December 22, 2024 Dear Readers, After much thought and internal debate, I have decided to go on hiatus with my blog, Ramblings of a Restless Mind. Thank you to all who have faithfully followed by writing and read my monthly articles. It means more than you know. On a parting note, I thought I would share some animal memes that incorporate paintings for you to enjoy. I hope they make you smile. Happy Holidays, Emily 1. Image courtesy of Facebook . Image courtesy of   Bored Panda . 3. Image courtesy of Facebook . 4. Image courtesy of Cheezburger . 5. Image courtesy of Facebook. 6. Image courtesy of Facebook.

By Emily Burkhart November 14, 2024 Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), Flora , 1894. Oil and gold leaf on canvas, 78 x 35 in. De Morgan Foundation Collection, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, UK. Image courtesy of  Wikimedia Commons. You are not to think that the only reason for doing Art is to make life beautiful. The reality it teaches is true as well as beautiful. -Evelyn De Morgan British artist and proto-feminist Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919) used her oil paintings to engage with the political, social, and moral issues of Victorian England from prison reform to women’s suffrage. Painting was also the medium she chose to express her spiritualist beliefs and pacifist stance with regard to Britain’s involvement in the Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa and the First World War (1914-1918). A prolific artist and draftswoman, De Morgan was commercially and financially successful during her life, with solo shows and financial independence unusual for female artists of the time. She paved the way for greater acceptance of women painters. After her death, however, De Morgan fell into obscurity and remains little known today. Her work was preserved by her sister and biographer, the art collector Anna Wilhelmina Stirling (1865-1965), who bought or retained much of it after De Morgan’s death in 1919. Undated photo of Evelyn De Morgan, photographer unknown. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Childhood One of four children, Evelyn De Morgan was born Mary Evelyn Pickering in London on August 30, 1855, to upper-class parents. Her father, Percival Pickering, was a lawyer who came from a long line of politicians and landowners in Yorkshire. Her mother, whose maiden name was Anna Maria Wilhelmina Spencer, was a direct descendant of the Earl of Leicester. Typical of children of their station, Evelyn and her younger sister Anna Wilhelmina (known as Wilhelmina) were schooled at home by tutors. At their mother’s insistence, she and Wilhelmina received the same education as their older brothers Spencer and Rowland, taking instruction in Greek, Latin, French, German and Italian. They studied classical literature and mythology as well and were exposed to history books and scientific texts, subjects unavailable to most girls. The four children also received extensive religious education from clergy who visited their home. Education and Artistic Training Despite growing up in a family appreciative of art, De Morgan’s mother held conservative views about the role of art in her daughter’s education. According to Wilhelmina, their parents initially discouraged Evelyn from pursuing her artistic ambitions in hopes she would give them up and enter society like other young women of her class. Wilhelmina recalled in a letter how Evelyn would paint secretly in her room after blocking up any holes in the door for fear that the smell of paint would drift into the rest of the house. But by the age of fifteen, she began taking formal instruction with private tutors paid for by her father, who finally came round to supporting her desire to paint professionally. He also allowed De Morgan to accompany her uncle, the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (1829-1908), to France and Italy to study Old Master paintings to hone her craft. Without her father’s financial support, De Morgan would not have had the means to pursue an artistic career since she was unable by law to manage her own money or property. In 1872, when she was seventeen, De Morgan enrolled at the South Kensington National Art Training School (now the Royal College of Art). She left after only a few months as she felt stifled by the school’s emphasis on the traditional feminine idea of artisanship rather than the high art of painting. The following year, she became one of the first three women to enter the newly established Slade School of Fine Art at University College in London. Founded by lawyer and art collector Felix Slade (1788-1868), female students were allowed for the first time to study from nude and draped models alongside their male colleagues. She excelled in her courses and won prizes and medals for her life drawings, studies from the antique, paintings, and compositional work, before being awarded the prestigious Slade Scholarship of 50 pounds per annum. It was around this time that De Morgan began using her middle name, the androgynous Evelyn, instead of her given name, Mary, to submit her work to ensure it would be judged on merit and not marked down because she was a woman in a man’s world. De Morgan remained at Slade until 1875, where she studied under the Neo-classical and Aesthetic painter and designer, Sir Edward Poynter (1836-1919). She also received tutelage from the Symbolist painter and sculptor, George Frederic Watts (1817-1904), a family friend, at his home studio, Little Holland House in Kensington, UK. De Morgan completed her studies in Florence, Italy, with her uncle who introduced her to his Pre-Raphaelite artist friends, among them Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), and the writer Vernon Lee (1856-1935). Florence deepened her admiration for Early and High Renaissance art, especially that of Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), whose work she studied and copied. De Morgan and other Victorian artists were inspired by the Italian Renaissance for its rich colors and attention to detail. Undated photo of Evelyn and William De Morgan, photographer unknown. De Morgan Foundation, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, UK. Image courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum , Willmington, Delaware. Early Career and Marriage De Morgan had her first exhibition in 1876 at the Dudley Gallery (1864-1905) and another a year later at the newly formed avant-garde Grosvenor Gallery in London where she was one of only two women included in the inaugural exhibition.Through the late 1870s and 1880s, De Morgan successfully displayed her work at a variety of galleries. During her marriage, De Morgan continued her own successful career. She used the profits from sales of her work to help financially support William’s pottery business until 1906, when he found commercial success with the publication of his first novel, Joseph Vance . She also contributed ideas for his ceramic designs. William’s mother, Sophia, a practicing spiritualist medium, encouraged her daughter-in-law to explore spiritualism both in her personal life and art . Spiritualism was a mid-nineteenth century religious movement that focused on the evolution of the spirit during earthly life in preparation for the afterlife  and communication with supernatural realms. De Morgan had one-woman shows in London in 1906, and in 1907 at Wolverhampton Municipal Art Gallery and Museum where she presented twenty-five works, many influenced by spiritualism. Together, the couple was politically active, advocating Victorian spiritualism, pacifism in response to the horrific devastation of the First World War, and supporting the early efforts of the women’s suffragist movement. Indeed, De Morgan was a signer of the 1889 Declaration in Favour of Women’s Suffrage while William served as Vice President of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage in 1913. Artistic Style De Morgan worked in a variety of styles throughout her career. Early on, she was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, becoming one of only a small number of women artists directly associated with the Brotherhood, and later with the Aestheticism and Symbolist movements. De Morgan’s work often featured powerful women and the female body. She employed spiritual and allegorical themes as well as narratives taken from classical mythology. She relied on symbols such as light and dark, day and night, rainbows, transformation, and bondage to represent the positive triumph of love, hope, and wisdom over egotism, despair, and ignorance.   Selected Works Aurora Triumphans  (Triumphant Aurora), 1877-1878 or ca. 1886 Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), Aurora Triumphans,  1877-1878 or ca.1886. Oil on canvas, 46 x 68 in. Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Aurora Triumphans  (1877-1878 or ca. 1886), Latin for Triumphant Aurora, features Aurora, the Roman goddess of Dawn, and Nix, the goddess of Night. At the center of the painting, a trio of red-winged angels in golden tunics herald the new day with trumpets. A garland of pink roses encircles the nude Aurora’s head as she reclines in the lower right corner, an arm modestly covering her breasts. Ropes of roses drape her pubic region and cascade down her legs, one wraps around a shin and another around an ankle, appearing to have shackled her to the rose-strewn ground. She holds the gathered ropes in her hands, as though removing the bonds of night. While Aurora faces the viewer, the dark-haired figure of Nix, whose gauzy drapery picks up the last hues of night in the sky, is depicted facedown, among her swirling veils, her darkness making way for the light of day.  Love’s Passing , 1883-1884 Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), Love’s Passing , 1883-1884. Oil on canvas, 28 x 45 in. De Morgan Foundation Collection, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, UK. Image courtesy of the Art Renewal Center , Port Reading, New Jersey. De Morgan painted Love’s Passing  (1883-1884) shortly after meeting her future husband but prior to their marriage. The painting is an atmospheric allegory for the passage of time and the human life cycle. In the foreground, two lovers sit on the ground wistfully listening to the music of a tunic–clad, red-winged angel playing a diaulos , an ancient Greek wind instrument made of two pipes ( aulos ) connected at the base.  The woman rests one hand on her lover’s chest and with the other clasps the hand that rests on his knee. Above, in the upper left, a slender crescent moon suggests twilight.  The book on the ground before them lies open to a passage from an elegy by the Roman poet and writer Tibullus (ca. 55 BC – ca. 19 BC), where the writer imagines dying in his lover’s arms, and considers her grief at his funeral.  In the background a stooped, gray-haired old woman in a black robe leans heavily on a wooden staff as she is escorted by the hooded figure of the Angel of Death across the River of Life into the afterlife, their silhouettes reflected in the water below. The bridge they cross denotes the border between the world of the living and the dead, youth and old age. Love’s Passing was one of several works De Morgan painted on the theme of love and mortality over the course of her married life. She would not sell the piece and it was kept within the family until her sister Wihelmina’s death in 1965.  Flora , 1894 Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), Flora , 1894. Oil and gold leaf on canvas, 78 x 35 in. De Morgan Foundation Collection, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, UK. Image courtesy of  Wikimedia Commons. Flora (1894), considered De Morgan’s  “most accomplished painting”   for its realism and technical detail by Sarah Hardy, Director of the De Morgan Museum, is one of her best-known works. Completed entirely in Florence, Flora  reflects the influence of Botticelli, of whom De Morgan was a great admirer, particularly of his Primavera  (ca. 1480) and The Birth of Venus  (ca. 1485). De Morgan’s life-size painting depicts Flora, the Roman goddess of spring, amid flowers in a sunny garden with a blue sky overhead. Flora’s golden hair is reminiscent of Botticelli’s Venus in The Birth of Venus while her floral print dress seems inspired by the figure of Flora in Botticelli’s Primavera. The roses in both paintings are the goddess Flora’s attribute symbolizing love and beauty.  Sandro Botticelli (Florence, 1445-1510), Primavera , ca. 1480. Tempera grassa on wood, 81.4 x 125.5 in. Le Galerie Degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Sandro Botticelli (Florence, 1445-1510), The Birth of Venus , ca. 1485. Tempera on canvas, 67.9 x 109.6 in. Le Galerie Degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons . De Morgan’s attention to realism extends to the fruit, flowers, and birds allowing them to be easily identified. Flora is shown standing in front of a nescola or loquat tree which bears orange fruit in the spring. Perched on its branches are four small birds, two red-headed goldfinches and two brown and yellow pine siskins. Gold swallows, harbingers of new beginnings, adorn Flora’s bright red sash. Beneath her bare feet a profusion of flowers scattered on the grass includes yellow primroses, blue forget-me-nots, and pink cyclamen, symbolizing the renewal and rebirth brought by spring , as well as more roses. Flora’s cream-colored gown is festooned with flowers native to Florence. The Storm Spirits , 1900 Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), The Storm Spirits , 1900. Oil on canvas, 46.2 in. x 67.9 in. De Morgan Foundation Collection, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, UK. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The Storm Spirits (1900), a work created during the Boer War (1899-1902), expresses De Morgan’s pacifism and antiwar stance. Here, she personifies the elements of rain, thunder, and lightning as strong female spirits wreaking havoc upon the sea and rocky landscape below. To the left, dressed in yellow with spiraling drapery and wavy brown hair, is Rain, pouring iridescent gray water from an endless ceramic vial. The rain flows out from under her feet into the frothy, roiling waves beneath her. She is the only spirit without wings. At the center is the black haired and cloaked figure of Thunder in an inky blue robe hovering above the jagged cliffs, her brown wings outstretched across the sky against dark billowing thunder clouds. On the right, Lightning strides forward in a melon robe with large vivid burgundy wings and snaky auburn hair. Yellow bolts of lightning emerge from her right palm while her left hand grasps a jutting rock. She also sports a pair of tiny pink wings on her right foot seen stepping on the rock ledge beneath her. Her left foot is obscured by the misty waves of what appears to be a waterfall. Together, the figures form a triangular composition in the stormy foreground, but a tranquil island in the center of a calm sea can be seen in the distance on the horizon. The artwork can be read as a symbolic depiction of the chaos of war and hope for a return to peace. The Vision , 1914 Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), The Vision, 1914. Oil on canvas, 24 x 31 in. Private collection. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. The Vision  (1914) is one of several allegorical paintings De Morgan created in response to the carnage and futility of the First World War. It was included in a 1916 exhibition held at De Morgan’s studio in the Chelsea neighborhood of West London and was among thirteen paintings sold for the benefit of the British Red Cross along with S.O.S.  (1914-1916), The Search Light  (1916), and The Red Cross  (1918). In The Vision , a brown-haired maiden in a blue robe personifies Purity wearing a golden headband decorated with grapes and leaves. She clasps several shafts of grain and gazes directly from the canvas. Purity is accompanied by the figure of Peace in a rose-printed red robe with a wreath of olive leaves in her windswept auburn hair. A dark, malevolent figure peers from behind the worried women. He is a bat-winged spirit with flames for hair representing the devastation of war. In the background, a dawning sun casts brilliant rays across the ocean, suggesting hope as it parts the clouds. S.O.S. , 1914-1916 Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), S.O.S. , 1914-1916. Oil on canvas, 367.7 x 257.8 x 23.2 in. De Morgan Foundation Collection, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, UK. Image courtesy of the De Morgan Foundation . Painted in the midst of World War I, S.O.S  (1914-1916) takes its name from the Morse code signal for help–Save Our Souls. The canvas explores the conflict between good and evil. A white-robed woman stands barefoot upon a rock in the sea. Eyes closed, her head thrown back, face tilted toward the heavens, she spreads her arms wide, palms up, as if seeking deliverance from above. She symbolizes the innocence of the victims of war  and England’s hope for peace. Hideous creatures threaten in the roiling water at her feet. De Morgan used dragons and sea monsters to reference evil and death.  Here, they represent the agents of war, ready to inflict physical and mental anguish. A concentric rainbow, symbolic of the afterlife, pierces the starry sky above, offering hope and salvation.  The Gilded Cage , 1919 The Gilded Cage  (1919) was De Morgan’s final work before her death and a commentary on women’s place in society. Inside a sumptuous room, a young woman draws back a curtain to look out at a group of dancers and musicians. Plum purple roses adorn the windowsill. Her lavish gold dress, bracelets, and ring indicate affluence. Yet, broken jewelry and an open book lay discarded on the floor by the woman’s feet, presumably rejected gifts from the older man who sits nearby at a writing desk, staring morosely into space. The inscriptions on the spines of the books on the shelf above the desk are in Italian. They read: “ Poesia ,” “ Musica ,”  "Arte ,” “ Mors ,” "Tratta-to-della ,” and “ Medicin ” (poetry, music, art, death, interpretations and medicine). The woman stares wistfully, one hand reaching out in yearning as she watches the festivities. Another woman is the central figure among the dancers outside. She wears a ragged blue gown and holds a baby, signifying motherhood and maternal duty. Above the revelers, a bird soars free, in contrast to a canary held captive in a cage within the room. Both the canary and the woman at the window can be said to each reside in gilded cages.  Later Life Even after her husband William attained his own success, De Morgan continued to achieve independently and had loyal patrons. Many of the works she painted from 1899 onward reflect her horror of war, particularly the Boer and World Wars. Many other artworks reference women's suffrage.  Around 1909, De Morgan stopped exhibiting regularly. She disdained modern art, commenting after seeing a 1910 exhibition of Post-Impressionist works, “If that is what people like now, I shall wait till the turn of the tide.”   Nevertheless, in 1916, she hosted a successful benefit at her studio in Edith Grove, London, in support of the British Red Cross and the Italian Croce Rossa.   Undated portrait of Anna Wilhelmina Stirling at her home, Old Battersea House, Battersea, UK. Photographer unknown. Image courtesy of the  De Morgan Foundation Collection. Death and the De Morgan Foundation Evelyn De Morgan died on May 2, 1919, of heart failure at the age of sixty-three, two years after her beloved William. She was buried beside him in Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking, Surrey. The inscription on their joint tombstone taken from their co-authored book, The Result of an Experiment ,   reads, “Sorrow is only of the flesh/The life of the spirit is joy.”   After her passing, De Morgan’s remaining paintings were sold to benefit St. Dunstan’s Charity for the Blind in London (now known as Blind Veterans UK). Her sister, Anna Wilhelmina Stirling, purchased a great number of these which became the basis for the De Morgan Foundation Collection. Upon her own death in 1965, Wilhelmina bequeathed the collection to be held in trust for public enjoyment. The De Morgan Foundation is the world’s largest, most comprehensive collection of artworks by Evelyn and William De Morgan  dedicated to promoting and protecting the legacy and reputation of both artists. The De Morgan Foundation Collection houses fifty-six of Evelyn’s oil paintings and over eight hundred of her drawings, alongside pottery by William, considered one of the foremost ceramicists of the Arts and Crafts movement. Through the De Morgan Foundation’s efforts, Evelyn De Morgan’s work continues to be exhibited across the UK and the United States to this day.  Collections and Exhibition History Besides the De Morgan Foundation, De Morgan’s works are held in numerous public and private institutions including the permanent collections of the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, the Walker Art Gallery, the National Trust properties Wightwick Manor and Knightshayes Court, the National Portrait Gallery, the Watts Gallery, the Southwark Art Collection and the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina. Her work was most recently shown in the exhibition “Evelyn De Morgan: The Gold Drawings” (March 11-August 27, 2023) at Leighton House Museum in London. To learn more about Evelyn De Morgan and her art, visit the De Morgan Foundation website here.

