Fortune and Felicity: Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun

Self-Portrait, 1790
Galleria degli Uffizi, Corridorio Vasariano, Florence

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

    But to be young was very heaven.”    

     -- from William Wordsworth’s 1805 poem 
“The French Revolution as it Appeared to Enthusiasts at its Commencement”.

The women in Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun's portraits have an inner life; you can see it in their eyes; you can feel it in their smiles. They were the exact contemporaries of the heroines in Jane Austen’s novels, and the characters in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace; Vigee Lebrun painted some of Tolstoy’s ancestors, whose memoirs he consulted while writing his book. 

Varvara Ivanova Ladomirskaya, 1800
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio

The women in Vigee Lebrun's paintings were reading the newly published poems of Goethe, Wordsworth, Shelley, Pushkin and Byron and the novels of Walter Scott; and listening to the latest music by Mozart, Gluck, and Beethoven. Little clues hidden in the paintings hint at their favorite artists.

Baronne de Crussol Florensac, 1785
Musee des Augustins, Toulouse
She is reading the score of Gluck's opera "Echo et Narcisse".

Elizabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun (1755-1824) was part of an outpouring of creativity at the end of the eighteenth century.

Self-Portrait with Cerise Ribbons, circa 1782
Kimbell Art Museum, Forth Worth, Texas

Now on view in a wonderful, long-awaited show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2016/vigee-le-brun, her portraits bring to life some of the people who lived through extraordinary times, and give us a glimpse of that dawn when it was bliss to be alive.

Self-portrait with her daughter Julie, 1789
Musee du Louvre, Paris

"In this new world, heart was to be preferred to head; emotion to reason; nature to culture; spontaneity to calculation; simplicity to the ornate; innocence to experience; soul to intellect; the domestic to the fashionable. The key word was sensibilite'  -- the intuitive capacity for intense feeling."
-- from Simon Schama: Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution.

The Duchesse de Polignac in a Straw Hat, 1782
Musee National des Chateaux de Versailles et de Trianon

According to the rules of the Academy, women artists were only allowed to paint portraits or flowers. So she painted portraits. 

Charles Alexandre de Calonne, 1784
Royal Collection Trust, H.M. Queen Elizabeth, London

Most of the men preferred to be painted more formally, with all their medals, ribbons, sashes, and swords. She also painted a few dreamy-eyed Byronic young men – including Lord Byron himself. But mostly Vigee Le Brun painted women, who trusted her and enjoyed the long sittings; many became her friends. 

Portrait of a Young Woman, circa 1797
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

She encouraged them to let down their hair and wash off their powder and rouge; to free their bodies from corsets and stays. She dressed them in lighter, looser, more comfortable Grecian tunics and soft, flowing shawls, with their curly hair blowing in the wind.

Princess Sapiena, nee Potocka,
or Dancing with Shawl, 1794
Royal Castle, Warsaw

She painted them smiling, blushing, walking in nature, embracing their children. She showed them reading books, reading music, writing letters, writing poems, writing songs, wrapped up in a dream.

Madame de Stael as Corinne at Cape Miseno, 1807-9
Musee d"art et Histoire de la Ville de Geneve
Gift of Madame Necker - de Saussure

A lucky chance brought her to the attention of Marie Antoinette, and she became the young queen’s favorite painter.

Marie Antoinette with a Rose, 1783
Collection of Lynda and Stewart Resnick

Many of the clothes in the portraits were designed or inspired by the queen's dressmaker, Rose Bertin, who "encouraged Marie-Antoinette to abandon the stiffness (both material and figurative) of formal court dress for the loose, simple gowns of white lawn, cotton, and muslin that she came to favor," as Schama wrote in Citizens.

Marie Antoinette in a Chemise Dress,  1783
Hessische Hausstiftung, Kronberg

To the contemporary eye, these costumes seem incredibly fancy, but for the era, it was a new and natural look – like today’s movie stars wearing yoga clothes on the street, instead of always posing in full make-up and evening gowns.

