Each time I bring my cocker spaniel to the vet’s office I am mesmerized by an MFA poster that shows a young woman wearing a plaid flannel bathrobe sitting with an Irish setter at her feet that hangs in the waiting room. It, I discovered, is the work of Scott Prior whose combined technical ability and homespun subject matter I find uniquely appealing. Unfortunately, I’ve learned how infrequently the Northampton, Massachusetts-based Prior’s work is shown beyond local galleries. So, when I heard that Cape Cod’s Cahoon Museum of American Art had scheduled a Prior 5-decade retrospective for early spring 2021, I knew I had to make the trip. The Cahoon Museum was once the home of Cape Cod folk artists, Martha and Ralph Cahoon. It is easy to imagine that the well-maintained rooms once served as a living space, a fact that both enhanced and restricted appreciation of the 35 Prior paintings on display. Prior’s depiction of domestic
In December 2018, the Getty Museum, an institution with seemingly bottomless pockets, paid 5.04 million dollars for a work entitled Interior with an Easel, Bredgade 25, painted in 1912. (See earlier post.) If one were to guess what early 20 th century modern artist would fetch such a sum, names like Bonnard, Vuillard, and Ensor may come to mind. But, no, Interior with an Easel was painted by Danish artist, Vilhelm Hammershøi . Who? Who indeed. For many the name Vilhelm Hammershøi is not a familiar one, but it may be in the future. If you’ve seen the movie The Danish Girl, you’ve already been exposed to his work thanks to the efforts of director Tom Hooper who insisted on using Hammershøi paintings as the basis for interior set design. At this point, the question that logically arises is why is Hammershøi , who died in 1916, just beginning to be recognized? And the answer, as will be shown, is that the world was not ready for Hammershøi in 1912, but, thanks