by Emily Burkhart July 26, 2023 Jordan Casteel (b. 1989), Jabari , 2013, from the Visible Man series. Oil on canvas, 72 x 52 in. Image courtesy of Jordan Casteel.com. A contemporary artist named Jordan Casteel (b. 1989) uses portraiture to bear witness to people of color who are often either overlooked or fetishized by the art world. Her bold, painterly style on large canvases incorporating saturated color has drawn comparison to such esteemed artists as Alice Neel, Henri Matisse, Jacob Lawrence, and Nancy Spero. Like Alice Neel, Casteel paints everyday people. She also cites Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff, Faith Ringgold, Charles White and Jacob Lawrence of the Harlem Renaissance as influences. Casteel’s focus on the Black and Latinx community grew out of going to museums as a child and not seeing anyone who looked like her on the walls. Jordan Casteel, photographed by David Schulze, 2021. Image courtesy of Culture Type. Background A native of Denver, Colorado, Casteel was born in 1989 to Charles and Lauren Young Casteel. She has both a twin brother and an older brother. Social advocacy and civil rights run in Casteel’s family. Her mother is president and CEO of the Women’s Foundation of Colorado and her father is a trial lawyer specializing in product liability. She was named after Vernon E. Jordan Jr., a family friend, who succeeded her grandfather Whitney Young as head of the National Urban League. Her grandmother, Margaret Buckner Young, was an educator and children’s book author. Casteel did not set out to be an artist. She originally majored in sociology and anthropology at Agnes Scott College, a private liberal arts school in Decatur, Georgia, until her junior year when she took a class in oil painting while studying abroad in Cortona, Italy. The experience had a profound effect and upon returning to Georgia, she changed her major. Casteel graduated in 2011 with her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art. After a brief stint working in special education for Teach for America, she went on to get a Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking in 2014 from Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut. As a student at Yale, Casteel participated in several group exhibitions including 13 Artists in 2014, a historic show featuring the works of all black artists, a first for Yale, curated by then-classmate, the Ethiopian-American artist Awol Erizku. From 2015-2016, she was an artist in residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. She then taught as Associate Professor of Art at Rutgers University in New Jersey from 2016-2021 and in 2021 was named a MacArthur fellow. Jordan Casteel (b. 1989), Jordan 2020, 2020. Oil on canvas, 90 x 78 in. Image courtesy of jordancasteel.com. Art Jabari (2013), from Visible Man Jordan Casteel (b. 1989), Jabari , 2013, from the Visible Man series. Oil on canvas, 72 x 52 in. Image courtesy of Jordan Casteel.com. Casteel’s first major painting series was called Visible Man , a group of male nudes whose title was inspired by and is in counterpoint to the title of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel, The Invisible Man. The subjects of these paintings were fellow students during her time at Yale. Jabari (2013) is one of these. Sunlight filters through a delicate white lace curtain illuminating the pale brown skin of Jabari seated in a wooden rocker. He stares thoughtfully at the viewer, his brow furrowed, hands clasped against his cheek. The painting is a study in light and shadow using shades of brown, red, ochre, tan, and yellow to create Jabari’s glowing skin, his navel, a nipple. There is some bulging arm muscle, lean thighs and calves, an arch of a foot, bony knees and feet. He appears at once wiry yet vulnerable and sensual. Cornelius (2014), from Visible Man Jordan Casteel (b. 1989), Cornelius , 2014, from the Visible Man series. Oil on canvas, 72 x 54 in. Image courtesy of jordancasteel.com. Another work from the Visible Man series is Cornelius (2014), painted from above looking downward as the man sits on the floor amid a pile of clothing, a hanger, some shoes. He gazes upward with an eyebrow raised quizzically. Elbows rest on bent knees, one hand clasps the wrist of the other, hands and shadow incidentally conceal the crotch. Casteel employs a somewhat darker palette with more vivid red, brown, and yellow hues for the person here than in Jabari . As with all of Casteel’s Visible Man paintings, the sitter’s genitalia is obscured. There is no need to fetishize or objectify the male body. A tenderness emerges as she chooses instead to emphasize the humanity and vulnerability of her subjects even amidst a pile of laundry. Zen (2017), from Nights in Harlem Jordan Casteel (b. 1989), Zen , 2017, from Nights in Harlem Series. Oil on canvas, 95 x 60 in. Image courtesy of jordancasteel.com. Casteel’s artistic process often involves neighbors, students, and people she meets on the street. She takes a multitude of photographs that she then studies in detail. Drawing upon these photographic likenesses for inspiration, an image evolves and becomes the final painting. “No one photograph is directly reflected,” she said in a January 15, 2019, interview with VOGUE magazine . Casteel’s Nights in Harlem series featuring people and Black-owned businesses in Harlem reflects this approach. The painting Zen (2017), for example, depicts a dreadlocked red-capped man with beard and sunglasses pausing comfortably while out for a walk with his two dogs. He rests on a wooden post with white graffiti on it next to a dark fire hydrant with bright flecks of maroon. In the background across the street are businesses with apartments above. Partly visible behind the man’s back are the words “nail spa” and “food.“ There are two parked cars whose outlines reflect the yellow orange color of the dogs and street. A tiny figure stands outside the restaurant, rendered in the same tones. The painting is a study of contrasting colors and highlights–red cap, blue shirt, yellow dogs, golden street. Tito (2017), from Nights in Harlem Jordan Casteel (b. 1989), Tito , 2017, from Nights in Harlem series. Oil on canvas, 60 x 78 in. Image courtesy of Jordancasteel.com. Another Nights in Harlem painting is Tito , also from 2017. It portrays a man perched on the edge of a folding chair. He is seated in front of a mural with two other portraits that may be youthful and older versions of each other because they share the same facial characteristics–brown eyes, arched eyebrows, dimples, high cheekbones, broad nose, soft smile. The titular Tito’s own smile mirrors those of the men portrayed behind him. His hand gesture with thumbs touching and both index fingers raised may be a meta commentary on all the levels of framing going on in the picture. Tito is a vivid presence–his skin tone, brightly patterned sneakers, the blue of his jeans and denim shirt, contrasting with the men in the oval “frames” on the wall behind him who are rendered monochromatically. The Spanish words written on the wall beneath the portraits, Estos…Jim , literally means “These Jim” in English. The painting seems playful but what exactly Casteel is signaling here is a mystery. Benyam (2018), from Returning the Gaze Jordan Casteel (b. 1989), Benyam , 2018, from Returning the Gaze series. Oil on canvas, 90 x 78 in. Image courtesy of j ordancasteel.com. Casteel paints students, pedestrians, and business owners alike as she sees them with dignity. She has explained that these “portraits are about engaging with my community, or my landscape, with mutual respect. " An example of this is Benyam (2018). It features the owner and her two sons of the popular Ethiopian restaurant, Benyam, in Harlem, that Casteel patronizes. The family poses at the restaurant counter each one gazing directly at the painter/viewer with familiarity. The son on the right who wears a gray bucket hat with the colors of the Ethiopian flag on it smiles slightly. The mother’s careworn face with furrowed brow also subtly smiles. She wears an African headscarf and black apron. The son in the middle leaning over the counter seems to challenge the viewer. He wears a sky blue baseball cap with the word Queens imprinted upon it. A quickly sketched wall in the background shows wine glasses and other bar accouterments in addition to pictures and art. Magnolia (2022), from In Bloom Jordan Casteel (b. 1989), Magnolia , 2022 from the In Bloom series. Oil on canvas, 78 x 60 in. Image courtesy of jordancasteel.com. In addition to portraiture, Casteel also paints the flowers in her garden and the landscape outside her home in the Catskill Mountains. Some of these were featured alongside portraits in the 2022 exhibition, In Bloom, at the Casey Kaplan Gallery in New York City. Magnolia (2022), depicts a magnolia tree just past peak flowering with intensely white and purplish-pink blossoms. Fallen petals cover the ground. A bluish-gray shed and gray bench behind the tree blend with the colors of the branches. Painted against a cloudy sky and from the perspective of looking down as though from an upper window, the blossoms seem to burst from the frame in the foreground. Commissions Jordan Casteel (b. 1989), God Bless The Child, 2019 from The Practice of Freedom series. Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 in. Image courtesy of jordancasteel.com. Casteel’s painting God Bless the Child (2019) from The Practice of Freedom series was featured on the cover of TIME magazine’s May 2021 issue on racial justice called Visions of Equity . The painting evokes maternal love, showing a mother with her young daughter cradled in her arms on her lap ostensibly in a New York City subway car. One year later, Casteel was included in the 2022 TIME100 Next issue as an artist to watch. Jordan Casteel (b. 1989), God Bless The Child, 2019. TIME May 24/May 31, 2021. Image courtesy of time.com. Casteel was also commissioned to design a cover for VOGUE magazine’s September 2020 fashion issue. She painted the African American fashion designer and activist Aurora James wearing a blue Pyer Moss dress, in honor of James’s new 15 Percent Pledge, which challenges major retailers to reserve 15 percent of their shelf space for products made by Black-owned businesses. The rooftop painting has since been acquired by Pamela J. Goyner and Alfred G. Guiffieda for long-term loan to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Jordan Casteel (b. 1989), Aurora , 2020. Oil on canvas, 90 x 78 in. Image courtesy of Artnet News. In December 2019, Casteel was invited to recreate her 2017 painting, The Baayfalls , as a mural for the High Line park in Manhattan at 22nd St where it was on view until Fall 2021. The painting is a double portrait of Fallou, a woman Casteel met during her residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and her brother Baaye Demba Sow. The pair are seated at a table outside the museum where Fallou sold the hats she designed. Notably, the shirt she wears reads: “I am not interested in competing with anyone. I hope we all make it.” When Baaye arrived in New York from Senegal, Casteel asked the two to sit for a portrait. The title references Baye Fall, a sect of the Sufi brotherhood Mouride, of which the Baayes are members. The gesture Fallou makes with her left hand signifies Allah among members of Baye Fall. The mural has since been replaced as part of an ongoing rotation. Jordan Casteel (b. 1989), The Baayfalls , 2017. Oil on canvas, 90 x 78 in. Image courtesy of jordancasteel.com. Photograph of The Baayfalls mural at The High Line at 22nd Street, New York, NY, December 2019–Fall 2021. Image courtesy of jordancasteel.com. Recognition Casteel’s first major solo exhibition was in her hometown at the Denver Art Museum in February 2019, featuring thirty paintings of subjects from her neighborhood in Harlem spanning the four years from 2014-2018. Since her acclaimed exhibition J ordan Casteel: Within Reach at the New Museum in February 2020, her first major New York City solo show, her works have been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, and exhibited abroad. Also in 2020, Casteel’s 2013 portrait of her mother entitled simply Mom and made while she was a student at Yale, sold for 515,250 British pounds ($666,734), twice the original estimate of 180,000-250,000 pounds at Christie’s London auction on February 12, 2020, setting a new world record for the artist who was only thirty years old at the time. Jordan Casteel (b. 1989), Mom , 2013. Oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in. Image courtesy of Culture Type. In 2021, Casteel was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellowship, a prestigious award given to up and coming artists with a $625,000 stipend paid out over five years. Awarded annually by the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the fellowships are intended to “encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations.” More recently, her work was included in the 2022 exhibition Women Painting Women at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. Casteel and her husband, the Australian-born photographer David Schulze, divide their time between an apartment in Harlem and a house in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. She is jointly represented by Casey Kaplan Gallery in New York City and Massimo de Carlo Gallery, with locations in Milan, London, and Hong Kong. If you enjoyed learning about Jordan Casteel, please check out her website, jordan casteel.com , for more information and further examples of her work.

