E24 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MARCH 6 , 2022
by the raging, maudlin mess that
is human subjectivity.
“So much depends,” wrote Wil-
liam Carlos Williams in his great
paean to humble beauty, “upon/
a red wheel/ barrow/ glazed with
rain/ water/ beside the white/
chickens.”
This painting sends a similar
sense of the sacred everyday
straight to my bloodstream.
When I see it surrounded by
trumpeting, gilt-framed master-
pieces, I breathe differently. My
pulse slows. And I feel briefly like
a cat — like a creature who knows
(and who doesn’t need to be told)
how to sit on its own shadow
under a radiant sun.“rooms with views” during this
period. Rorbye himself had
painted a view of Copenhagen’s
harbor through the window of
his parents’ home two decades
earlier.
But closer inspection suggests
that it’s probably not a figure. It’s
a hanging coat, disembodied, or
maybe even some kind of blanket
or curtain. It’s echoed on the left
by another dark coat and a
reddish-brown scarf hanging be-
hind the open door. Signs of
humans, both. But the entire
painting is otherwise unpopulat-
ed, and Rorbye’s rendering is so
unprejudiced, so tenderly disin-
terested, that it feels unviolatedly out-of-focus strips on the left,
like the chance effect of a lens,
reinforce the impression.
You could dwell on the sunlit
exterior forever. But it’s not just
an exterior scene, is it? The door
with its arched and weathered
wooden frame opens onto a dark
interior, and — through a far
window — a second exterior.
What’s curious, to my eyes, is
the shape covering part of the far
window. At first glance, it could
be a figure, in the manner of
Caspar David Friedrich’s views
showing people looking out win-
dows, seen from behind. Scores
of European painters, inspired
by Friedrich, were paintingBY SEBASTIAN SMEES
uch a simple, sober, sun-
lit painting! It’s in the
collection of the Los An-
geles County Museum of
Art, and it’s by Martinus
Rorbye, a well-traveled but rela-
tively short-lived (1803-1848)
19th-century painter from Den-
mark. It shows the wall of a
Danish inn, half-covered in
vines. The leaves cast shadows
against the white wall. There’s an
iron ring where a horse could be
tethered. Off to the right, curi-
ously cropped, is a bench with a
footrest. In the foreground, be-
sides some scattered dead leaves,
are two pairs of tidily aligned
shoes.
The overall impression is of a
neatness that, in characteristic
Scandinavian fashion, falls on
just the right side of obsessive-
ness. That goes for the way the
paint is worked, too. We know
that homes that are neurotically
tidy can feel unwelcoming; Ror-
bye’s brushwork, though won-
derfully deft, is never too fastidi-
ous. His touch is subtly musical.
He lets chance variations in
thickness, direction and trans-
parency convey the uneven tex-
tures of the wall; the life in the
fibrous, twisting leaves; the deli-
cate play of shadow and light.
Rorbye was for six years a
student of Christoffer Eckersberg
(1783-1853), a painter whose po-
etic realism spawned a genera-
tion subsequently hailed as be-
getters of a Danish Golden Age
(1814-1848). Eckersberg revolu-
tionized training in the academy,
persuading his students to pur-
sue direct observation of every-
day settings and a disinterested,
almost s cientific fidelity to natu-
ral light. Rorbye then traveled to
Paris and Rome, Athens and
Constantinople.
Photography was a recent in-
vention in 1844 when Rorbye
painted this inn (in oils on paper
laid on canvas), but there’s some-
thing almost photographic about
it — an evenness of attention, a
clarity of light and shadow and a
sense of cool observation re-
leased from any rhetorical func-
tion that all call to mind the
20th-century photographs of
Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange
and Robert Adams. The seeming-make what seems to be an
impossible decision. My
boyfriend and I have been
together 1 year 9 months, but
long-distance for the past 14find out whether he’ll ever
arrive. Nobody needs that
suspense.Dear Carolyn: I am trying toNICK GALIFIANAKIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTGREAT WORKS, IN FOCUSSo much depends upon sunlight and vines on a white wall
LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ARTthink.
