Carl Laubin, A Tribute to Charles Robert Cockerell, RA
Oil on canvas, 39' 11" x 60'
2005, Private collection

Beulah R. Bettersworth, Christopher Street, Greenwich Village
Oil on canvas, 30 1/8" x 24 ¼"
1934, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Charles Frederick William Mielatz, Grand Central Station at Night
Etching on paper, 7" x 10"
1890, Smithsonian American Art Museum

This, of course, is not the Grand Central we know today, but its immediate predecessor.

Previously: Bayerische Volkspartei | Lwow (Lvov/Lviv) | Empire State | Municipal Airports | Crêpes à Dentelles

John Durand, The Rapalje Children
Oil on canvas, 50¾" x 40"
1768, New-York Historical Society

According to the Historical Society, John Durand's group portrait of the four children of the prominent mercantile family of Manhattan is considered one of the finest examples of colonial painting in America. From left to right are Garret (b. 1757), George (b. 1759), Anne (b. 1762), and Jacques (b. 1752). Durand had come to New York from Virginia two years previous to paint individual portraits of the children of the Beekman family. Art historians suspect he was born or trained in France. Durand later returned to Virginia, where he continued to paint until his death in 1805.

George A. Bradshaw, Ludlow Street
Drypoint on paper, 8 7/8 " x 6 3/8 "
1935, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Ludlow Street is the home of the world-famous Katz's Delicatessen.

Paul Manship, New York Tercentenary Medal
Bronze, 2 3/4 inch diameter
1914, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Previously: The Queen in Williamsburg | A Welcome to the Queen | Old Dominion Will Receive Her Majesty | Old Dominion, New Mace | About Time

THE CROSS OF Saint George snaps proudly from the flagpole above Westminster Cathedral, the Administrator of which, Msgr. Mark Langham, has given us a special St. George's Day treat by revealing the newly-commissioned designs for completing the mosaic work in that cathedral's chapel dedicated to the patron saint of England.

JULIE TAYMOR'S VERSION of Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus", the 1999 film "Titus" (with Anthony Hopkins in the title role), is a rather interesting modern interpretation. It has rather whimsical aspects, such as the 'SPQR News' microphone the characters are seen speaking into. The rivals for the imperial throne bedeck their supporters in the colors of Rome's rival football teams: the red and yellow of Roma for Saturninus and the pale blue and white of Lazio for Bassianus. I especially enjoy the Senators bedecked in old-school white suits making them appear like a convivium of Kentucky colonels. Worth seeing.

Sir James Henry Mussen Campbell, Bt., 1st Baron Glenavy, PC, QC. was born in Dublin in 1851. Campbell graduated from the University of Dublin (Trinity College) a Bachelor of the Arts in 1874. He was called to the Irish bar in 1878, being made a Queen's Counsel in 1892. Campbell was elected to parliament in 1898, being called to the English bar a year later. He was made Solicitor General for Ireland in 1903, as well as being appointed an Irish Privy Counsellor. He rose to become Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in 1916, being made a baronet the following year, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland the year after that (1918). Sir James was ennobled as 1st Baron Glenavy upon relinquishing office in 1921.

Ireland was partitioned in the following year, and Lord Glenavy became the first Cathaoirleach of the Seanad Eireann (Presiding officer of the Irish senate). In 1923, he chaired the judicial committee investigating the establishment of a new courts system for the Irish Free State. His proposals were implemented the following year in the Courts of Justice Act 1924, forming the Irish courts as they remain today. Having served one six-year term in the Seanad, he did not seek re-elected in 1928, and died three years later in 1931. Holding the largely honorary position of President of the College Historical Society ("the Hist"), Dublin University's debating society, from 1925, he was succeeded upon his death by his fellow Irish Protestant, Douglas Hyde, who himself later became the first President of Ireland from 1938 until 1945.

CHARLES GRANT, VICOMTE DE VAUX, was a Frenchman of Caledonian extraction who served as a sous-lieutenant in the Scots Company of the Garde du Roi, eventually rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. A cadet branch of the Scottish clan, the Grants in France made sure to maintain links with their kinsmen in the old country. Abbé Peter Grant helped Sir James Grant, 8th Bt., commence an art collection while Sir James was on the Grand Tour in 1759-60. Abbé Grant's nephew, Baron Grant de Blairfindy, was a fellow Catholic and Colonel in the Légion Royale of Louis XVI. In a letter to Sir James, who was Cheif of the Grants, Blairfindy described their fellow kinsman the Vicomte de Vaux as "a clever, brave officer, polite in company... as brave as his sword," though, rather disappointingly, the Baron adds that the Vicomte "never drinks". De Vaux himself took a keen interest in his extended family, and when the terrors of the French Revolution forced him into exile in London, he published there his Mémoires de la Maison Grant depicting the history of the clan.

