The Lovers’ Chronicle 22 March 2013 – is it enough – art by Dorothy Tennant, Ernest Lawson & Greta Kempton

22 March 2024 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. Is it enough for you? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

oh pretty sure there was
at least as far as drama goes
and sadness and emptiness

write what you know, right
and that was all that was known
for more than a decade

and when i began in earnest
in 2017 to try to make some
sense of it all, it did prove
to be enough to get me
to you

and now

no corner

without you

you roam wild

openin’ doors,

turnin’ over stones,

castin’ away shadows

where desire hid

and

i embrace it

you have become

first and last,

and randomly

in between

just when we thought

we would never

so now what…

we belong

you ask, what of sadness

an undercurrent within

that ebbs and flows

sharin’ means so much

at last, enough strength

to go there

always good at fallin’

now ready for stayin’

plainly evident

where i belong

known sadness

may make better verse

but is it enough

you ask, what of sadness

an undercurrent within
that ebbs and flows

shared some of it
and it means so much

cannot share it all
therein lies the flaw, perhaps fatal,
not enough strength to go there

some are good at fallin’
and some are good at stayin’

plainly evident
where i belong

what has been known
has been fleetin’
and unforgiven

but known sadness
makes better verse
so thereon i hang my hat
and hope, that it is enough

but where…

there you are
and now,
there is no escape

no corner
without you
you roam wild
openin’ doors,
turnin’ over stones,
castin’ away shadows
where desire hid
and worst,
or best, of all
i embrace it

you have wrought
disorder
to my routine
i try to protect
through reason
but you have become
first and last,
and randomly
in between

just when i think
i can walk away,
there you are
and i am back
to the edge
of feelin’s
i cannot

so now what…
we belong

Inspired by a Vita Sackville-West quote and a note I once sent to you. Here is……

Is It Enough

You ask, What am I sad about?
Why am I sad? Let me count the ways
There is an undercurrent within
Like a tide that ebbs and flows
Most days I am good at hidin’ it
I have shared some of it with you
And it means so much to me

That you were there and that you listened
I wish I could share it all with you
But that is my flaw, perhaps fatal,
I do not have the strength to go there

Vita Sackville-West wrote
That some men make good lovers
And some men make good husbands
To that I would add…
If a man is a good lover,
He should never, ever get married
It is plainly evident
That I am not the marryin’ kind
And that makes me sad
I am sad that the love I have known
Was fleetin’ and not lastin’
I am sad that I told you goodbye

I am sad that my mother was crazy
And that I cannot forgive her
I am sad about lies that were told
And the lives that were troubled
By my actions and my inactions
I am sad that you have known sadness
Sad that I could not save you from that
But it makes better verse
So that is what I hang my hat on
And I hope, that is enough

Portrait of Lady Dorothy Stanley, by George Frederick Watts

Today is the birthday of Dorothy Tennant (Russell Square, London 22 March 1855 – 5 October 1926); Victorian neoclassicist painter.

In 1890, she married the explorer of Africa, Henry Morton Stanley, and became known as Lady Stanley. She edited her husband’s autobiography, reportedly removing any references to other women in Stanley’s life.

After Stanley’s death, she married in 1907 Henry Jones Curtis (died 19 February 1944), a pathologist, surgeon and writer.

Gallery

Suspiria

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Lord Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) (1880)
L’Amour Blessé (1895)

Today is the birthday of Ernest Lawson (Halifax, Nova Scotia; March 22, 1873 – December 18, 1939); painter and a member of The Eight, a group of artists who formed a loose association in 1908 to protest the narrowness of taste and restrictive exhibition policies of the conservative, powerful National Academy of Design. Though Lawson was primarily a landscape painter, he also painted a small number of realistic urban scenes. His painting style is heavily influenced by the art of John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, and Alfred Sisley. Though considered an American Impressionist, Lawson falls stylistically between Impressionism and realism.

Lawson visited France in 1893 and studied at the Académie Julian with Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. He practiced plein air painting in southern France and at Moret-sur-Loing, where he met the English Impressionist Alfred Sisley. In 1894, Lawson exhibited two paintings in the Salon. Lawson shared a Paris studio that year with W. Somerset Maugham, who is believed to have used Lawson as the inspiration for the character “Frederick Lawson” in his 1915 novel Of Human Bondage.

He married his former art teacher, Ella Holman after his return to the U. S. in 1896.

Lawson moved to Florida in 1936. Depressed and in declining health, he drowned under mysterious circumstances in 1939, while swimming on Miami Beach.

Gallery

Flâner dans le parc

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Approaching Storm

Brooklyn bridge

New England Birches

Spring Night, Harlem River –

Landscape

Excavation – Penn Station, oil on canvas, 1906. Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum

Today is the birthday of Greta Kempton (Martha Greta Kempton; March 22, 1901 – December 9, 1991); White House artist during the Truman administration.

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Kempton was born in Vienna and came to the United States in the 1920s. She studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts before emigrating to the United States and in the 1930s was a student at the National Academy of Design and Art Students League, both in New York City.

By the 1930s Kempton was living in California and a well-established portrait painter. Her style was reminiscent of Rembrandt, Rubens, and other European masters. By the 1940s, she had compiled a list of subjects, including Dagmar Nordstrom, one of the Nordstrom Sisters, the families of some Hollywood residents of New Orleans, where she lived with her then-husband, the businessman Ambrose M. McNamara. Kempton became well known in Washington following the unveiling in 1947 of her portrait of Drucie Snyder, the daughter of Treasury Secretary John W. Snyder. Through Snyder, Kempton gained introductions to other high officials of the Truman administration. Later in 1947, she painted a portrait of Bess Truman, and that same year was commissioned to paint a portrait of the President himself – the first of five Kempton paintings for which Mr. Truman posed. The 1947 painting became the official White House portrait of President Truman.

She remained active as a painter well into her eighties and restored many paintings at Church of the Transfiguration, “The Little Church Around the Corner” in New York City. Her works are in the collections of the White House, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Harry S. Truman Library, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the National Portrait Gallery, and a number of museums. Her papers, which include a number of portraits, now form a collection at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri.

She died in New York City from heart failure in December 1991, and her cremated remains were placed in the columbarium in the Church of the Transfiguration, Manhattan.

York City from heart failure in December 1991, and her cremated remains were placed in the columbarium in the Church of the Transfiguration, Manhattan.

Gallery

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