The Lovers’ Chronicle 12 August – livin’ – art by Abbott Handerson Thayer & Ernestine von Kirchsberg

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

have to go with a song by your guy Steven
“You can’t help yourself from falling”
he was right, we could not
“In Steven we trust”
we did our share
of hangin’ on the edge
“Yes we did”
how fortunate we held on
until we could fall here
a convergence of time
and place and livin’
two halves of a whole

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

on the edge, lookin’ in, observin’ not missin’ any details, yes a comfort zone, could be a function of growin’ up in isolation, spendin’ long stretches of time alone, needin’ to create my own panoramas, but better than not and it has led here where i should be

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

pre-you, on the periphery
lookin’ in, content to observe
provided some good verse
and i had to be there
to get to here
now the best of both
through you and our adventures
and then back here to write about it
wondered what it would be worth
never thought i would know but i do

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

as with all things new
comes mystery
and eagerness
to see what awaits

do you know
how long it has been

the verse goes on
with tales of intimacy
but they are mostly
imaginary

tryin’ to live
through this vision

i believe it is time
to set that life aside

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

i know,
my true,
i am bound

summertime,
fallin’,
if i cannot get,
will have none at all

wish i had made
every song, i wish
that girl was mine

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

with apologies
to Mr. Vidal…

intimacy is not my bag
i was debagged
at an early age
so i turned to verse and art,
perfectly acceptable substitutes

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

a helluva thunderstorm
blew through here earlier
high wind, heavy rain, hail
i poured another drink,
and watched
and thought of you

just a dreamer
which is all right, i s’pose
because you are just a dream

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Were I still with you
Were we still true

No, not for me
I was cured
So I turned
To sex and words
Fine substitutes

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Shall it be said or shall it not be said
Her secret truth so intimate with me
That any name would suit her well enough

Enough that she can see, will, entice, touch
My flesh delights her, under her caress
Livin’ but as a morsel of her life

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Wish I were still with you
Wish we were still true
Wish I could undo what was done
Wish we were still livin’ in the rose

© Copyright 2012 Mac Tag Cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

And today is the birthday of Abbott Handerson Thayer (Boston; August 12, 1849 – May 29, 1921 Dublin, New Hampshire); artist, naturalist, and teacher. As a painter of portraits, figures, animals, and landscapes, he enjoyed prominence during his lifetime, and his paintings are represented in major American art collections. Perhaps best known for his ‘angel’ paintings, some of which use his children as models.

During the last third of his life, he worked together with his son, Gerald Handerson Thayer, on a book about protective coloration in nature, titled Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom. First published by Macmillan in 1909, then reissued in 1918, it may have had an effect on military camouflage during World War I. However it was mocked by Theodore Roosevelt and others for its assumption that all animal coloration is cryptic.

Thayer also influenced American art through his efforts as a teacher, training apprentices in his New Hampshire studio.

In 1875, after having married Kate Bloede, he moved to Paris, where he studied for four years at the École des Beaux-Arts. Returning to New York, he established his own portrait studio, became active in the Society of American Painters, and began to take in apprentices.

Life became all but unbearable for Thayer and his wife during the early 1880s, when two of their small children died unexpectedly, one year apart. Emotionally devastated, they spent the next several years relocating from place to place. Although he was not yet secure financially, Thayer’s growing reputation resulted in more portrait commissions than he could accept.

After her father died, Thayer’s wife lapsed into an irreversible melancholia, which led to her confinement in an asylum, the decline of her health, and her eventual death on May 3, 1891, from a lung infection. Soon after, Thayer married their long-time friend, Emmeline “Emma” Buckingham Beach, whose grandfather Moses Yale Beach owned The New York Sun. They spent their remaining years in rural New Hampshire, living simply and working productively. In 1901, they settled permanently in Dublin, New Hampshire, where Thayer had grown up.

At age 71, Thayer, disabled by a series of strokes, died quietly at home.

Gallery

And today is the birthday of Ernestine von Kirchsberg (12 August 1857, Verona, Austria – 8 October 1924, Graz, Austria); landscape painter. She began taking art lessons in 1873 at the “Landschaftliche Zeichenakademie” (Landscape Drawing Academy). After 1881, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Her first exhibit followed shortly, at the Vienna Künstlerhaus.

It was Darnaut who most influenced her style; an atmospheric school of landscape painting peculiar to Austria, known as “Stimmungsimpressionismus (de)”. While in Vienna, she befriended Marie Egner and Alfred Zoff, who she later followed to Munich. There, she completed her apprenticeship with him and Adalbert Waagen (de), a student of Albert Zimmermann. She also took up watercolors and was initially best known for her work in that genre.

In 1893, she was awarded a prize at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. She later exhibited frequently in Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Graz and elsewhere; making numerous painting expeditions to the Adriatic, Styria, Carniola and the South Tyrol.

She is buried at the St. Leonhard Cemetery (de) in Graz.

Gallery

Dilapidated Mill

Suburban Villa with Garden

Mac Tag

There’s no remaking reality. Just take it as it comes. Hold your ground and take it as it comes.  – Philip Roth

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem. – Gore Vidal

Getting to know anybody is a hideous complex job. – Sylvia Plath

Love is not my bag. I was debagged at twenty-five and turned to sex and art, perfectly acceptable substitutes. – Gore Vidal

We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you. – Sylvia Plath