Printable Vintage Art: Beneath the Birches by Carl Larsson

Beneath the Birches, 1902
by Carl Larsson (1853–1919)

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Beneath you birch with silver bark
And boughs so pendulous and fair,
The brook falls scattered down the rock:
and all is mossy there.
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.
The only thing that could spoil a day was people
and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits.
People were always the limiters of happiness
except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

You can download a digitally enhanced version of the vintage painting (as seen above) as a high-res 7” x 11” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Illustrated Template for Announcements, Invitations, Journaling and Various Other Design Projects: At the End of the Lane

Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.
― Samuel Butler, Erewhon

Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy.

There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

Late 19th century illustration of a Victorian lady who has come to end of a fenced lane on one her walks. In the background you can see that she has come a long way with open sky, large field and tall trees framing the scene. Can be used for announcemnts, invitations, journaling and various other design projects. High-res 5.5” x 9.5” @ 300 ppi JPEG without any words/watermark can be found here.


From my personal collection of ephemera. These images are to be incorporated into your creative works. Not for resale “as-is.”

Printable Vintage Art: Girl and Bluebells, Brighouse Bay by Edward Atkinson Hornel

Girl and Bluebells, Brighouse Bay, 1919
by Edward Atkinson Hornel (1864–1933)

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We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

You can download a digitally enhanced version of the vintage painting (as seen above) as a high-res 9” x 6” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

My Photo Journal: Summer Throwback Walk at Lynde Shores Conservation Area in Whitby, Ontario

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty.
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
― Franz Kafka

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
― W.B. Yeats

Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time:
Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Picture above shows a fallen tree in the woods while we were out walking one summer day in Lynde Shores Conservation Area many years ago. Doesn't it almost look like it could be a tropical rainforest with the foliage being so lush?

We first started going to Lynde Shores in Whitby, Ontario when our daughter was around 2 years old (she is turning 18 this year) and it was once our favourite go-to destination for at least a decade because she was (still is, actually) absolutely fascinated by the abundance of wildlife that would waddle, scamper or crawl around with no fear of the humans traipsing through their habitat. We go less frequently now as it has gotten much busier since the COVID-19 lockdown but it is still worth visiting especially if you have young children who love getting up close and personal with Nature!

© FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

Printable Vintage Art: The Brushwood Collector by Adolf Kaufmann

We all have forests in our minds. Forests unexplored, unending. Each one of us gets lost in the forest, every night, alone.
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds one. Within there is no form, only prodigious detail that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight, foliage, fallen trees, small beasts that flee at the sound of a twig-snap, insects, silence, flowers. And all of this, dependent, closely woven, all of it is deceiving. There are really two kinds of life. There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see.
― James Salter, Light Years

A vintage landscape painting by Adolf Kaufmann (1848–1916) entitled “The Brushwood Collector”; oiginally found on Wikimedia here. Digitally enhanced version can be downloaded as a 5” x 7” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Printable Vintage Art: From the Road on the Way to Stinson Beach from Mill Valley by D. Howard Hitchcock

Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.

How hard it is to tell what it was like,
this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn
(the thought of it brings back all my old fears),

a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer.
But if I would show the good that came of it
I must talk about things other than the good.
― Dante Alighieri

Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds one. Within there is no form, only prodigious detail that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight, foliage, fallen trees, small beasts that flee at the sound of a twig-snap, insects, silence, flowers.

And all of this, dependent, closely woven, all of it is deceiving. There are really two kinds of life. There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see.
― James Salter, Light Years

A vintage landscape painting of trees in a forest by David Howard Hitchcock (1861–1943) from 1910 entitled “From the Road on the Way to Stinson Beach from Mill Valley”; oiginally found on Wikimedia here. Digitally enhanced version can be downloaded as a 6” x 8” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Printable Vintage Art: Winter River Landscape by Adolf Kaufmann

There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that’s a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don’t fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything’s quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep—then they appear.
― Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter

But now she loved winter. Winter was beautiful “up back” - almost intolerably beautiful. Days of clear brilliance. Evenings that were like cups of glamour - the purest vintage of winter's wine. Nights with their fire of stars. Cold, exquisite winter sunrises. Lovely ferns of ice all over the windows of the Blue Castle. Moonlight on birches in a silver thaw. Ragged shadows on windy evenings - torn, twisted, fantastic shadows. Great silences, austere and searching. Jewelled, barbaric hills. The sun suddenly breaking through grey clouds over long, white Mistawis. Ice-grey twilights, broken by snow-squalls, when their cosy living-room, with its goblins of firelight and inscrutable cats, seemed cosier than ever. Every hour brought a new revalation and wonder.
― L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

A vintage landscape painting by Adolf Kaufmann (1848–1916) entitled “Winter River Landscape”; oiginally found on Wikimedia here. Digitally enhanced version can be downloaded as a 14” x 11” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Printable Vintage Art: The Cat and the Flowers by Édouard Manet

