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Xipe Totec was a significant deity in Aztec mythology, representing spring, agriculture, and the cycle of life and death, often depicted wearing the flayed skin of a sacrificial victim.
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Xipe_Figure,_Mexico,_Stat...
Materials: oil on panel. Dimensions: 46.4 x 70.2 cm. Source: worcester.emuseum.com/objects/7836/a-village-scene-in-win....
Sorry I haven't been around; haven't shot much of anything lately, but trying to get back to it.
Hopefully all my friends are having a fine holiday season.
I hope all are having a terrific weekend.
Worcester Art Museum Sunday 6th August 2023-Leica Q3
Worcester Art Museum Sunday 6th August 2023-Leica Q3
Jenny Scobel
American, born 1955
March, 2003
Oil, graphite, and wax on gessoed panel
Sarah C. Garver Fund, 2005.165
Jenny Scobel's March begs us to ask who this mysterious, freckled-face, young woman might be and how that innocent face could belong to such a glamorously dressed body. Is she trapped by the expectations of womanhood? Does the improbable cartoon streetscape behind with its ominous sky offer an escape or spell looming danger? Scobel offers us no definitive narrative, no biographical truth; in fact, she has reused this intriguing face (from a photo found in a vintage magazine) in many works and meticulously wed it to different torsos and backgrounds, exploring ways in which identities are constructed. Together the heightened realism and classic portrait formality of the figure with the flat stylized background (culled from 1930s-'40s cartoons) encourage a sense of tension and estrangement.
(From Worcester Art Museum label)
DeWitt Parshall
American, 1864-1956
Hermit Creek Canyon, 1910-1916
Oil on canvas
Museum Purchase, 1916.57
Up until 1901, the Grand Canyon was difficult for most visitors to access given its remote location in northwest Arizona. The Santa Fe Railroad Company built tracks that year along the south of the canyon, prompting a wave of tourism. As part of a marketing campaign, the company sponsored five artists to paint the Grand Canyon. On November 5, 1910, Dewitt Parshall - alongside Elliott Daingerfield, Thomas Moran, Edward Potthast, and Frederick Ballard Williams - traveled by railway to the natural landmark. When the group arrived, they were led to the rim with their eyes closed and when Parshall saw the sight, he was reported to have gone "quite moon-mad and wandered for hours up on the rim in the unearthly splendor of its rays." Parshall captured this impression of sunlight reflecting off the canyon walls with swift brushwork and pale pinks, yellows, and blue-purple shadows.
(From Worcester Art Museum label)
Jan van Goven
Dutch, 1596-1656
Landscape with Two Horsecarts, about 1652
Oil on paper
Eliza S. Paine Fund in memory of William R. and Francis T.C. Paine, 1956.84
Van Goyen was chiefly a landscape painter, and his work includes scenes from many parts of the Netherlands. After 1626, he evolved a new method of depicting landscapes, reducing the number of colors in his palette and relying on changes of value within those colors to create atmospheric effects. This painting, signed with a monogram and dated 1652, is one of a series of oil sketches which Van Goyen made early in the 1650s.
(From Worcester Art Museum label)
Jean François Millet
French, 1814-1875
Les glaneuses (The Gleaners), 1850s
Etching on cream laid paper
Gift of Mrs. Robert M. Heberton from the Edward A. Bigelow Collection, 1981.225
In 1849, Millet permanently relocated to Barbizon from Paris.
There, he not only painted the forest, but the surrounding fields populated with peasants, whose backbreaking labor is shown with a realism deemed overtly political when his paintings were displayed at the Salon in Paris. Millet began sketching gleaners - impoverished women who picked up stray pieces of grain after a harvest - near the beginning of his time in Barbizon, a theme that culminated in 1857 with the completion of an oil painting, The Gleaners, now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. The composition of this etching - one of many created during the 1850s - is nearly identical to the final painted version.
While the careful, years-long process of determining a final composition is far removed from later impressionist spontaneity, Millet's etching is early evidence of the 19th century's "etching revival." This artistic trend reasserted etching as a medium for an original work of art, as opposed to a reproduction of a painting. The etching revival included many impressionist and other avant-garde artists of the 19th century, notably James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, and Childe Hassam.
(From Worcester Art Museum label)
Joseph H. Greenwood
American, 1857-1927
Apple Orchard, 1903
Oil on canvas
Bequest of Ruth G. Woodis, 2017.25
As impressionism increased in popularity throughout the United States, the style's accessibility prompted local artists to engage with the movement. Worcester native Joseph H. Greenwood adapted characteristics of impressionism to the Massachusetts landscape. In Apple Orchard, Greenwood conveys the essence of spring through flickers of light, a bright palette, and soft, hazy brushwork. Despite the similarities to impressionism, Greenwood refused to label his work as such, preferring to remain independent of stylistic categorization.
(From Worcester Art Museum label)
Frank Weston Benson
American, 1862-1951
Natalie, 1917
Oil on canvas
Gift of Desmond Callan, Mary H. Bailey, and Cristina E. Callan, 1996.106
Benson took impressionism westward while on a family vacation to Wyoming in 1917. After a 50-mile wagon ride, the Bensons arrived at Bar-B-C Ranch, their destination at the foot of the Grand Teton Mountain Range. The isolation in Wyoming allowed Benson to enjoy this new environment, taking copious notes on the fish and wildlife he encountered. While not intending to work on the trip, Benson finally unpacked his paint boxes after three weeks. This painting of Natalie Thayer was created at the request of Polly Hemingway, with whom both Thayer and the Bensons were on vacation. Unlike Benson's earlier academic portraiture, Natalie was completed entirely en plein air; photographs show that she perched on a split rail fence while Benson sat at his easel. Dressed in casual clothing with a red neckerchief and wide-brimmed hat against a bright blue sky, Natalie projects an independent spirit representative of modern femininity in the early 20th century.
(From Worcester Art Museum label)
Childe Hassam
American, 1859-1935
Lyman's Pool, 1912
Watercolors on off-white wove paper
Bequest of Mrs. Charlotte E. W. Buffington, 1935.52 and 1935.53
Hassam often summered on Appledore, one of the Isles of Shoals in the Gulf of Maine. In the summer of 1912, he explored the island's perimeter, specifically an inlet on its northeastern edge. Lyman's Pool and Looking into Beryl's Pool are two of the four watercolors he made at the site. Favoring watercolor as he worked en plein air, Hassam appreciated the medium's portability and luminosity.
(From Worcester Art Museum label)
