A Day in the Park with Roger Pasquier

William Glackens May Day, Central Park

ca. 1905

There are few public parks more beautiful and lush than New York's Central Park. A new book PAINTING CENTRAL PARK captures all the inspiration of the park in the many American paintings of the scenic landscape. This is the first book that explores the work-by Roger Pasquier with a foreword by Amanda Burden. 

Painting Central Park

by Roger F. Pasquier

Forward by Amanda Burden

Published by The Vendome Press 2015

Several Autumns ago, I had luncheon at one of the most talked about apartments in the design world. The table (for two) was perfection-linen that belonged to the Duchess of Windsor, all the finest one can imagine. While I was taking in my surroundings-my eye kept drifting out to the landscape. It was a stunning view of Central Park-with all its autumnal color at peak. Easy to see how artists find infinite inspiration amongst the acres-and of course the less gifted who can just wander about, drawing in the scene-if only in one's mind.

The book reveals the park and the changes of its inhabitants over 150 years. I am attracted to so many of the works- but of course the "people" pictures are my personal favorites. The book is somewhat like that-there is something for everyone to love-just like the park. About the park, Amanda Burden quotes Henry James, who wrote that there was "something for everybody... and everything at once."
"The perception comes quickly, in New York, of the singular and  beautiful mission, but almost crushing, that has been laid as an effect of time, upon this limited territory, which has risen to the occasion, from the first, so consistently and bravely." Henry James

George Bellows, A Day in June,1913

Maurice Prendergast, Central Park, 1900

"We may even say, putting it simply and strongly, that if he doesn't here, in his thought, keep patting the Park on the back, he is guilty not alone of a failure of natural tendency, but of real deviation from social morality." Henry James

William Glackens, Central Park Winter

ca 1905

The Park has had to "produce on the spot the particular romantic object demanded, lake or river or cataract, wild woodland or teeming garden, boundless vista or bosky nook, noble eminence or smiling valley." Henry James

The book rises to James prose, as Central Park still does today.



Quotes on the Park are all by Henry James.
Thank you to Vendome Press for this beautiful book!

from the end of a hectic summer, now that autumn advances...

the nights are cooler here in North Carolina, my garden is in dire need of relief from its summer leftovers. 

at the moment there are no takers. it's impossible to find a competent gardener that doesn't want to just desiccate the hedge or mow down the grass to within an eighth inch of his life...

but I digress, yet not so much.

"Just a single blossom can speak volumes." -Charlotte Moss

Charlotte Moss's book Garden Inspirations is a book that crossed my desk-my sofas-tables, chairs-now known as the How They Decorated files, and had me returning to it throughout the summer, and even today, just to grasp the possibilities of controlling my garden and yard, in so many ways an extension of a house's interior.

Charlotte Moss, with 8 diverse books -yet all focusing on how to make things beautiful- lasting- and personal, never disappoints. Garden Inspirations is both a visual feast and an approach to creating the lasting-lifetime project of a garden. Charlotte's garden is an extension of her East Hampton home-seen in the book, and most likely the source of her constant inspiration for what goes on inside.

"If you had to describe my garden, it's not so much about parterres and sweeping vistas as it is about intimate spaces, small rooms- gardens within gardens." -Charlotte Moss

I can find places in my garden spaces from Charlotte's book for much inspiration-but some struck me as essential and simple things to remember and to incorporate into my plans.

Have a plan, a map-a visual. At one time-early days, I had such a plan, by a professional-with many many tweaks of my own. Some things didn't work out, others after determinedly repeating what couldn't work-wouldn't work, have finally gone by the wayside, and my original garden intent has been diminished. In an attempt to get it back, I pulled everything but a few English boxes out in one area and have good intentions of regaining some structure and form to what I consider an English garden. Charlotte considered the boxwood as essential to her garden from the outset.
I like a somewhat Nancy Lancaster-Havershamish look to my English garden vision-timeless- yet a little unkempt.
As you know, this unstudied appearance takes work.

Charlotte's Garden Plan

"Boxwood-a shrub that I have such distinct memories of growing up in Virginia...was one of my first and more important requirements for our gardens and property." -Charlotte Moss

Another point well taken in Garden Inspirations is using urns to add structure to the garden. Charlotte also uses pots and urns to plant annuals that she can switch out over the season.  As it goes, I've got lots of urns that need to be moved around and placed differently for maximum effect. (Help Wanted!)

In Charlotte's kitchen garden, 3 terracotta pots of varying sizes are stacked to accommodate three different specimens-repeated to add height. I love this idea. 

Sometimes the simplest things can create the most memorable- Again this is an idea I am going to put into my garden.

The repetition of these chive plantings is so striking-at Mount Vernon

One of the most gratifying things about a garden-(even if it's just a terrace garden) for me is Cutting the flowers of our labor. Charlotte has collected wonderful vessels to arrange her flowers in-from a single stem with a moppy head, to an extravagant arrangement of wildflowers.

