RJ Treleaven

Showing posts with label Art History. Show all posts

Hello, My Lovelies! Welcome to the 44th Tales of the Traveling Tote. I have not been traveling much or even going to the lake recently. I have had family obligations keeping me busy, but my family held an intervention a couple of weeks ago and insisted that I get away for a quick weekend to my favorite city, Chicago. We planned to visit my two motherships: Wrigley Field and The Art Institute of Chicago.

We enjoy staying at the historic Palmer House because it's within walking distance to the Art Institute. Below is the pretty ceiling in the lobby.

On Friday night we ate at a fantastic Mediterranean restaurant called Avec. Everyone loved it, and we particularly enjoyed the family-style presentation.

Saturday morning, we ate breakfast at our favorite bakery and coffee shop, The Goddess and the Baker. They have the best breakfast pastries in Chicago! Then we headed to Wrigleyville. Shanley Belle and I visited a romance-only bookshop called The Last Chapter and had a ball. We like visiting Indie Bookshops while traveling.

After the bookshop, we met up with Christopher and Trip at the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field.

Unfortunately, La Countess de Monet is too large to get into the stadium. Miss Square Peggy and Miss Candy Max are also too large. The dimensions must be no larger than 16" X 16" X 8". So I carried Miss Check You're Out! because she is petite at 16" X 11.5" X 4". She loved the game!

Clark the Cubbies' mascot before the game. We had great seats behind the dugout on the third base side.

The Cubbies beat the Pirates 3-1, so the W flag was flown!

Saturday night after the game we ate dinner at our favorite pizza place in the city, Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinders. They have the best pizza pie in the world! I always order the individual mushroom one.

Sunday morning we ate breakfast at The Goddess and the Baker again because we love it so much. Then we walked to the Art Institute for the Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World exhibit. Since we're members, we were able to visit an hour earlier than the general public, so we saw the exhibit almost by ourselves. For the Sunday before school started on Monday, there were few people at the museum. I think it might have had something to do with the flooding rains on Saturday night.

Gustave Caillebotte was an independently wealthy Impressionist. He was good friends with Renoir, and he painted pretty much what he wanted to paint. During this time, painters usually painted lovely young women, but Caillebotte preferred painting men.

One of the lions in front of the museum.

I wanted to share with you two paintings, one by Renoir and one by Caillebotte.

I chose the mums by Renoir for autumn.

Chrysanthemums

Pierre August Renoir (French, 1841–1919)

1881-1882

Oil on canvas

21 5/8" × 25 7/8 "

I chose the Caillebotte painting (below) because I thought the perspective was neat.

The Boulevard Seen From Above

Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848-1894)

1880

Oil on canvas

25 3/5" × 21 3/10"

We enjoyed the member's lounge and a late lunch of Giordano's Pizza. Before heading to the airport, we went to the world's largest Starbucks, the Starbucks Reserve. The four-story shop is truly something. We had the Chicago blend, and I brought some home with me.

I also purchased a beautiful book of the Van Gogh bedrooms because we saw the exhibit in 2016 at the Art Institute. I was so happy to have a lovely reminder of that trip, too. The Caillebotte brochures were really large, so I didn't buy one of them.

I love how the page folds out to show all three bedroom paintings.

This book is so nice, and it also features other paintings shown at the exhibit.

I hope you enjoyed my post on my whirlwind trip to Chicago. I literally have nothing else to share!

I'm sure the other Traveling Tote Ladies have much more interesting posts than mine, so give them a visit using the links below!

Debbie with Miss Aurora @ Mountain Breaths

Emily with Miss Courtney Childs@ The French Hutch

Linda P with Miss Lola @ Life and Linda

Patti with Miss Kenzie @ Pandora's Box

Rita with Miss Luna C @ Panoply

Sarah with Miss Merri Mac @ Hyacinths for the Soul

Jackie and Miss Madi K @ Purple Chocolat Home

Ricki Jill and Countess De Monet @ The Bookish Dilettante

This TTT giveaway is hosted by Sarah. Please make sure to leave a comment on her post in order to be entered.

Join us for our next adventures in December!

Until next time...

Blessings!
Ricki Jill

Tales of the Traveling Tote: My Motherships

Monday, September 1, 2025

Happy June, My Lovelies! This edition of the Tales of the traveling Tote will feature our anniversary trip to Amsterdam and our river cruise on the Rhine. I could write a dissertation about our trip because we saw and learned so much. But instead I'm featuring my favorite things about the trip. We left Birmingham on our anniversary (March 19th) which was the opening day of tulip season.