Painted in 1781-1782 by Louis-Roland Trinquesse, the portrait of Charles Grant, Vicomte de Vaux, (oil on canvas, 113" x 81¼") is now available from Colnaghi in Old Bond Street, London, who specialize in old master paintings and drawings. [Click here for a closer look at the painting]. The portait was commissioned as a gift from the Vicomte de Vaux, a Grant in France, to Sir James, as Chief of the Grants. Indeed, Blairfindy had written to Sir James, informing him "you are to have his portrait, which was finished some days agoe. It is a very fine piece, ten feet high, etc. and represents himself, groom and horses as they are in full life and hight. This he intends you should putt up in Castle Grant. It is a very fine piece which, I can assure you, might be putt up in a King's appartment."

The groom attentively readies the Vicomte's boot.

Blairfindy had also written to Sir James that the portait was "done by the King's first painter and of the same size as those the King sends of himself to the foreign courts", but failing to mention the portraitist by name. Thus, according to Colnaghi, the portait had previously been attributed to a number of painters to the King of France, namely Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre, Jacques Callet, Antoine Vestier, and Joseph-Siffred Duplessis. Dr. Colin Bailey of the Frick, however, has claimed it for Trinquesse, another of the King's painters (though never elected to the Royal Academy).

Colnaghi: 'Portrait of Charles Grant, vicomte de Vaux, in uniform as a Lieutenant Colonel of the Garde du Roi, attended by his groom with their horses, a fortress beyond' (detailed description).

My favorite statue in Central Park is that of King Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland, by the Turtle Pond.

Credit for last photo: Bridge & Tunnel Club

Corregio, Nativity
Oil on canvas, 101" x 74"
1528-30, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

THE RECENT PURCHASE for the Neue Galerie of Gustav Klimt's 1907 'Adele Bloch-Bauer I' (above), alledgedly for a record-breaking price of $135,000,000, gives me the perfect opportunity to write a post on the eponymously recent addition to New York's coterie of art museums. Since its 2001 opening, the Neue Galerie has resided in the handsome 1914 beaux-arts mansion on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 86th Street, designed by Carrère and Hastings (of New York Public Library fame) for industrialist William Starr Miller and later inhabited by Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt III. In the time since the construction of No. 1048, the rest of Fifth Avenue has undergone a lamentable transformation from a boulevard of beautiful townhouses and mansions to an avenue predominantly consisting of apartment buildings. While one appreciates the inoffensive design of the pre-war buildings on Fifth, there remain a number of thoroughly opprobrious modern interlopers which offend the graceful avenue. One can't help but pine for Fifth Avenue before the mansions came down, but we can at least give thanks for holdouts like the Neue Galerie.

The Vanderbilts sold the home to the Astors in 1940, and in turn the Astors sold 1048 Fifth Avenue to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Founded in 1925 as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut in Berlin, the YIVO was responsible for most early orthographic and lexicographic work on the Yiddish language. Though originally based in Vilnius after its foundation in Berlin, the combined Nazi-Soviet invasions of Eastern Europe forced the Institute to flee, centering their operations in New York and Buenos Aires. Much of the YIVO Institute's massive archives was carted to Berlin by the Nazis and managed to survive the war, moving to New York after the end of hostilities. A large portion, however, had lain dormant and forgotten in a Lithuanian records building (a converted Catholic Church, actually) until rediscovered in 1989 and eventually returned to the YIVO in New York.

A reading room in the YIVO Institute, contrast with today's Café Sabarsky.

The YIVO Institute, however, found itself somewhat cash-strapped faced with repatriating the rediscovered Vilnius trove to New York. In response, the Institute sold the air rights to 1048 Fifth to a company which was redeveloping the old Adams Hotel next door at 2 East 86th Street. The President of the Borough of Manhattan then granted the developers' request to redesignate 2 East 86th Street as 1049 Fifth Avenue, adding a chunk of value to the new apartments while infuriating address purists. After cashing in on the unused air rights, YIVO sold 1048 itself and moved to a more capacious abode. The building was bought by Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky in 1994, who together conceived the Neue Galerie as a museum for German and Austrian art, almost entirely of the Expressionist school.

