New Leonardo da Vinci painting 'discovered'

Art experts believe a new portrait by Leonardo da Vinci may have been discovered thanks to a 500-year-old fingerprint.
A Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress, the painting which has been attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Photograph: Christie's
The small picture of a young woman in profile was previously believed to be a German work from the early 19th century and has changed hands in recent years for around £12,000.
But a growing number of leading Leonardo scholars agree the work is almost certainly by the Renaissance figurehead because it appears to have his fingerprint on it. Carbon dating and infrared analysis of Leonardo's techniques back up the theory.
If the scholars are correct, it will be the first major work by Leonardo to be identified for 100 years and will be worth tens of millions of pounds.
Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the history of art at Oxford University, is so convinced the portrait is a Leonardo that he has written an as yet unpublished 200-page book about it.
Kemp said he first thought the find was "too good to be true – after 40 years in the Leonardo business I thought I'd seen it all".
But gradually, "all the bits fell into place like a well-made piece of furniture. All the drawers slotted in," he told the Times.
The fingerprint, which corresponds to the tip of the index or middle finger, was found by Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal-based forensic art expert, when he examined images taken of the portrait by the revolutionary multispectral camera. Multi-spectral analysis can capture light from frequencies beyond the visible light range, such as infrared, allowing the extraction of information that the human eye fails to capture.
Biro believed the fingerprint, which was found near the top left corner of the work, was "highly comparable" to a fingerprint on Leonardo's St Jerome in the Vatican, the Antiques Trade Gazette reported.
The magazine said infrared analysis showed "significant" stylistic parallels with those in Leonardo's Portrait of a Woman in Profile in Windsor Castle and showed the work was made by a left-handed artist, as Leonardo is known to have been.
Drawn in ink and chalks, the beautiful young woman's costume and elaborate hairstyle reflected Milanese fashion of the late 15th century, and carbon analysis was consistent with that dating, the magazine reported.
Kemp believed that "by a process of elimination", the fresh-faced teenager could be Bianca Sforza, the daughter of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan from 1452-1508, and his mistress Bernardina de Corradis.
Kemp said he thought the portrait, which measures 33cm x 22cm (13in x 9in), must date from around 1496 when, aged 13 or 14, the Bella Principessa married the Duke's army captain, Galeazzo Sanseverino, a patron of Leonardo's. She died four months after the wedding.
It would be Leonardo's first known portrait of the princess, although he painted two of the duke's mistresses Cecilia Gallerani and Lucrezia Crivelli.
The picture was sold at Christie's in New York in 1998, in an Old Master Drawings sale as a Young Girl in Profile in Renaissance Dress, catalogued as German, early 19th century, with an estimate of $12,000-$16,000.
It sold for $19,000 (£12,000) and later went for a similar sum to Canadian-born collector Peter Silverman, in 2007.
Silverman believed there was more to the portrait and delved into the matter after a discussion last year with Dr Nicholas Turner, formerly the keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum.
Silverman told the Times that when he first saw the picture, "my heart started to beat a million times a minute. I immediately thought this could be a Florentine artist. The idea of Leonardo came to me in a flash."
The portrait is due to go on display in an exhibition in Sweden next year.

Hyacinthe Kuller Baron Paintings

"Red Hooded Asparas"
Asparas are the essence of the female.
Hyacinthe Baron in this painting captures
the longing, the hope,
the expectation
and the "Beauty of the Female Spirit.

Acrylic, Oil on canvass
Metallic gold and silver

Cadmium red and Alizaron Crimson
3'x4'

Hyacinthe Kuller Baron Paintings

Three Women With Flowers
The good and the evil...
The three aspects of the female Captured in this painting by Hyacinthe Baron
in a symbiotic relationship.
Oil and Acrylic on canvas
Metallic gold and silver
3'x4'

Hyacinthe Kuller Baron Paintings

"Cassandra...Aspara Aspect"

There are four aspects of the Aspara. In this recent painting Hyacinthe Baron imparts the beauty of Cassandra. The Aspara aspect inspires the soul of the lover and the poet.
Oil on canvas
3'x4'
Mixed media, metallics
Marble Dust

SOME WATER COLOR WORKS

Ingrid Simons Works

Cynthia Dempsey

Its called"EARLY RISER"



Its called" HIDDEN RETREAT"



Its called "A PEACEFUL TIME"

Light on the Familiar: The Paintings of Scott Prior

The University Gallery of University of Massachusetts Amherst is honored to host Light on the Familiar: The Paintings of Scott Prior from January 29 through March 17, 2000. The exhibition is a retrospective selection of 45 of Prior's paintings completed between 1971 and 1999 and includes examples of his early surreal paintings and more recent paintings of the people, interiors, places and objects that are most familiar to him. Light on the Familiar was organized by the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, Massachusetts where it was on view last fall. An opening reception for the exhibition's showing at the University Gallery will be held on Friday, January 28th from 5 to 7 p.m. and the artist will be present. Scott Prior will give a slide lecture about his work on Wednesday, February 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the University Gallery. (right: Barbeque in Winter, 1998, oil on linen, 28 x 22 inches, Collection of Leslie and Stephen Shatz)
Light on the Familiar is the first major exhibition of Prior's work to be presented in the Pioneer Valley, his home since 1967 when he came to Amherst to attend the University of Massachusetts. Prior is a 1971 graduate of the University's department of art from which he received a B.F.A in printmaking. After college he settled in the area and taught himself to paint, finding a supportive artistic community among the so-called "Valley Realists": Randall Deihl, Robin Freedenfeld, Gregory Gillespie, the late Frances Cohen Gillespie and Jane Lund. As the exhibition's curator Rachel Rosenfield Lafo suggests in her catalogue essay, the realist style has found great acceptance in the Valley, perhaps because the area is largely populated by writers, academics, small presses, book artists and illustrators who are naturally receptive to literary art. (left: Sand Box and Hollyhocks, 1980, oil on canvas, 54 x 42 inches, Collection of Robert and Esta Epstein)
Prior's early surreal paintings combine realistically painted passages with odd and often humorous objects. The real and invented images are rendered in minute detail, and show Prior's absorption of the techniques and style of Renaissance painting which he combines with contemporary subject matter. After 1980 Prior's interests turned to depicting natural phenomena - light as it bathes or illuminates places and things, time of day, and the change of seasons. Prior has said about his landscapes and still lifes painted in the 1980s and 1990s that he has been "...particularly interested in depicting solitude and light. Solitude because it can be illuminating. And light because it is like God's voice, the way it touches and plays over all things." Prior works from both photographs and life. After his marriage to Nanette Vonnegut in 1981 he began to incorporate portraits of real rather than invented people into his work. His family and their domestic surroundings have inspired a body of work that includes the interiors, still lifes and landscapes of his daily life. Prior captures the sense of intimacy and tranquility that exists in the space of the everyday lives of the people he loves.
The University Gallery, located on the lower level of the Fine Arts Center, is open to the public from Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. The Gallery is also open during evening performances held in the Concert Hall of the Fine Arts Center.

Giffin Art work

A few weeks ago we had our first snowfall of the season and it was absolutely beautiful. The way the landscape changed overnight was very dramatic. I latched onto my camera and went out to explore the area around the house. I had been attracted at once from the window of my studio to the snow on the bank on the other side of the river. I immediately went down and as the light began to permeate the cloud cover a soft yellow light began to shine through the alders on the opposite side of the river and wash across the water surface. I loved the interplay of reflection of the alders and the warming sunlight. It appeared as an impressionist painting. I shot a series of photos and immediately came up to my studio to address this image with it fresh in my mind’s eye. I had luckily stretched a canvas only a day or two earlier. The dimensions are 28″ x 42″ (seems to be a popular size for me as of late). I began painting with my eye set upon the still fresh image in my head and this painting fell from my brush.
Recently I was in Toronto removing my paintings from an exhibit that had been on of my work for a few weeks. While I was there I spoke with the artist that was setting up the next show. He commented to me that my paintings “looked as though I had breathed the paint onto the surface of the canvas.” I felt that was an appropriate statement because at times it feels that way when I am painting. It is a pleasure to do and a pleasure to share with you.

Christopher Terry: Recent Paintings

Terry Rodgers.... The Apotheosis Of Pleasure

Terry Rodgers is a realist known for his contemporary character studies. While his earlier paintings often contemplated personal and family relationships in brightly lit outdoor settings wrought with pale, intense, high-keyed colors, his recent paintings conjure up aVague Inferencesvision of the private nightlife of America’s privileged youth.

