Tag: stripes

The flower seller, Chartres

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Le marché aux fleurs, Chartres, France, August 19, 1922, by Auguste Léon, via Archives of the Planet Collection – Albert Kahn Museum /Département des Hauts-de-Seine.

One of my favorite blogs, It’s About Time by garden historian Barbara Wells Sarudy, is currently posting a series on paintings of flower sellers by American artists. Check it out here.

The autochrome above is one of about seventy-two thousand that were commissioned and then archived by Albert Kahn, a wealthy French banker, between 1909 and 1931. Kahn sent thirteen photographers and filmmakers to fifty countries “to fix, once and for all, aspects, practices, and modes of human activity whose fatal disappearance is no longer ‘a matter of time.'”* The resulting collection is called Archives de la Planète and now resides in its own museum at Kahn’s old suburban estate at Boulogne-Billancourt, just west of Paris. Since June 2016, the archive has also been available for viewing online here.

*words of Albert Kahn, 1912. Also, the above photos (A 33804 S) are © Collection Archives de la Planète – Musée Albert-Kahn and used under its terms, here.

Poppies, Sweden

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A young woman and two little girls in front of a row of double poppies, Gagnef, Sweden, August 1910, by Auguste Léon, via Archives of the Planet Collection – Albert Kahn Museum /Département des Hauts-de-Seine (both photos).

Another woman and her two daughters in Gagnef. What are those pink flowers next to them?

The autochromes above are two of about seventy-two thousand that were commissioned and then archived by Albert Kahn, a wealthy French banker, between 1909 and 1931. Kahn sent thirteen photographers and filmmakers to fifty countries “to fix, once and for all, aspects, practices, and modes of human activity whose fatal disappearance is no longer ‘a matter of time.'”* The resulting collection is called Archives de la Planète and now resides in its own museum at Kahn’s old suburban estate at Boulogne-Billancourt, just west of Paris. Since June 2016, the archive has also been available for viewing online here.

*words of Albert Kahn, 1912. Also, the above photos (A 436 and A 425) are © Collection Archives de la Planète – Musée Albert-Kahn and used under its terms, here.

The Sunday porch: County Armagh

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Bridget and Maynard Sinton at their family home of Ballyards, County Armagh, June 17, 1921, by H. Allison & Co. Photographers, via Public Record Office of Northern Ireland Commons on flickr.

That retractable striped awning emerging from the terrace roof looks very sleek and was brand new.  A ca. 1920 photo of the house in this biography of the children’s father shows the terrace with no cover. (You can read a brief history of awnings here.)

Ballyards was built in 1872 and sold to the father, a linen manufacturer, in 1908. He almost doubled its size and called it “Ballyards Castle.”

The children playing in a sandpile. (This photo has been printed in reverse from the others.)

Maynard was killed in WWII, but Bridget (age 7 in these photos) lived until 1975.

The Sunday porch: the Jones

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crj00 006“Calvert Richard Jones (on the right), with six women, a man, boy, girl and dog, standing and sitting in a colonnaded porch way,” probably Swansea, Wales, ca. 1860, via National Library of Wales Commons on flickr.

Jones was a member of Swansea’s wealthly, landowning elite.  He studied mathematics at Oxford and was ordained as an Anglican priest, but spent much of his time traveling and painting. Like many men and women of his class in the Swansea area from the 1840s to the early 1860s, he was a photography enthusiast. In 1841, he took a daguerreotype that is now the earliest accurately dated photograph in Wales.

The photo may include Mrs. Jones (Portia Smith) and one or more of their three daughters.

Striped road

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Vintage landscape/enclos*ure: Big Strips, painting by G. Davis, 1973, via Natl. Archives“Crossing the painted road which extends east from The Philadelphia Museum of Art, August 1973,” by Dick Swanson, via the U.S. National Archives Commons on flickr.

This is another photo taken for DOCUMERICA, a 1970’s photography program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (shown here with original caption).

The road painting, “Big Stripes,” by Gene Davis, was created in 1972. At the time, it was the world’s largest painting.  Davis was a leader in the Washington [D.C.] Color School.

Does anyone know if any part of this painting survives today?