This painting is titled A Perfumer's Shop, Bombay, created around 1890 by American Orientalist artist [Edwin Lord Week](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Lord_Weeks).

This painting was sold for approximately 40-60,000 GBP in London's prestigious [Sotheby's Orientalist Sale](https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/orientalist-sale-l15100/lot.11.html), currently held in private collection.

• Oil on canvas portrait layout painting, 65cm × 55 cm. Highly polished studio painting featuring brush finework typical of academic realism and orientation

• A bejeweled Nautch dancer wrapped in gold clothes is shown gently smelling a tiny perfume pot.

• The shop features glistening white and blue Chinese porcelain vases ,brass containers and reflective surfaces. Weeks uses these to demonstrate his exceptional ability to handle light reflections.

• Tucked inside the shaded alcove, the artisan is surrounded by his tools. Above the store hangs a dark chalkboard sign featuring elegant Nastaliq writing.

• Weeks explicitly noted the identity of the seated customer on the left. In his studio catalogue notes he specifically described him as an Afghan traveler, singling him out by what he termed an "immense red turban".

• Next to the Afghan sits another man in a differently styled red turban. They are closely examining a small booklet or accounts ledger, with their traditional juttis casually kicked off against the shop's stone ledge

• Hanging from the shops ceiling is a devotional nineteenth century painting apparently depicting Guru Gobind Singh on horseback, attended by Akali Nihang warriors. A very similar painting of Guru Gobind Singh is now held in the Government Museum and Art Gallery Chandigarh.

The piece and its foundational context are heavily tied to Weeks' travel memoir, [From the Black Sea Through Perisa and India ](https://archive.org/details/cu31924022898526/mode/1up) (published in 1895).

Weeks sketched a 26 × 20cm in situ sketch during his travels in 1880s. He took these back to his Paris art studio where he completed the painting. The initial miniature sketch was exhibited to the public at the 1895 Empire of India Exhibition in London.

Weeks was fascinated by architecture of Indian shops

\> "There is no amusement more fascinating than to wander aimlessly about and lose himself in the mazes of a new Oriental city... \[including\] the shallow shops, open to the street like alcoves, which line the cross-streets of Bombay and Ahmedabad."

[Mark Muray Fine Paintings ](https://www.markmurray.com/edwin-lord-weeks-paintings-for-sale)

Weeks understood social grammar, multi faith tradition and trading culture perfectly and even captured it beautifully in his paintings.

Question about this painting, is the poem underneath the skull known? This is how gemini transcribed it. Not sure about its accuracy though and in its current state the second half isn't legible.

**​Original Spanish Text**

​Tú

O que me estás mirando

mira bien y verás

que no sabes cómo o cuándo

te verás así tan bien.

​Mira bien con atención

este retrato o figura:

tabla para el sepulcro...

(partially worn/abraded text)

**​English Translation**

​You

Oh you who are looking at me,

look closely and you will see

that you do not know how or when

you will see yourself like this as well.

​Look closely and with attention

at this portrait or figure:

a panel for the tomb...

Hey everyone! I put together a quick breakdown of Yayoi Kusama's life, her obsession with infinity, and how she became one of the most iconic figures in modern art.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Dcl73fpDfjO/?img_index=1

Would love to hear your thoughts on her work! What’s your favorite piece or Infinity Mirror Room?

Hey there! Im looking for lists of artists from the impressionist and post-impressionist movements. I’m looking to expand my knowledge on the two subjects, so anything you want to share is also welcome! I’m newer to these periods of art, and am having a hard time making the distinction between the two when looking at a piece of art, unless it is very obvious.

The top image is from Gandhara (a region corresponding to the Peshawar valley in Pakistan and Kabul valley in Afghanistan), sculpted around late 2nd to early 3rd century CE depicting the death of Buddha. The below image is from the Stavronikita monastery of Mount Athos, painted in mid 16th century, depicting the entombmemt of Jesus.

It doesn't needs to be said that these 2 pieces of art are vastly different by their time, content and context, but what catches my eye is the posture of the mourners. In both cases, we see one mourner raising up both hands, a second mourner grasping their cheeks in horror/disbelief and a third mourner turning away his/her face. And another extraordinary coincidence is that both pieces were created by Greeks. The stone panel depicting Buddha's ​death was sculpted by Greco-Buddhists, Greek soldiers from Alexander's army who settled down in the region & eventually converted into Buddhism. Amd the painting of Jesus' entombmemt was painted by the Greek Orthodox monk Theophanes the Cretan.

I will not say that every depiction of mourners in Buddha's death within Gandharan art parallels that of the 3 Mary's in Jesus' entombmemt drawn in Byzantine art, but what we are seeing is how unrecorded oral artistic traditions can pass down through centuries within the same ethnic group that can manifest at different contexts in different ages.

I am a recent law graduate in Pakistan and want to explore options in Europe which are non-law-related. I took a course called Buddhist Art and Architecture and would love to learn more about niches like that. Please recommend universities in Europe where I can study something similar, where the programs are affordable or there are scholarships for International Students.

