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Portrait of a Man is an arresting painting that has recently been reattributed to Velázquez. It may or may not be a self-portrait. Take our poll and tell us what you think. See the exhibition preview for more information.

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish, 1599–1660). Portrait of a Man, ca. 1630. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Jules Bache Collection, 1949 (49.7.42).

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Can you still get lost?

2 Beiträge. Am 25. Dezember 2009 um 09:20 aktualisiert

What are your favorite displays or pieces? Why?

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American Paintings & Sculpture and American Decorative Arts

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Julie 10. Juli 2009, 20:01

Escorted two 10 year old girls to several amazing exhibits but an offensive guard at The American Wing, second floor freaked out and became most evil to say the very least. Not the type of fella that should be working in public. The guy was bizarre and nuts. Don't think he would have acted or behaved in such a rude manner if I were a male. He was plain BAD!!!! All other encounters with the staff was very nice......

Steve 17. Februar 2009, 18:47

The Egypt exhibit is breathtaking!
The Asian art is phenomenal!
The whole museum is probably the coolest in the world

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Artwork of the Day from the Met | Report

Marlene Dietrich, Turban by Dior, The Ritz, Paris, August 1955, 1955, printed 1978
26 Dec 2009, 7:00 pm

Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004)
Marlene Dietrich, Turban by Dior, The Ritz, Paris, August 1955, 1955, printed 1978
Gelatin silver print; 17 15/16 x 14 1/4 in. (45.6 x 36.2 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Parfums Nina Ricci, 1979 (1979.512.11)
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

Information about more than 130,000 works of art is available in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Collection Database.

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American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life | Report

A Passion for Fashion
22 Dec 2009, 3:29 pm

The December holiday season is a time of giving, which also makes it, for many, a time of shopping. For several months advertisers have bombarded us with gift ideas, ranging from cars and electronics to the latest fashions. Selling fashion is big business, and many of the most prominent retailers in New York set up lavish window displays every year to entice holiday shoppers. I went on a recent excursion to see some of the city’s window displays—(see some of my photos)—and the experience reminded me of several paintings in American Stories that relate to buying and selling clothes.

You may remember one of the earliest paintings in the exhibition—Ralph Earl’s portrait of Elijah Boardman—which I discussed in “Old Friends in a New Light” and have included again here:

Above: Ralph Earl (American, 1751–1801). Elijah Boardman, 1789. Oil on canvas; 83 x 51 in. (210.8 x 129.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Susan W. Tyler, 1979 (1979.395). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Boardman was a successful dry-goods merchant in New Milford, Connecticut, and Earl shows him standing beside a door in his shop that opens into a stockroom filled with bolts of fine fabric. We know the material is precious because a tax stamp, affixed to the corner of the gray-brown fabric draped over the edge of the lowest shelf, indicates that it has been imported from Europe. Boardman wouldn’t have sold ready-made clothing, which became widely available only after the invention of the sewing machine, but in this portrait he serves as a living mannequin, modeling the elegant fashions that could be created from his goods. In addition to actual material goods, Boardman also sells an image of himself as a sophisticated man of distinction who nonetheless earns his living through trade, and is thus aligned with his community’s egalitarian principles. Indeed, although Boardman’s family was one of New Milford’s wealthiest and most prominent, their status, like that of other affluent citizens in the early republic, was kept in check by a societal resistance to the formation of a new aristocracy.

While Earl’s painting serves as a billboard for his sitter’s good citizenship and enticing wares, other works in American Stories cast a more skeptical eye on the business of fashion. Two such canvases depicting young women who have splurged on bonnets are pictured below:

Above, from left to right: Francis William Edmonds (American, 1806–1863). The New Bonnet, 1858. Oil on canvas; 25 x 30 1/8 in. (63.5 x 76.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Erving Wolf Foundation Gift and Gift of Hanson K. Corning, by exchange, 1975 (1975.27.1). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Eastman Johnson (American, 1824–1906). The New Bonnet, 1876. Oil on academy board; 20 3/4 x 27 in. (52.7 x 68.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Collis P. Huntington, 1900 (25.110.11). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In Francis William Edmonds’s painting, a young delivery girl has just brought a new hat to the woman at center, who admires the purchase while her parents grimace at the bill. Hat-wearing rituals have essentially vanished, so it’s worthwhile to delve into a bit of costume history to understand the appeal of a bonnet such as the one Edmonds has depicted here.

During the nineteenth century, as in earlier eras, it was common for women of all classes to wear some form of head covering indoors and out, and their hats communicated a great deal of information about them. By looking back on these items through the lens of history, we can use them to understand the times in which they were made. In the 1850s, the growth of machine-manufactured fabrics and trimmings led to an increase in decoration on headwear. We get a sense of these new and exuberant decorative possibilities in the bonnet in Edmonds’s painting, which is trimmed with frothy white lace and blue ribbon around the brim, with matching blue ribbon ties. The bonnet itself is probably made of straw, but this seemingly humble material was often imported from Leghorn, Italy, which produced an especially desirable variety. The richness of the materials that appeared on American bonnets of the 1850s can be seen in an example from Met’s collection:

Above: Bonnet (Poke Bonnet), 1856. American. straw; Height: 12 in. (30.5 cm); Length: 9 1/2 in. (24.1 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Mrs. Richard T. Auchtmuty, 1917 (17.15.7). See the Collection Database to learn more about this work.

The bonnet, like the one in Edmonds’s painting, displays a distinctive curved shape at its base, and is made of Leghorn straw, silk lace, taffeta, and sprays of flowers. The fine and varied trimmings on this hat speak to the material abundance of the era, but also to the means of the person who wore it. Headwear indicated status, and we see this fact clearly in Edmonds’s work. The young woman he depicts has purchased a fancy bonnet, in contrast to her mother’s simple white cap and clearly distinct from the shawl that the delivery girl uses to cover her head. Perhaps she is hoping to project an air of affluence and attract the attention of a specific class of men.

While Edmonds uses exaggerated gestures to emphasize the comedic tensions caused by overindulgent shopping, Eastman Johnson’s treatment of a similar drama is more somber in tone, setting subtle interactions among family members within a shadowy interior. Here, a young woman shows off the bonnet she’s just acquired to her sister, who fixes a drink for their father, cold and fatigued from the outing. In this scene, painted nearly twenty years after Edmonds’s, the new hat is covered with a dark fabric and is festooned with feathers and a long veil. Again, we see a woman who has indulged in a fashion accessory that would aid flirtation; the veil would have functioned as an attention-grabber. By the 1860s and 1870s, bonnets frequently featured veils or streamers, often called “follow me lads.” (See an example in the Met’s collection.)

