Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death, by Laura Cumming
‘Since the start of the Eighty Years War, the
Dutch army had been keeping central
stores of gunpowder within the city walls of
Delft. In the late morning of October 12,
1654, the city was rocked by an explosion in
the Doelenkwartier, between Geerweg and
Doelstraat in the northeast section of the
city. The magazine, used for storing ammunition for the defense of the city, had blown
up. It contained some around 40 tonnes (80,000 to 90,000 pounds) of black powder
stored in barrels in a former convent. The cause is not known, but the keeper of the
magazine, Cornelis Soetens, went inside with a visitor. Half an hour later the magazine exploded.’
by Peter Douglas, from The Delft Thunderclap of 1654, in The New Netherlands Institute
The usual number for fatalities is given as one hundred, but bodies continued to be unearthed for weeks following the initial conflagration.
One of those who perished in the catastrophe was the painter Carel Fabritius. He was only 32 when he died, but he had already lost his (first) wife and three children. What an incredibly luckless man was Carel Fabritius! (But Death was such a relentless stalker in those times….)
T
The list of works by Fabritius is, of course, brief. But Cumming is eloquent in her admiration of them, especially as regards the two self-portraits below. The first dates from about 1645; the second, from 1654, shortly before the death of the artist:
(If these two works put you in mind of Rembrandt, there is a reason for that: Fabritius worked for a time in Rembrandt’s busy studio.)
Other works by Carel Fabritius (Be sure to specify ‘Carel.’ His younger brothers Barent and Johannes were also painters.):
It seems as though Cumming has written two books here’; one is a memoir of her father, the Scottish artist James Cumming; the other is an expression of the love she bears toward the great artists of the Golden Age of the Low Country. (This love was instilled in her by her father.)
Some of these artists I already knew of – Jacob Van Ruisdael:
Jan Van Goyen:
Gerard ter Borch:
Meindert Hobbema:
And of course Vermeer:
Some of the artists Cumming writes about were new to me. Such a one is Rachel Ruysch:
And Adrian Coortes:
This is what Cumming has to say about the work of Jacob van Ruisdael:
“….Jacob van Ruisdael made things up. He is not known to have travelled beyond the German border, yet there are Swedish waterfalls and Italian ruins in his art. The wildest of all his paintings, The Jewish Cemetery, collages a real graveyard with a fiction of rainbows, ravening clouds, black water and stricken oaks. And yet people still persist with that old cliché about Dutch artists that all they ever do is replicate what is in front of their eyes. “….Jacob van Ruisdael made things up. He is not known to have travelled beyond the German border, yet there are Swedish waterfalls and Italian ruins in his art. The wildest of all his paintings, The Jewish Cemetery, collages a real graveyard with a fiction of rainbows, ravening clouds, black water and stricken oaks. And yet people still persist with that old cliché about Dutch artists that all they ever do is replicate what is in front of their eyes.
Everything Ruisdael painted is charged with the sheer exhilaration of being outdoors in the world, and in his imagination. Constable, who loved his art, and absorbed its lessons, had its essence so well. ‘So true, clear, fresh & brisk as champagne… it clings to my heart.’”
Here is The Jewish Cemetery:
And there is so much more. As you can see from the passage quoted above, Laura Cumming writes beautifully.
I read this book on Kindle, but I may purchase the hardback as well. I want to be able to hold it, reread it, look at the gorgeous art works contained therein.
This is a superb book. I cannot praise it highly enough.
Recent Reads: Reviews at Lightning Speed!
I didn’t think I’d ever read another book about Abraham Lincoln since finishing the elegant, immensely moving Lincoln on the Verge by Ted Widmer. But this volume intrigued me, especially in regard to the history of the Booth family. As Alford succinctly states, “The son of one family killed the son of the other in the most infamous and consequential murder in American history.”
This book is filled with largely anecdotal tales of people possessing knowledge of events that will occur in the future. The accounts are spread out over time and place, giving the book a somewhat confusing structure – at least it seemed so to me.
One event that does loom large is the collapse of the Aberfan Colliery Spoil Tip in October of 1966. (Aberfan is a village in Wales.)
Knight also tells the story of a train wreck. One of the passengers was Robin Gibb, soon to become famous, along with his brothers, as the Bee Gees.
Some years later, the Gibb brothers were at a recording studio when the power suddenly went out. They found themselves sitting in a darkened stairwell, waiting for something to happen.
