Memorial Art Gallery

AMMI PHILLIPS
OLD WOMAN WITH A BIBLE

The discovery and purchase of Old Woman with a Bible (84.22) was a coup for the curatorial department. The painting was found in nearby Caledonia during the summer of 1984, and officially acquired by the Gallery in the fall.

The subject of the portrait is unidentified, but the portrait was probably painted in the early 1830s when the artist was working in the New York-Connecticut area. For more information, see Memorial Art Gallery: An Introduction to the Collection, page 179.

(from Antiques Magazine, November, 1989)

THE DISCOVERY OF AMMI PHILLIPS

Ammi Phillips' work was known long before his name. In 1924 a group of unsigned portraits of Connecticut residents, all dating from about the mid-1830s, was displayed in Kent, Connecticut. The artist was named the Kent Limner. By the mid 1950s, another group of paintings, dating from about 1812 to 1819, had been isolated and called the work of the Border Limner because they were of subjects who lived in a narrow area on either side of the New York-Massachusetts border.

In 1958, after collectors Barbara and Lawrence Holdridge bought a portrait dated 1840 and signed Ammi Phillips, they began to study the painter. Years later the Holdridges organized a major exhibition of more than seventy Phillips portraits at the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City. Through their study of iconography, style, and subject, they established that Phillips was both the Kent and the Border Limner. The list of paintings by or attributable to him in their catalog ran to 309 entries. Today a register of the artist's work would include more than 500 canvasses—all portraits.

RALPH AVERY, ROCHESTER’S OWN

Ralph Avery (1906-1976) was probably the best known and most loved of Rochester's artists. Though he was nationally known for his magazine and greeting card illustrations, local admirers knew best his views of Rochester, streets wet with rain. He had an insight that cut through the grey days and saw color and warmth in the city's streets.

Avery was born in Savannah, Georgia, the son of a marine surveyor and harbor-master. He moved to Rochester in his early twenties to attend the Rochester Institute of Technology (then the Mechanics Institute) and graduated in 1928. In his senior year, he captured first prize in the Picturesque Rochester Contest with a charcoal drawing of the statue of Mercury atop the Kimball Tobacco Factory. He never tired of recording Rochester's neighborhoods and landmarks, particularly the Third Ward, where he lived for over forty years.

His early career took many directions: he studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and spent two years at the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation in Oyster Bay, Long Island. He was in turn a designer of belt buckles, director of the Rundel Library art gallery, a Navy cartoonist, and an instructor at RIT. At last he settled into the life of a full-time freelance illustrator.

For his subject matter, he returned again and again to the places most familiar, discovering at different times of day and from different angles some previously unnoticed detail in the urban landscape. "I'm a real downtowner," he said. "I like to be right around the corner from where things are happening."

Avery gained international recognition for the many Reader's Digest covers he painted for both English and foreign language editions in the 1950's and '60s. He also found himself in great demand for calendar illustrations, nostalgic Christmas card designs, and precisely rendered advertisements for industry. Despite his legendary personal reserve and love of home, Avery was an enthusiastic traveler. The watercolors which emerged from early sketching trips to Mexico, Guatemala, the West Indies, Europe, and Africa were infused with the playfulness he could not indulge in his commercial work.

Although Avery considered himself an abstractionist, strong draftsmanship was the underpinning of even his simplest compositions. "Painting is not a bag of tricks," he wrote. And in the manner of academically trained artists, he worked through a series of preliminary sketches. However, he was not afraid to provoke the watercolor purists of his time by touching his transparent washes with a bit of opaque gouache.

Avery particularly loved the city's architecture. "I have a feeling for old buildings and streets," he said. He noted that abstract patterns can make or break a painting: "When I paint a building, I am not concerned whether my building looks just like the one in front of me—it may be just a vague mass with little dots for windows. As long as that mass seems to be the right size, color and shape, and is correctly placed, I am satisfied."

Avery died unexpectedly in 1976 as he was trying to push his car out of a snow bank. His last exhibition had been a joint showing with Rochester artist John Menihan at the Atelier, 696 Park Avenue. The year after his death, his family presented the Gallery with a major gift of over 450 of his works.

Strange and Familiar Places, the exhibition of his works mounted in 1992, included precise illustration-type watercolors, some from Readers Digest covers; looser, more personal vacation views; and drawings—preparatory as well as highly finished. They presented as varied subjects as New York cityscapes, North African settings, beach scenes, Rochester's streets and Upper Falls, and Charlotte Whitney Allen's garden.

(from an article by Marie Via and curatorial files)

Joan K. Yanni

September 1992

IL BACCHIACCA’S ST. PAUL

One of the most interesting paintings in MAG's collection of Italian art is The Conversion of St. Paul (54.2) by Francesco Ubertini, called Il Bacchiacca (bock-ee-ah-ka). The painting, a departure from the serene, elegant works of the Renaissance, reflects the more emotional, somewhat distorted style of the Mannerists.

Bacchiacca was born near Florence in 1494, the son of a goldsmith. His first teacher was Perugino, who painted in the classical manner. Said to be easy-going and gregarious, Bacchiacca was a friend of Andrea del Sarto and collaborated with other Florentine painters of the time. Ultimately he combined the balanced, symmetrical composition of his teacher with new, exciting color and exaggerated form, producing a fresh and delightful style. He borrowed from the earlier masters, as was often done in his day, but rearranged their elements and made them his own.

Artist-writer Giorgio Vasari says that Bacchiacca was especially adept at painting small animals and was in demand as an all-around painter in Florence. He designed cassoni (wedding chests) and decorated rooms for the Medici with his paintings. He was one of the early and best designers for the Medici Tapestry works. His success permitted him to marry and support a family, and he became the father of three sons. From 1540 to his death in 1557, Bacchiacca worked chiefly for Cosimo de' Medici, Duke of Florence, painting pictures for the court.

The story of St. Paul can be found in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles. Paul—his Jewish name was Saul—was a Roman citizen, born in Tarsus, an area near present-day Turkey. He was a relentless persecutor of Jesus and his disciples. The Acts relate that one day, as Saul and his followers were traveling from Jerusalem to Damascus, a bright ray of light suddenly pierced the heavens and shone on Saul. He fell to the ground, and when he arose, he was blind. His companions led him into Damascus where a follower of Jesus restored his sight. Saul, now Paul, converted to Christianity and traveled extensively throughout Asia Minor, bringing Christianity to the Greek and eastern Roman world and writing on Christian doctrine. He was ultimately imprisoned and later returned to Rome, where he was executed. In respect for his Roman citizenship, he was beheaded with a sword instead of being crucified or stoned. (Thus Paul, often seen in religious paintings, is the saint holding the sword.)

It's not easy to find Paul in our painting. The foreground is crowded with men, horses, and even a dog, all seemingly bumping against one-another. Colorful figures in red, blue and green clothing push toward the front of the painting. Paul is in the center foreground, still mounted on his horse, which has fallen to its knees. His hat lies on the ground. He holds up his hand as though to deflect the light emanating from the finger of God, who hovers above the melee on a cloud in the upper right. If God looks familiar, he is. He is taken directly from the Gathering of the Waters panel in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Dr. Howard Merritt, University of Rochester art history professor emeritus, has pointed out in the catalog for an exhibit on Bacchiacca and His Friends, that in addition to the figure of God, at least four other figures in the painting were taken from Michelangelo. The man directly above St. Paul's horse, the helmeted soldier on the left, the drummer in the central middle distance, and the mounted soldier at right are all from the Battle of Cascina. With Michelangelo's drummer is a second drummer, taken from Lucas van Leyden's engraving, Conversion of St. Paul. The bearded figure to the left of

Paul is said to be Bacchiacca's self-portrait. The background comes from two sources: the steep cliffs on the left are from Albrecht Dürer's woodcut Visitation, the tower at far right from his Madonna of the Pear. Bacchiacca no doubt saw the Sistine Chapel and other works of Michelangelo on a visit to Rome in 1524. His knowledge of Dürer and van Leyden came when Northern European prints were circulated in Italy, influencing the art of the time.

Though he used segments of known artists' works, Bacchiacca never copied an entire picture. He took what he liked and adapted it in his unusual style—lively, colorful, sometimes humorous. His mountains are more contorted, his horizon higher, his hills more fantastic than the original. He gave a fresh, new interpretation to familiar subjects. The vivid colors in MAG's painting, done in Florence over 450 years ago, are testament to the skill of both the painter, his medium, and modern conservation techniques. The work was done in oil on panel between 1530-35, and its fresh colors were renewed at Oberlin College conservation laboratory in 1989.

Note: Bacchiacca's work can be compared with Raffelino del Garbo's Renaissance work Madonna and Child with Angels (47.30), and with El Greco's Mannerist The Apparition of the Virgin to St. Hyacinth (38.28).

Source: Curatorial files; Nikolenko, Lad: Francesco Ubertini called Il Bacchiacca, J.J. Augustin Publisher, Locust Valley, NY, 1966; Bacchiacca and His Friends, an Exhibition presented by The Baltimore Museum of Art, News Quarterly, Vol. XXIV, No. 2, Winter, 1961.

Joan K Yanni

November, 1996

GEORGE GREY BARNARD

School children are delighted when they see George Grey Barnard's marble head of Abraham Lincoln (86.5). Because they recognize the subject (at least at second guess), they feel more at home in the Gallery. The work was one of a series of Lincoln heads done by Barnard after long study of a life mask of Lincoln taken by sculptor Leonard Wells Volk in 1860.

George Grey Barnard (1863-1938) was born in a small town in Pennsylvania, the son of a Presbyterian minister. Interested in art from an early age, he trained himself in drawing and modeling, then, at 19, entered the Art Institute of Chicago School. Here, drawing the powerful figures of Michelangelo from plaster casts inspired him to concentrate on sculpture, and in 1883 he went to Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts. Though he lived in extreme poverty and in conditions that would have defeated a less dedicated artist, Barnard's complete absorption in his work overcame even hunger and loneliness.

In 1886 he received his first commission: to carve a marble statue which he named Boy.

A commission for a monument to the Norwegian poet Severin Skovgaard soon followed. Around this time he met his most important patron, American collector Alfred Clark, the father of Robert Sterling Clark of the Clark Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

In 1884 Barnard exhibited six works at the Paris Salon, including the famous marble group, Struggle of the Two Natures in Man, which was modeled in Paris and blocked out at the marble quarry at Carrara, Italy. The Two Natures was a spectacular success, praised by Rodin himself. (It is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, donated by Clark.) The sculpture shows influences of both Michelangelo and Rodin.

On his return to New York, Barnard taught sculpture at the Art Students League for three years. In 1904 he went back to Paris to execute his largest commission: two groups of heroic size, symbolic nude figures for the new State Capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The large allegorical groups—34 figures in total—represent two ways of life: the Broken Law is made up of writhing, tortured forms and the Unbroken Law of tranquil, though powerful figures. The project took seven years to complete.

Barnard's last major sculpture was a 14-foot figure of Abraham Lincoln, which was cast in bronze and erected in Cincinnati in 1917. Before creating the work, the sculptor studied Volk's life mask of Lincoln as well as series of unretouched photographs taken during Lincoln's life. Excerpts from a letter written in 1985 by the artist's son, Monroe Grey Barnard, and his grandson, George Grey Barnard II, note that the sculptor studied the character and development of Lincoln in detail, and that between 1913 and 1918 Barnard limited his work to creating only sculptures of Lincoln. One of many portraits made during this time was MAG's head, purchased in 1986 from Barnard's family holdings.

At its completion in 1917, most critics praised the Cincinnati statue for its sensitivity and modeling, but the sculpture drew controversy when it was suggested that a replica be given to the city of London. Arch-conservative English critics, led by F. Wellington Ruckstull, then editor of The Art World, objected because they said it portrayed Lincoln as undignified and disheveled, with oversize hands and feet. (As a result of the criticism, a replica of a Saint-Gaudens Lincoln was sent to London instead.) Today Barnard’s statue is universally applauded as reflecting Lincoln's sympathetic nature mingled with his rugged strength of character. Replicas are in the Musée de Luxembourg, Paris, in Manchester, England, and in Louisville, Kentucky. In Barnard's studio at his death was a gigantic Lincoln head made of plaster, almost 16 feet from forehead to chin. It was meant to be carved out of solid rock and placed on the Palisades, overlooking the Hudson River, but this never happened.

While living in Paris, Barnard began collecting fragments of Gothic and Romanesque sculpture and reconstructing them. He brought these back to America and set them up for display in his studio and garden near Fort Tryon Park, north of New York City. Barnard sent the revenues from entrance fees to widows and orphans of men killed in World War I. The artifacts were purchased from him in 1925 by John D. Rockefeller and presented to the Metropolitan Museum as the nucleus of its collection of Medieval art, now The Cloisters.

Barnard's place in American sculpture is a special one because he embraced neither neoclassicism nor the French academic manner, but created an individual and powerful style—romantic, expressive and naturalistic. Three of his works, Rising Woman, The Prodigal Son, and Adam and Eve are on the Rockefeller estate at Pocantico Hills, New York. Two marbles depicting Life are in niches at the top of the Public Library on Fifth Avenue, and his bronze The Great God Pan is on the campus at Columbia University.

Source: Curatorial files; Wayne Craven, Sculpture in America, Thomas Crowell Company, NY, 1968; Encyclopedia of American Art, E. P. Dutton, NY, 1981

Joan K. Yanni

June 1997

BEARDEN’S GOSPEL SONG

It is appropriate to compare Romare Bearden's Gospel Song (70.18) and Jacob Lawrence's The Gamblers (74.1). These two eminent American artists explored ways to celebrate the history, ceremonies, and lives of African-Americans in terms of modern art. They also helped to force open the door that had been pretty much closed to black artists, a door closed not only for sociological notions of racial separatism but—even more humiliating—because of an indifference to their work.

Both Bearden and Lawrence experienced the great Depression of the 1930s, especially as it was survived in Harlem. Bearden's urban experiences and memories were mixed with memories of childhood visits to his southern grandparents. There, life was changing but still rural. Bearden determined to preserve these memories in his art, and so we find trains, musical instruments, donkeys, bits of sermons, strains of music—all things now gone, but things that had great beauty. Gospel Song recalls such a memory.

Romare Bearden, "Romie" to his friends, died in March of 1988 at the age of 74. He was a Renaissance man: artist, writer, poet, co-author of three books, philosopher, musician, mathematician, and social worker. He had a degree in mathematics from New York University, and was, during the 1950s, a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the Sorbonne. At one time he considered becoming a jazz musician, but painting won out.

In his painting career, Bearden was an avid explorer—he tried color field, abstract expressionism, figuration. He experimented with photo enlargements and torn paper techniques. All these, plus his memories, came together for him in the technique of collage, which he began to use in the 1960s. This is the medium for which he is best known, to the eclipse of his earlier work. Collage, with its sharp breaks, distortions, paradoxes and surrealistic combinations, seemed to him the perfect way to express the blending of styles, values, hopes and dreams of his people.

Many of his early collages are of city scenes, colorful, vibrant, and full of restless energy. Gospel Song seems to be more reminiscent of his southern country memories; the colors are more subdued. A woman is seated in a chair. A guitar—a frequent Bearden motif—is cradled in her outsized, androgynous hands. She is anchored to the canvas by the bowed legs of the chair and by her Egyptian-style feet.

It is her eyes that transfix us. They seem to be looking at us and through us, forcing us to listen to her, to her song of the history of her people. We think of gospel music as jubilant, but her song seems to have great sadness to it. It is hard to turn away.

Gospel Song invites comparison with the Byzantine icon in the Fountain Court and also with the Roman head with its wise, sad eyes. We see the same poignancy. It might also be compared with the compassionate gaze of the Bodhisattva Guan-yin or even the meditative musing of Bouguereau's Young Priestess.

Romare Bearden once said, "I want to paint the life of my people as I know it—passionately and dispassionately, as Brueghel painted the life of the Flemish people of his day." Gospel Song sings to us of those people.

A biography of Romare Bearden, written by Myron Schwartzman, is due for publication in the fall of 1991. And check the Charlotte Whitney Allen Library for a newly-released exhibition catalog of Bearden's work.

Libby Clay

March 1991

GIOVANNI del BIONDO

MAG's Crucifixion with God the Father (51.26) has been cleaned and, pristine and sparkling, is back in the Renaissance Room. It is worth examining once again.

Giovanni del Biondo was a Florentine painter active from 1356 to 1392. Documentary evidence says he became a citizen of Florence in 1356. He was one of the most productive of the artists working after the plague, or Black Death, of 1348; among his works are Madonna and Saints in a chapel in Santa Croce, an Annunciation in the Hospital of the Innocents, and a large polyptych now in the Accademia, all in Florence.

Del Biondo's paintings testify that he is a follower of Andrea Orcagna, a leading painter-sculptor in Florence after the middle of the century, Orcagna's brother, Jacopo, and Nardo di Cione. (Our five-panel altarpiece is attributed to the school of Nardo.)

Our MAG handbook tells us that the Crucifixion was probably one of del Biondo's later works, done between 1375 and 1380. It is tempera on panel and presents a late-gothic interpretation of the Crucifixion: the bent, yet rigid body of Christ hangs on the cross, around which are the anguished figures of the Virgin Mary, St. John and Mary Magdalene. The Magdalene, her red hair flowing over her shoulders, tearfully clutches the cross. Against the rich gold background, agitated angels hold out vessels to catch the blood dripping from Christ's wounds. Above the scene, the serene figure of God the Father raises his hand in blessing. The brilliant scarlet, yellow and blue of the paint contrast with, yet add to, the emotion of the painting. The panel can be compared to both the Giottoesque fresco The Annunciation to Zacharias (43.3), with its massive figures and spirited emotion, and the Nardo altarpiece (57.4).

Tempera painting on panel is a laborious technique which requires patience and skill. First the panel is chosen—poplar was used by the early Italians, oak by the northern painters. Then fine linen is laid on the panel to strengthen it and to serve as a base for a layer of gesso, upon which the actual painting is done. Gesso is an extremely fine-textured, white substance, similar to plaster but bound together by glue. It is applied to the panel in several layers and allowed to dry between applications. When the desired thickness has been built up, sometimes with the addition of more linen, the gesso is allowed to harden thoroughly and is then sanded until it is smooth.

A drawing, often scratched lightly into the gesso, always precedes the painting. If the work is to include gold, gilding is done first. The white gesso is covered by gilder's red clay, which serves as an adhesive for the gold leaf and a base for burnishing. Gold leaf is pure metal beaten into tissue-thin leaves that, if touched, will disintegrate into fine powder. A skillful gilder, however, using a wide,flat, brushlike instrument called a gilder's tip, can pick up sheets as large as three inches square. (With time, the layer of gold evanesces, and a reddish tint of clay may show through.) After one or more layers of gold are laid on and permitted to dry, the gold is burnished and tooled. Then it is time to add color.

Egg tempera is composed of powdered pigment, egg yolk and water. These must be in the correct proportion or the paint will either flake off or become gummy. Only a skillful artist knows when the mixture is right. The paint is mixed in very small quantities—spoonfuls at a time—because it tends to thicken and dry quickly. On the panel, it seems to dry instantly. Many coats of thin color must be applied, stroke by stroke in a crisscross pattern, until a uniform flatness is achieved.

The greenish cast so frequently seen in flesh tones is the original base color showing through the superimposed modeling. Tempera flesh tones placed over a pink or cream base appear chalky. When the green is used, the flesh takes on greater liveliness. As the paint grows transparent with age, more of the green shows through. Tempera painting was gradually supplanted by oil after about 1450 in northern Europe and after 1510 in Italy.

Source: Curatorial files and Canaday, John: Metropolitan Seminars in Art, Volume IX, "Tempera and Oil," pp. 8-16, NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1958

Joan K. Yanni

November 1993

BOLDINI’S Guitar Player

A charming replacement loan from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts., is now hanging in the Impressionist room in our Alma-Tadema's space. Since it will be there until September 1992, when The Sculpture Garden returns, information on the painting is in order.

A Guitar Player was painted by the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931). Boldini was born in Ferrara, the 8th of 13 children of a painter, restorer and copier. He had a natural aptitude for art, great technical facility, and a talent for catching likenesses. He did a self-portrait at the age of 14; and, when he left Ferrara at 20, he already had a solid reputation in Italy.

In 1862 he moved to Florence and worked with an avant garde group called the Macchaioli, from the Italian meaning "small patches." Forerunners of the Impressionists, the Macchaioli used small patches of pure, contrasting colors in their works in an attempt to depict the look of nature more closely. Boldini adopted the patch technique in his painting and brought new sparkle and excitement into his works. He became friends with the rich and the clever in Florence, and spent two sojourns painting in England where his patron, Sir Walter Falconer, introduced him to the international art scene. He moved to Paris in 1871.

In Paris he rediscovered the works of the 17th century painters Hals and Valasquez, and his use of vivid colors and short, staccato brush strokes made his paintings ever more popular. He was much in demand by rococo dandies and ladies of La Belle Epoque. He became a friend of Degas and his circle. Prices for his works soared.

In 1886 he rented the studio of John Singer Sargent, an American painter whom he emulated. But though he sought to be like Sargent, his paintings were superficial. Boldini captured the attributes but not the essence of his subjects. Yet some of his best paintings, such as that of Madame Veil-Picard, her white shoulders emerging from the clinging velvet of her dress, are exquisite. Whatever his shortcomings., Boldini became portrait painter to the rich and influential in Paris, at that time the most elegant city in the world.

When World War I erased La Belle Epoque, Boldini turned to subjects that would appeal to the public as well as to his aristocratic audience. A Guitar Player is one of his delightful genre works. And because he was able to transform everyday scenes into dazzling pictures which caught the imagination, his paintings were reproduced in prints and sold in quantity all over Europe.

It is easy to see the appeal of A Guitar Player. Boldini's artful composition and short, swift brush strokes show us a fascinating woman, her toreador, and her guitar. Her dress shimmers; his clothing gleams. His glistening cape and sword lie on an ornate chest near a poster announcing a bullfight. As he watches her play her guitar, smoke curls from the cigarette between his lips. One can almost smell it. Boldini mixes satin-smooth tints with touches of bright color in a sunlit composition. The picture is spirited, the subject is flirtatious. The painting is delightful.

Though he had become an international artist, Boldini's home town never forgot him. A small Boldini Museum has become part of Ferrara's Municipal Picture Gallery. An early critic summed him up: "If he is an ass in painting an angel, he is an angel in painting an ass." (Art Journal, July 1878).

Source: Curatorial label; Apollo Magazine, vol. 121, Jan. 1985, pp. 30-35; Art News, vol. 84, April 1985, p. 153.

Joan K. Yanni

October, 1991

BOLTON BROWN’S PRINTS

Bolton Coit Brown (1864-1936), was one of America's foremost artist-lithographers in the first half of the twentieth century. Though he is best known as the printer of lithographs by George Bellows and John Sloan, he was an accomplished artist and teacher in his own right.

Brown was born in Dresden, New York, in 1864, and received his Bachelor and Master of Painting degrees from Syracuse University. While finishing graduate work in Syracuse, he taught freehand drawing at Cornell, then became, in 1891, the first member of the art faculty at newly-founded Stanford University. While in California, Brown developed a passionate interest in exploring the remote canyons and peaks of the Sierra Nevadas, with the result that a high peak in the main range of the Sierras was named after him. Everything he did, he undertook with a passion for detail and perfection.

Brown left Stanford in 1901 to join Ralph Whitehead and Hervey White in the founding of Byrdcliffe, the Utopian art colony in Woodstock, NY. Brown had a falling out with Whitehead soon after, but, although he left Byrdcliffe, he kept a house and studio in Woodstock for the rest of his life.

In the winter of 1914-15, in New York City, Brown happened upon an exhibition of lithographs by Albert Sterner. Though Brown had made etchings in his early career, lithography was new to him. Fascinated by lithograph's ability to capture the appearance of intricate pencil drawings, Brown set out for London to learn the technique.

He had just passed his fiftieth year, and had already achieved distinction as a painter, author, scholar, teacher and mountaineer. But he was ready to begin a new career.

Brown attended five or six classes in London, then set out to learn on his own. His appetite was whetted, and even the onset of World War I and London bombing could not dampen his zeal.

He remained in London for a year and experimented with stone grinding, crayon formulas, lithographic chemistry, and printing techniques. He went so far as to visit tanneries so he could choose the softest, most supple leather for his rollers. "I was like one of those air-pump carpet sweepers; everything I came near got sucked in," he wrote in My Ten Years in Lithography.

On his return to Woodstock, he began printing for artists such as Bellows, Sloan and Sterner. Teaching lithography was part of his summer schedule, and he also gave lectures and demonstrations at universities and museums. Often he would draw on a prepared stone, fix and print the image as his audience watched. His own prints were often landscapes influenced by Impressionism and Tonalism, as in Moonlight and Untitled. A purist who would never tolerate the use of transfers or metal plates, he was a tireless champion of “crayonstone” llithography, a process by which the drawing is made directly on the stone. He published Lithography for Artists in 1930 and taught the medium to artists such as John Taylor Arms, Charles Burchfield, and John Menihan.

He is best known as the printer of over 100 lithographs by George Bellows done between 1920 and 1924. Brown, who considered the printer a collaborator equal in importance to the artist who drew the stone, insisted on signing the finished plates along with the artist. (In Dempsey and Firpo (59.30), Brown's signature is on the left corner of the image, Bellows's on the right.) His work with Bellows and with lithography came to an end with Bellows' death in 1925. After his friend's passing, Brown virtually discontinued printing and spent his remaining years writing.

An exhibition of Brown's works in 1993 brought to full circle the association of the Gallery and the artist. In 1926, Gertrude Herdle bought a number of Brown's works and asked him if he would provide materials for an exhibit on lithography. Brown sent a stone with a drawing, proofs printed from the stone, tools he had used, and notes describing what he had sent...all for $150. In 1988 Mr. and Mrs. John Menihan donated 44 of Brown's prints to the Gallery. The exhibit brought together Brown's early prints, the materials he sent to the Gallery, and later works owned by his pupil Menihan, who died in 1992.

Source: Bolton Coit Brown, My Ten years in Lithography and exhibition labels.

Joan K. Yanni

May 1993

ALEXANDER CALDER - HE MADE SCULPTURE MOVE

Alexander Calder (1898-1976) is known world-wide for developing the mobile—sculpture in motion. MAG's Untitled Mobile (64.27), which was commissioned by Charlotte Whitney Allen, was the first mobile he created for the outdoors.

Calder was born into a family of artists. His grandfather and father were sculptors; his mother was a portrait painter. Alexander Milne Calder, his grandfather, modeled and supervised the hundreds of sculptures in Philadelphia's City Hall complex. His statue of William Penn can still be seen standing high above the city. A. Stirling Calder, Alexander's father, created municipal works that ranged from classical to semi-abstract, such as the monuments in New York's Washington Square and Philadelphia's Logan Circle and Swann Memorial Fountain.

Alexander was born and grew up in the Philadelphia area. Clever gadgets had always fascinated him: his bedroom was a maze of strings that pulled shades up and down or turned lights on and off. He decided to go to Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken and study engineering, but four years after graduation he gave in to the call of art. In 1923 he registered at the Art Students League in New York, where he studied with Thomas Hart Benton, John Sloan, George Luks and Boardman Robinson. He had an affinity for drawing and was soon making humorous sketches of sporting events and the circus for the National Police Gazette. In 1926 he made his first trip to Paris, and it never lost its lure for him.

Though Calder had gone to Paris to paint, he began creating figures and animals from wire and wood, gradually building up an entire circus of trapeze artists, clowns and trained animals. His unique, whimsical forms attracted the attention of artists and intellectuals: Picasso, Léger, and Miro came to see his Circus. (It still exists today at the Whitney Museum.) He then branched out to caricatures entirely made of linear wire, among them the figure of jazz singer Josephine Baker. His first Paris exhibition took place in 1929.

In 1930 Calder settled in a Paris studio not far from that of Piet Mondrian. His first visit to Mondrian's studio brought the shock of new ideas and new art. The abstract grids and primary-colored squares fascinated him. He painted a few abstracts, then reverted to his three dimensional work—this time using oscillating circles, spheres and rods, which reflected his interest in the solar system and the universe.

Calder wanted his works to move, and at first he mechanized his creations. But mechanization brought with it pre-set movements, and he was more interested in chance and the element of surprise. He began to create works that would rely on balance and equilibrium and could be set in motion by a light touch or an air current. Marcel Duchamp christened his sculptures "mobiles." Calder's abstract works were first shown in Paris in 1931. That same year, perhaps because of his success, he married Louisa Cushing James, grandniece of both William and Henry James. Over the years, Calder's sculptures grew ever larger, until his giant non-moving outdoor sculptures, named "stabiles" by Hans Arp, were large enough for cars and people to pass through. His stabiles can be seen in countries throughout the world, and his mobiles are everywhere—the National Gallery in Washington, MOMA, and the Pittsburgh airport.

It is uncertain when Calder and Charlotte Whitney Allen first met, but landscape architect Fletcher Steele brought them together in 1932 when Steele was planning her garden. "Green gardens" were in vogue in the late 1920s and '30s, and it is said that Mrs. Whitney disliked the sight of faded flowers, so her garden was to consist of green plants and shrubs, with Calder's mobile adding a touch of color. Gaston Lachaise's Fountain Figure (64.28), now in storage, was to be the focal point of the garden.

Through the garden, Calder and Mrs. Whitney Allen formed a warm friendship. His Circus was shown at her Oliver Street home on two different occasions, and he made small gifts for her. A Happy Birthday mobile (68.50), jewelry, and other mementos from Calder have come to the Gallery through Mrs. Allen, as has the Flat Cat (64.20), a small oak sculpture that she bought at a show at Smith College. (Calder wrote her that it was possibly the first wood sculpture he ever made). Of Untitled Mobile, Calder wrote that it "consisted of some quite heavy iron discs found in a blacksmith's shop in Rochester and then welded to rods progressively getting heavier and heavier." It is said that the sculpture was originally painted at a Rochester auto body shop.

Docents—wearing white gloves provided by the curatorial department—are now permitted to touch the mobile gently and set it in motion so that tours can see it move. One never tires of looking at it.

Source: Curatorial files, 200 Years of American Sculpture, David R. Godine, Publisher, 1976

Joan K. Yanni

March, 1998

Love’s Mirror

A newspaper article from the Rochester Union and Advertiser, dated December 12, 1878, announced that "a rare acquisition" was coming to the city. D. W. Powers had bought one of the finest pieces in the 1879 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition for his art gallery. The piece referred to was Love's Mirror, the marble sculpture by Nicola Cantalamessa-Papotti, now in MAG's 19th-century European gallery.

An influential Rochester banker with an avid interest in art, Daniel W. Powers owned the impressive Powers Building with its cast iron facade, and in 1875 opened an art gallery on its top floor. At first he displayed copies of European art; then he gradually added his own purchases to the collection.

The newspaper article goes on to describe the sculpture as that of a "full size female figure very scantily draped, reclining in a graceful sitting posture and gazing into a mirror held by Cupid, who is crouched at her feet. The human form is perfect and every feature of the work full of interest...It must be seen to be understood." It further states that the piece took three years to complete and, with its pedestal, weighs about 5,700 pounds.

The description is a good one. Love's Mirror (66.20) depicts Cupid, the god of love, smiling mischievously at a maiden of classical beauty to whom he has presented a mirror. He seems to be enjoying her first realization of her own beauty.

The work is remarkable in that, rather than making the figures as unified and as compact as possible, the sculptor has carved graceful shapes and forms that flow outside the central mass of the piece, jutting into the space around it. Cupid's wing curls away from his shoulder; the mirror is held away from the figure; the curve of the lady's arm is outlined by the space between it and her body. Such spaces and slender protrusions make the sculpting process both difficult and dangerous.

Papotti (1833-1910) was an Italian artist who studied in Ascoli and Rome. His work was well known in his time, and his achievements included commissions from King Ferdinand II and Pope Pius IX.

He paid his first visit to the United States in 1857. His works were displayed at the Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis Expositions, all to great acclaim. He received many commissions here, including, in 1881, the memorial to assassinated president James Garfield.

Papotti returned to Italy in 1882 where he sculpted the memorial to Victor Emmanuel II at Ascoli. He entered the competition for the large equestrian statue of Victor Emmanuel to be set up in the Piazza Venezia in Rome, but his entry was not chosen. He did, however, execute two lesser statues there: Politics and Victory. He died in Rome in 1910.

At least three other sculptures by Papotti can be seen in Rochester. Two are in Mt. Hope Cemetery: the George Ellwanger monument, with its statue of St. John (the patron saint of writers, shown working on a manuscript, with his symbol, the eagle, at his left side) and The Weary Pilgrim. Another work by the artist marks the Barry plot in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.

Both Love's Mirror and Thomas Ridgeway Gould's West Wind (66.18) had been exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Both had been purchased by Daniel Powers and displayed in his Gallery. Though the Powers Gallery closed in 1897, some of the art remained in the building, almost forgotten, for over six decades. (Isabel Herdle remembered and rediscovered West Wind—but that's another story.) In 1966 both sculptures were donated to the Memorial Art Gallery through the Isaac Gordon estate. West Wind was put on display, but Love's Mirror had to wait in storage for its turn.

Source: Curatorial files

Joan K. Yanni

December, 1990

WENDELL CASTLE’S Dr. Caligari Clock

Much has been written about Wendell Castle's clock, Dr. Caligari (88.1). Now, with an image of the clock on the postcards going home with students (courtesy of Wegmans and Time Warner), it is a good time to gather all this material together and answer some questions still being asked.

Dr. Caligari was one of a series of thirteen tall-case clocks created in the late ‘80s by artist/furniture-maker Wendell Castle of Scottsville. Made of curly cherry veneer, ebony and gold-plated brass, and 92 1/2 " high, it was donated to the Gallery in 1988 in honor of Joan Vanden Brul's birthday.

