Printable Vintage Art: Hollyhocks and Cats by an Unknown Artist

Hollyhocks and Cats, between 1368 and 1644
by an unknown artist

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
― Roald Dahl

Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you've changed, by believing. Once you've changed, other things start to follow. Isn't that the way it works?
― Diane Duane

Vintage painting oiginally found on Wikimedia here. Digitally altered version can be downloaded as an 8.5" x 11" @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Vintage Art Appreciation: Purple crocuses, cloth of gold crocus, liverwort, poppy anemones and jay, c1650

I give you this to take with you:
Nothing remains as it was.
If you know this, you can begin again,
with pure joy in the uprooting.
― Judith Minty, Letters to My Daughters
About the painting: A page of watercolours depicting seven plants and a dead Jay. The plants are two Purple crocuses (Crocus vernus Hill), a crocus from Susa (Crocus susianus Ker-Gawler), double-form liverwort (Hepatica nobilis Miller 'Caerulea Plena'), and two poppy anemones (Anemone coronaria L.). The Eurasian Jay (Garrulus glandarius) appears to cast a shadow on the sheet, as though a real bird has fallen onto a page of painted flowers.

About the artist: Alexander Marshal (c. 1620-1682) was a talented horticulturalist, entomologist and amateur artist. He was one of a network of gardeners working in and around London in the middle of the seventeenth century, and had links with the Tradescants (who had a garden at Lambeth) and Henry Compton (who, as Bishop of London, developed a fine garden at Fulham Palace). Marshal’s careful study of plants was combined with an examination of the science of painting and he wrote in 1667 to the Secretary of the Royal Society to discuss the methods he used for making pigments. The colours in Marshal’s paintings do indeed remain impressively bright over 350 years later.

Source: Original painting and full article as it appears on the Royal Collection Trust (UK) website here.

To download my digitally enhanced version of the above painting as a 5" x 7" @ 300 ppi JPEG, please click here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

My Photo Journal: Two Habitats (A Juxtaposition)

We forget, in a world completely transformed by man,
that what we’re looking at is not necessarily the environment wildlife prefer,
but the depleted remnant that wildlife is having to cope with:
what it has is not necessarily what it wants.
― Isabella Tree, Wilding

We will spend billions making inhospitable distant planets habitable.
And yet we spend trillions destroying the abundant ingredients for life on our home planet.
― Freequill

A photo taken many years ago showing two different types of dwellings that we stumbled upon as we were wandering in the area around the Music Gardens in downtown Toronto, a small park fronting on its ineer harbour. I am not sure if the magnificent bird house is still there but it would be lovely if it was!

Photos © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: Come Into the Light

COMING FORTH INTO THE LIGHT

I was born the day
I thought:
What is?
What was?
And
What if?

I was transformed the day
My ego shattered,
And all the superficial, material
Things that mattered
To me before,
Suddenly ceased
To matter.

I really came into being
The day I no longer cared about
What the world thought of me,
Only on my thoughts for
Changing the world.
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun
Park bench beside a meandering path at the Oshawa Valley Botanical Garden, surrounded by evergreen and deciduous trees in summertime.

Photo © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

Vintage Art Appreciation: Christmas Eve by Carlton Alfred Smith

You can live a charmed life by causing others to live a charmed life.
That is, be the source of ‘charm’
— of charming moments and experiences — in the life of another.
Be everyone else’s Lucky Charm!
Make all who you touch today feel ‘lucky’ that you crossed their path.
Do this for a week and watch things change.
Do it for a month and you’ll be a different person.
― Neale Donald Walsch
I initially downloaded the above painting — Christmas Eve, painted by Carlton Alfred Smith (1853 – 1946) in 1901 — on Wikimedia Commons, which I then cropped and edited. You can download a high-res 6" x 4" @ 300 ppi JPEG of my digitally enhanced version here. I thought it would be interesting as a greeting card or incorporated into a collage or junk journal project but you can also simply print and frame for wall art.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.