Away for a bit

John Singer Sargent, Italian Girl with a Fan, 1882.

Cincinnati Art Museum, The Edwin and Virginia Irwin Memorial

Just a note to say I'll be more or less offline for a week or two.  We have some beloved friends from the past coming to visit today, and we'll be showing them the city.  After that, we'll be taking a quick trip out of town for a few days.  I may post, or I may not.  I may just read other people's blogs, since that's easier than posting myself.  But I haven't disappeared entirely.

What's that Sargent painting doing up there?  Well, it's part of a teeny, tiny daybook.  

I woke up at about 6:00 this morning to make Bob's breakfast.  When I went into the living room, it was cold because all the windows were open (C.Z. had been creating a patio on the radiator last night) and the overnight low was 46.  It was still dark, with the orange street lights casting mullion shadows on the closed curtains.  As I opened the curtains and leaned across the radiator to close the windows, I saw a beautiful lapis sky.  A few lamps were on in apartments here and there, and an airplane with its pinpoint headlight was arching into the sky seconds after takeoff.  The moments between nighttime and morning are among my favorite moments of the day.

I made toast and coffee, sat down with Bob to eat, and then took a second cup over to my favorite spot on the sofa to read John.  I was wearing my long cotton April Cornell nightgown, and had the chenille throw blanket over my shoulders as a shawl.  As I wrote in my journal, I became aware of these things, and that the only sounds I heard were the faint chirping of a House Sparrow and a garbage truck making its rounds, blocks away.  (That last detail is more Realism than Romanticism.)  

The nightgown and shawl got me to thinking about Sargent's Venetian paintings of young women in white dresses and shawls, standing in the shadows of old buildings.  My hair is the right color, but I'm sure I don't look that young or slender, especially at 6:00 a.m. No matter!  This seemed as good a time as any to think about Sargent, who is a master portraitist and long one of my favorite painters.  He hits the cusp between Romanticism and Realism, even though he painted well into the 20th century.  It irked him late in life, I think, that people admired him mainly for being able to make new money look like old, and any middling woman to look elegant.  But any artist who has tried to paint alla prima (spontaneously) knows how extremely talented he was.  So, here's to Sargent, dark ultramarine skies before dawn, chenille blankets, and living la dolce vita, which is not as spontaneous at it appears but is enjoyable nonetheless, for the next couple of weeks!