Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Modern French Color with Hard Edges

Édouard Manet
Strawberries
ca. 1882
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Virgin adoring the Host
1852
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Henri Fantin-Latour
Roses and Lilies
1888
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Gift

Nothing will hurt you that much despite how you feel
the stress on your back shapes your insight
this splendid November rain Toussaint. I find
you by your mark, he says
                                                    an imprint
But when I summon you, I talk to – I say –
my memory of your face. It's kind of crazy
to others. They're not very interesting, he says.
When I first came to this country, and now
I know the language I say, but I had in a dream
spoken it many years previously. That is,
not the language of the dead the language
of France. I took one year of French in 1964
and then nothing but once, in 1977 I spoke French
in a dream all night: I was in the future I
moved here in 1992. Country of the more
logical than I? though the people of my quartier
know and like me, even as I a foreigner remain strange
You do everything alone a woman said to me.
There are ways to care without interfering
but the French speak of anguish frequently
they are conscious of emotional extremity
a terrible gift. It's all a gift, he says . . .
some haven't been opened. I'm not sure
he said that it's nearly my sixty-seventh birthday
today though it's the day of the dead hello
we love you they say.

–  Alice Notley (2015)

Charles-François Daubigny
Landscape with Sunlit Stream
before 1877
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Horace Vernet
Start of the Race of the Riderless Horses
1820
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

James Tissot
Spring Morning
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Isidore Pils
Minerva combating Brute Force
before 1875
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Henri Rousseau
The Banks of the Bièvre near Bicêtre
ca. 1908-1909
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alfred-Bernard Meyer
Allegory of the French Republic
1892
enamel on copper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The French Revolution as it Appeared to Enthusiasts at its Commencement

Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven! – Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress – to assist the work
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
(As at some moment might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of paradise itself)
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
What temper at that prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
The playfellows of fancy, who had made
All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
Their ministers, – who in lordly wise had stirred
Among the grandest objects of the sense,
And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As if they had within some lurking right
To wield it; – they, too, who, of gentle mood,
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more wild,
And in the region of their peaceful selves; –
Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find, helpers to their heart's desire,
And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;
Were called upon to exercise their skill,
Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,
Of some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us, – the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!

– William Wordsworth (1798)

Jean-François Montessuy
Pope Gregory XVI visiting the Church of San Benedetto at Subiaco
1843
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

attributed to Paulin Jénot
Captain Swaton
before 1930
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jean-François Millet
Garden Scene
1854
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Édouard Vuillard
Jos and Lucie Hessel in the small salon, Rue de Rivoli
ca. 1900-1905
oil on cardboard, mounted on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Édouard Vuillard
The Green Interior (figure seated by a curtained window)
1891
oil on cardboard, mounted on panel
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York