CERES AND HER DAUGHTER

CERES AND HER DAUGHTER

by Joan K. Yanni

A newly-installed painting and a much admired bronze sculpture have been placed together in the Fountain Court. One is a prime example of Mannerism, the other shows the spiraling movement of Baroque art.  Both are concerned with the goddess Ceres and the mythological story of why the seasons change.

Sacrifice to Ceres

Ceres is the Roman goddess of agriculture and fertility. (Demeter is her Greek counterpart.)  She provides buds and blossoms in the Spring, green leaves, colorful flowers and fruits during the summer, and crops such as corn and wheat for harvesting in the fall. She causes rain to fall and sun to warm the ground. She gives life and food to the earth. 

The painting Sacrifice to Ceres (99.17), by an unknown Flemish artist, was painted in the early 1600s and is a perfect example of Mannerism, the movement that started around 1520. Unlike the balanced compositions of the Renaissance, Mannerist works have no focal point and space is ambiguous and distorted. Figures are in turn muscular and athletic, bending and twisting, then elegant and delicate.  Bizarre posturing is contrasted with graceful gestures. Colors clash, creating unstable, restless compositions with no  foreground, middleground or background.

In MAG’s painting, the main focus at first appears to be the kneeling, bearded figure, perhaps a priest, gazing upward, his delicate hands folded across his chest. Attention then turns to the action on the right, where a muscular figure is clutching a knife, preparing an animal for sacrifice. Other figures on the right are bringing sheep and other animals, presumably for sacrifice. At the lower left is a young servant girl offering up a tray of fruit and vegetables, while products of the harvest, including corn, symbol of Ceres, lie on other trays on the ground. A fire burns on an altar near the center of the picture.

It is hard to find Ceres among the clutter of figures in the foreground or between the Doric columns leading back into the picture. Look carefully to find a statue of the goddess high above the action, looking down at her followers. Her figure is seated on a pedestal decorated with fruit; in her hand she holds a sheaf of wheat. The upper left of the picture is quiet, showing mainly sky. The painting is confusing, as Mannerism is confusing, but it is never dull.

MAG’s small bronze sculpture The Abduction of Proserpina (68.2) continues the story of the myth. Ceres’ main love in life was her beautiful daughter Proserpina (Persephone in Greek) . When they were together, the  earth bloomed; where Proserpina stepped, flowers grew.  Pluto (Hades in Greek), god of the underworld, saw Proserpina’s beauty, fell in love with her and wanted her for his queen. He knew, however,  that Ceres would never permit him to take her beloved daughter to his underground realm, so he secretly kidnapped her and took her there. Ceres searched everywhere for her daughter, but could not find her. As she looked she forgot her duties on the earth. The ground froze and was covered with snow; no crops grew and mankind began to starve. Jupiter 

realized that something had to be done. He ordered Pluto to return Proserpina to her mother.  Pluto did as he was ordered, but had one trick up his sleeve. He asked his wife to eat some pomegranate seeds to sustain her on her way home. She absentmindedly ate a few and ran to meet her mother. The earth bloomed again and mother and daughter were happy.

But in the midst of their joy, Pluto appeared to claim his prize. Because Proserpina had eaten some pomegranate seeds, the food of the dead, she had to return to Hades for a month for each seed she had eaten. (Most stories say three. It seems like  in Rochester.) Proserpina returned to her underworld throne weeping, and her mother again neglected the earth. Thus the seasons came to be: the glorious color in spring, summer and fall, when Proserpina and Ceres are together, and white, frozen lands in winter during the months they are apart.

MAG’s The Abduction of Proserpina shows Pluto carrying off Proserpina. It is a perfect example of Baroque art, with figures spiraling upward as Pluto clutches the girl tightly while she struggles to be free. Her arms reach for the sky as she calls for help. The three-headed dog Cerberus, guardian of the Underworld, anchors the sculpture.

The original sculpture, a life-sized piece carved from marble and now in the Galleria Borghese, Rome, was created by one of Italy’s foremost sculptors and architects, Jean Lorenzo Bernini.

Bernini was born in Naples in 1598 to a Mannerist sculptor, Pietro Bernini. He often traveled with his father as a boy, and his skill was recognized early in his life. By the time he was eighteen he had gained the patronage of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V. His first works were inspired by antique Greek sculpture, but he soon changed the classic, stately forms to incorporate movement and emotion, a revolutionary innovation at the time. He made marble look like soft clay or wax. While difficult to see in MAG’s bronze composition, in the marble sculpture Pluto’s fingers seem to sink into the flesh of Proserpina’s thigh. The same realism can be seen in one of Bernini’s most striking sculptures, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, in the Cornaro Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. One can almost feel the saint falling backward as Bernini presents her swooning in ecstasy as her heart is pierced by divine love. Even in his portraits Bernini  made his subject come alive, with head and shoulders moving and face showing expressions not seen before in marble busts.

In addition to sculpture, Bernini was known for his skill in architecture. He carried over his dynamism into fountains (the fountain in the Plaza Nirvona, for example ) and, in particular, his monumental baldacchino designed for Saint Peter’s in Rome. The tabernacle is colossal, as it would have to be to stand out in the gigantic space of the church. It is over one hundred feet high (the size of an eight-story building) with huge bronze columns spiraling upward, one of the first monuments in the Baroque style which swept across Europe during the 17^thcentury. Bernini died in Rome in 1680.

Source: Curatorial files

MANCHESTER"S DOUBLE PORTRAIT

Judge and Mrs. Arthur Yates

MANCHESTER’S DOUBLE PORTRAIT

by Joan K. Yanni

Among the Gallery’s rich holdings in folk art (the enchanting Portrait of Josephine Dixon, for example, and the engaging Pierrepont Edward Lacey and His Dog, Gun) is a double portrait placed appropriately above an 18^th-century sofa in the folk art--decorative art gallery. It is the unusual portrait of Judge and Mrs. Yates (41.30) by M.M. Manchester.

 The painting shows a somber couple seated at either end of an Empire-style sofa. The man’s right arm lies across the back of the sofa, and in his left he holds a copy of William Paley’s Natural Theology, one of the most popular philosophical works of the 19^th century--a reference to the man’s erudition.  The work is finely detailed, with light playing across the satin drape behind the woman and illuminating her lace collar, her necklace and the brooch at her waist.  She holds a pink rose in her lap, and a lacy scarf is draped across her right arm.

Both people are in formal attire--the man in a black waistcoat and the woman in a fitted blue dress. Though their clothing is detailed, it is stiff and shapeless, with no sign of a flesh-and-blood body underneath. Mrs. Yates’ bodice is draped, swag-like, across her chest, while the judge’s coat could be made of cardboard. Their faces are smooth and expressionless. He looks out at the viewer, while she stares into space. This was a period in which the man was the important head of the household. Is that why she looks sad and he looks imperious?

Between the two in the center of the painting is a window looking out on a surreal vista.  It incorporates both the Old World and the New in a moonlit scene. In the background is a European vista including castles, ruins, and even the Tower of Pisa.  In the center foreground is a log cabin.  A strange mix, perhaps telling the viewer that the Judge was an educated and wealthy gentleman who had been on the Grand Tour of Europe in his youth. The log cabin may suggest that his roots were humble, his wealth coming from the hard work of his ancestors. Or perhaps the painter was demonstrating his knowledge of prints depicting European scenes.

And, as one examines the landscape closely, a question arises: did the artist intend the scene in the window to be out-of-doors, or is it a painting on a window shade, popular in homes of the well-to-do after the 1830s? The more one looks, the interesting the work becomes.

The painting was purchased by curator Isabel Herdle from the estate of Frederick W. Yates of Rochester in 1941. According to a surviving sister-in-law, the portrait had been handed down from the deceased’s father, Arthur Yates, Jr., who was an avid genealogist as well as a wealthy business man. The subject of the painting, Judge Arthur Yates (1807-1880), was the son of Dr. William Yates, reputed to be the first to introduce vaccination into America.  Judge Yates was born in Butternuts, now Morris, NY, in Otsego County, but moved to Waverly in 1932. There he built Tioga County’s first steam saw mill and became a prosperous lumberman. A leading citizen of Waverly, he served as both village postmaster and Justice of the Peace before being appointed to the Tioga County Court in 1836.  He married Jerusha Washburn of Butternuts, presumably the woman in the portrait, in 1836.  Six children were born to the couple before she died at age 45.                                       

The painting is signed and dated “M.M. Manchester, Artist, and AD 1840.” It has been relined and the signature no longer shows, but photographs were taken for documentation. Who was M.M. Manchester? Though he was obviously an accomplished painter, little is known about him, and the Gallery’s is the only known signed work by the artist.

