ancient graves in the tarim basin ... the Tarim Basin mummies were not newcomers to the area but rather appear to be direct descendants of Ancient North Eurasians—a once widespread Pleistocene population that had nearly disappeared by the end of the last Ice Age

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2021/10/genetic-study-on-the-origins-of-the-tarim-basin-mummies/141776

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaohe_Cemetery

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherchen_Man

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_Basin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taklamakan_Desert

 

a peter birkhauser scrapbook ...

two videos provide a convincing perspective on his states of mind ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=qjZ7tlh_nzo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjwCxpylfNc

difficult to feel comfortable in peter's company ...

a troubled man haunted by fears and visions and wounded by depression ...

this painting led me to him 

for many years he was a highly succesful commercial artist ...

but he came to an unexpected crisis point and needed to change his practice radically ... a shift from great clarity towards multi-layered ambiguity ... possibly / maybe ?

speculation on the motives of such artists isn't always helpful

after many years, he seems to have gone back to a kind of painted-surface perfectionism ... perhaps an idealized notion of a cosmic perfection ?

Ovid's Metamorphoses ... third edition, ripped-off from Tonson ... very poorly illustrated and printed in Ireland in 1727 ... here are the frontispiece pages with their pictorial dedications to a series of high-ranking ladies ... of Volume One, Books One to Seven ... and of Volume Two, Books Eight to Fifteen ... it seems only properly respectful to include such portraits of the ladies as will bring them to life ... BUT THEN, LATER ... mercy me ! ... I had failed to realize i was looking at the cheap rip-off pirate edition ... the original publisher was Jacob Tonson in London ... his printers and engravers and artists did much finer work, as you will see ...

 

VOLUME ONE

https://archive.org/details/ovidsmetamorphos01ovid/mode/2up?view=theater

this is the crude rip-off version printed in Dublin ...

and this is the original ... printed in London ...

... and here is the painted lady ...

in 1727, the duchess of kingston was Isabella Bentinck 

portraits are hard to find but this is a tentative ID ...

... and this is a more positive ID ...

https://historicalportraits.com/artists/362-charles-dagar/works/1296-charles-d-agar-portrait-of-isabella-bentinck-1690s/

lady mary ker, duchess of roxburghe

possibly lady henrietta pelham holles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Pelham-Holles,_Duchess_of_Newcastle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Seymour,_Duchess_of_Somerset_(born_1699)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Rich,_Countess_of_Warwick

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne,_Princess_Royal_and_Princess_of_Orange

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cowper

VOLUME TWO

https://archive.org/details/ovidsmetamorphos02ovid_0/mode/2up?view=theater

Lucy Manners, nee Sherard, Duchess of Rutland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Manners,_Duchess_of_Rutland

lucy pelham holles, countess of lincoln

Frances Digby, Viscountess Scudamore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Townshend,_Viscountess_Townshend

i am assuming that MRS walpole was really LADY walpole ...

margaret pelham

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Boyle,_Countess_of_Burlington

Juliana Boyle, Countess of Ailesbury

diana de vere, duchess of saint albans

The two rip-off volumes are kept in the Clark Institute Library

https://www.clarkart.edu/library/about-the-library

Ref:  

urn:oclc:record:1050250920

Tonson's 1717 first edition has been scanned in for Google Books so that you can read it all for free

https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Ovid_s_Metamorphoses_in_Fifteen_Books/2mlZAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1