Titian's Supper at Emmaus

Supper at Emmaus, Titian, 1530, The Louvre

The great Venetian Renaissance artist,Tiziano Vecelli, known as Titian, in 1530 painted this beautiful evocation of the Supper at Emmaus, as told in Luke 24:13-35. 

The Story

The story in the Gospel of Luke is prefaced by the words of the women, telling the disciples what they had seen and heard at the tomb of the risen Lord that Easter morning, but “…these words seemed to them”—to the disciples—“an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

“That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all those things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him” [emphasis added]. 

The two disciples and the stranger continue to walk together, and the disciples tell him of what has happened to Jesus of Nazareth and how “our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him.” They relate how it is now the third day since Jesus died, and that some of the women “were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said; but him they did not see” [emphasis added].

Christ gently chastises his two disciples, saying, “‘O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” 

As they near Emmaus, the disciples ask him to stay with them, rather than go on alone, “ ‘for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were openedand they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight” [emphasis added].

Many years later Pope Gregory the Great (540-604), revered as the father of Christian worship, preached on the Supper at Emmaus (Homily 23 in his Homilies on the Gospels). The two disciples on the road to Emmaus “did not, in fact, have faith in him, yet they were talking about him. The Lord, therefore, appeared to them but did not show them a face they could recognize. In this way, the Lord enacted outwardly, before their physical eyes, what was going on in them inwardly, before the eyes of their hearts. For inwardly they simultaneously loved him and doubted him; therefore the Lord was outwardly present to them, and at the same time did not reveal his identity. Since they were speaking about him, he showed them his presence, but since they doubted him, he hid from them the appearance by which they could have recognized him.” 

The Painting

Titian paints the moment when the disciples suddenly realize that the stranger in their midst is Christ. Christ’s left hand is on the bread, and he raises his right hand in the gesture of blessing. At this moment, the disciple on the right—dressed as a contemporary Italian friar—brings his hands together and partially rises, perhaps to fall to his knees before Christ. The other disciple draws back in consternation. 

The moment of recognition comes just as Christ repeats the blessing and giving of the bread, as in the Last Supper that initiated the Eucharist. Titian draws upon  Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, painted in the 1490s: a long frontally positioned table covered in white linen with Christ in the center flanked by his disciples, all of whom have highly individual reactions to Christ’s blessing of the bread. 

The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci, 1495

It is noted by art historians that the disciple to the left in Titian’s painting has a pose closest to that of Judas in Leonardo’s painting—a posture of withdrawal from the figure of Christ. At first I didn’t think this could be, but the half-medallion on the wall behind this disciple has the vague outlines of the torso of a hanging person, dressed in 16th-century garb, and a hook hangs from this medallion, while immediately to the right in sketchy white are what seem to be the shapes of a ribcage and perhaps a skeleton head. If this is at all a correct reading of this object in the upper left of the painting, then it is likely that there lies the shadow of death, Judas’ death in particular, in contrast to Titian’s celestial coloring of Christ, signifying the triumph over death. 

Christ’s face, at the horizontal center of Titian's painting, has a serene, other-worldly quality—it is bathed in light and his downcast eyes, as in Leonardo’s painting, suggest a humility that is turned to that which is unseen. His face is in keeping with the sacramental actions of his hands. The friar to his right looks of this world, but his humility in pressing his hands together as in prayer and his positioning as if about to kneel before the now-recognized Lord, show his love of Christ and his own nascent holiness. 

Leonardo’s famous painting situates the Last Supper before a trinity of windows opened to distant views of hills and sky. Titian’s single window opens up to a fully painted landscape and sky. The single tree stands as a remembrance of the wooden cross upon which Christ had died. (The tree seems slight, but alive, compared with the adjacent monumental Roman column behind Christ.) To the right, the earthen colors of the mountain continue into the brown cassock of the friar, and the beautiful blue, pale violet, and grays of the more distant mountain and sky are echoed in Christ’s gown and mantle. Titian chose to paint a sky in which the sun is unseen, but its light comes from behind gray storm clouds against an ascending sky of clear blue—a metaphor of light for the emotion evoked by the story itself. Titian’s unity of color signifies the harmony of Christ, God’s natural order, and the followers of Christ. 

