Through the Window of Mrs. Rose's Room

Holy Smokes!  I had no intention of not being here the last two weeks.  The transition from end-of-school to Summer chewed up my days in new and exciting ways and left little time to sit down and work through the next steps with Mrs. Rose.

So I did what any respectable needlewoman would have done under time constraints...

I got out some cross stitch and took it with me to stitch when I could.

Both cross stitch and knitting are easy to pick up and put down.  I actually had to dust this one off since it was bought in 2001!

As for Mrs. Rose, I finally turned my attention back to her today.  The next step in that project is to introduce climbing roses that grow over the walls, creating a rose bower that provides shelter and warmth.

It is the gifts that Mrs. Rose gives that transforms her environment from a depressing institution into a home.

I drew from a number of pics online to help me decide how best to create this bower of roses.  I like how this rose climbs up the walls...

And how these roses grow to frame a doorway...

Or drape down over a wall.



While I was pondering my next steps, I happened to get another bi-weekly newsletter from Robert Genn.  I've mentioned him before and can't say enough how helpful I find his tips.

This time his letter was on "Cropping"-- you can read the full letter here.

The upshot is that there are tricks to deciding what is placed in the "window" of the painter's canvas...what is cropped and what is not.

The advice was quite timely and useful since I'm currently deciding how to draw and shape the bower.  I hadn't considered that I'd been creating "windows" into my work, but it is true of many of us who are working within the confines of a quilt block.  Check them out...

• Do not have curved areas or lines tangential with the edges.

• Do not have a lot of small items dribbling along edges.

• Do not have spikey or angular items pointing too directly at corners.

• Do not have an even or symmetrical division of elements lying against the frame edges.

• Do have a design near the frame edge that has both positive and negative areas.

• Do vary the thickness of lines and patches that lie against, come up to, or approach those edges.

• Do have mystery, understatement, softening, incompleteness and wabi-sabi as part of your edge consciousness.

After digesting these guidelines, I found myself looking to some famous rose bowers within paintings to see how other artists treated the cropping of a rose bower.

In the painting below, the Madonna is placed centrally in the painting yet the roses on either side are asymmetrical.  I also note the larger roses in the left foreground adding more interest...

Madonna in the Rose Garden by Martin Schongauer ca. 1473

And the bower in the picture below surrounding Sleeping Beauty has been cropped quite severely at the edges...

The Rose Bower by Edward Burnes-Jones ca. 1885-1890

Note that the vines do vary in size and are not tangential to the edges.  The poem at the bottom of the frame was written by William Morris, a contemporary of Burnes-Jones.  Did you read it?  It's quite lovely and mentions love, treasure and a gift.

And Morris himself has provided a climbing rose design to inspire...

"Trellis" wallpaper by William Morris c. 1859

This last painting shows lots of flowers encapsulating another sleeping beauty, giving the impression that we really are looking through a window framed by roses.

Rose Bower by Hans Zatzka c. 1859

With all this to study and consider, I'm off to sketch a design for the climbing roses and to hunt down the right fibers for stitching the climbing vines.

It's great to be working on roses right now since they are blooming everywhere.

Speaking of gardens, the bluebirds have come back this year and I have three baby bluebirds in my bluebird box.  They were just starting to hatch when I took this pic... 

I'll take an update picture in the next few days.

Happy June and Happy Roses everyone!

Too Beautiful not to Share...

A treasure from my trip to the Art Institute of Chicago...

It's called the Londonderry Vase, an exquisite example of porcelain from Sèvres, France in 1813...



It catches your eye and draws you in immediately...

 

To drink in all the details...



Check out its history...

An excerpt from The Art Institute of Chicago's online catalogue:

This vase epitomizes the great achievements of the royal porcelain factory at Sévres during the Napoleonic period. Sévres was a chief beneficiary of Napoleon's policy of resuscitating factories after the trauma of the French Revolution: demonstrating the supremacy of French craftsmanship, the emperor used sumptuous porcelain in his palaces as well as for state gifts. With its commanding contours, monumental size, rigorous symmetry, and unabashed splendor, this vase is a superb example of the Empire style, inspired by Greco-Roman art. It is a triumph of the collaborative practice of the Sévres porcelain factory; documents reveal the precise roles played by each artist in its creation. Napoleon's chief architect, Charles Percier, who helped establish the Empire style, created the Etruscan scroll-handled design featured on the vase. Commissioned by Napoleon around 1805, the vase ironically cemented a relationship that sealed the French emperor's defeat. Held by the factory until 1814, after Napoleon's exile, it was used as a diplomatic gift from his successor, King Louis XVIII, to Visount Castlereagh, the English secretary for foreign affairs.
— Entry, Essential Guide, 2009, p. 171.

And a list of its makers:

Designed by Charles Percier (French, 1764-1838)
Decoration designed by Alexander-Theodore Brogniart (d. 1813)
Painted by Gilbert Drouet, flowers and ornament, (1785-1825)
and Christophe-Ferdinand Caron, birds, (active 1792-1815)
Manufactured by Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory

Londonderry Vase (Vase Etrusque a Rouleaux),1813

Hard-paste porcelain, gilding, ormolu mounts
137.2 cm (54 in.)

