Window To The Soul

Whenever I accompany someone to a museum they inevitably ask the same question, “Why did you stop in front of this particular painting instead of the hundreds of others we’ve walked past?” The answer is simple: I’m looking for a moment when an artist reveals himself.

This picture is a perfect example of what I mean. This wasn’t painted for nobility or a wealthy merchant. Rembrandt was painting a portrait of his son, not something that would have carried much value at the time. He emulated in paint what a novelist would take hundreds of pages to describe. This portrait hangs in the Wallace Collection in London. It is a depiction of Rembrandt’s twelve year old son, Titus, and it contains what is arguably the most revealing passage in all of art.

If you look closely (please enlarge the detail) you will confront the colors of extinction and the grave. This is an eye without a future, not just a revelation of a soul but a portal to nothingness. I could go on at length about the fantastic dexterity that went into creating this detail; the strong brushstrokes and indescribably beautiful juxtaposition of tone and color, but I can’t get beyond the notion that any father would have the honesty to describe such emptiness in his child’s gaze.

How could Rembrandt know that his son would be dead in a handful of years? This painting seems to confirm that he knew, and it’s hard to understand how such knowledge didn’t drive him mad. I tend to think that this painting is Rembrandt’s way of preserving his child. He lavished love on this canvas as if it, not Titus himself, were his flesh and blood, his link to posterity.

Rembrandt didn’t need a crystal ball to see the future. Titus van Rijn would not have a long and happy life. He would marry and die shortly after the birth of his first child. The artist followed his son into the grave less than a year later.

Rembrandt’s painting serves as a gut-wrenching expression of parental agony, a silent shriek of loss and anguish to haunt the centuries. The question shouldn’t be: Why pause in front of this painting? The question should be: How can we ever look away?

Dad's Last Flight: Almost

Today is Super Bowl Sunday and for me the day will be bittersweet. I’m not much of a sports fan but four years ago Mrs. Chatterbox and I had a little Super Bowl party. We like to scarf down a few munchies, watch the commercials and wonder what the game is all about. My parents had recently moved to the area and we included them.

We had the best time ever. I can’t remember Dad enjoying himself so much. The game was exciting, and after driving home Dad called to tell me what a great time he’d had. I never spoke with him again. The next morning Mom found him in his favorite chair. Dad had died from a heart attack. My parents had been married for fifty-nine years.

In the days to come my mother’s brain was understandably short-circuited by grief. Looking back on this painful experience I can now find a trace of humor in it. After dad was cremated Mom said to me, “I’ve decided what to do with your father’s ashes.”

I was surprised. I’d thought Dad would end up in the family cemetery where his parents and sister (and Mom’s family) were buried.

“No, I’ve thought of something special to honor your father.”

“Really, what do you have in mind?” I asked.

“I’m going to have your father’s ashes thrown out of an airplane. Over the ocean.”

I thought about it for a moment, trying to hold my tongue, but in the end my proclivity to render opinions won out. Dad had never let me down when he was alive and I felt that he needed me now. “Mom, that’s a thoughtful idea, but I don’t think Dad would have wanted it.”

“Why not?” she asked, sharply.

I gave her two reasons. “First, while it’s true that Dad was a pilot and loved to fly, he

spent his life trying not to plummet from the sky. It seems cruel to dump his ashes out of

a plane. And another thing…”

“Go on,” Mom said.

“Dad wasn’t a confident swimmer and was terrified of the ocean. To scatter his ashes over a place that terrified him just doesn’t seem right.”

In the end Dad was interred in the family cemetery where he’d always assumed he’d be laid to rest. So now for the public service announcement. If you’re watching the game today with your dad, stop for a moment to appreciate him. We never know how much time we have left together. If you aren’t watching the game with your dad, give him a call and tell him you wish you could be spending the day together.

As for your wife, be sure and tell her what you want done with your ashes or you could end up taking a dive from 10,000 feet into a very large swimming pool.

Enjoy the Super Bowl.

Check out Dad's amazing superpower here.

Peculiar Picture #4

This is one of the first pictures I attempted when I decided to become an illustrator in 1985. I had this idea of creating a picture book of famous people using cats as models to create a hiss-tory. So many people love cats that it seemed like a clever idea at the time. Since then I’ve noticed several bookstores carrying books along these lines. Most of the illustrators who ran with this idea painted cartoons of cats inserted into famous paintings, but I intended to do stroke for stroke copies.

This piece was based on Holbein’s portrait of Anne of Cleves, one of the wives of Henry VIII. Other ideas that might have followed in the series were Cleo-cat-tra and Meow-Zedong.

The model for Anne was a stray in the neighborhood; the belt I made her pose in for hours on end nearly killed her. (Just kidding, cat lovers!)

There must be something I can do with this illustration, but what?