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Steeple Jason Island in the Falkland Islands is home to the largest colony of Black-browed Albatross in the world. This albatross is currently listed as an endangered species, due in part to long line fishing.
Dan from Ray Brower.
Not to be used in any way without prior written permission.
All photos © Alexandra Bone
Joseph Blackburn - British, active 1752/1777
Portrait of a Gentleman, c. 1760
West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 62
Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned man with rosy cheeks looks at us in front of a window opening in this vertical portrait painting. The man’s body is angled to our left, but he turns his head to look at us with blue eyes under smooth brows. His chestnut-brown hair is brushed off his high forehead, which slopes down to a wide nose, notably flushed cheeks, and closed pink lips. A white cravat is knotted at his throat, and his left hand, to our right, rests on his hip so it pulls back the dark brown coat he wears. The coat has flaring sleeves and silver embroidery. Translucent ivory-white cuffs of his shirt rest along the backs of his hands. His long aqua-blue vest has a floral brocade pattern and elaborate embroidery of flowers and leaves down the buttoned opening of the front, around the scalloped pocket we see, and along the bottom hem, which comes to about mid-thigh. The man holds a black tricorner hat in his right hand, to our left, by that hip. Shimmering fern-green fabric hangs in folds and swags along the left edge of the painting in front of an ash-brown wall. The rectangular window opening is to our left. A volute climbs up the lower right corner of the opening, its scrolling bulk resembling a snail’s shell. A twilight sky glows over a few treetops in the landscape beyond. The artist signed the painting as if he had inscribed the front of the windowsill. Text reads, “I: Blackburn Pinx.”
A lavishly attired gentleman strikes a formal pose in a dark interior enlivened by blue drapery at the right and a window featuring an elaborate volute at the left. His rosy cheeks and the tricorner hat he grasps in his right hand suggest that he has just returned from a sunset stroll. The brown coat sports an unusual scalloped cuff, a style called à la marinière or mariners’ cuff, which was quite fashionable in England from at least the 1730s into the 1760s. The man’s left hand, placed assuredly on his hip, draws this coat back, as if to show off the sumptuous waistcoat and gold watch fob underneath. The waistcoat’s light blue silk is accented by a delicate, loom-woven subpattern and elaborate silver embroidery. Blackburn rendered this clothing in such remarkable detail that he must have worked from actual garments.
Little is known about this handsome portrait except that it was painted by the English-born Joseph Blackburn. The painting’s sitter and place of execution are unidentified, and its estimated date is based on the gentleman’s costume and the work’s relationship to other oils by the enigmatic Blackburn, who worked in Bermuda, New England, and Britain. Supporting the painting’s possible English origin are two facts: its first recorded appearance was in that country around 1956, and it bears a relatively large signature characteristic of Blackburn’s work there. More study is required to remedy the lack of information about this portrait in particular, and Blackburn’s biography more generally.
Nothing is known about English portrait painter Joseph Blackburn prior to his presence on Bermuda in 1752. During an extended stay on the island he painted about twenty-five portraits, including those of members of the Jones, Tucker and Harvey families. His compositions show that he was familiar with the work of the leading London portrait painters of the 1740's, including Thomas Hudson and Allan Ramsay. His rather dry, precise technique suggests a provincial English training. After about a year, Blackburn went from Bermuda to Newport, Rhode Island, where he painted several members of the Cheseborough family. He also painted Mr. and Mrs. John Brown (private collection), whose son-in-law Thomas Vernon introduced Blackburn to James Boutineau of Boston, describing him in his letter of November 25, 1754 as "late from the Island of Bermuda a Limner by profession & is allow'd to excell in that science, has now spent some months in this place, & behav'd in all respects as becomes a Gentleman, being possess'd with the agreeable qualities of great modesty, good sence & genteel behaviour."
Blackburn's graceful poses, his precise treatment of lace and other clothing details, and his softly colored landscape settings won him numerous commissions in the Boston area during the next five years. He repeated popular English poses: merchants at their desks, military men in uniform, public officials in their robes of office; women as shepherdesses or in dresses with low-cut bodices, decorated with lace, ribbon, jewels and flowing scarves. He apparently made contact with his sitters by personal recommendation; no newspaper advertisements have been found.
In 1759-61 Blackburn worked in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he painted several portraits for the Wentworths, as well as members of the Warner family. Portraits of Bostonians dated 1760, and a newspaper notice in 1761 regarding an unclaimed letter, suggest that he went back and forth between the two cities. He may also have returned to Rhode Island: one portrait of a member of the Babcock family of Westerly is dated 1761.
Blackburn returned to England by January 1764 and painted portraits in southwestern English counties of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Monmouthshire, as well as in Dublin. His last known portrait is of Hugh Jones, agent to the Morgan family of Tregdegar Park, Newport, Monmouthshire (1777; Worcester Art Museum, Mass.). Blackburn is particularly important in the history of American art for his early influence on John Singleton Copley. About one hundred and fifty portraits are signed by or attributed to him.
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The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC is a world-class art museum that displays one of the largest collections of masterpieces in the world including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, and decorative arts from the 13th century to the present. The National Gallery of Art collection includes an extensive survey of works of American, British, Italian, Flemish, Spanish, Dutch, French and German art. With its prime location on the National Mall, surrounded by the Smithsonian Institution, visitors often think that the museum is a part of the Smithsonian. It is a separate entity and is supported by a combination of private and public funds. Admission is free. The museum offers a wide range of educational programs, lectures, guided tours, films, and concerts.