Van Gogh's Cypress and Wheatfield

In 1888, when city life and living with his brother proved too much, Van Gogh left Paris and went to Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. He was impressed with the local landscape and hoped to found an art colony. He decorated a "yellow house" and created a celebrated series of yellow sunflower paintings for this purpose. Only Paul Gauguin, whose simplified colour schemes and forms (known as synthetism) attracted van Gogh, followed his invitation. The admiration was mutual, and Gauguin painted van Gogh painting sunflowers. However their encounter ended in a quarrel. Van Gogh suffered a mental breakdown and cut off part of his left ear, which he gave to a startled prostitute friend. Gauguin left in December 1888.
One of Vincent's famous paintings, the Bedroom in Arles of 1888, uses bright yellow and unusual perspective effects in depicting the interior of his bedroom. The boldly vanishing lines are sometimes attributed to his changing mental condition. The only painting he sold during his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, was created in 1888. It is now on display in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, Russia.
Van Gogh now exchanged painting dots for small stripes. He suffered from depression, and in 1889 on his own request Van Gogh was admitted to the psychiatric center at Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole in Saint Remy de Provence, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. During his stay here the clinic and its garden became his main subject. Pencil strokes changed again, now into swirls.
In May 1890 Vincent left the clinic and went to the physician Paul Gachet, in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, where he was closer to his brother Theo, who had recently married. Gachet had been recommended to him by Pissarro; he had treated several artists before. Here van Gogh created his only etching: a portrait of the melancholic doctor Gachet. His depression aggravated, and on July 27 of the same year, at the age of 37, after a fit of painting activity, van Gogh shot himself in the chest. He died two days later, with Theo at his side, who reported his last words as "La tristesse durera toujours" (French: "The sadness will last forever"). He was buried at the cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise; Theo, unable to come to terms with his brother's death, died 6 months later and, at his wife's request, was buried next to Vincent.
It would not take long before Vincent's fame grew higher and higher. Large exhibitions were organized soon: Paris 1901, Amsterdam 1905, Cologne 1912, New York 1913 and Berlin 1914.
Van Gogh's life forms the basis for Irving Stone's biographical novel Lust for Life.
Notable Works
•(1885) The Potato Eaters
•(1888) Bedroom in Arles
•(1888) Cafe Terrace at Night
•(1888) The Red Vineyard
•(1889) The Starry Night
•(1889) Irises
•(1889) Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers
•(1889) Portrait de l'artiste sans barbe
•(1890) Portrait of Doctor Gachet

vincent van goghs painting

Painting Title: Cafe Terrace at Night 1888
Oil on Canvas, 81 x 65.5cm - 31 x 26 Inches (approx)
Vincent van Gogh
Famous Dutch artist - Post Impressionist painter

About the Cafe Terrace at Night Painting
Vincent van Gogh painted several night scenes and became fascinated with depicting the stars (most famously with his Starry Night paintings) and the light effects of the night. Van Gogh has achieved an effect of luminosity with the use of contrasting colors and tones. The darks compliment the lights, the blues intensify the oranges, and the purples bring out the yellows.

Van Gogh wrote about the Cafe Terrace at Night painting in a letter to his sister, saying "Here you have a night painting without black, with nothing but beautiful blue and violet and green and in this surrounding the illuminated area colors itself sulfur pale yellow and citron green. It amuses me enormously to paint the night right on the spot. Normally, one draws and paints the painting during the daytime after the sketch. But I like to paint the thing immediately.
It is true that in the darkness I can take a blue for a green, a blue lilac for a pink lilac, since it is hard to distinguish the quality of the tone. But it is the only way to get away from our conventional night with poor pale whitish light, while even a simple candle already provides us with the richest of yellows and oranges."

The cafe still exists today and is a popular destination for those following the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh.

PAINTINGS OF WILLIAM MORRIS

MARY CASSATT (1844-1926)

Born Mary Stevenson Cassatt on May 22, 1844, in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. Mary Cassatt was the daughter of a well-to-do real estate and investment broker, and her upbringing reflected her family’s high social standing. Her schooling prepared her to be a proper wife and mother and included such classes as homemaking, embroidery, music, sketching and painting. During the 1850s, the Cassatt's took their children abroad to live in Europe for several years.

Though women of her day were discouraged from pursuing a career, Mary Cassatt enrolled in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts at age 16. Not surprisingly, she found the male faculty and her fellow students to be patronizing and resentful of her attendance. Cassatt also became frustrated by the curriculum’s slow pace and inadequate course offerings. She decided to leave the program and move to Europe where she could study the works of the Old Masters firsthand on her own.