Wildflowers "introduced me to a world with no boundaries and no rules." Charlotte Moss

From these points, Charlotte's book also has a beautiful section on her garden travels from around the world to her home state of Virginia, along with her garden observations, often seen through the lens of her camera. Her garden heroines are noted too- a sojourn to the late Bunny Mellon's Oak Spring Farm in Virginia, and two of my favorites Nancy Lancaster, and Vita Sackville West.

Charlotte's husband Barry Friedberg who wrote the foreword said, "the development of our garden has been and will continue to be a process full of surprises and many pleasures." I know I can expect the same from Charlotte's endeavors in finding beauty in the simple or grand-all approached with such great constancy.


I'm happy to note that Charlotte is writing the foreword to my book, How They Decorated...

it's over

the end to a hectic month, the exodus of extended daylight.
the beginning of brisk November days, the glow of a lamp in the window casting off the gloom of nightfall.

"An October Evening" by Sir John Lavery

Upcoming: Books to buy for the holidays, Announcements, & Friends drop in.

Liz got married...

I'm so happy to share my niece Elizabeth's October 4th wedding with readers. She and her now husband, ADAM, traveled from their home in California, to their once homes in Tennessee in the last days of September to organize the final details of their wedding that took place at Frozen Head State Park. Their families are in Tennessee, and North Carolina, so the pair accommodated them by planning a cross country wedding event. Liz had a firm spreadsheet to keep them organized, as they did all of the planning-and executing, with some help from friends and family.

Liz is definitely a child of summer, she was born on the summer solstice-June 21st, so an early fall wedding was the best she could do in order to work everyone's scheduling out. The pair previewed the park in July. Their wedding day was beautiful, clear, after a day of rain, sometimes torrential, and yes-it was cold. It was easy to guess the "locals," dressed in coats, lots of good looking parkas, scarves-gloves even, and one fur coat that I spotted (the official photographer). Though the sun was out, it was struggling to reach through the dense canopy of leaves-for the most part still green. (temp about 47 degrees)

I was impressed. Liz, who often walks around in sweaters year round, walked down the path to the park amphitheatre where the ceremony was held in her sleeveless dress. Though I'd suggested a sleeve earlier in the planning, she was firm about her choice, and braved the cold.

The bride wore a simple lace sheath dress made in Italy with an antique overskirt of muslin, circa 1850 (the something Old, something New). The dress was accessorized with a custom made diamond necklace- a graduation present from me & my brother (her father), and Carelle diamond earrings (the something Borrowed from me). The Blue came in the form of a brilliant blue silk velvet Edwardian era jacket of mine with lots of ruching & padding, later it was a gift to the bride!

Liz's talented neighbor where she grew up made a beautiful wedding cake, vanilla creme icing, and carrot cake.

The groom's cake made by another friend of the bride & groom-

a Buche de Noelle cake- smothered in meringue mushrooms

I did all the flowers for the day, including the bride's bouquet. 

Other than adding some blue, a request from the bride, all of the flowers were white.

boutonnieres 

 Lamb's Ear and Stock

bridesmaid's bouquets 

white Roses, blue Delphiniums, Stock, and Baby's Breath

the bride's bouquet 

white Roses, white Ranunculus, blue Delphiniums, Queen Anne's Lace, Baby's Breath

Flower arrangements of Roses, Lamb's Ear, and Baby's Breath for the tables were interspersed with sprays of Rosemary, Poet's Laurel, Passion Flower Vine, and Salal.

Flowers in large pine cone urns at the end of the bridal path were made of Erynguim, Queen Anne's Lace, Feverfew, Bupleurum, and Mistflower. I traveled up to Tennessee with a virtual garden in the rear view mirror. All of the Poet's Laurel, Rosemary, Lamb's Ear, Passion Flower Vine, and Mistflower came from my garden.

Four large arrangements in pine cone urns, and rusted iron urns for bridal paths and amphitheatre stage where the ceremony was held.

(note the rustic tree branch propping up the rustic pine cone urn)

tokens from the bride & groom.

A Straight Line is not Always the Shortest Distance between Two Points:

"We met sometime around 2001, we think. Always being in the same place at the same time, around the same friends, we don't actually remember the precise moment we met. However, the first thing that Liz remembers Adam actually saying to her is: "I have a sister in Chattanooga, who I think you would really get along with." He was right. 
We really didn't become what you'd call truly close friends until we began to play music together, about eight years ago.
Over the years, no matter if living in different cities, we stayed close friends, and began dating in the fall of 2012. And only good things have followed.  Over the past year and a half, adventures have been one of our primary focuses in life. We have tried to see most corners of California, including the far edges of Nevada and Oregon." (from the wedding site written by the bride & groom)

PREPARATIONS

 the groom hand-printed their invitations on a Vandercook 4 Letterpress at San Francisco Center for the Book.

 the bride making some repairs to her antique overskirt

the harvest of flowers before the wedding

GOLD IN THESE HILLS

(the website devoted to their travels, here )

Liz and Adam are both graphic designers living and working in Oakland & San Francisco


POSTSCRIPT

When Elizabeth and I first discussed plans for what they wanted, she mentioned (having always loved the hymn,) Simple Gifts, that she wanted her wedding to reflect these sentiments . The song was first written in 1848 by Shaker elder, Joseph Brackett. In so many ways this expresses their own belief in what is best & enduring in Life.

