2022 | Page 9 of 15 | Carol L. Douglas

June 17, 2022July 7, 2022

Alone or apart?

A painting class or group is good for your mental health.

Painting aboard American Eagle last September.

I’m puzzling out a problem, so I’ve been peppering Ken DeWaard with texts. It’s just as likely to be Bobbi Heath, Jane Chapin or Eric Jacobsen on the receiving end of one of these barrages, but it was Ken’s unlucky week. They’re all smart cookies whom I trust with my confidences—in short, my friends. And how do I know them? Through plein air painting.

Painting is a fundamental contradiction in work style. It’s solitary, but it’s also a form of communication. Most artists I know are sociable beings, but we’re required to spend long hours alone to achieve our goals. That push and pull can be tough on the psyche.

Main Street, Owl's Head, available, click for details. I started this painting with Eric Jacobsen.

Artists invented work-from-home, so a study that analyzed the effects of work-from-home during the pandemic should be of particular interest to us. The majority of people working remotely said they experienced adverse impacts on their mental health, including isolation, loneliness and difficulty separating from the job at the end of the day.

The workplace is a strong influence in modern culture. We no longer live in a society that’s village- or church-centered. Work takes up the biggest part of our waking lives. Often, people struggle to make and maintain friendships outside of the formal workplace, especially those who are socially-anxious or buried under family responsibilities. Work colleagues often share the same background, education, interests and values. They may not be our closest friends, but they usually understand us.

Mountain Fog, available, click for details. I painted this with Sandra Hildreth.

When one paints full time, work friendships are far harder to create. Yet there are times when only a colleague or peer gets it. Facebook is a poor substitute for that kind of conversation.

When I moved from Rochester to Maine, my former students wanted to keep painting together. They formed a group and called themselves Greater Rochester Plein Air Painters. That’s since morphed into a dynamic, active painting group with a few hundred members. It couldn’t have happened had I stayed in Rochester, because as their painting teacher I stood in the way of creating a peer group.

Quebec Brook, available, click for details. I also painted this with Sandra Hildreth.

However, people make lasting friendships in painting classes. I still have friends from my student days, and I’m blessed with students who like and support each other outside our classes and workshops.

A group or class can be healthy, but it also has the potential to be subtly overwhelming. Groupthink is the tendency of members of small, cohesive groups to value consensus over truth. That can stifle artistic development. If the ‘stars’ of your group all paint exactly the same way, you might be in a group or class where conformity is too strong a value. The answer, of course, is to find a different class or group, and luckily, that’s not too difficult—they’re everywhere!

June 15, 2022July 7, 2022

Buying a painting is a good hedge against inflation. Seriously.

Chosen wisely, a painting is a durable asset that will increase in value over time.

Spring Greens, 8X10, oil on canvas, click for more information.

If you were in midcoast Maine on Monday, you might have heard my yelp as I cashed out a 16-pound bag of Purina kibble. I checked to see if I’d accidentally scanned it twice. No, it really was $26.48.

I’ve been following the current crisis, of course. I know gasoline is over $5. I’m getting regular pings from Discover telling me, “One of your recurring charges seems different” as they all go up. But sometimes it takes a single purchase to bring home the enormity of the problem, and dog food was it.

Apple Tree with Swing, 16X20, oil on canvas, click for more information.

This all seems sadly familiar. Inflation, a GDP contraction, whiffs of a bear market—“it's all a bit 1970s, but without the decent tunes,” wrote the gossip columnist Steerpike.

There are few sure-fire inflation hedges, but the worst thing to have is money in the bank—especially when it’s earning no interest (which is different from the 1970s). Some of us are investing in groceries, but for those who are a little more flush, art is a recognized inflation hedge.

“Art gives its owners the pleasure of looking at it on their wall, and no rate of inflation can take that away. It is both an investment and a form of consumption, and the latter is quite protected against any macroeconomic conditions. When all else fails, spending money is one surefire inflation hedge. Art also happens to be a durable asset, so the expenditure is not entirely wasteful,” wrote Tyler Cohen of Bloomberg.com.

Bracken Fern, 9X12, oil on canvas, click for more information.

