Art Eyewitness Book Review How Painting Happens by Martin Gayford

How Painting Happens (and why it matters)

By Martin Gayford

Thames & Hudson/384 pages/$45
 

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Original photos by Anne Lloyd

The greatest compliment which can be paid to the author of an art book is that the book motivates readers to go to their local museum and see actual works of art.

This act of seeing entails more than gazing at a painting or sculpture for 27.2 seconds. Reputedly, this is the viewing time per work of art for the average museum goer at The Met.

Seeing art takes a lot more time and considerably more effort. Seeing art translates into a concerted eye-to-brain process- looking, analysis, perception and - hopefully - enlightenment.

 

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2023)

Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses at the Metropolitan Museum, 

showing Van Gogh's Landscape from Saint-Rémy, 1889

The second greatest compliment for the author of an art book is that motivated readers will refer back to his or her book for further reading and reflection. The volume in question may indeed become a trusted companion, perhaps honored with a place on a bed-side book shelf.

Both compliments apply to Martin Gayford’s How Painting Happens (and why it matters), just published by Thames and Hudson.

 

The title of Gayford’s new book states its theme directly and succinctly. Gayford surveys the process of painting from conception to fulfillment, from preliminary sketch to deciding when – or if – the painting is finished.

It is important to note that How Painting Happens is not a technical treatise. True, there are a few “pointers” here for the taking. Gayford describes the novel technique of Gerhard Richter when he wishes to “lose control” of a painting, that is to paint spontaneously. To do that, Richter uses a squeegee rather than a brush.

Gayford states that “these products of interaction between his (Richter’s) eye, mind, hands and arms, and the squashing, blurring power of a piece of plastic, can be overwhelmingly beautiful.”

Intrepid painters may want to give Richter’s squeegee a try. This technique sounds more than a little risky, so I think I’ll stick to magic markers.

Instead of “how to”, the key concept of How Painting Happens is “dialogue.”

David Dawson, Photo (2018)

David Hockney and Martin Gayford in conversation.

Photo from Spring Cannot be Cancelled (Thames & Hudson, 2021)

Gayford is the premier interviewer of the visual arts scene of our times. Spring Cannot be Cancelled, the 2021 book recording Gayford's friendship with David  Hockney over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, is a poignant and powerful testament to the human spirit.

Gayford has over three decades of experience speaking to artists, putting them at ease while encouraging them to discuss their viewpoints, trials, tribulations and achievements. Gayford draws on these interviews to inform the text of this book.

“Inform” is indeed the correct verb form for describing Gayford’s methodology. How Painting Happens is no “cut and paste” reassembling of old newspaper clippings. Rather, the comments and insights of now-legendary figures like Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon, Paula Rego and Frank Stella are combined with those of contemporary painters to create a “voice” for art.

 

El Greco, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586

Moreover, this “voice” resonates with what the Old Masters of painting, from Titian and El Greco to Picasso and Matisse, said and did. They make their presence felt chiefly through the comments of the artists whom Gayford interviewed. This gives depth of insight to How Painting Happens similar to the way that painting in oils builds layer upon layer to create the desired image.

Gayford weaves together the strands of many voices with commentary founded upon his deep-seated knowledge of art history. This produces a sense of continuity and shared purpose which carries through the discussion of the many genres of painting and historical eras surveyed in this remarkable book.

The “voice” we hear in How Painting Happens is the voice of experiences, founded upon a shared conviction and leading to the same, unshakable, conclusion:

Painting matters… Art matters and it has been doing so for a very long time.

In his discussion of the origin and use of color pigments, Gayford alludes to the alchemists. The aim of these Renaissance-era savants was to transform base metals into gold. Painters had beaten them to a comparable goal by many thousands of years.

Ochre, various forms of oxides dug from the soil beneath human feet, was the key component of the first paint. When mixed with fat from animal bone marrow and heated, ochre pigments enabled prehistoric artists to create astonishing masterpieces such as the cave murals at Chauvet and Lascaux. Is there a greater alchemy than this?

