Cards of Christmas Present

2003: " The 7th Angel of the Apocalypse" inspired by a 14th century ceiling fresco in southern Italy; the bombing of Iraq, and the capture of Saddam Hussein; and an obsession with ultramarine blue.

Since about 1971 or so, my parents have encouraged my art career (perhaps unwittingly) by asking me to do the artwork for their Christmas cards. I may post some of those early efforts here someday.
In recent years, Kit and Jet have traveled a fair bit, and it has become the tradition for me to design their Christmas card inspired by their most current trip abroad, be that Italy or Angor Wat. I paint them in gouache on paper, print the card, then frame the original artwork as their gift. I am told by my parents these cards are being collected by their friends.

So in case you are not on their mailing list, here are some selections from the last few years.

2008: I spent Thanksgiving weekend with Jet and Kit in Palm Desert, and sketched this view.

2009: A statue of the Madonna, damaged from fighting on D-Day, painted from a photo taken by my mother in Bayeux, France


2004: I made a too-short trip to Africa with my parents in May. This card was painted from my watercolor sketch of a Himba village in the Kaokoland, Namibia.


2005: Gospa od Škrpjela "Our Lady of the Rocks" painted from a photo taken by Kit in Montenegro

2006: from Kit's excellent photo of a Huli elder in Papua New Guinea.
I took some liberties with this portrait, aging the subject to make him look more wise and fierce.

all artwork in this post © Lynne Rutter
click on images to view larger

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

The long lost sketchbook of Jeanne Magnin

In true ornamentalist fashion, Jeanne Magnin collected borders and motifs from her travels, and documented them in beautifully drawn and composed pages.

Egyptian border, from Jeanne Magnin's Documente de Style 1916 - 1917

Tara Bradford, the creative force behind one of my favorite blogs, Paris Parfait, found a little plain brown paper bundle at a brocante, which turned out to be a sketchbook full of gorgeous designs of Egyptian, Roman, and Greek styles, collected in 1916-1917 by the French painter, collector, and art critic Jeanne Magnin.

Egyptian ornament, from Jeanne Magnin's Documente de Style 1916 - 1917

Tara was generous enough to photograph each page of her amazing find and post them to her blog, at very high resolution. With her permission I have re-posted some of them here.

Roman-style rinceau and bucrane borders, sketches by Jeanne Magnin

In true ornamentalist fashion, Magnin collected borders and motifs from her travels, and documented them in beautifully drawn and composed pages.

Greek ornament: a page of palmettes

Each page is like traveling to another time and place. Greek motifs, Jeanne Magnin's Documente de Style 1916 - 1917

Magnin was the author of Le paysage français, published in 1928 and Un cabinet d'amateur parisien en 1922. You can learn more about Jeanne Magnin by visiting Le Musee Magnin in Dijon, France.
All photos in this post by Tara Bradford- click on images to view larger.

Follow the links below for more inspiration from Documente de Style 1916 - 1917
Egyptian designs
Roman designs
Greek designs

Lynne Rutter Murals and Decorative Painting

Brush Shopping in Kyoto

Cabinet full of watercolor and calligraphy brushes, porcelain palettes, at Saiundo Fujimoto.

While in Kyoto, I paid a visit to the shop of Saiundo Fujimoto, very well known for hand-made watercolors, and "special materials for Japanese-style painting." This is a lovely little shop, crammed with special brushes, paper, and supplies: glue (nikawa), chalk (gohun), and powdered mineral pigments (iwa-enogu), everything for Nihon-ga and other forms of Japanese painting.

Ms Fujimoto added my card to the guest artist book. The drawers behinds her are full of bamboo handle brushes, and trays of watercolors.

Here is my lovely new set of handmade watercolors, each in its own little ceramic tray. What a gorgeous palette, just as it is.

A display of sumi-e paint brushes at Kyukyodo.

Just up the street from Saiundo Fujimoto is a wonderous store called Kyukyodo. They specialize in calligraphy papers, brushes, incense, and lovely gifts. Trust me it took all of my will not to buy one of these giant sumi brushes.

Next time you are in Kyoto,
Visit Saiundo Fujimoto: Anekoji Fuyacho Higashi, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto.
here is a little map to help you find it (click to enlarge.)