On the other side of the painting are more secularized individuals. The innkeeper has no awareness of or interest in the emotional tumult caused by the disciples’ realization that Christ is present. The innkeeper’s face is turned away, and his left hand sports a large ring of gold, perhaps pointing to the subject of his thoughts. Judas’s left hand, palm up, is immediately under the innkeeper’s hands. 

Under the table a dog growls at a cat. In medieval and renaissance Christianity, dogs symbolized loyalty, watchfulness, and trustworthiness—not like the disciples that slept as Christ prayed in Gethsemane although he had asked them to watch, or like Saint Peter, who denied Christ three times, as Christ told him he would do—loyalty, watchfulness, and trustworthiness in contrast to fallen man. The cat often symbolized cunning and deceit, such as in the betrayal of Judas, sitting directly above. 

The most diminutive figure is that of the adolescent servant bearing food, who looks beyond Judas to the friar at the far side of the table but with no apprehension of what is taking place. His innocent interest, however, brings him far closer to Christ than the complacency of the oblivious innkeeper. 

In all figures, Titian has painted hands that speak volumes of the inner life of their owners. The boy’s hands show a delicacy and tenseness of expectation and willingness to serve. Judas’ hands demonstrate his extreme surprise in seeing Christ, whom he had helped bring to what he believed would be certain death. The innkeeper’s hands, with his thumbs hooked in his belt, point to his earth-bound nature. Christ’s hands are carefully positioned in sacramental action, with the fingers of his blessing hand gracefully arched. The friar’s hands are those of one in prayer—any surprise he feels at his recognition of Christ is superseded by his humble desire to worship his Savior.

A striking feature of Titian’s painting is the prominence of the starched pure white tablecloth that stretches across the composition and touches all figures. Leonardo’s Last Supper table also has a white cloth with its fold lines, but our eyes quickly pass it by to look at the action above. In Titian’s painting, the white cloth is a symbolic reminder of the white linen burial shroud that enfolded Christ in burial and also of the white cloth laid out on a Christian altar. And this crisp, beautiful linen also brings to the mind the unseen women, who washed, starched, folded, and laid it—women such as those who loved Christ and first received the news that he had risen, and believed.

Saint Sebastian Tended by Saint Irene: An Image for Our Times

Saint Sebastian Tended by Saint Irene, by Hendrick Jansz Terbrugghen, 1625, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Saint Sebastian (256-288) was a Christian martyr who was tied to a post in Diocletian's Rome and shot through with arrows as punishment for his refusal to renounce his Christian faith. He did not die, however, thanks to Saint Irene, the widow of another martyred Roman Christian, who came to cut  down Sebastian from the post and bury him. Finding him still alive, she brought him to her home and nursed him to health.

The 17th-century Dutch artist Terbrugghen (1588-1629) paints the moment when Saint Irene and her servant rush to free Saint Sebastian and begin attending to his wounds. The painting, nearly 5 feet by 4 feet, is among the treasures at the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio.

Terbrugghen was one of a group of Dutch painters who lived and painted in Italy, learning fluidity of form and drama from the paintings of Michelangelo Caravaggio (1571-1610). After seven years in Rome, Terbrugghen returned to his native city of Utrecht in 1614.

In the late Middle Ages, the arrows that pierced the body of Saint Sebastian became a metaphor for the fatal piercing of the flesh by the bubonic plague--the disease of the Black Death that ravaged Europe in the 14th century and continued to recur regularly in European cities. For this reason, Saint Sebastian is venerated by the faithful as a protector against the plague.

Saint Sebastian's protection was immediately relevant to the inhabitants of Terbrugghen's Utrecht, where the dreaded disease returned each summer from 1625 to 1629. Terbrugghen brings this home in two ways.

First, as Valerie Hedquist points out in an article for the Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art (Volume 9, Issue 2 Summer 2017), the painter adds buboes on the body of the dying Saint Sebastian--on the inside of his right elbow and prominently on his right knee. He also shows the blackening of the saint's skin from the internal hemorrhaging the disease causes. The metaphor is now the reality.