The Comtesse Du Barry in a Straw Hat, circa 1781
Private Collection

Vigee Le Brun’s dinner parties brought together her aristocratic patrons and her artist friends, musicians, and theater people – just as in the 60’s the jet set socialized with artists and rock stars. 

Emma Hamilton as a Bacchante, 1790
Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool

Many of her patrons felt stifled by court life and prized in her portraits a dream of a freer, more romantic, more sensual life – a breath of fresh air, as Marie Antoinette sought at her make-believe farm where she could pretend to be an ordinary person, as described so poignantly in Antonia Fraser’s Marie Anoinette: The Journey. Most of them did not survive the Revolution.

Self-Portrait in Traveling Costume, 1789-90
Private Collection

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...."
     -- from Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

Vigee Le Brun’s art made her a fortune and saved her life. She fled France after the fall of the Bastille and spent many years travelling to Vienna, Berlin, Saint Petersburg, London, Madrid, supporting herself by painting portraits. 

Julie Le Brun as Flora, 1799
Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida

 She survived during the years when many of her friends and patrons came to violent deaths – the Terror, the endless wars, Napoleon, the beginning of modernity. She literally kept her head while those around her were losing theirs. 

Comtesse de la Chatre, 1789
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

She carried her romantic, neoclassical ideals with her during her long years of exile and continued to paint the world as she saw it – wide-eyed, curly-haired, and smiling. 

The Princess von und zu Liechtenstein as Iris 
1793, Private Collection

She believed she possessed "an inborn passion for the art," she wrote in her Memoirs at the end of her long, eventful life. "It is, indeed, to this divine passion that I owe,  not only my fortune, but my felicity."

Self-portrait with Straw Hat, 1784
National Gallery, London

by Rebecca Nemser, March 2, 2016

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2016/vigee-le-brun

One More Bouquet for Jon

Jon Imber: Purple Dahlias

Jon always had a vase of flowers in his studio, and he kept the flowers for a long time; he liked painting flowers that most people would think were “gone” – he saw the beauty in the transformation and decay. He preferred some flowers, like poppies, in their later stages, and admired the spare, modernist shape of the pods. He liked the way the petals of a lily fell on the table, leaving only the red-tipped stem.

Jon Imber: Hollyhocks 

When I brought flowers to Jon and Jill in Somerville, Jill would search through her wonderful collection of multi-colored vases, pitchers, and bowls for the perfect vessel. When the flowers began to decay, Jon would move them into the studio and paint them there, while Jill arranged fresh flowers on the dining table.

Jill Hoy: Garden in Maine

In Maine, Jill’s glorious garden provided marvelous tiger lilies, nasturtiums, lilacs, roses, hollyhocks, larkspur, lupine, and there were always big bouquets of fresh flowers on the kitchen table. 

Jill Hoy: July Table

But even there, when there were hundreds of flowers just outside the door, Jon would keep a vase of flowers in his studio until the flowers were way past their prime. He often talked about how the great Dutch still life painters, even in the most elaborate paintings of the most gorgeous flowers, would often include an insect eating a leaf.

Jacob Vosmaer: A Vase of Flowers in a Vase, 1618

In Jon’s last months, last weeks, last days, the house in Somerville was always full of flowers, in all stages of life from bud and bloom to decline and decay, artfully arranged in Jill’s wonderful vases, pitchers, and bowls. Jon’s last paintings of flowers, the brushes strapped to his hands, were so lovely and lyrical, the brushstrokes falling like petals, full of poetry and the fragile, fleeting nature of life.

Jon Imber: Nasturtiums

A little more than a year has gone by since Jon’s death. Great works of art change the way you see the world, and in this beautiful late Spring, I kept thinking about how Jon would have painted the flowers I saw blooming everywhere after a long, hard winter.

