They dominate the room! “Who are those people?” That’s what visitors on my tours said immediately upon entering the third gallery of the French Moderns show at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. They were drawn to a pair of huge portraits, one of a man and one of a woman facing each other on the gallery’s walls.
The man is William S. Davenport. He was an American dental surgeon living and working in France in 1925 when his portrait was painted. The tiny red mark on his suit lapel represents the French Legion of Honor he was awarded for his work in the American Ambulance Core during World War I as the assistant chief of the facial and jaw reconstructive surgery division. He served as a dentist to the Belgian royal family and was one of the first dentists to have his testimony in court accepted for using dental records to identify human remains. According to his obituary Mr. Davenport was also an artist himself and good friends with the American painter James Whistler.
The artist who painted Mr. Davenport was Kees Van Dongen. He was born in Rotterdam where he worked in the family brewery, studying art in the evenings. He moved to Paris in 1897 and remained there for most of his life. He was part of the Fauve art movement whose artists were known for the use of bright color hence the bright red and blue markings on Mr. Davenport’s face. Kees Van Dongen was really more famous for painting portraits of women than men and when he was in his eighties painted an iconic one of French actress Brigitte Bardot. 
The woman is Florence Meyer Blumenthal. Florence was also an American living in Paris. She and her husband had one home in Paris, and another in the South of France but still maintained a home in New York as well. Florence Blumenthal was also awarded the French Legion of Honor in her case for donating money to a Paris Children’s Hospital and establishing the Prix Blumenthal a grant awarded each year to a young French artist to aid them financially and to draw the United States and France closer together through the arts. Florence was a sister to the publisher of the Washington Post Eugene Meyer and an aunt to his daughter Kay Graham(think the movie The Post) who eventually became the paper’s publisher. Florence and her husband George donated millions of dollars to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as well as to New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital in memory of their son George Jr. who died as a young boy.
The portrait of Florence Blumenthal was painted by Giovanni Boldini an Italian artist who moved to Paris in 1872 and was good friends with impressionist painter Edgar Degas. Interestingly like Mr. Davenport, the dentist, Boldini was also good friends with the American artist James Whistler and Boldini’ s portrait of Whistler is a part of the Brooklyn Museum collection as are the portraits of Davenport and Blumenthal. In almost all his portraits of women Boldini has them pose in evening gowns. According to an article in The Daily Art Magazine Boldini used swirling loose brushstrokes to have those gowns take on a life of their own. His nickname was The Master of Swish.
If you haven’t already been to see the French Moderns exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery you need to come. These portraits are only two of the many intriguing artworks on display.
Other posts…..
I am from skinny- dipping in the dark, gin rummy games in the glow of the kerosene lamp and six cousins up on skis behind the boat
I am from swimming through seaweed, the lake itch, a salt- shaker for the eels, washing and drying dishes, building forts, planting pines, swamping the Pepper and catching frogs
I’m from charades, jig saw puzzles, Monopoly, the sand pile, the tire swing and my nose in a pile of Readers Digest condensed books and old National Geographics
I am from Segne Vater, Komm Herr Jesu, Johnny Appleseed and God is Great before meals, church at the camp on Sunday morning, and the neighbor coming to ask Dad to get the fishhook out of his hand
I am from hot nights and canoeing down the path of the full moon, chocolate chip cookies, Dad making eggs to order with bacon, and roasted marshmallows 
Hanging on the wall was the cabin journal adorned with birch bark and berries- stories from a family haven- the one constant place in my life.
I could not put this book down. I read it in one fell swoop neglecting everything else I was supposed to be doing. Now I am trying to figure out why I was so engrossed. Maybe it was because…………
In the early 1990s our family visited Walden Pond where the famous writer Henry David Thoreau made his home. We each wrote our dreams for the future on the rocks there. Supposedly the rain would wash our dreams into the water of the lake and they would come true. The wishes I wrote that day still haven’t materialized but I’m glad I don’t know what my future holds because that allows me to live in hope that someday my dreams will be fulfilled. 
