Lake Isle of Innisfree by Yeats and Arcadia

Pastorale ou Jeune berger dans un paysage, Francois Boucher

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee loud glade.

The Setting of the Sun, 1752, Francois Boucher

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

Et in Arcadia ego, 1637-38, Nicolas Poussin, Oil on Canvas, Louvre Museum, Paris, France

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
                     
~ W.B. Yeats

Yeats, like most of us yearned for an Arcadia, a Innisfree of sorts.... Yet he knew, like the last part of his poem that we must stand on the roadway where the pavement is grey and dream in our heart of that Pastoral and Arcadia in our heart. Without dreamers like Poussin, Boucher, and Yeats all would be grey, but with them and with us we have rich colors, buttery brushstrokes, beautiful dreams, and art to lose ourselves in.... even if for a short time.

To all my dreamers, artists, poets, writers, and lovers of life - keep making life beautiful, A Girl Named Fred

Bond and Free - Frost & Francois Boucher

'Fountain of Venus', 1756, Francois Boucher, French Oil on Canvas
CopyRight at bottom of page from Cleveland Museum of Art

Bond and Free


Love has earth to which she clings 
With hills and circling arms about-- 
Wall within wall to shut fear out. 
But Though has need of no such things, 
For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings. 


On snow and sand and turn, I see 
Where Love has left a printed trace 
With straining in the world's embrace. 
And such is Love and glad to be 
But Though has shaken his ankles free. 


Though cleaves the interstellar gloom 
And sits in Sirius' disc all night, 
Till day makes him retrace his flight 
With smell of burning on every plume, 
Back past the sun to an earthly room. 


His gains in heaven are what they are. 
Yet some say Love by being thrall 
And simply staying possesses all 
In several beauty that Thought fares far 
To find fused in another star.


~Robert Frost, 1916

The Toilet of Venus, 1751, Francois Boucher, French, Oil on Canvas
Copy Rights at the end of this post from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Boucher utilized earth tones for the background and drapery around Venus so that when he used his delicate tones on Venus the viewer is immediately drawn to her.  The diagonal lines and implied lines draw the viewers' eyes around the canvas noting every detail of her toilet.  Boucher is famous for his use of color to portray a mythical event which invites the viewer into a world which is only achievable through art.  


Boucher's portrayal of Venus, the goddess of love, is in her toilet and as a fountain (in the painting above) grounding in earth and in earthly things.  This is quite common in portraying Venus after her 'birth'.  In relation to Frost's poetry the two artists are actually portraying a similar theme.... love exists here, on earth.... grounded by nature and our human needs and desires...


Frost initially compares love as being bound and confined while thought is free.... Love leaves marks as in the sand and snow... Thought has shaken it's ankle free.... By the 4th stanza Frost begins to show that thoughts must travel to the stars "And sit in Sirius' disc all night, Till day makes him retrace his flight..." while love in stanza 5 does not have to leave to effect anyone, it possesses all without ever going anywhere... Frost is emphasizing the importance of love and gentleness as thought is shackled without love...




Fountain of Venus, Boucher - This image was provided by The Cleveland Museum of Art. Contact information: Kathleen Kornell, Rights and Reproductions Coordinator, The Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Blvd., Cleveland OH 44106, (216) 707-2498 (ph), (216) 421-8815 (fax), Kkornell@clevelandart.org. 

The Toilet of Venus, Boucher -This image was provided by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Contact information: Image Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028, (212) 396-5050 (fax), Scholars.License@MetMuseum.org Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art 

Vulcan Presenting Venus with Arms for Aeneas by Francois Boucher

Vulcan Presenting Venus with Arms for Aeneas, Francois Boucher, 1757,
Oil on Canvas, 321 x 320 cm, Musee du Louvre

