Jan de Clerck

Jan de Clerck, “De vermoeide Winden (The Tired Winds)”, 1937, Oil on Canvas, Private Collection

Born in Ostend, Belgium, Jan de Clerck studied briefly with the painter Camille Payen in Brussels, but was, for the most part, self-taught. He was much influenced by the exhibitions organized by the group La Libre Esthétique, and his first paintings date from the late 1890s. Quickly gaining in confidence and ability, De Clerck first exhibited his paintings in 1905.

Jan de Clerck developed an original technique of a sort of elongated pointillism of striped brushstrokes, producing landscapes and seascapes tinged with a Symbolist aesthetic. He often worked in mixed media, dragging the paint with short vertical strokes in order to build up the surface of the picture. This individual technique De Clerck made virtually his own: much of his best work up to 1920 is painted in this way.

A period of exile from Belgium during World War I, found De Clerke painting landscapes and camouflage, taking part in local exhibitions, and befriending such artists as Frank Brangwyn. After the war, Jan de Clerck returned to Ostend where his reputation continued to grow. He experimented with new techniques, often mixing pastel and watercolour, which he called ‘aquapastel’, to create the luminous effects he sought.

Further exhibitions of De Clerck’s work in Ostend, Liège and Ghent, as well as the publication of a book of reproductions of his work in 1928, served to advance his reputation. After 1933, however, there were no major exhibitions of De Clerck’s work for almost twenty years. His output began to decline, and he began to focus mainly on seascapes, always his favourite subject.

John Steinbeck: “The Gods Are Fallen and All Safety Gone”

Nineteen Men: The Black and White Collection

“When a child first catches adults out — when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just — his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child’s world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”

–John Steinbeck, East of Eden

 

Calendar: November 26

A Year: Day to Day Men: 26th of November

Incoming Surf

November 26, 1853 marks the birthdate of prominent lawman, gambler and saloon keeper Bat Masterson.

Born Bartholomew William Barclay Masterson in Henryville, Quebec, Canada, Bat Masterson grew up on a series of family farms in New York, Illinois, and Kansas. In 1873, at the age of twenty, he left home and began working as a buffalo hunter and Indian scout in Dodge City, Kansas.

Over the next decade, Masterson worked intermittently as the Ford County Sheriff from 1877 to 1879 and a deputy United States Marshal in 1879; but he largely made his living as a saloonkeeper and a gambler. During this time, he befriended and became an associate of legendary lawman Wyatt Earp, who served both Dodge City, Kansas and Tombstone, Arizona. Masterson’s brothers, Ed and James, were also Dodge City lawmen.

Bat Masterson spent his later years in New York City. He became a close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt and was one of the “White House Gunfighters” who received federal appointments from Roosevelt, along with Pat Garrett and Pat Daniels. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him deputy U.S. Marshal for the southern district of New York, a position that Masterson held until 1907.

Masterson’s enthusiasm for sports, especially prizefighting, led him to become a feature sports writer for Human Life Magazine. Masterson became a leading authority on prizefighting, attending almost every important match and title fight in the United States. This led eventually to Masterson becoming sports editor of the New York Morning Telegraph, a broadsheet newspaper focusing mostly on theater and sport racing. His column covered not only boxing and other sports, but he also gave his opinions on crime, politics, and other topics.

On October 25, 1921, at age 67, Bat Masterson died at his desk from a massive heart attack after writing what became his final column for the Morning Telegraph. About 500 people attended Masterson’s service at Frank E. Campbell’s Funeral Church at Broadway and 66th Street. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York. His full name, William Barclay Masterson, appears above his epitaph on the large granite grave marker in Woodlawn. Masterson’s epitaph states that he was “Loved by Everyone”.

J.M. Barrie: “The Colours Become So Vivid”

 

Photographer Unknown, Gay Film Computer Graphics, Gay Gifs, (The Colours Become So Vivid)

“If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Markus Zusak: “Shower After Shower”

Photographer Unknown, Shower After Shower

When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity’s certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower.”
Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

Antonio Canova

Antonio Canova, “Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss”, Detail, 1787, Marble, Louvre Museum, Paris

“Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss” is a marble sculpture by Italian artist Antonio Canova, who was raised by his stonemason grandfather, Pasino Canova. Antonio Canova valued his independence as an artist, believing that art was above politics. However, through pressure by the French on the papacy, he was forced to accept titles and honors.

The marble sculpture is in a Neoclassical style but shows characteristics of the then emerging Romantic movement. There were two versions of this piece; the image shown being the prime version, which was acquired by Joachim Murat, Marshal of France and Admiral of France under the reign of Napoleon. After Murat’s death, the sculpture entered the Louvre Museum in 1824.

Image reblogged with thanks to http://abrighterhellas.tumblr.com