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“Monet and Venice” at the Brooklyn Museum

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On January 29, 2026

In Art, Museum, STEAM, Travel

“The real subject of every painting is light.”

                                      Claude Monet

Step out of grey skies and bitter cold into the luminous world of Claude Monet and Venice before it ends this Sunday, February 1st.  Venice, also known as “La Serenissima (‘The Most Serene’),” casts its spell on visitors as they gaze in quiet joy at the beautiful works. 

At the invitation of friends, Monet visited Venice with his wife Alice during the fall of 1908.  Claude did not want to leave his beloved gardens at their home in Giverny, but the 68-year-old artist, who painted prolifically until his passing at 86 in 1926, became captivated by the city. Monet spent a lifetime trying to capture light, essentially trying to depict the elusive, as the exhibition notes, which often left him unsettled.  By painting an exact moment of light, he was capturing time.  His series of paintings, such as those of Venice’s island of San Giorgio Maggiore (“Saint George the Greater”), with its beautiful church, show both an eternal view and a “symphonic” passing of time as Jackie Wullschläger, one of his biographers, notes. The museum underscores this with serene, classical music. One might think Monet’s quest was unattainable, but 115 years later, each of his works in this beautifully curated exhibition continues to transfix museum-goers by transporting them to those moments in Venice.  Visitors can hear the soothing lapping of the Grand Canal.  Part of the beauty is seeing the faces of captivated viewers of different generations, lit by the luminous light that emanates from Monet’s canvases.

The Palazzo Ducale (“The Doge’s Palace,” below) represents the Venice that stands outside of time:


Monet was a proponent of painting en plein air (“in the open air/outdoors”), introduced to him by Eugene Boudin, his instructor at the Academie Suisse, who was also a mentor of Monet’s classmate and friend Jean Renoir.  So taken with Venice, Monet began more paintings than he anticipated, working each morning with Alice beside him, but he had to complete them back in France. They planned to return to Venice together, but his wife Alice passed away, a second profound loss for Monet whose first wife Camille had also died. Grief kept him from returning to the paintings until 1911, when he completed them in Alice’s memory. What is incredible about Monet’s accomplishment is that cataracts had begun to cloud his eyesight, but he managed around this until finally acquiescing to surgery on one eye at the age of 82.

Though it is difficult to believe now, the Paris Salon often rejected Monet’s early art for exhibition, as did London’s Royal Academy, both deeming it too radical.  Monet struggled for years. Art critics ridiculed the works of the first exhibition by Monet and his peers in 1874. Louis Leroy noted that Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise (1872)” was just an impression, a work left unfinished like those of the other artists.  This painting, which launched Impressionism and abstract art, did not sell. Ultimately, it was the first sales of his art in the United States that led to Monet’s financial stability. By the time of his trip to Venice, Monet had achieved critical and commercial success.

Monet, 75, at work in the gardens of Giverny from Sacha Gurtie’s 1915 film “Those of Our Land,” which included Renoir, Degas, and Rodin.

A sublime treat in the exhibition, a Monet water lily painting:

Just when one might think life couldn’t get any better, there is the incredible surprise of Canaletto. Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), also painted en plein air in the 1700’s, which distinguished his work from the studio-based art of the time:

“The Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day,” Canaletto, 1745, and some details (below), created using a camera obscura, a precursor to the modern-day camera.

The exhibition includes the Venice-inspired work of other renowned artists like Jean Renoir, Monet’s friend, classmate at the Academie Suisse, and co-founder of Impressionism, who suffuses his paintings with warmer light and greater detail. (An exhibition of Renoir’s drawings was recently at The Morgan Library.) To enhance Venice’s serenity, Monet included few people despite the crowds of tourists, while Renoir depicted more vibrant scenes. Renoir noted that sometimes as many as six other painters were working alongside him. Each artist may have had the same view, but made it his or her own.

John Singer Sargent, whose works are in the museum’s own impressive collection, had a recent exhibition at The Met. He shared everyday scenes of Venice in watercolor paintings such as “The Bridge of Sighs,” 1903-1904:

“Canal View, Venice,” Jane Emmet de Glehn, ca. early 1900s; the artist was a friend of John Singer Sargent:

Paul Signac, a younger artist whom Monet encouraged:

“The Lagoon of Saint Mark, Venice,” Paul Signac, 1905

“The Grand Canal at Night,” Lucien Levy-Dhurmer, 1895, Symbolist style

“Venice, Sunset behind Santa Maria,” Thomas Moran (American), 1898

In a rotunda-like room and alcove towards the end of the exhibition, a few children were sketching on the carpeted floor.  Parents proudly toted adorable newborns in baby carriers, which added to the overall charm. Monet drew visitors from the Metro area, and internationally, including his native France. 

The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore of the same era from the Brooklyn Museum’s noteworthy and extensive lantern-slide collection

As an aside, one of the perks of visiting NYC museums is enjoying the stylish clothing of international visitors, though the city that hosts Fashion Week each February touts its own inestimable style. Such style is notable in the American gallery next to Monet on the museum’s fifth and top floor.

“Woman with a Bouquet,” Laura Wheeler Waring, 1940

”On the Heights,” Charles Courtney Curran, 1909, oil on canvas

“Man’s Shirt Cut in European Style”, late 19th century, Red River Metis Artist or Eastern Dakota Artist (Manitoba Plains, Canada, or Northern Plains, Dakota) (North America)

“Brooklyn Bridge,” Richard Haas, 1985, charcoal and pastel; iconic bridge designed by John A. Roebling

Also in the American gallery is Christian Marclay’s “Doors,” a film created with movie clips of characters going in and out of doors, which was thought-provoking and fun. (Having only seconds to “name that film” was an unexpected delight. Spotted Ocean City-Philadelphia’s Grace Kelly several times.)

Partial view of the Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room

From the get-go, visitors know that the museum is fun.  The wooden pals in the Rubin Pavilion by Brooklyn-based artist KAWS (Brian Donnelly), originally from Jersey City, serve as hosts in the sunny atrium.  Visitors are greeted with smiles by courteous and helpful staff members. The museum is meant for enjoyment and is not just a checklist of cultural must-sees. Floral wallpaper, park benches, and interactive exhibitions underscore this. The Beaux-Arts style building, now being refurbished, is a work of art, designed by the renowned architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, 1895-1897.  

A charming greeting warms the wait of those in the coat check line who have come in from a wintry cold like that depicted in ‘Early Skating,” Anna Mary Robertson Moses (Grandma Moses), 1951:

Must tempt the crash of WordPress with so many beautiful works (!):

“The Brooklyn Della Robbia” or “The Resurrection of Christ,” Giovanni della Robbia (Italian), 1520, glazed terra cotta, restored by the museum in 2015

George Inness, “Sunrise,” 1887, Montclair, NJ; his paintings are also on view at the Montclair Art Museum and The Clark Institute with a visit to the latter to see his works described in “Clicking at the Clark”.

Walnut desk, Gustav Stickley, 1904, whose works are also on view at The Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms, Parsippany-Troy Hills, NJ

Cultural Burdens Basket, Carol Emarthle-Douglas, 2016, hemp, waxed linen thread, reed, hickory

Mahogany chair, Charles-Honore Lannuier, 1700’s, with shimmering details, inspired by Ancient Greek klismos chair

Apkallu-figure (a Mesopotamian demi-god) between Two Sacred Trees, Neo-Assyrian Period, circa 883-859 B.C.E., from the palace of Ashur-nasir-pal II at Nimrud; the reliefs were “meant to awe” visitors.

“Ajuna’s Penance” from the “Muhabharata,” ca. 1825-40, India

Pair Statue of Nebsen and Nabet-ta, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Thutmose IV or Amunhotep III, circa 1400-1352 B.C.E. (The label notes that Nebsen was “a scribe in the royal treasury” and Nebet-ta was “a singer in the temple of the goddess Isis”.)

Ancient scroll, Arts of Korea

Not to be missed are the mesmerizing portraits of “Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens” through May 17th.  The Malian photographer Seydou Keita (1921/1923-2001), “the father of African photography,” worked primarily in his studio in the nation’s capital of Bamako.  He produced beautiful portraits that reflected the country’s history from the 1950s through the 1970s, a period which saw national independence, a coup, and a famine.  The sweet account of Seydou’s start is that his uncle gifted him a Kodak Brownie camera. Photography was a curiosity at the time in Mali.  People flocked to have their photos taken by Keita, who had a mentor in French photographer Pierre Garnier, but was largely self-taught and initially supported himself as a carpenter.  The compelling portraits reveal his subjects’ trust in him.  What is remarkable is that due to costs, he only took a single shot of each person. 

Eventually, a government job and the theft of his equipment in the 1970’s took the artist-photographer from his studio; however, as he remarked, he retired once color photography became the fashion.  In the 1990s, his work was discovered in Europe and the United States. (Seydou Keita’s portraits are also on exhibition at MOMA through July.)

Seydou Keita, 1963, when he served as official state photographer (1962-1977)

Mr. Keita’s National Order of Mali Medals and a Silver Order of Arts and Letters Chevalier Medal from the French government for his “significant contribution to the arts”.

There is still so much more to see at the Brooklyn Museum including, “Breaking the Mold: Brooklyn Museum at 200,” commemorating the history of art in the borough.  “Unrolling Eternity: The Brooklyn Books of the Dead” opens January 30th. Went back a couple times, but kept missing, “The Dinner Party” (the invitation must be in the mail) and the Feminist Exhibition (mea culpa from a Seven Sisters graduate), and Norman Rockwell’s “The Tattoo Artist,” which was in storage on this visit.  On that note, the Visible Storage and Study Center was an innovative way to enjoy some of the collection not currently on view.

Tiffany Studios Leaded Glass Red Poppy Bronze Table Lamp, early 1900’s. Historical trivia: While a student at Eagleswood Military Academy in Perth Amboy, NJ, Louis Comfort Tiffany studied art with George Inness.

An inviting Education Center with Oliver Jefferies’, “Life at Sea,” 2025, on view through April 26th. The museum offers activities for children and teens, Kids Club memberships, and university memberships.

“Flowers,” Andy Warhol, 1970, screenprint

Excerpt from “Ruckus Manhattan” by Red Groom, Mimi Gross, and “The Ruckus Construction Co.”

