It's Actually Romantic #8

Happy 4th of July everyone and congratulations on 250 Years of American Independence.

This episode of my series has me starting off with a beautiful war art piece by Frank Owen Salisbury, RI, ROI called “Intercepting Doodlebugs over the south coast, 1944”

The present work was commissioned by Duncan Sandys, who at the time of its execution was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply and Chairman of the Cabinet Committee for Defence against German V-Weapons.

Though never an official war artist, Salisbury painted many patriotic scenes during the Second World War, such as the present lot which depicts the Germans bombing the south coast of England.

The RI and ROI after his name stands for his elected membership in two prestigious institutions — Royal Institution of Painters in Watercolours and Royal Institute of Oil Painters.

Love this reel — everyone basically told this girl she looks like Haaland and should imitate his hairstyle and she actually did it. It’s all very cute and adorable.

Next, we go french and romantic. Emile Munier lived between 1840-1895 and was a French Academic Classical painter and genre painter. He painted this lovely piece in 1877 and I wonder if he was making a point about youth mocking his own old age.

A cute reel where a girl got gifted a bunch of vintage clothes by an older lady she knows from her church. She does a bunch of tryouts and they all look great! Just love this inter-generational sharing, I think it’s very cute.

René Lalique created the "Vitesse car mascot " in 1929. It was used as a radiator cap on the front of cars of the time. The form of a woman endlessly beautiful.

These girls are dancing and wishing for their dream men in the rain on July 3rd, the day Taylor Swift got married and New York was hit with a surprise shower and rainbow. Don’t tell me girls are not romantic :) And it’s all just so aesthetic and beautiful!

The Stolen Kiss is an oil painting on canvas executed in 1787 and located in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. It has been historically attributed to the French Rococo artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806). The painting is a genre scene influenced by Dutch Golden Age painting, depicting a young couple in a secretive romance, set in the foreground – a subject that was favoured before the French Revolution among French aristocrats. I just love how he’s so gently stealing a kiss from her, the tenderness of man <3

A beautiful reel of a very beautiful girl getting ready for her wedding, in a dress with buttons sewed for her by her fiance:

Gudmund Stenersen (1863–1934) was a Norweigan dentist who moonlighted as an artist. He painted this lovely scene Midsummer Night in 1906 and I find it still holds true for how Norway and basically all of Scandinavia still celebrates summer.

A wonderful reel with this guy on a boat with his mom watching just asking out a girl! You can just do things! As someone in the comments said “No one has been asked out on a boat since a Jane Austen novel”.

Edmind Berninger was a German painter (1843-1929) who drew beautiful Italian landscapes and this one has me enthralled.

I spent my fortieth birthday month traveling to amazing beautiful places and meeting the best people I’ve had the privilege to have in my life. Lovely dinners in Paris, Rome, Prague and somewhere in the borderlands of Norway and Sweden. The time at the beautiful shallow lake where I just take a chair and sit in the water reading for hours is so ethereal I wonder if this is my real life.

I am so grateful that I have my beloveds, my family, my friends, that I have the love of the people who care for me. I am glad I get to live my life. And I wish everyone got to live their life as happily as I do. Here’s to another 40 years in this beautiful world.

I end with my favorite Italian song, Il Mondo, by Jimmy Fontana with the best translation I could find: