Beauty in the Everyday By Lilly Harvey

As I wandered through the Sterling and Francine Art Institute, most often referred to as, “The Clark,” I was in awe at the amount of beautiful work featured in this one space.  Everything about this museum is pristine, from the polished marbles floors to the carefully positioned paintings. The Clark Museum features a large body of work including paintings, porcelain, silver prints and drawings from the 14^th to 19^th Centuries.  The museum features work from artists who are both extremely famous and completely obscure but somehow flawlessly combines this wide range of work. 

One particularly gallery that I found especially striking was the impressionist gallery.  The room itself feels large and open with pale purple walls and a shiny wood floor.  The ceiling is made of glass, allowing natural light to filter into the gallery, which brings the colors in the paintings alive.  The paintings are placed throughout the room in such a way so that they balance each other out, while bringing out the best in each piece. 

As I drifted through the gallery I was drawn to one specific oil painting called “The Bath,” by Beth Morisot.  The painting captures a girl sitting beside a bath, pulling her light brown hair into a bun. She is wearing a thin white night gown and on her lap, almost blending into her dress, is a tan colored hairbrush.  Despite her state of partial undress, she seems unselfconscious, with a fixed gaze and confident posture.  While I was looking at the painting I felt as if I was walking into a moment that was both private and beautiful.  I could tell that the girl was a close friend or family member of the painter, simply because of the way the girl was captured.  The palette is made of light pinks, blues, and browns, which give the painting a soft, mellow feeling.  The brush strokes are long and broad, giving the piece a feeling of movement. As I took a closer look at the painting, I was impressed by the way that the colors were blended together.  For example, the nightgown is mostly white but the artist blended streaks of light blue and pink, which added more complex layers of color to the painting.

Perhaps why I was so drawn to this painting was because it was so completely different than the other paintings in the room. Brushing and styling your hair is something that most women do every single day and yet the artist made this moment beautiful.  Many of the other paintings in the room portrayed stunning landscapes or grand cityscapes and yet I found this private moment to be just as stunning.  This piece really spoke to me because it made me realize that there is something beautiful in each every day moment, whether we can see it or not.