BITTS AND BYTES FOR JUNE 5, 2011

June 5, 2011

HOUSE ON LYME STREET
Charles Ebert (American, 1873-1959)

TROPICAL LANDSCAPE WITH FISHING BOATS IN BAY

LONGSTREET'S SHARPSHOOTERS FIRING ON A FEDERAL SUPPLY TRAIN (January 1864)


KINDRED SPIRITS
ASHER BROWN DURAND Durand (August 21, 1796 – September 17, 1886) was an American painter of the Hudson River School. He was born in and eventually died in Maplewood, New Jersey (then called Jefferson Village), the eighth of eleven children; his father was a watchmaker and a silversmith.
Durand was apprenticed to an engraver from 1812 to 1817, later entering into a partnership the owner of the firm, who asked him to run the firm's New York branch. He engraved the Declaration of Independence for John Trumbull in 1823, which established Durand's reputation as one of the country's finest engravers. Durand helped organize the New York Drawing Association in 1825, which would become the National Academy of Design; he would serve the organization as president from 1845 to 1861.

Jas Buffan
(The Pool)

Cézanne understood that a painting could not really do its subject justice. He knew that colors in nature and their combination with natural light could never be truly reproduced. He saw himself as an interpreter who had to accept the limitations of the medium and tried to transfer the images onto canvas the best way he could. He attempted to bridge the natural and artistic worlds. Hence Cézanne's works, in comparison with the paintings of many other Impressionists, only make sense as a whole, not in snippets, as the brush strokes and colors are meant to be interdependent on one another. This is especially true for pictures painted in the latter part of his career, when he used color in short strokes or in almost mosaic patches, all of equal intensity, throughout an entire painting. In his striving for perfection, this meant retouching the entire picture to recreate the all-important harmony. No wonder he scared his sitters.

ONE HUNDRED FAMOUS VIEWS OF EDO (TOKYO)

NUMBER FIFTY-NINE

Ryogoku Bridge and the Great Riverbank

Hiroshige himself described Ryogoku Bridge as "the liveliest place in the Eastern Capital, with side-shows, theaters, story-tellers, and summer fireworks: day and night, the amusements never cease."

In this view, however, the artist offers us a peaceful, almost stylized, depiction of the place, with only a modest sense of its celebrated bustle.

On the river is a workaday mixture of cargo and passenger boats. Below is a row of riverside tea stalls where one could relax, much as in a modern Tokyo coffee shop.



AYE-AYE

KOMONDOR	LONG-EARED JERBOA

LEAFY SEA DRAGON	DUMBO OCTOPI

PINK FAIRY ARMADILLO	YETI LOBSTER

BLOBFISH	STAR-NOSED MOLE

TARSIER	CANTOR'S GIANT SOFT-SHELLED TURTLE



THE OLD HOMESTEAD

F-15 Eagles and F-22A Raptor Stealth Fighter over Nevada

These photos taken June 1, 2011

BUCKWHEAT

Low, spreading, and cushion-like describes many alpine plants including this species. Basal leaves are numerous, short and grayish-woolly. Yellow to rose-colored flowers are in clusters on leafless stems 3 to 8 cm tall.

Found on dry soils from the foothills to alpine ridges, it is a common fellfield plant in the alpine, where it blooms in early July. Rather widespread, this species ranges from Oregon to Montana, south to California, Wyoming, and Colorado.

FUZZYTONGUE PENSTEMON

These large tubular blossoms, 1 to 2 inches long, have broad mouths. An instantly captivating wildflower, the feature that attracts immediate attention is the bright yellow hairiness filling the open throat of the flower tube.

Blossoms appear from late May to July on dry prairies and footbhiils in the Columbia Basin to Nebraska. About 30 species of Penstemon can be found in the Northern Rockies, the majority of them in the mountains.

MISSOURI MILKVETCH (LOCOWEED)

This is a low perennial about 6 inches high with several to many branches growing from a root crown. Three to nine purple flowers cluster at the top of the flower stems. The leaves are pinnately compound, the leaflets oval or elliptical and about 1/4 inch long. Blossoms appear in June and July on open prairies--typically with sagebrush--in the Great Plains west to the valleys and foothills of the Rockies.

FIELD CRAZYWEED

Growing in clumps 2 to 8 cm tall at high elevations, this crazyweed has erect, grayish-hairy, pinnately compound basal leaves. The spike-like inflorescence has many white to yellowish flowers.

A widely distributed circumboreal species, field crazyweed occurs over a wide range of elevations from Oregon to Montana, south to Utah and Colorado.

BRIGANTINE RIDING THE WIND
Warren Sheppard

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