Practical, random tidbits: Timed tickets for “Monet and Venice” kept things moving, though not rushed. Ticketed parking is convenient, as was public transportation on a visit some years ago; the 2/3 subway lets visitors out on Eastern Parkway–Brooklyn Museum, which is wheelchair accessible.  (In a neighborly fashion, there are directions from Long Island, Westchester, New Jersey, and Connecticut on the museum website.) Bike racks are available for cyclists.  The museum allows standard-size strollers, which flow smoothly in museum traffic.  Most galleries include live captioning.  Trained service animals are permitted; there was one beautiful and impeccably well-behaved tall, white poodle or a labradoodle on a leash, which looked like it stepped out of a painting.  If anyone wants to avoid the coat check, which takes a while, consider wearing a lightweight coat and a wristlet or the like; purses and bags will need to be checked for security.

Side view of “No More Drama,” Kennedy Yanko, 2022, Brooklyn-based artist via St. Louis, Missouri

The light and airy café features friendly staff and healthful options.  Though it is not overly expensive for a museum café, it could be costly for a family. The profit, however, supports the museum. (Members receive a 10% discount.) In warmer weather, food trucks are outside.

“Early Summer Rain at the Sanno Shrine” from the series “Twelve Scenes of Tokyo,” Kawase Hasui, 1919, woodblock print on paper

“Tea Roses,” Emily Maria Spaford Scott, aka “Lady of the Roses,” late 19th-early 20th century, watercolor

Winter scene by Kawase Hasui

Select First Saturdays, which start February 7th, welcome visitors free of charge.  Enjoy upcoming programs like the Lunar New Year celebration.

Year of the Horse 2026, Horse with Saddle, late 6th century, China, earthenware

Travel sites note that a visit to the Brooklyn Museum takes between 2-4 hours.  Reserve a day to enjoy all that it has to offer!

“Flowers in a Vase (Zinnias),” Maurice Brazil Prendergast, ca. 1910-1914, presented with a note on zinnias from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Brooklyn Museum’s refurbishment in Monet’s blue light

(Sources: brooklynmuseum.org, theartnewspaper.com (interview with Jackie Wullschläger, author of “Monet: The Restless Vision“), claudemonetgiverny.fr, dailyartmagazine.net, seydoukeitaphotographer.com, artnet.com, all-about-photo.com, traveladvisor.com, reverse image app, YouTube, Wiki)

“’Monet and Venice‘ at the Brooklyn Museum” All Rights Reserved ©2026 Kathleen Helen Levey

Georgia O’Keefe has the final word with “Black Pansy & Forget-Me-Nots,” 1926, oil on canvas

A Golden New Year at Longwood Gardens

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On January 19, 2026

In Arts, Christmas, Family, Gardening, Nature, Travel

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in your life.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

As the days get shorter towards the Winter Solstice, we all await that moment when the spirit of Christmas fills our hearts.  Sometimes we wonder if it will ever arrive.  If it does not accompany the music, now starting at Halloween, or the decorating, now beginning on Thanksgiving before half-time, then when?

Beautiful jewel tree

Poinsettias in Exhibition Hall of the Main Conservatory

Yet it does arrive – sometimes inconceivably, improbably, and often unexpectedly, through a kind act, a heartfelt note on a Christmas card, or a loved one’s laughter.  These small things can flip the Christmas switch, bringing that warm, glowing, holiday feeling.  Grand gestures aren’t too grand to bring the magic either.  Someone conjuring up a big Christmas surprise is as joyful as a starry sleigh ride with Santa.

“A Longwood Christmas” has both the small and grand gestures – the unseen hours of dedication bring the splendor.  A literal switch may light up the Longwood night, but the gift of beauty brings the feeling.  Look around while visiting.  There are smiles everywhere, reflecting spirits lifted by the magic of nature meeting art.

Amaryllis

Words fail when walking into the Main Conservatory with its splendid floral Christmas trees, now mirrored by those in the incredible new West Conservatory. 

Splendid fountain greeting at the Main Conservatory entrance

Beautiful camellias were in bloom

Don’t miss the exquisite Orchid House, the original vision of founder Pierre Samuel du Pont and his wife Alice, in the Main Conservatory near the exit to the Waterlily Court, Cascade Garden, and West Conservatory.

Waterlily Court

The Longwood holiday tradition, which has delighted its Kennett Square neighbors and world travelers, was a gift from Pierre du Pont.  In 1906, Pierre saved Peirce’s Park, a former family farm beloved by locals that featured two beautiful allées of trees, which visitors to Longwood Gardens can still enjoy today. Inspired by his travels to gardens in France, Italy, and England, and visits to great exhibitions, Pierre gradually created beautiful gardens on the grounds. Pierre was a generous philanthropist who paid for the construction of nearly half of the public schools in Delaware at the time. Du Pont cousins Henry and Alfred, donated the incredible Winterthur Museum, Garden, & Library, magnificent year-round and especially during the holidays, and the Nemours Estate, in Wilmington, also festive at holiday time.  These generous gifts are gems of the scenic Brandywine Valley.

Christmas trees amidst the Steinway piano and organ console in the Ballroom celebrate the accomplishments and creativity of local arts organizations:

Handmade felt ornaments

Stunning floral trees and blooms in the West Conservatory:

What’s wonderful about Longwood Gardens, and bears repeating at Christmas, is that generations of family members can visit together.  “A Longwood Christmas” will delight everyone – couples, families, and solo travelers who won’t feel alone with a cup of warm cocoa on a merrily lit winter night.  Thank you, as always, to the dedicated staff.

Snapdragon charm

Magnificent trees in the Music Room:

Enjoy “Winter Wonder,” which began January 16th and spring ahead with “Longwood Gardens: Spring Symphony”. Save the date for “A Longwood Christmas,” starting on November 21st.

(Sources: longwoodgardens.org, mainlinetoday.com, Wiki)

“A Golden New Year at Longwood Gardens” All Rights Reserved ©2026 Kathleen Helen Levey

“A Christmas Carol” with Gerald Charles Dickens, The Historic Village of Allaire, and Two River Theater

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On January 19, 2026

In Arts, Christmas, Culture, Theater, Travel

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”                 

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

Often, we experience and hear similar stories from others that children enjoy playing with the embellishments of Christmas – making art with bows, creating collages, and stacking present boxes -more so than exploring the more costly gifts.  Their playfulness is a celebration.


In Gerald Charles Dickens’ performance of A Christmas Carol, his pared-down, one-man interpretation of the beloved story reminds the audience that his great-great-grandfather’s words are a gift.  There are no lavish stage settings or fancy props. Instead, Mr. Dickens plays with the gift, reinventing it to present it anew to the audience. In early December of 2025, on his USA Farewell Tour at Two River Theater, sponsored by The Historic Village at Allaire, in a Q&A Gerald warmly shared that he “feels a theatrical connection with Dickens, which allows for versatility and interpretation…”  After being on the road performing this and other Dickens works for thirty-two years, Mr. Dickens wants to spend more time with family, but his cousin’s son may pick up the mantle. 

Mr. Dickens conveys the warmth and charm of the kindest and best of Dickens characters.

A heartwarming anecdote is Gerald’s sweet memory of the first time that he discovered A Christmas Carol. In a scene straight out of a Dickens novel, five-year-old Gerald was celebrating Christmas with all his family.  The little cousins got into a big bed to listen while a family member read the story to them. 

Mr. Dickens explained some historical context of the novella. Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol at the height of the Industrial Revolution.  Once a child worker himself after his father was sent to debtors’ prison, and as a man of deep faith, Charles Dickens was concerned that the workers’ children would have no education and become a lost generation.  Rather than lecture people, Dickens hoped that his moving tale would connect with audiences and convince them to care about England’s many Tiny Tims.  


Charles Dickens created the beloved novella in six weeks of intensive writing. Published on December 19, 1843, the first edition sold out by Christmas Eve.  Meticulous about the book cover’s quality and illustrations, Dickens did not make as much money as he might have, but his message of “reformation and redemption,” as Gerald described it in a YouTube interview, resonated. By 1844, the novella had gone through 13 printings and is still a bestseller.  His original handwritten copy is at The Morgan Library & Museum, where the Renoir drawings are on exhibit until February 8th.

Regarding films of the story, Mr. Dickens enjoys the Muppets version with Michael Caine, because it uses more of the narration as does his play; he also favors the George C. Scott and Alistair Sims films. Regarding Charles Dickens’ biographers, Gerald prefers the books of Clair Tomalin, Edgar Johnson, and the biography by his great-great-grandfather’s friend John Foster.  Those interested in more may follow Gerald’s charming blog, On the Road with Gerald Dickens.  Gerald Charles Dickens is also the author of two books My Life on the Road with A Christmas Carol and Dickens and Staplehurst: A Biography of a Rail Crash. (What was refreshing and likable is that Mr. Dickens only mentioned his books once in passing.) Everyone can also enjoy interviews with him via YouTube.

The elegant, state-of-the-art Two River Theater from Facebook, which notes events like Shakespeare’s As You Like It, with student performers, premiering January 24th.

Gerald’s great-great-grandfather, with whom he also shares a family resemblance, toured across the United States twice and received warm welcomes.  His first trip was for writing inspiration and to promote the idea of an international copyright, because his books were routinely published outside of England without credit.  On the second trip, he read from his works, which included A Christmas Carol, and acted some of its roles.

Daryl O’Connell, Allaire Director of Development, served as emcee

A Christmas Carol festivals are held throughout England. Here in the US, Mr. Dickens has performed A Christmas Carol in fundraisers for The Historic Village at Allaire, in Farmingdale, New Jersey. (Industrialist and philanthropist James Allaire, a contemporary of Charles Dickens, founded the village, now a nonprofit living history museum, in 1822.) Further south, for fifty-two years, the Galveston Historical Foundation has hosted “Dickens on the Strand” on the first weekend in December (4th-6th in 2026). This Texan celebration of A Christmas Carol has always had a Dickens family member present; it may be possible to see Gerald Charles Dickens as a speaker, though his US performances ended December 15th.  Hearing the inside story of family members warmly exchanging thoughts on their “Dickens on the Strand” experiences was fun to hear.

For upcoming events, kindly visit the The Historic Village at Allaire on social media.

The scenic village grounds host events from April through December – visitors and new members are welcome!

Charles Dickens’ words have passed through the generations in his family and created the bond of a unique, shared experience. For those traveling to, or living in the UK, Mr. Dickens and his brother Ian are starting a “Dickens House Party Weekend” at The Royal, where Dickens stayed in 1838 while writing “David Copperfield,” on the Isle of Wight, February 27th-March 1st. The Dickens Fellowship, which is supported by Gerald and other family members, has chapters around the world and offers a connection for admirers of Charles Dickens. With the Dickens family’s dedication, A Christmas Carol is a gift from the past that delights us in the present and will continue to do so in the future.