Aaron Copland took the melody from the hymn for his Appalachian Spring scored for Martha Graham's ballet by the same name. Nothing is more beautiful than to hear this tune & ponder the depth and simplicity of Brackett's words. Copland's last passage of the melody is one of his finest to hear...

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,

To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come 'round right

autumn interlude

 

after a week spent in the mountains of TN preparing for my niece's wedding, I believe... 

 

 

 

 

painting by British artist, Charles Nash, "Berkshire Downs," 1922.

Goodbye to all that

"Autumn has caught us in our summer wear." - Philip Larkin

 Carol McCarlson on the beach in St. Augustine, Florida,

by Frances McLaughlin-Gill for American Vogue, 1948.

  the autumnal equinox brings the fall season to the Northern Hemisphere September 22 at 10:29 P.M. EDT. 

the ELEVENTH Hour

...

I can not think of a happier collaborative effort than what I offer today-the evocative photography of Carolyn Quartermaine-artist and textile designer, & Philip Bewley, art consultant and interior designer. I can only make the introduction-and savor their offering-with gratitude.

The Eleventh Hour

“I think always, always of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month ...and there is All Saints and All Souls at the beginning.

Such a month...
almost pierced by things...more than any other … I used to hate it and now its turned into something extraordinary…” -Carolyn Quartermaine

 
with thoughts from Philip: 
The month of November is the season for poets –and for painters and photographers. There is an exquisite ineffability, a gentle melancholy and yearning inside this time of year that is the culmination of all that has come before. Jane Austen mused that autumn was “…that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness…that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”

 Jane Austen could have described Quartermaine with her camera in hand, eye attuned to her November surroundings on her London rambles or in the countryside, when she wrote this passage in Persuasion, her final novel: “Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges.”

Interdisciplinary artist and designer Carolyn Quartermaine’s recent album of original photography, The Eleventh Hour . is a visual poem to this season, self-described as “…being the real time and place for novels and films.... where roads lead to leaf -filled tracks and misty mornings.  
The Eleventh Hour could be written by Daphne Du Maurier; it could be a fragrance by Shalimar.” 

As a fine art advisor I look at a lot of contemporary photography and I've discovered fine art photography to be the “It” medium for artistic expression today. Quartermaine has it –that arresting, singular quality in her photographs that turns my head and engages my mind. Arranged in albums, each photograph complements the other in the series, capturing fleeting impressions of sparkling light and shadow, evanescent fragments of observation and memory.

 Looking at Quartermaine’s photographs one experiences the history of photography distilled. In these images I see the legacy of 19^th century French photographers such as Gustave le Gray who defied photographic convention by pointing his camera into the light of the sun in the forest of Fontainebleau; I see the haunting elegance of Eugène Atget at Versailles; and the 20^th century work of Sarah Moon and the late, great Deborah Turbeville. 

“There is a resonance there of all the memories” says Quartermaine about one of the settings for The Eleventh Hour. “The road photos were taken at Chelsea Royal Hospital, next to the Chelsea pensioners and this in itself is lovely. 

There is something about that alley-way of plane trees and those stripy shadows and the rhythm of an autumn walk there: the stripes of long shadows that break the way people step…and the steps themselves, with that crunch of leaves and the footfall on the pavement. I went into Royal Hospital, and the graveyard… the green moss was startling on the stones, the leaves huge, the sky piercing blue.... everything swirling…swirling around.”

In another setting for her album, Quartermaine turns her focus inside to the interior of her studio, capturing expressionistic vignettes in dramatic light and shadow that evoke the Baroque paintings of Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi.

Quartermaine adds, “we want to be out of doors and yet…we also want to be inside to catch the morning light through windows, which make everything sparkle in a new way, to see the light through a prism of a chandelier... One wants to walk more this time of year... almost hurry ...and I think there such a profound memory of leaf crunching, of conker bashing, and then getting inside to a place of warmth.”

Artist and textile designer, Carolyn Quartermaine, divides her time between London and the South of France. Conversation Piece, an exhibition she curated for the Costa family, was recently on show at the Musee Fragonard in Grasse. 

Carolyn Quartermaine Here
Philip Bewley Here