The Jar Of Isabella X- A Journey Through The Arts-The Boston School, Ah, At The Museum Of Fine Arts-Thwarted Love With A Bizarre Twist- Alexander’s Keats’ Inspired Isabella And The Pot Of Basil

By Laura Perkins    

I will get to the subject in hand, a take on the marvelous and mesmerizing Isabella, Or A Jar Of Basil seen at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston a while back while on assignment for this upstart series which site manager has given to me under circumstances not of my own making. However the reaction I received to my first foray into this new review area for when in discussing John Singer Sargent’s The Portrait of Madame X has forced my hand to reply if that is the right word to all kinds charges of pandering to what is essentially soft-core pornography, or taking such a view of the painting. I might repeat for what it is worth that when I took this assignment, I told Greg Green that I would decide what I wanted to focus on in each painting, Not what the art world, the world of self-serving curators deemed the reason the damn things were in some museum other than as pace-fillers. So I will vent as is my prerogative. Laura Perkins]      

You never know what will happen in this business. This latter-day publishing business where unlike the old days you can lose stuff in an instant, lose by an injudicious hit of the delete button. That happened to me of late in something of an omen when I tried to do a second installment of what is according to site manager Greg Green an on-going series of painting which I am at liberty to choose to get us up to date in the art world, an area woefully under- represented in this publication. If I behave myself of which more below. Without overestimating the old days and their sluggish technologies there was something to be said for hand-written yellow pads and carbon copy smudge typewritten materials even without all the comforts of what the new technology has brought us. In any case I am starting to get the hang of it, the last barrier of cyberspace, getting used to the idea that not every utterance, every word needs to be etched eternally in the ether. Strangely I did believe that proposition in yellow pad (some of which I still have from my 1970s days as a free-lancer) and typewriter times (some also when I was weaned off of the yellow pad which was both too cumbersome and too slow when I had to make a day to day living out of my words). That typewriter in turn gave way to word processor and such when that too proved too cumbersome and too slow to make a day to day living out of my words. I would also add as will become clear below that I miss the old days when a reader had something bilious to say, some vitriolic smattering of words she or he had to not only write the spiel out but put stamp to envelope and actually go mail the damn thing. Which meant that they had to put some effort into the task unlike today they can fire off some silly salvo and move on to the next target of their villainy.    

But enough of personal recollections in the dark ages of this “publish or perish” business. As one and all should know by my first foray into the subject, at least first foray since I was named “unofficial” art critic I am taking quirky looks at some of the great paintings that intertest me. And not for art curator purposes either. I became an Art critic by default when Sam Lowell, my longtime companion who balked at doing this assignment. Sam, for better or worse, balked since he is in hot pursuit of why famed California private detective Lew Archer, yes that Lew Archer, who if you are old enough to remember solved the Galton kidnapping case, the Carlton murders and the infamous wife-done Hallman serial killings all under the noises of the public coppers, never made the vaunted P.I. Hall of Fame after such a glorious start. Sam has a “theory” which he can tell the reader if interested all I know is that site manager Greg Green let him off the hook to pursue his leads. Let Sam off the hook and put me on the hook once he knew from Leslie Dumont I had taken some art classes and at least had gone to an art museum unlike his other potential candidates.

By the way Sam’s credentials are far greater than mind could ever be since I only took art appreciation classes in high school and college and since then have limited my experiences in the field to an infinite number of doodling sessions when some windbag is fouling up the air at one conference or another. Sam actually could have gone to art school, his high school art teacher encouraged him endlessly and would have paved the way for him. Actually, now that I think about it did pave the way for him at his alma mater the highly regarded Massachusetts School of Art. Sam, from the desperately poor Acre section of North Adamsville where he grew up got a serious chill, a serious no when his mother found out he had applied and been accepted. She painted, nice word although not literally true, a horrendous picture of him in some flea-bitten, rat-infested and crime-ridden cold-water flat garret with him barely able to hold his frozen hand brush to canvas for the rest of his life. Her idea, a not uncommon one in the Acre from what some of the other guys who grew up there have told me, was for him to be the first in the family to have a nice steady white-collar civil service job which would bring the family fortunes up a notch. He didn’t do that but neither did he to his sometimes-later regret pursue that art dream, cold water flat and frozen fingers or not. I got the job even though I made it clear to Greg that I would not pose as an art critic and would take my shots where they would lead me without any regard for what they meant for the greater art world.  

