More Museums and Art
August 10, 2007
In early August I taught a one-day class for editorial staffers of The Pastel Journal, Artist’s Magazine and North Light Books. It was a great day, and I was impressed by the knowledge and abilities of the participants. See Anne Hevener’s blog at http://blog.pasteljournal.com/Not+Your+Typical+Monday+At+The+Office.aspx for a look at the class from the participants’ viewpoint.
While in Cincinnati I found time to visit their wonderful art museum. It was a treat to see the impressive collection there, including a wonderful painting by Sorolla, and to explore the Cincinnati Wing, with works by artists including Frank Duvenek, John Henry Twachtman, Robert Blum, Elizabeth Nourse and many others.
A few days later, in Kansas City, Missouri, we visited the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, primarily to see the Impressionist exhibition “Manet to Matisse,” a selection of works from the private collection of Marion and Henry Bloch. Though small in number, the paintings are outstanding in quality, and some have not been exhibited since 1886.
Among the works were three lovely pastels. The Beach, by Eugéne Boudin, was painted about 1865. It is a small painting, and the placard noted that the medium of pastel was “well suited to recording the rapidly changing atmospheric effects.” A work by Edgar Degas was painted about 1879—Dancer Making Points, in pastel and gouache on paper mounted on board. The strokes of pastel are fresh and vibrant. The last pastel in the collection was by Renoir, titled The Flowered Hat, and completed around 1890-95. Like the others, the pigment remains luminous and vivid, though all these works have been hanging in private homes, not climate- and light-controlled museums.
The Nelson Museum has been part of my life since childhood; my first exposure to the paintings of the masters was on a fourth-grade field trip. The Bloch exhibition is being shown to the public in part to celebrate the opening of the new wing, which I confess I strongly dislike when viewing the buildings from the street, but which is attractive from within. Because I grew up with this museum, I tend to take changes rather personally and am slow to approve them. But I quite approved of this exhibition!
A visit to the new museum store resulted in the purchase of the book on the Manet to Matisse exhibition, and the hefty volume titled The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings. Despite its equally hefty price-tag, once I’d leafed through this book I felt I had to have it for further study. Monet’s pastels are exquisite and inspirational; I learn something each time I look at them.
The finishing touch was seeing my own book in the museum store. After a lifetime of visiting the museum, my own work was—in published form, at any rate—included within its walls.