Art's Last Bow

Like all movement, dancing can seem difficult to capture in a painting. But this doesn’t mean that artists haven’t tried and succeeded. People dancing in art aren’t all that uncommon. Whether alone or in a pair, each of these paintings depicts dancers. Artists throughout the ages have been intrigued by the idea of capturing both the emotion and purpose of the dance’s steps. Here are a few paintings that attempt to do just that: Bold Ballet Anna Pavlova as Bacchante. 1911. John Lavery In this portrait, famous ballerina Anna Pavlova is depicted by Irish painter John Lavery (1856-1941) dancing in the “Autumn Bacchanal” from Glazunov’s “The Seasons”. She’s dressed as a bacchante – a female follower of Dionysius in Greek mythology. Anna Pavlova is shown throwing her head back in abandon, while gracefully lifting a scarlet veil over her head. She wears a simple white tunic with grapes in her hair, symbolizing autumn and wine’s intoxication. Her dance seems to mimic a trance, which...

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods   Albert Bierstadt’s beautiful landscapes have become a symbol of the American West. They’re also somewhat controversial. Idealized and stunning, today they are often seen as part of the Manifest Destiny propaganda. But is this truly all there is to this German-born immigrant’s masterpieces? Capturing the Dream of the American Frontier in Paint         “The Ore gon Trail”. 1869. Albert Bierstadt , The Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) was born in the Rhine Province, Germany, and in his heyday became one of the most famous American painters. His large-scale paintings depict the st...