My first foray not so strangely was John Singer Sargent’s Portrait Of Madame X which now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. How it got there is a long story as is the story behind many art acquisitions but will not detain us because I have bigger fish to fry today. My main axis on that first assignment was to deal with the obvious sexual allure (circa the 1880s which was demurer than now) of the painting and of Madame’s scandalous sex life considering she was married to some French pillar of society, a well-heeled and connected banker. You can read my take in the archives (see January 8, 2019) but mostly what I have found out was that Madame Guiteau, no need to be coy about that “Madame X” business she foisted on a less than candid world was that she was so intend on being a social climber, of working her way up French high society that she slept with any guy who could get her moving up what Seth Garth calls “the food chain.”

Fair enough then if today not fair enough in a post-#MeToo world since beautiful women, perceived beautiful women were known to, for good or evil, use their “profession” beauty to get ahead in this wicked old world. I said some other stuff, but this is what has brought me a ton of blow-back, blow-back which Sam, dear Sam in this instance, warned me would happen when I laid out my argument. He always said reviewing was a tough cutthroat racket and now I have had my baptism of fire. The gist of the responses has dealt with exactly how John Singer Sargent (hereafter Singer Sargent we don’t have to go on endlessly with the robber baron era habit of three name monikers among the elite to show pedigree or prove legitimacy in or more democratic age) got the Madame to pose so provocatively in the first place.

Even Sam was surprised though at the apparent source of the criticism not of me, although that may be in question the evangelicals. People not known to frequent this publication but who saw an opening to see who was, or was not, doing Satan’s work, who was damned and why. Here is where we get into what Sam and others call the “trolls” and their “alternate facts,” actually alternate universe outlook. A major rash of e-mails pointed out that Singer Sargent had obviously picked his model up out of the gutter and gave her a few sous, francs, some French money to pose for him, that he got some kind of sexual pleasure out of what he was doing as well as painting a great if toilsome masterpiece. Those skimpy straps ready to tell all, something like that. Certainly the gown and her provocative pose spoke of eternal damnation to these mob. The other big “school of thought” was that the model, nobody wanted to tie Madame Guiteau, a well-oiled member of high society looking to move upward with the age old art of using her professional beauty to work her way up that chain, had been tossed out of a high-end bordello in New York City after she had “stolen” some dough from one of the customers. Jay Gould, yes, the robber baron Jay Gould, and had to flee to avoid his wrath and her imprisonment.        

            

Under either theory what these ding-dongs have in common is the erroneous idea that Singer Sargent was getting sexual pleasure out of the provocative poses of the model, especially that very suggestive slipping of one of the straps of her evil thought jet black evening gown. What they could not factor in was the idea that Singer Sargent, as was well know, had a number of “assistants,” male and female, who found his bed. Which ones, which sex is problematic but most people with an opinion have mentioned that the females acted as cover. I have uncovered some useful information in that regard. The great English poet and self-acknowledged gay man when that was not cool to say in polite society, when it was the love  “that dare not speak its name,”    W.H. Auden had always claimed Singer Sargent for the “Homintern,” a name which he or one of his crowd, one of his gay friends maybe Christopher Isherwood or Stephen Spender, coined as a spin-off from the Comintern which both had at one time supported to mean that the guy was a member of the fraternity, was gay in the cloaked terminology of the times. Yes, the evangelicals will have a field day with this one if they can figure it out. What I don’t get is people who are ready to absolve every sexual predator alive if he or she repents has no mercy for somebody who used their sex, as with Madame X, to get ahead whether we agree or not.      

Most of the other comments descended downward from that Madame is a whore trope and are not worthy of comment. What is worthy is one that attempted to take the high road, attempted to in the end try to whitewash the whole sordid affair. One Arthur Gilmore Doyle, here we go with the “three name” Brahmin (although not all the “three name” crowd were Brahmins, Boston variety since Singer Sargent would trace his lineage from the Philadelphia Main Line crowd but they are all of a piece), who argued, if that is the right word, that Singer Sargent would not stoop to having some “fallen woman,” his term, pose for him under any circumstances. So here we have the class line drawn in lieu of the sex line. Or maybe both lines since he seemed very fussy about the whole matter.

