Celebrating Grant Wood on Mother's Day with a NYAE blog repeat -

Grant Wood, Hattie Weaver Grant, 1929

Repeating my Mother's Day 2016 New York Arts Exchange blog post because it was dedicated to my mother, Mildred Gersh - her last Mother's Day with us. Plus the Grant Wood painting is featured in the current Grant Wood retrospective at the Whitney Museum, closing on June 10th (a terrific show).

Happy Mother's Day to you and yours.  This blog post is dedicated to my mother, Mildred Gersh, who gave me a love for art through our many visits to museums.  Thank you, Mom.

Please make visits to museums a frequent and pleasant experience for your family.  Take your children and grandchildren to a museum for a short time - an hour or so.  Not too long.  Just enough time to whet the appetite for more, another day. 

Also, have the children select a reproduction in the bookstore as a souvenir of the trip to the museum. The purchase not only supports the museum, it also extends the experience past the doors of the museum and into one's personal space, one's comfort zone.

I urge you to frame these museum reproductions so that they hang in the child's bedroom, creating a personal connection that will last a lifetime.

Rembrandt van Rijn, Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuytgbrouch. van Rijn, 1629

Rembrandt's mother's face is familiar to us through other works wherein she served as his model.

Vincent van Gogh, Anna Cornelia Carbentus van Gogh, 1888

Almost smiling, Anna van Gogh seems to listen intently.  She provided solace for her son when he was at odds with his father. An artist in her own right, she too studied art and drew plants and flowers in notebooks. 

Andy Warhol, Julia Justine Zavacka Warhola, 1974

Julia Warhola is truly the Mother of Pop Art.  Her charming European script graces most of Andy Warhol's early works, such as the greeting cards and clever books. Examples of her work are currently on view at the Morgan Library in the exhibition Warhol by the Book, which closed on May 15, 2016.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Portrait of the Artist's Mother, 1897

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Henry Ossawa Tanner's mother, Sarah Elizabeth Miller, was the eleventh child of a slave who sent her children to freedom through the Underground Railroad.  She arrived in Pittsburgh, sponsored by the Pittsburgh Abolitionist Society.  Sarah Miller married Benjamin Tanner, a college-educated teacher and minister who became the bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh.  Henry Ossawa Tanner was born on June 21, 1859.  The only black student in Thomas Eakins' class at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art from 1880 to 1888, he moved to Paris in 1891, where he enjoyed success as an artist.  He returned to the US for a short time (1893-94) to set up a studio, but was not as well received as in Paris. He returned to France, where he married the Swedish-American opera singer Jessie Olsson and they lived out their lives together. This portrait of his mother may have been painted during a visit to his mother's home or during his mother's visit in Paris.  Another portrait of his mother belongs to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.    

Happy Mother's Day to you and yours - 

Beth New York

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director and owner

New York Arts Exchange,LLC
www.nyarts-exchange.com.