 

Aurochs, horses and deer painted on a cave at Lascaux.

Upper Paleolithic era, c. 17,300 years ago. Photo (2006)

The meaning of these cavalcades of painted aurochs, reindeer and wild horses has been much debated. Almost certainly, these scenes related to hunting, either invocations of divine assistance prior to a foray in search of game or to a celebration afterwards. In the case of the stenciled hand-prints at the Cueva de las Manos, located in Patagonia at the southern tip of South America, the statement was direct and unequivocal.

 “I exist.”

 

Mariano Cecowski, Photo (2005)

Hands at the Cueva de las Manos (The Cave of Hands), Argentina

No one knows the exact identity of the ancient painters in Cueva de las Manos. Yet modern-day artists can speak for them because the essential message of art never changes. Acknowledging the insights of the contemporary British painter, Jenny Saville, Gayford notes that the Cueva de las Manos handprints “are an arresting way of proclaiming the same message … that Van Gogh was transmitting with his oils and brushes: I exist.”

 

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2023)

Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses at The Met, 

showing Van Gogh's The Starry Night, 1889

Gayford, as noted above, has interviewed an impressive number of painters, discussing with them the steps they took, from blank canvas to gallery wall, to affirm their lives and art. So numerous are the respondents to Gayford’s inquiries that to try and encompass the contributions of all would be foolhardy. Instead, I will focus upon Gayford’s exchanges with two painters in order to convey a sense of the whole extraordinary enterprise.

Sean Scully is a perfect fit for a Gayford interview - and inclusion in How Painting Matters. Artist and author are near contemporaries, both steeped in the theory and practice of art, of the present and the past ... and with an eye to the future.

Ed Voves, (Photo 2022)

Sean Scully at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Spring 2022

Scully was born in Dublin in 1945. His family moved to London when he was boy and he was trained to work in the construction industry. Scully related to Gayford that he would spend his thirty-minute lunch break, making a dash to the Tate Gallery on a moped, to commune with his favorite painting. 

Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh's Chair, 1888

Standing in front of Van Gogh's Chair in his splattered overalls, Scully was moved to make a career change. From working with plaster, he chose to become a "worker" in paint. 

Scully's timing was not the most propitious to take-up painting. By the time his career was launched, 1970's Minimalism was in full-swing. Representational art of any kind was "out" and Abstraction held in low repute. After moving to New York, Scully rebelled against "what you see is what you get." And he switched from quick-drying acrylics back to painting in oils.

In a fascinating discussion with Gayford, Scully related that painting with acrylics had enabled his "work to become, let's say, more conceptual." Then, in the 1980's, he was inspired to create work that was "more sensual, more emotional, more romantic, more experiential and less programmatic."

The resulting transition, shifting from acrylics to oil paint, was a near disaster. Scully recounted how:

It was one of the most difficult things I've ever done. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown because oil paint was so unruly. It's like the difference between walking and riding a horse - especially the way I ride a horse, which is clueless. You can't control it. Even now, I don't control it entirely. That's what's so beautiful about it.

The ordeal of recalibrating back to oil paints has enabled Scully to create an impressive oeuvre, "more experiential and less programmatic" over the subsequent years. These include his signature Landline series. One of Scully's Landline paintings is included as a full page illustration in How Painting Happens. This work is entitled Landline Star (2017).

Ed Voves, (Photo 2022)

Gallery view of Sean Scully: the Shape of Ideas at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, showing Scully's Landline North Blue, 2014

I had the great, good fortune to meet Sean Scully at the press preview of the magnificent retrospective of his work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2022.  A Landline painting similar to Landline Star was on view, Landline North Blue (2014). In my review, I described this work as an abstract landscape, in the spirit of Caspar David Friedrich.

