My trip to Boston

[Jeff Fuchs]

Well, it's Thanksgiving day, and I'm home alone, since I picked up a bug in Boston. My wife went to her family's house for the holiday. With time on my hands, I can tell you about the Rembrandt exhibit.

First, if you go, get early tickets. They are sold in time blocks, and ours were for 10:30. Museums keep short hours, so we were left with very little time to see the rest of the exhibits after leaving the Rembrandts. We spent a full three hours on Rembrandt, then we discovered that we only had three hours left to eat lunch and see the rest of the museum.

At the entrance to the exhibit was a single painting - an early self portrait. I would have paid the admission price for this piece alone. It was stunning. It looked like the museum had positioned a pinpoint spotlight on the face and shoulder. I looked around, and saw no such light fixtures, and realized that it was Rembrandt's own light I was seeing. Inside, I saw several other paintings that seemed to emit their own light. Rembrandt did his own thing with lighting. He didn't care what the laws of physics had to say, he put light where he wanted it. In one painting, there was a fire in the foreground. The fire was dark, but the figures in the room were illuminated from the opposite direction. Of course, this was the Holy Family, so it was in keeping with tradition to have them bathed in light, but the lesson is a good one. The artist decides where the light goes.

The bulk of the show consisted of etchings. I was immediately drawn to the paintings, but found myself, in the end, spending as much time looking at the etchings as the paintings. They had, of course, the famous self portrait of a startled young Rembrandt, as he practiced facial expressions. It occurred to me that, during Rembrandt's time, most people who had seen his work, had never seen it in color. Etchings were the mass media for artists of the day.

After going through the exhibit for a fourth round, we took on the rest of the museum. I was delighted to see that they had an entire gallery of Sargents. The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit dominated the room. The painting was flanked by the actual giant urns that were painted into the portrait.

These weren't the only Sargents we saw this week. We also visited the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, and saw El Jaleo and several other Sargents from their collection. This museum was built by Isabella Stuart Gardner, who willed that it never change its collection, and that it stay set up exactly as it was in her lifetime. The Rembrandt that captivated me at the entrance of the MFA show is actually part of the ISG collection, so I can (and will!) See it again when I return to Boston. The ISG museum is a must-see for visitors to Boston. The building itself is a work of art, and the collection is impressive. They had a Van Dyk that rivaled the Rembrandts. They also had many works by Zorn, Holbein, and Whistler. Ms. Gardner insisted that many pieces remain unlabeled, so the viewer could enjoy them without prejudice.

This was only our fourth trip to New England, and every time we go, we promise ourselves we'll go more often, Maybe some day we'll keep that promise. Boston is a beautiful city, and we stayed in the theater district, and caught a different show every night. It's just like Louisiana, only 100% different.