Learning from the Masters
July 26, 2007
I am in Washington, D.C, having just completed a workshop in Marshfield Hills, Massachusetts, and having a few days before the beginning of the next class in State College, Pennsylvania.
It is exciting to be able to spend hours each day in the wonderful art museums here. It's been quite a few years since I've seen them, and exhibits change, new paintings are added, and seeing those I've seen before is like visiting old friends.
While it's always wonderful to see those paintings I'm familiar with and have long loved, the discovery of new works is exciting. Yesterday at the National Portrait Gallery I found a gorgeous gem of a painting by an artist with whose work I was not familiar. The artist is H. Siddons Mowbray, and his jewel of a painting caught my attention from across the gallery. At first glance, it is a simple subject: two women reclining, gazing towards the bottom right corner of the painting. The glowing reds of the closer figure's gown drew me across the room.
Then I studied the painting more carefully, admiring the artist's use of rectangles dividing the space, and noted how certain elements were placed on lines defining the Golden Section. The rectangles were balanced by the use of ovals in the foreground—the oval table, the bowl upon it, the oval of the fan and of the mandolin, and even of the shape of the turtles, the objects of the attention of the figures.
The more I studied this painting, the more I saw beneath its surface beauty to the artist's careful composition, which of course enhanced the beauty of the painting. I found a reproduction of the work, titled Idle Hours, at http://www.oceansbridge.com/ art/customer/product.php?productid=48213&cat=4219&page=1&maincat= The%20Gilded%20Age
At the National Gallery of Art today, an exhibit of drawings and sketches included a work by Federico Barocci, done in 1568, in what the card description called "the relatively new medium of pastel, pigment mixed with binder and made into sticks." The fresh and lovely colors spoke to me from across the centuries.
Also in that gallery were a group of paintings in a room with low light. The sign at the entrance said the low light was "to protect the fragile works of art" But they were not pastel; they were oil on cardboard on wood, and were painted by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in 1892. While pigments may not fade quickly, the surface on which a painting is made may deteriorate quite soon.
At the end of the day I indulged in another passion, which is visiting bookstores in art museums. Having spent some time thinking about the Mowbray painting and the artist's use of the Golden Section, I was thrilled to find a book on the subject. It's called The Golden Ratio, by Mario Livio (Broadway Books, New York) and just the few paragraphs I've read so far are fascinating.
And then, walking down the aisle in the bookstore, I spotted my own book prominently displayed, cover facing out, on the shelf there in the National Gallery of Art. It was a golden moment of delight and astonishment at the end of a perfect day.