FEEDING OUR SOULS: FLOWERS IN ART
The scientist Luther Burbank once said, “Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul.” That quote says a lot about the power of the bloom to inspire all disciplines from art and literature to science and metaphysics. It has been enchanting mankind since the beginning of history. Flowers are particularly meaningful to us because even the poorest among us have access to them and can invent our own gardens, whether a collection of geraniums growing from tin cans on a windowsill, or the manicured gardens of those to the manor born. The tradition of the cottage garden, a mainstay of poorer households in the 19th century, is celebrated in E.L. Henry’s A Cragsmoor Garden (see below). Even the humblest families did their best to plant flowers in view of their windows, evoking the proverb from the Koran that “Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul.” Henry specialized in a type of art known as genre painting which chose its subjects from everyday life. He was particularly noted for his somewhat sentimental depictions of rural life, particularly in the more freshly settled areas of the country. A Cragsmoor Garden, however, depicts the sort of cottage that was common in Cragsmoor, an artists’ community in upstate New York, where he had his summer home. A little girl wanders through the flora, bringing to life the words of poet Phoebe Cary: “I know not which I love the most,/Nor which the comeliest shows,/The timid, bashful violet,/Or the royal-hearted rose. . .”
Flowers have been with us a long time. Paleobotanists have discovered flower fossils dating back 120 million years. And they are also one of mankind’s earliest symbols. Explorers recently uncovered an ancient gravesite in a cave indicating that Neanderthals of the Pleistocene epoch may have placed flowers on graves. Heartbreaking and equally symbolic scenes have been played out when archeologists opened ancient Egyptian and Chinese tombs and saw rose wreaths and other floral offerings before the flowers collapsed into dust after their exposure to the air.
Many early civilizations held flowers in high esteem, both for their beauty and their usefulness. One of Western civilization’s oldest paintings is an ancient wall mural that discoverers called “The Crocus Gatherer.” The wall was part of the buried city of Akrotiri on the island once known as Thera (present day Santorini) dating to roughly 1628 B.C. Other civilizations were equally enthralled. Romans honored the goddess Flora in one of their major festivals. During the medieval period, flower and plant symbolism was often a visual means of expressing religious beliefs. The evergreen ivy, for instance, was used as a border in many Christian illuminated manuscripts to symbolize eternal life (and eternal truth).
The symbolic meaning of flowers has expanded over time into various genres of floral paintings with entire iconographies of their own. Gertrude Stein once declared that “A rose is a rose is a rose.” The Victorians, however, believed that a red rose indicated love and passion and a white rose symbolized virginity and purity (hence, its traditional use in bridal bouquets), and a yellow rose signaled jealousy and infidelity. For centuries, the bouquet operated as a cipher for communications that could not occur openly. The poet Thomas Moore commemorated this function in “The Language of Flowers,” writing, “. . . not words, for they/But half can tell love’s feeling;/Sweet flowers alone can say/What passion fears revealing . . .” These floral “letters” were often love letters, which remains their primary symbolic function today, but they could signal other things as well. A yellow carnation meant rejection and the daffodil was a sign of misfortune, while sending a rhododendron was a warning of danger.
Artists, too, have used flowers for a variety of meanings and purposes. Drawn as they were to color and light, many of these artists designed and maintained their own gardens. Arguably, the most famous of these was the garden of the great Impressionist artist Claude Monet at Giverny in France. The novelist Marcel Proust, born a generation later than Monet, wrote:
If I can someday see M. Claude Monet’s garden, I feel sure that I shall see something that is not so much a garden of flowers as of colors and tones, less an old-fashioned flower garden than a color garden, so to speak, one that achieves an effect not entirely nature’s, because it was planted so that only the flowers with matching colors will bloom at the same time, harmonizing in an infinite stretch of blue or pink.
Monet planned his garden carefully with an artist’s eye to produce certain colors and vistas at varying times of the year, so that there was always something beautiful blooming. Monet once declared, “I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.” Among the most famous of his works are those which immortalize his gardens, particularly the Japanese bridge he built over his lily pond. In the 20th century, the British artist Peter Ellenshaw, a frequent visitor to Giverny, painted his own version of this famous viewpoint in Monet’s Bridge with Water Lilies. He returned often, and captured the same viewpoint as the old master himself, as is the case with both Monet’s Bridge with Water Lilies and Monet’s Bridge, Spring 1981 (see below).
