365 Days at the Met

March 21, 2022 The paintings and sculptures in gallery 762, which center on the Civil War and its aftermath, strike me as being as important for what they reveal about the history and attitudes of the period and the views of the artists as for their artistic merit. One such work is a Saint-Gaudens bronze statuette of Abraham Lincoln, based on a larger statue the sculptor created for Chicago's Lincoln Park.  The Great Emancipator is shown looking downward thoughtfully; his clothes are rumpled, his face even thinner than in other images of him I've seen, his left hand large and powerful.  He stands in front of a chair emblazoned with the American eagle; the symbolism of Lincoln as preserver of the Union is unmistakable.  On one wall are two  paintings of  John Brown. An 1882-1884 work by Thomas Hovenden, entitled "The Last Moments of John Brown,"  shows the abolitionist surrounded by guards while descending the ste ps of the courthouse where he has been sente...

 March 18, 2022 According to the introductory signage in gallery 761, light was the central subject of many Late Hudson River School artists working between about 1860 and 1880. This is certainly true of the two works  featured in today's entry. The first,  entitled "Newburyport Meadows,"  a small (approximately 25 inches wide and 12 inches high) canvas painted between 1876 and 1881 by Martin Johnson Heade, is one of many Heade works depicting wetlands.  In the bottom third of the image, receding into the distance, is a green marshy meadow, broken by pools of water, haystacks,  and, barely visible,  a minute haying wagon. But what captures my attention is the gray, lowering sky.  Heavy rain seems to pour from the dark cloud at the left; the scene at the right is illuminated by that weird white light that signals an imminent downpour.  The painting is brilliantly executed - and disquieting, reminding me of the uncontrollable force of nature. I...

March 14, 2022 Gallery 760 turned out to be less intimidating than I'd feared. Aside from the Leutze, it centers on landscapes painted between 1850 and 1875.  I find myself a bit surprised that so many of the works depict foreign locales. Italy is a foregone conclusion, but Frederic Church also visited the Andes and, in one painting (again, annoyingly hung too high to see the details), he included images of sites on or near the eastern Mediterranean-  Palmyra, Petra, Constantinople, and the Acropolis.  I feel fortunate to have seen all but the last - and wonder how much of Palmyra is still standing after ten years of warfare in Syria. I'm immediately drawn to a grand-scale (perhaps 5' X 9') oil by Albert Bierstadt because it reminds me of the Grand Tetons,  one of my favorite locales in the American West.  Executed in 1863, it's entitled "The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak," and in fact depicts a scene in the Wind River Range of the Rockies in Wyoming....

March 11, 2022 I had thought that gallery 759 was the large space containing Leutze's monumental painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, along with many smaller works, and was rather dreading the long visit it would require. Instead, the gallery turns out to be a smaller (although still sizable) room devoted to works of the Hudson River school.  The first painting I see, opposite the entrance, makes me wonder,  "Can it be?" And it is: Thomas Cole's iconic painting of the oxbow of the Connecticut River painted from the top of Mount Holyoke. The painting brings tears to my eyes, I think because  it  depicts a landscape that is so familiar and so beloved - and because it reminds me of my young years, not necessarily such happy ones, but irretrievably gone Seeing it two days after my 74th birthday undoubtedly reinforces these feelings. The work I want to write about, however, is a small (approximately 15" by 24") oil that Cole painted in 1831 entitled ...

March 4, 2022 Gallery 757 displays genre paintings dating from 1830 to 1860, most of whose artists are unknown to me.  Several of the paintings, which show scenes of domestic life, were done by the only woman to gain prominence in the field, Lilly Martin Spencer. One work of interest is a small 1827 cityscape of Five Points in Lower Manhattan, a low-income area known for its criminal activity.  According to the placard, the artist is unidentified, but the image was well known, having been reproduced in an 1855 guidebook to New York City. The streets are filled with people in a roiling scene that reminds me of Pieter Bruegel. But, annoyingly, the painting is hung high on the wall, above another painting, and it's practically impossible to make out what the figures are doing.  It's probably inevitable that I'm drawn to an image familiar to me, George Caleb Bingham's 1845 painting,"Fur Traders Descending the Mississippi." But while I instantly recognize the work ...

 February 24, 2022 Gallery 756 is devoted to portraits and still lifes painted between 1800 and 1850. Most of the portraits are by artists whose names are at least somewhat familiar to me (although sometimes as landscape painters): Washington Alston, Asher Durand, Rembrandt Peale, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Thomas Sully (whose  full-length portrait of a very young - and, I suspect, considerably prettified-  Queen Victoria hangs here). I don't care for  most of these - they smack of sentimentality to me. But I do very much like an oil-on-canvas portrait of a Pawnee chief, Pes-Ke-Le-Cha-Co, painted by Henry Inman around 1832-1833. Measuring roughly 30 inches wide and 28 inches high., the work conveys a strong sense of the subject's  dignity. The chief is shown from the waist up; a cloak, lined with fur (buffalo?) and suspended from his left shoulder ,covers his otherwise bare chest and resembles a classical toga. His face is seen in three-quarters view, and the artis...

January 31, 2022 It was under 30 degrees outside this morning, and I did something I almost never do: treated myself to a taxi to the museum rather than risk having to wait several minutes for the crosstown bus. It was a wonderful expenditure of $15 - the cab was warm, and I basked in the sun that streamed in through the back window.  Gallery 754, a small room off of gallery 753, is closed, because of Covid, I'd guess. The introductory placard in gallery 755 bears the title, "Portraiture and the Atlantic World" - presumably the rationale for grouping together eight paintings, seven by American painters but featuring as subjects both Americans and Spanish officials in the New World, and an eighth by Jose Campeche, Puerto Rico's leading painter of the period (the late 18th and early 19th centuries).  On the basis of these works, I surmise that while the Americans preferred to be portrayed as wealthy but unostentatiously so, the Spaniards wanted to display their finery. ...