Victoria Ridley

For anyone that needs this.

This morning, Niagara Falls, Canada
📷my photo

Near the grave of Jim Morrison, Pere Lachaise cemetery, Paris.
📷my photo

Marketplace in Bergen op Zoom, 1590, by Abel Grimmer. Truly one of best early modern cityscapes, with many wonderful incidental details showing urban life in my youth!

Goodnight

STEWART: “Comedy doesn’t change the world, but it’s a bellwether— we’re the banana peel in the coal mine… authoritarians are the threat to comedy, music, art, thought… progress.”

Nailed it.

The invention of photography had major impacts on art. Some artists imitated photographic effects. Others deliberately differentiated their works from the “diabolical invention” ~ compare Van Gogh’s portrait of Eugene Boch, & a photo of him
www.artinsociety.com/pt-1-initial...

Alphonse Mucha depicts exhausted Slavic peasant woman as she sits, hopelessly alone, in frozen, famine-struck field, throwing back her head in resigned despair. As the wolves move in, does the star represent hope? (Winter Night, 1920s)

"What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet."

Walker Library in Newcastle my favourite. Used to have its own building then moved to a small part of a leisure centre. Apparently will be expanded soon. 🧪

Les Petits Métiers de Paris Un Cocher de Fiacre

Today, 30 Aug, is the feast of the Irish St Fiacre whose name - by way of the 17thC hôtel from which they first ran - is that for a Paris taxi.

Postcard: Photographer and Publisher: C. Malcuit (Paris) MFA, Boston.

St Anne teaching the Virgin to read, carved stone, Troyes, c. 1500-1530 (V&A Museum, London)

Painting of three dressed-up skeletons in the foreground around a stove on which is written “Pas de feu” and under it “en trouverez vous demain?”—“No fire. Will you find any tomorrow?” The skeletons are accompanied by a palette and brush, a violin, and a lamp, with skulls placed in various other places

James Ensor, Skeletons Warming Themselves, 1889

A row of Archive stacks with turning handles

In one of our archive strong rooms there is a shelf. The shelf does not contain the most exciting or interesting item in the archive but it does contain something amazing.

Read this short thread to find out more. 🧵👇

An illustration of the fairytale, The Little Mermaid, where the old sea witch floats at the top of the image, surrounded and entwined by eels and sea serpents. She is staring intensely at the viewer and her long hair fans out above her. Below, the little mermaid swims above seaweed and other plants. Her fish tail is ornamented with ornate designs.

"'I know what you want' said the sea witch."

Illustration from The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, engraving by Harry Clarke, 1916, Wikimedia Commons, public domain commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%2...

#WitchSky #WitchAlt #art #illustration

Black and white cover of The Victorian Book of the Dead with gothic arches and skeletal angel.

Table of contents for The Victorian Book of the Dead

#TheVictorianBookoftheDead I've posted about A is for Arsenic, but wanted to shamelessly puff The Victorian Book of the Dead. Where else will you find interviews with 19c post-mortem photographers, accounts of professional widows, and the tragedy of the gas-fiend parrot? Available worldwide.

The Doors come in handy.

Zach Bryan Purchases Historic Lowell Church to Launch Jack Kerouac Center Honoring the Literary Icon - That Eric Alper Multi-Platinum, GRAMMY-winning artist Zach Bryan has purchased the historic former Saint Jean Baptiste Church building in Lowell, Massachusetts, ensuring its transformation into the previously announced Jack Kerouac Center. The project was initially announced in November 2022, but stalled amid the COVID-19 pandemic and funding issues.  The collaboration between Bryan and the Jack Kerouac Estate marks a significant step […]

Zach Bryan Purchases Historic Lowell Church to Launch Jack Kerouac Center Honoring the Literary Icon zurl.co/GZIYd

Hieronymus Bosch, d. #otd 9 Aug 1516 Ecce Homo, c. 1490

Commissioned by a family originally depicted in the lower corners. Overpainted at an early date, the remnants of the figures now visible were uncovered only a few years ago.

(Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main)

Died (alas!) on this day in 1516, Hieronymus Bosch. A truly unique mind. It was said that he painted humanity as we are on the inside, not just the outside. And it isn't pretty!

2/2 Hieronymus Bosch died on this day 509 years ago. Man of the most extraordinary imagination. Nobody has ever come close.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

The Beheading of St. John the Baptist
c. 1631.

(The Morgan)

An interesting take on this subject. You often see his head on a platter but this, as it were, is the prequel.

19/20C Danish artist Peter Vilhelm Ilsted created calm interiors with artful use of light ~ here he depicts a woman reading by candlelight /and by sunlight

Representation of the copyist/author holding a stylus and wax tablet

BnF MS Latin 5748; Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Catilinae coniuratio, & Bellum Iugurthinum; 10th century (2nd half); France (North); f.1v @gallicabnf.bsky.social

Paris #photography #blackandwhite

R.I.P. Jean-Marie Gessat. 🥀

At the grave of Jim Morrison, July 3, 2025, Doors' fans from Germany, Armenia, and France display the "Freeway" postcard.

Courage doesn't mean you don't get afraid. Courage means you don't let fear stop you.

You are stronger than any obstacle that comes your way.

☕🌞💙

"Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no #courage unless you are scared." - Eddie Rickenbacker

"When #life takes the wind out of your sails, it is to test you at the oars." - Robert Breault

"If your #plan isn't working, adjust your plan. Never give up." - Matt Martin

a small gray gravestone with winged soul effigy and vine borders. Mary, daughter of Pompe Scott & Violet Robinson, died Augst ye 19th 1757 Aged 2

Mary, 2yo daughter of Pompe Scott & Violet Robinson, who died in Newport, RI in 1757.

Like many enslaved families in New England, Mary's family was probably split up among several enslavers' households.

This stone isn't signed by the enslaved gravestone carver Pompe Stevens, but it is his style.

Born on this day in 1593, in Rome, Artemisia Gentileschi. One of the great painters of Baroque Italy. Endured shit and painted about it. Here, herself as a martyr, Saint Catherine, 1616.