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Noonday Meal
Daniel Ridgway Knight’s scene depicts the interactions of a group of French peasants who have paused for lunch. An elderly woman stirs something in a pot while a boy puts potatoes into the coals of a campfire. The young woman in the middle ground seems to be more interested in the young man and woman filling a potato sack behind her than in the preparations for lunch.
The peasants are dressed in quaint clothing; there is even a hole in the boy’s clog to denote his poverty, though none of them are dirty despite a morning of labor. The surrounding landscape is treated with incredible detail. A prickly bush that contains a heart-shaped hole has been placed behind the girl; the vines and poppies frame the human interaction. Knight draws the viewer’s eye to a collection of items—wagon traces, harness, a potato hoe, baskets, and bottles—to add interest and to show the subtle contrast of light and dark throughout the canvas.
A Last Summer Day, Normandy
Novelist Alexandre Dumas wrote of Troyon’s work that it was “striking, full of truth, energy and life.” The large scale of the painting reinforces Troyon’s interest in inviting the viewer to join the charming scene. The late summer afternoon and endless sky seem to go on forever.
Wallachian Horses and Cart
Doge of Venice
“My beautiful Venetian friend,” wrote French artist Benjamin-Constant to Blanche Butterworth Haggin when she and her husband, Louis Terah Haggin, were living in Paris. Blanche modeled for the elegant Renaissance lady in the gondola. Constant found success making paintings of society figures and scenes that reinforced European stereotypes of “exotic” people.
King of the Herd
The Saddle Bazaar, Cairo
The Saddle Bazaar, Cairo, exhibits concerns typical of the Orientalist painter: exotic customs, physiognomy, dress, and architecture. From memories of his many journeys to Egypt and from studio memorabilia, Jean-Leon Gerome has re-created a corner of Cairo. Attention is focused on a magnificent white horse with henna-dyed mane and tail, and on a transaction between a bashi-bazouk (Turkish merchant) and a Jewish merchant. With expressive gestures the men actively bargain over a bridle. The horse seems to listen with interest, a witty touch as is often found in Gerome’s work. The anecdote is kept simple, so as not to detract from the picturesque accessories and costumes or from the carefully observed anatomy of the horse. Tack displayed before the stall and hanging from a rope help define the setting as Cairo’s saddle bazaar.
Gathering for the Hunt
On a misty morning, huntsmen have gathered around a welcome fire with their horses and eager dogs. Although action is restrained, a sense of anticipation hangs in the air. At left, pairs of dogs cast for the scent, while an excited group in the center have mistaken a man’s fur jacket for live quarry. As is usual in Bonheur’s paintings, animals take precedence over people, who are here indicated in shadow. The animals, on the other hand, are frequently lit by brilliant paths of light. Described in much greater detail, they are individualized through behavior and appearance. Each dog has its own movement as well as its own distinctive black or brown markings. The horses are viewed from the side, front, or back and are different colors- dapple-grey, bay (with black mane and tail), and chestnut. The bay horse and the dog in front of him look directly out of the painting, establishing a bond with the viewer. In contrast, human movements seem less convincing, particularly those of the stiff dog-keeper in the center. Bonheur draws attention first to the foreground group, then leads the eye into the distance with the diagonal arrangement of the dogs, rutted track, and fallen logs. In the background, other hunters, horses, and hounds approach the waiting group. The landscape is skillfully painted, with mists obscuring the forest and creating atmosphere and depth.
Two Young Deer in a Forest
Judging from her numerous paintings of them, deer were among Bonheur’s most popular subjects. According to the artist, her own interest in this theme began when she moved to By, where her property backed onto the Fontainebleau Forest, which then had a large deer population. She liked to track deer or lie in wait for them at night so she could observe their customary behavior, later sketching from memory what she had seen. Perhaps the example of Landseer was inspirational, for Bonheur expressed enthusiasm for his famous painting of deer. Her first deer paintings fate from the 1860s, a decade when the French Realist Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) frequently treated this subject. At the 1867 Paris Universal Exposition, she exhibited Deer in Repose (Detroit Institute of Arts) and Family of Deer Crossing the Summit of the Long Rocks (Forest of Fontainebleu, 1865, location unknown). In 1877 she built a pen for a doe and stag she used as models. Over the next twenty years, Bonheur’s production of deer paintings was considerable.
Looking up the Yosemite Valley
Bierstadt visited Yosemite Valley in summer 1863, when he traveled there with journalist Fitz Hugh Ludlow and artists Virgil Williams (1830-1886) and Enoch Wood Perry (1831-1915).
Looking up the Yosemite Valley shows a view from the western end of the park. The artist used striking contrasts of shadow and sunshine to dramatize and vary his scene; the foreground is dimmed, while sunlight bursts onto the green meadow, silvery blue El Capitan on the left, and Cathedral Rocks on the right. The mistiness of the distant reaches of the valley focuses attention on these two granite monuments. Of secondary interest are Bridalveil Falls, in a shaded cliff on the right, and an exploring party in an open meadow ribboned by the Merced River. The shadowy foreground contains an artist-perhaps Bierstadt himself-sketching the view. The tiny figures in the middle ground, like the trees that fringe the south rim, help convey a feeling of grandeur, as does the low viewpoint that emphasizes height.
Bierstadt was among the earliest wave of visitors to Yosemite after two trails for saddle animals were completed in 1855, only four years after the first reports of the valley’s beauty by members of the Mariposa Battalion who entered it to subdue the Ahwanichee Indians. By 1863 there were a saloon and modest hotel, and the first geological survey of the valley was undertaken. In 1864 Frederick Law Olmsted led a successful lobbying effort to preserve Yosemite as a park. A few years later, with the completion of transcontinental railroad and stagecoach service to Yosemite, tourists began to arrive by the thousands. Nonetheless, Bierstadt always painted Yosemite as an uncontaminated natural paradise.
Bierstadt’s first major Yosemite paintings predate the influx of tourism. His views must have struck the public with the force of revelation, or at least confirmation. Along with reproductions of the drawings of Thomas Almond Ayres (c. 1816-1858) in the 1850s and the photographs of Carleton E. Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) in the 1860s, Bierstadt’s paintings were proof of the awestruck pronouncements of journalist Horace Greeley in 1859 and nature writer Thomas Starr King in 1861.
Although a handful of California painters had depicted Yosemite, Bierstadt’s oils were the first large-scale color views shown to the Eastern public. Thus, he can be credited with establishing Yosemite as a serious landscape subject, although his lead was quickly followed by other painters, who soon saturated the market with views of the valley. Bierstadt returned to Yosemite three times in 1872 and 1873 to gather fresh material. In all, he made at least twenty-five Yosemite paintings (including six studies); most, like this work, are undated. A few bear dates between 1863 and 1875, suggesting the most likely period for the Haggin painting.