Thank you to the Historic Village at Allaire for the wonderful experience! 

Ms. O’Connell and two members of the dedicated team of staff and volunteers of Allaire Village with fundraising Christmas bears from the General Store – definitely more fun to play with than wrapping paper!

(Sources: geralddickens.wordpress.com, arts.gov, www.charlesdickenspage.com, YouTube, Wiki)

“‘A Christmas Carol’ with Gerald Charles Dickens, The Historic Village of Allaire, and Two River Theater” All Rights Reserved ©2026 Kathleen Helen Levey

Renoir and the Psalms at The Morgan Library

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On November 11, 2025

In Architecture, Art, Arts, Culture, Travel

I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it. ” Pierre-Auguste Renoir

“View of a Park,” ca. 1885-90, watercolor, The Morgan Library

Step into the eternal spring of Renoir in a new exhibition of his drawings at The Morgan Library and Museum.  November brings its own kind of beauty, but the dappled Impressionist light of Renoir’s art is a joyfully irresistible invitation.

The Morgan Library exhibition is an incredible opportunity to enjoy Renoir’s rarely displayed drawings and see the process for several of his great works. The exhibition with the artist’s drawings and paintings in two large galleries features works from museums and private collections around the world.  Visitors receive an overview in the room adjoining the galleries that includes two filmed interviews with Renoir from 1915 and 1920.  The size of the exhibition is ideal for enjoying his art in pen and ink, pencil, chalk, pastels, watercolor, oil, and even plaster.

“Portrait of a Girl,” 1879, pastel, The Albertine Museum, Vienna

Renoir is an artist whom we all think we know, but the meticulously curated exhibition offered new insights, not just revisits to his beloved works.  Some of these prompted more research into Renoir’s life and art.

“Self-Portrait,” 1879, oil, Musee d’Orsay, Paris

Renoir as a decorative artist

Renoir, who was from a family of artisans, originally studied decorative arts and saw himself as a craftsman, not an artist. “To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.”  One of seven children, Pierre-Auguste spent his first few years in Limoges, known for its porcelain and high-end leather goods industries. Around the time of his birth in 1841 and during early childhood, there were riots among the poor workers. (Limoges was the city of the first consolidated French workers’ union in 1895.)  When Renoir was a small boy, his family moved to Paris, so his father, a tailor, might find work.  Renoir apprenticed at a porcelain factory and was highly skilled at painting decorative flowers. Clearly talented, he got a permit to sketch at the Louvre, which was near his home.  Having saved a bit, Renoir took night classes at the Ecoles Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) and painting lessons with Swiss-born Charles Gleyere, who had studied with renowned Neoclassical portrait artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Renoir surprised his serious teacher by sharing, “If painting were not a pleasure to me I should certainly not do it”.

“The Milliner,” ca. 1879, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

Renoir joined Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, and Alfred Sisley, among others, as part of the Anonymous Society of Painters for an independent art exhibition in 1874.  The studio owner, Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, known as “Nadar,” a caricaturist, journalist, and photographer, was also an outlier known for taking the first aerial photograph from a hot-air balloon.  The artists exhibited outside the established Salon, which was the annual show of the Academie des Beaux-Arts (Academy of Fine Arts).  For the Salon, a jury selected the works that the public would see.  Following the exhibition, the group’s name came from Claude Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise” and a critic’s comment that it was indeed only an impression, an unfinished painting.

“Boating Couple,” 1880-81, smaller pastel work for “Luncheon of the Boating Party,” Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

After a period of creating sketches as a young artist and student, Renoir adopted the “spontaneous painting” of his fellow Impressionists and began his work directly on canvas.  Like the other Impressionists, whose works were originally rejected by the artistic establishment, Renoir enjoyed plein air painting, or outdoor painting “in the open air,” which captured natural light. An innovation with the production of the paints allowed for this, and Renoir and his peers made full use of the opportunity. They often painted with, and influenced, each other.

“Harvest,” ca. 1885, watercolor, white opaque watercolor, graphite, and varnish (unusually), Musee d’Orsay, Paris

“Impressionism” captured the artists’ “snapshot” style and brushstrokes.  In addition to natural light, they favored the use of bright colors, another result of improved paints, and did not varnish their works, which was done for a formal look. Such techniques lent themselves to painting nature and the countryside.

“Landscape,” 1899, watercolor, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Regarding subject matter, Renoir painted working-class subjects as well as wealthy patrons, which is how he met his wife, Aline Victorine Charigot, depicted in the portrait below. Aline was working as a dressmaker when Renoir approached her to model for him.  When they married, Aline was 20, and he was 38.  After 18 years as a painter and 25 years of working in the arts, Renoir had reached career stability, which suggests a strikingly long and difficult trajectory to success.  

Aline sitting for “Young Woman in a Blue Dress,” ca. 1885-86, watercolor with opaque watercolor, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Renoir also earned income as an illustrator. Some illustrations were for stories, others reproduced his paintings, like “Dance in the Country” and “Dancing Couple”/“Dance at Bougival” in which Aline was the model for both.

Book illustration

Study for “Dance in the Country, 1883, graphite, Musee d’Orsay, Paris

“Dancers (Bougival)” or “Dance in the Country,” 1883, oil, Musee d’Orsay, Paris

Aline and Pierre-Auguste had three sons who all had careers in the arts: Pierre, an actor, Jean, a celebrated filmmaker; and Claude, a ceramic artist.  Renoir’s family was a great source of his happiness, and they were often subjects in his paintings.  Aline modeled for “Luncheon of the Boating Party,” most notably, and her cousin and the family’s nanny, Gabrielle Renard, was a frequent model for Renoir, too.  Before Aline, Renoir had a relationship with Lisa Trehot, another model, with whom he had a daughter, Jeanne, whom he supported.  Despite Renoir’s happiness with Aline, he had affairs during the marriage.  Four years before Renoir’s death, Aline passed away after a hospital visit to Jean, who was badly injured in WWI, as was his brother Pierre. 

Sketch for “Gabrielle and Jean,” 1895, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

“Gabrielle and Jean,” 1895, oil, Musee de l’Organerie, Paris

(Note: On November 26th, a similar “long-lost” Renoir painting, “L’enfant et ses jouets – Gabrielle et le files de l’artiste, Jean (The Child and His Toys – Gabrielle and the artist’s son, Jean sold for $2 million dollars.)

Chalk sketch of “Jean in the Arms of Gabrielle,” 1895-96, possibly reworking “Gabrielle and Jean” (exhibition note), Collection Foundation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, Switzerland

“Child with an Apple” or “Gabrielle, Jean, and a Young Girl with an Apple,” ca. 1905, Collection of Leone Cettolin Dauberville

“Madeleine Adam,” 1887, pastel and graphite, Collection of Diane B. Wilsey

Division among the Impressionists

The founding members of Impressionism remained close for years.  They supported each other’s work, exhibited their art together, and looked out for each other, including each other’s families.  A falling out occurred over the Dreyfus affair.  As a quick history refresher, between 1894 and 1906, the guilt or innocence of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army captain, divided then predominantly Catholic France.  Captain Dreyfus, tried twice and found guilty of espionage, was eventually exonerated.  Camille Pisarro, who was Jewish and a Dreyfusard, along with Monet, supported the captain, and Edgar Degas, an anti-Dreyfusard, who was anti-Semitic, did not, which is not to suggest that the national division was about religion and not politics.  In Renoir, My Father, Jean attributed his father’s artistic divergence from Pissarro to differing artistic and political views. In Growing Up with the Impressionists: The Diary of Julie Manet, based on the journals of the then-teenaged daughter of Pierre-Auguste’s dear friend Berthe Morisot, Julie wrote about Renoir and his family, with whom she first stayed at 16 after her mother died.  (The diary was first edited and published in 1987 by Rosalind De Boland Roberts and Jane Roberts; the latter became a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres, or ‘Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters,’ France’s top honor, in 2011. In 2017, Jane Roberts edited a second, revised edition with 472 footnotes.) Julie, who had often posed for Renoir and was clearly fond of him, noted that he sometimes shared the less generous anti-Dreyfusard opinions of the time.  Renoir, however, stayed close to his Jewish sister-in-law, Blanche-Marie Blanc, and later attended the funeral of Pissarro, whereas Degas did not.

“Portrait of Camille Pissarro,” ca. 1893-94, charcoal, Dallas Museum of Art, Wendy and Emery Reves Collection

Having escaped from poverty, Renoir may have resented that he initially relied on Jewish patrons for exhibitions and commissions. Renoir’s early Jewish patrons supported his talent and influenced his early artistic direction. His portraits of these patrons, and especially those of their children, were beautiful. Greater success offered Renoir new commissions and travel around Europe and North Africa, where he saw the art of Raphael, Velázquez, and Rubens; this influenced his style, making it more classical in later years. He remained friends with the Jewish art dealers, Alexandre Bernheim-Jeune and his sons Joseph and Gaston, who curated 16 of his exhibitions.  Barbara Ehrlich White, PhD., who wrote Renoir, An Intimate Biography (2017) and Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters (1984), and also became a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2014, attests that Renoir was the Renoir whom the public knew: warm, sociable, and kind.  He loved being around people, which his art reflects. Dr. White based her opinion on her review of 3,000 of his letters, 452 of which were previously unpublished. 

A mournful Berthe Morisot, which Renoir sketched after the death of her husband Eugene Manet for a painting memorializing her after her own passing

Renoir’s paintings were one of the first to delight me as a child, not only for their beauty, but for their joy.  He depicts children with such sweetness, which helps young viewers connect with his work. This issue concerning Renoir was mentioned on one exhibit label, as far as I noted, out of more than one hundred.  It stayed with me, however, and I read more about it.  At this point, I leave Renoir’s legacy in this regard to art historians, but I thought that I should mention it.

The artist overcomes arthritis

“The pain passes, but the beauty remains.” Admirably, Renoir continued to paint despite having crippling and painful rheumatoid arthritis, which began when he was 50.  In his late 60s, Renoir and his family moved to Cagnes-sur-Mer on the French Riviera for the warmer climate.

“Girls Putting Flowers in Their Hats,” 1894, oil, private collection

“Young Woman Seated,” 1909, oil, The Art Institute of Chicago/Admin. by Musee d’Orsay. Renoir strove for a luminous quality in his later work.

