Day 281 - The Rutter children



January 10, 2022

Today was very cold, and I was tempted to stay in.  But I donned multiple layers and actually felt quite comfortable, except for my fingertips. I was reminded of the saying that there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. Of course that's not true; though cold, it was sunny, but  it would have been dreadful had there been precip of any kind.  Still, I was glad I persuaded myself to go - motivated in part by the knowledge that it is supposed to be even colder tomorrow.  

Gallery 751 houses part of yet another collection I didn't know the Met had - American folk art.  Seventeen paintings, which include portraits and landscapes that date mostly from the 1700s and the first half of the19th century, line the walls. These include a Edward Hicks "Peaceable Kingdom"  - perhaps inevitably, since I learn that Hicks painted 62 of these!  There are also a few sculptures and several pieces of furniture,  one of which I covet: a sleek Shaker pine bench made in Hancock between 1825 and 1850.

The portraits generally exhibit the characteristics I associate with the works of self-taught artists: the figures are flat, with relatively little modeling of facial features, and the proportions are often awkward  - no Vitruvian man here. The subjects are set against dark backgrounds, or against backgrounds that don't reflect the precepts about how to represent perspective that have been around since the Renaissance.  These artists paid considerable attention, though, to details of dress; I assume the people who commissioned these portraits wanted their outfits depicted with care.

Today's work is a dual portrait of Edward and Sarah Rutter, the young children of a sea captain. Measuring roughly 32 inches high and 28 inches wide, it was painted around 1805 in oil on canvas by Joshua Johnson, the African-American artist whose portrait of a little girl appears in the Day 260 entry.  Edward and his younger sister  look remarkably similar, with straight blond hair and large eyes. Johnson captures elegant details of their attire: his transparent linen collar, her gold-beaded necklace. The generally sober palette is broken by dashes of bright red: the boy's red bird (not a cardinal, but what?), the strawberries she holds, and her surprising red shoes.  

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