Portrait of a Dullard as a Long-Winded Preacher

Most museum labels don't provide a lot of insight. It seems that many curators are content with sharing only the basic data on a piece, like the title, artist, date, and medium. Oh, and the donor. It's rare to read any thoughts or opinions on the part of the people who know these works best.

This painting, which I saw in my trip to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts back in February, was an exception. The label struck me as a clever bit of insight into this guy, who was painted by the itinerant folk artist Ammi Phillips in Troy,New York, in about 1820.

His name was Jonas Coe, and he was a Presbyterian minister. According tot he label, a writer from the time period left us with our only verbal picture of Reverend Coe: "Great in character rather than in intellect, wit, or eloquence." Translation: boring and long-winded.

The curators who wrote the label astutely point out the visual clues to this man's lack of ability to engage his parishioners. His right hand is open and arm extended as if lamely making a point, and the fingers of his left hand mark the page in his Bible that is no doubt the source of his sermon. As the label points out, a "pedantic" style rather than an inspired one.

The last line of the label, which addresses the Rev. Coe's face, is priceless. "His dour expression augurs sterns and lengthy sermons." I wonder how many of these Ammi Phillips had to sit through in order to be able to express so beautifully the dullard's countenance and gestures. 

A Lady in Winter

I almost missed this great carving of Lady Liberty at the MFA in Boston last month. She was tucked away in a corner of one of the large galleries, literally swallowed up by the huge painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware by Thomas Sully. And she's one of the best sculptures in the museum.

According to the label, this figure of Liberty was carved probably for a Massachusetts courthouse in the 1790s. This symbol of Liberty was very popular in the early years of the American Republic. She is often dressed in classical garb -- an homage to the great republics of ancient Greece and Rome -- and also holds or wears a Phrygian cap, or Liberty cap. The Liberty cap, which you can see on the end of the staff in Liberty's hand, became a symbol of freedom in the 18th century. It also comes from ancient times; the Romans gave these caps to freed slaves.

It's a great carving, probably done by someone with experience in the shipcarving trade. I was amazed at the delicate realism of the sculpture, especially considering that it was meant to be exposed to the elements -- New England winters included.

In fact, I would venture to say that this frail Lady Liberty saw worse winters than the national hero occupying acres of canvas to her right, Valley Forge notwithstanding.

Encountering God at the MFA

It is perhaps the most famous quilt in America; certainly one of the best ever produced. During a recent visit to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston's new Art of the Americas wing I encountered for the first time in many years. It is Harriet Powers' great Pictorial Quilt (done between 1895 1n3 1898), recently conserved and just put on view in a special folk art gallery at the MFA.

Recognition of Powers' work came very early. In 1886, a young artist of Athens, Georgia, Jennie Smith, went to the Athens Cotton Fair. There she saw Powers' other great quilt, the Bible Quilt (now in the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, below). She wrote: "I have spent my whole life in the South, and am perfectly familiar with thirty patterns of quilts, but I had never seen an original design, and never a living creature portrayed in patchwork, until the year 1886....in one corner there hung a quilt which 'captured my eye' and after much difficulty I found the owner, a negro woman, who lives in the country on a little farm whereon she and husband make a respectable living....The scenes on the quilt were Biblical and I was fascinated. I offered to buy it but it was not for sale at any price."

Harriet later sold the quilt to Ms. Smith, and hard times compelled the latter to only offer five dollars. Harriet and her husband, facing financial trouble themselves, readily accepted the money. But before leaving Ms. Smith's she explained all of the panels in the quilt.

In recent years another great quilter, Kyra Hicks, has done extensive research on this extraordinary artist who was born a slave in 1837 and became a landowner after the Civil War. Kyra's book, "This I Accomplish," broke new ground in the study of Powers and her work. The most startling find for many was that Harriet was actually a literate woman and a quilter of some local renown prior to her "discovery." Other surprises await in Ms. Hicks' volume, but I would rather have her tell you what they are.

For now, you can view another national treasure of textile art at the MFA. As you look at the fifteen squares, each a different story (mostly Biblical), pay particular attention to the brilliance of Powers' improvisational style. There is very little like it anywhere, except in her other quilt at the Smithsonian.

