jimoneilalaska (AKA: Jim O'Neil on ipernity)
The sign of the cat with the racket
Steven H., on his Flickr site, posted a portrait he painted of Honore de Balzac.
His painting prompted me to pick up and read de Balzac's "At The Sign of the Cat and Racket"
The story starts: "Half-way down the Rue Saint-Denis, almost at the corner of the Rue du Petit-Lion, there stood formerly one of those delightful houses which enable historians to reconstruct old Paris by analogy. The threatening walls of this tumbledown abode seemed to have been decorated with hieroglyphics. For what other name could the passer-by give to the Xs and Vs which the horizontal or diagonal timbers traced on the front, outlined by little parallel cracks in the plaster?...A formidable wooden beam, resting on four pillars, which appeared to have bent under the weight of the decrepit house, ... In the middle of this broad and fantastically carved joist there was an old painting representing a cat playing rackets."
Subsequently that reading prompted me to paint this picture.
I must admit, in my picture, Theodore de Sommervieux, comes out looking a lot like Count Dracula, but Honore de Balzac is at least, in part, to blame for that. Hey, he's the one who dressed Theodore in a dark opera cape in the above scene set just before dawn! :-)
Watercolor and soft pastel on 12 by 12 inch card stock.
The sign of the cat with the racket
Steven H., on his Flickr site, posted a portrait he painted of Honore de Balzac.
His painting prompted me to pick up and read de Balzac's "At The Sign of the Cat and Racket"
The story starts: "Half-way down the Rue Saint-Denis, almost at the corner of the Rue du Petit-Lion, there stood formerly one of those delightful houses which enable historians to reconstruct old Paris by analogy. The threatening walls of this tumbledown abode seemed to have been decorated with hieroglyphics. For what other name could the passer-by give to the Xs and Vs which the horizontal or diagonal timbers traced on the front, outlined by little parallel cracks in the plaster?...A formidable wooden beam, resting on four pillars, which appeared to have bent under the weight of the decrepit house, ... In the middle of this broad and fantastically carved joist there was an old painting representing a cat playing rackets."
Subsequently that reading prompted me to paint this picture.
I must admit, in my picture, Theodore de Sommervieux, comes out looking a lot like Count Dracula, but Honore de Balzac is at least, in part, to blame for that. Hey, he's the one who dressed Theodore in a dark opera cape in the above scene set just before dawn! :-)
Watercolor and soft pastel on 12 by 12 inch card stock.