In the Norton’s glass courtyard, you can see our old friend Monet painting the beautiful flowers around him. Monet was never discouraged by, though he might have agreed with, the words of his fellow artist Marc Chagall, who said, “Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers and never succeeding.” After all, when an artist paints a flower, he is in direct competition with its original maker. Who could ever totally reproduce on canvas the beauty that nature possesses in actuality? Nevertheless, because flowers are such a central part of the human experience, it is not surprising that painters continue to find both inspiration and challenge in the art of the blossom.
Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections
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E.L. Henry, A Cragsmoor Garden, 1893
19th Century Landscape & Lifestyle Gallery |
Peter Ellenshaw, Monet’s Bridge, Spring 1981
South Wing Corridor |
TIPS FROM KIP: Patience
For the month of March, I recommend patience. March weather is unpredictable. The last frost may come any time this month to mid-April. Despite this uncertainty, you can still get some much needed work done in your gardens.
You can be preparing your beds for your spring annuals:
1) Loosen the soil at least eight inches deep.
2) Add to it a water-soluble fertilizer and organic matter, which will help retain moisture and allow roots to grow deeper.
3) To prevent the need for a lot of hoeing later, mulch your beds, even if you don’t plant right away.
4) Now is a good time to build new beds.
5) You can still plant cooler weather flowers, but wait before sowing the seeds of warm weather flowers. Even if your warm season annuals don’t freeze, cool weather can cause disease.
6) For early spring cover, see the March 2003 issue of Louisiana Gardener. It recommends you try dianthus or snapdragons. Both typically last longer into late spring and summer than others plants.
7) Watch for weeds and remove them by hand.
8) Plant summer bulbs and tubers now. Remove dead flowers from next year’s bulbs.
Your garden needs you in March for other reasons:
1) Prune trees and shrubs, but wait until they finish blooming.
2) Divide your perennials.
3) Clean out and trim groundcovers to encourage healthy new growth.
4) Shear monkey grass or liriope. Be careful not to fray or damage the tips.
5) Remove leaves from grass and groundcovers and put them in a compost pile.
Early March is still a good time to plant fruit trees and berry plants, such as crabapples and blueberries. Although you may be ready to plant your cool-season vegetables, you don’t have to be in a hurry. According to the March 2004 issue of Louisiana Gardener, seeded vegetables planted early will not be that far ahead of seed planted in warm soil.
Once again, be patient with your garden! Warm weather will be here soon enough, and your plants will be healthier and happier due to your careful preparation and attention.
Kip Dehart, Landscape Director
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OUT IN THE GARDENS: Azaleas
Every spring (and all other months, too) we love to see so many visitors from all over the South who come to enjoy our museum gardens, especially its vistas of blooming azaleas. Most of our azaleas, both deciduous and evergreen varieties, include such Southern Indian hybrids as George Lindley Taber (light pink), G. G. Gerbing (white), and Pink Formosa (dark pink). Deciduous native azaleas, which flourish at the northern end of the gardens, feature fragrant varieties in yellow, pink and white.The Norton would like to thank Dr. Dave Creech, Professor of Horticulture and Director of the Stephen F. Austin Mast Arboretum in Nacogdoches, Texas, for his generous donation of these native azaleas.
The Azalea Society of America (www.azaleas.org) says this flower has been hybridized for hundreds of years. More than 10,000 different registered plants provide “a variety of plant habits, sizes, colors, and bloom times to meet almost every landscaping need or personal preference.” Azaleas produce many different flower types (single, double, or hose-in-hose), petal shapes (narrow, rounded or triangular), and leaf lengths (ranging from 1/4 inch to 6 inches). Some varieties have solid green leaves while others are variegated. They may stand stiff, upright, compact and dense while others are irregular and open. Some even resemble weeping willows.
