23 Sunday Dec 2012
Posted in History
≈ Comments Off on Animated Nature
LWL-Animated Nature
Let’s just have some fun, and enjoy this image. Crush that surge of jealously that you’re not cataloging with “Temporary local subject terms: Dogs — Hats — Kittens — Monkey — Muff — Squirrel.”
I am so going to catalog our carved squirrel, just so I can add squirrels to the subject headings. Look, pages of squirrel subject headings! “Squirrel Bait–Musical Group.” The Library of Congress makes everything so–logical. Safe. Controlled.
Don’t you feel better now?
22 Saturday Dec 2012
Tags
19th century, american art history, Asher B Durand, Asher Brown Durand, asher durand, museum collections, Museums, painting, pinterest, portraits, Research, resources
BRM-Landscape, Wood Scene
At the Brandywine River Museum, I saw an Asher B. Durand landscape and said, “I haven’t thought about Asher Durand in a long time.” My mother, ever the realist, muttered just-loud-enough, “Well, why would you?!” She studied art history for real, me, I only went to art school. It’s a wonder I can even feed myself.
Getting my stimulating-image fix last night on Pinterest: lo and behold, Asher B. Durand! Buddy! Good to see you! Even better, the side of Asher Durand you never get in those American Art History classes taught by a disheartened adjunct on a three-year contract trying to beat Manifest Destiny into you.
If you’re like me, Asher Durand’s the original Jersey Boy member of the Hudson River School, all Thanatopsis and metaphors, machine-in-the-garden, acolyte of Thomas Cole. But it’s better than that–he’s also Mr. Awesome Portrait.
MMA-Mrs Winfield Scott
Thanks to Cassidy, Mrs. Winfield Scott gazed calmly from the screen last night, lovely in her golden silk gown with fine silk over sleeves not even as heavy as butterfly wings. Lovely Mrs. Scott, against a backdrop of a…finely painted river scene, highly detailed and with a looming cloud… That painter guy seems to know what he’s doing, why, Asher B. Durand, you scamp! You worked landscape magic into the background of that money-making, pay-the-bills portrait.
Grey Collection-Summer Afternoon
Cows won’t pay for portraits of themselves, so the history and landscape painters of the past generally had to shill the portraits (G.C. Bingham did it, but without Asher B’s grace). Lucky for us, they were good at people, too, though I think you can tell their first love is landscape.
PAFA-Creek & Rocks
Art History Secrets Revealed: I have a friend who paints rocks in streams (and other things), but Ken’s paintings of rocks are incredibly beautiful. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which is home to…did you guess? Asher B. Durand’s painting of rocks in a stream.
So while Pinterest can be home to horrors (go see for yourself, I’m not looking), it can lead you to places you didn’t expect to go, or back to things you’d forgotten about, like Asher B. Durand. He was useful to know about when I worked in the Midwest, photo editing a history journal. I’m glad I’ve met him again.
21 Friday Dec 2012
Tags
18th century clothes, Clothing, Costume, fashion, mercantile trade, museum collections, resources, robert jenkins, silk velvet
RIHS-Robert Jenkins
Meet Mr. Jenkins. There are references to a Robert Jenkins, Vestryman of Christ Church, Boston and merchant of Salem, MA and Newport, RI. A Robert Jenkins married Elizabeth Champlin of Newport, and we have a pendant portrait of Betsey Jenkins, suggesting stronger ties to Newport. The records are confusing, but one thing is clear: that’s his waistcoat and he’s happy to have you see it.
This 1748 portrait by John Greenwood shows a man associated with a port city, perhaps connected with shipping and mercantile trade (see the ships in the background), and who has made enough money to a) commission a portrait and b) either own that sweet silk velvet waistcoat or to have one painted. It is entirely possible that he owned it.
Met-Waistcoat
And it probably looked a lot like this 1750-1755 one from the Met, but without the sleeves. There is fragment (two fronts) of one very like this in the collection at work. It’s not Robert Jenkins’, but it is Rhode Island, so we know these kind of garments were available and worn. The last piece to track down would be an account book, to get some idea of what this might have cost.