This of course requires choosing wisely. Original art by known artists of quality are a different kind of art from mass-market prints of dubious quality. (I’m afraid that here is where NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, will reveal their true worth. In the end, they’re just an ownership record of limited edition digital ‘prints’, not significantly different from the giclee prints we were all hawking a few years ago.)

The problem, of course, is that for every winner who picked up a Van Gogh when he was just an unknown crazy guy, there is a loser who bought art that sank into obscurity. How do you tell the difference? The art market is both excruciatingly logical and highly subjective.

Apple blossom time, 9X12, oil on canvas, click for more information.

Educate yourself. Identify artists you love and learn more about them. Are they showing and selling in good venues? Do they have a social media presence? Ten years ago, I’d have said that their gallery representation was a good indicator, but the internet has changed that. In the end, it’s not just about the talent of the painter, but about marketing as well. Van Gogh might never have become famous had his brother’s widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, not tirelessly marketed him after his death.

Of course, if making money is your only consideration, you’re still best off taking all your spare pennies and buying an index fund. Nothing beats equities. But let’s be real here—none of us are shoveling every spare dollar into the future, and art will have a better return than other durable assets like a car, a refrigerator, or a washing machine—assuming those are durable in the first place.

June 13, 2022November 9, 2022

Monday Morning Art School: what is critique?

It’s not an emotional response or mere fault finding.

This week I begin a new online class dedicated to critique. Since it’s a totally new idea, the shape of this class is evolving. However, the plan is that students will bring work they’ve done on their own for analysis within the group. The hope is that we can develop a sort of executive function that will oversee our painting processes outside of class. This, as you can imagine, is much harder than “hold your brush like this” painting classes.

Critique is a long-standing tool in every intellectual discipline, artistic and technical. However, it’s more straightforward to tell your co-worker, “I can’t duplicate your results,” than it is to put into words why a painting isn’t working. “I don’t know about art, but I know what I like,” is only a funny joke because it’s to a large degree true.

What critique is not is an emotional response. It must be disciplined and systematic, but art is at the same time intuitive and subjective. We bridge that gap by analyzing works based on a series of values:

Focal point
Line
Value
Color
Balance
Shape and form
Rhythm and movement
Texture (brushwork)

These elements of design transcend style or period. Every painting includes them to some degree. The critic must consider how they work together. Do they coalesce into something arresting or not? If not, what forces are blocking the full expression of the artist’s idea?

There should be no censure involved. We’re all intelligent adults; if our ideas aren’t working, it’s because we’ve run into a problem that another set of eyes can help us unravel.

The very first question we must ask (and answer) is, what are you trying to do or say in this painting? That’s not always simple, so it deserves time. Every subsequent point of discussion should be weighted in regards to that answer. For example, if what interested me was the loneliness of a home on a rocky crag, my composition, color, brushwork all need to support that aloofness.

Criticism should never be mere fault-finding. There is a seed of brilliance in almost every painting, and it needs to be enlarged upon. That means discussing the merits of a painting as much as discussing its faults.

For critique to work well, the critic and artist must both approach the process with humility and mutual respect. I once took a painting I couldn’t finish to a noted teacher for criticism. She told me that it looked like a ‘bad Chagall.’ In trying to execute her ideas on the canvas, I completely destroyed my own vision. My self-doubt met her self-confidence in a terrible concatenation.

I’m speaking here of narrow peer criticism. There’s a larger world of art criticism that seeks to analyze artists in terms of their culture and times, but it has nothing to do with us.

By the way, I’m also starting my mid-coast plein air sessions tomorrow. There’s more than ample room in this class, so if you’re interested, email me for more information.

June 10, 2022July 7, 2022

Your brushes suck. What are you going to do about it?

While you can paint a good oil painting with a stick (if you know how), decent brushes certainly help.

A few months ago, a student in my Zoom class asked me to check a brush for him. He held it up to the camera.

“Shot. Toss it,” I said.

“How about this one?”

“Total c--p. Toss it.”

“This one?”

“It’s a stub! You can’t paint with a stub!”

After more of this than I ever expected, we came up with some ground rules for assessing brushes. While watercolor brushes will last forever if you care for them properly, oil painting brushes do wear out. You can’t paint with a brush that’s:

Hardened with paint;
Splayed (because it has paint dried in the ferrule);
Developed a wicked curve (either a manufacturing problem or because it’s sat in solvent);
Worn to the point of having no flexible fibers left;
Missing chunks of hair.

