Middle Grade Gallery 5

This week in the Middle Grade Gallery, a real painting, not a fictional one.  Actually, it's a reprint of a real painting, but close enough.  It's quite throughly described here:

"I'm going to hang old Elizabeth Bas by the fireplace," said Dean.  "'Engraving from a portrait by Rembrandt.' Isn't she a delightful old woman, Star, in her white cap and tremendous white ruff collar?  And did you ever see such a shrewd, humorous, complacent, slightly contemptuous old face?"

"I don't think I should want to have an argument with Elizabeth," reflected [xxx].  "One feels that she is keeping her halds folded under compulsion and might box your ears if you disagreed with her."

"She has been dust for over a century," said Dean dreamily.  "Yet here she is living on this cheap reprint of Rembrandt's canvas.  You are expecting her to speak to you.  And I feel, as you do, that she wouldn't put up with any nonsense."

"But likely she has a sweetmeat stored away in some pocket of her gown for you.  That fine, rosy, wholesome old woman.  She ruled the family--not a doubt of it.  Her husband did as she told him--but never knew it."

"Had she a husband?" said Dean doubtfully.  "There's no wedding-ring on her finger."

"Then she must have been a most delightful old maid," averred [xxx].

[Me again.]  I couldn't resist quoting this passage at length; Dean and "Star" have so thoroughly imagined old Elisabeth Bas.  The image above is of the original painting, now believed to be by Ferdinand Bol (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

Based on this portrait, do you think her personality is as they have described it?  Would you hang this portrait (or any portrait) at your house?  If you know who did (and in what novel, not necessarily middle grade but that's when I first read it), please leave a comment.  And thanks for visiting the Middle Grade Gallery!  I appreciate your patronage.

Ballet for Martha

Sometimes art is made by one artist, working alone, but sometimes it is the result of artists working together--collaborating--to forge something new.

At this point, I'm just adding my voice to the chorus of praise (including five starred reviews) for Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan's latest collaboration, the picture book Ballet for Martha:  Making Appalachian Spring (illustrated by Brian Floca; Roaring Brook, 2010).  Actually, authors Greenberg and Jordan (Action Jackson, 2002; Christo and Jean-Claude: Through the Gates and Beyond, 2008) also collaborated with Floca and editor Neal Porter (not to mention book designer Jennifer Browne) to an unusual degree in the making of this book; see Booklist's Story Behind the Story (June, 2010) for their process.

Back to the book itself, which is about the collaboration of choreographer Martha Graham, composer Aaron Copland, and artist Isamu Noguchi in the making of Appalachian Spring (link is to a filmed version from 1959; the first performance was on October 30, 1944 at the Library of Congress).  Somehow Ballet for Martha beautifully conveys a Graham-like sense of movement, music, and spaciousness; all qualities that would seem to resist the book form.  It's in the spareness of the text, and the line of the illustrations.  And--a point that has not yet been made, I don't think--it's a book about ballet that's not pink.  No tutu required.

I did wonder who had designed the costumes (Martha Graham herself); an original cast member was able to describe the colors to Floca.  I should note that in the final image, of an imagined performance, the Bride is wearing a pink dress!  It must have been impossible to resist.  The back matter ("Curtain Call") includes brief biographies of Graham, Copland, and Noguchi, each accompanied by a photograph of the artist dating to the 1940s; as well as extensive source notes and bibliography.

Ballet for Martha is a masterpiece--both of them.  Don't miss it!

The Saturdays

The French painting of the girl on the garden wall featured in last week's Middle Grade Gallery comes from The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright (first published in 1941; Square Fish, 2008).  The Saturdays is the first, and my favorite, of the books in The Melendy Quartet.  There are four Melendy children, too (guess who is my favorite of them?), and in this book they decide to pool their allowances so each can have an Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure.

On her Saturday, Randy visits an art gallery where French paintings are being shown for the benefit of war relief.  That's where she finds the painting of The Princess, and its model, who turns out to be old family friend Mrs. Oliphant.  The story behind the painting is long and best told as Mrs. Oliphant told it to Randy, over vanilla ice cream and petit fours.  Suffice it to say that at one point Mrs. Oliphant is kidnapped by gypsies (I agree with Charlotte that this is a bit much).

Elizabeth Enright's own pen-and-ink drawings illustrate all four of the Melendy books.  Here's one from The Saturdays of Randy in front of the painting in question (I scanned this image from my childhood copy).  I'm still wondering whether Enright saw a similar exhibition in New York City and based her description on a real painting, or whether she made up exhibition, painting, or both.  At any rate, we know what it looks like.  Congratulations to Charlotte for recognizing it right away!

Urban Animals

No,  not pigeons, rats, or raccoons.  Urban Animals by Isabel Hill (Star Bright Books, 2009) is about animals in architecture, and it works as an introduction to architectural terms (like keystone, column, and bracket), as well as an I Spy book that might inspire you and your kids to look for the animals in your own built environment (or in a nearby city; author and photographer Isabel Hill found all of these animals in New York).

I like the design details of Urban Animals itself:  Colorful cartoon animals correspond to the mostly monochrome architectural ones, and coordinating accents (photo corners on the detail shots, the hand-printed font used for architectural terms) brighten things up.  The rhyming text (it's all in couplets) is relatively utilitarian.  Here's a typical double-page spread:

There's also an Architectural Glossary at the back of the book, helpfully keyed to a line drawing of a city block; and a list of "Animal Habitats" that gives the NYC street address (as well as the architects and construction dates) of the buildings featured in the book.

It's interesting to think about why a particular animal might have been incorporated into a building's design:  the cow on the Sheffield Farms Milk Plant makes sense, and so does my favorite, the squirrel on the Kings County Savings Bank, but what about the alligator on Liberty Tower?

[Local folks, check out the National Building Museum's Calendar of Events for animal sightings in Washington, DC.  I'll let you know if we spot any more!]