Flowery

I made a large print of last month's iconic Laundry Photo and trimmed it to fit inside the ornate enameled frame received as a gift this Christmas by Mabel Watson Payne's California grandmother. Swarovski crystals punctuate the center of each pastel blossom. As soon as I saw this object it reminded me of some other object seen in the fairly recent past But it took several days before my brain finally laid its proverbial hands on the image of the carved and painted wooden frame of a French settee at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor (below). I had taken several pictures of it in September. And this piece of museum furniture showed me that the brand-new sparkly picture frame, mass-produced in China, probably did nevertheless deserve to be seen as a careful expression of an authentic 18th century motif.

French Things

I went to the Legion of Honor this afternoon and wandered through the French galleries for a long time.



There were crowds downstairs (in the recently-contrived, low-ceilinged, harsh-lighted special exhibition space) peering reverently at the visiting show of Finicky Dutch Pictures, but not many people upstairs in the noble rooms devoted to the paintings and furniture and sculpture of the permanent collection.




The cupid above reminded me forcefully of Mabel Watson Payne, insistently pointing to direct the attention of any nearby adult.




Groups of art students (with white chairs and white easels) were making drawings in all different parts of the museum this afternoon (except for the traveling show of Finicky Dutch Pictures, which of course nobody would want to copy). Their concentration was quietly impressive and their collective presence added a cheerful and earnest touch to the scene.


But the main reason I am posting today's non-remarkable sampling of snapshots is for the love of this pink settee. It captured my heart in an uncanny way and I could not stop taking pictures of it. These are only a few of the best ones. There are many more.

Polaroid Fortnight

Polaroid picture-taking can improve, while remaining unpredictable. My daughter is proof of this fact.  

The Legion

There are about half a dozen wonderful paintings at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. The best are French, in keeping with the taste of Mrs. Spreckels, the founder.

Not so much a place for masterpieces as for generalized haunting.

Enfilades

Tsarskoe Selo

Mannheimer Schloss

Juan Pablo Molyneux Residence

Ekaterina Palace, St. Petersburg

Valst Makslasmuzeis

Kuskovo Palace

Petworth

Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Chateau de Brou

Parisian Flat

Brooklyn Party Scene

iPhone

enfilade

My friend at the museum yesterday mentioned the word. Since then, somehow the idea of sequences of rooms (like the galleries at the Legion of Honor) keeps recurring.

Museum Bride

Spent Sunday with a friend at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco, a highly popular place for wedding-couple photographs with its ever-ready backdrop of marble columns. I visit this museum every month or two, and can hardly remember any visit when I did not see bridal gowns trailing across the lawn.

The building sits on a bluff overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, and even on a sunny day it can be pretty chilly out there. We counted ourselves fortunate when the sun turned out to be warm enough to permit eating lunch in reasonable comfort under the olive trees on the walled-in terrace outside the museum cafe.


The museum possesses a large number of Rodin sculptures which are constantly being rearranged so the viewer is always startled by some new juxtaposition. Today's incarnation was particularly successful, with the figures ranged round the walls and the center of the gallery empty under its lovely beaux-arts skylight.

Legion of Honor

Went out with a friend for coffee and then to see the new show at the Legion of Honor, described as below by the museum:

"Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique is the first comparative study of the work of the three greatest jewelry and decorative arts designers at the turn of the 20th century: Peter Carl Fabergé, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and René Lalique. Their rivalry found its stage at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris—the only exposition where all three showed simultaneously and where the work of each was prominently displayed. Some of their most elaborate designs for the Paris World's Fair are reunited for the first time in a gallery recreating the ambiance of this opulent international exposition. Looking critically at the development, design, and marketing of each firm, this exhibition explores how these designers responded to the demand for luxury goods in the years leading up to World War I."

In my opinion this show is far better mounted and better lighted than the usual traveling show at the Legion, with a cohesive theme and marvelous artifacts. Recreating the Paris Exposition of 1900 required borrowing pieces from the Hermitage, the royal families of Monaco and of Great Britain, and of course also from our own local arbiters of opulence, the Gettys (who loaned an astonishing portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, as framed by the painter). The jewelry is often incredibly delicate and poetic, while the larger pieces (such as a solid silver dressing table) are never less than fascinating even when they are quite horrible.

And then there are the Fabergé eggs.