Doyle further mentioned that Madame X if she posed for Singer Sargent was a pure as the driven snow. Worse disputed the evidence presented by the famous Parisian paint-maker Bleu who provided Singer Sargent (and others) with his paints in his memoir that when Madame was in her plebian wants mood he was her lover. Going up the back stairway to her boudoir, sometimes when her husband was down in his study figuring out ways to make money to keep his growing number of creditors at bay. Disputed as well, the testimony of Madame’s personal maid that she let him in and further, under orders from Madame, had cut that provocative gown strap with her own scissors. You see according to Doyle one   could never believe the hired help, not even somebody who had to change the sweaty sheets after each exhortation. Yes, the class line indeed.

We have already dealt with the predilections of Singer Sargent for his male “assistants” which may not freak out Brother Doyle as much as it was the gay-bashing evangelicals since it was an open secret that half the bluebloods were same-sex inclined. And everybody knew and accepted it unlike in poor Oscar Wilde’s irate father of Lord Alfred Douglas who was crazy with hate about the whole matter. Where the heck do you think they got the term “Boston marriage” when two unmarried women lived together lesbian splendor.

What has amazed me about this first volley into the art world, or the social aspect of it is that nobody thus far has mentioned word one about why Madame had not allowed herself to be posed in a frontal position by Sargent (and upon further investigation by any other artist with one possible later exception to be mentioned below). That is she did not want her beak-like nose to be fully exposed to the light of day. Apparently Madame was so vain to have that horrendous little pointed nose shown too prominently would have detracted from his sullen suggestive pose. Remember she was using her professional beauty to advance in the world, a hard task for an “ice queen” and so that was her order. Upon further investigation there is some evidence that later in life, in 1907 she did pose in a frontal position but by that time the wear and tear of using her beauty for social advantage, the dissipation showed through. And the nose was even more hideous that I expected. So Madame did make a smart move, very smart. Still I don’t know why nobody in the flutter of responses picked up on that beak even to defend her against my charges that maybe men liked that kind of nose then. Fashion and beauty tend to change with the ages, with time.   

But let’s move on. Finally I can get to the subject matter for today’s piece, John White Alexander’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil which is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (here we go again with the three name moniker business that drives me crazy so let’s call him Alexander and be done with it). Alexander was linked to the Boston School who were for the most part interested in realistic portrayal of whatever subject matter they were painting. When you first go into the room where the painting is located you are immediately drawn to this high Victorian beauty in a great gauzey with sharply drawn flowing lines dressing gown strangely caressing a jar, a big jar with some kind of plant of unknown original within. Looking at the caption provided with the painting tells us that the plants are basil, allegedly associated with love, thwarted love. Upon closer inspection they looked like poppies to me, like the stuff that opium and heroin are made of. The reader may be surprised that the stuff is high end dope and reject that notion out of hand. Don’t be so quick the annals are filled with details of guys like Thomas de Quincy and Sam Coleridge taking the pipe in the days when that stuff was not regulated and frowned upon. Half the high society types were wired to the stuff, to lanadum for their highs in order to get through the day in that stuffy society.

Reading further though gives the reason she is eyes closed in some form of ecstasy, a adherent to some bizarre love cult. This Isabella back a few hundred years ago according to the English poet John Keats who got it from the ribald Italian storyteller Boccaccio had a plebian lover, a good worker for her father’s estate in Italy. A couple of brothers not crazy about kowtowing to a mere commoner killed the lover and buried him out in some ditch far away. Isabella bought their story that lover boy had drifted to the next best thing and had gotten pretty sullen and forlorn about her long-gone lover. Then in a dream, and here I suggest an opium dream or whatever elixir they got high on back then, she figured out the truth, the brothers had killed her lover. She went out and found the body, had the head and put it in the jar to keep forever, or as long as she lived. That is the public story but remember this is stone cold Italy in times when guys like Machiavelli suggested ways to get even with the bad guys. Isabella hired a couple of “hit men” to gain her revenge. And she got it. Then she could go back to her opium dreams and those gentle sensual, sexual caresses of her jarred lover’s head. I expect blowback on this idea but please, please don’t start with those accusations that these are the meanderings of a sex-crazed old lady.