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The Seasons (Thomson)
''The Seasons'' is a series of four poems written by the Scottish author James Thomson. The first part, ''Winter'', was published in 1726, and the completed poem cycle appeared in 1730.Sambrook, 2004 The poem was extremely influential, and stimulated works by Joshua Reynolds, John Christopher Smith, Joseph Haydn, Thomas Gainsborough and J. M. W. Turner. ''The Seasons'' is also mentioned by Emily Dickinson in poem 131, "Besides the Autumn poets sing". Context Thomson was educated first at the Parish school of Southdean then at Jedburgh Grammar School and Edinburgh University where he was a member of "The Grotesques" literary club; some of his early poems were published in the Edinburgh Miscellany of 1720. Seeking a larger stage, he went to London in 1725, and became the tutor of Thomas Hamilton (who became the 7th Earl of Haddington) in Barnet. There he was able to begin ''Winter'', the first of his four ''Seasons''. Blank verse had been considered more of an interesting toy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Thomson (poet, Born 1700)
James Thomson (c. 11 September 1700 – 27 August 1748) was a Scottish poet and playwright, known for his poems '' The Seasons'' and '' The Castle of Indolence'', and for the lyrics of "Rule, Britannia!" Scotland, 1700–1725 James Thomson was born in Ednam in Roxburghshire around 11 September 1700 and baptised on 15 September. He was the fourth of nine children of Thomas Thomson and Beatrix Thomson (née Trotter). Beatrix Thomson was born in Fogo, Berwickshire and was a distant relation of the house of Hume. Thomas Thomson was the Presbyterian minister of Ednam until eight weeks after Thomson's birth, when he was admitted as minister of Southdean, where Thomson spent most of his early years. Thomson may have attended the parish school of Southdean before going to the grammar school in Jedburgh in 1712. He failed to distinguish himself there. Shiels, his earliest biographer, writes: 'far from appearing to possess a sprightly genius, homsonwas considered by his schoolmas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of Copyright
History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categorize history as a social science, while others see it as part of the humanities or consider it a hybrid discipline. Similar debates surround the purpose of history—for example, whether its main aim is theoretical, to uncover the truth, or practical, to learn lessons from the past. In a more general sense, the term ''history'' refers not to an academic field but to the past itself, times in the past, or to individual texts about the past. Historical research relies on primary and secondary sources to reconstruct past events and validate interpretations. Source criticism is used to evaluate these sources, assessing their authenticity, content, and reliability. Historians strive to integrate the perspectives of several sources to devel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Hughes (artist)
Arthur Hughes (27 January 1832 – 22 December 1915) was an English painter and illustrator associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Biography Hughes was born in London. In 1846 he entered the art school at Somerset House, his first master being Alfred Stevens, and later entered the Royal Academy schools. It was here, after reading a copy of ''The Germ'', that he met John Everett Millais, Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, although he never became an official member of the Pre-Raphaelite group of painters. His first picture, ''Musidora'', was hung at the Royal Academy when he was only 17, and thenceforth he contributed almost annually not only to the Royal Academy but later also to the Grosvenor and New Gallery exhibitions. After having his painting ''Ophelia'' hung near Millais' version of the same name, they became friends and Hughes served as the model for the male figure in '' The Proscribed Royalist''. In 1855 Hughes married Tryphena Foord, his model for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Bather 'At The Doubtful Breeze Alarmed'
''Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed, also known as ''The Bather'', is a name given to four nearly identical oil paintings on canvas by English artist William Etty. The paintings illustrate a scene from James Thomson's 1727 poem ''Summer'' in which a young man accidentally sees a young woman bathing naked and is torn between his desire to look and his knowledge that he ought to look away. The scene was popular with English artists as it was one of the few legitimate pretexts to paint nudes at a time when the display and distribution of nude imagery was suppressed. Other than minor differences in the background landscape, the four paintings are identical in composition. The first version was exhibited in 1843. Two versions are in public collections, one in Tate Britain and one in the Manchester Art Gallery; one of these was painted in 1844 and first exhibited in 1846 and the other was painted at around the same time; it is not known which the version is exhib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Etty
William Etty (10 March 1787 – 13 November 1849) was an English artist best known for his history paintings containing nude figures. He was the first significant British painter of nudes and still lifes. Born in York, he left school at the age of 12 to become an apprentice printer in Hull. He completed his apprenticeship seven years later and moved to London, where in 1807 he joined the Royal Academy Schools. There he studied under Thomas Lawrence and trained by copying works by other artists. Etty earned respect at the Royal Academy of Arts for his ability to paint realistic flesh tones, but had little commercial or critical success in his first few years in London. Etty's '' Cleopatra's Arrival in Cilicia'', painted in 1821, featured numerous nudes and was exhibited to great acclaim. Its success prompted several further depictions of historical scenes with nudes. All but one of the works he exhibited at the Royal Academy in the 1820s contained at least one nude ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin West
