Tag Archives: light

Lighting Out for the Territories

10 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Art Rant, History, personal

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

I don’t know about you, but the end of winter often seems harder than the beginning: will this ever end? The snow begins to melt, the dirt turns to mud and you’re walking on ice suspended in pudding. It’s claustrophobic.

George Caleb Bingham (American, 1811–1879). Boatmen on the Missouri, 1846. Oil on canvas. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1979.7.15

George Caleb Bingham (American, 1811–1879). Boatmen on the Missouri, 1846. Oil on canvas. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1979.7.15

The weather turns here and the lid finally comes off the sky and reveals that blue above and I think of the vistas of the west, the fields that open up along the rivers of the center of this continent, the fields rough with corn stubble punctuated by trees that pass your car window like drum beats in a song, so regular.

I wonder about the people in the past, wonder what they thought and knew about. Of course it was different for the uneducated and the poor then as now, but if you were wealthy, oh, the places you could go.

Karl Bodmer (Swiss, 1809-1893), White Castles on the Missouri , 1833 watercolor on paper, 9 x 16 3/8 in.; 22.86 x 41.59 cm gift of Enron Art Foundation, Joslyn Art Museum, 1986.49.176

Karl Bodmer (Swiss, 1809-1893),
White Castles on the Missouri , 1833
watercolor on paper, 9 x 16 3/8 in.; 22.86 x 41.59 cm
gift of Enron Art Foundation, Joslyn Art Museum, 1986.49.176

At the dawn of time back in Missouri, I never had the pleasure to hold but I did get to order 8×10 color transparencies* of things as wonderful as the Karl Bodmer watercolors of the trip he took up the Missouri River, and George Caleb Bingham’s Fur Traders Descending the Missouri.

Art history classes will teach you to recognize painters and images, styles and eras, but they won’t teach you the kind of seeing you can only get by being in the same place at the same time in the same light.

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri. Oil on canvas, George Caleb Bingham, 1845. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 33.61

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri. Oil on canvas, George Caleb Bingham, 1845. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 33.61

Far from the wide Missouri, I have to be content with images in books and the internet, but I can tell you from looking: Bingham got it right. The sky really does look like that above those rivers and plains; the light is rosy and grey at once, the river swift and glassy. I don’t know how it works, I only know how happy it makes me.

Come, spring: bring us the river and the light.

*Yes, and we had the printers run separations and then FedExed them to other museums for approval. Can you imagine!

And, if you’re handy to the place, the St Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is having a Bingham show. 

Visual Illiteracy

23 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Art Rant, Clothing, Fail, Research, Snark, TV Review

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Banastre Tarlteon by Joshua Reynolds

Portrait of Sir Banastre Tarleton (1754-1833) by Joshua Reynolds, 1782. National Gallery (UK)


See update below!

By 9:00 on Sunday, I was asleep and missed “Turn,” which Mr S wasn’t even watching because, as he declared, “It’s just a bad show.” On Monday evening, I made it through the opening of the show and gave up for good. But those minutes made me think of the Banastre Tarleton portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the suggestion on Twitter that “Turn” had no historical consultant.

It occurred to me, as I stared at the rather curious headgear worn by Captain Tallmadge (I think it’s stretch lycra over a “Roman” gladiator costume helmet glued to a baseball cap visor and edge-taped with gold foil) that perhaps the people doing the costumes simply lacked visual literacy. This could explain the refugees from Fort Lee who looked like they stepped out of an Emma Lazarus poem, and it could explain the very unfortunate helmet.

Tarleton_notes

Let us look at Banastre Tarleton, hunky bad boy of the British dragoons: he came to mind on Monday night, and what visual relief he is.

Note the light edge of the visor: this is a highlight. The leading edge of a polished surface will shine, and helmets, even of leather, will be reflective. Over time, the edges will polished by wear if not on purpose. I cannot speak to the helmet habits of the horse-mounted, but I know from paintings, and that edge is a highlight.

The Boys last July. Look, shiny, not-taped visor edges.

The Boys last July. Look, shiny, not-taped visor edges.

Reynolds painted what he saw, and just as the Young Mr’s cheekbones are reflecting light off the underside of his visor and Mr S’s helmet edge is shining in the direct light, so too is Colonel Tarleton’s helmet edge shining.

(Yes, there are both mounted and unmounted dragoons within a unit; but I just can’t help feeling that an officer would be mounted more often than he has appeared to be thus far.)

ETA: Heather has graciously pointed out a very nice blog on Turn, which is doing a far more even-handed and informed job of watching and commenting on the show. Thank you, Heather!