Barry Gibb recalls:
‘”That song didn’t take a lot of thinking about because it is a catastrophe and catastrophes happen all the time.” He added: “The atmosphere just came and the song just came.’
The song was odd and somewhat haunting.”
This was fun! I learned a lot, too. Heller introduced me to a number of interesting artists. Admittedly, some of these works didn’t do much for me, but I was pleasantly surprised by others.
Like this one, by Frank Stella:
The story of the nineteenth century obsession with finding the source of the Nile River. The expeditions undertaken into Africa are good examples of a trip you would never wish to take, unless you are confirmed masochist. Millard’s focus is on two explorers who did in fact undertake it: Richard Burton and John Speke.
That’s Burton on the left. This visual makes them look like great buddies. In reality, they were anything but.
Candice Millard is the author of Destiny of the Republic, a book which made a powerful impression on me and on many others as well. She admits that it was a difficult story to write, and I can understand why. It was difficult to read, too. But people need to know about the quiet heroism of James A. Garfield. He was shot by an disappointed office seeker who was clearly insane. Garfield endured months of acute misery before finally passing away at the age of 49.
The plot of Swanson’s thriller is exceptionally cunning and fast moving. Nothing too profound here, but good fun and excellent escapism.
A primer on the ecology of the Southeast, a subject about which I knew next to nothing. I know more now, but the book is so rich with anecdote and evocative description, I fear I have retained very little of its riches. A Road Running Southward is a prime candidate for rereading, I think.
The author’s choice to anchor his own experience to that of John Muir is a device that works beautifully. Many people know of Muir’s explorations of Northern California, especially his adventures in the High Sierras, his “range of light.” But before heading West, Muir headed South, and kept a detailed journal of his observations while traveling – on foot, naturally.
“‘Today, emerging from a multitude of tropical plants, I behold the Gulf of Mexico stretching away unbounded,except by the sky,’ he wrote in A Thousand Mile Walk. ‘What dreams and speculative matter arose as I stood on the strand, gazing out on the burnished, treeless plain!'”
Comparisons between what Muir saw then and what the author sees now are inevitable, and often deeply dismaying.
Dan Chapman has produced a marvelously informative work. A world unknown to me came vividly to life. Highly recommended.
The first part of this book reads more like an exposé than anything else. Most of us know about the lobotomies, but not about the furious rate at which they were performed in the early years of the twentieth century, and the inadequacy with which the outcomes were made known. Then of course there is electroconvulsive therapy, the results of which were also rather horrific, at least when it first came into use.
That’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. This is a complex subject, but Scull treats it in a lucid manner. One thing is made clear: Treating mental illness is a very perplexing undertaking. That is as true today, as it was a hundred years ago:
“Mental illness remains a baffling collection of disorders, many of them resisting our most determined efforts to probe their origins or to relieve the suffering they bring in their train.”
This book is filled with fascinating revelations. I found it a mesmerizing read.
And now: Even in a field of such superior works , this one stands out.
The Goldenacre is many things at once: a thriller complete with a cunning plot and a twist at the end that I, for one, did not see coming; a terrific sense of place, that place being Edinburgh, a compelling cast of characters whose motives are not always obvious, and finally, writing that absolutely soars.
The title refers to a painting attributed to Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Here is how it is described:
“Mackintosh had painted a blaze of white sky, and, within that blaze, something living and diaphanous. In the distance sat the black of the Pentlands. They had been rendered as if they were not bare hills stripped of their native trees but two giant legs and a mammoth body: a distant giant cut from the landscape. The perspective of The Goldenacre was unnerving: the field was both flat and three-dimensional, and the height down to the foreground was precipitous. Throughout, the colours were bold and watery, as rich as a passing reality, as sorrowful as a dream departing upon waking.”
The story involves a young man with the improbably name of Thomas Tallis whose job it is to verify this attribution.
Anyway, just take my word for it. The Goldenacre gives proof that people can still create works of this caliber. I’m deeply grateful to Philip Miller, a writer whom I did not know. I know him now. And on the strength of this novel, I am deeply, deeply impressed by him.
Nonfiction, Part the First, Art: Hans Holbein the Younger
The King’s Painter: The Life of Hans Holbein, by Franny Moyle
A fascinating, eminently readable biography. I learned, among other things, that Holbein, born in Switzerland, made many more works than the (justly famous) portraits of King Henry VIII and Thomas More.