Every day, at least for a few minutes, go and be with the plants. Look at them and smile, touch them with love, and talk to them for a while. These little engagements will recuperate your heart and nurture your soul.
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

We are all mistaken sometimes; sometimes we do wrong things, things that have bad consequences. But it does not mean we are evil, or that we cannot be trusted ever afterward.
― Alison Croggon

Vintage drawing titled “The Cat and the Flowers,” 1861 by Édouard Manet (1832-1883); oiginally found on Wikimedia here. This picture resonated with me because our toitoiseshell cat is also a master gardener who simply loves deadheading flowers and plants. She is so zealous in her duties that sometimes she doesn't even wait for the plants to look spent before she slices them off with her razor-sharp claws! Do you have a cat who loves gardening? Feel free to share your experience in the comments below.

My digitally enhanced version of Manet’s vintage drawing can be downloaded as a high-res 11” x 14” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Printable Vintage Art: Still Life with Flowers in a Glass by Jan Brueghel the Elder

Still Life with Flowers in a Glass, 17th century
by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625)

What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. ... In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.
― John Lubbock, The Beauties of Nature and the Wonders of the World We Live in

It is easier to tell a person what life is not, rather than to tell them what it is. A child understands weeds that grow from lack of attention, in a garden. However, it is hard to explain the wild flowers that one gardener calls weeds, and another considers beautiful ground cover.
― Shannon L. Alder

A somewhat dark and somber flower painting, which was par for the course in art from the 17th century (sometime between 1600 and 1625). Oiginally found on Wikimedia here. I thought this picture rather echoed my general mood when winter starts to descend in earnest. I can feel the malaise beginning to creep in around the edges and it can be helpful to stave off depression with a small posy of flowers (or at least, a picture of one if you can't get your hands on the real thing). You can download a digitally enhanced version of the vintage artwork (seen above) as a 7” x 9” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.

Three Callas, Winter Edition © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.
Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Printable Vintage Art: Glass with Alpine Flowers by Rudolf von Alt

And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered. But most of all, I learned that life is about sitting on benches next to ancient creeks with my hand on her knee and sometimes, on good days, for falling in love.
― Nicholas Sparks

If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Another wonderful watercolour painting by Rudolf von Alt (1812-1905).* This one is titled “Glass with Alpine Flowers” which was painted circa 1860. Oiginally found on Wikimedia here. Digitally enhanced version of the vintage artwork can be downloaded as a 12” x 12” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.

* You can find an earlier post I made on Rudolf von Alt here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Printable Vintage Art: Autumnal Still Life with a Basket of Blackberries by Hans Zatzka

Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
― Samuel Butler

Use what you have, use what the world gives you. Use the first day of fall: bright flame before winter's deadness; harvest; orange, gold, amber; cool nights and the smell of fire. Our tree-lined streets are set ablaze, our kitchens filled with the smells of nostalgia: apples bubbling into sauce, roasting squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, warmth itself. The leaves as they spark into wild color just before they die are the world's oldest performance art, and everything we see is celebrating one last violently hued hurrah before the black and white silence of winter.
― Shauna Niequist

Vintage painting titled “Autumnal Still Life with a Basket of Blackberries” by Hans Zatzka (1859-1945); oiginally found on Wikimedia here. Don't you simply love that little butterfly fluttering just above the mushrooms? What are you harvesting or collecting from your autumn garden this year?

Digitally enhanced version of the vintage artwork can be downloaded as a 11” x 8” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Printable Vintage Art: Garden with Flowers by Eliseo Meifrén y Roig

I was surrounded by friends, my work was immense, and pleasures were abundant. Life, now, was unfolding before me, constantly and visibly, like the flowers of summer that drop fanlike petals on eternal soil. Overall, I was happiest to be alone; for it was then I was most aware of what I possessed. Free to look out over the rooftops of the city. Happy to be alone in the company of friends, the company of lovers and strangers. Everything, I decided, in this life, was pure pleasure.
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. ... In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.
― John Lubbock, The Beauties of Nature and the Wonders of the World We Live In

Vintage painting of a lush garden filled with an abundantly fruiting peach tree and beautiful flowers by Eliseo Meifrén y Roig (1857–1940); oiginally found on Wikimedia here. Digitally enhanced version can be downloaded as a 12” x 10” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Vintage Art Appreciation: 1910 Poster for Biological Exhibition by Theodorus van Hoytema

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

The above illustration was in a poster advertising a biological exhibition at the zoo in The Hague from June 11-21, 1910. It was produced by printamaker Theodorus van Hoytema (1863–1917), and was originally found on Wikimedia. My digitally enhanced version of the painting can be downloaded as an 11” x 7” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Vintage Art Appreciation: The Little Gardener by Gustav Gaupp

A wise parent humors the desire for independent action,
so as to become the friend and advisor when his absolute rule shall cease.
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it,
if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring
that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass,
the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows,
the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’
because they did no harm to the precious crops.
What novelty is worth that sweet monotony
where everything is known and loved because it is known?
― George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