My favorite thing about Amsterdam was the Van Gogh Museum. We had special tickets and went early. There were very few people around, so we were able to take our time in the galleries. Here are some favorites:

The Bedroom

Arles, October 1888

oil on canvas

28.5" X 36"

We had seen this one before when it was on loan at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016.

Sprig of Flowering Almond In a Glass

Arles, March 1888

oil on canvas

9.6" X 7.6"

Below is one of my favorite paintings. Van Gogh's Almond Blossoms was the most cherished paintings by his family, and it was heavily influenced by his interest in Japanese print making. The perspective is looking up through the branches toward the sky. This perspective loses the view of the tree in its entirety.

Almond Blossom

Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, February 1890

oil on canvas

29" X 36"

We also visited the Rijksmuseum which is located on the same campus. It was slightly crowded, but we really didn't have much trouble seeing everything in the galleries. I think most people were outside because it was the first pretty weekend after a cold, rainy winter. They were in the process of restoring The Night Watch which is Rembrandt's most celebrated painting. It shows citizens of Amsterdam protecting the city.

We enjoyed one of our best meals in Amsterdam at the Rijksmuseum. In the café they had these gorgeous (and huge) Delft tulipieres.

Our first stop on our cruise included an eBike tour of Kinderdijk windmills. We saw nineteen windmills in all, and we were able to tour one that is a working museum. It was very interesting seeing the millers go about their day and moving the windmills to catch the wind.

Kinderdijk windmills

One thing that has been on my bucket list as an adult is to see the Cologne Cathedral in all her gothic splendor. She did not disappoint, and I might have been slightly overhwelmed.

Another favorite activity one afternoon was viewing many, many castles along the Rhine from the boat. I sketched several of them while enjoying afternoon tea.

Ehrensfels Castle

near Rüdesheim, Hesse, Germany

This castle was actually rebuilt in 1212

One of my favorite places in Germany is Heidelberg. I've visited there several times, and I wanted Shanley Belle and Christopher to experience it, so we took a little side trip there. This was the only day without sunshine; it was very foggy for almost the entire day.

This is one of my favorite views at Heidelberg Castle. This is the moat, and at one time, it was a zoo for a very spoiled queen.

We were a little early in the season, but this area as well as many of the walls and ruins at the castle become covered in wildflowers in spring and summer.

My new favorite region of France is The Alsace, and we visited several World War II sites and villages. Below is a panorama view of Strasbourg. This region is known for its gingerbread, and it's enjoyed year round.

The last thing I want to share about our trip was a visit and hike in the Black Forest of Germany. This area is known for cuckoo clocks and Black Forest Cake. We took a class to learn how to make and assemble the cakes. It was a lot of fun! After sampling the cakes, it was nice that we had the opportunity to go on a little hike.

Mountainside brook in the Black Forest of Germany

Disclosure: La Countess de Monet was unable to make this trip because I needed a backpack for many of the biking and hiking tours we did. She was not happy, I tell ya! So in order to make it up to her, I took her to a flower arrangement class at a beautiful local farm here in Central Alabama. You can read about our adventure HERE.

La Countess de Monet at Stone Hollow Farmstead learning about floral arranging

Please visit the other ladies' blogs and read about their travels using the links below. Rita is hosting our giveaway!

Debbie with Miss Aurora @ Mountain Breaths

Emily with Miss Courtney Childs@ The French Hutch

Linda P with Miss Lola @ Life and Linda

Patti with Miss Kenzie @ Pandora's Box

Rita with Miss Luna C @ Panoply

Sarah with Miss Merri Mac @ Hyacinths for the Soul

Jackie and Miss Madi K @ Purple Chocolat Home

Ricki Jill and Countess De Monet @ The Bookish Dilettante

Please join me Wednesday, June 4th for my review of this new Civil War historical fiction novel.

Until next time...

Blessings!
Ricki Jill

Tales of the Traveling Tote: Rhine River Cruise and Amsterdam

Sunday, June 1, 2025

Mirabell Garden

Salzburg, Austria

Happy Monday, My Lovelies! What have you been up to this spring so far? We have been traveling, gardening, and celebrating for the most part. Spring is my favorite season, partly because we start going to the lake more often, and baseball returns.

In spring, we celebrate Easter, our anniversary, my birthday, and Mother's Day.

We celebrated Easter in Germany this year, but beforehand we attended a few Easter markets in Prague.

I will be posting about a travels in the coming weeks. Here is a little preview of what I'll be sharing:

Prague is beautiful at night. this is a scene from the Municipal House concert hall and café

Göttweig Abbey, Krems, Austria

Most of the gardening we've been doing has been the grunt work of pruning and shaping trees and shrubs; cleaning retaining walls and patios; and putting out pine straw. We also planted our containers for spring. I'll share them once the plants grow a little bit.

This is our climbing New Dawn rose outside our dining room and my art studio.

I haven't been doing much decorating indoors lately. But I have been repotting houseplants and bringing in a few blooms.

Kalanchoe and campanula

Our daughter Shelley loves to go to antique shops, vintage stores, and flea markets. Lately she's asked me to tag along with her, and look what I found in excellent condition and at a very good price:

It's a MacKenzie-Childs storage box. I use it to hold my many spools of ribbon in the art studio.

I also found this beautiful 1972 illustrated edition of Black Beauty. Isn't the cover gorgeous! It has beautiful black and white and color illustrations inside.

This book is in excellent condition. I love books with pretty covers like this!

Shelley is very good at finding beautiful things. She can enter a huge warehouse and literally find the three prettiest things in there. I'm impressed that she has such a great eye, but she gets it honestly from her grandmother who owned an antiques store in New Orleans.

We've been to Lake Martin a couple of times so far this spring. A gander was following me everywhere because I like to feed the turtles, and apparently geese love turtle food. The following weekend, he brought his entire family including his wife and eight goslings. I recently posted a reel on Instagram if you'd like to see it. Please use the link below and follow me. I will follow you back.

A gaggle of goslings

Lake Martin, Alabama

I've been involved in my regular art class this spring and a class at church.

Our class at church is based on this book: The Friendship of Women by Joan Chittister.

In my art class I finally finished the realism colored pencil book. It took me a little over a year to complete. My last drawing is featured below. I am currently painting with oil paints again. :D

I've seen beautiful art this spring, and one of the best museums we visited was the Albertina in Vienna. The painting, below, is inspiring me. I'd like to try my hand at pointillism.

Paul Signar (1863 - 1935)

"Venice, the Pink Cloud"

1909

Albertina, Vienna

I've been visiting friends and going on outings with them this spring. It's been nice getting reacquainted with childhood friends who've moved back home to Alabama. They have been blessings to me!

A friend and I enjoyed decadent slices of chocolate cake in celebration of my birthday.

The General

Birmingham, Alabama

I got a new desktop computer. My old one had issues, and my laptop completely crashed. Right now I'm not planning on replacing my laptop because I am LOVING my new desktop so, so much! Now that my computer frustrations are behind me (let's hope they stay there) I'm planning to blog more than I have been.

I've been reading a lot this year, and on Friday I will share my three favorite books of 2024 so far in my Literary Friday post. Please come back and read it because all three would make fantastic beach and/or lake reads!

Until next time...

Blessings!
Ricki Jill

Spring Shenanigans

Monday, May 6, 2024

Hello, My Lovelies! Welcome to the Welcome Fall Tablescape Blog Hop hosted by Sweet Rita @ Panoply!

I love fall. What's not to like? The days are cooler, the skies are bluer, and everything important is flavored pumpkin spice. I also love sweaters and sweater weather, pumpkins, college football, bonfires, and Hallmark's Countdown to Christmas.

Because I love so much about fall, it was hard for me to decide on just one theme for my tablescape. I was inspired by two things: one of my favorite movies and a milestone from my own life:

Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. On the other hand, this not knowing has its charms.
~Joe Fox, You've Got Mail

Don't you just LOVE that movie? It will truly put you in the fall spirit. It inspired me to make a bouquet of paint brushes, though, because for the first time in months I was able to go back to my art class in person! Buh-bye, ZOOM!!!

Come on into our dining room and see what I put together:

I found the plates in an email from West Elm. I laughed for about thirty minutes when I saw them, and when I noticed that they were on sale, I bought them for less than $10.00 each.

Our daughter Shelley, also an artist, HATES them. She's insulted because Vermeer's Girl With The Pearl Earring is a favorite of hers, and she also likes Van Gogh.

I wanted my centerpiece to be a vanitas. I have several features seen in most vanitas paintings, like the flowers, fruit, paintbrushes, painting, and a book. All represent fleeting worldly pursuits and ephemeral beauty. The brevity of life is represented by the tea light candles.

According to Wikipedia, vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death.

“Vanitas—Still Life with Bouquet and Skull,” by Adriaen van Utrecht, circa 1642.

This genre was popular with the Dutch Old Masters, and skulls, timepieces, and withering vegetation are featured prominently in these paintings. (My husband has a skull from school, but I decided not to use it in my vanitas). These carry the same meaning—life is short and fleeting. Musical, writing, and art instruments as well as symbols of wealth represent that earthly pursuits are worthless or in vain.