Other striking paintings at this show include two panels from Monet’s signature Luncheon on the Grass (1865-66), a 20-foot-wide canvas that’s being shown in the US for the first time. Here we see the smart set, once again, en plein air, this time picnicking in style. The woman at the center of the main panel is wearing a flowing, dotted white cotton dress that seems to melt into the picnic blanket. Her female companions are sporting handsome ensembles with bright trimmings and modish hats. The clothing is carefully defined and trumps the splendor of the pastoral setting. The focus is on capturing a moment in time, light and shadow as they fall on fabric.
Major works by Monet’s Impressionist contemporaries — Manet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot, Cassatt, and the like — appear on virtually every wall of the galleries. The exhibit is organized thematically and chronologically, with entire rooms devoted exclusively to paintings of white dresses, black dresses, gentlemen’s apparel, ready-made items from the new department stores, en plein air fashion scenes and urban fashion scenes (think seminal works such as Mary Cassatt’s In the Loge, 1878, and Gustave Caillbotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877, for starters).
Don’t miss some of the lesser-known but no less extraordinary works. Albert Bartholomé’s In the Conservatory (c. 1881) is a dramatic, full-length portrait of his wife, Madame Bartholomé, in a purple-and-white cotton summer frock. The original dress, with purple polka dots, stripes, pleats, bustle and bows, is on display just a few feet away, courtesy of the Musée d’Orsay. Bartholomé preserved it in memory of his wife, who died soon after the painting was finished. Shadows predominate in this work and mask facial features, perhaps a harbinger of its subject’s fate.
But the dress is depicted with great precision. Light bleaches the dots on the lower half of the bodice and throws its upper half into high relief. The two-tiered skirt has thin pleats, and the pleats mirror the slats on the door blinds; the former is a vertical image, the latter a contrasting horizontal. Color, and light and shadow on cotton, are paramount. We’re seeing a costume — the latest fashion — and an environment. All else pales by comparison.
It’s 1881, and styles have evolved. This dress is a trendy garment resembling patterns that were readily available in fashion journals and could be whipped up by anyone with a sewing machine. As the catalogue states: “It is not known who made Madame Bartholomé’s fashionable summer dress, but it combines elements of structure and tailoring with controlled draping, and copious, precise pleating. The tiered, columnar skirt combined with the polonaise bodice fit snugly to the waist and hips accentuates the new long, narrow line."
Fashion Week in New York may have ended in February, but its spirit lives on here.
©2013 Val Castronovo for SeniorWomen.com
Paintings:
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926), Luncheon on the Grass (central panel), 1865–66. Oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Acquired as a payment in kind, 1987ng, narrow line.”
Albert Bartholomé (French, 1848–1928) In the Conservatory (Madame Bartholomé) ca. 1881 Oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Gift of the Société des Amis du Musée d’Orsay, 1990
Images courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
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