Spooky Art: Spirit by George Roux

Spirit, 1885
George Roux

I love sharing spooky art with you all! A couple of weeks ago, I saw this image come up on my Facebook feed from at least 3 different sources, and of course, I had to find out more. 

This is an oil painting by the French artist, George Roux. Roux, who was born in 1853 and died in 1929 was an artist and book illustrator. Roux is best-known for his illustrations for Jules Verne's science fiction works, but as seen in the painting above, also had a flair for the spooky and ethereal.

The painting in question is titled Spirit, and was completed in 1885. It depicts a man at work at his desk, interrupted by the ghostly sight and sound of transparent, glowing woman playing the piano. No definitive answer can be given as to who the woman is, or her relationship to the man, but he looks a tad startled! There's also no definite answer as to what melody the ghostly lady is playing. 

Spirit was purchased by a private collector in 2009, but luckily, the image is available online for everyone to see and enjoy...and speculate over! So let me know in the comments below: Who do you think the ghostly woman is, and what song is she playing on the piano? 

Ghost Soldiers of St. John's Church

Tomorrow, 11 November 2018, marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War 1.  As we remember the day that ended the war to end all wars, I wanted to share with you a hauntingly beautiful art installation dedicated to fallen soldiers in one English town.

In the small village burial yard of St. John's Church in Slimbridge, Gloucestershire,  eleven 'ghost soldiers' made of chicken wire stand guard over their own tombstones.  The phantom soldiers are the work of local artist, Jackie Lantelli.  Ms. Lantelli, who generally creates fairy sculptures from chicken wire, decided to use that medium to honor the eleven men from the village who died serving their country during that great war of 1914 to 1918. 

The sculptures will be on display through Monday, and have already caused quite an emotional response among visitors, who now have a more concrete representation of the men who are generally only remembered with a name inscribed on a tombstone. 

For more information and more photographs, please see this BBC article, Ghost Sculptures of WW 1 Soldiers Erected in Cemetery. Photos by Robert Eveleigh/Slimbridge Local Historical Society.

Castle of the Dead

I LOVE sharing artwork with a supernatural/paranormal theme to it here on Theresa's Haunted History.  Therefore, when I stumbled across this image, I knew it needed to find a home here on my blog.  It's a striking piece of work, complete with full moon, spooky house, and a graveyard full of rising souls.

The name of this piece is Castle of the Dead, and its not exactly what it might look like at first glance.  It isn't a painting or drawing.  It isn't a print of such. It isn't even a digital work of art, per se.  This image is actually a do-it-yourself square diamond painting by the company Pretty Neat Creative!  For about $30, you can buy a kit to make this creation for yourself.  You'll need a little bit of patience, as each 'pixel' of this image is created by gluing a bunch of tiny resin dots to a pattern. 

That seems pretty, um...neat and pretty creative! I'm not a very artistic or crafty person, and even I think that I can have fun with this and make something really spooky and cool to leave on my wall all year long.

Death and the Dancer

This spooky aquatint engraving was done by illustrator Joshua Gleadah, around 1822. According to the Oxford Index, "Joshua Gleadah executed a few engravings for A Treatise on the Principles of Landscape Design; with General Observations and Instructions to Young Artist by John Varley (1778-1842); and Journey Through Part of the Russian Empire by R. Johnston; and Album of the Spirit."  He was active between the years of 1815 and 1836.  

Aside from Death and the Dancer, Gleadah is responsible for two similar works, Death and the Industrious Wife, and Death and the Warrior. All three images are presumably from the same time frame and same publication.  They can be found on the Wellcome Collection's online database. 

Richard T. Cooper's Otherworldly Art

According to HorrorPedia, Richard Tennant Cooper was an obscure British artist whose metaphorical phantasmic paintings show the negative effects of both disease and medical cures on the human body. Born in 1885 and leaving this life in 1957, there isn't a whole lot known about Cooper, but he's left behind a legacy of REALLY creepy paintings with a paranormal element.  

I've chosen to highlight this particular watercolor completed around 1912.I can't figure out if it has no title, and just a description...or if the description is just a really long title, lol. Either way, the painting is known as "A sickly female invalid sits covered up on a balcony overlooking a beautiful view, death (a ghostly skeleton clenching a scythe and an hourglass) is standing next to her.”

I specifically chose a painting with a tuberculosis theme to it because of the idea that the disease itself has such a link to paranormal phenomenon. Over the years, TB, or consumption, was mistaken for vampirism, such as with the case of Mercy Brown. And, as many paranormal enthusiasts will attest, Kentucky's Waverly Hills, a former TB hospital, is one of the most haunted locations in the country.  Before the discovery of penicillin as an effective way to combat TB, a common 'treatment' at Waverly Hills and other TB sanitariums was giving the patient plenty of fresh air. Large balconies filled with patient beds were a staple in these places, despite the outside temperatures.  Cooper seems to have beautifully, and creepily, captured a young woman waiting for the inevitable death sentence that so often accompanied a TB diagnosis in those early days.

To see more of Cooper's work, please check out the HorrorPedia article linked above. 

Real-life balcony. Source