Ed Voves, (Photo 2022)

Sean Scully's Landline North Blue, 2014

The experience of beholding this powerful painting and discussing it with Scully ranks as one of the most memorable events in my evolving appreciation of art. But it was made even more meaningful by reading the Gayford/Scully dialogue in How Painting Happens. It is truly a case study of the "uses of adversity." 

One of the most vital tasks of a writer involved in cultural commentary and analysis is to make new or unfamiliar art forms intelligible to general readers. With Sean Scully, Gayford was able to find common ground and mutual understanding fairly easily. In his conversation with Korean artist, Lee Ufan, it was Gayford's turn to cope with a bit of adversity.

Andrew Tupalev, Portrait of Lee Ufan, 2014

Lee Ufan, born in 1936, is not only one of the major painters and sculptors of modern Korea, but is a leader of the philosophical movement in Korea and Japan known as Mono-ha. This "school of things" explores the interface of natural and man-made objects. Lee Ufan has been a strong critic of the rapid and heedless Westernization of Asia.

Ed Voves, (Photo 2024)

Lee Ufan's From Line, 1979, displayed at the Metropolitan Museum 

Lee Ufan's signature paintings are known by a common title, From Line. 

These paintings are generally similar: uniform strokes of blue cobalt-cadmium pigment which begin with intense coloration at the top of the canvas, gradually losing saturation in the downward sweep, until only ghostly shadow-like forms remain. 

As described by Gayford, Lee's working procedure is like that of Michelangelo in reverse. The canvas is placed on the floor and Lee paints, face down, from "a wooden board set-up, like a bridge, above it."

Ed Voves, (Photo 2024)

Detail of Lee Ufan's From Line, 1979

Prior to reading How Painting Happens, I had never seen a Lee Ufan From Line painting. This made it difficult to follow Gayford's exchange with Lee. 

MOMA has a From Line in its collection but it is not currently on view. Fortunately, The Met's recent exhibition of Korean art, Lineages, displayed a From Line painting similar to the one chosen to illustrate How Painting Happens. I was able to see this painting, confirming its status as a remarkable, hard-to-fathom work of art - at least for a Westerner.

Gayford evidently had a similar reaction and his attempts to draw-out some form of intelligible meaning (again to Westerners) met with a barrage of polite rebuttals from Lee Ufan:

Maybe you don’t really understand what I’m doing. I put some paint on the brush then make one, two, three, four strokes, and as I do so, with each stroke, the paint becomes fainter. Perhaps you imagine I control my breathing just during one stroke, but that’s not the case. With one breath, I make several strokes. That’s very important... Because this is the result of a long, long period of training. It is the same as the way an athlete trains; artists train themselves as well.

After further discussion, Gayford finally grasped that when Lee paints, he is "immersing" himself into the work. 

"I am inside the canvas," Lee says. He is painting, not only with blue cobalt-cadmium paint, but with his breath, his life force, his body.

"The body is crucial, our body does not belong just to us. It creates a relationship with the world. And that relationship is the most interesting thing of all."

These then, are just two of the amazing cast of characters summoned by Martin Gayford to the pages of How Painting Happens. Individually and collectively, they make the case of why art matters. They do so in terms which validate the hand-painters of Cueva de las Manos, ten thousand years ago, and Lee Ufan in the world of today.

Anne Lloyd, (Photo 2023)

Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses at the Metropoitan Museum of Art, 

showing Van Gogh's Country Road in Provence by Night, 1890

Art affirms our existence. Art records the relationship of our body, "which does not belong just to us", with the world.

And so, in the end does Martin Gayford's How Painting Happens. It affirms life and testifies to our relationship with the world.

Gayford's book, a work of art in its own right, has already claimed a place on my bed-side book shelf. It is wedged in beside Christopher De Hamel’s Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts and The Oxford Book of Essays. But How Painting Happens (and why it matters) is not a book to rest on its laurels and it won't be sitting on that shelf, gathering dust, for long.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved.