I’ve puttered endlessly trying to revitalize hardened, splayed or curved brushes, and its simply not worth the effort. Pitch them.

Most of us need fewer brushes than we think, but the difficulty lies in knowing which brushes are appropriate. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. The first question is what fiber is appropriate.

For alla prima oil painting, hog bristle brushes (synthetics are generally too soft for stiff paint);
For indirect oil painting, synthetic or sable along with hog bristle;
For acrylic painting, either hog bristle or synthetic brushes, because acrylic paint is softer than oil paint;
For watercolor painting, sable or synthetic, including taklon. (It’s too early in the morning for me to consider plucking squirrels. Sorry.)

There is very little application for tiny brushes in painting unless you’re a miniaturist. In watercolor, a ½” flat, a 1” wash brush, a #6 quill and a #8 round are enough to get you started. Add a set of short synthetic flats (or mottlers, as they’re sometimes called) in ¾”, 1” and 1½”. A little pointed brush to sign your name is helpful.

In oils and acrylics, a life list would include:

Brights (short flats) in 6, 8, 10, possibly 12, depending on how big you’re going to paint;
Rounds: 2, 4, 6;
Long (true) flats: 3, 4, 5;
Filbert: 2, 4, 6;
A few tiny rounds in sable for detail and to sign your name: 2,4;
1” badger blender brush;
2” spalter or hog bristle background brush—this is for blocking.

I generally recommend Princeton brushes to students; they come in a range of quality and material and are good value for money. I’m currently painting with Rosemary & Co. in both watercolor and oils. Other brushes I’ve known and loved include Isabey, and Winsor & Newton. But brushes are a highly-personal thing, and you’re best buying one or two from a maker and running them through their paces before you commit to a relationship.

The best brushes in the world will do you no good if you abuse them. My daughter makes me castile soap, which cleans my oil brushes beautifully. You can buy it in the laundry section of your grocery store. Saddle soap and conditioning brush soap are also excellent products. The important thing is to clean your brushes as soon as you finish a painting session.

Watercolor brushes need nothing more than a good rinse in tepid water. Shake dry and gently reshape the bristles.

All brushes will be ruined if they’re allowed to stand in solvent or water. That’s a terrible habit, so don’t let it develop. Swish them free of solvents and set them down on a paper-towel or in a brush holder.

June 8, 2022July 7, 2022

Good design is in the details

The people who made beautiful art in earlier eras weren’t focused on themselves, but on craft and how it fit into a greater whole.

The rood screen of York Minster featured the kings of England from William the Conquerer to Henry VI. That's the only reason these figures weren't smashed, and they give us an idea of what the saints in their niches might have looked like.

York was founded by the Romans, slumped into inconsequence under Anglian rule, was rebuilt by the Northumbrians, conquered by Vikings, was sacked by the Normans, and then rose slowly again, only to be pummeled during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the English Civil War. It is, in short, deep and complex, and that is visible on the very fabric of the city.

York Minster contains three monuments designed by Grinling Gibbons. They don’t stand out. That’s not a slam on Gibbons, but rather a reflection of the depth and breadth of good design in the Minster. It’s hard to be moved by massive marble reliquaries to slumbering prelates, but they’re all masterworks. They make their point powerfully.

There are thousands of beautiful small details in the Minster.

The north transept contains the so-called Five Sisters window. Five long, narrow lancet windows are the largest example of grisaille glass left in the world today. Grisaille glass came into vogue after a prohibition on the use of colored glass by the Cistercian Order in 1134, and these are dated to around 1260.

These windows are so contemporary in effect that I wondered if they were modern. Yet they are almost 800 years old. There’s a lesson there: if your art is solely about ideas, it’s unlikely that it hasn’t already been done.

The quire at York Minster.

York Minster survived the hacking and smacking of Henry VIII’s evil minions, but the saints in its innumerable niches did not. They stand empty to this day, a stark reminder of the dangers of iconoclastic fury. Still, one has a sense of the power of the cathedral’s design as it moves from broad concept to finest detail. First there is its standard cruciform shape, oriented to the east and balanced by a tower rising above the crossing. This became so standardized in ecclesiastical design that we sometimes forget that it was a new language then. So, too, was the inexorable visual sweep upward and the glorious light. It must have seemed amazing to people accustomed to squat wattle-and-daub or stone huts.

Contemporary needlework at York Minster.

It is impossible to describe all the layers of design that were integrated into this new cathedral form—arches, buttresses, niches, gargoyles, right down to tiny bits and bobs of sculpture. It has evolved over the centuries. Thus, the tiny headless saints dancing on the western wall seem as much a part of the fabric of the place as the Great East Window. The statues were sculpted in 2004 by Terance Hammill and they are sending a semaphore message with their haloes: Christ is here.

Semaphore Saints, 2004, by Terance Hamill, York Minster.

I was raised in the era of Brutalism and Scandinavian modern and have a fondness for stripped-down design, whether it’s in architecture or painting. But there’s something missing in that: the integration of detail and depth.

Part of that comes, I think, from the egocentricity of our own age. The people who made beautiful art in earlier eras weren’t focused on themselves, but on craft and how it fit into a greater whole. That’s as true of the metalwork of the Vikings and Romans as it is of the ecclesiastical art at York Minster.

The stonemason's yard is an eternal verity of a great cathedral as parts are constantly wearing out and must be replaced.

The Five Sisters window is too extensive to have been the work of any single man. It fits in an austere blind arcade of banded stone, and is topped by another group of five lancets. I expect the glassblowers, the men who leaded the windows, and the stone carvers each had their specific instructions, handed down to them by someone who, in turn, was following instructions. These plans would have been rigorous and limited. That ruled out the self-expression we consider basic in our own time, and yet it resulted in one of the glories of civilization.

June 3, 2022July 7, 2022

Feel the Love

Kind Cumbrians cheered us on as we hiked the last few miles of the wall. Now on to the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations.

The churches of Cumbria are built of reclaimed wall stone, including pagan shrines and inscriptions.

The last few hundred yards of the Hadrian’s Wall path took us down the main street of Bowness-on-Solway, population 1126. It being a warm day in June, there were people out on their business or sitting in their front gardens. Each smiled and nodded, or offered congratulations and last-minute encouragement.

Rambling is a uniquely British pastime, supported by a network of footpaths across private land. We have no equivalent in America, and it’s a wonderful way to see the backside of Britain—its farmyards (complete with ordure), sheepfolds and gardens. The Roman engineers were interested in a strategic fort to keep the Picts out, so the wall misses most settlements and marches resolutely east to west.

These fellows were celebrating a bike ride across England in honor of the Queen's Jubilee.

There were places where I thought those engineers were daft as brushes. In the crags of Northumberland National Park, the wall seesaws crazily across sharp rises and gullies. It’s miserable hiking, so it must have been just terrible for the toiling stonemasons. “Why didn’t they just fill these parts in and make less work for themselves?” I grumbled as I lurched down yet another steep pass.

The wall is an amazing feat of architecture. Much has been dismantled, for shielings, barns, walls, byres and houses. But what remains still stands impossibly true 1900 years later.

There are times on the path when you are walking through someone's back garden.

Bowness-on-Solway is the terminus because it’s the westernmost point where the Solway Firth can be forded at low tide. There was once a large fort and garrison stationed here. Other defenses continue 40 miles down the coast to Maryport. Selgovae raiders weren’t the only problem; there were also troublesome Celts just across the Irish Sea.

But here is where the wall itself ended. The wall’s second-largest fort, Maia, lies under little Bowness-on-Solway.

Drumburgh castle has bits of Roman arch and shrine in its walls. It's a private home today.

The wall is disembodied, but its presence is all around us. In places, it shows as a stiff turf line in low meadowlands. Bits and bobs are baked into churches, houses, and the 14th century pele-tower castle at Drumburgh.

Alas, no wading in the Irish sea for me.

The Cumbria shore looks tranquil but is prone to flooding. Signs warn us against quicksand and fast current changes. We’ve tramped through fields containing innumerable cows, sheep and horses, but it was here that we finally encountered a beast who took umbrage. She quickly decided to boss someone else around.

Our intrepid group, from left: Alison, Doug, Kenneth, Martha, me and wee Poppy, who took at least twice as many steps to go the same distance.

Perhaps fewer people than I imagine really finish the walk. “We just had a party quit in Carlisle,” the publican at The Inn at the Bush told me. “They were in their 30s.” A walker we encountered in Burgh-by-Sands told us that his partner had quit along the way. Yet this is considered the easiest of all the national pathways.

Yarn bombing seemed silly in Manhattan, but is so right for the Queen's Jubilee.

As for us, our feet are terribly blistered. We ache in places we didn’t even know we had. But today we stuff our hiking clothes in a plastic bag and dress for a weekend in Yorkshire. This is the Queen’s Jubilee, and we are looking for lawn fetes and evensong in her honor.

May 31, 2022July 7, 2022

God Save the Queen

Here in the countryside, her subjects love her.

Shop window display in Cumbria

Every small town we’ve walked through has been decorated for the Jubilee. That’s not with big-box generic décor, either, although there are Jubilee flags and bunting everywhere. Every little shop window and many, many front gardens sport tributes from the heart—handmade signs, memorabilia from the Coronation, and many, many teacups of the kind your grandmother collected.

A laundromat in Haltwhistle, Cumbria

It's not my country, she’s not my Queen, but the sentiment chokes me up. This is England’s famous red wall, the Labour heartland that went Conservative in the last election. In other words, it’s in political flux. There are both conservative and workingmen’s pubs in these villages, but none of that touches the Jubilee. The Queen truly transcends politics in a way Americans don’t understand. This Jubilee is her celebration.

Every pub is decorated for the Jubilee.

I am an unabashed fan of the Queen. She reminds me of my mother and all the women of her generation—stoic, composed, hardworking, redoubtable and dignified. I miss them, terribly.

The Jubilee is tied with memories of WW2, which are made more poignant by the current Ukraine war.

The Washington Post opined recently that the Queen should retire. We Americans are not entitled to an opinion (something we should practice saying regularly about a whole host of things). The British monarchy has had no impact on America for 250 years. Any road, the question of whether she’s ‘fit’ for the role is absurd. The modern monarchy is largely her creation, and for all we know she’ll keep on defining it.

The Queen Bee and her subject bees in Gilsland.

I will be in Yorkshire for the Jubilee celebrations proper, but there could be no better place to observe them than right here in Brampton, Cumbria—or any of the other little villages we’ve passed through. There will be prayer vigils and parties for the old people. Tomorrow night, there will be beacons lit across England, including along Hadrian’s Wall. These will range from “private bonfires to full-blown spectaculars with fireworks, choirs, pipers, and buglers.”

The Queen's corgis in a large yarn-bomb in Brampton, Cumbria.

I’ve been to Britain before, but always to big cities or World Heritage Sites. This time, I’m waiting out the rain in country bus stops and drinking in rural pubs. This England is to London as Pecos, NM is to New York. I had breakfast yesterday with a Shropshire farmer. We discussed the labor shortage, just as I might with my Maine neighbor.

In the window of an Indian restaurant in Brampton.

Two nights ago, we stayed at The Centre of Britain in Haltwhistle. It’s in a stone building that wraps around a 15^th century Border Reivers' Pele Tower. It’s ridiculously atmospheric, and it’s for sale for a fraction of the price of a boutique inn in Maine. You’d have to deal with muddy boots, but if you want to throw over your current life for one in a small English village, email the proprietors here. The beer, I promise you, is very, very good.

Many people have pulled out treasured memorabilia from the Coronation in 1952.

May 27, 2022July 7, 2022

The care and feeding of your dogs

Poppy discovered the joys of manure, but my feet were thoroughly blistered.

The beautiful Northumbrian landscape.

This is what I’d call ‘hill-walking’ but my friend Kenny—who was raised on the shores of Loch Linnhe, just a hop, skip and a jump from Ben Nevis—thinks of as a doddle. Shortly after leaving the Tyne at Newburn, we started the long slog up to Heddon-on-the-Wall. There is no urban sprawl here—just long agricultural vistas and Constable skies.

These small Northumbrian villages are Cotswold-beautiful, built of golden-brown stone and perched on high hills with magnificent vistas in every direction. Still, all the beauty in the world doesn’t prevent one from being parched and in need of a pee by midmorning. There was a public house but it seemed a bit early, even for me.

The ever-polite British have deferred the 1900th birthday celebrations for the wall until September, so as to not take away from the Queen's Jubilee.

“Look for a Methodist church,” said Alison, and she was right. They had a bathroom, and they offered us coffee, tea, and cheese scones. We had a lovely sit in their garden before we went to look at our first section of unreconstructed wall. Thank you, lovely Methodists!

From there we walked a section of military road planned by Field Marshal George Wade following his inability to move artillery and troops cross-country in pursuit of Bonnie Prince Charlie. The old wall was torn out and used as the base for the highway. The British were pretty sick of the Jacobites by that point.

Our first glimpse of the wall since Wallsend.

After crossing the A69, we dropped down into a peaceful meadow where Poppy discovered the joys of cow dung. Poppy is a well-bred lass from Edinburgh but that didn’t stop her from rolling ecstatically. Fifteen minutes and a package of baby wipes later, we’d fairly evenly distributed the manure among our human persons, with only a moderate amount left on the dog.

Rural England is crisscrossed by public rights-of-way, but they’re shared with livestock. I don’t mind cows; they’re generally leery of people. Horses so far have been behind fences; that’s good as they’re far too canny to be trusted with daypacks.

Rudchester Farm.

At Rudchester, we crossed a sheepfold, the site of the fourth fort along the Wall, Vindobala. The only reminder of its existence was the unnatural flatness of the farmyard—and the ancient stone walls, undoubtably made of reclaimed stone. As we gathered to read the explanatory sign, Poppy found sheep manure and joyfully worked it with her muzzle.

I am an assiduous hiker who does 4.5 miles up Beech Hill every morning before breakfast. I’d hoped that would prepare me for this walk, but by midafternoon, my own poor dogs were blistered. They were sliding forward with every downward step. At lunch, Martha cleverly relaced my hiking shoes for me, but the damage was done. I limped the remaining distance.

The path is very well marked, and surprisingly busy.

Kenny is very kind. For the last four miles, he promised me that there was a pub just another half mile along.

It worked.

May 26, 2022July 7, 2022

The Perfect English Holiday

I dipped my feet in the North Sea. It rained. I ate an ice cream. There was a dog. How much more British can you get?

Dipping my toes in the North Sea, with the requisite British dog. Her name is Poppy and she's a gem.

Last week, I wrote here and here that nothing lasts forever. In Britain, is sometimes turned on its head; antiquity seems to pop up everywhere.

The Moray Estate was built in the early 19^th century on a steep slope above the Water of Leith. Ownership is by feu, a feudal land tenure system peculiar to Scotland. The freeholder is somehow a vassal to the mesne lord, in this case the Earl of Moray. This is all pretty vestigial at this point, but it seems to confer some rights, including the beautiful gardens of the Moray Estate.

Portrait of Dr. Martha Vail Barker, 2019, Carol L. Douglas.

I came to Scotland in 2019 to paint a portrait in one of these townhouses, located on Great Stuart Street. In the end it became as much a portrait of the rooms as of the subject. I’d heard the townhouse had sustained serious flooding last year, but the scale of the damage shocked me. There is nothing left of the rooms but the radiators, the fireplace and the wooden shutters. The ornate plaster ceiling friezes have been restored; but the floors are gone completely. The ground floor has been restored, with just a few fiddly bits left to finish, but the first floor is uninhabitable. Nothing lasts forever.

The Moray Estate was built to house Edinburgh’s rich and famous, but the only one that truly interests me is the Scottish Colourist, Francis Cadell, whose family home was at 22 Ainslie Place. Cadell used that interior in many of his paintings, so I play Peeping Tom whenever I walk by.

Interior, The Orange Blind, c. 1914, Francil Cadell

My goal for this trip is actually England, not Edinburgh. Yesterday, we traveled by train to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The East Lothian landscape would serve up a lifetime of painting in itself. Quietly rolling, impossibly green, dotted with sheep and cattle, it lies along the North Sea. Unlike America, every inch of shoreline has not been coopted by the rich.

We spent the afternoon dutifully touring the Roman ruins of Segedunum. There are only so many clay pots and bronze brooches I can take, but the cavalry barracks were touching. Each man lived back-to-back with his horse in adjoining rooms and stalls. How do they know this? On one side of the wall were the remains of cooking hearths. On the other, horse piss and manure.

