Art and Vanity

Since my post yesterday, I've been thinking about vanity, and since my mind has also been on early American portraits, the two have become inextricably linked. For the first few hundred years of America's history, portraits were the number one type of painting. Everyone who was anyone had to have one painted. Was it out of vanity? Probably, in some cases. But I believe that there is also a very human desire, in the face of mortality, to leave some trace of ourselves on earth for those who follow after. For our children or for our community, or, if we are all alone, to remind someone out there that we once existed.

Maybe that's why I'm writing a blog! Just one person in an enormous city, who knows I even exist?

Thomas Smith was the first person in America (that we know of) to paint a self portrait. But more than just a visual recording of himself, it tells a many-layered story about death, faith, and vanity. A vanitas painting is one that comments on the emptiness of worldly possessions, reminding us that we all will die, so we ought not place too much value on tangible objects. Thomas Smith's work can be called a vanitas, also sometimes called a memento mori painting. He has depicted himself touching a skull, a reminder of death. Beneath the skull is a sheet of paper with a poem that goes like this: Why why should I the World be minding,Therein a World of Evils Finding. Then Farwell World: Farewell thy jarres, thy Joies thy Toies thy Wiles thy Warrs. Truth Sounds Retreat: I am not sorye. The Eternall Drawes to him my heart, By Faith (which can thy Force Subvert) To Crowne me (after Grace) with Glory.

His poem asserts his forsaking of the World for The Eternal. But if his heart is set purely on the hope of things eternal, why has he shown us his wealth (evident in the elaborate lace neckcloth), his accomplishments (he was a sea-captain, and a possibly real battle is depicted behind him), and taken the time to leave us with a fine painting of his pious self? Is it vanity? Or does he just want to teach a moral lesson to his children and grandchildren? Is he vain to believe that he has something to tell them? It is impossible to know what he was thinking, but it is a fun painting to study, with so many contradictions to be found within it. I encourage anyone in Worcester, Massachusetts to go take a look at the original, in the Worcester Art Museum.

I was thinking a lot about it today as I sketched in Central Park. The morning was cloudy and cool but I was able to do some nice drawings of trees and people before the skies opened and poured rain. Vanity. Here I was--a tiny person in a huge park in a giant city, in an enormous nation, on a huge planet with no controlling its elements, in space--making faint pencil marks on paper. It all seems so futile, yet in the end I cannot believe that I don't matter.