Kyukyodo is only a short block away here (map)

My thanks to Diane Durston and her wonderful guide book Old Kyoto: The Updated Guide to Traditional Shops, Restaurants, and Inns

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Eye Candy

A splendid miniature eye portrait from the Victoria and Albert Museum, with a diamond teardrop,
via Tail of the Yak.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, miniature eye portraits were all the rage. This was after the late 17th century rage for miniature portraits of any kind. They were painted most often using watercolor or gouache, on a substrate of ivory or parchment, then set into a bit of jewelry- a pin or pendant.
In Victorian times the eye portrait was often a piece of mourning jewelry, but the origin of this form was as a token of love.
I have had, for rather a long time, an obsession with eyes, used as symbols in my paintings. So naturally I am fascinated with these tiny symbolic paintings, the lover's eyes.

an assortment of lover's eyes

According to The Art of Mourning:
"Eye portraits are considered to have their genesis in the late 18th Century when the Prince of Wales (to become George IV) wanted to exchange a token of love with the Catholic widow (of Edward Weld who died 3 months into the marriage) Maria Fitzherbert. The court denounced the romance as unacceptable, though a court miniaturist developed the idea of painting the eye and the surrounding facial region as a way of keeping anonymity. The pair were married on December 15, 1785, but this was considered invalid by the Royal Marriages Act because it had not been approved by George III, but Fitzherbert’s Catholic persuasion would have tainted any chance of approval. Maria’s eye portrait was worn by George under his lapel in a locket as a memento of her love. This was the catalyst that began the popularity of lover’s eyes. From its inception, the very nature of wearing the eye is a personal one and a statement of love by the wearer. Not having marks of identification, the wearer and the piece are intrinsically linked, rather than a jewellery [sic] item which can exist without the necessity of the wearer."

I'd love to be a collector of these, or to have just one of them. Perhaps I will paint one of or for my own best beloved, as a follow-up to the maxi-eye portraits I painted a few years ago, of Erling Wold, myself, and our "adopted" daughter Laura Bohn.

Eye portraits of Erling Wold, eye self-portrait, and Laura Bohn, at 250% of life size, oil on masonite.




Treasuring the Gaze more about Georgian lover's eye portraits.
Check out the highly enviable collection of Cathy Gordon
Oeil en miniature by Le Divan Fumoir Bohémien
Even more lover's eyes from Candice Hern

The Art of Mourning more about Victorian mourning jewelry
Interested in collecting? Antiques Roadshow has some tips.

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

J.W. Bergl: a Bohemian Muralist in Vienna

Garden murals by J.W. Bergl, Hofburg royal apartments, Vienna. photo by Lynne Rutter, 2007

During a recent trip to Vienna, I visited the Imperial Apartments of the Hofburg palace, and I was thrilled to find there, two small rooms with murals by the Bohemian artist Johann Wenzel Bergl (1718-1789). They are painted on canvas, with a secco-fresco style, and a look that reminds me of papier peint panoramique applied to all the walls, including two or three jib doors, making these tiny rooms whole, charming worlds unto themselves.
As it turns out, photography is not permitted in the Hofburg, so shortly after taking the above picture, I was asked to leave.
I attempted to console myself with a Schnitzel and a Carafe of Grüner Veltliner in the nearby Burggarten Café. I mean, really, one would think I was shooting pictures of the Empress Sisi in her underwear.

The very next day I went to Schönbrunn Palace, hoping to get another Look at the wonderful rooms of Bergl murals I has seen there a few years earlier. To my dismay, the Goëss Apartments as well as the other Bergl rooms, were all closed. I was told they are open only on special occasions and by appointment, and was directed to an Office where Appointments are made.
I should point out that this would not irritate me quite so much if there was a decent book on this painter's work available anywhere.

I screwed up my nerve and asked the management if they would be so kind as to open the rooms for me. This request was met with the usual calm Viennese disdain, which conveys a measure of blank shock at having been asked about something that is not allowed. Why on earth would anyone ask about something that is not allowed? Oh no, they told me. Es ist nicht erlaubt. I don't speak German, so I refrained from asking why.
Another day, Erling and I spent over an hour trying to gain entry to the Melk Stiftkeller in Vienna, which is reputedly adjacent to a chapel full of Bergl's paintings. More Grüner Veltliner at a nearby Restaurant was required to recover from our Failure.
Did you think you were going to read all this and go away with no eye candy? Would I do that to you?
Fortunately, I have the photographs I took in December of 2002, when the apartments of the Crown Prince as well as the Goëss rooms of Schönbrunn were open for a display of international-themed Christmas Trees.
These murals were commissioned by the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, and were painted between 1768 and 1777 in an enfilade suite of rooms on the garden level of the Palace. The artist used drawings of original specimens of exotic fauna and flora brought back from Hapsburg-funded scientific expeditions. Schönbrunn has extensive gardens and at one time boasted the largest zoo in Europe.
Shortly after the death of the Empress in 1780, the murals were covered over with wall-hangings, and not rediscovered until 1891. They remain in exceptional condition.
photographs by Lynne Rutter, 2002 Click on the images to see larger version.