Azaleas are fairly easy-to-grow. They require moderate temperatures (zones 6 to 8), dappled shade, and moist, slightly acidic soil. Plant them in soil with good drainage and mulch around the base. Prune them shortly after they bloom to avoid cutting off next year’s blooms.
Azaleas are relatively pest-free; however, the lace bug, a flattened, rectangular insect about 1/8 to 1/4 inch long with a lace-like covering, is its most significant pest. Lace bugs feed on the underside of the azalea leaves (and other ornamental shrubs) causing damage to the upper leaf surface. Brown droplets of excrement and old “skins” of nymphs are indicative of lace bug presence. Use insecticidal soaps or horticultural oils to control small populations. Chemical control may be necessary for heavy infestation. Apply an early spring treatment to reduce the number of needed applications.
UPCOMING AZALEA SYMPOSIUM
SFA Mast Arboretum and the Texas Chapter of the Azalea Society of America will be hosting an upcoming azaleas symposium. Nacagdoches Azaleas Trail Symposium: Azaleas and More - Companion Planting, on Saturday, March 21, 2009 from 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. The symposium will be held at the Stephen F. Austin State University Agriculture Building on Nacogdoches, Texas. For more information or to register for the symposium, go to www.nacogdochesazaleas.com.
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VOICES FROM THE ARCHIVES: Virginia Graf, WWII Civilian
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"My family thought my mother was crazy to let me go to Washington at seventeen, but at that time the only places in Arkansas to work where Little Rock (Cam Robinson was there and there were five guys to every woman in Little Rock) and in Texarkana, they had--See they were at Camp Robinson in Little Rock, but if you'd walk down the street you'd just have a whole bunch of soldiers following you, whistling at you and carrying on. And Texarkana was almost that bad because it had Lone Star Ordnance Plant and Red River Ordnance Plant, and then there was the Hope Proving Grounds, where they tested weapons. So in the cities in Arkansas, there were more servicemen than there were women. In Washington, there were five women to every man. So, I was safer in Washington than I would be in Arkansas."
Virginia Graf, from Delight, Arkansas,was one of thousands of young women who left farms and small towns to work in the war effort as well as enlisting for uniformed service. Virginia did go to Washington, where she worked for the FBI through the end of the war. She returned home, went to college, became a legal secretary, and helped her husband open a law practice in Shreveport. Virginia is among more than 400 men and women from the Shreveport area who graciously gave their time to tell us their life stories of service and sacrifice. We’re preserving those stories as part of our Oral History Project, an ongoing effort to interview members of the World War II generation, along with veterans of subsequent American conflicts. We also want to hear from eyewitnesses and participants in the civil rights struggle, as well as those who shaped the musical heritage of the city and the nation.
If you would like to hear the audio of Virginia Graf’s interview, you may go to the Oral History Project website by clicking here. If you or someone you know would like to share stories with us, please call (318) 865-4201, or contact ohp@rwnaf.org.
Museum Staff
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BEHIND THE SCENES: Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections
“The best thing about my job,” declares Everl Adair, “is that I literally learn something new every day.” When the R.W. Norton Art gallery was founded, part of its initial mission was not only to amass a permanent collection of art and host visiting exhibitions, but also to provide publications and other materials regarding these for the education and enjoyment of the public. As Director of Research and Rare Collections, Ms. Adair is responsible for gathering and presenting information about the artworks on view at the Norton and the artists who created them. This is passed on to our patrons in the form of textboxes, brochures, and catalogues, while a visit to our website also offers articles and monographs on specific artists and movements as well as artist’s biographies for those in the permanent collection. The writing of these is not only an obligation for her, but also a genuine pleasure. Whether it’s discovering how Audubon bamboozled biographers about his origins for more than a century, learning that Rosa Bonheur had to acquire a special dispensation from the French government to wear pants since it was otherwise illegal for women to do so, realizing that most of the great Renaissance masters worked with toxic pigments that contributed to their ill health and occasional insanity, or finding out that the tiny bubbles lodged in crystal art works will slowly migrate over the course of a century, Ms. Adair finds each subject fascinating in its own way. Passing that knowledge on to others is simply the icing on the cake. “I love my job,” she explains, “because I get to do two things I that I have always enjoyed and pursued - learning and writing - on subjects which genuinely engage me.”
In addition to her research and writing, Ms. Adair is also involved with the evaluation, conservation, and presentation of the present collection and the acquisition of additional works. She collaborates with Tour and Special Events Coordinator Jen DeFratis to create a broad range of tours for our visitors, including core tours which emphasize education about our permanent collection and the themed “First Saturday Tours” and in planning future educational endeavors and events. “One of the many wonderful things about the Norton,” she adds, “is that it is dynamic – there is always something new happening here. It is so exciting to be a part of that.”
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FEATURED ARTIST IN THE COLLECTION: Porfirio Salinas
A native of Bastrop, Texas, Porfirio Salinas (1910-1973) is considered one of the most successful painters of the Southwest and is most well known for his Texas landscapes. Growing up just two miles from the Alamo in San Antonio, Salinas was greatly inspired by the surrounding Texas hillside, his subject matter including the bluebonnets, prickly cactus, sunny villages, and bull fights of the Southwest. Through his paintings he taught fellow Texans how to see the beauty of their native land. As a proponent of the Texas Regionalism movement of the 1930s and 1940s, he helped present the beauty and diversity of the state’s natural world to the rest of America.
Although Salinas was largely a self-taught artist, three people influenced him. According to the Slimp family, Salinas received some artistic instruction from his neighbor Helen Slimp, who also helped him design his artistic signature with a bull. Salinas worked after school in a graphics company that also sold art supplies. There he met director of the San Antonio Art School Jose Arpa and the recognized Texas landscape artist, Robert Wood. Salinas learned from Arpa while watching him sketch the streets and fields of San Antonio. Wood, who hated painting blue bonnets, offered Salinas his most formal training and paid him five dollars a picture to paint in the flowers. It is the Texas bluebonnet for which Salinas is most well-known. The Norton owns his painting entitled Field of Bluebonnets (1940) (below) which is on display in the South Wing Corridor.
In 1939 Dewey Bradford, the owner of a well-known art gallery in Austin who worked as Salinas’ agent, soon enhanced the artist’s national stature. Texas collectors especially coveted his work. They included President Lyndon Johnson, who hung Salinas paintings in the White House and at his Texas ranch, helping the artist’s reputation grow beyond the borders of Texas. In 1981 the first Salinas Art Exhibit was held in honor of the native artist with a fiesta, and it continues to be held each year. In 1985 the Salinas Festival of the Arts Association was formed in Bastrop, and in 1986 the Salinas Bluebonnet Festival was held.
Museum Staff
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FEATURED ARTWORK IN THE COLLECTION: The Birds of America by John James Audubon
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| Brown Pelican |
Wildlife artist John James Audubon (1785-1851) traveled through the eastern United States painting birds, a hobby that grew into an obsession. In 1826, Audubon arrived in England (after having encountered hostility in America from previously established naturalists who jealously guarded their publishing allies) hoping to find a publisher for a new ornithological portfolio that would exceed everything published before, and some say since, on the subject of the birds of America. He quickly became popular as “the American Woodsman.”
No one had seen work like his before; his birds were the first scientifically-oriented paintings designed to show the birds in action, looking alive instead of stuffed. This was made possible by a method Audubon demonstrated at the Wernerian Society in Edinburgh. Instead of using stuffed birds like previous naturalists, he pushed wire through a freshly killed bird’s body to affix it in a position mimicking action on a board with a marked-off grid. A corresponding grid on his drawing paper enabled him to draw the bird to scale and life-size. His media included pencil, pastel, gouache, chalk, ink, and glazes, but he used watercolor primarily, layering and mixing all the media to achieve an unusually complex coloring and depth.
Audubon found his first engraver, William Howe Lizars, in Edinburgh, to create the book in the double elephant format, 39 ½ inches by 29 ½ inches, the same size paper on which he created his original paintings. Each of the five volumes weighed 40 pounds, and producing it proved an expensive and time-consuming process. The engravings in The Birds of America were actually a combination of etching and aquatint. The plates were printed in black. A team of colorists, working from the original paintings, added color to each print. While Audubon painted all the birds in the original works, over time, three separate artists, Joseph Mason, George Lehman, and Maria Martin, added different backgrounds.
