Highlights and Details from My Visit to the Walters Art Museum

The holiday tree greeting me in the lobby. When I arrived I was the only visitor in the lobby and when I stepped up to the cashier I said, "One adult admission, please." She smiled back and asked, "Just one?" Have I gained that much weight? So I looked around behind me and turned back saying, "yes, just one..."

There's a magnificent staircase in the lobby, but it doesn't start until the second floor. So you basically have to take the elevator up one floor to get to the stairs. Although it does make for a very interesting composition for a photograph.

"Ganymede," 1777-87 by Claude-Claire Francin (1702 - 1773)

"Portrait of Decatur Howard Miller," c. 1850 by Alfred Jacob Miller (1810 - 1874) The artists here paints his younger brother. And here in the 19th Art on the fourth floor is where I spent most of my visit.

"Landscape In Scotland," c. 1878 by Gustave Doré (1832 - 1883) This is a monumental and lush painting. The artist has another painting @ the Philadelphia Museum of Art called "The Neophyte" that is also among my favorite works from this time period.

Doré's use of paint is visceral and rich, like icing on a cake.

The Walters has a very impressive collection of table sculptures by Antoine-Louis Barye. Most depict humans on horseback (or even elephant back) in the thralls of battle with some beast, a lion or lions, a tiger, a bear, a pair of nearly prehistorically-antlered bucks, even a mad bull. Thus the amazing contrast with "Two Rabbits," c. 1840 by Antoine-Louis Barye (1796 - 1875) in both scale and subject.

"Art and Liberty," 1859 by Louis Gallait (1810 - 1887)

A closer inspection revealed words painted into the column in the form of a vandal's message. It pays to spend time with a least one painting every time you visit a museum. This next one caught my attention this time at the Walters.

"An Accident," 1879 by Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret (1852 - 1929) There is such a rich story in this beautiful painting. And the artist has taken great care to fill it with facts that will both delight and challenge your imagination. Study the full image. How many people do you see? Where do ideas contrast? Do you see the cat? Do you see the top hat? Why the gilded clock? Look at the work as both a whole idea and as a collection of details that support, enrich and even challenge that idea. How many people did you count? Did you count 9? There are 9. Click the image to see a larger version and look some more.

The first thing that jumps out is the complexion of the boy. Positively jaundiced against the rudy cheeks of the others in the room. Next you just have to marvel at the basin of bloody water. It's so realistic, perhaps the single most realistic detail in the entire painting. Notice too, that it sits at the veritable heart of the composition. Finally you can't help but contrast the two feet. One richly attired; the other dirty, battered, barely kept within the sorriest excuse of a shoe imaginable. There is no question who is the recipient of charity and mercy here.

Now you can see the cat. And also the 9th person. A woman. The boy's mother? Sister? Does she weep for fear? for shame? for guilt? Her emotions are driving her to a state of near invisibility and in her sorrow, she is alone. Not a single other player in this snapshot drama gives her the slightest notice, hence, when first viewing the painting, neither to we. In this one revelation we now are no longer passive observers, we have become part of the drama. We now stand on this side of the room awaiting the outcome of the good doctor's ministrations.

Don't you love their noses? They are clearly related. The young man and the woman share the nose, the eyelid, the push-up of their lower lips away from their chins. They are also obviously poor, yet the artist gives them a transcendent calm that comes across as dignity. Amazing painting. Oh, the clock. The gilded clock--the most precious item in the room. Time, the most precious thing we have. We never know when it will run out for us--we still do not know if it is about to run out on the boy. His fate is uncertain, but we have, like those caught in the trance of the moment, hope. It's not a perfect hope, the young woman still weeps.

"Route To Versailles, Louveciennes," 1869 by Camille Pissarro (1830 - 1903)

"Paris Kiosk," c. 1881 by Jean Béraud (1849 - 1936)

"Lion Drinking," c. 1897 by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859 - 1937) Tanner is one of my favorite artists. I never miss the chance to enjoy one of his works no matter how small.

"Damascus," 1880 by Alberto Pasini (1826 - 1899)

The courtyard on the other end of the museum, the original entrance.