Synopses & Reviews
Review
"This delightful, brief, poetic, freely associative book is a quartet of meditations on still life, and much more. Describing a bust of Sherlock Holmes in the detective's room (a literary still life), Davenport takes flight, and the next thing the reader knows he is passing through the labyrinth of imagination as the author guides us meanderingly to Edgar Allan Poe, Thoreau, Homer, Picasso, Braque, Horace Vernet, Oscar Wilde, to the obscure Constantine Meunier, and beyond. Intoxicating in its historical fantasy, Davenport's book is not for pedants but for the common reader, who retains a child's wonder." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
This collection of four essays on the art of the still life begins with a look back to pictures of meals painted on the walls of Egyptian tombs--as the author points out, the soul could eat. Davenport's meditations on the still life dip into the full history of this art form, touching on neolithic cave paintings, the Dutch masters, Cezanne, Van Gogh, even photography and the collage.