The clock gets its name from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a startling German film made in 1919. Just emerging from World War I, Germany was poor and artists were poorer—yet art went on. In painting, a school of "expressionists" sprang up, artists whose powerful canvases were filled with intense human feeling. In the field of German cinema, six young artists pooled their meager resources and produced The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with painted sets, inexpensive film, and a budget of a few hundred dollars. The film was completed in a few weeks, but is still regarded as one of the best films of the first half of the century. It is set in a background of shadowed streets, angular steps, skewed windows and tilted walls—a distorted world created by black paint on canvas.

The film tells the story of a madman (a twist at the end reveals just who is mad). Dr. Caligari is pictured as a charlatan who sets up a booth at a fair, calling fair-goers in to see a somnambulist, or sleepwalker, who is about to wake. The somnambulist, Cesare, sleeps in the cabinet of the title: a tall, tapered box that sometimes stands upright, sometimes lies on the floor like a coffin. He emerges from his cabinet at night to do his master's will, including murder.

One glance at the movie or a still taken from it will reveal how perfectly the interior of Castle's clock captures the mood of the film, with its slashing black and white paint strokes mysteriously hidden inside the clock. MAG displays it with its door open to show the black and white design. The clock is asymmetrical—there are no right angles in the piece—symbolizing the expressionist vision of a world where time is out of joint. Made from curly cherry and ebony woods, its obelisk-like case is stained vivid blue on the outside, though the cherry grain can be easily seen through the paint.

How does the clock run? It contains a special West German weight-driven movement that strikes every quarter hour, the hour and half-hour on a coil gong. Three small holes in the back near the top permit winding and setting. Who winds it? Not Caligari, but Donna DeFord, facilities staffing coordinator who presides over the Admission Desk.

The clock cries out to be compared with another of Castle's pieces in the same area: the walnut Suggestion Box, (72.64) created in 1972 when Castle was producing furniture in natural, organic forms using a lamination technique. Commissioned by the Gallery, it is a combination of desk and ballot box and includes holders for a pen or pencil and specially made suggestion cards as well as a slot in which Gallery visitors may insert their suggestions. Does it open? Of course, or how would we get the suggestions out? A tiny hole underneath the front of the top permits the insertion of a nail-like key that, with a push, will open the top. Who opens it? You guessed it! Donna DeFord.

In contrast to the natural wood of the Suggestion Box (the clock is painted a vivid blue (though the grain can be seen through the color)), and takes the shape of an obelisk—or in this space age, a rocket. (The classic obelisk shape goes back to Egyptian times, when it had four sides resting on a cube base.)

Wendell Castle was born in Kansas in 1932, received an undergraduate degree in industrial design and a master's in sculpture from the University of Kansas, and came to the RIT furniture design department in 1962. He stopped making furniture for a time in 1969 and concentrated on large, fiberglass sculpture, two examples of which can be seen near Rochester's Chamber of Commerce and at Marine Midland Bank. In 1970 he moved to SUNY Brockport, then returned to RIT in 1984 as tenured professor and artist-in-residence, a position in which Castle gives critiques and lectures, represents RIT nationally, and continues to create.

Ten years ago Ron Netsky, in an article in Upstate Magazine (July 6, 1986), said that “Castle's reputation, established early and bolstered by every new series he creates, has earned him that greatest of commodities: a license to create whatever he wants, knowing there will be a market for his work." His designs have gone from the organic, to the trompe l'oeil (the hat on the table and the suit coat on the chair are all carved of wood), to the whimsical and classical. For a recent show he created a series of wall pieces that converted to furniture. Another recent achievement is the creation of the 500,000th Steinway piano, first introduced in Rochester, then on tour in the United States, beginning in Carnegie Hall, New York City. His studio is in a renovated bean mill in Scottsville; there he designs and makes drawings that are converted into wood by his staff of six craftsmen.

Source: Curatorial files; Sandra Wake, ed., The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1979

Joan K. Yanni

May 1996

COLON CAMPBELL COOPER

COLIN CAMPBELL COOPER (1856-1937) was acclaimed as a painter of buildings—skyscrapers in Manhattan, palaces in India, villas in Rome—and churches in Rochester. Whatever his subject, he brought to it a special light, glowing color and beauty of detail.

Cooper was born in Philadelphia, the only son of well-to-do parents. His father was a surgeon and his mother an amateur painter in watercolors. His parents encouraged his interest in the arts and gave him the financial and moral support that permitted him to study and travel as he pleased throughout his life.

In 1879 at the age of 23 he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where Thomas Eakins was his instructor. Philadelphia at this time was the center of the country's artistic activity; the Pennsylvania Academy, founded in 1805, was the second full-scale art museum and art school in the United States. Art students flocked here to learn the scientific approach to art as taught by Eakins: drawing from nude models and from live animals (sometimes from dissections) and painting realistic rather than merely flattering portraits.

In 1886 Cooper went to Europe for further training and inspiration. Joining fellow artists Henri, Schofield and others, he sketched and painted in Holland and Belgium. He then went on to Paris and the Académie Julian, where instructors Gustave Goulanger and Jules Lefebvre further emphasized solid draftsmanship and composition. While in Paris, Cooper saw the works of Claude Monet and was captivated by his loose brush strokes and vivid colors. However, unlike other American Impressionists, Cooper chose to paint architectural treasures and city scenes rather than the countryside. He adopted Monet's technique of painting a textured facade at various times of day, choosing Beauvais cathedral as Monet has chosen Rouen. Though the effects of sunlight and atmosphere permeate these pictures, Cooper never lost the formal solidity of the buildings. His technical training made a permanent mark on his style, and he was able to successfully combine attention to detail with his impressionistic brushwork and palette.

Although he spent many years abroad, Cooper took time between his travels to paint and work at home. In 1897 he married the painter Emma Lampert, and they spent many productive years traveling and painting together.

In 1913 Cooper made his first trip to India, where he was able to capture the baked earth, blue skies, and exotic palaces on canvas. But it was in New York City that he found the theme that earned him most acclaim: the skyscraper. He painted cityscapes according to a mathematical formula which he explained in a magazine article titled "Skyscrapers and How to Build Them in Paint." Though his compositions were painted according to formula, his fluid brushstrokes convey spontaneity and excitement.

Because Cooper's wife was from Nunda, near Rochester, and her family lived there, he painted many scenes of the city. The popular Main Street Bridge (26.20) is one of them. He once stated: "Mrs. Cooper says that the Main Street Bridge picture...has attracted much attention because people are surprised that such a foreign looking place can be found in America." The painting shows buildings lining the bridge. The structures are gone now, but railings by Albert Paley add beauty and interest to the walkway.

In 1915 Cooper exhibited his works in San Francisco, and found California so attractive that, after Emma's death in 1920, he moved to Santa Barbara, where he spent his last years painting and teaching.

....................

Emma Lampert, Cooper’s wife and a painter in her own right, painted Weaving Homespun, Canada (77.16), the work now in the Docent Room. She was born in nearby Nunda in 1860, studied at Cooper Union as well as in Paris and Holland, and exhibited in the Paris Salon. Her work was in the MAG 1913 Inaugural Exhibition and in later exhibits created by the Gallery.

Source: Curatorial files; Goolsby, Tina: "Colin Campbell Cooper: An American Impressionist with a Global Perspective," Art & Antiques, Jan. - Feb., 1963

Joan K. Yanni

December 1992

CURRY’S, The Bathers

As the Hudson River School painted the glories of America's wilderness, and the Ashcan painters recorded scenes of the city, so the American Regionalists championed the Midwest. The triumvirate of Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), Grant Wood (1892-1942), and John Steuart Curry (1897-1946), painted pictures that the public could understand and enjoy, and for a decade, focused attention on the people and places of Middle America.

MAG has an excellent Benton; Boomtown (51.1) was part of the Benton retrospective that traveled around the country last year. Now we have on loan a remarkable painting by Curry, installed next

to Boomtown.

The Bathers shows three men, probably farmhands, and two boys cooling off in a water-filled animal trough. The farm in the background looks brown and hot. A tractor sits idle, and two pigs may be heading for the shade of trees in the far right side of the picture. The men, two of whom are dousing each other with a pail of water, look unusually clean and groomed for farm hands; but they have the tan of outdoor laborers on their faces and forearms. The young boy with his hands above his head, about to jump into the water, is said to be the youthful Curry. As a second-grader pointed out, the figures are "not wearing shorts."

The painting is dated 1928, the same year as Curry's well-known Baptism in Kansas, and its men are splashing in the same round animal trough being used for a baptism in the baptism picture. The Bathers is said to be the last of Curry's major works still in private hands.

John Steuart Curry was born on a farm in Kansas. After high school he decided to study art, for a brief time in Kansas City, then at the Art Institute of Chicago. He became a successful magazine illustrator, contributing to Boy's Life, The Saturday Evening Post and other Curtis publications, but he wanted to produce more serious art. He went to Paris to study for a year, and returned to his studio in Westport, Connecticut, to paint what he knew and loved best—the Midwest. He received his first recognition as an important American painter when Baptism in Kansas was exhibited in a show at the Corcoran Gallery in 1928.

By 1929 the Great Depression had begun, and people were yearning for better, happier times. The cities were poor and dirty; Curry's scenes of the manicured, abundant farmlands of the Midwest supplied reassurance and hope. Some of his paintings, like Wisconsin Landscape, are quiet panoramas of the land; others, such as The Tornado, depict the violence of nature. He injected movement, vibrant color and melodrama into his works.

During the '30s Curry increasingly turned to mural work where he could comment on social problems and reach even larger segments of the population. His murals are on the walls of the Department of Justice and Interior in Washington, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and the Kansas State Capitol Building.

In 1936, after teaching at the Art Students League and at Cooper Union in New York City, he returned to the Midwest to become artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin, where he stayed until his death in 1946.

Curry and Grant Wood met in 1933 and remained friends throughout their lives. They also knew Benton. All three had independently rejected the European art of the Armory Show, believing that America should have an indigenous art, realistic and nationalistic. Their art flourished until the late 30s and the coming of World War II, when interest in Regionalism ended and Internationalism captured the attention of the public.

Source: Czestochowski, Joseph S.: John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood, A portrait of Rural America; Eliot, Alexander:

Hundred Years of American Painting

Joan K. Yanni

June 1992

GUSTAVE DENTZEL

A favorite folk art piece on docent tours is the prancing carousel goat, attributed to the factory of master carver Gustave Dentzel, often called the "father of the carousel."

We associate carousels with children, but originally they were an adult pastime.

Victorians "rode" crudely-carved, horse or man-powered animals that were suspended from a framework and swayed from side to side as they were propelled. These animals were often bizarre and frightening to children, so as the riders became younger, the animals became less threatening.

American carousals always turn counter-clockwise. English carousals clockwise. Large amusement park rides usually consisted of seventy-two figures. There was a lead horse or "king horse," more elaborate than the rest, to lead the parade. The other animals fell into three categories. Standers, for the most part stationary with at least three hooves on the floor, were usually the sixteen outside row figures. They were flashy, heavily carved and of top quality. Prancers, with two feet on the ground, and Jumpers with all four feet in the air, travelled up and down on brass poles. MAG's goat is a prancer: he is mounted incorrectly and should have his hind feet on the floor.

There is a "romance side" to each animal, the side facing outside. It is more elaborately carved and painted than the inside—MAG's goat has no jewels on the wall side. There are more than two dozen types of animals found on American carousals. The rarest include buffalo, kangaroos, roosters.

Three types of carousel animals were produced in America. Philadelphia-style are classically elegant and realistic, carved in true proportion. The G.A. Dentzel Co., D.C. Muller and Brother Co., and the Philadelphia Toboggan Co. (still in operation) manufactured these animals.

The County Fair style features animals, mostly horses, carved for portability. They are generally smaller and less realistic. Herschell-Spillman Co. was known for these. The Coney Island style, dazzling, gilded and gaudy, came from such factories as Charles Looff and Marcus Charles Illions.

Authentic animals are hollow, with slabs of wood glued together to create a body block. Necks, legs and tails are attached separately. The term "head man" comes from the fact that the shop's master carver would devote himself to carving the head, the most difficult part of the figure. Most antique animals have glass eyes with realistically-carved eye sockets shaped like a horse's. Reproductions usually have the eyes of a human.

When looking at MAG's goat, notice that his mouth is open, rather rare in goat figures. Notice also the fine carving of his shaggy coat, his goatee, and the way the horns are set in with soft curls at the base. He is covered with layers of park paint from many seasons of being "spiffed up." Twin bird carvings form the cantle of the saddle, a feature more often seen in the Looff factory productions. Each factory had its own signature saddle features, so it is sometimes possible to attribute origin by studying the saddle.

A "bridge" to MAG's goat would be the sternboard from Salem. When iron ships replaced wooden, ship carvers found their work obsolete. They often found their way to carousel factories.

At one time there were an estimated 3,000 - 4,000 wooden carousels in America—now only about 160 survive. Carousel museums for the preservation of these treasures are appearing. The Binghamton area has six different parks, all within twenty miles of each other. There is also the newly-opened Herschell Carousel Factory Museum in North Tonawanda. The Women's Council is planning a trip there in October.

For more about carousels, see The Pictorial History of the Carousel by Fred Fried, 1964, Vestal Press, and Painted Ponies by William Manns and Marianne Stevens, 1987, Vestal Press.

Source: New York-Pennsylvania Collector, August 1993; articles by William Manns and Lew Larason; Americana magazine, June 1986. Libby Clay October, 1993

EDWIN W. DICKINSON

Edwin W. Dickinson (1891-1978) is an artist's artist, an exacting and innovative painter who combined a mastery of form with a unique sense of design.

MAG's Snow on Quai (87.62) is an example of his deceptively spare, masterful technique. The brush strokes in the small, quiet painting are few, but each is essential, each exactly right. (A quai or quay, pronounced kee, is a landing place constructed along the edge of a body of water).

A letter from Dickinson's daughter Helen to the Gallery recounts that the family spent the winter of 1937-38 in Sanary-sur-mer, in the south of France. While they were there, the first snow in ten years fell on the town. So unusual was it that " men in streets threw snowballs and children in school were not allowed to go out and enjoy it." The snow had melted by the end of the day, but not before Dickinson had painted it from inside a balcony window of the Hotel Beauport. A glance through the MAG tour entrance near where the painting hangs now will help explain the work, especially in winter. Both the tour doors and the window in the painting frame the scene outside.

Edwin Dickinson was born in Seneca Falls, New York, the youngest of four children. His father, a Presbyterian minister, moved to Buffalo when Edwin was six, and the boy grew up there and at the family's country home at Sheldrake on Lake Cayuga—a place that he often pictured in his work. He was educated in local public schools and drew constantly.

His goal after leaving high school was to enter the US Naval Academy, but after flunking the entrance exam he turned to art. He studied at Pratt Institute, then at the Art Students League under William Merritt Chase. In the summer of 1912 he went to Provincetown to study with Charles W. Hawthorne, with whom he stayed for more than three years. His paintings during these years were varied, sometimes simple shore scenes, sometimes very large, exotic images suggested by stories he heard from the Portuguese fisherman who visited Cape Cod.

In his spare time Dickinson learned Morse telegraphy and during World War I he served as a ship's radio operator in the Navy. After discharge in 1919 he studied art independently in Paris and Spain. El Greco's works made a lasting impression on him.

Returning to America in 1920, he again settled in Provincetown where his uniquely independent art evolved. In his works he painted a dislocated reality. Still life subjects were placed in unexpected positions or unusual lines of vision; he often took everyday objects—a boat, bench or rock—and pictured them alone, abstracting their essence. He captured nuances of light and color, taking sensuous pleasure in handling pigment.

Windows, as in Snow on Quai, were a favorite subject, with their abstract reflections and the contrast between the regular form of the frame and the irregular forms outside. He was also skilled at portraits, all marked by an intimate sense of character and feeling for the individual.

Dickinson kept firm ties to Buffalo, and his first work to enter a museum, An Anniversary, was given to the Albright Art Gallery (now Albright-Knox) by friends in 1927. One of his large paintings (72"x 60"), it presents a festive but odd gathering of people: an old fisherman, girls and artists crowd the picture, with a collection of still life at their feet—all painted with complete realism. His first one-man show was at the Albright-Knox that same year. Another large work, The Fossil Hunters, an enigmatic picture which included masterful foreshortening of figures, won the Second Altman Prize at the National Academy of Design in 1929.

In 1928 Dickinson married Frances Foley, an art student. Their life was not easy, since living on Cape Cod kept them out of the art scene except in summer, and he was not yet invited to show in large exhibitions. He did some teaching, and in 1933/34 was employed on the Public Works of Art Project, for which he produced The Stranded Brig, a large powerful work capturing the terrors of the sea.

In 1944 his family—there were now two children—moved to New York, spending summers in Wellfleet on Cape Cod. He began to teach regularly, first at the Art Students League and Cooper-Union, later at the Buffalo Academy of the Fine Arts, the Brooklyn Museum art school, Cornell, and other institutions. In the late 40s and mid-50s recognition began to come, and Dickinson was elected an Associate in the National Academy in 1948. Critical attention increased, particularly through articles by Elaine de Kooning, a friend and admirer. He was included in MOMA's "Fifteen Americans" exhibit in 1952 and his pictures were purchased by major museums. He received an honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in 1961.

His reputation is still growing and his art is being "rediscovered" today.

Source: Curatorial files; Lloyd Goodrich, Edwin Dickinson; Frederick A. Praeger, Inc. NY. 1955

Joan K. Yanni

February, 1998

ARTHUR DOVE

Was Arthur Dove (1880-1946) inspired by an Upstate New York winter when he painted Cars in a Sleet Storm (51.4)? He was certainly familiar with them, for he was born in Canandaigua and grew up in Geneva. The elder son of William and Anna Dove, Arthur Garfield Dove attended Geneva High School and Hobart College, which his contractor father helped to build.

The man who has been called "America's first abstract artist" was introduced to drawing and painting by a Geneva neighbor, Newton Weatherly. An artist and naturalist, Weatherly provided young Dove with instruction and art supplies. He also taught him to love nature, taking him on camping trips and showing him how to hunt and fish. Art and nature would be the twin beacons of Dove's life.

Dove transferred from Hobart to Cornell, where he studied art with Charles Wellington Furlong. Dove's drawings were witty and humorous, and Furlong encouraged him to become an illustrator. After graduation from Cornell in 1903, Dove went to New York and sold illustrations to magazines such as Harper's and Collier's. He also married a Geneva girl, Florence Dorsey.

Illustrating soon became too mechanical for Dove, and he began to explore painting. With a borrowed $4,000, the Doves left New York for France; there he could study painting at the cutting edge of the art scene. He met most of the American artists who had flocked to France, and Alfred Maurer was especially helpful to him. When Dove returned to New York, he carried with him a letter of introduction from Maurer to Alfred Stieglitz.

Stieglitz was impressed with Dove's work and arranged a one-man show for him. However, the country was not ready for Dove. He was one of the few American artists to develop his own non-representational style before the 1913 Armory show, and became the symbol of "deranged modernism" in the eyes of the American public. One acerbic critic wrote, "To paint the pigeon would not do/And so he simply paints the coo...."

Dove's work did not sell. His family now included an infant son, William, and he needed money desperately. His father refused to support his son's "madness," so Dove tried farming and then lobstering. The long hours of toil left him little time to paint, and their arduous life was too much for Florence. She left him and returned to Geneva.

Helen Torr (Reds) Weed, a fellow artist, became Dove's second wife. They had a succession of unusual residences, the most famous being a 42-foot yawl, the Mona. For a decade they cruised and painted, and Dove had all he needed—time to paint and proximity to nature.

He and Reds also lived on an island off Connecticut, in a former post office, and on the top floor of a commercial building erected by Dove's father in Geneva. Dove always tried to make the best of everything, and he painted the one windowless wall of the Geneva residence white, hung his paintings there, and created a private art gallery. (A 1938 photograph shows Cars in a Sleet Storm hanging there.) The life of Geneva paraded by below them, and Dove wrote to Stieglitz, "We see and hear everything, even the Salvation Army band concerts every evening. Have listened all winter and not saved yet."

Arthur Dove thought of his paintings as "extractions" rather than abstractions. Whereas European abstractionists tried to convey the mood evoked by a motif, Dove sought, through color and form, to find the essence. He believed that color could describe and recall sensations. Thus the cold blue-green base of Cars in a Sleet Storm evokes in us a shivery chill. Auras and vibrations recall the distortion of light seen through a windshield glazed with ice. Headlights glow like pairs of eyes in a surreal world where distances and shapes are ambiguous. Dove extracts the sensation of a northern winter.

Sources: "Arthur Dove and the Nature of the Image," Jim M. Jordan, Arts Magazine, February, 1976; "The Art of Arthur Dove," no author cited, Cornell Alumni News, May 1976; "Arthur G. Dove: Ahead of His Time," Shirley Meador, American Artist, November 1975; Article, -JAMA, M. Therese Southgate, MD, May 20, 1992. Libby Clay

February 1994

THOMAS EAKINS, Unmatchable

Largely misunderstood and underestimated in his own time, Thomas Eakins is now looked upon as one of America's finest painters. The Gallery is fortunate to have an example of Eakins at his best—the sensitive, penetrating portrait of his father-in-law, the engraver William H. Macdowell (41.26).

Thomas Eakins (ay-kins) was born in Philadelphia in 1844 and, with the exception of four years of study in Europe, lived there all of his life. His father was a writing master and amateur artist who encouraged his son to develop his talent. In 1861 Eakins entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied drawing—mostly from casts, as was the custom of the time. He supplemented this study by taking anatomy classes at Jefferson Medical College.

In 1866 he went to Paris where he had three years of academic training at the École des Beaux-Arts under Jean Leon Gérôme. He also studied briefly under the sculptor Augustin-Alexandre Dumont. In 1869 he traveled to Spain, where he discovered the 17th-century masters Velázquez and Ribera. Their realism was a revelation to him, and he remained in Spain for six months before returning home.

Back in Philadelphia, he began to paint the life around him: portraits of his family and friends and scenes of outdoor activity. His pictures showed a strong structural sense, precise vision, and first-hand observation of outdoor light and color—although his palette was far from that of the popular Impressionists. Max Schmitt in a Single Scull was the first of a number of paintings in which he honored champion rowers, a sport which he saw as combining physical and mental discipline.

In 1875 the approaching Centennial exhibition motivated Eakins to paint the masterpiece of his early years, The Gross Clinic. He chose to show the famous surgeon Samuel D. Gross operating in an amphitheater at Jefferson Medical College with his students looking on. The painting shows Gross lecturing, holding in his hand a scalpel covered with blood. While it had precedents in Rembrandt's paintings of anatomy lessons, the picture's dark tones, broken only by the light on Gross's forehead, hand, and on the patient, shocked the Centennial jury. His painting was rejected, but Gross sponsored its showing in a medical exhibition, and it still remains at the Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia. (Eakins pictured the same theme in 1889, when the graduating class of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School asked him to paint a portrait Dr. C. Hayes Agnew, their retiring professor of surgery. Eakins insisted on painting Agnew presiding over a surgical clinic, but made a point of showing all the advances in surgery developed since the Gross portrait.)

Despite the criticism of The Gross Clinic, Eakins was hired as a teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy and became its director in 1882. In 1884 he married one of his art students, Susan Hannah Macdowell. Abandoning the old system of drawing from casts, he based his teaching on the study of the nude and insisted that the Academy facilities be primarily for professional artists. In contrast, the Board of Directors wanted the school to be self-supporting and sought to attract any and all interested students. In 1886 uproar over his use of a nude model in a mixed drawing class gave the Board an excuse to force Eakins's resignation.

The action badly disappointed Eakins and many of his students, who resigned from the Academy in protest. Though he taught at other institutions sporadically and gained some reputation as a painter, he attained little financial success. He traveled to the Dakota Territory in late 1886 for a change of scene and there met the poet Walt Whitman. They formed a lasting friendship, sharing the painful experience of having their work misunderstood. Over the next two decades, though commissions were rare, Eakins painted some of his most sensitive portraits—most of friends or individuals whose mind and spirit interested him. Often he gave the paintings to the sitters. Unlike his contemporaries John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase, he was uncompromisingly realistic, refusing to flatter. However, his sense of character and his psychological insight gave his portraits intense vitality.

In the late 1880s Eakins suffered from continuing neglect, even though his skills increased. During the early 1900s he finally received some recognition and a number of awards and honors. But although he ultimately painted just under 300 works, he received commissions for only about 25. He died in 1916.

While oil painting was the major focus of his life, Eakins was also an expert photographer. In 1884 he worked with Eadweard Muybridge in recording human and animal motion. He also did a number of sculptures, including the horses for the Lincoln and Grant monument in Brooklyn, New York. Though he had no one student who directly passed on his techniques, his realism, in contrast to the prevailing Romantic style of the late 1800s, influenced an entire generation of American painters in the 20th century, especially members of the Ashcan School.

Source: Curatorial files, Dictionary of Art, Grove’s Dictionary and McMillan Publishers, Ltd. 1996

Joan K. Yanni

May 1997

ERASTUS SALISBURY FIELD, The Embarkation of Ulysses

The painting recently installed in the Folk Art Gallery is an eye-catcher. In brilliant colors it presents a scene that looks like a stage setting: architectural towers are outlined against a vivid blue sky. Men in colorful costumes stand on the decks of sailing ships. Banners are unfurled, trumpeters play, and women in classical garb watch at the top of the steps leading to the sea. The painting is The Embarkation of Ulysses (1.98L) by Erastus Salisbury Field.

Ulysses was the hero of Homer's Odyssey, one of the Greeks who sailed to Troy to rescue Helen, carried off by Paris. Ulysses and the Greeks then defeated the Trojans through the trick of the wooden horse. After the fall of Troy, the Greeks sailed home—but it took Ulysses ten years to get there. When he finally got back to Greece, he found his faithful wife Penelope surrounded by suitors, whom she had kept at bay by promising to choose a new husband from among them when she finished her tapestry, then weaving by day and unraveling by night.

But our painting, on anonymous loan, is of the glorious departure of the Greeks for Troy. It is a fascinating painting by an intriguing painter.

Erastus Salisbury Field (1805-1900) was born in Leverett, Massachusetts. His parents encouraged his sketching of family activities as he grew up, and he went on to study briefly in New York City with inventor-painter Samuel F.B. Morse. Once home again, he painted portraits; and in his early works Morse's influence can be seen. Field soon developed his own style, however. He had a special insight into his sitters’ personalities, and he was able to show their inner spirit as well as intricate details of their clothing, hair styles and homes.

During the 1830s Field was able to support his wife Phoebe and their daughter Henrietta by working as an itinerant painter in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Some of the best work of his career was painted at this time.

Between 1841 and 1848 Field moved to New York City. Here, in addition to portraits, he began to paint history pictures, which he copied from engravings. Our Embarkation of Ulysses dates from this time. It was taken from an engraving, City of Ancient Greece with the Return of the Victorious Armament by the English artist J. W. Appleton, published in London in 1840. (The engraving, in turn, had been copied from a painting by W. Linton.)

While in New York, Field also learned the new art of photography (the daguerreotype had been introduced into this country in 1839 by Samuel Morse).

In 1849 the painter was called back to Massachusetts to take care of his ailing father's farm. Though he still painted, photography had lessened the demand for painted portraits. Field began to take photographs of his subjects to reduce sitting time, and painted from these images. Consequently, his later portraits, though realistic, lack the spark of his earlier works.

In 1872 Field conceived the idea for the masterpiece of his old age. His painting The Historical Monument of the American Republic, which measured 115" x 158", was completed in 1876 on the 100th anniversary of American independence. It represents history in the grand manner: towers of varying architectural styles (some similar to those in our painting) rise in the air, and each is keyed to a major event in American history; each national hero is represented. Field had hoped that his Historical Monument painting would be turned into sculpture, but that was not to happen.

A mildly eccentric painter watched over by his equally eccentric daughter, Field spent his last days in Plumtrees, Massachusetts. His legacy is a body of work that reveals the character, taste and look of his New England world, ending with a huge painting of an idealized American dream.

Source: Black, Mary, Erastus Salisbury Field, Springfield, MA 1894. Beryl Smith, assistant librarian from Rutgers University, located the image of the source of our painting.

Joan K. Yanni

February, 1992

JOHN B. FLANNAGAN, Fawn

One of the easily overlooked treasures of the Gallery's collection is John B. Flannagan's (1895-1942) small granite Fawn (74.2), now in the 20th century gallery. Its rough surface and compressed fetal form give the impression of an animal emerging from some secret place within the rock, rather than being carved from it. Indeed, the artist spent long hours combing the fields near Woodstock, NY for stones that approximated the shape of the figure he had in mind, which he then "released" from the rock through subtle shaping.

Animals were Flannagan's favorite subjects, and he preferred the stubbornness of stone to the "deadly facility" of wood. His works are best understood when seen from all points of view; their rounded shapes curve back upon themselves to express the artist's fascination with the circle, an ancient symbol of eternity.

Flannagan's brief life was marked by hardship. His father died in 1890, when Flannagan was five, forcing his poverty-stricken mother to place the boy in an orphanage for a number of years. At 19 he enrolled at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and held down three jobs to support himself, his mother, and his brother. He moved to New York, and after months of sleeping in the subway was rescued by the generosity of painter Arthur B. Davies, who gave him a job and helped him secure gallery representation.

The artist's existence became devoted almost solely to freeing "the image in the rock." This absorption led to a nervous breakdown in 1934, after which he was confined to a sanitarium for seven months and not allowed to work. He sculpted madly upon his release, drinking heavily to obliterate exhaustion. A few years later, he was the victim of a hit-and-run accident; a series of brain surgeries could not fully restore his powers of coordination, speech, and balance. Suffering a deep despair over his inability to work, Flannagan committed suicide in 1942, just six months before his scheduled retrospective at the Bucholz Gallery in New York.

Marie Via (reprinted from the Averell Council newsletter, 1991)

Joan K Yanni

May, 1989

EDWARD HICKS, The Peaceable Kingdom

LOOK AGAIN, Docents, at the wondrous painting The Peaceable Kingdom, on loan until December from Cooperstown. Though we miss Pierrepont Lacey and Gun, curator Patti Junker could not have made a better trade—even for a short time—than Edward Hicks's work.

Perhaps the best known of American folk painters, Edward Hicks (1780-1849) was a Quaker born in the farming country of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia. A sign and carriage painter by trade, he learned the technique of careful lettering, painting with flat, decorative colors, and the use of gold leaf.

Hicks devoted much of his art to expressing his faith in the peaceful coexistence of man and nature. His popularity today rests largely on his many representations of The Peaceable Kingdom, illustrating the prophecy in the book of Isaiah, Chapter 11. More than 100 of these exist, for he painted them to give to his friends as expressions of his Quaker faith in God and hope for peace on earth. He devised stock patterns of all the animals mentioned by Isaiah, but arranged them differently in each picture.

Some of his pictures have scriptural texts carefully lettered across the bottom or around all four sides, as in our loan. Peaceful beasts with a child in their midst are seen in combination with a river landscape and the scene of William Penn making a treaty with the Indians. The text reads:

"The leopard with the harmless kid laid down,

And not one savage beast was seen to frown.

The lion with the fatling on did move,

A little child was leading them in love.

The wolf did with the lambkin dwell in peace,

His grim carniv'rous nature there did cease.

When the great PENN his famous treaty made

With Indian chiefs beneath the elm-trees shade."

HELEN FRANKENTHALER, Seer

Helen Frankenthaler's Seer (81.3) was presented to the Gallery by the Women's Council in 1981 in celebration of the Council's 40th anniversary. (The Council also gave Angelica Kauffman's Portrait of John Monck (80.56) at the beginning of the anniversary year, and has presented the Gallery with such important works as Rachel Ruysch's Floral Still Life (82.9) and Hyacinthe Rigaud's Portrait of Charles Gaspard Guillaume de Vintimille du Luc, Archbishop of Paris (68.1)

The seven-by-eight-foot Seer was created with acrylic paint and Frankenthaler's "soak-stain" technique. Though the raw canvas can be seen through much of the paint, the orange touches and white area were applied after the paint was dry, and lie thickly on top of the canvas. The central black area gives depth—one can almost walk through it. What do children, the most imaginative audience, see in it? Always water with foam—then everything from a hornet's nest to a piano (look yourself!). An adult visitor saw a golf course! The painting presents a mood or idea rather than a realistic image. Its magic is that it can be anything anyone sees in it.

Helen Frankenthaler (b.1928) was born in New York City to an affluent family and learned oil painting from artist Rufino Tamayo at the Dalton School. She went on to Bennington College where she studied with cubist painter Paul Ferry and developed into a competent cubist painter herself. Later, inspired by the works of Kandinsky, Gorky and de Kooning, she began to move into freer forms of expression.

Frankenthaler met art critic Clement Greenberg at an art exhibition where one of her paintings was displayed. Though Greenberg told her he hated the painting, he became her friend and mentor and encouraged her to study with Hans Hofmann. In 1951 she was the youngest artist in a show of abstract expressionists. That same year, Greenberg took her to see an exhibition of Jackson Pollock's paintings, then to visit the Pollocks on Long Island. She was so impressed that she began to use Pollock's method and to work with her canvas on the floor.

In 1952 she caught the attention of the art world with her Mountains and Sea. Using a unique variation on Pollock's drip painting, she thinned out her paint and allowed it to soak into the canvas. Her new technique eliminated brushwork and paint texture, resembled watercolor, and created a new kind of color painting. When Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland saw Mountains and Sea they began to exchange visits and ideas with Frankenthaler and to use her staining method in their own works.

During the next seven years Frankenthaler continued to experiment, in spite of the critics who viewed her technique with suspicion. Only when she won first prize at the 1959 Paris Biennale and was selected as one of four artists to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale was her work re-evaluated. In 1969 her Whitney retrospective made it clear that she was the forerunner of an important new movement in American art.

In 1958 she married Robert Motherwell. He was a major figure in art, a distinguished painter, critic and one of the founders of the New York School; she was a star of the second generation of abstract expressionists. During the thirteen years of their marriage, they were the center of art circles.