Text and photographs by Emily Burkhart February 23, 2023 Roederick Vines (American, b. 1949), Thankful , 2008. Mixed media. “ I learned to accept the fact that it [the image] was whatever it was, even if there were no specific words to define it.” -Paul R. Jones A new exhibition at the Flint Institute of Arts entitled “Ways of Seeing: The Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at The University of Alabama” features art from the private collection of the late philanthropist and public servant Paul Raymond Jones (1928-2010). The exhibition opened January 29th and runs through April 23rd. Art & Antiques magazine called Jones “one of the top art collectors in the country.” During his lifetime, he acquired over two thousand works by more than 600 twentieth-century African American artists, building, as the FIA states, “one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of 20th century African American art in the world.” In 2008, two years prior to his death, Jones donated his collection to the University of Alabama. Curated by the FIA’s Rachel Holstege, the exhibition consists of a cross section of Jones’ collection– paintings, works on paper, mixed media, assemblage sculpture and photography from the 1930s to the early 2000s. In an interview with Mid-Michigan Now , Holstege emphasized the importance of “showing the breadth and diversity of African American art to the public.” Among the many artists in the exhibition are Roederick Vines, Valerie Maynard, Sheila Pree Bright, Michael Ellison, Gwendolyn Knight, John Riddle, Felicia Grant Preston, and Duhirwe Rushemeza. The usual museum labels describing the artworks are supplemented throughout the exhibition by quotes from Jones himself along with explanatory panels discussing subject, style, and the medium used and a panel with recommendations for how to start one’s own art collection. The Art S heila Pree Bright (American, b. 1967), Paul R. Jones, 2010. Chromogenic print. The large introductory placard at the exhibition’s entrance features the photographer Sheila Pree Bright’s 2010 portrait of Jones alongside the exhibition’s title. Her image indeed presents a way of seeing Jones himself–an African American man who had served his country wearing the flag. The photograph alone also stands by itself in the exhibition, its museum label noting that this portrait was likely the last taken of Jones before he passed away later that year. The label also adds that the photo was included in the exhibition because Bright (American, b. 1967) was an artist collected both “broadly and deeply” by Jones. Roederick Vines (American, b. 1949), Thankful, 2008. Mixed media. The works Jones collected speak to the African American experience and the visual representation of African Americans in art. Among the pieces displayed, Thankful (2008) by Roederick Vines is a larger than life-size mixed media painting of a young African American man in profile gazing straight ahead as objects seem to magically fall into his hand from above or arc from his hand up into the air. Of his work, Vines said: “My drawings and paintings are aesthetically executed, but when necessary, they are designed to shake up the soul, to make the viewer laugh or cry, or to just contemplate in wonder.” Indeed, the young man in Thankful does make one pause in wonder at what he is doing and thinking and the meaning of the title. Valerie Maynard’s (1937-2022) Get Me Another Heart This One’s Been Broken Many Times (2000) is a monochromatic work iteratively depicting a nude woman with another figure clutched against her chest. Her body appears to be riddled with literal keys and her skull pierced by nails, a symbolism of repeated opening and closing and suffering. Valerie Maynard (American, 1937-2022), Get Me Another Heart This One’s Been Broken Many Times , 2000. Ink on paper. Outside In (1986) by Michael Ellison (1952-2001) depicts two figures seated outdoors. Executed in a palette of purple, brown, pink, black and gray, the woman in the picture looks toward houses and stores across a disconcerting white space. The boy beside her meets the viewer’s gaze. The museum label notes that Ellison primarily depicted people in social settings like churches, bars, and other gathering places. The meaning of this work remains obscure but somehow melancholy because we do not know how or why they are situated the way they are. Michael Ellison (American, 1952-2001), Outside In , 1986. Ink on paper. Gwendolyn Knight (1913-2005) was involved in the Harlem Renaissance and the Works Progress Administration’s mural project. Her silkscreen print New Orleans (2002) is an ambiguous piece much like Outside In . A thin, featureless woman in a high-necked red dress passes by the entrance to a building. On her other side, a large, stocky palm with an enormous red flower or fruit emerging from its fronds looks to devour the woman. It nearly bursts out of the frame, dwarfing the woman and obscuring what might be lettering that could identify this street scene. Gwendolyn Knight (American, 1913-2005), New Orleans , 2002. Screenprint on paper. John Riddle’s (1933-2002) collaged painting Untitled (Club Man in Tuxedo ,1994 ) we are told was inspired by the August 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles personally witnessed by Riddle. While at first glance the painting seems innocuous, on closer inspection it is far more sinister. At the center, an elegant Black man in a tuxedo carries a magazine and cigarette but surrounding him are unsettling scenes of imprisonment, death, and torture featuring African Americans. Among these scenes, a silhouetted figure stands behind bars, a human form hangs from a noose as someone else holds a paper, a woman dances naked on a table, while in another scene, another tuxedo-clad Black man in tophat seems to have followed a person from a building. The entire effect of these images is unnerving. John Riddle (American, 1933-2002), Untitled (Club Man in Tuxedo) , 1994. Mixed media on board. The title of Felicia Grant Preston’s (American, b. 1953) abstract painting Zora’s Fire #11 (1997) suggests an homage to the Harlem Renaissance author and filmmaker Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) whose writing “focused on contemporary issues in the African American community and her struggles as an African American woman.” In her lifetime, Hurston published more than fifty short stories, plays, and essays about deeply felt racial experience. Likewise, Zora’s Fire positively smolders. Felicia Grant Preston (American, b. 1953), Zora’s Fire # 11 , 1997. Acrylic on polyfoam. Lastly, Duhirwe Rushemeza’s linocut A Votre Choix (2005), French for “your choice,” is a somber autobiographical work. After living abroad, Rushemeza (American, b. Rwanda, 1977) and her family returned to her country of birth in 1994 after the genocide that claimed over 800,000 lives and left many thousands of children orphaned and homeless.The print is from a series Rushemeza created depicting the children she saw wandering the streets. Her work chronicles their emotional trials but also emphasizes healing and strength, portraying them not just as victims of war, but also as survivors– votre choix , as the title advises. Duhirwe Rushemeza (American, b. Rwanda, 1977), A Votre Choix (Your Choice), 2005. Linocut on paper. About Paul R. Jones (1928-2010) “Accomplishments have no color. I decided to focus on [African American] artists–to give their artwork exposure and, hopefully, to influence in a positive way their futures.” -Paul R. Jones The man who collected these works, Paul Raymond Jones, was born June 1, 1928, to Will and Ella Jones near Bessemer, Alabama in Muscoda, a mining camp owned by the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Co. He had four older half-sisters and one half-brother from his parents’ previous marriages. He was sent to New York City to live with his half-brother in the Bronx following the 1939 World’s Fair because his mother thought the schools better there. After several years, he returned to Bessemer to finish high school. Following graduation, Jones received a scholarship to attend Alabama State University, later transferring to Howard University in Washington, D.C. His application to the University of Alabama Law School, though initially welcomed, was later officially discouraged because of his race. He then stayed on at Howard for a year of post-graduate work. As funds ran low, he returned home in 1951. Back in Alabama, Jones began working for civil rights and social justice causes at a series of non-profits and governmental agencies, eventually including the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development where he earned a national reputation for his work. He also later served as deputy director of the Peace Corps in Thailand. The Collection “I knew that if I was really going to be serious about collecting I needed to focus, I needed to look around and see where the gaps were.” -Paul R. Jones Jones began collecting art in the 1960s when he purchased three small prints by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Marc Chagall, and Edgar Degas. He then began immersing himself in the art world and noted the underrepresentation of African American artists in museums, galleries, and in the telling of the history of American art. Jones decided to make it his mission to address the cracks in the institutional foundations of the so-called “white cube” through collecting works by living African American artists. He wanted to give them the support and representation they deserved and to influence other art collectors to do the same. Jones never intended to keep the art for himself; rather, he used the collection to educate and inspire others. In addition to his very generous 2008 bequest to the University of Alabama, Jones had previously gifted several hundred works to the art history department at the University of Delaware in 2001 to help “provide an avenue to learn about African American art as part of American art history,” he stated. Paul R. Jones died at his home in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2010 at age 82. “Ways of Seeing: The Paul R. Jones Collection of American Art at the University of Alabama” runs through April 23, 2023, at the Flint Institute of Arts. To learn more about African American artists and their art, I encourage you to visit the exhibit. You will not be disappointed.

By Emily Burkhart May 7, 2023 Dawn Nichols Walden, Random Order XIII , 2006. Cedar bark, cedar root, bear grass. 23 ¾ x 14 1⁄2 in. [irregular] Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum. Weaving sculpture is like creating a spirit, pursuing an essence of plant and purity of form. T he completed form in the end represents both the plant and the artist’s essence. –Dawn Nichols Walden Dawn Nichols Walden Dawn Nichols Walden (b. 1949) is a Native American basketry and fiber artist known for her woven pieces incorporating elements of basketry and contemporary sculpture. She uses cedar tree bark, roots, beargrass, and other natural materials to craft her work. A descendant of the Ojibway tribe, she was born in Vulcan in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in a historically preserved town with a reconstructed Ojibway village and is a member of the Mackinac Band of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians. Walden studied Commercial Art at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. She worked for the U.S. Department of Defense and Air Force for ten years after college. During this time, she also studied fine art, sculpture, ethnobotany, and native cultures. With no formal education in basketry or ethnobotany, Walden acquired her technical skills and knowledge in these areas through workshops led by elders and artisans of various indigenous societies. Dawn Nichols Walden. Image courtesy of United States Artists. Walden’s artistry fuses sculpture with basketry, and incorporates her research of Great Lakes ethnobotany. Joining plants with ancient technology, her work focuses on the significance of raw materials and the manual labor involved in acquiring and preparing the material. “It begins ,” she says, “ in the woods to collect the plant materials with the reverence and reflection on the sacredness of nature.” Walden’s woven sculptural vessels are often composed of two layers. For Random Order XIII (2006) , the inner layer is made with cedar bark sourced from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Walden then devised the unusual outer layer–an intricate pattern created with what has been described as a dense matrix of interwoven cedar bark and beargrass fibers that radiate freely, in a “random order,” from a central cedar root medallion. The Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired this exquisite piece in 2021. Dawn Nichols Walden, Random Order XIII , 2006. Cedar bark, cedar root, bear grass. 23 ¾ x 14 1⁄2 in. [irregular] Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Image courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum. Walden’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions across the country including the ones mentioned below: Random Order of Anishinaube (ca. 2006) Dawn Nichols Walden, Random Order of Anishinaube, ca. 2006. Cedar bark, cedar root. 51 x 23 x 23 in. Photograph by Jon Bolton. Image courtesy of Racine Art Museum , Racine, Wisconsin. Walden’s large cylindrical work called Random Order of Anishinaube (ca. 2006)was among the artifacts displayed in Woven: The Art of Contemporary Native Basketry at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington (March 1-April 23, 2016), and at the Schingoethe Center Museum of Aurora University in Aurora, Illinois (October 4-December 16, 2016). About the Woven exhibition, the curator Todd Clark, founder of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit IMNDN (I am Indian), stated that “exploring Native mythologies, colonization, and identity, with clear vision and lacking romantic overtures, these artists embody the idea of what it means to be a Native artist in the 21st century.” Walden’s Random Anishinabe appears to guard the past while opening to the future. The vessel is ringed on top by a border of what might be construed as conjoined Anishinabe stick figures that recall the Ojibway people, or, more broadly, all of the culturally and linguistically linked tribes. Ties that Bind (2013) Dawn Nichols Walden, Ties that Bind, 2013. Cedar bark, cedar root, 52 x 14 in. Image courtesy of Houston Center for Contemporary Craft , Houston, TX. Walden’s superb piece Ties that Bind (2013) was presented in the traveling exhibition, Rooted, Revived, Reinvented: Basketry in America (2017-2018), a collaboration between the National Basketry Organization in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and The Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri that traveled to the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel, Mississippi, in 2017, and to the Houston Center of Contemporary Craft in Texas in 2018. The exhibition featured ninety-three objects providing a historical overview of American basketry from its origins in Native American, immigrant, and slave communities to its presence within the contemporary art world. Co-curators Jo Stealey and Kristin Schwain of The Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri remind us that “baskets convey meaning through the artists’ selection of materials; the techniques they use; and the colors, designs, patterns, and textures they employ.” Walden’s Ties that Bind is an imposing work 52 inches in height and some 14 inches wide. Walden constructed this woven vessel with the double layer method used previously in Random Order XIII and other pieces. This vessel is, however, gashed from top to bottom as though torn asunder, but the “wound” appears in the process of repair as roots tentatively bridge the gap. A knob or medallion of cedar root rests in the opening as though applying its healing power as a salve to the wound. Radiate (2013) Dawn Nichols Walden , Radiate , 2013. Cedar bark, cedar root. 52 x 14 inches. Image courtesy of United States Artists . Another 52 inch tall work entitled Radiate (2013) was included in the 2014 exhibition Elementals: Women Sculpting Animism at the Cavin-Morris Gallery in New York City from November 1-December 13, 2013. The all-women exhibition featured artists whose pottery and basketry “ express the animistic essence of life. ” Since animism may refer to an essence animating the material universe, the exhibition’s name suggests that the pieces embody this dialogue. Indeed, speaking of her artistic process, Walden says: "the maker becomes infused with the materials, and then the materials make the basket" . She goes on to state that she ‘ ‘believe[s] that the artwork is not only about a beautiful shape and well-crafted materials, but also about the spirit within the materials and within the artist.” Three pieces from Walden’s Restless series (2014-2015) further exemplify this idea as “roots” appear to emerge from each vessel to various, progressive degrees. Restless (2014) Dawn Nichols Walden, Restless , 2014. Cedar bark, cedar root. 14 x 48. Image courtesy of United States Artists . Restless (2015) Dawn Nichols Walden, Restless , 2015. Cedar bark, cedar root. Dimensions unavailable. Image courtesy of John Bedell. Dawn Nichols Walden, Restless, 2015. Cedar bark, cedar root. Dimensions unavailable. Image courtesy of John Bedell . For her artistic accomplishments, Walden was awarded a United States Artists Fellowship in 2018. And more recently, as previously mentioned, her sculpture, Random Order XIII (2006), was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. in 2021. If you enjoyed today’s article on Dawn Nichols Walden and admire her work, please share it online. For more information on the IMNDN exhibition series, visit the website here . To learn more about the National Basketry Association and its work to preserve the art form in America, check out this website.