Holbein also painted this strange and somewhat disturbing yet riveting image:
What a great portraitist Holbein the Younger was!
Oh – and Holbein the Elder was no slouch, either:
Ambrosius Holbein, brother of Hans the Younger, was also a painter:
The Summit of Beauty in Art
On my art-cluttered coffee table, this gorgeous volume currently takes precedence. It is a birthday gift from Ron – my most splendid husband.
Giotto’s O is about the great painter Giotto de Bondone. His genius pointed the way forward from the art of the Middle Ages to the triumph of the High Renaissance.
From Andrew Ladis’s Introduction:
The tale of Giotto’s O is a story of magical technical mastery and the most unassuming interpretive intelligence, an extraordinary combination of hand and mind. The painter transforms himself into a human compass, but in addition to mechanical precision there is a diagnostic dimension behind the mark that is equally astonishing, an idea that informs and elevates the painter’s manual dexterity….
The murals by Giotto in the Arena Chapel…constitute the greatest pictorial cycle of fourteenth-century Europe. Above all, what elevates them to the realm of the universal and timeless is their profound humanity. In a series of images whose subtlety, truthfulness, and dramatic range anticipate Caravaggio and Rembrandt, Giotto explored the world of the human heart and mind in such a way that, as the nineteenth-century English critic John Ruskin put it, he “defines, explains and exalts every sweet incident of human nature; and makes dear to daily life every mystic imagination of natures greater than our own. He reconciles, while he intensifies, every virtue of domestic and monastic thought. He makes the simplest household duties sacred, and the highest religious passions serviceable and just.”
Recently, I’ve taken a Lifelong Learning class entitled The Giotto Revolution. I’ve had this instructor before, but this time she really outdid herself. The course was not only about Giotto; several other great artists were covered. Among the most notable, Duccio di Buoninsegna. ( I love his name):
Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
To begin with, the word ‘Secret’ should have been plural: Lady Audley had several, any one of which, if revealed, could have torpedoed her status as ‘My Lady’ within the staid rigors of Victorian society.
I first encountered information on this novel in the pages of Kate Summerscale’s riveting book The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher. One of the things that made that book so fascinating was the telling of the various ways in which the contemporary culture reacted to news of the grotesque murder at the center of Summerscale’s narrative. During the heat of the high profile investigation, both Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins caught ‘detective fever’ and found themselves speculating on possible solutions. Meanwhile, Mary Elizabeth Braddon‘s response to the hubbub was to write Lady Audley’s Secret.
From the viewpoint of plot, the two books have very little in common. But from the standpoint of character, they have one commonality: both feature a woman at the center of a maelstrom, a woman whose moral compass has malfunctioned, with predictably disastrous results. Braddon’s novel falls into the category of literature called ‘novels of sensation.’ Allow me to quote myself, from the post I linked to above:
‘According to Henry James, works of this type dealt with “‘those most mysterious of mysteries, the mysteries that are at our own doors…the terrors of the cheerful country house, or the busy London lodgings.’” Summerscale elaborates: “Their secrets were exotic, but their settings immediate – they took place in England, now, a land of telegrams, trains, policemen. The characters in these novels were at the mercy of their feelings, which pressed out, unmediated, onto their flesh: emotions compelled them to blanch, flush, darken, tremble, start, convulse, their eyes to burn and flash and dim.”‘
In other words, if your feelings are somewhat numb – try one!
This was actually my second reading of Lady Audley’s Secret. Why did I decide to reread this novel at the present moment? I was having trouble finding reading matter that adequately matched my mood. In particular, I was experiencing one disappointment after another with new so-called ‘literary fiction.’ I’m sure some of it is very good; it just did not seem to be written for me.
When I descend into doldrums of this sort, I tend to reach back to the classics for consolation – and inspiration. My first attempt was a novel I’ve always meant to read but have never gotten all the way through: Crime and Punishment. I’ve always found Dostoevsky tougher going than Tolstoy. I recently read, for the first time, the latter’s short story “Master and Man” and found it powerfully moving. So, how did I do with Dostoevsky this time around? Better…but not completely. These days, due to the magic of Kindle, I could tell precisely how much of the novel I got through: eighty-one percent. I was reading the Constance Garnett translation; possibly a more recent one would have worked better for me. At any rate, I may go back to it, at some future time….
In contrast, reading Lady Audley’s Secret was a breeze. I was engrossed from the outset and stayed that way until the end. In addition, at the time of this reading, I was taking a most pleasurable Lifelong Learning class on the Pre-Raphaelite painters. Just before the final session of this course, I happened upon a passage in which the author describes a portrait of Lady Audley:
Yes, the painter must have been a pre-Raphaelite. No one but a pre-Raphaelite would have painted, hair by hair, those feathery masses of ringlets, with every glimmer of gold, and every shadow of pale brown. No one but a pre-Raphaelite would have so exaggerated every attribute of that delicate face as to give a lurid brightness to the blonde complexion, and a strange, sinister light to the deep blue eyes. No one but a pre-Raphaelite could have given to that pretty pouting mouth the hard and almost wicked look it had in the portrait.
It was so like, and yet so unlike. It was as if you had burned strange-colored fires before my lady’s face, and by their influence brought out new lines and new expressions never seen in it before. The perfection of feature, the brilliancy of coloring, were there; but I suppose the painter had copied quaint mediaeval monstrosities until his brain had grown bewildered, for my lady, in his portrait of her, had something of the aspect of a beautiful fiend.
Her crimson dress, exaggerated like all the rest in this strange picture, hung about her in folds that looked like flames, her fair head peeping out of the lurid mass of color as if out of a raging furnace. Indeed the crimson dress, the sunshine on the face, the red gold gleaming in the yellow hair, the ripe scarlet of the pouting lips, the glowing colors of each accessory of the minutely painted background, all combined to render the first effect of the painting by no means an agreeable one.’
I immediately copied this text and sent it to our instructor. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in 1848. Lady Audley’s Secret came out in 1862. The edition at the top of this post features a painting by Dante Gabriel Rosetti entitled Monna Vanna.
Meanwhile, I had recently read of a new book by Christine Emba, one of my favorite Washington Post columnists. Here it is:
The cover image is by yet another Pre-Raphaelite painter, Frederick Sandys. It is called Love’s Shadow.
There really is something witchy about the way in which the Pre-Raphaelite painters depict certain women…
Hans Holbein the Younger
An exhibit featuring the works of Hans Holbein the Younger is currently to be seen at the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan. The exhibit is entitled “Holbein: Capturing Character.”
The artist’s famed portrait of Sir Thomas More has been conveyed downtown from the Frick Collection in order to be part of this showing.
I’ve known this painting my whole life. I’ve spent many hours in front of it, gazing intently, hypnotized. It has always been for me a sort of summation of the endlessly fascinating history of England. (I was especially delighted to encounter Holbein himself in the pages of Hilary Mantel’s magnum opus, Wolf Hall. )
And by the way, Holbein Senior was no slouch either, as I learned from Franny Moyle’s biography The King’s Painter.
Peter Scheldahl, who writes about art – wonderfully – for The New Yorker, covered this exhibit in the magazine’s February 28 issue. In particular, he describes a work that is not part of the installation at the Morgan. He first saw it where it resides in the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland. It made an unforgettable impression him, as it has on many others, including myself:
Tantalizing hints of unfulfilled potential attend much of [Holbein the Younger’s] tyro work, notably one of the most indelibly shocking images of all time, “The Dead Christ in the Tomb” (1521-1522). The painting, measuring a foot high and six and a half feet wide, depicts a gruesomely putrefying corpse that, if unearthed, could present only a sanitation problem. Famously, Dostoyevsky’s encounter with the picture, in 1867, shook his Christian faith and obsessed him thereafter, figuring as a philosophical provocation a year or so later in his novel “The Idiot.”
Scheldahl adds parenthetically: “The work is not in the Morgan show but I will not forget, no matter how hard I try, my own first look, in the Kustmuseum Basel, at that…what? That thing.”
But the portraits for which Holbein is best known are those he made in England, of King Henry VIII:
Now, go back and gaze once more at these extraordinary images while you listen to some music of the period: Ave Maria by Josquin des Pres and Cantate Domino by Claudio Monteverdi. The Monteverdi is a bit later than Holbein’s time, but I love it and wanted to include it here.
Need for the Solace of Beauty
This work resides in the Groeningenmuseum in Bruges, Belgium. It was painted between 1434 and 1436 by Jan van Eyck. To me, it is somewhere beyond beautiful, even approaching perfection. Art historian Carel Huydecoper offers an enlightening explication. You can enjoy his talk, or simply stare, and be mesmerized – or both.
