The Majickal Garden

johnstanfordmusic.com Ambient Trance. Track 3 from the album “Deep Space” by John Stanford

Question by kat: What does this quote from John Barrymore, “A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams” mean?
I might use this as message for a friend’s debut.

Best answer:

Answer by Shannon
meaning that a man can’t say he is old until he stops dreaming and imagining and regrets what he has done his whole life.

hope you understood that and it made sence.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

by rocor

Article by Paul S. D’Ambrosio

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was the foremost American portrait painter of the late nineteenth century. In his elegant, fluid likenesses of leading figures in industry, society, and the arts, Sargent captured a new America-a country emerging from the ravages of civil war and eager to take its place on a global stage. A lifelong expatriate, Sargent was immersed in European culture and, as Americans traveled to Europe in greater numbers than ever before, became an important link between old world and new. Americans who desired to be seen as sophisticated and worldly sought him out to paint their portraits. The resulting body of work documents a period of profound changes in American society and culture.

Early in his career, Sargent earned praise for his portraits of women. Henry James, in his 1887 article on Sargent in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, saw something about the young artist that made him “so happy as a painter of women.” Sargent’s women were not “the commonplace work that looks down at us from the walls of exhibitions,” where “delicate feminine elements have so often been sacrificed.” The women with whom Sargent surrounded himself, or met on his travels, inspired him to create vibrant canvases that reveal each woman’s allure, intelligence, and complex humanity.

The height of Sargent’s career coincided with an historical era in which women claimed new personal freedoms. The post-Civil War period was a time in which women’s roles in society were changing rapidly. Women entered higher education and professional careers in greater numbers than ever before, and changes in fashion (especially the development of the bloomers and the shirtwaist) and culture gave them greater physical freedom. In art and the popular press, the “new” woman can be seen experiencing her newfound independence and confidence.

The Fenimore Art Museum exhibition “John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women” is presenting thirty of Sargent’s portraits of American women, and will connect the artist’s stylistic choices with the character traits of his female portrait subjects. Specifically, the exhibition illustrates the manner in which Sargent created a range of images that effectively communicated the complex changes and paradoxes in femininity in late nineteenth century America. Divided into three thematic sections-Women of Fashion, Women of Mystery, and Women of Substance-the exhibition showcases images of women who exerted leadership in the arts and society as well as in their careers and in the intellectual community. It also demonstrates Sargent’s keen interest in exotic women little known or understood by an American audience, and his visual assertion of the importance of mystery in the definition of femininity.
Women of Fashion includes portraits of women who exemplified sophisticated taste and extravagance, many of whom made their homes centers of social interaction and artistic exchange. Sargent tended to paint these women with a lighter palette and an emphasis on surface textures and light, along with costume details that spoke to the sitters’ wealth and taste.
Women of Mystery features exotic beauties, mainly (but not exclusively) women from cultures little known to fashionable society. These include Sargent’s famous Capriote model Rosina Ferrara and perhaps his most famous (or infamous) subject of all, Virginie Avegno Gautreau, or Madame X, represented in the exhibition by two preparatory drawings for her 1883-4 portrait. In these likenesses Sargent entices the viewer with sensuous poses and emphasizes the “strange and unusual” physiognomies, costumes, and settings of his subjects. Unlike Sargent’s commissioned portraits, these subjects engage the viewer in oblique ways that enhance their allure.
Women of Substance includes portrait subjects known for their contributions to higher education, professional life, or the intellectual community. Many of these women were pioneers in their fields and leaders in society. In these portraits Sargent often employs a darker palette along with restrained compositions and cerebral poses that emphasize the formidable intelligence of the sitters.