During this time, Renoir was in pain, especially when he tried to sleep, and he became progressively disabled.  He did, however, paint more than 400 works, including the masterpiece, “The Great Bathers,” which is in the exhibition along with sketches, and influenced Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. His family and assistants placed his painter’s palette on the arm of his wheelchair and his canvas on a rolling easel. Incredibly, Renoir’s paintings became lighter and more joyful.

The film and newsreel interviews in the exhibition show the deformed joints in Renoir’s hands.  Brushes were not strapped to his hands as sometimes noted, but they had to be placed into them. These interview clips were fascinating to watch, and though film was an early art form, Renoir charmed by periodically turning to the camera with a smile.

An arthritic Renoir, painting, [public domain]

On the day of his passing at 78, having painted for several hours, Renoir told his studio assistant, “I think I’m beginning to learn something about it.”

Enjoy seeing “Renoir Drawings” at The Morgan Library, which also offers detailed information about these works on their website, through February 8th.

“Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life“

The illustrated Bibles, many from The Morgan Library’s own collection, are exquisitely beautiful.  As the exhibition notes, the Book of Psalms, the most popular book of the Bible, is known as Tehillum, or “Praises,” in Hebrew, and King David is credited as the primary author. The exhibition begins with King David’s composition of the Psalms, or “songs accompanied by stringed instruments” from the Greek “psalmos”. 

“King David as Psalmist” (instrument), 1408-10, by Lorenzo (Piero di Giovanni)

During the Middle Ages, psalters, or books with the 150 psalms, were initially the clergy’s prayerbooks. These promoted literacy and the study of Latin. Priests, monks, friars, and nuns had to recite all the psalms daily. The Book of Hours, customized psalters, were most popular among lay people, or non-clergy. The faithful looked to these prayers for hope, comfort, celebration, and forgiveness. Children had their own psalters, or primers, from which they learned to read.

“[St.] Jerome in His Study,” Book of Hours, in Latin, ca. 1440-50, Fastolf Master, England

Glossa ordinaria (Standard Gloss), the complete Bible with the writings of Saints Jerome and Augustine, intellectuals and scholars of the Church, before 1480, The Morgan Library, open to Psalm I: “Blessed is the man.”

“Tree of Jesse” and “Annunciation,” depicting “David as Ancestor of Christ,” Book of Hours in Latin and French, Robert Boyvin, ca. 1495-1593, France

The exhibition concludes with Sir Thomas More’s Book of Hours and Psalter. Visitors can see his handwritten notes in Latin, which are moving to see. As a brief historical note, Sir Thomas More, the respected and beloved clergyman, lawyer, statesman, and humanist, served as the Lord Chancellor to King Henry VIII.  Sir Thomas refused to recognize Henry as Head of the Church, a move intended to facilitate the king’s annulment from Catherine of Aragon, and to break with the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Clement VII. Imprisoned in the Tower of London for well over a year, Sir Thomas was executed and later canonized as a saint. Today, some people may know him from the word “utopia,” which came from his sociological and political satire of the same name; this writing was somewhat out of character, though his motives were always honorable. Below: “To think my most enemies my best friends….,” final verses of “A Godly Meditation,” Francois Regnualt, Book of Hours. 1530, Paris/Franz Birckman, Psalter, 1522, noted below.

For more detail on this period and the beautiful exhibition, enjoy visiting upstairs in the Engelhard Gallery through January 4th, or finding the book in the gift shop.

Other treasures on exhibit are:

From “Lisa Yuskavage: Drawings”

“William Shakespeare, Seated,” 1881, marble, William Wetmore Story, permanent collection

“Jane Norton Grew Morgan,” ca. 1905, oil, by John Singer Sargent, permanent collection. Enjoy another visit to his work via “Travel with John Singer Sargent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art”.

John Pierpont “Jack” Morgan, Jr., ca. 1930 by Fayer of London and Vienna, permanent collection

“Bust of Anne Tracy Morgan,” philanthropist and youngest daughter of J.P. Morgan, bronze, 1937, by Malvina Hoffman, permanent collection

Enjoy seeing the beautiful Gilded Age mansion, designed by premier architect Charles McKim of McKim, Mead & White, and appreciating the breathtaking library. Time did not allow for a revisit this time, but that will be the perfect excuse to return and fully appreciate the 2024 renovations, which everyone can appreciate. Free admission for everyone is available Friday evenings from 5-7 p.m.. College students with IDs may enjoy free admission the first Sunday of each month with a reservation. Fellowships and internships are available at times for college students, and for NYC university students, there is a college ambassador program. There are a a number of teen programs (writing challenge, summer reading, and drawing) and teacher resources.

The Morgan is wheelchair accessible and offers wheelchairs and walkers. Additionally, discounted tickets are available.  (Kindly call (212) 685-0008 or email visitorservices@themorgan.org with questions regarding any accommodations.) If visitors plan a longer day at the library, there is an inviting café.

(Sources: The Morgan Library, musee-orsay.com, metmuseum.org, britannica.com, goodreads.com, artinsociety.com, clarkart.edu, openculture.com, 19thc-artworldwide.org, medium.com, nytimes, nationalgallery.org.uk, 19thc-artworldwide.org, apollo-magazine.com, thephilipscollection.org, getty.edu, dailyartmagazine.com, art-renoir.com, adventuresintheprinttrade.blogspot.com, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, latimes.org, bbc.co.uk, harvardartmuseums.org, pasonlinelectures.com, galeriemagazine.com, theatlantic.com, theparisreview.org, shop.themorgan.org, amazon.com, legendarte.shop, Wiki)

“Renoir and the Psalms at The Morgan Library” All Rights Reserved ©2025 Kathleen Helen Levey

The Frick Collection: A Splendid Dream

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On July 24, 2025

In Architecture, Art, Culture, Museum, Travel

“I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.” Van Gogh

Visiting the newly reopened The Frick Collection is like stepping into an artist’s dream.  After an experience that is wonderous and splendid, one wakes upon leaving, startled by unfiltered daylight and the sounds of the city street.  Putting iPhones away upon entering the museum, a polite requirement for viewing the collection, visitors immerse themselves in the art. The uninterrupted viewing of the artwork, combined with its location in a former home, creates a feeling of intimacy.  Underscoring this intimacy is the exhibition, “Vermeer’s Love Letters” on view only until August 31st.  Comprised of “Woman Writing a Letter, with her Maid,” c.1670, on loan from the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, “Mistress and Maid,” ca. 1664-67, The Frick Collection, and “The Love Letter,” c. 1669-1670, on loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the exhibition showcases another art not lost at The Frick.  Vermeer fans will also enjoy “Officer and Laughing Girl,” ca. 1657, and “Girl Interrupted at Her Music,” ca. 1658, in the permanent collection.  

Garden Court designed by John Russell Pope (Visitors may take photos here.)

“Angel” by Jean (Jehan) Barbet (France, 16th century)

To truly appreciate such an incredible collection, visitors must return and make it a cornerstone of every visit to New York City.  (What visitors saw before the recent renovation was 25% of the collection; now they can see 47%, a boon for art lovers.) New visitors will be dazzled by the sumptuous décor by English interior designer Charles Allon of White, Allom & Co., primarily on the ground floor, and by Elsie de Wolfe, one of the first American interior designers, mostly on the second floor, which includes ceiling art in the hallway that connects the galleries.  Returning visitors will enjoy the improved lighting and relish ascending the formerly roped staircase to the second floor.  Though the works of Van Gogh have only graced the museum via exhibitions, the quote was irresistible.  Still, the artists’ works on view are beyond imagination (noted in order via “Featured Artists” from The Frick): Bellini, Carreira, van Dyck, Fragonard, Goya, El Greco, Ingres, Monet, Rembrandt, Titian, Turner, and Vermeer.  (If visitors are able to turn their gaze away from the paintings, the beautiful Sevres porcelain, antique clocks, and Chinese vases are a few of the other exquisite treasures.)  As a complement to the Old Master works, highlights of drawings from the collection are on view through August 11th, and Vladimir Kanevsky’s porcelain floral art, commissioned by the museum, is on view until Nov. 17th.

View along Fifth Avenue with a hint of the elevated garden


Partial views of the Russell Page Garden along East 70th Street

The building that houses the collection is magnificent.  The three-story Gilded Age Beaux Arts mansion with its limestone facades was originally the home of collector Henry Clay Frick and, strikingly, fills a city block.  At various times, premier architects have created, expanded, and renovated the building which include the original architect Thomas Hastings of Carrere and Hastings, 1912-1914, and John Russell Pope, who converted the home to a museum with the addition of the entrance, the Garden Court (formerly the carriage pavilion and where visitors may take photos), and The Frick Research Library, all in 1935, when Frederick Olmsted, Jr. updated the elevated the garden that elegantly sets the building back from the street and complements the serenity of his father and Calvert Vaux’s Central Park across Fifth Avenue.  In 1977, the museum added a pavilion and another garden with a rectangular pool along East 70th Street, designed by Russell Page OBE. Annabelle Selldorf of Selldorf Architects designed the most recent renovations, which included enhancing the galleries, creating an auditorium, and adding a cafe and gift shop. Beyer Blinder Belle assisted with the historic preservation. Both the mansion and Frick Research Library are New York City and National Historic Landmarks.

Blooming hydrangeas on the Upper East Side near The Frick

The friendly and professional staff members, who are proud to share such a treasure, warmly welcome visitors, which was a lovely part of the visit. A courteous guard explained to a surprised visitor that people sometimes try to touch the art, especially Mr. Kanevsky’s lifelike flowers. Though most of the visitors seemed awed, delighted, and considerate, kudos to the staff for their patience as this surely happens.

“Lemon Tree” by Vladimir Kanevsky in the Garden Court

Some logistics: Visitors must reserve timed tickets to view the galleries which have accessibility for most types of wheelchairs.  (Discounted tickets are available for visitors 10-18, those with disabilities, seniors, and students with valid IDs. Admission is free for care partners and active military with valid IDs. Note: Visitors must be over 10.)  Memberships may interest repeat visitors, and donations are always welcome.  The art does not have labels, but the museum offers a $5 guide (which has a new book smell) that may be purchased along with tickets, or visitors may enjoy an audio tour via Bloomberg Connects.  (My first tour was with a wonderful teacher and friend who suggested a visit; the website offers audio for some artwork, helpful for teaching and study, and tours are available for class trips.) Some discounts are available, particularly on Wednesdays from 1:30 to 5:30, when admission is “pay-as-you-wish” with programs that are open to the public.  A charming new café, “Westmoreland,” named after Henry Clay Frick’s Pullman car, and a shop complement the experience.  Students and faculty with valid IDs from the City University of New York, the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York University, and Pratt Institute may receive two complimentary tickets. To visit the Frick Art Research Library, first-time visitors must register. 