Although millinery shops are rare today, the shopping impulse chronicled by Johnson and Edmonds remains familiar, as people splurge on fashion items to enhance their attractiveness. On the surface, both paintings tell stories about women buying hats, but, more broadly, they chronicle the increasing availability of luxury goods in America and the great temptations they offered. In addition, both paintings associate shopping with a degree of guilt. As viewers, we sympathize with Edmonds’s poor delivery girl, who suffers in the face of another’s frivolity, and with Johnson’s exhausted father. Edmonds, who pursued dual careers as an artist and banker, perhaps knew too well the growing divide between the rich and poor and the dangers of unbridled consumption. Johnson, who based his painting on studies made in Nantucket, perhaps longed for simpler times.

By the early years of the twentieth century, the emergence of large department stores, like Wanamaker’s and Filene’s, helped to change perceptions about the hazards of consumerism, promoting instead a “democratization of desire,” as the historian William Leach has stated in his book Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Pantheon, 1993). As manufacturing increased the availability of goods, it became more acceptable for Americans of all income levels to desire the same things. Indeed, William Glackens’s The Shoppers speaks to the way in which attitudes about consumption had changed:

Above: William Glackens (American, 1870–1938). The Shoppers, 1907–8. Oil on canvas; 60 x 60 in. (152.4 x 152.4 cm). Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, Gift of Walter P. Chrysler Jr. (71.651). Photograph © The Estate of William Glackens, courtesy Kraushaar Galleries Inc., New York.

At the center of the painting is the artist’s wife, Edith, who examines lingerie in the company of female friends. The setting is most likely the New York branch of Wanamaker’s, which opened in the city’s Washington Square neighborhood in 1906 and was located only a few blocks from the Glackens’s residence. Unlike Edmonds and Johnson, Glackens doesn’t reproach or satirize the women’s shopping activities, and no men are present to serve as foils. Rather, the artist depicts shopping as a facet of the everyday urban American experience that he and the other Ashcan artists sought to chronicle.

While we may no longer dress to the hilt for an afternoon of shopping, the experience of being enticed and entertained by a department store, as I was when I went to see the display windows, still applies. I’m fascinated by the ways in which the four paintings I’ve discussed here convey the joys and pitfalls of American consumption with such continued relevance. In this season of sharing, I welcome you to contribute your observations here, and wish you safe and happy holidays.

—Katie Steiner

Paintings within Paintings
9 Dec 2009, 11:57 am

How do artists depict art? It’s a fascinating question, and in today’s post I’d like to consider a few examples of paintings within paintings in American Stories. How are the figures depicted in relation to works of art, and how do the depicted works themselves function within the overall narratives? There are many examples in the exhibition’s more than one hundred iconic paintings, but let’s start with depictions of art in museums:

Interior View of The Metropolitan Museum of Art when in Fourteenth Street

Above, from left to right: Frank Waller (American, 1842–1923). Interior View of The Metropolitan Museum of Art when in Fourteenth Street (detail), 1881. Oil on canvas; 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, 1895 (95.29). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Samuel F. B. Morse (American, 1791–1872). Gallery of the Louvre (detail), 1831–33. Oil on canvas; 73 3/4 in. x 9 ft. (187.3 x 274.3 cm). Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Daniel J. Terra Collection (1992.51). Photograph: Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago / Art Resource, NY; Charles Willson Peale (American, 1741–1827). The Artist in His Museum (detail), 1822. Oil on canvas; 8 ft. 7 3/4 in. x 79 7/8 in. (263.5 x 202.9 cm). Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison Jr. Collection) (1878.1.2).

Museums can play a number of roles, but missions of education have been common throughout history. In some cases, these didactic missions are evident in works of art as well. Frank Waller’s painting shows two of the second-floor galleries of the Met (when it was located on West Fourteenth Street), and it includes works that were actually on view at the time. The painting above the lintel at the center is The Wages of War by the American artist Henry Peters Gray, but most of the other works that have been identified are by European masters. To the left of the door, for instance, are Anthony Van Dyck’s painting of Saint Rosalie and, above it, Cornelis de Vos’s Portrait of a Young Woman. We know from his writings that Waller admired European art; perhaps by directing viewers toward these works he hoped to instruct their tastes as well. He may even have wanted his fellow Americans to follow the example of the studious female visitor he depicts, who leans in intently to absorb art’s lessons.

Samuel F. B. Morse’s painting of the Louvre’s Salon Carré also features European masterworks. Less concerned than Waller with accurately depicting the gallery space, Morse was perhaps more ambitious in presenting lessons to a broader audience. The American figures depicted—including James Fenimore Cooper, and Morse himself—are shown studying and copying the masterworks. Waller exhibited this monumental canvas in New York and New Haven as both a spectacle and a tool for teaching European art, and even produced a pamphlet identifying all of the featured works to assist in educating his audience.

In Charles Willson Peale’s painting, the artist depicts himself lifting a theatrical red curtain to reveal the interior of the Philadelphia Museum, which he and his family founded and managed. The galleries were devoted to the natural sciences and art, with fossils and portraits occupying the same spaces. Through the strategic arrangement of objects intended to instruct visitors to his museum—and viewers of his painting—Peale established a hierarchy of life forms: human beings, represented in portraits, surmount dioramas of bird specimens, which in turn stand above the fossils of extinct animals resting on the floor in the foreground. Like the Louvre and the Met, Peale’s museum was a place of learning, but it was also devoted to creating spectacles. The artist shows himself lifting the curtain just enough to provide a partial, tantalizing glimpse at the mastodon skeleton in the background at right.

It’s also interesting to note how Peale depicts the reactions of the male and female visitors in this painting. While the adult man and his young companion respond calmly—the boy even holds a book, emphasizing his rational and intellectual nature—the woman throws her hands up in surprise, overcome with emotion at the wonders she sees. So we see that Peale has encoded lessons of another sort—i.e., “the nature of the sexes”—in this painting as well. (Similar gender differences are apparent in another work in the exhibition: Francis William Edmonds’s The Image Pedlar, in which a door-to-door vendor proffers small sculptures of fruit to women, while men admire busts of great historical figures.)

Far from the educational, instructive narratives mentioned above, several paintings in the exhibition communicate more commercial or even self-serving messages, as in the two works shown here:

Above, from left to right: Matthew Pratt (American, 1734–1805). The American School, 1765. Oil on canvas; 36 x 50 1/4 in. (91.4 x 127.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Samuel P. Avery, 1897 (97.29.3). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art; William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916). The Tenth Street Studio, 1880. Oil on canvas; 40 3/8 x 52 1/2 in. (102.6 x 133.4 cm). Saint Louis Art Museum, Bequest of Albert Blair (48:1933).

