Sea Angels Pins and Buttons
Description: The Mobile Bears were an American minor league baseball team based in Mobile, Alabama. The franchise was a member of the old Southern Association, a high-level circuit that folded after the 1961 season. Mobile joined the SA in 1908 as the Sea Gulls, but changed its name to the Bears in 1918, and the nickname stuck. The club played in the Association until July 1931, when it moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. Almost exactly 13 years later, in July 1944, the Bears returned to Mobile when the Knoxville Smokies franchise shifted back from Tennessee. (A club known as the Mobile Shippers competed in the Class B Southeastern League from 1937 to 1942.)
Description: The Birth of Venus was one of the great successes of the 1863 Salon, where it was bought by Napoleon III. Typical of Cabanel's virtuoso technique, this facile and disciplined painting is a perfect example of popular and official artistic taste of the period. In an eclectic spirit characteristic of the Second Empire, Cabanel combines references to Ingres with an 18th century style of painting. Here, however, the mythological theme is simply a pretext for the portrayal of a nude figure who, though idealized, is nonetheless depicted in a lascivious pose. Emile Zola denounced this ambiguity: "the goddess, drowned in a river of milk, resembles a delicious courtesan, not made of flesh and bone - that would be indecent - but of a sort of pin...
