Hungry for some art? Get creative in your kitchen! Master the art of making beautiful focaccia bread inspired by works in our collection. We recommend Samin Nosrat’s recipe for focaccia, which you can find here. Remember to plan ahead! This bread requires up to 14 hours to proof before baking.
Tips for making your focaccia:
When activating yeast, make sure water is lukewarm (between 105°–115°F).
After adding the brine, let it soak for at least 5 minutes before adding herbs and vegetables on top of the focaccia.
When creating your design, keep in mind that most vegetables will shrink during baking.
Practice re-creating your image on a piece of wax paper first. When you are happy with your design, transfer it to the focaccia dough just before baking.
Miniature Painting – A White-Eared Bulbul (Pycnonotus Leucogenys) Perched on a Rock Under a Slender Tree, 1671, work on paper, The Keir Collection of Islamic Art on loan to the Dallas Museum of Art, K.1.2014.775
Food used to re-create the artwork:
2 baby yellow sweet peppers
2 shallots
2 baby purple carrots
1 white radish
1 pink radish
Half of a red onion
Half of a yellow bell pepper
Half a cup pitted green olives
Half a cup pitted kalamata olives
Scallions
Cilantro leaves
Manji Inoue, Amalmon Inaiz XIII, Vase, n.d., glazed porcelain, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Edward Mattil, 2012.28
Food used to re-create the artwork:
6 cherry tomatoes
3 baby yellow carrots
3 baby purple carrots
1 red bell pepper
1 yellow bell pepper
1 shallot
Cilantro leaves
Chives
Mughal, Textile Fragment, 18th century, silk and metal embroidery, The Keir Collection of Islamic Art on loan to the Dallas Museum of Art, K.1.2014.1282
Museum exhibitions serve different purposes. Some do heavy lifting in the field of new scholarship about unknown or understudied artists or cultures. Others may capitalize on strengths in the museum’s collection and, thereby, present a richer, contextual understanding of an artistic movement. And yet others present to our visitors works by artists that address gaps in our own permanent collection—a role beautifully fulfilled by the present exhibition, Pursuit of Beauty: The May Family Collection. I would like to focus on a few works and what—besides their apparent beauty—makes them special to me.
William Merritt Chase, Weary, c. 1889, oil on panel, The Collection of Eleanor and C. Thomas May, Jr., 114.2019.17
Gertrude Fiske, Contemplation, before 1916, oil on canvas, The Collection of Eleanor and C. Thomas May, Jr.
Weary (1889),a small interior scene by William Merritt Chase is a quintessential example of the artist’s skills of observation that also provides us a peek into his well-appointed studio in Manhattan. Chase was not striving to make a narrative here. The subject is beauty alone—of a sitter placed within a beautiful setting full of patterns and textures. The large Japanese screen in the background, the plush velvet of the cushion beneath her feet, the sparkle of gilding on the armature of the chair, and the gleam of light on the large vase in the background at right, are all effects that lure and please the eye. A wonderful counterpoint to Chase’s creation is Contemplation (1915) by Gertrude Fiske, an artist trained in Boston. While it too presents a contemplative woman set in an interior, the artist is presenting to us a modern woman for the new age. Using complimentary colors of orange and green to frame the sitter, the crisp striped wallpaper effectively foregrounds her. Fiske further illuminates her with light flooding in from the upper left, which simultaneously bathes her face and torso in yellow that reflects off the material at the right edge.
Theodore Robinson, Miss Motes and Her Dog Shep in a Boat, 1893, oil on canvas, The Collection of Eleanor and C. Thomas May, Jr.
John Henry Twachtman, Frozen Brook, 1893, oil on canvas, The Collection of Eleanor and C. Thomas May, Jr., 114.2019.12
American Impressionism is underrepresented at the DMA and two works within the May Family Collection created in the exact same year offer comparison of two artists whose means (light & brushwork), achieved different ends. Theodore Robinson’s small canvas of Miss Motes and Her Dog Shep in a Boat (1893) is an oil sketch by the first and most important of the American Impressionists to paint alongside Monet at Giverny between 1886 and 1892. Robinson’s intent was to capture an individual in a fleeting moment and his quick touches of brushwork fix her at a point in time as well as evoking the optical effect of forms blurred in reflection on the dappled surface of the water. InFrozen Brook (1893), John Twachtman also endeavored to capture a particular moment, but his motivation was to capture the atmospheric and emotive effects of a winter’s day. His brushwork is more varied, complex, and labor intensive (daubed, scumbled, and dragged) to conjure the optical effect of heavy, wet snow on the cusp of spring, when all is blanketed in contemplative silence.
I do hope that you will come to the DMA to explore these five works for yourselves, along with the other twenty-three now on view.
Sue Canterbury is The Pauline Gill Sullivan Curator of American Art and Interim Allen and Kelli Questrom Curator of Works on Paper at the DMA.
