The Feast of St Lucy is celebrated on December 13 in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and other places where there are Scandinavian immigrants. St Lucy is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox churches. She lived from 238 until 304 CE in Syracuse, Sicily. Her parents were wealthy, was a devout Christian who early in her life had dedicated herself and her worldly goods to helping the poor. Lucy was engaged unwillingly to a wealthy, pagan bridegroom who became enraged when he learned he would not get her dowery of money and jewels. 

 

The Roman Emperor Diocletian prosecuted Christians. Lucy’s bridegroom brought charges against her. “Lucy Before the Judge” (1532) (95”x 93”) was painted by the Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556/57). Lucy confronts the judge. She points toward the white dove, representing the Holy Spirit, and explains her Christian beliefs. Known for paintings featuring unique poses, Lotto surrounded Lucy with a collection of onlookers. Whether there is agreement or disagreement is unclear. The figure in gray standing in front of Lucy is not identified, although he may be the bridegroom trying to stop Lucy’s testimony.

As her penance, Lucy was ordered by Paschsius, the Governor of Syracuse, to burn a sacrifice to the Emperor Diocletian. When she refused, he sentenced her to a brothel, where she would be defiled.  Jacobus de Voragine (c.1230-1298), who compiled The Golden Legend, which became the most popular retelling of the lives of the saints, tells of Lucy’s response: “The body is not soiled unless the soul consents; and if in despite my body is ravished, my chastity will be doubled. Thus, you canst not ever force my will. And as for my body, here it is ready for every torture. Why delay thou? Son of the Devil, begin! Carry out thy heinous design!” 

 

“Lucy Dragged by Oxen” (1410) is part of an eight-panel altarpiece for St Lucy’s Church in Formo, Italy, by Venetian painter Jacobo del Fiore (c.1370-1493) who was commissioned by the church of St Lucy. His work was influenced by the French Gothic style which can be seen in Lucy’s gold gown, resembling a French tapestry with gardens of flowers. When Lucy was sentenced to the brothel, her body became infused with the Holy Spirit and became so heavy the guards could not move her. She was chained to oxen, and over a thousand men still could not move her.

 

“Lucy in the Burning Bush” (1320), also by del Fiore, is a depiction of the next attempt to bring about her death. Paschsius became so angry that he ordered a fire be built with pitch, resin, and boiling oil added. Still Lucy survived.

 

“The Martyrdom of St Lucy” (1505-1510) is by the Master of the Figdor Deposition (1480-1500), an Early Netherlandish painter. When Lucy did not burn, Paschsius grew even angrier. A man uses a bellows to blow air into the fire to heat it up. Finally, a soldier takes up his sword and stabs her in the neck. Also in the painting, Lucy being pulled by oxen to the brothel can be seen in the left background. Farther left, a soldier tries to behead Lucy. In the middle ground, Lucy receives her last communion and dies. 

 

“The Last Communion of St Lucy (1585-86), by Venetian painter Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), is a rare single depiction of the Lucy story from The Golden Legend.  Lucy receives Holy Communion before she dies. The priest offers her bread and wine, and an assistant holds a small cup to collect her blood. 

 

The legend of St Lucy had become a popular story by the 6th Century, and many images of her were painted. The images were not presented in story form so much as through iconographic symbols. “Saint Lucy” (1472) (30”x33”) (tempura and gold on wood) is in the collection of the National Gallery in Washington, DC. Italian artist, del Cossa was from Ferrara, and he also worked in Bologna. Lucy was said to be very beautiful, and her family’s wealth made her a desirable wife. Her story tells that to make herself less desirable, she plucked out her eyes. In the painting, she holds two of her symbols: in one hand, a black palm branch denoting her martyr’s death, and in the other, two eyeballs as if they were flowers.

 

“St Lucy” (1625-30) (41”x31”), also in the National Gallery of Art, is by Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbaran (1598-1664). St Lucy became particularly popular during the Catholic Reformation. In de Zurbaran’s painting, she carries two eyeballs on a plate. Protestantism led to a major revival in the Roman Catholic Church. Saints, like Lucy, were praised for their steadfastness to the Church, and their images hopefully would inspire the congregations. The stories of St Lucy offered various reasons for why and when she plucked out her eyes. Her sight miraculously did return. 

