Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick was born in 1935 in Syracuse, New York. Her father was Scots/Irish and her mother was of the Cherokee tribe in Oklahoma. WalkingStick began making art at an early age. She graduated in 1959 from Beaver College in Pennsylvania where she earned her BFA degree. She completed her MFA degree at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York City. She served from1988 until 2005 as a tenured Associate Professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.  She commented, “It was always important to me to be recognized as a Native person…It was also important to be understood as a New York artist, one who was working in the mainstream.” 

“Where are the Generations, Stillness” (1991) (28”x56’’) (acrylic, copper, and oil on canvas) is an example of WalkingStick’s early paintings in which she adapted the diptych, two separate panels hinged together. She said, “The diptych is an especially powerful metaphor to express the beauty and power of uniting the disparate and this makes it particularly attractive to those of us who are biracial…I use landscape as the context…one side of the painting represents immediately visual memory; the other archetype memory and both could be a stand-in for the human body and soul.”

The left panel of “Where are the Generations, Stillness” is abstract. At the middle of the composition an ochre half oval is surrounded by a sapphire field. The interpretation of abstract images is left to the viewers, but the title of this work offers a suggestion: the semi-oval could be half an egg, symbolic of life. The universe and creation are suggested by the sky, including the red sparks, and the red shape lying beneath the oval, the beginning of the Indian Nations.  A barren mountain landscape is on the right panel; no people are present.

Text is printed on the wall next to the painting: “In 1492, we were twenty million. Now, we are two million. Where are the generations, never born? From a distance, the sphere becomes more prominent–a universe, suggesting that viewers would need the perspective of time and distance to understand the weight of genocide.” 

 

In “We’re Still Dancing” (2006) (32’’x64’’), WalkingStick pairs a dramatic image of a rocky mountain with women’s legs dancing on a golden field. The two images create a dynamic duo of hope. The paintings may appear to be alla prima, an Italian term meaning at first attempt.  They are, in her words, “by contrast, deliberate and resolved.” They are from “memory, sketches, photos, not a depiction of a specific space, but a psychological state painting of a totally real place.”

 

WalkingStick painted “Fairwell to the Smokies” (2007) (36”x72’’) after a visit to the Smoky Mountains. It represents the Trail of Tears, when the Indian Removal Act in 1830 forced five tribes, including the Cherokee, to leave their homes in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. They walked 800 miles west of the Mississippi to Oklahoma. The landscape is painted in rich browns and greens. The Indians walk along the bottom of the canvas. The small size of the figures and hazy gray color make it easy to miss them, particularly those who enter the unknown new land at the right. Text placed on the wall of the gallery explained that Walkingstick, although born and raised in New York, felt the significance of the Trail of Tears when she visited her ancestral homeland in the Carolinas and Tennessee: “It’s about the traumatic experience of leaving home—leaving this beautiful home.” 

Stories of the Indians who walked the Trail of Tears are hard to hear. Families were separated, the elderly and sick were forced to leave at gunpoint, and they were given no real time to gather their possessions. After they left, white people looted the homes. Gold was discovered in 1830 on Cherokee lands in Georgia.

 

“Lush Life” (2015) (36”x72”) represents another facet of Walkingstick’s paintings. She commented, “The move seemed inevitable. Although, I hadn’t put depictions of humans into my art for many years. In fact, their absence had seemed crucial to the significance of the work.” The female figure was herself, and she began using the image on a limited scale in the 1990s.  Placing her figure against a lush light green landscape and coordinating the trees with the movement of her dancing legs, gives the viewer a peaceful and happy moment. 

WalkingStick was given a retrospective exhibition in 2015 at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.  She commented, “I had to come to terms with this idea that I am as much my father’s daughter as my mother’s…I hope viewers will leave the museum with a renewed sense of how beautiful and precious our planet is with the realization that those of us living in the Western Hemisphere are all living on Indian Territory”

 

WalkingStick grew up on the East Coast, but she has painted landscapes from coast to coast.  She lives and works in Pennsylvania, and she has traveled across the American west and to Italy. In “New Hampshire Coast” (2020) (36”x72’’) she expresses her love of landscape painting in the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean and New Hampshire’s rocky coast. The Indian sign, painted in terra cotta on the right side of the diptych, is from a Native basket motif of the Wabanaki Indians, who lived there for hundreds of years before white settlers arrived. A fight for the ownership of the land is an on-going battle in Maine.

 

“Niagara” (2020) (36”x72”) is a painting of one of America’s best-known landmarks. Walkingstick depicts a panoramic view of two of the three falls, Horseshoe and Bridal Veil. WalkingStick has chosen to paint single-view landscapes in her recent diptychs. She painted a symbol of the Haudenosaunee Indians, people of the long house. They are the first Confederation of the Six Nations, also called the Iroquois Confederation, that included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora tribes. They are the oldest participatory democracy in America. Several of their democratic principles were adopted by the thirteen original colonies. The six tribes originally lived in northern New York. 

