The last few posts have been pretty long, so I thought it might be a good idea to shift the balance to something lighter today.

I think it's always interesting to see what art an artist keeps - here's Cezanne's The Three Bathers. Matisse bought this, a bust by Rodin, a Van Gogh drawing, and a few other pieces even though he and his wife were in dire financial straits.
Here's Head of a Boy by Gauguin:


What would you want nearby to study and enjoy? Any of these? Here's Matisse's Dos I (Back I), 1908-9 - probably shipping from France would be prohibitive, so maybe I'd have to pass on this, but isn't it powerful and mysterious in the way the figure's face is turned away?


What about Vuillard? Here's Mother and Sister of the Artist, 1893. Talk about playing with perspective and decorative pattern. (And it would work well hanging over the dinner table at Thanksgiving - keep everyone in line. . .)


Diebenkorn? Here's Albuquerque, 1951. (I have been there and it looks just like this.)



Something more contemporary? I'd love to see what you'd want to look at every day.

Do you look at art sometimes and resist reading anything about it because you really prefer not to have any information? Sometimes it's just enough to look and think about it. So if you want, don't read any further and just taken in Vuillard's oil, The Nape of Misia's Neck, from 1897-99.

For a few years now I've had a doorstopper book on Vuillard (published to accompany an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in D.C. several years ago) and I've looked at this piece a zillion times - today for the first time I read the notes about the painting and they gave me a whole new perspective. Apparently, Vuillard was very charmed by Misia, a talented and charming pianist who became a muse for him as well as for others (no, not Tiger). She was married to Thadee Natanson, and Vuillard and other painters including Bonnard, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Renoir used to gather at their house.

Misia's memoirs were published after her death:

The echoes of this agitation (the Dreyfus affair) reached me at Villeneuve, and I decided to leave for Paris earlier than usual. Vuillard then said he wanted to take a last walk along the banks of the Yonne, and we started at dusk. Looking dreamy and grave, he led me beside the river amongst the tall birches with their silvery trunks. He moved slowly over the yellowing grass, and I fell in with his mood; we did not speak. The day was closing in rapidly, so we took a shortcut across a bare beetroot field. Our silhouettes were insubstantial shadows against a pale sky. The ground was rough, I tripped on a root and almost fell; Vuillard stopped abruptly to help me regain my balance. Our eyes met. In the deepening shdows I could see the sad gleam of his glance. He burst into sobs. It was the most beautiful declaration of love ever made to me.
(p. 220, Vuillard, produced by the publishing office of National Gallery of Art, Washington, editor Judy Metro, 2002)

I have been half in love with easeful death. . Keats

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice or wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison. Virginia Woolf

Went to see Bright Star, the new movie about John Keats. Really struck by how little critical praise or financial profit he received during his short life - he did not even have enough money to get to Italy that last year in order to convalesce and avoid another cold English winter - his friends had to come up with the money. If he had known about the book, "Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow," he certainly would have figured the money was following at a safe distance.

I remember hearing that orange is the least popular color in a painting while blue is at the top of the list. If Keats had been a painter, he would have just continued with puce if that had been his passion. But it is hard to not ever listen to a quiet voice saying, well, maybe just a nice blue painting to see if it sells quickly.

Here's Vuillard's Two Women at the Linen Closet. How does he get so much with so little out of those faces?

This is my only orange painting, Noon, inspired from a photo I took in Rome, not far from where Keats died in 1821 at the age of 25. Ready to sell to a color-blind individual.

Came across this painting by Vuillard -- love the eyebrows on the dealer in the foreground. He is one of the brothers who owned the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris where Vuillard's work was exhibited. They became his friends, but it does seem that he can make a little fun of them here, showing the one in the background fussing over the books while the one in the foreground is almost a caricature of a sly salesman.

Love the shapes of those lights used to show off the paintings and the posture of the salesman, ready to spring to his feet and come forward. The pointy foot is great, isn't it?

In Vuillard, author Stuart Preston explains that Vuillard hated the financial side of the art world and became increasingly uncomfortable as he watched the prices for his works rise toward this end of his life. This one was painted later in his life when he began to simplify his interiors.

Here's an earlier one I like. Shows the interior of Madame Vuillard's workroom where Vuillard's sister Marie sorts materials and his friend, the painter Ker-Xavier Roussel, peeks around the screen at Marie, whom he would marry the same year this was painted. Vuillard had training in the theater and you can certainly see that in the whole set-up of this scene. That big orange shape in the corner, a wardrobe closet or something, seems to anchor the scene somehow. This painting, entitled Interior.

And one more, below, that goes in the other direction. No decorative patterns, very simple shapes, flatness influenced by his interest in Japanese prints, an intruging corner of a jack in the upper left. It's called Ker-Xavier Roussel Reading a Newspaper. (By this time he was married to Marie.)
I suppose if Vuillard were working today there might be a Kindle in this picture.