Katherine Keenum

A friend recently bought an early-19th C miniature portrait that shows a woman writing a letter. It struck me that her pen-holding hand rested only on her little finger, something my fifth-grade teacher insisted on. (Ever since, I have enjoyed defying that teacher by resting the whole side of my hand against the surface.) For fun I looked for other images of Regency ladies writing and found this one, which shows something closer to the way I hold a pencil on paper. Not sure how my childhood experience or a detail in a painting could be used in fiction, but odd things make connections hop out in the imagination.
 
For the entire portrait by Pajou, click here.

How I wish I had known Interior of a Studio in Paris by Eva Bonnier when I was writing about Sonja at work in Where the Light Falls! I have seen 19th C photographs of sculptors' studios and their works-in-progress. Photographs are excellent sources for historical details and accuracy. But as David Hockney often reminds us, the camera does not see what the human eye sees. Oil painting, moreover, has a tenderness and tactility all its own—even in digital reproduction!
 
Eva Bonnier is new to me, a Swedish contemporary of the real Jeanette. You can read more about her and her place among the Scandinavian artists who studied in Paris in the well-illustrated article, The context of Anders Zorn's paintings in Sweden.
 

At bedtime, I'm rereading Kelly Barnhill's excellent middle-school novel, The Girl Who Drank the Moon. This time, what struck me when I took the book off the shelf was the cover art by Yuta Onoda. Flat, poster-style art works well for making a jacket visible across a room, and Japanese manga-anime styles can thus be very effective. But just look at the volume and motion achieved in billowing skirt of the girl's cloak! And the depth and contrast created by the fiery band below the shadowy city under that huge moon with the swirling origami birds. This isn't cartoon work.
 
I explored Onoda's website and was led by it to my next YA choice, How Do You Live?—which is even better when you open out the book and find that the jacket is wraparound. Maybe you can't judge a book by  its cover—but, as the publishing industry knows, it sometimes helps!

Blog post alert: Cabinets of curiosities, gardens, elegant glass instruments, paintings, frames—the post Science, gardens and the Baroque frame has everything! Or anyway scads of related topics and images that reflect my particular fancies. For a hi-rez version of this painting, click here.

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I'm reading Isabella Tree and Charles Burrell's Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding, Big and Small. So should everyone who wants to help save life on the planet. What I'm going to write about here, though, is my delight in learning that beavers were a mighty force in shaping British and European landscapes before they were hunted to near extinction. How wonderful for those of us who build imaginary worlds!

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Blog post alert: Midsummer in Paintings: Midsummer Eve reproduces eight Scandinavian paintings of Midsummer's Eve celebrations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Gorgeous—and very human in contrast to the Titania-Oberon folkloric associations that crop up in English-speaking traditions.
 
Krøyer's painting is included, but I have taken a higher resolution image from Krøyer's Final Masterpiece.

As we near Midsummer, I have pulled out Shaun Tan's Rules of Summer and read it two or three times in the past week. At each reading, I've laughed out loud. It's brilliant! It's zany! It's surreal! It's wise. For me, it's one of the indispensable books.

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An article in the Guardian tipped me off to an exhibition, For Tove Jansson To Paint Was To Be. It is now at the Didrichsen Art Museum in Helsinki, Finland, where it originates, and will be going to Paris.  How I wish I could see it in either place!

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Maybe while New York is under a ghastly orange haze, it's wrong the wrong time to post a sepia photograph; but I got such a kick out running across this carte-de-visite , that I can't resist. According to the seller, the picture was taken in 1865 even though the card commemorates Carolus-Duran's winning of a silver medal at the World's Fair of 1878. And doesn't he look young and handsome! For Ferdinand Mulnier's sensitive portrait of Jeanette's other teacher, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, click here. For many more of Mulnier's photographs, click here.

Okay, so not a female artist, but I couldn't resist William McGregor Paxton's portrait of a woman in a kimono contemplating a Japanese doll. (A female artist connection: the model may be his wife, painter Elizabeth Vaughan Okie.) What's useful to me in my musing on Japonisme as part of Jeanette's story is the way the picture can lead to thoughts about how a particular woman might react privately to a particular Japanese object. Is this Jeanette or one of her friends? Does the character hold a doll or teacup? What is the emotion aroused in her? in the reader? Looked at this way, there's no need worry about the Male Gaze or other scholoraly or critical criteria. As for the golden frame, well, of course, I had to include it when I took a screen shot!

Image via Sotheby's.