Oscar Howe | art retrospective

The Yanktonai Dakota painter Oscar Howe, who died in 1983, is the subject of a remarkable retrospective at the National Museum of the American Indian. ~ The New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl 

“Dance of the Heyoka” (1954) 

"Dakota Modern,” crisply curated by Kathleen Ash-Milby, consists almost exclusively of works in tempera, watercolor, gouache, or casein on paper. The execution is phlegmatically deliberate. Photographs of Howe, always neatly dressed and placidly industrious, usually seated at a table, consort oddly with the power-packed compositions and aggressive hues of his pictures. 

The upshot is a channeling of sheer, visionary imagination, as if the artist were taking dictation from an unseen demiurge. Do some of the effects seem cartoonish, with figuration that anticipated popular styles of graphic fiction which took hold in the nineteen-seventies? Perhaps. 

Oscar Howe, photographed on March 30, 1958

Still, generic characters in melodramatic poses strategically depersonalize subjects to the benefit of thematic punch and decorative finesse. The results exalt audacity and breathe beauty. Howe seldom repeated himself. Each work can feel one-off, fulfilling a special mission to a fare-thee-well. If any quality is consistent, it’s suddenness. 

A poem of seasonal observances: The Chinese Solar Terms

One of our favourite books is Liza Dalby's The Tale of Murasaki, a historical novel about the life of the famous writer of the Tale of Genji. Before she becomes Murasaki Shikibu, the book imagines the character of Fuji, a quiet but fiercely intelligent poet with a keen sensitivity for seasons and nature.

The Tale of Murasaki, Penguin Random House, 2001

botanical illustration with Lizzie Harper

Lizzie Harper is a botanical illustrator based in Britain. Her stunning realism evokes classical masters like Franz Bauer and Maria Sybilla Merian. We first found her when searching for watercolour paper reviews!

The Lozano Album

At wonder | wander | world we love pouring through old prints and images of a history long lost to us today. Fine art that reignites our spirit and feeds our soul.

The Lozano Album consists of 60 illustrations depicting daily Filipino life in the 1800s by painter Jose Honorato Lozano.

Lozano (1821-1885) was a Filipino painter born in Manila. Lozano was the son of a lighthouse keeper at Manila Bay. He grew up in Sampaloc, Manila outside the walled city of Intramuros. 

A folio of Lozano's watercolors surfaced in a 1995 episode of Antiques Roadshow (the UK edition) with appraiser Peter Nahum. 

The album had been commissioned by Emile Nyssens, and was sold at Christie's in 1995. In September 2016, an extremely rare set of 12 watercolors by Lozano, originally in the possession of a Spanish marquess, was offered at auction with a starting bid of ₱5 million. 

Impressionism: light and water

Seeing paintings in the country where they were painted is pure magic. The French Impressionists especially were obsessed with the exact colours that reflected off their rivers and lakes and shimmered in the sky.

Regatta at Argenteuil, Claude Monet (1872)

elephant parade

We draw aside the curtain this month to give you a peek at wonder | wander | women's latest and favourite commission!

Our crowning glory framed in antiqued brushed chrome.