Smart Women, Foolish Choices

When 8-year-old Marie Elizabeth Louise Vigee-Le Brun’s father, an artist, saw a drawing she had done of a man’s head, he announced that she, too, would be a painter, and a great one. Born April 16, 1755, Le Brun kept that drawing with her for the rest of her life, cherishing that memory of her father, whose death in 1768 devastated her. Although she grew proficient enough as a portraitist at the age of fifteen to support herself, she rushed into an unwise marriage at seventeen. Her Self Portrait in a Straw Hat (above, from 1782), based on Rubens’ The Straw Hat, which she saw in person, demonstrates how Le Brun saw herself as part of the same artistic community as Rubens, Rembrandt, and Van Dyck, yet never found a peaceful domestic situation in which she could find solace. Bobbing like a buoy on the tempest of the French Revolution, Le Brun’s talent always kept her afloat even as her husband kept her weighted down.


Le Brun’s Portrait of the Artist with Her Daughter (Mother and Daughter) (above, from 1789) shows the artist with her nine-year-old daughter Julie. Le Brun married an art dealer named Jean Baptiste Pierre Le Brun in 1774. Jean recognized Elizabeth’s gift early on and decided to exploit her very profitable portrait career. Jean’s gambling addiction and otherwise deadbeat lifestyle drained the artist’s resources just as she was beginning to reach the height of her success, especially in her portraits of Marie Antoinette. That same royal connection later proved troublesome in the wake of the French Revolution. Le Brun fled with her family to Italy, Austria, and later Russia, painting the rich and powerful at each stop. Le Brun’s royalist sympathies seem troublesome even today, but she truly seems in retrospect to be above the political fray, painting her royal subjects as people rather than embodied ideologies.


The one constant in Le Brun’s life was her daughter Julie, whom she painted as Flora in 1799 (above). Two years before this painting was made, Julie herself entered into a hasty marriage against her mother’s wishes. Julie soon regretted her actions, but the die was cast. She continued to pull on her mother’s heartstrings, consorting with the wrong type of men and repeating all the mistakes her mother had made. Julie even returned her mother’s love with a refusal to live under the same roof with her after the marriage fell through. Despite all these rejections, Le Brun’s daughter’s death pained her infinitely more than that of her husband. “All the wrongdoings of the poor little thing were blotted out," Le Brun wrote in her memories of her daughter’s death. "I saw her as in the days of her childhood as I still see her. Alas! she was so young! Why did she not outlive me?" Today, Le Brun would be called codependent, a woman wise in art matters but foolish when it came to men. Considering how far she had to climb to achieve her place in nineteenth century art, you have to wonder what held her back from taking that final step towards independence in her personal life.

The Son Also Rises

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993). Cactus, Santa Barbara, 1931. Silver gelatin photograph; 8 x 10 in. The Brett Weston Archive. Courtesy, The Christian K. Keesee Collection

We all like to think of history as a neat progression—time goes forward, things get better and easier, the future builds on the past. In the Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s new exhibition Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow, they turn the idea of generation influencing generation on its head. Not only does Brett Weston re-emerge as an important figure in the history of photography in his own right, but we see how Brett influenced the work of his father, Edward Weston, in so many ways. As the Directors’ Forward to the catalogue puts it, this exhibition is “a study of progressions—photography’s ascent from trade to fine art, a son’s emergence from his father’s footsteps to transcendent legacy, and an artist’s evolution from youthful prodigy to foremost American modernist photographer.” While both Brett and Edward ventured out to the deserts, they returned with greatly different results, as seen in Brett’s Cactus, Santa Barbara (above) which brings a far greater sense of abstraction to the subject than similar works by his father, reflecting not only a difference in their two approaches but a shift in the development of photography itself.

