365 Days at the Met

March 24, 2025 Gallery 630 contains a number of 18th century paintings of people, sometimes individuals, sometimes in groups.  The introductory signage notes that around 1650, scenes from everyday life became popular subjects for painters, in part because the Reformation  decreased the demand for religious images. Also, I would assume that the rise of a wealthy mercantile class brought a new group of art consumers who wanted to see their own lives better reflected in artists' works. Some of the works have moralizing overtones, and some are sexually frank. One shows a procuress introducing a young woman to a gentleman sitting at his breakfast table. I see that Met caption-writers have now adopted the term "sex worker" to describe women who, in the past, would have been labeled "prostitutes." I'm intrigued to see two detailed copper engraving plates used to make William Hogarth's prints; it's unfortunate that while small reproductions of the prints are...

 March 20, 2025 Gallery 629 is home to a rather odd melange of early 18th century French paintings whose subjects include entertainers, military encampments, still lifes, and imagined scenes illustrating LaFontaine fables.  Truth to tell, I don't much care for most of these paintings, many of which feel more like sketches than finished works .The gallery  also contains musical instruments from the period - mostly stringed instruments, but also, an oboe and a beautifully curved hunting horn, as well as a hurdy-gurdy, which I've never seen before. The placement of these instruments here is apt, since musicians figure in a number of the paintings, and since a glass door leads from this room into the musical instrument galleries.  One work that captures my attention is Jean Simeon Chardin's "Soap Bubbles," completed around 1733-1734.  In this rather small square painting, which measures about 32" by 32", a young man leans over the edge of a table blowing a s...

March 3, March 10, 2025 As I walked into gallery 628, I instantly knew that it’s devoted to English painters of the 1700s.  (More accurately, it's home to works of painters who worked mostly in England, since the gallery contains works by Copley and John Trumbull.)  Is it that I’ve seen some of the images before? John Hoppner’s portrait of a famous boxer of the period, fists raised in an en garde position, looks very familiar. Is it the abundance of red coats worn by the men in the portraits? Is it the pouffy powdered wigs of the women? Or is it something about the gray skies and hazy treatment of the landscapes (perfect for a damp, misty climate!), or the use of dogs and horses as accessories for men of genteel birth? It seems to me, too, that there's also a stylistic element involved: many of the pictures display loose brushwork  (The introductory placard talks about Britain’s role in the global economy and the establishment of the Royal Academy, so maybe I’m on the wro...