Tag Archives: fineartfriday

He That Is Mighty Hath Done Great Things to Me

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Study for an Annunciation by Lorenzo di Credi

My soul doth magnify the Lord.
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
Because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid;
    for behold from henceforth
    all generations shall call me blessed.
Because he that is mighty, hath done great things to me;
    and holy is his name.
And his mercy is from generation unto generations,
    to them that fear him.
He hath shewed might in his arm:
    he hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat,
    and hath exalted the humble.
He hath filled the hungry with good things;
    and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He hath received Israel his servant,
     being mindful of his mercy:
As he spoke to our fathers,
     to Abraham and to his seed for ever.

                         ~ Song of Mary

We are learning to sing the Magnificat set to Thomas Tallis’ Dorian Service.  It is so foreign to our ears, so difficult to get the right notes even remotely at the right time.  It will be beautiful when we are on the far side of the learning curve. 

I chose this study because the pencil strokes and homely stained paper capture some of the mystery in what is one of the most mysterious, astonishing, mind-boggling events in history.  

Candle Hat

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Candle Hat   (a poem by Billy Collins)

In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cézanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrandt looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Samson.

But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.

He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
a device that allowed him to work into the night.

You can only wonder what it would be like
to be wearing such a chandelier on your head
as if you were a walking dining room or concert hall.

But once you see this hat there is no need to read
any biography of Goya or to memorize his dates.

To understand Goya you only have to imagine him
lighting the candles one by one, then placing
the hat on his head, ready for a night of work.

Imagine him surprising his wife with his new invention,
then laughing like a birthday cake when she saw the glow.

Imagine him flickering through the rooms of his house
with all the shadows flying across the walls.

Imagine a lost traveler knocking on his door
one dark night in the hill country of Spain.
“Come in,” he would say, “I was just painting myself,”
as he stood in the doorway holding up the wand of a brush,
illuminated in the blaze of his famous candle hat.

Don’t you just love the playful humor in Billy Collins’ poems?
I’m not sure which self-portraits Collins had in mind,
and each painter made several self-portraits,
but here are my guesses:


Cézanne, Self-Portrait


Van Gogh, Self-Portrait


Rembrandt, Self-Portrait

Glasgow Children and Scottish Seascapes

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I want to highlight a modern Scottish artist,
Joan Eardley (1921-1963).
 
Her paintings fall into two groups:
street children of Glasgow and
land and seascape paintings of Catterline,
and East coast fishing village.

I would pair her pictures with Charles Dickens, don’t you think?


Children and Chalked Wall 3


Brother and Sister

This is a compelling picture: the proprietary grip,
the arm cradling the milk, the clear eyes amidst the squalor…

Winter Sea IV


Seeded Grasses and Daisies, September

The Seeded Grasses reminded me of this photo, taken by Donna.
Donna at Quiet Life blesses us with beautiful and artistic photos every day.

We watched Visions of Scotland last night, one of those films shot
from a helicopter with minimal narration.  My husband was a skeptic.
Green fields, castles, and lochs abounded, picturesque to the 13th degree.
Of course, Scotland was showing her best side. 
But every country has its shot-nosed ragamuffins, doesn’t it now?

Peploe, A Scottish Artist

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A Rocky Shore, Iona  by Samuel John Peploe

In Alexander McCall Smith’s book 44 Scotland Street a painting in a gallery is suspected of being a Peploe.  I’d never heard of the chap (I’m working on my British idioms), so I looked him up.  Peploe (1871-1935) was in a group of artists called the Scottish Colourists.


Still Life: Apples and Jar, c.1912-1916

Peploe is noted for his still lifes.

“In Kirkcudbright one either fishes or paints.”
Dorothy L. Sayers in The Five Red Herrings

Here are two Kirkcudbright paintings by Peploe.
The lower one reminds me of Edward Hopper.

My first thought when I saw some of Peploe’s works was
“Here is a modern art which I like.”

And if nothing else, Peploe is a wonderful word to say aloud.
Pep-loe.
Peploe, Peploe, Peploe.
Happy Friday!

Fine Art Friday

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We note Fine Art Friday in our home by watching Sister Wendy. 

I discovered the Watch Instantly tab on Netflix a couple of months ago.  You get to watch the same number of hours that you spend in dollars per month.  We are happy with the basement package of $4.99, which translates to five hours of free instant watching on the computer.  I can watch some movies which hold no interest for the other occupants of this household.  We had to download Internet Explorer 6 to use this feature – Firefox didn’t work.

Back to Sister Wendy.  On Fridays we watch one ten-minute segment of her Grand Tour. 

It is a nice length: she’s a dear, but one could easily get too much at one sitting.  

Like the daily poetry, my goal is regular exposure to the true, the beautiful and the good. 

 

Her Own Room

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Girl Embroidering 
Georg Friedrich Kersting (c.1814)

The desire for a room of one’s own was not simply a matter of personal privacy.  It demonstrated the growing awareness of individuality–of a growing personal inner life–and the need to express this individuality in physical ways.  Much had changed since the seventeenth century.  […]

We know immediately that the room [in painting] is hers.  Those are her plants on the windowsill; it is her guitar and sheet music on the settee; it is she who has hung the picture of the young man on the wall and draped it with flowers. […]

Fanny Price, the heroine of Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park (written the year before Kersting painted this picture), had a room where she could go “after anything unpleasant below, and find immediate consolation in some pursuit, or some train of thought at hand.  Her plants, her books–of which she had been a collector from the first hour of her commanding a shilling–her writing desk, and her works of charity and ingenuity, were all within her reach; or if indisposed for employment, if nothing but musing would do, she could scarcely see an object in that room which had not an interesting remembrance connected with it.”

