IMPRESSIONIST WOMEN,-- THEY'RE HOT!
Midwestern Visions of Impressionism will show at the Ohio Arts Council's Riffe Gallery at 77 South High in downtown Columbus until October 12. You will find my article about this wonderful exhibit in the current (September) issue of The Short North Gazette. The exhibit stars several pretty women, so look for them. (Unfortunately I've lost my exhibition list so I'm flying by the seat of my flowery wash- and-wear skirt!)
Believe me, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman was not lovelier than the slender youngish woman in Morning Sun, as painted by Pauline Palmer. ( I think around 1920, perhaps earlier. No matter.) The time is morning; the scene is a sea side hotel room with a high ceiling. Near a huge window the pretty woman sits at a make-shift vanity table likely arranged by the artist herself. Perhaps the slender young woman in gauzy and layered "morning" attire IS the artist herself! A wood frame stand-up mirror is her mirror and she's making herself up, the way the painter is making this painting up! The window is tall and wide and beyond it is the bay, the sky, and the LIGHT fills everything. --- It's the light, guys, how you paint light! --- Yes, the pretty woman is, quote, "illustrative,"--- She's a magazine cover for all time. --- You want to call room service and order a French press (coffee) and chat with her.
Mary Holland Bacher, 1891, by Otto Bacher (1856--1909) (Click image for a larger view.)
In 1891 Otto Bacher painted Mary Holland Bacher his wife, an artist. Her long, full tennis- whites dress, possibly a blouse and skirt,with its big dippy lace collar, was likely made to order by a dress maker. There were visiting dress makers; they would stay at your house while they sewed clothes for you, and you didn't have to be especially rich. --- The white chapeau --- sooo 1890s --- is topped by a big white rose! Mary sits --- notice I use the present tense --- leaning forward in a straight backed wicker chair, probably in her own back yard, to pose for her husband. She poses, of course, in natural light that filters through shimmering leaves while daisies glow like dim stars toward the back. Mary's fingers, grasping the tennis racket, are strong. --- She's a painter! Her wrists are small. She's a lady, a no nonsense woman-lady. Her face is thin, sweet, earnest --- she looks straight at you, and, if you observe carefully, you notice sensible brown "athletic"shoes peering from beneath the ruffled skirt.
I know Mary is accurately dressed in the tennis playing vogue of her time because I have seen very old photographs of my father's aunts playing tennis in Marion, Ohio, around 1900. Sometimes they played croquet and wore similar dresses and once in a while a very young guy named Warren G. dropped by and joined the crowd. Aunt Letty wouldn't let him smoke in the house. But that was later.
The Midwestern Visions exhibit allows us to time travel. Good painting orbits beyond time!
Believe me, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman was not lovelier than the slender youngish woman in Morning Sun, as painted by Pauline Palmer. ( I think around 1920, perhaps earlier. No matter.) The time is morning; the scene is a sea side hotel room with a high ceiling. Near a huge window the pretty woman sits at a make-shift vanity table likely arranged by the artist herself. Perhaps the slender young woman in gauzy and layered "morning" attire IS the artist herself! A wood frame stand-up mirror is her mirror and she's making herself up, the way the painter is making this painting up! The window is tall and wide and beyond it is the bay, the sky, and the LIGHT fills everything. --- It's the light, guys, how you paint light! --- Yes, the pretty woman is, quote, "illustrative,"--- She's a magazine cover for all time. --- You want to call room service and order a French press (coffee) and chat with her.
Mary Holland Bacher, 1891, by Otto Bacher (1856--1909) (Click image for a larger view.)
In 1891 Otto Bacher painted Mary Holland Bacher his wife, an artist. Her long, full tennis- whites dress, possibly a blouse and skirt,with its big dippy lace collar, was likely made to order by a dress maker. There were visiting dress makers; they would stay at your house while they sewed clothes for you, and you didn't have to be especially rich. --- The white chapeau --- sooo 1890s --- is topped by a big white rose! Mary sits --- notice I use the present tense --- leaning forward in a straight backed wicker chair, probably in her own back yard, to pose for her husband. She poses, of course, in natural light that filters through shimmering leaves while daisies glow like dim stars toward the back. Mary's fingers, grasping the tennis racket, are strong. --- She's a painter! Her wrists are small. She's a lady, a no nonsense woman-lady. Her face is thin, sweet, earnest --- she looks straight at you, and, if you observe carefully, you notice sensible brown "athletic"shoes peering from beneath the ruffled skirt.
I know Mary is accurately dressed in the tennis playing vogue of her time because I have seen very old photographs of my father's aunts playing tennis in Marion, Ohio, around 1900. Sometimes they played croquet and wore similar dresses and once in a while a very young guy named Warren G. dropped by and joined the crowd. Aunt Letty wouldn't let him smoke in the house. But that was later.
The Midwestern Visions exhibit allows us to time travel. Good painting orbits beyond time!
posted by Liz James at 11:25 AM
<< Home