There were many itinerant painters at this time--artists, many lacking skills, who made a living by going from town to town, advertising their presence in local papers, showing an example of their work, and painting whatever townspeople were able to pay for a portrait. Manchester was no ordinary itinerant, though. His skill can be seen in the Yates portrait, and he was aware of the European tradition of the Grand Manner, of placing a subject in luxurious and elaborate, even if not authentic, surroundings and wearing fashionable clothes. Thus he must have been than an unskilled folk art painter working in isolation. At some time he must have been in a city where skilled artists worked and where he could see the work of accomplished American painters or prints of works by European artists.

Still, it is strange that so little is known about such a talented painter. Research has found an obituary from the Cooperstown, NY, Freeman’s Journal for May 29, 1847, noting the death of an M.M. Manchester in the 38^th year of his life. The death notice does not mention that this Manchester was an artist, and his name does not appear in Cooperstown census records or directories.  No death certificate survives, and apparently no will was probated in either Otsego or Chenango County.  However, odds were against finding such records, since birth, death and marriage certificates were not regularly kept by the New York State Department of Health before 1880.

But the date of our painting and the location of the sitters would make it likely that this Manchester was the painter of our portrait. And an early death at age 38 would suggest a short career and might account for the small number of paintings by him that have been located.

In her article “A Yates Family Portrait by M.M. Manchester: Materials for a History,” Patricia Junker makes note of a double portrait, unsigned, but attributed to M.M. Manchester, and reproduced in The Magazine Antiques. This unsigned portrait uses the same composition as ours: a couple seated on either side of a sofa, with a view of a landscape seen in the center of the picture. The careful details of texture are similar, and light plays across the picture highlighting the fabric of the drapes in the background and the clothing of the sitters. The landscape is not European, however, but a panorama with a river steamer. The similarity of the style in the two portraits, however, indicates that the artist is the same.

The scarcity of works by such an accomplished artist is not only odd, but frustrating, and MAG’s unique double portrait begs for research.

Source: Porticus, vol. IX, 1986: Patricia Junker: “A Yates Family Portrait by M. M. Manchester: Materials for a History” p. 21, and curatorial files

INGRES AND BERNIER: PORTRAIT OF A FRIENDSHIP

INGRES AND BERNIER: PORTRAIT OF A FRIENDSHIP

by Thea Tweet

Late August and early September of 1800 found two extraordinary young men in Paris. Both had spent their childhood in the south of France, away from the worst aspects of the French Revolution.  Before long, Napoleon would crown himself Emperor, and some measure of stability enabled Ingres to enter the studio of Jacques Louis David, the most famous painter of his generation. While in David’s studio Ingres would win the Prix de Rome. His friend Bernier had just attached himself to a scientific expedition to the Far East.  For two young men, both twenty years old and hailing from the remote French town of Montauban, these were notable accomplishments

.

Their fortunate juxtaposition resulted in the portrait that the Memorial Art Gallery acquired in 1956. Although it is unsigned, Ingres included it in his list of paintings in his notebook.  A confirming label was lost when the painting was earlier relined.  The medium of the painting, oil on paper mounted on canvas, is somewhat unusual.  It might be explained by the poverty of both the painter and his subject.

The quality of the portrait is immediately visible upon first inspection. Ingres became famous for his ability to capture a likeness. Even his later rapid sketches of visiting tourists are remarkable for being lifelike.  Fortunately, in addition to the Bernier portrait, MAG owns a fine example of Ingres’ drawing of his friend, the sculptor Cortot.  Ingres’ drawings were remarkable. Though they were  done quickly, the artist managed to capture the personality of the subject.