 

The Christmas card, produced by Adele Soderberg, illustrates the modern version of St Lucy’s Day on December 13. A young girl, chosen to represent St Lucy, leads the procession through town. She is dressed in white and wears a wreath holding candles. She traditionally is followed by a group of young girls, dressed in white, and/or a group of boys, wearing white robes and cone shaped hats with stars. She serves coffee and baked goods. A popular treat is saffron buns. Songs are sung, and concerts are held. Traditions are developed in each community.

The Latin name Lucia is the root for lux, or light. St Lucy brings light in the darkness of winter. Thus, the candles in the wreath. Many people observe the tradition of placing candles in windows of their houses, beginning on December 13.

Happy St Lucy Day to Everyone

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Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring to Chestertown with her husband Kurt in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and the Institute of Adult Learning, Centreville. An artist, she sometimes exhibits work at River Arts. She also paints sets for the Garfield Theater in Chestertown.

Pablita Velarde (1918-2006) was born in the Santa Clara Pueblo in Espanola, New Mexico.  Her Indian name Tse Tsan means Golden Dawn in the Tewa language. Velarde is one of America’s foremost Native American painters. She and her sister attended St Catherine’s Indian School in Sante Fe. At age fourteen Pablita was one of the first women to attend the Studio Art School in in Santa Fe, founded by Dorothy Dunn in1932. She taught what she called “flat-style painting,” memory paintings intended to preserve the old ways of the Pueblo before they disappeared. 

 

Velarde received a commission in 1939 to paint scenes of traditional Indian life prior to1900. The work was a WPA project, part of the National Park Service, for the visitor center at the Bandelier National Monument in Los Alamos, New Mexico. She began the project in 1937, and she completed over 700 paintings by 1943. “Basket Making” (1940s) (12’’x11’’), in the flat-style, is a depiction of a man wearing a red shirt, sitting under a tree, and weaving a basket of yucca leaves. The man beside him is weaving a twill basket. The woman next the them is stripping the leaves from the yucca stem. Two men in the distance carry bundles of yucca leaves and flat stems that would be used to weave twill baskets. Velarde described her time at Bandelier: “I figure, I’ve learned more about my own people…than I would have…and I appreciate what the old ones have tried to pass on…I want the earth to remember me through my work.”

 

In “Three Woman Grinding Corn” (1940s) (13’’x8’’) Velarde depicts the process of grinding blue corn into flour. Cobs of blue corn hang at the rear of the pavilion, and two women are grinding corn in the traditional way, each using a manos, the long round stone rolled across a metates, the large stone on the ground. A third woman sifts the ground corn to remove any hard kernels. Pueblo Indians planted red, yellow, white, blue, black, and multicolored corn. Each had a particular use. Blue corn is high in protein and contains potassium and calcium, as well as other nutrients. It is also easier to digest and has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

 

Maria Martinez (1887-1980), from San Ildefonso Pueblo, and her family of potters began experimenting with new techniques and created the world- famous black-ware pottery. “Santa Clara Women Selling Pottery” (1940s) is a display of black-ware pottery shapes and sizes, decorated with heavily incised traditional symbols. Behind the pots are eight colorfully dressed women of the Pueblo. One carries a papoose. Velarde has included a pueblo building behind them. Straight, symmetrical lines on a pot represent rain in the desert and feathers represent daily prayers. Among the other patterns are bear claws and Avanyu, the god who formed the Rio Grande River, and who is depicted as a water serpent. 

 

Velarde painted the traditions of the past in great detail. “Turtle Dance” (1953) is a depiction of a religious ceremony performed on January 1, the beginning of the new year. The turtle is believed to be the first animal to move at the arrival of the new year. Dancers wear evergreen branches, turtle shells, bells, and feathers. The sound of their moccasins scraping gently in the sand creates the sound of rain.  The dancers welcome back the sun. The dance is performed by about 100 men, lined up according to their height from tallest to shortest, representing respect for the elders, who are the tallest.  A new song is created each year to accompany the dance. 

Two medicine men are in the front row. Between them, and to the left side of the painting, and on the roof of the pueblo are Koshare, dressed in black and white striped costume. They are clowns who participate in Pueblo ceremonies. They continue to participate to this day. On January 1, 2025, the Turtle Dance will be performed for the public at the Taos Pueblo.

In 1954 Velarde was awarded, along with eleven other Native Americans, the French Order of the Palmes for excellence in art. It was the first time foreigners were given this honor since it was founded by Napoleon in 1808.

