1/2/13 – Day 4 Metropolitan Museum of Art Infusion Week

The Mayor of NYC in the 1970s and 1980s, Edward I. Koch died today. He was described in the NY Times this morning as “the vortex of the maelstrom that was his term in office.” And as “a feisty slippery egoist could not be pinned down by questioners and who could out talk anybody in the authentic voice of NY; as opinionated as a Flatbush cabby, as loud as the scrums on 42nds street, as pugnacious as a west side reform Democrat mother”. Does that mean they liked him or not?

 

As usual we started today at the gym. After that it was off to the Met for the fourth day running and today we chose to investigate the American wing. Peter and I were keen to see what Americans think it is important to show their people and the rest of the world about their journey from settlement through the War of Independence to today and we were not disappointed with their choices.



1738 – 1815 was a time of portraiture inherited from the English and the good work from home grown boys such as John Singelton Copley impressed. The work then moved through the battles for independence and Washington’s personal journey from fame on the battlefield to his struggle to appropriately transform his behaviour to exhibit the grace that should come with being a world leader. Interestingly, as the first President of the USA, he wanted to be known as ‘Your Excellency’ but luckily Ben Franklin told him to cool it and settle for ‘Mr President’! 

Crossing the Delaware



1800 – 1850 saw a shift away from portraiture and a move towards great landscapes like Albert Bierstadt’s ‘Rocky Mountains, Landers Peak’ and Frederic Edwin Church’s ‘Heart of the Andes’. Interesting that Emanuel Leutze’s ‘Washington Crossing the Delaware’ – an iconic painting that at the time was, and ever since has been, an iconic rallying point for emerging American nationalism – should contain so many factual errors.



Rocky Mountains - Landers Peak

Apparently they didn’t travel right to left, there was no ice in the river and they certainly didn’t carry cannons and horses across the river in their little boats on Christmas Day when the British enemy was caught of guard celebrating this most holy of days. Still,despite all these inaccuracies, and even though it was painted by a German in Germany it has found its way into the hearts of the American people (and into the ‘encyclopaedic’ collection of the Met) … and I love it!

 

Heart of the Andes



After the American Civil War (1861 – 1865) people preferred to see normal life rather than the reality of war and its aftermath. So art reflected not only the urban life that came with the golden age of railways and the emergence of ‘big cities’ but also the important themes of big animals like the bison and the ‘Red Indians’ (in that order according to the display) that faced the eventual extinction that came with the ‘white’ man’s progress across the nation to the promised wealth of the gold mines in California.  

 

Tiffany Vase 1893

1860 – 1900 saw a huge increase in the number of people with considerable personal wealth and so there was a resurgence of portraiture to record for posterity these important people, their children and, in keeping with well-established European traditions often their mistresses. Men like Whistler and John Singer Sargent did particularly well and even some women artists like Mary Cassatt (the first American woman invited to exhibit at the Louvre albeit for indoor scenes showing domestic life involving sewing, taking tea and tending to children) were receiving patronage. Other American impressionists such as Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri were emerging and their paintings on display in the gallery were simply delightful.

 

Tiffany



In the first decade of the new (20^th) century the first mass produced car had been released to the market (the Model ‘T’ Ford at only $345), Orville Wright was getting his plane thing up and running and despite disastrous conclusion to the Titanic’s maiden voyage in 1912 more American people were to travelling to Europe to see the sights. They develop a passion for collecting art especially in the aftermath of WWI when Europe was in turmoil and great pieces of art were there for the taking.

Tiffany

Luckily the wealthy in America in this era were not all gangsters like Tom and Daisy Buchanan or Al Capone (whose income in the 1920s was reputed to be over at 100 million dollars a year) and some collected art for the enjoyment education of those in the future. I pay tribute to the vision of those like Henry Clay Frick, J. Pierpont Morgan, Louisine and Henry O. Havemeyer in New York; J. Paul Getty, Norton Simon, Arabella and Henry E. Huntington in Los Angeles; Andrew W. Mellon in Washington, D.C. and Claribel and Etta Cone in Baltimore who were keen, like the wealthy before them, to collect nice things to show off to their friends.  

Tiffany Ware - inlaid ivory and enamel

  

Windows from the Coonley Play House by F.L Wright