Rooms with a view – from the Met, New York

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Eleanor Robbins visits Rooms with a View—The Open Window in the 19th Century

The exhibition’s title, borrowed from E.M. Forster’s novel (1908), explains the theme of this very interesting, very focused exhibition now on at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (until 4 July 2011). The open window was a favourite notion of Romantic painters – those European artists of the first quarter of the 19th century who concentrated on the expression of emotional feelings and mood. The window served as a metaphor for some unfulfilled longing or a persistent yearning for something, perhaps unobtainable, or lost in the past.  The artistic motif of ‘standing on the threshold between an interior and an outside world’ was a compelling image. One contemporary poet said: ‘Everything at a distance turns to poetry: distant mountains, distant people, distant events: all become Romantic’. The nearer, and more intimate, space of the room offered an opportunity to show furnishings with richness and detail in the foreground and in the viewer’s space.

Painters were often drawn to this motif, not simply for the beauty of the landscape or even as a topographical exercise, but as a way of balancing a darkened interior with the bright outdoors. They were challenged by the delicate nuances of light playing over surfaces and textures and they used the interior view to underscore a quiet, contemplative atmosphere.  We see the artist himself surrounded by the tools of his profession in his studio, often a rather grand place and curiously uncluttered.  A number of paintings show these artists who, as winners of the Prix de Rome, had rooms in the French Academy, installed in the Villa Medici by Rome’s Borghese Gardens. Called ‘pensionnaires’, the figures are small in scale and somewhat overwhelmed by the shabby austerity and historical antiquity of the building. They are shown leafing through drawings or reading books or quietly playing a musical instrument, lost in contemplation, awaiting the spark of inspiration before starting their work again. Outside lies a static landscape under a cloudless sky.    

We are reminded of the business of painting by the classical busts, easels, half-completed paintings and sketches pinned to the walls of the room. Some works are more direct and interesting to us because they show us something about the daily tasks of the artists.  We see drawing lessons in progress and women standing at the window using the windowpane and flood of light for tracing drawings.  Women were trained separately from men, we are told, and they could only gain a place to study art at an academy by open competition, but it took until the 1890s for this to happen.

There are a few self-portraits and portraits of other artists at work but the window openings are also used either as a frame for a figure leaning, his back toward the viewer, or simply as the principal light source for the painting. There is another type of ‘open window’ too, in which the artist simply uses the window and its embrasure as an exercise in geometry. These are more architectural representations ‘of ’ rather than ‘from’ the opening. They tend to be precise depictions, being not so burdened by emotion.

The best works are by German artists whom we should know better.  Friedrich, one of Germany’s most important Romantic painters, used the window’s geometrical proportions repeatedly in oil paintings and in studies painted in a greyish brown sepia wash. These are very detailed depictions of the casement windows in his Dresden studio overlooking the Elbe. Outside, the river flows slowly beneath a huge expanse of sky and inside, on the bare studio walls, hangs a bunch of keys or a pair of scissors, exquisitely drawn, adding a surprising touch of the mundane.

More painterly are the works by Adolf Menzel.  The artist himself always considered these pictures of intimate surroundings and empty rooms as his ‘private’ pictures; to him they were mere experiments and they lingered in his studio until some years after his death. It was at that time that critics, on seeing Menzel’s attachment to the ephemeral effects of sunlight, spoke of him as an ‘impressionist’ decades before the term became opaque from overuse.

There are many reasons to go and see this exhibition (note: it is not a ‘blockbuster’ and viewers are there because they want to study the paintings).  It introduces us to new artists with interesting concerns and ways of expression and it modestly traces an intriguing theme.  Best of all it is packed with ideas worth further consideration. The idea for the show itself was first suggested some years ago, but the hard work of assembling the most relevant works and then shaping the exhibition to demonstrate this quite fascinating and original theme was undertaken over a period of years.

The catalogue is exactly how an exhibition catalogue should be—not pretentious, but accessible and interesting.  All the works are illustrated and discussed in detail. Just occasionally the writer falls into the trap of explaining what can be seen by any sensible viewer, but perhaps this is necessary these days for those who read the catalogue while standing before the paintings. The main essay, called ‘Reflections on the Open Window’ by Sabine Rewald is well-written and thoughtful.  She concludes her essay by mentioning some twentieth-century artists who use the same motif for very different purposes.

The catalogue Rooms with a View – The Open Window in the 19^th Century  by Sabine Rewald is published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2011. 190 pp., fully illustrated in colour and mono, £20.00. ISBN: 978-1-58839-413-2 (pbk The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and978-0-300-16977-5 (pbk Yale University Press).