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993). Dune, Oceano, 1934. Silver gelatin photograph; 8 x 10 in. The Brett Weston Archive. Courtesy, The Christian K. Keesee Collection

When Edward’s marriage to Brett’s mother began to fall apart, Brett left school in 1925 and joined his father in Mexico. Working with his father on photography became Brett’s primary education. With access to Edward’s professional equipment, Brett soon schooled himself in the early technology of photography and began creating images himself. As Scott Hale points out in his essay in the catalogue, “In His Own Light,” Brett’s early work in glossy silver prints inspired Edward to give up the matte platinum paper he had been using. When Brett learned to drive, something Edward never learned, Brett sought out new subjects. After showing those works to Edward, the father would often ask the son to drive him out to shoot the same scenes, such as Dune, Oceano (above). “I note Brett’s interest in photography,” Edward wrote of Brett’s early work. “He is doing better work at fourteen than I did at thirty. To have someone close to me, working so excellently, with an assured future, is a happiness hardly expected.” Brett’s prodigious talent surprised Edward initially, but he soon came to see him as a collaborator in addition to a son. Brett and Edward exhibited their work side by side as early as 1927, when Brett was only fifteen. Edward also trusted Brett like no other to print his photographs. “In printing his father’s work,” Hale writes, “Brett exercised the ultimate influence on Edward’s art.” Edward taught Brett the ground rules, but very quickly the student caught up to, if not surpassed, the teacher. A solo exhibit in 1928 and inclusion in the landmark 1929 Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany, alongside the likes of his father, Paul Strand, Man Ray, and others, announced to the world that Brett had arrived as an artist separate from the shadow of his father.

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993). Garrapata Beach, California, 1954. Silver gelatin photograph; 11 x 14 in. The Brett Weston Archive. Courtesy, The Christian Keesee Collection

Part of that separation from Edward required a departure in approach to the subject itself. As much as he could look for different subjects, there would always be a comparison until he made a distinct break. Edward came from the old school of photography, beholden to the conventions of painting. Although he emulated some of the trends of modern art, such as Surrealism, Edward remained a painterly photographer for the most part until his death in 1958. Brett, on the other hand, took photography to a new abstract level, abandoning the painterly concentration on the subject for pure pleasure in the possibility of photography, helping establish the independence of his medium simultaneously with his own freedom. “Edward’s photographs grant the immediate recognition of the subject, giving way to form and abstraction, something he called ‘intellectual jugglery,’” Hale writes in drawing distinctions between father and son. “But Brett’s nonobjective photographs reverse the object/subject dichotomy: form denies the subject, requiring a reevaluation of the object and its understanding.” Garrapata Beach (above), at first glance, seems an abstract arrangement of darks and lights and varied textures. Not until you see the footprints trailing off into the distance and recognize the tiny curve of surf peeking in from stage left are you sure this is a beachscape. Brett, who was colorblind, worked exclusively in black and white, amplifying those two extremes to render the natural abstract, whereas Edward excelled in the middle tones, documenting before composing possible aesthetic form. While Edward’s nudes stand as some of the most beautiful and intriguing in the history of American photography for their celebration of the human form, Brett’s few nudes are shot underwater, allowing the play of light through the water to dance on the subject’s skin, painting abstract patterns and making even that most recognizable subject initially indiscernible.

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993). Kelp and Sand, c. 1970. Silver gelatin photograph; 11 x 14 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Gift of the Brett Weston Archive from the Christian K. Keesee Collection, 2006

Brett “seems to have had a sunny disposition and natural optimism, and his work displays none of the gloomy irony that can come across as contrived in his father’s work,” Johanna Halford-MacLeod and Stephen Bennett Phillips write in their catalogue essay that gives the exhibition its title. Movie-star handsome, as can be seen in the youthful self-portrait that begins the catalogue, Brett comes across as a straightforward man of action in contrast to the complex thoughtfulness of his father. Brett actually played an extra in the film Captain Blood and reportedly inspired the playboy character at the center of the film Love Affair and it’s remake, An Affair to Remember. “My work is perhaps more graphic, but at the same time it is more sensual,” Brett said in comparing his photos with his father’s. “The difference is enormous… He would say that I had influenced him.” Edward may have been more thoughtful, but Brett’s sensuality doesn’t come thoughtlessly, as seen in Kelp and Sand (above). The arrangement of the kelp on the sand in thick ropes that almost seem alive attracts the eye, but the complexity of the image engages the mind as well. The catalogue essays downplay the influence of modern painting on Brett, calling it “generalized,” mainly to widen the gap between him and Edward, but I see echoes of Abstract Expressionism, itself a sensual genre with a brainy side, in images such as Kelp and Sand.

