One of the World's Great Museums

I visited the Art Institute of Chicago the other day.  It's a splendid place, with collections of many kinds, and countless masterpieces by marquee artists.  Here's a fine work by Winslow Homer...fishermen hard at work.  Blow these pics up for best effect.

Frederic Remington action sculpture.

This is just a shot of Chitown on a beautiful September day.

These Greek vases look like they were crafted on hi tech equipment in the past few years.  Actually, they're 2500 years old.  Great artists have been with us for a long time.

A coin of Alexander the Great's empire.  Interestingly, middle eastern monarchs minted coins showing themselves with a similar hairstyle for the next three centuries.  But there was only one Alex the Great.

An exquisite window done by Marc Chagall.

Ganesh presides.

A Chinese warrior gives a demon a good stomping!

The classic portrait of Napoleon by his court painter, Jacques-Louis-David.  I always took this to be a depiction of the emperor at his arrogant best.  But the bottom line is that the artist said Ol' Nap had been working all night on his code of laws; the clock in the background indictes a time of around 4...AM.  So maybe the emperor was just tired.

An exquisite 19th century vase.  According to the caption, elaborate artwork like this was often used during diplomatic negotiations in Europe.  One party would present it to the other...a bribe, perhaps?

Francisco Goya was a painter of many styles.  He is probably known best for his protest paintings of oppressed Spaniards rising up against their French antagonists during the Napoleonic wars...and sometimes getting shot for their efforts.  Later, as an old man, Goya painted many dark, surreal paintings that seem to me to be harbingers of modern art...in the 1820s.  But he started as a court painter, depicting various noble bigwigs.  This is an example, from 1795.

The Art Institute has a big room full of impressionists...perhaps my favorite art genre.  This is a seaside painting by Monet.

And a seaside painting by Manet.

And one by Renoir.  A fine representation of turbulence, both atmospheric and oceanic.

A French village, by Cezanne.  Watch the Tour de France in July and you'll see villages very much like this one, a century and a half after the painting.

An El Greco masterpiece.  Christ seems weary.  Or maybe he's a Bears fan and he's dejected because the team looks really lousy in the early part of the season.

I got mixed up loading pix so here's Winslow Homer again.

And Remington...the detail he achieves is amazing.  Though a native New Yorker, Remington spent a lot of time in the west, and loved it, though he wasn't particularly in non-artistic enterprises there.  He came from a distinguished and varied family.  He was related to George Washington; famed Indian painter George Catlin; and mountain man Jedediah Smith, among others.

Chicago skyline.

Huge building soars through the Millenium Park foliage.