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Records Broken at Auction of Rare Impressionist and Modern Works

Posted in Little Known Facts, Serendipity, tagged Monet's Grand Canel, Sotheby's on February 5, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Sotheby’s staff prepare to hang Claude Monet’s Le Grand Canal, which sold for £23.7m. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA

“A Sotheby’s auction featuring rare impressionist and modern works by Monet, Matisse and Picasso has broken the record for the highest sales total ever reached at a London auction. The evening auction on Tuesday raised an overall total of £186.44m ($284.11 million), and broke auction records for five individual works by artists including Seurat and Malevich as bidders from 35 different countries clamoured to get their hands on the many iconic works up for sale.”

“The most expensive work of the night was Monet’s 1908 oil painting Le Grand Canal, which sold for £23.7m ($36.12 million)– the highest ever price for any of Monet’s Venice view works. The painting, which was part of a private collection, had been on loan to the National Gallery in London since 2006.”

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Remembering Mondriaan

Posted in Little Known Facts, tagged Mondrian, Pieter Mondrian on February 1, 2015| Leave a Comment »

An early Piet Mondrian 1908-10, Evening Red Tree, oil

Piet Mondriaan, 1930, Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow

Piet Mondrian, 1930, Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow

Today in New York City in 1944 Piet Mondrian died.

Pieter Cornelis “Piet” Mondrian was a Dutch painter.

“He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed neoplasticism. This consisted of white ground, upon which was painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors.”

You can learn more about him by clicking here and reading about him on Wikipedia. Once I saw a private small airplane painted like the red, blue and yellow neoplasticism style. I couldn’t get my camera out fast enough to get a photo of it. I still think of it every time I see one of Mondrian’s paintings.

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2014 Blog Statistics-I Love This Stuff!

Posted in Little Known Facts, Serendipity, tagged End of Year report, statistics on December 31, 2014| 2 Comments »

WORDPRESS.COM PRESENTS – “Life of a Daily Painter” 2014 ANNUAL REPORT

I love the year-end Annual Report from WordPress about my blog. They put together interesting tidbits to share to show the progress over the course of the year.

Interesting that I had exactly the same number of posts in 2014 that I did in 2013 – 352. In 2014 there were 28,708 visitors with 69,724 views. That is up from 21,916 visitors and 56,141 views in 2013. That’s a pretty good increase. Looking at the referring information it appears that Pinterest and Ravelry helped to increase the numbers coming to view my blog.

There were 608 pictures uploaded; that’s about 2 pictures per day. The busiest day of the year was March 5th with 572 views.

Cabin

The most popular post viewed that day was Fort Valley Cabin complete.

The longest writing streak was 76 days from June 1st through August 15th. And my best day for posting was Monday with 52 total posts…that means I never missed a Monday last year!

Attractions in 2014

These are the posts that got the most views in 2014.

Some of my most popular posts were written before 2014. They say that means that my writing has staying power and I should consider writing about those topics again. Interesting that they were the crochet patterns that I wrote out last year. Guess I will have to write out more patterns that I make up! 🙂

There were people from 144 countries who viewed my blog this year up from 137 in 2013.

And this year I went over 2000 posts – a number we plan to celebrate very soon. Thanks so much for continuing to follow and support “Life of a Daily Painter”.

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$62 Million Van Gogh Masterpiece

Posted in Little Known Facts, tagged Sotheby's, Van Gogh on November 6, 2014| 4 Comments »

Sotheby’s in New York

A Van Gogh floral masterpiece went for almost $62 million this week to a Chinese film mogul. Read more about it here.

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National Gallery of Art

Posted in Little Known Facts, Serendipity, Travel, tagged National Gallery of Art, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec on October 20, 2014| 1 Comment »

Andrew Wyeth

I spent a delightful afternoon leading a tour group from The Village at Orchard Ridge to the National Gallery of Art in DC yesterday. We made the trip to see the wonderful Andrew Wyeth exhibit, “Looking Out- Looking In”. The exhibit closes the end of November and if you haven’t seen it yet you MUST go take a look. Amazing watercolors with a limited palette. Wonderful!

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. “Lady with a Dog”, oil on cardboard, 1891

Auguste Renoir, “Mlle Charlotte Berthier”, oil on canvas, 1883

We had some time to see a lot more art and I will share more with you this week. Here are two we saw in the Impressionist Galleries by Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. Of course, they caught my eye because they had pups in them. 🙂

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Happy Birthday Rothko

Posted in Little Known Facts, Serendipity, tagged color block, Mark Rothko, Rothko on September 25, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Samples of Rothko’s color block paintings

Mark Rothko (September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970) was an American painter of Russian Jewish descent. He is generally identified as an Abstract Expressionist. You can read more about Rothko here.

He is most well-known for his “color block” paintings.

This is my favorite Rothko quote: “It’s a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it’s well painted.”

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Happy Birthday Hopper and Calder

Posted in Little Known Facts, tagged Alexander Calder, Edward Hopper on July 22, 2014| 1 Comment »

Two wonderful and very different artists share a birthday today – Edward Hopper and Alexander Calder.

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While he was most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist. Both in his urban and rural scenes, his spare and finely calculated renderings reflected his personal vision of modern American life. See more here.

Calder Mobile

Alexander Calder ( July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known as the originator of the mobile, a type of kinetic sculpture made with delicately balanced or suspended components which move in response to motor power or air currents. Calder’s stationary sculptures are called stabiles. He also produced numerous wire figures, notably for a miniature circus. More about Calder here.

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A Monet Sells for $54 million

Posted in Little Known Facts, tagged Claude Monet, Monet, Venice, water lily on June 30, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Monet’s “Le Palais Contarini”, 1908

Claude Monet’s painting of a Venetian palazzo, “Le Palais Contarini” , dating from 1908, sold for $30.5 million at Sotheby’s this past week.

Monet’s “Nympheas”, 1906

And it was a bargain compared to the iconic 1906 painting of water lilies, “Nympheas” that sold for $54 million becoming the top sale at the recent auction. Inspired by the lily pond in his garden at Giverny, the work was the second-highest price for a Monet at auction.

50 Painting-50 States- 50 Days

Posted in Little Known Facts, tagged 50 States-50 Paintings-50 Days, Tim Kenney on June 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Norman artist Tim Kenney painted this landscape in Louisiana. Kenney is painting 50 canvases in 50 states in 50 days.

I love a BIG project. I have been developing a few ideas of a BIG project to do as a follow-up to my Painted Diamonds-30 Parks in 30 Weeks that I did last year.

One project that I think would be great would be to paint in all 50 states. Well there is an artist doing it right now…and doing it in a BIG way. Tim Kenney, an Oklahoma painter, is now toward the end of his BIG project. He is painting 50 Paintings, one in each of the 50 states, and here is the kicker…in 50 days!!! Wow!

I have been following Kenney on his Facebook page during this project and it’s fascinating. Check out this article about Tim Kenney and his work and if you are on Facebook follow him for the next 9 days as he completed this BIG project.

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Picasso’s Hidden Painting

Posted in Little Known Facts, tagged Pablo Picasso, Picasso, Picasso painting discovered, The Blue Room on June 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »

The Blue Room
Picasso

Image underneath “The Blue Room” painting

I love stories about finding unknown paintings by famous artists or recovering stolen paintings.

Here is a really fascinating story. A portrait of a man was found underneath Picasso’s “The Blue Room” painting. Many artists “reuse” canvas especially if they are unhappy with a painting.

Since 1954 conservators suspected there was another painting underneath but didn’t have the technology to discover it without damaging “The Blue Room”. Read more about this discovery here.

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