Matthew Pratt’s painting tells a story—or perhaps a tall tale—about his training in Benjamin West’s London studio. West is featured on the left, assisting a group of American artists who draw at a table, while Pratt, at right, suggests his more advanced status by depicting himself as a painter working independently on a canvas. In actuality, Pratt had no formal training before he arrived in London in 1764, but by depicting himself with a canvas, he boldly advertises his professional-level skills to potential patrons. William Merritt Chase’s work, like Pratt’s, contains a self-portrait. The artist presents himself seated in the shadows at right, conversing with a friend, model, or patron. Chase was an avid collector with eccentric tastes, and his studio is shown overflowing with paintings, prints, lamps, rugs, and tapestries, presumably brought back from his travels. While he often used these items as props in his work, they also announced his sophisticated and worldly tastes and increased his appeal to elite clients.

Finally, consider Thomas Le Clear’s view of a photographer’s studio, seen below:

Thomas Le Clear (American, 1818–1882). Interior with Portraits, ca. 1865. Oil on canvas; 25 7/8 x 40 1/2 in. (65.7 x 102.9 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the Pauline Edwards Bequest (1993.6).
While the scene may look mundane, it is actually a complete flight of fancy. The figures posing for a photograph are Parnell and James Sidwell, a sister and brother who died as adults before the painting was commissioned by their surviving brother, but who are here represented as children. As Margaret Conrads pointed out in the essay she contributed to the American Stories catalogue, the painting challenges the idea that photography is more truthful than painting. Just as the painter fabricates the scene, so does the photographer at right use a backdrop to fabricate the appearance of nature. The inclusion of “Old Master” canvases and plaster casts of classical sculptures like the Venus de Milo in the painting further emphasizes the way in which images may depend on other images to come into being. What is real and what is fabricated, here, after all? While the photographer may rely on a painted backdrop, painters also rely on certain prototypes in their work.

These are just a few examples from American Stories of paintings that incorporate or reference other works of art. I hope you enjoy looking for more on your own.

—Katie Steiner

Paintings and Parks, for our Benefit and Enjoyment
2 Dec 2009, 1:57 pm

In recent weeks, many PBS stations aired Ken Burns’s latest film, a six-part series called The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. The documentary chronicles the rise of the park concept and the often dramatic struggles to preserve—for the benefit and enjoyment of the people—some of the country’s most spectacular scenery. The National Parks devotes significant attention to the ways in which both naturalists and ordinary people have responded to nature and the parks over time, which inspired me to think about the sizable group of paintings in American Stories that feature figures in landscape settings. In fact, I was struck by how much the paintings resonate with the same ideas about the American wilderness that are brought out in the documentary.

It’s worth a brief interruption to mention that paintings of pure landscape, such as those by the artists of the Hudson River School, are absent from the exhibition. To be sure, landscapes can and do tell stories—sometimes truly extraordinary ones—but the works included in American Stories focus on figures and the everyday human dramas in which they participate.

One of the most extraordinary paintings of ordinary life in the exhibition is George Caleb Bingham’s Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, seen here:

Above: George Caleb Bingham (American, 1811–1879). Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845. Oil on canvas; 29 x 36 1/2 in. (73.7 x 92.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Morris K. Jesup Fund, 1933 (33.61). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The rugged father-and-son team, accompanied by a bear cub, are in tune with and reliant on nature, floating down a river past a calm and pristine landscape that is unmarred by signs of development, or even of other people. By 1845, the year that George Caleb Bingham finished and exhibited this painting, the simple way of life he depicted had already begun to disappear in the wake of increasing development and industrialization. Calls for federal protection of American lands began as early as the 1830s, and Bingham was no doubt keenly aware of the nostalgia that urban Easterners—his target audience—felt for the rapidly vanishing frontier. (This nostalgia also provided additional support for the burgeoning conservation movement, as The National Parks points out.) In the same way that Bingham cast a longing glance backward, freezing a moment in time, proponents of protected natural reserves strove to halt the encroachment of industrial development on scenic tracts of land.

William Sidney Mount’s Eel Spearing at Setauket is, like Bingham’s painting, a view of “the good old days.” In this case, the painting was created to appeal to a specific patron’s nostalgia for his childhood:

Above: William Sidney Mount (American, 1807–1868). Eel Spearing at Setauket, 1845. Oil on canvas; 28 1/2 x 36 in. (72.4 x 91.4 cm). Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York (N-395.55). Photograph: Richard Walker.

This scene of figures fishing off the shore of Long Island was commissioned by George Washington Strong, a wealthy lawyer who had spent his boyhood near the island’s north coast. Mount also grew up in Long Island and likely shared his patron’s wistful feelings about this particular scene. But as we know from his writing, the artist sought to communicate something more than just nostalgia in his paintings. In a diary entry from the mid-1840s, Mount wrote:

There has been enough written on ideality—and the grand style of Art etc—to divert the artist from the study of natural objects. For ever after, let me read the volume of nature—a lecture always ready and bound by the Almighty.

In the same way that the boy in Mount’s painting learns the ways of nature from an adult companion, we may imagine that the artist is seeking to understand the presence of the divine in the stillness and serenity of nature. The Emersonian concept of finding God in the outdoors was pervasive in the nineteenth century, and, as The National Parks tells us, fueled the notion that nature is restorative. The film presents Stephen Mather, the first National Park Service director, as a striking example of someone who warded off debilitating bouts of depression by spending time out of doors.

In American Stories, figures enjoying the restorative powers of nature can be seen in works by William Merritt Chase and Thomas Eakins:

Above, from left to right: William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916). Idle Hours, ca. 1894. Oil on canvas; 39 x 48 5/8 in. (99.1 x 123.5 cm). Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (1982.1); Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916). Swimming, 1885. Oil on canvas; 27 3/8 x 36 3/8 in. (69.5 x 92.4 cm). Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, Purchased by the Friends of Art, Fort Worth Art Association, 1925; acquired by the Amon Carter Museum, 1990, from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth through grants and donations from the Amon G. Carter Foundation, the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, the Anne Burnett and Charles Tandy Foundation, Capital Cities/ABC Foundation, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The R. D. and Joan Dale Hubbard Foundation, and the people of Fort Worth (1990.19.1).

