William E.L. Bunn (America, 1910-2009), Dubuque III, 1934, oil on composition board, Dubuque Art Association purchase, 1987.02.11 William E.L. Bunn was born in Muscatine, Iowa. He studied under Grant Wood at the University of Iowa. In March 1934, a call went out through President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program for mural submissions for the new federal post office in downtown Dubuque. This painting is Bunn’s winning submission. Four Mississippi steamboats were named “Dubuque.” The third “Dubuque” was built in 1867 but destroyed by fire in 1876. Bunn’s mural is one of two that can be seen today in the 6th Street entrance of the post office, just across Washington Park from the museum.
Dubuque III is the latest featured work on the museum’s Conservation Corner page. We are raising money for it to be conserved by a professional paintings conservator. See our website for more info and to contribute to the fund: https://dbqart.org/conservation-corner/
William Edward Lewis Bunn, Dubuque III (mural study), 1934, oil on Masonite, 24 1/4 x 20 inches, Collection of the Dubuque Museum of Art. Purchase of Dubuque Art Association.
Looking for inspiration for your “Portraits of the Pandemic” exhibition submission? What about some inspiration from art history?
Featured Historic Self Portrait: Jan Van Eyck
Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck’s “Portrait of a Man in a Turban” is regarded as the earliest known self-portrait. Like many things in art history, this view is not unanimous. The inscription at the top of the frame has been cited as strong evidence in favor of the attribution. It reads “Als Ich Can” (as I/Eyck can) which is a pun on the painter’s name.
Van Eyck painted both secular and religious work. He was an in-demand portrait painter of the emerging merchant class, known for his manipulation of oil paint, meticulous attention to detail and keen powers of observation. Van Eyck apparently depicted himself in two other works; he seems to be reflected in the mirror in the “Arnolfini Portrait” and in Saint George’s armor, in his helm and on the shield of St George in “The Madonna Of Cannon Van Der Paele”.
Artists and Their Pets in Friendship – Matisse & Picasso
French artist Henri Matisse and Spanish artist Pablo Picasso were friends and rivals. They had a profound influence on one another and their art.
They first met in 1904 when they were introduced at the Paris salon of art collector, Gertrude Stein. At the time they were rivals, each vying for recognition in the art world. Picasso’s disciples once wrote anti-Matisse graffiti on the walls near Picasso’s studio. Matisse responded by using the term “Cubism” to mock the art of Picasso and his followers, a label that stuck and became part of art history.
As they grew older, they grew closer. By the end of World War II, the rivals had become great friends. Matisse was now almost eighty, nearly bed-ridden and living in apartments in Vence, a town close to Nice. Alone, his wife having recently divorced him and his children grown, Matisse kept his studio filled with birds and cats for company and inspiration.
Picasso with his mistress, Francoise Gilot, visited Matisse often. Picasso, who was eleven years younger, brought recent paintings to Matisse for comments. They exchanged paintings and even exhibited together. Picasso considered Matisse “an elder brother.” Matisse thought of Picasso as “the kid.”
Matisse and Picasso shared a love for doves. Picasso grew up around pigeons, which are scientifically the same as doves. His father, also an artist, bred pigeons and they were one of his favorite subjects to paint. In turn, they became a subject Picasso returned to again and again throughout his life.
Matisse’s love for doves began in 1936 when he acquired a a variety of caged songbirds and doves from merchants along the river Seine. He delighted in their shapes and colors, plumage and singing. Doves were also inspiration for his “Cut-outs”. In a gesture of friendship. Matisse gave Picasso, who also loved birds, one of his doves.
In 1949, Picasso created the “Dove of Peace” poster for the 1949 Paris Peace Conference. It caught on and became an international symbol for the peace movement. Picasso’s daughter with Francoise Gilot was born the same day as the poster hit the streets of Paris. It seemed ordained that she be named Paloma, which is “dove” in Spanish.
When Matisse died in November of 1954, Picasso was disconsolate and couldn’t paint for days. When a friend called on him, he saw him staring out a window, murmuring “Matisse is dead. Matisse is dead”.
Years before he had said, “When one of us dies, there are things the other will not be able to say to anyone else again.” As a final homage to his lost friend, Picasso painted a series called “Studio” showing an open window looking out on the Mediterranean surrounded by doves. Matisse’s doves.
