SG
5. Watson and the Shark (1778)
John Singleton Copley (1738–1815)
John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778
Oil on canvas, 183.5 x 229.6 cm
Gift of Mrs. George von Lengerke Meyer (89.481)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photo credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / Bridgeman Images
This painting is glitzy and has all the crunch and snap of Jaws , the film about a shark off the coast of Cape Cod that terrorized unsuspecting bathers, which scared the bejeepers out of me. It is by an American of average ability who went to London and became a star. London had just celebrated the unveiling of Benjamin West’s Death of Wolfe (1771, National Gallery of Canada), which tapped into the national mood of glorifying heroic messages and anticipated Romanticism by pushing melodramatic subjects of death struggling in light and shade.
At first, the work seems a striking painting, and you are drawn again and again to the teeth of the shark, the white of the body, the pose of the jabbing lad leaning over the bow, but then, after looking at the painting many times, it may become an attractive comic strip. But the flash of the shark’s teeth doesn’t go away.
It is based on a true story. Brook Watson, a cabin boy on a ship moored in Havana Harbor, was attacked by a shark and lost a leg — true. Also true, Brook Watson, with one leg, became lord mayor of London! The newspapers reported the incident at the time and the painting hit the spot.
For the rest of his career, Copley did portraits, but he never whiffed such acclaim again. He became depressed and never returned to his native United States. His name does live on, though — Copley Square in Boston is named after him.
JP
6. Edmondo and Thérèse Morbilli (c. 1865)
Edgar Degas (1834–1917)
Edgar Degas, Edmondo and Thérèse Morbilli, c. 1865
Oil on canvas, 116.5 x 88.3 cm
Gift of Robert Treat Paine II, 1931 (31.33)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photo credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / Bridgeman Images
Because of his poor eyesight — he suffered from photophobia, a sensitivity to light — Degas was not drafted for the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). Indeed, such was his sensitivity to light, he said to Monet when reviewing the latter’s water lily paintings, “Let me get out of here. Those reflections in the water hurt my eyes.”
Unable to enjoy the works of his contemporaries in their well-lit studios or the brilliant galleries in which they showed, Degas was even more at a disadvantage outdoors. As a result, he painted indoors, in a vast gloomy room. He often spoke disparagingly of the outdoor work of the other Impressionists. “If I were the government, I would have a special brigade of gendarmes to keep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don’t mean to kill anyone; just a little dose of bird-shot now and then as a warning.”
Despite the disadvantages from which he suffered, Degas had huge talent and a particularly magnificent way of capturing French superiority and aloofness. This is a portrait of Degas’s sister, Thérèse, who married her first cousin, Edmondo Morbilli, who lived in Naples. They visited Paris in 1865 after the loss of an expected child in 1864. Apparently, the marriage was not a happy one and the contrast of the two sets a mysterious mood. Is she strong enough for this certain officious force? Is her hand on his shoulder restraint, affection, or a gesture of hope? Is she resigned?
Degas kept this picture in his home until his death fifty years later.
The painting was done at a time when Degas was examining the portraiture of sixteenth-century Italian artists, such as Bronzino.
When I see it for the fourth time, this is what I see: The colours are to be savoured. A pale slate blue runs into mustard olive — a clash; the slate blue behind the wife, the mustard behind the husband. The flittering sheets of vertical blue, a midnight northern lights, the lovely lightness of the blouse, the hint of a smile on her face, yet pancake makeup — all elation is stamped out.
Look at the know-it-all mouth of the husband. You’ve met this type before, smarter than you, meaner, quicker, a cold fish, yet her hand rests on his shoulder.
Is it possible there isn’t the apparent estrangement seen at first view? Is it a hand of pure affection? I hope so.
I like this portrait. I tire of his ballerinas and fatigued washerwomen.
JP
7. Fray Hortensio Félix Paravicino (1609)
El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) (1541–1614)
El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos), Fray Hortensio Félix Paravicino, 1609
Oil on canvas, 112.1 x 86.1 cm
Isaac Sweetser Fund (04.234)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Photo credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / Bridgeman Images
This is a surprising El Greco.
The subject was Hortensio Félix Paravicino, a monk of the Trinitarian Order, also known for his skills as a poet and orator. He was a close friend of El Greco.
Hortensio was pleased with the portrait. He wrote a sonnet praising it.
O Greek divine! We wonder not that in thy works
The imagery surpasses actual being
But rather that, while thou art spared the life that’s due
Unto thy brush should e’er withdraw to Heaven
The sun does not reflect his rays in his own sphere
As brightly as thy canvases …
Whew!
In Malcolm Rogers’s Director’s Choice,1 he says, “Peravicino’s tunic, occupying the centre of the painting, suggests the importance of the subject’s life as a monk and how Christianity forms the very core of his existence.”
And indeed, seventeenth-century Spain was a deeply religious place. However, sitting here in the twenty-first century, all of that seems somewhat absurd — perhaps because I’ve never been exposed to such a fervour. So when I look at this painting, I have to wonder: Is this a portrait of a religious figure or is it a portrait of an aesthete who is merely wearing the clothes of a monk?
The definition of aesthete is “one who professes a special appreciation of the beautiful and endeavours to carry his ideas into practice.” In truth, to me the sitter looks to be a flighty, off-the-wall actor whose brilliant insecurities are hidden by the monk’s costume and the trappings of the Bible. It seems to me that we have here a nervous theatre director in the wings. Or a slightly crazed writer who thinks unconventional thoughts.
H.W. Janson, in his famous History of Art — the staple when I was a kid — says, “Yet the mood is one of neither reverie nor withdrawal. Paravicino’s frail, expressive hands and the pallid face, with its sensitive mouth and burning eyes, convey a spiritual ardor of compelling intensity. Such, we like to think, were the saints of the Counter Reformation — mystics and intellectuals at the same time.”2
This shows you that when El Greco was good (he assigned much to assistants), his portraiture could hold its own with Titian.