I was in Boston last week and had a chance to see my cousin, William R. Cross, give a lecture at the Museum of Fine Arts about Winslow Homer and his connection to the Adirondacks. Bill has written a new biography about Homer, which examines the connections between the somewhat elusive man and his paintings. I watched one of Bill’s virtual talks last spring, but it was great to see in person and to learn more specifically about Homer’s Adirondack paintings, one of which graces the cover of Bill’s book.
Winslow Homer, Two Guides, 1877, Oil on canvas. Acquired by Sterling Clark, 1916. The Clark Art Institute, 1955.3.
While at the MFA, I made sure to spend time with At Dusk (Boston Common at Twilight) by Childe Hassam. I love this painting. It has become an iconic image of Boston; I am one of many who feels as though this painting captures an essence of the city. I can feel the cold. The snow packed hard underfoot. That orange-pink winter sky. The bare trees marching down the side of the Common. While time is an important thematic component of this painting—the left side clearly shows the encroachment of the late 19th century onto the more natural landscape of the right—one of the remarkable things to me is that time also seems to be standing still. What Hassam saw in 1885-86 is connected to the Boston I knew in 1974-77 and what I still see and feel now in 2022.
At Dusk (Boston Common at Twilight), Childe Hassam (American, 1859–1935), 1885–86, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
A few years ago, I spent some time looking at and learning more about this painting—primarily through the work of Erica Hirshler, Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings at the MFA—because Susan Minot wrote a beautiful and haunting story, also titled “Boston Common at Twilight.” I wrote a piece examining the connections between the painting and the story. I enjoyed the process of thinking through the ways that Minot mirrored her story after the painting, and I appreciate that Minot was interested in linking the two together. Poets do this all the time; there are far fewer examples of fiction writers who take on this challenge.
Because of Minot’s story, I now see the painting differently. Her story—set in the 1970’s—is beautiful but heartbreaking, and when I look at the painting, I see a sadness there that I hadn’t seen before. The children, in particular, feel more vulnerable to me, and there’s a more ominous quality to the sunset, to the idea of what might happen as darkness falls. But the experience is richer, too: all those layers, all those stories, all those times, somehow blending together.
I am grateful for various writers on Instagram, including Rachel Cohen, Garth Greenwell, Idra Novey, and Lynn Steger Strong, for sharing art. As I’m scrolling, it’s such a pleasure to see a painting or a drawing or another work of art, to slow down and stare at it for a bit, to think about how it makes me feel. I don’t know a lot about visual art but, like poetry, I do know whether I respond to it, whether it appeals. In some ways, I’m glad to be an outsider so that I can simply take it in.
When I took a class with Lynn four years ago, she recommended 9th Street Women, and I didn’t have a chance to read it then. I’m reading it now, slowly, and I love being in that world, with those women. Thinking about art and friendship and expectations and ambition. It feeds into the project I’m working on, but not directly. It’s adjacent, or maybe even adjacent to adjacent, but when I look at the paintings of those women—particularly the late paintings of Joan Mitchell—I know I want to somehow capture in my words the way the paintings make me feel.
Interestingly, Mitchell thought about time, too. For her, painting appealed because it captured a moment, not a stretch of time: “Painting is the only art form except still photography which is without time. Music takes time to listen to and ends, writing takes time and ends, movies end, ideas and even sculpture take time. Painting does not... It's a still place. It's like one word, one image.” And I think that’s what I see in the Hassam as well—a single moment albeit one that’s shared over time.
This weekend I’m heading to see some of Mitchell’s later works at the David Zwirner gallery in New York. The show is only open until December 17. I hope I can get there more than once.
Joan Mitchell, Wood, Wind, No Tuba, 1979, Museum of Modern Art, New York
See you in two weeks!