Leander Engström – Neighbour’s house – Settignano, Italy

“Splendid to arrive alone in a foreign country and feel the assault of difference. Here they are all along, busy with living; they don’t talk or look like me. The rhythm of their day is entirely different; I am foreign.”

(Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy)

Leander Engström (Swedish, 1886-1927), Neighbour’s House – Settignano, Italy, 1921

There is something about the Mediterannean nature, architecture and the whole ambience which intoxicates my soul beyond words! And this is why Engström’s painting “Neighbour’s House – Settignano” appeal to me so much these days. The first thing that attracted me about this painting is its vibrancy; the intense orange walls of the houses, the green wooden shutters, the turquoise wall of the balcony, the red roof that has soaked in all the warmth of the sun. Even the warm peachy and sandy tones in the upper part of the painting take on a certain intensity from the colour-bomb that is the lower part of the painting. Our eye goes from the lowest to the highest point in the painting, from the details closest to us to the things far off on the horizon. The painting was probably painted from some balcony and he sure had a wonderful view! A view made for daydreaming, and for capturing on canvas. A plant in a pot perched on the wall of the balcony. In the neighbour’s house bellow two women, both dressed in equally vibrant green and blue dresses, are seen sitting in front of the house’s gates, sewing something and, even though we cannot hear it, gossiping and chitchatting for sure. White cloth is hanged out to dry out of the window on the first floor. A row of terracota roofs and a few chimneys. In the distance more houses in colours of sand and cream, and a church with a tower surrounded with moody cypresses and other lush trees. I can just hear the sweet lullaby of the churchbells and imagine the birds flying by. The dance of the wind through the cypresses. A cat passing by from one roof to another. Who knows what else was going on during the time Engstrom was painting this, but the painting is static, a moment frozen in time, only awoken by our imagination it gives us more than what was painted. Settignano is an Ancient Tuscan town, near Florence, situated beautifully on the top of the hill. Engstrom loved painting vibrant landscapes in an Expressionist way, but this painting speaks more of Cubist than of Expressionist influence to me. The narrow streets, houses all clumped together with no space inbetween, roofs, church towers and cypresses; all these elements lend themselves so perfectly to a Cubist style. The shapes of things are clear and objects can be taken out and added, perfect for a Cubist eye to notice and paint. Engström lived in Florence from 1920 to 1923, studied with Matisse and lived in Paris from 1908 to 1913.

Federico García Lorca: You’ll wither like the magnolia, no kisses burnt on your thighs, no fingers in your hair (Elegy)

This June I enjoyed reading the poetry of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, especially the poems from his poetry collections “Book of Poems”, “Suites” and “Poem of the Cante Jondo”. Many poems and many verses touched me and fired my imagination, but these days his poem “Elegy” from the “Book of Poems” lingers in my mind; the image of a life unlived, wasted, missed out on, an image of a love unfulfilled, passions and kisses not tasted, an image of loneliness, of longing for all that could have been, are all really powerful to me at this stage in life. I feel almost on a crossroad. The verses in bold are my particular favourites… The image of a woman watching people passing by, listening to the rain fall on the bitterness of old provincial streets, saddness in her eyes and in her soul, sweet serenade never reaching her, is very touching to me.

Photograph by Laura Makabresku

Elegy

Like a censer filled with desires,

you pass through clear evening,

flesh dark as spent spikenard;

your face pure sex.

 

On your mouth, dead chastity’s

melancholy; in your womb’s

Dionysian* chalice the spider weaves a barren veil

to hide flesh spurned by living roses,

the fruit of kisses.

 

In your white hands

the twist of lost illusions,

and on your soul a passion

hungry for kisses of fire,

and your mother-love dreaming distant

pictures of cradles in calm places,

lips spinning azure lullabies.

 

Like Ceres,* you’d offer golden corn

to have sleeping love touch your body;

to have another Milky Way

flow from your virgin breasts.

 

You’ll wither like the magnolia.

No kisses burnt on your thighs,

no fingers in your hair,

playing it like a harp.

