Ravinia 2019, Issue 4, Week 7

Clockwise from top left: The Baptism of Christ by Piero della Francesca; St. Francis in the Desert by Giovanni Bellini; The Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel the Elder; Self-Portrait with Two Circles by Rembrandt van Rijn; Stratford Mill by John Constable So excited was Goode to talk about art in what he said was his rst-ever interview on the subject, he prepared a list of what he called his favorite “touch- stone” works—“Great paintings that I live with and have loved for many years.” Some of them are famous, others less so. Here are his six top picks: ■ e Hunters in the Snow ( ), oil on wood, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Kuns- thistoriches Museum in Vienna. Meant to depict the season of winter, it shows three men and their dogs returning from a largely unsuccessful hunt. ■ Stratford Mill or e Young Waltonians ( – ), oil on canvas, John Constable, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT. A group of boys are shing in a mill pond in this idyllic landscape with billowy white clouds in the background. ■ e Baptism of Christ (a er ), tempera on wood, Piero della Francesca, National Gallery, London. e title makes clear the subject matter of what was once the central panel of a chapel altarpiece in an Italian abbey. ■ Self-Portrait with Two Circles ( – ), oil on can- vas, Rembrandt van Rijn, Kenwood House, London. One of the best known of Rembrandt’s more than self-portraits, it portrays him against a background with two enigmatic partial circles. ■ St. Francis in the Desert (ca. – ), oil on panel, Giovanni Bellini, Frick Collection. Goode calls this portrait of the celebrated Italian saint “one of the greatest paintings I have ever seen.” ■ Paris Street; Rainy Day ( ), oil on canvas, Gustave Caillebotte, Art Institute of Chicago. One of the most beloved works in the Art Institute’s collection, it depicts a bustling Parisian street near the Gare St. Lazare right a er the rain has stopped. ese are all European Old Master or Impres- sionist works, which Goode readily acknowledges are typically his preference. “I’m narrow in that way,” he says, “if there is a European painting collection, I tend to go to that.” at said, he cites two American painters he likes—celebrated th-century realist omas Eakins and pioneering th-century modernist Marsden Hartley. At the same time, the pianist went out of his away to add a seventh painting to his list of favorites, one that Goode says shows he is not completely stuck in the distant past—Balthus’s Passage du Commerce-Saint-André ( – ), which is owned by the Beyeler Foundation in Switzerland. “I’ve actually visited that street in Paris, which you can still see,” Goode says, “and it looks much as it did when he painted it.” Beyond simply visiting museums, Goode also likes to per- form in them, something he has done at the Frick Collection, the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, England, which has one of Europe’s nest art-deco concert halls. “It gives me a special pleasure to play surrounded by paintings,” he says. He has a special memory of playing before some people about years ago in San Giovanni Evangelista, a th-century church in Venice decorated with frescoes. “In that place, I remember feeling very happy, because I was playing in Venice for the rst time,” he says, “and I played Chopin’s Bacarolle, which is certainly a piece inspired by Venice and ideas of a gondola and a trip on the Great Canal. I felt like that was a perfect marriage of music and art and place.” Goode is not really sure where his interest in art originated, but he has had since he was a child. “I just cottoned to it,” he says. He grew up in the Bronx, and when he was , he started taking lessons in Manhattan at the Mannes School of Music, which in those days was located on the Upper East Side, not far 34 RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JULY 15 – JULY 28, 2019