In the 1960s the images Frankenthaler created became simpler and more controlled. She changed from the use of oils, which had left "halos" around the edges of her forms, to acrylics and deeper color. She became interested in the illusion of space and luminosity. Later works are sometimes painted with more texture, with thick paint pulled across the canvas with rollers or accented with drips or lines—such as in Seer.

Frankenthaler works without preliminary drawings; she plans during the painting process. Experience, intuition, inspiration, and a gifted eye guide her. She spreads large, unprimed cotton canvas (the same as used for boat sails) on the floor, pours or spreads a shape, looks at it, and sees where the next shape is needed. She pours, drips, then uses a sponge or squeegee to spread more paint, bending down to smear or flick an accent with her finger, her foot, or the palm of her hand. Finally, she views the work from all sides or pins it to the wall to look it. If she finds balance, harmony of color and tension between shapes—something that "works"—she will keep the painting. If she does not, she may crop it or add a bit of color. If it still does not please her, she will throw it away. Though a tremendous amount of labor, thought and editing go into her works, they appear to be spontaneous.

Frankenthaler's work derives from nature rather than from geometric sources. She avoids the expected or the predictable, using a combination of inspiration and keen intelligence to create her works. Her paintings are in the collections of all major art museums.

Source: Encyclopedia of American Art, E.P. Dutton, NY, 1981; Charlotte Streifer Rubenstein, American Women Artists, Avon, NY, 1982; Time Magazine, March 28, 1969; Curatorial files

Joan K. Yanni

June, 1996

GEORGE INNESS

A new catalogue raisonné of the work of George Inness is being researched by scholar Michael Quick, who was in Rochester last fall to look at MAG's Inness paintings. Quick reaffirmed the authenticity of Early Moonrise in Florida (36.61) and authenticated a painting not currently on view: Sunset (14.3), an oil painting on wood. Though Sunset had been attributed to Inness, a question had arisen as to whether it could be the work of his son, George Inness, Jr., whose late paintings resemble those of his father. After examining the work, Quick decided that Sunset was indeed by Inness Sr., probably from around 1878-83, when he was painting sunsets "extremely thinly and boldly, with an emphasis on the movement of the brush." Quick plans to use pictures of both MAG's paintings in his catalog.

Early Moonrise in Florida is an unusual landscape. It is an atmospheric painting, mysterious and enigmatic. A lone, hooded figure, seen in profile, stands with hands outstretched as though making an offering. The painting has a dreamlike quality. Low vegetation in dark greens and browns fills the bottom of the canvas, and the red-roofed houses, trees and blue sky seem enveloped in mist. The atmosphere changes to a strange pink/purple at the top of the canvas. Yet the white moon stands out, clearly defined.

George Inness (1825-1894) was born in Newburgh, NY, and grew up in New York City and Newark, NJ. His father was a well-to-do grocer who would have liked his son to follow him into the grocery business, but George was not interested. His schooling was spotty because of fragile health and bouts of epilepsy, but he was always interested in art. His only training came from an itinerant painter and, for a short time, from Regis Francois Gignoux, a French painter living in New York. By 1844, when he was only 19, he had one of his works accepted for exhibition at the National Academy of Design.

When Inness was in his twenties, a patron sent him to Europe, and he continued to go there intermittently throughout his life. His early landscapes reflect the influence of the Hudson River School, particularly Asher B. Durand. But he was also captivated by the work of Lorrain and Constable, and gradually he broke away from the linear, objective quality of Durand and Cole and began to paint more intimate landscapes and subjective interpretations of nature. The paintings in the first half of his career were naturalistic and luminous, glowing with light and color. They emphasized atmosphere and emotion, not detail. His discovery of the French Barbizon school further inspired him to paint a more intimate landscape, rather than the panoramic views of Church and Bierstadt. His brushwork became softer and his outlines more fluid. Living in a small town on the outskirts of Boston, he painted golden, peaceful pictures, even during the Civil War. Inness was independent and unique . His work finally acclaimed, he was made a member of the National Academy of Design in 1868.

During Inness's late period, from about 1880 on, he turned further away from realistic, literal depiction of scenery to a more personal depiction of nature. Seldom working outdoors or sketching, he turned out impressions from memory and often repainted a single canvas over and over again. Many landscapes of this period show a marked preference for the soft effects of early spring or the glowing red tones of autumn. He began to use a cursory, looser brush stroke, and his work became more vaporous and unworldly. Early Moonrise (1892) is from this time.

All through his life Inness had been interested in religion and theology. He saw spiritual symbolism in nature and attempted to capture it in his work. He was attracted by the beliefs of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish mystic of the time, who fascinated many nineteenth-century thinkers including Emerson. In his writings, Swedenborg describes his communication with the spiritual world and even with God. Inness, though he does not cite Swedenborg specifically, published statements on art that concentrated on the importance of an invisible world. The undefinable elements and vagueness in some of his late paintings may be the quality that makes them so fascinating.

In his late years, Inness spent most of his time in his last home in Montclair, New Jersey, with short vacation trips. Early Moonrise was painted on a trip to Tarpon Springs, Florida. Of the painting, Michael Quick noted "the softly atmospheric appearance of the trees, sky and horizon appear to be the result of Inness's dragging one layer of paint over another to discover contours. An example is the nearly white paint applied over the red tree trunks. It is a many-layered painting with numerous changes of design intended to refine a very delicate effect."

In June, 1894, Inness and his wife made a last visit to Europe. He died suddenly in Scotland; his son says he was on the dock, watching the sunset.

Source: Curatorial files; E.P. Richardson, A Short History of Painting in America, Harper and Rowe Publishers; Dictionary

of American Art, E. P. Dutton publishers.

Joan K. Yanni

February 1997

ALEXEI JAWLENSKY, In Happy Mood

In a Happy Mood (81.47), a painting by the artist Alexei Jawlensky, was installed in the 20th-century European gallery during the summer. A small painting, it could easily be overlooked. Yet its artist was one of the important members of the German Expressionists, showed with the Blue Rider, and, with Kandinsky, Klee and Feininger, exhibited in America as one of the Blue Four.

Jawlensky (1864-1941) was Russian, born in Kuslovo of an aristocratic family. He was educated at the Moscow Cadet School, but at the age of twenty-five abandoned the military for art and the St. Petersburg Academy. At thirty-two, dissatisfied with Russian realist painting, he and a group of Russian artists emigrated to Munich, the "Paris" of Germany.

In Munich Jawlensky lived the comfortable life of an educated Russian emigre, with enough money to allow him to pursue his own identity in art without the need to sell his paintings. He and his friends enrolled in the atelier of Anton Azbé, an innovative and creative teacher. Vasily Kandinsky was later to enroll in the school, as was Paul Klee. To escape from the school routine of head and figure drawing, Jawlensky began to paint landscapes in his studio, experimenting with color and form.

In 1905 he traveled to Brittany and Provence, then Paris, where he became acquainted with the paintings of Gauguin and Van Gogh and even painted for a time with Matisse, all forerunners of expressionism. In this atmosphere his own style began to evolve. He painted in flat, simple shapes, using bold, contrasting primary or secondary colors and dark outlines to unify them. He used some techniques of the Fauves but held on to his Russian mystical traditions and background.

In Germany art was changing. A group of artists calling themselves The Bridge had been formed in Dresden as a reaction against objective painting. Founded in 1904 by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, the group believed in expressing subjective and emotional feelings, using distortions for emotional effect. Max Pechstein and Emil Nolde were members of The Bridge.

In 1909, influenced by The Bridge and dissatisfied with the exhibition possibilities in Munich, Jawlensky and Vasily Kandinsky founded the New Artists' Association of Munich. They sought the simplification of form and the elimination of nonessentials. "A work of art is a world of its own, not an imitation of nature," Jawlensky said.

By 1911 Kandinsky had formed still another group, The Blue Rider, which included painters such as Franz Marc, Karl Hofer, and Paul Klee. Jawlensky exhibited in the third show of these artists. In 1912 "expressionism" was first used to describe this art.

By 1914 Jawlensky had established his reputation as a member of a new generation of German artists. But his life was to change: the outbreak of World War I forced him to leave Germany because of his Russian nationality, and he settled in St. Prex, Switzerland, forced to leave behind his luxurious studio and most of his possessions. His new studio had a single window, and through the war years he painted a series of Variations, pictures of his limited view. The works are lonely and reflective and became more and more abstract. However, unlike Kandinsky, Jawlensky never created completely non-objective art, but based his abstractions on natural subjects.

In 1916 he met Emmy "Galka" Scheyer, a young art student who became his champion. She arranged sales of his work and seemed to be the impetus for new vigor in his art. He began a series of mystical, semi-abstract heads—a vertical near the center of the picture represents the nose, horizontals represent eyes, eyebrows and a mouth. He used warm, bright colors, against deep, cool blues and greens. Color and form reflected his emotional moods, the seasons, and even sound, for he believed in the correlation between music and colors. Lines in the faces were designed to resemble crosses, icons and the like, giving the work religious and mystical overtones. He painted variations on these heads from 1921 to 1935; In a Happy Mood (1932) is one of these.

In 1922 Jawlensky settled in Weisbaden. Two years later Scheyer formed the Blue Four group with Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Klee and their friend, American Lyonel Feininger, and set out for the United States to promote their work. Though the exhibitions were successful, they did not bring financial relief. In 1933 the Nazis forbid Jawlensky to show his work in Germany. He continued to paint, however, till 1939, when arthritis forced him to stop. He died in 1941.

MAG's expressionist paintings include Pechstein's Ripe Wheat Fields (49.80), Kandinsky's watercolor Pentagon (76.145), Klee's watercolor Fairy Tales (57.37), George Grosz's The Wanderer (51.6), Klees Van Dongen's Portrait of a Woman (66.27), and Feininger's Zirchow IV 46.38).

Source: Anne Mochon, Alexei Jawlensky: From Appearance to Essence; Hans Roethel: The Blue Rider; Leonard Hutton Gallery catalog, The Blue Four.

Joan K. Yanni

December, 1995

WOLF KAHN, Evening Glow

The radiant, sensuous colors in the painting appeal to everyone who visits the 20th-century galleries. Even adults who claim to dislike all "modern" art, who scoff at Albers, Hofmann, and Frankenthaler, stop and sigh in front of Wolf Kahn's Evening Glow (85.59). How do they know it's a landscape? They know. There's a horizon in the painting, with the elements of land, water, and sky. The colors may not be real, but they're wonderful and exciting. And that tiny white spot in the middle of the canvas makes everything come alive.

Wolf Kahn was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1927, fourth child of Emil and Nellie Kahn. His father was conductor of the Stuttgart Philharmonic. When he was three he went to live with his grandmother in Frankfurt, where he attended Philantropia, the "gymnasium" of the Frankfurt Jewish community, and began private art lessons. His love for art never diminished.

In 1939, two weeks before the outbreak of World War II, he was sent to England in a transport of refugee children. A year later he joined his father in the United States, then moved to New York City where he attended the High School of Music and Art. He joined the U.S. Navy at 18, and after his discharge returned to the pursuit of art, attending classes taught by Stuart Davis and Hans Jelinek.

In 1947 he began studies at Hans Hofmann's School of Fine Art in New York, and spent a summer painting with Hofmann in Provincetown. Hofmann became his mentor, and he found his roots in abstract expressionism.

After receiving a BA from the University of Chicago, Kahn settled in New York City, where he had his first one-man show in the Hansa Gallery at the age of 26. In 1957 he was part of the exhibition, The New York School—The Second Generation at the Jewish Museum in New York City. Shows throughout the country followed.

He made several trips abroad—to Italy, France and even Kenya—and lived in Venice and Rome for a time; but he found his inspiration mainly in New England, particularly around the Connecticut River Valley. He has said that one must be familiar with a place to paint it.

The influence of the Abstract Expressionists on Kahn's work can be seen in his fluid, gestural painting. He differs from them, however, in that he insists on the object in his works, while they eliminate it. He does not paint to manipulate or to evoke specific moods, but wants his audience to "freely participate in the paintings on their own."

Color is a primary interest, and he finds inspiration in the works of both Turner and Mark Rothko. Like Turner, he avoids sharp delineations in his paintings, preferring subtle transitions from earth to sky. Like Rothko, he uses radiant, vibrating colors. In Evening Glow one can see the hovering color and glowing layers of veiled light that are evident in Rothko's abstractions. "Rothko took the idea of radiance further than any previous artist," Kahn says. "Since I saw Rothko...I look at nature in a different way.” He found that, for example, “if you make a hard edge between two colors you inhibit the radiance of one color against another...I am no longer so interested in the division between things, but am much more interested in the lack of division between them."

Kahn is married to contemporary artist Emily Mason, and they have two daughters. In 1968 he bought a farm in West Brattleboro, Vermont, and he has been spending his summers there ever since, soaking up the New England atmosphere. His winters are spent in a home and studio in New York City, where he transforms summer sketches and motifs into paintings or watercolors.

Today Kahn is widely regarded as one of the country's leading contemporary landscape painters. His work has been exhibited across the United States and abroad, and he is represented in major museums across the nation, including the Metropolitan, the Whitney, the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, San Diego Museum of Art, and the Carnegie Institute.

A new book on his work is being written by noted art historian and critic Robert Hobbs and will be published in 1995.

Three Kahn pastels are on view in the Contemporary Gallery next to Evening Glow at this time: Key West Harbor, Bright Winter Day, and Evening at Deer Lake.

Source: Wolf Kahn, Landscapes, exhibition catalog published by San Diego Museum of Art; curatorial files.

Joan K. Yanni
November, 1994

GASTON LACHAISE

The acquisition of Gaston Lachaise's James Sibley Watson, Jr. marks a valuable addition to MAG's collection of works by Lachaise and focuses on the Rochester connection of the artist.

Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935) was born in Paris, the son of a woodworker/cabinet maker. A classically educated artist, he attended the École des Beaux-Arts, worked with Réné Lalique, and exhibited regularly at the Salon. A meeting with American Isabel Nagle changed the direction—or at least the location—of his life. He fell in love with her and, though she was married, he followed her to Boston in 1906. She did not become his wife until 1917, but she was forever his muse and often the model for his flamboyant female figures.

In the United States, Lachaise worked first with Henry Hudson Kitson on Civil War monuments, then moved to New York to collaborate with Paul Manship. Though he worked as a traditional apprentice for many years, the works which Lachaise produced in his free time were unorthodox. Except for his decorative animal figures, his art never caught the public's eye. He was acclaimed by critics, however. The Dial, a literary magazine which published the works of contemporary writers and artists, praised his work, and many Dial writers gave him commissions. Among his portraits, in addition to our bust of Sibley Watson, are heads of O'Keeffe, Stieglitz, John Marin, e.e. cummings (now in the Fogg Art Museum), and Marianne Moore (now in the Metropolitan Museum).

The standing woman theme was Lachaise's particular contribution to his art. The sculptures of his wife—large, voluptuous, easily identifiable figures with a curiously light, tranquil step—serve as examples of his ideal woman.

In 1935, eight months before his death, he had the honor to become the second living American to have a retrospective at MOMA. He died of leukemia in 1935.

James Sibley Watson, Jr. was the son of James and Emily Sibley Watson, founder of the Memorial Art Gallery. Though Sibley Watson held a medical degree from New York University, he was always interested in the arts—sponsoring artists, making innovative films, and co-editing The Dial. His marriage to Hildegarde Lasell of Boston deepened his interest in the artistic, for she sang, acted in his films, wrote, and painted.

Sibley Watson and Lachaise probably met through The Dial. The bronze head of Sibley Watson, which captures his quality of silent perception, was depicted in the magazine in 1927. Through the relationship, Lachaise met other members of the family and crafted the painted alabaster head of Urling Sibley Iselin (73.74), granddaughter of Hiram Sibley and niece of Emily Sibley Watson, and a bronze head of Samuel A. Torrens, Hildegarde's music teacher.

Lachaise also executed MAG's remarkable, full-length portrait of Hildegarde, Portrait Statuette of Mrs. J. Sibley Watson Jr. (68.11). A small sculpture (15 1/2 inches tall), its right leg steps forward confidently, its left is hidden in a billowing skirt. Awareness, refinement and intelligence are depicted in the figure, cast in bronze with the bodice and skirt nickel-plated.

Rochester again figured in Lachaise's work when landscape architect Fletcher Steele asked him to do a sculpture for the garden of Charlotte Whitney Allen. Our stone Fountain Figure (64.28) was the result. Other Lachaise sculptures owned by the Gallery include the bronze Standing Woman (73.75), which overlooks the Sculpture Pavilion from her niche against the back wall. (She was a gift of Peter Iselin and his sister Emilie Wiggin); the small Standing Woman (64.29) gift of Charlotte Whitney Allen; and Ogunquit Torso (60.46)—one of his first fragment sculptures, a powerful piece that was formed in bronze and plated in nickel. The Gallery is fortunate to have such a variety of first-rate works by the artist.

Source: Curatorial files

Joan K. Yanni

November 1990

FITZ HUGH LANE and JAMES E. BUTTERSWORTH

"Meditation and water are wedded forever," says Ishmael in Melville's Moby Dick. The sea, and later the ships that sailed her, have always held a fascination for us; in art, this has manifested itself in the genre of the seascape, first developed by the Dutch and the English. Four American seascapes in MAG's collection remind us that the American experience has from the beginning been inextricably linked to the sea.

Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865) was one of the ablest of the "harbor view" painters. The Golden State Enters New York Harbor, 1854 (3.87L), shows American space within a particular American harbor. We see The Golden State, sails set, majestically occupying the place of honor in the painting. We sense not only the romance of the high seas, but also another sensation. By confining the fleet of ships in the harbor, Lane calms our fears of the vastness of the sea; the sea here is under control.

Lane was born in Gloucester, the son of a sail maker. He had little formal artistic training, but painted intuitively. He was apprenticed to a lithographer for a time, and that may be the source of his command of drawing. He understood naval architecture and painted ships with confidence and clarity.

Early in his career, Lane tended to use impasto to emphasize the power of the waves. By 1854 he was beginning to apply his paint more thinly; looking closely, you can see the twill canvas showing through the paint. Of interest is the small boat in the right foreground. At first glance, three of the men seem to be rowing. But look again, for the oars are tipped precariously, and the men are leaning over the gunwale, retrieving something—perhaps a fishing net. The boat in the left foreground, stern toward us, makes a nice juxtaposition. By giving us these small foreground boats, Lane is including the shore world, our world, in the marine world. Also visible are a steamboat and what may be a steam yacht. Thus the artist bridges the age of sail and the age of steam.

Two paintings by James E. Buttersworth (1817-1894) evoke strong emotions. The tragic Fleetwing Loses Six Men Overboard during the Trans-Atlantic Race of December, 1866, (17.79) depicts the terrible power of the sea. The moon emerging from the heavy cloud-cover casts its white light on the waves breaking over the starboard rail—the waves that will wash six men to their destiny. The gray-green waves are a Buttersworth trademark—one of them makes an S-shaped sweep toward the unfortunate men, as if to emphasize the inexorable flow of the sea.

The Clipper Ship Flying Cloud off the Needles, Isle of Wight (89.71), shows the most beloved of the famed clipperships. The low horizon line serves to silhouette the ship and emphasize the fact that she is sailing into bad water. The small boat in the right foreground is probably coming to pilot her to safety. The men on board may have come from the houses that can be seen midway up on the right. Buttersworth's understanding of rigging and the setting of sails under way was unrivaled, and he matched his understanding with careful drawings. (See page 122 for more on Buttersworth.)

The swift clipper ships had a glorious but brief life. They were replaced by steamships, which used a more reliable propellant than the wind. James Bard (1816-1897), painter of Steamship James Fisk, Jr. (65.60), is acknowledged as the best of the steamship painters. He worked largely in lower Manhattan, near the docks, but is best known for his river views of steamboats, seen from the port side as a strong horizontal. Bard took great care in measuring the vessels he painted, but he often overlooked consistency of scale and proportion. This, combined with his flat patterning and bright arbitrary coloring, places him on the edge of primitive painting.

It is paradoxical that the very notion of seascape implies the imposition of order and perspective upon that which is by definition formless and shapeless. Nevertheless, seascape taps a shared cultural experience and speaks to our "inner selves."

In addition to using MAG's marine paintings to complement the ongoing China Trade exhibition, they can also be connected to the sternboard, folk art (with Bard); View of the Delaware Water Gap, the Di-Polar Girls, Homer's studio—and Bard’s whiplash banners with Paley's ribbons on Convergence.

Source: Stein, Roger B., Seascape and the American Imagination; Wilmerding, John, A History of American Marine Painting.

Libby Clay

May, 1995

FITZ HUGH LANE, Maine Cove at Sunrise

On loan and installed in the 19th-century corridor is Fitz Hugh Lane's shimmering Maine Cove at Sunrise. Lane, one of the most important American marine painters, was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1804, and while still a child began to sketch the seashore at Cape Ann. His talent secured him an apprenticeship with William Pendleton's lithography firm in Boston—his only formal training as an artist. In 1849 he returned to Gloucester and published his own prints, from trade cards and book illustrations to topographical views of New England coastal towns.

As a painter Lane was influenced by Robert Salmon, an English-born marine artist who had settled in Boston. He painted about 150 oils as well as a few watercolors, including shore scenes, ship portraits, landscapes and harbor views. Two paintings of naval engagements during the war of 1812 show his skill in depicting the ferocity of a naval battle.

In his mature work, beginning in the late 1840s, Lane combined his knowledge of draftsmanship with a mastery of the nuances of water and light in some of the most remarkable luminist paintings of his day. He achieved the effect of arrested time and heightened clarity that characterized his best period—as can be readily seen in Maine Cove. He was an important influence on Frederic Church. Though he achieved popularity during his lifetime, Lane fell into obscurity after his death. Today his high position in American art is firmly established.

Joan K. Yanni,

September, 1989

Ernest lawson

Contrary to rumor, The Garden of Ernest Lawson's painting (51.36) is neither that of Mrs. James Sibley Watson nor Charlotte Whitney Allen, nor any other garden in Rochester. Recent research has disclosed that the painting depicts a garden in Tuxedo Park, New York, about 60 miles north of Manhattan. The information was ferreted out by Dierdre Cunningham, landscape curator at the George Eastman House. Research on Mrs. Watson's property proved that the painting was not of her garden. But Cunningham was directed to a 1917 article from the Architectural Forum, which described the H.H. Rogers estate in Tuxedo Park. In the article were drawings of the garden and reflecting pool, which can be seen in the painting. The drawings and a statement by Lawson's wife that the painter often visited the homes of wealthy patrons were convincing. Cunningham also contacted the present owners of the estate, Allen Yassky and his wife, who supplied current pictures of the garden, which they are now renovating.

Ernest Lawson (1873-1939) was one of The Eight, (Arthur B. Davies, William Glackens, Robert Henri, George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan were the others) and the only one to paint landscapes almost exclusively. He was born in Nova Scotia, Canada, where his father was a physician. The family moved to Kansas, where Ernest took some courses from Ella Holman at the Art Institute, then to Mexico City where he worked briefly as an assistant draftsman and attended art class at Santa Clara Art Academy. Though his father considered art an unfit profession, Lawson saved his money and, when he was 18, went to New York City to study at the Art League.

Lawson worked under both J. Alden Weir and John Twachtman before setting out in 1893 for Paris. He attended classes at the Académie Julian for a time, but left to work on his own, using impressionist techniques that became his hallmark. A meeting with Sisley further influenced his art, and two of his paintings, since lost, were accepted for hanging in the 1894 Salon des Artistes Francais. He had already adopted his jewel-like colors and palette knife technique, which he never abandoned.

In 1894 Lawson moved to New York, was reunited with his former teacher and champion, Ella Holman, and they were married. They settled in Washington Heights, where he painted farmlands and trees, the nearby High Bridge and the picturesque Harlem River, all done with luminous, brilliant colors, broken brush strokes and impasto layering of paint.

Lawson's reputation continued to grow; he won a silver medal at the St. Louis Universal Exposition in 1904 and a gold at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1907. William Merritt Chase called him "America's greatest landscape painter," and Robert Henri said he was "the biggest we have had since Winslow Homer." Lawson met William Glackens in 1904, and they became lifelong friends. With Glackens, Lawson joined Henri and his circle in their evening get-togethers at Mouquin's Restaurant in Manhattan. Lawson was soft-spoken and introspective. It is hard to imagine him at a meeting of the noisy Eight; but all of The Eight were different in style, technique and temperament. "We've come together because we're so unlike," said Henri. When, in 1906, paintings by Glackens, Luks and Shinn were rejected by the Academy, Henri withdrew two of his own paintings, and with his friends decided to have an independent exhibition. The show of The Eight opened in February 1908, at the Macbeth Gallery. The exhibition has ever since been regarded as a milestone in the development of American realism.

The next upheaval of the art scene took place with the Armory Show in 1913. Arthur Davies had helped import modern French art to exhibit with the Americans. Lawson had three paintings in the show, and other members of The Eight, along with younger painters such as George Bellows, Stuart Davis and Edward Hopper, were represented. But the French Post Impressionists and Cubists stole the show. The American art looked passé compared to the French, and Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, described as "an explosion in a shingle factory," won the most attention.

The American public was not ready for the French, however, and Lawson continued to receive acclaim. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1917, and his works were sold to the Metropolitan Museum and to collectors Albert Barnes and Duncan Phillips. Considered one of the best American Impressionists, he was still popular in the 1920s. Gradually, however, tastes changed, Lawson's marriage ended, he was increasingly short of funds, and he turned to alcohol. He found a teaching job at Broadmoor Academy, Colorado, and met Katherine and Royce Powell, who became his benefactors. Some of his last paintings were done when visiting the Powells in Florida. In 1939 he was commissioned to do a mural for the Post Office in Short Hills, New Jersey. Just after its completion, Lawson was found dead, probably of a heart attack, on a Florida shore.

Source: Curatorial files, Berry-Hill, Henry & Sidney, Ernest Lawson, American Impressionist, F. Lewis Publishers Ltd., Leigh-on-Sea, England, 1968; Perlman, Bennard B., The Immortal Eight, Exposition Press, NY, 1962

Joan K. Yanni
October 1996

MacCameron: New Orleans Man

New Orleans Man (14.4), the eye-catching portrait of a black man, was painted by Robert Lee MacCameron, an artist once renowned, now almost forgotten. The painting was part of the recent exhibition Facing History: The Black Image in American Art 1719-1940, organized by the Corcoran Gallery.

Robert Lee MacCameron was born in Chicago in 1866, and grew up in Wisconsin. Little is known about his parents; the biographical sketch in the Corcoran catalog says that MacCameron's father, Thomas, was a member of the Wisconsin state legislature. In any case, the family was of modest means. Robert spent his early life surrounded by forests in which he learned to be an expert woodsman and rifle shot. The locale offered little in the way of formal education, and MacCameron used to say that he never had more than a year of school. At the age of fourteen, he was doing a man's work in a lumber camp.

A chance acquaintance with an itinerant French drawing teacher awakened his interest in art and gave him a chance to develop his talent. By saving his wages he was able to go to Chicago, where he studied art at the YMCA. His drawing skill brought him success as an illustrator in Chicago and New York, and when he was 22 he went on to London, where he briefly illustrated Boy's Own, a children's publication. Success in London made it possible for him to move to Paris where he received a scholarship to the École des Beaux-Arts. He went on to study under Jean Leon Gérôme, and after Gérôme's death, with James McNeill Whistler.

MacCameron received some recognition during these years, but very little money, so that living was always a struggle. In addition, he was a perfectionist who destroyed much of his early work because it did not satisfy him.

In 1902 he married Louise Van Voorhis of Rochester. How they met is not clear, but a son was born in 1904 and a daughter in 1906. With marriage, his fortune changed.

In 1904 he gained his first public recognition when his painting Mi-Careme won honorable mention in the Salon des Artistes Français. (He later destroyed the painting.) In 1906 he won a gold medal; and that same year was awarded the Hors Concours Medal, the highest honor a foreign artist can gain in France, for Groupe d'Amis (a group of absinthe drinkers), which now hangs in the Corcoran. He was interested in the poor and created sensitive, insightful pictures of them. (In addition, to New Orleans Man, MAG owns MacCameron's The Absinthe Drinker, 26.62).

Fame and success quickly followed. It is ironic that, though MacCameron was always interested in showing the plight of the destitute, his popular acclaim came from his portraits of the rich and famous. He now traveled between Europe and America, painting portraits of the most influential in society, politics and art: Presidents McKinley and Taft, Chief Justice Harlan, Rodin, Whistler, Gertrude Stein, Sir Thomas Beecham, Mrs. John Astor, Mrs. E.H. Harriman, Mrs. Arthur Iselin. He maintained studios in London, Paris and New York and was a member of the National Association of Portrait Painters, The Paris Society of American Painters, and the National Academy of Design.

In 1912 his career was at its peak. He was awarded the medal of the French Legion of Honor, and the first American exhibition of his work had been scheduled. Tragically, in December of 1912, he died suddenly in New York City of a heart ailment. He was 46.

His paintings show his skill as a draftsman, his facility with paint, and his ability to show the character of his subjects, whether street people or men and women of importance.

(Sources: Curatorial files; short biographical sketch by Robert F. MacCameron of Rochester, 1974: Dictionary of American Biography, New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1933, pp. 566-67; Catalogue of an Exhibition of Works by the late Robert MacCameron and a Collection of Oil Paintings and Water Colors by Walter Gay of Paris, The Memorial Art Gallery, 1913.

Joan K. Yanni

September 1993

St. Sebastian

A recent acquisition joined St. Peter, St. Barbara, and other MAG sculptures in the Northern Renaissance gallery. St. Sebastian (91.1) was purchased for the Gallery's permanent collection after a long search for a noteworthy example of Gothic sculpture from late medieval Germany.

The statue is an exceptionally fine piece of Bavarian work from around 1470. It has been associated with two sculptures from the high altar of the church of the Cistercian Abbey of Furstenfeld, near Munich, and is attributed to the Master of Furstenfeld, thought to be sculptor Ulrich Neunhauser, (1405-1472).

The piece is 54 inches high, carefully carved of lindenwood, and was once polychromed. Its face is serene and thoughtful, its hair soft and flowing. The youthful figure is covered by a mantle which is held across the waist by the right hand, as if to cover the saint's nakedness. The saint's left wrist is tied to a branch; the hand is missing. The bare left arm and the upper body show marks of arrows, sign of Sebastian's martyrdom. The toes of the left foot and the arrows, once jutting from the figure, are also missing. Under the garment, the right leg crosses over the left in a graceful, slightly forward movement.

Since the back of the statue is hollowed out and the legs and figure elongated, it was no doubt made to be placed near—or against—a wall and to be seen from below. It was probably once part of an altarpiece, but it is not clear whether it was to stand alone or as part of a larger composition.

Though details about St. Sebastian cannot be verified, he is said to have been born in Milan in the third century. He was an officer in Diocletian's Imperial Guard, which he entered in order to give help to the Christians being persecuted by Rome.

When it was discovered that he was a Christian, he was sentenced to be slain with arrows. Though he was left for dead by his executioners, the arrows had not pierced a vital organ (a matter not always noted by painters and sculptors), and he was found and nursed back to health by a woman named Irene, widow of another martyr. When his survival was discovered, he was battered to death with cudgels and his body thrown into the Roman sewer.

Sebastian is a favorite subject of Renaissance and Counter-Reformation artists and was often used as a vehicle for portraying the male nude. He is usually shown pierced with arrows, often with a soldier's helmet and shield at his feet. Some paintings reveal a background of the Palatine Hill in Rome, where his death was said to have taken place.

Since the ancients believed that Apollo's arrows caused disease, and since Sebastian escaped death by arrow, he was thought to be one of the saints who could protect against pestilence.

Docents can use the statue in tours of "Passport to the Past" or on any tours of sculpture or European art. It can be compared to the sculptures of St. Peter, St. Barbara and others now in the same gallery, or to the Spanish crucifix and the statues of Mary and John in the Fountain Court.

Or Sebastian and his arrows, though missing, could be used on a tour of clues to the saints: Peter's key, Catherine's wheel, Francis's stigmata, Barbara's tower, Elizabeth's bread, Magdalene's ointment jar, etc.

Source: Curatorial files; Hall, James: Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, Harper and Rowe, 1974. For further information see Baxendall, Michael, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1981.

Joan K. Yanni

September 1991

Kathleen McEnery (Cunningham)

Whether we discuss the Ashcan school or women in art, one painting demands attention: Woman with Ermine Collar (83.13) by Kathleen McEnery (Cunningham).

Kathleen McEnery (1885-1971) was known to many Rochesterians—even some docents! She was a friend of Charlotte Whitney Allen, Hildegarde Watson, Helen Ellwanger, Clayla Ward, Fritz Trautman—to name only a few. She was a member of the MAG art committee from 1945 to 1971, and was named an honorary life member of the MAG Board in 1927. She was said to be elegant and slightly arrogant and a great conversationalist—and she hosted formal luncheons at which she personally tossed salad at the table.

McEnery was born in Brooklyn but grew up in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. She studied at New York's Pratt Institute, then became a student of Robert Henri, first at the New York School of Art and later (the summers of 1906 and 1908) with his class in Spain. When Henri indicated that she had taken enough formal classes, she went to Paris, living in a pension with an older cousin as chaperone. Woman with Ermine Collar was painted there.

After a productive period of work in Paris, she returned to New York City and rented a studio with other artists on the upper West Side. In 1913 artist friend Leon Kroll submitted two of her works to the Armory Show; both were accepted. They were rather daring for a woman of that era: Going to the Bath was a study of two female nudes, and The Dream, a half-length female nude. Both are now owned by the National Museum of American Art.

In 1914 McEnery married Francis E. Cunningham, whom she had met through his cousin, Rufus Dryer, an artist who was also a Henri student. Cunningham was part of the Cunningham Carriage Factory in Rochester (the source of our Aurora weathervane), which made carriages, then automobiles and armored cars and farm machinery.

