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Nineteenth-century paintings curator Rebecca Rabinow finds a way to get a taste of the outdoors inside the galleries.
My name is Rebecca Rabinow, I'm a curator of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European paintings here at the Metropolitan Museum.
I think flowers and foliage are timeless and have interested people from every generation and every culture.
In college, I spent a lot of time in the greenhouse, sometimes I would even do my work there.
And here at The Met I see qualities of this building that
remind me of the greenhouse that I love so much back in school.
In the nineteenth-century galleries there's one room that I think of as our greenhouse. It's full of fantastic pictures
by Bonnard and Vuillard who are two of the great colorists of the first half of the twentieth-century. And there's a picture by Bonnard that shows the view from the back of his country house. And the colors just emanate from it in a fog, the blues and the purples and the melon colors.
And it takes awhile before I even can register the composition or see the boaters on the river out in the distance.
A painting by Vuillard, I think most people who look at it first see there's a standing figure on the right in a rose-colored dressing gown.
But almost everyone misses the kneeling figure on the left, and that was one of Vuillard's great loves, Lucy Hessle, and this is a picture of her country house.
There are some paintings that just capture my attention when I walk by. Right now I have a crush on a sixteenth-century Italian painting that has a gigantic laurel tree. It's a huge picture and this laurel tree dominates the entire gallery.
And I don't even look at any of the religious imagery at all. There's something about the tree. It just resets my equilibrium for the day, I feel like I've been outside.
Flora isn't always something that's beautiful and nice and friendly. There's no better instance than my own pet, which is a Venus flytrap.
And seeing that thing close in on a spider, it's just really distressing. And I think in a painting like Rousseau's picture The Repast of the Lion, he really captures that violence that nature can present and this jungle vegetation is so menacing.
Or the sexuality that so many people see in flowers. Georgia O'Keeffe painted her Black Iris in 1926 and since it was exhibited, critics have likened it to female genitalia. She always denied that that was her intent, but the fact that people see it that way is a valid thing.
This is a design that has inspired people for many, many reasons throughout time.
And of course you can't talk about foliage without talking about The Cloisters. I always try to arrange a family field trip every spring so I can go out in the gardens which are just breathtaking, as is the view across the Hudson River. And when the pollen gets too much for my family, we retreat inside
and I just lose myself in The Unicorn Tapestries.
Every year I think I find the exact same number of flowers that I can identify, but just when I turn around to inform my family of what I've found, they've always wandered off in search of some gory reliquary. And that's the thing about the Met, it's a great museum because there's something here for everyone.
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Works of art in order of appearanceLast Updated: June 22, 2015. Not all works of art in the Museum's collection may be on view on a particular day. For the most accurate location information, please check this page on the day of your visit. |
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A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers (Madame Paul Valpinçon?) 1865 Edgar Degas (French) Oil on canvas H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (29.100.128) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Lilacs in a Window (Vase de Lilas à la Fenêtre) 1880–83 Mary Cassatt (American) Oil on canvas Partial and Promised Gift of Susan and Douglas Dillon, 1997 (1997.207) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Outer robe (uchikake) with theme of Mount Hôrai Edo period, second half of 18th–first half of 19th century Japan Silk and metallic thread embroidery on silk satin damask with stencil-dyed details Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Jonas M. Goldstone, 1970 (1970.296.1) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Bamboo in the Four Seasons, Muromachi period (1392–1573) Attributed to Tosa Mitsunobu (Japanese) Pair of six-panel folding screens; color, ink, and gold on paper The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.44, 45) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Irises 1890 Vincent van Gogh (Dutch) Oil on canvas Gift of Adele R. Levy, 1958 (58.187) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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The Terrace at Vernonnet 1939 Pierre Bonnard (French) Oil on canvas Gift of Florence J. Gould, 1968 (68.1) © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Morning in the Garden at Vaucresson 1923 and 1937 Édouard Vuillard (French) Distemper on canvas Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1952 (52.183) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Madonna and Child with Saints, altarpiece ca. 1520 Girolamo dai Libri (Italian, Veronese) Tempera and oil on canvas Fletcher Fund, 1920 (20.92) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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The Repast of the Lion ca. 1907 Henri Rousseau (le Douanier) (French) Oil on canvas Bequest of Sam A. Lewisohn, 1951 (51.112.5) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Black Iris 1926 Georgia O'Keeffe (American) Oil on canvas Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1969 (69.278.1) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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Floral collar from Tutankhamun's embalming cache New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Tutankhamun, ca. 1336–1327 b.c. Egypt, Upper Egypt; Thebes, embalming cache of Tutankhamun (Tomb KV 54), Valley of the Kings, Davis/Ayrton 1907 Papyrus, olive leaves, persea leaves, cornflowers, blue lotus petals, Picris flowers, nightshade berries, faience, linen Gift of Theodore M. Davis, 1909 (09.184.214) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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The Unicorn in Captivity ca. 1495–1505 South Netherlandish Wool warp, wool, silk, silver, and gilt wefts Gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1937 (37.80.6) More information: The Collection Online Not on view
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![]() Medieval Art and The CloistersThe Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park |
© 2011 The Metropolitan Museum of Art |