Sleeping 18th Century-Style

07 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in History, Living History

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

the_idle_servant1There was a mild flurry about a year ago around the release of Evening’s Empire, by Craig Koslofsky. Like the 2005 book by Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, Koslofsky’s book examines pre-electric lighting patterns of behaviour at night, including sleep patterns.  The BBC has a nice article on the two here. Both Koslofsky and Ekirch assert that until the 19th century, humans typically slept in two blocks of about 4 hours each, and scientists confirm this natural tendency.

Last year, between December and March, I had the luck to test this theory, and once again, it seems I will be sleeping old school, in blocks of time. Unfortunately, these blocks of time are often 2 hours and not 4 hours, as the scientists and historians claim we need. User testing of one shows me that 2 hour sleep blocks (or 4 hours followed by 2 hours) are inadequate and I may be near-hallucinatory by March, just as I was last year.

When doing living history, its always better not to skimp on resources.

Light & Night

04 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by in History

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Morland: Woman Reading by a Paper-Bell Shade: YCBA

Winter’s hard for me. I don’t like the lack of light, I don’t like the shortness of the days and how the sky is pale and stretched in these months. But this is a good time to think about basic needs, like light and heat and warm clothing.

The New York Times came to my rescue this morning with the article by Holland Cotter (and others) on “Artworks That Shine in New York Museums.” Cotter is one of my favorite critics and writers, and he, along with Karen Rosenberg, Roberta Smith, and other NYT critics, have selected some interesting pieces.

De La Tour: Penitent Magdalen, MMA

Ken Johnson leads with Georges De La Tour’s Penitent Magdalen. It’s earlier than my usual era but I was attracted to the image of the flame in the mirror; it’s not just a lighting device, of course, it’s a metaphor, but the rendering of the candlelight, and the use of the mirror to boost that light, tells us about how 17th and 18th century painters saw light, and how light was manipulated. We know from our simple experiments at work that mirrors really do amplify light, and that large stately rooms would only glitter with lots of candles and lots of mirrors. Light gives us a window on economy and wealth, as a precious commodity that cost money or labor to have.

Vermeer: Mistress and Maid, The Frick

Vermeer: Mistress and Maid, The Frick

Cotter looks at Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid at the Frick, and notes the lack of obvious natural light or other light sources, and the overall dark mood of the scene. But Cotter’s writing shines, as he concludes the little essay: Whatever Vermeer’s anxious thoughts, light stayed on his mind. It scintillates in the pearls the woman wears in her hair and shines in the butter-yellow silk of her jacket. And the blacked-out space the women occupy turns out to have sunlit windows after all. We see them reflected in glassware on the writing table as tiny lozenges of light, far in the distance, as if at the end of a tunnel, but there.

Writing like that is its own kind of light, a joy to have in the daily newspaper on a cold, short day. In all, four critics look at five paintings each from a range of cultures and time periods. It’s enough to make one want to hop a train south.

Light, or Lack of It

15 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by in History

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

The Tea Party, 1824, MFA Boston

On Saturday evening, we drove up to Old Sturbridge Village for their “Evening of Illumination” tour. The village is by no means as fancy as the house depicted at left, but the gentle quality of the candlelight captured by Henry Sargent reminds me of the evening. I took no photos, because I just wanted to enjoy the experience…and learn from it.

Candles used in New England were usually home made, dipped, and of tallow. (See here for one reference.) The Browns of Providence had a spermaceti candle manufactory, and people in cities and towns often bought candles–by the pound, not by the stick. Spermaceti supposedly burns brighter than beeswax or tallow, but the only spermaceti candles I know of are accessioned museum objects and will never be lit.

In thinking about upcoming programs at two different sites, I’ve been thinking about what it was like to live in the dark, and to work mostly within the sun’s hours, and then judiciously by candle light. Sharon Burnston says, “Sew by daylight, knit by candlelight,” and if you think about process, you can imagine that  in low light, even the fine thread of sock knitting is far more manageable than fine sewing.

Large fireplaces provided both heat and light, and candles are surprisingly bright. I suspect that an evening by a fireplace, reading aloud by candlelight while a friend or sibling knit, was pleasant enough in a wool gown, or with a shawl over muslin. The trip to bed would have been another matter, and getting up something else indeed.

It is also well to remember that class difference would have created comfort differences: a servant would have been colder getting up than the master, for the servant would rise in a cold room and be expected to light a fire in the master’s bedroom. Rural workers would also have risen in a cold room, to cold or frozen water.

These are some of the things I’m thinking about as I read and look and get ready for programs, and for winter.