Chase’s painting depicts members of his family relaxing by the seaside in Southampton, Long Island. Although the family lived most of the year in New York City, they retreated to the countryside during the summers while the artist taught at the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art. The landscape in Chase’s painting is not a national park, but the figures—especially the girl in the blue dress sprawled across the grass—seem to enjoy the same sense of relief from the stresses of urban life that visitors to Yellowstone and Yosemite might. Similarly, Eakins’s swimmers, who have retreated from the city of Philadelphia to the countryside, enjoy a moment of outdoor leisure. Their nakedness also suggests that they’ve recovered in nature an elemental part of their humanity that’s not accessible to them in urban society.

In addition to the nostalgia and restorative properties associated with nature, The National Parks describes the hold that the wilderness has on the American imagination. In 1871, readers of Scribner’s Monthly were captivated by Truman C. Everts’s serialized account of being stranded in Yellowstone for thirty-seven days and surviving encounters with a mountain lion, a snowstorm, and burns from the steam of a hot spring. In the 1880s, inspired by the park’s geysers and boiling mud pots, and taking advantage of the popularity of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, railroad companies marketed Yellowstone as a “New Wonderland.” (See the Southern Methodist University website to learn more about one of the brochures featured in National Parks.)

Several paintings in American Stories, including Frederic Remington’s Fight for the Water Hole, demonstrate the power of landscape to capture the imagination. In this work and others, the artist appealed to Easterners’ fantasies about rugged life in the West, shaping ideas about the frontier experience that would go on to inspire John Ford and other directors of early Western movies. Consider also these two paintings in the exhibition, which depict figures who are entranced by their natural surroundings:

Above, from left to right: Lilly Martin Spencer (American, 1822–1902). Reading the Legend, 1852. Oil on canvas; 50 3/8 x 38 in. (128 x 96.5 cm). Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts, Gift of Adeline Flint Wing, class of 1898, and Caroline Roberta Wing, class of 1896 (SC 1954:69); Jerome B. Thompson (American, 1814–1886). The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain, 1858. Oil on canvas; 38 x 63 1/8 in. (96.5 x 160.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1969 (69.182). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In Lilly Martin Spencer’s work, a young couple enjoys reading a book in nature. While the text they read no doubt plays a primary role, the fact that they are outdoors allows their imaginations to roam so freely that the romantic ruins of a castle have materialized in the background. Similarly, Jerome B. Thompson’s depiction of a group of young men and women presents them as so enraptured by the beauty of the mountainous Vermont landscape that they have failed to begin the journey home while there is still daylight.

I hope that visitors to the exhibition will be just as captivated as I am by the stories that artists tell about figures situated in the American landscape. I welcome your observations and comments here, and encourage you to watch The National Parks, if you haven’t already.

—Katie Steiner

Food for Thought
25 Nov 2009, 10:12 am

With Thanksgiving approaching, I want to dedicate this week’s post to paintings in the exhibition that feature or reference food and drink. In some examples, food appears as a symbolic element, such as in the portrait of Benjamin and Eleanor Ridgely Laming—discussed in “Old Friends in a New Light”—where the peaches resting on Mrs. Laming’s lap suggest fecundity and fertility. The portrait of Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley also falls into this category, as the teapot alludes to contemporary political anxieties over the Townshend Acts and the tax on tea.

In other instances, food is referenced within scenes of familiar social rituals. Take, for example, William Merritt Chase’s Open Air Breakfast and William McGregor Paxton’s The Breakfast, which depict figures at their morning meal. It’s interesting to note how the female figures in both pictures are excluded from the outside world: in Paxton’s painting, the husband buries his head in the newspaper and the realm of external affairs, in which his dejected wife takes no part, while in Chase’s painting, a large fence encloses the figures in an almost sanctified space, separating them from what lies beyond.

Above: William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916). The Open Air Breakfast, ca. 1887. Oil on canvas; 37 1/2 x 56 3/4 in. (95.3 x 144.1 cm). Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott (1953.136). Photograph © Toledo Museum of Art, 2008; William McGregor Paxton (American, 1869–1941), The Breakfast, 1911. Oil on canvas; 28 1/4 x 35 1/4 in. (71.8 x 89.5 cm). Ted Slavin.

Mary Cassatt’s Lady at the Tea Table also depicts a woman confined to an interior, sitting before a handsome Japanese tea set and participating in a respectable ritual appropriate for someone of her—and, indeed, the artist’s—affluent class.

Above: Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926). Lady at the Tea Table, 1883–85. Oil on canvas; 29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 61 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of the artist, 1923 (23.101). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Two food-related paintings by Lilly Martin Spencer stand in contrast to Cassatt’s lady, as they work to reverse certain social expectations:

Above: Lilly Martin Spencer (American, 1822–1902). Young Husband: First Marketing, 1854. Oil on canvas; 29 1/2 x 24 3/4 in. (74.9 x 62.9 cm). Private collection; Lilly Martin Spencer (American, 1822–1902). Kiss Me and You’ll Kiss the ‘Lasses, 1856. Oil on canvas; 29 7/8 x 24 7/8 in. (76 x 63.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, A. Augustus Healy Fund (70.26).

In Young Husband, Spencer presents a figure whose inexperience or enthusiasm has caused him to overload his market basket with eggs, asparagus, lettuce, tomatoes, poultry, and even a pineapple. There’s so much food, in fact, that the basket’s handle has split, causing some of the groceries to tumble to the ground. The overall mood of the painting is humorous, but there’s conflict as well. Whether by choice or necessity, this young husband engages in a chore that traditionally would have been reserved for his wife. Although it has been noted that men in Cincinnati—where Spencer spent part of her career—commonly did the grocery shopping, the reactions of the gawking passers-by suggest that the activities of the man in the painting are unusual. Interestingly, Spencer’s own marriage had nontraditional aspects. Her husband, Benjamin Rush Spencer—a tailor by trade—found himself unemployed early in their marriage and struggled to find other prospects. In view of their growing family—the couple had thirteen children, seven of whom lived to maturity—Benjamin adopted a large share of the domestic responsibilities as his wife became the chief breadwinner.

A host of luscious foods, and some interesting contrasts, are also central to Spencer’s painting Kiss Me and You’ll Kiss the ’Lasses. The figure, who is in the process of making preserves, playfully threatens the viewer—presumably a man—with a sticky spoonful of molasses. In a recent Met Podcast episode, the New York Times food writer Mark Bittman commented on the odd contrast that the young woman embodies, as she labors and flirts at the same time—a feat that would be difficult for most cooks to accomplish as they toil away in the kitchen. In the name of research, I recently enlisted the help of two friends to make strawberry jam, in the hopes that our experience would lend insight into the activities of Spencer’s figure. Armed with a fifteen-page recipe that claimed to be easy, we embarked on our “jam session.” Here are a few highlights from our experiment:

Above: Crushing the berries in the food processor; boiling the berries, with sugar; the finished product. Photographs by Alison Buchbinder, November 7, 2009.

