Dulce et decorum est pro patrio mor

"It is a sweet and honourable thing to die for one's country." Horace 19BC

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end they remain.

From "For the Fallen"

Laurence Binyon (1869 - 1943)

Starry Night
Vincent Van Gogh
oil on canvas
St Remy, France 1889

Blue Note

"There is no blue without yellow and without orange." Vincent Van Gogh

"Starry Night over the Rhone"
Vincent Van Gogh
1888

The search for the perfect blue.....trace the story

From the stones, tiles and mosaics of the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic World, the European Renaissance, a little plant isatis tinctoria and the 'war of the blues' over indigo and woad, to the discovery by Impressionist painters that "the shadows were full of colour".

"The Four Trees"
Claude Monet 1891
painted from his boat in the River Epte near Giverny

Liebhaber in Wien - Lovers in Vienna

Hochzeitsgeschenke

Imagined wedding presents for you both - Gustav Klimt in his Golden Phase

Bauerngarten mit Sonnenblumen
Oil on canvas

Kuss
Oil, silver and gold plate on canvas

Ensoleilée

Brightness, warmth and hope given at a time of loss; a symbol now forever vibrant.

Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in 1888 - "Gaugin was telling me the other day that he had seen a picture by Claude Monet of sunflowers in a large Japanese vase, very fine, but - he likes mine better. I don't agree."

Spring

"I started right away to make a picture for him.................big branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky."  Almond Blossom Vincent Van Gogh 1890