In A History of American Art, Daniel Mendelowitz writes, “The Birds of America is one of the great scientific and artistic achievements of the century.” Unfortunately, many of the folios have been broken up or destroyed. As of 1973, 134 complete folios remained. One of those resides here at the R.W. Norton Art Gallery. The Gallery’s copy, purchased in 1939, previously belonged to Queen’s College, Oxford, which sold it to finance the reconstruction of its library. The first five prints in this copy are from Lizars plates, which indicate that it was one of the very first subscriptions. The Birds of America proved that Audubon was not merely a great artist, but one of the first truly American artists.
Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections
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CAN YOU GUESS THE
TITLE AND ARTIST?
Answer to the February 2009 newsletter:
The painting featured in last month’s newsletter is entitled Mother and Daughter Both Wearing Large Hats (1900-1901) by Mary Cassatt and can be seen in the First American Art Gallery.
Mary Cassatt was born May 22, 1844 in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. Despite her American birth, she is widely seen as a seminal figure in French Impressionism. Just before her 16th birthday, Mary, determined to become a professional artist, enrolled in the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1865, she convinced her reluctant father to allow her to go to Paris to continue her training. Women were refused admission to the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Arts, so Mary obtained lessons from the most sought-after artist/teacher in Paris, Jean-Leon Gerome. Gerome grounded Cassatt in the academic style, which favored detailed draftsmanship and historical or genre paintings. Cassatt quickly mastered it and first had a painting accepted by the Salon, the official juried exhibition of the French art establishment, in 1868, a feat she repeated every year the Salon was held through 1876. In 1877, a mutual friend introduced her to Edgar Degas, who invited Cassatt to participate in the next Impressionist exhibition. Thereafter, she became a part of the Impressionist group, both socially and artistically. Renowned for her paintings of mothers and children, Cassatt grew into one of the finest printmakers of her time. Fine draftsmanship, a vivid palette, and a lack of sentimentality characterized her work.
Museum Staff
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DID YOU KNOW?
Edward Szmyd (1933-2004) was obsessed with flowers! This floral landscape painter from North Carolina began collecting orchids and other flowers, until his botanical collection reached approximately 4,000 plants. Caring for the orchids began interfering with his career, so he sold them. Szmyd wanted to plant every flower type he saw, until he realized his plant passion could be transferred onto canvas. The Norton collection features many of Szmyd’s floral landscapes in the 20th Century Landscapes and Lifestyles Gallery including Spring Garden (below), Red Poppies, Puerta Vallarta, and Sunflowers.
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QUERIES FOR KRISTI
What is gum arabic and how is it used by artists?
Curious in Cotton Valley
Gum arabic, the hardened sap from the acacia tree, can be ground into a fine powder and dissolved in water. It is used primarily in the food industry, but has also served as an ingredient in printing, paint production and glue. Artists like gum arabic as a binder for watercolor and gouache painting as well as pastels. When the water evaporates, the gum arabic binds the pigment to the surface and increases the body and gloss of the paint. Too much of it on canvas, however, can turn brittle and flake off. Winslow Homer frequently preferred watercolor paint. An example to the right of his work, Shadows on the Dunes (1883), can be seen in the American Art History Gallery.
If you have an art-related question you would like answered in a future newsletter, submit it by clicking here.
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FOR THE KIDS:
The gardens at the Norton provide a wonderful teaching and learning environment for you and your children. Bring them and friends for a stroll and identify the various flowers in bloom this spring! Not only are azaleas in full bloom, but the many bulbs planted in late fall and early winter are now adding color to the lawn beyond the north gate. In addition to the variety of flowering plants, your family will surely find many interesting insects, including butterflies, dragonflies and bumblebees in the gardens. You will be able to observe birds, frogs, lizards, and goldfish, too. It is a great time and place to encourage your children to respect and enjoy nature! You may even want to bring paper and crayons or markers as this outing will surely inspire your child to create a work of art, maybe even a masterpiece worthy of framing for hanging on your living room wall! It is a great time and place to encourage your children to respect and enjoy nature!
