As a reminder our postponed class meeting is this Tuesday the 16th at 10am.
I was moaning on about my various commitments in my last post and just to encourage you I want to say that I couldn't handle it all so I postponed the taxes appointment (cowardice in part, not ready mainly), the Cemetery meeting isn't until next week, and I did the NEDCC meeting by conference call. The week seemed much saner once I took out big chunks of travel time.
I have thirteen lovely ladies in my Lifelong Learning class and they are going to be fun. Doesn't mean I don't have work to do for them but some of the anxiety is gone. I started out by asking how many of them followed social media in any form - about 2 admitted to following grandchildren on FaceBook but that was it. They looked alarmed when I even mentioned it lest I be about to require them to open a Twitter account.
The joys and frustrations of the Print Department were mainly focused for me this week on dealing with the need to prepare for two additional presentations. I found some interesting stuff when I was investigating the two Whistler prints that we were showing. One, the Girl Reading by Lamplight, is an etching of Whistler's half-sister Deborah, who was married to fellow artist and etcher Francis Seymour Haden. Haden, the older man, had been enjoying some success with his landscape etchings and for a time he and Whistler worked together. The Girl Reading by Lamplight was apparently drawn and etched from life. Haden etched the same scene, in landscape format, and when I found out about that I went to our inventory database to see if we also had Haden's print. Indeed, there it was. So for my last presentation I was able to tell the story of the two men, whose relationship soon faltered - Whistler was very difficult always - and show both prints together. Which one do you like better?
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| Whistler's A Girl Reading by Lamplight, 1859 |
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| Haden's A Lady Reading by Lamplight, 1859 |
I prefer the Whistler over the Haden; there is a lovely repetition of curves that is appealing (the light/shadow from the lamp, the top of her head, the edge of the table, teacup, and the lamp itself). The repetition of curves combined with the vertical orientation draw the viewer's attention back to the figure and also seem to create more of a sense of intimacy. Well...there's my two cents on the topic!
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