The Gift of Art

I quietly stole away from the family on Mother's Day afternoon for a moment of reflection.   

Driving down main street of my little community, something caught my eye.  

Having passed it, I looked in my rear view mirror.   

Is that what I think it is?

At the next street, I turned left and doubled back.

To my surprise and delight, it was what I thought...FRAMED ART.  

I parked and took my phone (aka. camera) from my purse.  

Waiting to cross the street, I saw this piece straight ahead.

Young Woman with a Violin
(Saint Cecilia), about 1612
Orazio Gentileschi, Italian

Bude Sands at Sunset, 1874
John Brett, English

 I continued my walk toward the first picture I'd seen and found it just beyond the ice cream stand.  

Neptune, God of the Waters (tapestry fragment),
between 1500 and 1525,
Unknown artist, France/Netherlands

The next treasure I encountered was of Neptune.  It stood  nearly as tall me.  Sadly, the artist remains unknown.    

There was a map attached that showed the locations of six more pieces of art clustered in the downtown area.    

I checked the battery of my phone ...low.  I had to hurry.










                                      This piece and I have history. 

          

The Wedding Dance, 1566
Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
Netherlandish

I found a humongous poster 

of it in a little shop in East 

Lansing when I attended MSU.  

It hung on my dorm room wall my senior year.

The Trapper's Return, 1851
George Caleb Bingham, American

Celadon and Amelia, 1793
William Hamilton, English

My treasure hunt lead me to these:

What a lovely Mother's Day gift!

       

Seascape: Sunset, 1861
Martin Johnson Heade, American

The Lily Pond, 1886
Charles Harry Eaton, American

The Wreck, 1854
Eugene-Louis-Gabriel Isabey, French

All were provided by the Detroit Institute of Art's INSIDE OUT program that brings reproductions of great treasures into our community through the Knight Foundation.