Kay WalkingStick’s work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Her paintings were exhibited by the New York Historical Society from October 2023 until April 2024, comparing her landscapes with those of the Hudson River School of the 19th Century. WalkingStick was included in the 60th anniversary of the Venice Biennale, that will end on November 24, 2024. The theme of the Biennale was Foreigners Every Where. The Addison Gallery in Andover, Massachusetts is exhibiting her work from September 14, 2024 until February 2, 2025. Kay WalkingStick is one of the most esteemed American Indian artists.

“I want them to also see the primary message in the work, that is: This is our beloved land no matter who walks here, no matter who “owns” it. This is our land. Recognize us and honor this land.” (Kay WalkingStick, 2012)

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Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring to Chestertown with her husband Kurt in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and the Institute of Adult Learning, Centreville. An artist, she sometimes exhibits work at River Arts. She also paints sets for the Garfield Theater in Chestertown.

“Autumn Frost” (1874) (18”x22”), by Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley (1830-1899), is a depiction of what French travel advisors describe as “one of the loveliest times of the year.” During the day, the weather is mild, and at night there is a chill. Painted en plein air (outdoors), the work captures the bright oranges of fallen leaves. In the foreground is a tree, its trunk and branches painted dark brown. The artist uses yellow to represent the sunlight on the side of the tree trunk. The trunk creates a parallel line that is repeated in the parallel lines of all the buildings. The tree branches reach out left and right, and into the sky, guiding the viewer’s attention to the two houses beyond the fields. A man and a woman stand in the middle ground, almost at the center of the painting. The human presence supports the idea of a beautiful day to be outdoors. 

At the left side of the composition, the artist depicts the circular furrows of the plowed field. Sisley used the complementary colors of orange and blue on both sides of the painting, and the juxtaposition of colors brings out a dynamic energy. Yellow and purple rows extend from the foreground to the middle of the scene. Blue not only is used to create shadows, it also represents the Autumn frost of the title. The sky is painted light blue and the underside shadow of the clouds light orange. The sunny side of the largest house and the fence posts are painted yellow like the tree trunk. Light blue and orange are used in the depiction of the towering church. Sisley has captured a lovely autumn day in a charming French village.

“Chill October” (1870) (56’’x74’’), by English painter Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896), was painted en plain air beside the river Tay near Perth, Scotland. It is an example of the artist’s later period when he favored a realistic style. The painting is a depiction of a boggy landscape with reeds, grasses, alder trees, and willows. Millais had a platform constructed on which to work. He described the setting: “The traveler between Perth and Dundee passes the spot where I stood. Danger on either side–the tide, which once carried away my platform, and the trains, which threatened to blow my work into the river. I painted every touch from Nature, on the canvas itself, under irritating trials of wind and rain…there was more significance and feeling in one day of a Scotch autumn than in a whole half-year of spring and summer in Italy.’’

Millais depicts the natural colors of Autumn which include black and brown, a variety of yellows, greens, and oranges. The yellow-green cloud cover  creates the desired chilly effect, as does the wind blowing through the grasses and trees. Even the river is painted a yellow-green, not the usual blue. A few birds fly away. 

Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo after meeting Millais and seeing this painting, “Once I met the painter Millais on the street, just after I had been lucky enough to see several of his paintings…not the least beautiful is an Autumn landscape, Chill October.

“The Alyscamps” (1888) (36”x29”), by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), was the first painting he made after moving in October to Arles in southern France. Gauguin and Van Gogh were both Post-Impressionist painters who carried the rainbow colors of the Impressionists to the next level. They painted this scene side-by-side. The Alyscamps was the site of a Christian cemetery dedicated by Saint Trophime, the Bishop of Arles in the 3rd Century CE. Gauguin depicts the Avenue of cypress trees and the distant dome of the Romanesque church of St Honorat.  He focuses the viewer’s attention on the vibrant green landscape, the fiery orange leaves of the cypress trees, and the gray-blue area road that stretches toward the church. The colors are thickly painted in patches, the brush strokes largely visible. 

Centered in the composition are two women and a man dressed in Arlesienne clothing of the time. Gauguin found the place and the people of Arles unattractive. At first, he titled this painting ironically “Three Graces with the Temple of Venus.” He later changed the to “The Alyscamps.” The road  had become a lover’s lane. Gauguin’s painting depicts a bright and clear French Autumn day. 

“Autumn in Murnau” (1908) is by Russian painter Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). A highly intellectual man, Kandinsky was a leader in the Blue Rider movement and a leader in abstract art. He studied law at the University of Moscow when he was 20 years old. After graduating, he was offered a professorial chair. He declined and went to art school, which he found easy. The influence of the new styles of Cubism and its offshoots influenced his transformation from realism to abstraction. His move to the village of Murnau in the Bavarian Alps in 1902 provided the inspiration he needed. “Autumn in Murnau” is one of his early paintings. He paints only the essential elements, and they are in bright color patches.

