MASSACHUSETTS: MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS BOSTON

November 7-11, 2018 

I love art museums, and when some of my new friends at the Boston Honors conference invited me to go with them to the Museum of Fine Arts after a day of lectures, I jumped at the chance. The MFA Boston is the 17th largest art museum in the world by public gallery area and contains almost a half-million works of art. It was founded in 1870 and moved to its current location in 1909.

Photo from  mfa.org

I split up from my friends and wandered around on my own. There was no way I could do the museum justice in the two hours we had before closing, but I could see a lot more on my own than with a group.

From 1916 to 1925, John Singer Sargent painted a series of frescoes that adorn the rotunda. I thought I had pictures of them, but I can't find them. However, here is a sketch he did for one of the paintings: Atlas and Hesperides (1922-1924):

There was a wonderful display of musical instruments. Since my daughter played the French horn, that's what caught my eye first:

This multi-keyboard harpsichord dates to the 1700s, although the gorgeous lid was painted in the 1800s:

I don't think I've ever seen a harp guitar before. This one was made in Chicago in about 1920

I have seen Dale Chihuly's glass art--lots of it--in dozens of museums. He has become the new Picasso. It is as if a museum doesn't own one of his monumental pieces, it isn't a first-rate museum!  This one is called Lime Green Icicle Tower (2011) and stands 40 feet high. It is made of 2,342 individual glass pieces and weighs about five tons.

Even though I have seen dozens, maybe even hundreds of Chihuly's unique sculptures, they never grow old.

Nearby is Appeal to the Great Spirit (1913) by American artist Cyrus E. Dallin. This piece became the most widely reproduced bronze of a American western theme in the early 20th century. The Chihuly piece looks like a glowing cactus in the background.

Aha! Remember that John Singleton Copley painting from my last post? Here it is--Paul Revere (1768). Mr. Revere was just 33 years old when he posed for his portrait and already well known as both a silversmith and a political activist.

Another Copley--Samuel Adams (1772). The patriot is shown confronting Governor Thomas Hutchison following the 1770 Boston Massacre. He is holding a petition and pointing to the Massachusetts Royal Charter while he demands the expulsion of British troops from Boston. This painting was actually commissioned by John Hancock.

Alexander Hamilton (It's hard to say that instead of sing it) was painted by John Trumbull in 1806. I think his red nose makes him look like a bit of a sot.

Jean-Antoine Houdon's bust of Thomas Jefferson (1789) captures the cocky confidence of our third President.

Gilbert Stuart is one of the most famous and prolific painters of our first president. Here is Washington at Dorchester Heights (1806), commissioned seven years after Washington's death by a wealthy citizen of Boston.

This portrait by Charles Willson Peale is of his THIRD wife, Mrs. Charles Willson Peale (Hannah Moore) (1816).  She was 61 and he was 76 at the time. He considered this the best portrait he ever painted.

Another Copley!  I love nativity scenes--painted, carved, and sculpted. It is believed that Copley's wie Susanna and his newborn daughter were the models for The Nativity (1776).

In King Lear (1788), Benjamin West depicts one of my favorite scenes from my favorite Shakespeare play: Lear raging against a violent storm.

Besides the murals in the rotunda, the MFA Boston has a great collection of works by John Singer Sargent. Helen Sears (1895) depicts the daughter of one of Boston's most famous photographers (who was a woman, by the way). It is interesting that she would have her daughter's portrait painted when she could actually take a photograph of her.

Charles J. Paine (1904) was a general in the Union Army and made his fortune in railroads. I don't particularly love the painting, but I do love Sargent, so I include it here for my own record.

In Sargent's The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1883), the youngest child in seated on the rug, the next youngest is standing on the left, and the two oldest are receding a bit into the shadows in the back. What is Sargent saying about childhood and growing up? That has been the subject of much speculation and debate.

Edith, Lady Playfair (Edith Russell) (1884) has an uncanny resemblance to Mark Zuckerberg.

And finally, my favorite Sargent painting in the MFA Boston is Robert de Cévrieux (1879). I hope that poor puppy made it through the sitting.

Winslow Homer painted his iconic Boys in a Pasture in 1874, just five years before Sargent's painting of little Robert.

Another well-known Homer painting, The Fog Warning (1885), is a lot less idyllic.

My favorite bust in the museum is Meg Merrilies (1881) by Edward R. Thaxter, a depiction of the ugly, half-mad gypsy in Sir Walter Scott's 1815 novel Guy Mannering. Meg is the embodiment of every witch in every fairy tale I have ever read.

Speaking of scary, let's jump ahead 130 years to Museum Epiphany III (2012) by Warren Prosperi. That statue looks like she is reaching down to grab that poor little girl.