Despite her family’s strong objections (her father declared he would rather see his daughter dead than living abroad as a "bohemian"), Mary Cassatt left for Paris in 1866. She began her study with private art lessons in the Louvre, where she would study and copy masterpieces. She continued to study and paint in relative obscurity until 1868, when one of her portraits was selected at the prestigious Paris Salon, an annual exhibition run by the French government. With her father’s disapproving words echoing in her ears, Cassatt submitted the well-received painting under the name Mary Stevenson.

In 1870, soon after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Mary Cassatt reluctantly returned home to live with her parents. The artistic freedom she enjoyed while living abroad was immediately extinguished upon her return to the outskirts of Philadelphia. Not only did she have trouble finding proper supplies, but her father refused to pay for anything connected with her art. To raise funds, she tried to sell some of her paintings in New York to no avail. When she tried again to sell them through a dealer in Chicago, the paintings were tragically destroyed in a fire in 1871.

In the midst of these obstacles, Mary Cassatt was contacted by the archbishop of Pittsburgh, who wanted to commission her to paint copies of two works by the Italian master Correggio. Cassatt accepted the assignment and left immediately for Europe where the originals were on display in Parma, Italy. With the money she earned from the commission, she was able to resume her career in Europe. The Paris Salon accepted her paintings for exhibitions in 1872, 1873 and 1874, which helped secure her status as an established artist. She continued to study and paint in Spain, Belgium, and Rome, eventually settling permanently in Paris.

Though she felt indebted to the Salon for building her career, Mary Cassatt began to feel increasingly constrained by its inflexible guidelines. No longer concerned with what was fashionable or commercial, she began to experiment in new directions. Her new work drew criticism for its bright colors and unflattering accuracy of its subjects. During this time, she drew courage from painter Edgar Degas, whose pastels inspired her to press on in her own direction. "I used to go and flatten my nose against that window and absorb all I could of his art," she once wrote to a friend. "It changed my life. I saw art then as I wanted to see it."

Her admiration for Degas would soon blossom into a strong friendship, and Mary Cassatt exhibited 11 of her paintings with the Impressionists in 1879. The show was a huge success both commercially and critically, and similar exhibits were staged in 1880 and 1881. Shortly thereafter marked a dormant period for Mary Cassatt, who was forced to withdraw from the art world to care for her ill mother and sister. Her sister died in 1882, but after her mother regained her health, Mary was able to resume painting.

While many of her fellow Impressionists were focused on landscapes and street scenes, Mary Cassatt became famous for her portraits. She was especially drawn to women in everyday domestic settings, especially mothers with their children. But unlike the Madonnas and cherubs of the Renaissance, Cassatt’s portraits were unconventional in their direct and honest nature. Commenting in American Artist, Gemma Newman noted that "her constant objective was to achieve force, not sweetness; truth, not sentimentality or romance."

Mary Cassatt's painting style continued to evolve away from Impressionism in favor of a simpler, more straightforward approach. Her final exhibition with the Impressionists was in 1886, and she subsequently stopped identifying herself with a particular movement or school. Her experimentation with a variety of techniques often led her to unexpected places. For example, drawing inspiration from Japanese master printmakers, she exhibited a series of colored prints, including Woman Bathing and The Coiffure, in 1891.

Soon after, Mary Cassatt began taking an interest in young American artists. She also sponsored fellow Impressionists and encouraged wealthy Americans to support the fledgling movement by purchasing artwork. She became an advisor to several major collectors with the stipulation that their purchases would eventually be passed on to American art museums.

A 1910 trip to Egypt with her brother Gardner and his family would prove to be a turning a point in Mary Cassatt’s life. The magnificent ancient art made her question her own talent as an artist. Soon after their return home, Gardner died unexpectedly from an illness he contracted during the journey. These two events deeply affected Cassatt’s physical and emotional health, and she was unable to paint again until around 1912. Three years later, she was forced to give up painting altogether as diabetes slowly stole her vision. For the next 11 years, until her death on June 14, 1926, Mary Cassatt lived in almost total blindness, bitterly unhappy to be robbed of her greatest source of pleasure.

THE STARRY NIGHT BY VAN GOGH

THE DUTCH POST IMPRESSIONISMIST VINCENT VAN GOGH DRAW THIS PAINTING. HE WAS CALLED A MAD GINIOUS AND HIS FAVORITE COLOR WAS YELLOW. SINCE 1941 THIS PAINTING HELD AT MUSEUM OF MODERN ART IN NEW YORK CITY.