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Picturing a World

Somm, Japonisme

May 25, 2023
Tags: Amy, Cassatt, Japonisme, Jeanette, blue-and-white china

One of the things I'll have to think about is whether Jeanette is more attracted to Japanese objects  per se or to the art of Western Japonists, e.g., Henri Somm—or Mary Cassatt. Certainly, one of Jeanette's friends can be caught up in the craze for netsukes and small decorative objects. They all love fans and parasols. Amy can add Japanese blue-and-white to her teacup collection. Meanwhile, I love this image for reflecting my process of musing. See also Somm's Fantaisies Japonaises of 1879

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Margaret Macdonald Macintosh

June 12, 2022
Tags: Amy, Women artists, marriage
Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, The May Queen (1900)

When I wonder about an afterlife for my character Amy Richardson, I usually place her in the Glasgow Girls scene among fellow women artists. The most famous were Margaret Macdonald, who married Charles Rennie Macintosh, and her sister, Frances. I was reminded of one angle of Margaret's life in a recent review article about overlooked artistic wives. Charles Rennie Macintosh was and is certainly better known than Margaret, but he's the one who said "I have talent; she has genius."

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Asleep on a train

February 6, 2014
Tags: Amy, Effie, Jeanette, photograph, transportation, work-in-progress
Gui de la Bretonnière, En Wagon (Photogravure, 1895)
For my new novel, I’m investigating early 20th C photography and print processes. This picture of a girl asleep on a train appears Read More 
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Malade

January 30, 2014
Tags: Amy, Carolus-Duran, Sonja, Monet, malade, model
Claude Monet, Camille on her Death Bed (1879)
When Amy returns from Pont Aven to find that Sonja has brought La Grecque and Angelica into their studio, she makes the best of what she considers a bad situation by insisting that the model earn her keep by posing. The idea of Amy’s unflinching desire to take advantage of the chance to study a sick woman’s appearance was suggested to me by several 19th C paintings of sick beds or death beds. The most haunting case, which Carolus-Duran recounts to Jeanette later in the novel, was Monet’s oil sketch of his wife, Camille, in the hour after her death. Read More 
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Angelica/Demonica

January 27, 2014
Tags: Amy, angelica, transportation
Théophile Steinlen, “A Batignolles” (1889)
“Her mother calls her Flora/ She doesn’t know her papa …” The illustration by Théophile Steinlen of a fatherless little girl on her way to school is way too innocent for my Angelica (the child Amy Richardson calls Demonica). All the same, I was delighted  Read More 
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Red Rose Girls

September 9, 2013
Tags: Red Rose Girls, Jeanette, Amy, Emily, Effie, studio, Women artists
Elizabeth Shippen Green, Violet Oakley, Jessie Willcox Smith and Henrietta Cozens in their Chestnut Street studio (ca. 1901)
After Saturday's blog alert on moving pictures, here's a still that tickled me while I was writing Where the Light Falls. Although I wanted events in my novel to be accurate to 1878–1880, not everything that inspired me came from that period. The camaraderie, humor, and tensions of a shared studio as well as the fruitfulness of women’s friendship were exemplified by the three women artists shown in this photograph. Jeanette's somewhat younger contemporaries, they began living together in 1899 and called themselves the Red Rose Girls. Read More 
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Hot stove in a studio

September 5, 2013
Tags: Amy, Bazille, Sonja, studio, Paris landmark
Jean Frédéric Bazille, The Studio on the Rue de Furstenburg (1865)
I loved this picture when I came across it early in my research—it was so specific and full of workaday details. Here was what the gray walls artists wanted for neutral light looked like, along with a chair for a sitter, a paintbox, a palette. Bazille’s studio is not exactly how I later imagined Sonja and Amy’s—oh, but look at that hot, hot stove! Coal supplied by Count Witkiewicz! And now that I look at the picture again, I see it as one of Jeanette’s empty rooms as a portrait.

For a very similar painting, see Gustave Caillebotte’s Interior of a Studio with Stove.  Read More 
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Studio omelettes

September 2, 2013
Tags: Amy, Jeanette, Sonja, Trilby, illustration, studio
George du Maurier, “Cuisine Bourgeoisise en Bohème,” (1894)
As I said in an earlier post, my editor teased me about how often my characters eat. In a scene that got dropped from “Winter’s Cold,” Jeanette demonstrates breaking two eggs at once (a trick my college roommate, the writer Elaine Fowler Palencia, taught me) and  Read More 
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Winter's cold

August 26, 2013
Tags: Amy, Jeanette, Dogs
Félix Hilaire Buhot, Paris in Winter (1879)
In Pont Aven in August 1878, Amy warns Jeanette about the everlasting gloom of Paris in winter. That slushy, dark, urban chill is captured in Buhot's 1879 etching (complete, notice, with dogs on the street). In August 2013, why not welcome a momentary shiver?!
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Blue-and-white teacups

August 22, 2013
Tags: Amy, Sonja, Wegmann, Cassatt, blue-and-white china, studio, Women artists
Bertha Wegmann, Visit in the Studio (date unknown)
When Edward goes to Sonja and Amy’s studio to see the portrait medallions Sonja has sculpted for him, Amy serves the gathered friends tea in chipped blue-and-white porcelain. I got the idea for chipped china from Massachusetts artist Eleanor Norcross, who  Read More 
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