365 Days at the Met

  October 27, 2022 I've peered into gallery 814 several times and looked forward to visiting it, because it has significant sentimental value for me.  My mother loved both Degas and the ballet, and the gallery contains 56 Degas bronze statuettes, primarily of dancers and horses. I recall that on one of our last visits to the Met, I pushed her in a wheelchair, but she hoisted herself up from the seat, the better to see these works. I read that the statuettes, originally modeled in clay, wax, and plasticine, were discovered in Degas’ studio after his death in 1917. Degas apparently made them for his own contemplation and use, the sculptural equivalent of sketches;  only one was ever exhibited. A few years after his demise, however, bronze castings were made of 72 statuettes; Mrs. Oscar Havemeyer scooped up most of them and donated them to the Met in 1929. We are in her debt.  A placard discusses the difficulty of dating the statuettes. It seems clear, at least to me, t...

 October 14, 2022 Gallery 813 is out of sync chronologically with the preceding and following galleries, focusing as it does on Symbolist images (I can't say I understand these, really) and on Art Nouveau works. The gallery consists of two parts, one holding a number of paintings, the second containing the dining room from the Parisian apartment of Auguste Rateau, a connoisseur of Art Nouveau works. The room is particularly notable for its walls painted with wisteria and its six torchiere lamps whose sinuous, curving alabaster shades remind me of shells. The paintings include several flower paintings by Odilon Redon.  My favorite is one he painted around 1912-1914, toward the end of his life.  Measuring about 25 inches high and 20 inches wide, the canvas  shows several kinds of flowers - among them poppies, carnations, sunflowers, and daisies -  arranged luxuriantly in a tall white vase. But what makes the painting special for me is that flowers and vase are sus...

October 10, 2022 Gallery 812 is devoted to French landscapes, mostly dating from the 1850s and 1860s. They include several Courbets and what I learn is Rosa Bonheur’s most famous painting, “The Horse Fair,” a monumental effort that occupies most of one of the gallery's walls. I’d heard of Bonheur, of course, but I didn’t realize that she was known as an animal painter. Today’s work is Charles-Francois Daubigny's 1873 oil painting of an apple orchard in flower.  The canvas, which measures approximately 32 inches wide and 20 inches high, strikes me as unusually fresh in appearance, with quick strokes used to portray the cirrus clouds scudding across the light blue sky as well as the blossoms and leaves of the gnarled tree in the foreground, which seem to be blowing in the breeze. The description says that Daubigny was admired by younger colleagues like Monet while at the same time he absorbed their palettes. The painting is not an Impressionist work, exactly, but proto-Impression...