Original photography, copyright of Ed Voves and Anne Lloyd. Book cover, courtesy of Thames and Hudson.

Introductory Image: Diego Velazquez (Spanish) Self-Portrait, detail from Las Meninas, 1656. Oil on canvas: 318 cm × 276 cm (125.2 in × 108.7 in) Museo del Prado, Madrid. This image comes from the web site of National Gallery, London.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2023) Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, showing Van Gogh's  Landscape from Saint-Rémy. 27 3/4 × 34 7/8 in. (70.5 × 88.5 cm) Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

David Dawson, Photo (2018) David Hockney and Martin Gayford in conversation. Photo from Spring Cannot be Cancelled (Thames & Hudson, 2021)

El Greco, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586.  Oil on canvas: 480 cm × 360 cm (190 in × 140 in). Church of Santo Tomé, Toledo Spain.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burial_of_the_Count_of_Orgaz#/media/File:El_Greco_-_The_Burial_of_the_Count_of_Orgaz.JPG

Unknown photographer (EU), Photo (2006) Aurochs, horses and deer painted on a cave at Lascaux. Upper Paleolithic era, c. 17,300 years ago. Photo licensed under Creative commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lascaux_painting.jpg

Mariano Cecowski Photo (2005) Hands at the Cuevas de las Manos (The Cave of Hands), 2005. Photo licensed under Creative Commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SantaCruz-CuevaManos-P2210651b.jpg

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2023) Gallery view of Van Gogh's Cypresses, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, showing Van Gogh's The Starry Night, 1889. Oil on canvas. 29 x 36 1/4" (73.7 x 92.1 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Spring 2022.

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch,1853-1890) Van Gogh's Chair, 1888. Oil on canvas: 91.8 × 73 cm. National Gallery, London. NG3862

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Gallery view of Sean Scully: the Shape of Ideas at Philadelphia Museum of Art, showing Scully's Landline North Blue, 2014.

Ed Voves, Photo (2022) Sean Scully’s Landline North Blue, 2014. Oil on Aluminum: 7 feet 1 inches × 6 feet 3 inches (215.9 × 190.5 cm). Forman Family Collection.

Andrew Tupelvev, Photo (2014) Lee Ufan at the opening of artist's personal exhibition at Gary Tatintsian Gallery, November 13, 2014. Photo licensed under Creative Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lee_Ufan.jpg

Ed Voves, Photo (2024) Lee Ufan’s From Line, 1979. Displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Oil on canvas: 76 3/16 in. × 8 ft. 5 15/16 in. (193.5 × 259 cm) Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul. #LL.001

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2023) Vincent van Gogh’s County Road in Provence by Night, 1890. Oil on canvas: 35 3/8 x 28 3/8 in. (90.6 x 72 cm) Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands

 

Art Eyewitness Essay: Morgan Library & Museum Centennial Tribute

  

     

 Art Eyewitness Essay:
Morgan Library and Museum Centennial Tribute

By Ed Voves

Original Photography by Anne Lloyd and Ed Voves

"Life is a spell so exquisite,” Emily Dickinson wrote, “that everything conspires to break it.”

If Dickinson’s hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts, was hostile to enchantment, how much so is the “24/7” tidal wave of distractions which daily engulfs our lives? Wherever one lives in our harried, mind-fatigued world, the “spell” of a meaningful life is difficult to cultivate.

Yet, it is possible to find places of refuge – mental, emotional, life-affirming. Occasionally, these sanctuaries of sanity may be found in the middle of the maelstrom. 225 Madison Avenue at 36^th street in New York City is one such location:

The Morgan Library & Museum.

Brett Beyer (Photo 2022)

 J.P Morgan’s Library & Garden, looking west toward the Annex

The Morgan, if I may, is celebrating its centennial year as a public institution. But the Morgan Library and Museum’s pre-history, spanning two decades before its incorporation in 1924, is of crucial importance in understanding the Morgan’s mission as a premier American venue of culture.