McEnery continued to paint regularly in Rochester, even after the births of her daughter and two sons, in a studio she had built onto her home. Eventually her interest in painting gave way to her family needs and social responsibilities. She was among the founders of the Harley School and had been interested in the Women's Suffrage movement. Her last exhibit was held at the Feragil Art Gallery, New York City, in the early 1930s. She died in 1971 at the age of 85. A memorial exhibition of 30 paintings was organized by the Gallery in her honor in 1972.

Today the largest body of her work is owned by her family, particularly her daughter Joan Cunningham Williams and her son Peter Cunningham. MAG owns six of her works. Two remain in the Cunningham house, now part of the Museum and Science Center; a portrait of former RPO concert master Eugene Goosens hangs in the Eastman School of Music; and a portrait of Charlotte Whitney Allen is in the MAG library. There are probably more of her paintings in Rochester, but they are not on record in our files. Woman with Ermine Collar can be used in many tours: women in art, Rochester art (along with the Charlotte Whitney Allen collection of Calders and the Watson collection of sculptures) and the Ashcan school.

McEnery's painting has a modern look to it: the figure is at the front of the canvas, looking

directly at the viewer; the background is dark, like that in many of Henri's portraits. Who is the woman? So far she is a mystery. Does she look like a lady, dressed to go to tea? Or is she a Paris prostitute with worn shoes and shabby dress? Look closely and decide.

Source: Curatorial files

Joan K. Yanni

May 1991

Joseph Mondini

Docents who have had to coax their tours away from the harpsichord in the Baroque room in order to look at other art have asked about the history of the eye-catching instrument.

The harpsichord (77.140) was built in the studio of Joseph Mondini, a native of Imola, Italy, and was signed and dated 1696. Where it went immediately after its completion is unclear, but it is known that Mondini worked for Pope Alexander VIII, Ferdinand de Medici, and other notable patrons. Our provenance dates from the late 19th century, when the instrument was owned by American actress Ada Rehan and used by impresario David Belasco in Broadway productions such as The School for Scandal and The Taming of the Shrew. After Rehan's death, it passed into a Rochester private collection. A “Friend of the Gallery” presented it to MAG in 1977.

Harpsichord experts who examined the instrument for the Gallery found it to be of outstanding quality and said that it could be restored to its original condition. The instrument was sent, therefore, to the studio of Lynette Tsiang in Somerville, Massachusetts, to be restored. The case was restored in Oberlin, Ohio, at the Intermuseum Conservation Laboratory. Because harpsichords such as ours were often kept in decorative cases, then taken out and placed on tables to be played, it is not certain that the painted case is contemporary with the instrument. It would not date from much later, however, since the heavy floral decoration and putti are painted in a style dating from either the late 17th or early 18th century.

The landscape scene, showing Apollo and the Muses in a wooded setting, is very much in the style of Gaspard Poussin, a brother-in-law of the French history painter Nicholas Poussin. The scene, with its classical temple and waterfall, is probably meant to represent the Roman ruins at Tivoli, a site popular in the 18th century.

Have you noticed that the painter created two scenes in one? The main landscape is painted from left to right across the lid, with the horizon parallel to the back hinges. A second scene emerges if only the front part of the lid is turned back: the ground is then seen from left to right parallel to the keyboard. The legs and frame may not be original, and could have been made later to support the case.

One thing is certain: the range of the keyboard was altered to increase the span from 54 to 58 keys, presumably during the 18th century. The original had walnut keys with ivory keytops; those added are fruitwood with bone.

In addition, the base strings were shortened and the tail of the case was cut down to adapt to the new shape. Since neither the decorative paintings on the top and sides nor the landscape on the inside of the lid seem interrupted by this change, they were probably executed after the case was cut down.

The harpsichord was played only once at the Gallery after restoration: at a patrons' dinner on June 6, 1993, when Ross Wood, a harpsichord expert with the Eastman School of Music's Sibley Music Library, gave a lecture and concert using the instrument. After the concert a crack was found on the right side of the cypress soundboard.

Two trips back to Massachusetts for repairs and further restoration followed, until both the Gallery and Tsiang decided that it could not be permanently repaired without complete rebuilding—a procedure which would erase the authenticity of the piece.

The harpsichord now stands as a beautiful museum piece attracting the attention of all visitors and recalling more glamorous times.

Material excerpted from curatorial files and October, 1981, Gallery Notes)

Joan K. Yanni
December, 1989

Jerome Myers, Angels of the Festa

Angels of the Festa by Jerome Myers (20.4) is an enigmatic painting, with its dark background, subdued colors and flattened perspective. Its theme is a religious celebration, and its people are taking part with a sense of subdued joy.

"Festa" is the Italian word for feast, celebration, or saint's day. And among the Italian Catholic immigrants who lived on New York City's Lower East Side, their saint's feast day was the time for celebration. Usually the saint had been the patron saint of their province in Italy; and yearly, on a summer Sunday, they held a street festival in his or her honor.

A procession after the last Mass started the day. Men of the parish carried the statue of the saint set upon a paten, along with smaller statues from the church and banks of candles in wedding-cake arrangements. In the afternoon, the festivities began. Always there was ethnic food and socializing. Often there was a band concert. It was time for families to enjoy their religion, their friends and each other.

In our painting, darkness has come and the festa is about to end. The procession and musicians have disbanded in front of a statue of the honored saint surrounded by candles, banners, and the Italian flag. The saint is a bishop, as we can see by his miter, or hat. Perhaps he is San Gennaro (St. Jerome), whose feast is still celebrated in September on New York's Bleecker Street. But the name of the church, which can be seen in the painting, is St. Ciro, a rather obscure saint but important enough to Italian immigrants to have a church named after him. The location of a statue is puzzling. It seems to be in a free-standing shrine, since onlookers lean out of upstairs windows on either side. Little girls in their best dresses—part of the "angels" title—hold lighted candles as neighbors and families look on. And in the dark sky above the festa, two blissful angels—this time the kind with wings—can be seen throwing roses onto the crowd below.

Jerome Myers (1867-1940), the painter of this scene, was born into poverty in Petersburg, Virginia. He managed to get to New York City when he was eighteen, and while he worked by day as a sign painter and photo-engraver, he took evening art courses at Cooper Union and at the Art Students League. He studied under George de Forest Brush and learned from the works of old masters, but his style and subject matter were his own. He felt a kinship with the city's poor, and they became his theme—one frowned upon by the academicians.

Myers had chosen drawings, etchings, and pastels as his medium; but in 1902 he met the noted art dealer William Macbeth, who liked his work, became his dealer, and encouraged him to turn to painting. He had his first one-man exhibition in 1908, began to exhibit widely, and ultimately joined John Sloan and his circle, also painters of the city.

Myers, Henri and Sloan were among the artists who showed in the 1910 exhibition of Independent Artists, the first non-juried show ever held by and for American artists. Myers also helped to organize the Armory Show of 1913. He had hoped that the show would promote American artists; but Arthur B. Davies invited European painters to participate, and the Europeans, the Cubists in particular, stole the show.

Though Myers never was a huge success in selling his paintings, he eventually received prizes from the National Academy and the Carnegie Institute. His pictures of the slums were idealized, sympathetic and dignified. His children, unlike Luks's dirty urchins, were clean and happy and in their best clothes. His people exude a spiritual happiness and a hope for the future.

Angels of the Festa can be compared to any of the Ashcan paintings. Myers's loose brush stroke is similar to that of Sloan in Election Night (41.33) and both pictures show celebrations. Myers’s painting can also be compared with Lawrence's Summer Street Scene in Harlem (91.5), or discussed in connection with ceremonies in the African gallery.

Source: Curatorial files; Bennard B. Perlman, The Immortal Eight.

Joan K. Yanni

May 1992

DOUGLAS GORSLINE, Bar Scene

What's going on in Douglas Gorsline's narrative painting, Bar Scene (42.19)? A man, with hat, drink, cigarette and leer, has placed his hand on the shoulder of a woman seated at the bar. She is well dressed, and though the top buttons of her blouse are provocatively open, she looks sad and resigned rather than inviting. Is she his date and wishing she weren't? Is he trying to pick her up? The patrons in the background are talking among themselves, ignoring the central couple. (In 1942, without television, bar patrons were forced to entertain themselves by conversing!) What happens next? Does the woman decide to leave—or to stay and make the best of things? The viewer must finish the story.

Douglas Gorsline (1913-1985) was born in Rochester to a wealthy and prominent family who came to Rochester in 1816. The Gorslines were contractors and builders; they had built the aqueduct that carried the Erie Canal over the Genesee, as well as the Rochester Savings Bank and other notable landmarks. Douglas received his first formal art training at the Mechanics Institute (now Rochester Institute of Technology) and took some courses in figure drawing at MAG's Creative Workshop. In 1931 he went to the Yale University School of Fine Arts for a year, then enrolled in New York's Art Students League. His "arrival" on the New York art scene came about in 1938 when one of his paintings was selected for the Whitney Museum's annual exhibition of contemporary American art. The following year he had his first one-man show at the Arden Gallery in New York.

Gorsline was painting at a time when realistic, narrative themes dominated American art, even though Europe was experimenting with abstraction. Though there were a few abstractionists in the 1938 Whitney show, none won acclaim. A non-objective painting by Stuart Davis, and Ilya Bolotowsky's study of organic forms were declared "baffling." The Art Students League itself was in debate over the direction of art. In 1932 John Sloan had resigned as president of the League because expressionist George Grosz had been refused a teaching post. Yet Stuart Davis taught there in 1931-32, and abstractionist Hans Hofmann in 1932-33; but they were among the few voices of modernism in a faculty that espoused realism.

Gorsline was probably drawn to the League by the reputation of his mentor, realist Kenneth Hayes Miller. From the mid-1930 into the '50s, Gorsline pictured fashionable, "modern" men and women in his paintings and prints, such as those in MAG's Bar Scene and Check-Up (46.60) (part of the 1995 exhibit, Art By and About Women) in which a 1940s woman, in clinging dress, fur jacket and wide-brimmed hat, checks her make-up in her compact mirror on a city street corner. The subject of both these paintings was Gorsline's first wife, Elizabeth "Ziggy" Perkins, daughter of Scribners editor Maxwell Perkins, who molded the manuscripts of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and in particular, Thomas Wolfe. Through these literary connections, Gorsline began a lasting friendship with Wolfe, whom he painted 5 or 6 times and whose Look Homeward, Angel he illustrated in a special edition after Wolfe's death.

Gorsline's continued interest in narrative painting and his association with the publishing world brought about his writing and illustrating a history of costume, What People Wore, in 1952. He taught drawing at the National Academy of Design from 1959 to 1962, then began a series of illustration projects for Sports Illustrated, which he continued until the late '70s. In 1965 his search for new material prompted him to move to France to paint. He was able to combine his painting with illustrating and achieve the highest standards in both.

Always interested in portraying movement in art, as Marcel Duchamp had in Nude Descending a Staircase, Gorsline attempted to join Cubism to realism in both his painting and his sports illustrations. He began to work in a series of sequential frames, which he called "sequential simultaneity," using fractured vertical panels to show ongoing action—in a horse race, on a basketball court, skiing, or even in landscapes and portraits. His sequential work received favorable reviews, though it never attracted imitators.

Gorsline enjoyed the role of artist/reporter. He loved to travel to sporting events, recreating them with his perceptive eye and keen draftsmanship. In 1973 he was invited to the People's Republic of China to paint its landscape and people. In 1975 he began a series of children's picture books for Random House and illustrated a book of nursery rhymes as well as the Clement Moore classic, The Night Before Christmas (now out of print). Some of his illustrations from the 1960s and '70s are among his finest works. He died suddenly in France in 1985 at the age of 72. A retrospective exhibit of his works was held at the Gallery in 1990. His widow, Marie, who had traveled with him and promoted his works, has created the Musée Gorsline, in Bussy-le-Grand, France, to honor his works.

Source: Curatorial files, CWA Library archives, Landmark Society library.

Joan K. Yanni

December, 19971998

Update: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently purchased Gorsline's illustrations for Thomas Wolfe's classic, Look Homeward, Angel, and is making them available to the Gallery prior to their exhibition in Asheville, North Carolina for Wolfe's 100th birthday celebration. They will be exhibited in the Forman Gallery in 1999. Curator of Exhibitions Marie Via wrote the overview of Gorsline's career for the catalog that will accompany the exhibit.

WILLIAM GROPPER, The Opposition

Both William Gropper's The Opposition (51.5) and MAG's print of the same name were executed by the artist in response to what he considered government censorship. The works are current enough to appear on editorial pages today, when committees are discussing censorship of web sites and Congress has proposed legislation that would restrict the content of federally funded art programs.

During the early 1940s Gropper, always a crusader for freedom of speech, stated, "the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives have had such an influence on American life, good and bad, that it has even affected the arts and the cultural development of our country. Only recently one blazing speech of a reactionary representative resulted in...dismissing the Graphic Division of the OWI (Office of War Information) and nullifying art reportage for the War Department. In my painting of the Senate, called Opposition, I have portrayed the type of representative that is opposed to progress and culture."

A staunch member of the social realism movement in American painting, Gropper (1897-1977) was born in New York City's Lower East Side. His grandparents were immigrants. His father, a scholarly man with wide interests, could speak eight languages but had trouble holding down a job. His mother, a seamstress who took piecework home to do at night, supported the family. Gropper dropped out of high school to take a job working 12 hours a day, six days a week, for $5. Work in a sweatshop made him an advocate of liberal causes for the rest of his life.

Gropper began to take art courses at night in the Ferrer School under George Bellows and Robert Henri. He was awarded a scholarship to the National Academy of Design, but failed to complete his course there. The school was too rigid after the fellowship and freedom of criticism he had found with Bellows and Henri.

His first job as a political cartoonist came with the New York Herald Tribune. He continued as cartoonist and illustrated for various magazines through the twenties.

In 1936 he had his first exhibit as a painter, though he had been painting quietly for fifteen years. His canvasses had many of the same qualities as his prints: the same distortion, the same exaggeration of figures with iron-hard contours. He combined a muted palette with stippled textures and a dramatic use of white pigment. He had a marvelous sense of movement and action.

The Opposition, with its distorted forms and its placement of rude, inattentive, gossipy figures among empty chairs, reveals Gropper's contempt for what he considered to be an ineffective and indifferent bureaucratic system.

Gropper editorialized in paint the social maladies of the ‘30s and ‘40s. Along with many other artists, he was blacklisted by McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee. Throughout his life he continued to encourage social consciousness and reform.

The Opposition was among fourteen paintings purchased by the Gallery in 1950 from the Encyclopedia Brittanica collection with the help of former Senator William Benton and the Marion Stratton Gould Fund. Other paintings in the purchase, which became the core of our early 20th century collection, include Thomas Hart Benton's Boomtown (51.1), John Sloan's Chinese Restaurant (51.12), George Luks's London Cabby (51.9), Stuart Davis's Landscape with Garage Lights (51.3), Arthur Dove's Cars in a Sleetstorm (51.4), Ralston Crawford's Whitestone Bridge (51.2), Georgia O'Keeffe's Jawbone and Fungus (51.11), George Grosz's The Wanderer (51.6), John Marin's Marin Island - Small Point, Maine (51.10), Max Weber's Discourse (51.13), Walt Kuhn's Clown (51.8), Robert Gwathmey's Non-Fiction (51.7), and Karl Zerbe's Troupers (51.14).

Joan K. Yanni

April, 1990

CHILDE HASSAM

It is often customary to whisk our tours away from the nudity that greets them throughout the Gallery. The tittering and poking that sometimes occurs has long been something of a problem to us, and we each have tried to work out solutions. Escape is one method! I would like to suggest that for our older students and certainly for adults, a head-on exploration of works which include nudes. We could begin with the work of America's leading Impressionist—Childe Hassam.

Hassam, born in 1859 in Boston, studied in Paris in the late 1880s, was exposed to the work of the Impressionists, and became one of America's first converts. In 1898, with J. Alden Weir, he founded the group of American Impressionists known as The Ten, which included John Twachtman and Edmund Tarbell.

The Bathers (63.27) is believed to have been painted as a mural decoration for the residence of Charles Erskine Scott Wood of Portland, Oregon, a West Coast lawyer, collector, amateur artist and good friend of Hassam. On one of Hassam’s visits, Wood took him camping in the Oregon wilds, and some forty canvasses resulted. In a letter to Weir, Wood wrote that he wanted his "bric-a-brac house" to get back "to Greek simplicity." In addition to inviting Hassam to do a mural for his library, Wood lined up Weir to do a painting for his dining room and Albert Pinkham Ryder a work for the hall!

Hassam's mural was painted in New York City and transported to Portland to be installed by the artist. In later years, when the house was torn down, the mural was removed, and Wood gave it to his daughter Nan Wood Honeyman. It was later acquired by Mr. and Mrs. Ogden Phipps of New York, who gave it to the Memorial Art Gallery in 1963.

The painting has been described as a "pastoral scene full of sunshine and warmth against an exquisite background of bluish tints." In all likelihood, it was inspired by Hassam's visits to the Isles of Shoals, which lie ten miles off the US mainland near the New Hampshire-Maine border. Appledore, the gem of the nine islands, was the location of the gardens of his friend, the writer Celia Thaxter. Hassam's painting of Thaxter in her garden appears in the frontispiece of her book, Island Garden. It has been suggested that Hassam owed a debt to Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, painter of the grand murals at the Parthenon and the Sorbonne in Paris and in the Boston Public Library.

As we examine this oil painting, we see seven nudes, the center figure holding a mirror bearing a reflection; several are in the water; several are wearing garlands. Trees are painted in clumps, and there are about twenty bushes and many rock formations. At the horizon one can see outcroppings—other islands, perhaps? The water is turquoise, the cloud yellow, orange and white. The spaces between the dabs of paint suggest the dappling of the sun. The broken color method with alternate streaks and stripes of pure color in close proximity is certainly reflective of Impressionism. The general composition is symmetrical. It is clear that Hassam was a seeker of sunlight and bright skies.

There is nothing vulgar about these nudes. Some critics have suggested that Hassam appeared to have difficulty in painting them: they seem flat—almost as if they were pasted on the landscape in a decorative arrangement. (We might compare them to the realistic nude in John Koch's Interlude.)

There is much that can be discussed about this painting on our tours: the spatial relationships; the contrast of horizontal and vertical; the blue sea vs. the amber red cliffs; the contrasts and similarities in the brush strokes of The Bathers and the other Impressionists in our collection.

And let us not ignore the judicious placement of this painting in the Gallery, near Piping Pan and Bacchante and Faun. There are marvelous tie-ins here. Pan, the Greek god of shepherds and hunters, constantly wandered through woods, playing and dancing with nymphs. A faun, half human/half goat, was god of the woods and herds, and was a follower of Pan and Bacchus, god of wine. The bacchante were worshippers of Bacchus, enjoying dancing, drinking and revelry. Nymphs were maidens who guarded various realms of nature: hills, mountains, seas, rivers, trees and forests.

We will soon see more of Hassam's Impressionistic works when The Impressionists' New York opens later this month. Meanwhile, have a long, good look at The Bathers.

Joan Baden

February, 1995

GEORGE MICHAEL HAUSHALTER, Plowhorses

The serene and charming painting, Landscape with Farmer and Plowhorses (89.65), was given to the Gallery by docent Beula Sonders in memory of her husband, Samuel. It is the work of a painter well known in the Rochester of his time, and remembered now through a series of works he has left in Rochester homes and area churches.

George Michael Haushalter (1862-1943) was born in Portland, Maine, but spent much of his early life in Europe. He studied at the Académie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris as well as in Madrid, Munich and Florence.

It was in Italy where he was studying frescos and tempera paint that he met J. Sherlock Andrews of Rochester. Haushalter was deeply influenced by the Old Masters and church art, and had begun painting religious themes. Andrews saw Haushalter's work, was impressed by it, and commissioned the artist to paint a memorial to his mother in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on Averill Avenue in Rochester.

Once in Rochester, Haushalter designed windows and altar decorations not only for Andrews, but for other influential Rochesterians as well. He married Clara Wilder, the descendant of A. Carter Wilder, Rochester's first mayor, and moved to West Avenue.

He joined the Rochester Art Club and became a member of the American Watercolor Society. He continued to produce religious art for local churches and to sell his works to Rochester art patrons. In 1939 an exhibition of his early paintings was installed at the Brodhead Gallery in Rochester. Portraits, landscapes, and scenes of the marine coast, where he spent his summers, were included.

Though there is no record of Haushalter children, the artist's interest in the young is evident in that he taught art classes to children at Iola, the county tuberculosis sanitorium, for more than ten years. Here he gave instructions in drawing and painting, often donating the art materials.

Haushalter died at the age of 81 in Sodus Point. After his death, the Rochester Historical Society mounted a memorial exhibition of his work.

Strangely enough, Haushalter is known in Rochester as much for reviving the custom of burning Christmas trees on Twelfth Night as for his art. The headline "Death Claims Artist, Father of Trees Rite," headlined his obituary in the Times Union, August 9, 1943. The article notes that he introduced the community burning of Christmas greens at Cobbs Hill Park in 1932, and it became one of Rochester’s "picturesque winter ceremonies."

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (still on Averill Avenue but now called Calvary St. Andrew’s Parish) is rich in examples of his legacy: a triptych of the Virgin of the Thornblossoms commissioned by Sherlock Andrews; a large mural of the Visit of the Magi, given by Mrs. James Sibley Watson in memory of her mother Mrs. Hiram Sibley; a mural depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds. The memorial window in St. James Episcopal Church was also done by Haushalter, as was a window in the Asbury Methodist Church.

MAG's painting shows what is probably a Brittany scene: two horses and a farmer plowing the land. What seems at first glance to be a somber, earth-toned scene becomes a softly glowing landscape in pinks and blues as we look more closely, with a house in the distance and a pond in the right center of the painting. It can be compared to the rainbow colors of River Pond and to other landscapes or farm scenes.

Sources: Newspapers including Democrat and Chronicle, December 22, 1929; Times Union, August 9, 1943; Times Union, November 19, 1943.

Joan K.Yanni

April 1992

MARTIN JOHNSON HEADE - Hayfields and Hummingbirds

Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) was a late bloomer. He spent much of his life striving for recognition, but acclaim came only in the 1940s—forty years after his death. He is now known as 19th-century America's only painter to excel in both landscapes and still life (his orchid paintings).

MAG owns two excellent works by Heade: Newbury Hayfield at Sunset (75.21) and Hummingbird with Cattleya and Dendrobium Orchids (76.3). Hummingbird has been chosen as the keynote for the 1998 Art in Bloom.

Heade began to paint early in life, but did not seem to find his niche until he was in his forties. Born in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, before he was twenty he had studied with Edward Hicks, the naive painter (See page 38). His early works, dating from 1839, were mainly portraits. He also produced a few genre scenes and landscapes similar to those of the Hudson River School, which was popular at the time.

Heade was a compulsive traveler. As a young man he spent time in Italy, France and England. He traveled over much of America, painting, speculating in land, and probably trying other professions. In the 1850s he lived in St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Trenton, NJ. At 40 he had not yet produced a memorable painting.

In 1859 he moved to New York City, renting quarters in the Tenth Street Studio Building, which housed many of the leading landscape painters of the time. He became a friend and hunting companion of Frederic Church, but his works never brought the prices or the acclaim paid to his friend.

It was in 1862 that Heade first saw the marshes near Newburyport, Massachusetts—scenes that were to enchant him for the rest of his life. Here was a beautiful, changing marsh crossed by winding rivers, in some seasons covered with huge haystacks as far as the eye could see. Though his first marsh paintings vary in quality, he soon captured the drama of changing seasons and weather. Often he pictures farmers working with the hay, but these figures are never the main focus of the canvas. His works concentrate on the landscape and the atmosphere. Ultimately he painted more than 100 pictures of the haystacks he saw in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and, late in life, in Florida. He was particularly interested in the drama of nature: dawn and sunset, the approach or waning of a sudden storm, combining in countless ways the haystacks, river, and changing weather. Today he is considered one of the masters of luminism, the technique of capturing light and atmospheric effects on canvas.

Heade's haystack theme brings to mind the haystacks series of Monet, but Heade was never an Impressionist. Though both artists were interested in light, Heade never lost the outline of his objects, while Monet was interested in optical experiments which sometimes caused his subjects to fade into atmosphere.

In 1863 Heade traveled to Brazil to make sketches for a book on hummingbirds, The Gems of Brazil. While the project was never completed, Heade was knighted for his work by Dom Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil. He became a devoted observer of the birds, depicting them in their tropical habitat with the large, lush orchids they favored. He described himself as "almost a monomaniac on hummingbirds," studying their habits as well as their appearance.

Heade revisited South America in 1866, and began a series of dramatic paintings of orchids and hummingbirds. The combination of rich color and subject matter with a tropical landscape makes these works unique.

MAG's Hummingbird with Cattleya and Dendrobium Orchid is one of the series of paintings that dominated the last twenty years of Heade's life. It is believed that he found both the birds and the flowers in private gardens and greenhouses in New York, because, though many varieties of Cattleya labiata that he painted are found in Brazil, other varieties are non-Brazilian flowers. For example, the three small dendrobium orchids at the bottom of MAG's painting are native to the East Indies (the large orchid is the Cattleya). The tropical landscape and foliage—mossy branches and palm trees shaded in mist—were probably painted from memory.

But even Heade's orchid and hummingbird paintings did not bring him success. They were considered too exotic in the Victorian world. Traditionally associated with sex and lust, the orchid was not considered a fit subject for art. Yet it was popular among scientists and botanists, and Heade painted it with scientific accuracy.

Heade did not marry until 1883, when he was 64 years of age. He and his young wife settled permanently in St. Augustine, Florida, where he won his first patron, developer Henry M. Flagler. He continued to paint there until his death in 1904.

MORE ABOUT HAYFIELDS

There are, at the present time, over 100 known "Hayfield" paintings by Martin Johnson Heade. MAG's, dated 1862, is one of the first that he painted.

What were these hayfields? They were salt marsh grasses, varying in usefulness. Some of the grasses grew 10 feet high, but the more useful grass grew about two feet high. This was the grass that was harvested, but only when the tides were running particularly low, and it was used as fodder for the farmers' cattle.

The mowing would take from three to four days to complete, and then raking and "cocking" (forming the conical piles) would take another two days. The hay had to be stacked before the tides rose high enough to cover the marsh again. It was stacked on "staddles," large stakes set in the marsh in a circle with a diameter of perhaps twelve feet. They could be well over twenty feet high, holding from one to three tons of hay. Salt grass keeps best out of doors, so the stacks might be stored many months before being hauled off by boat or over the ice in winter. By the early 1900s, harvesting salt grass had diminished, as many workers had left the area following the lure of the West.

Source: Curatorial files; Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., Life and Works of Martin Johnson Heade, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1975

Joan K. Yanni

April, 1998

RICHARD HIRSCH, Ceramic Artist

Richard Hirsch is a ceramic artist whose work combines antiquity with contemporary art. His sculptures present an awareness of man's ongoing interaction with tools and materials. He deals with the timelessness and universality of shape and form, the connections between past and present.

All during his career Hirsch has been interested in archeology and the antique. Objects of every age can be seen on the shelves of his 19th-century farmhouse in Churchville. The bronze tripod vessels of Ancient China's Shang Dynasty and artifacts from 16th-century Japanese tea ceremonies rest next to Pre-Columbian clay vessels and contemporary ceramics.

In his own work, Hirsch combines primitive and contemporary, Eastern and Western traditions. To this end, he often does raku firing, which offers the appearance of age even in new work. He says he is not a raku artist, but uses the technique because its qualities are consistent with his artistic goals.

MAG has two of Hirsch's large, vertical works in its collection, both on display in the contemporary gallery: Pedestal Bowl with Weapon Artifact #9 (96.78), and Altar Bowl with Weapon Artifact #21 (96.32).

Each work is made up of a number of pieces: the first has three, the second, four. In Pedestal, the elongated base holds a rough, almost unworked vessel or bowl, on which is balanced a blade shape. Altar Bowl is built of a shorter pedestal or base, a round altar which resembles metal and which, in turn, is a platform for a large vessel with balanced blade. Both sculptures reflect the artist's interest in vessels and tools as ritualistic rather than utilitarian objects.

MAG's works are earthenware. To create the works, Hirsch modeled each piece, then low fired it in an electric kiln. After firing, he painted some parts (the long pedestal of the first sculpture, for example) with acrylic lacquer. Other parts, such as the aqua altar bowl, he glazed and fired several times until he obtained the color and effect he desired. Raku, used for the bowl in the Pedestal piece, is the third technique used in the sculptures.

The raku technique comes from Japan and Zen Buddhism, where raku tea bowls were used in the Japanese tea ceremony as early as the 16th century. Since the bowls are typically formed from a coarse clay and the "accidental effects" from the firing give them a natural charm, raku fits into the Buddhist emphasis on a simple, unaffected way of living.

The raku process is dramatic and unpredictable. The body of the piece to be created is generally made of specially formulated clay, which is bisque-fired to harden the body—then glazed. It is then placed in a kiln and fired until the glaze begins to melt. Just before melting occurs, the piece is quickly removed from the kiln with tongs and placed in a container or pit filled with sawdust, straw or leaves—any material that will smother the work and prevent oxidation. This final step is usually done outdoors because of the smoke it creates.

The speed of the work, together with the smoke and flame, make raku firing a fascinating "happening." The procedure gives raku glazes a smoky, accidental quality, often unusual and varied. Oxides, stains and colorants used in raku decoration tend to develop fantastic color combinations. Hirsch's colors are largely those of worn stone, aged metal or the aqua of unearthed artifacts, and his finishes range from glossy to matte. His pieces are a mixture of control and spontaneity.

Hirsch's work is well known in Japan as well as in the Western world. His tea bowls are displayed in Japanese museums and shown with those of raku masters, a rare honor for a Westerner. Along with artist Paul Souldner, he was invited by the Japanese government to demonstrate "American Raku." Among those observing the demonstration was the reigning master of the fifteen-generation raku heritage. In recent years a teaching stint in Israel provided the inspiration for Hirsch to change his palette to the pale, natural colors of the desert environment.

Hirsch, born in New York City, is a graduate of RIT with an MFA in ceramics; he also holds a BS in art education from SUNY at New Paltz. He is professor of ceramics and ceramic sculpture at RIT's School for American Crafts and was an associate professor of ceramics at Boston University, where he taught a program in artisanry. His work is in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the American Crafts Museum, the Ohi Museum in Japan, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in British Columbia, and others. His art has been featured in publications such as The Craft and Art of Clay by Susan Peterson, and Raku, A Practical Approach by Steven Branfman.

Source: "Changing While Staying the Same: The Mid-Career Journey of Richard Hirsch," by Scott K. Meyer, and Ceramics, A Potter's Handbook by Glenn C. Nelson

Joan K. Yanni

June 1998

ANNA HYATT HUNTINGTON, Joan of Arc

The Gallery's statue of Joan of Arc (88.15) is the figure of a legendary woman who saved her country, and it was created with insight by a woman who was one of the most admired sculptors of her time.

ANNA HYATT HUNTINGTON (1876-1973) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her father was a Harvard professor of paleontology and her mother an amateur painter. Anna grew up with a series of unusual pets provided by her father, as well as access to a backyard studio where she and her older sister Harriet could sculpt. (Harriet was studying at the time with sculptor Henry Hudson Kitson.)

Although Anna had been looking toward a career as a violinist, she turned to sculpture after her sister asked her to create an animal for a group she was planning. Her first attempt was so successful that she began to take lessons, first from Kitson and later at the Art Students League and Syracuse University. Though her father encouraged her training, he advised her to rely more on direct observation of her subjects—their bones, muscles and movements—than on art instruction. She was interested mostly in animals, particularly horses, and made sketches in clay at stables, zoos and circuses. By 1906 she had sold enough of her work to travel to France and acquire a studio.

Anna had always been interested in Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who heard Voices telling her that she must become the savior of France. (Joan succeeded in getting the dauphin crowned and chasing the English from Orleans, only to be captured, tried as a witch, and burned at the stake.) Now in France, Joan's country, Anna's desire to create a statue of the Maid of Orleans became almost an obsession. She could picture an inspired Joan astride her horse, standing in her stirrups and saluting heaven with her uplifted sword. But the representation of Joan's horse was not as clear. Anna began to look for a mount that would express sturdiness, spirit and power. She found her ideal in a stable of delivery horses and went there each day to make clay sketches.

To make her Joan a real person rather than merely a suit of armor, Anna modeled the figure first, and added the armor afterwards. Her finished statue was cast in plaster and exhibited in the spring Paris Salon in 1910.

The sculpture was awarded an honorable mention by the Salon. It was said that the judges did not give it a medal because they could not believe that woman could have done the strenuous work alone.

Anna's Joan was seen by a member of a Franco-American committee looking for a sculptor to create a statue of Joan for a New York site. Anna was commissioned to do the work. For this new statue, an expert form the Metropolitan Museum provided medieval armor of the type Joan would have worn, and stones originally part of the tower of Rouen, where she was imprisoned, were brought from France for the base. The competed statue was placed in Riverside Drive and unveiled in 1915. In recognition of Anna's work, France awarded her the Purple Rosette of the Legion of Honor.

In 1921 Anna received a commission to design a commemorative medal for railroad heir Archer Milton Huntington, poet, art collector, and founder of museums. An admirer of all things Spanish, Huntington had translated Spanish works and founded the Hispanic Museum. Their relationship led to marriage in 1926—and to Anna's creation of the epic sculpture El Cid Campeador, a spirited figure of the Spanish hero riding into battle. One casting of the sculpture stands in the Hispanic Museum, NYC, another in Balboa Park, San Diego, and still another in Seville, Spain.

