Comments on: All in the Details

By: Susan Henry

Susan Henry — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:42:16 +0000

I looked closely at the painting, Cider Making, near Setauket, Long Island. I noticed hills in the background of the painting, but I don’t believe Long Island has any hills as high as those. Is this the artist’s license? Even so, these paintings are a delight. I love all the details, especially all the dogs–not very many purebreds then–just dawgs!

By: Leslie Sewell

Leslie Sewell — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:56:41 +0000

What a wonderful story. As a reporter/film-maker I totally agree with the need to verify and research information. I wouldn’t have expected any less from the Met but I’m glad to see my prejudices confirmed.

By: Bob R

Bob R — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:32:06 +0000

I enjoyed reading the story of your finding where Chase painted his “Lake for Miniature Yachts.” I think that is one of the reasons why I like “Eel Spearing in Setauket.” I learned a little about the local history of Strong’s Neck and I can almost picture where Wm S. Mount was when he painted. I’m looking forward reading more of your blog and going to the exhibit. Go Ephs

By: Katie Steiner

Katie Steiner — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:20:22 +0000

Hi again, Josh—I consulted with one of our paintings conservators here at the Museum in order to answer your questions about the ways in which oil paintings change and are cleaned. Paintings in oil tend to be rather stable, but all paintings change in some way as they age. These changes can be subtle or pronounced depending on the techniques used by the artist. If you’re interested in learning more about the process of cleaning a painting, you can find some useful information on the website for the American Institute for Conservation. In addition, some museums, like the Tate, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Museum of Modern Art present conservation case studies that you might find interesting. Many print resources about painting conservation are also available. Our conservator recommends Nicolaus Knut’s The Restoration of Paintings (Cologne: Könemann, 1999), which is well illustrated. Copies are available through the New York Public Library. I hope these resources help!

By: Katie Steiner

Katie Steiner — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:42:09 +0000

Thanks, Josh, for your interest in the show and for your terrific questions. We’re actually planning a future post that will address how some of the paintings in the exhibition have changed as they’ve aged, and how these changes enhance the stories that the works tell, so stay tuned!

By: Josh

Josh — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:18:08 +0000

Dear Ms. Steiner,

I attend high school and visited your exhibition over the weekend. My teacher wanted us to write on one of the paintings that we like. I enjoy painting and use oil paints. I was just wondering how do the paintings get cleaned and are the colors the same as when the artist painted on the canvas. Thank you, Josh

By: Katie Steiner

Katie Steiner — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:46:13 +0000

Thanks so much for your comment, which refers to the quote by Charles Willson Peale appearing in the gallery devoted to the first chronological section of our exhibition. The full quote, excerpted from Peale’s July 3, 1820 letter to Thomas Jefferson, reads as follows: “I love the Art of Painting, but the greatest merit of execution on subjects that have not a virtuous tendency, loose all their value in my estimation.” To modern eyes, it seems that one of two things has happened: either the artist has misspelled the word lose by inserting a stray “o”, or we at the Met forgot to use spell check before affixing the quote to our gallery wall. To address the first possibility, I’ll mention that in Peale’s time, English spelling had not yet been entirely standardized. In fact, if we look up the verb lose in the Oxford English Dictionary, we find several examples, particularly from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, of the word being spelled with an extra “o”, just like in Peale’s correspondence. Although the artist was writing in the early nineteenth century, his letter suggests that alternate spellings of lose had a certain amount of staying power. I’m also happy to affirm that the extra “o” isn’t a typo on our part, but actually appears in Peale’s letter. In fact, my process for verifying the wording of—and spelling in—the artist’s statement was very similar to the process of checking our quote by Mount, which I discussed in the post above. Much of Peale’s correspondence has been published, so I first checked The Selected Papers of Charles Willson Peale and his Family (ed. Lillian B. Miller), a five-volume series which we have in our library in the American Wing. (FYI, the quote in question appears on page 831 in volume 3.) Sure enough, lose was spelled here with an extra “o”. In order to confirm this secondary source, I contacted a manuscripts librarian at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, which houses Peale’s July 3, 1820 letter to Jefferson. The librarian very kindly pulled the original letter, double checked the quote, and confirmed that it was correct as published in the Selected Papers. So, even though Peale’s quote may look a little strange, we did our due diligence to make sure it was right. All the same, many thanks for your response and your sharp eyes!

By: K. Donkin

K. Donkin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:37:17 +0000

I loved the American Stories exhibit and will probably come back for a second time. In one of the rooms I thought I noticed a quote, lettered high overhead on the wall, with the word “lose” misspelled as “loose.” Can this be?