Tim Gunn was featured in a regular column of the New York Times about famous people’s Sunday routines. In it, he says he frequently visits The Met on Sundays. The last sentence is particularly impactful. He says, “I’m just blessed, and I’m very cognizant of it.” There’s something amazing about being able to feel grateful for all the things we have in our life on a regular basis.
Perhaps missing the point, I found myself at the Met on a Saturday afternoon, trying to capture that same feeling of gratitude.
As I headed up towards the second floor permanent collections, I did feel a small stirring of gratitude that, on a whim, I can visit these collections.
When I reached the nineteenth-century paintings, I came across two paintings I haven’t studied before. I think it was their yellow tones and golden hues that drew me in.
The Organ Rehearsal – Henry Lerolle – From The Metropolitan Musuem of Art’s website
One depicts an environment where we’d feel compelled to use hushed tones — an organ rehearsal. There’s an anticipation, we wait under the soft yellow light.
But in the other, we can sense the water lapping against the boat, but here, there’s an energetic reserve, a sense of weathered lives.
Boatmen of Barcelona – Dionisio Baixeras y Verdaguer – From The Metropolitan Musuem of Art’s website
I can see why these might actually go together.
There’s the wood that surrounds the main characters. Wood grounds, even when we are aloft a balcony, or rocking gently in a boat. Then there’s the bright light that actually softens. The way things can be dulled and muffled, by the hushed murmur of the audience, or the water that laps on the side of a boat. (Or the murmur of fellow museum goers.)
Somehow that white noise only seems to amplify what is directly in front of us. Then, clarity. The realization that in this moment, we are experiencing beauty. And there is something very humbling about experiencing beauty; and indeed, it is easier to feel grateful to be alive to know such an ephemeral, but powerful feeling.
The Sentimental Bee 