And look closely at the blue square in the center. It depicts the Leonid Meteor Shower that took place in 1833, a few years before Powers was born. The stories told by the slaves of this phenomenon must have left a deep impression on the young Harriet. By placing this image at the heart of her quilt, I think Harriet was connecting the spiritual with the physical. Her lively and profound affirmation of the presence of God on Earth is now on view in a spectacular new venue every bit the equal of the Athens Cotton Fair.

The Dentist and the Mole

Joseph Moore was a dentist in rural Massachusetts. He couldn't have made a lot of money practicing in the small town of Ware in the late 1830s; in fact, he had to travel in order to find enough patients to keep his practice going. During the long New England winters, when travel was difficult, he had a second job as a hatter.

How is it, then, that when Moore commissioned his neighbor in Ware, Erastus Salisbury Field, to paint a portrait of himself and his family, that he chose to have them depicted on a canvas fully 84 x 93 inches? When you encounter this picture in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, it is as overwhelming as any of the huge history paintings by Copley or Stuart or Sully. And yet it depicts not a national hero, but an average country dentist.

What an incredible monument to the talents of the folk artist this painting is. It has everything: bright color, lots of detail in the faces, costumes, furniture, and carpet; incredible sense of pattern in the way that the figures float against the vertical perspective of the floor; homespun charm in the depictions of the children standing erect as forthright young adults or clinging to their parents.

And in the midst of all this artistic virtuosity, one small telling detail that really says it all. Look closely at Joseph Moore's face. No, that is not a flaw in the photograph. It is a large mole on his left cheek. Why would you allow that to be included in your portrait if you were paying enough to have a mural size image created?

Because it was there. A distinguishing feature that was not seen as a blemish, at least not by Joseph Moore. In folk art studies we acknowledge the tendency of the artist to present subjects as they are, with all there "flaws," as an honest, direct approach to art-making. It's what makes folk art such an important historical document, and a counterpoint to the tendency among academic artists to gloss over the odd features of a subject to approach a more conventional notion of physical beauty.

In the typically witty shorthand of the folk art field, this approach has a nickname: it is known as the "warts-and-all" approach. It's just one more way that the untrained artist, in doing everything wrong, somehow got it all right.

Meditation by the Sea

I just got back from a trip to Boston to see the new American wing at the Museum of Fine Arts. The museum is a far cry from my graduate school days of the early 1990s. The new wing is huge, inviting, and loaded with the museum's formidable collection of American art from prehistory through the present.

Of course, I took particular note of the folk art collection, which was always a strong component of the museum's offerings since their main benefactor, the collector Maxim Karolik (a Russian immigrant who married into the wealthy Codman family of Boston) was a major enthusiast of the works of American self-taught artists. I was delighted to find out that the folk art pieces appear in a number of galleries throughout the new wing, and are also featured in one large gallery on the second floor. While perusing that space, I reacquainted myself with a singular, enigmatic piece that has captivated critics and the public for decades: the unassuming little painting called "Meditation by the Sea."

It'a a wonderful little painting, with all of the bold patterning of forms that make folk art so much fun. But it has more than that. It has an air of mystery and tension that is inescapable. Who is the figure in the foreground? Why is he at this beach? Most important, what is he thinking as he contemplates the sea before him?

The accompanying label offered two tidbits. One, that this painting was based on a print of the beach at Gay Head, Martha's Vineyard, that appeared in Harper's Magazine in the early 1860s. And two, that perhaps the tension and anxiety some see in the picture has something to do with the Civil War going on at the time.

Both ideas are tenuous. I'm reproducing the print here to make my point that there is no conclusive way to say it is the inspiration for the painting. At least not to my eye. This lack of visual connection throws into question, obviously, the latter contention that the mood is related to the Civil War. I'm not sure we know when this picture was painted.

None of this matters, of course, when considering this work as an American masterpiece. It is, unquestionably. It's just a pity we don't know what that little guy is thinking. In the meantime, we can fill in the blanks with our own imaginations, and admire the liveliness of the unidentified artist's brush strokes, which delight the eye, and the composition, which invites us to take a walk on that beach and lose ourselves for a moment or two.