January 26, 2023 Honorable Mention Mary Chase Perry Stratton with a large vase in 1929, photographed by Mach. Image courtesy of Pewabic Pottery . Mary Chase Perry Stratton For people familiar with Detroit, Pewabic Pottery and its architectural tiles are as iconic as Motown music, the Guardian Building, Belle Isle, and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Less well known is the name of Mary Chase Perry Stratton (1867-1961), one of its two co-founders. Stratton, a ceramic artist and teacher, along with her business partner Horace James Caulkins (1850-1923), a dental supplies dealer and ceramicist, founded Pewabic Pottery ceramic studio and school in 1903. It is Michigan’s oldest continuously operating pottery and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991. Pewabic Pottery may be best known for its architectural tiles with signature iridescent glazes developed by Stratton. They grace such notable buildings as the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Catholic Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, Belle Isle Aquarium and Bridge in Detroit, the Guardian Building also in Detroit, the Rainbow Fountain at Cranbrook Educational Community in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and many others including private homes and contemporary installations such as at the Detroit Medical Center Children’s Hospital, several Detroit People Mover stations, and Comerica Park (home of the Detroit Tigers). Early Life and Education Mary Chase Perry was born in the mining village of Hancock in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula on March 15, 1867. After her father's death when she was ten, Perry moved with her mother and older brother Frederick south to Ann Arbor where Frederick studied to become a pharmacist at the University of Michigan. His graduation in 1881 when Perry was fourteen brought the family to Detroit where Frederick established a pharmacy on Woodward Avenue in the Brush Park neighborhood. Perry’s enthusiasm for art began early. She learned charcoal drawing from Detroit artist Colonel Charles Lum and took her first art classes at the Art School of the Detroit Museum of Art (now the Detroit Institute of Arts) while attending Detroit High School. She followed up with two years of study at the Art Academy of Cincinnati from 1887 to 1889 under the Italian-born sculptor and educator Louis Rebisso. While in Cincinnati, Perry was introduced to China painting, the application of mineral paints onto pre-made pottery that created a watercolor effect that was very popular among women in the late nineteenth-century. In 1894, Perry encountered the Revelation Kiln, a new design of kiln in use at a local studio and purchased one for her own China painting work. Pewabic Pottery Michigan Historical Site Marker. Photographed By J.T. Lambrou, May 5, 2021. Image courtesy of The Historical Marker Database . Horace James Caulkins (1850-1923) Born in Oshawa, Ontario, on July 25, 1850, Horace James Caulkins first came to Detroit in 1871 as a worker in the dry goods business at the George Peck & Company store. He began his career as a dental supplier in 1877 before turning to ceramic arts. Considered a high heat and kiln specialist, Caulkins developed the “Revelation Kiln” which could reach temperatures of 2,400 degrees and was initially used for firing dental enamel to create strong false teeth. Caulkins’ kiln innovation came at the height of the Arts and Crafts movement in America which sought “ to improve standards of decorative design believed to have been debased by mechanization, and to create environments in which beautiful and fine workmanship governed” . Like the British Arts and Crafts movement that rose in opposition to the mechanization of the Industrial Revolution, the American Arts and Crafts movement also emphasized hand craftsmanship and design. Caulkins, coincidentally a neighbor of Mary Chase Perry in Brush Park, hired her to promote his Revelation Kilns locally in 1896 and by 1897 expanded her work to a national scale because of her connections through the National League of Mineral Painters. By 1899, Perry was listed on Revelation Kiln promotional materials as a partner to Caulkins . Mary Chase Perry Stratton at work in the East Jefferson Avenue pottery studio on Detroit’s east side, ca. after 1907. Image courtesy of Pewabic Pottery. Mary Chase Perry Stratton and Horace James Caulkins inside the new Pewabic Pottery Studio on East Jefferson Avenue. Image courtesy of Pewabic Pottery. Founding of Pewabic Pottery Combining Caulkins’ technological skills with Perry’s understanding of glazes on ceramics, the partners founded a pottery together in 1903. They called it Revelation, but the next year they changed the name to Pewabic Pottery. The word Pewabic is derived from the Ojibwa or Chippewa word “wabic,” which means metal, or “ bewabic,” meaning iron or steel. It specifically refers to clay the color of copper and the Pewabic Upper Peninsula copper mine in Hancock where Perry would take walks with her father as a child. The business was established in an old carriage house on John R. Street at a time when women could neither vote nor own property. Perry was “ the artistic and marketing force” of the company while Caulkins provided technical and financial support. Perry ran the Pottery and ceramic school and under her leadership oversaw production of architectural tiles, lamps, and vessels. The burgeoning enterprise soon outgrew its original space, and the founders hired Detroit architects William Buck Stratton and Frank D. Baldwin to design a new studio on East Jefferson Avenue. The new Tudor Revival style building opened in 1907 and was expanded in 1912. Six years later, in 1918, Perry married Stratton. Mary Chase Perry Stratton continued working at the Pottery over many decades, dying on April 15, 1961, at the age of 94. During her life, she was awarded honorary degrees from both the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Wayne State University in Detroit. She taught at both universities over the years and established the ceramics department at U of M. She was also a charter member of the Detroit Society of Women Painters and Sculptors founded in 1903. Aerial view of Pewabic Pottery, Detroit, MI. Image courtesy of Detroit Chamber Winds & Strings. Examples Pottery Vessels Vessels from the Gerald W. McNeely Collection of Pewabic Pottery, 2016. Photo: Tim Thayer and R.H. Hensleigh. Image courtesy of Cranbrook Art Museum. Teardrop vase with contemporary iridescent copper glaze. Image courtesy of Pewabic Pottery. Decorative Tiles Hand-painted Downtown Detroit Map Tile, one of many Detroit and Michigan themed designs. Image courtesy of Pewabic Pottery. 6 x 6 Pine Cone Tile in Pewabic Blue, an original Mary Chase Perry Stratton design and glaze, from ca.1907-1910. Image courtesy of Pewabic Pottery. Installations Pewabic tile fireplace Blended Blue and Green Fireplace, an example of a residential installation. Image courtesy of Pewabic Pottery. Little Caesars Arena, Detroit Pewabic tile embellishments on the pillar inlays flanking the Little Caesars Arena entrance and building header along the Woodward Avenue façade. Image courtesy of Pewabic Pottery. Detroit Institute of Arts Historic harlequin fountain outside Rivera Court, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI. Image courtesy of Pewabic Pottery. Iridescent niche in the entry to the American wing, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI. Image courtesy of Pewabic Pottery. Stair risers up to the Crystal Gallery, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI. Image courtesy of Pewabic Pottery. Guardian Building, Detroit Facade niche of the historic Guardian Building (formerly Union National Trust Bank), Detroit, MI. Copyright Jennifer Johnson-Baross, 2012. Image courtesy of Detroit Architecture Book. Guardian Building north lobby ceiling with Tiffany clock. Image courtesy of the Guardian Building website. Legacy Pewabic Pottery is known for the unique iridescent glazes covering its pottery and tiles in colors created or inspired by Stratton in a manner outlined by the International Arts and Crafts movement. All pottery vessels and tiles are still made and fired by hand to this day. Over a hundred years after its founding, Pewabic Pottery continues to operate in its 1907/12 building as a non-profit educational institution that not only offers classes in ceramics, but exhibits and sells pottery made in house as well as from artists across the United States. It also offers design and fabrication services for public and private buildings. Its exhibitions focus on Pewabic’s role in the history of Detroit, in the Arts and Crafts movement in America, and the development of ceramic art in the United States. The galleries regularly showcase new works by contemporary ceramic artists. If you’ve never been to historic Pewabic Pottery, or if it’s been awhile, I encourage you to visit. When you are there, make sure to leave time for the gift shop. Buy a decorative tile, vessel, ornament, or jewelry item. They make wonderful gifts–for yourself or others. And don’t forget to take a tour of the architectural installations around the area featuring the beauty and craftsmanship of Mary Chase Perry Stratton’s legacy– ”enrich[ing] the human spirit through clay.” For more information on Pewabic Pottery, visit their website here.

January 10, 2023 Honorable Mention Signed photograph of Maija (Majlis) Grotell (1899-1973), ca. 1920s. Photographer unknown. Image courtesy of Wikimedia. To kick off my new series spotlighting artists who have lived and worked in Michigan, I’m starting with the Finnish-born ceramicist and educator, Maija Grotell (1899-1973) who taught at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, outside Detroit. Cranbrook Academy of Art’s reputation for craft in architecture was built by Grotell, the first woman and longest-serving head of Ceramics at the Academy. In fact, Grotell is responsible for changing the title of the program from Department of Pottery to Ceramics, “where the focus was not just an object, but the development of materials, processes, and the ability to enhance spaces” ( “The Potter Who Helped Shape Cranbrook Architecture” -MetropolisMagazine ). Maija Grotell, Vase, ca. 1950. Glazed stoneware, signed MG, 14.5 x 8 in. Image courtesy of Wright: Auctions of Art and Design. Grotell became known for her radical experimentation with glazes creating shades that ranged from intense blues to bright oranges, seen in the glazed blue stoneware Vase (ca. 1950) pictured. Although a number of women played important roles in the art pottery movement in the early twentieth-century, Grotell was one of only a few female ceramists active between the first and second World Wars. Often described as the “Mother of American Studio Ceramics, " Grotell was influential in bringing European pottery kick wheel techniques to the United States. Maija Grotell, Vase, ca. 1942. Albany slip over glazed stoneware, 20 x 11 1/8 in. Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. Image courtesy of Cranbrook Art Museum. Early Life Born Majlis Grotell in Helsinki, Finland, on August 19, 1899, Grotell (1899-1973) was the athletic daughter of a sculptor and woodcarver mother who created Renaissance-style sculpture and wood carvings. Her father, a businessman, died in 1914. As a teenager, Grotell studied at the Ateneum, the only art school in Helsinki and where her mother had also studied. However, her artistic ambitions of making pottery were not supported by the Ateneum teachers who favored her mother’s work and compared the two. Grotell’s training included painting, sculpture and design. She supported herself during school by drawing for the National Museum and working as a textile designer. Upon graduation in 1920, Grotell completed six years of graduate work in ceramics with the artist-potter Alfred William Finch, the only professional ceramics teacher in all of Finland in the 1920s, who encouraged her talent with the potter’s wheel. Unable to find work in Helsinki, where there was little opportunity for innovation, teaching, or marketing of ceramics, Grotell left Finland for New York in 1927 at the age of 28. Education In America, Grotell enrolled in a summer-school ceramic studies course at New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in Alfred, New York, where she met the founder of the school, Charles F. Binns in 1927. Grotell clashed with Binns on his teaching methodology, preferring the potter's wheel to Binns's constructive method . At the time, wheel-thrown ceramics were not common in the United States. Instead, American potters used the methods of coiling, slip casting, or slab building. In the 1920s and 1930s, there were minimal ceramic facilities in the United States, and pottery was considered either an industry or a hobby. To sustain her career, Grotell was often asked to demonstrate her techniques with the potter’s wheel and she found work teaching throughout New York City while exhibiting and selling her own ceramics. A Diploma from the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition and a Silver Medal at the Paris International in 1937 were among the first of twenty-five major exhibition awards Grotell was to receive over the next thirty years, including six from the Syracuse Ceramic National Exhibitions and the Charles Fergus Binns Medal from Alfred University in 196I. From 1936 until 1938, she was the first art instructor and research assistant at the School of Ceramic Engineering at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Maija Grotell, 1947. Photographed by Harvey Croze. Copyright Cranbrook Archives. Neg. P39. Image courtesy of Cranbrook Academy of Art. Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1938-1966 In 1938, Grotell accepted a position as head of the ceramics program at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. A year prior, in 1937, she had been turned down for the post because of her gender. She was also hesitant to take the position for fear of losing her independence and fear that credit for any success would be attributed to male colleagues. However, when the post was offered to her, Grotell accepted and left Rutgers for Cranbrook. Her move to Cranbrook marked a turning point in her career. It was while teaching there that she created her finest work. With access to a large kiln, she could throw pots on a scale far grander than previously and she developed a sophisticated, geometric style. Grotell worked primarily with stoneware clay bodies and high-fire glazes. Throughout her long career, including twenty-eight years at Cranbrook, Grotell was an avid experimenter, investigating a variety of glaze chemistries, kilns, and clay. Maija Grotell with Pot, March 1941. Published in the 100 Treasures catalog. Image courtesy of Cranbrook Archives, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, Cranbrook Archives Digital Collections. Maija Grotell, Vase , 1940-1942. Stoneware, Albany Slip over unglazed clay, 21.5 x 8.25 in. Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. Image courtesy of Cranbrook Art Museum. Influence and Legacy As an educator, Grotell was an innovative and dedicated instructor. She discouraged imitation and urged her students to develop their own individual aesthetics. In the early 1960s, Grotell developed a muscle condition that limited her ability to throw clay, impacting her creative production. Yet, by the time she retired from Cranbrook in 1966, Grotell had developed the ceramics department into one of the most prominent and influential in the United States. Today, Grotell’s work is in twenty-one museum collections, including the American Craft Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as well as the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art and, of course, the Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum. Maija Grotell, Jar , ca. 1944. Glazed stoneware, signed MG, 11 in. high. E. John Bullard Collection. Image courtesy of The Marks Project. Grotell’s groundbreaking glaze formulas paved the way for the use of ceramics in architecture. Particularly after her colleague, the Finnish-American architect and industrial designer Eero Saarinen (1910-1961), used her glazes on the exterior of the General Motors Technical Center in Troy, Michigan, completed in 1956 and since designated a National Historic Landmark. Grotell’s glaze techniques made the colored bricks suitable for commercial use. One of her glazes, an intense blue-green shade called “Grotell blue” was also used on the walls of Cranbrook Academy of Art’s Williams Natatorium designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien in 1999. Elsewhere, the Cranbrook Kingswood Middle School for Girls, completed in 2011, uses a green glaze palette inspired by Grotell. Grotell died in 1973 at the age of 74 at her apartment in Pontiac, Michigan. I hope you have enjoyed today’s Michigan artist profile. Stay tuned for more Michigan history lessons and artists who have (or had) connections to Michigan. Maija Grotell, Vessel , ca. 1946. Glazed stoneware, signed MG, 7 3/8 x 7 7/8 x 7 5/8 in. The Art Institute of Chicago. Image courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago.