J.W. Bergl was born September 23, 1718, in Königinhof, Bavaria. He was a student of the prominent painter Paul Troger, the artist who decorated the ceilings in the enormous library in the Benedictine Abbey at Melk. Bergl worked his entire career in Austria, and is best known for his bright- colored baroque trompe l'oeil murals, most notably those in Melk, and Schönbrunn.



I'm not the only one with a camera! See more of J.W. Bergl's work:

The Bergl frescoes in the Garden Pavillion at Melk, photographed by Harald Hartman.

Here is an amazing panorama of the rooms at Shönbrunn!!

Schlosses Ober St. Veit: more of J.W. Bergl's exotic landscape frescoes by Helmut Jaklitsch.

The Goëss Apartments and other pictures of Shönbrunn, a Picassa album by Chris.

Flickr album by Ilja van de Pavert, with wonderful photographs of Melk.

My Bergl Flickr set to which I hope to add more photographs in the near future.

Some decent but small photos in this souvenir book on Schönbrunn.

The October 2007 issue of the World of Interiors has a lovely spread about the Goëss rooms.

Jib Door is in the glossary!

Lynne Rutter Murals & Decorative Painting

Cluster Bomb Batik

Daniel Gundlach designed this piece by incorporating the images of bombers and cluster bombs into a patten from an antique batik sarung.

A recent addition to my textile collection is this modern batik sarung designed by my friend Daniel Gundlach. At first glance it's a traditional pattern with marsh reeds and birds, in an unusual color of battleship gray with green and bits of orange.
And then you notice... the bombers... and the cluster bombs.

Unexploded devices still litter the landscapes of Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam. They have a high rate of failure to detonate on impact, and subsequently lie like tiny landmines, continuing to mame and kill children and other civilians dozens of years after the bombs were dropped.

Daniel got a nice mention in the San Francisco Chronicle this week. You can see more of his work and benefit from his excellent eye for batik and other Asian textiles at the Language of Cloth Trunk Show and Sale weekends now through December 24.

jennybird's open studio

this lovely october morning.... erling and i went to the open studio of jennybird alcantara.
we have both long admired her work and erling has been keen to buy a larger painting. we now are excited to be making room for the nearly eight foot high panel "seperated at birth" one of the 2005 burning man funhouse series.

jennybird also has a lot of smaller work as well as prints available, and she's well known for her wonderous dolls, many of which relate back to her paintings and which appeal to the crafty as well as the creepy side of me. i could not help it. violet came home with me.

support your local artists!
san francisco open studios runs through the end of october all over the city. you can visit jennybird and other sunset district artists, october 13 and 14, 2007.

Albrechts Flügel

This week we are in Vienna!

Yesterday Erling Wold and I went to Albertina, notable for its print collection and works on paper, including those by Albrecht Dürer.

Years ago Erling wrote some music for a Jon Jost film called Albrechts Flügel. Though the film was never finished, the piano piece, played here by Marja Mutru, is among my favorite of Erling's compositions.
mp3 at erlingwold.com

The Second Earl of Wold

My portrait of Erling Wold is included in Anna Conti's Artist as Subject project- an on-line gallery show with some amazing work by local as well as internationally noted artists.

Hearts in San Francisco

Here/Not Here
This giant fiberglass heart was painted by Lynne Rutter as part of the Hearts in San Francisco project. The two faces represent the moment just before and after death, and reflects on the loss of a close friend to AIDS.

This piece has been sold via auction to an anonymous collector. The money raised from this project benefits San Francisco General Hospital.

These pictures were taken at Crissy Field in July, 2004.
The heart also enjoyed some time in Civic Center Plaza during the summer.

Lynne Profiled in Artist's Magazine

February, 2004
Click on the image to see the article large enough to read
Here is a very kind profile of me in The Artist's Magazine
"Scaling The Wall" by Jennifer Ball.