Valentine’s Day, William Bouguereau, and Stobart Retrospective
February 13, 2010
L'Amoure et Psyche, Enfants by William Bouguereau
In honor of St. Valentine’ s Day this is William Bouguereau’s depiction of Cupid and Psyche. The mythical story of Cupid and Psyche first appeared in Lucius Apuleius’ The Golden Ass in the 2nd century A.D. Enraged by jealousy, the goddess Venus, orders her son Cupid to make the princess Psyche fall in love with a monster. Instead, Cupid falls in love with Psyche. After several celestial trials, Cupid convinces the gods to turn Psyche into an immortal so they can be married in the heavens. By depicting the lovers as infants Bouguereau seems to highlight the innocence, trust and companionship of true love which transcends physical attraction. Truly the stuff we celebrate on St. Valentine’s Day.
Pope Gelasius I officially declared Feb. 14th as the Feast of St. Valentine. This was in keeping with early Church practice of recasting pagan feast days. Here Pope Gelasius was recasting the Roman fertility festival, Lupercalia. There are three Catholic saints named Valentine, all three were martyrs and all three lived and died prior to the Pope’s declaration. So, it is not clear which saint the feast is actually named after. Scholars believe the saint of the holiday was a priest in Rome who fell into disfavor with Emperor Claudius II in about 270 A.D. Legend has it that Cladius prohibited marriage for young men claiming that bachelors made better soldiers. Fr. Valentine, who continued to perform marriage ceremonies in secret, was arrested and put to death. The feast day remained on the Catholic liturgical calendar until 1969 when the Church began removing feast days of saints whose historical origins are unclear.
I am basically off the hook on St. Valentine’s Day largely because my sweetheart and I celebrate our wedding anniversary on Feb. 7th. That date is significant because the year we were married in Tampa, Fl Feb. 7th was Gasparilla Day. Gasparilla Day is Tampa’s version of marde gras. It celebrates the day when the pirate Jose Gaspar (who may or may not be a myth himself) invaded the city raping and pillaging. An odd thing to celebrate, I know, but they do it with a parade and bead throwing, the whole nine yards. My wife and I rode through parade traffic in a limo from church to reception hall. We stood up through the sunroof of the limo and people tossed beads to us….ironically Penny caught one gaudy set of red beads in the shape of hearts. Great memories!
This year we celebrated our anniversary by spending a couple of days in Palm Beach, Fl. We chose Palm Beach because we wanted to see a retrospective on the work of painter John Stobart at the Society of the Four Arts. That show was fantastic. Stobart is a master of historical maritime paintings. If at all possible you should make the trip, see the exhibit before it leaves on Feb. 28th. If you do go, here is something to look for. Stobart, who at the age of 80 is doing arguably his best work, hides a little wine bottle in each painting. It was fun playing “find the bottle” as I got everyone in the gallery including the security guard involved.
An added benefit to the weekend was that the American International Fine Arts Fair was at the convention center in West Palm. We enjoyed browsing galleries from all over the world. We saw numerous paintings by a favorite , Daniel Ridgway Knight. We learned that Monet had a step daughter, Blanche Monet, who became his daughter-in-law, studied under his tutelage and copied his style. We watched a man debating whether to purchase an original Claude Monet based on if it was the right size. He even had the gallery attendant measure it. We saw a Bougoureau that was so grotesquely ill proportioned that I blurted out, in front of the gallery owner, “No way that’s a real Bouguereau.” He looked at me sideways to say the least. We also developed an appreciation for artists whose work we had not seen before: Antoine Bouvard, Dorthea Sharp, Edward Seago and Sir Alfred Munnings.
Oh, and while we were over there we ate at one of our favorite reastaurants, Cabana Noevo Latino. I highly reccomend this small chain out of NYC for it’s gourmet cuban style food, reasonable prices, eclectically austere atmosphere and wonderful cleanliness.
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