Much beloved, the Frick Collection initially sparked debate over its renovation, but with different perspectives coalescing, the result is a harmonious and inviting city oasis.

(Sources: frick.org, nypost.com, newsart.net.com, artnews.com, www.tclf.org, nps.gov)

“The Frick Collection: A Splendid Dream” All Rights Reserved ©2025 Kathleen Helen Levey

Highlights from “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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On July 21, 2025

In Art, Culture, Fashion, Travel

Enjoy seeing “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” this year’s exhibition of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, through October 26th. The exhibition examines Black style over a 300-year period via dandyism, a fusion of African and European styles, and how style has contributed to the development of Black identity.  The exhibit defines a dandy as a person who “studies above everything else to dress elegantly and fashionably”. Zora Neale Hurston’s essay “Characteristics of Negro Expression” (1936) was the springboard for the twelve sections, or aspects, of dandyism that the exhibition presents. Following are a few highlights:

A Jeffrey Banks Ensemble [1980’s] and suit for Andre Leon Talley, “fashion icon,” “creative director and editor at large at ‘Vogue,’ and Paris bureau chief of ‘Women’s Wear Daily'” by Morty Sills (1986), the latter “bespoke tailor” mentioned in the film “Wall Street”:

Josephine Baker portrait by Teddy Piaz (1932) in a tailless tuxedo by Arturo Cifonelli; Ms. Baker, who fought in the French Resistance and wore a Free French uniform at the March on Washington with Dr. King, was the first Black woman inducted into the Pantheon with France’s other military heroes:

Louis Vuitton Ensemble by Pharrell Williams (2025), inspired by the Air Afrique uniforms revived in a collective by Lamine Diaoune; Air Afrique, with stylish uniforms by Dior, supported African art, films, and fashion, was an airline founded by eleven decolonized African countries in 1961 to promote “intra-African travel and culture development”:

“Tailcoat worn by Grace Jones” by Jean Paul Gaultier (2011-12) at the annual amfAR Inspiration Gala in Brazil in 2012.  Ms Jones collaborated with both Mr. Gaultier and headwear designer Philip Treacy:

“Portrait of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas,” (1801), by Louis Gauffler depicts the father of the novelist Alexader Dumas; Thomas-Alexandre, son of a marquis and a mother who was a slave in Saint-Domingue (Haiti), he was the first Black to rise to the rank of General-in-Chief of the French Army; his imprisonment in a dungeon during part of the French Revolutionary War inspired “The Count of Monte Cristo”:

House of Balmain Ensemble by Olivier Rousteing (2023), black velvet coat with gold metallic braid embroidered with pearls and crystals inspired by a 19th-century French cavalry jacket paired with black track pants; Mr. Rousteing refers to those who wear and admire his clothes as “Balmain’s Army”:

Hat worn by Walt Frazier (ca. 2010) and ‘Jet’ magazine cover (1974); Mr. Frazier’s nickname “Clyde” came from the fedoras he wore that were reminiscent of Warren Beatty’s from ‘Bonnie & Clyde’; Mr. Frazier developed the Clyde line of sneakers with PUMA, still popular today.

Silk shirts by Joe Casely-Hayford OBE [1980’s], part of a series from the renowned tailor for whom the British Fashion Council Foundation have established a scholarship with Casely-Hayford. (britishfashioncouncil.co.uk):

“Maya Angelou Passport Ensemble” (2023-24) from LABRUM London by Foday Dumbaya, which represents Mr. Dumbaya’s immigration journey from Sierra Leone to London; inspired by Ms. Angelou’s ‘Passports to Understanding’ essay in “Wouldn’t Take Nothing from My Journey Now” (1993):

Andre Leon Talley Louis Vuitton trunks (1990) – The possession of luggage represents freedom and prosperity:

Guest curator and Barnard College professor Moncia L. Miller, author of “Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity,” wrote the labels for the exhibition. Funding is by Luis Vuitton with “Instagram, the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, Africa Fashion International, founded by Dr. Precious Moloi-Motsepe, The Perry Foundation, and Conde Nast”.

Some of the tailors and designers from or relevant to the exhibition, like Charlie Casely-Hayford, the son of Joe Casely-Hayford, shared their interpretations of dandyism for attendees of this year’s Met Gala.

Music in the Instagram post @kathleenhelenlevey: “Take the ‘A’ Train” by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. (Additional sources: Met Museum, apnews.com, vogue.com, nytimes, wiki, Andre Leon Talley @andreltalley, americainclass.org/RutgersU/Cheryl Wall, 1997, essence.com, casely-hayford.com, rolfpotts.com, esquire.com, barnard.edu, isac.uchicago.edu/museum-exhibit, @chrisroyerscollections IG, monacolife.net, airmail.news, amazon.com, us.puma.com)

“Highlights from ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art” All Rights Reserved ©2025 Kathleen Helen Levey

Travel with John Singer Sargent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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On July 21, 2025

In Art, Culture, Museum, Travel

“In the Luxembourg Gardens”

Enjoy seeing the splendid “Sargent and Paris,” 1874-1884, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York through August 3rd. The early paintings of the American expatriate, who spoke several languages and was an accomplished pianist, reveal not only his brilliance but the genuine friendships he had with his patrons and fellow artists with whom he exchanged works as gifts and who praised his work publicly as he did theirs. The world traveler had a natural curiosity about people, their lives, and cultures. He mastered Realism, though he showed skillful use of Impression. Well-known for his portraiture, he painted murals in later years.

Following are a few highlights of the exhibition:

“Madame Ramon Subercaseaux,” wife of his friend Ramon Subercaseaux, Chilean diplomat and artist

A self-portrait at age 30

The initially scandalous and later renowned “Portrait of Madame X”: John Singer Sargent excelled at depicting society women with great elegance. Subjects usually sought him out; in this instance, he pursued the renowned beauty American-born socialite Virginie Amelie Avegno Gautreau, who had married a prominent French banker. Initially, the right shoulder strap of the gown was down in the portrait, but this, combined with so much exposed skin, i.e., no evening gloves, created a scandal. The artist repainted a raised strap, but his subject rejected it. Mr. Sargent left for London and took the portrait with him. John Singer Sargent was confident that this was his best work, and his loyal friends supported him.

The artist in the studio

Photo of Virginie Amelie Avegno Gautreau with the gown’s strap down

A Gust of Wind (Judith Gautier)”

“Oyster Gatherers of Cancale”; one of a series of this scene that Sargent created with models whom he posed.

“La Carmencita (Carmen Dauset Moreno),” a Spanish style dancer and the first woman featured in film (1894).

“Fumée D’Ambre Gris (Smoke of Ambergris)”; the artist had a model pose in Tangiers for this painting of ambiguous meaning, possibly religious, which he completed in his Paris studio.

“Fete Familiale (The Birthday Party)” depicts John Singer Sargent’s friends and fellow artists Albert Besnard and his wife Charlotte Dubray, and their son, Robert.

“An Out-of-Doors Study” (Paul Helleu Sketching with His Wife)

“Dr. Pozzi at Home,” Samuel Jean Pozzi, an Italian medical doctor who was also “an aesthete and a collector” (partial view)

“Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children” by Renoir, one of the paintings by a Sargent peer in the exhibition

“La Vicomtesse de Pouilloue de Saint-Perier (Marie Jeanne de Kergolay)”

Looking forward to returning to see the works of John’s sister Emily Sargent on view through March 8th. Music on Instagram @kathleenhelenlevey, published on July 19, 2025, is by the artist’s friend Faure.

Dans les Olivier’s a Capri (Among the Olive Trees, Capri)

The Met Museum and the Musee d’Orsay organized the exhibition. The generous sponsors are The Marguerite and Frank A. Cosgrove Jr. Fund with Bank of America, The Sam and Janet Salz Trust, GRoW @ Annenberg, Jim Breyer, the Aaron I. Fleischman and Lin Lougheed Fund, and Trevor and Alexis Traina.

(Sources: Met Museum, arthistory.net, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Clark Art, new.artsmia.org, Wiki).

“Travel with John Singer Sargent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art” All Rights Reserved ©2025 Kathleen Helen Levey

“Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood”: Monet paints at his home near Giverney; his wife Alice keeps him company.

”The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” in a style influenced by Velasquez.

Longwood Gardens: Spring Symphony

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On May 3, 2025

In Architecture, Arts, Family, Gardening, Travel

“Flowers are the music of the ground. From earth’s lips spoken without sound.”

– Edwin Curran

Tulips dance to their own music in the spring at Longwood Gardens, which is a prelude to the beauty to come. “Longwood Reimagined” shares a new West Conservatory with a Bonsai Courtyard and a Cascade Garden, which makes it dazzling for new visitors and delightful for returning ones. If the melodic bells of the charming Chimes Tower did not return garden-goers to some sense of reality, everyone would be hard-pressed to say what day it was, much less what time. Though it only takes a few hours to visit the gardens, the experience has the transporting feeling of a vacation.  While writing this, images of sunlit flower petals and the fragrance of the stargazer lilies in the Main Conservatory come to mind.  Nothing that one could write would top the flowers. The photos will do the talking on this spring stroll with more to come since the gardens are wonderful year-round.

Stunning Cattleya orchids

An endearing aspect of Longwood Gardens is its intergenerational appeal; it is not unusual to see three if not four generations enjoying the beauty together.  On this trip, families were visiting during the spring break, happily spending time as a family and having lovely flowers in their family photos.

Lovely lilies in the elegant Lord & Burnham-designed Main Conservatory

Music fills the grounds daily throughout the spring, summer, and fall, a complement to the serene water sounds throughout the gardens. The impressive fountains have their own showcase with jets of water synchronized to music, which begins May 5th. The traditional Illuminated Fountain Performances with synchronized, light-filled jets of water, start this year with a Taylor Swift-themed show, which will delight her fans.  Fireworks & Fountains Shows begin July 3rd. Longwood Gardens has a Summer Performance Series that offers every genre of music and entertainment: carillon, classical, pop, folk, and country music, ballet, and comedy. The “flowers bloom in the spring” with Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado performed by the Savoy Company May 30th and 31st.

