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Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun, Self-Portrait with Cerise Ribbons, c. 1782, Kimbell Art Museum Vigée-Le Brun: Woman Artist of Revolutionary France is major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum until May 15.  Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun's Self-Portrait from the Kimbell Art Museum explains her quite well. She shines with the confidence and elegance of a woman who would eventually become an international superstar. It shows off her top-notch artistic skills. Touches of brilliant red for the ribbon, sash, lips and cheeks to add sensual pizzaz. Portraits are not my favorite genre of painting, but Vigée-Le Brun's portraits are always dazzling. The light radiating through her earring is just the right touch. One reason we never hear her mentioned among France's top ten or twenty painters is that she was a painter of royalty who supported the wrong side of the French Revolution.  It is only last year that France gave her a major retrospective, although her international reputation w...

Mary Cassatt, La Loge, 1878-79 Mary Cassatt was several years younger than Edgar Degas, but when he saw her work he exclaimed, "Here's someone who sees as I do."   Currently, the National Gallery is showing Cassatt side by side with Degas, comparing how they two worked together and shared.  Both are remarkable portrait artists. Like Manet and Morisot, their relationship was especially helpful for each of them reach the fullness of artistic vision.  They spent about ten years working closing together.  As their artistic visions changed, they grew in different directions.  They share same daring sense of composition. Both are excellent portrait artists.  I just finished reading Impressionist Quartet , by Jeffrey Meyers.  It's the story of Manet, Morisot, Degas and Cassatt: their biographies, their art and their interdependence. Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt Degas and Manet were good friends, too, and had a friendly competition. They had much in common, ...

Rania Hassan, Pensive I, II, III , 2009, oil, fiber, canvas, metal wood,  Each piece is 31"h x 12"w x 2-1/2"  It's currently on view at Greater Reston Arts Center. There's a revival of status and attention given to traditional, highly-skilled arts and crafts made of yarn, thread and materials. "Stitch," a new show at Greater Reston Arts Center ( GRACE ), proves that traditional sewing arts are at the forefront of contemporary art, and that fiber is a forceful vehicle for expression.  Meanwhile, the National Museum of Women in the Arts puts the historical spin on traditional women's art in " Workt by Hand ," a collection of stunning quilts from the Brooklyn Museum which were shown in exhibition at their home museum last year. Bars Quilt , ca. 1890, Pennsylvania; Cotton and wool, 83 x 82"; Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. H. Peter Findlay, 77.122.3; Photography by Gavin Ashworth, 2012 / Brooklyn Museum Quilts are normally very lar...

Manet, The Repose , 1870, Rhode Island School of Design.    Berthe Morisot is at rest, but the seascape behind her could symbolize an inner restlessness behind her calm demeanor.  Why hasn't the love story of painters Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot been told in film?  (Both Manet and Morisot are represented in large numbers at the exhibition, Imp ressionism, Fashion and Modernity , formerly at Musée d' Orsay, but no w at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC and onto the Art Institu te of Chicago this s ummer.  M orisot was the sub ject of a large retrospective at Musée Mar mottan Monet, Paris , last year , and her work , like much Impressionism, is so much better when viewed in real life rather than reproduction.) Manet, a "people person" and painter of people, is the one artist of the past I would wish to meet above all others.  Morisot, one of his muses, is the artist with whom I empathize more than any other.  She loved in a painful way,...