The bright green fields and dark blue mountains are as they appear in the Bavarian landscape. The actual colors are clear, rich, and intense. The autumn leaves are represented by bright red brush strokes on the dark green and blue tree. The mountains are painted dark blue and purple. White clouds and storm clouds cover the sky. A road leads the viewer’s eye from the foreground into the background. 

During this period, Kandinsky was writing Concerning the Spiritual in Art, his treatise on abstract art and the significance of color in art. His theory of color, published in 1911, included some thoughts on the meanings of color: yellow=warm, exciting, and disturbing; green=peaceful, calm, passive; blue= heavenly, the lighter the calmer; red=restless, glowing, alive; brown=dull, hard; orange=radiant, serious, healthy; violet=morbid, sad; white=pregnant with silence, possibility; black=extinguished, immoveable; gray balance between black and white, soundless, motionless.

This photograph of Murnau, taken in August, in 1972, records the intensity of colors of the Bavarian landscape and the Alps. If the viewer has not actually seen the place represented in a painting, the painting does not seem true to life.   

 

“Four Trees” (1918) (43”x55”) is by the Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918). Expressionism implies the desire to express emotions and inner thoughts, often including spiritual themes. The work was painted in the Autumn of 1918. Each tree has a different number of leaves, representing the transition of autumn, and of life. The tree with the most leaves can be seen at the far right. The tree at the far left has started to shed, but it is the next tree that stands out. Almost bare, its few remaining leaves on the dark branches hang on to life.

A small ribbon of blue water flows in the foreground. Green fields with small touches of yellow, orange, and red, provide contrast to the dark red leaves. The distant hills are blotched with lighter orange, yellow, and blue. The four trees rise tall against the streaked sunset sky. The orange sun lies low on the horizon. Night is imminent. However, the whole painting seems to glow, much like a scene created in stained glass. Schiele painted in 1911 two scenes with four trees. 

“Four Trees” (1918) seems to represent Schiele’s melancholy at the time. He was a young man on the way to a good career when he died of the Spanish Flu on October 31, 1918. His pregnant wife Edith died of the same cause just two days earlier. His last works were drawings of Edith. 

“When one sees a tree autumnal in summer, it is an intense experience that involves one’s whole heart and being; and I should like to paint that melancholy.” (Egin Schiele)

 

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Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring to Chestertown with her husband Kurt in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and the Institute of Adult Learning, Centreville. An artist, she sometimes exhibits work at River Arts. She also paints sets for the Garfield Theater in Chestertown.

Artist and fashion maven Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) was born in the Ukraine to a Jewish family. Her uncle Henri Terk and his wife adopted her when she was a child. He was a lawyer in St Petersburg, and his home was full of French art. Sonia had a governess who taught her English, French, and German. The artist Max Liebermann, a friend of the Terks, gave her a box of paints. She studied art in Karlsruhe, Germany, from 1903 until 1905, when she moved to Paris to study at the Academe de la Palette, a progressive art school. She met the Russian painters Kandinsky and Jawlensky, and Picasso, Braque, and Robert Delaunay, and saw the work of Gauguin, Van Gogh, and other Post-Impressionists. 

Delaunay was given her first solo exhibition in1908 at the Wilhelm Uhde Gallery. She married Uhde to remain in Paris because her parents wanted her to come home. When she met Robert Delaunay, she was “carried away by the poet in him.” She and Uhde divorced a year later, and she married Robert. Uhde explained the situation: “After a year our marriage came to an end.  A friend of mine felt he could make my wife more perfectly happy than I could.”

 

Both Sonia and Robert were painters influenced by Picasso and Cubism, but their early paintings lacked color. They named their style Orphism, after Orpheus, the famous musician of ancient Greek mythology.  The style also is known as Simultanism, a term coined by Guillame Appollinaire, the poet and play write. They said, “We have liberated color, which has become a value in itself.” Chevreul’s study of color in 1839 identified the phenomena of simultaneous contrasts: colors look different because of the colors that surround them.

Sonia created the Simultaneous Dress (1914) when she and Robert attended the hot night club Bal Bullier on Montparnasse in Paris. The dress is designed with a variety of color patches, similar to a patch work quilt. However, the patches reveal the shape of the body beneath the fabric. The bodice is divided in half. The right side defines the neck with the colors green and beige, the breast with black and dark green, the waist with gold, and the hip with a white crescent shape. The fabrics on the left form a multicolored pattern. The waist is green with a black semi-circle. The lower part of the dress is composed of elongated shapes pointing downward. The right side is differentiated from the left by a long dark green ruffle. Materials used in the dress are tulle, silk, flannel, and peau de soie. Robert’s outfit had a red and green jacket, red socks, yellow and black shoes, black pants, and a sky-blue vest. Guillaume Apollinaire described their outfits as “sculpture built on a living frame.” Blaise Cendrars, the poet and novelist stated, “On her dress she had a body.” 

