I’m not threatening or anything like that. 

And my arrows are not of desire and I don’t have a chariot of fire, either.** 

Nor do I want Cupid spearing me in the heart.

 

 

 

Cupid, 1530, oil on canvas

Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1472 – 1553, German.  Philadelphia Art Museum

 

 

 

It is just that hunting season has begun here in Pennsylvania and continues until mid-November.

 

 

The Archers, red chalk, and detail.  Michelangelo.  Loaned by the HM Queen Elizabeth II to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2017/18 (with light interference).

The museum notes that the meaning and context of this sketch of archers both male and female and without bows advancing towards a herm is not known.

 

 

And you think to yourself:

 

Wait now. Where’s my bow?

Where is my embossed and gilded quiver?  Is there anyone out there making arrows?

 

Diana, where are you? Artemis, then….. Could you get off your many pedestals  please……….

We need to go hunting: it is in our DNA…

 

 

 

Diana, this cast 1893-94, bronze.  Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 1848-1907, American.  Metropolitan Museum, NY

 

 

 

Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Diana in The National Gallery, Washington, DC

 

 

 

Augustus Saint Gaudens’ Diana in the Philadelphia Art Museum

 

 

 

Diana the Huntress, oil on wood, after 1526. 

Giampetrino (Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli, active by c. 1495-1553).  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

Diana, bronze gilt, 1923

Edward Francis McCartan, 1879–1947 American.  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

——————————-

 

 

Herakles the Archer, bronze, 1909

Emile Antoine Bourdelle, 1861-1929, French. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

This beautiful piece, probably in bronze, was at the late Corcoran Galelry

I do not know its provenance and have not yet found it at the National Gallery of Art, DC who inherited the Corcoran’s collection. 

 

 

 

Picture with An Archer, 1909, oil on canvas. 

Vasily Kandinsky, French born Russia, 1866-1944. MOMA, NY

The Museum points out that Kandinsky was moving towards abstraction and did so fully not long after this painting – of the full-bodied immersion and adrenalin of the hunt  set in his native Russia – was completed.

 

 

 

 

Archer and Unliberated Woman, 1987, oil on canvas. 

 Honoré Sharrer, 1920-2009, American.  Loaned by the artist’s family to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia in 2017

The pose of the archer is that of a statue of a Greek Trojan archer found at the Sanctuary of Aphaia at Aegina and dated to 500 BCE.  The unliberated woman is another Helen of Troy for this artist.

 

 

 

The Hunter, 1906, oil on canvas. 

N.C. Wyeth, 1882-1945.  Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania

 

 

**A poem by William Blake, (1757-1827, British) appended to another much longer poem. 

Adopted as ‘Jerusalem’ with music by  Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1848-1918, British, by the British Left and claimed now by everyone and their uncle.

 

It is not clear whether  the poet was inveighing only against the noxious consequences for workers of the first Industrial revolution; or against the dominance  alsoof the Church of England.

Poured through our ears and into our hearts from when we were very young as the absolute obligation we have to social justice.

Here now on the eve of another revolution (AI) in our work habits and possibilities.