Ian Thomas – "Painted Ladies" (1973)

Feeling fine, mama

Painted ladies and a bottle of wine, mama

Penn State archaeologist Dean Snow believes that the relative length of the fingers in the hundreds of prehistoric cave art handprints indicates that most of the painters were women.

Prehistoric cave art handprints

But when University of Alaska evolutionary biologist R. Dale Guthrie measured those handprints, he concluded that they had been left by adolescent boys.

Guthrie also believes that the predominant subject matter of the cave paintings – “naked women and large, frightening mammals” – is indicative that the artists who created them were males.

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Male artists have come a long way since prehistoric times, of course.  Modern artists not only paint naked women, but also women with clothes on.  (We men have come a long way, baby!)

Here are a dozen paintings of women by male artists that I saw earlier this year during visits to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium:

Abbott Handerson Thayer, Angel (1887)

Henry Siddons Mowbray, Idle Hours (1895)

Henry Brown Fuller, Illusions (circa 1895)

William R. Leigh, Sophie Hunter Colston (1896)

Emile Claus, Portrait of the
Artist Anna De Weert (1899)

Frederick Carl Frieseke, Nude
Seated at Her Dressing Table (1909)

Robert Reid, The Mirror (1910)

Ferdinand Hodler, Woman in Ecstasy (1911)

Felice Casorati, Young Girl on a Red Carpet (1912)

Torajiro Kojima, Woman Reading (1921)

Francis Criss, Alma Sewing (1935)

Edgard Tytgat, Four Nude Girls in a Boat (1950)

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Today’s featured song sounds more like an America song than most America songs.  But not only was it not recorded by America, it wasn’t even recorded by an American.

“Painted Ladies,” which made it to #34 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in 1973, was recorded in 1973 by Canadian singer-songwriter Ian Thomas.

Thomas is the younger brother of comedian Dave Thomas, who was one of the funniest cast members on the funniest TV sketch show ever – Second City Television, or SCTV.  (Ian once appeared on “The Great White North,” a regular SCTV feature that starred Dave and Rick Moranis as moronic, beer-loving Canadians.)  

Click here to listen to “Painted Ladies.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: