Lowry in Berwick

Long ago, Berwick-on-Tweed was a prize in the Anglo-Scottish wars over old Northumbria. For centuries now it has been English, but the casual visitor (me) has a hard time telling which kingdom it belongs in (Northumbria?). The big social issue seems to be whether dogs should be welcome in pubs.

It is not a flashy place and may never have been, but Berwick had its artistic champion in the mid-20th century, when one L.S. Lowry did many striking paintings of the streets and the people. There is now a downtown "trail" on which you can visit sites he made famous, and which are pretty much the same.

A genealogy site has a good selection of Berwick neighborhoods and the paintings they inspired.

Summer, Park Avenue, 1930

From Ephemeral New York.

The Kornbluth Photo Archive

This announcement speaks for itself:

Dear Colleagues,

After two decades teaching medieval art history and doing photography for my own use, I have started a photography business. As part of that project I am posting my archive of images online for all to use without charge. So far I have posted about 750 images, and I am adding more all the time. The archive includes material from all periods of western art starting with the Neolithic, but its greatest strength is in medieval and Roman art. I am posting all images at the right size for classroom use (PowerPoint friendly).

I am sharing my images partly out of loyalty to academe, and partly in the hope of exchanging their free use for exposure. My web site becomes increasingly visible to potential paying clients via Google and other search engines as more people visit and link to it. I also license my photographs for publication, so of course I want scholars to know that they exist.

I am sending this message now so that people can use my archive during the new academic term. Also, I am currently planning a research/photography trip to Europe in October. I will be in London, Paris, Mainz, Ravenna, Budapest, Szekszárd, and Kaposvár. Anyone who needs images from places in or near the cities where I will be working could piggyback a request on to the trip without having to pay major travel expenses.

My general web address is www.KornbluthPhoto.com .
To go directly to the historical archive, the address is www.KornbluthPhoto.com/archive-1.html .

Best regards to all,
Genevra Kornbluth
Kornbluth@KornbluthPhoto.com

Bird of Paradise by Holly Anne Garnett

Link.

Madison Square Park, New York, c. 1900

From the blog Ephemeral New York. Check it out for images and stories.

Painting "After the Rain" by Paul Cornoyer. Click to see a much larger version.

Cosmic truth?

Someone sent me a link to this painting by James Christensen, Michael the Archangel Battles the Dragon While Almost Nobody Pays Attention.
That's exactly how it works. Nobody is paying attention to the vital, heroic struggle. One can just hope there is a hero out there, fighting and winning. How Michael Moorcock! How Gene Wolfe!

Two statues in Minsk, Belarus

From English Russia. Plus some other marvelous stuff.

A modern religious mosaic -- Washington, D.C.

The Washington Post has a slide show illustrating the construction of a mosaic depicting the Incarnation of Christ at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (USA).