The Morgan was designed as a private library by the celebrated architect, Charles McKim, and built between 1902 and 1906. Set amid brownstone townhouses in the Murray Hill neighborhood of New York, the Morgan Library was constructed of Tennessee marble. From its inception, the Morgan was intended to be exceptional.

At McKim’s behest, the emplacement of the marble exterior stonework was done without the use of mortar. This exacting procedure would make the Morgan “the only building ever built in modern times as the ancients built and will require, as was required of them, the utmost accuracy and nicety known in mechanics.”

 

  J. P. Morgan’a Library & Garden with sculptures of lionesses by Edward Clark Potter (photo by Henry Wysham Lanier),1906. Brett Beyer (2022) Entrance to J. P. Morgan’a Library, evening view

McKim modeled the entrance area of the Morgan after the Villa Medici, a Renaissance palazzo from the 1500’s. As the patron of McKim’s masterpiece was an American “Medici”, the building was designed to match the man.

J. Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913) was a hugely controversial figure of his time – and since. He was praised by some and vilified by others for his financial transactions. The prompt action he took in 1893 – and later in 1907 - to prevent a bank panic from spiraling into a nation-wide depression was both public-spirited and sound business practice.

Hayman Selig Mendelssohn, J. Pierpont Morgan, c. 1890

The private library which McKim built for Morgan, adjacent to his family residence, was to be Morgan’s refuge from the harsh world of Gilded Age finance. An avid reader since childhood, Morgan could retreat into the spell of an “exquisite life.” His version of Dickinson’s dream state was a place of eternal verities and timeless ideals, in a setting of commensurate grandeur.

Ed Voves (Photos 2023) Gallery views of Pierpont Morgan's Library

One commentator, upon being given a tour of the completed Morgan Library in 1907, described it as “the bookman’s paradise.”

 

Ed Voves (Photo 2023)

 Gallery view of the Rotunda of the Morgan Library and Museum

Morgan was indeed a “bookman.” He treasured the manuscript of a Sir Walter Scott novel which his father, a collector of autographs, had purchased. When the senior Morgan died in 1890, Pierpont (as he was known in his family) followed his father’s lead as a collector. But he did not limit himself to individual volumes and manuscripts. Morgan began to purchase entire collections, sometimes numbering a hundred or more volumes at a time.

 

Udo J. Keppler, The Magnet, 1911. Published in Puck Magazine

Masterpieces of ancient and medieval art complemented these book acquisitions. European connoisseurs were enraged to see treasures like the Lindau Gospels lost to Morgan’s clutches. Such was the power of the “almighty dollar” and the astute advice of his bibliophile nephew, Junius, that Morgan was an unstoppable force.

Ed Voves (Photo 2023)  

The Lindau Gospels, c. 880, manuscript from St. Gall, Switzerland

To a significant degree, Morgan's book collecting was motivated by his religious faith. This led him to buy rare and historic bibles like the famed Gutenberg Bible (the Morgan now has three copies) and Coptic biblical codices, inscribed by hand in Egypt during the early Middle Ages. The fascinating interaction of worshiping God and obsession with books was documented in the exhibition, Morgan's Bibles: Splendor in Scripture (October 2023-January 2024).

Ed Voves (Photos 2023) Johan Gutenberg’s Biblia Latina, c. 1455 (top photo); Samuel 1 & 2 in Coptic, before 893. From Egypt, Al-Fayyum 

Closer to home, Morgan made his earliest headline-grabbing purchase in 1879. Dubbed the "Thousand-Dollar Bible" by the New York Times, this was the first bible printed in America, dating  to 1663. John Eliot's translation of the Old and New Testament into the language of Algonquian Native American people was also featured in Morgan's Bibles.