Jon Imber: Self-portrait, 2013

In May, I always have peonies in vases all over my house.  I love seeing them unfold from tight green fists with a streak of color to a glorious pink cloud with hundreds of fragrant, flowing petals. Once the  flowers fade and fall, I usually take them out to the compost pile. But this year, remembering the way Jon kept on loving his flowers until the very end,  I am keeping my peonies in his honor, until there is nothing left but crown and stem. One more bouquet for Jon.

Blossoming Peony, 12th century Chinese, Harvard Art Museum 

for Jon Imber 1950-2014

A grove of birch trees

I rescued this grove of birch trees a few years ago; they were completely overgrown with weeds so tall I couldn't even see the smaller trees. Since then, I have been transplanting all the lilies and irises from the garden to this birch grove. It is a wonderful transformation, and a tribute to my mother, Lillian, who loved birch trees because they reminded her of her own mother, who spoke so poetically about her beloved birch trees in Russia. 

When my mother was born, in Montana, her mother wanted to name her after the flowers that were growing outside the window and asked what they were called in English; someone told her they were lilies, so she named her Lillian. Later they learned that the flowers were really irises. 

In Greek mythology, Iris is the Messenger of the Gods. Now they are all together in my garden in Maine -- Lily, Iris and the beloved Birch trees.

Shakespeare in Stonington: ROMEO AND JULIET

             

Opera House Arts has for many years done a splendid job of staging Shakespeare’s plays in ways that open them up beautifully to people who are seeing them for the first time, and making them feel new to people who have seen and read them many times before. 

This summer’s Shakepeare in Stonington, Romeo and Juliet, was one of their best. The production emphasized the tragedy over the romance, spotlighting the violence of the emotions and the extravagance of the language. The play is filled with

opposites – life and death, dark and light, longing and despair, love and hate: “My only love, sprung from my only hate!”

All the characters, not just the star-crossed lovers, are  tossed and turned by warring passions, like a storm at sea. The gorgeous language in the love scenes –“Parting is such sweet sorrow”, “It is the nightingale” -- is counterbalanced by the explosive moments of irrational hatred -- Romeo’s violent killing of his rival in the tomb, Juliet’s father’s shocking outburst of rage when she refuses to marry the man he has chosen: “Graze where you will, you shall not house with me!”

Within minimal sets and the same actors playing several roles, the Shakespeare in Stonington players made the play feel very real and poignant, a tragic reflection on all the wars and conflicts going on all over the world right now.

The ending of this production was exceptionally moving and profound. In the play, the fathers of Romeo and Juliet shake hands and call each other “Brother” as a sign of reconciliation.

In this production, it is the mothers who drape themselves, weeping, each over her own child, and then slowly, almost reluctantly, reach across Romeo and Juliet's dead bodies to hold hands. When Romeo’s mother sorrowfully calls Juliet’s mother “Sister!” and clasps her outstretched hand, the play becomes a passionate prayer for peace.

Romeo and Juliet

Shakespeare in Stonington

July 3- 19, 2014 at the Stonington Opera House

Stonington, Maine

Opera House Arts

http://www.operahousearts.org/

I saw the Tempest at the ART, jazzed up with magic tricks.
The best part, by far,  was when Prospero just stood alone 

on the darkened stage and spoke his immortal lines.

"Our revels now are ended. These our actors, 
As I foretold you, were all spirits and 
Are melted into air, into thin air: 
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep. "

Acis and Galatea

“Heart, the seat of soft delight,

Be thou now a fountain bright!”

One of the highlights of my career as an arts writer was the week I spent interviewing Mark Morris when he was in Boston preparing for his dazzling 1996 production of Gluck’s “Orfeo.” We talked about everything – life and love and art. He was so funny and charming, and yet so deeply serious about music. So I was thrilled to learn that he was back in town for “Acis and Galatea,” another mythical tale of love, loss, and metamorphosis.