Second, Terbrugghen heightens the immediacy of the drama by placing us so close to the life-sized figures. Saint Sebastian's right knee juts out beyond the picture plane, putting us right into the scene and drawing us upward toward the expressions of urgency and care in the faces of the saint's rescuers. As the art historian Wolfgang Stechow writes,

"... the action of the two women is the very life-blood of the picture. Loving care is about to conquer death; it is a tense struggle but it is a noiseless one. No punches are pulled in the depiction of the nearness of the end: the body of Sebastian is olive-grey, his mouth drooping, his left arm hangs limp, touching the ground behind his right foot. Yet the activity of the women bespeaks efficient help--but without resort to any ado. Wonderful is the quiet contrast between the neighboring hands at the upper left, and particularly, how the lifeless flesh of Sebastian's right hand yields to the pressure with lively resilience. It is as though this contrast sounded the key for the entire picture. Above the slumping head of the Saint appear the reassuring smile of Irene and the busily alert profile of her servant. The lifting of the arrow by Irene's gentle right hand is a masterpiece of depicting an action bent upon easing pressure and soothing pain, her left hand is a little wonder of subtle luminosity (The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 96, No. 612, March 1954).  

Almost 400 years later, Terbrugghen's masterpiece prompts the modern-day viewer to pause and consider the courage of our first responders and hospital doctors and nurses as they act with all due haste to care for those sick with infectious disease.

In Praise of Hands by Henri Focillon 2

 Hand print found in a cave in Borneo with other images created by cave people. 

No matter where found, the ancient art of the cave people features the stenciled or traced hand. 

"The human hand forms one of the most ancient themes of human art," reports a study of hand stencils in Upper Palaeolithic cave art, published by Durham University. "Prehistoric examples of hand prints (positive images formed by covering the hand with paint and placing it on a surface, rather like modern children create) and stencils (negative images formed by placing the hand against a surface and blowing paint around it) are known from prehistoric contexts in Latin America, the Sahara, Indonesia, Australia and Tasmania, in many cases dating back several thousand years. For decades these have been thought to be Mid Upper Palaeolithic in age (around 22-29,000 14C BP) but recent dating and critical evaluation of existing data have shown that they are among the earliest examples of European Upper Palaeolithic cave art., stretching back at least to 35,000 (calendar) years ago."

Investigations by Anthropology professor Dean Snow at Pennsylvania State University further show that many of the hands stenciled or traced are those of women, and it is thought that this could mean that the stenciling of hands had a religious significance. 

Henri Focillion would not be surprised by such conclusions. "I seem to see primitive man inhaling the world through his hands," Focillon writes in his essay "In Praise of Hands," "stretching his fingers into a web to catch the imponderable."

Hand stencils next to drawings of horses in the Peche Merl caves in southern France. 

Focillon writes as if to explain the presence of hands as a kind of signature or sign of human presence and action on the world:

"As soon as man tries to intervene in the natural order in which he is subject, from the moment he begins to push a pointed instrument or a sharp edge into some hard material in order to split it and give it form, his primitive labor contains in itself its whole future development. The caveman carefully chipping the flint and fashioning needles out of bone astonishes me much more than the clever builder of machines. He is no longer activated by unknown forces; he can work on his own. Formerly, even in the recesses of the deepest cave, he remained on the surface of things; even when he broke up animal vertebrae or tree limbs, he did not penetrate, he had no access to meaning. The implement itself is no less remarkable than the use to which it is put. It is both a value and a result in itself. There it is, set off from the rest of the world, something new. Though a stone knife may have a cutting edge no sharper than that of a thin shell, it was not picked up by chance on some beach. It can be called the work of a new god, the product, indeed, the extension, of his hands."

Hand stencils from La Cueva de las Manos (Cave of Hands) in Patagonia, Argentina. 

"What distinguishes dream from reality is that the dreamer cannot engender art, for his hands are asleep. Art is made by the hands. They are the instrument of creation, but even before that they are an organ of knowledge," Focillon writes."...In the artist's studio are to be found the hand's trials, experiments and divinations, the age-old memories of the human race which has not forgotten the privilege of working with its hands."

Hand print decorations in a cave in southern Africa. 

See In Praise of Hands by Henri Focillon 1

In Praise of Hands by Henri Focillon 1

Henri Focillon (1881-1943) was an eminent French art historian and professor, who fled Nazi-occupied France to the United States, where he taught at Yale University. In 1934, he published a book of essays titled The Life of Forms in Art.

He concluded this volume with an essay titled "In Praise of Hands." In its opening section, Focillon notes that "all great artists have paid close attention to the study of hands, they have sensed the peculiar power that lies in them." In recognition of this, this post, composed of excerpts from Focillon's essay, is illustrated with the studies of hands by the German painter Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), of which his study of hands in prayer is the most famous.

