Things That Lose by Being Painted

Posted in List of Things, Splendid things, Things of elegant beauty

blue room-sm

Sei Shonagon in The Pillow Book has a short list for Things That Lose by Being Painted: “Pinks, cherry blossoms, yellow roses. Men or women who are praised in romances as being beautiful.”

I was invited to a Beethovan string quartet concert at the surviving A.J. Davis Hudson River villa, the Dr. Oliver Bronson House in Hudson, NY. A.J. Davis was one of America’s greatest architects and the house is fantastic. The bones are all there and it’s being restored, but right now it’s a beautiful place with it’s peeling paint and marvelous hundred year old wall paper.