Brett Weston (American, 1911-1993). Building Reflections, c. 1975. Silver gelatin photograph; 11 x 14 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Gift of the Brett Weston Archive from the Christian K. Keesee Collection, 2006

As much as I enjoyed the essays, which help resurrect Brett’s reputation, which has faded somewhat since his death in 1993, the catalogue truly excels in allowing the pictures to speak for themselves. With almost 140 beautifully reproduced plates, you get a full sense of the versatility as well as the consistency of vision of Brett Weston’s work from the 1920s up until the 1980s. Whether it was sand dunes in the 1930s or modern office windows in the 1970s (above), Brett Weston found abstract beauty in the reality at hand. I found myself wondering at the bottomless chasms of blackness in so many of his works, which make the surrounding highlights surge with life. I’ve always been a fan of Edward Weston’s work and now appreciate it even more in contrast to and in symbiosis with Brett’s. Both as a dichotomy and as a team, Brett and Edward Weston helped shape the course of modern photography. Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow does, indeed, pull the son into the light, but it also manages to keep his paternity intact—a feat of “intellectual jugglery” that both would have appreciated.


[Many thanks to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art for providing me with a review copy of the catalogue to Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow and for the images from the exhibition.]

A Crucifixion in His Face

And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe.

--From Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Whenever you look at photographs of Arshile Gorky you can see the pain in his eyes, as if he knew things were bad and were going to end badly. Like Melville’s Ahab, Gorky bore a “crucifixion in his face” yet maintained a dignity and poise that allowed him to become a seminal figure in the history of Abstract Expressionism. Born Vostanik Manoog Adoyan in Armenia on April 15, 1904, the artist took the name Arshile Gorky as a way of separating himself from his memories of the Armenian Genocide he and his family fled from. After the death of so many family members and his estrangement from his father once in the United States, Gorky, who claimed the author Maxim Gorky as a relative, formed a new family composed of the artists he surrounded himself with, including his close friend Willem de Kooning, portrayed by Gorky in Portrait of Master Bill (above, from 1929-1936). Gorky and de Kooning shared a studio for a time, bouncing ideas about art off of one another as they each shaped their personal visions. Gorky’s love of Cezanne appears clearly in this portrait, but cubism, especially by Picasso, and Surrealism also fired his imagination. Again, like Ahab, Gorky stalked an elusive prey—a wholly new way of creating art.

The influence of Joan Miro and his mythical little creatures appears in Gorky’s beautiful The Liver Is the Cock’s Comb (above, from 1944). The title alone announces it as a surrealist work. However, Gorky begins to go beyond Surrealism and towards Abstract Expressionism in this work with the power of his gestures, a parallel development with that of his friend de Kooning. Younger artists such as Jackson Pollock soon saw Gorky’s work and listened to his words as they gathered at the local Cedar Tavern in New York City to talk shop. It’s hard to truly appreciate Gorky’s influence today because his works have been so overshadowed by those who came later and lived to see the rise of Abstract Expressionism as the dominant movement of the 1950s. The fame de Kooning and Pollock find in that decade comes too late for Gorky to enjoy, even second hand.

Gorky’s last years were as full of pain as his first ones. A fire in his studio destroyed many of his works, one of the reasons why his works are so scarce today. A diagnosis of cancer led to a painful colostomy. Shortly thereafter, a horrific auto accident left Gorky with a broken neck and partially paralyzed, unable to paint. Gorky’s wife left soon after, taking their children with her. Gorky’s Charred Beloved I (above, from 1946), painted before all his troubles, seems like a prophecy of this trial by fire and pain. Finally unable to cope with all his pain, Gorky took his own life in 1948. In his 44 pain-plagued years on Earth, Arshile Gorky managed to touch many lives and minds and helped shape the art world for decades.

Past and Passed

When Thomas Hart Benton painted a mural cycle for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair to represent the state of Indiana, he wanted to show the entire history of the state—good and bad. Born April 15, 1889, Benton drew fire for one panel called Parks, the Circus, the Klan, the Press (above, from 1933) in which he shows the Ku Klux Klan, a powerful, racist presence in Indiana in the 1920s. Amazingly, the murals made it to the World’s Fair, but later languished in various homes until Indiana University took them. The infamous KKK mural, which made brought Benton his first fame, now occupies a college classroom. “History was not a scholarly study for me but a drama,” Benton later said, reflecting his belief in history as a study of people and their stories rather than dry facts and dates. While Diego Rivera and the Mexican muralists were painting the history of Mexico, Benton painted America’s past in his dramatic, muscular style, perfectly suited to the brawny persona the nation was beginning to adopt as it assumed a more prominent role in the world between the wars. Sadly, that approach to the past eventually resulted in Benton himself being passed by.

