That is Priceless by Steve Melcher for August 29, 2024

I don’t know the date, but some time about a year ago I wrote the following verses about these two paintings:

/// When he worked, painting, Friedrich would sit

in his studio, canvas well lit

through the window by sun.

When the painting is done,

he stands up and back, critiquing it.

/// And by contrast Herr Kersting, who made

these two paintings of Friedrich, displayed

up above, side-by-side,

never judgment applied.

He cared mainly about being paid.

/// These two works with the same name begin

on the left. (There’s a door to come in.)

Done in Hamburg, he’s seated.

At right, work is completed.

Painted first, it’s the one from Berlin.

/// What’s called “After” was painted before

he broke through that wall forming a door.

The increased ventilation

then improved concentration.

He could sit and stop pacing the floor.

/// But, the truth is, there’s not much to say

‘bout the two “Masterpieces” today.

Variations, they seem,

on the same boring theme:

“Well-known painter in his atelier.”

/// He found landscapes a terrible bore

and decided to paint a large door

on the wall to his rear,

(and it looks real from here),

in the painting that’s labeled “BEFORE.”

/// The trompe l’oeil door glowed with light

every sunset, but looked fake at night.

He repainted the room

to help brighten the gloom

in the “AFTER” oil up on the right.

I see the problem.

He got the paint all over the walls instead of the canvas.

I wish the nude model had stayed the lighting is getting romantic at this hour.

Caspar David Friedrich, upon reading ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’, made his painting of the Narnia ship so realistic that he had to back away to avoid getting soaked. C.S. Lewis later acquired the painting … and thereby hangs a lion tale.

Two “homeless limerick saith no excuse for existing: A Londoner from the East End/

Initiated a trend/

By dipping his wiener/

In a double Martini./

It’s a practice that’s hard to defend..///

A dancer from Illinois/

Was gifted with marvelous poise:/

The problem (of course)/

Had the usual source:/

He would only dance with the boys….

(Not that there’s anything wrong with that)

Trying to paint a nude from memory but, sadly, it’s been a long time

Had fun looking at landscape “ on its side”.

The artist was prone to presume/

That the sight of the same dreary room/

Would interest a few/

And maybe it do-/

But now give us a nude we can “zoom”…

When viewing a pic of this kind, The first thing that comes to mind, He’s making his mark, But it’s really so dark, The artist must be going blind.

It’s a gimmick- admittedly clever/

A skillful artistic endeavor/

But a bit of a bore/

Not hard to ignore/

But a great nude endureth forever!

We have to use our imagination for “Between”.

The neighbor’s new patio umbrella serious impacted the light at that window.

A sad Scandinavian gloom/

Suffuses this sad little room:/

The outlook is grim/

(I don’t share that with him)/

Because I live in Florida.

(We have our own “Darkness at Noon”…called DeSantis.)

Wide screen tv is so cool. Movies in original format and other stuff.

I use my big screen TV on the wall to provide “northern light” for my canvas.

(Not really, but it’s a good idea.)

For some reason, I thought of “Late Lament” by the Moody Blues. “Breathe deep the gathering gloom. Watch lights fade from every room. Bedsitter people look back and lament. Another day’s useless energy is spent. Impassioned lovers wrestle as one.Lonely man cries for love and has none. New mother picks up and suckles her son.Senior citizens wish they were young. Cold-hearted orb that rules the night. Removes the colors from our sight. Red is grey and yellow-white. But we decide which is right. And which is an illusion” (Copy/pasted but punctuation added by me.)

M. C. Escher really wasn’t productive until he redesigned the easel he was using.

Caspar David Friedrich in his Studio: 

is the title of both. Paste (including the quote marks) 

"Category:Windows in paintings" Wikimedia 

(syntax supported by the Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckgo, and Brave search engines) in the browser address bar (or search for it using one of those search engines), and choose the first Category: found, and once there find the text string 1811 for BEFORE and 17.65 for AFTER, and click each link for info and links that point to more info (perhaps best viewed using the Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browser, which can automatically translate most webpages if necessary) about that roughly jumbo envelope size painting. Second File history has that strip coloration image.

A slightly larger strip image is shown by merely clicking the image in Mr. Melcher’s THROWBACK THURSDAY: MASTERPIECE #66 (12/19/09) (August 28, 2024) blog entry, accessible by the Check out the blog! box after the last comment. I have added a comment there pointing to the blog entry with my comment and reply (added today) pointing to info about this artist I used to point to here. So far, 4 works by him have been used here (6 times total, including this Throwback Thursday and 2 prior repeats of this dual strip), the December 20, 2011, strip being their first use. Back then, my comments were less informative. The August 7, 2023, strip has their prior showing here. The September 13, 2022, strip has the prior non-repeat by him.

I wish GoComics would enlarge the paintings in this comic.

Now if I could just remember what I would like in the mornin’

Some comments from 12/20/2011:

bluskies: but he’s gotten a new easel on life …

Plods with …™: I want to know why he put the TV on the harpsichord. Doesn’t seem safe. Just sayin’

mimismom: The long stick is used by artists to rest their wrist or forearm upon to steady their hand, especially when painting fine detail.

V-Beast: He’s having a stroke.

Some comments from 08/07/2023:

Call me Ishmael: Nuthin could be smellier than a cold German atelier in the mor-ornin’…

Solstice*1947: “Nuthin’ feels more trying than to watch him watch paint drying in the mor-or-ornin’…”

Call me Ishmael: Nuthin’s as prosaic as a few feet of trochaic in the mornin …

jdculhane46: Fred stops to admire his first paint-by-number masterpiece

Solstice*1947: /// The two lenses that shot what we see,

use advanced secret technology.

One side views present tense,

on the left, eight years hence.

That camera’s not 3-, but 4-D.

Carol from CT: In the left panel, we see a door / In the right, the door is no more / When he’s done for the day / How does he get away? / Through a trap door in the floor?

Exasperated999: He clearly painted himself into a corner ….

Call me Ishmael: He was once the most diligent of men /

Whether working with brush or with pen /

But things have grown drastic /

Since women’s gymnastics /

Is showing on ESPN … ///

Call me Ishmael: His wife is a mountain of lard /

Hence a sprite in a tight leotard /

Is quite a distraction /

And the painters reaction /

Suggests that he’s “taking it hard” …

epaphus8: Portrait of the artist after he feng shui’ed the heck out of his Brooklyn studio apartment.

phritzg: The first laptops had really big screens.

anomaly: Georg found the quality of his paintings dramatically improved when he stood too far away for his brush to reach the canvas.

6turtle9: The sales girl assured him that the ladies love a big screen, but he was beginning to suspect she had other motivations.

Running Buffalo: Nuthin could be noisier than an old German snorin’ in the morn-in’…

Darn it. All I can find different is the wart on the left onesleft cheek. My smartalic brother says there are 2 differences to find!