There was much to enjoy in “Acis and Galatea,” especially the music, which was composed by Handel in 1718, re-orchestrated by Mozart in 1788, and beautifully performed by musicians from Handel and Haydn’s wonderful orchestra and their splendid Chorus. The story comes from Ovid, and the libretto is real poetry, written by John Gay, with help from Alexander Pope and Dryden’s translations of Ovid. The dancers were lovely, fluttering across the stage, as nymphs and swains frolicking in a forest glade, dappled with a pale green light.

Sadly, with "Acis and Galatea" Mark Morris seemed to be working against the music. Has he lost his faith in art?

Of the four soloist singers, only the jealous monster Polyphemus was given stage directions that added expression to his singing. The other soloists had to rush around the stage or gesture unconvincingly, while wearing the cruel and comic costumes that Isaac Mizrahi designed for them, in high contrast to the slim and lovely dancers swirling around them in flowing, diaphanous gowns. The dancing was beautiful, but purely decorative, on endless replay. Worst of all, the Chorus of singers, so central to the opera, was kept muffled and hidden in the orchestra pit; they were notes from the underground.

The opera is full of water imagery, written by Handel, the master of water music -- yet the stage was set in a forest; it’s landlocked. The story, the words, and the music, sing about transformation, yet the staging was both cluttered and strangely static.  Galatea sang her beautiful aria “The bubbling fountain, Lo! It flows!” standing completely still, while the dancers swirled around her, their gestures of grief in the final act no different from their gestures of joy in the first. The libretto repeats the word “flow” over and over again, but only the Chorus, concealed underground like the river that Acis becomes, conveyed a real sense of flow: the flow of the music, the flow of the water, the flow of the heart chakra opening into joy.

“Acis and Galatea” takes place in Sicily, in a mythical Arcadia. Galatea is a sea nymph, who loves Acis, a shepherd. After some back and forth, they sing a ravishing love duet (“The flocks shall leave the mountains/the woods the turtle doves/the nymphs shall leave the fountains/ere I forsake my love.”) But when Polyphemus, a giant one-eyed monster who wants Galatea for his own, sees them together, he flies into a jealous rage and hurls a huge rock from Mount Aetna at Acis.

This was the best choreography: Polyphemus sent a dancer as the rock he hurled at the lovers; she tumbled over the other dancers until she reached Acis. But the death of Acis, so poignant and powerful in the poetry and the music, was choreographed without passion, as a set change instead of a sea change. Only the Chorus, hidden underground, expressed the mournful moment: “Ah, the gentle Acis is no more!”

As the music moves from grief to mourning to consolation, the Chorus inspires Galatea to call upon her divine powers: “Cease, Galatea, cease to grieve!” She transforms Acis into a river god, a “gentle, murm’ring stream”, a river forever flowing, slowly, to the sea: “Heart, the seat of soft delight,/Be thou now a fountain bright!”


The tragic love of Acis and Galatea was a theme beloved of painters, and there’s an amazing 19th century sculpture of it in Paris in the Jardin du Luxembourg, showing the happy lovers intertwined, blissfully unaware of their cruel fate, as the raging giant lurks above them, about to strike.

In retrospect, I found it fascinating that Mark made Polyphemus the center of the production – the spurned gigantic lover who deliberately destroys something beautiful because he cannot have it for his own.

Polyphemus is certainly a comic character, but he is also a malevolent force, a snake in the garden, the shadow of death. “Et in arcadio ego,” as Virgil says: Death is present, even in our happiest hours.

Mark Morris was once the most beautiful of dancers – as Ovid tells us Galatea was the loveliest of nymphs. But it was not just his beautiful dancing; it was also his profound understanding of music that made Mark’s best work so brilliant. His “Dido” and “Orfeo” were meditations on the eternal themes of art and nature, tragedy and transfiguration, love and death. This is the first time I've ever seen him miss a step.

