Orangerie: A Moveable Garden

  

"I peeled my orange

That was bright against

The gray of December

That, from some distance,

Someone might have thought

I was making a fire in my hands." 

                        -"Oranges" by Gary Soto

The most popular fruit in the world is the orange.  Its association with winter holidays makes perfect sense, a fruit that looks like the sun is fit  for purpose in the darkest time of year.

When Charles VIII invaded the Italian peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century he was smitten by a love for oranges. The orange trees were shipped in their root balls; on arrival the French gardeners bathed the roots in milk and honey. When Charles returned home to his chateau at Amboise he built France's first orangerie.  His wife, Anne of Bretagne, not to be outdone, built an orangerie for herself at Blois.

Henry II built one for his wife Catherine de Medici in 1533 and one for his mistress Diane de Poitiers. 

This competitive one-upmanship continued for centuries; each successive monarch felt the need to create a bigger, more elaborate hothouse for their precious citrus fruit.

Known as the Sun King, Louis XIV could just as well have been called the Orange King. He commanded a twelve hundred foot orangerie in the shape of a half moon to be built as a setting for masked balls and garden parties. His gardeners invented an ingenious method to make the trees  bloom year-round. This was also when the French began to pour hot orange juice over roasted chestnuts. C'est si bon!

The Musee de l'Orangerie was built in 1852 to shelter the orange trees from the Tuileries gardens. A typical orangerie, its glazed windows faced south to capture as much heat as possible. These hothouses evolved into the prototype for the modern greenhouse. At the turn of the century it was converted to a warehouse.  Claude Monet donated his panoramic water lily canvases to the nation; the paintings were installed in 1927 after the painter's death.

Image: Sergio-Gonzalez-Tornero - Orangerie, color intaglio print, 1966, Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute, Utica,

Scarab-Like: Mark Innerst

"Seers can see, for instance, the light of the scarabs, emanations expanding to great size." - Carlos Castenada, from The Fire From Within

Mark Innerst is known for  paintings of luminous landscapes so it is possible to see in Scarab-Like a portal to another time and place. He has used the beetle  shape as a frame for a star-flecked night sky through a scrim of trees. The gem-like tints are true to history; blue was the most common color for glazes. A divine manifestation of the early morning sky.

In Egypt by about 2055 BCE an impression of a beetle, called a scarab was a sought-after amulet that was believed to bring good luck to its  owner. It was often worn in the form of a ring. The term scarab comes from Scarabaeus sacer, the family name for ding beetles. Rolling a ball of dung was likened to the heavenly cycle of regeneration.

Image: Mark Innerst - Scarab-Like, 1992, oil and acrylic on panel, Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute, Utica.

A Predilection For Onions: Mary Ann Currier

"How easily happiness begins by

dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter

slithers and swirls across the floor

of the saute pan, especially if its

errant path crosses a tiny slick

of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions."

 - an excerpt from "Onions" by William Matthews which first appeared in Poetry in August 1989

Something about a still life painting turns its subjects into objects of desire. That is what happens in Mary Ann Currier's Onions and Tomato.  I want to chop them into small pieces and make soup. Three onions and a tomato, round, shiny, and luscious, guarded by a utility knife and a pot that functions as a mirror as well as a receptacle

Mary Ann Curries (1927-2017) had a predilection for onions. Currier chose onions as a favorite subject for their humble origins in fields of muck, the subtle variations in their color, and because they maintained their freshness while she finished painting them. She painted only from real fruit and vegetables, never from photographs although the realism of her paintings is breathtaking. 

Currier was born in Louisville.  Her parents emigrated to the United States from  Germany after World War II.  She studied art with many GIs, often being the only female in her classes.  She did advertising spreads, stationery, and then moved on to portraiture, finally finding her niche as a still life painter.  She had her first exhibition at the relatively late age of fifty.

Image : Mary Ann Currier - Onions and Tomato,1984, oil pastel on mat board, Metropolitan Museum, NYC