Misplaced by History: Artists Worth Knowing Vanessa Bell
British artist Vanessa Bell was known for her Post-Impressionist paintings which emphasized bold forms with pronounced brushstrokes and rich colors. She was also an innovator in the design world, blurring the distinction between fine and applied art. The artist’s sister, the writer Virginia Woolf, remarked that Bell’s work was as “firm as marble, ravishing as a rainbow, and like sunlight crystallized.”
Born Vanessa Stephen in 1879 in London, England, Bell was raised in an literary household where leading thinkers and artists of the time were family friends. Her father, Leslie, was an accomplished writer and editor and her mother, Julia, a great beauty immortalized by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones and the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.
Bell’s father encouraged her artistic talents, and in 1899 she enrolled in the Royal Academy of Arts. There, she was taught by John Singer Sargent, whose influence can be seen in the sumptuous tactile qualities and muted colors of her early work.
After the death of her parents, Bell and her siblings settled in the Bloomsbury area of London. There she met writer Clive Bell and artist Duncan Grant, founding members of what came to be known as the Bloomsbury Group. The “Bloomsberries” as they were called, were influential English writers, intellectuals, and artists who rejected oppressive Victorian institutions and embraced creative and sexual freedom. They were known for their bohemian lifestyles and complicated love affairs: the American writer and wit Dorothy Parker famously remarked that the group “lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles.”
In 1907, Vanessa married Clive Bell. They both had romantic relationships outside the marriage but remained devoted to each other.
Bell’s artistic epiphany occurred in 1910 when she attended England’s first Post-Impressionist exhibition, organized by the artist and curator, and her eventual lover, Roger Fry. There she saw the works of Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso for the first time and felt liberated by the bold, unrefined and expressive quality of their work. Said Bell, “It was as if one might say things one had always felt instead of trying to say things that other people told one to feel”
Bell embarked upon an intense period of experimentation, utilizing the vocabulary of Fauvism and Cubism in her still lifes and landscapes, as well as abstract compositions. She invented a new language of visual expression, just as her sister Virginia invented a revolutionary way of writing. Months prior to the outbreak of World War I, Bell, her husband, and their friends, moved from the city to a country home in East Sussex. Charleston became an ever-changing work of art. Bell and her artist friends, among them Roger Fry and Duncan Grant, decorated furniture, curtains and embroideries, painted doors and walls, with their spots, swirls, arabesques, acrobats and mythic figures.
With Fry and Grant (who eventually became her longtime partner and the father of her daughter, Angelica), Bell founded the Omega Workshops, a lab to experiment with abstraction while creating beautiful and useful things for the home. Their modernist products ranged from furniture to stained glass and mosaics, as well as textiles. In 1915, Bell began to incorporate handprinted fabrics into popular dress designs. She also created the original book jacket designs for the majority of her sister novels and essays. To Bell, art and life were intertwined and intensely personal. She died in 1961 at her beloved Charleston. Her works can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.
Let’s Talk About Art: Edward S. Curtis’s “A Bridal Group”
Image Credit: Edward S. Curtis, “A Bridal Group”, 1914, photogravure on Dutch Van Gelder paper, 11 1/2 x 15 3/8 inches, Collection of The Dubuque Museum of Art, Gift of the Dubuque Cultural Preservation Committee, an Iowa general partnership, consisting of Dr. Darryl K. Mozena, Jeffery P. Mozena, Mark Falb, Timothy J. Conlon, and Dr. Randy Lengeling, 2009.361. Open Access, Public Domain
American novelist and short story writer Ernest Hemingway was also remembered for his love of polydactyls, his six-toed cats. After a ship’s captain gifted Hemingway with his first cat, named Snowball, Hemingway was hooked. He owned 23 cats by 1945.
Hemingway named his cats after famous people and let them roam freely about his house. He fed them generously from cases of salmon and even offered them a mixture of whiskey and milk. His love of cats inspired his creative writing, evident in his 1925 short story titled “Cats in the Rain,” which is said to be inspired by a true story of his wife encountering a stray cat on vacation.
ErnestMiller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961)
“To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.”