Although we used modern appliances and a modern recipe, which called for pectin to aid the jelling process, our half batch of strawberry jam still took the three of us just under two hours to make, and left us with a sink full of dirty dishes. The finished product was delicious, but it certainly required our undivided attention and plenty of standing over boiling pots. The experience clarified for me just how unrealistic Spencer’s young woman is—the absence of sweat is all the more interesting when we consider, as Mr. Bittman points out, that canning would have taken place in the heat of summer. The contrast between reality and fiction is joined by the conflict between the populist appeal of the brazen, humorous woman and Spencer’s virtuosic aspirations implied by the expertly rendered still-life elements: notice the carefully observed basket of red currants on the floor, as well as the apples, pineapples, cherries, gooseberries, and raspberries on or near the worktable.

What accounts for this conflict between the romanticized depiction of the woman’s labor and the “truthful,” highly illusionist representation of fresh fruit? Curator Teresa Carbone at the Brooklyn Museum, which lent us the painting, recently observed that Spencer may have been responding to critics who wished to see her use her gifts to create more dignified works. A critic in The Crayon, for instance, argued in 1856 that “[b]eing a woman, [Spencer] should have some deeper, tenderer conceptions of humanity than her brother artists, something, at all events better worth her painting, and our seeing, than grinning housewives. . . . We should hope for much more from her, if she could see that it was her duty to be serious sometimes.”

Seen in this light, the two paintings by Spencer suggest her simultaneous desires for commercial appeal, through humor, and critical praise, through exquisite still-life detail. The fact that her own domestic situation contrasted with mid-nineteenth-century societal norms makes the content of the two works that much more intriguing.

In the last section of the exhibition, visitors will encounter John Sloan’s Chinese Restaurant, which represents a twentieth-century telling of a story about a woman, food, and gender-related conflict. On the one hand, the garishly dressed woman in this painting, who is in the midst of feeding a cat, occupies a position of control, as she solicits the male diners’—and the viewer’s—attention. On the other hand, she surrenders control, presenting a performance and an appearance that are geared toward male desires.

John Sloan (American, 1871–1951). Chinese Restaurant, 1909. Oil on canvas; 26 x 32 1/4 in. (66 x 81.9 cm). Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Marion Stratton Gould Fund (51.12). Photograph: Andy Olenick. © 2009 Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

We can certainly revel in the multiple, complex layers of the food-related paintings in the exhibition, but in the meantime, I hope your holiday mirrors the abundance that many of them celebrate.

—Katie Steiner

Robert Frank and American Stories
17 Nov 2009, 11:49 am

Part of what makes the Met so extraordinary is that it facilitates encounters among masterworks from every century and every corner of the world. This fall, visitors to the Museum can encounter under a single roof two very different exhibitions devoted to scenes of everyday American life. American Stories brings together paintings by fifty-two artists that date from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, while Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Americans, the influential suite of black-and-white photographs that Robert Frank (American, b. Switzerland, 1924) made on a cross-country road trip in 1955–56. The exhibitions explore works in different media and from different periods, and the objects and the American experiences they chronicle speak to each other in interesting and sometimes surprising ways. I recently visited both exhibitions on the same day and found a few intriguing connections.

One of the most haunting works in Looking In is Frank’s photograph of passengers on a New Orleans street car:

Robert Frank (American, b. Switzerland, 1924). Trolley—New Orleans, 1955. Gelatin silver print; 8 5/8 x 13 1/16 in. (21.9 x 33.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005 (2005.100.454). Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans.

The gallery label that accompanies this photograph discusses how it encapsulates the social tensions in the South in the mid-1950s, as evidenced by the hierarchical positions of whites, blacks, men, and women. We may hypothesize that Frank’s experiences as a Jew in Europe during World War II sensitized him to marginalized members of society in America, where he emigrated in 1947. I was also fascinated to learn that Frank had been the victim of prejudice only days before he took this photograph, arrested by Arkansas authorities after he was seen making photographs, being unshaven, and driving a late-model car with New York license plates.

Frank’s photograph, and his position as an outsider traveling through his newly adopted country, reminded me of Charles F. Blauvelt’s painting A German Immigrant Inquiring His Way, which is included in American Stories:

Charles Felix Blauvelt (American, 1824–1900). A German Immigrant Inquiring His Way, 1855. Oil on canvas; 36 1/8 x 29 in. (91.8 x 73.7 cm). North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina (52.9.2).

This painting, which predates Frank’s Trolley—New Orleans by exactly a century, also tells a story about racial tension in American society. Its narrative is seemingly simple: a white man, who the painting’s title tells us is a German immigrant, interrupts the labor of a black man to ask for directions. The subtext, however, is more complex, implying how European immigrants threatened to push free African Americans out of the workforce. Unlike Frank, who is from Switzerland, Blauvelt was an “insider,” born in New York City. Perhaps his upbringing as the son of a German-born father accounts for his keen awareness of the tensions caused by the incoming waves of immigrants. Clashes between racial and ethnic groups were a common fact of life in pre–Civil War New York, which suffered a host of violent riots. A reviewer in the December 1860 issue of the Cosmopolitan Art Journal commented on Blauvelt’s sensitivity toward marginalized members of society, writing that the artist’s “emigrants, stage-drivers, old negroes, boys, and old men, are inimitably rendered, not with anything of grossness, but with a delicacy of feeling and undertone of humor or pathos which are as refreshing as rare.”

For me, the experience of encountering both A German Immigrant and Trolley—New Orleans underscored the differences between the two works. Blauvelt treats his subject with a touch of humor, as the two white figures in the background cast knowing glances toward the awkward exchange at the center of the composition. His approach seems all the more cheerful in comparison to the matter-of-fact presentation of societal inequities in Frank’s photograph, which, in turn, emerged more forcefully in comparison to the painting. Blauvelt, like many of the other painters represented in American Stories, had to create works that would appeal to the open market. This practical concern may account for his more humorous approach to a difficult subject, which stands in contrast to the more documentary nature of Frank’s project, which was funded by a Guggenheim Foundation grant.