Praying Hands

Perhaps in 1934 Focillon had a premonition of the degree to which we would lose the use of our hands in much of our daily lives, for other than typing or tapping, or of the increasing replacement of manual human labor with the prescribed performance of robots, or the extreme mechanization of agriculture that has practically removed the human hand from the soil. So far, in the plastic arts, the hands have not been replaced. The hands of the artist remain intrinsic to the creation of the work of art, to a far greater extent than in industry or the activities of daily life.

Boy's Hands

The hand, says Focillon, "is, like the higher forms of life, highly original and highly differentiated. Jointed on its delicate hinges, the wrist has a structure of many small bones. From it five skeletal branches, each with its system of nerves and ligaments, run beneath the skin, thence they fan out into five separate fingers. Each of them, articulated on three knuckles, has its own aptitude and its own mind." The hand has remarkable flexibility of motion and of purpose--it can hold, stiffen, be supple, or make a fist that is as hard as a rock.

As if to address the increasingly "virtual world" that we inhabit, where our perception is divorced from physical reality and the natural world, Focillon notes:

"Sight slips over the surface of the universe. The hand knows that an object has physical bulk, that it is smooth or rough, that it is not soldered to heaven or earth from which it appears to be inseparable. The hand's action defines the cavity of space and the fullness of the objects that occupy it. Surface, volume, density, and weight are not optical phenomena. Man first learned about them between his fingers and in the hollow of his palm. He does not measure space with his eyes, but with his hands and feet. The sense of touch fills nature with mysterious forces. Without it, nature is like the pleasant landscapes of the magic lantern, slight, flat, and chimerical. ...

"Without hands there is no geometry, for we need straight lines and circles to speculate on the properties of extension. ... Man's hands set before his eyes the evidence of variable numbers, greater or smaller, according to the folding and unfolding of his fingers. ...
Did not the hand, moreover, set number in order, being a number itself and thus an instrument for counting and a master of rhythm?"

"For touch is at the very beginning of Creation. Adam was molded of clay, like a statue. In Romanesque iconography, God does not breathe on the globe of the world to send it off into the ether. He sets it in place by laying his hand upon it." 

The hand makes possible a relationship with objects--tools--with vast potentials for experimentation, Focillon indicates.

"... Between hand and implement begins an association that will endure forever. One communicates to the other its living warmth, and continually affects it. The new implement is never 'finished.' A harmony must be established between it and the fingers that hold it, an accord born of gradual possession, of delicate and complicated gestures, of reciprocal habits and even of a certain wear and tear. Now the inert instrument becomes alive. To this association no material lends itself better than wood, which, even when mutilated by and shaped to the arts of man, maintains in another form the original suppleness and flexibility that characterized it when growing in the forest. ...  Contact and usage humanized the inert object... Anyone who has not known men who live by their hands cannot understand the strength of these hidden relationships, the positive effects of this association in which are found friendship, respect, the daily communion of work, the instinct and pride of ownership, and on the highest plane, the concern for experimentation."

Durer Self-Portrait, Hand, and Pillow

"When one realizes that the quality of a tone or of a value depends not only on the way in which it is made, but also in the way in which it is set down, then one understands that the god in five persons [the senses] manifests itself everywhere. Such will be the future of the hands, until the day when artists paint by machine, as with airbrush. Then at least the cruel inertia of the photograph will be attained by a handless eye, repelling our sympathy even while attracting it, a marvel of light, but a passive monster. Photography is like the art of another planet, where music might be a mere graph of sonorities, and ideas might be exchanged without words, by wavelengths. Even when the photograph represents crowds of people, it is the image of solitude, because the hand never intervenes to spread over it the warmth and flow of human life."

Christ Among the Doctors (detail of hands) by Albrecht Durer

The Master of Mary of Burgundy's Charming Book of Hours

The Book of Hours in question was created for Engelbert II of Nassau (1451-1504) of the Duchy of Burgundy. The name of the author remains unknown to this day, but  the same hand also produced a Book of Hours for Mary of Burgundy, and so the illuminator bears the name The Master of Mary of Burgundy.

