Wilhelm Bendz: A Smoking Party

Here we get a glimpse into a home of the Copenhagen Golden Age, where the son of the house (the future Professor Christian Jürgensen) has invited his friends to an evening with tobacco pipes and conversation. Bendz was one of the Golden Age’s most ambitious painters, which is also apparent in this work’s complicated shadow effects. Unfortunately his career was cut short when Bendz died, only 28 years old, on the obligatory cultural tour to Italy.

Wilhelm Bendz: A Smoking Party

Einstein's pipe

Albert Einstein's desk at Princeton University.  Photo taken a few hours after his death. From The Day Albert Einstein Died:  A Photographer's Story at Life Magazine.

It's a very good pipe!

From Fingerpori (Facebook link).

Jan Steen - "The World Turned Upside Down"

From 1663.

Thanks to Daily Window On a World of Wonder.

Vintage Ad (1947): Westinghouse radios

Vintage Ad (1950s): Three Nuns

Received via email from a reader, who says that he believes this is from a 1950s-era Reader's Digest.

Oh, how I miss Three Nuns!