J.P. Morgan died on March 31, 1913 in Rome. With his passing, care for the “bookman’s paradise” entered into the capable hands of J.P. (Jack) Morgan Jr. and the now legendary librarian, Belle da Costa Greene (1883-1950). Greene was an African-American woman who "passed" as a person of Portuguese descent. Greene's sharp eye at detecting fakes and forgeries was invaluable in maintaining the integrity of the Morgan's collection.

Ed Voves (Photo 2023)  

Gallery view of the Morgan Library, East Room, showing terracotta bust of Belle da Costa Greene, by Jo Davidson

To round off its centennial celebrations, the Morgan has just opened an exhibition devoted to Belle Greene. Many of the outstanding manuscripts and books purchased on the advice of Greene are on display. Art Eyewitness will review Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian's Legacy in a future post.

In 1924, Jack Morgan decided to recast the Morgan as a public research institution, eventually as a museum as well. In this essay, we shall focus on the Morgan as a museum.

The Morgan is a unique institution, functioning – quite successfully - for many years without large galleries for long-term display of its collection. Approximately 7,000 works of art were donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of which Morgan was president at the time of his death. These included masterpiece paintings like Raphael's Colonna Alterpiece.

Morgan's vast collection of "works on paper"  - medieval manuscripts, Rembrandt etchings and original musical scores such as Beethoven''s Violin and Piano Sonata, op. 96 in G major -  were retained under the careful guardianship of Belle Greene. 

William Blake, America, a Prophecy, 1793-95

Incredibly, works by William Blake, with their prophetic religious visions and radical political views, also remained in the Morgan collection. One would never have assumed that a "robber baron" like J.P. Morgan would have held Blake in esteem, yet apparently he did.

Today, most of the Morgan's 350,000 collection items remain in storage for significant periods. This is due to conservation requirements, as well as space restrictions. To deal with the latter concern, major renovations of the Morgan campus in 1991 and 2006 added additional room,. Especially worthy of note is a more spacious second floor display area, the Englehard Gallery. 

Ed Voves (Photo 2023)  

 The Englehard Gallery, during the Medieval Money exhibit 

However, the Morgan curators must still make optimum use of small spaces by comparison with the cavernous galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Anne Lloyd (Photo 2017)

 Exhibition banners, Summer 2017, at the Morgan Library & Museum

Special exhibitions and rotating “treasures from the vault" are key to the Morgan’s presentation of its vast and varied collections. Generous loans from major museums from around the world are also a major feature of the Morgan’s mission of addressing epic themes in art, music and literature.

The opulent decor of “Mr. Morgan’s Library” never changes. Everything else is in a state of creative flux. As a result, the Morgan's revolving exhibition schedule enables us to step-out of the pressures and frustrations of “this moment” into realms of the imagination, past, present and future.

                  

Anne Lloyd (Photo 2024) 

 The Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature Exhibition,

 with display of illustrated letters to Noel Moore, 1890's  

               

Many of the Morgan exhibitions are immensely enjoyable. The 2012 Charles Dickens tribute, 2019’s Drawing the Curtain: Maurice Sendak’s Design for Opera and Ballet and this year’s Beatrix Potter: Drawn from Nature occupy an especially memorable place in my regard for the Morgan.

The wonderful exhibitions at the Morgan, superb articulations of word and image, have all left their mark on me. To conclude this tribute, I will focus on a sequence of three exhibitions from 2016-2017 and an earlier one, which was mounted in 1971.

This 70's exhibition occurred before I began visiting the Morgan. But judging from its impact, the display of photos of Native Americans taken by Edward S. Curtis from the 1890’s to 1930 was a landmark event in American museum history – and America’s cultural history, writ large.

Edward S. Curtis, Self-Portrait, 1905

In 1906, Edward Curtis (1868-1952), a self-taught photographer based in Seattle, Washington, approached J.P. Morgan for financial support to enable him to document the endangered culture of the North American Indians. Construction of “Mr. Morgan’s Library” was in its final stages and Morgan gave Curtis the brush-off. Or tried to.