While you are gazing on the painting, you can listen to Panis Angelicus, an exquisite short piece of sacred music by César Franck. I’ve long known about the version with Pavarotti and the children’s choir of Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica. But the version below came as a surprise to me – and a pleasant one that I wasn’t expecting:
Here is Pavarotti at the Notre-Dame Basilica:
Post for the Christmas Season, 2021
So, this year is not ending on the upbeat, carefree note we were all hoping for. Nevertheless, there is still beauty in the world to be thankful for. I would like to share several of my favorite art works and musical performances with you.
I’ve taken several art courses over the past year, and they’ve given me many precious images to contemplate. A course in the Harlem Renaissance served to remind me how many terrific African American artists deserve a closer look.
Jacob Lawrence:
Steel workers
This Is Harlem
Faith Ringgold:
We Came To America
Jazz Quilt
I was also introduced to some artists whose work was well worth getting to know.
Elizabeth Catlett:
Homage to Black Women Poets
Playmates
Kara Walker:
Black out Silhouettes Then and Now
In May of 2014, Kara Walker created a work of public art entitled A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant. It is so…well, I’ll let this video do the explaining:
I also took a class entitled “Gustav Klimt and the Viennese Secessionist Movement.” It was a revelation. All I knew about Klimt was the The Kiss:
and Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer I, also known as The Woman in Gold or The Lady in Gold:
This painting was the subject of the famous legal battle that was fought between the Austrians, claiming that the work was rightfully theirs, and Maria Altmann, a niece of Adele’s husband Ferdinand. Maria, who was living in California at the time, claimed that the Nazis had stolen the painting during the war and that she was its rightful owner.
The story is told in the book The Lady in Gold by Anne-Marie O’Connor. There’s also a film, Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren as Maria Altmann. Worth watching, especially to see Helen Mirren doing her usual superb work:
Our instructor took us beyond Klimt’s so-called gold period, to his later work which consisted primarily of landscapes. These I found utterly enchanting:
Apple Tree One
Farm Garden with Sunflowers
Slope in a Forest on Atterslee Lake
Sebastian Smee is a journalist whose writing about art combines insight with a rare eloquence. He absolutely outdid himself in a recent article in the Washington Post in which he analyzes and rhapsodizes on the subject of a painting attributed to the great Jan van Eyck: Saint Francis receiving the Stigmata:
To read Smee’s article, click here.
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And now, for music and ballet.
This performance of Mozart’s final symphony, the Jupiter (No.41) knocked my proverbial socks off the first time I heard it. I shall always love it. For a new kid on the block – it was founded in 1992 – the Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia has become a major player, especially under the baton of conductor Dima Slobodeniouk. This performance is a knockout. The final movement rises to a tremendous crescendo of pure joy. The audience went wild. I don’t blame them.
A performance of rare perfection: the Adagio from Spartacus by Aram Khatchaturian, danced by Anna Nikulina and Mikhail Lobukhin of the Bolshoi:
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, by Ralph Vaughan Williams. This performance takes place in Gloucester Cathedral. This is the same venue where the piece was first performed in 1903 and conducted by the composer. A writer who was present on that occasion had this to say:
The work is wonderful because it seems to lift one into some unknown region of musical thought and feeling…one is never sure whether one is listening to something very old or very new. The voices of the old church musicians are around one, and yet their music is enriched with all that modern art has done, since Debussy, too, is somewhere in the picture. It cannot be assigned to a time or a school, but it is full of visions.
I think many people feel that they could use a blessing at this time. (I know I do.) Here is an especially beautiful one, a Gaelic blessing entitled Deep Peace, written by John Rutter and sung by Libera:
At this Holiday Season, I wish everyone the best.
Introduction to American Art, Part Two
It will be noted, from the examples in Part One, that early American painting possesses a certain folk art , even primitive, quality. We must keep in mind the fact that the European art of this period – the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and prior – had a glorious artistic heritage to draw upon, starting with the statuary and sculpture of antiquity, followed by the vivid imagery evoked in the West by the doctrines and rich lore of Christianity.
In addition, there was little if any professional caliber instruction available to aspiring artists in colonial America. Reproductions of the great masterpieces of Europe could be seen only in the engravings that were circulated at the time in the colonies. These would have reproduced the outline of each work and not the color – no color!