“John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women” breaks new ground in several ways. It is the first museum exhibition devoted exclusively to Sargent’s portraits of women. It is the first exhibition to directly compare the varied attributes of the women Sargent portrayed and the visual strategies employed by the artist to communicate those characteristics. Lastly, paired with the new exhibition “Empire Waists, Bustles and Lace,” the first exhibition of the Fenimore Art Museum’s collection of historic costumes, the Sargent exhibition is the first to allow visitors to see and experience broader historical context of women’s fashion.

by rjs1322

Article by Brandon Fuhrmann

John Singer Sargent was an American artist born in Florence Italy, to American and expatriate parents. Receiving his first formal art instruction in the City of Rome in 1868, the young John Singer Sargent floated around Florence between 1870 in 1873, before he was accepted at the Paris Cold Art School. Although a dual citizen of America and France, it would take John Singer, until the age of 21, before he would step foot on American soil. Intensely intelligent and trilingual in several languages, Sargent was able to rub elbows with some of the most important European aristocracy, and wooed the American well-heeled socialites, as well. With everything that John Singer Sargent attempted to complete, came success and notoriety. This American artist was said to have a special quality about him, a mere attraction that screamed brilliance and periscope-absolute refinement. The only hurdle left was the question of what John Singer Sargent would do next; a brilliant artist is as well as dynamic personality, he had the world at his feet. That question was answered in relatively short time as Sargent became one of the world’s greatest artists and one of the most sought after muralist, in both Europe and America.

John Singer Sargent was humble to a certain degree, yet could be calculating and direct when needed, and once said that color is an inborn gift, but appreciation of color value is merely training of the eye, which everyone ought to be able to acquire. Although born into a well-to-do family, John Singer Sargent also possessed a work attitude that bordered on the edge of fanatical. Even though obviously genetically gifted in the artistic world, John Singer started and was not satisfied with this and would spend long days, sketching everything that crossed his path, and would say that you can do sketches enough, sketched everything and key good curiosity for us, and testament to his own characteristics and successful demeanor.

John Singer Sargent became one of the most successful portrait painters of his era, and also was a gifted and sought after land state painter. John Singer Sargent never wavered in his love of France and Europe yet found the natural beauty of America, to be more than accommodating for his artistic desires. One of his most remarkable paintings, ‘Carnation Lily Lily Rose’, was painted in 1885, and shows the detail that only John Singer Sargent could pull off and produce from an oil painting. This masterful work of art has an equally matching and wonderful storyline, behind its creation and inspiration. The painting was created during the autumn time at Farnham House and Russell House, which were the family homes of Frank Millet. The two girls pictured in the painting are the daughters of Frederick Bonnard and his wife Alice. John Singer Sargent wanted to illustrate the fading of the flowered background, and highlighted the lily white dresses, in an attempt to contrast the beauty of life with the finality of death. The work took a full week or so, with painstakingly readiness of both children and Millet and Bernard family. This was in a time when only the natural light would do and this comes across in this truly masterful production by John Singer Sargent. John Singer Sargent illustrated his approach to painting Carnation Lily Lily Rose, when he pointed out that the paints have no chance at capturing the most- central quality and beauty of the flowers and bright green lawn background, what was produced, was one of the most stunningly beautiful reflections of light on canvas of all the 19th century artesian of the era. By capturing the many different types of light that was flooding down upon the ‘Lily’ scene Sergeant was able to adequately cement his mane in place for one of the most spectacular artist that came out of Europe or the Americas.

Some cool John Singer Sargent images:

John Singer Sargent: Nonchaloir (repose)

Image by deflam
Sargent. Oil painting. 1911. 25×30 inches.

John Singer Sargent: Emily Sargent

Image by deflam
sargent. oil painting.

signed at the top: "with a merry xmas, jss"

John Singer Sargent: Mrs. George Swinton

Image by unbearable lightness

Tomorrow Burns – John Lancaster – Karma to Burn – Dead Face Down – Nuns on Fire – Saprogen
Event on 2011-09-10 20:00:00
Day 2 of Mission Coalition. Other bands TBD

at The Sound Factory
812 Kanawha Blvd.
Charleston, United States