The original neoclassical building, the West Building includes European (13th-early 20th century) and American (18th-early 20th century) paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, and temporary exhibitions. The National Gallery of Art was opened to the public in 1941 with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The original collection of masterpieces was provided by Mellon, who was the U. S. Secretary of the Treasury and ambassador to Britain in the 1930s. Mellon collected European masterpieces and many of the Gallery’s original works were once owned by Catherine II of Russia and purchased in the early 1930s by Mellon from the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad.
The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.
The NGA's collection galleries and Sculpture Garden display European and American paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and decorative arts. Paintings in the permanent collection date from the Middle Ages to the present. The Italian Renaissance collection includes two panels from Duccio's Maesta, the tondo of the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, a Botticelli work on the same subject, Giorgione's Allendale Nativity, Giovanni Bellini's The Feast of the Gods, Ginevra de' Benci (the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas) and groups of works by Titian and Raphael.
The collections include paintings by many European masters, including a version of Saint Martin and the Beggar, by El Greco, and works by Matthias Grünewald, Cranach the Elder, Rogier van der Weyden, Albrecht Dürer, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Francisco Goya, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and Eugène Delacroix, among others. The collection of sculpture and decorative arts includes such works as the Chalice of Abbot Suger of St-Denis and a collection of work by Auguste Rodin and Edgar Degas. Other highlights of the permanent collection include the second of the two original sets of Thomas Cole's series of paintings titled The Voyage of Life, (the first set is at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York) and the original version of Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley (two other versions are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Detroit Institute of Arts).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Gallery_of_Art
Andrew W. Mellon, who pledged both the resources to construct the National Gallery of Art as well as his high-quality art collection, is rightly known as the founder of the gallery. But his bequest numbered less than two hundred paintings and sculptures—not nearly enough to fill the gallery’s massive rooms. This, however, was a feature, not a failure of Mellon’s vision; he anticipated that the gallery eventually would be filled not only by his own collection, but also by additional donations from other private collectors. By design, then, it was both Andrew Mellon and those who followed his lead—among them, eight men and women known as the Founding Benefactors—to whom the gallery owes its premier reputation as a national art museum. At the gallery’s opening in 1941, President Roosevelt stated, “the dedication of this Gallery to a living past, and to a greater and more richly living future, is the measure of the earnestness of our intention that the freedom of the human spirit shall go on.”
www.doaks.org/resources/cultural-philanthropy/national-ga...
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________________________________
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC is a world-class art museum that displays one of the largest collections of masterpieces in the world including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, and decorative arts from the 13th century to the present. The National Gallery of Art collection includes an extensive survey of works of American, British, Italian, Flemish, Spanish, Dutch, French and German art. With its prime location on the National Mall, surrounded by the Smithsonian Institution, visitors often think that the museum is a part of the Smithsonian. It is a separate entity and is supported by a combination of private and public funds. Admission is free. The museum offers a wide range of educational programs, lectures, guided tours, films, and concerts.
The original neoclassical building, the West Building includes European (13th-early 20th century) and American (18th-early 20th century) paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, and temporary exhibitions. The National Gallery of Art was opened to the public in 1941 with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The original collection of masterpieces was provided by Mellon, who was the U. S. Secretary of the Treasury and ambassador to Britain in the 1930s. Mellon collected European masterpieces and many of the Gallery’s original works were once owned by Catherine II of Russia and purchased in the early 1930s by Mellon from the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad.
The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.
The NGA's collection galleries and Sculpture Garden display European and American paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, and decorative arts. Paintings in the permanent collection date from the Middle Ages to the present. The Italian Renaissance collection includes two panels from Duccio's Maesta, the tondo of the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, a Botticelli work on the same subject, Giorgione's Allendale Nativity, Giovanni Bellini's The Feast of the Gods, Ginevra de' Benci (the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas) and groups of works by Titian and Raphael.
The collections include paintings by many European masters, including a version of Saint Martin and the Beggar, by El Greco, and works by Matthias Grünewald, Cranach the Elder, Rogier van der Weyden, Albrecht Dürer, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Francisco Goya, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and Eugène Delacroix, among others. The collection of sculpture and decorative arts includes such works as the Chalice of Abbot Suger of St-Denis and a collection of work by Auguste Rodin and Edgar Degas. Other highlights of the permanent collection include the second of the two original sets of Thomas Cole's series of paintings titled The Voyage of Life, (the first set is at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York) and the original version of Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley (two other versions are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Detroit Institute of Arts).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Gallery_of_Art
Andrew W. Mellon, who pledged both the resources to construct the National Gallery of Art as well as his high-quality art collection, is rightly known as the founder of the gallery. But his bequest numbered less than two hundred paintings and sculptures—not nearly enough to fill the gallery’s massive rooms. This, however, was a feature, not a failure of Mellon’s vision; he anticipated that the gallery eventually would be filled not only by his own collection, but also by additional donations from other private collectors. By design, then, it was both Andrew Mellon and those who followed his lead—among them, eight men and women known as the Founding Benefactors—to whom the gallery owes its premier reputation as a national art museum. At the gallery’s opening in 1941, President Roosevelt stated, “the dedication of this Gallery to a living past, and to a greater and more richly living future, is the measure of the earnestness of our intention that the freedom of the human spirit shall go on.”
www.doaks.org/resources/cultural-philanthropy/national-ga...
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The black-browed albatross (Thalassarche melanophrys), also known as the black-browed mollymawk, is the most widespread and common member of its family in the Southern Oceans, Falklands and Antarctica.
Photographed in the wild in Antarctica.