I enjoyed this short video essay by New York Times writer Roberta Smith, in which she muses about a painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that she had passed often without really stopping to look.
After realizing that what she thought was a picture of women socializing was actually a studio visit with an artist, her model and another woman who is presumably a patron or friend of the artist, she got thinking about several other paintings in the museum which portray artists in the studio or at work.
Here are links to the Met’s pages for the works she mentions and shows in the essay:
In the Studio by Alfred Stevens (image above)
The American School by Matthew Pratt
Woman Seated at an Easel by Georges Braque
Chance Encounter at 3AM by Red Grooms
Self-Portrait With a Friend by Edward Vuillard is not in the Met’s collection, it was in a special exhibit Smith was on her way to view when the idea occurred to her. I haven’t been able to locate it with a quick search, but there are lots of Vuillard images here and resources here.
Though, of all of the paintings on view at the Met of artists working (or not), I’m surprised Smith didn’t include a painting that immediately springs to my mind when I think of artists engaged in drawing or painting, Young Woman Drawing, by Marie-Denise Villers, which I wrote about here.
[Link via Art Notes]
Wonderful today! I subscribe and read every day, but this touched my artists heart. As a new and beginning artist, I have found the subjects in the works of art really fascinating.