By Emily Burkhart September 26, 2024 Anna Boch (1848-1936),  En Juin (In June), 1894. Oil on canvas, dimensions unavailable. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi, Belgium. Image courtesy of Art Errors. Considered a grand dame of the Belgian art scene , the Neo-Impressionist artist Anna Boch (1848-1936) was both a painter and accomplished musician as well as a passionate art collector with a shrewd knack for promoting talented and struggling artists, many of whom were personal friends. Her large collection of paintings included works by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Paul Signac (1863-1935), and James Ensor (1860-1949), among others. Notably, she purchased a painting by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), La Vigne Rouge (The Red Vineyard at Montmajour,   1888), that was believed to be the only painting Van Gogh ever sold in his lifetime . It is estimated that Boch completed more than 900 of her own paintings over her career as well. She was a woman of rare independence for her time. She never married nor had children; instead, she devoted her life to art, music, and travel. She was the first and only female member of the Belgian artistic group  Les XX  ( Les Vingt,  The Twenty, 1883-1893) and became one of the few female artists to achieve acclaim as a Pointillist . Today, Anna Boch has the distinction of being the most important woman artist of her time in Belgium. Vincent Everarts, Portrait photo of Anna Boch at easel,  nd. Private collection, Binche, Belgium. Image courtesy of De Witte Raaf. Background and Education Anna-Rosalie Boch, known as Anna Boch, was born on February 10, 1848, in Saint-Vaast, Hainaut, Belgium, into a family devoted to music and the visual arts who had been in the ceramics business since 1748. Her father, Frédéric Victor Boch, was the co-founder of the faience porcelain (glazed earthenware) factory, Boch Fréres-Kéramis, in La Louvières, Belgium, while her uncle, Eugene von Boch, co-founded the Villeroy & Boch ceramics factory in Mettlach, Germany. Anna received musical and artistic training from a young age, twin passions she would pursue throughout her lifetime as she became an accomplished pianist, organist, and violinist as well as an artist and art collector. Her younger brother, Eugéne (1855-1941), who also became an established painter and art collector in his own right, befriended Van Gogh who would paint a striking portrait of him in 1888. In 1876, Anna met the well-known landscape, portrait, and still-life painter Isidore Verheyden (1846-1905), who would become her mentor and painting teacher for many years, until she dismissed him as being “too bourgeois and academic.”   Les XX  (1883-1893) and La Libre Esthétique (1894-1914) Anna and Eugéne’s cousin, Octave Maus (1856-1919), an art critic, writer, and lawyer active in the Belgian art scene, helped found and was elected secretary of Les XX (The Twenty) in 1884, a group of twenty Belgian painters, designers, and sculptors. Anna became its only female member in 1885. That same year, she exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, France. Les XX  held annual art exhibitions inviting international Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist artists to participate including Camille Pisarro (1830-1903), Claude Monet (1840-1926), Georges Seurat (1859-1891), Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) and, posthumously, Van Gogh in 1890 and 1891. While in Les XX , Boch met the Neo-Impressionist Théophile “Théo” van Rysselberghe (1862-1926), who would become an artistic influence and paint a thoughtful portrait of her in the Pointillist style. After the dissolution of Les XX in 1893, Maus founded its successor,  La Libre Esthétique (The Free Aesthetics) of which Boch was also a member. She regularly participated in its salon exhibitions from 1894 until its last in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I. She had also joined with the painter Emile Claus (1849-1924), a leader of the Belgian Impressionists, as one of the founding members of the artist group Vie et Lumiére  (Life and Light) in 1904 until it, too, disbanded in 1914. By 1915, German troops occupied Belgium, including Brussels, its capital. Théophile “Théo” van Rysselberghe (1862-1926), Anna Boch in her Studio,  ca. 1889-1893. Oil on canvas, 37.4 x 25.5 in. Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Artistic Style Though Boch is perhaps best remembered for the luminous, Impressionist style of the genre scenes and landscapes she created for the majority of her career, she experimented with Pointillism in her earlier works especially during the 1890s. In 1887, Boch saw the Neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat’s Pointillist painting, A  Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1886), which had a transformative effect on her aesthetic. Her brushstrokes were composed of small dabs of color but were freer and more expressive, putting her in the vanguard of the new artists:  “I am not lumped together with the old ones but put at the very forefront,"  she wrote to her brother Eugéne,  “I am so happy.”   As one critic remarked at the time, “Anna Boch has admirably deployed the tenets of Pointillism, taking its sparkling light and leaving the idiosyncrasies of the process behind.”   Boch produced her first Pointillist painting in 1889. Selected Works Tijdens de Elevatie  ( During the Elevation ), 1892-1893 Anna Boch (1848-1936), Tijdens de Elevatie   (During the Elevation ), 1892-1893. Oil on canvas, 29.3 x 44.4 in. Mu.Zee, Ostend, Belgium. Image courtesy of  Wikimedia Commons. One of Boch’s works in the Pointillist style called During the Elevation  (1892-1893) depicts worshippers–men, women, a young girl–entering a country church for Sunday service. Heads bowed, they enter the church in procession, their shadows silhouetted in mauve on the stone walkway. The women wear white caps on their heads. An elderly, gray-haired man brings up the rear poignantly moving with one knee resting on a wooden chair. He is the heart of the composition. To the left is the church cemetery, its graves marked by crosses. Behind the church is a silo and the thatched buildings of the village. Boch’s painting consists of loose, layered spots of color in a much freer version of Pointillism than that employed by her male contemporaries. Retour de la Messe par les Dunes (Return from Mass through the Dunes), 1893-1895 Anna Boch (1848-1936), Retour de la Messe par les Dunes (Return from Mass through the Dunes), 1893-1895. Oil on canvas, 19.6 x 26.3 in. Musée d'art de la Province de Hainaut, Charleroi, Belgium. Image courtesy of the Musée d'art de la Province de Hainaut. Boch’s Return from Mass through the Dunes (1893-1895) likewise depicts a church procession. Here, instead of entering a church for service, the people are leaving. A group of sketchily painted, faceless figures including an elderly man and woman, and a mother and several children are seen departing from the church in the background. The church and the figures of the congregants are indistinct, suggested in the sandy, coastal landscape. All is portrayed in shades of sunshine, mauve, green, blue and brown. From 1890 onwards, Boch’s painting was characterized by a significant use of the color mauve, which she used in particular to mark the shadows of her characters.  Indeed, mauve shadows dapple the sand and dunes here, as well as the church and the clouds in the sky giving the painting its dimensionality. En Juin (In June), 1894 Anna Boch (1848-1936),  En Juin (In June), 1894. Oil on canvas, dimensions unavailable. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Charleroi, Belgium. Image courtesy of Art Errors. In June (1894) presents the profile of a dark-haired young woman in a lacy white dress with matching parasol. She is standing by the steps of La Closiére, the Boch family’s castle in Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, a commune on the east coast of the Cotentin peninsula in northwestern France. Purple clematis cascades down the stone bannister, mixing with other flowers and the grass below and stopping on a massive pedestal column with an urn of yellow flowers on top. Clasping her parasol in one hand, the woman reaches to touch a purple blossom with the other. The way Boch captures the sunlight and shadow is reminiscent of During the Elevation.  A year later, in February 1895, Boch exhibited In June at the Salon de La Libre Esthétique in Brussels, where it received rave reviews for the manner in which she evoked the heat of summer. A few weeks after the exhibition opening, the Belgian State purchased the painting and gave it to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Charleroi. It was the first time one of her paintings had sold. The Mu.ZEE art museum in Ostend, Belgium, included  In June in its acclaimed 2023 exhibition, “Anna Boch, An Impressionist Journey” celebrating the 175th anniversary of her birth that later traveled to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pont-Aven in France. The Shores of Brittany (Coast of Brittany),  ca. 1901 Anna Boch (1848-1936), The Shores of Brittany (Coast of Brittany) , ca. 1901. Oil on canvas, 42.5 x 57.6 in. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. By 1900, Pointillism had gone out of fashion and Boch’s works became solidly Impressionistic for the remainder of her life. The Shores of Brittany ( Coast of Brittany, ca. 1901) portrays the pink-tinged cliffs along the coast of Brittany, France, on the English Channel. Composed primarily of beiges and blues with mauve and green hues, Boch captures the effect of waves cresting on the rocks, some of which are half-submerged in the water, and the unique colors of the granite. Grasses cover the top of the cliffs. In the distance, the billowing white of sailboats can be seen. The entire painting shimmers in sunshine. The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium purchased  The Shores of Brittany in 1902 .   Portrait of Anna Boch in her home, Villa Anna, in Ixelles, surrounded by her art. Date and photographer unknown. Image courtesy of   DASartes. Art Collection In 1889, Boch began buying avant-garde paintings, eventually building a collection that came to encompass over 400 Post-Impressionist paintings, a third of which were by women artists including Berthe Art (1857-1934), Euphrosine Beernaert (1831-1901), Jean Canneel (1889-1963), Lucie Cousturier (1876-1925), Anna De Weert (1867-1950) and Nina Alexandrowicz (1888-1945). Prominent works in the collection also included Paul Gauguin Conversation in the Meadows, Pont Aven  (1888), Georges Seurat The Seine at La Grande Jatte  (1888), and Paul Signac La Calanque  (The Cove, 1906) in addition to works by Henry Moret (1856-1913), Émile Bernard (1868-1941), and Jan Toorop (1858-1928). In 1890, at the Les XX  Art Expo in Brussels, Boch purchased Van Gogh’s 1888 painting, La Vigne Rouge (The Red Vineyard at Montmajour) for 400 francs ($1600 in today’s value) where it was exhibited publicly for the first time. Boch later sold the painting to a Paris art gallery in 1910 where it was bought by Ivan Morozov (1871-1921), a Russian businessman and art collector. It is now in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and considered one of the world’s most prestigious and valuable paintings . Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890),  La Vigne Rouge  (The Red Vineyard at Montmajour), 1888. Oil on canvas, 29.5 x 36.6 in. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia. Image courtesy of  Wikimedia Commons.   Boch purchased Van Gogh’s 1889 Plaine de la Crau  (Peach Trees in Blossom) at the Tanguy Gallery in Paris for 350 francs (about $1400 today) after Van Gogh’s death in 1891. Julien Tanguy (1825-1894), a French painter and owner of the combined gallery and art supply shop, was a close friend of Van Gogh’s, both displaying his work and painting three portraits of him. Plaine de la Crau  was acquired by the British industrialist and art collector Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947) in 1927 for 9,000 pounds or only about $11,990 in today’s dollars . It now hangs in the collection of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.  Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Plaine de la Crau (Peach Trees in Blossom), 1889. Oil on canvas, 25.5 x 31.8 in. The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK (Samuel Courtauld Trust). Image courtesy of The Courtauld Institute of Art. Death and Honors In 1903, Boch was named a Knight of the Order of Leopold in Belgium. In 1919, she was appointed Belgium’s Officer of the Order of the Crown and in 1928, Officer of the Order of Leopold. While Boch continued to paint and exhibit until the end of her life, she unfortunately went deaf and lost her ability to make music, which deeply affected her. She died at the age of 88 on February 25, 1936, in Ixelles, Belgium, where she is interred. In her will, Boch arranged for the sale of much of her art collection and for the proceeds to pay for the retirement of needy artist friends. She also donated some of her own paintings and some from her collection to various museums including the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She left a further 140 of her paintings to her godchild, Ida van Haelewijn, who was the daughter of her gardener, Antoine van Haelewijn, and the subject of many of them. In 1968, Boch’s great nephew, Luitwin von Boch, an entrepreneur and CEO of Villeroy & Boch Ceramics, acquired Ida’s entire collection, but let it remain with Ida until her death in 1992. Exhibition History and Documentary The first retrospective of Boch’s paintings took place in 1994 at the Pontoise museum in Pontoise, France.  In 2000, the Belgian art historian Therése Thomas curated the retrospective “Anna Boch 1848-1936” at the Royal Museum of Mariemont at Morlanwelz and in 2005 she published a catalog raisonné of Boch. Another exhibition about Boch’s life and work was in 2010 at the Vincent van Gogh Huis Museum in Zundert, Netherlands. The permanent Anna and Eugéne Boch Exposition opened on March 30, 2011, at the Villeroy & Boch Ceramic Museum in Mettlach, Germany; while in 2015, the Belgian director and writer Françoise Levie completed a documentary about Boch and Van Gogh entitled Anna and Vincent. The film premiered at the Wellington Museum in Waterloo, south of Brussels, on January 19, 2016. To learn more about Anna Boch, her art, and her art collection, visit the website Anna Boch.com , established in 2011 to preserve Boch’s legacy.

by Emily Burkhart August 30, 2024 Aurora Reyes at work, ca. 1937. Anonymous photographer. Secretariat of Culture, Mexico. Image courtesy of Mexico Desconocido.   “I love freedom above all else.” -Aurora Reyes Flores Aurora Reyes Flores (1908-1985), better known as Aurora Reyes, was an artist, poet, teacher, and political activist. She was the first exponent of Mexican muralism (1920s-1950s), art projects funded by the government in the wake of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) to help unify the people and foster a national identity, or Mexicanidad. She was also the first woman to receive an official mural commission from the government, resulting in her most celebrated work, Atentado a las Maestras Rurales  (Attack on the Rural Teachers, 1936) created for the lobby of the Centro Escolar Revolución (Revolution School Center) in Mexico City. While not as renown as Diego Rivera (1886-1957), José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), or David Siqueiros (1896-1974), known as Los Tres Grandes  (The Three Greats) of Mexican muralism, Flores brought a feminist perspective to her work that they did not. She also taught drawing and painting for decades, organized for teachers unions, and fought for the rights of women, the working class, and the poor; earning her the nickname, la magnolia iracunda (the fiery magnolia). In addition, she was an accomplished poet and founding member of the feminist group Las Pavorosas  (The Terrifying Ones) dedicated to fighting for women’s rights, suffrage, and gender equality for Mexican women. Although she received much acclaim in her lifetime, after her death in 1985, Flores fell into obscurity. Her murals fell into disrepair, one was lost. Today, she remains little known outside of art circles and her native Mexico. Portrait of Aurora Reyes Flores. Photographer and date unknown. Image courtesy of the Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions. Early Life and Education Aurora Reyes Flores was born in Hidalgo del Parral in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, on September 9, 1908, two years before the outbreak of the revolution, to Captain León Reyes, a soldier, and his wife Luisa Flores. Her paternal grandfather, Bernardo Reyes, was a military general, and her uncle, Alfonso Reyes, a well-known writer and scholar. In 1913, due to political persecution and her grandfather’s involvement in La Decena Trágica  (the Ten Tragic Days), a failed coup d'état by opponents of president Francisco I. Madero between February 9 and 19, Flores’s father went into hiding for a year. To avoid government backlash, Flores and her mother fled to Mexico City. Forced into poverty, her mother baked bread that they sold at the Lagunilla market to survive. There, Flores suffered firsthand the harshness of life for the country’s most marginalized classes. Her childhood experiences shaped her political convictions, encouraging her to fight for social justice on behalf of the rights of women, the working class, and the poor throughout her adult life.   When the persecution against her family lessened in 1921, Flores began classes at the National Preparatory School;  however, she was soon expelled after an altercation with another student over her family’s political connections. During her brief attendance at the National Preparatory School she did meet the future artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) who would become a lifelong friend and whose portrait she later painted in 1946, Retrato Frida frente al espejo (Portrait of Frida in Front of the Mirror). Kahlo would introduce her to Diego Rivera and the Mexican Communist Party. Aurora Reyes (1908-1985), Retrato Frida frente al espejo  (Portrait of Frida in Front of the Mirror), 1946. Oil on canvas, dimensions unavailable. Instituto Chihuahuense de la Cultura, Chihuahua, Mexico. Image courtesy of the Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions. Soon after her expulsion, Flores began attending the National School of Fine Arts where she took evening painting classes, graduating in 1924. She had her first solo art exhibition at age eighteen in 1925 at the Galería ARS. That same year, she married the journalist and writer Jorge Godoy (1891/2-?) with whom she would have two sons, Héctor, born in 1926, and Jorge in 1931. Post-divorce, Flores and Godoy never saw each other again, leaving Flores to raise their sons on her own. From 1927 onwards, beginning at age nineteen and for the next thirty-seven years, she taught painting and drawing at the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico City. In 1937, she co-founded the avant-garde collective Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios or LEAR (the League of Writers and Revolutionary Artists), a group dedicated to promoting the ideals of the Mexican Revolution and struggles of the working class through art.   Atentado a las maestras rurales (Attack on the Rural Teachers, 1936) Aurora Reyes (1908-1985), Atentado a las maestras rurales  (Attack on the Rural Teachers), 1936. Fresco, 86 ft. Instituto Chihuahuense de la Cultura, Chihuahua, Mexico. Image courtesy of the Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions. Flores’s most famous mural,  Atentado a las maestras rurales (Attack on the Rural Teachers, 1936) , originally titled The Murdered Teacher, was painted for the lobby of the Centro Escolar Revolución in a downtown neighborhood of Mexico City. The Mexican government commissioned Flores and LEAR to create murals for the school to promote its embodiment of a new form of “socialist education” in the country .  Attack on the Rural Teachers commemorates the real-life massacre of sixteen teachers in the village of San Felipe Torres Mocha in the state of Guanajuato. During the 1930s, rural school teachers, many of them women, were regularly attacked by zealous supporters of Catholic-controlled education in the country.  Flores blamed the Catholic Church for supporting these actions. Indeed, the man at the center of the mural wears a scapular, a Catholic necklace associated with devotion to the Virgin Mary. Barefoot with his face obscured by a sombrero, he violently beats a teacher with the stock of his gun. The teacher’s face and body lie contorted in pain, arms flailing helplessly. To the left, another man in a hat with his back to the viewer, clutches her hair in a tight fist while holding pages torn from a book. His arms and legs eerily form the shape of a swastika. On the far right, three children, two boys and a girl, stand in the doorway of the schoolhouse. The taller boy in front stares in horror, the girl behind him with her hand on his shoulder looks shocked while the younger boy in the background buries his face in the girl’s hair, unable to watch the violence taking place. A ttack on the Rural Teachers was featured in the 2018 group exhibition, “The Mexican Muralism Movement” at the Central University of New York (CUNY) alongside works by Diego Rivera, Fernando Leal, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Death and Exhibition History Aurora Reyes Flores died at the age of seventy-six on April 26, 1985. She was the subject of the 2011 biography, Aurora Reyes: Alma de Montaña (Aurora Reyes: Mountain Soul) by Margarita Aguilar Urbán, which was named Best Book of 2011 by the Mexican literary criticism website Sálon de Letras. Posthumous exhibitions included the 2007 group show, “Women Artists of Modern Mexico: Frida’s Contemporaries” at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. In 2015, the Metro Collective Transportation System, in collaboration with the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature through the Museum of Art of Ciudad Juárez and the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana, paid tribute to Flores with an exhibition of her work at the Bellas Artes train station. The National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature and the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana also mounted the 2018 exhibition, “Aurora Reyes (1908-1985): The First Mexican Muralist” at the Museum of Art of Ciudad Juárez. Flores had a career retrospective at the Mexico City Museum entitled “Aurora Reyes: A Life in Art 1908-1985.’’ Curated by Ester Echeverría, the exhibition ran from March 14-May 26, 2019. Flores’s contributions paved the way for other women muralists in Mexico, notably Elena Huerta Muzquiz, Rina Lazo, and Fanny Rabel.

