Pirate with a Paintbrush
Have you seen the story about the second-grader forbidden by security guards to sketch paintings in an art gallery-- because the paintings were copyrighted?
It brings to mind the 1830s painting "Gallery of the Louvre." This sinister practice has been going on a long time. This particular painting portrays dozens of paintings and sculptures, along with, yup, several young artists hanging around the gallery painting their own copies.
The artist is Samuel F.B. Morse, the troublemaker whose meddling eventually led to all this Internet and whatnot. The finished painting allowed American eyeballs to feast on the distant Louvre's pirated masterpieces. The Terra Foundation folks, who presently own the painting, inform us that the art teacher in the center of the painting is Morse himself, and that the guy in the corner is his buddy, two-fisted adventure novelist James Fenimore Cooper.
They also explain: "Gallery of the Louvre is Morse's 'gallery picture,' a form first popularized in the seventeenth century, and the only major such example in the history of American art. In a gallery picture the works depicted are clear and distinctive copies of real or imaginary works of art that are related to foreground figures. Morse completed his copies of Louvre masterworks in Paris and returned to New York with his unfinished canvas in the fall of 1832."
(It's nice to see that the North Carolina Museum of Art has now changed its draconian policy. )
It brings to mind the 1830s painting "Gallery of the Louvre." This sinister practice has been going on a long time. This particular painting portrays dozens of paintings and sculptures, along with, yup, several young artists hanging around the gallery painting their own copies.
The artist is Samuel F.B. Morse, the troublemaker whose meddling eventually led to all this Internet and whatnot. The finished painting allowed American eyeballs to feast on the distant Louvre's pirated masterpieces. The Terra Foundation folks, who presently own the painting, inform us that the art teacher in the center of the painting is Morse himself, and that the guy in the corner is his buddy, two-fisted adventure novelist James Fenimore Cooper.
They also explain: "Gallery of the Louvre is Morse's 'gallery picture,' a form first popularized in the seventeenth century, and the only major such example in the history of American art. In a gallery picture the works depicted are clear and distinctive copies of real or imaginary works of art that are related to foreground figures. Morse completed his copies of Louvre masterworks in Paris and returned to New York with his unfinished canvas in the fall of 1832."
(It's nice to see that the North Carolina Museum of Art has now changed its draconian policy. )