Sargent, Whistler & Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano
Mystic Seaport Museum • Mystic, CT • mysticseaport.org • Through February 27, 2023
Among over 115 artworks on view at Mystic Seaport Museum’s exhibition Sargent, Whistler & Venetian Glass sits Murano, Hermann Dudley Murphy’s 1907-dated painting of the titular island off of Venice, plunged into an impossibly thick wash of fog. Rendered in an emblematic blue that both signals nocturnal dimness and morning’s luminosity, the seascape veils the island of incomparable glass mastery with a malleability not indifferent from molten lava’s pliable nature during its metamorphosis into rigid glass.
The exhibition, which features paintings, drawings, and prints, in addition to glass objects, assumes the late 19th century American artists’ fascination for Murano glassmaking tradition to explore the formation of mobility, cultural exchange, patronage, and art commerce among the era’s intelligentsia. In doing so, the juxtapositions of flamboyant Venetian canals, locals in idyllic postures, and ornate glass vessels—blown by Murano masters such as Giuseppe Barovier or Toso Brothers and collected by Americans—chronicle the blossoming of an American art determined to carve its global footprint whilst looking up to Europe for criteria of aesthetic and inspiration.
John Singer Sargent, who was in fact born in Florence to American parents, commences the show with a 1913-dated, lucidly-illustrated oil painting of Church of San Stae in which the building’s marble facade is washed with a dramatic veneer of sunlight and shadow. La Serenissima’s aquatic marvel inspired Maurice Brazil Prendergast both in canvas and glass. The Canadian born painter’s one-year-and-a-half sojourn in the Queen of the Adriatic in 1898 yielded two renditions of Venetians walking on the Riva degli Schiavoni with brightly-colored parasols. In the oil painting, circular umbrellas dot the crossing while the passersby in lavish dresses march toward a line of cafes facing the St. Mark’s Basin. The bird’s-eye view is rather abstracted in its glass and ceramic mosaic tile adaptation (1899) with a medley of rounded and geometric bits: umbrellas are minimized into densely arranged circles, blended with brown or blue rectangular tiles reminiscing the cobblestones and the sea that blanket the city. The sun that illuminates the water filling the canals finds a similar echo in glass when the light hits the blue mosaics in a similar gleam.
—Osman Can Yerebakan