 A closer examination of MAG’s painting shows a noticeable difference between the left and right side of the face, and suggests that the painter was standing somewhat to Bernier’s left when he created the work.  What might appear to be a “five-o-clock shadow” might be the beginning of a mustache and beard, or it could be the way Ingres modeled the face.

                                                                                                                                                               He frequently used the grey-green prime coat for shadows and added the flesh tones where they were needed.Other notable aspects of the painting are the extraordinary amount of curly hair, the lavish shirt with its fashionable stock and the prominent button with its anchor insignia. All of these details are secondary to the immensely appealing face portrayed here. Bernier’s lively, alert expression conveys an active mind.

The painter Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres was born in 1780 and lived until 1867. During his entire life he yearned to be remembered as a history painter, but to this day he is most admired for his luscious nudes and for his portraits of elegant society men and women. Like his American counterpart John Singer Sargent, he detested doing these portraits and once kept a woman waiting ten years for hers!

The years Ingres spent in Italy deepened his love of Raphael and refined his style. He had always been an excellent amateur violinist, and he continued his performances on the violin, the silky tones of his music reminding his listeners of the silken textures of his paintings. He may well have found that organizing musical soirees was a welcome relief from those everlasting portraits.

A great deal is, of course, known about Ingres, but it is somewhat surprising that so much is known about Bernier. Still known as Citizen Bernier ten years after the French Revolution, he had already distinguished himself as a mathematical prodigy who was published as a co-author at only 17 years of age. He was in Paris as what we would call today a graduate student and restless for a  exciting life. over, he was anxious to avoid the universal draft. Consequently, he signed on to be a civilian scientist on an expedition to the East Indies. (Hence the anchor button on his portrait.)

Before he left France Bernier wrote a letter to his parents:                    

“If I have the good fortune to return, the government, which is just and generous, will help me find the means to make you as you were before the Revolution. That is, in comfortable circumstances, but not wealthy. I will have the honor of being useful to France and of helping to extend the limits of human knowledge. What are the dangers compared to such great incentives? And even if I should die there, isn’t a short but useful life really longer than many years spent in idleness or useless pastimes?”

On September 28,1800 Bernier left Paris to join the expedition of two sailing vessels with a complement of astronomers, zoologists and botanists. They were destined for the very long trip around the Cape of Good Hope, through the Indian Ocean,  with landfall on northern Australia. Several of the scientists abandoned the expedition long before it reached there, but unfortunately, Bernier did not.

In addition to his astronomical and meteorological observations, Bernier had begun some pioneering anthropological studies. He did not much care for the aborigines of Australia, but he was beguiled by the natives of Timor and was making a study of their language as well as their customs. 

On June 6, 1803, Bernier’s life was cut short by fever, and he was buried at sea--only 23 years old. Subsequently his colleagues wrote of “his gentle and modest character, his friendly and obliging ways, his coeur et esprit.”

Thirty years later another scientist attached to a naval expedition traveled along the southern coast of Australia on his way home from a five-year expedition, which he described in “The Voyage of the Beagle.” Many years later he lived to write Origin of the Species. He was Charles Darwin.  Had Bernier been spared, what would he have left us?

Of the many portraits Ingres painted in his  87 years, there is not another that evokes  nostalgia than this early picture of Pierre-François Bernier. 

Source: Porticus, 1984; Karin H. Grimme, “Ingres,” curatorial files.

NB: The prestigious Prix de Rome is an award given by the French government to students of the fine arts. The competition is conducted yearly by the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and is open to students between the ages of fifteen and thirty. Ten students are chosen for the final competition. The prize consists of a four-year scholarship at the Académie de France in Rome, allowance for expenses, and exemption from military service.

BEYOND THE OBJECT (RE: WALTER MURCH)

Roasting Rock

MAG’s Resting Rock (98.78) painted in 1961 is an example of Murch’s mature style.  He creates an altar-like setting for a rock, a rock fragment and a small block of wood resting on an oriental carpet.   He illuminates the objects with light that seems to come from above and in front of the picture plane.  The rectangle of the rock is echoed by the implied rectangle in the carpet.  He uses a muted color palette of grays, gold, rose, pink, blue, cream.  Nothing is clearly defined.  The edges of the rocks blur, meld into the background, the colors of which echo those of the carpet. The rock takes on the quality of a gemstone, a jewel shimmering in diffused light.   The painting evokes a mood of nostalgia, of mystery, of events long past.