When I visited both shows, I was also struck by the different treatments of rugged, Western American figures that appeared in some of the works. In the fourth section of American Stories, Cosmopolitan and Candid Stories, 1877–1915, is Charles Schreyvogel’s My Bunkie:

Charles Schreyvogel (American, 1861–1912). My Bunkie, 1899. Oil on canvas; 25 1/8 x 34 in. (64 x 86.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of friends of the artist, by subscription, 1912 (12.227). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This painting offers a dramatic and idealized view of male heroics in the frontier, as a cavalryman on horseback rescues his bunk mate, who has lost his mount, from an unseen enemy. Compare this depiction with Frank’s photograph of a cowboy on the streets of New York City:

Robert Frank (American, b. Switzerland, 1924). Rodeo—New York City, 1954. Gelatin silver print; 13 1/4 x 8 3/8 in. (33.7 x 21.3 cm). Collection of Barbara and Eugene Schwartz. Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans.

We know from the introduction to The Americans, written by Jack Kerouac, that this cowboy is standing outside Madison Square Garden, presumably taking a break from a touring rodeo. Removed from the West and consigned to the realm of popular entertainment, the figure evocatively signals the decline of an American icon. The subverted traditions in Frank’s image were easier to read after I viewed Schreyvogel’s painting; similarly, the idealized Western masculinity chronicled in Schreyvogel’s work was cast into higher relief when I considered it in light of Frank’s photograph. Rodeo—New York City offers a glimpse of contemporary life, featuring a figure that perhaps contrasts with the expectation of viewers conditioned to more heroic imagery. While Frank’s photograph may thwart fantasies, My Bunkie appeals to them, echoing the staged drama of a Buffalo Bill Wild West show to present a story about life on the vanishing frontier.

If you have the opportunity, I encourage you to visit these two special exhibitions in person and to share your insights about the experience with us.

—Katie Steiner

The Medieval Garden Enclosed | Report

Boxwood
18 Dec 2009, 3:30 pm

Above, from left to right: Boxwood shrub growing in Bonnefont Garden; fresh boxwood installed on the Main Hall arches for the holidays; detail view of a minutely carved boxwood rosary bead in The Cloisters collection. See the Collection Database to learn more about this work of art.

Boxwood (Buxus sempervirens) is most familiar to us as a foundation planting, or as a low edging for garden beds, a practice that became common in the sixteenth century and continues today. Boxwood has also been a popular subject for topiary work since Roman times. There are many varieties of box, including dwarf forms and forms with variegated foliage. (For more about B. sempervirens and other ornamental species, visit the website of The American Boxwood Society.)

The arborescent form of boxwood is a slender, arching, slow-growing tree. Mature specimens range in height from twelve to twenty-five feet, although rarely exceeding twenty. The trunk reaches a diameter of about six inches. The evergreen boughs were used both as a Christmas green in the Middle Ages and, in northern Europe, as a substitute for palm on Palm Sunday. According to Mirella D’Ancona Levi, boxwood, like yew, was a funereal plant in antiquity; it was also sacred to Venus. In the Middle Ages, it came to be associated with the Virgin. The foliage is notoriously pungent, and many people find it malodorous, although some enjoy the smell. The leaves are bitter and astringent. Boxwood was not used in ancient or medieval medicine, although it did come to be used as a purgative and a vermifuge (a plant that expels and kills internal parasites) in subsequent centuries.

The light-colored wood is very hard, close-grained, and fine-textured, allowing the carver to do very delicate work. Boxwood was valued for practical as well as artistic purposes, and was employed for rolling pins, mallet heads, pestles, weaver’s shuttles, combs, chess pieces, and musical instruments. It was and is especially valued for wood engraving and printer’s blocks. According to the sixteenth-century herbalist John Gerard, the root is yellower, harder, and more beautiful than the timber, and was preferred for making boxes, dagger hafts, and the like. The wood of the root was known as “dudgeon.”

More on medieval plants and gardens to come in the New Year . . .

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

Grieve, Maude. A Modern Herbal. 1931. Reprint: New York: Dover Publications, 1971.

Grigson, Geoffrey. The Englishman’s Flora. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1955.

Levi D’Ancona, Mirella. The Garden of the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting. Firenze: L. S. Olschki, 1977.

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The Hallowed Yew
11 Dec 2009, 3:27 pm

Above, from left to right: A large yew tree (Taxus baccata) growing near the portcullis on the lower drive of The Cloisters; a detail of the yew in fruit in mid-November. The gelatinous red flesh surrounding the seeds is as sweet as it looks, and is innocuous, but the seed itself is very toxic, as are the leaves.

There is here above the brotherhood
A bright tall glossy yew;
The melodious bell sends out a keen clear note
In St. Columba’s church.

—Fragment of an Irish poem, ca. 800–1000

A famously long-lived tree of ancient significance, the yew (Taxus baccata) has borne both positive and negative connotations. As Geoffrey Grigson notes, yew was beneficent in its character as a protective tree, to be grown in dooryards and churchyards (perhaps because of the red fruit, often a sign of apotropaic power); it was a tree of life, both as an evergreen and because of the great age and stature it could attain. However, yew also had more somber and funereal associations because of its poisonous nature.

In Greco-Roman antiquity, the yew was sacred to the Furies and was a plant of ritual purification; according to both the Roman natural historian Pliny and the poet Ovid, yew was a tree of hell and grew near the entrance to the underworld. Yew was planted on tombs and was associated, like the cypress, with death. It was also a sacred tree of the Celts, planted anciently in the British Isles, where many famous specimens, like the Fortingall Yew, remain.

Christian commentators associated the poisonous fruit with sin and death, but despite this link, yew was used as a Christmas green in Europe. (Like the boxwood that will be the subject of next week’s post, the yew was used not only at Christmas but also on Palm Sunday as a substitute for the exotic palm, which would only have been available in southern Europe.) The Renaissance painter Girolamo dai Libri juxtaposes a yew tree, as a symbol of the Tree of Death, with a pomegranate in flower, signifying the Tree of Life in his Presepe dei Conigli, or Nativity with Rabbits. (An image of this work is available on the website for the Dioceses of Verona, Italy.) Dai Libri also contrasts the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death in the Met’s Madonna and Child with Saints. In this work the Tree of Life is a magnificent bay laurel; the Tree of Death is unidentifiable.

Yew was a useful as well as a symbolic tree. Both its hardness (a post made of yew was said to outlast one made of iron) and its flexibility were exploited in weaponry: Beowulf’s shield was made of yew, and yew was also the wood of choice for the medieval longbow.

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

Grigson, Geoffrey. The Englishman’s Flora. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1955.