-Maya Angelou
Listen: Renée Fleming and Evgeny Kissin – Franz Schubert: “Ave Maria”Look: Horace Pippin; “Giving Thanks” 1942Look: Mary Cassatt: “Maternal Caress” 1896Look: Edward S. Curtis:”, Mother and Child, Nunivak” 1929
Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, is one of the most iconic artists of all times. Picasso was best known for his unbridled appetite for women. His diet, however, was surprisingly restricted. When he was in his fifties and plagued by worries of ill health and decreased productivity, he adopted what today would be termed the Mediterranean diet, consisting of fish, vegetables, grapes, and rice pudding washed down with mineral water or milk. He ate in silence, uttering not a word from beginning to end.
Picasso’s doctor advised him to eat spinach. One of Picasso’s least objectionable ways to consume this leafy green vegetable was in a souffle.
Explore more of Picasso’s life from the PBS Digital Studio, “The Art Assignment” series.
Spinach Souffle (vintage recipe) (4 servings)
1 package chopped frozen spinach (1 cup) 1 Tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese 1 Tablespoon butter 2 or 3 shallots – minced 2 Tablespoons lemon juice 6 Tablespoons butter 5 Tablespoons flour 1 and 1/2 cups milk 1 teaspoon salt freshly ground back pepper – to taste 6 large eggs 1 egg white
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Butter a two-quart souffle dish and sprinkle the sides and bottom lightly with Parmesan cheese.
Melt one Tablespoon of butter in a heavy saucepan and add the shallots. Cook for about three minutes, stirring once or twice. Add the thoroughly drained spinach and lemon juice and cook over very low heat, stirring frequently, until all the liquid has evaporated, which will take about 10 minutes. Set aside.
Melt the 6 Tablespoons of butter in a heavy sauce pan and, over low heat, stir in the flour with a wire whisk; remove from heat.
Meanwhile, bring the milk to the boiling point and add it to the butter-flour mixture, beating vigorously with a wire whisk until smooth. Add the salt and pepper and continue whisking until blended. Let this white sauce cool a little.
Meanwhile, separate the eggs. Beat the yolks into the sauce one at a time. Stir in the spinach and set the mixture aside.
Beat the egg whites, including the extra white, in a large bowl until they hold soft peaks.
Stir a little of the whites into the sauce to make it easier to manage, then gently fold in the remainder.
Pour this mixture into the prepared souffle dish. Place in oven, turn heat down to 375 degrees immediately and bake for 30 to 40 minutes until the top is well puffed up ad lightly browned.
Misplaced by History-Artists Worth Knowing: Vilhelm Hammershøi
Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) was a Danish painter known for his meditative interiors and landscapes. Created with a sensitivity to both light and spatial construction, his muted paintings use a limited palette to great effect. His figures are often positioned away from the viewer and project an air of mystery.
Hammershøi was born in 1864 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The son of a well-to-do merchant, he studied drawing from the age of eight before embarking on studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. By the age of 17, Hammershøi had chosen his themes: portraits of family and close friends, spare interiors and a few landscapes. He shunned the lively subjects and colors favored by his contemporaries, limiting his palette to subdued grey, blue, black, white and ochre.
Hammershøi worked mainly in his native city, painting portraits, architecture, and interiors. He is most celebrated for his interiors, many of which he painted in Copenhagen. By 1885, his work had taken on the formal and emotional characteristics of Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. His early works, with their simplicity and recording of the “banality of everyday life”, enjoyed critical acclaim. Artists and literary figures of the time, among them Emil Nolde and Rainer Maria Rilke, admired his work and sought out his company. They remarked on Hammershoi’s retiring manner and reluctance to talk.
Hammershøi took few risks and never explained his art. As his library of art journals testifies, Hammershøi was exposed to contemporary art movements but consciously chose to ignore their “contaminating” effects.
Painting slowly, Hammershøi completed only 400 canvases. He expressed admiration for only one other painter, the American James McNeill Whistler. As an homage to Whistler’s iconic portrait of his mother, Hammershøi painted his mother Frederikke seated in profile.
Hammershøi’s also contributed to a new model in Scandinavian interior design, with his rejection of the cluttered nineteenth-century aesthetic in favor of a simplicity that bordered on the ascetic.
Successful during his own lifetime, Hammershøi died in 1916 in Copenhagen. In 2008, the Royal Academy of London put on the first major exhibition of his work in Britain, “Vilhelm Hammershøi: The Poetry of Silence.” Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the National Gallery in London, and the Ordrupgaard Collection in Charlottenlund, Denmark, among others.
