William Blake

When the Morning Stars Sang Together (1823) - William Blake.

William Blake (1757-1827) was a gifted engraver... here is one of my favorite pieces.

Blake invented a method of relief printing from metal plates, and ways of obtaining many colors simultaneously that only recently has been equalled.

This particular plate has been selected as one of the best of Blake. "When the morning stars sang together," one page from The Book of Job illustrated by Blake, reveals the sweep of his admittedly complex and obscure but wedded to the realities of his time - a breadth of vision moving beyond the theme of conflict between Good and Evil. (Jules Heller)

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Paganini, 1819. Pencil drawing, 12 x 8 1/2 in. Louvre, Paris

Princess de Broglie, 1853. Oil on canvas, 47 x 35 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

Ingres: (pronounced 'Ang') 1780-1867. French painter, a student of David and leading exponent of the Neo-Classical style. He studied and worked in Rome about 1807-20, where he began the Odalisque series of sensuous female nudes, then went to Florence, and returned to France 1824. His portraits painted in the 1840's-50's are meticulously detailed and highly polished.

Ingre's style developed in opposition to Romanticism. Early works include portraits of Napoleon. Later he painted huge ceilings for the Louvre and for Autun Cathedral. (Brockhampton)