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FROM THE VAULTS: John Gould Ornithological Lithographs and Folios
John Gould (1804-1881), a contemporary of naturalist and artist John James Audubon, was probably the most famous British ornithologist. Initially a taxidermist by profession, Gould became known as “The Bird Man” and published nearly 3000 paintings of birds. His birds were printed as hand-colored lithographs from his original paintings. Gould’s hummingbird renderings have proven to be his most popular due to his ability to capture their iridescent plumage. Because Gould sometimes mixed gold or silver leaf in the paint to reproduce the hummingbird’s luminosity, only the very affluent could afford these vibrant lithographs. He produced a total of 360 folio-sized, hand-colored lithographic hummingbird plates which were originally bound into six volumes. After Gould’s death, a supplementary volume of 58 plates was issued to complete his work.
Two of Gould’s hummingbird lithographs are housed in the Norton storage room. Phaethornis Striigularis, or the stripe-throated hermit, is a species of hummingbird from Central America and north-western South America. It is among the smaller species of hermits with a total length of 3 1/2 to 4 inches and a weight of only 2-3 grams. Amazilia Leucophaea is a white breasted hummingbird found in northern Peru featured with a plant known as calliandria tweedii.
The Norton also owns many of Gould’s ornithological folios in its rare book collection. Some of the titles include Birds of New Guinea, Birds of Australia, Birds of Great Britain, Birds of Europe, Birds of Asia, and Century of Birds from the Himalaya Mountains.
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| Phaethornis Striigularis |
Amazilia Leucophaea |
Note: Items featured in From the Vaults are currently not on display.
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WORTH QUOTING:
My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.
::: Claude Monet ::: |
WORTH THE TRIP: Dallas Museum of Art - Uncovering the Tomb of the Pharaohs
Not since the 1970’s have the treasures of an ancient world been permitted outside Egyptian borders. For the first time in a generation, museum visitors to the Dallas Museum of Art can see not only the treasures of King Tut’s tomb, but also the exotic relics of his dynasty that were hidden away in the Valley of the Kings.
As you wander through the labyrinthine exhibit, lit dramatically with stage lighting, you cannot help but feel that you are Howard Carter himself discovering a golden cache that will make audiences gasp in wonder for years. Every room of the exhibit is more fantastic than the last – I spent two hours absorbing the culture of the Egyptians and it only felt like a brief moment. Walking back out to a sunlit modern Dallas was incredibly disorienting after the immersion of the exhibit.
The treasures themselves are exceedingly opulent: A golden sarcophagi of one of Tut’s relatives is the focus in one room. It is so well preserved (thanks to the dry desert climate) that every intricate cartouche detail is still readable. The shine of the gold is so magnificent and unbelievable that it seems it could not have possibly been made by mortal hands.
Every treasure was not necessarily swathed in gold, though all were fit for a god-king: one of the finest pieces meant for King Tut’s afterlife was a miniature ivory game board inlaid with obsidian hieroglyphics. Tut was only 19 years old when he died, so of course would want his games to accompany him into the afterlife, much as modern day boys would never part with their X-box.
While ticket prices are bit steep, they are not unjustified. This exhibit is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience that should not be missed. Everyone from scholars to those who just enjoyed The Mummy trilogy will learn and experience something new. While every artifact is well labeled and explained in context, I must recommend the additional audio tour, narrated by Omar Sharif. The advantage gained from the easy-to-use device is like having your own personal tour guide whispering insights in your ear.
I am going to give away one secret of the pharaoh’s tomb: the image of the golden mask used heavily in the marketing campaign that at first glance might be Tut’s coffin is actually a “canopic coffinette” that once held his mummified liver. The vessel in reality is less than 12 inches high. King Tut’s death mask, golden sarcophagus and mummified body still lie in Egypt, waiting for the afterlife.
Dallas Museum of Art: 1717 N. Harwood St. Dallas, TX 75201. Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs runs until May 3, 2009. Admission: Ticket prices start at $15.00. Hours for the special exhibit: Noon until close Monday through Thursday. Call (214) 922-1803. See http://www.kingtut.org/about_the_exhibition.
Jennifer DeFratis, Tour and Special Events Coordinator
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