À la belle étoile

In French class last week, we were discussing different ways to say "outside," as in to go outside. Florence, our teacher, mentioned that one could say à la belle étoile, literally, to the beautiful star. Sound poetic enough? It reminded me of a collage I had done, so today I took the collage à la belle étoile and photographed it in our beautiful Seward Park cherry tree.

I have a collection of vintage handkerchiefs, and I used one

for the dark blue background and one for the rose cocktail dress. 

A Woman of the 20's
Florine Stettheimer

The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde, a show of art work collected by  Gertrude and Leo Stein, is now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  My favorite objects in the  exhibit are these tiny dolls by Florine Stettheimer dressed in the costumes she designed for the 1934 opera, Four Saints in Three Acts by Virgil Thomson with a libretto by Gertrude Stein. Miss Stettheimer's maquette for the stage design is also on view.

Here are four of Miss Stettheimer's dolls from the collection of Columbia University.

A scene from the production of Four Saints in Three Acts

If one travels north in Manhattan to 104th Street and 5th Avenue, one may visit the Museum of the City of New York and see a marvelous doll house by Florine and her sisters which is modelled after their own townhouse. Florine was born in 1871 and died in 1944. During her lifetime, she painted and wrote, but eschewed publicity. After her death, the Museum of Modern Art gave her a retrospective show.

Florine Stettheimer

Bergdorf Goodman has a little book department on the 8th floor run by Jane Stubbs which specializes in books on art, design and fashion. That's where I found this 1946 catalog for an exhibit of Miss Stettheimer's work.

The painting on the left is called "Heat," and was done in 1919. It depicts the artist and her sisters and their mother and commemorates the latter's birthday. The lethargy is palatable.

Florine and her sisters, Ettie and Carrie led a privileged life having been nicely provided for by their family's wealth. In addition to their New York townhouse, they had a country place as well.

"She and her two sisters, Miss Carrie and Miss Ettie, presided over a salon that had considerable to do with shaping the intellectual and artistic impulses of the period just past, although at the dinners and receptions which followed in quick succession in their house and in which hardy ideas were put into words which echoed sooner or later in other parts of the city, she seemed often a furtive guest rather than one of the genii loci which she undoubtedly was, for her demure presence invariably counted." Henry McBride

Family Portrait No. 2 1933. Left to right: the artist, her sister Ettie, her mother, and her sister Carrie.

Florine peopled her paintings with her family and famous artists and writers of the day.

"She did not have to go far in search of subject matter. She looked upon her sisters, her mother and herself as phenomena of surpassing interest (which they indeed were)." Henry McBride

Lake Placid, 1919. The artist's mother viewing the aquatic scene from the balcony; and the artist herself descending the steps. Right: the Marquis de Buenavista standing on a raft; Marie Sterner lying down and the artist's sisters Ettie and Carrie seated, the latter with a sunshade; and Elie Nadelman, half in the water. Left, Maurice Sterne paddling a canoe in which reclines Elizabeth Duncan. Right, swimming toward the raft: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and the artist's sister Ettie. In the launch: Professor E.R.A. Seligmann; and on the surfboard, his daughter, Hazel.

"The artist had not progressed far in this sequence of portraits and party-pictures when it became apparent that she had shaken off the conventional premier-coup of the pseudo-Sargents and had evolved a manner that was to do her for the rest of her painting days. It is not a manner that may be hit off in a word. It might be thought to disdain manner in that it is wilful, unconcerned with precedent and as unpredictable as the flight of a butterfly in a garden of flowers." Henry McBride

There are four beautiful Florine Stettheimer paintings in the collection of the Metropolitan,

 and I photographed them on my last visit.

 Cathedrals of Art, 1942

Cathedrals of 5th Avenue, 1931

 Cathedrals of Broadway, 1929

Cathedrals of Wall Street, 1939

Two of my collages. Is it any wonder that I love Miss Stettheimer's work?

If I had two daughters who were mine,

I'd name them Delphinium and Columbine.

À Bientôt until next time.