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This week: more European art at the Wadsworth. For previous posts on the Wadsworth, click here.

1669: Jacob Ochtervelt, The Dancing Dog

This is much more typical of Dutch painting of the Golden Age than Vermeer’s paintings are. It’s a genre scene: normal people doing normal things, in this case courting. Ochtervelt (1634-1682) painted another version of Dancing Dog, in which the woman wears bright pink (Museum of the Shenandoah Valley).

Gerard Ter Borch, Ochtervelt’s contemporary, painted many similar works, such as the Suitor’s Visit, ca. 1658, at the National Gallery in Washington. I’ve used both of them in the video of last week’s Sunday Recommendations (4/11/2021), which included poems about coy women and demanding men (and women).

Ca. 1671-1691: Gerrit Berckheyde, Town Hall, Haarlem

The detail in this one one reminds me of one of my favorite cityscapes, Vermeer’s View of Delft. But what a difference the composition and colors make! This one has no glittering water or blue sky, so it looks far more sober and serious. Vermeer’s has a lot of red and blue; this one is monochrome. But I like the detail on the buildings and the composition (the overall arrangement) very much: main building centered, but not symmetrical; streets balancing it on left and right almost but not quite symmetrical. Even the people in the plaza are grouped and positioned to be balanced but not symmetrical.

1678: Emanuel de Witte, The New Fish Market in Amsterdam

Another scene of normal Dutch people doing normal Dutch seventeenth-century things. I’d rather see paintings of heroes, but paintings such as this one have an appeal because I know they were preceded by centuries during which life on earth just wasn’t considered important enough to represent in paintings.

Ca. 1750: Stephen Slaughter, Two Women with Fruit

Scholars have debated at length the subject of this painting: is the woman standing a servant of the seated woman, or an equal? For a discussion with all the usual academic terminology, see here.

I’d guess they’re equals. First, the standing woman wears a triple-strand pearl necklace, while the seated woman has only a pair of earrings, which would be decidedly odd of the two were mistress and servant. Also, the standing woman rests her arm in a friendly way on the seated woman’s shoulder. It’s not conceivable that a slave would be shown doing that in a portrait – probably not a servant, either.

Slaughter (1697-1765) was British, so the American habit of representing blacks as slaves or servants wouldn’t have been ingrained in him.

1871 & 1878: Julius Victor Berger, Allegory of Venice and Allegory of Rome

Allegorical figures represent an abstraction: in this case, the cities of Venice (a major seafaring power until the sixteenth century) and Rome (home base of the Roman Empire and the Christian pope.) See if you can pick out the elements the artist has used to distinguish the two.

Berger (1850-1902), an Austrian, was known primarily for portraits, genre scenes, and history paintings. His most famous are on the ceiling of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, gallery XIX.

1883: William Heysham Overend, An August Morning with Farragut

This short title, “An August Morning with Farragut,” is a bit understated: the painting represents the Battle of Mobile Bay on August 5, 1864. Admiral Farragut had been ordered to capture Mobile Bay, which was the Confederacy’s best remaining port on the Gulf of Mexico and a haven for ships running the Union blockade. Here Farragut is shown hanging from the rigging of his flagship, the Hartford (perhaps shouting “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”), while the ironclad CSS Tennessee passes by at the far right. Saint Gaudens’s portrait sculpture of Farragut in Madison Square, New York, launched his career and changed the face of American sculpture. (See my blog post on that sculpture for more on the Battle of Mobile Bay.)

This huge painting (10 x 6.5 feet) was inspired by a vivid account of the Battle of Mobile Bay written by J. C. Kinney and published in the June 1881 edition of Scribner’s Magazine under the title “An August Morning with Farragut”. After being commissioned to paint this work, Overend travelled to the United States and did meticulous research. The painting was exhibited in Philadelphia and other American cities, and was distributed in prints as well. When the painting of Farragut and the Hartford was exhibited in Hartford, Connecticut, a fund was raised to buy it for the Wadsworth Atheneum. (For all this, see Wikipedia.)

Overend (1851-1898) was famous as a British painter of marine scenes, even though he was not a seaman. He was also a prolific illustrator of books and periodicals.

More

• In Getting More Enjoyment from Sculpture You Love, I demonstrate a method for looking at sculptures in detail, in depth, and on your own. Learn to enjoy your favorite sculptures more, and find new favorites. Available on Amazon print and Kindle formats.
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