I have a kind of replica of this book, as published by George Braziller, Inc., of New York in 1970. It is the same size of the actual Book of Hours for Engelbert II now held in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England: 4 inches wide by 5 1/2 inches in height. It's a pocket book, that you literally hold in your pocket and then pull out to read at the appointed time for prayers. The book begins with the calendar of the year ,so that Engelbert can check which saint is honored on this day.

The month of October in calendar of the Book of Hours. 

This October page and the writing in the book were not created by the Master of Mary of Burgundy but by two calligraphers. All of the pages by the calligraphers contain whimsical scroll work, as seen in the page on the right above, and birds. The birds fly in and out, like little angel prompters and heralds. Here the birds are piecing together Engelbert of Nassau's coat of arms--just as the birds design and sew Cinderella's first ball gown in the Disney production of Cinderella!

Then follows a prayer to the Holy Face (Saint Veronica's veil) and prayers to the Virgin, which includes the page below.

This page ends the prayer to the Virgin and shows the oat of arms of Philip the Fair and of his family.  Pages done in this mode were created by the Master of Mary of Burgundy. 

Next is a prayer to Saint Sebastian, a prayer to Saint Anthony Abbot, a prayer to Saint Christopher, prayers to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and prayers to Saint Barbara--all with a painting from the life of the saint surrounded by a flower-filled margin. These are the work of the Master of Mary of Burgundy, although the afore-mentioned calligraphers supply the text.

Then we proceed to the prayers of the Hours of the Cross for both Matins and Lauds.

But what is life without comedy in the face of such tragedy? The book abruptly switches topic from the Hours of the Cross to...a falconer who unleashes his falcon and his greyhound to hunt down and bring to his lady a beautiful magical bird. The story runs for 18 pages, with the angel prompter birds flying about to guide the falconer and guide us through the story. With this insertion, Engelbert II of Nassau could appear to be piously praying with his Book of Hours while actually reading a medieval comic book!

The falconer begins his chase to bring the magical bird to his lady. 

At the conclusion of this story, we resume the prayers for the Hours of the Cross for Prime, Terce, Terce Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. Most of these pages are beautifully illustrated by the Master of Mary of Burgundy, with flowers painted in the borders of the holy picture painted with such accuracy as to suggest that actual flowers had been strewn on the page. 

Next comes the Hours of the Virgin. beginning with the Annunciation, with a border of peacock feathers signifying Engelbert of Nassau II. 

The Annunciation embellished with peacock feathers. 

The painting of the Annunciation on the page is only 3 inches by 1 7/8 inches, yet the Master of Mary of Burgundy has managed to create an entire architectural space within this tiny boundary and created   exquisite facial expressions on both the Virgin Mary and the Archangel Gabriel. 

Toward the end of the Book of Hours of the Virgin are these remarkable pages, a trompe l'oeil of crockery of identifiable types set within painted niches. The placement of crockery within niches is a trompe l'oeil technique that goes back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, as Ms. Mastai and others document. In this painting, the crockery is meant to show the sacramental offerings to the Christ child.

Toward the end of the Book of Hours of the Virgin are these remarkable pages, a trompe l'oeil of crockery within niches. 

The Master of Mary of Burgundy was a skilled practitioner of trompe l'oeil, as his paintings of flowers, insects, and butterflies in this Book of Hours show. My interest in him was piqued when I saw a page of a book that he had painted that had a beautiful flower with the stem painted as if it had been woven through the page itself. I saw this page in black and white in Illusion in Art, Trompe l'Oeil: A History of Pictorial Illusionism by M. L. d'Otrange Mastai but have not been able to find it online.  This painting is a triumph of trompe l'oeil, because it seems so real and the sizing of the flower for the page is perfect. Thus, the text is lovingly surrounded by a reverent offering of completely life-like flowers, a butterfly, and an insect.

The Prayers to the Virgin are followed in the Book of Hours by the Seven Penitential Psalms, which include this beautiful illustration for Psalm 38, where David confronts the giant Goliath. The emotional confrontation of David and Goliath, along with the details and perspective background, a display the Master of Mary of Burgundy's skill. The borders show his ability to paint flowers--columbines and pinks--in an elegantly realistic way. 

Illustration for the penitential Psalm 38.

Then the Book of Hours ends with a Litany and the Office of the Dead. That is the official book ends, but not the real book. We are treated to another cartooned story--the Sequence of the Grotesque Tournament, which begins with the lady preparing the monkey for battle and then the unicorn, and her forces go into battle and win the day. And then the Book of Hours of Engelbert II of Nassau truly ends.