Benton saw history as specifically social history—the tale of people rather than rulers and their armies. In another state mural, for his native state, A Social History of the State of Missouri, Benton painted Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn in one panel (above, 1936). In showing Huck with Jim, the escaped slave, Benton took on the issue of race again, bringing it home, as it were, to the deep South, which still employed the Jim Crow laws resulted from the failure of Reconstruction. Along with Grant Wood, Benton most often gets labeled with the Regionalist tag, which I’ve always seen as a diminutive assessment. Benton and Wood are much larger than just the region they come from. Clearly, they paint what they know, but the slice of American life they portray applies in many ways to the entire American odyssey. Benton studied in Paris for years and credited El Greco as an influence, making claims for his innate “American-ness” or “Midwestern” qualities seem thin.

Benton’s moment in the sun was quite brief. By the 1950s, modern art had quite literally passed him by. Despite his deep hatred for modern art, Benton actually contributed to the phenomenon that made him seem a dinosaur in teaching Jackson Pollock, whose Abstract Expressionism replaced Benton’s masculine Americanism with a new brand for the Cold War years. Benton’s later works seem painfully awkward, such as The Twist (above, from 1964), which tries to show the dance craze years after the height of its popularity. Benton’s marrying of his hate for modern art and modern art museums with his homophobia, calling the typical museum "a graveyard run by a pretty boy with delicate wrists and a swing in his gait," led to his marginalization in the 1940s and makes him seem even more like a caveman today. At his best, Benton helped paint the history of the American people. At his worst, Benton embodied some of the same narrowing prejudices that he brought to light in his art.

Crystallized Meth

“At the end of the day, no one could say he wasn’t religious anymore,” Clifford Meth writes of one character in his short story collection One Small Voice. “He practiced avoidance religiously.” If Kurt Vonnegut and Flannery O’Connor made a baby and allowed Quentin Tarantino to raise it, you’d have Clifford Meth. In getting to know Meth’s characters, I thought of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s description of Herman Melville’s religiousness: “He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other.” Meth crystallizes the plight of modern faith through god-haunted characters looking for love (and sanity) in all the wrong places. “You feel as if you’re not reading at all, but merely evesdropping,” Roy Thomas writes in the introduction, hinting at the unerring ear Meth has for natural dialogue that gets to the heart of the matter while still making you laugh, all accompanied by equally concise and direct illustrations by some of the leading graphic artists in the comics industry today. The harrowing and hilarious recounting of one character’s vasectomy comes to life in Gene Colan’s illustration (above) of the two men driving together. Like his pharmaceutical namesake, Meth’s effects can be overwhelming and troublingly addictive.

Meth follows Sartre’s belief that “Hell is other people,” but adds “so is Heaven.” “Hank’s wife smiled,” Meth writes in one of his more romantic (for him) moments. “She was his opposite pole, stupid with life, holy and healthy and pristine. She never used bad language. She was an angel. Hank wondered about that—how love could possibly have a urinary track.” This Vonnegut-esque view of life, taking the bitter and the sweet appears in the repetition of the phrase “What do you want from life?” in one story titled “A Foolish Consistency,” which tolls bell-like the same way “So it goes…” tolled in Slaughterhouse-Five. David DeVries version of a pieta (above) accompanies “A Thimble of Salvation,” a story in which deliverance comes in the form of a prostitute, as likely a source as any in Meth’s universe. Organized religion takes a beating in Meth’s stories, but the characters’ disorganized faiths hold few answers, too. “Herb’s eyes had that opaque, faraway look you’d have expected of Jesus, or at least of Joan of Arc,” Meth writes. Faith is an opaque thing for Meth, who prefers instead the clear transparency of everyday life, with all its small cruelties and kindnesses.

