A summer’s day in March: at the Women’s Museum

Gabriele Munter, Breakfast of the Birds (1934). For more images (her work continues the tradition described by Deborah Cherry)

Dear friends and readers,

Soon winter will become a mythic time and pictures of snow and frost will have to be explained: today our temperatures in the DC area reached 80 fahrenheit and we are in for repeat heat for 2 days, then soar up to the 90s, after which the heat will break on Saturday. In front of my window all the lovely daffodils Laura, Izzy and I have planted are now in bloom, and the pink tulip tree to the side of my window is beginning to shed its petals so heavy-laden is it.

This is really to remember the good time Jim and I just had this afternoon at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and recommend to others to go and see the exhibit called Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles and Other French collections. We saw some pictures we had never seen before, artists we’d never heard of and got a sense how hard it was for a woman to have a professional career: yes they did have to paint conventionally acceptable subjects, and they had to make their connections through their families (so it was important to be born or marry luckily). We saw a number of good paintings. Some landscapes had strong individual feeling; there was one of a dog I really liked; portraits, historical paintings, a husband’s studio, woman patrons who were daringly sexy. Antoinette Cecile Haudebourt-Lescot seems to have a strong presence. This one by her was not there (I did not buy the book as it was $45) but is typical of her work, contemplative, quietly sexual (her body is clearly emphasized as fecund), psychologically intense:

A woman reading (I don’t know the title)

I really liked a room devoted to showing dress-making in the “haute couture.” Celia Reyer and her assistants who had put the show of painting and sculpture together filled the room with patterns, materials, bodices, corsets, a mannekin dressed in a typical later eighteenth century outfit, and they told a little of their own careers.

Then we walked around the rest of the museum and really did spend an hour or more enjoying ourselves. We had not been for a while so there were some new works to see; some works had been brought up from “the basement” (or wherever they keep excess) and replaced ones we were familiar with.

A lush and deeply sensual one we had not seen before by Constance Mayer, 1775-1821 (known as a pupil of Prud’hon

Some were placed in better spots; we got into a conference room where the curators keep some of their favorites, one American one of a woman painter painting her sister and the sister’s dog, later 19th century, exquisitely lit and realistic surface. Alas I didn’t take down the title of the painting or name of the artist, so put this one by another American artist we did see that I liked equally:

Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-99), The Haunt of the Muskrat, East Hampton (1884, etching on cream parchment)

Moran’s techniques of foliage and landscape, the background use & knowledge of Dutch landscape, using unconventional proportions she creates haunting scenes.

We saw one exhibit of unreal glittering gowns and shoes said to have been inspired by Princess Grace of Monaco. Jim said it had a strong feel of “gay” aesthetics.

We spent some fun time in the shop too: we looked into books and I bought a book about the museum with samples of the permanent collection. On sale for $20, it enabled me to feel I was contributing something beyond the entrance fee. The museum has far more paintings by Remedios Varos than I thought they had, and Jim and I spent time reading and looking at the pictures in Surreal Friends — he could see more there, as well as images by Leonora Carrington. One learns by reading books with such reprints and information and insights. I may yet buy that book if I can find it on the Net.

Our interlude away from our usual activities, work, routine, was not yet finished.

We walked uptown for about 10 long blocks and over two avenue blocks to reach the West End Cinema where we planned to see (and hear) an HD opera from the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden: Massenet’s Cendrillon (Cinderella). It has the marvelous singer who sang Sycorax in Enchanted Island from the Met last month: Joyce DiDonato. (The opera itself left a lot to be desired, hard comedy with offensive typologies that amused some in the audience. Oh well, one can’t have everything: the music had this minor key mysterious feel.) On the way there we stopped off to eat out and drink at an attractive friendly pub and the meal was good. At the movie house I got into some friendly talk with people like ourselves (retired) who told me about courses in opera and other subjects at American University for $200 for 3 for retired people. Maybe we’ll look into it.

There are many museums in DC and we told ourselves we don’t go enough to them and would try some we’ve not yet been to and keep our eyes for shows on in those we have.

Ellen