 

Woman strong with ebony and spikenard,

breath white as lilies,

Venus of the Manila shawl tasting

of Málaga wine and guitars!

 

Black swan* on a lake of saeta

lotuses, waves of orange

and spray of red carnations scenting

the withered nests beneath its wings.

 

Andalusian martyr, left barren.

Your kisses should have been beneath a vine,

filled with night’s silence,

stagnant water’s cloudy rhythm.

 

But below your eyes circles start,

and your black hair turns silver.

Your breasts ease, spreading their scent

and your splendid shoulders start to stoop.

 

Slender woman, meant for motherhood, burning!

Virgin of sorrows;

forever hopeless heart

nailed by every star of the deep sky.

 

You’re the mirror of an Andalusia

suffering and stifling great passions,

passions swaying to fans

and mantillas at throats

shivering with blood, with snow,

red scratch-marks of gazing eyes on them.

 

Like Inés,* Cecilia,* and sweet Clara,*

you go through autumn mists, a virgin,

a bacchante who’d have danced

in garlands of green shoots and vine.

 

The great sadness floating in your eyes

tells us your broken, shattered life,

the monotony of your bare world,

at your window watching people pass,

hearing rain fall on the bitterness

of the old provincial streets;

far away, a troubled clash of bells.

 

But you listened to the air’s accents in vain.

The sweet serenade never reached you.

Behind your windows still you look and yearn.

The sadness that will flood your soul

when your wasted breast discovers

the passion of a girl new to love.

 

Your body will be buried

untouched by emotion.

A dawn song will spread

across the dark earth.

Two blood-red carnations will spring from your eyes,

and from your breasts, snow-white roses.

But your great sadness will join the stars,

a new star to wound and outshine the skies.

 

(December 1918, Granada)

Charles Burchfield: Maple Trees, Tiger Swallowtails and the Magic of Mid-June

“There seem to be many more tiger swallow-tails this year than is usual. Gorgeous creatures, they are to be seen everywhere, making dazzling effect on wild iris, lavender lilacs, and pink roses. Yesterday two of them staged several battles in mid-air, over the possession of the wild iris clump, a fine sight, and a struggle that seemed to be without injury to either party”

(Charles E. Burchfield, June 13, 1944)

Charles Burchfield, Mid-June, 1917-1944, watercolour

My first introduction to the paintings of the American painter Charles Burchfield came through his watercolours of gloomy, forlorn, decreipt and abandoned Victorian houses, and I wrote about those watercolours on a few occasions. Later on, I discovered that there was a whole different side to his art; the vibrant, colourful, whimsical, joyous side and such is the majority of his oeuvre. An amazing example of this vibrancy and joy is the watercolour “Mid-June” painted both in June of 1917 and in June of 1944. Well, not all of it technically. Burchfield painted this nature scene in June of 1917, and revisited the watercolour decades later, in June 1944, but not by simply redoing what he had painted earlierly but by adding new sheets of paper around the original base of the wateroclour. Something particular about the art of Charles Burchfield is that he painted almost exclusively in the medium of watercolour and he took it very seriously. He was also a staunch opponent of any sort of realism. Watercolour “Mid-June” is pure loveliness. I gaze at it; at the lace-like treetop, at the quick butterflies flying about, at the greenness of it all, and I think that the fairies must have collected the dust from the flowers and the rays of hot June sun and sprinkled Burchfield’s watercolours with it. The entire surface of the watercolour seems to be flickering, trembling from excitement, and everything is so lumionous and bathed in golden lightness. I adore the effect of the butterfly caught in flight which you can see in detail bellow.

From 14 April to 15 May 1944 the Buffalo Fine Art Academy presented an exhibition “Charles Burchfield: A Retrospective Exhibition of Water Colors and Oils, 1916-1943” at the Albright Art Gallery. It was around the same time that Burchfield began reworking his paintings and in 1946 the same Academy bought the waterolour “Mid-June”. Burchfield explained the inspiration behind the watercolour in a letter the gallery’s director who had organised the 1944 exhibition:

“The original motif or idea, from which the picture Mid-June was developed, was painted in 1917; the full elaboration of the motif was executed in 1944. Prior to this, I had been studying the earlier version. It seemed to me incomplete, but held within its limited scope the germ for a much larger and more complete realization of the original intention.

