Homer at the Clark

I was set to thinking of Melville as I passed Greylock Mountain on the way up to Williamstown.

"swells heaving up like immense subsiding, waves far and wide around it."

Here are some of the classic ocean paintings to go along with that.

It is interesting to see how great the paint is bravura quality I guess coming from Manet and that tradition.

"Look at Nature, work independently, and solve your own problems." Very Yankee, of the time! But it makes sense to wonder what he meant by it.

Bernard Berensen says something about Piero that his figures stand 'silent like the everlasting rocks.'

I read that in Italy seeing the Peiro della Francesca's in 1972 and have always remembered it.

So seeing the Piero downstairs and then these connected it all. The way I love Art History to line up.

A detail of above.

Clark Art Institute

I felt a lot of associations between paintings today. The Piero starts it all out with it's classical reality from the Greek.

I've always loved this head to foot relation of Piero which makes a very solid reality which echoes through Art History and right here today in the Homers.

Homer has this classic solidity. Especially in some etchings which the Clark doesn't own.

That same solidity is in this Renoir and also in his Sculpture.

I wonder if the Homer's reality is coming through Goya. He takes the classic and relaxes it into the everyday, but the underpining is still there. This is a great little Goya.

Homer is also extending from Manet. There is a great Watteau here also which show the lineage of bravura paint, I usually associate with Hals, and Goya. Here Berthe Morrisot.

This Renoir also shows the classical outline and shape.

This is surprisingly a Singer Sargent, I see the Morisot portrait by Manet!