a dagger of the mind

Two Muses, 1897

Gibbes Museum of Art, South Carolina

Head of a St. Bernard Dog by Otto Eerelman (Dutch, 1839--1926)

by Edwin Austin Abbey

French, 1860 – 1950

Two Javanese Ladies, ca. 1920

Augusta Auctions

The Blue Cup (1909) by Joseph Rodefer DeCamp (American, 1858 – 1923), oil on canvas, 126.6 cm (49.8 in) x 104.4 cm (41.1 in), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Dame agenouillée (La Grande-Duchesse Stéphanie de Bade)(1850-1874) - Thomas Couture

this is actually really interesting to me because i hadn't thought about that before but it does look a little menacing now that you mention it! i think part of that is because it's a study for a larger painting (which apparently i forgot to note in this post? i did for the other studies i posted that were for the same painting but i guess i forgot for this one. but i edited the original post so its there now even if its a little late for that) and the full painting has a lot of people and light and all that but in the absence of all that she does look pretty isolated. according to the commentary on the museum website the point of the study was to work out how to paint the clothing so that's probably why she doesn't have much of a face but taken as its own piece of art it does have a kind of ominous effect. anyway if you're interested in more of the background on this painting, it's at the château de compiègne and they have the information about it here (it is in french but google translate should work fine)