Veranda

Half-way in and half-way out, a veranda is an in-between space. Throughout history the veranda, porch, terrace, balcony, or portico has been a staple structure for homes and public places alike. It isn’t surprising then that it also became a common setting or subject for many paintings, especially in the West after the Industrial Revolution. What was it that drew artists to the veranda at this particular shift in history? Artists were going into the spaces of the changing culture, trying to make sense of an ever more segregated world - church from state, public from private, city from country. Along with parks, verandas were one of the most common of these reinvented spaces. There people could find rest and balance in a culture that was speeding up and splitting up.

A veranda was both a private and public space, open to nature and comfortably contained. And for a painter, not only was it a good setting for cultural response and commentary, but it’s formal qualities were captivating. The natural light and shadows interacting with the structure and figures, the clear division between the background and foreground and their play with each other, the colors of things both man-made and natural - all these were at a painter’s disposal. The visual elements of the veranda corresponded with the growing appreciation of play and rest in the new, industrial West, creating the perfect meshing of life and beauty for painters to capture.

Silver Shchedrin, A Veranda Overgrown with Grape Vines, 1828

oil on canvas, The State Tretyakov Gallery

Verandas have been a part of life about as long as houses have, and they were painted before, as well as after, the Industrial Revolution. Shchedrin was captivated by the life of the peasants he saw when he visited Italy from his native Russia, at a time when both nations were still relatively free from the hurry of industry. A Veranda Overgrown with Grape Vines serves as a good example of what a painting before the Industrial Revolution often looked like. Shchedrin depicts the peasants resting from work on a veranda, not yet as a decisive act of leisure, but as a simple, natural part of life.

Pierre-Auguste Renior, Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1880-81

oil on canvas, The Phillips Collection

After the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, the veranda’s role developed into something new, and paintings set in them did the same. In Luncheon of the Boating Party, the sunlight dances over the energetic, intimate party. Out on the terrace, the partygoers can be both free from indoor constraints and yet sophisticated, enjoying life in their free time. Renoir captures the new life of a working class who now venture out of homes and offices, not just for a quiet siesta, but for the purpose of leisure.

Vincent van Gogh, Caféterras bij nacht (Place du Forum), 1888

oil on canvas, Küller Möller Museum

Like Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party, van Gogh paints a public terrace, rather than a private veranda. However, because the point of view is from outside of the veranda, he emphasizes the publicness of the place over the intimacy of conversation. The separation of space is clear between the lighted café and the darker street, but crossing back and forth isn’t difficult. Leisure is both apart and accessible. However, the goal of that leisure is not seclusion, but interaction, as all the customers congregate at the far end of the terrace.

Frank Blackwell Mayer, Independence (Squire Jack Porter), 1858

oil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1906.9.11

It is interesting to see how the purpose verandas served in culture and painting differed between places, even during the same period. North America, the other part of the West, was also industrializing. Its people were participating in leisure activities and looking for places to rest. Once more, the porch, as they would call it, with it’s sunlight and shade, was a go to. However, in America, independence was a strong value, as Mayer emphasizes in his portrait of the wealthy Squire Porter, and so the porch was often a more private or intimate place, a complete retreat from the bustle of the day. A man’s porch was part of his castle, where he could watch the world go by.

John Sharman, At the End of the Porch, 1916-1920

oil on canvas, Indianapolis Museum of Art, 81.6

In At the End of the Porch, Sharman also paints the porch as a private space, using the natural light and shape of the porch to create a sense of peace and seclusion. More than golden afternoon light or the electric light coming from within van Gogh’s Caféterras, Sharman’s soft light expresses a contrast to all the Industrialization that had happened by the early 1900‘s. He expresses a desire for some slowness of life to come back.

Paul Gauguin, The Siesta, 1892-1894

oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993.400.3

Gauguin paints Tahitian women in The Siesta resting out of a bright afternoon on a veranda that would have been modeled after ones built by the French. Disgusted with industrialization, and even more at its seeping into the pure native culture in Tahiti, the painter seems to go back to a veranda scene reminiscent of ones painted before the Industrial Revolution, like Shchedrin’s A Veranda Overgrown with Grape Vines. He paints the common, primitive people resting naturally, a little removed from their outdoor surroundings, bringing graceful spontaneity back to the veranda. Gauguin represents the veranda as a space of rest, but it is only a temporary and partial escape. On the veranda, one may rest for a moment, then move out in the world again.

Carrie Mixon