Anna continued with her prolific work even through a ten-year bout with tuberculosis. In her sculpture she began to use human as well as animal forms. In 1930 the Huntingtons bought 7000 acres in South Carolina and developed them into Brookgreen Gardens, including a wildlife refuge and a ten-acre outdoor American sculpture museum. In 1940 they purchased a farm in Connecticut. Anna took over the practical running of the farm in addition to working in a studio built on the grounds. Here she produced such works as the young Lincoln of The Prairie Years and the symbolic Youth Taming the Wild.

After her husband's death in 1955, Anna continued to produce amazing numbers of sculptures and receive countless honors. In 1960 she was named outstanding Woman of the Year by Who's Who in America. She worked in her studio until 1972, when she was 96. She died in 1973.

MAG’s Joan of Arc is a reduction—a small version of the original reworked on a smaller scale by the artist. It is marked #11 of a multiple edition cast by Gorham Company Founders.

Source of material: Curatorial files

Joan K.Yanni

June, 1995

OUTDOOR SCULPTURE

Docents enjoy taking their students outside to look at the sculpture on the Gallery grounds. Forgotten what it is?

Just outside the main doors, a pair of sculptures by Scottsville artist Nancy Jurs flanks the entrance. Called Emergence (96.9.1, 2), the sculptures are made of clay, and are hollow.

In the circle in front of the Gallery is the kinetic sculpture by George Rickey, Two Lines Up Excentric—Twelve Feet (94.44). Always “awesome,” it moves with the wind—and the blades never touch! (See article on page 91.)

If we begin on the grounds at Goodman and go toward Prince Street (east to west), the first sculpture we meet is Go (75.19) by Duayne Hatchett. It is made of aluminum plate and plexiglass. (Look for the plexiglass—it's there! It looks yellow-green from the front, clear in back.) Go is next to the walkway between the parking lot and the front of Cutler Union. Does it look like a sail? A boat? Does it move?

Just west of the front entrance to Cutler is Meridian (69.35), by Ettore Colla. Constructivist Colla has created an intersected circle resting on a small circle—all made of iron.

Near University, next to the sidewalk leading to Cutler is Ell II (77.89) by Larry Mohr; medium: aluminum beams. And on the lawn at University near the main entrance drive is Beverly Pepper's shining Vertical Ventaglio (78.195), constructed of stainless and carbon steel and painted with automotive paint. Is it a fan? Falling boxes? You can see your image in it as well as the reflection of traffic and the lovely Victorian houses across University Avenue.

On the lawn at University, also near the main entrance drive, is the minimalist Playground (70.57) by Tony Smith—medium: painted mild steel. (More about Smith on page 99)

Just west of University Avenue entrance drive is Converging Cubes (68.3), by William F. Sellers; medium: painted Corten steel. The sculpture is ever-changing as you walk around it.

In the court area in the alcove to the right of the front steps of the 1913 building—and visible through the windows in the Gill Education Center—are the cast bronze Mountain Piece (75.114), by Hilda Morris, and Six Cubes (67.21), another piece by William F. Sellers—this one of stainless steel. If you look carefully, the Morris piece becomes three folk dancers...or merely mountain peaks?

The most recent addition to that space is the group of three Penguins (89.56.1-3) by Blanca Will, former Creative Workshop instructor. The charming sculptures were designed in the 1920s, and the Wills family had them cast in bronze in 1989.

Suggestions for looking at these sculptures on a tour

(Adapted from a 1986 outline by former curator/educator Penny Knowles)

Movement

Are any of these pieces kinetic (incorporate actual movement) or is the movement implied? What kind of movement do they suggest? Why?

Texture

How many different textures do you see? Are some of them opposites? (rough-smooth, matte-shiny, etc.)

Size

Is the size of the piece important? Is it measured with the eye, the body, or its surroundings?

Color

Does its color change with the light? Does color enhance its effect? Is it harmonious with the surroundings or contrasting?

Mass and Volume

Sculpture has height, width and depth. It also has mass and volume, and can be referred to as having positive and negative space.

Which works have more mass, which more volume? What happens if you walk around them or look through them? If you took Bill Sellers's Converging Cubes and flattened it out, what would it look like?

Placement

Why do you think the pieces were placed where they are? Where else might they be? How do they add to the Museum grounds?

Content

What would you name any single sculpture?

Joan K. Yanni

June, 1989

WILLIAM ORDWAY PARTRIDGE, Memory

(Portions of the following are taken from an article by Curatorial Assistant Marie Via, written for the Averell Council newsletter. (Marie is now Curator of Exhibitions.) Further information about the artist has been added.

The hooded marble figure titled Memory (13.12) has been an imposing presence in the upper galleries for over 75 years. Gallery founder Emily Sibley Watson commissioned William Ordway Partridge to create the figure in remembrance of her son by a previous marriage, James G. Averell. Partridge also sculpted, from a photograph of the young man, the bas-relief plaque set into the marble pedestal above the epitaph that reads: "James G. Averell (1877-1904). He loved life, beauty and honor. His mother dedicates this building to his memory."

Due to Partridge's extended illness during the summer of 1913, work on the sculpture lagged behind schedule. When it became clear that Memory would not be finished in time for the Gallery's gala opening in October, a plaster copy was created for the occasion. The completed marble version was installed later that year.

James Averell was born in Rochester in 1877. When he graduated from Harvard in 1899, he decided to pursue the study of architecture. Like so many well-to-do men of his generation, he embarked upon a tour of Europe, immersing himself in the art and architecture of other cultures. He continued his studies at Harvard and in the spring of 1904 joined the firm of Herbert D. Hale in Boston. Tragically, at the age of only 27, he succumbed to typhoid fever a few months later, leaving behind a more striking reputation as a sportsman (he belonged to five hunt and polo clubs at the time of his death) than as an architect.

William Ordway Partridge (1861-1930) was born in Paris of American parents. He was graduated from Columbia College in New York, pursued acting for a year, then turned to art, and studied sculpture in Paris, Florence and Rome. In 1889 he established his studio in Milton, Massachusetts.

Partridge made his public debut in the 1893 Columbian Exposition, where he showed models for two full-length sculptures along with portrait busts of James Russell Lowell and Edward Everett Hale. Mainly a portrait sculptor known for his monumental public commissions, he created full-life likenesses of such literary and historic icons as Shakespeare, in Lincoln Park, Chicago; U.S. Grant (equestrian), in Brooklyn; and Alexander Hamilton, Columbia University. His busts include English poets Shelley, Keats and Milton. Among his few symbolic works is the marble female head, Peace, now at the Metropolitan.

His work was always influenced by the lively, impressionistic style of Paris in the 1870s and '80s. In presenting his subject he rejected smooth surfaces and superficial detail, preferring to achieve the rich look of modeled clay.

In addition to creating sculptures, Partridge lectured on art at Stanford University and taught at George Washington University, Washington, DC. He was also a poet and critic, writing several perceptive articles about the sculpture of his time.

He died in New York City at 69. He was ill during the last few years of his life, and it is said that his death might have been hastened by the shock of finding that all of his plaster casts, which had been stored in the basement of his apartment house, had been ruined because tons of coal had been mistakenly dumped on them.

When Mrs. Watson commissioned him to do Memory, Partridge was among America's most prominent sculptors. The Gallery is fortunate to own, in addition to Memory, the plaster maquette for Thomas Jefferson (23.8), one of his full-length sculptures on view on the grounds of Columbia University.

Source: Curatorial files and The Britannia Encyclopedia of American Art

Joan K. Yanni

April 1993

The Flight into Egypt

It happened in the Egyptian room when I was talking to a group of third-graders. A flash of color from the adjoining Northern Renaissance gallery caught my eye. It had come from the painting of The Flight into Egypt (94.23), possibly by Joachim Patinir, which had been one of the gems of my parents' collection. Suddenly I remembered that my mother had bought that painting when I was the age of these third-graders, and probably did a better job of talking about it than I was doing right now.

My parents had been collecting Gothic wood sculptures for a number of years, when they were informed in 1929 that the collection of the Munich painter Fritz von Haulbeck was going to be auctioned. My two sisters and I, as well as my parents, had been born in Munich; but my father's career in academic medicine had necessitated our moving from Munich to Düsseldorf. Mother was always homesick, and never lost the chance to go back, especially as our grandparents lived there. So my parents went off to the auction. I remember how happy I was when they returned with a lovely painting of The Flight into Egypt, picturing the Holy Family in a landscape similar to that of the Rhineland, where we were living. I liked it so much better than the fragile Gothic sculptures that we were forbidden to touch.

The painting always hung in my father's study in Düsseldorf, and later in Boston, where my family emigrated in 1935. In 1941 my parents loaned it to Johns Hopkins University for an exhibit called "Landscape Painting from Patinir to Hubert Robert." Later on, they had George Stout, conservator at the Fogg Art Museum, transfer it from the original wood panel to Masonite.

On my father's death in 1962, the painting passed to my younger sister. Last year my sister and her husband decided to donate it to a teaching museum. Because the Fogg did not have the space to hang it permanently, my sister, to my great delight, offered it to the Memorial Art Gallery. Candace Adelson, our curator of European Art, researched its origin from sources at Princeton, the Louvre, and the National Gallery, with the verdict that it is the product of the circle of Patinir, painted about 1515. (My mother had researched the painting in 1929, and always felt that it had been painted in Patinir's workshop, with the figures done by Joos van Cleve.)

Joachim Patinir was born about 1475 in Dinaut, Flanders, near the river Maas (Meuse). He went to Antwerp in 1515 and was received into the painters' guild. At this time, Antwerp had superceded Bruges as the center of Flemish art and had become the largest port in Europe, even busier than Venice. Commerce had created a wealthy middle class able to commission paintings.

The 15th-century artists of the Bruges school, such as the van Eyck brothers, Roger van der Weyden, and Gerard David, painted mostly religious subjects and portraits. Their colors were brilliant and their lines clear, with emphasis on detail. Landscapes were usually incidental, often seen through an open window. Towards the end of the 15th century, knowledge of the world was changing rapidly. Bold explorers set out for unknown lands, scientists discovered new techniques such as printing, and humanists such as Erasmus led the Northern Renaissance. Thus it was natural for artists to discover that the world around them was full of interest and beauty, and they broke away from traditional Biblical themes and figures.

There are only four paintings actually signed "Patinir." This may be due to the fact that Patinir collaborated with Joos van Cleve and Quentin Massys by painting landscapes as background for their subjects. The landscape in my parents' painting depicts a semi-imaginary scene with meandering rivers, protruding rocks, and rural houses reminiscent of the hilly and rocky region around Patinir's birthplace. The colors of the painting are typical of his landscapes—earthy brown foregrounds merge into woodland and meadow greens, and then into the hazy blue horizon. The figures of the Holy Family are still of primary importance, but only secondary in terms of space. The painting is horizonal, also stressing the landscape. Before the painting was conserved, it had a single idol falling from a column. Cleaning revealed a fountain with two idols falling down!

Dürer visited Patinir in 1521 in Antwerp and drew his likeness. He called Patinir "the good landscape painter." Patinir was also called the first landscape painter. Flight into Egypt is a beautiful example of his work, and it enriches our gallery.

(Some material from Early Netherland Paintings by Max J. Friedlander)

Trudi Beyer
October, 1995

John Frederick Peto and John Haberle

Trompe l'oeil, the illusion of three-dimensional reality on a flat surface, was the traditional goal of artists in the western world until fairly recent times. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, a number of American painters carried the imitation of nature to the point where their works literally did fool the eye. William Harnett is considered the father of this school, and is probably the best known of these virtuosos. While MAG does not own a Harnett, it has two wonderful examples of trompe l'oeil by John Frederick Peto and John Haberle: Peto’s Articles Hanging on a Door (65.3) and Haberle’s Torn in Transit (65.6).

Ironically, Peto and Haberle, so well known now, had both slipped into obscurity until about forty years ago. The skillful sleuthing of Alfred Frankenstein, researching for his book After the Hunt: William Harnett and Other American Still Life Painters 1870-1900, brought them back into the limelight.

John Peto was born in Philadelphia in 1856, the son of a framer and gilder, restauranteur and fire engine salesman. Perhaps his exposure to the pictures in his father's shop and to the glitter of the gaudy fire engines, not to mention the Philadelphia Fire Department Band, led to Peto's dual choice of careers. He became both a painter and a cornet player. (A cornet hangs in MAG's painting.) He divided his artistic time between Philadelphia and Island Heights, New Jersey, where his cornet led the singing at camp meetings and summer visitors bought his paintings. Eventually he spent more and more time at Island Heights and gradually lost contact with the art world. He was almost completely forgotten long before his death in 1907.

Peto and Harnett were apparently good friends, and Harnett's was the strongest influence on Peto's career. However, while they often used the same iconography in their paintings, Peto had his own style. Where Harnett chose to paint cherished antiques, such as a violin or books with legible bindings, Peto chose the romanticism of cast-offs, old relics, a rusty gun or a battered cornet. Peto's drawing, choice of color and application of paint were poles apart from Harnett's. Yet, ironically, when Peto slipped from memory, many of his surviving paintings were forged with Harnett's signature, for Harnett's name commanded a much higher price. (In her handwriting under the lining of MAG's picture, Peto's daughter testified that her father painted Articles Hanging on a Door.)

Until Frankenstein began his research, John Haberle was known only through two small paintings in the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts. By the time After the Hunt was published in 1953, the number of known Haberles had grown to twenty-six, no doubt a small fraction of his output. Virtually nothing had been known about the artist, but Frankenstein found that he was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1856 and died there in 1933. Frankenstein was able to interview one of Haberle's daughters who still lived in the family home, and the house was still filled with paintings, clippings, and memorabilia. Family interviews told him that, before taking up painting, Haberle worked as a preparator for a famous Yale paleontologist, cleaning fossils, mounting skeletons, etc. Later, as an art student, he was unable to afford a model, so sketched his own hands, arms and legs.

If Harnett is the master of careful balances and three-dimensional spatial relationships, and Peto the master of sensitivity to color, Haberle is the master of the painted line, with a minimum of modeling and no exploitation of color or tone. His paintings bestow dramatic qualities on the mundane—a comb, a ticket stub, a torn label. In addition, his entire trompe l'oeil oeuvre is humorous. Illusionism is trickery, and trickery itself involves humor.

Torn in Transit is a painting within a painting, for its "torn wrappings" reveal a landscape, rather amateurishly painted. The landscape contrasts with the perfection in the torn paper, labels, and the precisely painted strings that cast shadows on the package. The landscape takes up about four-fifths of the entire image, and we have a trompe l'oeil work most of which is not trompe l'oeil at all. Torn in Transit has continued to delight gallery goers since its 1965 acquisition. According to docent Shirley Somers, it once hung without its plexiglas cover, and appeared so real that people just had to touch it—hence the added protection.

Harnett and Haberle both ran into trouble with the Secret Service for their realistic painting of money. They were forbidden to paint American currency, under threat of all the penalties listed on the real bills. Haberle had his revenge, incorporating into one of his paintings the reverse side of a five dollar bill, copying exactly the penalties printed there. It apparently escaped the notice of the Secret Service, as they were not in the habit of frequenting art museums. Haberle had the last laugh.

Sources: Curatorial files; Alfred Frankenstein: After the Hunt: William Harnett and Other American Still Life Painters 1870-1900; and William H. Gerdts: Humble Truth: Masterpieces of American Still Life 1801-1939.

Libby Clay

March 1997

POP ART

The Gallery’s set of seven Pop Art sculptures, though not always on view, is always fun to see. It was created by the Tanglewood Press—ours is #17 of seventy-five—and was given to MAG in 1975 by Gallery friend Charles Penney. The group includes Side-view Mirror (75.333.1) by Allan D'Archangelo; Rainbow Faucet (75.333.2) by Jim Dine; Setting Sun (75.333.3) by Roy Lichtenstein; Baked Potato (75.333.4) by Claes Oldenberg; Reclining Rooster (75.333.5) by George Segal; Kiss (75.333.6) by Andy Warhol; and Female Nude Bust (75.333.7) by Tom Wesselman.

Two Pop Art prints, also gifts of Penney, are now installed above the case: Untitled (75.335.2) by Robert Indiana, and Untitled (75.328.1) by Roy Lichtenstein. And two works by Andy Warhol, Jackie (65.7) and Jacqueline Kennedy III (76.132), are now on view in the adjoining gallery.

Pop Art was a movement that took over the New York art scene roughly between 1956 and 1966. Pop artists sought to erase the hand and mood of the artist as seen in abstract expressionism and to reintroduce recognizable subject matter to the public. Their art is rooted in the urban environment, and it is based on commonplace subjects: mass produced images from ads, comic books, and TV.

Andy Warhol (1930-1987) is the most familiar figure of Pop Art. Born in Pittsburgh, he moved to New York City in 1952, where he became a successful commercial artist. In the early ‘60s he began to base his art on familiar objects and famous people: Campbell's soup, a dollar bill, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe. His most characteristic element is repetition—endless rows of bottles, soup cans, faces. His use of silk-screen for printing further eliminates the signature and comment of the artist. Despite his dispassionate presentation, Warhol's images remain extremely potent.

Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1998), born in New York City, worked at first in the abstract expressionist style, then, about 1960, began to draw themes from advertising and the comics. He starts with a comic strip and recomposes it, retaining the bright, primary colors of the original and simulating the mechanical printing process with his meticulously painted Ben-Day dots.

Claes Oldenberg (born 1929) combines fantasy, humor and irony in his work. Born in Sweden, he grew up in Chicago, then moved to New York City. In 1963 he exhibited his first "soft sculptures": bathtubs, typewriters and other solid objects reproduced in vinyl. This art had built-in mutations: when touched, it would settle into a new position. Oldenberg is also known for his giant sculptures: a clothespin in Philadelphia, a baseball bat in Chicago, and a lipstick in London, for example.

Tom Wesselman (born 1931) followed Andy Warhol in the early 1960s in the reproduction of supermarket products, then turned to collage paintings combining the nude and the still life. During the later '60s he concentrated on the "Great American Nude," isolating realistic details such as an open mouth with a dangling cigarette. His images are realistic, Playboy-like and sensual.

Allan D'Archangelo (born 1930) had his first exhibition in New York City in 1963 and at once established his particular imagery: the American highway, with zooming perspective and road signs. He paints in a tight, flat manner with precise geometric outlines.

Jim Dine (born 1935) was born in Cincinnati, moved to New York City in 1958. His first one-man show consisted of pictures of neckties, hats and bandanas painted in varying styles, often with the actual article glued to the canvas. A series of works from 1962 consisted of everyday objects placed in front of "paintings," such as a lawnmower placed in front of a canvas with daubs of green paint. He has more recently turned to silk-screen prints of everyday objects: pajamas, a heart, a robe.

George Segal (born 1926), a native New Yorker, was a student of Hans Hofmann, but painted Biblical and allegorical figures. He made his first cast from a living body in 1960, and afterward continued to explore the combination of plaster figures and real props. His sculptures are modern genre scenes, his white plaster figures often seeming more alive than their setting.

Robert Indiana (born1928) was born Robert Clark and took his pseudonym from his native state. He used words and numbers as images, painting hard-edged road signs and billboards in bold, contrasting, frequently clashing colors. One of his most familiar paintings simply proclaims, in flat, interlocking, complementary colors: LOVE.

Source: Mario Amaya, Pop Art and After, Viking Press, 1965; David Britt (ed.), Modern Art: Impressionism to Post-Modern, Little, Brown and Co., 1974.

Joan K. Yanni

June 1993

FAIRFIELD PORTER

Fairfield Porter's The Beginning of the Fields (86.132), is one of many landscapes in MAG's permanent collection which can be used in conjunction with the current modern landscape exhibition. It is an interesting work, and a somewhat puzzling one.

The painting is obviously a landscape: a clear, open scene with sky, trees, a house, street signs and a road. Yet the road begins and ends suddenly—where does it go? The amazing sky is peach, thickly painted in some areas, thinner in others, but always dominating the canvas. Looking carefully, we can see that the sky was painted after the trees; the peach brush strokes outline the green shapes. And, unlike landscapes painted by members of the Hudson River School, the scene is abstract rather than detailed, and the branches of the large tree on the right jut into the painting rather than frame it.

The road and puddle are salmon colored—just dark enough in color to separate them from the sky. And the pale blue paint becomes radiant as it outlines the sun (or daytime moon) and the street signs, affirming Josef Albers's theory that color seems to change in relation to the hue and intensity of the color adjacent to it. Despite its cheerful colors, the painting has a sense of loneliness and ambiguity.

Fairfield Porter was born in Winnetka, Illinois, in 1907. Never in need of money, he was the son of architect James Porter, and a graduate of Harvard, where he majored in fine arts. After graduation he studied painting and mural art at the Art Students League under Thomas Hart Benton. But the style that eventually evolved in his work was largely self- taught through looking and experimentation. He has said that his intent in painting was "getting it down," copying what he saw in nature rather than adding details to create a more desirable composition.

Porter traveled extensively, especially in Europe, between 1927 and 1932, admiring and learning from the Old Masters. He particularly liked Velazquez because the Spanish master painted reality, things as they really were. Porter was also influenced by an exhibit of the works of Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard held in 1938 at the Art Institute of Chicago. Their sense of color and organization of space influenced his work throughout the 40s.

In 1949 Porter and his family relocated to Southampton, Long Island, and his paintings from

then on were of his Southampton surroundings or the coast of Maine, where he and his family vacationed. His subjects reflect his comfortable world of sturdy houses, cozy interiors and healthy family. He painted those things that surrounded him—his house, studio, his wife and his children. He once noted that there is enough material in everyday life to keep a painter busy forever.

In 1951 and during the rest of the '50s his reputation was made as a critic rather then a painter. As associate editor for ARTnews and frequent contributor to other periodicals, he was a widely published and well-respected art critic. In 1959 he wrote a biography of Thomas Eakins. His writing, which required thinking about and analyzing art, may have prompted him to paint with a new imagination and clarity, but it did not change his interest in realism. Gradually, however, his subjects became less important than the paint itself.

It is remarkable that Porter's style did not change, considering the ever-moving art world in which he worked. In the 1950s, Abstract Expressionism was the dominant theme in American painting, expressed by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem

de Kooning. Within a decade, Andy Warhol and other Pop artists, with their emphasis on popular imagery and mass production, captured the spotlight. Op Art, minimalism, conceptualism—none of these movements lured Porter, and his independent means permitted him to paint in any way he wished.

He was a friend of de Kooning—and it has been noted that neither man ever gave up painting the figure—though the figures of de Kooning were far different from those of Porter! Proof of his awareness of the art around him can be seen in the few things he took from Abstract Expressionism: a shallow pictorial space with flat color areas, as in The Beginning of the Fields, and objects which, on close inspection, become strokes and dabs of paint. His double portrait of Andy Warhol and Ted Carey also shows that he knew other artists of his day.

Porter remains something of a paradox in the art scene. He is both a realist and an abstractionist. He uses his family and familiar landscapes to experiment with paint, for paint was his passion. He lived through countless movements in art but remained a representational artist. When he died in 1975, his works were given to the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, an area that he loved.

Source: Curatorial files, reviews of the exhibit Fairfield Porter: An American Painter.

Joan K. Yanni

October, 1997

THE PITKIN HOUSE

Docents have often been questioned about Charles Willson Jr.'s painting, View of the Pitkin House on East Avenue (73.13). The house—still standing—is one of three "country homes" built on East Avenue in the mid-1800s by eminent Rochesterians.

The Pitkin house, at 474 East Avenue near Prince Street, was completed around 1839. It was built by William Pitkin, druggist, banker, and, from 1845 to 1847, mayor of Rochester. (Incidentally, Pitkin's second wife was the daughter of Nathaniel Rochester!) Today the house is the headquarters of the Otetiana Chapter of the Boy Scouts of America.

The home is Greek Revival architecture, a style which reflected America's reaction to ornate European taste during the 1800s. It has simple, symmetrical lines with bold moldings, pedimented gables, heavy cornices, unadorned friezes, and a horizontal transom above the entrance.

When the house later passed into the hands of Daniel Powers, he added a mansard roof, similar to the roofline on his commercial structure, the Powers Building, downtown. Toward the end of the century, Powers’ son added a third story to the house under the supervision of J. Foster Warner, famed Rochester architect.

Toward the end of the century a third story was added to the Pitkin house under the supervision of J. Foster Warner, famed Rochester architect. Legend has it that Jenny Lind, in a visit to Rochester, greeted admirers from its balcony.

Two other houses were built on East Avenue across from the Pitkin house in the early 1840s. Woodside, built by Silas Smith, a storekeeper at the Four Corners, now houses the Rochester Historical Society. The home of wool merchant Aaron Erickson has become the Genesee Valley Club.

The artist, Charles Willson Jr, was the son of a music teacher. He was listed in the Rochester City Directory from 1849 to 1854 as painter, artist, and finally landscape painter. From the date of our painting, we know that he was active at least until 1859. Another of his paintings is owned by Woodside.

Source: Curatorial files

Joan K. Yanni

May, 1989

RED JACKET by JOHN L MATHIES

A painting of the Seneca chief Red Jacket (2.91L) is often used in tours centered on Rochester and its history. The portrait, painted by John L. Mathies, is a striking one—the chief is clad in a red jacket and wears a large silver medal.

Red Jacket was born in 1758 (?) in Canoga, NY, and died January 20, 1830 in Seneca Village, Buffalo. He was a magnificent orator, and his speeches saved his position as chief of his tribe more than once. He announced often that he hated the white man; but he fought on the side of the British during the American Revolution, and, both in and out of battle, wore red coats given him by the English. After the Revolution, he became a staunch friend of George Washington, whom he admired because of Washington’s fair treatment of the Iroquois. Washington gave him a silver medal (shown in the painting), which he wore constantly. He fought for America in the War of 1812.

Red Jacket urged his people to hold on to their tribal customs and religion. He opposed missionaries living on Indian lands, and vainly attempted to preserve Indian jurisdiction over criminal acts committed on Indian property. The Rochester Boy Scout Council is named Otetiana, Red Jacket’s tribal name, and a school district in Manchester is named after him—though students who come here for tours often have no idea that their school is named after a famous Seneca chief.

The medal in the painting is still in existence—in the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society. After Red Jacket’s death, it was given to his nephew Jimmy Johnson, a fellow member of the Wolf clan and a preacher at Tonowanda. Ely S. Parker received it from Johnson, and Parker’s heirs passed it on to the Historical Society. The medal is a large oval, 6 3/4 inches high and 5 inches wide. If we look closely at the medal in our painting, we can see that an Indian wearing a medal and holding a peace pipe is on the left, and George Washington is on the right, facing him. The arms and crest of the United States are on the reverse side.

JOHN L. MATHIES was a portrait painter born in Canandaigua in 1816. Around 1825 he and a friend named William Page established a short-lived art gallery in Rochester. Though Page left for New York City a year later, Mathies stayed on as a grocer, patent agent and hotelkeeper. His portrait of Red Jacket hung in the Clinton Hotel, which he owned.

Note: The Senecas were part of the Iroquois confederation founded in the 16^th century in the region around central New York State. The original family consisted of five tribes: Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga and Seneca and was known as the League of Five Nations. In the early 1700s, the Tuscaroras, an Iroquoian tribe from North Carolina, immigrated to New York, were formally admitted to the confederacy, and the name of the league was changed to the League of Six Nations.

Joan K. Yanni
November 1991

GEORGE RICKEY’S Kinetic sculpture

It looks like shiny antennae, gracefully moving and bowing with the air currents. It is eye-catching, fascinating, and absolutely absorbing. It's MAG's kinetic sculpture, which was installed in front of the Gallery entrance in 1994

The acquisition, Two Lines Up Excentric—Twelve Feet (94.44), was given to the Gallery by Richard F. Brush, Chairman of The Sentry Group, member of our Board of Managers, and long-time friend of the Gallery.

The work consists of a 10-foot-high stainless steel column topped by two 12-foot-long blades that move independently of each other as the wind nudges them. (No, they never collide!) The stationary shaft of the sculpture is made up of four pieces of steel, welded together to form a hollow column and set in concrete. Lead was poured into the hollow arms, or blades, until a desired balance was achieved. Ball bearings in the sculpture joints permit movement. The piece is the creation of George Rickey, major American sculptor and pioneer of kinetic sculpture. It was made during the past year and installed by members of the artist's studio.

George Rickey was born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1907, and educated in Scotland and England. He showed an early aptitude for mechanical devices, inherited perhaps from his father, a mechanical engineer, and his grandfather, a clockmaker.

While studying modern history at Balliol, Oxford, (he earned a BA in 1929 and an MA in 1941), he also attended the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. Attracted to painting, he later traveled throughout Europe, studying with cubists André Lhote and Fernand Léger before returning permanently to America as a painter. He worked in both the manner of Cézanne and in a social realist style, supporting himself by teaching history at Groton, then as a copy reader at Newsweek.

During World War II, Rickey served with the U.S. Air Corps, teaching the maintenance of computing instruments used by bomber gunners. Here he learned welding and gained a knowledge of the effects of wind and gravity on ballistics. His artistic interests turned from painting to sculpture, and through welding he made his first mobile in 1945 to entertain his army friends. He created his first kinetic sculpture in glass while studying at the Institute of Design in Chicago after the war, and his first work in stainless steel in 1950. He was influenced by the work of Alexander Calder and encouraged by sculptor David Smith, a friend.

In 1947 he married Edith Leighton; they became the parents of two sons. He taught at various colleges and universities, including Tulane; UC Santa Barbara; Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York; and Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

In 1960, he and his family moved to a farm in East Chatham, New York, near Albany, and his work became larger in scale, often using simple, elegant blades that oscillated with wind currents. The design of his sculptures lies in the motion rather than the form of each piece. His constructions, he says, "have more in common with clocks than with sculptures."

Rickey's sculpture draws on the tradition of constructivism, non-objective art based on space and time; and his book, Constructivism, Origins and Evolution, published in 1967, remains a major source for that movement. He prefers smooth, slow, changing motion, which the viewer contemplates over time, much as one watches the movement of waves or clouds. Many of his works are in stainless steel, which he or his assistants burnish with a disk grinder in short, random strokes, as can be seen in MAG's piece.

Rickey has been the subject of many exhibitions, the first at UCLA in 1978, the latest in celebration of his 85th birthday, with simultaneous shows in Los Angeles, Osaka, and Berlin. He and his wife divide their time between Santa Barbara and East Chatham.

Source: Two Hundred Years of American Sculpture, published by David Godine; "George Rickey, Master of Kinetic Sculpture" an essay by Nan Rosenthal.

Joan K. Yanni

September, 1994

MAG’S ROGERS GROUP

(John Rogers' Taking the Oath (51.310) is a popular subject for docents leading tours. Who was Rogers and what is going on in this narrative sculpture? Cynthia Goldstein researched the subject for docent and curatorial files. The following is excerpted from her findings.)

John Rogers (1829-1904) was born in Boston, left high school after two years, and worked as a mechanic. He became interested in art after discovering a supply of clay in a local brickyard, and began to model figures, which he gave as gifts to family and friends. His job as a mechanic ended during The Panic of 1857, and his dormant ambition to be a professional artist came to life.

Feeling that he needed professional training in Europe, Rogers studied in Paris and Rome, but became discouraged with classical sculpture because it did not allow for "the little odds and ends that I used to put round my groups to help tell the story." And without a story, Rogers thought, a piece of sculpture was pointless.

He returned to America, decided to give up sculpture, and took a job as a draftsman in Chicago. Here, one of his pieces owned by an acquaintance was exhibited in one of Chicago's first art exhibitions, and Rogers was urged to make a clay group to be raffled off in a citywide charity bazaar. His Checker Players was a hit, and a demand for his work grew rapidly. He moved to New York City with the intention of marketing his groups from there.

Rogers' hold on American affection came from his sympathy with the common man and his perfect sense of timing. His views were staunchly Unionist, antislavery, and pro-Lincoln. Since military service was not required during that time, Rogers’s failure to enlist excited no adverse comment—on the contrary, he was praised for contributing to the war through his plaster groups, which immortalized scenes of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

At age 35, Rogers married. After a European trip, he returned to his New York studio and searched for an idea for his next sculpture. Finally he wrote to his wife, who was visiting her parents, "Eureka, Hattie, Eureka! I have got a wrinkle which I think is going to make a good group...a proud Southern woman taking the oath and drawing rations. There is a chance to make a magnificent woman—something of the style of Marie Antoinette in the trial scene..."

Taking the Oath was the result. A catalogue advertisement published in 1866 describes the piece: "A Southern lady, with her little boy, compelled by hunger, is reluctantly taking the oath of allegiance from a Union officer, in order to draw rations. The young negro is watching the proceedings while he waits to have the basket filled for his mistress." Inspired by a theme which captured his deepest feelings and by the joy he had found in his marriage, Rogers gave the work the best that was in him as an artist and a sensitive interpreter of the Civil War experience. Into this composition went more modeling and characterization, more subtlety than is to be found in any of his earlier works—or in many of those which came after.

From 1860 to his retirement in 1893, Rogers produced over 80 different groups and sold somewhere between 70,000 and 80,000 of them. More than two-thirds were scenes from everyday life; the rest were inspired by literature or history. To produce his works, Rogers had what amounted to a factory, sometimes making as many as 12,000 copies of a group from molds. He always designed and modeled the groups himself, however, and they are remarkable for fine detail and for their wit and humor or display of feeling, whichever was appropriate to the subject. The average Rogers Group sold for under $15 and could be bought in general stores or from a catalog. To a dealer who called him foolish for pricing his works so low, Rogers said he preferred to put them "at a price that no one who likes them need hesitate to buy."

Rogers Groups declined in popularity by the mid 1890s. Though Rogers produced a few busts and an equestrian statue for Philadelphia, his fame rests on his plaster groups. He died in 1904.

Source: David H. Wallace, John Rogers, The People's Sculptor, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 1967 and curatorial files

Joan K. Yanni

May 1994

SARGENT, AMERICAN EXPATRIOT

"An American born in Italy, educated in France, who looks like a German, speaks like an Englishman, and paints like a Spaniard." Thus did a contemporary describe John Singer Sargent, master of portraits and landscapes, expert in oil, watercolor, and charcoal.

