An article in the Guardian, Discovered: a lost possible inspiration for Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, describes this painting by her sister, Vanessa Bell, which will viewed in public for the first time in sixty years when it goes on view at Sotheby's in London in November. Vanessa gave the picture to Virginia just as the writer was beginning to draft her novel, Mrs. Dalloway. It's tempting to some—and makes for good marketing—to assume that the painting helped Virginia visualize the party as she wrote. But there's no proof, and it certainly isn't necessary. Readers, moreover, are free to rely solely on Woolf's words and their own imaginations. Still, it will be an interesting experiment, don't you think, to read or reread the novel with this image in mind?
Picturing a World
Sleeves and Japonisme
Blog post alert: This portrait by Hanna Hirsch-Pauli of sculptor, Jenni Lagerberg tickled me by its Japonisme, the mischievous look in the subject's eye, and those sleeves! The sleeves helped me date the picture to around 1895, thanks to a well-illustrated post, Sleeve Shifts of the 1890s at Historical Sewing.com. Its author, Jennifer Rosbrugh, makes the point that fashion ideas are sometimes taken to an extreme over a short period of time and then disappear—which is what happened with puffed sleeves.
Rembrandt at auction?
Of course, from the get-go, it's more like fiction than a news story: Estate sale, item from attic, auction set at $10,000–12,000, and, blooey! bidders take risk that a painting is no copy but a real Rembrandt. Final price: $1.4 million. Waaaaaay too pat (even if true), and, yet—what would you do with it? What story would you tell?
Cabinet of curiosities—and more!
Blog post alert: Cabinets of curiosities, gardens, elegant glass instruments, paintings, frames—the post Science, gardens and the Baroque frame has everything! Or anyway scads of related topics and images that reflect my particular fancies. For a hi-rez version of this painting, click here.
Kimono and doll
Okay, so not a female artist, but I couldn't resist William McGregor Paxton's portrait of a woman in a kimono contemplating a Japanese doll. (A female artist connection: the model may be his wife, painter Elizabeth Vaughan Okie.) What's useful to me in my musing on Japonisme as part of Jeanette's story is the way the picture can lead to thoughts about how a particular woman might react privately to a particular Japanese object. Is this Jeanette or one of her friends? Does the character hold a doll or teacup? What is the emotion aroused in her? in the reader? Looked at this way, there's no need worry about the Male Gaze or other scholoraly or critical criteria. As for the golden frame, well, of course, I had to include it when I took a screen shot!
Image via Sotheby's.
Pooch with a lion-cut hairdo
Well, I do love seeing paintings in picture frames. And I'm fond of dogs. I even collect images of medieval and Renaissance dogs with lion-cut hairdos. But, no, not $279,400's worth. And I wouldn't take Sotheby's word for it that this is Marie Antoinette's Pompon—though it must have been somebody's celebrity pooch, poor thing,
Fanny Fleury
It's not hard to find 19thC depictions of women wearing kimonos painted by male artists—Monet, Stevens, Whistler, Chase. But what interests me as I think about how Japonisme might touch my character, Jeanette, is the extent to which female artists drew or painted them. Et voilà, in addition to Marie Danforth Page—Fanny Fleury! She even studied with Carolus-Duran.
Greene/Hills
In The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club (p. 481), Christopher de Hamel reports that Belle da Costa Greene " had a miniature portrait of herself painted in 1910 wrapped in apricot silk like an odalisque of the Middle East, explaining it to [Bernard] Berenson as showing 'the Belle of one of my former incarnations — Egyptienne.'" The artist, Laura Coombs Hills, was an exact contemporary of the real Jeanette Smith, which was enough to interest me in her. For her part, Greene was the great librarian of medieval manuscripts for J. Pierpont Morgan, an endlessly fascinating woman. And then I saw the portrait in its frame! Oh, that frame!
Dallas Museum frames
Blog post alert: A 2014 post, Mind's Eye from a Different Frame of Reference, discusses how curators at the Dallas Museum of Art chose frames from their collection to mount pictures in an exhibition. The images in the post are small, but they give a quick look at some unusual frames. There's really no connection to writing, but it's a good reminder by analogy that reframing a question or a plot point can reveal new insights.
Reframing Cézanne et al
Blog post alert: A reprinted article, Reframing at the National Gallery, London: Part 1, at The Frame Blog shows several paintings in both their old frames and the frames chosen fifteen years ago. Different eras, different tastes, different impact on the viewer.