On Austria, Assimilation and Art - The Hare With The Amber Eyes

The Hare With The Amber Eyes: A Family's Century Of Art And Loss

I have been super busy these last few days, as I'm sure that you gathered from my lack of posting and commenting on all of your blogs. 
It is the season, after all, and the Christmas crunch is on.

Marie Antoinette - The Journey

Do you read only one book at a time or do you have several books going simultaneously?
I generally have 3 entirely different types of books going at the same time; a downloaded audio book on my iPod, a downloaded book on my nook (like a kindle) and an actual physical book.

Last week while finishing 'The Hare with the Amber Eyes' on my nook and 'Marie Antoinette' on my iPod, I was struck with the similar theme that runs through both books, the concept of being 'The Other'. 

No matter how Francais the Austrian born Marie Antoinette became, including bearing the dauphin, she was never truly accepted as the Queen of France.  She was libeled and maligned in print in Paris.  She was accused of cuckolding the King and of having numerous lovers.  She was blamed for adding to the national debt, for hoarding wheat during the low harvest and for virtually everything else that was wrong in France.  No matter what she did  for France, she remained 'The Other', an easy target and scapegoat for all that was wrong.

Stepping into the next century we have the flourishing of the Ephrussi family, a highly successful Russian Jewish Family that expanded their grain trading business in Odessa into a European banking powerhouse that rivaled the Rothchilde's. With branches of the family in London, Paris, Lucerne and Vienna, the great wealth enabled the family to become patrons of the arts and of the cultures of their respective cities.

Note the man in the top hat in Renoir's The Boating Party.  That was Charles Ephrussi, art historian, owner of the Parisian art journal La Gazette and patron of the Impressionists. 
He was also the model of Proust's character Charles Swann of 'Rememberance of Things Past'.

Amongst his vast art collection was a group of 264 netsuke which he purchased at the onset of the French fascination with all things Japonnais in 19th Century Paris.
'The Hare With The Amber Eyes' traces the journey of these netsuke from Charles'  elegantly art filled Palais Ephrussi to his nephew and niece at the Ephrussi Palais on the Ringstrasse in Vienna, to post WW2 Japan and finally to the author, British artist and Eprhussi descendant, Edmund de Waal.


As with the great nouveau riche families of 19th Century Europe, the Viennese branch of the Ephrussi were highly educated. Vicktor read history as he reluctantly took over as the head of the bank.  His daughter Elisabeth Ephrussi was the first woman to graduate with a degree in Law from the University of Vienna. All members of the family spoke Russian, French, English and German fluently.  They were full citizens of the Hapsburg Empire and loyal supporters of the Emperor.  They were titled. 
They were completely assimilated.
Or so they though.


All this of course changed with Kristallnacht.
They were 'The Other'.
But unlike Marie Antoinette, they were able to leave everything behind and survive.

This week I've been thinking about Thanksgiving, and about all of the things that I am thankful for...and there many. On this most American of holidays, I am indeed thankful that America is perhaps the only country where immigrants can indeed assimilate and become truly American. 

'The Hare With The Amber Eyes' is the best book that I have read all year and if you like History and Art History I encourage you to read it.

Around Town - Renoir versus American Stories at LACMA

Another week started with total craziness...goods going here and there and now the need to gear up for the Antique and Estate Jewelry Show in Las Vegas which is coming up in a couple of weeks.

At least I had the perfect Mother's Day: two art exhibits, an exquisite afternoon in the sun and an early dinner with the kids.

Happily, I made it to the last day of the Renoir in the 20th Century exhibit at LACMA.

With the entire 2nd floor of the Broad building filled with Renoir, I can say that a huge effort was made to, as the LA Times review states, overturn the conventional wisdom. that late Renoir was bad art.

Here's the contested rap on Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Following success at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, when he was 33, plus another decade's worth of heady achievement, his paintings went steadily downhill. After his death in 1919, conventional wisdom began to solidify: Late Renoir is bad Renoir.

After seeing this show my opinion remains conventional, Renoir's late works were pretty bad except perhaps for the influence that they had on other artists such as Bonnard and Maillol.

Bathing Girl by Renoir

Don't get me wrong, I loved the early work by Renoir, all lightness and froth and luminosity, but the late work of fleshy females and wanna be Titianesque classicism I found to be trite. Furthermore, I particularly disliked the way that Renoir, who had earlier created portraiture with specific character definition in the faces of his subjects, reverted to a style where the faces of many of his females were undefined and childlike and totally without individualization.

Where others might have looked at the expressions on the faces of the females and found them contemplative or perhaps seen a intimate glimpse of girls caught in their own dream world, I found the expressions to be unaware to the point of being catatonic.

So for me the late Renoir paintings just became a bevy of interchangeable buxom, big bottomed, babes...in pretty soft pastel colors....kind of like soft core porn early 20th Century style...talk about the objectification of women!

The Serenade by Renoir

Much more exciting to see was American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life 1765-1915 featuring works from Peele, Copley, Sargent, Chase, Homer, Eakins, Cassatt and many more. The exhibit featured a small but astounding group of American masterpieces, including five great paintings by Homer, which the LA Times review describes as almost worth the cost of the ticket alone.

But I was particularly impressed with this portrait.

Portrait of Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley

From the Times review an excellent description:

A few portraits also make an appearance. They include Copley's classic 1768 depiction of Paul Revere, silversmith and Revolutionary War hero, in shirtsleeves. His chin is contemplatively held in his right hand, a handsomely crafted silver teapot cradled in his left.

The teapot of course nods toward the critical role of tea in the New World's economy. A year before, Britain's Parliament fiddled with the tea tax; results were devastating for colonists. (Witness Revere's grim, shadowed face.) The subsequent Boston Tea Party was an insurrection against a corporate stranglehold on trade, held by the British East India Company working with George III. Copley's brilliant image fuses head and hand as tools for thought, labor and moral action. The portrait describes a person, but it places him in the context of an epic story.

The painting -- as sleek and elegantly crafted as Revere's light-reflective silver -- puts artists in that developing story too. Copley is as much an agent of thought, labor and action as Revere is, and his work speaks to the present as much as to history.

Boys in a Pasture by Winslow Homer

And then there were the Homers, the famous ones including the carefree Breezing Up and the menacing Gulf Stream. I think that my favorite was Eagle Head, Manchester, Massachusetts (High Tide) which depicted three young women drying their long bathing dresses on the beach after swimming. It was certainly not one of Homer's best, but it had the promise of a story not yet told of the activities of women during the 1870s.

The American Stories show will be at LACMA through May 23rd and I highly recommend that you see it.

Georgian London Through The Art of Paul Sanby

If, like me, you have an interest in 18th and 19th Century history and art, check out the podcast on the Georgian London blog about 18th Century water colorist Paul Sanby at the Royal Academy