Sargent was born of American parents in Florence, Italy, in 1856. His father was a New England doctor and his mother a painter of watercolors. The boy showed artistic talent early in life, and at 14 he was entered in the Academia delle Belle Arti in Florence. When he was 18, he went to Paris to study with Carolus-Duran, an esteemed artist/teacher of the time, and the most important influence in Sargent's career. Duran was an admirer of the work of Velázquez and Manet, and the influences of both can be seen in Sargent's work. By the time Sargent was 21 his portrait of Miss Watts was accepted for showing at the Paris Salon. The next year his Oyster Gatherers of Cancale won an honorable mention.

Ambitious and eager to learn, Sargent traveled to Haarlem to see the work of Hals, and to Spain and Morocco where the sensational El Jaleo, now at the Gardner Museum in Boston, was conceived. He made his first trip to America in 1876 and quickly became the most sought-after portrait painter in New York and Boston as well as in London. In 1882 he painted The Daughters of Edward D. Boit, which, in composition, shows a definite relationship to Velasquez's Les Meninas. In the Paris Salon of 1884 he displayed one of the strongest portraits of his career—the startling (by Edwardian standards) Madame X—actually Mme. Gautreau, now in the Metropolitan. The painting of a beautiful woman in décolleté with lavender-powdered skin caused such a scandal that Sargent was forced to shift his studio from Paris to London.

Another portrait that caused dissent was his picture of Isabella Stewart Gardner, done in 1888. Sargent showed Mrs. Gardner wearing a low-cut black dress. It is said that her husband thought the picture improper and forbade his wife to show it in their home. After Gardner died in 1898, the painting was hung in her new museum. Sargent and Mrs. Gardner remained friends throughout her life, and after she suffered a stroke that prevented her from walking, he painted a last portrait of her, Mrs. Gardner in White, two years before she died in 1914.

Sargent did not lose commissions in his move to England. Though he had a heavy schedule of portrait sittings, he managed to visit Monet at Giverney and to travel and paint constantly, both in oils and watercolor. The apparent ease and flourish of brush strokes in his work disguises his exacting standards which caused him to rework a passage repeatedly until he was satisfied with it.

In the 1890s Sargent was at the peak of his activity, traveling constantly and winning the highest awards. In 1907 Edward VII recommended him for knighthood, as "the most distinguished portrait painter in England," but Sargent declined the honor because he would have had to relinquish his American citizenship to receive it.

During this time a mural commission for the Boston Public Library became particularly demanding. Sargent worked on the project for parts of 26 years until the murals were finally installed in 1916. As a relief from the intensity of this work, he turned to doing bust-length charcoal portraits.

In 1918 Sargent began to serve the Imperial War Museum of London, sketching troops in France. During his last years he spent more time on murals, carrying out works for the Boston Museum and the Widener Library of Harvard University. He died unexpectedly in Chelsea, England, in 1925.

MAG has two of Sargent's works: the oil on canvas Mrs. Shakespeare (57.14), painted in London around 1894, and a vibrant charcoal head of Mrs. Charles Hunter (70.52). Mrs. Shakespeare was the wife of singer, composer and conductor William Shakespeare, and was hostess at music soirees where Sargent, an accomplished pianist, and other musicians assembled. Eva Ducat, a friend of Mrs. Shakespeare, describes her as "wearing a pale silk celadon gown, with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a jewelled brooch in the form of a bird on the bodice" in MAG's work. She describes our painting as "one of the most tender, gentle, intimate things ever done in oils," and relates that Sargent tried to capture the sitter's characteristic wistful expression by telling her sad tales as he painted her. Though she looks quite young in the portrait, Mrs. Shakespeare had a 24-year old son at the time of the sitting. The painting is signed on the upper right and inscribed "To my friend Shakespeare" on the upper left.

Mrs. Hunter was also one of the leading London hostesses of the day, the wife of a wealthy coal mine owner. She had begun to collect art under Sargent's guidance, and Sargent remained her close friend, standing by her when her fortune declined in later years. Energetic dark strokes surround the subject's face and bring the fluttering fur and feathers of her hat and coat to life.

Source: Curatorial files; Lomax, James, and Richard Ormond, John Singer Sargent and the Edwardian Age, 1979; McKibbin, David, Sargent's Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1956

Joan K. Yanni

May, 1998

WALTER ELMER SCHOFIELD

Three paintings by Walter Elmer Schofield are among the American Impressionist works in the Gallery’s collection. The paintings—Lower Falls (40.42), In the Dugway (51.59), and Polperro Bay (41.27), are arresting, and their impressionistic brush stroke is obvious, but the artist's name is not a familiar one.

Schofield (1867-1944) was born in Philadelphia of English parents. He studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where fellow students were Robert Henri, John Sloan, William Glackens, and Edward Redfield. In late 1892 he went to Paris to study at the Académie Julian under Bouguereau and remained in Europe for three years.

Back in Philadelphia in 1895, he tried to work in the family business, but found painting to be his main interest. He attended Tuesday meetings at Henri's studio on Walnut Street, and became a regular member of the group where Henri and his followers had animated discussions about art.

By June, 1895, Schofield was back in Europe, this time sketching with Henri and friends, including Glackens and Colin Campbell Cooper. While Henri studied the portraits of Hals and Rembrandt, Schofield satisfied his craving for landscape art in the collections in Brussels, Amsterdam and The Hague. Dark, muted tonalities and soft hazy images became typical of Schofield's paintings: He used soft, greenish-grays and browns, misty sfumato, nocturnal illumination and loose brushwork. For the next ten years he was a tonalist, using a limited range of muted colors.

In 1897 he married Murielle Redmayne, an English woman whom he had met when she visited Philadelphia with her parents. At first they lived in Philadelphia, but by 1901 they had moved to England where Murielle and their two sons could be close to her family. They eventually moved to Cornwall, where Schofield joined an international artists' colony and found landscapes that were an inspiration for the rest of his life. His art barely paid for his travels, so for the most part, Murielle and the boys were financially dependent upon her parents.

Schofield continued his friendship with Henri and his circle and regularly went back to the United States, though he also went on painting trips in Cornwall and throughout Europe. He loved painting en plein air, no matter what the weather. Often he spent the winter months in America, where he painted the snow scenes for which he became known. Sun-filled Cornish scenes reflect the summers he spent with Murielle.

After the move to Cornwall, Schofield's palette changed; his brushstroke was still impressionistic, but his colors became bright and vibrant, nature in the full glare of sunlight. By 1915 he and Redfield (painter of our River Hills) were known as the masters of the Pennsylvania Impressionist school.

How Schofield got to Rochester is not clear, but he did visit here in 1914-15, when he painted the dramatic Lower Falls (Genesee River at Rochester, NY). The swiftly moving water from the falls seems to pour down over the painting from the high horizon line. The dramatic perspective, with smoke-spewing buildings at the head of the falls, create a powerful landscape. (MAG's Polperro Bay is a picture of Cornwall; In the Dugway, a snow scene, could refer to a place in Penfield, but is most likely the area north of Philadelphia where he loved to paint.

In late 1915 Schofield joined the British army, as he wrote to Henri, "to prevent Germany goose-stepping over the world." He saw battle in France and retired from the army with rank of major.

During the first three decades of the twentieth century, Schofield was regarded as one of America's leading landscape painters. He never gave up his American citizenship, but "commuted" between England and America. In March, 1944, he collapsed and died after a day painting the nearby English countryside.

Source: Curatorial Files, Catalogue for Walter Elmer Schofield: Bold Impressionist with essay by Thomas Folk.

Joan K. Yanni

November 1992

TONY SMITH: PLAYGROUND

One of MAG’s outdoor sculptures that has been a favorite ever since it was installed in 1970 is Tony Smith’s Playground (70.57).

The five-foot high steel sculpture came to MAG partly as a gift of the artist. Its name and mysterious look invite children to climb on it. (Docents are asked not to permit this because of the liability which might be incurred by the Gallery. Walk under it, maybe?)

Smith represents the best of the minimal sculptors of the ‘60s, whose works are sometimes called "primary structures." He creates simple, massive, geometric forms which have a dignity and strength reminiscent of ancient monuments. Former MAG director Harris Prior, in a letter to the Gallery Art Committee urging the acquisition of the piece, described it as resembling a "great claw which has survived from some earlier civilization." Yet the sculpture has a familiar presence, a stability that reassures.

Tony Smith, painter, architect, sculptor, (not to be confused with David) was born in 1912 in South Orange, New Jersey. Ill with tuberculosis as a child, he amused himself by making Pueblo villages out of medicine boxes. His father and grandfather ran an iron foundry, and Tony learned to love "black iron" in its natural state as it comes from the rolling mill.

He attended the Art Students League in New York City form 1933 to 1936, then Chicago's New Bauhaus School. In 1938, though he had no formal training in architecture, he joined Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin as an apprentice and worked with him for two years.

Smith spent the next 20 years painting and working on architectural commissions of his own. He taught classes in art and three-dimensional drawing at New York University, Pratt Institute, Bennington, and Hunter. Robert Goodnough and Alfred Leslie were his students.

By 1960 he was dissatisfied with both painting and architecture. He disliked catering to the whims of his painting patrons and seeing secondary buyers make changes in his houses. He returned to the permanence of the box shapes and the iron of his youth.

His career from then on is an example of the suddenness with which even a known artist can be "discovered." His first piece of sculpture was shown in 1963, and he had his first one-man show of that medium at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia only two years later

Though Smith was a friend of Newman, Rothko, Still and Pollock, he always worked independently. He was said to be a minimalist, but he noted that while the minimalists worked toward a preconceived plan, he did not.

The impact of his works depends on their unfinished roughness, bulk, and self containment, all emphasized by matte black surfaces. Strength, mystery, and stability are inherent in this designs; yet the large, flowing surfaces are filled with energy.

Smith died of a heart attack in January, 1981. In his obituary, Time magazine quoted his own description of his work: "My sculptures are on the edge of dreams; they come close to the unconscious in spite of their geometry."

Most recently (1998) Playground has been included in a Smith retrospective at MOMA.

References: Curatorial files and Lippard, Lucy: Tony Smith, New York, Harry Abrams, 1972; Tony Smith, Exhibition catalog, Maryland University Art Gallery, College Park, MD., 1971.

Joan K. Yanni

Summer 1991

SONNTAG: HUDSON RIVER PAINTER

Catskill Panorama (38.40) by William Sonntag was given to the Gallery in 1938 by Hannah Gould and was recently restored at the Williamstown Regional Arts Conservation Laboratory through funds donated by the Elizabeth F. Cheyney Foundation. The undated painting shows an autumn landscape framed by broken or cut branches, trees and mountains. A lone figure sits fishing; his rustic cabin can be seen on the right of the canvas. A lake or river in the foreground flows upward into a distant, mountainous mist.

Sonntag (1822-1900) is associated with the second generation of the Hudson River School, and was a friend of Asher B. Durand (Genesee Oaks), Frederic Church, and Worthington Whittredge. The Hudson River painters, popular from around 1826 to 1876, are known for their meticulous, realistic detail and romantic feeling for nature. Cole, Durand and Thomas Doughty, and later, Church and Albert Bierstadt, were prime figures in the school. Cole (1801-1848) and Bierstadt (1830-1902) are represented in the Gallery’s collection, as are other artists of the time: John Kensett (1816-1872), Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904), Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900) and genre painters Eastman Johnson (1824-1906), Lilly Martin Spencer (1822-1900) and David Blythe (1815-1865).

Sonntag was born in Pittsburgh in 1822 to a family which proudly traced its roots to 13th-century Saxony and the American Revolution. He grew up in Cincinnati, where his father was a successful merchant. How William became interested in painting is not known. It is known, however, that his father viewed the study of art as impractical, and tried to deter his son from following it as a career. He sent William on a trip to the Wisconsin territory to take his mind off art, but William returned with a love for the wild, untamed landscape he had seen and was determined to paint it.

Nothing is knows about Sonntag’s art teachers, so he probably either was self-taught or learned from a minor artist. In 1846 he exhibited his first work at the American Art Union in New York City and was hired by the proprietor of a Western Museum in Cincinnati to paint dioramas for exhibitions. Money from this venture gave him the means to open his own studio, where a patron encouraged him to paint his first important work, The Progress of Civilization, a four-painting series probably inspired by Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire. At the time, paintings with religious or allegorical themes were considered the highest artistic level to which an artist could aspire.

In 1849 the Cincinnati Directory lists him as a painter of circus wagons—not an unusual way for a painter to earn money. In 1851 his only panorama, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained was exhibited at P.T. Barnum’s American Museum and in other cities throughout the country to crowds who paid to see it.

In 1851, at the age of 29, he met and married 16-year-old Mary Ann Cowdell. Their honeymoon was a trip paid for by the director of the B&O Railroad, who had commissioned the artist to paint that line’s wild and picturesque scenery. At the time, railroad trips were touted as pleasant excursions during which America’s wilderness could be viewed in comfort, and Sonntag’s paintings were to serve as advertising.

In 1853 Sonntag submitted one of his paintings to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia—the first of many to be accepted—and he took his first recorded trip to Europe. After his return, he painted several Italian landscapes, which were favorably reviewed. Eventually he settled in New York City, and by the late 1850s was at the height of his popularity. He was elected an associate of the prestigious National Academy of Design in 1860, and exhibited his work at the Boston Athenaeum in 1869. In Boston he probably got his first look at the French Barbizon School paintings, which had been introduced to America there—a style of quickly painted, intimate, romantic scenes of nature that influenced his later work.

In 1869, after eighteen years of marriage, Sonntag and Mary Ann had a son, William, Jr., and in 1871 a daughter. William, Jr. eventually became an artist known for his illustrations. As Sonntag aged, his style became looser, more relaxed. He also became interested in watercolors and began exhibiting with the Watercolor Society of New York. A portrait of the artist James Beard (The Night Before the Battle) is one of his few known portraits.

By the 1890s, sales of work by Hudson River artists had slowed, out of vogue in a society that had begun to revere genre painting and European “modern art.” Sonntag died in New York City in 1900.

Source: Nancy Dustin Wall Moore: “William Louis Sonntag, Artist of the Ideal (1822-1900),” Goldfinch Galleries, Los Angeles, 1980; Curatorial files.
Joan K. Yanni October 199

FRANK STELLA: PAINTER AND PRINTMAKER

Estoril Five I (84.46), an intricate, somewhat mystifying print, was created by renowned painter and printmaker Frank Stella, one of the most influential and innovative artists of our time.

Stella was born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1936 and educated at Phillips Academy and Princeton. He became interested in painting at college, and after graduation in 1957 moved to New York City, rented a studio and supported himself, at least partially, by house painting.

His talent was quickly recognized. His first exhibition came in 1959, and his first solo show followed in 1960 at the Castelli Gallery. Since then he has appeared in almost every exhibition—national and international—of contemporary abstract painting.

In his earlier years, Stella was determined to create a rational and orderly art in response to the frantic and emotional Abstract Expressionist school. The "pin stripe" series was the result—canvases with symmetrical 2 1/2 inch black stripes. His idea was to eliminate illusionistic space and show that a painting was nothing more than a flat surface with paint on it.

He did his paintings in series. He began to cut notches out of the centers, corners and sides of his canvases so that the shape of the paintings would become part of the design. L's, T's, and geometrical shapes replaced the usual rectangular form of the picture.

After his black series, he gave color a primary role, with geometric shapes painted in brilliant shades of fluorescent paint. His geometric shapes seemed to move back and forth in space, and thus he returned to three-dimensional illusions. Next he experimented with color combinations, and his paintings became larger—often ten to twenty feet in width. Some of his recent works—paintings or sculptures?—are a combination of canvas and wood and actually extend out from the wall by five inches or more. In many of his works French curves, S-curves, protractors, and other architects' tools can be seen.

Stella's interest in printmaking began in 1967, during a time when recognized painters and master printers began to collaborate in a revival of lithography. He met printer Kenneth Tyler and they joined in producing a number of print series based on his paintings. Stella did the design, Tyler the printing. The black series paintings had been done in 1958-59; the black series prints were done in 1967.

Our Estoril Five I is one of his Circuit (race track circuit) series, named after race tracks: Estoril (Portugal), Imola (Sicily), and Telladaga (Alabama). Stella has always been interested in auto racing. He designed a BMW racing car in 1976, and traveled with the BMW Formula II racing team from Munich to Sicily. He did a Race Track series of prints in 1972 and the Circuits in 1982. Each of his Circuit prints is done in more than one version, thus Estoril Five, with a variety of plates and colors.

Our print was created in five steps on handmade paper, from a beech woodblock and four magnesium plates. The paper was made under Stella’s supervision at the Tyler Graphics workshop, where. each sheet was hand colored with a series of nine liquid dyes ranging from lime green and pale orange to blue and magenta. In Step 1: the printing was done with the routed beech woodblock in transparent yellow to allow the paper color to show through. Step 2: a metal plate was used to print in red, yellow, yellow-orange, pale orange, spring green and turquoise blue. Step 3: a second metal plate with light ocher was pressed over the yellow of step two. Step 4: a thin, line plate was used to print in purple. Step 5: dark ocher was added over the yellow and light ocher, and, finally, a black border was printed around the work.

SOURCE: The Prints of Frank Stella: Catalogue Raisonne; curatorial files; and research by Anne Mauromatis, education department intern.

Joan K. Yanni

October 1992

STEWART’S RAKE AND FORK

Two enigmatic ceramic pieces that resemble human forms on on view in the Contemporary Gallery. They are Rake (92.85) and Fork (92.84), the latest work of Bill Stewart, well-known ceramist, sculptor and professor of art at the State University College at Brockport.

Both figures are life-size, mysterious yet whimsical. Rake suggests a brown, black and pink figure from primitive art. Its surface is rough and crackly; its base looks like four black prongs—a rake—and its head is topped by a black conical shape with what looks like an air vent or speaker attached. A small cow-like head protrudes from the side of the figure. Fork is colored in shades of lime and blue-green, with a partially blue head. Its small breasts suggest a female form; a curved handle protrudes from its head. Its two-pronged base (fork) resembles a mermaid's tail with peeling scales On its head is a closed water jar or basket, with holes in its top. On the figure's side is scratched the intriguing message, "Rain causes grass to laugh."

Stewart's early works were usually colorful and funky. These new sculptures combine elements of his whimsical pieces with his later monumental black sculptures, The Council, installed at the Rochester airport.

What are these recent figures and what do they mean? Even the artist cannot always explain. In a statement about his work given to the Dawson Gallery during a show of his sculptures, Stewart wrote, "There are things that appear intuitively in the objects I make that are puzzling to me. Total explanations are difficult, if not impossible. Things materialize and images occur that simply "feel right." I am interested in invention, in energy, surprise and in some instances, creation before explanation."

Of the unusual look and finish of the clay, Ron Netsky in an October 14, 1992, article in the Democrat and Chronicle stated that the surfaces of these works are the result of Stewart firing them up to seven times instead of the usual two, and often glazing over glazed surfaces. Stewart says of his technique, "Process and content remains vital.... Touch is significant: the connection with materials and the manual art of forming is evident. In some cases the work may involve found and fabricated forms integrated with the clay as well as an intuitive sense of texture, modeling and assembly.

"The images appear to have their roots in an ancient past but the content is also influenced by contemporary concerns. The objects relate to a time when there was no gap between animals and man, a time of myths and legends, a time of magical rites, rituals and curiosities."

Stewart goes on to say, "I am interested in how people provided answers for things puzzling and unknown in their environment, along with their strong connection with the spiritual qualities associated with nature. I am attempting to produce work that is enigmatically primitivistic and sophisticated, focusing on nature and the figure as a representational as well as metaphorical image. To do so one must occasionally reach inside to the secret past or lunge into the absurd. The resulting images hopefully will have a strong sense of the fantastical and retain a touch of whimsy.:

The combination of ancient and contemporary[ elements in the figures is similar to Rick Hirsch’s works in the same gallery. All fit perfectly into a "Myths and Legends" tour, and can be linked to the Judeo-Christian references in the works on the second floor, and to the legends connected with the objects in the ethnographic and ancient American galleries downstairs. What stories children will be able to make up about them!

Joan K. Yanni

February 1993

LOUIS COMFORT TIFFANY

Louis Comfort Tiffany's birth in 1848 instantly made him eligible to preside over Tiffany and Company, the multi-million dollar diamond and silver business his father had built. Instead, at eighteen Louis announced that he wanted to become an artist, and he set about learning landscape painting from George Inness. After two years in Inness's studio, he went off to Egypt and Europe and spent the next five years studying art in a thoroughly undisciplined way. Yet he became quite a respectable painter, and his Duane Street, New York is often cited as a forerunner of the Ashcan School. On the whole, through, he had more in common with the work of Winslow Homer.

Before long Louis realized that his forte was interior decoration, and he set up his own business. He specialized in glassware, but also made tiles and mosaics and designed bronze hanging lamps.

Tiffany himself was neither graduate chemist nor glass blower, but he hired expert chemists and craftsmen to realize his designs, and he supervised them closely. His first successes were with stained glass windows. He avoided painted decoration, striving for a jewel-like effect in his work. Chemicals were added at various stages of glassmaking, and the glass was manipulated as it cooled to alter its thickness. To achieve a kaleidoscope effect, as the Gallery's window, Sunset Scene (93.28) clearly illustrates, he had pieces of broken glass placed in a glass bed; then molten glass was poured over them. His experience as a landscape painter had taught him perspective, and he learned to use glass to gain that effect. The windows he designed for churches and chapels often had landscapes rather than religious scenes as their subject.

Tiffany's greatest achievement technically was in making what he called "favrile" glass. In 1880 he received a patent for his process. In this method, gold chloride (AuC1₃) was used both in suspension and sprayed on the surface, creating a satin-like texture. The gold in the glass was brought to the surface by a reducing flame. Tiffany made his gold chloride by melting $20 gold pieces in a solution of nitric and hydrochloric acid (aqua regia), which was used for the spray. Modern craftsmen would no doubt use scrap gold, but Tiffany had no for regard for expense when he wanted a special effect. This literally was "The Guilded Age"!

Tiffany was diligent in maintaining the integrity of his products. Everything not commissioned was offered for sale on consignment to dealers for three months. Unsold items were offered to another dealer. Anything still unsold was returned to Tiffany and destroyed. However, he did sell some of his glass to other artists who used it to execute their own designs. Consequently, much inferior work has been sold as Tiffany.

Tiffany's work was popular not only in New York but in such places as Washington, D.C., where he decorated rooms in the White House for President Arthur in a style combining oriental and gothic elements. When Teddy Roosevelt came to the White House, one of the first orders he gave was to tear down a Tiffany glass screen. This was the first of many losses of Tiffany's work.

Tiffany and Louis Sullivan, the Chicago architect, are usually considered the founders of Art Nouveau in the United States. Both men used decorative motifs deriving from natural plant forms, and preferred curvilinear to straight lines. When Frank Lloyd Wright broke away from Sullivan, he also rejected the Art Nouveau aesthetic and was outspoken in this scorn of Tiffany's decorating style.

The famed Armory Show of 1913 marked the beginning of a change of taste in art and decoration in America. By the time of his death in 1933, Tiffany's style had fallen out of favor, his $13 million inheritance had been reduced to one million, and his business went bankrupt. Fortunately he had already established the Tiffany Foundation as an art colony for young artists looking for freedom in their work. It was thirty years after his death before Tiffany began to receive the recognition he deserved.

MAG’s Tiffany window was removed from a mausoleum at Mt. Hope cemetery to keep it safe from vandals.. The preservation of the window would have pleased Tiffany. Its prominent location near the tour entrance would have delighted him.

Source: Robert Koch, Louis C. Tiffany, Rebel in Glass. Crown, 1964.

Thea Tweet

December 1994

BESSIE POTTER VONNOH

The lovely bronze Fountain Figure (96.11) nestled in the corner of the Sculpture Pavilion was presented to the Gallery by Edward, James, and Julian Atwater in honor of their parents and grandparents. The life-sized maiden, curls upswept and garment outlining her figure, holds a water bowl (or birdbath) in her raised hands as a bird hovers near her shoulder. She is the work of sculptor Bessie Potter Vonnoh.

The sculpture has a local history. A figure identical to ours is part of a 1930s fountain group in the conservatory Garden at the north end of Central Park, dedicated to the memory of Frances Hodgkin Burnett, author of The Secret Garden. Funds were raised for the Central Park garden by selling sculptures. One of these was commissioned by the Atwaters’s grandmother, and placed in a park in Batavia as a memorial to her father.

When the Batavia park fell into disrepair, the sculpture was returned to the family. After the death of their mother, the Atwater sons decided it should be put on view where others could enjoy it—at the Gallery, of course. MAG was delighted to receive it, since it is the work of an accomplished American sculptor—and since the artist had exhibited at the Gallery in 1916! While the tubing leading to the birdbath is still intact, there are no plans at present to reactivate the fountain. MAG has recently acquired the paster maquette for this sculpture.

Bessie Potter Vonnoh was born in St. Louis in 1872. She was a fragile child and a tiny woman—only 4 feet eight inches tall. But neither of these factors prevented her from succeeding in the difficult, sometimes strenuous, field of sculpture.

In 1876, two years after her father died, Bessie and her mother moved to Chicago. Here she became a student of the sculptor Lorado Taft, who had returned to Chicago after training at the École des Beaux-Arts. She was one of Taft’s women students who helped prepare his work for exhibition at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, and who were named the “White Rabbits,” because of the way they scurried about in their white smocks. Vonnoh had some of her own pieces exhibited at the Exposition: an eight-foot figure of Art for the Illinois State Building and two plaster portraits.

Probably the most significant event at the fair for Potter was her exposure to the small, bronze, loosely modeled figures of the sculptor Paul Troubetzkey. These inspired her to experiment with her own bronze figurines, which she called “Potterines,” and which in time became enormously popular. Today most American museums have at least one of her small bronzes: The Young Woman (1896), Girl Dancing (1897), Motherhood (1903) or The Fan (1910).

In 1894 she opened her own studio and specialized in portrait statuettes of young girls, mothers and children, dressed in the full skirts and puffed sleeves of the time. In 1895 she visited Rodin in Paris, and in 1896 she produced what was to become her most popular work, The Young Mother, a seated woman with flowing skirt looking tenderly at a baby which she holds in her arms. This work was so popular that many replicas were made of it, in both plaster and bronze, and it was the source for several other statuettes that were variations on the same theme. The work received a bronze medal at the Paris Exposition of 1900 and an honorable mention at the Paris Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo. Potter looked for inspiration in the every-day world and was intent on proving that “as much beauty could be produced in statuettes twelve inches in height, and in busts six inches, as could be had in the life-size and colossal productions suitable for so few houses.”

Her skill grew along with the demand for her work. She had five works accepted in the 64th annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1894, and at the 17th annual exhibition of the Society of American Artists in New York held in the spring of 1895, she showed four pieces.

She was not afraid to experiment with new materials; she occasionally used terra cotta for her work, and, in some instances, colored her plasters. Nor did she limit her work to statuettes: in 1898 she was commissioned to do two colossal projects: a portrait bust of major General S. W. Crawford as part of a Civil War memorial in Fairmont Park in Philadelphia, and a life-size statue of the actress Maude Adams for the Colorado State Exhibition at the Paris Exposition of 1900. These were followed in 1911 by a commission to sculpt a marble bust of vice President James S. Sherman in 1911 for the US Senate Building in Washington, D.C.

In 1899 Potter married the Impressionist painter Robert Vonnoh, whom she had met in Taft’s studio. They made their home in New York City and in the artists’ colony in Lyme, Connecticut. Bessie now increasingly turned to life-size statues and to nudes or classical statues rather than contemporary garb. In 1913 the Brooklyn Museum gave her an exhibition, and she had works accepted into the Armory Show in New York in 1913. In 1906 she became an associate member of the National Academy of Design, and in 1921 she received its gold medal.

Vonnoh and her husband had several two-person exhibitions in New York galleries in the 1920s and ‘30s, and were living in Nice, France when he died in 1933. She returned to New York and tapered off in her work. In 1948 she married urologist Edward Keyes, who died nine months later. She died in New York City in 1955 at the age of 82.

From her earliest pieces, Vonnoh’s modeling had fluidity and spontaneity. She was adept at modeling both the nude and the clothed figure. In her depictions of young mothers, infants and children at play, she, like Mary Cassatt, was able to achieve an expression of the joy of motherhood and the beauty of young children absorbed in some wonder of nature. Her work has enduring appeal.

Source: Craven, Wayne, Sculpture in America, Thomas Y Crowell, New York; Brookgreen Gardens, Brookgreen, S.C., “Sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh”; curatorial files

Joan K. Yanni

September, 1997

CORNELIS de VOS: YOUNG MAN WITH A DOG

Cornelis de Vos, painter of MAG's Young Man with a Dog, (55.83) was one of the foremost artists of his day. Patrons sought him out, Peter Paul Rubens referred commissions to him, and his good friend Anthony van Dyck painted a portrait of him. His paintings are well executed and beautifully detailed. He excelled in painting children and families.

His Young Man with a Dog is an early baroque painting, with strong diagonals—the boy's arm gestures toward the dog's head, cutting across the canvas; the dog, in turn, looks up attentively at his master. The dog's left leg, poised above the ground, provides a lower diagonal. The billowing red baroque drapery catches the viewer's attention and provides a background for the figures. To our left, the drape parts to reveal a slice of landscape probably owned by the boy's family. The boy's clothing is meticulously detailed.

It is worth noting that the name Count de Feria is inscribed on the back of the painting. It is not clear whether the inscription refers to the sitter or to an owner of the painting, but it is known that the name is one of Spanish nobility.

de Vos (1585-1651) was a painter of religious and historical subjects as well as portraits. A Flemish painter, he had studied with David Remeeus in Antwerp, then, around the age of twenty, traveled abroad. In 1608 he became a master in the Guild of St. Luke (the painter's guild) in Antwerp and served as dean in 1618-20. Though he had been born in Hulst, he bought Antwerp citizenship in 1616 in order to become an art dealer. About 1635 he became one of the many talented assistants of Rubens, who kept an extensive workshop of painters, specialists in various genres, to help him handle his tremendous number of commissions.

In addition to de Vos, many other painters in the MAG collection trained or collaborated in the Rubens workshop. These include Frans Snyders, known in his own right as a painter of animals (The Fable of the Fox and the Stork, 72.75), landscape painter Joos de Momper (Landscape with Figures, 46.36), Jacob Jordaens (Portrait of Elizabeth Jordaens, Daughter of the Artist, 74.102), David Teniers the Younger (Tavern Scene, 55.70), and Van Dyck (Portrait of an Italian Nobleman, 68.100). Van Dyck, who went on to become painter for the English court of Charles I, was probably the most successful painter to come from Rubens's studio. Rubens's oil sketch, The Reconciliation of King Henry III and Henry of Navarre (44.24) is also in the Gallery's collection.

Young Man with a Dog was part of the Bertha Buswell Bequest, one of the important sources of MAG European art. Mrs. Buswell, the wife of a Buffalo physician, was a collector of 17th-century Dutch, Flemish, and French works, including furniture, tapestries, sculptures and paintings. Some items she gave outright to the UR; others were left to her brother Ralph Hochstetter until his death and then were presented to the Gallery along with art from Hochstetter's own collection. Thus, some artworks are labelled Bertha Buswell Bequest, others Buswell-Hochstetter Bequest. Among paintings received from these bequests are Steen's The Pancake Woman (55.71), Teniers' Tavern Scene (55.70), Mae's Portrait of a Gentleman (55.77), van Santvoort's Portrait of Eva Bicker (55.72), de Bray's Child with Cherries (55.65), and many other works. The Buswell-Hochstetter Bequest came to the Gallery in 1955 and the entire collection was exhibited at the Gallery in November and December of that year.

On docent tours the de Vos painting can be compared with dell’Abate, Portrait of a Boy of the Bracciforte Family (76.13), Noah North’s Pierrepont Lacey and His Dog Gun (78.189), Henri’s Tom Cafferty (26.1), and any of MAG’s 17th-century paintings.

Sources: Curatorial files; Brayer, Elizabeth, MAGnum Opus, Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, 1988; Myers, Bernard S., Ed., McGraw Hill Dictionary of Art, McGraw Hill Book Co., NY, NY, 1979, vol. 5; Wedgwood, C.C. The World of Rubens, Time-Life Books, NY, NY, 1967.

Joan K. Yanni

March 1994

HAROLD WESTON’S TREES

Harold's Weston's Three Trees—Winter (25.33) looks stark and simple, but is filled with pulsating color. One must stand and look into the darkly-outlined trees to see the vivid blues, pinks and yellows in the work. The painting is much like its author—a combination of austerity and the exotic.

Weston was born in Merion, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, in 1894. But his life really began at the age of nine, he states in his memoirs, when his father took him to climb Mount Marcy. The Adirondacks had always been part of his family's history. Weston's grandfather had been among the wealthy Philadelphians who purchased a tract of land in 1887 that included the Ausable lakes and Mount Marcy. The group formed the Adirondack Mountain Reserve and later the Adirondack Trail Improvement Society, with the intention of preserving and protecting the land.

After his first trip to the mountains, young Weston spent every summer hiking around St. Huberts and the lakes. He knew the land so well that at fourteen he was able to act as a guide for his father's friends. In 1911 young Weston contracted polio and was told that he would never hike again. But he was determined to enjoy his mountains, and for the rest of his life he climbed with a walking stick.

The damage from polio kept him out of the service in World War I, but he spent over three years in the Near East with the YMCA International. He had become interested in art at Harvard College, and back in New York City in 1920 he attended art school for a few months, but felt out of place and unfulfilled. He returned to the Adirondacks, where he constructed a rough, one-room house for himself and began to paint. "There I felt that if I lived alone with the woods and the mountains the technique of how to paint would work out." He lived frugally and alone, trying to paint what he felt as well as what he observed. His Near East experiences, he noted later, helped him see colors, design and patterns that he used in his work.

