Blog

In 2021, I emailed 157 art-related items to my members of my free Sunday Recommendations list. (To join, just ask me: DuranteDianne@gmail.com.) For supporters, I recommended 52 more items. The items in this week’s post, last week’s, and next week’s are my favorites among them. They include 12 items that were originally shared only with supporters, which are marked with two asterisks. For other posts in the Favorites series, click here.

Painting

Tied for winner:

• Sargent, John Singer. Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1885-1886). In 1884, Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X caused such a scandal that he left Paris, settling for a time in the Cotswolds with the family of his friend Francis Davis Millet, another American painter. Also staying there was Robert Louis Stevenson, who was at the time writing A Child’s Garden of Verses. (I’ve used several poems from that collection in the Sunday Recommendations.) Stevenson’s poetry inspired Sargent to create this painting of children at dusk. To capture the light, Sargent painted for a short time every evening from September to November 1885 – a technique Monet made famous with his “series paintings” in the early 1890s. The final touches to this painting were done in 1886. Frederic Lord Leighton, then president of the Royal Academy, encouraged the Tate Gallery to purchase the painting, making it the first of Sargent’s paintings to enter a public collection. The painting’s title comes from “Ye Shepherds Tell Me” by Joseph Mazzinghi (1765-1844), a popular song of the time in which a lover seeks news of his beloved:

Tell me have you seen my Flora pass this way?
A wreath round her head, around her head she wore,
Carnation, lily, lily, rose …

• [Unknown artist]. Portrait of an Unknown Artist (19th century). One of the reasons I love exploring small-city museums is that I often find striking works that I’ve never seen illustrated – such as this one at the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts. It was formerly identified as a portrait of Baron Von Schwiter by Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863). According to the museum’s label, that attribution now seems unlikely. But it does look very much like a brooding artist or poet of the Romantic period, doesn’t it? That would make it early nineteenth century.

Runners-up: portrait

• Rubens, Peter Paul. Lady in Waiting (Albertina, Vienna) (ca. 1623). This woman reminds me of a couple characters in the Giordano Bruno series, which I mentioned in last week’s favorites. I wrote about this drawing in detail here.

Runners-up: landscapes (five of them!)

• ** Bruegel the Elder, Pieter. The Harvesters (Metropolitan Museum of Art) (1565). The Harvesters made the cut for my current art-book-in-progress, Getting More Enjoyment from Paintings You Love, because I’ve been fond of it for decades. I always assumed that I was just letting my eye wander at will among the fantastic detail. But when I started working through the painting for the book, it turns out Bruegel actively directed my attention, via his composition – the way objects are arranged on the canvas. Starting at the lower left, the edge of the wheat field curves up and to the right. The piles of wheat that have been cut are a dotted line, echoing and reinforcing the curving edge of the wheat field. Both end just behind the tree near the center of the painting. The tree’s dark vertical line leads the eye down to the group of workers having a picnic beneath the tree. These two major lines of Bruegel’s composition are elegantly simple … but they include both the workers and the wheat fields, the two important elements of the painting. After working through it for an hour or so, I can finally put into words part of the reason I like this painting: it shows a prosperous community, collaborating to harvest the abundant crops they’ve planted.

• Parrish, Maxfield. River at Ascutney (1942). At age 61, when many artists would be thinking of retirement, Parrish decided to paint only landscapes – and did so for the next 30 years. The colors are even brighter than those in his earlier works, probably because there are no figures to which the landscape must be subordinated. While I admire Parrish’s perseverance, color choices, and ability to show detail, this particular landscape is a favorite for more sentimental reasons. It reminds me of the landscape I grew up in, although I’m sure the colors were never actually this bright back in Pennsylvania. For more on Parrish, see Artist-Entrepreneurs: Saint Gaudens, MacMonnies, and Parrish. The last location I’ve been able to find for River at Ascutney is at Vose Galleries in Boston in 1977; presumably it’s in private hands now.

• Thøming, Friedrich. Swordfish Fishing off Capri (ca. 1830-1840). A painting of Capri, with colors and detail that take my breath away. Capri, just outside the Bay of Naples, has been a tourist haven ever since Emperors Augustus and Tiberius built multiple villas there in the first century AD.