 

Velarde wrote and illustrated the children’s book Old Father Storyteller in 1960. It was one of her most popular images and the subject of “Old Father Storyteller” (1960) (18’’x14’’). The painting was made into a print. Velarde’s father was a respected storyteller at the Santa Clara Pueblo: “I was one of the fortunate children of my generation who were probably the last to hear stories firsthand from Great-grandfather or Grandfather. I treasure that memory, and I have tried to preserve it in this book so that my children as well as other people may have a glimpse of what used to be.”

In “Old Father Storyteller” the over-sized storyteller sits cross-legged at the center of the composition. He points to the arch of stars as he tells migration stories to the women, children, and men who listen intently. Velarde has included an imaginary structure composed of Indian patterns. It contains animals that are important to the people and part of the stories. A large spider web and spider appear on the left side of the work, with warriors trying to climb onto it. An eagle soars across the sky at the center, and a bear, two other animals, and a turtle occupy the right side. On both sides, warriors carrying sacks may be bringing offerings to the animals. The book was selected as one of the best Western books of 1960. It is still a best seller.

During Velarde’s long career, she received many honors. She was declared a Santa Fe Living Treasure in 1988.  In 1990 Velarde received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art.  Founded in 1972, the organization supported women artists, art historians, students, educators, and museum professionals. Its affiliation with the United Nations in 1975 extended its influence beyond the United States. The Pablita Velarde Museum of Indian Women in the Arts was opened in Sante Fe in1912. She received a Doctorate in Arts from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in 2005, the year before her death.

 

Velarde’s painting skills developed during her career. She used several paint mediums, and she also made paint from natural materials which she used in what she called her earth paintings. “Mimbres – Antelopes, Quails, and Rabbit” (1993) (18’’x24’’) (print from an earth painting) is a depiction of one of her several Pueblo Indian subjects. The people and their customs included images of animals important to them. Mimbres indicates that the animals are kin, part of a group of persons with common ancestry. Velarde’s animal paintings are often childlike, but also are abstract. Antelope are a significant food source, and their hides are used for necessary items. Quail are considered sacred, and their feathers are used in ceremonies. They are messengers between the earth and sky, connecting the physical and spiritual worlds. They are also an important food source. Rabbits were a significant food source and respected. Each of the animals is painted with Pueblo patterns.           

In a 1979 interview, Velarde commented on women and painting: “Painting was not considered women’s work in my time. A woman was supposed to be just a woman, like a housewife and a mother and chief cook. Those things I wasn’t interested in.”

 

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Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring to Chestertown with her husband Kurt in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and the Institute of Adult Learning, Centreville. An artist, she sometimes exhibits work at River Arts. She also paints sets for the Garfield Theater in Chestertown.

Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick was born in 1935 in Syracuse, New York. Her father was Scots/Irish and her mother was of the Cherokee tribe in Oklahoma. WalkingStick began making art at an early age. She graduated in 1959 from Beaver College in Pennsylvania where she earned her BFA degree. She completed her MFA degree at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York City. She served from1988 until 2005 as a tenured Associate Professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.  She commented, “It was always important to me to be recognized as a Native person…It was also important to be understood as a New York artist, one who was working in the mainstream.” 

“Where are the Generations, Stillness” (1991) (28”x56’’) (acrylic, copper, and oil on canvas) is an example of WalkingStick’s early paintings in which she adapted the diptych, two separate panels hinged together. She said, “The diptych is an especially powerful metaphor to express the beauty and power of uniting the disparate and this makes it particularly attractive to those of us who are biracial…I use landscape as the context…one side of the painting represents immediately visual memory; the other archetype memory and both could be a stand-in for the human body and soul.”

The left panel of “Where are the Generations, Stillness” is abstract. At the middle of the composition an ochre half oval is surrounded by a sapphire field. The interpretation of abstract images is left to the viewers, but the title of this work offers a suggestion: the semi-oval could be half an egg, symbolic of life. The universe and creation are suggested by the sky, including the red sparks, and the red shape lying beneath the oval, the beginning of the Indian Nations.  A barren mountain landscape is on the right panel; no people are present.

Text is printed on the wall next to the painting: “In 1492, we were twenty million. Now, we are two million. Where are the generations, never born? From a distance, the sphere becomes more prominent–a universe, suggesting that viewers would need the perspective of time and distance to understand the weight of genocide.” 