In 1922 he visited Vassar College, where his sister was a student. There he met his future wife Faith and invited her to St. Huberts. It must have been true love: despite temperatures of 10 degrees below zero and the experience of getting lost in a blizzard, she agreed to marry him. To prove to her parents that he would be able to support her, Weston arranged his first one-person show in November, 1922—the year MAG's Trees in Winter was painted. The exhibit contained almost 200 paintings, mainly Adirondack landscapes, and was reviewed with praise. He and Faith were married in 1923—and returned to St. Huberts to live, even though Faith had been accustomed to luxury.

Now Weston had a new subject: "Marriage brought the nude into my life, and pantheism disappeared." The series of nudes he painted also won acclaim. In a letter to Gertrude Herdle, then MAG director, Weston stated that his pictures were on view at Stieglitz's gallery when John Marin saw them. "I feel the woods and the mountains in these nudes," Marin remarked. "Synthetic American landscapes—direct primitive quality...who did them?" Weston was startled and pleased: he had carried over his love of nature into the love he felt for his wife. In early 1926 he and Faith traveled to France, where they lived in a small cottage while Weston explored new media . Two of their three children were born here.

The 1930s were a productive period for Weston. He became a friend of Duncan Phillips, the art collector and critic, who eventually collected 34 of Weston's works. The Phillips Memorial Gallery, now the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, mounted four Weston shows, and the artist's reputation grew. He painted a series of important portraits, all noted for their intuitive representations. In 1939 Weston won third prize at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. In addition, he painted a series of murals for the General Services Administration Building in Washington.

During and after World War II, committed to a family tradition of public service, he became a force behind the creation of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, founded Food for Freedom, organized the International Association of Art (an affiliate of UNESCO), was co-founder and chairman of the National Council on the Arts and Government, helped create the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities—and still he found time to paint. A series of six oil paintings from this time shows the construction of the United Nations buildings and is now owned by the Smithsonian Institution.

In his later work Weston became more interested in the abstract in nature, the design and structure of natural forms. He sought simplification and abstraction without any sacrifice of meaning.

To please his friends he wrote his autobiography, Freedom in the Wilds. He continued to paint into the final months of his life. He died in 1972.

Source: Mackinnon, Anne: "A Passionate Nature: The Consummate Art of Harold Weston," Adirondack Life, Jan/Feb 1994: Weston, Harold: "A Painter Speaks"; curatorial files

Joan K. Yanni

March, 1996

WHEELOCK: LE COQ d’OR

The shining, golden Le Coq d'Or (subtitled Chanticleer Greeting the Sun...from Chanticleer's Point of View, Causing the Sun to Rise) (77.105) is the work of Warren Wheelock, an American sculptor, painter and designer. It is a delightful bronze sculpture, with a small but glorious rooster perched atop cubist architectural elements and singing, his head proudly raised toward the sky. The influence of 1920s Art Deco can be seen in the design of the shaft, with its mechanistic circles and repetition of horizontal bars.

Wheelock (1880-1960) was born in Sutton, Massachusetts, the descendant of a prominent New England family that included Eleazer Wheelock, founder of Dartmouth College, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn from 1902 to 1905 and taught drawing there for the next five years.

Wheelock began his career as a commercial artist and painter. He became interested in sculpture when he settled in the Blue Hills of North Carolina around 1910. He built himself a log house, then began to experiment with carving the beautiful wood found in the mountains. His first piece was made for his cabin—a model for an andiron titled Fire Dog. In the early 1920s he began work on Le Coq d'Or. After creating numerous sketches of his subject, constantly eliminating non-essentials, he carved a small applewood version of the work about 8 inches high. The final, 29-inch bronze sculpture was made from a second applewood model, the same size as the finished version, honed so that its elements would catch light falling on it. (The whereabouts of the applewood models is unknown, and there appears to be only one bronze.)

The influence of Rumanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) can be seen in the stacking of abstract forms and the gleaming surface of Le Coq d'Or. Brancusi's work had been exhibited in New York at the Armory show in 1913 and at Stieglitz' 291 Gallery in 1914. In addition, photographer Edward Steichen owned La Maiastra, one of Brancusi's highly-polished, idealized bird forms; and the first version of Bird in Space had been executed in 1919. Wheelock could have seen all of these.

The first exhibition of Wheelock's work took place in 1921 at the Society of Independent Artists in New York. He was already working in abstract art at that time, and went on to become a founder of the American Abstract Artists in 1936. Ilya Bolotowsky, Adolf Gottleib, and Mark Rothko, along with Hans Hofmann's students Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and David Smith exhibited with the group.

Wheelock was active as a sculptor and designer into the late 1940s, and headed the sculpture department at Cooper Union from 1940-45. In the ‘50s he moved to New Mexico where he died in 1960 at the age of 80.

His work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles Museum of Art in addition to the Memorial Art Gallery. It has been exhibited in such museums as the Metropolitan, MOMA, the Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. His sculptures include complete abstractions, religious sculptures, and interpretations of historic Americans such as Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Walt Whitman, Paul Revere, and others. He designed the modern Royal typewriter, Steuben glass pieces, and mobiles for children. Of his work, Time Magazine (April 1, 1940) stated, "No believer in repetition, Sculptor Wheelock keeps on experimenting. His lovely, engaging pieces range from a plump, belligerent Fiorello LaGuardia to an abstract, pinafored Little Girl; from a bat-swinging Babe Ruth (Sultan of Swat) to a shiny, swivel-hipped Black Dancer." When LaGuardia saw the bronze Coq D'Or, he is quoted as saying, "If that's a bird, I'm Hitler!" (New York Times, May 5, 1938). The Mayor obviously hadn't looked carefully enough!

The story of Chanticleer is simple, yet complex. Chanticleer was an arrogant rooster who believed that his crowing caused the sun to rise. He is first heard of in the 11th century tales of Reynaud the Fox and again in a 1910 play by Edmund Rostand. The French have adopted him as their national bird.

The rooster is king of the countryside, a noisy, confident, braggart. To sing, (chanticleer means "clear song") he perches on a high fence in the barnyard, above all the other animals. The figure of Chanticleer is often used as a weathervane. (Cocks and banners are the most frequently used images in America.) The rooster is also a reminder of the New Testament story of St. Peter, who denied three times that he was an apostle of Jesus before the cock was heard to crow. In the 9th century, an edict from Rome dictated that the figure of the cock, whose voice brought light to darkness, was to be symbolically placed on top of churches.

The Wheelock can be contrasted with MAG's cock weathervanes, which are flat and static.

Source: Curatorial files

Joan K. Yanni

February 1996

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S BOYNTON HOUSE

Editor's note: Because the Frank Lloyd Wright furniture from the Boynton house will be on view until January 12 and many visitors are coming to see it, a review of Wright's life and work will be helpful to docents. The following was written as a press release by Shirley Wersinger, public relations associate.

In 1908, the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright completed plans for a residence for Rochesterian Edward Boynton and his daughter Beulah. Eight decades later, the house remains a rare example of an intact Wright house. Architectural historian Jean France calls it "a fortunate survivor, one of the few Prairie Style houses which can still give an idea of the original feeling of a Wright interior." The furniture now on view in the contemporary gallery showcases the Boyntons’s 16-piece dining room set, now owned by the Landmark Society of Western New York. The exhibition also includes stained glass windows, architectural drawings, and historical and contemporary photos.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) is widely considered America's greatest architect. Born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, Wright studied briefly at the University of Wisconsin before apprenticing successively at two Chicago architectural firms. In the second of these, he worked for the eminent architect Louis Sullivan. After leaving Sullivan's employ in 1893, he built a career that concentrated largely on domestic architecture, with designs that were innovative, inventive in their use of space and light, and influential, particularly in Europe.

Throughout his long career, Wright remained committed to the concept of "organic architecture," in which buildings were integrated into their natural surroundings, and their furniture was designed to express the same aesthetic as the structures. An early expression of this was called the Prairie Style.

Between 1900 and 1916, he designed more than 60 Prairie Style buildings. The name was doubly significant: the ground-hugging houses echoed the lines of the prairie so familiar to Wright, a Midwesterner. And most were built in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa. Rochester's Boynton House has the distinction of being the farthest east of all the Prairie Style houses. (Another excellent example is Buffalo's Martin House.)

Wright planned each of his houses as an integrated environment, with distinctive furnishings that exemplified his almost mystical theories about the importance of home and family. He saw the dining room, in particular, as a gathering place; the Boyntons's dining set was designed to create an enclosed space for welcoming guests and bringing the family together.

Wright's furniture designs also serve to demonstrate his idiosyncracies. For example, he disliked floral centerpieces and candelabra that were a barrier to conversation. For the Boyntons, he designed a dining table with built-in lighting fixtures and receptacles for flowers at each corner.

Flamboyant, freethinking, often controversial, Wright was to see his reputation wane, then wax during the next fifty years. Personal problems and a loss of acceptance in the 1920s were followed by a second golden age. Yet there was never a period when he did not produce works of genius and often astonishing variety. His later masterpieces include two of the most famous buildings in America—Fallingwater, a home built outside Pittsburgh in the 1930s, and New York City's Guggenheim Museum, designed in the 1940s, built in the 1950s and recently restored.

Wright never stopped working. In 1959, when the Guggenheim was under construction, the 91-year-old architect visited the site. Six months later he died at Taliesen West, his retreat in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Also about the exhibition:

When the house was built, it was on a much larger lot, which included extensive gardens, a reflecting pool with fountain, and tennis courts. Segments of the land were sold off over the years, leaving the house somewhat "hemmed in."

Using a computer terminal in the exhibition space, visitors can "tour" other Wright buildings around the country via CD-Rom. The furniture on which the computer rests was designed by John King, MAG exhibition designer, and built by MAG's crew.

Docent Colleen Hurst made it possible for the Gallery to borrow "The House Beautiful" for the exhibit. The book was designed by Wright and is in the collection of the First Unitarian Church.

Photos and plans of Wright’s Heurtley house in Illinois were lent by Helen Berkeley, former Council president. The house was built for her grandfather.

Former docent Mary Alice Wolf and her husband helped underwrite the exhibit in honor of Dorothee Schwartz, a member of the Gallery since 1937, an early Finger Lakes artist, and at one time part of the education department school outreach program.

Joan K. Yanni

September 1996

REDISCOVERED: OLINSKY, BRACHT, VOLK

The 1913 retrospective exhibit, which ended in November, brought memorable experiences for the curatorial staff and was the source of three paintings newly-hung in the Gallery.

Ivan Olinsky's A New Arrangement (88.24) came to us through exhibition organizer Marie Via's contact with the Olinsky family. Since a work by Olinsky had been in the original 1913 exhibition, Marie looked for a work by the artist for her retrospective. She finally decided to borrow an Olinsky from the Detroit Institute of Art, but the daughter and son of the artist had become interested in having one of their father’s works in the Gallery’s permanent collection. Also, the daughter’s grandson just happened to be graduating from the University of Rochester! Curator of American Art Patti Junker was invited to look over five of Olinsky’s works and choose one. A New Arrangement, the painting she chose, is an excellent Olinsky, and typical of portraits painted at the time. Its subject is a model with a 1920s hair-do and an eye-catching red dress. The picture was documented by a grandson of the painter who is a professor at the City University of New York.

The painting Morning Star (13.10) by Eugen Bracht, a gift of Mrs. James Sibley Watson, had been in the original 1913 exhibit but was badly in need of cleaning. Mr. and Mrs. Michael Watson donated funds for its conservation and it appeared in the 1913 retrospective. It was also chosen for use as UR President and Mrs. Dennis O'Brien's 1988 Christmas card.

The third "1913 connection" is the Douglas Volk painting of his daughter Marian Douglas Volk Bridge - Artist’s Daughter. Though there was a Volk painting of Marian in the original 1913 exhibit, it was not THIS Volk. Our painting (15.3) was bought at a 1915 Gallery exhibit and presented to the Gallery by Mrs. George Dickman, a friend of Mrs. Watson. Coincidentally, Marian's painting arrived in Rochester ten years before she herself moved here—in 1926 when her husband, Dr. Ezra Bridge, became director of Rochester's Iola Sanitarium. Mrs. Bridge was not the typical society matron that the painting conjures up. She was introspective, loved gardening, music and reading, and, despite the fur stole she wears in the portrait, had become an animal activist and a vegetarian long before these stands were popular. The painting had been in Registrar Sandra Markham's "missing" file, but since everything has to be somewhere, and since it was needed for the 1913 retrospective, Sandra contacted Gertrude Herdle Moore and Isabel Herdle. They remembered that it had been lent to the Eastman School of Music—probably in the '20s, a time when many paintings were lent to University buildings. Sandra went to examine the Eastman dorms—and found the picture in the South Lounge, very dirty and with several considerable tears in it. Don Manfredi of West Bloomfield did the conservation in record time—in time for the 1913 retrospective.

Two more paintings appeared on Gallery walls during the past month.

Batavia (66.25) by Esteban Vicente, was brought back from City Hall where the Gallery once had paintings on loan. Vicente is an Abstract Expressionist who was born in Spain but spent much of his life in the United States. A leading painter of the New York School, he often works in muted earth colors—low-key reds and browns. Is MAG’s painting our local Batavia? The answer is not clear, but it is known that Vicente spent some time in the Finger Lakes region...

Charles Gruppé's Harbor Scene (88.18) is a painting of Gloucester, Massachusetts. given to the Gallery by St. Paul's United Church of Christ in Irondequoit. Since the church in which it was hanging was about to be torn down, its pastor decided it should be preserved in our Gallery. Other paintings by Gruppé, one of the leading landscape painters of his day and a member of the Rochester Art Club, can be seen in Oak Hill Country Club—and in some private homes in the area.

Joan K. Yanni

March 1989

BEARD: NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE

Monica Marcotte describes an interesting experience that took place when she was writing her paper for the provisional docent program. She had chosen James Beard's The Night before the Battle (78.15), and while in the Gallery studying the painting, she met a woman who said she was the great-great granddaughter of the painter. The visitor’s name was Joan Wing, and she confirmed that a brother and four sons of Beard also were artists and that one of the sons (Daniel) was the father of the Boy Scout movement in America. She said that Beard did a great many animal pictures, particularly of family dogs. Wing related that her mother knows all the family history and still owns several of Beard's paintings. Most of the information about the Beard artists is in the art gallery in Painesville, Ohio, where the artist lived for a time beginning in 1923.

MORTIMER SMITH: HOME LATE

Mortimer Smith's Home Late (75.139), recently restored and returned to the Gallery's 19^th-century American galleries, was painted in 1866. It shows a young boy entering his home at a late hour with his skates and books in his hand. The moonlit, wintry evening seen through the open door contrasts with the warm, though humble, interior. The cabin is candle-lit, with simple, frontier furniture; some meat, which is curing, and a flintlock rifle hang from the ceiling. The boy’s father is lighting his pipe with an ember from the fireplace, and careful looking will reveal a dog and cat in the darkness. There is a basket with knitting on the table near the door—indicating the presence of woman in the family.

Home Late is Smith's first known painting. Only four paintings have been located out of a possible 48 listed in his probate will. The curious awkwardness in the proportions of the figures in Home Late suggests that the artist was self taught. Smith was born in Jamestown, NY, moved to Detroit in 1855, and became well known for his home scenes and winter landscapes. He was an avid photographer, and a number of his paintings may have been created from photographs he made.

Smith was most prominent as a Detroit architect, however, and it is assumed that he was trained in his father's firm. Architecture was his vocation, painting his avocation.

Joan K. Yanni,

October, 1988

BUTTERSWORTH AND BOLOTOWSKY

Two paintings have been acquired to augment the American collection.

James E. Buttersworth's The Clipper Ship Flying Cloud off the Needles, Isle of Wight (89.71) has been hung in the 18th century American gallery. Beside it is a smaller painting by the same artist, Fleetwing Loses Six Men Overboard (17.79). The subject of both is the clipper ship, the artist's specialty.

Flying Cloud was the most famous clipper ship in maritime history. She was made in Boston, the masterpiece of shipmaker Donald McKay; and her design was unsurpassed in speed, seaworthiness, and beauty. In 1854 she set a record of 89 days for a trip around Cape Horn—a record which stood until 1989, when broken by Thursday's Child, which made the passage in 80 days!

Buttersworth (1817-1894) was born in England and came to the United States around 1850. He was well known to his contemporaries because many of his paintings were reproduced in lithographs done by the popular Currier and Ives.

The second new work, Untitled (Relational Painting) (89.70) by Ilya Bolotowsky, is a non-objective painting which shows the artist's skill in using primary colors and the grid motif.

Born in Russia, Bolotowsky (1907-1983) was influenced by the Russian constructivists, by Mondrian, and by the Dutch de Stijl school. When he came to the United States in the 1930s, he took Mondrian's color and space and developed them further in rhymes and complicated patterns. Our painting is pure design, typical of experiments into what came to be known as "neo-plasticism," an attempt to reduce art to its purest essentials and to show that formal elements can create movement and vitality. To quote curator Patti Junker, "Color and tone project space and spatial relationships, lines suggest direction and rhythm, the shape of the canvas suggests a design motif in and of itself."

Joan K. Yanni

February, 1990

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION PRINT (91.13)

Ritchie after Carpenter

The Emancipation Proclamation, which was signed in 1862, freed the slaves in the Confederacy. (The North was already free.) Portrait artist F. B. Carpenter, realizing the importance of the signing, approached President Lincoln about painting a recreation of it. With Lincoln's cooperation, he lived for six months in the White House in 1864, looking by day and painting by night. He used the cabinet room in his painting, with actual wallpaper, books and maps. To complete his work, which he named The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation before the Cabinet, he used photographs of his subjects taken in the Brady Studio.

The painting was a popular and commercial success, first unveiled in the White House, then touring throughout the North. Carpenter earned a royalty of $50 a week, and publishers Derby & Miller paid him an advance of $2000 for the rights to make prints. Alexander Hay Ritchie's engravings (MAG’s print is one of these) brought $10 a copy. The original painting was on exhibit in Pittsburgh the day of Lincoln's death.

Can you name the cabinet members in the print? To Lincoln’s right are Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, and Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. Seated to Lincoln's left are

(l-r) Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy; William H. Seward, Secretary of State; and Attorney General Edward Bates. Caleb Smith, Secretary of the Interior, and Montgomery Blair, Postmaster General, are standing on Lincoln's left. (Carpenter positioned the "radicals" Stanton and Smith on the left of the picture and the conservatives Welles, Seward, Bates, Smith and Blair on the right

Joan K. Yanni

December, 1995

COLE’S ITALIAN SCENERY

Don't laugh at ads for "sofa-size paintings." Our Thomas Cole, Landscape Composition: Italian Scenery (71.37) was commissioned in Florence in June, 1881, by American Rufus Lord who wanted a painting with dimensions to suit the space above his parlor mantel. For the work Cole used images seen in Italy during his residence there: castles, towers, trees, and hills, a bucolic fantasy set among classical, overgrown ruins. Later Cole painted a companion piece for Lord's second mantel: The Notch of the White Mountains, now in the National Gallery in Washington.

DURAND’S GENESEE OAKS

During adult tours docents are often asked about the setting for Asher B. Durand's Genesee Oaks (74.5). The painting was commissioned by James Samuel Wadsworth, whose family had settled in Geneseo. Durand sketched in the area during June and July of 1859 and completed the painting in his New York studio in 1860. The oaks still stand today in and around Geneseo, and the Wadsworth family still lives in the mansion on the estate.

Joan K.Yanni

June, 1989

PRATT’S CAPTAIN JOHN BARRY

Nathan Pratt’s Captain John Barry (81.22) is on view at the Gallery for the first time. In case you’ve forgotten, Barry, an Irishman who settled in Philadelphia, was commander of the frigate Alliance, which outfought (and outsmarted) three British ships in the last navel engagement of the Revolution. He won Washington’s personal congratulations for his gallantry.

The painting came to the Gallery through the descendants of Peter Barry, relative of the naval hero and an early Rochester mayor. It was recently cleaned at Oberlin College.

Joan K.Yanni,

September 1988

ALEX KATZ

Alex Katz, creator of the newly-installed Twilight (15.88L) is a unique, unorthodox painter of modern life. His subjects—always familiar, usually affluent—drink at a party, smoke, sunbathe, dine. They wear casual, elegant clothes. Yet Katz makes them somehow different. His outwardly placid images are caught in a specific instant in time, in the middle of a gesture. His pictures are flattened, angular; often strange, unstated undercurrents are caught on stiff, smooth faces. Katz desires to jar and surprise the viewer by presenting the ordinary or mundane in a major way: ultra large-scale, simplified forms in painted-out backgrounds give his work maximum visual impact.

Katz was born in 1927 in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. He attended Cooper Union Art School, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and studied with Henry Varnum Poore. He first attempted large, cropped images when influenced by Kline and deKooning.

He works quickly, to achieve smooth canvases with casual strokes that disappear into a crisp, impersonal precision. He became well known in the 1950s art scene, and his pictures have held up well. In 1987 the Whitney held a Katz retrospective.

Joan K. Yanni

September, 1988

A series of serigraph prints by Katz was donated to the Gallery by Lewis Norry and his wife Jill Katz Norry (no, she is not related to the artist!) in 1995. The serigraphs, titled Alex and Ada Suite, (95.62.1-8) are all portraits of Katz and his wife done in the artist’s unique, simplified style. They are larger than life, impersonal and without background. Their size and close croppings demand a second—and third—look.

Joan K. Yanni

April 1996

LIE: MORNING ON THE RIVER

Jonas Lie's Morning on the River (13.6) was acquired in 1913, the year the Gallery first opened. Research shows that the painting was purchased from the inaugural exhibition of 1913 and donated to the Gallery by Ruth Sibley Gade in honor of James G. Averell, in whose honor the sculpture Memory was dedicated.

Lie was an American sculptor, though born in Norway. His paintings consistently celebrate the power of modern industrial society. In Morning on the River, the Brooklyn Bridge is the center of a drama of ice, steam and morning fog. The painting was the central piece in the MAG celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge.

MACMONNIES’ NATHAN HALE

The bronze statuette of Nathan Hale (86.4), acquired in 1986, is a replica of an 8-foot tall statue in City Hall Park, New York City. (Author Theodore Dreiser noted that this statue was "one of the few notable ornaments in New York.") The sculptor of the piece was Frederick MacMonnies (1890-1937), an artist who was born in Brooklyn, studied in Paris, and exhibited at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.

Did you know that Hale was only 21 years old when, on a mission for General George Washington, he was captured by the British and hanged as a spy? His final words were "I regret that I have but one......." Remember?

SHARRER: LEDA AND THE DWARF

Diane Tichell talked with Honoré Sharrer about Sharrer's painting, Leda and the Dwarf (79.40), and gathered some information about the work. There is no "story" in the painting. During the time it was painted, Abstract Expressionism was popular. Sharrer decided that she would turn reality around, as the Abstract Expressionists did, but in her own fashion. She placed the woman on the horse backwards. The other items in the painting? "Some are personal. Sharrer loves painting metal and jewelry; thus, both are in the painting. A picture in a newspaper of a farmer, standing in an impoverished yet fruitful field and holding a chicken, inspired the dwarf (though the figure is from Velázquez). The tea set? Just a happy, dancing teapot she had in her childhood. She had it set on a milking stool at the opening of her show in New York City. The pin? Personal. Didn't you ever (in your youth or otherwise) have anything held together by a safety pin? Sharrer is a realist painter, almost photographic. Her juxtapositions are the confusing element in her paintings.

Joan K. Yanni

October, 1987

RUBENS, STUDIO OF: ODYSSEUS AND NAUSICAA

The large painting that recently appeared in the 18th-century room is Landscape with Odysseus and Nausicaa (61.27).

The story is from Homer’s Odyssey. The shipwrecked Odysseus, having escaped the Cyclops and navigated through Scylla and Charybdis reaches the shore of an unknown land. He falls asleep, weary and naked, and is awkened by Princess Nausicaa and her attendants, who have come to wash some clothes. Odysseus covers himself with leaves and appraches them, asking for food and shelter. Nausicaa speaks with him, though her maidens flee. In the painting, the cart holding laundry can be seen in the left foreground, Odysseus and the princess in middle foreground. The elaborate mountain villa of Nausicaa’s father, king of the Phaiakians, is in the middle ground and his capital city in the background. In the sky the warrior goddess Athena, protectress of Odysseus, confers with Zues, king of the gods.

As the label points out, the Homeric legend provided the chance for Rubens to design a detailed landscape and add atmospheric effects. Since his work was in great demand by the 1620s, Rubens had a studio of many collaborators and students who worked on his designs. How much Rubens did on any one canvas varied, but replicas were most often painted by assistants. Rubens’s own smaller version of this painting is in the Pitti Palace, Florence, and a 1635 replica by Lucas van Uden is in the Bowes Museum in England. MAG’s painting may be by van Uden, who specialized in landscapes in Rubens’s studio.

Joan K. Yanni

April, 1997

GUSTAVO TORNER

Earth and Gold (67.29), the exciting gold leaf and polyvinyl work hanging in the 20th-century gallery, was painted by Gustavo Torner, a Spanish painter and sculptor born at Cuenca in 1925.

Self-taught in art—he had studied forestry engineering as a career—he collaborated with two other artists in founding the Cuenca Museum of Spanish Abstract Art in 1963. He first worked in the style of lyrical abstraction, emphasizing contracts between smooth surfaces and coarse materials. Later he turned to geometrical abstraction and sculptural constructions made of stainless steel combined with wood and other materials. He is represented in the museums of Cologne, Prague, and in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City.

As any child can tell you (and many already have), our work represents the brilliant sun shining on rough, pale earth.

Joan K. Yanni

February, 1990

ASIAN ROOM: ARHAT HANDAKA

The addition of an image of the Arhat Handaka to MAG's Asian Gallery provides an unusual example of a 15th-century hanging scroll (kakemono), whose subject was popular during the Ashikaga Period in Japan. The scroll (66.33) was painted with ink and color on silk and perhaps later cut down and mounted on board.

At first the image seems difficult to decipher because of its deep indigo background, but longer viewing will reveal three figures: the chief subject, Arhat Handaka, his attendant, and a dragon.

A little information about the Ashikaga period and Japanese Buddhist imagery may be of help in interpreting the painting. The Ashikaga period, during the fifteenth century, was a time in Japan when the emperor or emperors were completely dominated by the shoguns and the rising warrior class, the samurai, who preferred scenes of regions where nature is at its most severe. Note that the Arhat appears to be seated at the mouth of a cave on the shore of a lake or the ocean.

Although the Ashikaga period was chiefly marked by the rise of Zen Buddhism with its insistence on personal discipline rather than faith in the Buddhist pantheon, this is not a Zen image, but very much in the earlier tradition of Esoteric Buddhism. Zen placed its emphasis on refined, austere imagery in contrast to the elaborate ornamentation of Esoteric or Shingon Buddhism.

The original meaning of the word arhat was "deserving worship." The arhats were creatures who had attained perfection, but had chosen not to enter Nirvana and become Buddhas. They often appeared in groups, and were noted for their sagacity, the possession of supernatural powers and exemption from transmigration. They differed from bodhisattvas in that it was not their purpose to assist ordinary mortals in reaching Nirvana.

The term arhat originally applied to the 1200 disciples of Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, but the Japanese reduced the number to sixteen. According to Henry Joly, they had "halos around their shaven heads, long eyebrows, large ears, often with earrings, and the Buddhist cloak attached to one shoulder, leaving the other bare." In the MAG painting, both shoulders are covered.

It is easy to see Handaka's earring, but not so easy to see the object in his right hand. It appears to be a fan, but also strongly resembles the agni symbol for fire or weapon of war. The left hand is held in the mudra or gesture known variously as vyakhyana, vitarka, or sandarsana. The tips of the thumb and forefinger touch each other to form a circle, while the other fingers are open. The palm ordinarily faces outward, though in the MAG version the palm faces inward. The Indian scholar Gupta interprets this mudra to mean teaching or exposition. The Japanese scholar Yoshiko Kakudo describes this as the Raigo mudra, which indicates the first level of the first rank. This interpretation would place Handaka as chief among the sixteen major arhats.

Since arhats were known to have extraordinary powers, it is not at all unusual for the Arhat Handaka to appear in dialogue with a dragon. Popular belief is that the dragon also had remarkable powers, and that seeing its body in its entirety meant instant death for the viewer. However, it obviously presents no threat to Handaka. But this is no ordinary dragon. The waves lapping around it at the bottom of the image indicate that it may be the rain dragon, Amario, or the ruler of the waters, Ryuo Kio, who lives beneath the seas or at the bottom of lakes. Though ordinary Japanese dragons have three claws (Chinese dragons have four), there are only two claws visible in this painting.

The Arhat's attendant, in the upper left corner, appears to be peering timorously from behind a tree, for fear of seeing the dragon in its entirety. In his left hand he holds a staff or standard, with six rings loosely attached so that they will clang together with each step to announce the arrival of the arhat—and perhaps also to frighten the dragon. The decorative swirls above the attendant's head may represent clouds or the upper part of a cave.

The painting of Arhat Handaka came to the Gallery through the gift of Mrs. Erik Fischer Wood, who acquired the painting around the turn of the century when the samurai were selling their collections to compensate for losing their pensions during the Maijii Restoration. (Information provided by Eleanor Dye, daughter of the donor.)

Sources: William Theodore deBary, ed.: Sources of Japanese Tradition; Joseph Campell: The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology; Ramesh Shankar Gupte: Iconography of the Hindus, Buddhists and Jains; Henri L. Joly:Legend in Japanese Art; Yoshiko Kakudo, The Art of Japan

Thea Tweet

November, 1995

THE ASANTE STOOL

One of the most interesting pieces of African sculpture in our collection is the Asante stool (62.24). A catalog from a 1988 exhibition at the Galerie Amrad African Arts in Montreal, gives new insight into the aesthetic and cultural context of the stool and is an important source for the information in this article.

The Asante people are often referred to as Ashanti. They speak the Akan language and live in the east central area of southern Ghana. The founder of the Asante kingdom was King Osei Tutu, who lived in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. He enlarged and strengthened the kingdom, which flourished until a conflict with the British Empire in 1896 led to his exile and the decline of his people.

While carved stools are common in Africa, the veneration of the stool and its connection to ancestral spirits is a practice unique to the Asante, according to E.A. Dagan, writer of the catalog essay.

An Asante saying goes, "The stool contains the soul of its owner. A man with no stool is a man with no dignity." The carving of a stool is highly ritualized. The commissioned sculptor must meet rigorous qualifications. He must have technical skills, imagination, and be a devout practitioner of moral codes, since the stool will eventually house the spirit of its owner. If a tree must be cut down to obtain the wood, sacrifices and offerings are made, tools are purified, and the tree spirit is supplicated.

Only three types of wood can be used for the stool. Each stool is carved from a single piece of wood and composed of three areas: the base is a rectangular flat shape, the seat—larger than the base—is rectangular and curves upward, and the pedestal is carved with a variety of symbolic motifs. The stool is cleaned at least once a year by being taken to the river, scrubbed with sand, and blanched with lemon juice.

A number of traditions are connected with the stool: the curvature of the seat is called "the mother's embrace"; a "good fortune stool" would be given by a friend for good luck; a crocodile symbolizes holiness. The larger and more elaborate the stool, the greater the respect and higher the status of the purchaser. For example, there are a number of designs available only to the king. The Gallery's stool appears to most closely resemble a woman's stool.

"The Golden Stool" forms the basis of an Asante legend. Following a battle between Osei Tutu and a neighboring king, the Asante were victorious but tribal unity was uncertain. To celebrate, Osei Tutu invited his chiefs to a festivity on a Friday. A storm broke out, and through the thunder and lightening, the Asante saw a white stool covered with gold descend from the sky and settle on Osei Tutu's knee. The miracle of its appearance forged a new unity among the leaders, who believed that the nation's soul lived within the stool and they must remain united to protect it. The stool is named Sika Dwa Kof—the Golden Stool Created on Friday. From then on, the stool was hidden and used only on most important occasions. If it appeared to be endangered, sacred offerings were made for its protection.

A blackened stool is one that has been ritually sanctified following its owner's death. Sacrifices and libations are poured over the stool, which then receives the soul of the deceased, who becomes one of the ancestors who is worshipped. The blackened stool resides in the stool temple. Only people of high rank who have died by natural causes or bravery in battle, qualify for this honor. Many rituals, such as the naming of a newborn or the seeking of forgiveness, include prayers directed toward the blackened stool.

Contemporary uses of the stool include festivals of worship as well as communication of symbolic messages, but to a less traditional degree than in the past. Ghana has been independent since 1957, and contemporary furniture is mixed in with traditional stools in homes. Rigid codes restricting use of motifs have been relaxed. New symbols and themes are used in commissions. There is great demand for these stools in local and tourist markets.

Marjorie Searl

February 1991

ABOUT BUDDHISM

With the Tibetan mandala exhibition capturing the attention of both the Gallery and the community, some notes on Buddhism and Buddhist art in the MAG collection might be helpful.

The founder of Buddhism was Siddhartha Gautama, who was born in northeastern India, just inside present-day Nepal, around 563 BC. Because Siddhartha was the son of the head of the Sakya warrior caste, he is sometimes known as Sakyamuni, "Sage of the Sakyas." He was brought up a Hindu, and in his caste he was surrounded by all the richness and pleasures of life and shielded from its misery.

At 16 he married and began to participate in the life of the court. But this life did not satisfy him, and when he was 29 he ventured out of his palace, hoping to find enlightenment. It is said that he encountered an aged man, a sick man, and a corpse and realized that suffering is the common lot of mankind. He decided to forsake his family, wealth and power and seek the truth.

He sought answers under two spiritual masters and performed extreme self-mortification, to no avail. Finally, at the age of 35, as he sat meditating under a Bo tree, he experienced the Great Enlightenment, the highest spiritual state, and became the Buddha, or Enlightened One. He began to teach throughout northern India as a mendicant monk until he died at the age of 80. After his death, stupas, or reliquary shrines, were built in his honor. In subsequent centuries Buddhism, which sees all people as spiritually equal, spread across most of India, then to the rest of Asia including China and Japan.