 

Sonia wrote, “Before WWI broke out, Robert had shot off rockets in every way.  I, on the ground, had lit more intimate and ephemeral fires in everyday life.” The Delaunays were on vacation in Spain when the first World War started.  They lived in Madrid for a while and then relocated to Portugal.  They met Sergi Diaghilev, and Sonia was invited to design costumes for the opera “Cleopatra” in 1918, and “Aida.” in the Orphic style. The costumes, like her fashions, were created using fabrics in bright colors, and clearly were designed to accentuate the female figure. Sonia also established the Casa Sonia, a workshop and store that featured her clothes and fabrics, also lampshades, tableware, furniture, pottery, and household items. 

The couple returned to Paris in 1920. They opened their apartment on Sunday afternoons for artists, poets, writers, and intellectuals. It was the best- known salon in Paris. Sonia opened the Atelier Simultane studio in Paris, and she designed clothing for many well-known people, including actress Gloria Swanson and poet Nancy Cunard. She received commissions from Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer for the Bauhaus. She was commissioned in 1923 by a silk manufacturer in Lyon, France, to create 50 fabric designs. Sonia was one of the exhibitors at a Paris international exhibition of decorative arts in 1925. Other participants included the furrier Jacques Heim, Lanvin, Hermes, and Channel.

 

Sonia’s art was featured on the cover of the British Vogue Magazine in January 1925. She believed that color could be used everywhere and that clothing could be coordinated with an object. She designed the outfit and the car for the magazine cover. 

That same year, Citroen invited her to paint the Citroen B12 (1925) and design an outfit to wear with it. The CEO of Matra commissioned Sonia to paint the Matra M530, which had a fiberglass body and a Ford V4 engine and was manufactured from 1967 until 1972.

Sonia frequently knitted and embroidered the items she produced. The hand embroidered coat for Gloria Swanson” (1925) contains geometric designs that are created with a striking color palette.

 

At a distance the hand embroidered coat (1925) appears to be a luxurious fur. Sonia had learned to embroider as a child, and she used it frequently because it reminded her of Russia. She employed a couch stitch that holds the vertical wool threads in place with silk threads. 

 

Sonia designed everything, including shoes (1925). 

 

The Amsterdam department store Metz & Co. offered dresses by avant-garde designers, and it became one of Sonia’s most important clients. She worked for the firm for 30 years, starting in1925. Metz also sold her fabrics in America. Metz produced over 200 of her fabric designs, but the store’s archives had over 2000 of her sketches. Sonia’s husband Robert designed the first paper dress patterns, permitting people to produce their own Delaunay dresses. Paper patterns inspired the idea of ready-to-wear fashion.

Sonia’s knitting skill came in handy when she began to design and knit women’s bathing suits (1928). 

An album of her designs was published in 1928 in Paris.  The stock market crash of 1929 brought an end to Sonia’s fashion house; it closed in the early 1930s. She painted two large murals for the Air and Railroad Pavilion at the1937 Paris World’s Fair, and she received a gold medal. 

Robert died of cancer in 1941. Sonia moved to Grasse in the south of France with several other French artists. Some were resistance fighters. The Nazis confiscated the house, but Sonia remained in Grasse. She continued to paint and made plans to preserve Robert’s reputation. Exhibitions of his work and a catalogue raisonné (1957) were produced. She was made a Chevalier of Arts and Letters in1958.

 

After the War, Sonia was again a major figure in the art world of Paris. She added jewelry, stained glass, and porcelain, but she continued to paint. Sonia was the first living woman artist to be given a retrospective in the Louvre in1964. She donated 177 of Robert’s paintings to the Paris Museum of Contemporary Art, better known as the Pompidou. She also received the City of Paris Gold Medal, and she was made a member of the Order of the Legion of Honor.

The Aubusson Tapestry company commissioned Sonia, Picasso, Leger, and Calder to create tapestries designs in 1967.  UNESCO’s first “International Women’s Year” poster (1975) was designed by Sonia Delaunay in the Orphism/Simultanism style that she and Robert invented. She was given her first American retrospective at the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, New York, in 1980. Major exhibitions of her work continue today, and fashion designers continue to be inspired by her work.

 

Sonia Delaunay died at age 94. Among her last words were “Je suis une optimiste (I am an optimist).

 

“I always painted as an amusement, and it amused me to do that, but this amusement took my whole life.” (Sonia Delaunay)

 

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Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring to Chestertown with her husband Kurt in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and the Institute of Adult Learning, Centreville. An artist, she sometimes exhibits work at River Arts. She also paints sets for the Garfield Theater in Chestertown.

