I have had a postcard of this wonderful painting for several years. Probably at least a decade or more. When I decided to make it the focus of my Sunday Painting today I looked at the artist’s website and was happily surprised to see that she has done many book related paintings. She even did a six-panel mural at New York University that shows the bookish surroundings of six different writers. This one below is of Edith Wharton but she also did one for Zora Neale Hurston, Jane Jacobs, and three others. You can see them all here.

   
Months ago the scanner died interrupting my weekly “Sunday Painting” feature. I am happy to say the scanner has been replaced and the show can go on. I wasn’t sure what I was going to post this week for the return of this venerable institution, but last night I watched Tony Palmer’s documentary on Benjamin Britten, “A Time There Was”.

I have long been a fan of composer Benjamin Britten, his life partner and tenor Peter Pears, and this touching painting of the two of them from 1943. Watching this documentary last night reminded me of Britten’s brilliance and the brilliance of their professional partnership. It also gave wonderful insight into the deep and loving personal relationship they maintained over 40 years. And this 67-year old portrait of a prominent gay couple is nothing less than a revelation.

   
Since I fell in love with this marvelous portrait by John Singer Sargent at the National Gallery of Scotland in 1997, I have seen it crop up in many places and on many a book cover. But perhaps the most interesting literary tie-in that I have come across is in the movie Mrs. Dalloway where the young Clarissa (played by Natascha McElhone) wears a gown identical to the one Lady Agnew is wearing in the portrait.  Oddly enough the film came out the same year I first saw the painting, but I think I saw the film first. So it wasn’t until about a year ago when John and I made a double feature of Mrs. Dalloway and the The Hours that I noticed (with an assist from the ‘pause’ button) that the young Clarissa was wearing this gown. The pause feature on the DVD also came in handy during the viewing of The Hours when I noticed that Julianne Moore’s character had a copy of Iris Murdoch’s Under the Net next to her bed, which wasn’t actually published until a year or two after the time of the action in the film. But I digress, on to the lovely Lady Agnew…

  
All of my recent reading about the English countryside has me in mind of grand old trees and lovely pastoral scenes. This particular landscape is not in England but it certainly could be.

  
This week for my Sunday Painting I decided on something rural and Springy. We spent the last 24 hours out in rural Maryland, about 10 miles from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Friends of ours own Whitmore Farm and we had a wonderful time with them collecting, washing, sizing, and sorting these beautiful eggs. Plus we helped tag a lamb that was born over night, clip and clean goat hooves, and move new born chicks out of the incubators into their warm halfway house before they head out doors to begin their lives lunching on grass. With all these English Journey books I am reading, I felt right at home on the farm.

It kills me that we forgot the camera at home since the farm was so green and lush, much like this beautiful image of Marin County, California.

  
Several years ago we were in Provincetown, Massachusetts when I stumbled on this postcard at the William Scott Gallery. I don’t even recall if we saw any of Daphne Confar’s works on display, but I was obviously taken with this image, and still am.

Doesn’t she look like a character just waiting for a novel?

   
A few weeks ago we were at the world-famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. (Don’t worry, no one is sick.) Mayo has a pretty extensive art collection scattered throughout the clinic campus. These particular works by Carrie Crane really stood out for me. I even crossed a room to get a closer look. I like the boldness of them and the pastoral landscape subjects. To me, they have a bit of a Grant Wood quality.

This is kind of how DC looks right now, things on the ground are greening up and some of the early bloomers like the tulip magnolias are starting to bloom, but most of the trees are still sticks.

  
This weekend we took a road trip up to Philadelphia for the annual flower show. I thought it only fitting then that this week’s Sunday Painting be of flowers. This beautiful still life is from the Mauritshuis in Den Haag, which we visited back in October.

  
Back in January, Linda over at Under the Gables did a blog post about the romance of laundry. She posted a bunch of wonderful images depicting the act of doing laundry. As most of you know I destest doing laundry, but I kind of like hanging laundry out on a clothesline. And I love depictions of clotheslines in art. When Linda first blogged about these images, somewhere in the back of my brain I recalled that I had post card of a great painting of a woman hanging clothes on a line, but I couldn’t remember where I put it. Last week I finally uncovered the card and decided to make it my Sunday Painting for the week. I haven’t posted a Sunday Painting since before we went to Thailand so it is about time I get back on schedule and return to this regular weekly feature.

The title of this painting is particularly appropriate since Linda’s blog is “Dedicated to Discussion of Women and their Work.”