God's Beauty - God’s Good Creation

July 14, 2022July 14, 2022

‘We’ve Lived The Sexy Life God Created Sex For’

So says Peter J. Leithart.

My wife and I have given the world an attorney, a couple of teachers, more than one writer, a game designer, a musician and a couple of filmmakers, an executive assistant who runs a nonprofit, a social worker, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, boys and girls with plans and aspirations that will come to fruition long after my wife and I are gone. Lord willing, Leitharts will keep proliferating for a thousand generations.

This is what the Bible means by “blessing,” and it all began with my wife and me keeping our promise to be “only for you.”

We’ve lived the sexy life God created sex for.

A beautiful account of what sex is for. Read “Our Sexy Life“

Jean Honoré Fragonard (painter) French, 1732 – 1806
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

I’m a Classic Christian and think Gender Ideology is anti-creational to the core. This blog is about “God’s Good Creation.” That’s why I’m writing about Gender Ideology. And “speaking up” as I’m confident Jesus would.

"Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female.'" [Matt 19:4]

If you would like more detail on how my Christian worldview informs my understanding of Sex and today’s Gender Ideology please read the following posts.

**The Natchez** by Delacroix – 1835
Oil on Canvas
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Love refuses to affirm confusion.

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July 11, 2022July 14, 2023

An Idealized American Landscape

Pastoral Landscape, 1861
by Asher Brown Durand
National Gallery of Art

See if you can spot the churches in the background.

Overview

By 1861, when Asher B. Durand executed this large and impressive picture, he had fully perfected his approach to landscape painting, creating idealized, expressive views of America’s wilderness based on close observations of the natural world that stand as prime examples of the Hudson River School aesthetic.

Because virtually nothing is known of Pastoral Landscape’s history prior to 1980, the painting’s original title remains the subject of speculation. But certain relevant facts can be established. First and foremost, the work is the largest, most ambitious, and most accomplished of Durand’s paintings from 1861, representing a substantial commitment of time by the artist, who was not a fast worker. Second, the scenery resembles that of the Hudson River Valley, where he spent considerable time and from which he drew inspiration for many works. Third, the painting contains several works of architecture—an Italianate villa just beyond the woods at left, an arched stone bridge, a gabled house across the water, and an English Gothic revival church in the center distance—that may or may not indicate that Durand sought to depict a specific, identifiable place. And finally, in certain respects—mostly notably, the presence of a house nestled in the woods, a church, and an arched bridge— Pastoral Landscape bears a strong resemblance to Durand’s important work of the previous year Sunday Morning (New Britain, Connecticut, New Britain Museum of American Art). Regardless of its precise identity, the painting is unmistakably one of Durand’s grandest and most successful panoramic renderings of an idealized American landscape.

Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

Doughton Park, Blue Ridge Parkway
by blueridgemountain_man

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July 7, 2022July 14, 2023

Mount Corcoran

[Click on image for full view]

Overview

In 1877 Albert Bierstadt displayed this enormous composite of Sierra Nevada mountain views at a New York City exhibition with the generic title Mountain Lake. The following year, inspired in part by the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s well-publicized purchase of his rival Frederic Edwin Church’s Niagara, Bierstadt offered the work—rechristened Mount Corcoran—to the museum and its founder, William Wilson Corcoran. Staff and board members were deeply suspicious, but Bierstadt presented them with a War Department map showing the mountain’s location. Curator William MacLeod opined that a government official had manually added Corcoran’s name to the document, but it was revealed that the artist had, in fact, named a specific Sierra Nevada peak for the banker (albeit after he had offered him the canvas). Undeterred by the controversy surrounding the painting’s acquisition, the artist stated: “I am happy to have named one of our highest mountains after him, the first to catch the morning sunlight [and] the last to say good night.”

Bierstadt was the first artist to use his European training to translate field studies into expansive paintings celebrating western American grandeur. Evident everywhere in Mount Corcoran, from the glassy water to the snowy mountain peaks, are the artist’s detailed naturalism and smooth surfaces. Following the discovery of gold in California, the American West became a source of intense fascination for East Coast art patrons and armchair travelers alike who were eager to see images of the vistas enthusiastically described by forty-niners, surveyors, and journalists. In 1859 Bierstadt joined US Army Colonel Frederick W. Lander’s survey party to the Rocky Mountains. Four years later he set his sights on California’s spectacular Yosemite Valley. When he returned to New York following that trip, Bierstadt began producing stunning landscapes such as Mount Corcoranthat introduced eastern audiences to the natural wonders of the West.

More information on this painting can be found in the free PDF of Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945, available for download at https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/corcoran-american-art.pdf

Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

Yosemite Valley & Merced River
by blueridgemountain_man

God made a beautiful world for us to enjoy.

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