The Spanish City in its heyday.

The seaside holiday resort of Whitley Bay is dominated by the Spanish City, a pleasure hall that opened in 1910. It once included a concert hall, ballroom, funfair, restaurant, tea room and roof garden, but all are closed. Now there’s a gift shop, a restaurant, and a wedding venue.

I ate an ice cream on the lido and dipped my toes in the North Sea. It rained. In short; it was a perfect English holiday.

Today we start our walk in earnest—11.5 miles through Tyneside. We’ve been promised that this is the most boring part of the walk, as we’re essentially crossing the city. The upside, as I reminded my partners in this venture, is that we can lunch in a pub, and that will include a half pint of Newcastle Brown Ale.

May 20, 2022July 7, 2022

Boys will be boys

Boys must be boys

The ick factor in art history is compounded by our own era’s obsession with sex and power.

The Milkmaid, c. 1600, Johannes Vermeer, courtesy Rijksmuseum

During Monday’s class, I zipped quickly through Vermeer’s oeuvre on line, when a sentence about Vermeer’s The Milkmaid stopped me cold. This is one of the most well-known paintings in western art, so familiar that it’s become background noise.

“For at least two centuries before the painting was created, milkmaids and kitchen maids had a reputation as being predisposed to love or sex, and this was frequently reflected in Dutch paintings of kitchen and market scenes from Antwerp, Utrecht and Delft. Some of the paintings were slyly suggestive, like The Milkmaid, others more coarsely so.”

This interpretation apparently came from a 2009 show at the Metropolitan, curated by the late Walter Liedtke, because most of the text was lifted verbatim from his catalog.

“The physical appeal of the ‘milkmaid’ is sensed naturally,” wrote Liedtke, “like the taste of milk or the touch of bread. Rough sleeves reveal bare arms, where the skin (unlike that of the wrists and hands) is rarely exposed to sunlight. The ruddy wrists and face, the woman's generous proportions, and her warmth, softness and approachability are qualities not found in Vermeer's more refined young ladies. They too are alluring, but the kitchen maid is frankly so.”

Kitchen Scene, 1620s, Peter Wtewael, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

There are certainly coarse Dutch kitchen scenes—the Peter Wtewael kitchen scene, above, is a compendium of every sex reference that can be crammed on a canvas. Dutch painting of this time was full of jokes and bawdy comic references. Frans Hals’ laughing faces contrast vividly with the rest of Europe’s dour demeanor in Baroque portraiture. Art history tells us that the Dutch drank copiously.

Yes, the 17^th century Dutch Republic was Calvinist. Prostitution and adultery were against the law. That didn’t stop the Dutch from recognizing the realities of life, and laughing at them.

The Laughing Cavalier, 1624, Frans Hals, courtesy the Wallace Collection

But Peter Wtewael’s kitchen scene is the attraction of equals. That’s very different from the class abuse of men like Samuel Pepys groping their maids.

These paintings are no longer in middle-class Dutch homes. They have been moved to palaces and museums, where their caretakers and interpreters are the wealthy, educated and powerful. It’s no surprise that their own privilege subtly colors the work they analyze.

To Liedtke, the wide-mouth jug in The Milkmaid was a symbol of feminine anatomy. “By inserting a foot warmer and, next to it, a Delft tile depicting Cupid, Vermeer intimates that love and desire, as well as work, are burdens the maid must bear… Foot warmers do not heat rooms. They heat feet and, under a long skirt (as in Van Loo's Wooing), more private parts.”

Ick.

The Procuress, c. 1622, Dirck van Baburen, courtesy Museum of Fine Arts.

This is not to say that there wasn’t an erotic underpinning to Dutch art, or that servants weren’t the objects of male lust. “I am perfectly willing to believe that you are knowledgeable in the delectable art of preparing stews / But I feel even more appetite for you / Than for the stew that you are preparing,” read the French caption for an engraving of Gerrit Dou’s A Girl Chopping Onions.

It’s just that the ick factor is compounded by our own era’s obsession with sex and power.

Vermeer was just too intelligent to have played this game of simple parts. His mature paintings show keen psychological insight. His milkmaid is a dignified, moral presence. It’s obscene to suggest otherwise.