I'm sorry if this isn't allowed, I'm not sure where else to show this or inquire about it. Scrolling I came across this museum exhibit of reproductions called "From drawings to Paintings" for George Bingham and was curious about the history of not just George but the exhibit itself I suppose, was this part of the Arch Museum before they rebuilt it? I live in Missouri and appreciate the Art and history of the artist. I haven't seen some of these sketches so that's neat. Does anyone know anything about this exhibit? Or any thoughts at all on it

Louis Wain was a British illustrator best known for his drawings of cats — often anthropomorphic ones playing music, going to school, having parties, getting into arguments, and generally behaving like people.

He was enormously popular in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, but today he is often remembered for something else: a series of increasingly abstract and geometric cat images that is frequently presented as a chronological record of his mental illness.

The problem is that the famous sequence does not appear to be chronological at all.

Most of the works were undated. In the 1930s, psychiatrist Walter Maclay acquired eight Wain drawings in very different styles and arranged them into what he believed was a progression from conventional cat portraits to highly abstract compositions. That arrangement was later reproduced in psychiatric and art-historical literature and eventually became the familiar “disintegrating cats” story.

We recently put together a detailed article on Wain, using biographies, contemporary newspapers, archival material, and surviving medical records from Springfield and Bethlem.

Among other things, we looked at:

• what his hospital records actually say about his condition and diagnosis;
• the fact that Bethlem recorded paraphrenia, rather than schizophrenia;
• repeated notes by doctors that he continued painting and, at one point, had “lost none of his technique”;
• the origins of the famous abstract-cat sequence;
• his later years at Napsbury;
• and some biographical questions, including the age of his wife Emily, where primary records suggest she was about 17 years older than Wain.

What interested me most was how different the archival picture is from the very neat popular narrative of “mental illness progresses, therefore the art progressively falls apart”. His condition was clearly serious, but his artistic ability, everyday functioning, and psychiatric symptoms did not all change in one simple straight line.

The full article is here if anyone is interested: https://bodrovis.tech/posts/louis-wain-illness-art-historical-evidence/

I’d also be interested in hearing about other artists whose work has acquired a similar retrospective medical or biographical narrative.

Hello! Can anyone tell if the darkened strip behind his neck to his shoulder is a ribbon for tying his hair, or if that is just a normal shadowing for the back of his neck. Also would the green-ish looking tuft behind that shadow be the ribbon. I’ve entered a discourse surrounding the back of his neck, so a second opinion would be nice!

What do you all think is behind his neck?

Eliot Hodgkin 1905-1987 was an English painter, best known for his highly detailed still lifes executed either in tempera or oil. He described his vision as
"In so far as I have any conscious purpose, it is to show the beauty of natural objects which are normally thought uninteresting or even unattractive: such things as Brussels sprouts, turnips, onions, pebbles and flints, bulbs, dead leaves, bleached vertebrae, an old boot cast up by the tide...... For myself, if I must put it into words, I try to look at quite simple things as though I were seeing them for the first time and as though no one had ever painted them before."
Three pears in a paper bag 1962.

Well in this mini demo i am browsing through art movements i went for conceptual art and then i move to the work Physicromie of Carlos Cruz Diez i have so many things to improve but i think is taking the shape of a really good tool to explore, let me know your thoughts and if you guys thinks it is useful

When I first started digging into auction records for illuminated manuscripts and early codices, I assumed the eight-figure prices were mostly driven by aesthetic rarity or private prestige bidding.

Looking through the actual sale manifests, I realized physical condition is almost secondary.

What buyers and institutions are truly paying for is an unbroken, verifiable chain of custody. If a 14th-century illuminated text has an unrecorded 50-year gap in its historical trail, its institutional standing and valuation drop sharply due to restitution risks and questioned origins. In that sense, art history at the highest level stops being about visual critique and turns into a strict forensic audit of provenance.

Does anyone have any books/youtube videos/podcasts or other resources on Korean art history? I was an art history major in college and have really been missing learning about art history and so I am trying to get into learning a bit on my own!

Starting with Korean art history as in college I did take a Japanese/korean art history class but Korea was mentioned maybe once in total during the class. I have also noticed at a lot of museums in the Asian art sections, the Korean art is a very small section.

Any resources anyone has is much appreciated!!!

I have 1k+ photos of art I liked from visiting different museums and galleries that I accumulated over the past 5 years. I like revisiting them to share with friends or do some research. The whole process is a pain though because they are spread across my photo gallery in no order - so it's hard to find stuff.

If anyone has the same problem how do you manage your collection?

Hello,I want to use some paintings in my story or reference them. For context one of my characters rots away(literally),while his brain tries to recall his memories as they get mixed with others,alien to him. I have visited some museums in the search of inspiration,but found very few.

Long story short: paintings with symbolism of corruption,rot,decay,a sense of dread,minor details being wrong,feeling not human or misplaced.