Meth marries religious hang-ups with sexual ones, specifically the special brands of repression dealt out by the Catholic and Jewish faiths. The consequences of sex for Meth’s characters usually outweigh its pleasures. In “Reprise,” two married people, former lovers, conduct an “affair” over e-mail, virtually experiencing what they resist physically and emotionally (accompanied beautifully by Mark Badger’s striking image above). A Victoria’s Secret addict finds even his fantasies are unfulfilling in “Inside Yasmeen.” “I want you so bad,” he says in his dream. “Badly,” she corrects him. Meth traces the whole trajectory of love, from the first glances across a bar to the restraining orders to the divorce proceedings, always with an eye on some kind of salvation, however small. Seen from a distance, Meth’s world seems bleak and cold, but read closely reveals itself as a series of oases from the spiritual and emotional dryness all around us.

Meth’s film noir-esque, combative spirit energizes his writing. “Turn the other cheek: The battle cry of the slapped,” he writes. The meek may inherit the earth, but Meth inherits the legacy of writers such as Vonnegut in his clear-eyed take on life, love, and god, if there is one. Meth’s writing seems perfectly suited to the short format used in One Small Voice. Longer exposure would be overwhelming. Meth in small doses acts like homeopathic medicine, poisoning you just enough to make you better and stronger. By combining Meth’s powerful voice and the creative visuals of his accompanists, One Small Voice says the things that we only admit to ourselves, but know that everyone else is thinking, too.


[Many thanks to IDW Publishing for providing me with a review copy of Clifford Meth’s One Small Voice and for the images from the book.]

Ladies Night

Henriette Wyeth, Gardenias, c. 1935-1945. Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches.

Anyone familiar with the history of the Brandywine School of art knows the well-worn litany of men who shaped that tradition: from the founder, Howard Pyle; to Pyle’s student, N. C. Wyeth; to N.C.’s son, Andrew; and to Andrew’s son, Jamie. Behind that great wall of descent, however, lurks the great ladies of the Brandywine tradition: from Pyle’s student, Jessie Willcox Smith, to N.C.’s three talented daughters— Henriette, Carolyn, and Ann. Wyeth Women—An Exhibition of Paintings by The Daughters of N.C. Wyeth at the Somerville Manning Gallery brings these talented women out of the shadows of the men of the Brandywine legacy and will hopefully allows such works as Henriette’s Gardenias (above) to find their place in the pantheon beside their father, brother, and nephew.

As the catalogue to the exhibition points out, Henriette was truly the “prodigy” of the family, the talented child upon whom N.C. placed his highest hopes. When young, rough-and-ready artist Peter Hurd descended upon Chadds Ford to learn from N.C., Henriette found a partner in both life and art. After their marriage, they moved back to Peter’s native New Mexico. Perhaps because of that distance, the subject matter of Henriette’s work goes in a different direction from that of her brother Andrew, which is so inextricably rooted to Chadds Ford. Henriette gained much success in painting portraits of actress Helen Hayes, Mrs. John D. Rockerfeller III, and First Lady Pat Nixon, but it was in her still lifes, such as Gardenias, that she found a gentler subject. Henriette’s ability to depict the shimmering textures of seashells and the almost nothingness of feathers demonstrates not only her skill but the vast departure she made from the world of her father and the sturdy action figures of his illustration work.

Ann Wyeth McCoy, Yellow Flowers in Vase, 2003. Watercolor, 20 x 14 inches.

N.C.’s youngest daughter, Ann, showed early promise as both a composer and an artist. A musical composition she wrote for her father sadly became his requiem when he died in 1945. Like Henriette, Ann married one of her father’s students, John McCoy, himself an outstanding watercolorist and an artistic confidant to Andrew. Thanks to her husband and brother, Ann continued to learn the medium of watercolor and created works such as Yellow Flowers in Vase (above). Like Andrew, Ann painted scenes of the world around her in Chadds Ford. Unlike Andrew, however, Ann’s inspiration came more from the domestic than the rural. The tradition of Wyeth women continues today through Ann’s daughter, Anna B., who studied for some time with N.C.’s second daughter, Carolyn.

Carolyn Wyeth, The Jones House, c. 1937. Oil on canvas, 26 x 31 1/2 inches.