The monkey is prepared for battle.

Then the unicorn. 

The forces race to meet the enemy.

They meet the enemy, and the unicorn and his monkey squires leave the battle triumphant. 

"Wise Men Invented It"

"For one who wishes a clever theory, the invention of painting belongs to the gods--witness on earth all the design with which the Seasons paint the meadows, and the manifestations we see in the heavens. But for one who is merely seeking the origin of art, imitation is an invention most ancient and most akin to nature; and wise men invented it, calling it now painting, now plastic art."

Little did the Greek writer Philostratus the Elder know when he wrote these words in the third century A.D. in his treatise on painting called Imagines, that the origins of art would take us back more than 60,000 years.

That is the conclusion of scientists from a redating of the prehistoric drawings in the La Pesiaga cave in Spain. The scientists calculated the age of tiny samples of the sediment on top of the drawings that they meticulously scraped off, with the startling discovery that the paintings had been done 64,000 years ago—a time when Neanderthals were the only hominids inhabiting Western Europe, the scientists said.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, "The analysis revealed that the paintings predated early modern humans in the region by at least 20,000 years, leaving the scientists with no alternative but to attribute the artwork to the Neanderthals who made this area their home. ... 'We conclude that this cave art has to be made by Neanderthals,' said physicist Dirk Hoffmann at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, who led researchers from 15 centers in Germany, the U.K., Portugal and Spain. They published their findings in the journals Science and Science Advances."

Fine Arts Friday: The Miracle of Drawing

Untitled, by George Luks, 1920

To me, this drawing exemplifies the miracle of drawing and painting. I happened upon it when I was looking at George Luks' work in preparation for this post. We could easily COUNT the pencil strokes in this drawing. And yet, we know exactly what is going on. Two women who are neighbors in the city are talking. They are not affluent, as indicated by the kitchen chair on the stoop and the babe in arms. The one with the baby is doing the talking and the one who is sitting is listening but not in rapt attention, as she is not looking up at the talking woman. We feel that they are friends who know a lot about each other. More than likely the standing woman is talking of things that must be done--I have to go in now, only have this for supper, a comment about the husband and when he is coming? Yes, the sitting woman may tiredly nod in agreement, I know what you mean.

Meanwhile, sitting in front is a woman who seems younger, who hears their conversation in the background, and is not attentive. It is the background noise of her life. She sits in a condition of inwardness, even as she looks onto the street before her, watching children playing or women on the way to the store or peddlers calling out their goods or men on the way back from work. But she is not thinking of them. She is watching and waiting. She may be waiting for a man or for a friend or, more likely, simply for her future, and she waits in anxious hope.

My words are a reduction of the atmosphere conjured up by Luks' drawing. With his few quick strokes of the pencil, he has created a world, and we instantly know its tone--cares, tiredness, neighborliness, boredom, and hope. A whole world on a piece of paper.

"Like Some Billowing Crazy Quilt"

Chadds Ford Hills by N. C. Wyeth

I posted this painting first in 2010, noting that it was by N. C. Wyeth "of his beloved Chadd Ford Hills, for which I have no words at all."

But N. C. Wyeth had words, which he put down in a letter written on July 19, 1907, about Chadds Ford:

"From the hill...the country rolls back like some great billowing crazy quilt: patches of tender green corn interspersed with squares of ripe yellow wheat and the rich succulent greens of the woods. Great voluminous clouds boil up from hot, quivering horizons, blossoming in great bunches of ominous rain clouds."

N. C. Wyeth's letters are filled with beautiful passages like this. He was a great writer with the gift and willingness to lyrically pay homage to the people and land he loved. Note the gorgeous shimmering blue of the Brandywine River in the lower-center. 

Fine Arts Friday: Paintings of Family Life by Horace Pippin

Giving Thanks by Horace Pippin, 1942

Horace Pippin was an African-American painter, born in West Chester, Pennsylvania,  in 1888, 10 miles from the Brandywine River. When he was a small child, his family moved to Goshen, New York, but he returned to West Chester in 1920 and lived there with his wife until his death in 1946.

