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art history, painter -

New year doesn’t often appear in artworks in the West. I suppose that most folks are celebrating new years. They are too busy partying to bother to paint. I saw more Japanese prints featuring new years. It is a bigger celebration in Asia. Perhaps, the impressionists made New Years popular thanks to the Japanese prints. The first New Years tradition is to wait until midnight. I saw an interesting painting that features turning off a candle. The New Years Baby showed up around the turn of the century. Champagne is also a pretty common tradition. Just showing champagne is associated...

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The Nativity is a scene from the Bible. It takes place just after Jesus is born. In some books, he gets visited by Wise Men. In others, angels and shepherds visit. The donkey becomes an impure animal because eats the hay of the baby’s bed. The cow is considered sacred because he showed due reverence. I do not know where that story came from. It is just something I remember from the Bible study I took when I was wee small. Joseph is often shown looking concerned. As for the wise men, they are named after the presents they brought....

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I wanted to show you some nice Christmas paintings. It is a little early for Christmas, but whatever. The first couple of paintings are by Norman Rockwell. He was quite the prolific American painter. He made front cover arts for various magazines. When you see his paintings, you see traditional Christmas. I wanted to focus on Santa Claus. There are no Nativity paintings. There are a couple of paintings with children discovering that their father is Santa Claus. Other show Santa like a true being made of flesh and blood. There is a funny painter showing a cowboy running into...

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I wanted to show you 18 lovely Cinderella paintings and illustrations. Cinderella is one of the most popular fairy tales of all time. It has been adapted into plays and movies hundreds of times. Her story has some regional variants. The most common one is about a girl whose father dies. She is then made into a servant by her stepmother. Her sisters are also mean to her. One day the King makes a ball for his Prince. He wants the Prince to finally pick a wife and settle down. Cinderella wants to go to the ball, but her sisters...

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I wanted to show you 10 nice thanksgiving paintings and drawings. The first artwork is a lithograph by Winslow Homer. It shows the tradition of hanging up the riffle. Thanksgiving was created after the civil war. It originally was a celebration of folks being thankful that they were not at war with one another anymore.  John Schutler, Home To Thanksgiving, 1867 features a business man returning home for the holidays. It is a more traditional Thanksgiving painting. Henry Tanner’s Thankful poor shows Thanksgiving in an African American home. The old man is thankful that he is no longer slave. Yes,...

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