Painting is titled "The Little Gardener". Painted c1918 by Gustav Gaupp (1844–1918). Originally found on Wikimedia. Digitally enhanced version of the painting as a 10” x 15” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Vintage Art Appreciation: June by Fidelia Bridges

June, 1876
by Fidelia Bridges (1834 - 1923)

And since all this loveliness cannot be Heaven, I know in my heart it is June.
― Abba Woolson

June falls asleep upon her bier of flowers;
In vain are dewdrops sprinkled o'er her,
In vain would fond winds fan her back to life,
Her hours are numbered on the floral dial.
― Lucy Larcom

Spring being a tough act to follow, God created June.
― Al Bernstein

So sweet, so sweet the roses in their blowing,
So sweet the daffodils, so fair to see;
So blithe and gay the hummingbird a-going
From flower to flower, a-hunting with the bee.
― Nora Perry, In June

Vintage Art Appreciation: Spring in the Forest by George Edward Lodge

Spring in the Forest
by George Edward Lodge (1860 - 1954)
The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.
― Harriet Ann Jacobs

The forest was not dark, because darkness has nothing to do with the forest — the forest is made of life, of light — but the trees moved with wind and subtle creatures.
― Lauren Groff, The Midnight Zone

Old-growth forests met no needs. They simply were, in a way that bore no questions about purpose or value. They could not be created by men. They could not even be understood by men. They had too many parts that were interconnected in too many ways. Change one part and everything else would change, but in ways that were unpredictable and often inexplicable. This unpredictability removed such forests from the realm of human perspectives and values. The forest did not need to justify or explain itself. It existed outside of instrumental human considerations.
― Steve Olson

Vintage Art Appreciation: On an Apiary by Aleksandr Makovsky

On an Apiary, 1916
by Aleksandr Makovsky (1869 - 1924)

The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist.
For man it is to know that and to wonder at it.
― Jacques Cousteau

It is so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun,
to have lived light in the spring,
to have loved, to have thought, to have done.
― Matthew Arnold

And we should always remember that, in matters of evolution, nature will select for the ability to adapt and survive, not for maximum convenience to mankind.
― Phil Chandler, The Barefoot Beekeeper

Don't Just
Don't just learn, experience.
Don't just read, absorb.
Don't just change, transform.
Don't just relate, advocate.
Don't just promise, prove.
Don't just criticize, encourage.
Don't just think, ponder.
Don't just take, give.
Don't just see, feel.
Don’t just dream, do.
Don't just hear, listen.
Don't just talk, act.
Don't just tell, show.
Don't just exist, live.
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

Vintage Art Appreciation: A Walk in the Woods by Louis-Robert Carrier-Belleuse

A Walk in the Woods, 1873
by Louis-Robert Carrier-Belleuse (4 July 1848 – 14 June 1913)

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
― John Muir

All forests have their own personality. I don't just mean the obvious differences, like how an English woodland is different from a Central American rain forest, or comparing tracts of West Coast redwoods to the saguaro forests of the American Southwest... they each have their own gossip, their own sound, their own rustling whispers and smells. A voice speaks up when you enter their acres that can't be mistaken for one you'd hear anyplace else, a voice true to those particular tress, individual rather than of their species.
― Charles de Lint, The Onion Girl

The forest has shrunk
And fear has expanded,
The forests have dwindled,
There are less animals now,
less courage and less lightning,
less beauty
and the moon lies bare,
deflowered by force and
then abandoned.
― Visar Zhiti, The Condemned Apple: Selected Poetry

In the beginning I gave you paper for books, fruits for food, roots, bark and leaves for medicine, and I gave you shelter from the scorching sun and fierce rainfall, but now you cut me down for parts and set me on fire without remorse.
― Paul Bamikole

Vintage Art Appreciation: A January Evening in the Haagse Bosch by Louis Apol

A January Evening in the Haagse Bosch, 1875
by Louis Apol (1850 - 1936)
Inhale and hold the evening in your lungs.
― Sebastian Faulks, Engleby

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
― John Burroughs

I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on,
The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,
The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,
And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see
The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass;
And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
And build me stately palaces by candlelight.
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

Vintage Art Appreciation: A Winter Woodland by Karl Rosen

A Winter Woodland
by Karl Rosen (1864 - 1934)
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
― John Muir

The places of quiet are going away, the churches, the woods, the libraries. And it is only in silence we can hear the voice inside of us which gives us true peace.
― James Rozoff

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.
― Theodore Roosevelt

An English wood is like a good many other things in life-- very promising at a distance, but a hollow mockery when you get within. You see daylight on both sides, and the sun freckles the very bracken. Our woods need the night to make them seem what they ought to be--what they once were, before our ancestors' descendants demanded so much more money, in these so much more various days.
― Gertrude Atherton, The Bell in the Fog & Other Stories