Round Up #1: “Four Things to See” Issues 1-15

If you’ve been reading “Four By Four” regularly, you know that each issue contains a curated collection of four images, four articles, and four pieces of music. After ten issues, in other words, you’ve received forty curated items in each category. After forty-five issues, which is what I am up to now, there are 180! Once I realized just how many items that is, I decided it would be good to organize them into an archive of some sort that I could refer to in the future. Then it occurred to me that some of you might feel the same way, which is why I’ve decided to create these “Round Up” posts.

I’m going to share the first three—images, articles, music—from issues 1-15 with everyone. This way you can get a sense of what I am talking about, but after that, the round-up posts will be available to paid subscribers only. If you’d like to receive these round-up posts on a regular basis, along with the other perks of being a paid subscriber, and you are not already a subscriber, click here. If you’re currently receiving the newsletter for free and would like to upgrade your subscription, click here and follow these steps:

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Issue #1

These are four paintings by the artist Terrance Netter, who was my teacher and my friend when I was an undergraduate at Stony Brook University.

Issue #2

These are royalty free images I found while poking around on the web. The first one, by Franz Marc, reminds me a little bit of the paintings by Terry Netter I included in Four by Four #1. I also love the idea of hanging poems from the branches of a tree. It’d be an interesting thing to do, say, for a botanical garden event.

The Little Mountain Goats (1913–1914) painting in high resolution by Franz Marc. Original from the Saint Louis Art Museum. (Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.)

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Teahouse at Koishikawa the morning after a snowfall, Katsushika, Hokusai, 1760-1849, artist. (From the Library of Congress)

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Hanging poems on a cherry tree, by Ishikawa, Toyonobu (1711-1785), from the Library of Congress

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Narcisse by Weimar, Wilhelm - Museum of Arts and Crafts, Hamburg, Germany - CC0.

Issue #3

I don’t remember where I found these drawings, but I know that they are in the public domain and that they are gorgeous:

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Issue #4

All by Vincent Van Gogh

Landscape from Saint-Rémy (1889)

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Shoes (1888)

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Stairway at Auvers (1890)

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Head of a skeleton with a burning cigarette

Issue #5

Issue #6

These are paintings by Paul Klee (1879–1940), who is known as the father of Abstract Art and was a central figure of the Bauhaus movement. Influenced by Cubism and Surrealism, he is best known for minimal stick figures, abstract forms, vivid colors and his usage of symbols drawn from imagination, poetry, music, literature, and the world around him.

Hardy Plants (1934)

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Persische Nachtigallen (Persian Nightingales) (1917)

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The Harbinger of Autumn

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Two Men Meet, Each Believing the Other to Be of Higher Rank (1903)

Issue #7

These are from the Smithsonian’s Open Access Collection.

A Woman Has Registered To Vote

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Collection Box of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the Garrison Family in memory of George Thompson Garrison

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Carte-de-Visite Portrait of Harriet Tubman

Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress

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Black-and-white Ruffed Lemur

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Issue #8

These photographs are by Carol Highsmith, who takes pictures of all aspects of American life in all fifty states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. She has donated her life’s work, a collection of around 100,000 images to the Library of Congress.

An elaborate spiral staircase, at the Nathaniel Russell House in South Carolina

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An infrared-camera view of the New River Gorge Bridge in Fayette County, West Virginia

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Prince William Sound on the south coast of Alaska

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Slot Canyon in Arizona

Issue #9

Cloud Dragon, by Morizumi, Tsurana, 1809-1892

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Military Dragon, by Valturio, Roberto, 1405-1475

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Friendly Dragon

An only mildly fierce dragon, hanging from the Providence Children's Museum in Providence, the capital of, and largest city in, Rhode Island. Originally created by Symmetry Products for a Chinese painting exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, it was moved to the roof of the Providence Children's Museum in 1997. The museum held a naming contest, and the dragon is called Nori. (Source: Providence Children's Museum article dated 2013, viewed 2023)

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Ryu Shoten (Dragon Rising To the Heavens), Ogata, Gekkō, 1859-1920

Issue #10

These are chromolithographic patterns from L'animal dans la Décoration (1897) by Maurice Pillard Verneuil (1869–1942), French artist and decorator in the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movement. Verneuil studied and developed his style from Eugène Grasset, a Franco-Swiss pioneer of Art Nouveau design. Inspired by Japanese art, nature and particularly the sea. He is known for his contributions to the Art Deco movement through the use of bold floral designs on ceramic tiles, wallpapers, textiles, and posters. (From Raw Pixel)

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Issue #11

All images are from the National Gallery.

The University Singers of New Orleans, photographed in 1879 by Llewellyn A. Sawyer (1844 - 1923)

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Portrait of a Family

Photographed by Edith R. Wilson (1864 - 1924) in 1922

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Branche de Pommier

Painted in 1922-23 by Eugène Atget (1857 - 1927)

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Allegory on Copulation

By an anonymous Italian artist in the fourth quarter of the 15th century

Issue #12

Julie de Graag (1877–1924) was a female Dutch graphic artist and painter. She mainly produced graphic works in an Art Nouveau style which have been described as being both “sober yet refined.”

Chrysanthemums

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Dog's head (1920)

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Flower (1920)

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Chestnut Leaf

Issue #13

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) is known as one of the first pioneers of modern abstract art. He employed geometry, abstract colors, and abstract forms in his artworks. He believed that art can be used to express the “inner life” of an artist.

Untitled (1916)

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Painting with Green Center (1913)

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Free Curve to the Point: Accompanying Sound of Geometric Curves (1925)

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Landscape with Two Poplars (1912)

Issue #14

These images are all from The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Bugaku

This photograph of a woman in a bugaku-style costume was probably produced for the tourist trade. Bugaku, a traditional form of Japanese court theater that dates back to the first millenium, was performed only by men. The photographer's use of a female model suggests that he was concerned more with effect than with authenticity.

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The God of Good Fortune Daikoku, on Horseback, Being Led by an Ohara Maiden

by Hokkyō Kōitsu, probably 1834, year of the horse

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Rakan

In the Style of Keinin Sumiyoshi Japanese, 15th century

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Handscroll of Ten Homoerotic (Nanshoku) Scenes, by Miyagawa Chōshun, early 18th century

Although during the Edo period there was no taboo or stigma associated with male-male sexual liaisons, and many famous writers, artists and other celebrities were known to have same-sex lovers, there are very few surviving deluxe paintings capturing scenes like this one, which can be seen in context in this handscroll.

Issue #15

These are from the New York Public Library’s collection of sheet music of American popular songs.

All Aboard For Podunk

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Gesundheit (To Your Health)

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Bright Eyes

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Lovers Once But Strangers Now or Strangers Now But Lovers Once

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