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“From the heights of Montmartre in Paris, trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary and accordionist Félicien Brut play “Le Temps des Cerises” (“The Time of Cherries”), a legendary love song composed in 1866 by Antoine Renard with lyrics by Jean-Baptiste Clément and reimagined in this duet version by Domi Emorine.”

Warner Classics

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CHU TEH-CHUN at Christie’s

CHU TEH-CHUN at Sotheby’s

CHU TEH-CHUN at Bonham’s

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CHU TEH-CHUN at wikiwand

10 things to know about poet painter Chu Teh-Chun

Chu Teh chun: The Man Behind the Legendary Painter

Chu Teh-Chun in Three Works: Symphonic, Calligraphic, Lyrical

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~Sunnyside

Self-importance is akin to cocaine.

Social Psychologist David Myers discovered what he labeled “The Lake Wobegon Effect.” Based on a fictitious town where everyone considers themselves to be above average, Myers noted the human propensity to have a somewhat aggrandized view of oneself. Other psychologists describe self-enhancing beliefs. But while many of us fancy ourselves, a select few have managed to convince themselves of their god-like specialness. These individuals are the apparent revolutionaries sent to fundamentally change the world.

And all of them hate the establishment.

In If It Sounds Like a Quack…, journalist Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling wrote about various practitioners of alternative medicine, who rose to prominence, or infamy, by means of their varied medical inventions. One created a laser, another harnessed the power of leeches, and there was also a bleach injection. Each individual story was a type of heroic journey, wherein the revolutionary thinker resolved to take…

No, I’m not about to try to tell you that Ilia Repin is just a Ukrainian painter. What I’d like to do is show how he was more than the Russian painter that he’s normally labelled as.

Ilia Repin, or Ilya Yefimovich Repin, (1844-1930) was born in the town of Chuhuiv, to the south-east of the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. His father was an itinerant horse-seller who was a veteran of three major wars. Repin was schooled locally, and started his working life as an apprentice to an icon painter. In the autumn of 1863, when he was nineteen, he moved to Saint Petersburg to try to gain entry to the Imperial Academy of Arts there. He was successful at his second attempt early the following year.

Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1844-1930), Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870-3), oil on canvas, 131.5 x 281 cm, State Russian Museum…

This is book number 6 of my 20 books of summer, and it is a really wonderful book, published this year. It is part memoir and part guide to art appreciation, written by Patrick Bringley, who spent a decade working as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Bringley had been a successful student, and was on his way to launching the glittering New York journalistic career that seemed his for the taking when his brother became seriously ill with cancer, dying tragically young. Broken after his brother’s early death, Bringley sought a refuge, and space to reflect or just to switch off his thoughts, and he found just that inside the timeless rooms of the Met.

But the book is not primarily a grief memoir. It is interesting in so many ways: Bringley is a warm and erudite guide to the art works themselves, and…

This weekend, the Tour de France is in the midst of its mountain stages in the Alps. To mark that, this article looks all too briefly at paintings of cycling.

Bicycles and cycling started to catch on in the middle of the nineteenth century, and by 1868 cyclists were racing against one another in parks in Paris.

Édouard Manet (1832–1883), Le Vélocipédiste (The Cyclist) (1871), oil on canvas, 53 × 20 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Commons.

Manet’s remarkably early oil sketch Le Vélocipédiste (The Cyclist) from 1871 is probably the first depiction of a cycle by a major painter. Others like Robert Alott followed, still on their ‘penny farthings’ On the Beach at Ostende (1888), below.

Robert Alott (1859–1910), On the Beach at Ostende (1888), oil on panel, 26 x 53 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Alexey Korzukhin (1835-1894) Petrushka Goes! (1888), oil on canvas, dimensions not known…