 

In “We’re Still Dancing” (2006) (32’’x64’’), WalkingStick pairs a dramatic image of a rocky mountain with women’s legs dancing on a golden field. The two images create a dynamic duo of hope. The paintings may appear to be alla prima, an Italian term meaning at first attempt.  They are, in her words, “by contrast, deliberate and resolved.” They are from “memory, sketches, photos, not a depiction of a specific space, but a psychological state painting of a totally real place.”

 

WalkingStick painted “Fairwell to the Smokies” (2007) (36”x72’’) after a visit to the Smoky Mountains. It represents the Trail of Tears, when the Indian Removal Act in 1830 forced five tribes, including the Cherokee, to leave their homes in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. They walked 800 miles west of the Mississippi to Oklahoma. The landscape is painted in rich browns and greens. The Indians walk along the bottom of the canvas. The small size of the figures and hazy gray color make it easy to miss them, particularly those who enter the unknown new land at the right. Text placed on the wall of the gallery explained that Walkingstick, although born and raised in New York, felt the significance of the Trail of Tears when she visited her ancestral homeland in the Carolinas and Tennessee: “It’s about the traumatic experience of leaving home—leaving this beautiful home.” 

Stories of the Indians who walked the Trail of Tears are hard to hear. Families were separated, the elderly and sick were forced to leave at gunpoint, and they were given no real time to gather their possessions. After they left, white people looted the homes. Gold was discovered in 1830 on Cherokee lands in Georgia.

 

“Lush Life” (2015) (36”x72”) represents another facet of Walkingstick’s paintings. She commented, “The move seemed inevitable. Although, I hadn’t put depictions of humans into my art for many years. In fact, their absence had seemed crucial to the significance of the work.” The female figure was herself, and she began using the image on a limited scale in the 1990s.  Placing her figure against a lush light green landscape and coordinating the trees with the movement of her dancing legs, gives the viewer a peaceful and happy moment. 

WalkingStick was given a retrospective exhibition in 2015 at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.  She commented, “I had to come to terms with this idea that I am as much my father’s daughter as my mother’s…I hope viewers will leave the museum with a renewed sense of how beautiful and precious our planet is with the realization that those of us living in the Western Hemisphere are all living on Indian Territory”

 

WalkingStick grew up on the East Coast, but she has painted landscapes from coast to coast.  She lives and works in Pennsylvania, and she has traveled across the American west and to Italy. In “New Hampshire Coast” (2020) (36”x72’’) she expresses her love of landscape painting in the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean and New Hampshire’s rocky coast. The Indian sign, painted in terra cotta on the right side of the diptych, is from a Native basket motif of the Wabanaki Indians, who lived there for hundreds of years before white settlers arrived. A fight for the ownership of the land is an on-going battle in Maine.

 

“Niagara” (2020) (36”x72”) is a painting of one of America’s best-known landmarks. Walkingstick depicts a panoramic view of two of the three falls, Horseshoe and Bridal Veil. WalkingStick has chosen to paint single-view landscapes in her recent diptychs. She painted a symbol of the Haudenosaunee Indians, people of the long house. They are the first Confederation of the Six Nations, also called the Iroquois Confederation, that included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora tribes. They are the oldest participatory democracy in America. Several of their democratic principles were adopted by the thirteen original colonies. The six tribes originally lived in northern New York. 

Kay WalkingStick’s work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Her paintings were exhibited by the New York Historical Society from October 2023 until April 2024, comparing her landscapes with those of the Hudson River School of the 19th Century. WalkingStick was included in the 60th anniversary of the Venice Biennale, that will end on November 24, 2024. The theme of the Biennale was Foreigners Every Where. The Addison Gallery in Andover, Massachusetts is exhibiting her work from September 14, 2024 until February 2, 2025. Kay WalkingStick is one of the most esteemed American Indian artists.

“I want them to also see the primary message in the work, that is: This is our beloved land no matter who walks here, no matter who “owns” it. This is our land. Recognize us and honor this land.” (Kay WalkingStick, 2012)

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Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring to Chestertown with her husband Kurt in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and the Institute of Adult Learning, Centreville. An artist, she sometimes exhibits work at River Arts. She also paints sets for the Garfield Theater in Chestertown.