By Emily Burkhart July 28, 2024 Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge , ca. late 1680s. Oil on canvas, 42 1/2  x 33 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Photo by Lee Stalsworth. Image courtesy of the  National Museum of Women in the Arts. Introduction A specialist in the painting of flowers, the Dutch still-life artist Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) developed her own style of asymmetric floral composition. Her paintings also combine a scientific eye with a keen sense of observation perfected under the influence of her anatomist and botanist father who encouraged her art. During a career spanning more than six decades, Ruysch became the most documented woman painter of the Dutch Golden Age.  She painted professionally, taking commissions and signing and dating all her works. Unlike many of her female contemporaries, she did not give up painting after marriage but continued to paint even while raising ten children. Ruysch painted from the age of fifteen until she was eighty-three. She produced several hundred paintings of which more than 250 have been documented, completing her last known still life in 1747 three years prior to her death. Ruysch was the first female Dutch artist to win international recognition in her own lifetime and her paintings routinely sold for more than that of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), the leading portraitist and most famous Dutch artist of the era. Though still lifes today are often regarded as a lesser form of artistic expression, Ruysch’s reputation has not diminished. She is regarded as one of the most talented still-life artists of either sex by art historians.  Godfried Schalcken (1643-1706), Portrait of Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) , before 1706. Oil on canvas, 28.2 x 24.4 in. The Wilson, Cheltenham, UK. Image courtesy o f Wikimedia Commons. Early Life One of twelve siblings, Rachel Ruysch was born June 3, 1664, in The Hague, Netherlands. She was surrounded by art and science her entire life. Her father, Frederik Ruysch, was a well-known physician and professor of anatomy and botany as well as an amateur painter who published both textual and graphic descriptions of botanical discoveries. With his trained scientific mind, Frederik observed and recorded nature with great accuracy, a skill he instilled in his daughter. He also collected art, notably the paintings of local artist Otto Marseus van Schrieck (ca. 1613-1678), who was known for his depictions of dark, fungi- and insect-glutted forest floors–a genre known as sottobosco (Italian for “undergrowth”) which would influence Ruysch’s later work. Her mother, Maria Post, came from a creative background as well. Her mother’s father, Pieter Post, was initially a landscape and battle scene painter before pivoting to architecture. In the 1640s, he was appointed court painter and architect for Prince Frederik Hendrik and settled in The Hague. Maria’s paternal uncle Frans Post was also an artist, specializing in landscape painting. When Rusych was three years old, her family moved to Amsterdam, where she was primarily raised. Beginning in 1667, her father served as Amsterdam’s praelector (college officer) of anatomy and took positions as a professor of botany and supervisor of the city’s botanical garden.  His reigning achievement was his famed collection of anatomical and botanical curiosities–a five-room assemblage of embalmed and wax-injected organs, animals, plants, and other oddities which he posed in artful dioramas and publicly exhibited–that Rachel used to hone her drawing skills. These early drawings were mainly studies of insects and flowers. Frederik encouraged his daughter’s artistic pursuits and cultivated her talent. Artistic Training Further influencing Ruysch’s vision and future direction was the family’s location in Amsterdam on Bloemgracht  (the “flower canal”), an area famed for its natural beauty. She studied under the Dutch flower painter Willem Van Aelst (1627-1683) to whom she apprenticed in 1679 at the age of fourteen, a rare opportunity for a young woman at the time. Since moving there in 1657, Van Aelst had become widely recognized as Amsterdam’s premier painter of still lifes and flowers  and was known for his spiraling compositions that eschewed the convention of symmetrical arrangements . Van Aelst taught Ruysch how to arrange bouquets so they would look spontaneous and less formalized, producing a more realistic and three-dimensional effect in her work. Sometimes she would use real moss to apply paint to her pictures, a method borrowed from both Van Aelst and Van Schriek, as well as butterfly wings to give her surfaces texture. Her earliest paintings began appearing around 1680 and consisted mostly of flower studies and woodland scenes. Ruysch continued as a pupil of van Aelst until his death in 1683. Rachel Ruysch and Michiel van Musscher (1645-1705), Rachel Ruysch , 1692. Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Image courtesy of Hyperallergic . By the time she was eighteen, Ruysch was producing and selling independently signed works in her own studio, as the 1692 collaborative self-portrait with Dutch artist Michiel van Musscher attests. Her prices were high enough that she only had to complete a few paintings a year. As she became more accomplished, she taught her father and younger sister Anna (1666-1754) her techniques as well. Anna Elisabeth Ruysch also became a noted still-life artist, although she never attained the stature of her older sister and stopped painting when she married at the age of twenty-one. However, because Anna rarely signed her work, only a small number of paintings can be attributed to her with certainty  and just ten of her signed works survive. Marriage and Family Juriaen Pool (1666-1745), Portrait of the Painter Rachel Ruysch, ca. 1710-1720. Oil on canvas, 32 x 25 in. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Image courtesy of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. In 1693, at twenty-nine years of age, Ruysch married the Amsterdam portrait painter and lace dealer Juriaen Pool (1666-1745), who painted a well-known portrait of her sometime between 1710 and 1720. The couple reportedly enjoyed a happy marriage and had ten children together. Despite marital and motherly demands, Ruysch continued to paint and produce commissions for an international circle of patrons. She also continued to sign her work with her maiden name. Most women of the time were expected to participate in traditional feminine art forms, such as sewing or spinning, but Ruysch was able to carry on with her painting because her contribution to the family’s income allowed the couple to hire help to care for their children.   Ruysch and Pool moved their young family to The Hague in 1699, where she was offered membership in the academic artists club, Confrerie Pictura, as their first female member. In 1701, both she and her husband joined the Guild of St. Luke, the city’s association of painters. Seven years later, they were invited to Düsseldorf, Germany, to serve as court painters to Duke Johann Wilhelm van der Pfalz II, the Elector Palatine of Bavaria (1658-1716), who was named godfather to Ruysch’s tenth and last child, a son, born in 1711 when she was forty-seven years old. She and Pool remained court painters until the prince’s death in 1716. They then returned to Amsterdam. With her meticulous eye for detail and composition, Ruysch’s artworks were again in great demand by the Dutch nobility. Dutch Flower Painting Ruysch’s career paralleled the rise of the Dutch horticultural industry and the science of botany. The Netherlands became the largest importer of new and exotic plants and flowers from around the world.  Once valued primarily for their use as herbs or in medicine, flowers became appreciated for their beauty and fragrance, as prized luxuries and desirable status symbols for the wealthy.   The tulip, featured in many of Ruysch’s paintings, was the most exotic having been introduced from Turkey in the late 16th century.   During this era, art was divided into two categories: “greater” and  “lesser.” The greater art category was composed of religious and historical paintings. The lesser was still life, portrait, and landscape. These latter artistic areas were considered more appropriate for women, with women artists particularly attracted to still life. Overall, professional painting was considered a male domain and it was widely believed that women were incapable of true artistic genius. However, Ruysch stood out from her female contemporaries because of her ambition and for the realism and scientific accuracy of her work.   Moreover, her diagonal compositions differed from the more compact and symmetrical arrangements most other women painters employed. Selected Works Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge,  ca. late 1680s  Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge , ca. late 1680s. Oil on canvas, 42 1/2  x 33 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Photo by Lee Stalsworth. Image courtesy of the  National Museum of Women in the Arts. One of Ruysch’s earliest floral still lifes, Roses, Convolvulus, Poppies and Other Flowers in an Urn on a Stone Ledge  (ca. late 1680s) is representative of her painterly style. The architectural setting, a hallmark of her work, was a new compositional trend among flower painters in Amsterdam. The dark background and dramatic lighting were also characteristic of Baroque painting in the seventeenth century. She captured each detail of every flower, highlighting individual colors, form, and texture from the veins of the foliage (which she felt were just as important as the flowers themselves) to the faint yellow powder of pollen on the white rose. Typical of her still lifes, Ruysch included insects among the flowers, adding an entomological touch to the painting. Butterflies, a dragonfly, a small bee, and a spider were added with fine brushes after the rest of the paint had dried. Unlike other female contemporaries, Ruysch painted her flowers from all angles as evidenced by the backside of the sunflower with its curling green stem facing forward at the top of the composition and the side presentation of the poppies on the right of the canvas. The larger drooping pink rose and smaller flowers below it along with the wilted leaves on the lower left of the canvas symbolize decay. They are reminders of mortality and the fleeting nature of life, known as vanitas .   A Still Life with Devil’s Trumpet, a Cactus, a Fig Branch, Honeysuckle and Other Flowers in a Blue Glass Vase Resting on a Ledge, ca. 1690 Rachel Ruysch ( 1664-1750) , A Still Life with Devil's Trumpet, a Cactus, a Fig Branch, Honeysuckle and Other Flowers in a Blue Glass Vase Resting on a Ledge , ca. 1690. Oil on canvas, 18.7 x  15.7 in. Private collection. Image courtesy of Artsy. Ruysch often introduced new flora and fauna from Dutch trading voyages into her work, as well as unusual varieties of flowers, fruits, and insects, such as she did in A Still Life with Devil’s Trumpet, a Cactus, a Fig Branch, Honeysuckle and Other Flowers in a Blue Glass Vase Resting on a Ledge (ca. 1690). In this piece, she depicted a cactus, making her one of the first Western painters to include cacti in her still lifes . She also included a ripe kiwano, or African horned melon,   a tropical fruit native to Africa, Australia, and some islands in the Pacific . A cross-section of kiwano can be seen in the bulbous, spiky orange shape with glistening red seeds at the center of the bouquet above the green fig branch and to the left of the white devil’s trumpet or jimson weed. For this work, Ruysch used a cooler palette primarily composed of gray, green, white, and blue hues with pops of yellow, orange, red, and lavender. Shadows can be seen on the ledge, cast from the flowers, leaves, and translucent glass vase, in which the stems are visible. The torn leaves and holes from insects in the foliage at the bottom of the bouquet are memento mori symbols, acting as a reminder of the inevitably of death. Still Life with Bouquet of Flowers and Plums,  1704 Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Still Life with Bouquet of Flowers and Plums , 1704. Oil on canvas, 36.2 x 27.5 in. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Completed while Ruysch was working in The Hague, Still Life with Bouquet of Flowers and Plums  (1704) is not as densely packed as some other pieces. The architectural setting is less defined with the bouquet resting on a wooden surface. The greenery nearly blends into the background while the blossoms form a series of S-curves instead of strong diagonals . A vase is barely discernible between the plums and trailing leaves on the ledge where a fat beige moth with eyelets on its wings perches. Other insects include a beetle on top one of the purple plums, a dragonfly eating a leaf on the lower right, a pale green and white moth on top of a small reddish primrose, and other small insects scattered throughout the bouquet.  Feminist art historians and professors Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin (1931-2017) included Rusych in their groundbreaking 1976 exhibition and accompanying book, Women Artists: 1550-1950, the first international exhibition of art by women artists that included eighty-three artists from twelve countries. The authors note that Still Life with Flowers and Plums is   one of the best examples of Ruysch’s compositional skills and ability to suggest movement, "as if a gentle breeze were ruffling the whole arrangement."   Indeed, the blossoms do appear to sway. Still Life of Roses, Tulips, a Sunflower and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase with a Bee, Butterfly and Other Insects Upon a Marble Ledge, 1710 Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Still Life of Roses, Tulips, a Sunflower and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase with a Bee, Butterfly and Other Insects Upon a Marble Ledge , 1710. Oil on canvas, 35 x 27.9 in. The National Gallery, London, UK. Image courtesy of The National Gallery. Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Still Life of Roses, Tulips, a Sunflower and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase with a Bee, Butterfly and Other Insects Upon a Marble Ledge , 1710. Oil on canvas, 35 x 27.9 in. The National Gallery, London, UK. Image courtesy of The National Gallery. Still Life of Roses, Tulips, a Sunflower and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase with a Bee, Butterfly and Other Insects Upon a Marble Ledge  (1710) is one of many paintings Ruysch completed while she and her husband were court painters in Düsseldorf, Germany. It is now one of three flower paintings by Ruysch in London’s National Gallery. The blooms tightly pressed together in the vase give a three-dimensional quality to the composition. In fact, a successful Dutch still life painting was highly valued for its degree of skillful realism.  Interspersed among the blossoms are assorted beetles, butterflies, a dragonfly, a lady bug on the white hydrangea, a bee on the sunflower falling out of the vase, and, most prominently, a light green grasshopper with its wings extended on the marble ledge. According to Harris and Nochlin, Ruysch’s habit of depicting groups of specimens seldom seen together in the same season–beetles, butterflies, grasshoppers, and dragonflies–indicate an idealized representation. Of this trait, they suggested that Ruysch was: “in effect following the doctrine that it was the artist's duty to select from nature and to portray perfectly what nature could only render imperfectly. ” Fruit and Insects and Basket of Flowers (1711) Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Fruit and Insects , 1711. Oil on wood, 17.3  x  23.6 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Smarthistory . Two paintings from 1711, Fruit and Insects  and Basket of Flowers , are both  sotto bosco pieces, a sub-genre of still-life painting that emerged around 1650 in the Netherlands. Popularized by Otto Marseus van Schrieck, these works depicted fruits, plants, and flowers with small creatures on the ground in a forest-like or natural space.  In Fruit and insects,  Ruysch has portrayed dew-covered fruits and several creatures on a mossy, damp ground. Two red plums, a rusty pear, three white peaches, bunches of green, purple, and black grapes, an ear of yellow corn in the husk, and a green and yellow striped squash dominate the picture. In the foreground are a tan snail, a bird’s nest with several white speckled eggs upon which a fly rests, as well as a dark green striped lizard with its mouth agape looking intently at a butterfly hovering nearby. Other fauna include a forward-facing green dragonfly that nearly blends in on top of the leaves above the plums on the left, a fly that has landed on one of the white peaches, and an enormous blue and yellow stag beetle perched on top of the squash. Fruit and Insects  was one of a pair of paintings commissioned by Ruysch’s patron Johann Wilhem as a gift for his father-in-law, Cosimo III de’Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. The other painting in the pair, Basket of Flowers , features a wicker basket filled with delicately colored flowers, many of which appear in sprin g such as narcissus, tulips, and peonies. The blooms overflow the tiny, woven basket Ruysch has placed them in. The flowers seem to glow with an inner light against the black background, even as their gently wilted petals and overgrown blossoms exhibit the passage of destructive time.   Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Basket of Flowers , 1711. Oil on panel 18.1 x 24.4 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Ruysch has incorporated her usual butterfly, dragonfly, and bee motifs along with a caterpillar slithering along the stem of the dangling tulip on the lower left of the painting. Dr. Saskia Beranek has postulated that while  the two paintings have some compositional similarities, they seem to reflect different seasons: the fruits and squash seem to suggest late summer into fall, while the basket of flowers suggests spring and early summer.  Further, she suggests that perhaps the two paintings were intended to be compared, to provide a chance to compare and contrast between the two seasons. Left: Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Fruit and Insects , 1711. Oil on wood, 17.3  x  23.6 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Smarthistory .  Right: Rachel Ruysch, Basket of Flowers , 1711. Oil on panel, 18.1 x 24.4 in. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Still Life of Flowers in a Vase with a Bird’s Nest upon a Marble Ledge,  1738. Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750), Still Life of Flowers in a Vase with a Bird’s Nest upon a Marble Ledge , 1738. Oil on canvas, 17 ¼ x 15 ⅜ in. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s. Created when Ruysch was seventy-four years old and had already been painting nearly sixty years, Still Life of Flowers in a Vase with a Bird’s Nest upon a Marble Ledge  (1738) was discovered behind the door of a French country house in 1999. Found by an art auctioneer, the painting went on sale anonymously in Deauville, Normandy, on January 31,1999, where it sold for 2.9 million French francs, or the equivalent of $508,000. In December 2021, it was sold at Sotheby’s London for 1,346,000 British pounds or approximately $1,710,000. With advancing age, the rate of Ruysch’s output slowed after 1720 and the size of her canvases decreased. Still Life of Flowers in a Vase with a Bird’s Nest upon a Marble Ledge , c onsidered one of Ruysch’s most ambitious late flower pictures, is only some 17 x 15 inches yet the multi-floral bouquet consists of roses, anemones, a variegated tulip, narcissi, honeysuckle, forget-me-nots, poppies, primroses and a peony. In contrast to the dark backgrounds of her earlier works, the flowers are now set against a brighter background, a response to the lighter palette and growing color of the eighteenth century.   This luxurious arrangement of flowers is displayed in a dark glass vase set upon a marble ledge before a stone niche, with the light falling diagonally from the left. Ruysch has incorporated twigs, feathers, and moss into the bird’s nest, containing four tan-colored eggs. To the right is a blue blowfly with its wings open; and on the opposite side of the vase, in the shadows, is a black and yellow sand wasp. On the leaf of the flower hanging over the front of the vase is a small red and black butterfly. Crawling up the stem of the center tulip, is an orange and black cylinder leaf beetle, and resting atop a large leaf above the peony to the right, is a bumblebee. The painting was included in the 1998 catalog and monograph on the works of Ruysch by Dr. Marianne Berardi, Science Into Art: Rachel Ruysch’s Early Development as a Still-Life Painter , published by the University of Michigan. Death and Acclaim In 1750 at the age of eighty-six, Rachel Ruysch died. She was hailed as Hollants Kunstwonder  (“Holland’s art prodigy”), Onze vernuftige Kunstheldin (“Our subtle art heroine”), and the Onsterflyke Y-Minerf (“Immortal Minerva of the Amsterdam”) by her male contemporaries. Upon her death, eleven poets paid tribute to her in an anthology. Ruysch’s biographer, the contemporary painter Jan van Gool (1685–1763) described her in an interview for her biography in his Nieuwe Schouburg  published in 1750 as an “Art Goddess,” “Art Heroine” and the “Amsterdam Pallas. ” It is estimated that at the time of her death, Ruysch had painstakingly produced more than 250 paintings, an average of four or five  a year. Sadly, only about 100 of them are known to still exist.  In the past thirty years, there has been renewed interest in Ruysch’s oeuvre. In January 2000, the Dutch art magazine Kunstschrift devoted an entire issue to Ruysch. Her paintings were featured in several exhibitions at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, in 1990-1991, 2011, 2015, and 2019-2020. Prominent European exhibitions including her work were “Still Life Paintings from the Netherlands 1550-1720” at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (1999) and “Each their own Reason: Women Artists in Belgium and the Netherlands 1500-1950” at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Arnhem in 2000. More recently, in 2021 at the Hallwylska Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, Ruysch was included in the group exhibition “The Flowers are in Bloom Again!” also featuring the still-life painters Catharina Backer, Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, and Pieter Faes. With her innovative techniques, Rachel Ruysch employed a style that can be seen as a transition from 17th-century to 18th-century flower painting.

By Emily Burkhart May 1, 2024 Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), High Cat, from the All Fun & Games series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. It's important for me to say something with my artwork, so for the vast majority of my work there's a meaning behind them. Sometimes the narrative is witty or sarcastic, sometimes it's horrific with a sense of danger or urgency, sometimes it's chill. I leave it to the viewer's imagination to fill-in-the blanks of the story plot. -Eugenia Loli Eugenia Loli-Quéru (b. 1973), known professionally as Eugenia Loli, is a Greek Surrealist collage artist, painter, freelance illustrator, and filmmaker. She is best known for her digital collages. She creates amusing, often piercing social commentary using images scanned from her collection of vintage magazines and science fiction. Some of her creations capture a moment in time resembling a still frame from a surreal movie while others are purely fantastical, juxtaposing mundane earthly pursuits with the unearthly. Her many influences include “The Matrix” films; David Delruelle, a Belgian collagist; Bryan “Glass Planet” Olson, an American collagist; Julien Pacaud, a French artist, illustrator, and digital collagist; Kieron “Cur3es” Cropper, a British designer and collagist; and the Belgian Surrealist painter, René Magritte (1898-1967). Before becoming an artist, Loli worked as an artificial intelligence (AI) computer programmer, a technology journalist, and a music videographer for experimental indie artists in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, where she lived for twenty years. Since 2013, Loli’s collages have been featured in Teen Vogue, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair, Forbes, VICE, Wired, New Scientist and The Guardian among other publications. Eugenia Loli in an undated photo. Photographer unknown. Image courtesy of the Public House of Art, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Biography Born in Athens, Loli grew up in the village of Skiadas in the Preveza region of northwestern Greece. She studied computer programming and analysis in college, and her first job was in AI. She is also the former editor-in-chief of OSNews, an online computing newsletter that had been established in 1997 but then languished. After a period of inactivity, Loli relaunched the site in 2001 and stayed until 2005. She has written a personal blog, entitled  Eugenia’s Rants and Thoughts, since 2002. Loli made her first digital collage in April 2012 for an animated music video for the San Francisco Bay Area musician, philosopher, and political scientist John Maus. Besides California, she has lived in Germany, the UK, and Spokane, Washington. In early 2024, Loli and her French husband, Jean-Baptiste Quéru, a mobile software architect, returned to Greece to live in the Preveza area where she was raised. The following seven collages demonstrate her quirky sensibilities and techniques. Selected Works High Cat Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), High Cat, from the All Fun & Games series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. In High Cat, from Loli’s All Fun & Games series, a long-whiskered calico wears thick, psychedelic cat’s eye-shaped glasses with multi-colored bullseye patterns on the lenses. Enveloped in a starry black background and with head cocked, a pipe dangles from the cat’s mouth billowing clouds or bubbles of cosmic “smoke,” semi circling the cat's head. These emissions waft toward what appears to be the moon in the upper left and Mercury to the right. This chill cat could be said to be “high” from the emissions of its pipe but also literally high as he/she improbably smokes in outer space. Prophetic Vision Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), Prophetic Vision, from the All Fun & Games series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. Prophetic Vision incorporates traditional Surrealist themes while reflecting the influence of René Magritte. Open doors as a portal to another world–in this instance, another planet–are a hallmark of Magritte’s paintings. In the foreground, a blonde-haired young girl wears a puffed sleeve 1950’s pink and white party dress with pink sash, white shoes and socks. She peers cautiously around the doorframe of a well-appointed home judging from the moldings and the candelabra to the right of the door, also a classic Surrealist pictorial device. The candelabra’s teal candles are unlit, suggesting the unknown. Outside an otherworldly landscape of dunes features two gleaming white objects–a pointed obelisk and large sphere. In the sky, the green glow of a flying object or of a planet (possibly Mars) illuminates the shapes and the dunes below. All in all, there is something wondrous and mysterious about the girl, the building and the locale. Let Me Get That For You Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), Let Me Get That For You, from the Oh, L’amour series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. Let Me Get That For You from Loli’s Oh, L’amour (Oh, Love) series, wittily explores a traditional heterosexual relationship dynamic. A smiling, 1950’s couple in a bright red canoe glide through a reddish-purple nebula in star-filled space. The couple appear to be on their way to or from a picnic judging from the wooden basket inside the canoe at the man’s feet. It looks as though Loli cut and pasted the image from a classic river or lake scene. The woman holds a water lily in one hand and a wide-brimmed straw hat in the other. One oar rests across the cross beam at the center of the canoe that divides it like the implied separate gender roles of the couple. The man holds onto the other oar while reaching down to pluck a star from the cosmic sea, for the woman (we suppose), hence the tongue-in-cheek title Let Me Get That For You. Every Act of Creation is First an Act of Destruction Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), Every Act of Creation is First an Act of Destruction, from the Mind Alteration series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. A surprising albeit gruesome work, Every Act of Creation is First an Act of Destruction, finds two men in black business attire with crisp white shirts sharing a meal at a fine restaurant. A folded white cloth napkin rests on the table in front of the man on the left who sports a pink and black striped tie while the man on the right has donned a white polka dotted black tie. On top of the aqua tablecloth are the pair’s water and wine glasses, a burning oil lamp, bread basket, and butter dish. Around their necks small flashlights or perhaps microphones dangle strangely from lanyards. They both wear what may be matching signet rings on their right ring fingers which could signify common membership in a fraternal order of some type–manhood, perhaps. Loli has replaced the heads of both with explosions. The smoke and gas billowing from the head of the left hand man disappears into the horizontal picture frame behind him as though into the outside world, where a nearly cloudless blue sky can be seen darkening with his eruption. Behind the man on the right in a vertical frame, a craggy mountain range is surrounded by swirling mist and wispy clouds in a deep blue sky. The flaming explosion emerging from his collar also enters this idyllic scene. The enigmatic title of the collage is said to be a quote from Pablo Picasso referring to the necessity of the old being swept away before anything new can arise in art, much like his legacy achieved. With this collage, Loli may be saying that the old male-dominated order must be blown up before a more equitable society can emerge. Quarrymen Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), Quarrymen, from the Mind Alteration series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. The title Quarrymen refers both to the British musical group John Lennon founded in Liverpool in 1956 that preceded the founding of the Beatles in 1960 and to the Beatles’ groundbreaking 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles–Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison–wore the brightly colored military-style uniforms depicted in the collage on the cover of this album. Loli matches the background stripes to the regalia of each of the Beatles. As in Every Act of Creation is First an Act of Destruction, Loli has removed their heads and replaced them with a surrealistic element but here, instead of explosions, she gives each man a bouquet of flowers. Ringo is on the far left in the magenta uniform, John is in lime green to the right of Ringo, Paul is in the blue uniform with his knees drawn up on John’s right, and George is in red on the far right. A brilliant butterfly perches on Paul’s right shoulder as another one hovers above the bouquet on George’s head. Loli has subverted the iconic album cover and created something new as do caterpillars when they turn into butterflies and as did the Beatles when they unleashed their masterpiece on the public. Natural History Museum Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), Natural History Museum, from the Reportaz series, nd. Digital collage. Image courtesy of  Cargo Collective. For Natural History Museum, Loli takes a black and white image of people contemplating what should have been paintings within ornate frames in a museum gallery and replaced the paintings. She instead inserts gigantic flora that literally bursts out of the frames making it indeed a natural history museum rather than an art museum. The viewers stand unfazed, quietly pondering the unearthly or possibly irradiated plant specimens. In lieu of an overhead light or chandelier and befitting the collage title, another huge spray of flowers hangs from the ceiling. A beach vista stretches beyond an open doorway in the gallery, where a saucer-shaped spaceship can be seen taking flight, suggesting that the UFO may have had something to do with the strange flora. Global Toasting Eugenia Loli (b. 1973), Global Toasting, from the Reportaz series, nd. Digital Collage. Image courtesy of Cargo Collective. Global Toasting portrays an old Toastmaster toaster from the sixties against a black background. Loli has placed flattened color images of the Earth and Moon in the bread slots. The collage wryly conveys a warning against global warming. If we do not take action, the Earth will soon be “toast,” as barren as the moon, thus ironically making a very serious and cautionary point. Recognition While Loli has exhibited in independent galleries and shows, and some of her work is in the permanent collection of the unique  Public House of Art Gallery in the Netherlands, she harbors a reluctance to market her work by traditional means. She has said that she doesn’t do exhibitions or work with galleries but does everything by herself online. Loli sells a few pieces a month but profits most from commissions. She has produced pieces for clients such as Urban Outfitters, Alice McCall (an Australian fashion house), and Venyx Jewelry. Loli’s collages can be seen in the films “The 9th Life of Louis Drax” (2016) and “Replicas” (2018). She has also created album art for the rock bands Highly Suspect and White Denim as well as numerous CD covers for various indie artists. In addition, she has illustrated thirty book covers, one of which was selected best book cover of the year by the The New York Times Book Review in 2016. Her collages have been included in the art books, The Age of Collage (2013) and Collage Makers (2015) both published by Monsa. In 2016, she released her own book, Living with Eugenia Loli: 32 Removable Art Prints that featured a wide range of her collages. To learn more about  Loli and see more of her digital work, visit her website on Cargo Collective and her social media pages on Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, and Tumblr.

