averilburystedmunds: The Artistic Window

The Play School Windows

I saw a passing reference to Play School recently and immediately remembered my own offspring when young. Play School, together with Listen With Mother, were 15 minute TV programmes for the very young child. My three loved it and at the appropriate hour, I would switch on the set, Shandy, the Golden Labrador would take the hint and lie down in front of the TV and the three children would all sit on her to watch. I was always impressed with the opening of the programme; there would be a picture of three windows and the presenter would ask, “Which window shall we look through today? The arched, the square, or the round?” My three would decide and shout the chosen one and real delight would ensue if they had guessed correctly. If incorrect, no matter, because the camera slowly zoomed up to The Chosen One and ‘melted’ through the window for the audience to witness delights beyond, as a magical story unfolded

In my own apartment, the small kitchen has one bifold wall of glass, really, an extended window on to a tiny terrace which serves to illuminate the inner room while simultaneously disclosing the terrace beyond and notionally extending the dimension of the kitchen. It is a notable feature in a relatively ordinary living space and gives me pleasure every single day, regardless of the weather outside.

This fascination with windows is universal; we instinctively look to a window when we enter a room for the first time as we look through to discover what lies beyond. They allow us to engage visually with the world from the comfort of our homes while protecting us from the elements. Windows are not mere architectural decoration, they influence the amount, and the passage, of light into a room, significantly determining the atmosphere of a room. And windows themselves, are not mere frames for glass, they possess an intrinsic beauty and variety in form, as well as illuminating beauty. The interiors of our homes have provided inspiration for many artists and windows have functioned as a focal point, often the focal point, on many occasions.

Pieter de Hooch
Card Players in a Sunlit Room
1658

Artists use windows as framing devices to direct our gaze to a particular scene or subject, showing us the meaning of a scene or lighting up a particular view in a specific way. The open window in a painting can serve as the background, or the focus, and often can serve as a metaphor for hope or change or loneliness or a step in the dark. Laura Cumming in her Thunderclap, writing of Pieter De Hooch, asserts:

“To walk through the streets of Delft is to feel this pleasure redoubled; here is the world, and then smaller views of it, framed as you look through arches into inner courtyards, through doorways into cobbled passageways, into the windows of houses. All of De Hooch’s art turns upon the human urge to look through apertures into the world beyond.”p174.

The Danish Symbolist, Vilhelm Hammershoi, used windows to great effect. His 1900 painting, Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams is an evocative example.

Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams
Vilhelm Hammershoi. 1900

Our attention focuses on the window, the only source of light in a mysteriously empty room. Little can be seen outside; inside there are panelled doors but centre stage are the slanting rays of sunlight which flood through the uncurtained window, catching the gaze of the observer and taking his eye diagonally to the silhouette of the window frame on the floor. The sunbeams show us the dust motes, dancing. The atmosphere is one of muted but tranquil beauty.

Another Hammershoi interior of 1901, less mysterious though presenting a scene of equal tranquility, shows us two windows with a woman half kneeling on a chair at one window, perhaps calling to someone below. There is an open harpsichord with sheet music ready and a table covered with a white cloth. The walls are all white. The windows have floor length filmy white curtains with a small table between containing a bulbous vase. Beyond the windows are buildings across a narrow street, with several other similar windows in view. This painting could be entitled Windows in a White Room!

Interior Stragegarde
Vilhelm Hammershoi 1901

At the other end of the spectrum, there are Henri Matisse's joyful, vividly coloured interiors, often incorporating windows. Many of these were painted in the beautiful village of Collioure on the Mediterranean coast of southern France where he went to soothe his depressive tendencies. These paintings below seem to reflect the emotional intensity of his response to the landscape before him.