Landscape architecture firm Reed Hilderbrand designed the new West Conservatory with a Mediterranean-style landscape. Architecture firm Weiss/Manfredi designed the conservatory.

Bonsai garden sneak peek

A glimpse of the cascade garden designed by the “father of modern landscape design,” Brazilian Roberto Burle Marx

Timed tickets and the spaciousness of the gardens allow large number of visitors without anyone feeling too crowded.  Surrounded by beauty, everyone’s mood is usually generous regarding photo-taking and interacting.

The 200-acre grounds are accessible with mostly paved paths.  Electric scooters and wheelchairs are available on a first-come, first-served basis. There are mobile and print-friendly maps available with suggested routes. A Sensory Tip sheet is available for visitors with autism. Tickets are best reserved ahead for this popular destination. The cost of tickets depends on the season and weekday vs. weekend. Youth (5-18) pay less than adults and children four and under have free admission. Discounts for military, veterans, college students, seniors, SNAP EBT and PA ACCESS cardholders are available. Though there is no re-admission, the purchase of two-day passes offers a 10% discount for travelers who are staying in the beautiful Brandywine Valley.

The talented horticulturists, focused and hard-working, while visitors mill around them, bring this dream to life.  Thank you to them and the friendly staff and volunteers.

(Source: longwoodgardens.org)

“Longwood Gardens: Spring Symphony” All Rights Reserved ©2025 Kathleen Helen Levey

A Return to Christmas in Stockbridge

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On January 1, 2025

In Art, Christmas, Culture, Culture, Holidays, New Year's Day, Travel

“You can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.” Maya Angelou

With the speed of a run down a Berkshire ski slope, Christmas has arrived…and gone, less than a month after Thanksgiving this year.  The Three Kings still travel towards the star as the Jewish faithful light their menorahs, so here’s a “merry mini” to keep the holiday cheer going.

Each December, the Stockbridge Chamber of Commerce recreates the much-beloved Norman Rockwell painting “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas,” which was wonderful to experience before the pandemic (“Christmas in Stockbridge”). Despite the rain on that trip, everyone was in great spirits. Returning this Christmas was reassuring that the event is not only back but is even better and more fun for children including a visit with Santa and Mrs. Claus, a petting zoo, and face painting.  Both on the first trip and this, visitors were friendly and considerate, offering to take photos of each other by the classic cars. (Classic car fans will enjoy chatting with proud owners of vintage cars, some from New Jersey.) Not only do the details from Norman Rockwell’s beloved painting come to life, but so does the vibe, which he might enjoy even more.  For anyone looking for the holiday spirit, this is the perfect event to experience.

Close-up with Christmas tree in the second-floor window (Norman’s former studio) over the General Store (slightly lightened here for visibility)

The artist warms the darkened Red Lion Inn, formerly closed in the winter, with children and a Christmas tree-topped red Mercury

The Mercury comes to life along with the Red Lion Inn

Victorian carolers on the porch of the Red Lion Inn

The charm is in the details

Norman’s former studio above the General Store (with a 🎄); he later had a studio behind his home on South Street, which is now part of the nearby Norman Rockwell Museum.

Winter chapeau

Cute surprise 🐾

Beautiful detail

Santa’s reindeer at the petting zoo

Store windows display entries for the gingerbread house contest (Williams & Sons Country Store)

Historic Red Lion Inn

Visitors first arrived at the historic Red Lion Inn by stagecoach in 1773. Since then, additions to the original building starting in the 1800s and the accumulation of antique furniture and china have given the inn its unique character and charm.

A truly jolly and charming Santa at The Red Lion Inn (visiting for a different event)

Red Lion Inn

Party starter

Santa’s rooftop view and a few reindeer hoofprints 🦌

Santa’s daytime ride

A door to nowhere (2016), part of the historic inn’s ramshackle charm, long suspected of being Santa’s portal to the North Pole (effectively confirmed in “Red One”). Luggage dropped off here is never lost, just regifted.

Winterberry welcome

Norman Rockwell Museum

Why are Norman Rockwell and his work so beloved?  His warmth and humor got his fellow Americans through the Great Depression and several wars, and they cheer us to this day. His illustrations depicted touchstone moments of life, which we all have in common. Mr. Rockwell worked mostly on deadlines to create covers for The Saturday Evening Post, whose editors gave him creative freedom. Over 47 years, he completed 323 covers for the bimonthly periodical, and his overall body of work includes an impressive 4,000-plus paintings. Admirably, as a consummate professional, he carried on with this cheer through some difficult personal times. Modestly, Norman Rockwell considered himself a commercial illustrator, not an artist. Each of his paintings tells a story, and Norman was excellent at casting.  Favoring naturalism, he employed neighbors and friends as models instead of professionals. In interviews, they fondly recounted his style of direction, which set them at ease and enabled them to become the characters. Inherent in this collaboration was an element of trust.

“Pepsi Cola Santa,”1965, a second attempt as Santa initially appeared too tipsy

Original costume for “Pepsi Cola Santa”

In producing paintings often within two months, photography expedited the process and spared subjects from posing for lengthy periods in positions often too awkward to maintain. Some art critics chastised him for this, but with his training and talent, as noted, he did have the expertise to paint traditionally. As he said, he had an eye like a camera.

Norman Rockwell giving direction to one of his models (museum exhibition of 2009 via npr.org)

Originally a New Yorker, Norman Rockwell arrived in Stockbridge via Vermont.  Regarding the town where he lived for the last 25 years of his life, Norman remarked that he loved living in a place where he knew everyone.  He captured that happiness in “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas”. The painting, which is on view at the Norman Rockwell Museum, has the spontaneous look of a snapshot.  That “spontaneity” took the artist 11 years to capture between 1956 and December 1967. The work conveys someone taking in the view from across the street, perfectly depicted with a panorama.  The golden light of welcoming shops owned by neighbors illuminates the winter blue sky and makes the painting feel suffused with love. (Even a darkened Red Lion Inn, formerly closed in the winter and now lively with Victorian carolers and visitors for the event, does not detract.) Though the holiday preparations look ordinary – people Christmas shopping, neighbors chatting, children throwing snowballs, the ordinary, everyday things are what we all appreciate after an absence, and Christmastime charms most of all.  Painted during the time of the Vietnam War, the painting also reassures with its “changelessness, tranquility, and safety”. (massmoments.org)

“Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit (God Bless Us Everyone),” 1934, cover The Saturday Evening Post

(“Christmas Homecoming,” 1948, cover for The Saturday Evening Post, December 25th. As noted in a Post blog, the mother Norman’s wife Mary, the returning son, their son, Jerry. To Mary’s left is their son Tommy in the plaid shirt, and their youngest son Peter is far left with glasses. Norman is pictured as the happy father who is smoking his pipe. The others are friends and neighbors and frequent models which adds to the warmth of the painting.)

The painter known for celebrating small-town Americana kept his work fresh and original in a professional life of fifty-six years. As he once remarked, “Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative. We find that it is not a new scene which is needed, but a new viewpoint.” With his classical art training, Mr. Rockwell could paint using a traditional process. At 15, he was already making Christmas cards professionally. The aspiring artist left high school after his sophomore year; he studied at the Chase Art School (Parsons School of Design) and later at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League of New York.  (The museum shares that Gerard ter Borch, Peter de Hooch, and Johannes Vermeer, who also used light to great effect, were three of Norman’s favorite artists.) As noted in “Frankly Norman,” a more -in-depth profile, by 19, Norman Rockwell was an associate art director at Boy’s Life, the magazine for the Boys Scouts. 

Charming model of Stockbridge, generously donated by Carol Soeldner

“The Discovery,” 1956

A tired waiter after the celebration in a charcoal study for “Happy New Year,” Saturday Evening Post cover, December 29, 1945

His muscular Rosie the Riveter, a Saturday Evening Post cover, May 29, 1943, which reflects women’s movement into the workforce during World War II, takes inspiration from the Prophet Isaiah of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, and shows his appreciation for European art. Additionally, the Post cover significantly popularized the role of Rosie. Mr. Rockwell later apologized to his model, the pretty and petite 19-year-old Mary Doyle Keefe, a part-time telephone operator from Vermont, for the transformation, which he explained was to convey a strong, inspirational larger-than-life figure.  Ms. Keefe, delighted to be part of history, often participated in museum events and later appeared at the sale of the painting at Sotheby’s in 2002, when it sold for $4.9 million.

Mary Doyle Keefe, circa 1943, via ctpublic.org

Via Wiki

Via Wiki

Though the occasional critic derided Mr. Rockwell for idealizing American life, particularly as the appeal of abstract art grew, he was nonplussed, “Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.” (Christies.com)  If we scroll through our iPhone photos or look back at snapshots, there are captures of some perfect moments that may have passed our notice.  Rather than idealizing life, Mr. Rockwell keenly observed the good. “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas” exemplifies how Norman Rockwell was inspired by life around him.

Fans like Steven Speilberg, originally from Haddonfield, NJ, and George Lucas, who surely wishes he were from New Jersey, admire Mr. Rockwell’s narrative paintings as “cinematic”.  Both have purchased numerous works of the artist over the years, and share these in an exhibition “Telling Stories” at the Smithsonian Museum.

Some may not know that Norma Rockwell taught in a correspondence school for commercial art, which predated email and Zoom. Founded in Westport, Connecticut, by illustrator Albert Dorne in 1945, the Famous Artists School (FAS) offered home study with lessons designed by the respective “famous artists” to help returning GIs find work in the field of commercial art.  At its peak, the school had 50 instructors working onsite.  Requests for Norman’s class outpaced others due to his fame and success.  Lucky students enrolled in Mr. Rockwell’s class, though other experienced illustrators often critiqued submitted work as was standard in those schools.  (FAS attracted some famous students of the day including actors Tony Curtis and Charlton Heston, as well as singers Dinah Shore and Pat Boone.) Artist Jim Stafford was on a correspondence course with acquaintances of Norman Rockwell’s, and later, as a young soldier, Jim wrote to Norman and asked if he might visit him at his Stockbridge studio.  After receiving an invitation, Jim and a friend went the studio, where Norman cast Jim as the window washer for a 1960 Post cover.  In a paternal gesture, Mr. Rockwell tried to set Jim up with the model for the stenographer, but the real-life Jim was not as bold as his character.  He did, however, appreciate that Norman critiqued the art that he brought. 

Via saturdayeveningpost.com with an interesting article title to accompany the illustration

A fun fact is that Norman owned several dogs, which kept him company at his studio. A Collie dog named “Raleigh Rockwell,” who appeared on numerous Saturday Evening Post covers, was special.  An account from “Dogs Society” shares that Raleigh so adored Norman that when his owner-pal was away in Europe once on business, Raleigh refused to eat and started to fade.  His health deteriorating, Raleigh’s whiskers drooped and turned white. When Norman returned, he hand-fed Raleigh until he was well and promised never to leave him again if his whiskers returned to their natural color. Raleigh’s whiskers changed within a few weeks, and Norman kept his promise.

“Making Friends,”1929, with Raleigh via saturdayeveningpost.com

Enjoy Norman Rockwell’s heartwarming holiday themed paintings in “Home for the Holidays” through February 25th at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, just a short drive from Main Street. Other exhibitions include “Anita Kunz: Original Sisters Portraits of Tenacity and Courage,” “Illustrators of Light: Rockwell, Wyeth, and Parrish from the Edison Mazda Collection,” “Norman Rockwell: Illustrating Humor,” and more.

Fans may also be interested in Mr. Rockwell’s autobiography My Adventures as an Illustrator: The Definitive Edition.

Naumkeag “Winterlights”

The striking Stockbridge Naumkeag, named after the Naumkeag tribe, an Eastern Algonquin-speaking people, is a Gilded Age cottage. The mansion is on the National Register of Historic Places, and the entire estate is a National Historic Landmark District. The former is the work of the renowned architect Stanford White of McKim, White, & Mead, who built the country retreat for prominent lawyer Joseph Hodges Choate, who helped found the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and his wife Caroline Dutcher Sterling Choate, a proponent of women’s education who co-founded the Brearley School and Barnard College.  In non-architectural terms, Naumkeag looks like a fairy tale cottage that morphed into a mansion while keeping its charm. With thoughts of spring, when Naumkeag reopens in May, the grounds include beautiful gardens, notably the Rose Garden, the Afternoon Garden, and the Chinese Garden, designed by Fletcher Steele, and summer brings Tanglewood to nearby Lenox.

Magical welcome at “Winterlights”

Stunning library with live music

Beautiful menorah

Wishing trees 🕊️✨

Norman Rockwell celebrated at the Doctor Sax House (hotel) in nearby Lenox

Doctor Sax House, Lenox, 1874, and dulu Cafe & Lounge

Holiday cheer at Michael’s Restaurant, Stockbridge

The Lost Lamb (from an October visit)

Santa welcomes customers at Tiffany’s Cafe & Market

Since all roads lead to New Jersey, a revisit to a Rockwell gem at the Nassau Inn, not far from the Arts Council of Princeton, also noted in ”Frankly Norman,” is a must:

Partial view of the Rockwell mural “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” not quite the Three Kings, but still weaving it in, from the Yankee Doodle Tap Room, Nassau Inn, dating back to 1769; rebuilt in 1938. Mentioned in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise, a fun reminder from Wiki

Beautiful Christmas tree at Palmer Square

Three hundred and fifty-four sleeps till Christmas

Never too early to mention that “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas” festivities are December 6th-7th in 2025 with more details about weekend events via the Stockbridge Chamber of Commerce. No matter what the weather brings, visitors will receive a warm welcome and be in good company.

(Source: stockbridgechamber.org, ormanrockwellmuseum.org, redlioninn.com, dailyartmagazine.com, npr.org, smarthistory,org, crystalbridges.org, americanart.si.edu, brooklynmuseum.org, berkshireeagle.com, boston.com, chronline.com, rauantiques.com, connecticutthistory.org, ctpublic.org, theguardian.com, gurneyjourney.blogspot.com, printmag.com, southlandcollierescue FB (Dogs Society), nationalpurebreddogday.com, bostonmagazine.com, doctorsaxhouse.com, avingplaces.org, wiki)

“A Return to Christmas in Stockbridge” All Rights Reserved ©2025 Kathleen Helen Levey

A Thanksgiving: The Emily Dickinson Museum

By

On November 28, 2024

In Arts, Baking, Gardening, Travel, US History

Visitors receive a warm welcome at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst and enjoy guided tours with Dickinson scholars.  The museum has photos and exhibits that make it ideal for children and classes to tour. The Homestead, where Emily grew up, the Evergreens next door, where her brother Austin, his wife Susan, and their three children lived, and the carriage house are prominent features of the scenic grounds. Spacious and charming, The Homestead, a National Historic Landmark owned by Amherst College, underwent a restoration in 2022 based on descriptions from Emily’s letters and meticulous historical research about the family. The Evergreens, which had remained in the Dickinson family, eventually merged with The Homestead through the trust of Martha Dickinson Bianchi, Emily Dickinson’s niece, a poet, novelist, and editor of her aunt’s work, and the college.

The Homestead sits atop a knoll that has a stunning view of Amherst, which Emily took in each day from her bedroom window.  In Emily’s lifetime, she had the run of 14 acres of land, eleven of which extended across the street.  On the three acres surrounding The Homestead were an orchard, a peony garden, lilac bushes, a vegetable garden, a grape trellis, a honeysuckle arbor, a barn, and a “summer house covered in roses” (penn.museum). Emily’s avid love of gardening came from her mother, Emily Norcross Dickinson. Her brother Austin’s interest in landscape design was so keen that he engaged Frederick Law Olmsted, known best as the co-creator of Central Park, to improve Amherst Town Commons.

The Federal style Homestead, 1813

The Homestead, which features a conservatory, reopened in 2022

The Evergreens, 1856: “Italianate domestic architecture” (emilydickinsonmuseum.org)

A trip to the museum brings alive the relatable human aspects of a genius and the life that formed her.  Emily Dickinson was a devoted and loving daughter, sister, sister-in-law, and aunt who owned a Newfoundland dog named “Carlo,” a gift from her father that she named after a dog in Jane Eyre. Emily loved gardening and was an amateur naturalist. Her mind was so focused on poetry that she wrote on the back of recipes, scraps of paper, and envelopes as she carried out her domestic duties during the day. Envelopes were handy as Emily was a faithful correspondent who wrote an estimated 1,000 letters and often included pressed flowers or bouquets from her garden with her letters: “My friends are my Estate” (archive.emilydickinson.org). She had a mischievous sense of humor conveyed through the wit of those letters and poems.  Lest her observations seem too sharp, sweet blooming roses on her bedroom wallpaper are familiar to many a girl and woman. Though not a churchgoer in later years, Emily was a person of faith, perhaps influenced by the Transcendentalism of her time, reflected in her poems:

The Brain – is wider than the Sky –

For – put them side by side –

The one the other will contain

With ease – and you – beside –

The Brain is deeper than the sea –

For – hold them – Blue to Blue –

The one the other will absorb –

As sponges – Buckets – do –

The Brain is just the weight of God –

For – Heft them – Pound for Pound –

And they will differ – if they do-

As Syllable from Sound –

As Joyce Carol Oates, the lauded writer, the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, and a delightful public speaker notes in her introduction to The Essential Emily Dickinson, Emily gave voice to readers’ interior lives, the hopes, thoughts, and doubts most everyone explores. As Ms. Oates conveys, Emily was a “great poet of inwardness, of that indefinable region of the soul in which we are, in a sense, all one,” which is one reason her poems resonate worldwide. With pensive reflection and few references to news or events, Emily’s poems stand outside of time. Ms. Oates describes Emily’s lyric poems as “revolutionary,” departing from the traditionally structured poems of her time, sometimes even inverting sentence structure in a playful adaptation of the rules of Latin grammar.

Ms. Dickinson’s poems often stand outside of a setting as well, “scenelessness” (Monica Cooper, classicalpoets.org):

Summer laid her simple Hat

On its boundless Shelf –

Unobserved – a Ribbon slipts,

Snatch it for yourself.

Summer laid her supple Glove

In its sylvan Drawer –

Wheresoe-er, or was she –

The demand of Awe?

Biographical overview

Emily, her brother Austin, and sister Lavinia

Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, was a well-educated woman and used this in her poetry. Born at The Dickinson Homestead, she was the middle sibling between older brother Austin and younger sister Lavinia or “Vinnie” in a closely knit family.  Her grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson, built the stately home, the first brick one in Amherst.  He was a prominent attorney and a founder of Amherst College. Emily lived at The Homestead for most of her 55 years with fifteen spent at another house in town after Samuel had overextended himself financially to support the fledgling Amherst College.  Some historians view his son Edward, Emily’s father, as being frugal and stern, which perhaps he was.  He grew up, however, as the eldest in a family of nine, saw his family’s finances fold, and rebuilt his immediate family’s fortune enough so that he could repurchase the lost Dickinson Homestead. Edward had his daughters formally educated in an era when many girls received only tutoring at home.  He married Emily Norcross, a well-educated woman, though “shy and retiring”.

As a girl, Emily studied for seven years at Amherst Academy, where her love of nature flourished with studies in botany.  She created a herbarium, a collection of pressed plant specimens, with more than 400 types of plants.  Visitors will see replicas of some pages on the tour. At the academy, Emily also studied composition, Latin, geology, and astronomy and had access to lectures at Amherst College.

Interior of the Talcott Greenhouse, Mount Holyoke Botanic Garden

The Talcott Greenhouse

Slender yellow woodsorrel

A 17-year-old Emily tested and placed in the middle of three levels at Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary in nearby South Hadley and might have graduated in two years. She found it confining, however, perhaps due to its strict Calvinism at the time and left after one year.  Emily favored the sciences over religious studies, which did not align with the revival of Calvinism throughout Massachusetts (The Guardian):

“Faith” is a fine invention

When Gentlemen can see –

But Microscopes are prudent

In an Emergency.                                                                                                                                         

Emily, 16, whose hair was reportedly red in childhood, and later auburn; her eyes were a dark hazel

One fun tidbit from the tour is that Emily’s father gave her mother a book on housekeeping as a wedding gift.  Mrs. Dickinson took this to heart and, though the family could afford servants, she and the girls did all the housework for 25 years. Emily’s work flourished upon the engagement of a housekeeper.

The petite genius who often dressed in white wrote at a tiny desk in her bedroom and kept her poems in packets, “fascicles,” sometimes sewn together. Enjoy hearing details about her bedroom’s restoration on the museum’s YouTube channel.

Around 1860, when Emily was 30, she began withdrawing from public life. Some speculate that her reclusiveness was due to an eye condition.  Her work became more prolific, so it is possible that she did not want interruptions. Regardless of the reason, she continued to read poetry, novels of her time, the Bible, The Springfield Republican, a highly regarded newspaper, and The Atlantic Monthly. With her family, Emily traveled to see family in Massachusetts and went on trips to Philadelphia and Washington, DC.

The circle of Emily’s immediate family grew with Austin’s marriage to Emily’s friend from Amherst Academy, Susan Huntington Gilbert, the greatest recipient of Emily’s poems and a helpful critic.  Some scholars believe that Emily’s feelings towards Susan extended beyond friendship.  Emily was a doting aunt to Susan and Austin’s children Edward (“Ned”), Martha (“Mattie”), and Thomas Gilbert (“Gib”).  One of her pastimes as a fun aunt was lowering gingerbread on the sly from her bedroom window to her nephews, niece, and their friends.

In middle age, she and her sister Lavinia, who kept the house running, cared for their mother, who was partially paralyzed after a stroke, with the help of their maid Margaret Maher.  Mrs. Dickinson resided in a room adjoining Emily’s.  (Their father had died suddenly while away from home when Emily was 43 which left the family grief-stricken twice over, not having had the opportunity to say goodbye.) Though Emily and her mother were not close, Emily reportedly never complained about caring for her for seven years and spoke of her with great affection.

Egyptian lotus at the Talcott Greenhouse

After the death of Emily’s beloved nephew Gib, 8, from typhoid fever and the loss of a friend and one-time suitor Judge Otis Philips Lord some months later, Emily’s health began to decline.  She died a few years later at 55 from Bright’s disease, which was a catch-all for unknown causes.

Publication

Of the nearly 1,800 poems Emily wrote, only ten were published in Emily’s lifetime, anonymously and likely without her approval. The lack of publication may be a combination of factors: Emily’s reserve, her father’s conservative views on women and publication, and discouragement from a friend and correspondent, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an editor of The Atlantic Monthly.  Emily had read his letter to young writers in the magazine and submitted four poems to him.  Thomas did not recognize her genius and discouraged her, but they continued to correspond and eventually met.

After Emily’s death, Lavinia found hundreds of her sister’s untitled, numbered poems in a bedroom drawer. More kept turning up on scraps and the backs of various household papers which revealed Emily’s discipline and dedication to her writing.  Lavinia sought to have her sister’s poems published, but grief and a fractious division within the family resulted in a heavily edited publication by an Amherst College professor’s wife, Mary Loomis Todd, who had insinuated herself into the Dickinson family, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson.  As co-editors, the two “corrected” Emily’s poems to reflect the poetic style of the Victorian era.  The first time Emily’s poems appeared in print as she wrote them was in a 1955 edition from Harvard University Press edited by R.W. Franklin, the Director of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.

For a list of noteworthy publications of Emily’s poems, kindly visit the museum’s page.

A 2016 definitive edition of Emily poems by Cristanne Miller, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Edward H. Butler Professor of Literature, University of Buffalo, an Emily Dickinson scholar who also edited and wrote several other books on the poet

The enigmatic Emily Dickinson loved riddles, and it is a joy to explore the meaning of her intricate poems.  One of the museum’s exhibits demonstrates how Ms. Dickinson’s poems often had alternate words in the margins.  One wonders if, rather than being “unfinished,” in the mind of a gifted gardener, Emily’s poems were organic: ever-growing and ever-changing.  Though her thoughts about publishing seemed ambivalent, publishing a poem defines it at least for the readers. Given the private nature of Emily’s writing, her sophisticated use of sound is another impressive aspect of her poetry.

Perhaps there is an irony in writing a travel piece about someone known as a recluse, but as our guide, Brenna shared, that term may be misleading for someone who had the run of a large working farm and gardens.  Emily Dickinson lived a full life on her terms and was sociable within her world.  Many of her poems concern death, which was all around her.  She lost cousins at an early age, lived through the Civil War, and saw people pass away from fevers or illnesses easily remedied today. (The average lifespan in 1860 was 39.4 years.) Emily’s most prolific writing period was 1855-1865. Though she never directly references the Civil War, it impacts her work. At the very least, the act of creativity in writing and gardening, is life-affirming. Though there were hardships for the family, as there were for many in those years, the cheer of The Homestead belies this.

Emily once wrote to a friend, “If we love flowers, are we not born again every day?” A curator for the New York Botanic Garden’s “Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers” (2010) shared this in a PBS interview on YouTube and the wonderful realization of Emily’s that pressed flowers, like poems about them, live on.  Enjoy a virtual tour of Emily’s garden from the NYBG exhibition.

Though Emily Dickinson could explore the depths of the soul, she shared that soul’s resilience:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.

Emily composed a poem for “Thanksgiving Day,” which is shared somewhat from the viewpoint of an outsider but conveys that our thanks are never sufficient:

…Not a mention whose small Pebble

Wrinkled any Sea,

Unto such, were such Assembly,

‘Twere “Thanksgiving day”

Children often initially read or hear “A Bird Came Down the Wall,” but the first that resonated with me was one I read as a teen:

The Souls Selects her own Society –

Then – shuts the Door –

To her divine Majority –

Present no more –

Unmoved – she notes the Chariots –

    pausing –

At her low Gate –

Unmoved – an Emperor kneeling

Upon her Mat –

I’ve known her – from ample nation –

Choose One –

Then – close the Valves of her attention –

Like Stone.

Gardening

Emily’s renown was as a gardener, and gardening offered her a world of metaphor for her poetry.  A striking feature of the street view of Emily’s home is the sparkling glass of the conservatory in which she grew ferns and flowers year-round. In a greenhouse that her father had built for his daughters, Emily grew gardenias, carnations, jasmine, fuchsia, and heliotropes.  She often used those flowers like violets, one of her favorites, in baking, another pastime.

Of Emily’s gardens, her niece Martha recalled “a mass of meandering blooms” composed of “daffodils, hyacinths, chrysanthemums, marigolds, peonies, bleeding heart and lilies…and Greville roses” (nytimes.com).

As an insight into Emily Dickinson’s gardening life, readers may enjoy the gloriously illustrated and detailed Emily Dickinson’s Gardening Life by Marta McCall, Chatham, NJ, who teaches at the New York Botanic Garden and was the 2018 gardener in residence at the Emily Dickinson Museum. Bought this with good intentions as a reference for this post, but it will be a cozy winter read in anticipation of spring.

Baking

Emily won second place in a baking competition with her “Indian loaf and rye bread” (tastingtable.com) and enjoyed baking for her family, friends, and neighbors.  The home-baked gifts sometimes included edible flowers from her garden.  The Homestead had three types of grapes, and the family made jams and wine.  Emily’s popular gingerbread recipe is on innumerable blogs as well as the museum’s website. As a fun addition to the Thanksgiving meal, I added this:

Emily Dickinson’s Recipe for Gingerbread:

1 quart flour
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup cream
1 tablespoon ginger
1 teaspoon soda
1 teaspoon salt
Make up with molasses (a little more than a cup is about right)

Cream the butter and mix with lightly whipped cream. Sift dry ingredients together and combine with the other ingredients. The dough is stiff and needs to be pressed into whatever pan you choose. A round or small square pan is suitable. Bake at 350 degrees for 20–25 minutes. (The recipe is via the nybg.com blog with the addition of a simple icing with confectioner’s sugar and edible violets. Enjoy making more of Emily’s recipes via novelist Emily Temple on Literary Hub.)

Since Emily’s grandfather co-founded Amherst College, this will include a brief pitch made in gratitude for the Five College (Amherst College, Smith College, Mt. Holyoke College, the University of Massachusetts, and Hampshire College) experience.  A free bus takes students around to each school.  When this started about the time of my senior year at Smith College, it led to the discovery of brilliant foreign films with friends at the Amherst Cinema, views of the golden autumn and pumpkin-laden fields of South Hadley on visits to a friend at Mt. Holyoke, and later her graduation at the hillside amphitheater, the music of Rimsky-Korsakov played by the Moscow Philharmonic at UMass concert hall (now the Frederick C. Tillis Performing Arts Center, part of the Randolph W. Bromery Center for the Arts), and “Plan 9 from Outer Space” and other horror classics at a fun Halloween festival at Hampshire College.  All these experiences of the arts were as rich as any in New York City and made affordable to students in the days before ride shares allowed for the ease of off-campus trips and travel to Boston.

A later spontaneous trip to Amherst, which was to have included the Emily Dickinson Museum, began with Amherst College’s Beneski Museum of Natural History with its incredible dinosaur fossils.  As it turned out, planning to visit the popular museum is advised. The museum is open March-December, Wednesday-Sunday 10-5 with last admission is at 4 p.m.. A key suggestion is to purchase tickets online before the trip, an invaluable tip from tripadvisor.com reviews. The Evergreens, newly restored, and its former carriage house, now under construction as a welcome center, should reopen in the spring, which is all the more reason for another visit as well as to enjoy the gardens.  Enjoy updates by subscribing to the newsletter and following the museum’s social media.

Sincere thanks to the charming and scholarly Brenna who was a wonderful guide.  Anything on point is a credit to Brenna, any detours, hopefully, few, are mine.

A view of the beautiful trees on the museum grounds and the carriage house construction

Donations and items from the shop support the museum: Emily Dickinson Museum Shop.  Join the free online party on December 10th for Emily Dickinson’s birthday (in-person is sold out!) and a virtual tour.  As Frommer’s Travel Guide notes, Dickinson enthusiasts may also enjoy a tour of the Houghton Dickinson Room at Harvard University’s Houghton Dickinson Library, which features Ms. Dickinson’s writing desk, books from the family library, and other original items of the home.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Beautiful tree on the Amherst Town Common, such nice people there

(Additional sources: emilydickinsonmuseum.org, amherst.edu, mtholyoke.edu, poetryfoundation.org, poetry.org, drupal.yearbooks.yale.edu, poemanalysis.com, Britannica.com, edsitement.neh.gov,frommers.com, dbu.edu, penn.museum, journeys.dartmouth.edu, theatlantic.com, nytimes.com, buffalo.edu, princeton.edu, owlcation.com, tastingtable.com, quotefancy.com, lindaborromeo.com, frankhudson.org, publishersweekly.com, statistics.com, Wiki)

“The Emily Dickinson Museum” All Rights Reserved ©2024 Kathleen Helen Levey

Sunny mums at the Hotel Northampton

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