To me, Carolyn is the most fascinating of the Wyeth women. Her paintings show a restless, almost nervous energy, as in The Jones House (above). The unpopulated nature of almost all of her works (even in The Jones House, which was a gift to friends) suggests both a rejection of the world at large and loneliness. After N.C.’s death, Carolyn lived in her father’s house and taught there. “If she liked you, she loved you. But if she didn’t, watch out,” Karl J. Kuerner III, one of Carolyn’s students remembers. Jamie, Anna B., and a host of other artists went through Carolyn’s school, many of whom later went on to teach themselves, spreading her influence even further. In many ways, Carolyn continued the teaching tradition begun by Pyle by opening her school right there in Chadds Ford. With the centennial of Carolyn’s birth coming up next year, a catalogue of her works is being compiled. I myself am interested in pursuing her story, not as the gruff eccentric but as the serious artist and teacher of art. Andrew called his sister Carolyn the best critic of his art, even sharing the secret of the Helga paintings with her and her alone during their creation. Unfortunately, Carolyn sought the shadows for the greater part of her life. Perhaps this exhibition and further scholarship on her can coax her into the spotlight she so richly deserves.

The bond between the children of N.C. Wyeth transcended place and time. Each stemming from that common root of imagination flowered in their own way. To look at Henriette’s painting is to see hints of Andrew filtered through N.C. and Peter Hurd. To look at Ann’s art is to see the domestic bliss and powerful sense of place fostered by the nurturing education environment of her father. To look at Carolyn’s work is to see pure, rough-hewn honesty of her father, and to understand why Andrew valued her imput after their father’s death in developing his own vision. Those connections don't diminish these women but, rather, should enhance just how strong their works are next to the more recognized works of the Wyeth men. Wyeth Women—An Exhibition of Paintings by The Daughters of N.C. Wyeth brings the larger picture of the Brandywine School into sharper focus and hints at the still-to-be-written chapters of the Wyeth dynasty’s story.

[Many thanks to Somerville Manning Gallery for providing me with a copy of the catalogue to Wyeth Women—An Exhibition of Paintings by The Daughters of N.C. Wyeth and for the images from the exhibition.]

Stooping to Conquer

The last time we were at the Met to see The Age of Rembrandt exhibition, while walking from part 1 to part 2, I stopped dead in my tracks when I walked through the room and saw the portrait of Elizabeth Farren by Sir Thomas Lawrence (above, from 1790). Born April 13, 1769, Lawrence is one of those little-known artists that just captivates me beyond all reason. Like your favorite indie band that nobody else has heard of but you listen to endlessly, Lawrence is that little-known treasure I’ve made it my mission to broadcast to the world. The rendering of the fabrics of Ms. Farren, an Irish actress who starred in Oliver Goldsmith’s play She Stoops to Conquer, proves that Lawrence, along with Joshua Reynolds and George Romney, belonged in the upper echelon of portraitists of the early nineteenth century in England. Despite great critical and financial success, Lawrence always looked for new worlds to conquer, sadly stooping himself from his high place among portraitists.

Lawrence grew up as the sixteenth and last child of an innkeeper and his wife. As guests passed through the inn, young Thomas would entertain them by performing passages of Milton’s poetry and drawing their portraits. That love of Milton may have come into play when he painted Satan and Beelzebub (above, from 1795-1797), which depicts a scene from Milton’s Paradise Lost, a hugely popular subject among the Romantics. Lawrence tried to capitalize on that popularity with this scene, which combines his beautiful technique in depicting the human form along with his love of grand history painting, another style he longed to do instead of portraiture. Henry Fuseli, who had been painting similar scenes since 1790, accused Lawrence of plagiarism in his copying of Fuseli’s dramatic take on Milton’s underworld. Lawrence soon abandoned his dream of “escaping” portraiture, leaving us with only these hints at would he could have done elsewhere.

The crowned heads of Europe and even the pope lined up to be painted by Lawrence. When he returned from one successful sojourn to Europe in 1820, he found himself the new president of the Royal Academy after the death of Benjamin West. By all accounts, Lawrence was a brilliant conversationalist and a charismatic personality, charming all his sitters in a way that perhaps only John Singer Sargent matched a century later in terms of personal attributes and artistic talent. Paintings such as Lady Mary Templetown and Her Eldest Son (above, from 1802) show so many different sides of Lawrence: the aspiring landscapist in the beautiful background, the closet classicist putting Lady Templeton in the role of sylvan goddess, and secret Romantic in his dramatic staging that literally puts mother and son in a spotlight. Throughout his life, Lawrence struggled with success, almost as profligate with his money as he was with his talent. Perhaps the factor that brings me back to Lawrence again and again isn’t as much the works themselves, which are amazing, but the vast potential always just beneath the surface.