“Autumn Frost” (1874) (18”x22”), by Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley (1830-1899), is a depiction of what French travel advisors describe as “one of the loveliest times of the year.” During the day, the weather is mild, and at night there is a chill. Painted en plein air (outdoors), the work captures the bright oranges of fallen leaves. In the foreground is a tree, its trunk and branches painted dark brown. The artist uses yellow to represent the sunlight on the side of the tree trunk. The trunk creates a parallel line that is repeated in the parallel lines of all the buildings. The tree branches reach out left and right, and into the sky, guiding the viewer’s attention to the two houses beyond the fields. A man and a woman stand in the middle ground, almost at the center of the painting. The human presence supports the idea of a beautiful day to be outdoors. 

At the left side of the composition, the artist depicts the circular furrows of the plowed field. Sisley used the complementary colors of orange and blue on both sides of the painting, and the juxtaposition of colors brings out a dynamic energy. Yellow and purple rows extend from the foreground to the middle of the scene. Blue not only is used to create shadows, it also represents the Autumn frost of the title. The sky is painted light blue and the underside shadow of the clouds light orange. The sunny side of the largest house and the fence posts are painted yellow like the tree trunk. Light blue and orange are used in the depiction of the towering church. Sisley has captured a lovely autumn day in a charming French village.

“Chill October” (1870) (56’’x74’’), by English painter Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896), was painted en plain air beside the river Tay near Perth, Scotland. It is an example of the artist’s later period when he favored a realistic style. The painting is a depiction of a boggy landscape with reeds, grasses, alder trees, and willows. Millais had a platform constructed on which to work. He described the setting: “The traveler between Perth and Dundee passes the spot where I stood. Danger on either side–the tide, which once carried away my platform, and the trains, which threatened to blow my work into the river. I painted every touch from Nature, on the canvas itself, under irritating trials of wind and rain…there was more significance and feeling in one day of a Scotch autumn than in a whole half-year of spring and summer in Italy.’’

Millais depicts the natural colors of Autumn which include black and brown, a variety of yellows, greens, and oranges. The yellow-green cloud cover  creates the desired chilly effect, as does the wind blowing through the grasses and trees. Even the river is painted a yellow-green, not the usual blue. A few birds fly away. 

Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo after meeting Millais and seeing this painting, “Once I met the painter Millais on the street, just after I had been lucky enough to see several of his paintings…not the least beautiful is an Autumn landscape, Chill October.

“The Alyscamps” (1888) (36”x29”), by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), was the first painting he made after moving in October to Arles in southern France. Gauguin and Van Gogh were both Post-Impressionist painters who carried the rainbow colors of the Impressionists to the next level. They painted this scene side-by-side. The Alyscamps was the site of a Christian cemetery dedicated by Saint Trophime, the Bishop of Arles in the 3rd Century CE. Gauguin depicts the Avenue of cypress trees and the distant dome of the Romanesque church of St Honorat.  He focuses the viewer’s attention on the vibrant green landscape, the fiery orange leaves of the cypress trees, and the gray-blue area road that stretches toward the church. The colors are thickly painted in patches, the brush strokes largely visible. 

Centered in the composition are two women and a man dressed in Arlesienne clothing of the time. Gauguin found the place and the people of Arles unattractive. At first, he titled this painting ironically “Three Graces with the Temple of Venus.” He later changed the to “The Alyscamps.” The road  had become a lover’s lane. Gauguin’s painting depicts a bright and clear French Autumn day. 

“Autumn in Murnau” (1908) is by Russian painter Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). A highly intellectual man, Kandinsky was a leader in the Blue Rider movement and a leader in abstract art. He studied law at the University of Moscow when he was 20 years old. After graduating, he was offered a professorial chair. He declined and went to art school, which he found easy. The influence of the new styles of Cubism and its offshoots influenced his transformation from realism to abstraction. His move to the village of Murnau in the Bavarian Alps in 1902 provided the inspiration he needed. “Autumn in Murnau” is one of his early paintings. He paints only the essential elements, and they are in bright color patches.

The bright green fields and dark blue mountains are as they appear in the Bavarian landscape. The actual colors are clear, rich, and intense. The autumn leaves are represented by bright red brush strokes on the dark green and blue tree. The mountains are painted dark blue and purple. White clouds and storm clouds cover the sky. A road leads the viewer’s eye from the foreground into the background. 

During this period, Kandinsky was writing Concerning the Spiritual in Art, his treatise on abstract art and the significance of color in art. His theory of color, published in 1911, included some thoughts on the meanings of color: yellow=warm, exciting, and disturbing; green=peaceful, calm, passive; blue= heavenly, the lighter the calmer; red=restless, glowing, alive; brown=dull, hard; orange=radiant, serious, healthy; violet=morbid, sad; white=pregnant with silence, possibility; black=extinguished, immoveable; gray balance between black and white, soundless, motionless.