~  Witold Rybczynksi in Home, A Short History of an Idea

*     *     *     *    *

Did you have your own room when you were a child? 

I did, but it was a closet.  I loved that little room…most of the time.  Another post, another day.  My husband always shared with his brother, shared with his roommates, shared with his wife.  He’s never had a room of his own.  [moment of respectful silence]   There are worse things to endure!  And that bit about my husband  having to share hasn’t been mentioned in decades.  So don’t think he’s bitter. [wink]

My thoughts are like children bursting out the school door for recess.  Screaming with exhuberance, focused on the far side of the playground, these thoughts will not stand still.  So let them gallop and romp.  There will be time for corralling soon enough. 

Interior Space

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Interior with a Woman Playing a Virginal
Emmanuel de Witte

I am captivated by the Witold Rybczynski’s Home, A Short History of an Idea.  I just finished a chapter about the influence of the Dutch borgeois in the 1600s, illustrated by this painting.  Rybczynski obviously loves words; he frequently stops and explains etymology. 

The wonderful word, “home” which connotes a
physical “place” but also has the more abstract
sense of a “state of being,” has no equivalent in
the Latin or Slavic European languages.  German,
Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Dutch and English all
have similar sounding words for “home,” all
derived from the Old Norse “heima.” p. 62

The Dutch loved their homes. …
“Home” meant the house, but also everything
that was in it and around it, as well as the people,
and the sense of satisfaction and contentment
that all these conveyed. You could walk out of
the house, but you always returned home. p. 62

Some background notes on the Netherlands:  The Dutch were predominantly townspeople who valued moderation, hard work, thrift and cleanliness.  Land reclaimed from the sea was valuable: the narrow lots were usually one room wide.  Windows were placed on exterior walls in order to lighten the load on the foundation pilings. 

The rooms are illuminated to emphasize their depth
and distance, as well as their physical, material
reality. It is above all this sense of interior space,
and hence of insideness, that distinguishes this
painting. Instead of being a picture of a room,
it is a picture of a home. p.70

Friday’s Stuff

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Snap the Whip   ~ Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer is a wonderful go-to artist for Fine Art Friday.

It is better to keep quiet and be real,
than to chatter and be unreal.
It is a good thing to teach if, that is,
the teacher practices what he preaches.
~  Ignatius of Antioch
(ouch!)

Magistra’s Dictionary:

i • ro • ny:  deer (pl) frolicking in our front yard
while men pack for hunting trip this weekend.

con • viv • i • al • i • ty: a girlfriend weekend with Mel

I’m headed to Boise to collect her from the airport. 
And shop. And talk.  But our chatter will be *real*. <grin>
Y’all have a great weekend. 
(In heaven I’m going to be a southern girl.)

Fine Art Friday & The Grapes of Wrath

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Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother

The other five images Dorothea Lange took.
I know zip about photography, but the lesson here is clear:
Zoom in close. Lange’s famous photograph has so much
more power than the others; you can see the wrinkled brow.
More about the subject, Florence Owens Thompson.

Added Later:

“This benefit of seeing…
can come only if you pause a while,

extricate yourself from the maddening mob
of quick impressions
ceaselessly battering our lives,
and look thoughtfully at a quiet
image…
the viewer must be willing to pause,
to look again, to
meditate.”
~  Dorothea Lange

This famous picture had to accompany the Steinbeck review.
The obvious connection was confirmed in this quote from the Wikipedia article.

Florence remembered that “when Steinbeck wrote in The Grapes of Wrath about those people living under the bridge in Bakersfield – at one time we lived under that bridge. It was the same story. Didn’t even have a tent then, just a ratty old quilt.”

The Grapes of Wrath begins with a drought and ends with a flood.  The book was disturbing, uncomfortable, and yet … compelling.  Since most of you read this in high school English (why didn’t I ???) I’ll leave the plot and characters to your memory.

I’m always comparing books.  This book reminded me in many ways of Cry, The Beloved Country.  Both deal with tragedy, injustice, greed, violence.  But more than that, they both have these incredible little essays tucked in between the chapters that move the plot along.  The commentary and descriptive prose in both are haunting; they visit your mind long after you’ve finished.

Can we talk about obscenity and profanity in a book?  I don’t normally swear or cuss and I never use the Lord’s name casually in speech.  I inwardly cringe when someone says, “Oh God” let alone J.C. or C. Almighty.  For the most part,  my days have been insulated from a steady stream of profanity.  What I found with this audio version was the obscenity was in. your. face.  Or, rather, in my ears.  Inescapable.   I debated with myself about continuing. 

I thought Steinbeck had a message worth listening to, an indictment on corporate business methods that starve the little farmer out of his farm.  I was sick to my stomach at the image of car loads of oranges doused with diesel and burned while people were starving, not just starving but dying, so the price of oranges stayed up.  

So I struggled with the issue of keeping myself pure and the issue of being strong enough to sift through the grit.  This sounds unconnected, but last year I served on a grand jury rape case.   It was murky, messy, and needed the wisdom of Solomon.  At the same time that I felt slimed, I was able to inject some maturity and common sense into the debate.  I reflected that I was able to deal with the situation emotionally in a way that I wouldn’t have been able twenty years ago.

Wiser folk have written about this.  It would be a good study for my son and I to work through. These are matters that require wisdom.

“Wisdom doesn’t mean that you are smarter.  It means you are living out what you know.”   ~ Pastor Steve Schlissel