Max Liebermann (1847-1935) introduced Impressionism to Germany. His parents owned a leading cotton factory in Berlin. Liebermann studied art at the Grand-Ducal Saxon Art School in Weimar, Germany. He moved to Paris in 1873 and set up a studio in Montmartre.  He spent the summer of 1874 in Barbizon, outside of Paris, where he discovered the work of Daubigny, Corot, and Millet, the first French painters to adopt plein air (outdoor) painting. Liebermann admired the work of Millet that featured laborers working in the fields. He also admired the paintings of Monet, Manet, Renoir, and Degas.

Liebermann submitted “Women Plucking Geese” (1870-71) (not shown here) to the Paris Academy in 1872. It was in the dark colors of the German style and of common working people. Although the Academy accepted it, it was sharply criticized, earning him the title “painter of the ugly” and “apostle of ugliness.”

 

 

Unhappy that his skills were not progressing, Liebermann traveled to Holland in 1875, where he discoverd the work of Frans Hals, a Dutch painter of the 17th century, who used a thick application of paint (impasto) with visible brush strokes. Liebermann’s “Dutch Sewing School” (1876), is evidence of the influence of Hals and early Impressionism in Paris. Sunlight pours through the windows and the Dutch costumes are painted with strong yellows on the white collars and hats. Liebermann’s adopted Impressionism did not use the rainbow colors of the French, but hewas able to depict a sun filled room. He captured the intensity of the young seamstresses at work by depicting accurately the positions of their hands. 

 

 

Liebermann continued to prefer painting the common people at their work. He believed the quiet and solemn nature of workers was a worthy subject. “Free Period in the Amsterdam Orphanage” (1881-82) (31”x42’’) represents his interpretation of the Impressionist style. The sunlight of the scene is filtered through trees, creating dappled spots on the ground, walls, and girls. These became popularly known as “Liebermann sun spots.” He chose to retain the original colors of the objects: the red and black dresses, the white hats and aprons, and the earthy colors of the buildings and walkway. Renoir also was famous for his dappled sunlight effects. The viewer feels the warmth of the sunlight and the serenity of the scene. It does not come to mind that these women are orphans.

 

 

Liebermann spent his winters in Germany and his summers in Holland. He was born three days before Germany passed on July, 23,1847, the law emancipating Jews.  His early paintings were unpopular, but by the 1880’s his work shown in the Paris Salons had become popular, and he had found several patrons. Liebermann knew his decision to move back to Berlin in1884 could cause conflict because he was Jewish, and antisemitism was on the rise. His painting “Twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple” in1789 (not shown here) was sharply criticized because Jesus was depicted in the clothing of a poor Jew.  Nevertheless, several German artists supported him, and he was accepted into the Association of Berlin Artists. At the Paris Salon of 1880, he was the first German artist to receive an honorable mention for his work. The painter and art critic Ludwig Pietsch (1824-1911) called Liebermann a “great talent and an outstanding representative of modernism.”

‘’Munich Beer Garden’’ (1884) (37”x27’’) portrayed one of Germans’ favorite pastimes, beer gardens. Under the shade of the trees, people sit in the sunlight and enjoy the beautiful day. The Liebermann sun spots seem to flicker on the colorful costumes, kerchiefs, bonnets, and boater hats. In the foreground of the painting are three charming little girls. Liebermann was married in September 1884, and his daughter Kathe was born in 1885.  After her birth, he did little painting because he was a devoted father. 

 

 

Liebermann began to make sketches for “Flax Barn in Laren” (1887) (53’’x91’’) while he was in Laren, Holland. He was fascinated by the process of converting flax into thread and then into linen fabric. The girls wear black dresses with white aprons and klompen 

(Dutch clogs). They stand on the wood floor and hold cleaned flax stems which they twist into linen thread. Across the room, seated men and women wind the flax onto spindles. Growing flax to be made into linen cloth was an important industry in Laren. When Liebermann exhibited the work in the Paris Salon in 1887, the reception was generally unenthusiastic. However, Adolph von Menzel, a well-known German painter, remarked that the painting was “the only one to represent men and not models.”

The room with little light coming through the windows is not the usual Impressionist sunny scene. The painting is one of Liebermann’s larger works. His continued interest in the laborers of his time is set against the new factories and machines of the  industrial age already taking hold in Europe. 

 

 

Many of Liebermann’s genre paintings were sketched while he was in Holland and painted when he returned to Berlin. A simple subject, “Woman with Goats” (1890) (50”x68”) depicts a wide verdant green field. Paths are worn in the grass with tracks in many directions. A Dutch woman in clogs pulls on the rope of the larger, stubborn goat, most likely to lead it home. The second goat does not give her any trouble. Painted in larger, freer brush stokes, the scene is appealing. Liebermann received a gold medal in 1891 for this painting at the Munich Art Association exhibition.