Benjamin West (October 10, 1738 – March 11, 1820) was a British-American artist who painted famous historical scenes such as ''The Death of Nelson (West painting), The Death of Nelson'', ''The Death of General Wolfe'', the ''Treaty of Paris (painting), Treaty of Paris'', and ''Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky''. Entirely self-taught, West soon gained valuable patronage and toured Europe, eventually settling in London. He impressed King George III and was largely responsible for the launch of the Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Academy, of which he became the second president (after Sir Joshua Reynolds). He was appointed historical painter to the court and Surveyor of the King's Pictures. West also painted religious subjects, as in his huge work ''The Preservation of St Paul after a Shipwreck at Malta'', at the Chapel of St Peter and St Paul at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, and ''Christ Healing the Sick'', presented to the National Gallery. Early li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musidora (Gainsborough)
''Musidora'' is a c.1788 oil painting by the English artist Thomas Gainsborough. It depicts a scene from the 1727 poem ''Summer'' by the Scottish writer James Thomson, part of his larger work '' The Seasons''. After relocating from Bath to London, Gainsborough established himself as a leading painter of high society portrait paintings while also producing notable landscapes. The painting is his only known nude. Although there is no solid evidence, it has traditionally been believed that it was produced for Thomas Macklin's Poet Gallery. The painting remained unfinished at the artist's death. It later came into the collection of the art collector Robert Vernon who donated it to the nation in 1847. Today it is in the collection of the Tate Britain in Pimlico. See also * '' Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed''', nineteenth century paintings of the same subject by William Etty William Etty (10 March 1787 – 13 November 1849) was an English ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gainsborough - Musidora
Gainsborough or Gainsboro may refer to: Places * Gainsborough, Ipswich, Suffolk, England ** Gainsborough Ward, Ipswich * Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, a town in England ** Gainsborough (UK Parliament constituency) * Gainsborough, Saskatchewan, Canada * Gainsboro, Roanoke, Virginia * Gainesboro, Tennessee * Gainesboro, Virginia People * Earl of Gainsborough, a title in the peerage of England and the peerage of the United Kingdom * Humphrey Gainsborough (1718–1776), English minister and engineer * Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), English painter * William Gainsborough (died 1307), Bishop of Winchester Other * Aerith Gainsborough, a fictional character from ''Final Fantasy VII'' * Gainsborough (crater), on the planet Mercury * Gainsborough (horse), the 1918 Triple Crown Champion of English Thoroughbred Racing * HMS ''Gainsborough'', two ships of the Royal Navy * Gainsborough Pictures, a London-based film studio, active between 1924 and 1951 ** Gainsborough melodramas, a grou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Seasons (Haydn)
''The Seasons'' (German: ''Die Jahreszeiten'', Hob. XXI:3) is a secular oratorio by Joseph Haydn, first performed in 1801. History Haydn was led to write ''The Seasons'' by the great success of his previous oratorio '' The Creation'' (1798), which had become very popular and was in the course of being performed all over Europe. Libretto The libretto for ''The Seasons'' was prepared for Haydn, just as with ''The Creation'', by Baron Gottfried van Swieten, an Austrian nobleman who had also exercised an important influence on the career of Mozart (among other things commissioning Mozart's reorchestration of Handel's ''Messiah''). Van Swieten's libretto was based on extracts from the long English poem " The Seasons" by James Thomson (1700–1748), which had been published in 1730. Whereas in ''The Creation'' Swieten was able to limit himself to rendering an existing (anonymous) libretto into German, for ''The Seasons'' he had a much more demanding task. Olleson writes, "Even when ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn ( ; ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions to musical form have led him to be called "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String quartet". Haydn arose from humble origins, the child of working people in a rural village. He established his career first by serving as a chorister at St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, then through an arduous period as a freelance musician. Eventually he found career success, spending much of his working life as Kapellmeister, music director for the wealthy Esterházy family at their palace of Eszterháza in rural Hungary. Though he had his own orchestra there, it isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original". During this period his music circulated widely in publication, eventuall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Libretto
A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as the Mass (liturgy), Mass, requiem and sacred cantata, or the story line of a ballet. The Italian language, Italian word (, ) is the diminutive of the word ''wiktionary:libro#Italian, libro'' ("book"). Sometimes other-language cognates, equivalents are used for libretti in that language, ''livret'' for French works, ''Textbuch'' for German and ''libreto'' for Spanish. A libretto is distinct from a synopsis or scenario of the plot, in that the libretto contains all the words and stage directions, while a synopsis summarizes the plot. Some ballet historians also use the word ''libretto'' to refer to the 15- to 40-page books which were on sale to 19th century ballet audiences in Paris and contained ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gottfried Van Swieten
Gottfried Freiherr van Swieten (29 October 1733 – 29 March 1803) was a Dutch-born Austrian diplomat, librarian, and government official who served the Holy Roman Empire during the 18th century. He was an enthusiastic amateur musician and is best remembered today as the patron of several great composers of the Classical era, including Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven. Life and career Van Swieten was born Godefridus Bernardus "Godfried" van Swieten in Leiden and grew up in the Dutch Republic to the age of 11. His father, Gerard van Swieten, was a physician who achieved a high reputation for raising standards of scientific research and instruction in the field of medicine. In 1745, the elder van Swieten agreed to become personal physician to the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and moved with his family to Vienna, where he also became the director of the court library and served in other government posts. The young v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