What I like in particular about the Met’s waistcoat is the cuff detail. The sleeve, which would be heavy if fully made of velvet, is not. Only the cuff is the velvet, while the sleeve itself is lighter weight silk.
20 Thursday Dec 2012
Tags
cataloging, museum collections, Museums, National Gallery of Art, Research, resources, zen cataloging
NGA- Lady Wearing a Large White Cap
Sweet cap, right? It all started because it’s cold this morning here in RI and I thought about skating when I went out to get the Times, and that led to Gilbert Stuart, which led to the National Gallery.
They have a fun search option, similar to the Tate Britain’s subject-search, but not quite as elegant.
You can start with a subject search, and then add a sub category. Results (stability not guaranteed) show you things you would not have otherwise expected, and that’s one more reason to love online catalogs & databases.
NGA Screenshot
The results give you little unexpected galleries, and the juxtaposition or similarities of the thumbnails help you see the work differently. Black dresses and white collars are prevalent on this page: why? Is this fashion alone, or are these mourning garments? they’re earlier than the Civil War, but maybe it’s time to re-read This Republic of Suffering.
NGA- Sarah Cook Arnold knitting
But wait–who is this? It’s Probably Sarah Cook Arnold, Knitting. (Probably is not her name, smartypants, it’s an adverb.)
She’s knitting in the round, by the way, on three incredibly tiny pins from an invisible ball of yarn, possibly swallowed by the cat hidden in her skirts. (I know a woman who can knit with these skinny quadruple-ought pins, but they are a hazard in my hands.)
I would not have found Sarah Cook Arnold knitting without using the random subject search, nor would I have found Fabulous Cap at the top. Sometimes you need to enjoy the journey as much as the destination.
19 Wednesday Dec 2012
Tags
18th century clothes, Clothing, Costume, dress, fashion, john smibert, Museums, Research, resources
John Smibert made me laugh. He’s been dead since 1751, so it wasn’t easy.
The day I went to the MFA and walked into the gallery with Mrs Tyng on wall, I laughed, and said, “I know her!” while my son died a small interior death. Then I pulled up the record and image for Mrs Browne, and showed him how I knew Mrs Tyng.
Follow Smibert’s pictorial advice if you’re reenacting an American woman of means between 1729 and 1732, and you’re wearing blue silk. You may have a red silk wrapper/shawl. Your shift will show at the center front and sleeves to show off your fine linen. You look like you might be a little cold, but perhaps that explains the “I store oranges in my bodice” look.
See for yourself:
MMA, Mrs Brinley & her son
MFA, Mrs MacSparran
RIHS, Mrs Browne
MFA, Mrs Tyng
MFA, Mrs Dudley
Smith College- Mrs Erving
Yale- The Bermuda Group
After a while, you start to wonder if there was only one woman in the colonies in 1730… And then you wonder how she got into every painting…
I know, style and conventions helped create these portraits as much as Smibert’s skill. And the portraits only get weird when you do the thing that was never supposed to happen. We were never meant to see all of these portraits all together, all at once, anywhere.
So, what’s she wearing? Probably this dress. No, not this exact dress, though if it was same woman in all those paintings, maybe the Met does have her actual dress. (Sometimes I have these weird museum-y ideas, and that’s generally when I need a vacation or come up with a new program idea.)
The robe volante shows up in paintings of women dressing, and in informal scenes, as below. She’s clearly wearing stays, which is helpful to know, because while I knew the women in the Smibert paintings ought to be wearing stays, and they had conical torsos, the orange-smuggling look was confusing.
Galerie Dreyfus- Scène galante dans un parc, ca 1725
In fact, it confuses me still.
Seriously, the 18th century was a pretty sexy place, if you like oranges and silk.
Yale- Mrs Tyng
Look, there’s Mrs Tyng again! She’s left the MFA and taken a chair at Yale.
Kitty Calash 