Pair of Diviner’s Figures, Baule Peopke, Côte d’Ivoire

Painter Tamara de Lempicka was born on this date in 1898. “Young Woman in Green”, also known as “Young Woman with Gloves”, dates from 1930-31.

Harrison Fisher, “Lady in Oversized Hat with Flowers”, 1909

Constance Bennett magazine cover, October 1930

Gerard Hoet, “Olympias Presenting the Young Alexander the Great to Aristotle”

Richard Estes oil painting, “Jones’s Diner”, 1979

Thomas Gainsborough, born on this date (May 14) in 1727, “The Rev. John Chafy Playing the Violoncello in a Landscape”

Walt Disney by Edward Steichen, Vanity Fair 1933.

John Coltrane’s last band in the recording studio, 1966. Trane in front, Pharoah Sanders with flute and tenor sax, Rashied Ali way in the back on drums, Jimmy Garrison on bass, Alice Coltrane at the piano

Wooden Bundu Helmet Mask, Mende people, Sierra Leone, late 19th or early 20th century

Mary Pickford

Perhaps Cecil B. DeMille said it best: “There have been hundreds of stars. There have been scores of fine actresses in motion pictures. There has been only one Mary Pickford.” He wrote these words in 1955, but they ring even truer today, when it’s clear that not only has there been only one, there’s never going to be another. Pickford was the biggest of the big, a top box office draw, an international superstar, and a strong woman who took charge of her own career in a tough business run by competitive men. The early film historian Benjamin Hampton assessed her career in 1931 by saying, “Mary Pickford is the only member of her sex who ever became the focal point of an entire industry,” but he got it wrong. She was the only member of either sex to do so—and still is. And yet today, although people know her name, and though silent film historians keep trying to set the record straight, they have no real grasp of who she was, how important and beloved she was, or how she pioneered stardom and the concept of the career woman. Isn’t it ironic that the biggest female star in history ends up being the most misunderstood?

(From Silent Stars by Jeanine Basinger, 1999)

Sandro Botticelli, “Mystic Nativity”, 1500-01

1916 American film and stage actress Fay Bainter and a cat, by Arnold Genthe. From America in the 1910's, FB.

RIP Roger Corman

George Petty, “Cowgirl”, 1955, slappin’ that doghouse bass.

17th century Danish antiquary Ole Worm’s curiosity cabinet.

Source details and larger version.

So much talent: musical animals through time.