How does he feel about this
pursuit you’re finding so hard to
leave behind?
If he doesn’t respect and
support it — I mean really get it,
not just lip service, which
anyone can pull off — then he
doesn’t support you, know you,
love you. Certainly not enough to
justify a heart-rending cross-
country move based on,
essentially, seven months of
dating.
If he does really get it and I’ve
brought you no closer to a
decision, then we still have this:
You’re 23. If he’s right for you
now, he’ll be right when you’re- You don’t even have to agree
to that now; it’s a c onclusion you
can both come to independently,
despite — or even thanks to —
breaking up and starting new
lives.
Write to Carolyn Hax at
[email protected]. Get her
column delivered to your inbox each
morning at wapo.st/gethax. Join the discussion live at noon
Fridays at washingtonpost.com/live-
chats.months. We are both 23. We are
both convinced we have found
our lifelong partners.
However, he has been
required to take a job on the
other end of the country. I h ave
been offered a good job there as
well, but moving would take me
away from something I have
been working toward for years,
that is very, very, very important
to me and has been since long
before we met.
He is unwilling to continue
dating long-distance for the next
two years, which would be the
next time we could be together,
though we talk every night and
visit every month or so. I need to
decide in the next few weeks
whether to follow him and give
up this very important thing, or
to stay and give him up.
The fact that I haven’t decided
yet is tearing us apart both as a
couple and as individuals. I have
talked it through with many
friends, tried making lists, paid
attention to my dreams, but
these haven’t helped. I have no
idea how to make this decision.
— AgonizingAgonizing: Ooh, ooh, I know! IOnly 24: “Oh, and also”? Here’s
what this person just told you:
When he feels he has something
to lose, he will lie at your expense
to protect himself and his
interests. People do get into
complicated situations, yes, and
do make massive mistakes;
you’re right that it doesn’t make
them undeserving of love.
When their mistakes include
long-standing, self-serving
whoppers that involve the denial
of the existence of a person he
helped create, however, it does
make them undeserving of trust.
Get your head out of your
altruism and listen to your
mommy.
Look. He may be an okay guy
someday. Or great.
He may be so close to being an
okay guy that your dumping him
— explicitly because of the lie,
and explicitly not because of the
soon-to-be-ex-wife and kid — will
be the butt-kick he needs to start
owning his life and all its
consequences, not just the ones
that are legally enforceable.
But he’s not there yet, and I
don’t advise hanging around for
the next complicated situation toCarolyn Hax is
away. The
following is from
Jan. 4, 2008, and
Nov. 30, 2007.Carolyn: My
loving boyfriend
of eight months
recently informed me that he is
the father of a 2-year-old son,
whom he has been financially
supporting for the duration of
our relationship. He didn’t tell
me earlier for a whole host of
reasons, some reasonable and
some simply cowardly. I feel lied
to, yet at the same time I feel so
understanding. How do I know if
I’m willing to move on from this?
Oh, and also, due to
complicated circumstances
involving immigration, etc., he
married the mother, whom he
barely knew, and is in the
process now of securing a
divorce. My mom insists I never
would have tolerated this from
anyone else (and she’s right) and
that I’m being “bamboozled.” I
say that I love him and this
massive mistake doesn’t mean he
doesn’t deserve to be loved.
— Only 24She finds o ut he has a wife and kid and argues that he’s Mr. Right, not Mr. Perfect
Carolyn
HaxMartinus Rorbye ( b. 1844)Entrance to an Inn in the
Praestegarden at Hillested, 1844
At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.A series featuring art critic Sebastian Smee’s favorite works
in permanent collections across the United StatesMIKE DU JOUR B Y MI KE LESTERDid you hear The Post today?
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