You have to hand it to the people at The Baker Museum at Artis—Naples, perhaps along with a nice box of chocolates or those little candy hearts with sayings on them. February, as we all know, is the month of love and romance. Now, it’s also been designated as National Creative Romance Month. And they have the perfect exhibition on tap to embrace that concept. “Love Stories from the National Portrait Gallery, London” opens on Feb. 4. Filling the museum’s entire third floor, the exhibit takes a delicious — and dishy — look at the topics of love and romance from all sorts of perspectives. The hundred or so objects on view range from centuries-old grand manner paintings of marriageable aristocrats dressed in their finest ruffles and frills to a video portrait of soccer star David Beckham sleeping, made in 2004. Dreamy, that.
Normally, we’d never have an opportunity to see artworks of this historic caliber so close to home. But this show is on tour while the National Portrait Gallery in London is closed for renovations. “These are not works that are usually tucked away in storage,” says Courtney McNeil, executive director of the Baker Museum. “These are top-tier works from their collection.”
The show is organized by themes rather than chronologically. It’s loosely grouped into sections focusing on topics such as artists and their muses, creative couples, and tragic love stories. Artworks in different media and from different time periods are mixed together, prompting viewers to consider how certain aspects of love — courtship and marriage, for instance — have changed over time. Or, in some cases, not.
“This is a new perspective on works that have been in a major public collection for decades, sometimes more than 100 years, but their presentation through the lens of love stories shines a new light on works that have been researched, exhibited and documented many times,” Ms. McNeil notes.
“What I love is the in-depth information that visitors will encounter about the specific individuals in these portraits, the challenges they faced in love, the different forms that love took for some people,” Ms. McNeil continues. “In many cases, we see portraits of people in what we consider today to be fairly conventional marriages. Other times, we see star-crossed lovers. You’ll see the members of the Bloomsbury Group [of writers, artists and thinkers], who were very famously polyamorous. So there’s a wide variety of perspectives on love and relationships and what that means to people.”
Lovers, partners, spouses
One of my favorite parts of the show surveys romantic partnerships. Pictures of couples are fascinating, because there’s almost always an implied narrative or relationship to tease out of the image. For instance, in Thomas Gainsborough’s double portrait, “Sarah Kirby and Joshua Kirby,” an oil on canvas from the mid- 18th century, the married couple seems locked in a pose of stiff decorum.
Just a generation later, however, Sir Joshua Reynolds portrays a pair of married performing artists. In this portrait, sitters David and Eva Maria Garrick look fully at ease in their own skins. He was an actor and stage manager; she was a dancer who retired from the stage when she married him. They appear to be relaxed and companionable, seated in their country garden, perhaps performing the role of landed gentry.
Nontraditional couples are part of the mix, too. Kenneth Green’s painting of Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten, dating from 1943, memorializes the relationship of two musicians from the era of “the love that dare not speak its name.” Pears was a vocalist and Britten a well-known composer. The double portrait, as the exhibition’s supporting volume notes, “uses the conventions of marriage portraiture to celebrate their commitment at a time when gay men could face a lifetime in prison for being in a same-sex relationship.”
The only sign of intimacy in this calmly reticent portrait is their physical closeness.
In contrast, almost three-quarters of a century later, Helen and Kate Richardson Walsh look radiant, open and joyous together. The two athletes, British field hockey players who married in 2013, are sprawled on the grass holding hands. The color photograph was taken in 2016, a few days after their team won Olympic gold in Rio de Janeiro.
The candid camera
Like icing on a heart-shaped cake, the exhibit has an entire section called “Love and the Lens.” Vintage movie stars, fashion models, pop music icons and British royals make for an irresistible parade of People-mag type moments.
Mick Jagger and his model-wives offer a dose of rock-star hedonism, while Paul and Linda McCartney look serious (or maybe just bored) in a photo from 1976. Charles and Diana’s official wedding portrait from 1981 showcases her famous gown, while an engagement photo of Harry and Meghan catches them blissfully nuzzling one another.
