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| "Sir William Pepperrell and his family." Copley, 1778. |
You've got to admire an art museum docent -- and for anybody like me who had to look that word up, a docent is a museum guide -- who sees a mother with four children -- including a two-year-old being reprimanded for spitting on the floor and an infant imitating a shrieking hawk -- and not only doesn't run away but approaches them with a large smile and offers to give them a private tour of the American collection.
Maybe admirable isn't the right word. Maybe the word I'm looking for is "crazy." But I digress.
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| "Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite." Albert Bierstadt, 1871. |
For a while I'd been promising Catherine that we would visit the museum in search of the Pepperrell Family portrait by John Singleton Copley. In her art class she was inspired by the painting's story: The portrait shows a mother, father and their four young children surrounded by wealth and luxury, their vast lands rolling out behind them. Indeed, Lord Pepperrell was once the richest man in New England. But he chose the wrong side of the war and lost his wealth. And then, on his voyage to England, he also lost his wife.
The painting, which was composed after the wife had been dead for two years, is the story of what might have been had war and death not intervened.
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| Vincent's rendition of "Bridal Veil Falls." See the deer on the left side? |
For reasons that aren't altogether clear, this painting made its way to North Carolina. So when Beverly the Docent asked if we were looking for anything in particular, Catherine couldn't wait to tumble out the whole story, and her enthusiasm struck Beverly so much that she insisted on taking us to the painting herself. For the next 20 minutes she and Catherine chatted about art -- Catherine observed that the mother was paler than the others and that she seemed to be looking off in the distance, and Beverly confirmed that Copley did this on purpose because the mother was already dead. Catherine also observed that Copley used light to illuminate the mother and children ("Like Rembrandt!") and that up close you could see the thick application of paint ("Like van Gogh!").
At that point Beverly turned to me and said, "Wow. You must be doing something right."
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| "The Garden Parasol." Frederick Frieseke, 1910 |
Vincent chose that moment to observe that he was bored, and Dominic
spit on the floor, and shortly thereafter we found the exit.
But the kids came away from the museum with a new appreciation
for stories behind the paintings. When they came home they spent the
afternoon recreating two of the paintings they saw there -- Albert
Bierstadt's
Bridal Veils Falls and Frederick Frieseke’s
The Garden Parasol.
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| Catherine's "The Garden Parasol." |
As for myself, I came away with a new appreciation for kind docents
who see rowdy little kids not as savages to be tamed, but as
spirits to be inspired.
