"The Artist's Garden" at Reynolda House

Today I went to the Reynolda House in Winston-Salem to see the exhibit The Artist's Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement (1887-1920) before it closes on January 3. What a stunning exhibit! I was, however, disappointed when I saw an icon of a camera with a slash through it at the entrance to the exhibit, Absolutely No Photographs, full stop, as I was hoping to put together a little illustrated essay about the exhibit. 

The unpleasant surprise of no photographs was counterbalanced by the pleasant surprise of walking into the next-to-last room of the exhibit and seeing an oil of irises in shades of blue and purple, white and yellow, nestled among deep-green spears of leaves. Before I could stop myself, I gave an audible gasp and exclaimed, "I know that!"  Reading the object label posted on the wall, I saw it was Iris at Dawn by Maria Oakey Dewing, a favorite of mine from the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, a collection I have visited a number of times. Favorite works of art are like old friends, and I was delighted that this one had traveled to North Carolina to visit me. I shall content myself with a reproduction from the public domain:



It turns out that Maria Oakey Dewing and her artist husband Thomas (a younger man who she did not marry until she was 36) spent many summers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at the artists' colony in Cornish, New Hampshire, where she cultivated a large garden that served as inspiration for many of her paintings. Here is one from the Smithsonian called Garden in May. 



A Bed of Poppies, below, lives at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts (the gallery being a part of tony prep school Phillips Andover, not to be confused with tony prep school Phillips Exeter). 




Delicious. I love the Smithsonian's description of Garden in May, which seems applicable to all three paintings:

"Dewing places the viewer among the living stems and blossoms that she knew so well. She has cropped a section from the larger bed for intense study, as if she had held a frame in front of the garden and painted only what fit in the rectangle."

I staggered out of the exhibit, art-drunk, watched the video about the history of Reynolda AGAIN (I'm obsessed with the Reynolda House, Gardens, and Village, as well as RJ and Katharine Smith Reynolds, but that is for another day), and went into the main house for a while to see it decorated for the holidays, lingering in RJ's study and the lake breakfast porch.

On the way out I treated myself to something from the gift shop, a long, heavy string of pearls that can be doubled -- very Coco Chanel -- once I overheard the stylish manager (today she was wearing a chic turquoise wool pencil skirt) say to someone else, "This is the best value in the store! Hand-knotted, cultured pearls!"  I can hardly wait for the Ansel Adams exhibit to arrive in the spring.