This photograph of Murnau, taken in August, in 1972, records the intensity of colors of the Bavarian landscape and the Alps. If the viewer has not actually seen the place represented in a painting, the painting does not seem true to life.   

 

“Four Trees” (1918) (43”x55”) is by the Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918). Expressionism implies the desire to express emotions and inner thoughts, often including spiritual themes. The work was painted in the Autumn of 1918. Each tree has a different number of leaves, representing the transition of autumn, and of life. The tree with the most leaves can be seen at the far right. The tree at the far left has started to shed, but it is the next tree that stands out. Almost bare, its few remaining leaves on the dark branches hang on to life.

A small ribbon of blue water flows in the foreground. Green fields with small touches of yellow, orange, and red, provide contrast to the dark red leaves. The distant hills are blotched with lighter orange, yellow, and blue. The four trees rise tall against the streaked sunset sky. The orange sun lies low on the horizon. Night is imminent. However, the whole painting seems to glow, much like a scene created in stained glass. Schiele painted in 1911 two scenes with four trees. 

“Four Trees” (1918) seems to represent Schiele’s melancholy at the time. He was a young man on the way to a good career when he died of the Spanish Flu on October 31, 1918. His pregnant wife Edith died of the same cause just two days earlier. His last works were drawings of Edith. 

“When one sees a tree autumnal in summer, it is an intense experience that involves one’s whole heart and being; and I should like to paint that melancholy.” (Egin Schiele)

 

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Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring to Chestertown with her husband Kurt in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and the Institute of Adult Learning, Centreville. An artist, she sometimes exhibits work at River Arts. She also paints sets for the Garfield Theater in Chestertown.

Artist and fashion maven Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) was born in the Ukraine to a Jewish family. Her uncle Henri Terk and his wife adopted her when she was a child. He was a lawyer in St Petersburg, and his home was full of French art. Sonia had a governess who taught her English, French, and German. The artist Max Liebermann, a friend of the Terks, gave her a box of paints. She studied art in Karlsruhe, Germany, from 1903 until 1905, when she moved to Paris to study at the Academe de la Palette, a progressive art school. She met the Russian painters Kandinsky and Jawlensky, and Picasso, Braque, and Robert Delaunay, and saw the work of Gauguin, Van Gogh, and other Post-Impressionists. 

Delaunay was given her first solo exhibition in1908 at the Wilhelm Uhde Gallery. She married Uhde to remain in Paris because her parents wanted her to come home. When she met Robert Delaunay, she was “carried away by the poet in him.” She and Uhde divorced a year later, and she married Robert. Uhde explained the situation: “After a year our marriage came to an end.  A friend of mine felt he could make my wife more perfectly happy than I could.”

 

Both Sonia and Robert were painters influenced by Picasso and Cubism, but their early paintings lacked color. They named their style Orphism, after Orpheus, the famous musician of ancient Greek mythology.  The style also is known as Simultanism, a term coined by Guillame Appollinaire, the poet and play write. They said, “We have liberated color, which has become a value in itself.” Chevreul’s study of color in 1839 identified the phenomena of simultaneous contrasts: colors look different because of the colors that surround them.

Sonia created the Simultaneous Dress (1914) when she and Robert attended the hot night club Bal Bullier on Montparnasse in Paris. The dress is designed with a variety of color patches, similar to a patch work quilt. However, the patches reveal the shape of the body beneath the fabric. The bodice is divided in half. The right side defines the neck with the colors green and beige, the breast with black and dark green, the waist with gold, and the hip with a white crescent shape. The fabrics on the left form a multicolored pattern. The waist is green with a black semi-circle. The lower part of the dress is composed of elongated shapes pointing downward. The right side is differentiated from the left by a long dark green ruffle. Materials used in the dress are tulle, silk, flannel, and peau de soie. Robert’s outfit had a red and green jacket, red socks, yellow and black shoes, black pants, and a sky-blue vest. Guillaume Apollinaire described their outfits as “sculpture built on a living frame.” Blaise Cendrars, the poet and novelist stated, “On her dress she had a body.” 

