A Bluestocking Knits

The Red and Pink Gallery

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One of my favorite pastimes is "collecting" art for my fantasy museum.  If money, time, current ownership, etc. etc. were no object!  Here then, arranged to suit Project Spectrum‘s theme for this month, is the Red and Pink Gallery — or, as I suspect, part of the Red and Pink Gallery ….

Wright_mrandmrscoltman_natlgallery

Joseph Wright of Derby, "Mr. and Mrs. Coltman," 1771 (National Gallery, London).  One of my favorite pictures ever.  So often, portraits of couples have some kind of psychological distance between them, but Mr. and Mrs. Coltman have a comfortable familiarity with each other.  I love the way that his elbow rests on her knee.  Her red dress is a bonus.

Cassatt_younggirls_c1885_frick_1

Mary Cassatt, "Young Girls," ca. 1885 (Frick, Pittsburgh).

Degas09red_1

Degas, "The Dance Lesson," 1879 (National Gallery of Art, Washington).

Anguissola_artistssisterminerva_1

Sophonisba Anguissola, "Portrait of the Artist’s Sister Minerva", c1564 (Milwaukee Art Museum).

Carllarsson_barbro

Carl Larsson, "Barbro," 1903.  Finding reds in Carl Larsson’s paintings and watercolors is absurdly easy — he loved to put splashes of red, whether flowers, textiles, painted furniture, in almost everything.  This little girl, though, I find extremely charming, as she reminds me very much of my younger daughter.  (I cannot seem to find the location of the original watercolor.  It was reprinted in Larsson’s book Andras Barn (Other People’s Children), but the reproduction that I have of the watercolor is rather vague as to the credit.)

Fantinlatour_whiteandpinkmallowsinavase_

Henri Fantin-Latour, "White and Pink Mallows in a Vase," 1895 (Norton Simon, Pasadena).  An old favorite from early on, thanks to many school trips to this wonderful museum.

4 responses to “The Red and Pink Gallery”

  1. Beth Avatar
    Beth

    I’ve just found your blog, I’m not even sure how I got here. I think maybe a link from Yarnstorm. Anyhow I love your “fantasy museum” idea! Great picks.

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  2. Helen Avatar
    Helen

    I’m not sure how to reproduce an actual picture, so here’s the link to a rather small version of one of my favorite ‘pinks’, from my very own National Gallery of Victoria…that’s Victoria, Australia.
    http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/european/em_ipa00084.html
    “Miss Susanna Gale” by Sir Joshua Reynolds always charmed me — I even bought the poster version when I was a teenager. I think her face is sweetly pretty without being saccharine or too angelic. She’s a mere 14, but of course her costume is all grown up. She was the daughter of a Jamaican plantation owner, Francis Gale, but I’m not sure whether the backdrop is supposed to be Caribbean or classical English! I love the side note about the condition of the painting: “The painting was trimmed on the right edge in the eighteenth century, the result of seawater damage after a ship captained by Susanna’s husband ran aground on the northwest coast of America.” It really makes it come to life, and starts me wondering about Susanna, and what happened to her, and her life.

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  3. Helen Avatar
    Helen

    Oh, look what I did. Somehow I managed to make the link to the painting my own personal info! Perhaps it will fix itself…

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  4. Helen Avatar
    Helen

    Me again. I got distracted by the mechanics of posting Susanna, so I forgot to add that the Larsson painting of “Barbro” IS uncannily like Julia! It gives me a pleasant little shiver to see it. You simply have to get her one of those red stripey dresses, and a pair of clogs of course, and pose her on a ladder by the side of the house…although she probably won’t go for the cute little bonnet. It’s too tempting a coincidence to ignore. How often does one find one’s own face, or one’s loved ones’, in a work of Fine Art? (Of course Julia is a work of fine art in her own right.) Just in your spare time, of course. I know you have so much of that!

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