Mark: Sevres mark for 1813-1815; (in gold) 30 Mars B. T. Drouet, 1813
     

How's that for teamwork.

I'm cleaning and running errands today.  Have a beauty-filled weekend...

Needlework in Portraiture at The Art Institute of Chicago

While in Chicago we had about two hours to tour the Art Institute of Chicago.  Though they currently have a Picasso exhibit, we decided we didn't have time to see that as well as the rest of the museum.



We chose the rest of the museum and it did not disappoint.

There were many impressionist pieces in the permanent collection and they were displayed in a showroom bathed in natural light.  Yay!  Since photographs were allowed, I was able to capture a bit of what I saw that day.

Two Sisters (On the Terrace) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881.   Oil on canvas.

Taking pictures allows me to foucs on specific areas of a painting that tend not to be available as images for sale in the museum gift shop...The vividness of this painting is unbelievable.  How is that Renoir was able to use such a riot of color without it appearing garish and overwhelming the composition?  What is off-setting the color that gives the work balance?

There's so much light in Renoir's work.  In photography, light absorbs color.  I wonder if that was his trick?  Maybe some of you art majors or painter friends have a theory.

I'm tempted to do a piece explosive with color just to see what would happen...

As always, I am overjoyed when I find paintings of sewers, knitters, embroiderer, lacemakers, etc.  And this museum had a good number of them; two were by Renoir.

Renoir had a blue and purple color party in this painting of a young girl sewing...

Young Girl Sewing by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1879. 

I'm not sure I would have ever thought to bring so much blue into the flower arrangement since there aren't that many naturally occurring flowers in those particular shades.

That being said, the preponderance of blue with undertones of violet, helps to bring the girl forward...

The following painting isn't a girl at all but a picture of Renoir's son at age 5 or so sewing.   I've read that Renoir liked the color of his son's strawberry blond hair so much that he wouldn't allow him to cut until his son's school required it at age 7.

I remember when Jack was about four, he wanted to stitch so I gave him a hoop, needle and thread.  He sat there for an hour or so making big stitches in all different colors.

It was the first and last time he has stitched.

Another portrait of a stitching woman is this one by Jacques Louis-David...

Madame Pastonet and Her Son by Jacque-Louis David, 1791/92.  Oil on canvas.

It turns out that this painting isn't quite finished because it's believed that the political views of the artist were in conflict with his patron.  Hence there is no needle in Madame's right hand and the background is incomplete.

You barely notice the babe in the cradle off to the right.

Next up is probably my favorite "needle" painting of the day,  most likely because there is a bit of mystery to the work.

It's called Hesitation and the artist's suggestion of a title leaves the viewer to play a role in interpreting the story...

Hesitation (Madame Morteaux) by Alfred Stevens, 1867.

This painting is by Alfred Stevens, a Belgian painter who spent most of his life in Paris.  He was known for painting aristocratic women in  elegant and enticing backgrounds.  He often liked a bit of mystery, capturing his subject at a particular moment in time.

At first I thought this woman was listening at the door and her hesitation was her resistance to walk through it...But on further study, I noted the bit of pink paper that had been slipped under the door.  Hmm...

Like Stevens' other works (see a gallery of his works here), the background detail is impressive as we are treated to a work table spilling over with tapestry wools, one skein having dropped to the floor as she stood up...

The detail is so well done that we can see that the needlepoint design is of Chinese influence, very appropriate for the late 19th century.  We can also see the mess of thread ends on the back of the work.

It appears that there were quite a number of portraits painted in the 19th century showing girls/women who were working some type of needlework.   Young aristocratic ladies were expected to be accomplished at many of the domestic arts, needlework being one of them and portraits showing their endeavors helped to sell that brand.  

You can see hundreds of other examples of needlewomen in portraiture in Gail Sirna's book, In Praise of the Needlewoman.  It's currently out-of-print but you can find used copies around the net.  I love to use it as a guide for what paintings are housed in which museums...

Ok.  I saved the best for last.

As I walked through one of the lesser galleries, I was stopped dead in my tracks by this painting...

Shoe Shop by Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones, c. 1911.

It was most certainly an Impressionist work but I had never seen it before.  And, it was painted by a woman.  Yet...

I had seen the Women Impressionists exhibit at the Legion of Honor a few years ago and never heard of this artist Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones.

It turns out that she studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in the early 20th century and began painting and selling her work as a teenager.  Even though she was young, her paintings sold for about $50,000 in today's equivalent and she won many awards.

Following an exhibition in 1907, the New York Times dubbed her the "Find of the Year" after stating that her painting, The Porch, was the most unforgettable canvas in the show.

And check it  out, there's even a woman embroidering in the foreground...

The Porch by Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones,  1907

By 1913, a hereditary mental illness had claimed her and she wouldn't paint again until 20 years later.  Though there wasn't even a wikipedia site for her, I was pleased to find a biography written in 2010 that I hope to read.

All of her early paintings are of contemporary, urban scenes of women shopping, reading, or caring for babies.  To see more of her wonderful paintings, check out this blog post showing her work.

Well, that's it for my little art tour.  Happy day everyone!