Continuing our first visit to the Museum of Fine Arts… This is as far we got in the Beck building
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- Before the Civil War. “Southern Courtship” by the abolitionist Eastman Johnson. 1859.
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- After the Civil War. “Recognition: North and South” 1865 by Constant Mayer.*
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- Unknown British artist, c1765. The Thames at the Tower of London with London Bridge and St. Paul’s in the Distance,. I have also seen the London Bridge; it’s now in Arizona.
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- After the Civil War, Alexander Robey Shepherd moved his family to Batopilas, Mexico, where he purchased a silver mine. He commissioned 15 flasks of Batopilas silver as gifts. The saguaro cactuses were not found in that region of Mexico.**
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- Tiffany window. A Wooded Landscape in Three Panels, c. 1905. I immediately thought of the Tiffany windows at the Union Church of Proctor, Vermont.
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- In 1879 Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes ordered a new dinner service for the White House. ***
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- Tall Case Clock, 1875.
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- In 1858, Tiffany bought the excess cable from the first transatlantic telegraph cable. Each 4-inch piece was surrounded by a brass ferule and sold for 50 cents as a souvenir.
*After the Civil War. “Recognition: North and South” 1865 by Constant Mayer.
From the museum label: The atrocities of the Civil War were primarily depicted in photographs as most painters of the era avoided the subject. Constant Mayer was one of a few artists who attempted to capture the emotional toll of the conflict. Using the visual vocabulary of the death-of-a-hero history paintings of the previous century, Meyer’s central figure recalls images of a dead Christ and symbolizes the ultimate sacrifice in war. He portrays the moment one brother, a Confederate soldier haggard from battle, recognizes his dead Union brother. The divided family was symbolic of a country divided on the issue of slavery.
**Funny footnote. The flask was in the display case with the Navajo bracelets from the previous post, but since Microsoft Windows 11 Photos app now as AI erase, I erased it from the photo.
***From the museum label: In 1879 Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes ordered a new dinner service for the White House. Each course centered on a decorative theme devoted to the American outdoors. The Snowshoe ice cream plate is one of the more unusual forms in the service. The gilded snowshoe on a rose background would appear to be covered with snow as the ice cream slowly melted. In 2018, we visited Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library in Fremont Ohio.