Venus' husband, Vulcan, the god of fire and the forge crafted arms for Aeneas at her pleading for his battle with Turnus.  Virgil writes of Aeneas in 'The Aeneid', the son of the Trojan mortal Anchises and Venus, the goddess of beauty and erotic love.  Aeneas is bestowed with divine protection because of Venus. He is chosen to survive the siege of Troy and to lay the foundations in Italy for the glory of the Roman Empire. In the Aeneid, Aeneas’s fate as Rome’s founder propels the story forward and the sequence of events frequently conveys that Aeneas’s heroism is to be indebted as much to his legacy as to his own choices and deeds. Aeneas provides the medium for the fates to carry out its design.  Boucher utilizes his creamy brush strokes and rich colorization to bring to life the mythological history of the exchange of the armor made for Venus' son who is half mortal and half god.  Although this is a Rococo period work, the elements of the Baroque style are still evident in the dramatic triangles, implied diagonal lines criss crossing the canvas, and the bottom of the canvas appearing as if the viewer could step into this dreamy world of gods, goddesses, putti, and myth.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and The Vegetable Vendor

The Vegetable Vendor, Francois Boucher, 1735, Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA, USA

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love 

Come live with me and be my love,

And we will all the pleasures prove

That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,

Woods, or steepy mountains yields.

And we will sit upon rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,

By shallow rivers to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses 

And a thousand fragrant poises,

A cap of flowers, and a kirtle

Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool

Which from our pretty lambs we pull;

Fair lined slippers for the cold,

With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy buds,

With coral clasps and amber studs;

And if these pleasures may thee move,

Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherds's swains shall dance and sing

For they delight each may morning:

If these delights thy mind may move,

Then live with me and be my love.

Christopher Marlowe, 1599

Much like the poem of the Passionate Shepherd captured by Christopher Marlow portrays a leisurely life of fanciful days in the fields with a lover, Boucher captured the essence of the Rococo period in the Vegetable Vendor painting.  The myrtle leaves to which Marlow refers are known as belonging to the Myrtle tree, the sacred tree of Venus, the goddess of love.  Rococo art emphasized the portrayal of the serene country life the French aristocracy craved.  The theatrical setting; a lively use of line and balance; and a delicate palette of colors characterized the style.  The Vegetable Vendor has an overwhelming effect on the viewer.  The large canvas painted entirely in smooth, flowing brushstrokes with a beautiful array of color envelope and draw in the audience.  The invitation of the painting to join the idyllic scene is answered by the viewer as they stop to gaze around this fanciful scene.

Boucher incorporated an expanded delicate pallet of colors to create this idyllic bucolic painting.  As the majority of the canvas is covered in earth tones, delicate pastel hues, and low value colors the viewers’ eyes are immediately drawn to the Vendor’s burnt red-orange jacket in the lower left side of the canvas.  Even though this is a somewhat muted hue of burnt red-orange, in comparison to the pastel blue sky; the muted earth tones of the ground; the umber and tan tree bursting into the billowy clouds; and the pale skin of the maid; the jacket stands out and draws the viewer into their world. The maid, clothed in a pale blue dress with matching hair band is holding a large light value green cabbage with a dark hue of green to highlight the shape of the cabbage in her left hand. The amorous couple lounge on a white sheet in the hay as the Vendor displays his produce.  Directly behind the couple is a young girl wearing a cream scarf, a light blue dress with an even lighter value blue hair bonnet resting on the neck of a mule. The mule is richly decorated with fabrics and ornaments of tan, peach-pink, blue and gold. Echoing the peach-pink color are flowers located behind the maid.  Dominating the background of this scene are trees with leaves of a deep hue green on the left and golden leaves closer to the center with tan, brown, and umber branches reaching into the pastel sky overlooking the entire scene.   In the middle ground on the right of the canvas the view is expanded further into this idyllic landscape to encompass the misty blue mountains and a blue-grey water falls flowing over dark gray rocks.  All the elements of color on this canvas create a magical, idyllic yet unachievable world created through art.

The painting’s effect on the viewer is enhanced via the placement of the subjects in the painting. Boucher placed the subjects of the painting in the lower left hand and lower middle ground of the canvas as if they were sitting “down stage” at the theater.  He further enhanced the viewers’ involvement in this dream world by painting his background in an impossibly perfect sky, much like a backdrop at a theater performance. The subjects therefore appear directly in front of the viewer, drawing them in to their Arcadian world.  