“Acis and Galatea” has gone through many metamorphoses since Handel first wrote what he called his “little opera” three hundred years ago. This production is travelling and there is still time for a change. Bring the chorus back onstage, where it belongs. Drape the soloists with the dignity they deserve. Listen to the music’s message of consolation through love and art.

Let it flow.

"Acis and Galatea" at the Shubert Theatre, Boston, May 15-18, 2014.
Mark Morris Dance Group with Handel and Haydn Society Period Instrument Orchestra and Chorus.

Jon and Jill

I was fortunate to be a friend of Jon Imber (1950-2014) both in Boston, where Jon and I moved in the same art world circles, and in Maine, where our family has lived every summer, first in Deer Isle and now across the Reach in Harborside.

Jon met the wonderful artist Jill Hoy in 1989 at the Stonington summer home of legendary painter/printmaker Karl Schrag. It was love at first sight and what Shakespeare (in Stonington) would call “a marriage of true minds.”

I often saw Jon and Jill painting together on Deer Isle with their twin easels set up in a field, by a pond, or near the sea. Jon had been a studio painter before he met Jill, but she encouraged him to go outside and paint what he saw. Even when he moved back into the studio, a few steps away from their house in Stonington, he set up his easel with a view of Jill’s garden, a fabulous multi-colored paradise of lilies, lupine, foxgloves, snapdragons, and wild roses.

Jon and Jill’s paintings changed the way I look at this beautiful landscape, too. Jon immortalized Stonington Harbor; Fifield Point; the Lily Pond; the Pink Lily Pond; the Causeway; the Deer Isle Bridge. Walking or driving around Deer Isle or Harborside, I would often say: “That’s a Jon”, or -- especially when the light was glimmering on the water -- “That’s a Jill.” Even after Jon moved indoors and started painting abstractly again, his work was filled with the spirit of the landscape, the sound of the sea.

In the Fall of 2012, Jon was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease, and began very rapidly to decline. His last summer in Maine, the whole community came together to help. Friends donated physical therapy, built ramps, drove and carried him, helped him figure out ways to keep on painting. Deer Isle artist Holley Mead organized a meal train to bring dinners for Jon and his family. I made soup.

I made soup from the vegetables in my own garden, with help from Four Season Farm, Tinderhearth, David’s Folly, Yellow Birch Farm, Little Island Oyster, and other local farms. Whenever I stopped by to buy supplies, my farmer friends would say, “Take a little extra for Jon.” The whole Peninsula was pulling for him.

Sometime that summer, as Jon was more and more confined to the house, he began painting portraits of family and friends and people who came by to help. And so many people came by to help! It was a great outpouring of love and art.

That summer, although he was more and more immobilized, and using only his left hand, Jon painted a hundred portraits. They were exhibited at Haystack in November, in a beautiful and moving show.

The same outpouring of love and art continued when Jon and Jill returned to their home in an artists’ building in Somerville, near Boston, for what was to be a long, hard winter. Their son, Gabriel, a sophomore at Bates College, took the semester off to stay home and help. Friends and family brought food and flowers. Helpers and healers came every day.

Jon continued to decline, and continued to paint, with the brushes strapped to his hands, helped by his amazing assistants, Chris Hassig and Adam Eddy, and often painting side by side with Jill.

He painted portraits, and he painted flowers. He had always loved the flowers in Jill’s garden; now he was painting flowers in a vase.

Even at the end, when he couldn’t use his hands, Jon found a way to paint with the brushes strapped to his head. In his last days, in Somerville, as the Spring bulbs were just beginning to arise, he was still painting amazingly beautiful pictures of an orchid plant. He was an inspiration.

(A version of this story appeared in the May 1 issue of Island Advantages of Stonington, Maine.)

Thanks to Four Season Farm, Tinder Hearth, Yellow Birch Farm, Little Island Oyster Co., David's Folly Farm.