Okay, back to the 19th century. At Dusk (Boston Common at Twilight) (1885-86) by Childe Hassam depicts a modern city (a trolley car traffic jam) side-by-side with quiet nature.

Mary Cassatt always pleases. This is The Tea (1880).

Which one of these two stained glass windows is the Tiffany piece?

Parakeets and Gold Fish Bowl (1893) is by Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Butterflies and Foliage (1889) is by his intense and sometimes bitter competitor John La Farge.

Tiffany was also known for his lamps. This is Hanging Head Dragonfly (1905-10), likely designed in collaboration with Clara Driscoll, one of his employees who didn't get much credit for her work.

The Fish (1890) by John La Farge looks very Japanese.

White Rose with Larkspur No. 2 (1927) could only be by Georgia O'Keeffe. I loved the museum's label: "I'll tell you how I happened to make the blown-up flowers," said O'Keeffe. "In the twenties, huge buildings sometimes seemed to be going up overnight in New York. At the time I saw a painting of [19th-century French painter] Fantin-Latour, a still life with flowers I found very beautiful, but I realized that were I to paint the same flowers so small, no one would look at them because I was unknown. So, I thought I'll make them big like the huge buildings going up. People will be startled, they'll have to look at them--and they did."

As I mentioned before, It seems that in order to be a top-tier museum, there must be at least one Picasso. MFA Boston's is very atypical. Fernande Olivier (1905-1906) was painted when Picasso ws just 24.

Walking into this room required a major shift in perception.

Juxtaposed paintings make for interesting comparisons. Troubled Queen (1945) by Jackson Pollock and Standing Figure (1908) by Pablo Picasso were painted 37 years apart, longer than I would have guessed.

This could only be by Jackson Pollock. Number 10 (1949) is one of his iconic drip paintings.

One of the inspirations for Picasso's exploration of human violence in Rape of the Sabine Women (1963) was news of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the resulting threat of nuclear war.

While Edward Hopper's Drug Store (1927) seems to contrast entirely with the Picasso and Pollock paintings, there is something disturbing about loneliness and the prominent Ex-Lax sign!

Frida, is this one of yours??!! Dos Mujeres (Salvadora and Herminia) (1928) depicts two of Frida Kahlo's mother's maids. This is the first painting Frida ever sold. She was 22 years old at the time. I was surprised to learn that this is one of only thirteen paintings by Kahlo that are in a public collection in the United States.

Frida's on-again off-again husband Diego Rivera, most famous for his huge political and historical murals, painted this rather ugly, distasteful little girl, Irene Estrella (1946), who appears to be eating a block.

No, it is not a chalkboard. It is Composition with Blue, Yellow, and Red (1927) by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. Can you believe he started his career painting landscapes?

I love this Christmas Tree (1939) by Hyman Bloom, partly because it looks like a first-grader's fingerpainting. Bloom had studied expressionism at Harvard University and is considered to be the first abstract expressionist.

In Jewish folklore, a golem is a creature made of mud that can be brought to life to act as servants to their masters. This is The Golem (1958) by David Aronson.

Job (1949) is a self-portrait by Karl L. Zerbe that draws on the recent horrors of World War II

This is NOT a painting. It is a look down from the second floor at the museum restaurant.

I was running out of time and trying to catch a few side galleries I had missed, including a furniture section that included this two wonderful pieces. On the left is a teak bureau cabinet with ivory inlay from 1725-1740. On the right is an Italian armchair made in about 1780. (Check out the faces at the end of the arms.

This terra-cotta depiction of The Holy Families (1700-1710) by Pierre Étienne Monnet is one of my favorite finds. It places the Christ child at the center of focus in the arms of his adoring mother, but also gazed upon by the young John the Baptist with his parents Elizabeth and Zacharias on the left and a very manly and prominent Joseph on the upper right.

This is a painting I have often seen reproduced and I was so excited to see the real thing that I took a totally crummy photo.  It's hard to tell, but it is Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1879) by Luc Olivier Merson.  It shows Joseph dozing beside a dying campfire while his donkey seeks for grass to graze on. Meanwhile, Mary and the infant Jesus, identified by the glowing halo, sleep peacefully in the arms of a sphinx. The whole scene is fanciful and magical. I love it.

I also happened on this beautiful painting, one of my new favorites (having never seen it before), Belcolore (1863) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  "Belcolore" means "beautiful color."  Dante Rossetti, who was also a poet, was the brother of poet Christina Rossetti.

Well, it was time to go. We made a quick pass through the gift shop, where (sadly) I resisted both of these purchases.

Here is my impromptu tour group!

Now . . . if I could only go back to Boston and visit the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.  How about it, Bob? (I know, I know. I'm getting greedy.)