With the death of Serge Sabarsky in 1996, Ronald S. Lauder took the helm as the driving force behind the newest addition to Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile. The Neue Galerie hired German-born architect and designer Annabelle Selldorf to redesign the interiors before the opening exhibition in 2001, a task which was accomplished with taste and modernity, while keeping an eye towards preservation. Austrian chef Kurt Gutenbrunner was brought in to run the Café Sabarsky in one of the main rooms on the museum's ground floor. (The less-crowded Café Fledermaus can be found in the basement, with the same menu as upstairs).

Two views of the much-vaunted Café Sabarsky.

The museum wisely admits only three-hundred and fifty viewers at a time, at the price of $15 for adults and $10 for students and the elderly. Normally closed to the general public on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the management of the Neue Galerie had considered charging $50 per person for semi-private admittance on Wednesdays, but when a maelstrom erupted after the word got out, the plan was quietly placed to the side.

The ground floor of the Neue Galerie.

The first floor.

As with the purchase of Klimt's 'Adele Bloch-Bauer I', which Lauder has described as "Our Mona Lisa", the Neue Gallerie's collection continues to expand, and the institution has quite the prodigious benefactor in Mr. Lauder. We hope, however, that it remains a small museum, on the human scale which makes its home at the corner of Fifth and 86th so appropriate. The building which once housed the wealthy today is home to priceless works of art which, though of foreign origin, New York must be proud to call its own.

Nicolas Poussin, The Assumption of the Virgin
Oil on canvas, 22" x 16"
1650, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Click here for a closer view.

Titian, Assumption of the Virgin
Oil on wood, 272" x 142"
1516-18, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice

Wandering around the merry old world wide web I stumbled upon these stamps, which I bring to you for your own enjoyment. Above we have the Great Metropolis itself, the island of Manhattan in its swankier days. Below we have a view of the Crown of the Hudson, West Point, with the beautiful Cadet Chapel designed by that American Master, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue himself, presiding over the campus of the United States Military Academy.

The postage stamp was once a thing of beauty and composition, but it's heartening to see that some still design beautiful stamps. Just examine Elliott Banfield's stamp of General Washington, based upon the staute in Union Square. Mr. Banfield believes that the decline in the design of postage stamps is due to a "moral void" most readily shown when the Postal Service unveiled its famous 'Elvis Stamp' a few years back.

"Elvis was important in the popular culture, yes," writes Mr. Banfield. "But how important is the pop culture? Important only to those who can't see anything higher or better. It's scary to think that people like that are in charge of public policy. But they are, and the Elvis stamp proves it."

Hear! Hear!

An irrelevant stamp, after the jump.

Having been duly capped on the head by the Rt. Hon. Menzies Campbell QC MP with John Knox's breeks last Thursday I have returned to the land of my birth a Master of the Arts. Details of the various rites and festivities are forthcoming, but in the mean time I share with you these three travel posters from back in the day when they made proper travel posters. All three advertise our blessed Empire State, two of them West Point, the glorious gothic crown of the Hudson. Excelsior!

Click on the images for the full posters.

Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1 May 1851
Oil on canvas, 42" x 51"
1851, Royal Collection, Windsor

For a closer view, click here.

Piero della Francesca, Resurrection
Mural in fresco and tempera, 88" x 86"
1463-1465, Sansepolcro

Glen Hansen, Praha - Church of St. Nicholas
Oil on panel, 32" x 32"
2005, Fischbach Gallery

Glen Hansen, Praha - Trilogy (Homage to Agnes Martin)
Oil on panel, 24" x 24"
2005, Fischbach Gallery

"Praha" is on display through Saturday, April 15 at the Fischbach Gallery, 210 Eleventh Ave., between 24th and 25th streets. Tue.–Fri., 10:00am–5:30pm, Sat, 10:00am–6:00pm, 212-759-2345, free.

Pietro Perugino, Adoration of the Kings (Epiphany)
Oil on panel, 95' x 70'
c. 1476, Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia

Jean Hélion, Grande Journalerie
Oil on canvas, 51" x 76"
Robert Miller Gallery, New York

Santiago de Chile, May 24, 2005. Photograph by Lucas de Soto.