Boucher utilized the Baroque diagonals to visually draw the viewers’ attention around the painting. Two on the main diagonals occur in the background with the tip of the mountain on the left of the canvas running diagonally right to the waterfalls of the right mid-ground and the tip of the umber and tan branches in the upper right of the background running down to the left side of the canvas drawing the viewers’ attention back to the subjects and the context of the theme.  While the diagonals draw the viewers’ attention round the painting, the three figures in the painting create a small triangle in the foreground balancing the painting visually.  Additionally balancing the painting are the Vendor’s products including a basket of eggs; various vegetables; a brass and copper pot and pan; two wooden barrels placed on both the right and left of the canvas; goats; and a clay pot on the left are all placed along the foreground directly in front of the subjects. 

Boucher’s response to the desires of the Rococo in France for an idyllic Arcadian world in which to escape was successful in The Vegetable Vendor.  His painting was full of beautiful, yet unattainable visions of the carefree life of the shepherd and shepherdess the aristocrats so craved.  Boucher was a personification of the Rococo and skillfully conveyed the mind-set of his audience.

Ode to Psyche ~ Keats

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung 
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
 And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear: 


Surely I dreamt today, or did I see
 

The winged Psyche with awakened eyes? 
I wandered in a forest thoughtlessly,
 And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
 Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side 
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof
 

Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
 

A brooklet, scarce espied:



Psyché ranimée par le baiser de l'Amour, 1757,  Antonio CANOVA - Possagno, Venise, 1822

© Musée du Louvre/P. Philibert

A Closer Look, Louvre

'Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,


They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;


Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu,


As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,


And ready still past kisses to outnumber


At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:


The winged boy I knew;


But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove? 


His Psyche true!



O latest born and loveliest vision far


Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!


Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-regioned star,


Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,


Nor altar heaped with flowers;


Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan


Upon the midnight hours;


No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet


From chain-swung censer teeming;


No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat


Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming.



Cupid and Psyche, 1808, oil on canvas, Benjamin West, On Auction at Christies at Present

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,


Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,


When holy were the haunted forest boughs,


Holy the air, the water, and the fire;


Yet even in these days so far retired


From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,


Fluttering among the faint Olympians,


I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.


So let me be thy choir, and make a moan


Upon the midnight hours;


Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet


From swinged censer teeming;


Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat


Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming.



Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane


In some untrodden region of my mind,


Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,


Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:


Far, far around shall those dark-clustered trees


Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;


And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,


The moss-lain dryads shall be lulled to sleep;


And in the midst of this wide quietness


A rosy sanctuary will I dress

The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, 1744, Francois Boucher


With the wreathed trellis of a working brain,


With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,


With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,


Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:


And there shall be for thee all soft delight


That shadowy thought can win,


A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,


To let the warm Love in!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What interested Keats particularly in the myth was the fact that Psyche, a mortal, achieved immortality through love.

Sculpture - Antonio CANOVA - Possagno, 1757 - Venise, 1822

Psyché ranimée par le baiser de l'Amour

© Musée du Louvre/P. Philibert

Painting - Benjamin West, Cupid and Psyche, 1808

Painting - Francois Boucher, The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, 1744

We

As grown humans philosophy ner' occur -

            irrevocably, uniquely are we 

Whence upbringing, socialization strain -

            individuality, spirituality wane

Earthly morals, norms, insecurities lend –

loss of self, spirituality, Zen

Akin boxes we conform -

mourning

With age miracles fade – 

mercifully

til’, prepared we are to see

Introspection -

Love,

Hope,

Pray

Move - 

stir anew what lies dormant

Lovingness, Lightness, Joy –

Hopefulness, Wonderment, Glee

Reawaken souls, 

Irrevocably, Uniquely

We ~ A Girl Named Fred

Francois Boucher, Pygmalion and Galatea