Pippin was an artist who proved what courage and perseverance can achieve. He was forced by the illness of his mother to leave school as a young teen and work to help support the family. When World War I came, he joined the renowned African-American 369th infantry, called Harlem's Hell Fighters, all of whom received France's Croix de Guerre honor. Pippin returned from the war with wounds that rendered his right arm useless. This did not stop him from becoming an artist. To paint, he learned to use his left arm to prop up and guide his right hand.

Horace Pippin marker outside 327 West Gay Street in West Chester, where Pippin and his wife lived. The marker says notes: "A self-taught black artist, he painted while living here such notable works as 'Domino Players,' 'John Brown Going to His Hanging,' and the 'Holy Mountain' series."

In 1937 at the behest of a local school principal, Pippin's work was shown in the Chester County Art Association show. N. C. Wyeth, a judge of the show, found his paintings impressive and began to open doors to Pippin. Wyeth introduced his work to the art historian, Christian Brinton, and from there Pippin's work began to be collected, including by Albert Barnes. His work also came to the attention of the pioneering New York City art dealer Edith Halpert. One year later, his work was being shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  In 1994, a retrospective of his work, with more than 100 paintings, was shown at the Metropolitan Art Museum, and in 2015, the Brandywine River Museum had a major exhibition of his work.

Pippin painted many kinds of subjects--historical, allegorical, religious, and scenes from life in the Brandywine River Valley. Here is a small selection from among his scenes of domestic life. All of these paintings were done in the last few years of his life. Some of them have quilts, and in Domino Players, a woman is sewing one! Pippin may have been thought of as a folk artist, but I find in his work a sophistication of color and composition that goes beyond folk art, and an emotional intensity with an economy of line that folk art often lacks.

Christmas Morning Breakfast, 1945

Domino Players, 1943

Sunday Morning Breakfast, 1943

Supper Time, 1940

Interior, 1944

Art Lessons: Wyeth to Wyeth

Anthony Adverse as a Boy, by N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945), with his son Andrew as the model

"My father was a terrific technician. He could take any medium and make the most of it. Once I was making a watercolor of some trees. I had made a very careful drawing and I was just filling in the lines. He came along and looked at it and said, 'Andy you've got to free yourself.' Then he took a brush and filled it with paint and made this sweeping brushstroke. I learned more then from a few minutes of watching what he did than I've ever learned since."

        Andrew Wyeth, as quoted in "Wyeth's World,"
        by Henry Adams, Smithsonian Magazine, June 2006

The Road to Friendship by Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), 1941

"Close to the holidays, my father painted by 4x5-inch Christmas cards. We'd stretch out in front of the  fireplace with the watercolors. He'd work in quick washes, not starting anyplace in particular. It was like whoosh, and out of that would come a leaf or an animal. His technique taught me to embrace accidents."

Jamie Wyeth, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2014

Christmas card, 1954, by Andrew Wyeth

                                                   The Sea Watched by Jamie Wyeth (1946-), 2009

Of course, that's only part of the story.  

Fine Arts Friday: City Snow by George Luks

Children Throwing Snowballs by George Luks, 1906

Taking a welcome break not from winter but from the Wyeths, here are paintings of snow in New York City, by George Luks (1867-1933), a painter of the Ashcan School. I don't think anyone captures as well the contrasting qualities of snow in the city and the moods it engenders. 

Luks hailed from Pennsylvania coal country, studied briefly at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and had a personality brimming with vitality and orneriness. Although he exhibited beginning in 1908 as a member of The Eight--the Robert Henri Ashcan School--he rejected any school label and said he had no mentors, including Henri.  

His painting--fresh and direct--bespeaks his view on life. Take it head on, without hemming and hawing; he reportedly died from injuries suffered in a barroom brawl. 

In his scenes of New Yorkers in the snow, he manages to capture the beauty of snowfall but also its devolution on the city streets to piles of wet grime surviving only because the air is harshly cold. To me, his paintings exhibit great economy--every brushstroke counts and is filled with energy. So vibrant is his painting of people, that we know exactly the mood of his subjects and can easily imagine being right there with them. Watch for his miniature cityscapes in the far left corner of some of these paintings. 

The Butcher Cart, 1901

Winter Night, 1930

The North River, 1910

Winter, High Bridge Park, 1910

Hitch Team, 1916

Brooklyn Bridge, 1916

Luks also painted a scene of women knitting on park benches at Highbridge Park. 

These and many others of his paintings can be found here.