A PLACE TO STOP, THINK AND WONDER, PART IV

Gerrit Dou, Dog at Rest, Dutch, 1650

Do you live near a museum?  We met up recently with someone who loves to travel.  I do too. Seeing something new or revisited far from home, enriches us.  For me, museums are places to marvel.  Maybe I'm not as awestruck as when we saw a breaching humpback whale, but standing in front of a Van Gogh is close.  Or a Picasso.  I wanted to know what museums this lunchmate had visited.  After all, she was in Paris.  "I don't go to museums," she said.  "I saw the Mona Lisa thirty years ago and it hasn't changed."  

Well, we can't all be alike, can we?  Among my favorite days are museum days.  Like many museum goers, I never tire of the Impressionists.  Another Renoir?  Yes, please.  One of Monet's "Rouen Cathedral Series?"  Paul Cezanne?  Mary Cassatt?  Lucky me! 

Summertime, 1894, Mary Cassatt

Famous museum, local museum, traveling exhibit, the Courtauld Gallery in London, the Louvre (of course) or the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, the Uffizi in Florence . . . .  These are places to dream of for me.  If I'm fortunate enough to have been, or to go again, I never forget the visit.  No, the Mona Lisa hasn't changed, it's eternal.  But I have.  The world has.  When we look at great art, we often see things we missed before.  We look with deeper eyes, wiser souls. Their beauty strikes anew.

Our North Carolina Museum of Art hosted a traveling exhibit of Dutch masters from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  That gently sleeping dog above is, not surprisingly, known as the most adorable dog in Dutch art.  It lies curled upon a shelf, half-awake with eyes slightly open, master perhaps nearby, perhaps not.  The fur is soft, the nose wet and the paws leathery. We could scratch it behind the ears and nuzzle it contentedly.  Knowing little about art history, I had not heard of Garrit Dou or this small (6"x8") exquisite masterpiece. 

I don't know if I'll ever see this painting again.  It caused many to stop, think and wonder.  Viewers kept coming back to it.  Maybe people with dogs, like me, struck by the tender realism of the work.  Or awed by the individual brush strokes of the pup's finely delineated fur.  Or admiring how most of the oil-on-wood painting covers the bottom half and right side of the composition, balanced perfectly by only light on the top left.  

How wonderful that the Dog at Rest won't change.  That for all who see it, it will continue to work its magic. Our friendly get-together and this local exhibit on an early January weekend brought these thoughts together.  A good beginning to the year.  

                                                           Nina Naomi