Curtis would not take no for an answer. He thrust several or his portraits of Native-American people from the south-west territories into Morgan’s hands. The aging titan of Wall Street was intrigued. 

Edward S. Curtis, Native American Portraits from lantern slides: Unidentified girl (A:shiwi/Zuni), at left, c. 1903;

 Luzi (Tohono O’odham/Papago), c. 1906 

Curtis received a generous, if not lavish, stipend, paid in installments. Morgan provided $15,000 per year for five years, to be spent on field work, but not publication costs.The funding from Morgan enabled Curtis to continue with his ever-expanding project - photographs for his multi-volume book, The North American Indian, ethnographic study of social customs and religious practices and production of sound and motion picture recordings. It was a stupendous achievement.  

Edward Curtis had, at great personal cost, saved America’s Native American heritage. But, by the time he finished his epic task, the  U.S. was in the grip of the Great Depression. Few of the expensive book sets were sold. Curtis died in obscurity in 1952.

Edward S. Curtis, The Courier (Apache), c. 1906. Lantern slide

Carefully stored in the Morgan’s vault were over 400 lantern slides of Curtis photos which had been used by the intrepid photographer in his public-speaking tours. Many had been hand-tinted to heighten their visual appeal to the public. The lantern slides formed the core of the sensational 1971 exhibition at the Morgan which revived Curtis' reputation and heightened awareness of the rich heritage of the Native American peoples Curtis had  immortalized.

The  Curtis/Morgan saga is surely one of the most dramatic and influential episodes involving a museum in American history. That being said, I would contend that three exhibitions, presented by the Morgan during 2016-2017, should be considered as a benchmark achievement in curatorial excellence. 

Over the twelve-month course of a single year, the Morgan mounted back-to-back-to-back exhibitions surveying the lives and times of three giants of mid-19th century literature: 

·      Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will (September 2016–January 2017)

·      I’m Nobody! Who are you? Life & Poetry of Emily Dickinson (Jan- May 2017)

·      This Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal (June–September 2017)

Art Eyewitness Image 

From left- Charlotte Brontë, Emily Dickinson & Henry David Thoreau

The Morgan exhibitions generated an extraordinary confluence of genius, as if these three very different writers had joined forces, each using their own singular talent to address the issues of their day and the challenges facing human beings in every era.

In preparing these exhibitions, the Morgan curators searched through the Morgan's considerable holdings of material related to Charlotte Brontë, Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau and augmented these with loan items from all over the world. 

Anne Lloyd (Photo 2016)

 Charlotte Brontë’s portable writing desk

For Brontë, and Thoreau, the results of this research were dazzling. Charlotte Brontë's portable writing desk, a dress she wore on a visit to London where she met William Makepeace Thackeray, tiny hand-written story books made for her youngest sister, Anne, and much more testified to the almost religious devotion which the author of Jane Eyre has inspired.

The Thoreau exhibition was almost as well-endowed with pictures, letters and memorabilia related to this Yankee philosopher. Even the lock on the Middlesex County Jail, where Thoreau spent a night-time of protest against the Mexican War, was on view.

Anne Lloyd (Photo 2017)

 Steel lock & key from Middlesex County Jail

As befits a reclusive individual, the Emily Dickinson exhibition was a more difficult proposition. The Morgan exhibition, I'm Nobody! Who are You? took an interesting route to gain insight into the source of Dickinson's creativity. The curators recreated the safe, cozy gentility of Dickinson's childhood. By taking this approach, the astonishing, unpredictable length to which her poetic vision carried Dickinson was underscored.

There is no calculus for determining genius. No secret formula will ever be be found in the arcane tomes of the alchemists. At some point, each creative person sits down before a sheaf of paper, a blank canvas, a smooth, untouched piece of marble. What happens next is inspiration, also impossible to define but an established fact. 

