Connections/Quiet

I'm Jennifer Meagher and I'm a researcher in the department of European Paintings. I travel a lot

and when people ask me where I live and I tell them I live in New York the response I often get is

'how can you live in New York, there's no such thing as peace or quiet.' So it got me thinking about

what I do to achieve quiet. I do it especially by walking around the galleries and looking at images that either

depict a scene of quiet or evoke quiet in the viewer.

I think there are different kinds of quiet. There's the domestic scene where we're watching someone who

doesn't engage with the viewer, doesn't seem to know they're being observed. The image lets us sort of slip in and be voyeur for a moment and then slip out unobserved.

There are works like the Seated Buddha that evoke a meditative, reflective state and then there are works

where the quietness has a sense of isolation like the Hopper Office in a Small City. The man is seated in this room in a corner above the activity going on in the city and there's a tension to the silence.

Other scenes of quiet allow us to be a kind of mischievous voyeur like the Johann Liss Nymph and Shepherd allows us to take on the role of the shepherd, to be the possibly desirous observer of the young nymph who is meant to be entirely innocent but is a very sensual being.

The painting of Repose is different from many of the others in that the figure is looking at us a little bit through her half-closed lids and the silence is sort of languorous and it's rather provocative. It's sort of inviting us into the scene.

I think winter scenes like the Yosemite Valley photograph are particularly good at evoking a sort of hushed atmosphere. You know animals are in hibernation. Silence seems natural.

In the Garden of the Unsuccessful Politician I chose it and I found it so interesting that part of the sense of stillness and tranquility is the fact that the figure is so small within the landscape. It highlights his insignificance, which I think is something that he may be contemplating.

I feel like we're often looking at works of art and having a conversation with them, asking questions about what's going on and being caught up in a scene of activity. And I think images like the Maid Asleep, like

Two Men Contemplating the Moon allow us to observe our own feelings about the work of art. They draw us in, in a

way that sort of shuts everything else out. They make us feel quiet because, if we aren't, we may wake the sleeping girl or disturb the two men observing the moon.