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Michael Bryan

British, 1757 - 1821

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British art historian (1757–1821)

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Sixteen men, women, and children sit on or walk among seven horses against a landscape with tall, narrow trees, buildings, and distant mountains under a vivid blue sky in this horizontal painting. In the lower left corner, a man and woman approach the group, which are arrayed across a dirt ground. The man carries a large basket with chickens over one arm and doffs his hat with his other hand. Just behind him, the woman carries a flat-bottomed, wide basket of fruit and vegetables balanced on her head. Some of the men in the main group wear wide-brimmed, feathered hats, long coats in shades of peanut brown, black, and scarlet red, and knee-length pants over stockings. The two other women wear gold-trimmed dresses in shimmering orchid pink or sapphire blue. Several of the men and women ride or prepare to ride horses, which range in shades of brown, gray, white, and black. Nine dogs with brown, white, or black fur frolic, stand, or lie among the horses. One boy pours from a jug into a stemmed glass with a flaring bowl, held by a man holding a curling hunting horn. Just beyond this pair, another man, wearing black and sitting on a horse, blows into a curving horn held up in one hand, while his other hand is planted on his hip. All the people have pale pink skin except for two men. One, to our right, is possibly of short stature and he has an olive complexion. He wears a crimson-red jacket and holds a falcon on one gloved hand. The second man has brown skin and holds the reins of a gray horse near the right edge of the composition. Near the lower right corner of the painting, a potted miniature orange tree sits on a ledge next to a peacock who perches nearby. A second peacock’s head peers out from behind the ledge. A fountain just behind the group at the center has water pouring from a stylized fish’s mouth. A sculpted woman riding the fish holds up a long object while water spouts in thin streams from her breasts. Another statue stands between two tall, spear-like trees to our left. To our right, about two dozen people look onto the scene below from a rooftop terrace on a section of the building rising up along the right edge of the painting. There, a band of musicians plays while guests dine at a small table with a peacock-shaped pie, as two more people bring out trays of food. On the front face of that structure, a man and woman talk on a balcony, as a monkey eating an orange perches on the banister. A grassy lawn or garden stretches back to a large manor house, which is hazy in the distance to our right. The horizon comes about a quarter of the way up this composition, and the sky above has bright white and flint-gray clouds against a brilliant blue sky. The overlapping letters “DG” are inscribed on the rump of a horse to our left, near the fountain. Painted in red in the lower right corner, the letters “PHILS” are entwined in a monogram next to a “W.”
Philips Wouwerman, The Departure for the Hunt, c. 1665/1668, oil on panel, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, in honor of Earl A. Powell III, Director of the National Gallery of Art (1992-2019), 2019.2.1

The Departure for the Hunt

Philips Wouwerman · c. 1665/1668 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  2019.2.1

Shown from the hips up, a woman with pale skin, wearing a sapphire-blue gown, looks over her left shoulder at us in this vertical portrait painting. Her body faces our left in profile, and she looks at us from the corners of her large, hooded, gray eyes. She has an oval face with a straight nose, rosy cheeks, and her full, pink lips are closed. Wisps of brown hair fall across her forehead, and her face and neck are framed by a cloud of soft curls tied with a royal-blue bow over the ear on the side we can see. Around her neck is a cream-white pearl choker necklace. Her low-cut bodice is lined with transparent parchment-white fabric, which she holds at her chest with her right hand, farther from us. We see one blousy sleeve of her blue, satin dress, and the sleeve is tied at the elbow. Equally blousy white sleeves cover her forearms. With her left hand, closer to us, she holds a wreath of orange, pale blue, deep pink, and white flowers down by her waist. She is lit from the upper left, and the background behind her is dark in shadow. A patterned curtain hangs along the left edge of the painting.
Sébastien Bourdon, Countess Ebba Sparre, 1652/1653, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.34

Countess Ebba Sparre

Sébastien Bourdon · 1652/1653 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1952.5.34