Leonid Meteor Storm, as seen over Niagara Falls on the night of November 12th, 1833, pictured in E. Weiß's Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt (1892). ⠀ One of 15 new prints just up in our online shop: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/flowers-of-the-sky #otd #onthisday
Big fish, serious man — one of Marcus Selmer’s wonderful photographs of 19th-century Norwegians. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/marcus-selmer-s-photographs-of-19th-century-norwegians
A whale and three fish sitting down to a formal dinner of Russian sailors, in a propaganda cartoon created by Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915), during the Russo-Japanese war (1904-5). View more from this superb series of prints here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/kobayashi-kiyochika-s-cartoons-of-the-russo-japanese-war-1904-5
Ruined Country: Old Battlefield, Vimy, near La Folie Wood, 1918 — by Paul Nash.
More of Nash's moving depictions of the destroyed and broken landscapes of the First and Second World War here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-war-art-of-paul-nash-1917-1944 #ArmisticeDay #RemembranceDay2022 #RemembranceDay
Landscapes of the Western Front, 1914–1918 — A century after their strategic function has passed, these official British army intelligence photographs offer an unusual and haunting portrait of the front: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/landscapes-of-the-western-front-1914-1918 #RemembranceDay #RemembranceDay2022 #ArmisticeDay
"Human pyramid" prints (ca. 1540) attributed to the Italian-born Juste De Juste. The visual energy of these acrobatically poised écorché figures are echoed centuries later in Henri Matisse's painting Dance (1910). More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-human-pyramids-of-juste-de-juste-ca-1540
105 yrs ago #onthisday, just days before end of #WW1, French poet Apollinaire (weakened by a shrapnel wound) died in the Spanish flu epidemic. Later that year Calligrammes: Poems of Peace & War was published, a collection of his concrete/visual poems https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/apollinaire-s-calligrammes-1918 #OTD
Wonderful series of photographs offering a glimpse into female friendship in Maine, ca. 1898: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/babb-photographs
154 years ago #onthisday, Top the wombat died. He was the pet of the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti who, upon Top's passing, created this self-portrait in mourning. More on Rossetti and co’s curious but longstanding fixation with the #wombat here: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/o-uommibatto-how-the-pre-raphaelites-became-obsessed-with-the-wombat
A woman grieves for her beloved prince.
From the titular story in East of the Sun and West of the Moon, a collection of Norwegian folk stories fantastically illustrated by Kay Nielsen in 1914. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/east-of-the-sun-and-west-of-the-moon-illustrated-by-kay-nielsen-1922-edition
Fireworks at the Ryogoku Bridge, by Utagawa Hiroshige, 1858.
Available to buy as a print in our shop: https://t.co/v566Avx4lv #bonfirenight #FireworksNight #fireworks
Pages from a beautiful hand-written and illustrated treatise on firework design and manufacture published in 1785, including ‘blue-prints’ for the devices and explosive recipes. See the full book here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/manuscript-handbook-of-firework-design-1785 #Fireworks
"Picturing Pyrotechnics" — @simon_werrett on how artists through the ages have responded to the challenge of representing firework displays: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/picturing-pyrotechnics #bonfirenight #FireworksNight #fireworks
Published by the National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company in 1917, this little book's pages are entirely blank. More on it here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/why-women-should-not-vote
German composer, pianist, organist and conductor Felix Mendelssohn died #onthisday in 1847 aged just 38. Pictured here, more than 50 years later, his music as a "thought form" emanating from a church: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/victorian-occultism-and-the-art-of-synesthesia #otd
Still Life with Peeled Orange and Bunch of Grapes, Albertus Steenbergen, late 19th century.⠀ ⠀ Available as a print from our shop here: https://t.co/LOmFqVfqzE