Levi D’Ancona, Mirella. The Garden of the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting. Firenze: L. S. Olschki, 1977.

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The Death of the Boar
4 Dec 2009, 5:14 pm

December calendar page from the Belles Heures thumbnail

The Zodiacal Sign of Capricorn thumbnail

Above, from left to right: Calendar page for December from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry, 1405–1408/1409. Pol, Jean, and Herman de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France, by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1); detail of the activity for the month; detail of the zodiacal symbol Capricorn. See the Collection Database to learn more about this work of art.

A boar, wild or domesticated, is an uncastrated adult male pig. Swine were domesticated earlier than any animal other than the dog, and all domesticated hogs descend from a single wild species, Sus scrofa, although numerous subspecies are recognized and many breeds have been developed.

As befits an animal that has lived in such close conjunction with humans for so many centuries, pigs have acquired much religious and symbolic significance, both positive and negative, while cleaning up around the dooryard and greasing chins. (See “Pigs in Religion and Folklore” on Professor Joshua Bamfield’s website.) Many medieval calendar images for this month depict either the slaughter of the domestic boar or the hunting and killing of a wild one. (See the December page of the Très Riches Heures.) Bridget Henisch observes that the death of the boar in December is the only death portrayed in the medieval calendar tradition.

Unlike sheep and cattle, domesticated swine were not kept over the winter, but were slaughtered to provide food for the cold season. Peasants are often shown either dispatching a hog with an ax or slitting its throat, preparatory to making the bacon, hams, and blood puddings that were an important part of their winter diet. The wild boar hunt of the Middle Ages, however, was an aristocratic activity that was an exercise in martial skill and a proof of valor. The famous hunting manual of Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix, provides several illuminated chapters on the pursuit of this dangerous animal, including “How to put the wild board to the sword.” (See the online exhibition on the Morgan Library & Museum website.) Although boars were brought down by hounds, Gaston remarks that the dogs’ fangs could not tear their tough hides, which could only be pierced by pikes or arrows. Once the boar turns to face his tormentors, the huntsman should rise in his saddle and throw his pike like a javelin; he must then dismount and dispatch the dying boar with a sword thrust, carefully and from behind.

While the peasant’s Christmas dinner might consist of pork, the head of the wild boar, bedecked with bays and rosemary, was at the front and center of the nobleman’s feast, as in the famous fifteenth-century Boar’s Head carol still sung today. Le Viandier, a recipe collection compiled about the year 1300, describes a rich dish called bourbelier, for which a wild boar is boiled and then roasted and basted with a sauce of ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and grains of paradise.

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

Gaston III Phoebus. The Hunting Book of Gaston Phébus. Preface by Christian de Longevialle; introduction and captions by Clause d’Anthenaise; translated Ian Monk. Dallas,TX: Hackberry Press, 2002.

Henisch, Ann Bridget. The Medieval Calendar Year. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.

Husband, Timothy B. The Art of Illumination. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.

Redon, Odile, Francoise Sabban & Silvano Serventi. The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy. Translated by Edward Schneider. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.

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Hips and Haws
20 Nov 2009, 4:22 pm

Above, from left: The ripe fruits of the white rose tree in Bonnefont garden are held on their stems late into the fall, and provide food for birds and wildlife; the fleshy red fruits of the rose are known as “hips” and contain seeds that were used medicinally in the Middle Ages.

Apples, roses, and hawthorns are all members of a single botanical family, the Rosaceae. The fruits of the hawthorn are known as haws. The fruits of the rose are known as hips, a word of Germanic origin that appears in the glossary compiled by the Anglo-Saxon grammarian Aelfric in the ninth century. (The Romans had designated the rose hip as malum roseum, or “rose apple”.)

While all roses bear hips, it was the fruit of wild roses such as the briar rose or eglantine (R. rubiginosa) and the dog rose (R. canina) that seem to have been used for food and medicine. The cookbook of Apicius, compiled in the fourth or early fifth century A.D., includes rose hips in several recipes, but in both ancient and medieval cuisine rose petals are used more often than the fruits. Wild roses seem to have been a famine food gathered in case of need rather than a delicacy. In the fourteenth-century Middle English translation of the Romance of William of Palerne, two lovers, William and Melior, flee to the woods disguised in bearskins, where William is given advice by his cousin—who has been transformed into a werewolf—as to what foods they may sustain themselves on, in addition to their love. It is suggested that they forage for wild plums, blackberries, hips, haws, acorns, and hazelnuts (”haws, hepus, & hakernes & hasel-notes”):

(For acorns as famine food, see last week’s post, “Pigs and Pannage“.)

William Turner, in his New Herbal of 1565, warns that those who make tarts out of hips should take heed to remove all the “down” from the fruit. These little hairs inside the hips are quite irritating to the skin. (I once made hedgerow jelly from hips, haws, and sloes, while in England, and found the process of removing the fibers from all those little hips pretty unpleasant, as well as tedious.) Dioscorides also recommended that this wooly matter be removed before the fruits were dried as a medicament to “stop the belly.” Albertus Magnus specified the seeds contained in the hips as a remedy for diarrhea in infants.

Rose petals and oil of roses are more frequently recommended in medieval herbals than the fruits. Although garden roses were characterized as cold in the humoral theory of the Middle Ages, wild roses were classified as hot. Hildegard of Bingen says that the hips are very hot. As such, they would be considered efficacious in a complaint of “a cold cause,” such as catarrh.) Hildegard recommends rose hips as a cure in Book LII of the Physica:

One who has pain in his lungs should crush rose hips with their leaves. Then he should add raw honey and cook these together. He should frequently remove the froth, then strain it through a cloth and make spiced wine. He should drink this often, and it will carry off the rotten matter from his lungs, purging and healing him.

Despite the flower’s ubiquity in medieval art, rose hips are rarely depicted in paintings or illuminations. However, a leafy stem of rose hips does appear in an early sixteenth-century book of hours commissioned by Anne of Brittany and painted by Jean Bourdichon. The painter shows a single “robin’s pincushion” or rose gall, formed by a parasitic wasp. (For the illumination, see the British Library Images Online.)

The gall, which is especially common on the wild field rose (R. arvensis) and the dog rose, is created when the wasp deposits its eggs in autumn. The larvae overwinter in the plant tissue, which provides both food and shelter until they hatch out in spring. This rose gall, known as a “bedeguar,” was powdered and used to treat internal ailments.

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

Fisher, Celia. The Medieval Flower Book. London: The British Library, 2007.

Hildegard of Bingen. Physica. Transl. Patricia Throop. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 1998.

