Some gems at Wadsworth Atheneum

 Here are some of the amazing paintings at Wadsworth Atheneum.

A special surrealist painting by Salvador Dali.  The central image is either a chalice or a face.  

Vincent Van Gogh was fascinated with painting himself.  He did it numerous times over his brief career.

John Singleton Copley was a superb portrait artist.  This portrait of Bridget Forrester Foot always catches my eye because it shows us a not overly attractive woman just the way she must have looked.

Gilbert Stuart is famous because of his portraits of George Washington.  I liked seeing his painting of a different man, in this case James Heath.

Marsden Hartley painted this image of Military a year before the start of World War I.  As the nearby label wrote, "Here, numbers, bold shapes, and vivid colors evoke the sights and sounds of military music and parades. You don't just see the rhythm; you can hear it.  Military turns paint into music, line into movement."

This isn't a work by an artist famous today, but it is the kind of painting one can spend time admiring.  Giovanni Paolo Panini was a Roman artist who painted The Picture Gallery of Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, a huge work, in the middle of the 16th century.