Talking to a Portrait

Rosalind Pepall tells stories from her days as a curator at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

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Curators have a certain image in the popular imagination – the critical eye, the withering glare, the steely intellect, the love of arcane details. 

Rosalind Pepall almost lost me to those clichés on the opening page of her collection of stories from her career at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Talking to a Portrait: Tales of an Art Curator.

The book’s opening line is a question from an unnamed colleague: “Has a painting ever brought you to tears?” Posed during a meeting, it caught Pepall off-guard, she writes, and she pondered it briefly “feeling a little scornful of emotional outbursts.”

I put the book down at that point, barely registering the qualification of her following line: “A work of art had often moved me deeply, but not to the point of weeping.” 

The book languished for several days before I tried again, skipping ahead to the fourth and titular story, which sees Pepall heading to New York as a young curator to secure the loan of a remarkable 1926 portrait of Baroness Vera Wassilko by German artist Christian Schad for an exhibition on the Roaring Twenties.

Pepall describes the baroness, with her captivating brown eyes and plunging décolleté. “Despite an indifferent expression, the woman’s gaze held me in an unsettling way. She seemed to be alive. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.”

At that point, the book claimed me. 

Pepall is a fluid and engaging writer with a good eye for human psychology – curators, after all, need a certain shrewdness in their dealings with artists and collectors. But ultimately, the stars of each story are the art objects, the raison d’être of the curator’s existence. The humans who circulate around them are merely a supporting cast.

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Christopher Dresser, “Teapot,” about 1879

Christopher Dresser, “Teapot,” about 1879

silver-plate and ebony, 7” x 10” x 2” (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; photo by Christine Guest, MMFA)

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Louis C. Tiffany, “Peacock Table Lamp,” about 1905

Louis C. Tiffany, “Peacock Table Lamp,” about 1905

leaded glass and bronze, 26” x 19” diam. (designed by Clara Driscoll, made by Tiffany Studios, New York; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; photo by Christine Guest, MMFA)

The stories provide generous insight into the varied challenges of a curatorial career – from getting a vintage Airstream trailer through a low entryway (let the air out of its tires) to persuading the wily owner of a rare Christopher Dresser teapot to sell it at a reasonable price after blocking its export to a potentially lucrative overseas auction.

Each account is well researched and abounds in detail. No surprise there, perhaps, but a welcome discovery is how each object is wrapped in nuanced layers of narrative. It’s a pleasure to flip forward to the colour plates to expose the final gift, the image that gives form to Pepall’s observations.

These objets d’art are a varied lot, as Pepall served both as curator of Canadian art and later as senior curator of decorative arts. They range from a portrait of a sad-eyed girl, Rose Fortin, by Quebec painter Jori Smith (“a feisty, loveable, cantankerous bundle of energy”) to a Tiffany lamp designed to resemble peacock plumage and the sketchbooks of Arctic explorer George Back, who at one point, facing starvation, ate his leather shoes.

While there’s a tension between the stories about art and decorative craft that may pull readers one way or the other, depending on their interests, Pepall’s accounts offer insights that go far beyond simplistic clichés.

And yes, when I went back to that first story, I discovered it was Ludivine, a 1930 portrait by Montreal artist Edwin Holgate now at the National Gallery of Canada, that had, indeed, brought tears to Pepall’s eyes.

Ludivine’s mother had died shortly before she posed for Holgate. Only 15, the daughter of a poor fisherman in a remote community on the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, she would have to care now for her seven siblings.

“Sensing her plight, Holgate captured Ludivine numbed by grief and the weight of her new family responsibilities,” Pepall writes. “The painting resounds with restrained emotion. Wariness, weariness, sadness and innocence can all be found in the face of this young girl with haunting jet-black eyes.”

There’s more of course, much more, as Pepall, her curiosity aroused, tells of her search to learn about Ludivine and what became of her. 

But no spoiler alert here – you’ll have to read the story to find out. ■ 

Talking to a Portrait: Tales of an Art Curator by Rosalind M. Pepall. Véhicule Press, Montreal, 2020.

PS: Worried you missed something? See previous Galleries West stories.