Once or twice, like any person who buys and occasionally sells books, I have found a book on my shelves that I did not know I had. But only once have I found a really valuable one that I had no recollection of buying, and still don’t. It happened about two “book culls” past, when …
Tag: Art
Astonishing Paintings
From Jim Moore: astonishing paintings of Passenger pigeons in a strange thirties style, maybe even cooler than Ford’s, below.. More tomorrow.
C J’s latest project
C J Hadley came over as a young girl from Birmingham in England, and worked at Car and Driver magazine in its legendary years, when the late David E Davis ran a strong stable of writers and illustrators. It may be advancing age, but I think magazines were more colorful then, perhaps because they were …
Update on “Beebesaurus”
… also known as Microraptor gui. I painted it a sort of irridescent black, to conform with what is known about its feathers. Can’t believe how much it looks like Beebe’s bookplate in his pre- WW I (1910) book Our Search for a Wilderness. Microraptor was dug up in China in 2003.
Beebesaurus
I finally got my copy, Beebe’s copy, of his book Our Search for a Wilderness, with his bookplate. The seller thought it was an iguana, but I knew it was a sketch of a possible “pre-Archaeopteryx” avian ancestor he had imagined. In 1910. I think it was 2003 when they dug up Microraptor gui. The …
Beebe
Will Beebe, naturalist, writer, inventor, New York socialite, jungle and ocean explorer, is a man whose like it would be hard to have today. But without his example, I don’t know if I would be the person I am. Tom McGuane also cites him as a childhood inspiration, not for writing (I think he slights …
What is on a Sighthound’s Mind?
Lucas Machias sent me this image: My reaction was simple: WANT one. He traced it to this excellent blog, on greyhound sculpture and North Dakota life. I DO want one, and must research…
Carl Rungius painting
An unusual one, from the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, for “our” exhibition (be patient!), courtesy of the Museum and Kevin Sharp. Also the locked skulls that inspired Rungius. I found this letter from Rungius in a book I bought, unmentioned…
“Better than Bacon”
This painting, in which Carl Rungius does his own version of a Charley Russell theme, is in the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole. Most of Rungius’s late great oils have a distinctive theme or style, which I characterized rudely to two of my friends, art historian Jim Moore and museum curator Toby …
Image again
Here is the full image of the painting that contains the detail I blogged on below. I await the book, but as far as I know it is in Chinese, so it may still be enigmatic. It is both beautiful and sinister, and its title is “Clearing the Mountains”. Who is clearing whom out of …