BEYOND THE OBJECT (Re: Walter Murch)

by Sandra Koon

“I think a painter paints best what he thinks about the most.  For me, this is about objects, objects from my childhood, present surroundings, or a chance object that stimulates my interest, around which accumulate these thoughts. ……I am  concerned with the lowly and forgotten object, the one people discard because they are finished with it or see it in a certain logical automatic way that I would like to break.”

This general statement about his work explains Walter Murch’s career-long interest in the commonplace of everyday life -- machines, fruit, vegetables, clocks, eggs, architectural ornament -- most often fragments in juxtaposition of the natural and the man-made.  For Murch the object is a starting point not an end.  As he explains, “Once I have selected an object to paint and have worked out the background and technique of transferring the object to the canvas, I forget about the object and try to paint the best painting I can…..which means that it will not be just paint on canvas but a re-created image.”

 It’s difficult to categorize Murch amid the movements of 20^th- century American art.   By choosing objects as his focus he positioned himself within the tradition of American still life painters.  He rejected the direct reproduction of objects as seen in MAG’s  Still Life Number 26: Silver Basket of Fruit by Rubens Peale or  the fool-the-eye explicitness of John Haberle’sTorn in Transit.  Murch set himself apart by his application of paint and by his commitment to transforming the object into something poetic, unreal or mystical.  His objects are volumes which give shape to light.

Above all, Murch was interested in the act of painting, an interest that places his work securely in the second half of the 20^th century.  He preferred a thick, irregular surface and painted the texture of objects via thin layers of paint loosely applied, sometimes with a brush, a rag, a palette knife, even his hand.   He said,  “If I use a brush at the outset, I get too damn self-conscious.  I want to put paint on – like Pollock did – and see what happens.” This trust in the act of painting developed slowly over the course of his career.  A quiet, unassuming man who dressed

and spoke conservatively,  Murch forged his own path in the ever-changing art world of New York City.  A Canadian by birth, Murch came to New York in 1927 at the age of 19 and happened into a job with the Montague-Castle Stained Glass Company as an assistant designer.  He had studied at the Ontario College of Art for two years, but found the course work a bit dull.  In New York he studied at the Art Students League and with Arshile Gorky for several years.  He became a close friend of Joseph Cornell with whom he shared an interest in mundane objects portrayed in unusual ways.

 In 1930 he married Katharine Scott, a fellow Canadian, and the family grew to include a son and daughter.  To support his family Murch worked first in the design department of Lord & Taylor for five years, then as a free-lance artist designing book covers, painting murals in private homes, illustrating advertisements.  His paintings of technical subjects were featured on the covers of Fortune and Scientific American magazines and often found their way onto the walls of major corporations. 

His first two one-man shows were arranged by Betty Parsons, in 1941 and 1947, the second one hung by Barnett Newman.  Parsons continued to feature his work in shows over the next two decades.  Following a 1957 exhibit, Stuart Preston, a critic with the New York Times, wrote, “So adventurous is the general run of exhibitions at the Betty Parsons Gallery that it always surprises one to find Walter Murch’s exquisite, slightly sleepy still lifes hanging on walls usually devoted to trail blazers.  No disparagement is meant here.  Murch’s precise and poetic realism probes as deeply into the mystery of placing color and shape as any abstract.”

By the 1950’s Murch’s work was included in group shows throughout the U.S. Beginning in 1951, he taught at the Pratt Institute, New York, Boston and Columbia universities, becoming a highly respected teacher.  He was a frequent juror of museum shows including a stint as a juror of the 1966 Finger Lakes exhibit at MAG.  In 1966 the Rhode Island School of Design organized a retrospective of his work which subsequently traveled to Montreal, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington and the Brooklyn Museum of Art among others.  He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966 which went unused due to his untimely death in 1967 at the age of 60. 

(Murch’s son, Walter, is an Academy Award winning film editor and sound mixer.  He won an Oscar for the sound mix of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”  Murch’s film work can also be seen or heard in The English Patient, The Godfather, and Cold Mountain.)