By Emily Burkhart June 16, 2024 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Self-Portrait, 1928. Gelatin silver print, 9 ⅞ x 7 ¼ in.  J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Image courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum. What I want above all in photography is to compose the image as I do with paintings. It is necessary that the volumes, lines, the shadows and light obey my will and say what I want them to say. And this under the strictest control of composition, because I do not try either to tell about the world or to tell about my thoughts. All that I know and the way in which I know it is made above all of abstract elements: spheres, planes, and grids with parallel lines offer me great resources. -Florence Henri Introduction The multidisciplinary artist Florence Henri (1893-1982) was a pioneering twentieth-century avant-garde painter and photographer with a background in piano composition. Best known for her experimental mirror photographs taken between 1928 and the late 1930s, Henri’s oeuvre is representative of the New Vision (Neues Sehen), a photography movement promoted by the Hungarian artist and theorist László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). Moholy-Nagly was an influential instructor at the Bauhaus school in Dessau, Germany, where Henri studied painting for a time. He advocated bringing science and technology into the arts, emphasizing form and function over aesthetics. Through photography, Henri became one of the few women artists involved in this male-dominated movement. The outbreak of World War II forced Henri to return her focus to painting as photographic supplies dwindled and also for fear of the Nazi’s labeling both her and her photographic work degenerate. She would not be recognized again for her pioneering photography until the 1970s, when she was in her eighties. Early Life Florence Montagne Henri was born in New York City on June 28, 1893, to a French father and German mother. Following the death of her mother in 1895, Henri and her father left the United States. She accompanied him as he traveled for work as the director of a petroleum company. Henri spent her childhood between maternal relatives in Silesia (now southwestern Poland), Munich, Vienna, a convent school in Paris, and family homes in London and on the Isle of Wight in the UK, where she and her father settled in 1906. Just two years later her father died and the now teenaged Henri went to live in Rome with her Aunt Annie and her husband, the Italian Futurist poet Gino Gori, who introduced Henri to the avant-garde. While in Italy, Henri continued the piano studies she had begun at the age of nine with the Italian pianist-composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) and became an excellent pianist by eighteen. She moved to Berlin around 1912 to further her musical education. Two years later, when the First World War broke out, she found herself trapped in Germany. To make ends meet, she composed music for silent films to earn a living. Art Education At about this time, Henri visited the Academy of Art in Berlin and decided to pursue painting instead of music, enrolling in 1914. Soon after, she met the German Jewish art critic and historian Carl Einstein (1885-1940), who became a close friend and mentor. Through Einstein, she became acquainted with Herwarth Walden (1878-1941) and other avant-garde artists. Beginning in 1922, Henri trained in the studio of the Latvian painter Johann Walter-Kurau (1869-1932). When she decided to move to Paris in 1924, she was denied entry into France and declared “stateless.” Through a marriage of convenience to Karl Anton Koster (they divorced in 1954), Henri attained Swiss citizenship. She was then permitted to reside in Paris. She took classes at the Académie Moderne and Académie Montparnasse in 1925, studying under the Cubist and Purist painters Fernand Léger (1881-1955), André Lhote (1885-1962), and Amédée Ozenfant (1886-1966). Florence Henri in her studio with some of her paintings, Saint-Tropez, France, summer 1926. Photographer unknown. Galleria Martini & Ronchetti, Florence Henri Archives, Genoa, Italy. Image courtesy of Hundred Heroines. In 1927, at the age of thirty-four, Henri returned to Germany to enroll at the Bauhaus school as a non-matriculating student. There she studied painting with Josef Albers (1888-1976), Paul Klee (1879-1940), and Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944). While photography was not officially included in the curriculum until 1929, it had already been used for documentary, experimental, and publicity purposes. At the Bauhaus, she was introduced to the subject by her teacher and mentor, László Moholy-Nagy. Henri also developed a close friendship with Moholy-Nagy’s first wife, the British photographer Lucia Moholy (1894-1989), who encouraged Henri’s experimentation with the camera and took photographs of her, including the 1927 portrait below. Within a year, Henri pivoted again, this time abandoning painting for photography. Lucia Moholy (b. Austria-Hungary, 1894-1989), Florence Henri, 1927. Gelatin silver print, 14 ⅝ x 10 15/16 in. The Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Henri returned to Paris in 1929 and opened a photographic studio out of which she taught photography and worked as a freelance commercial photographer in the fashion and advertising fields to support herself and her art. She completed commissions for portraits, advertising, and fashion for Vogue magazine, The New York Herald, and other publications. Among her students were the photographers Ilse Bing (1899-1998), Giséle Freund (1908-2000), and Lisette Model (1901-1983), each of whom became well-known in her own right. The New Vision (Neues Sehen) New Vision (Neues Sehen or Neue Optik in German) was an artistic movement that evolved in the 1920s out of the principles of the Bauhaus. The term was coined by Moholy-Nagy to describe the technological nature of the twentieth-century following World War I.  Avant-garde artists, commercial illustrators, and journalists turned to photography as if seeking to discover through its mechanisms and materials something of the soul of contemporary industrial society. The 1920s and 1930s were an innovative time as unconventional techniques such as abstract photograms or photomontages consisting of fragmented images, and combinations of photography and graphic design flourished. The New Vision aimed to look at the world through the camera lens, using it as a mirror to the reality of the everyday, and also a framing device for the documentary and experimental. Henri’s work in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s reflected this new approach to photography and some of these images are included here. Selected Works Self-Portrait, 1928 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Self-Portrait, 1928. Gelatin silver print, 9 ⅞ x 7 ¼ in. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Image courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Henri took many self-portraits throughout her career, the earliest being 1928’s carefully composed Self-Portrait, one of her best-known. We see the upper half of Henri’s likeness reflected in a mirror against a wall. Except for a light-colored button on her right sleeve, she appears to be wearing a solid black shirt. She leans on her folded arms propped on a slatted wood table with her hands resting on her crossed forearms. Since only Henri’s reflection appears in the photograph, it is a picture of a picture, a study in light and dark. Lower down in front of the mirror, are two shiny spheres. Their reflection makes it appear as though there are four. Self-Portrait along with one of Henri’s still lifes that also featured mirrors were both published in the Dutch avant-garde journal i10 Internationale Revue on December 20, 1928. The photos were accompanied by a commentary from Moholy-Nagy. In what was the first critical assessment of Henri’s work, he asserted that: With Florence Henri’s photos, photographic practice enters a new phase, the scope of which would have been unimaginable before today….Reflections and spatial relationships, superposition and intersections are just some of the areas explored from a totally new perspective and viewpoint. Mirrors were a recurring “prop” in Henri’s early photographs, used not only in self-portraits and portraits of others, but also in still lifes and often in her commercial work as well. As Priscilla Frank observed, she used them “as a surrealist tool to disrupt perception, disorient the viewer and multiply her subject matter into infinity ambiguity.” Fruit, 1929 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Fruit, 1929. Gelatin silver print, 6 ⅝ x 9 ½ in. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. Image courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum. In the still life Fruit (1929), Henri placed a pear in a dish on a tabletop as well as a lime and an apple directly on the table. Several small mirrors also arrayed on the table’s surface create different planes, jagged images, and reflections. The lime and the pear are in the viewer's field of vision, while the apple appears only as a reflection in a mirror. The fragmentation created is like that of a cubist painting. Henri’s photos were included in several prominent German photography exhibitions of the time, including Fotografie der Gegenwart (Contemporary Photography, 1929) in Berlin, Film und Foto (Film and Photo, 1929) in Stuttgart, and Das Lichtbild (The Photograph, 1930) in Munich, along with others across Europe and in New York throughout the 1930s. Portrait Composition (Woman with Cards), 1930 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Portrait Composition (Woman with Cards), 1930. Gelatin silver print, 11 in. x 8 13/16 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Another of Henri’s well-known photographs, Portrait Composition (Woman with Cards) from 1930 depicts a woman in full makeup, closed eyes with shadowed lids, mascaraed lashes, and penciled arched eyebrows. Her painted lips are parted slightly exposing a hint of teeth. She reclines, her bare right arm over her head, an eight of diamonds in her hand. Scattered on the bed above her are other playing cards, mostly indistinguishable. Arrayed as they are, the cards look like the woman may have simply fallen asleep during a game or that these are the cards she has drawn in the game of life. Or, the eight in her hand may symbolize the woman’s “sun card”–a person who is powerful and may be dominating. It may represent her changeable, independent nature, an intense desire for knowledge and a belief that knowledge is power. Whichever or whatever, the woman seems untroubled. The close cropping may have been inspired by the photos of Henri’s friend Lucia Moholy, who often employed this cropping technique as she did in her 1927 portrait of Henri. Moholy thought it better focused the eye thus revealing the essence and character of the subject. Both Henri and Moholy were inspired by the Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s influential 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin in which such close framing was used to emphasize the emotions and reactions of the actors. Nu, ca. 1930 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Nu, ca. 1930. Gelatin silver print, dimensions unavailable. Galleria Martini & Ronchetti, Florence Henri Archives, Genoa, Italy. Image courtesy of AnOther Magazine. In addition to portraiture, Henri shot a series of female nudes. Nu (1930) is an example. In an unadorned room on a disheveled bed, a woman in three-quarter view sits with knees tucked beneath her. She leans on one arm, the other hand caresses her neck. Her chin tilts upward, her eyes gaze downward. She exudes an ease with her nudity. Henri has employed her characteristic contrast of light and dark to highlight her sitter’s physicality without oversexualizing her. The light on her back throws the front of her torso chastely into shadow except in the triangular area made by her arm, thigh, and torso. There her backlit breast with a hint of nipple is sharply outlined. In 1935, Henri published this and other nude studies as a collection in the book, Femmes Nues (Female Nudes). Nature Morte (Roses), 1931 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Nature Morte (Roses), 1931. Silver gelatin print, 13.25 x 18.75 in. Edition 6/9. Holden Luntz Gallery, Palm Beach, FL. Image courtesy of Holden Luntz Gallery. In the 1931 photo entitled Nature Morte (Roses), a single rose lies on an unfolded sheet of paper while a stem with four leaves rests on an open envelope at the upper right. A mirror may reflect the rose and stem or it may be an actual second rose and stem–it is not clear what is or may not be a reflection. Nonetheless, it is an unconventional floral arrangement or “still life.” The close-up emphasizes the texture of the rose petals, their slight wilt, and the veining of the leaves. As the title implies, the rose and leaves are dying; but, of course, since they are cut, they are already dead. Their life has been stilled; it has unfolded. ROME (The Glory that Was Greece), 1934 Florence Henri (1893-1982), ROME (The Glory that Was Greece), 1934. Vintage gelatin silver photomontage, 9 x 11 5/16 in. Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Image courtesy of Robert Koch Gallery. Henri also experimented with photomontage, a technique adopted by Surrealist and Pop artists as well. Photomontage, the combination of two or more photographs (or pieces of them) to form a single image, came to prominence as a Dadaist form of political protest during the First World War in Germany. Henri was aware of the Dada Group from her time at the Bauhaus. Though not protest art, her Surrealist-inspired photomontage ROME (The Glory that Was Greece) evokes nostalgia for a bygone era. Henri was familiar with Greco-Roman ruins from her time in Italy. The sculptural head in the foreground has been toppled from its body, which is not shown, and rests on a blanket by the sea. The message seems bleak, a head without a body juxtaposed against the shore. On the horizon a distant mountain range nearly blends into a silvery-gray sky as the waves break. The ironic title of this photomontage comes from the middle stanza of the Edgar Allen Poe poem, “To Helen” (1831, revised by Poe in 1845): On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece. And the grandeur that was Rome. Whether Henri was familiar with the poem or the mythology of Helen is unknown but probable. The image is certainly suggestive. ROME (The Glory that Was Greece) was featured in the exhibitions, The Source (February-March 2008) and Fabricated Realities (July-August 2011), at the Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco. Portrait Composition, 1937 Florence Henri (1893-1982), Portrait Composition, 1937. Gelatin silver print,11 7/10 x 8 7/10 in. Edition 2/9. Atlas Gallery, London. Image courtesy of Atlas Gallery. Portrait Composition from 1937 was one of Henri’s last photographs before the outbreak of the Second World War. One of her few works to feature a smiling subject, a woman in profile casually sits with her legs crossed in a chair on a balcony. She wears a floral patterned dress with mandarin collar. Her chin is tilted, her hair slightly tousled. She is framed by an awning or umbrella. Henri has positioned a mirror to reflect the opposite wall of the balcony, and the shadow of an armrest and the back of another chair can be seen. A column with a plant in a basket is partially visible. One can see the rooftops of buildings in the background. Henri has created a split-screen image with her placement of the mirror. Sunlight casts hard shadows caught in both the mirror and on the balcony where the woman sits, especially through the gridwork of the railing. It seems a meditation on reality. Soon, Henri’s output would decline significantly as photographic materials became difficult to obtain and her compositions would be considered degenerate by the Nazis occupying France. Late Career and Rediscovery With but a few notable exceptions, one being a series of photos of the American ballet dancer and member of the Choctaw Nation Rosella Hightower (1920-2008) in the 1950s, Henri returned almost exclusively to painting. After leaving Paris for Belleville-sur-Vie, a former commune in Western France in 1963, she gave up photography for painting full-time. In the 1970s, she moved to the village of Compiégne, where she lived and painted until the end of her life. If not for the efforts of an Italian gallerist named Giovanni Battista Martini, Henri would likely have fallen into obscurity. In the early 1970s, Martini came across a portfolio of Henri’s work in an old art magazine Stile Futurista and spent two years searching for the artist. After finding her in Compiégne, Martini and Henri worked together to catalog her archive before her death. In 1974, she had her first solo exhibition in four decades at the Galerie Wilde in Cologne, Germany, at which time a small portfolio of her photographs was also published. Henri died on July 24, 1982, at the age of 89. Posthumously, she has been included in a number of solo and group exhibitions, most recently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the exhibition, “Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum” that ran from April 16-October 10, 2022. Her work was also featured at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Despite her rediscovery in the 1970s, Florence Henri still remains little known outside of art circles today. Florence Henri in 1975. Photographer unknown. Galerie m, Bochum, Germany. Image courtesy of Galerie m.