Every Thursday, as part of my personal “enriched environment” initiative, I post a piece of art, usually from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which recently released online some 400,000 high-resolution images of its collection. All artwork will show a sun (or sunlight) somewhere.
I won’t name the piece or the artist, but instead invite you to study the art and post a comment addressing one or more of these questions:
- What is going on in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
- What more can you find?
If you have another idea, run with it.
Special Update! The New York Times website does this same exercise every Monday with a news photo that is uncaptioned and contains no text (click!). The Times asks viewers the same three questions:
- What is going on in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you say that?
- What more can you find?
However, at the end of the week, the Times posts the background information on the picture. So, I’ve decided to do the same. I’ll still post an unlabeled piece of art on Thursday. But return on Sunday (for the Sunny Sundays post!) and you’ll find an update on the artwork here.
Note: To embiggen the image, click on it!
Memorial painting
Maker: Sally Miller
Date: 1811
Geography: Made in Litchfield, Connecticut, United States
Culture: American
Medium: Watercolor and ink on silk
Dimensions: 28 x 32 3/8 in. (71.1 x 82.2 cm)
Classification: Textiles
The Litchfield Female Academy (1792–1833), where this picture was made, was one of the few schools that provided both academic and ornamental educations for young American women. Parents sent their girls to Litchfield expecting them to return home knowing English grammar, arithmetic, history, geography, and religion. But any ladies’ academy, no matter how progressive, was still expected to provide instruction in needlework, music, and painting. This painted silk mourning picture is one of eight known from the Litchfield Female Academy.
All are almost identical in size, composition, images, and coloring. The painted faces in all eight appear to be by one artist, possibly Flora Catlin, an art teacher at the school from 1815 to 1831.
It’s interesting the way four of the women in the painting have voluminous white sheets or scarves completely covering their faces. I don’t get that.
This is a weird picture because the river or bay in the background is warped and the boats and the buildings are all leaning to the right. I’m assuming that the central scene in the foreground are people who are burying a family member, a young woman who died at age 25, perhaps in childbirth, which would explain the baby on the right. I agree with Tarona’s comment that it’s weird that some of the women in the painting have completely covered their faces with white sheets. Where is this all taking place?
A lot of the men’s faces are the same, and they look like they belong in a Japanese painting, not a western one .
I agree with many of the comments above. In addition, I notice that there seems to be three separate groups of mourners here, although I’m not sure whom the two women on the left with their faces covered with the white sheeting are mourning. I infer that the main group in the center are mourning Mary Starr, who died at age 25. The way three of the mourners are gazing at the baby suggests that Mary died in childbirth.
Looking at the background, I see that on the upper left corner you have clouds gathering, and the general scenario (including the vegetation on the hillside) is cramped, busy and claustrophobic. But then the horizon tilts downward to the right and you have an open, calm sunlit sky. I agree with the comment that the background appears off-kilter. You can see that many of the buildings are leaning to the right, as are the masts of the ships. Is the artist saying that when death occurs, everything goes akimbo?