Joseph Surface Gallery

On November 10, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a Lake Superior storm with the loss of the entire crew of 29.

When launched on June 7, 1958, she was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes, and she remains the largest to have sunk there.

Shanon Playford's 30" x 40" oil painting of the Edmund Fitzgerald was originally commissioned for the Nauticarum Societatis Occultae - Nautical Brotherhood

The Edmund Fitzgerald by Shanon Playford The Edmund Fitzgerald Painting by Shanon Playford

I mean c'mon, who doesn't at least like a little Chardin?

So far, our exploration of has just tapped into the world of 16th- and 17th-century painters from the Netherlands. However, French and German painters participated in the evolution of vanitas painting too.

Jean Siméon Chardin was born in Paris in 1699 and spent his entire life there. He learned what he needed from the old masters he saw in the French royal collection, in the collections of Parisian amateurs, or passing through the active Parisian art market of the day. He might have claimed he did not need to visit Rome or the Netherlands.

Chardin often drew inspiration from the 17th-century Dutch genre tradition, for both format and subject. What is the first thing that catches your eye in “The House of Cards”? The ephemeral nature of a house of cards reminded the 18th-century viewer of the fragility—and often futility—of human existence. The boy's apron suggests he is a household servant called to clear up after a gaming party. Instead, he uses the cards—folded to prevent their being marked and used again—to build the most impermanent of structures. The stability of the painting's triangular composition freezes the moment, as the boy is poised, breathless, to remove his hand and test the fragile balance of his construction. In the open drawer the jack of hearts hints at rascality.

Jean Siméon Chardin, “The House of Cards,” probably 1737, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.90

VANITAS!

The Dutch loved the color and beauty of flowers, particularly tulips. Floral still lifes became popular in the early 17th-century, in part because they depicted the exquisite, imported blooms collected by wealthy citizens who wished to admire their colors and rhythmic forms throughout the year.

Why might this depiction of a vase of flowers be a painting?

Ambrosius Bosschaert’s bouquets capture the fragile beauty of flowers and the sense of hope and joy they represent. Cut flowers do not survive long, so any depiction of a vase of blossoms alludes to the brevity of earthly existence as well.

Ambrosius Bosschaert, “Bouquet of Flowers in a Glass Vase,” 1621, oil on copper, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1996.35.1

Odilon Redon, (1840-1916) "Fighting skeletons"

Art Conservation at the University of Delaware : Giotto di Bondone It is not certain where and when Giotto started his apprenticeship as a master painter, but it has been suggested that he trained in Rome. Vasari’s argument that Giotto studied under Cimabue’s tutelage has not been proven to date. However, Giotto was a renowned artist in his lifetime, and that he re…

Since antiquity, items found in domestic spaces, churches, or businesses have been stored in rectangular or arched niches cut into walls. Depicting 3D images within a 3D space became a staple of painting. The artistic challenge was to create the illusion of space--whether niche or cabinet--behind the actual picture plane. Convincingly rendered things that illusionistically filled such “recessed” spaces would tempt the viewer to reach in and try to take them. If an artist succeeded in bringing off the illusion, only the touch of the viewer’s hand on the painted surface--a sensation utterly different from what was expected--would disrupt it.

In this painting by Hans Memling, a jeweled, golden goblet is placed in a gray-violet stone niche. The illusionistic, red-eyed snake in the goblet is striking and highly unusual; it may refer to John the Evangelist’s power to exorcise demons. What feeling do you have while looking at this work of art? Do you think Memling intended you to be fooled by this niche and chalice?

Hans Memling, “Chalice of Saint John the Evangelist [reverse],” c. 1470/1475, oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1952.5.46.b

If you absorb one thing this week, make it poet Jane Kenyon's advice to writers – some of the wisest words for any human being to live by: https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/09/15/jane-kenyon-advice-on-writing/

“large pictures are like dramas in which one participates in a direct way” but painting a small picture “is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it.”

For most of his career, Mark Rothko preferred to use large formats for his paintings. For him “large pictures are like dramas in which one participates in a direct way” but painting a small picture “is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it.”

This painting is one of the largest in the Gallery’s collection at 105 inches tall by 93 inches wide and currently on view in the West Building, Ground Floor, with one other large oil on canvas from 1961, No. 1.

Have you seen this painting in person before? What was your impression of its size? How does it appear on your screen now?

Image: Mark Rothko, "Untitled," 1955, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. 1992.51.14 © 2015 by Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

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