 

Sonia wrote, “Before WWI broke out, Robert had shot off rockets in every way.  I, on the ground, had lit more intimate and ephemeral fires in everyday life.” The Delaunays were on vacation in Spain when the first World War started.  They lived in Madrid for a while and then relocated to Portugal.  They met Sergi Diaghilev, and Sonia was invited to design costumes for the opera “Cleopatra” in 1918, and “Aida.” in the Orphic style. The costumes, like her fashions, were created using fabrics in bright colors, and clearly were designed to accentuate the female figure. Sonia also established the Casa Sonia, a workshop and store that featured her clothes and fabrics, also lampshades, tableware, furniture, pottery, and household items. 

The couple returned to Paris in 1920. They opened their apartment on Sunday afternoons for artists, poets, writers, and intellectuals. It was the best- known salon in Paris. Sonia opened the Atelier Simultane studio in Paris, and she designed clothing for many well-known people, including actress Gloria Swanson and poet Nancy Cunard. She received commissions from Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer for the Bauhaus. She was commissioned in 1923 by a silk manufacturer in Lyon, France, to create 50 fabric designs. Sonia was one of the exhibitors at a Paris international exhibition of decorative arts in 1925. Other participants included the furrier Jacques Heim, Lanvin, Hermes, and Channel.

 

Sonia’s art was featured on the cover of the British Vogue Magazine in January 1925. She believed that color could be used everywhere and that clothing could be coordinated with an object. She designed the outfit and the car for the magazine cover. 

That same year, Citroen invited her to paint the Citroen B12 (1925) and design an outfit to wear with it. The CEO of Matra commissioned Sonia to paint the Matra M530, which had a fiberglass body and a Ford V4 engine and was manufactured from 1967 until 1972.

Sonia frequently knitted and embroidered the items she produced. The hand embroidered coat for Gloria Swanson” (1925) contains geometric designs that are created with a striking color palette.

 

At a distance the hand embroidered coat (1925) appears to be a luxurious fur. Sonia had learned to embroider as a child, and she used it frequently because it reminded her of Russia. She employed a couch stitch that holds the vertical wool threads in place with silk threads. 

 

Sonia designed everything, including shoes (1925). 

 

The Amsterdam department store Metz & Co. offered dresses by avant-garde designers, and it became one of Sonia’s most important clients. She worked for the firm for 30 years, starting in1925. Metz also sold her fabrics in America. Metz produced over 200 of her fabric designs, but the store’s archives had over 2000 of her sketches. Sonia’s husband Robert designed the first paper dress patterns, permitting people to produce their own Delaunay dresses. Paper patterns inspired the idea of ready-to-wear fashion.

Sonia’s knitting skill came in handy when she began to design and knit women’s bathing suits (1928). 

An album of her designs was published in 1928 in Paris.  The stock market crash of 1929 brought an end to Sonia’s fashion house; it closed in the early 1930s. She painted two large murals for the Air and Railroad Pavilion at the1937 Paris World’s Fair, and she received a gold medal. 

Robert died of cancer in 1941. Sonia moved to Grasse in the south of France with several other French artists. Some were resistance fighters. The Nazis confiscated the house, but Sonia remained in Grasse. She continued to paint and made plans to preserve Robert’s reputation. Exhibitions of his work and a catalogue raisonné (1957) were produced. She was made a Chevalier of Arts and Letters in1958.

 

After the War, Sonia was again a major figure in the art world of Paris. She added jewelry, stained glass, and porcelain, but she continued to paint. Sonia was the first living woman artist to be given a retrospective in the Louvre in1964. She donated 177 of Robert’s paintings to the Paris Museum of Contemporary Art, better known as the Pompidou. She also received the City of Paris Gold Medal, and she was made a member of the Order of the Legion of Honor.

The Aubusson Tapestry company commissioned Sonia, Picasso, Leger, and Calder to create tapestries designs in 1967.  UNESCO’s first “International Women’s Year” poster (1975) was designed by Sonia Delaunay in the Orphism/Simultanism style that she and Robert invented. She was given her first American retrospective at the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, New York, in 1980. Major exhibitions of her work continue today, and fashion designers continue to be inspired by her work.

 

Sonia Delaunay died at age 94. Among her last words were “Je suis une optimiste (I am an optimist).

 

“I always painted as an amusement, and it amused me to do that, but this amusement took my whole life.” (Sonia Delaunay)

 

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Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years. Since retiring to Chestertown with her husband Kurt in 2014, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and the Institute of Adult Learning, Centreville. An artist, she sometimes exhibits work at River Arts. She also paints sets for the Garfield Theater in Chestertown.