'Tohyrder'

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, The Two Shepherds (1813)

Something to do with the Shakespearean (Sophoclean) "ages of man", I think!

John William Waterhouse, The Crystal Ball (1902)

UPDATE: The "Christian" counterpart of this painting, finished by the artist in the same year, is here.

Family

'Little Boy Blue'

One set of [Mark Ryden's] works that is a personal favorite of mine is Bunnies and Bees: Paintings Created To Illustrate Divine Truth In Accordance With The Secret Principals Of Science And Soul. From it comes the story of what would seem to be sugar and spice where nothing is quite that nice. The creatures, some with glassy, complacent stares some with nasty frowns.

One in particular comes to mind titled "Little Boy Blue" the subject is the storybook classic we're all familiar with but with a demented twist: clad in pale pink with blue accents donning a baby blue Nazi swastika on shoulder and cap alike. It seems to tell of sweet innocence gone sour, in more ways than one: his slight scowl the foreboding storm overhead and the adorable little blue pistol in it's holster. He's not off to shoot imaginary Indians or be a bank robber, this little guy's out for holocaust! It's paintings like this that really speak to me telling you to look a little deeper than just the surface, question, probe, discover.

[Helium]

Loki and Sigyn

[Mårten Eskil Winge]

[Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg]

Another artist who has depicted this scene has been W. G. Collingwood, whose line-drawing version is here.

'Hof in Spejlsby auf Möen'

Same again! This could just about be Bifröst, I suppose. Again, Google's translator is fairly useless.

'Portrait of T E Lawrence'

[Henry Scott Tuke]

Actually Rory Stewart's mini hagiography of Lawrence, of which I saw the second part this evening, was quite engaging and he himself comes across as an impressive figure. On the other hand, there was more than a whiff of not just self-justification from Stewart, given his own small part in Britain's most recent balls-up in Iraq, and even a spot of exorcising of personal demons.

'In the Studio'

Marie Bashkirtseff (1881)