Photographs of celebrities are interspersed through other sections of the exhibit too. John Lennon and Yoko Ono are particularly well represented in pictures that epitomize the late 1960s, when baring their bums for the camera was shocking and controversial. Actress Audrey Hepburn is cast as a “public muse” in photos designed for mass consumption and adoration.
Passion, scandal, tragedy
Love can, of course, get messy. In the late 1890s, it took years for the biracial composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to overcome the resistance of his future wife’s Victorian-era family to the notion of her marrying a Black man. Besides being thrown out of the house when he asked for her hand in marriage, he told a friend: “They tearfully warned their Jessie that if she married him in all probability he would inflict upon her strange shifts — perhaps take her to the Dark Continent, compel her to live amongst his naked relations and wear no clothes.”
Nonetheless, this story had a happy ending, up to a point. The couple wed at the end of 1899, had two children, and he enjoyed professional success until he passed away at the age of 37. He’s pictured in the exhibit in a rather bland portrait photograph from 1912, the year of his death.
However, the trifecta of passion, scandal and tragedy comes into play in the story of Emma Hamilton, told by way of three paintings from the late 18th century. The first is an oil portrait of her, as a soft and beguiling young woman in vaguely classical dress, by George Romney. He painted her in various guises more than 100 times over a four-year period in the 1780s. She rose from party girl for hire to being a social influencer of her time, thanks to her amiable personality, dramatic flair and strategic marriage to a much older man, Sir William Hamilton. He and Emma’s famous paramour, the English naval hero, Admiral Horatio Nelson, are depicted in two more sober portraits nearby.
William doted on Emma and tolerated her intense love affair with Nelson, a relationship that began in the late 1790s and resulted in her giving birth to Nelson’s daughter in 1801. It was the biggest scandal of the age, especially after Nelson divorced his unhappy wife. Despite their notoriety, Nelson and the Hamiltons “went everywhere together” in London society and were sought-after dinner guests. However, after the deaths of both men, Emma struggled to maintain her social standing, giving in to a taste for drink and gambling. She was reduced to poverty and died in France in 1815, at the age of 49.
Love and work
Along with such juicy historical tidbits, the sweet spot of this exhibition is the intersection of love and creative work. As Sigmund Freud said, “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness,” two great forces that make our lives meaningful. And the accomplishments of the artists, writers, musicians, poets, dramatists and intellectuals displayed in this exhibit could form the basis for an entire college humanities course.
But, Ms. McNeil points out, the exhibit can be enjoyed without an encyclopedia in hand. “I always want any exhibition to function on a variety of levels,” she says. “If somebody just feels like breezing through and looking at some art, this will be a really visually rewarding exhibition because the works are beautifully painted, and the artistry is fantastic. However, if somebody wants to take a deep dive into the narrative, that time will be rewarded by the wealth of information contained in the object labels.”
So, put on your rose-colored glasses, maybe invite your sweetheart to join you, and prepare to look through the eyes of love at some works of art. ¦
— Janice T. Paine is a Naples-based freelance writer on art topics.
In the KNOW
“Love Stories from the National Portrait Gallery, London”
When: Feb. 4-May 7
Where: The Baker Museum at Artis— Naples 5833 Pelican Bay Blvd.
Info: www.artisnaples.org 239-597-1900
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sunday, noon-4 p.m.
Admission: Adults, $10; students and active military (with I.D.), $5; SNAP EBT card holders, $1; children 17 and under, free.
ART TALKS
Lecture by Lucy Peltz, Head of Collection Displays (Tudor to Regency) and Senior Curator, 18th Century Collections, National Portrait Gallery, London, “A Portrait of Love Stories from the National Portrait Gallery, London,” Feb. 9, 10 a.m., $20.
Lecture by Adam Eaker, Associate Curator, European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Sittings, Seductions and the English Portrait,” March 22, 2 p.m., $20.
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