As I mentioned in an earlier post, with lots of mid-week closures throughout western MA we had a day to kill and weren’t quite sure how we were going to do it. Doing my research the night before really narrowed down the choices. It seems like the only thing open on this particular day was The Springfield Museums in Springfield, Massachusetts. It’s a series of four buildings, one for science, one for history, and two for art. In the end we only had time for the art buildings.
Erastus Salisbury Field
This rather large painting is what you see when you walk into the main gallery space in one of the buildings. Look at the train tracks in the sky!
Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde
Howard Cook
Paul Sample
I love this for so many reasons. Don’t you think it would make a good novel?
George Newell Bowers
You know I love lots of domestic details in my novels. Not to mention how perfect the room is.
George Newell Bowers
The subject is a little too “Newsies” for me to covet this one for my own walls, but I love all the background detail. I’m particularly taken with the glimpse of the hallway. As a historic preservationist by training, it is fascinating to see the vernacular detail in what is a rather simple, but probably fancy for where and what it was, hallway. Paintings of this period are more often filled with images of rooms like the one in the foreground, but not the circulation space beyond. Photos from the time similarly tend to overlook documenting something as mundane as a hallway, and even if they do, we don’t get to see them rendered in color like this.
Andrée Ruellan
This one I do covet for my own on so many levels. I’m always a sucker for urban scenes and domestic detail. It also stokes my desire to travel in time. And again, I’m realizing as I do this post, how most of the art I am drawn to and tack pictures of could be turned into novels. Not a novel of the painting, but what is happening in the painting. I’m going to say that little boy is with his grandmother.
hogglestock 
Nice paintings; thanks for posting them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I can so see the two paintings you mention as novels. So much going on. Wonderful art. Thank you for sharing them. I really enjoyed them. 💙💙💙
LikeLike
Ooh, I particularly like Church Supper and Sixth Avenue – thank you for sharing these!
LikeLike
I love that you posted these paintings – thank you! Made me smile and my heart sing looking at art. I loved Church Supper and View of the Marketplace with the Great Church at Haarlem – wow!
LikeLike
These and soooo many others can be seen at a jewel of a museum – Springfiield, MA Museum of Fine Art. Make a plan to do a road trip there .. and as a bonus there are three other museums adjoined to the first!
LikeLike