Art on My Mind: Sir Luke Fildes's The Doctor

Sir Luke Fildes, one of the Victorian social realists (along with Hubert von Herkomer and Frank Holl) who painted scenes of poverty and struggle in late 19th-century England, painted The Doctor (exh. 1891, Tate Collection, London) following the death of his son. The painting, however, celebrates the heroism of the dedicated country doctor. Despite the melancholy of the picture--watchful doctor, prostrate child, hovering father, collapsed mother, dark and poor interior--the child is showing the first signs of recovery as the morning light peeks into the room.

Art on My Mind: Caspar David Friedrich

I have been thinking of snow all winter, since we've had several snow storms, many more already than all of last year. And this image and others like it, kept coming to mind. But, embarrassingly, I couldn't remember Friedrich's name, which really upset me. I used to be able to recite all sorts of information about paintings, artists, styles, etc., at the drop of the hat. So to forget the German Romantic painter of the early 19th-century was shameful. Sure, I haven't used that information actively since orals in 1998, but, well, I should remember. What is it that Ali McGraw's dying character says at the end of Love Story, something about Radcliffe grads not supposed to forget? It's kinda like that.

Anyway, I hadn't realized until I picked this image that it had been destroyed during WWII, which means that any color photographs you see are purely approximate. I love the Gothic ruin, so common in Romantic images, as well as all the nature vs. human aspects of the trees and architecture with the tiny almost inconsequential humans dwarfed by it all, and the winter/death/cemetery correlations. Sublime, allegorical landscape at its best. And though for me winter has happier connotations (more like Avercamp's Winter Scene with Skaters Near a Castle at the National Gallery, London, 1608-09), Friedrich's paintings so perfectly capture the look of the landscape in deep winter, even here in New England without Gothic ruins around.

Art on My Mind: Marie Spartali Stillman's Love's Messenger

Weeks ago I added a new gadget to my blog, with a painting I've been thinking about. I mean to update this regularly, but figured I should first tell you why I have been thinking about Marie Spartali Stillman and Love's Messenger. Stillman was a nineteenth-century painter influenced and inspired by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in England who created canvases featuring lone woman in medieval or Renaissance settings (much like Dante Gabriel Rossetti). A beautiful member of London's Greek community, she also frequently posed for other artists. I almost wrote my dissertation on her at that Ivy League school, but didn't (and that's a long story). Anyway, with thoughts of teaching again and discussions of grad school with Gorgon, I got to thinking about Stillman again. Hence, the painting on my blog's sidebar. The Delaware Art Museum has quite a collection of her works, though I can't recall if I've actually seen this one in person. I've never researched it (the diss was squashed in the early stages), and so can't provide any real illumination of the generalized romantic subject or particular symbols, beyond that the cupid/Eros/angel on which she is stitching is strongly reminiscent of the figures of Edward Burne-Jones.