It is a hot humid day, close to the time of the summer solstice, when the sun at noon seems to be almost directly overhead, sending down its rays so nearly vertical that the light seems to come from all sides and everything seems to be flooded with golden light.

In the foreground is a maple tree, whose umbrella-like canopy of drooping leaves, though pierced by the sunlight thru countless fantastic interstices, nevertheless casts its circular shadow on the earth, forming a sort of cone of shade, surrounded by sunlight. In the middle ground are more trees with similar concentric shadows, beyond which can be seen vistas of yellow buttercup meadows.

Great tiger swallow-tail butterflies, characteristic creatures of June, are disporting themselves, reveling in the sunlight and heat. Out and down they flutter, in nervous restless flight, only pausing momentarily to rest on some convenient mandrake leaf. At times they quarrel and the skirmish presents to the eye a bewildering clash of yellow and black rhythms. Then constant motion seems to set the trees to dancing and the tops of the trees flutter and disintegrate in the hot white sky. Even the buttercups in the foreground assume a strange aspect, as if they were seen thru the butterflies’ eyes. Creatures and plants seem to be intoxicated by the sheer ecstasy of existence on such a day.”

As I already wrote earlier, later in his career Burchfield often returned to the watercolours that he had painted back in 1917, and not just the watercolours it seems, but to a state of mind that he had at the time, hoping to recapture it, reclaim the youthful optimism and joyfulness. In 1965, reflecting on the fifty years of his career, Burchfield said: “I have always believed 1917 to be the ‘golden year’ of my career. Forgotten were the frustrations and the longing for more freedom. The big city was not for me. I was back home in the town and countryside where I had grown up, which were now transformed by the magic of an awakened art outlook. Memories of my boyhood crowded in upon me to make that time also a dream world of the imagination.” Burchfield’s love for the small towns, the comfort he found in such a setting, and his enjoyment of nature shines through in all of his watercolours. He truly had a gift of tranforming the mundane into magic and that is why the term “magic realism” can be applied to his art so well.

I think there are several lessons we can learn from Charles Burchfield’s approach to art; firstly to spend more time in nature in order to meet her charms, to find beauty in the everyday, in the plain and mundane spaces, to embrace colours, and finally, to not give up on things, or, more specifically, on artworks. Don’t be afraid to leave an artwork if you don’t feel inspired anymore, but also don’t hesitate to pick it up again and rework it. When I don’t finish a painting in a week, I think it’s a lost cause, but in Burchfield’s case I see that he had returned to his watercolour almost thirty years later. And why wouldn’t he? An unfinished painting? Unfinished at this point in time, not necessarily never.

Henri Rousseau – The Sleeping Gypsy

“Beneath the gypsy moon
things are watching her
and she can’t watch them.”

(Federico García Lorca, Dreamwalker Ballad)

Henri Rousseau, The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897

I have been absolutely enchanted by Henri Rousseau’s whimsical and dream-like paintings. Despite working a monotonous, non-artistic job as a tax collector, Rousseau used his spare time to create an enchanting verdant world of jungles, tigers, lions, flamingoes and sleeping ladies. While his fellow artists drew inspiration from the Parisian life that was around them, Rousseau escaped the fin de siecle Paris and painted his dreams on lush, tropical canvases. Still, lions and jungles aside for now, it is Rousseau’s painting “The Sleeping Gypsy”, painted in 1897, that has been my favourite these past few weeks. There is just something about it!

As the title suggests, the painting shows a desert scene with a sleeping woman, a lion and a moon. All three seem equal characters in this strange, mystical, dream-like scene and the painting would be incomplete with either element missing. The woman is dressed in vibrant, striped robes and there are mandolin and a tall jar beside her. She is sleeping; the moon is watching her, but she is not watching the moon because her eyes are closed. Blissfully, she is sleeping, unaware of the danger of the lion beside her. Sleeping and dreaming. Perhaps the lion is only a part of her dream and not a real lion. Perhaps even the moon and the desert are a part of her dream and not a part of her real, physical surrounding. The lyrical beauty of the painting is tangible, almost seeping from the painting and spreading out into my reality. Especially these warm summer nights the desert seems tangible, the hot air that turns colder at night imaginable, the quietness in the air, the emptiness of the vast space. The gypsy, the moon; both elements made me think of the poetry of Federico García Lorca and his “Gypsy Ballads”; Lorca’s poems are full of images, and Rousseau’s painting is poetic. Here is what Rousseau wrote about the painting: “A wandering Negress, a mandolin player, lies with her jar beside her (a vase with drinking water), overcome by fatigue in a deep sleep. A lion chances to pass by, picks up her scent yet does not devour her. There is a moonlight effect, very poetic. The scene is set in a completely arid desert. The gypsy is dressed in oriental costume.”

There are many ways to interpret the painting, naturally; the gypsy woman with her vibrant, exotic clothes and her vagabund, nomadic lifestyle may represent freedom, choosing adventure over possessions, the lion may represent dangers that lurk at the woman throughout her life, while the woman’s state of sleeping may be seen as something vulnerable or innocent or oblivious; she is unaware of the lion, unaware of the dangers, her body is in the desert but her spirit dreams and travels far away… No matter the interpretation, I simply love the painting and I take delight in its mystical, poetic aura.

To end, here are some verses from Lorca’s poem “And After”:

The heart,
fountain of desire,
dissolves.

(Only desert remains.)
The illusion of dawn
and kisses dissolve.

Only desert
Remains.
Undulating desert.

Anne of Green Gables (Anne with an E) in Art of Winslow Homer and Lilian Westcott Hale

“It’s nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one’s heart, like treasures.”

Lilian Westcott Hale, L’Edition de Luxe, 1910

Many beautiful, fragrant and flowery Mays have passed since I first read L.M.Montgomery’s wonderful novel “Anne of Green Gables”. The beloved children’s classic was first published in 1908 and many film and series adaptations were made in the last few decades, my favourite being the Netflix show “Anne with an E” (2017) starring Amybeth McNulty as Anne Shirley Cutberth, a vivacious, talkative and imaginative redhead eleven year old orphan girl living in a fictional town of Avonlea on the Prince Edward Island, Canada, in late nineteenth century. These late May and early June days always bring to mind the magic that I felt while reading the novel for the first time, inspired by a dear friend of mine who thought the character resembled me a great deal, and I finally decided to write this post, the idea for which was brewing in my mind for many years. While reading the book many paintings would come to mind and while seeing some paintings scenes from the novel would come to mind, so this post is about paintings, mostly Winslow Homer’s watercolours and some other, that share the aesthetic with both the novel and the series I’ve mentioned above.

The first painting here is Lilian Westcott Hale’s painting “L’Edition d’Luxe”, from 1910. Her paintings are a doorway to the gentle and secretive feminine world as she mostly painted interiors with women and children. This painting has that same soft, feminine, dreamy vibe and the painted girl is a redhead just like Anne. She is seated at a table and reading a book. A vase of spring blossoms on the table adds to the Anne-esque aesthetic. The hairstyle that she is wearing is a typical Edwardian Gibson Girl hairdo that Anne is seen wearing in the last season of the series, when she is preparing to go to college and is a tad more grown up.

Winslow Homer, Fresh Eggs, 1874, watercolour

Winslow Homer, A Sick Chicken, 1874

The two watercolours by Winslow Homer above; “Fresh Eggs” and “A Sick Chicken” both painted in 1874, remind me of the scenes in the series when Anne first arrives to Green Gables and finds out she is not wanted because she is not a boy and is walking on the roof of the chickencoop. She is a tender girl and tries to be helpful to the elderly siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthberth who end up adopting her and so she takes on a number of household chores, including getting the eggs from the chicken.

Winslow Homer, Girls Strolling in an Orchard, 1879

The watercolour “Girls Strolling in an Orchard” reminded me of Anne and her best friend and kindred spirit Diana, a beautiful and polite girl who is the first to befriend Anne. The girl on the left looks more dainty and fashionably dressed, the way Diana is in the book, while the other girl is wearing more simple clothes, the way Anne is in the novel because Marilla likes things to be sensible and proper. I can imagine the tall grass being swayed by the wind whilst they are strolling through it and I can imagine how much Anne would enjoy the scenery around her, especially that lovely branch full of blossoms that is almost touching Diana’s shoulder.

Winslow Homer, Fox Hunt, 1893

“Anne with an E” series diverged from the original novel and in the second season of the series a fox becomes a new character and this is something that doesn’t exist in the novel. Anne first sees the fox snooping around her secret hideout in the forest and begins to see it as another kindred spirit, begins to relate to it as well, Anne with an E’s writer and creater Moira Walley-Beckett said: “She [commiserates] with the fox at one point: ‘Do you get twitted about your hair too, the color of your hair?’ But they’re both always alone,” she said. But also, the characteristics of a fox are so much like Anne. They’re both incredibly inquisitive and self-sufficient.” (source)

Emily Shanks, Newcomer at School (New-comer at Gymnasium), 1892

Emily Shank’s painting “Newcomer at School” makes me think of Anne’s first day at school and how the other girls such as Ruby Gillis would have looked at her, how they would judge her and make fun of her red hair and her being from the orphanage.

Winslow Homer, Blackboard, 1877, watercolour

In chapter 24 of the book, one beautiful October day, Mrs Stacy – a new teacher comes to Anne’s school and Anne is instantly besotted: “Miss Stacy was a bright, sympathetic young woman with the gift of winning and holding the affections of her pupils and bringing out the best that was in them mentally and morally. Anne expanded like a flower under this wholesome influence…” Again, Winslow Homer has an appropriate painting for that moment of Anne’s life as well. Watercolour “Blackboard” shows a teacher explaining some geometry to the class that we don’t see.

Winslow Homer, Pond and Willows, Houghton Farm, 1878, watercolour

Nature plays a big role in the novel because it is a place and source of magic for Anne. There are many lovely descriptions of ponds, willows, flowery meadow and cherry blossoms throughout the novel and the change of seasons are indicated not merely to indicate the passage of time but also because Anne finds magic in different seasons and different clothes that nature puts on. Willows in particular are often mentioned, and they do have a striking romantic look to them, and the pond might as well be the Barry Pond which Anne refers to as “The Lake of Shining Waters”.

Winslow Homer, On the Stile, 1878

Homer’s watercolour “On the Stile” makes me think of Anne whilst on a walk with Gilbert. Her romance with him is not that much a part of the first of the Anne novels, but it is a part of the series and the actor who plays Gilbert is quite handsome. The boy and the girl in the watercolour are holding hands and are seen wandering around in nature, maybe looking for a secretive spot to spent time together. I love the way the girl’s bonnet’s ribbons are dancing in the wind and I like her attire as well and I can imagine Anne wearing something similar.

Winslow Homer, Fresh Air, 1878

To end the post, here is yet another gem from Winslow Homer’s plethora of watercolours titled “Fresh Air”. The girl, who looks similar to the girl in the watercolour “On the Stile” is gazing out into the distance. Her hands are clasped in a calm, resigned position, but there is a hint of worry in her eyes. The wind is present everywhere in the scene; her clothes, the ribbons of her hat, the branch behind her, even the blades of grass. Homer really makes the moment seem fresh and alive! The watercolour makes me think of Anne gazing out into the distance, into her future which, as the novels nears its end, is full of uncertanties, but also filled with possibilities of joy. Anne feels hopeful and scared both at once. The chatty girl we meet in the beginning of the novel has grown into a more quiet creature, though still romantic and imaginative under the surface:

“I don’t know, I don’t want to talk as much. (…) It’s nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one’s heart, like treasures. I don’t like to have them laughed at or wondered over.”