Liebermann was honored by the Prussian Academy of Art on his 50th birthday in 1897, and he was elected president of the Academy in the following year. He received a medal of honor in the 1890 Paris International Exhibition, and he was admitted to the Société des Beaux-Arts in Paris.  Germany’s younger artists were eager to move into a modernist style, and the Berlin Secession, founded in 1898, elected Liebermann as the first president.

 

 

 

Liebermann purchased a house in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee in 1909, and he began to paint landscapes and garden scenes. “Garden Restaurant on the Havel-Nikolskoe” (1916) was one of the many paintings he did of the Lake Havel-Nikolskoe during the summer. The sunny scene is similar to those of Renoir who also loved to show people gathered by a lake enjoying themselves. Liebermann’s scene includes dappled sunlight. The colors are in the Impressionist style with rainbow colors used to depict sunlight and shadow throughout the scene.   

Liebermann became a favorite portrait painter of the German aristocracy and upper middle class at the beginning of the 20th Century.  He painted over 200 portraits, including Albert Einstein, Richard Strauss, and Paul von Hindenburg, President of Germany from 1925 until 1934. Hindenburg gave him an eagle shield “as a token of the thanks that the German people owe you.” Adolph Hitler stated in a paper, “It would be unheard of for a Jew to paint the Reich President.” Liebermann’s response was “I can only laugh at something like that. I’m convinced that when Hindenburg finds out, he’ll laugh about it too. I’m just a painter, and what does painting have to do with Judaism?”

As the leading German artist, Liebermann had to deal with several long running challenges from the German academy artists and the modern artists he supported. On his last trip to Holland in1912, Queen Wilhelmina presented him with the Order of the House of Orange. On returning to Berlin, he was awarded a doctorate by the Friedrich Wilhelms University, and art academies in Venice, Brussels, Milan, and Stockholm made him a member in 1913. He was elected president of the Prussian Academy of Art in 1927. His work was included in the art competition and painting event in the 1928 Sumer Olympics in Berlin. 

When the Nazi’s came to power in 1933, the Academy decided not to show any works by Jewish artists. Liebermann resigned from the Academy before he was forced to by the new anti-Jewish laws. The Gestapo began removing his paintings from museums and private collections.  Liebermann stayed in Wannsee with his wife and continued to paint until his death in 1935. The Gestapo forbade attendance at his funeral, but more than 100 people showed up, including the German printmaker and sculptor Kathe Kollwitz.

Liebermann’s wife Martha inherited his large private collection of art, and she kept it with her in Wannsee. She suffered a stroke in 1943 and was bedridden. She took her own life after she was ordered to report to a concentration camp. Their daughter escaped to America.

Hundreds of Liebermann’s paintings and others from his private collection are listed by the German Lost Art Foundation, created in 1994. The Max Liebermann Society opened the Liebermann Museum on April 30, 2006, at the villa in Wannsee.

 “In his various capacities as a leader in the artistic community, Liebermann spoke out often for the separation of art and politics. He pushed for the right of artists to do their own thing, unconcerned with politics or ideology.” Grace Gluck (1926-2022) American arts journalist)

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Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring to Chestertown with her husband Kurt in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and the Institute of Adult Learning, Centreville. An artist, she sometimes exhibits work at River Arts. She also paints sets for the Garfield Theater in Chestertown.

August 15 was the 125th anniversary of the installation of the Hebe fountain in Fountain Park in Chestertown. Hebe was the youngest daughter of Zeus and his sister-wife Hera.  According to Pindar (c.515-438 BCE), one of the famous lyric poets of Greece, Hebe was the most beautiful of the goddesses. The Greek word Hebe means youth or prime of life. The goddess Hebe played an important role on Mt Olympus as the cupbearer to the Gods. She was responsible for providing ambrosia, the nectar of the gods, the elixir of eternal youth. Hebe danced with Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, and was Aphrodite’s herald. Hebe is often present with Aphrodite in images of weddings in ancient art.

On the Chestertown Fountain, Hebe pours ambrosia from a pitcher into a cup. Below, swans spout water. They represent inner beauty, innocence, and a commitment to others. Swans were the symbols of the Muses that inspired poets and artists. The base of the fountain is a large shell that collects the water, a reference to the birth of Aphrodite. Born in the sea, she was ferried ashore on a large seashell pulled by dolphins.  A famous depiction of this is “Birth of Venus” by Botticelli (1482-85). The shell is supported by lions’ heads. Lions represent power, courage, and justice, but most important in the fountain, they represent protection.

 

“Marie Antoinette as Hebe” (1773) (38”x31”) was painted by Francois Drouais (1727-1775), a popular portrait artist in the court of Louis XV. Portraying royal women as Greek goddesses became very popular in the Rococo Period (c.1750-1880). Marie Antoinette was Dauphine, not yet Queen, at the time of this painting. She was just 14 years old. Hebe was a very popular subject, often depicted with a pitcher and goblet, and an eagle that represented her father Zeus. Drouais and the artists of the Rococo period preferred pastel colors, unlike the rich colors of the previous Baroque period. 

