A couple days ago I registered for the Hill-Stead Museum “Pink Party,” and although I had my doubts about the audience for this event, I got in my car around 12:30 this afternoon and drove a little over an hour to Farmington, Connecticut.  I’d been here once before, and it wasn’t hard to retrace my steps.  The property comprises 152 acres, but winter still grips the landscape, and the house itself, with its Mount Vernon-Style portico, is the focus of attention when one arrives at the gates.  The museum director says:

Hill-Stead’s world-class collection of French Impressionist paintings and fine art, exquisite decorative arts and handsome antiques can be found on display year-round in our 1901 Colonial Revival house, designed by one of the country’s first female architects, Theodate Pope Riddle.

I first heard of Ms Pope Riddle when my book club read a book about the sinking of the Lusitania (she was one of the passengers who survived).  Born in 1867, she was a remarkable woman: wealthy due to her family’s money (her father was a self-made industrialist), but also talented, independent, forward-thinking, and socially conscious.  When she died in 1946, she willed her home to the public, stipulating that Hill-Stead become a museum, as a tribute to her parents.  It is a fitting memorial to them and to her life and work.

Among the museum’s treasures are paintings by the French impressionist Edgar Degas, who is sufficiently famous that even I knew that his subjects often included horse racing jockeys and ballerinas.  For today’s event, the museum invited guests to dress in their finest pink clothes and to enjoy a short performance by a local ballet troupe.  Of course most of the guests were young children, girls between four and ten.  I felt out of place, but I’m used to that.

In her welcoming remarks, the museum educator explained the pink connection: the museum owns the only Degas painting in which he painted ballerinas wearing pink (we’re looking at a reproduction in this photo):

Here are two of the company ballerinas, also dressed in pink:

I should know the music they danced to — it might have been a Nutcracker piece:

The museum educator read a story about the Edgar Degas sculpture, The Little Dancer (in French, La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans), now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.  The story explains how Marie van Goethem came to model for the artist.The special program this afternoon, an interpretation by the Albano Ballet Company of Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, was simply wonderful. The Albano Ballet Company, incorporated in 1974 as a Hartford-based professional dance company, was founded by and remains under the direction of Joseph Albano. “Mr A,” as he is known in the ballet world, himself introduced the dance.  He explained how each character dances to a specific orchestral instrument.  According to Prokofiev’s own notes:

Each character of this tale is represented by a corresponding instrument in the orchestra: the bird by a flute, the duck by an oboe, the cat by a clarinet playing staccato in a low register, the grandfather by a bassoon, the wolf by three horns, Peter by the string quartet, the shooting of the hunters by the kettle drums and bass drum.

I don’t think I have ever been closer to real ballet dancers, and these dancers seemed very young but very polished.  Here is the duck (the wolf has his arms around her):

And here is the wolf, after he was captured by Peter (note the rope):

I’m sorry these are such bad photos — my cheap little camera does not capture motion well, especially indoors.  Suffice it to say that I would like to see more of this company’s repertoire.

After the performance, we were welcome to visit the museum and wander at will through the rooms.  Ms Pope Riddle’s father, Arthur Pope, was the driving force behind this impressive art collection.  As the Hill-Stead Museum web site articulates:

Today, the Alfred Atmore Pope Collection is a testament to a man who developed a personal aesthetic worthy of a scholar. As one of the earliest Americans to collect Impressionist art, Pope did not rely on established academic conventions, but trusted instead his eye for the groundbreaking and the forward-looking. His business acumen gave him a sense of the practical: the relatively small size of his collection reflects his wish to own no more paintings than could be comfortably displayed and enjoyed throughout the house.

Among the impressionist works collected by Mr Pope are pieces by Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, and Claude Monet. The Dancers in Pink canvas was painted by Degas around 1876; Mr Pope purchased it in 1893 and it holds pride of place in one of the home’s central drawing rooms.