Ed Voves (Photo 2023) Gallery view of the Morgan's Bibles exhibition

 For one hundred years, the Morgan Library and Museum has been providing creative people with the means to be inspired and inspiring others to be creative. From a rich man's palazzo to a palace of enlightenment and enjoyment for all, the Morgan has truly become a place for inspiration.

One hundred years of inspiration at the Morgan! As the calendar page is flipped, a new century of inspiration begins.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved                                                

Original photography, copyright of Anne Lloyd and Ed Voves

 Introductory Image:                                                                           

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2024)  The logo of the Morgan Library and Museum.

Brett Beyer (Photo 2022) J. Pierpont Morgan’a Library and Garden, view looking west toward the Annex. Courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum, N.Y. Copyright Brett Beyer, 2022

J. Pierpont Morgan’a Library and Garden with sculptures of lionesses by Edward Clark Potter (photo by Henry Wysham Lanier), 1906 Gelatin silver print Morgan Library archives 

Brett Beyer (Photo 2022) Original entrance to J. Pierpont Morgan’a Library, evening view. Courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum, N.Y. copyright Brett Beyer, 2022

Hayman Selig Mendelssohn (1848-1908) J. Pierpont Morgan, c. 1890. Photograph, Albumen Albumen print. Morgan Library archives

Ed Voves (Photo 2023) Gallery views of Pierpont Morgan's Library

Ed Voves (Photo 2023) Gallery view of the Rotunda of the Morgan Library and Museum

Udo J. Keppler (1872-1956) The Magnet, 1911. Published by Keppler & Swarzmann in Puck Magazine, Vol. 60, #1790. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Divison #2011649038

Ed Voves (Photo 2023) The Lindau Gospels, c. 880 (manuscript, from St. Gall in Switzerland) Front cover, France, c. 870; back cover, Salzburg, c. 780-800. Morgan Library and Museum.

Ed Voves (Photo 2023)  John Gutenberg’s Biblia Latina, c. 1455. Morgan Library and Museum.

Ed Voves (Photo 2023)  Samuel 1 and 2 in Coptic, before 893. Transcribed in Egypt, Al-Fayyum region. Morgan Library and Museum.

Ed Voves (Photo 2023) Gallery view of Pierpont Morgan's Library, East Room, showing terracotta bust of Belle da Costa Greene, by Jo Davidson. 

William Blake (1757-1827) America, a Prophecy, 1793-95. 18 plates (in 2 vplumes): illustrated; 53 cm. Morgan Library and Museum, purchased in 1909.

Ed Voves (Photo 2023) View of the Englehard Gallery during the Medieval Money, Merchants and Morality exhibition.

Anne Lloyd (Photo 2017) Exhibition banners, Summer 2017, at the Morgan Library and Museum.

Anne Lloyd (Photo 2024) View of the Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature Exhibition, with display of letters to Noel Moore, 1890’s

Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) Self-Portrait, 1905. Photogravure: 18.5 x 12 cm. (7 5/16 x 4 ¾ in.) National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.

Edward S. Curtis  Native American Portraits from lantern slides: An unidentified girl (A:shiwi/Zuni), c. 1903;  Luzi (Tohono O’odham/Papago), c. 1906. Morgan Library and Museum.

Edward S. Curtis  The Courier (Apache), c. 1906. Lantern slide: photograph on glass, hand colored; 3 ¼ x 4 inches. Morgan Library and Museum.

Art Eyewitness Image. Photo Montage of Portraits of Charlotte Bronte, Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau.

Anne Lloyd (Photo 2016) Charlotte Brontë’s portable writing desk, with contents including pen nibs, ink bottle, and other tools, Parsonage Museum, Haworth, UK

Anne Lloyd (Photo 2017) Steel lock and key from Middlesex County jail, ca. 1788 Concord Museum, gift of Cummings E. Davis, 1886; M2081

Ed Voves (Photo 2023) Gallery view of the Morgan's Bibles exhibition