National Gallery - Joseph LeGare & Paul Peel

17th acquisition of the National Gallery
purchased from a bar owner

The Venetian Bather by Paul Peel

What is it about going to the National Gallery that keeps me getting on the bus every morning and going down there.

For some reason I feel as though I am shopping for some exquisite items and then being  able to buy them all.

Today the docent was talking about the 5 second stroll through the gallery – the one where I just walk through the room and try to run my eye over every picture there. I haven’t been using that approach this week. The first thing I do is go to the handicapped outlet and sign up for a walker – one with wheels. It is not that I need one to walk. But standing in front of one picture for ten minutes or so takes a lot out of me after I have read the gallery description of the painting and then gone back and forth from that to the painting and then back to the description. The walker has advantages that the gallery stools don’t have: a back to lean against and the chair can be wheeled instead of lifted. Small joys, but I have to say I enjoyed them.

Mary packed me a lunch. I can’t remember the last time someone packed me a lunch and sent me on my way. It didn’t matter that the dressing, the cucumbers and the carrots are what came home from Rhiannon’s lunch yesterday. And the lettuce in another container was generous. It had that whorl of lettuce at the base of the head that I usually try to get out, but sometimes miss. I recognized it and enjoyed it as though it were meant to be. The lunch tasted twice as good, sitting in front of that grand expansive view – the river, the government buildings, the bridge – it was as though I was in London or Paris, or Rome. And that rush that I might not get through every gallery was gone, since I have figure out – 3 more days here, and then I can come back in the Spring again. With good luck I will be able to sit for 10 minutes in front of every painting that the gallery has.

When someone has done hours of research and then comes to share points about the painting that aren’t obvious or are that historical, that is what I like to listen to. Apparently the painter of Josephte Ourne was Joseph LeGare, the first owner of an art gallery in Canada. He had many firsts – he was also a painter who did the first landscape picture of Canada, as well as the first historical painting. I didn’t know that paintings were classified this way.

Josephte Ourne
- a chief's daugher holds trout and a bird,
her attributes

Purchased 1975

He drew attention to the earrings which had a Moroccan flavour, probably from tribal trade with clans in the Caribbean. And her broach is of trade silver, not silver that was very valuable, but still silver that was used for pelt trade. Her red dress is called pigeon waist or women’s waist – a well know fashion of the time. Apparently young women of the time were allowed to hunt small game: eggs, birds and fish and we get to see this in the painting.

I am way behind with art. I had to come home and look up Fauvism, Cubism and Expressionism. As well, I was back in one of the corridors where there were some Morrice paintings and the word marabout (a member of the Arabic clergy) was in the description of the painting so that was on my list of things to do at home. I am probably like a lover of music who doesn’t know the language of music – only in my case this all has to do with art.

Still. Fun.