That is Priceless by Steve Melcher for November 01, 2021

“After you finish her portrait, do one of the dog. And if you have time, then my in-laws.”

“Oh oh, I think mother has frozen. Someone give her a slap.”

The self-portrait of Herr Joseph Dorn / may be viewed by some critics with scorn. / Everyone in this place, / (but the dog), shares one face. / Artist’s license, or how they were born? /// The resemblances may be misleading. / At true likenesses, is Dorn succeeding? / Not a case of bad art, / or a joke on his part. / They are look-alikes due to inbreeding.

“What a beautiful … wait a second. I recognize your palette. This is PAINT BY NUMBER!”

“Does this mean I won’t get a tip?”

It finally makes sense! The reason all those paintings by the ‘Dutch Masters’ are so dark is that they are too cheap to turn on the lights, and instead paint by the light of a lone window.

You’re the child of a people imperial/ you’re the spawn of a strain ministerial/ but your parents were cousins/ (of whom you have dozens)/ and you simply ain’t “model material”.///The island of Britain is small/ and connections are hard to recall/ since few people can read/ we breed without heed/ and nobody keeps track of it all…

There are 73 rooms in this castle, does everyone in the family have to be right here, geesh!

Now airbrush it to make me look ten years younger

“Hey, where’d you get the pig?”

“I beg your pardon? That is my dog.”

“I was talking to the dog.”

Either those two women were twins or Dorn only knew how to paint one kind of female.

That’s gonna be one big passport.

Everyone knew Esmeralda had farted, but no-one dared to crack a smile….not even the dog!

Portrait of Doreen Gray, day 1.

Enough chaperones already!

Their heads look too big for their bodies…except for the artist’s. Is he trying to tell us something?

Development while waiting was longer back then.

She’s posing nicely for her husband, with her darn-in-laws watching, but in her mind, Liesl is far-away, reining her horse across sun-lit fields.

It is said that the German writer, Goethe, could only write if there was a rotting apple in his desk drawer; the German leader, Hitler, could only appear menacing when he put a black caterpillar under his nose; and the German artist, Dorn, could only paint with his underpants on his head …. and to think: they make such excellent strudel!!!

After having Aunt Matilda stuffed, they needed a picture because they knew the corpse would deteriorate with time.

For once the portrait is more lifelike than the subject.

Die Mamas und Der Papas, circa 1832 ♪♫ CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ ON SUCH A WINTER’S DAYYYYYYY! ♪♫

School photos — is that still a thing?

Nursie from Blackadder being told she will be executed as she sat for her portrait.

is that Stevie Van Zant and family?

I think the dog needs to be let out.

“It’s amazing how you’ve captured the detail of each and every one of her nose hairs.”

After bandaging his head from the smacks she gave him, and noticing the threatening scowls from her brothers, the artist removed her 2nd and 3rd chins.

Well, I was going to comment on the nearly surrealistic perspective, but your verse outshines all other comments I’ve read on this website, to say nothing of my meager observations. Bravo/a, Solstice!

Whatever the family paid/ to have this woman portrayed/ might have been better spent/ on a load of cement/ under which she should have been laid./// The painter has failed to include/ any warmth that these people exude/ or perhaps they just trigger/ an onslaught of frigor/ in the persons by whom they are viewed..

There is something distinctly daemonic/ in this cluster of titans, Teutonic,/ and it doesn’t bode well/for it seems to foretell/ far less fun than a high colonic..

Selfportrait Joseph Dorn: 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1832_Dorn_Selbstportrait_Joseph_Dorn_Historisches_Museum_Bamberg_anagoria.jpg 

(best viewed with Google Chrome, which can automatically translate most webpages as necessary) has info and links that point to more info about this painting.

Again, a larger strip image is shown by (⌘- or Ctrl-) clicking the image at 

https://thatispriceless.blogspot.com/2021/10/masterpiece-2818.html 

I have added a comment there (awaiting Mr. Melcher’s approval) pointing to the artist’s German Wikipedia page (also indirectly pointed to by the title URL), the only online info I could find about him. First work by this artist used here.

So what?

It might be my image is flat,

but the rear fellow looms like a bat.

He’s foregone his torso

while his visage e’en moreso’s

a scowling Cheshireized cat!

Howard Cosell, politician James Baker, George Burns, Debbie Harry, and Cher as a wind-up monkey missing its cymbals, teamed up for this SNL skit which never made it to air. The dog ran off but was later spotted.

Ex-husband: If I had a real pistol, I’d put one right between your eyes.

Ex-wife: Oh, yeah? Well, if I had a real hand grenade, I’d pull the pin and blow us both to hell.

Painter: I hate this job.

Madam De Boveair’s mother, father, husband , and spot the dog telling the artist what to paint so she looks better. their advice falls on deaf fingers

Perhaps Joseph should have foresworn/ depicting “die Familie Dorn”/ for their eyes make me tremble/ – they closely resemble / the kids in “Children of the Corn”.

“That’s an incredible likeness. Say, do you do colonoscopies?”

The self-portraitist views his reflection / with a rare degree of introspection. / But the unfocused eyes / of the other four guys / seem like victims of Botox injection. /// Why is it they don’t interact? / Why are their face muscles all slacked? / I am staring, aghast, / at weird shadows they cast. / Are they zombies, or ghosts, or just cracked?

“Nothin’ signals danger like to paint an ugly stranger in the mo-o- r-nin’…”

In 1830s Germany the most exciting thing to do was watch paint dry.

The three witches became fast friends after the first meeting by the cauldron. Now and then, they would have reunions; even after they were all married. Of course, one of them had been turned into a bitch by then.

Painter: When I paint, I think of Wagner’s work; Fafner, the Valkyries … tump tada tump tum, tum tada tum tum… and “Hiya-towAH, Hiya-towAH” … and of course, “Father, father, where is my sword?” … Well, I must be going now.

Others [in unison]: Oh, sir, would you?

A Greek who lacks hands and feet/ is a Greek who remains incomplete./ There are numbers of these/ on the Parthenon frieze/ and they lie there and bleach in the heat../// In Britain it’s easy to see ‘em/ where the tickets are sold “per diem”./ You may even get cool/ in the vestibule/ when London heats up in the P.M…///