“Mrs. Musters as Hebe” (1785) (94”x57”) was painted by English artist Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792). Reynolds’s style was a blend of Baroque and Rococo styles.  The soft pastel clouds and Hebe’s transparent scarf represent the Rococo. The dress and eagle are painted in the deep reds, browns, and blacks of the Baroque.  Sophia Catherine Muster (1758-1819) was 24 years old at the time her portrait was painted. It was intended for her husband, but it was given to the Prince of Wales (1762-1830), later George IV.  Mrs. Musters was believed to be one of his many lovers.

“Anne Pitt as Hebe” (1792) (55”x39”) was painted by Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun, Marie Antoinette’s favorite painter. Vigee-Lebrun wrote in her memoirs about painting the sixteen-year-old Miss Anna Pitt while they were in Rome. Vigee-Lebrun fled Paris on the same night that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were arrested. Looking for accuracy in her representation of the eagle, Vigee-Lebrun borrowed an eagle from Cardinal de Bernis. The eagle, unhappy about being brought into the studio, behaved badly. Vigee-Lebrun managed to depict a calm bird.

“Hebe” (1800-1805) (62.2’’) (marble) was sculpted by the Italian Antonio Canova (1757-1822), considered to be one of the greatest sculptors of the Neo-classical period (1760’s until 1850’s). After the French Revolution, artists returned to the Classical style of ancient Greece.  Hebe holds the pitcher and cup, this time with a golden metal finish. Her figure is classically proportioned, and she is partially nude. Canova treated her garment with the wet drapery look used by the Greeks before female nudes became popular. “Hebe” descends from the clouds above Mt Olympus. 

Delegates to the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, at its convention in1874, officially encouraged erection of Temperance Fountains, many depicting Hebe, in American hometowns. Tea and coffee were expensive, beer was unacceptable, but fresh drinking water was safer, cleaner, and free. Numerous “Hebe” fountains were cast from a mold that was very similar to Canova’s sculpture. Chestertown’s “Hebe” may be one of them.

“Hebe and Jupiter” (1852-57) (marble) was commissioned by the city of Dijon, France, from native-son Francois Rude. Rude chose to depict Hebe with a full-sized eagle, representing her father Jupiter (Roman name for Zeus). With wings spread out behind Hebe, the eagle looks up in anticipation of receiving the ambrosia. Several smaller sculptures of the statue were cast in bronze and can be seen in American museums. Rude is known for his sculpture “Departure of the Volunteers” (1792), frequently called “La Marseillaise” on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Sculptures of Hebe from ancient Greece represent her as a goddess, sometimes with wings, and sometimes without them. “Hebe Taking Hercules to Mt Olympus” (c.525 BCE) (Ricci hydria water jar) (black figure vase) (Etruscan) is a depiction of another part of Hebe’s story. Goddess of brides, she originally was unmarried. When the mortal Hercules died, she was charged with bringing him to Mt Olympus where he was made him immortal. Hebe became the divine wife of Hercules. The images of Hercules, following the tradition, depict him with short, curly hair and a beard. He wears a lion’s skin over his shoulder and carries a large club. 

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Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring to Chestertown with her husband Kurt in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and the Institute of Adult Learning, Centreville. An artist, she sometimes exhibits work at River Arts. She also paints sets for the Garfield Theater in Chestertown.

The Olympics began officially in 776 BCE, but games have been recorded as early as the 9th Century BCE. The Roman historian Dio Chrystostom (40-115 CE) wrote in the Rhodian Discourse, “You know that the Olympian crown is olive leaves, and yet many have preferred this honor to life itself, not because there is anything wonderful about the olive that grows there, because it is not given carelessly or for slight achievement.”  

There were four games: the Olympic, the Nemean, the Isthmian, and the Pythian. One was held each year in a four-year cycle, and the same rules applied. Each game was dedicated to a male god. In 566 BCE, the Panathenaic games started in the city of Athens and honored Athena, the patron of the city. The events included sports competitions, banquets, processions, and there were contests in poetry and music. Olympic athletes received olive wreaths made from the olive tree of Zeus, and they were celebrated with life-size statues. At the Panathenaic game, winners received olive wreaths from Athena’s olive grove and a black-figure vases filled with olive oil.

After the unexplained decline in c.1100 BCE of the Minoan and the Mycenean civilizations, Greece went through a period of dark ages.  The first major artistic development was vase painting, in what is called the Geometric period (c. 900 BCE). The clay around Athens was discovered to be excellent for pottery making. It contained iron oxide giving it an orange-red color with a sheen when it was fired.  

