I spent much of Sunday at the National Gallery. My knowledge of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was limited to his height and a handful of his more famous works, so the
exhibit there was interesting. Toulouse-Lautrec died at 36 of syphillis and alcoholism, which qualifies him for my next "When he was your age" birthday, such as "When Lord Byron was your age, he'd been dead for a year." (Though Byron also died at 36, now that I look it up; I somehow thought he died sooner.) Someone else has a much more
comprehensive list for this game. Given how Monet and Picasso developed in their later careers, it would've been interesting to see what a post-WWI Toulouse-Lautrec would've done. Or maybe not; his contemporary Van Gogh had a full-fledged shift in style in the 1880s, and he died at 37, whereas Toulouse-Lautrec never really developed in the same way.
I found the exhibit more interesting for what it said about late-19th century life in France. Such as a 4' x 6' lithograph
ad for Sardines by contemporary Henri Gustave Jossot that shows that using famous artists and famous faces to advertise is hardly a recent innovation--but I doubt Sarah Bernhardt or Aristide Bruant were paid for the use of their images.
Similarly, Toulouse-Lautrec's late 1890s series of circus paintings are fascinating just because they show how little the popular conception of a circus has changed in a century.
The piece I liked best was Steinlen's kitschy
Apotheosis of Cats, a giant mural that hung in the Chat Noir--and it was funny to see that "Black Cat" was considered a cool name for a club in the nineteenth century.
The Gilbert Stuart exhibit had its moments, too. Stuart's portraits of Washington became sufficiently famous in his own lifetime that he made a good living painting slapdash $500 knock-offs of his own work where he didn't bother to get the perspective right. I found the exhibit frustrating; there were portraits of people sufficiently famous at the time to retain Stuart, but the listing gave only the sketchiest biographical details. I mean, come on, there's got to be something interesting about the marriage between Jerome Bonaparte and American Eliza Patterson that Napoleon had it annulled. (And sure enough,
there is: who knew that a
Teddy Roosevelt attorney general was the grandnephew of Napoleon?) I hadn't seen Stuart's
"Medallion" portrait of Jefferson before; for those used to the one on the nickel or the $2 bill, it was something to see Jefferson in profile. I need to take a daytrip to Monticello.
There was also a
Rembrandt exhibit. Did his Dutch artist contemporaries realize that Rembrandt was playing chess while they were still playing checkers? The difference in understanding lighting is just amazing.
Walking back to the car, my Russian friend and I ran across the Alexandrov Red Army Choir setting up on the Mall, and stuck around for the first hour of their concert. "Watch how they march," she said, "I was at the Iwo Jima memorial and was amazed at what Americans do in comparison." The flag honor guard marched across the stage in the Red Army fashion you may recall from May Day parades where Brezhnev would watch over them, arms swinging, high-kicking. "I think it's just because it's the marching you grew up with," I said. The blue in the Red Army's Russian flag was either faded or, simply put, Russians don't care about color consistency in their flags the way Americans do. I gather Americans are relatively flag-obsessed. It was pretty dramatic to see several dozen Red Army members, in full regalia, singing the Star Spangled Banner with the capitol dome in view. If I described this 2005 scene to someone in 1985, it would've seemed like science fiction or, worse, a bad Patrick Swayze movie. Other culture shock: seeing a dozen Red Army soldiers, again in full dress, perform choreographed chorus-line-kick moves and barrel turns and leaping ballet twirls--it was like a scene out of Monty Python. Never fear: Cossack plie kicks were also on the agenda.
