From "Restoration work wipes smile off the face of Dutch vegetable seller/Painting reclaims former glory as English Heritage rights the wrongs of 19th-century additions" (The Guardian).
What I find so interesting here is not the outrage of painting changes onto a valuable work of art, but that the changes are so discordant. Assuming the changes were done at the same time — and there you see an easy off ramp from the conundrum — I wonder: Who would think both that a resting-bitch-face woman ought to give us a smile and that a luscious display of fresh food needs to be offset by a glum, grimy sky?
I can see thinking the original painting was too cheerful...
... and needed a depressing sky to remind us that the pleasures of life are transitory and geographically limited, but then why not leave the woman's face alone, hinting of her awareness that all this food is about to rot?
I see the food display is also darker and sadder. Perhaps the darker aesthetic was thought to be more serious and elevated, but then why not leave the woman with her original expression. Why make her smile?
Explanation #1: The original expression makes the woman seem like an ordinary worker, more suspicious of customers than aware of the beauty of the vegetables. A little smile, along with less beautiful vegetables, makes her seem — or so it was hoped — like a full human being aware of the meaning of life and able to convey her knowledge if you, the viewer, stop long enough and gaze into her face. You know, like with the Mona Lisa.
Explanation #2: The owner of the original painting found the expression unsettling. She looks uneasy and even hostile. An artist fixed the expression, but then the rest of the painting made the whole thing look too cheesy, like an ad — did they have ads then? — for a vegetable stand, and to pump up the high-art vibe, everything else was toned way the hell down.
Explanation #3: It all started with a big square frame that needed using. A strip of canvas was added, and somebody painted that gloomy sky and other dark stuff to fill the space. To integrate this material with the rest of it, shadows were painted down into the vegetables. The artist probably thought something like, I am really maximizing the chiaroscuro, like the big-shot artists do. When the owner of the painting saw what had been done, he just said one thing: Well, can the lady at least be smiling?
Explanation #4: The woman never looked right, never looked like a street vendor, and she was probably the daughter of the rich person who commissioned the painting. In the original painting, she looks like who she was, a wilful young girl, forced into stupid clothes and an awkward position. She hates the artist. All that work painting all those vegetables, and the main point of interest is still the human face, and it's a human face radiating ill will. When the painting was redone, toned down, and made more suitable to a posh, somber environment, the face was also toned down, softened into a gentle smile.
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4 comments:
K writes:
"Probably they were trying to integrate it into a room with a Turkey carpet, brocade curtains, a crystal chandelier and paintings of Italian landscapes darkening behind aging varnish. William Peter Smith-Rooke bought it in Amsterdam in the square frame when he was twenty because he had a good time there with a vendor and her brother painted. William Peter added the smile, the family added the sky. It hung behind the door."
Jeez, I find myself plunging into the dark theory that paintings suck. They just all suck.
Iain writes:
"It's been a long time since I took geometry, but I remember learning that a square is a rectangle. All squares are rectangles, though not all rectangles are squares.
"Your explanation number 3 is certainly plausible. Frames were, and still are, expensive. I have art that cost less to buy than to frame. When we look at the kind of gold-leaf-encrusted laboriously carved frames we see in European manor houses and in our museums, it's not strange to think that things might have been made to fit their frames, rather than the other way around."
Norpois writes:
"One point about the difference between the Victorian restoration and what is pictured as the "original": Starting around 1800-1820, new chemical processes both increased the number of colors available to European painters and allowed painters access to much "brighter" colors than previously available. While we think of Victorian interiors as "gloomy" and "dark", the Victorian taste in
painting was bright, bright, bright. Further, in order for oil paintings to survive hundreds of years, their surface had to be varnished -- and not just once, several times a century. So a layer of varnish began to make paintings look three or four times darker than when they were first painted.
"Thus you can argue about the "validity" of the 19th century restoration -- it quite possibly looked (color-wise) more like the painting did when it first came off the easel.
"Anyone interested in this topic should look at the restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Centuries of dust, varnish and candle-smoke were removed late last century and the resulting color palette astounded (and sometimes disgusted) viewers accustomed to a more subdued use of color. But there is no question the bright, gaudy current look of the ceiling is closer to what Michelangelo actually painted. Art restoration is subject of great technical interest (to some) but also raises interesting questions about how taste changes, and quasi philosophical questions about what we mean by an "original". The debate about the "Salvator Mundi" of Leonardo (according to some) is a recent example. And it is highly unlikely that a single bit of the paint used by Leonard to fresco the "Last Supper" in Milan actually dates from Leonardo's lifetime. "
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