I’ve just added She Persisted Around the World to our church library. The book written by Chelsea Clinton and illustrated by Alexandra Boiger tells the stories of thirteen women from around the world who persisted despite all kinds of barriers placed in their way. 
Some of the women are familiar like Marie Curie twice awarded the Noble Prize for her discovery of two new scientific elements. She persisted despite the fact she had to leave her home country to study. 
Another familiar woman is English author J.K. Rowling who persisted in writing her award winning series of Harry Potter books despite being rejected by dozens of publishers. 
Other women featured in the book are not so familiar like Caroline Hershel an astronomer who discovered two planets. She persisted in studying astronomy even though her parents thought she should try to get a job as a servant. 
Another woman I hadn’t heard about before was Sissi Luna do Amor one of the first women to play soccer professionally in Brazil. She persisted even though she got in trouble for wanting to play because she was a girl. 
There is even a section in the book about Canada’s own Viola Desmond who persisted in retaining her seat in the “white” section of a movie theater even though she was black. 
“She Persisted” is the famous phrase directed at American Senator Elizabeth Warren when she insisted on reading a letter from Coretta Scott King to the Senate as a way to defend her objection to the appointment of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. Sessions had an abysmal record on civil rights which had previously prevented him from being appointed as a federal court judge. The Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell called for a vote to silence Senator Warren. He said he had no choice because she wouldn’t listen to him. “She persisted” he said and kept reading the letter. The phrase “she persisted” has quickly come to refer to women’s persistence in breaking barriers despite being silenced or ignored. 
On Monday my friend Esther and I met in Assiniboine Park to sketch. Esther had picked a spot with a great view of The Pavilion. We spent an hour and half or so creating our own versions of the scene. 
One of the things I really liked about the Nelson Mandela display at the Canadian Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg is the way it provides the visitor with a variety of experiences to draw you into the story of the fight to end apartheid in South Africa. 
You can sit on a park bench clearly labeled For Europeans Only and read information about what it was like for a black woman to work as a domestic servant or a black man to be a miner in Johannesburg. Photos show how they were given unsanitary cramped living quarters and made to wear an identification bracelet with a number assigned by their employer. 
You can stand in a cell like the one where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for twenty- seven years. As silhouettes of Nelson appear on the walls you almost feel like you are with him on Robben Island where he was imprisoned because of his activism and leadership in the anti-apartheid movement. 
You can sit on chairs in a secret hideout and watch Nelson Mandela do a television interview with a British journalist at 2:00 am in 1961. 
Mandela had gone underground after been convicted of treason for his peaceful protests against apartheid. 
You can make a poster. A display features a whole variety of posters that helped to advance the ideals of the anti-apartheid movement. 
On an interactive board you can choose from many different options to create a background, wording and illustrations and create an anti-apartheid poster of your very own. If you take a photo you could even print up your poster at home.
You can write a letter. As you leave the display you watch young South Africans share their hopes and dreams for the future of their country. After being inspired by what Nelson Mandela did to bring about change in his community you have the opportunity to write a letter saying what you will do to change your community for the better. Letter writing paper, felt markers and even colorful envelopes are available and once you have written your message you can either keep it or ‘mail’ it to the world in the mail slot provided. 
The Nelson Mandela exhibit is informative and thought-provoking and provides opportunity for hands on involvement. Since experiencing the exhibit I’ve been thinking a lot about how the South African colonizers knew ending apartheid would also end their comfortable and successful way of life. Their story reminds us that people are always susceptible to following their basest instincts of self-survival and self- promotion even if that damages others and is not fair or ethical. Sadly it is still a timely message in our present day.
“Who is she?” While giving a tour of The French Moderns exhibit at the Winnipeg Art Gallery a woman stayed behind to ask me about a painting that intrigued her. It was called Femme au Foulard or Woman With A Scarf. She thought the woman in the painting looked sort of mysterious and melancholy. The gallery visitor had never heard of Marie Laurencin the artist and I had to confess I hadn’t either. I thanked the woman for her interest and promised I’d find out more about Marie Laurencin. 
What Next? 