Katherine Keenum

February 07, 2021 12:13 PM EST

Thank you for posting this, Katherine. What a stunning artist. Her use of perspective draws the viewer in to see what else is happening more deeply in the painting. I kept having the feeling of trying to peek around the corner to see what or who is hiding there.

- Patricia Franzino

February 07, 2021 12:37 PM EST

Pat, Isn't that a delicious feeling when you want to peek around a corner in a painting? So mysterious and secret and personal! Thanks for pointing out that aspect.

- Katherine

June 18, 2017 6:18 AM EDT

The detail is astounding. The depth perception draws the viewer into the room. It has the feel of a photograph. Both father and daughter are great draftsman to produce the feeling of exploring and walking around these rooms.

- Patricia Franzino

June 18, 2017 9:06 AM EDT

Exactly right about the depth perception and drafting! She caught the textures of different materials, too, didn't she? It's a room to explore.

- Katherine Keenum

March 09, 2017 4:09 AM EST

I wonder what the relationship was between mother and daughter. This artist is so self-assured and a believer in women's suffrage. Her "The Prodigal's Return" is the only painting of its kind I've seen with a female prodigal. No man would ever have the courage to mess around with the biblical story in such a way. She was a great feminist painter as well as representing women in the household in what is sometimes the only place they have power over their lives in our era and in the past.

"The Old Poacher" is astounding in its detail and the reactions of the other people around him, and his exhausted expression. Her more simple painting of a fishing village is moving with the isolated woman holding her baby.

Thanks, Katherine, for posting this lovely blog.

- Patricia Franzino

March 10, 2017 4:14 AM EST

Pat, you are so right. Clacy's painting of a woman reclining outdoors while she reads is believed to be a portrait of her mother. I like to this they were very close and also quite free-spirited! Katherine

- Katherine Keenum

November 14, 2020 8:05 AM EST

Beware, the watercolor of a room in the Cluny is not painted by Ernest Guilliaud (1882) but by Georges Quilliard https://www.photo.rmn.fr/archive/03-005209-2C6NU04U6BTX.html

- Cl

November 14, 2020 9:29 AM EST

Thanks to Cl for the correction. I have added it to the original post as well. Glad to know that someone is monitoring the blog so many years later!

- Katherine

August 22, 2013 6:11 AM EDT

I imagine that the teacups pictured in Bertha Wegmann's painting feature the Blue Willow pattern, discussed at the end of the Wikipedia article referenced
in Keenum's blog. One "English" feature of this pattern is the pair of turtle doves symbolizing conjugal fidelity found at the top of the scene. Such birds would not have appeared on the Chinese blue-and-white porcelain that helped inspire this English-designed pattern. You have chosen two lovely paintings to illustrate today's blog, KK!

- Elizabeth