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4C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2016 PARTING SHOT FROM DANNY MILLER A weekly snapshot from The Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer photographers A flock of birds takes flight near the South Jetty of the Columbia River at Fort Stevens State Park in June. ODDITY Flower power Exhibit combines Impressionist gardens and paintings By KATHERINE ROTH Associated Press N EW YORK — Many American painters, inspired by French Impressionists at the turn of the 20th century, locked from East Coast cities to sun-dap- pled garden havens in places like Appledore, Maine; Old Lyme, Connecticut; and Long Island’s East End. The gardens they sought, known as “grandmother’s gar- dens,” were utterly unlike the formal Victorian gardens of the time. These were homey, Colonial-era lower gardens, densely packed with bright and abundant blooms red and orange poppies and enormous peonies in pastel pinks and purples set against backdrops of towering blue delphin- ium, digitalis with their tiny bell-shaped white and purple blooms, and yellow sunlow- ers. The delicate foreground might include violas, calendu- las and violet sage. Grandmother’s gardens were designed so that no mat- ter what season, something was always blossoming and bright, with blooms planted close to houses and porches to encourage lingering, touching, tinkering and inhaling. “Impressionism: Ameri- can Gardens on Canvas” is a multi-disciplinary show at the New York Botanical Garden, in the Bronx, through Sept. 11. Along with lowers, it includes 20 Impressionist paintings inspired by such gardens. Bold, painterly strokes Artists featured in the New York Botanical Garden’s Rotunda gallery include Wil- liam Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam and John Singer Sar- gent among others. Some of them gardened, and all were known for their skill at paint- ing outdoors and for bold, painterly brushstrokes. “The positive reception of Impressionism in the United States coincided with a bur- geoning garden culture, and these interpretations of well- tended residential gardens res- onated with American ideas of the good life,” said guest cura- tor Linda S. Ferber, a senior art historian at the New-York His- torical Society. The paintings are easy on the eyes, she said: “Americans have always had a sweet spot for landscape, which carries many messages about national and cultural identity. Here, we can see how deeply enmeshed in the American psyche gar- dening was.” Impressionism was consid- ered edgy in its day, which was the same era when the New York Botanical Garden, now celebrating its 125th anniver- sary, was founded, along with some of the East Coast’s most famous parks, museums and gardens. Public-minded spirit The paintings, gardens and optimistic, public-minded spirit of the time are captured in two books published to coin- cide with the show: “Impres- sionism: American Gardens on Canvas” (New York Botanical Garden, 2016), about the fea- tured painters and paintings; and “The New York Botani- cal Garden” (Abrams, 2016), about the garden’s history. Preparing for the show Robert Benson/New York Botanical Garden via AP A Colonial-era style garden, or “grandmother’s garden,” planted around the facade of a house inside the Botanical Garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory in New York. William de Leftwich Dodge’s painting “The Artist’s Garden.” William de Leftwich Dodge/ Neville-Strass Collection/ New York Botanical Garden via AP Edmund William Greacen/Private Collection/New York Botanical Garden via AP Edmund William Greacen’s painting “In Miss Florence’s Garden.” involved training a dizzying array of lowers to bloom all at once for maximum impact. That took much of the past three years, numerous green- houses and the garden’s enor- mous team of experts, who grew and trained around 50,000 plants for the exhibit. “In real life, you would never see all these lowers blooming at the same time. It’s a living work of art, an ideal garden in perpetuity. So don’t try this at home,” said Todd A. Forrest, the garden’s vice pres- ident for horticulture and liv- ing collections. “And many are lowering off-season, so don’t expect to see them in the shop.” Once a week, whole sec- tions of the garden are replaced, if needed, so the display continues to looks perfect. “The result is that if you squint, you should be able to see a living Impressionist gar- den,” Forrest said. A model porch To put the grandmother’s garden in context, much of the exhibit is nestled around a model porch, the type of archi- tecture often included in the backdrop of American Impres- sionist paintings. “We invented an Impres- sionist garden from whole cloth intimate, comfortable and colorful, so that walking through the doors it evokes the brilliance and boldness featured in so many Impres- sionist gardens,” explained Forrest. The exhibit is accompanied by a program of poetry, lec- tures, tours, music, dance and even an “1891 Ale House,” offering snacks and drinks in keeping with the era. 3 W AY S TO GE T Y O U R CO PY TOD AY ! OR DER ON LIN E w w w .DiscoverO urCoast.com /order S TOP BY ON E OF OU R 3 LOCATION S A storia • 949 Exchange St. Seaside • 1555 N . Roosevelt Dr. Long Beach • 205 Bolstad A ve. E. #2 o r CALL HOLLY LAR K IN S at 503-325-3211, x227 Em ail: hlarkins@ dailyastorian.com