Black Figure Geometric Krater (c.750-735 BCE) is a large two- handled vase. Such vases ranged from approximately fourteen to twenty-two inches in height. The vase was used to dilute wine with water. The period was named Geometric by art historians because the first vases were painted with complex geometric patterns. By 750 BCE, painters had added a row of female mourners with their hands on their heads, standing on either side of a coffin that included men and dogs. The lower row depicted warriors either marching or driving chariots and holding figure-eight shields. The figures were composed of simple geometric shapes. The subject came from the stories of the Greek gods and heroes, later written down by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey. Such elaborate funeral rites were given to Greek kings and warriors.

“Wrestling” (c.500 BCE) (Archaic period, c.700-480 BCE) (6.5’’x9’’) is a skypos (deep drinking cup), painted by the Theseus painter. Wrestling was very popular, and with the exception of biting and attacking the genitals, everything was legal. Snapping fingers, breaking arms, and breaking other bones was typical. Wrestlers were naked and covered with oil. Wrestling standing up was held in a sand filled pit, and one wrestler had to throw the other three times to be the winner. Ground wrestling was over when one man was so exhausted he quit. 

Archaic vase painters have made significant strides in depicting the human body. Proportions improved, and knowledge of musculature is evident in this piece. The potter who made the vase was not the painter. The painter used slip, a mixture of clay and water, to paint. The color of the clay was orange/red as was the color of the slip. This meant the artist applied paint the same color as the vase. The muscles were articulated by incising lines. First, the kiln was heated to 800 degrees centigrade, and the vase remained orange/red. In the second stage, reduction, the kiln vents were closed, and the temperature increased to 950 degrees centigrade. The addition of green wood to the kiln created smoke, causing the vase to turn black. Finally, the vents were opened, and oxygen entered. The non-painted areas returned to orange/red, and the thicker painted areas remained black.

The trophies of the Panathenaea were amphorae filled with olive oil from Athena’s olive grove. Athena is shown on one side and the sport on the opposite side. “Two-horse Chariot Race” (c.510 BCE) (25’’) was by the Legos group painters. Athena, goddess of wisdom, war, and crafts, wears a helmet, brandishes a spear, and holds a shield depicting an image of Nike, the goddess of victory. On pedestals on either side are roosters, representing Athena’s war aspect, because roosters were combative. The skin of Athena and Nike is white, created by adding a white slip of kaolinite, a technique used sparingly in the Archaic period. 

A two-horse chariot race is depicted on the opposite side. Two horse heads are visible, one parallel with the other. To make sure the horses were complete, the artist painted eight back and front legs.

“Four-horse Chariot Race” (c.410-400 BCE) is an amphora from the Panathenaea games. The painter made progress in the depiction of the driver and the horses. The details of the four horses are more realistic. The horses’ heads are incised to show eyes, mouths, ears, and main. Each has a bridle and breast plate which is decorated with white slip dots. The bearded charioteer is dressed in a white chiton and a leather belt. Two and four horse chariots raced12 laps which equaled 9 miles. 

This race was the one event where a woman could win a trophy. Women, foreigners, and slaves were not allowed to participate in any form, even as members of the audience. However, wealthy women could sponsor a chariot and horses in the race, and could win. The law stated that women would be thrown off a cliff if they trespassed. Only the priestess of Demeter and her virgins were allowed to be present at the events. 

The “Hoplitodromos” (c.323-322 BCE) (26”x33’’) is a Panathenaea amphora depicting the foot race, one of the essential elements of the games. The foot race, known as a stade, was one length of the stadium. Hoplites were the civilian soldiers who wore helmets and carried shields and spears into battle. The introduction of this special foot race for hoplites was a later development. The weight of the shield and sword was approximately 12 pounds.

“Music and Dance” (c.510 BCE) (13”) is a pelike wine jar with a depiction of two male dancers and a musician playing an aulos, a double reed, double piped instrument. The games included musical and poetic competitions. A man could win a prize by reciting a Homeric poem most rhapsodically.  Rhapsodist was the Greek word for reciter of epic poetry. Singers were accompanied by the aulus or a lute. Drama contests also were held. 

Plato described the importance of music in Republic : “The music master makes rhythm and harmony familiar to the souls of boys, and they become gentler and more refined and having more rhythm and harmony in them they become more efficient in speech and in action.  The whole life of a man stands in need of good harmony and good rhythm…In keeping the harmony of his body in tune, his constant aim is to preserve the symphony which resides in the soul.”

 

 “Discobolus” (c.510-500 BCE) (7.7’’) is an example of the development of red-figure vase painting in c.530 BCE.  Reversing the process, the artists painted the background with slip. As a result, the figure appeared more human. The artist’s knowledge of anatomy had advanced. This artist created a composition using elegant curves that perfectly echo the circular shape of the stemmed drinking cup, a kylix. The inscription around the right edge of the kylix reads, “Cleomelos is beautiful.”

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Looking at the Masters: Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring to Chestertown with her husband Kurt in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and the Institute of Adult Learning, Centreville. An artist, she sometimes exhibits work at River Arts. She also paints sets for the Garfield Theater in Chestertown.