The Buddha's teaching is called Dharma and is often symbolized as an eight-spiked wheel. His followers are taught Four Noble Truths: suffering is universal; the cause of suffering is craving, or selfish desire; the cure for suffering is elimination of craving; and the way to eliminate craving is to follow the "middle way." This path includes reaching out to others with sympathy and compassion, restraining greed by avoiding lying, stealing or committing violent acts, and meditating. Meditation brings peace, serenity, and knowledge of self. Achievement of this state of bliss is nirvana.

Representations of the Buddha show elongated ears, a remnant of the heavy earrings Siddhartha once wore; short curls, a result of his cutting off his long hair when he rejected his youthful life; a fleshy protuberance on the crown of his head (the ushnisha or usnisa) which represents wisdom; and the urna, a mark in the center of his forehead, sometimes a jewel, which represents omniscience, the all-seeing nature of enlightenment.

Buddha is often seen sitting cross-legged, with his left hand resting palm up in his lap, while his right hand extends down over his leg to touch the ground. This represents the moment when Buddha called upon the earth to witness his Enlightenment. All hand positions, called mudra (mood-rah), are symbolic. The right hand raised, palm out, fingers pointing up, symbolizes "Fear not." An extended left hand, palm out, fingers down, represents the granting of requests. Both hands pointing up, joined palm to palm, show reverence and submission. Deep trance meditation occurs when the hands are laid in the lap, palms upward, resting on one another; sometimes there is a bowl resting on the hands. In the teaching mudra, the hands are held in front of the chest, the index finger and thumb of the right hand touching and the left hand held below, its fingers touching the palm of the right hand. Standing figures of the Buddha usually show him with a raised right hand and a lowered left hand, both palms turned towards the spectator, respectively signifying the bestowal of fearlessness and generosity.

Bodhisattvas (bo-dee-saht-vahz) are Buddha candidates, beings who have achieved enlightenment but postponed their own nirvana in order to help others on the path to perfection. As the personification of compassion or mercy, Avalokiteshvara (Ah-vell-o-kah-tesh-vah-ra) is the most popular bodhisattva. Originally male, this bodhisattva was slowly transformed into a woman in East Asia. In China, she is known as Kwan-yin or Guan-yin; in Japan she is Kannon. Sometimes Avalokiteshvara is shown as multi-armed.

An arhat is in a special category of Buddhist iconography. Arhats are usually found as attendants to Buddha images in sculptures and painting, as in MAG's painting of the Arhat Handaka (66.33).

On view in MAG's Asian Room are three sculptures of Guanyin: the seated, polychromed wood Guanyin on Mt. Potala (42.21), and a stone figure (34.3) both from China; and a slim, elegant Kannon (74.83) from Japan. Heads of the Buddha on view are from Thailand (30.33), Cambodia (36.4) and Afghanistan (58.20). There is also a sculpture of Tara (30.31) in the Asian Room. MAG's figure is of Hindu origin; but Tara, said to have been born of tears shed by Avalokiteshvara, is a bodhisattva of great importance to Buddhists in Tibet and Mongolia. Our sculpture shows Tara seated on a lion throne with her right hand extended in the mudra of giving and her left holding a lotus, which signifies unity and compassion.

Source: Philip Rawson, Sacred Tibet; Henry M. Sayre, A World of Art; John Snelling, Buddhism; and Time, Inc. The World's Great Religions.

Joan K. Yanni

April, 1997

CHINESE WALL PAINTING

MAG's Chinese wall painting (86.117), on view for the first time, creates an interesting new focus for the Asian Gallery. Since the piece was probably taken from the wall of a shrine, the spaces adjacent to the painting have been reinstalled to reflect a religious atmosphere. The seated, wooden figure of the bodhisattva Guanyin, a docent favorite, has been moved from its niche and placed on the painting's left; a standing stone Guanyin is on its right. A Taoist deity carved in stone and a fragment of a large scroll compete the new arrangement.

The Taoist wall painting, most likely from the late Ming dynasty (1600-1650), is part of a much larger composition. It shows a female figure dressed in billowing robes and standing against a background of clouds. The movement of robe and clouds reflects the invisible energies of the "Tao," the constant motion of the universe. The figure is elaborately dressed. Looking closely, one can see a pearl in the central portion of her blue headdress and dangling earrings on her ears. The full pink sleeve of her garment makes a diagonal across the painting.

In her right hand she holds a scepter called a ju-i. An object with connotations of longevity and well wishing, the ju i was often presented as a gift for special occasions. The tiny marking decorating the fungus-shaped, curved end of the ju-i is not clear; it might be the head of a buddha, or perhaps a small bat, a motif the Chinese use to symbolize happiness. (Phonetically the character for bat is identical with that for happiness.)

The identity of the lady is also in doubt. She might be the bodhisattva Manjusri, who personifies Transient Wisdom and is known to have been represented holding a ju-i. However, since part of a flowing sleeve can be seen on her left, indicating that there were other figures in the painting, she is probably simply one of many figures in a large composition.

When the painting was given to the Gallery in 1986, it was very much in need of repair. A major matching grant from the IMS made the conservation possible, and Cynthia Luk from the Williamstown Regional Art Conservation Laboratory spent nearly three years on the project, actually going to China and Russia to research techniques. If you look closely, you can see that the piece has been installed so that it tilts slightly. Because the painting was crumbling around the edges, especially on the bottom, it was decided that installing it upright with all its weight on the base would be unwise. Thus the piece was tilted 10 degrees off vertical, so that its weight is distributed—a technique developed at the British Museum. (The Pompeii fragment in the ancient gallery has been installed in the same way.)

To create the painting, the artist drew the composition in charcoal. Brilliant, coarsely ground natural pigments were used for the paint color: malachite for green, smalt and indigo for blue, cinnabar for red, lead for white, and charcoal or lamp black (soot). Beneath the paint is a layer of fine white ground, and beneath that, two layers of mixed sand, clay, and vegetable fibers.

Source: Curatorial archives.

Joan K. Yanni,
September, 1995

INFLUENCES ON CHINESE ART AND CULTURE

The on-going warfare in the Tigris and Euphrates valley has called our attention to the area often called the cradle of civilization. It is interesting to note that not only was this area (Iraq and Kuwait) a highly civilized land itself, but it also influenced Chinese culture and art.

During the T'ang Dynasty (618-907 AD), China enjoyed a truly golden age of exploration and expansion. New palaces, new ideas, new cultures and new chattel were eagerly sought. China looked west to India and further west to Persia for fresh influences. Out of India, Buddhism was embraced and became an enduring political power, changing to meet Chinese needs and ideas.

Out of Persia came the working dog—used for hunting and carrying loads—and fine Arabian horse stock coupled with the "sport of kings," polo. Whole strings of ponies were brought to China along with the sport of polo itself.

We know about the dog, the horse and polo because of the funerary art that has been and still is being uncovered in China.

During the T'ang Dynasty, important people were buried with clay figures—sometimes thousands of them—representing the good life they had led, and hoped to lead again, in the after-life. Horse and Rider (73.22), MAG's polo player on her pony, is one of these figures.

In 667 AD an imperial edict restricting the riding of horses to the aristocracy was passed in China. Riding became very popular at Court and soon aristocratic women enjoyed it, too. Over time, as women became more proficient at riding and began playing polo, they began to wear men's clothing. That is why we are not positive that our polo player is either (1) playing polo or (2) a woman. We think so, though; and remember that nobody is ever 100 percent sure about anything in history.

Chinese hairstyles and clothing were also influenced by the Persian court. The Court Lady (49.1) has an elaborate, spoked-wheel coiffure, the style of which was most likely excitedly brought home from a trip to Persia. Her gracefully and artfully draped robes were probably Persian in their lines, and her turned-up toes are a puffier variation of the turned-up slippers of the Arabian nights.

After 907 AD the T'ang Dynasty fell, and foreigners and foreign ideas were persecuted. Foreign art was methodically obliterated, leaving us with only a few cherished scrolls and some funerary art to tell us the tales of wonder from Persia.

When you stop and think how far away Persia is from China, and contemplate the slow, difficult means of travel, it is amazing how a hairstyle could recognizably make the journey from Persia to China to Rochester.

Lois Metcalf,

April, 1991

KAGE’S CRÈCHES

Crèches from the collection of Earl Kage, long-time friend of the Gallery, are exhibited annually as part of the MAG holiday celebration. To appreciate these manger scenes, called crèches in France, presepio in Italian, German Krippe, Spanish belèn, or Southwest American nacimiento, docents must know the story of the nativity.

The familiar story is taken from the New Testament gospels. The Roman emperor Caesar Augustus decreed that each man must go to his own town to register for a census. Joseph, with his pregnant wife Mary, traveled to Bethlehem to comply with the law. Soon after they arrived, the time came for her delivery; and because of the crowds in the town, they could not find room at an inn. A kind innkeeper led them to a stable, where the baby was born and laid in a manger—a trough from which animals eat. Shepherds were in the fields watching their flocks that night, and angels appeared to them and announced the birth. "Do not fear. We bring you tidings of great joy."

The Magi were kings, or astronomers, or wise men who came from the East. They are often seen with camels, following a star that led them to Bethlehem. Caspar, the oldest, kneels before Mary and the Child with his gift of gold, symbol of Christ's kingship. Behind him stands Balthazar, an African, and Melchior, the youngest. Their gifts were frankincense, homage to Christ's divinity, and myrrh, an aromatic perfume used in embalming, foreshadowing Christ’s death. The coming of the Magi represents the coming of Christ to the Gentiles. In the late middle ages the kings symbolized the known world: Europe, Asia and Africa.

Earl Kage's crèches, collected over a period of almost 50 years, were made by artists from around the world; and though the scene is the same, the figures have been set in their own time and culture.

Earl tells us that the depiction of the birth goes back to scenes found on sarcophagi of the 4th century. By the 12th century figures of Jesus, Mary and Joseph were seen in Roman churches. St. Francis was said to have created a live nativity tableau around 1229 in a forest near Assisi. Originally the scene had only three human figures, and the replica of the Baby Jesus was inserted into the scene on Christmas Eve. Later the three kinds were added, and still later angels, shepherds and animals. In some traditions, the three kings are not set out until the Feast of the Epiphany, or Twelfth Night, on January 6.

In the Gallery's collection are two paintings of the scene at Bethlehem: The Nativity (31.28), once attributed to the Master of Frankfurt, now being investigated as perhaps the work of Marcellus Coffermans; and Adoration of the Magi (80.43) by the Master of St. Sang.

The Nativity portrays the adoration of the child by the Virgin and three kneeling angels in the foreground of a Romanesque ruin, with a Flemish landscape in the background. Two shepherds and their donkey can be seen at the left; at the right Joseph enters, carrying a candle and accompanied by a female figure, who may be a midwife introduced into the story as later generations embellished it. Three angels, with fluttering, jeweled robes and naively foreshortened faces, hover above the ruins. The detail is meticulous.

Little is known about the life of Coffermans, but he is mentioned repeatedly in the annals of the guild of St. Luke in Antwerp. Several signed paintings are dated around 1549-1570, and he seems to have spent much of his time copying earlier Flemish and German works.

In The Adoration of the Magi, the three kings have arrived to worship the Child. The figures have a solid monumentality that shows the influence of the Italian Renaissance. The kneeling king has a cardinal's hat on his back, a mark of the artist. The Master of St. Sang, named after a picture in the Chapel of St. Sang, Gruges, may have studied with Gerard David in Bruges, but he worked in Antwerp. His paintings are marked by warmth of color and psychological depth.

Joan K. Yanni

December 1991

IVORY DIPTYCH

Are you running out of things to talk about in the Fountain Court? Do you find yourself "losing steam" after you have talked about the Otto III tapestry and the manuscript?

Perhaps the treasury arts case, to the left of the far doorway, will provide some new material. The ivory diptych (49.19), with its top register showing a Crucifixion and its lower register a Nativity scene, is a particularly fine example of French 14th-century ivory carving. In addition, MAG's diptych is very unusual in that Mary, in the crucifixion scene, is not wearing a head veil. In the many examples of these diptychs, where artists chose iconography from pattern books, most portrayed Mary with her head covered. (David Walsh comments on this in Porticus, Vol. VII, 1984).

You would probably want to begin by reminding your group that, because ivory is so valued, the animals whose tusks supply it have been over-hunted, often illegally, and are now endangered. The finest ivory comes from the African elephant, both male and female, and the male Indian elephant. Tusks continue to grow, can reach six feet in length, and a pair may weigh 100 pounds.

Ivory has been highly prized since ancient times, and was used almost continuously in the West from Roman times until the sixteenth century. Its fine grain, smooth texture and non-chipping qualities make it eminently suited for carving. It is not destroyed by fire, which may be the reason ivories have survived in greater quantities than many other decorative arts.

You could emphasize the fine workmanship on the diptych by having your group carefully view it from the side. This way they can better appreciate how skillfully the carver gave a three-dimensional feeling to a piece of ivory only 3/8 of an inch thick. He has carved it into at least three different planes. Work like this would be given only to a master carver, for there was no margin for error with so costly and rare a material. The carver would use tools similar to those of a woodworker—saws, drills, files and rasps. The ivory would then be polished, usually with a paste made from its own dust.

Your group can sharpen their looking skills by close observation of the diptych. You might ask them how they know there was another side to this piece (hinge marks on the right side). You could explain that this would probably have belonged to a wealthy person with his own private chapel in his own castle or great house.

The top scene shows a Crucifixion with the thorn-crowned Christ on his cross in the center. It is difficult to see, but his right foot is crossed over his left—a medieval symbol for the triumph of good over evil (the right side is the "good" side). His head falls to his right shoulder, symbolizing surrender of self-will to the will of the Father. To Christ's right is the veil-less Mary, supported by three women. To his left is John the Evangelist, with a book in his left hand, symbol of the New Testament. Two men, wearing the conical caps required of Jewish men in the middle ages, stand behind John.

The lower register shows a busy Nativity scene. Mary reclines on her makeshift bed and reaches down to grasp the hand of the infant reaching up to her. She cups her chin in her hand, as if to contemplate the fate awaiting her child. Joseph dozes at her feet. He is not disinterested—he was often pictured asleep or away from the main action to show that he had no fleshly connection with the Incarnation.

The ox and the ass are often incorporated into Nativity scenes, as they are here, for the ox, frequently referred to in the Old Testament as a sacrificial animal, became a symbol of the Jewish people. As a metaphor for patience, strength, docility and humility, the ox represents Christ the Redeemer. The ass or donkey is docile, humble and long-suffering; its presence indicates that even the simplest of the animals recognizes the Savior.

Above all in the scene, under the arches, is the Annunciation to the shepherds. The angel on the left displays a scroll to those tending their sheep. The shepherd in the center has a bagpipe under his left arm; the right arm is missing. The hand of the shepherd on the right is raised in a rather comical way; it is doubtful that they could read the scroll.

Connections might be made with the Consul sculpture (73.146) with his scrolls, or with any of the manuscripts in the covered case or in the Asian gallery. The crucified Christ could be compared with the Spanish crucifix (52.34) to show how the creator of each piece endeavored to arouse our emotions. There are also two other ivory pieces in the case in the Fountain Court. Finally, the realistic tenderness of Mary toward her child could be compared with the Renaissance tondo, Madonna and Child with Angel (47.30), and contrasted with the formal Byzantine mother and child across the room (27.1), where Mary presents the child to the world.

Sources: Calkins, Robert G., Monuments of Medieval Art, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979; Haskell, Alfred, Ivories, Rutland,Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc., Publishers; Walsh, David A., "Notes on the Iconography of a Fourteenth-century Ivory" Porticus, VII (1984), pp. 1-7. For other items in the case, see Porticus, V. (1982) David A. Walsh, "Two Limoges Enamels." The Antioch mosaic floor is also in this issue.

Libby Clay

April 1996

THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS

The Gallery's calendar shows that spring arrived officially on March 25, the day the Lockhart Gallery burst into flower with the show Art in Bloom. Many of the works on view have spent long winters in storage and, thanks to Marie Via, who organized the show, they now have their season in the sun. Many of the flowers in "Marie's garden" have wonderful histories and legends, reflecting the love affair mankind has had with flowers since time immemorial.

Anemones, found in Flowers by G. Alix, are among spring's first blooms. Part of the buttercup family, they are also called windflowers, for the Greek god of the wind. Ancient Greeks believed they would open their petals only when the wind blew. Legend has it that when Venus was weeping in the forest for Adonis, amemones sprang up where her tears had fallen.

Carnations, found in Henry Keller's Old Fashioned Bouquet, were called Di-anthos, meaning Flower of Jove, by Athenians. They used them to make wreaths and garlands for coronations, hence the name Carnation. Cultivated for over 2000 years, they were sometimes added to wine to impart spiciness.

Daisies, also seen in Keller's lithograph, mean "the eye of the day," for they open with the dawn and fold their petals at sundown. Natives of China, these hardy flowers spread throughout Asia, North Africa and Europe. There were no daisies in America when the Puritans unpacked their goods in Massachusetts, but when they threw out the packing straw, they unknowingly planted this wildflower of summer.

Water lilies, seen in Agnes Jeffrey's watercolors, were associated with the Greek goddess

of springs, Nymphe. They were found growing where the nymphs were said to play. These delicate flowers do not open until midday, and they retire iin the early evening.

The lily, among the flowers in Henry Keller's bouquet, is the symbol of purity and is one of the oldest flowers in the world. It was the personal flower of Hera, the moon goddess, and Christians associated with the Virgin. A legend tells that it first sprang from the tears dropped by Eve when she left the Garden of Eden. The lily and day lily developed at the dawn of history in China. They were much prized for their medicinal qualities, and they were carried by caravans on the silk routes. Lilies were introduced to England by 1595 and were among the first plants brought to the American colonies. Their hardiness and endurance were a promise of the future.

Irises appear in several of the works, including Elmer MacRae's Purple Iris, which was chosen for the cover of Gallery Notes (and also the invitation to "Art in Bloom," the event.) Iris was the messenger of the Greek gods, and she appeared to mortals as a rainbow, the arc being her flight as she winged her message across the sky. Appropriately, irises are found in a rainbow of colors. They became the emblem of the kings of France as the Fleur-de-Lis. Also known as "flags," they were favorites of American colonists. A letter from Thomas Jefferson to his sister requests that she send him some by mule from Monticello to his Lynchburg residence.

Finally, we come to the queen of flowers, the rose. It blooms in many of the works in the Lockhart Gallery. Species of Rosaceae have been in cultivation for more than 3.000 years in the gardens of China, Persia, Egypt and the Greek Islands. Roses have been used as food, medicine, decoration and perfume. Queen Elizabeth I took the Tudor rose as her personal emblem, and the Empress Josephine had 250 varieties at Malmaison. Ninety per cent of our cultivated roses are of foreign origin, and even the so-called wild roses are escaped immigrants from early gardens.

Remember to take time to smell the flowers!

Sources: The Language of Flowers, Edited by Sheila Pickles, Harmony Books, NY; Historic Preservation, July-September, 1978; “Gardner's Journal,” by Helen Foster, from a publication by the Landmark Society.

Libby Clay

April, 1994

GUI AND TSUBA

Editor's Note: Cases flanking the entrance to the Asian Gallery contain artifacts important in the culture in which they originated. Libby Clay has researched Chinese ritual vessels and Japanese sword guards.

A GUI (pronounced gway) was one of many forms of Chinese ritual vessels used for serving food. Each vessel had its own distinctive shape and use. Though many were similar, no two were exactly alike.

The Gallery's gui (42.15) was produced during either the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1500-1066 BCE) or the Shou Dynasty (ca. 1066-221 BCE). New archeological finds keep pushing back the beginning of the Bronze Age in China, so it is impossible to supply single dates for the beginning or end of the period. 221 BCE is a handy, if arbitrary, ending date, for it was then that the ruler of the principality of Qui (pronounced Chin) united all of China under a single rule. Our name for China derives from the name of Qui's state.

MAG's gui was used specifically for serving steamed grain in a ceremonial function, as in offerings to ancestors. It is made of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. During the Shang and Shou dynasties, bronze was regarded as a semiprecious material, and its use was restricted to ceremonial or military purposes. Ordinarily bronzes were not made to be placed in a tomb (as were our clay musicians), but used for above-ground rituals. The percentage of tin, which determined the color of a given vessel, varied greatly in Chinese bronzes. The silver-gray color of our vessel seems to indicate a large percentage of tin.

Most of these bronze ceremonial vessels are decorated with animal-like images, more fantastic than real. The Gallery's gui has two flanges attached to the bowl, across from each other and centered between the handles. Each flange serves as the nose of an imaginary animal mask, called taotie or tao-tieh. The round, projecting eyes of two confronting dragons, seen in profile, serve as the eyes of two taoties. The tops of the handles also have taoties.

To make the vessel, the Chinese poured molten metal directly into clay "piece molds," a process called the "direct method of casting." Clay molds could be made in multiple sections, then keyed together to produce the final mold into which the molten bronze was poured. Only a people with a long and advanced ceramic tradition could have made these elaborate molds. Decorations for a piece such as MAG's were cast at the same time as the vessel and attached later.

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SAMURAI AND TSUBA: A Samurai was a member of the warrior class in feudal Japan, and the sword was an essential component of the warrior's dress. Used initially in feudal warfare, by the Edo period (1615-1868), the sword had become mainly an article of personal adornment and status.

The tsuba (soo buh) was the hand guard for a Samurai sword, designed by master craftsmen to express the distinctive virtues of its owner. Unlike early Chinese and European sword guards, which usually are wrought into the blade, the Japanese tsuba is a distinctly separate piece of metal. The Gallery has nine tsubas on view (grouped as 44.26 and 66.9) and others in storage.

Everything that pertained to the sword was regarded with reverence by the Samurai. The sword was considered part of the Samurai’s personality, and people tended to judge his character by his weapon. The tsuba was second in importance only to the blade itself. It was so important, in fact, that it was the custom to have it consecrated by Buddhist priests.

The tsuba started as an oval form, corresponding to the shape of the closed hand that grasped the sword. It had three functional qualities: strength, lightness, and appropriate form to protect its owner's hand. It had a central opening where the tang of the blade was inserted into the hilt.

As the sword began to serve a more symbolic, ritualistic purpose, tsubas became more aesthetically pleasing—a creative vehicle for artistic expression. A wealthy Samurai might have as many as five sets of sword furniture. In the Edo period there were about 2 million Samurai carrying both long and short swords, each equipped with a tsuba.

The Samurai themselves evolved just as tsubas did. Originally they were exclusively an aristocratic warrior caste; later the term included all members of the warrior class that rose to power in the 12th century and dominated the Japanese government until 1868. The ideal Samurai was supposed to be a stoic warrior who followed an unwritten code of conduct (Bushido) which held bravery, honor and personal loyalty above life itself. Ritual suicide (hari-kari) was considered a respected alternative to dishonor or defeat. The Samurai class lost its privileged position when feudalism was officially abolished in 1871.

The Samurai culture produced such uniquely Japanese arts as the tea ceremony and flower arranging that continue today.

Source: Curatorial files, Grolier Encyclopedia, and talk by Keith Wilson, Curator of Asian Art, Cleveland Museum of Art.

Joan K. Yanni

November, 1997

HANUKKAH AND THE MENORAH

The menorah is the outstanding symbol of Hanukkah, known as the Festival of Lights or Feast of Dedication. As can be seen in the annual exhibition at the Gallery, menorahs can be made of a variety of materials—silver, brass, ceramic, iron, etc.—and their designs represent a multitude of sizes and artistic expressions. Menorahs—literally, light holders—can be used in ceremonies throughout the year, but the eight-light menorah used especially for Hanukkah is called a hanukkiah.

Hanukkah (which can also be spelled Chanuka, Chanukah, or Hannukah) marks the deliverance of Jews of Palestine from the oppression of the Syrian-Greeks in the second century BC.

King Antiochus of Syria had prohibited the observance of sacred Jewish practices and had ordered the Jews living in his territory to worship his idols. In the year 165 BC, the Jews rebelled. Under the leadership of Judah Maccabee and his four brothers, sons of Matthias the priest, they succeeded in defeating the Syrian armies. Once the Jews had recaptured the Temple, they smashed the idols and cleansed and rededicated it. Hanukkah means rededication.

It is told that when Antiochus and the Syrian-Greeks first captured the Temple, they desecrated all the jugs of oil that the Jewish High Priest had prepared for lighting the Temple menorah, or candelabra. When the Jews recaptured the Temple, they needed purified oil to relight the menorah. But after much searching, they found only one small jug still bearing the unbroken seal of the High Priest, and this jug contained only enough oil to burn for one day. Nevertheless, the High Priest kindled the menorah, and a miracle happened! The flame continued to burn for eight days.

In commemoration of this miracle, Hanukkah is observed by kindling lights for a series of eight days. Thus Hanukkah became known as the Festival of Lights. The festival is usually celebrated during the month of Kislav in the Hebrew calendar, which corresponds to late November/December.

Today, candles are used in the menorah instead of oil. One candle is kindled on the first night, two on the second, etc., until eight have been lighted on the last night of the holiday. The candles are inserted from right to left, but lighted from left to right, the newest addition lighted first each night. (Equal importance is given to the right and left side, indicating God's presence everywhere.) The ninth candle, usually placed above the rest, is called a Shammash, meaning servant, and is used to light the other candles. A blessing—in remembrance of the miracle and expressing personal gratitude for being alive and well to observe the holiday—is recited over the candles.

Eastern European cities developed their own special food for Hanukkah: latkes, (pronounced lot-keys) which are potato pancakes. A game, the Hannukah dreidel (pronounced dray-dull), which resembles the English game of put-and-take, is played. A dreidel is a four-sided top with a different Hebrew letter on each side. In recent years, gift-giving on each of the nights of Hanukkah has become commonplace, and community celebrations are in evidence.

To Jews of all ages, the story of Hanukkah dramatically demonstrates that there is no force in the world that can crush the free and dedicated spirit of people of faith.

Essie Germanow

December, 1993

Editor’s Note: The menorahs on exhibit at the Gallery each year are from both public and private collections in Rochester. Both seven-branched and eight branched examples, made for use with oil as well as with candles, are included. They have been made in many different countries, from materials ranging from silver to clay and, like the crèches in the Gallery's other annual December display, show a great variety of interpretation.

Possibly the earliest piece in MAG’s yearly display is a small travel hanukkiah made by a 17th-century Dutch silversmith. There is also usually a group of menorahs made by twentieth-century artists including local Rochester masters Albert Paley, Al Wilson and Kurt Feuerherm. A few of MAG’s ancient oil lamps are also usually on view.

J K Yanni

KUBA TEXTILES

Four Kuba textiles (92.79-.82)—the first African weavings in the permanent collection—have been acquired by the Gallery and were unveiled at the opening of Royal Kuba Art. When the exhibition ends, they will be on view (one at a time) in the African gallery.

The textiles are examples of "musese," also called "Shoowa velvet," or "Kasai velvet," a high-quality, cut-pile type of cloth worn by the Kuba. Musese, like other Kuba textiles, is made of fibers from the raffia palm, but it is far the most luxurious. Indeed, the use of raffia for cloth is unusual; in most of the rest of Africa, wool and cotton fibers are used for textiles.

The "velvet" fiber is made up of strips of the outer layer of the young leaves of dried raffia. The raffia fiber is rubbed by hand or with pieces of wood, beaten, then divided by a fine-tooth comb until it becomes very soft, supple and silky—hardly resembling raffia at all. Traditionally the weaving is done by men, who learn it at an early age. The women do the embroidering.

The raffia cloth that forms the base of the velvet is dyed yellow, orange, red and sometimes violet and purple. If it is meant for royalty, it is left in its natural state, for white is the color of nobility. Vegetable dyes are used except in the case of green, which is obtained from copper oxide. Work on one high-quality velvet may last a year or more.

Once the fibers have been woven into cloth, soft filaments are threaded in a needle, several at a time, and caught in the fabric. Then, with a special razor, the filaments are cut to about 1/16 of an inch on both sides of the weft to produce the pile. The pile design may be surrounded by a backstitch border.

Musese is worn by both men and women on state occasions, and is a symbol of their status. It is also used as currency.

Motifs embroidered in any Kuba cloth are done without preliminary sketching, so that though the designs may be similar, no two are exactly alike. The patterns are geometric and maze-like, often using diamond or chevron designs. The motifs have names drawn from the natural world, such as Stones, Smoke and Lion's Paw.

The origin of weaving among the Kuba has been said to date from the reign of King Shyaam (c. 1600). One story says that the king wanted a wife, and all the Kuba maidens danced before him. A young girl named Kashasha had secretly embroidered a skirt with magnificent designs, which so dazzled the king that he made her his queen.

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There are four objects in the MAG collection, all in the same case, which can be related to the Kuba exhibition. The brass collar or necklace (68.106) is incised with intricate geometric designs and would be worn by royalty in special ceremonies. The ivory pendant, or amulet (51.114), would be given to a young man as a badge of adulthood when he was admitted to the society of men. The amulet has the stylized marks of large Pende masks: half-closed eyes, small nose, small mouth. Highly prized, the piece would be passed on or sold only after the owner's death.

The wooden double cup (51.112) was used for drinking palm wine during rituals. Two figures on each side of the cup represent slaves who carry the cup. Designs similar to those of the Kuba can be seen on the top of the cup. The mask (72.54) is typical of Yaka culture from Zaire, and would be worn in ceremonies to honor a particular spirit or to celebrate a special event.

Joan K. Yanni

March 1993

MOMOTARO: A JAPANESE LEGEND
The "devil scroll" (63.25) in the Asian Gallery illustrates an old Japanese legend:

A poor hardworking old man and his wife, who had prayed all their lives for a son, were sent a baby boy by the gods. They called him Momotaro, meaning son of a peach, because he came to them inside a peach. He grew to be a strong, brave, and wise young man.

One day he said to his parents, "There is something important I must do, but have patience and I will return to you. I must travel to the island of devils, who have been robbing and killing people for many years; I believe I can conquer them and return their plunder."

The next day he set off for the island of the devils. During his travels he met a large dog, a monkey, and a pheasant, all of whom asked to join him on his mission. The dog marched first, carrying a flag; next came Momotaro with an iron war fan; behind them came the monkey, carrying a sword; and last, the large pheasant. Finally they came to the sea. Momotaro secured a ship and they set sail for the island. After sailing for some time, they came to an island with a large castle in the center: the island of the devils.

Momotaro made his plan. He told the pheasant to fly to the castle and engage the devils in battle. So the pheasant flew over the devils and cried, "The great Japanese general Momotaro has come to capture your stronghold. Surrender or we will kill you." The devils looked up, saw the bird, and began to laugh. Then they tried to attack the pheasant with their horns. But the bird dodged them so fast that all they did was hit one another in the head with their horns until they were exhausted.

Meanwhile Momotaro and the dog landed the ship and walked up the path to the castle. They joined the pheasant in his attack. The three of them fought so hard they seemed to be one hundred. And that is how Momotaro conquered the devils.

Momotaro found all the treasures that had been stolen from the people and returned them; he freed the captives he found on the island. He, the dog, the monkey and the pheasant returned home as heroes.

In Asia, the peach is symbolic of life. Momotaro is the heroic self in all of us. We must release that self and subjugate the devils within ourselves.

(Research by Diane Tichell)

Joan K. Yanni

December, 1987

MANUSCRIPTS

The paintings in illuminated manuscripts were called miniatures, not because they were small, but because red paint, "minium" in Latin, was often used in their decoration. When parchment replaced papyrus in manuscripts, illustrations became elaborate and the manuscripts became more expensive. (This was because of materials, not man-hours— monks' time was not chargeable!) Parchment and vellum were made from goat, sheep and calf skin; the color and quality depended upon the age, texture, and country of origin of the skin.

Two different artists did the illustrations and the text. Pens for the finest work were made from the quills of a crow, with very long slits. Writing was done with goose or weed quills that had a shorter slit. Colors came from natural materials: black from twig or candle soot; white from white lead; blue from lapis lazuli and indigo; red from sulfur, quicksilver (mercury) or red lead; green from malachite; and rose from Brazil wood. Ear wax or honey was used in some recipes of medieval craftsmen to make the color shiny rather than brittle. Gold and silver were natural and usually used in leaf form.

An expert monk could do fifteen pages of script a day. Artists and scribes rarely signed their work, but did add dedication or warnings of a curse should anyone destroy the work. Despite the enforced silence in the scriptorium, monks found a way to communicate: in the margins of some books are notes from one monk to another.

Research on manuscripts by docent Bonnie Nolen.

Joan K. Yanni

June, 1989

MYCENAEAN KRATERS

Few objects in the Gallery's collection of classical antiquities are as important as the Mycenaean Greek kraters (51.203,.204) in the Ancient Gallery. (Both are not always on view.) These wine-mixing bowls are known to have been found on Cyprus and acquired by the diplomat Frederic Morgan between 1901 and 1903 when he was Fi

SIR LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA Joan K. Yanni September 1989

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's A Sculpture Garden or The Sculpture Gallery (89.45) was acquired this year through the Strasenburgh Fund and has been installed in the 19th-century European Gallery.

AMMI PHILLIPS OLD WOMAN WITH A BIBLE

ALEXANDER CALDER - HE MADE SCULPTURE MOVE

CORNELIS de VOS: YOUNG MAN WITH A DOG

Ritchie after Carpenter

MOMOTARO: A JAPANESE LEGEND The "devil scroll" (63.25) in the Asian Gallery illustrates an old Japanese legend:

SIR LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA
Joan K. Yanni
September 1989

AMMI PHILLIPS
OLD WOMAN WITH A BIBLE

MOMOTARO: A JAPANESE LEGEND
The "devil scroll" (63.25) in the Asian Gallery illustrates an old Japanese legend: