Back to the Garden: The Pastoral Vision in Britain at the Delaware Art Museum

“And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden,” Crosby, Stills, and Nash sang in “Woodstock,” the song that tried to capture the spirit of the generation-defining gathering. For artists working in Britain after the Romantic movement, getting back to the garden—getting back to a sense of the natural world as a spiritual realm—became the top priority. The Pastoral Vision: British Prints 1800—Present currently at the Delaware Art Museum traces the way artists tried to picture the pastoral aspect of British Romanticism over the course of two centuries. The results reveal much about both the art of printmaking and the art of depicting the abstract lurking in tangible reality. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Back to the Garden."

[Image: Morning of Life, 1861. Samuel Palmer (1805-1881). Etching, 5 3/8 x 8 1/8 inches. Gift of Dr. Charles Lee Reese, 1940.]

[Many thanks to the Delaware Art Museum for providing me with the image above and press materials for The Pastoral Vision: British Prints 1800—Present, which runs through August 15, 2010.]

Private Dancer

"Different men are moved or left cold by lines according to the difference in their natures,” wrote Robert Henri. “What moves you is beautiful to you." Born June 24, 1865, Henri found women dancers moving in their beautiful, graceful movements and bodily freedom. Henri and the several other of The Eight artists found the modern dance style of Isadora Duncan especially intriguing. (John Sloan painted a portrait of Duncan in action in 1911.) Throughout his career, Henri painted many dancers, but one dancer—Betalo Rubino—captured his imagination the most as a model. From 1909 up until at least 1916, the dark eyes and hair of Betalo provided the perfect focal point for Henri’s explorations into color. Henri’s 1909 Salome remains for many the pinnacle of his career, or at least of his dancer and dancing works, but he continued to move past the colorful drama of that work and seek out new combinations. Unlike Degas, perhaps the most obsessive painter of dancers ever, Henri always paints the dancer as an individual rather than as a type. Degas’ dancers are beautiful in design, but you never feel that they are alive. In contrast, Henri’s Betalo the Dancer (above, from 1910) almost vibrates with life. The vigorous brushwork gives the sensation of movement, as if Betalo herself were suddenly caught unaware by our entrance and just turned to face the viewer.

Betalo proved to be an ideal model for exotic dress. Her athletic dancer’s physique and pretty face enhanced the exoticism of the costumes in works such as Dancer of Dehli and Dramatic Dancer, both done in 1916. In that same year of 1916, Henri painted Betalo several times in the nude. In the version above, Henri surrounds the pale-skinned, dark colored beauty with blues, grays, and whites. Like Whistler in works such as Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Little Blue Girl (1898), Henri approaches abstraction in the composition of pure color compliments and contrasts but remains in the figurative tradition through the centering theme of the nude. Betalo must have seemed like a godsend of a model to Henri in her amazing versatility. A living, breathing example of chiaroscuro, Betalo exuded the drama around which Henri could experiment in color with full freedom. Betalo’s natural grace in motion comes across in Henri’s ability to paint her lounging but simultaneously raising herself slightly from the couch, as if anticipation of something or someone.


In the painting of Betalo nude above, also from 1916, Henri surrounds his private dancer with pinks and greens. As with the blue-gray nude above, the colors around her become echoed in her pale skin. Just as the dancing costumes clothed her in other paintings, the colors around Betalo “clothe” her in these nude paintings. There’s also that same sense of movement in Betalo’s reclining pose, as if she’s right at the moment of lifting herself into a new position. I doubt Betalo could hold such a suspended pose for long, but Henri tried to work quickly to get a sense of the essence of the moment. “Do it all in one sitting if you can,” Henri said of capturing the spirit of a model. “In one minute if you can. There is no virtue in delaying." For Henri, speed and movement were more virtuous than meticulous detail. Henri’s nude paintings of Betalo Rubino and other women around 1915 and 1916 present them as vital, alive, confident women rather than passive objects receiving the artist’s gaze. For many feminist critics, female nudes represent the repressive patriarchy of art history. I agree for the most part. However, Robert Henri’s nudes express rather than repress the fullness of womanhood and present the private dancer to the public eye in all her glory.

All in the Timing

It’s very ironic that it took a comedian—the manic Michael Palin of Monty Python fame—to resurrect the reputation of an artist known for the deathly quiet and stillness of his art—Vilhelm Hammershoi. Of course, Palin’s mind is much more versatile than that of a simple madcap, as his thoughts on Hammershoi prove, just as Hammershoi is much more than a kind of grand claustrophobic of art. Born May 15, 1864, Hammershøi studied painting as a young man and exhibited a portrait of his young sister Anna, titled Portrait of a Young Girl (above, from 1885), as his first public attempt at success. Although many, including reportedly Renoir admired Portrait of a Young Girl, Hammershoi failed to win the prize, just the first of many slights that would drive Hammershoi further and further into himself. Today, Hammershoi has become a “name” in the lexicon of Danish art thanks to several touring exhibitions of his work in the United States and Europe. Although portraits such as that of Anna and even nude studies by Hammershoi exist, the “branding” of Hammershoi as a reclusive, obsessive painter of interiors, almost exclusively the famous apartments he shared with his wife, has taken hold, possibly forever. Like Edvard Munch and Vincent Van Gogh, Hammershoi suffers from an overabundance of psychobiography when critics try to grasp his work and understand the artist himself.



Part of the reason why Hammershoi seems to perpetually recline on the art historian’s psychobabble “couch” is the lack of source materials. Hammershoi’s silent works seem even more silent thanks to the lack of words left behind by the artist. Whereas someone such as the recently departed Thomas Chimes surrounded his works with volumes of verbage, Hammershoi deafens us with his quietness. Hammershoi himself seems to have been extremely shy, once famously traveling to England to meet his hero Whistler and then never mustering the courage to knock him up. Regardless, Hammershoi’s paintings, such as Interior with Woman at Piano, Strandgade 30 (above, from 1901), stand for more than agoraphobia. Painting his wife Ida in their home, Hammershoi captures the coziness of his domestic setting while also creating a fascinating composition of shapes. The frames on the wall echo the larger frame of the wall itself. The plates lined up on the table draw us into the picture, as if inviting us to sit down and eat as we listen to the music. The colors are somber, but the mood is not funereal. Hammershoi feels at home here, and wants us to, too.


I have no idea if artists such as Andrew Wyeth or Edward Hopper were ever aware of the work of Hammershoi. The plates in Interior with Woman at Piano, Strandgade 30 remind me of the plates in Wyeth’s Groundhog Day. Hammershoi’s Sunbeams, or Sunshine: Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams (above, from 1900) reminds me of Hopper’s quote that all he wanted to do was paint the play of light on a wall. Just like Wyeth made an entire universe out of his Chadds Ford surroundings, Hammershoi created whole galaxies out of a simple set of connecting rooms. Light coming through the window of his parlor served as the doorway to infinite. If William Blake could see infinity in a single grain of sand, Hammershoi could find it in a dust mote dancing in sunlight. If artists’ reputations can be likened to stocks, Hammershoi stock is rising slowly and, characteristically, quietly.

A Purpose-Driven Life

Born May 2, 1806, Charles Gleyre fills perfectly the definition of a late bloomer. Born in Switzerland, Gleyre moved to France as a small child after the death of both of his parents. After a few years of art school, Gleyre rambled through Italy to drink in the Renaissance before spending six years in Greece and the Middle East, including Egypt and Syria. While on this vision quest, Gleyre contracted ophthalmia, an inflammation of the eye that threatened his eyesight for the rest of his life. Gleyre, however, waited until his return to Paris to begin creating art based on all that he had seen. Gleyre’s Evening (later re-titled Lost Illusions; above, from 1843) won an exhibition medal and, more importantly, recognition from the art world. Remembering a dreamy evening he spent on the bank of the Nile River in 1835, Gleyre paints himself as a lyre-wielding poet watching a boatload of muse-like singers float away. Although Gleyre dipped often into his mental storehouse of Orientalist imagery, he had a clear-eyed view of the work of the artist and worked with a pragmatic single-mindedness that became legendary.

When Gleyre’s teacher, Paul Delaroche closed his teaching studio in 1843, he recommended that his students continue on with Gleyre as their teacher. Gleyre ushered in a golden age of the French atelier that would continue with the next generation of Jean-Leon Gerome, Leon Bonnat, and others. From 1843 through 1864, when Gleyre’s eye problems forced his retirement, great artists such as James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley studied under Gleyre, yet he never took a fee for teaching. Whereas other teachers try to create disciples molded in their own image, Gleyre imparted to his students a seriousness of purpose in the art life rather than a specific style of painting. Renoir loved Gleyre specifically for the free hand he gave to his students—allowing the young Impressionists to paint outdoors while he preferred working in the studio from memory. Gleyre’s Separation of the Apostles (above, from 1845) perfectly captures this sense of teaching and trusting that students will find their own way.


Gleyre lived an almost monk-like existence. He never married and actually saw marriage as an impediment to the careers of other artists. Gleyre literally married his work. Despite the sensuality of such works as La Danse des Bacchantes (above, from 1849), Gleyre was reportedly celibate his entire life. For him, the flesh painted on the canvas in mythological scenes always remained a myth, an unfelt abstraction. Gleyre earned a reputation for perfectionism that many of his students took away from his atelier. The way that Gleyre returned again and again to the same works can be seen, for example, in Monet’s obsessive series of water lilies, haystacks, cathedrals, etc., etc. Gleyre and Monet differ widely in style, but their commitment to depicting a personal vision is exactly the same. Like Michelangelo, one of Gleyre’s Renaissance heroes, Gleyre’s only secret was hard work, free of illusions of an easy life in art.

Boy Wonder

At the tender of age of just 13, Fyodor Vasilyev began taking classes at night to learn how to paint. Born February 22, 1850, Vasilyev felt pressure to support his family after the death of his father and hoped to take the skills he’d learned as a painting restorer and use them as a maker of pictures himself. A few years later, Russian landscape painter Ivan Shishkin fell in love with Vasilyev’s sister and soon began teaching Fyodor his secrets. Shishkin eventually introduced his young protégé to other great Russian painters of the time, including Ilya Repin, who also took Vasilyev under his wing. Before turning twenty, Vasilyev, the boy wonder of Russian painting, was creating works such as Illumination in St. Petersburg (above, from 1869). It is truly amazing just how quickly Vasilyev put into practice the lessons and advice he received. Illumination in St. Petersburg looks like something Whistler might paint if he found himself in Russia on a cold, dark night pierced by gaslight. The way the moon silhouettes the great dome in the distance like a white nimbus brings the entire picture together. The quick execution of the people bustling along the street brings to mind the Parisians of the Impressionists, just beginning to work around the same time.

Like the Impressionists, Vasilyev was influenced by the artists of the Barbizon School, such as Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, and Théodore Rousseau. Vasilyev most likely learned of the Barbizon style through Shishkin, but once he knew the basics of the style, he quickly made it his own. Vasilyev’s Thaw (above, from 1871) unites the bleakness of earth and sky in the middle of an unforgiving Russian winter. The sky seems almost more solid than the ground, which is divided by swirling ruts that reveal the dark earth beneath the snow and give the surface as much a sense of movement as the clouds above. The great horizontals of Thaw make it seem to extend forever—as “endless” as the famous Russian winters themselves. Vasilyev takes care to derive maximum drama from every element of nature, just as Corot, Millet, and Rousseau took the Forest of Fontainebleau and squeezed every last drop of interest from it.

Vasilyev’s Wet Meadow (above, from 1872) shows how he was able to do more than winter snowscapes. The richness of detail in the foreground enhances the sense of depth as Vasilyev moves back into the picture plane and softens the focus. Again, the clouds above rival the best that the Barbizon artists have to offer. Still only 22 years old, Vasilyev seemed poised to rule over the Russian art world for decades. Sadly, after a little more than a year after painting Wet Meadow, Vasilyev was dead, a victim of tuberculosis. Vasilyev’s tuberculosis forced him to paint indoors. He painted Wet Meadow entirely from memory. Just as he was gaining fame and seeing more that Russia’s great landmass had to offer as subject matter, Vasilyev’s life and career were over. Fortunately, Vasilyev lived on in the sense of influencing the next generation of Russian landscape artists, who followed his example of taking the best of the French style and making it distinctly Russian.