Youth and age

Despite the wild winter weather almost everywhere, we know we'll cycle through -- right?  The bulbs will be up soon and before long the flowering shoots of a favourite BC wildflower of mine -- "Youth-on-Age", so called because tiny new plants form at the base of the mature plants.

Big sigh.  Aging is an inevitable conversation topic these days among....people my age.  Call it art therapy, but I decided I'd confront the topic head-on.  It's another project that's been steeping since my trip to New York and my longed-for visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I was trying to pack as much as possible into a few short hours there, but every few steps I'd stop in my tracks to be amazed at something that wasn't on my short list.  "WHAT!!!  Rodin sculptures!!!"    I could only gulp and stop and take some photos.  This small study brought back a whole thought train:

I'd seen the final full-scale work reproduced in a Rodin book years ago and was so touched by its story.  The sculpture is variously called "The Old Courtesan", "Winter", or the one I prefer: "She who was once the helmet-maker's beautiful wife"; in French, "La Belle Heaulmière" ("The Beautiful Armouress.")

Rodin's version of a wrinkled sagging old woman was inspired partly by a poem of the medieval French poet (and criminal) François Villon.  It's pretty raw -- as is the sculpture -- but have a read.   Rodin evidently knew of the poem, as an educated French person would, and one day an old woman walked into his studio with her own story.

Seeing the Met's small study, I was reminded of the time I'd sat across from a much older woman in a medical office waiting room -- noting how beautifully groomed she was and what a fine-featured beauty she must have been in her day.  And so, about the time Valentine's Day rolled around, I decided to paint her from memory.

 

I made several attempts to be wrinklier (a word?), which made her look like The Night of the Living Dead.  I also realized at about this stage that I must shoot my paintings-in-progress under a better light.

At last I called it a wrap, borrowing the title -- "She Who Was Once the Helmet-maker's Beautiful Wife."

 Could she be the grandmother of my punk kids?  Maybe.

 Now what about that wrinklier face that looks back at me from the mirror?

Well, I've decided that if you didn't begin as the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife, you don't have to worry about falling off from your old standards.  The Tomboy Vibe has stood me in good stead -- the pulled-down cap and the patched-knee trousers are just as true to type in my 70s as they were in my youth.

François Villon must have had a thing about lost beauties.  In searching for the Armouress poem, I discovered that the pre-Raphaelite poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti had translated another of Villon's poems on this subject (scroll down in the link for the poem).  Rosetti's big contribution perhaps was to coin the poignant term, "the snows of yesteryear." 

And right on cue yesterday in my photo gleaning project, I came across "She Who Was Once a 55-year-old Tomboy":-- two photos in an envelope labelled, "Feb 2000 - 18 inches of snow!"    -- the snows of yesteryear.