Birthday Wishes

Today is Tammy’s birthday.

Birthdays are a common event, happening in everyone’s life every year, so I figured that a quick review of art history would yield a plethora of birthday-themed images from important painters from history. Boy, was I really wrong.

Such an image search gives you page after page of stuff like this:

Superhero Birthday Party

I really like that one, from a blog called Welcome to Sillyville. It would be perfectly appropriate if Tammy were a 9-year old boy, which she isn’t.

Serious painters have rarely tackled the birthday scene, and most of what I’ve found leans toward reverent celebrations in the lives of 19th Century nuclear families, like this one from John Singer Sargent:

The Birthday Party (John Singer Sargent, 1885)

It’s a quaint and heartwarming scene, and that could actually BE Tammy sitting there if she weighed 200 pounds more than she does now, had much darker hair,  and lived 150 years ago.

And then there’s this celebration from Marc Chagall:

Birthday (Marc Chagall, 1915)

I’m not sure what to make of that one and I’m too old to float around the room now, if indeed I ever could.

For whatever it’s worth, I give you these images in celebration of Tammy’s birthday today. Not sure what I was really hoping for, but these will have to do.