Vasily Kandinsky, Various Circles
Oil on burlap, 55" x 55"
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

No one quite knows how often the Gifford Lectures are. Some people say they're every three years. I thought they were every year, and they are spread amongst the four ancients of Scotland (St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh). But we hosted them in my first year and already have them again. And our own Professor John Haldane (alledgedly the only theist in the School of Philosophy) is concurrently giving the Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen, supposedly. Go figure.

Anyhow, on Tuesday commenced the ambigu-annual (ambiguennale, I am told, is the word the Italians use) Gifford Lectures here at St Andrews, by none other than the most-eminent Professor Alvin Plantinga of the University of Notre Dame. Unfortunately, I had to miss this one, as I had work to do. The title was 'Evolution and Design' and it basically demonstrated that there is no conflict between evolution (even Darwinian concepts of evolution) and the idea of design by the Creator as advocated by Christians.

Wednesday, I attended a lecture by Irving Lavin of Princeton University entitled 'The Story of O from Giotto to Einstein'. It tracked the fascinating tale of Giotto's 'O' from the perhaps aprocryphal tale all the way to an etching of Einstein, via calligraphy, Rembrandt, Jasper Johns, and others. Difficult to quite explain it, but most enlightening. Also, it was about an hour and a half but felt more like forty-five minutes.

Yesterday, I did attend, and Platinga demonstrated in his second Gifford Lecture that there is a conflict between the naturalist/materialist idea that the universe is a closed system because there is no demonstratable evidence of such, nor is it even observable. Thus science cannot really have anything to do with the idea of the closed universe, and it is left to metaphysics. So all the silly liberal posturing about the ridiculousness of miracles is, in effect, ridiculous itself, and most unscientific.

Thankfully, Professor Plantinga is a very good lecture, balancing clarity, thoroughness, joviality, and asides quite adroitly. The next is on Tuesday: 'Evolutionary Psychology and Scripture Scholarship: more alike than you think'.

Tonight, I'm off to the theatre to see the late Arthur Miller's 'The Creation of the World and Other Business'. Apparently some sort of retelling of the Genesis narrative. A fellow son of the Empire State, second-year John MacDonald, is among the cast of this production. We look forward to it.

In my opinion, one of the best illustrators alive is Elliott Banfield. I have seen his work a few times in the New York Sun, but only managed to finally investigate him on the web this evening (thanks to the Irish Elk), and his website offers a plethora of wonderful retro illustrations that prove his skill and his worth. Why, if I ran a newspaper – one with a real budget I mean – I'd have this guy be the in-house illustrator and might be tempted to ditch photographs altogether.

Mr. Banfield even gives us a wonderful impression of his proposal for a September 11 monument, inspired by critic Henry Reed. I love it. It oozes Gotham and reeks of Manhattan. I especially enjoy the use of New York's civic arms on the base of the pillar, supported, appropriately, by a policeman and a fireman, rather than the official settler and native. The heraldic achievement of our city is, I'll admit, somewhat provincial with its windmills and beavers, but all the more endearing for it, if you ask me.

Huzzah for Elliott Banfield!

Here's a window from the Goodhue-designed Christ Church Bronxville, with a close-up of one panel below.

I am a philistine. The reason I am a philistine is because when it comes to art, I only like what I find beautiful. Today in the world of art, you're supposed to appreciate art for the ideology and thought that goes behind it. If you only like what's beautiful, then you are a philistine. I am quite happy being a philistine and hope I remain a philistine for the rest of my life.

Nonetheless, there have been a few recent works of art I felt I ought to show you. The common theme is New York.

"The Dream of Christopher Columbus" sometimes known as "Christopher Columbus Bringing Christianity to America" is probably my favourite Dali painting. It's a fascinating painting and jam-packed with symbolism. One of the symbols I find particularly interesting is Dali's painting of two orbital paths in an armillary-like fashion around the crackling shell. This is taken to be a Salvadorean symbol for Man's conquest of the Moon, which took place some years after the painting was finished.

Bo Bartlett, The Bride
Oil on linen, 80" x 100"
Private collection

Bo Bartlett, Leviathan
Oil on linen, 89" x 138"
Private Collection

Scott Fraser, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil
Oil on Board, 9" x 17"
Private Collection