Apollo Belvedere
Laocoon and His Sons
Both of the above works are housed in the Vatican Museums.
The Laocoon was discovered buried beneath a Roman vineyard. Michelangelo was present as it was gradually unearthed. I have a picture in my mind of his standing there. eyes wide with amazement, as this masterpiece was revealed to the world.
Portrait of Michelangelo by Daniele da Volterra, c. 1545
This striking image of the Genius of the Age provides a neat segue into the Renaissance:
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints, by Raphael, 1504
Giovanni Bellini, Madonna of the Meadow, 1505
Saw this painting for the first time yesterday and fell in love with it at once. The chubby, blissfully dozing little baby, his beautiful mother, robed in red and blue, adoring her little offspring as new mothers will do, the clouds above her curving around a to the left and almost seeming to form a halo…
Talk about getting sidetracked!
Anyway, American art of the pre-Revolutionary period seems positively quaint when compared to masterpieces like the above. This is not to say, however that it does not possess its own unique virtues:
Isaac Royall and Family, by John Feke
Mann Page and Elizabeth Page, by John Wollaston
There is a certain piquancy in the way these characters peer out at us from their two-dimensional space. The children are especially charming.
Yet it seems almost miraculous to go from the above to this full-blooded, beautifully rounded portrait of Henry Pelham:
Boy with a Flying Squirrel, 1765
Henry Pelham was the half-brother of John Singleton Copley, the first great painter to emerge from the Colonies.
Statue of Jon Singleton Copley in Copley Square, Boston
Introduction to American Art, Part One
Did I ever get a gloriously heavy dose of American Art the week before last! Two hours on a Friday evening, followed by a 9:30 AM to 4 PM session on the following Saturday.
Art historian Bonita Billman started us off with Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues. Ever heard of him? I hadn’t either.
Here’s a quick précis from the Met:
Born in Dieppe, a center for cartography and manuscript illumination, Le Moyne de Morgues emigrated to London, probably following the Huguenot massacres of 1572.
Le Moyne de Morgues accompanied a French expedition to Florida in 1564. The goal of the expedition was to establish a colony. In this they did not succeed; however, Le Moyne de Morgue, a gifted artist, made numerous botanical paintings. This one is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art; it is entitled A Sheet of Studies of Flowers: A Rose, a Heartsease, a Sweet Pea, a Garden Pea, and a Lax-flowered Orchid:
Equally valuable are Le Moyne de Morgue’s sketches of Native Americans.
For more on Le Moyne de Morgue’s images of Native American, click here.
And for more images of the fruits and the botanicals, which are truly lovely, click here.
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In colonial America, portraits were in demand. Among the earliest, dated between 1671 and 1674, are these two of John Freake and his wife Elizabeth Clarke Freake, shown here holding baby Mary.
These works are both held by the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Mass. Fascinating information concerning these paintings can be found at the Worcester Art Museum’s site.
And why have I not mentioned the name of the artist? Because it is not known. He is usually referred to as the Freake Master or the Freake Limner. He dwells, seemingly forever, among the shadows of early America, a land evoked in the haunting prose of Nathaniel Hawthorne, in such stories as”The Minister’s Black Veil” and “Young Goodman Brown.” (Some elements of this story might make for a compelling work of historical fiction, methinks.)
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The Bermuda Group (Dean Berkeley and his Entourage), begun in 1728; reworked in 1739, by John Smibert
The Bermuda Group commemorated an ambitious venture to found a seminary in Bermuda. Frustrated with what he saw as a corrupt European civilization, the philosopher and Anglican cleric George Berkeley (far right) believed that only in the New World would a religious and cultural rebirth be possible. His patron, John Wainright (seated), commissioned the artist John Smibert (standing left), whom Berkeley had hired to teach at the new college, to create this portrait of the expeditionary party, which included two additional wealthy supporters and members of Berkeley’s family. When the seminary project failed for lack of funds, Berkeley’s entourage returned to England, but Smibert moved to Boston and established himself as America’s first professional painter. Despite Berkeley’s misfortune, his poem “Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America” became a touchstone for the new nation: “There shall be sung another golden age / The rise of empire and of arts / … Westward the course of empire takes its way.”
Westward the course of empire takes its way….
Books to the Ceiling 