Touw, Mia. “Roses in the Middle Ages,” Economic Botany, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan.–Mar., 1982).

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Pigs and Pannage
13 Nov 2009, 4:50 pm

November calendar page from the Belles Heures thumbnail

The Zodiacal Sign of Sagittarius thumbnail

Above, from left to right: Calendar page for November from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry, 1405–1408/1409. Pol, Jean, and Herman de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France, by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1); detail of the activity for the month; detail of the zodiacal symbol Sagittarius. See the Collection Database to learn more about this work of art.

“September’s Husbandrie” from Thomas Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie, 1580.

The term “mast” was applied to any autumnal fodder on which pigs might forage, including beechnuts, haws (the fruit of the hawthorn), and acorns, as well as fungi and roots. Acorns were the principal fodder in fattening up swine to be slaughtered and salted for winter food. While green acorns contain toxins that are poisonous to cattle and to people, they are not harmful to pigs. (Pigs were not reared in winter. Once the boar had sired a litter, he was sacrificed. Bacon and hams were cured after the November slaughter. Bacon grease replaced butter as the principal fat in the winter diet.)

“November’s Husbandrie” from Thomas Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie, 1580.

A swineherd carrying a pole or stick to knock down acorns for his pigs frequently appears in the calendar tradition as the activity proper to November, as in the detail from the Belles Heures shown above. A very similar scene is depicted on the November page of the Très Riches Heures.

The same subject is drawn in ink on the lower left margin of the November calendar page of the Hours of Jeanne d’Évreux, currently on display in the Treasury at The Cloisters. Jeanne, queen of France, retained the right to the income from the harvest of acorns in the forest of Nogent for her lifetime.

Jean Pucelle (French, active in Paris, ca. 1320–1334). Detail from the November calendar page from The Hours of Jeanne d’Évreux, ca. 1324–1328. Grisaille and tempera on vellum; 3 1/2 x 2 5/8 in. (8.9 x 6.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.2). See the Collection Database to learn more about this work of art.

In medieval forest law, certain rights and privileges were afforded the tenants on the lord’s woodlands; the term “pannage” was used to designate both the practice of bringing pigs to the wood to forage for mast, and the right or privilege to do so. The term could also be applied to payment made to the owner of the woodland in exchange for this privilege, or to the owner’s right to collect payment, or to the income accruing from the privilege.

In England, where the tradition of foraging swine in oak forests was an important part of the agricultural cycle, the Saxon rights of pannage were much reduced by the Norman enclosure of game preserves, and the Saxon diet was greatly reduced when their pigs were deprived of acorns.

Acorns contain fat, carbohydrates and protein. The acorns of the common oak of Britain and northwestern Europe (Quercus robur) have a high tannin content and are too bitter to be palatable, but have been eaten in times of famine. They were ground into a meal that afforded a coarse bread. Alan Davidson notes that both acorns and bread or cakes made from them have remarkable keeping powers.

The Mediterranean holm oak (Quercus ilex var. rotundifolia) bear acorns that are much sweeter, and these are still enjoyed in Spain and Portugal, much as chestnuts are. It is probably the acorns of this species that are recommended in the fifteenth-century Tacuinum Sanitatis as a health-giving food, to be roasted and eaten with sugar.

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:
Arano, Luisa Cogliati. The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinum Sanitatis. New York: George Braziller, 1976.

Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Hartley, Dorothy. Lost Country Life. New York: Pantheon Books, 1979.

Husband, Timothy B. The Art of Illumination. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.

Pérez-Higuera, Teresa. Medieval Calendars. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1997.

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Flickr pictures by all group members | Showing 29 randomly selected photos within the The Metropolitan Museum of Art group sorted by most interesting.

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Velázquez Rediscovered | Current Exhibitions | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Quelle: www.metmuseum.org

"Velázquez Rediscovered" features a newly identified painting by Velázquez, Portrait of a Man, formerly ascribed to the workshop of Velázquez, and recently reattributed to the master himself following its cleaning and restoration. It will be shown alongside other works from the Museum’s superior col...

Participate in the first in a series of polls about the painting Portrait of a Man, recently reattributed to Spanish master Velázquez. Go to the Boxes tab on our Facebook page to take the poll.

Ritual Vessel: Horse with Figures (Aduno Koro)

Quelle: www.metmuseum.org

Ritual Vessel: Horse with Figures (Aduno Koro). 16th–19th century, Dogon, Mali. Wood, H. 20 1/2 x W. 18 1/2 x D. 93 in. (52.1 x 47 x 236.2 cm). The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979 (1979.206.255)

Featured Artwork of the Day (http://www.metmuseum.org/feeds/artworkoftheday.aspx).

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American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915
October 12, 2009–January 24, 2010

Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156–1868
October 21, 2009–January 10, 2010

Velázquez Rediscovered
November 17, 2009–February 7, 2010

Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans
September 22, 2009–January 3, 2010

Eccentric Visions: The Worlds of Luo Ping (1733–1799)
October 6, 2009–January 10, 2010

Sounding the Pacific: Musical Instruments of Oceania
November 17, 2009–September 6, 2010

The Young Archer Attributed to Michelangelo
Opened November 3, 2009

Pablo Bronstein at the Met
October 6, 2009–February 21, 2010

Annual Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche
November 24, 2009–January 6, 2010

Imperial Privilege: Vienna Porcelain of Du Paquier, 1718–44
September 22, 2009–March 21, 2010

The New American Wing
Part 2: The Charles Engelhard Court and the Period Rooms
Opened May 19, 2009

Peaceful Conquerors: Jain Manuscript Painting
September 10, 2009–March 21, 2010

The Lens and the Mirror: Modern Self-Portraits from the Collection
July 21, 2009–December 6, 2009

Silk and Bamboo: Music and Art of China
September 5, 2009–February 7, 2010

Cinnabar: The Chinese Art of Carved Lacquer
August 6, 2009–February 21, 2010

North Italian Drawings, 1410-1550: Selections from the Robert Lehman Collection and the Department of Drawings and Prints
November 3, 2009–January 31, 2010

Surface Tension: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection
September 15, 2009–May 16, 2010

Highlights from the Modern Design Collection: 1900 to the Present
June 23, 2009–June 23, 2011

Masterpieces of French Art Deco
Opened August 4, 2009

Reopening of the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries for Byzantine Art and the Medieval Europe Gallery
Opens November 18, 2008

American Landscapes
Opened May 20, 2008

Tibetan Arms and Armor from the Permanent Collection
Through fall 2009

See all special exhibitions

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