• Turner, Joseph Mallord William. The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last berth to be broken up (National Gallery, London), 1838. HMS Temeraire, launched in 1798, played only a minor role in the Napoleonic Wars until the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. There she was astern of Horatio Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, and came to Victory‘s rescue, capturing two French ships in the process. She was known henceforth as “the Fighting Temeraire“. Nearly 35 years later, when steamships were becoming common, she was an outmoded relic of the age of sail, and was condemned to be broken up for scrap. In his four-foot-wide painting, Turner envisions the Temeraire, almost ghost-like, being towed away against a blazing sunset … by a steam-powered tugboat. When 007 meets the new Q in Skyfall (2012, and still one of my favorite Bond movies), they have a prickly conversation in front of this painting at the National Gallery. It’s a reminder that one’s favorites don’t necessarily depend on subject, style, or theme: this painting made the cut for favorite recommendations because of the association with Skyfall.

• Williams, Frederick Ballard. Bright Angel Trail (1913). When prospectors in the Grand Canyon area discovered that the tourist trade brought in more money than mining did, they improved the old Native American trail from the Canyon’s rim down to the river. The Bright Angel Trail is now one of the primary hiking paths in the Canyon. Williams studied at the Cooper Union and National Academy of Design in New York City, and after a trip out west, established himself in New York City. For more on painters of the American West, see this post on Thomas Moran. This painting is at  the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Sculpture

Winner:

** Longman, Evelyn. Genius of Electricity (a.k.a. Spirit of Communication or Golden Boy) (1915). For its new 29-story headquarters at 195 Broadway, AT&T requested models for a seated figure of Zeus, wielder of thunderbolts. Longman won the competition with this sculpture of a young, winged, muscular man carrying lightning in one hand and loops of cable in the other. The cable ends in a sizzle of the electricity that powered AT&T’s telephone and telegraph lines. For decades, the 24-foot figure stood out against the NYC skyline and was used in AT&T’s branding. In 1980, it was moved to the lobby of AT&T’s new headquarters on Madison Avenue, and by 2002 was in New Jersey. Since 2009, it has been at company’s headquarters in Dallas. Longman (1874-1954) was among the first American women to make a career of creating monumental public sculpture. After studying at the Art Institute of Chicago (1898-1900), she became a studio assistant to Daniel Chester French, who sent some commissions her way. By 1906, she was able to support herself with her own work – most often in the early years by submitting to blind competitions, where her work could not be rejected because she was a woman. For more on the Genius of Electricity, see here and here. For more on Longman, see here. (HT for the Longman article: Eric K.)

Runners-up:

• French, Daniel Chester. His Majesty (1931). Thanks to Dana Pilson, curatorial researcher at Chesterwood, for supplying photos of this charming but little-known work. Chesterwood has three copies. The one on display is in a side room in the visitors’ center.

• ** Avila, Cicero d’. Caryatid Ruiva (Red-head Caryatid) (2017?). What a lovely work this is! And (this was a surprise): the sculptor knows why he creates this sort of work: “Of course these types of politics [i.e., the statements of critics in the “art world”] inhibit and intimidate many sculptors who are seeking the freedom and space to follow their own path, particularly those who’s work expresses a union of technique and creativity, and who above all are inspired to cultivate beauty and poetry in their art. I’m part of this latter group—I carry out my work staying true to my ideals, and don’t follow market dictates or make choices based on any kind of ‘intellectual’ or political impositions whatsoever. Over the course of my career I’ve found it’s in fact quite possible to survive and get along in this way—my sculptures have been acquired by significant private collectors throughout the world, and this has financially helped me maintain a very high standard of quality in my work.” The quote is from an interview that includes many more photos of Avila’s work. Avila is in the first generation of sculptors to use a CNC (computer numerically controlled) milling machine in his work. He creates a clay or plaster maquette that is digitally scanned and loaded into a CNC. The machine then carves the block down to a certain level, and the artist finishes the details. According to Avila, CNC machines can cut production time for a lifesize sculpture from two years to four months. Here’s a video of the creation of a different work with CNC. HT to Sam Axton on Facebook for the original recommendation of this sculpture and for the link to the CNC video. For more of Avila’s work, see his Instagram feed.

Next week: architecture, decorative arts, music, dance, film.

More

• In 2021 I published The Financial Programs of Alexander Hamilton, by a Farmer’s Daughter: a massive amount of research and writing, but I’m very glad I did it, and happy that it has received such positive comments. Also out this year: the last two volumes of my edition of Henry Kitchell Webster’s Collected Short Works and Related Correspondence (vol. 3, 1915-1922, and vol. 4, 1922-1932). For more of my writings, see the Books and Essays page. All my books are available in Kindle and/or print format via my Amazon author page. And check out dozens of videos from 2021 on my YouTube channel.

• For favorites from earlier years, see the Favorite Recommendations and Photos link.
• Want wonderful art such as these recommendations delivered weekly to your inbox? Check out my free Sunday Recommendations list and rewards for recurring support: details here.