Scenes From Pennsylvania Dutch Country

September 15th found us driving through Pennsylvania "Dutch" Country. Yes, it's about as Dutch as sauerkraut. I'm not sure what drives an interest in these things, all the peculiarities, anachronisms, curiosities, etc., but there we were, taking it all in, learning about the differences between the Amish and the Mennonites, etc. We had driven these parts before, in 1968, en route to a memorable summer in New Haven, CT. We still have the souvenir hex sign we purchased then. Most of the pix are by Vicki.

Street scene

Big-time agricultural country; family farms

Not exactly the old-fashioned way

Among the dozens of one-room school houses...educational
opportunities among the sects and cults are generally pretty limited...

Turnpike cruisers

Mennonite most likely, judging from the heart-shaped head-gear

Tour bus

Seriously

High point of the visit

We considered spending the night, but had reservations elsewhere

Huge barns for drying tobacco leaves

Now we are in Lancaster, to visit the famous Central Market

Mennonite cheese shoppe

Huge old 19th century building, impressive vaulting

Row housing in the city

We love the stone construction one sees increasingly traveling north;
especially Vicki, who in her Pennsylvania childhood years lived in a
house reconstructed from a stone barn

A fun day

Norfolk's Chrysler Museum Of Art, 2

 More paintings from the excellent Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk...

Dosso Dossi, Learned Man of Antiquity, 1540; maths

Pietro del Vecchio, Portrait of Erhard Weigl, 1649;
working towards a unified theory of everything; seriously

Ribera, Saint Jerome, 1650; sans lion

Guido Reni, Meeting of David and Abigail, 1620

Attributed to Bernini, Bust of the Savior, 1679; nice curls

Rubens, Man with a Sword, 1598

Claude Lorrain, Loading Timber in the Golden Glow of Evening, 1627;
interestingly, oil on copper; the Dutch were fooling around with copper 
in the 16th and 17th centuries...but Claude? in Rome?

Hubert Robert, Landscape with a Temple, no date, but, hey, another
of my favorite painters

Bierstadt, Minnehaha Falls, 1886

Bierstadt, The Emerald Pool, 1870; the drapery reflects what a 19th
century American showing would look like; nice historical touch

Winslow Homer, Song of the Lark,1876

Gustave Dore, The Neophyte (First Experience of the Monastery, 1866;
based on a scene from a George Sand novel; Dore wrote "He will be 
over the wall tonight"

Renoir, Trees by the Edge of a River, 1875; small, early Renoir, acquired
in a 1967 Norfolk subscription drive involving some 20,000 residents; impressive!

Fantin-Latour. Portrait of Leon Maitre, 1886; the anti-Impressionist

Monet, View of Vernon, 1886

Degas, Dancer with Bouquets, 1895

John Singer Sargent, The Countess of Latham, 1904;
"Queenie" was her nickname; this was Sargent's final
portrait, turning to landscapes and murals

Sargent, Olives at Corfu, 1909; I would have stuck with the very,
very lucrative portraits for which he is remembered

Braque, The Pink Tablecloth, 1933; a Cubist still life in which the
objects on the table merge...I think

Picasso, Decoration for Bal de Mardi Gras, 1923; too long a story...

Jack the Dripper, Number 23, 1951; 1951

Visiting later that day and next with Harry and Norma
in their Manassas home; our longest-time friends...since
the cradle in Mark's case, from high school in Vicki's; First
Christian Church in Miami was the origin of many very
long-lived marriages

Norfolk's Chrysler Museum of Art, 1

We very much enjoyed Norfolk's Chrysler Museum of Art. Yes, that Chrysler, a scion of the early automaker, with a 1971 donation of some 10k works of art, and whose wife just happened to be from Norfolk. The museum has a robust collection, strong especially in glass. 

Italianate entrance to the main building, antedating the Chrysler gift

Unable to find the real name and artist, I am dubbing
this monumental sculpture Need a Lift?, by Rodin

As is the trend these days, the Huber courtyard is now beautifully
enclosed; used for performances, etc. 

Major upcycling in the gift shoppe: art vending machine

Now in the extensive glass collection: a chess board of Catholics vs Jews?
Gianni Tose, Chess Set, 1985

Jaraslava Brychtova and Stanislov Libensky, Astronomical Calendar Sphere,
1994; amazing, the stuff done in glass these days 

F. L. Wright, Window from the Darwin Martin House, 1903

Daum, Vase, 1927; lots of Daum here

In the extensive historical section now...a large German drinking
glass; the lines indicate each person's share...

Personal favorite: Majorelle cabinet, filled with Galle and Daum glass

Tiffany, While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks at Night, 1910

Lots of Tiffany, of course

Tiffany, Woman in a Pergola with Wisteria, 1910-14

Clara Driscoll (Tiffany lead designer), Wisteria Lamp, 1901 

Tiffany, Seascape Window, 1910; a new form to us

In addition to the many rooms of the permanent glass collection, there were
special exhibitions, open workshops, demonstrations, and more; one could easily
spend a day just perusing the glass here

Follower/studio of Bosch, Temptation of St. Anthony,
early 16th

Ditto, Landscape with Temptation of St. Anthony

Alas, we were laughing so hard I neglected to get a photo

of the descriptive signage; a late 14th/early 15th panel of

St. John the B scenes; note the headless burial; Spanish

We're big Cranach the Elder fans; this is Cranach the Younger, who
continued the family business by doing copies of dad's works; hey, it
worked for the Breughels, through 3 generations; numerous copies
of this particular scene, JC and the adulteress; 1537

Marx Reichlich, Last Judgement, south German, early 1500s