Talks & Conversations

Seeing Little Beasts: In the Garden with Rea Manderino

Jan van Kessel the Elder, Study of Insects and Reptiles [center], c. 1660, oil on copper, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Upperville, VA

Jan van Kessel the Elder, Study of Insects and Reptiles [center], c. 1660, oil on copper, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Upperville, VA

Join us for a talk in the Sculpture Garden with ecologist Rea Manderino in collaboration with the exhibition Little Beasts: Art, Wonder, and the Natural World. Learn about the lives of the little critters that make their homes amongst the art in the garden!

About the presenter

Rea Manderino is ecologist and collections specialist at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation. Originally from El Dorado, Kansas, she has gradually moved east over the decades, receiving a BA in ecology from the University of Chicago and living briefly in St. Louis, Missouri, before settling in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Manderino received her MS in environmental science from the University of Virginia and worked with the Coastal Virginia Wildlife Observatory and NOVA Parks. She then moved to Maryland briefly to work at the Port of Baltimore for USDA-APHIS. She ultimately returned to ecological research, completing her PhD in entomology at SUNY-College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

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We look out onto a sweeping, panoramic view with trees, their leaves fiery orange and red, framing a view of a distant body of water under a sun-streaked sky in this long, horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, and is lined with hazy mountains and clouds in the deep distance. Close examination slowly reveals minuscule birds tucked into the crimson-red, golden yellow, and deep, sage-green leaves of the trees to either side of the painting. Closest to us, vine-covered, fallen tree trunks and mossy gray boulders line the bottom edge of the canvas. Beyond a trickling waterfall and small pool near the lower left corner, and tiny within the scale of the landscape, a group of three men and their dogs sit and recline around a blanket and a picnic basket, their rifles leaning against a tree nearby. The land sweeps down to a grassy meadow crossed by a meandering stream that winds into the distance, at the center of the painting. Touches of white and gray represent a flock of grazing sheep in the meadow. A low wooden bridge spans the stream to our right, and a few cows drink from the riverbank. Smoke rises from chimneys in a town lining the riverbank and shoreline beyond, and tiny white sails and steamboats dot the waterway. Light pours onto the scene with rays like a starburst from behind a lavender-gray cloud covering the sun, low in the sky. The artist signed the painting as if he had inscribed the flat top of a rock at the lower center of the landscape with his name, the title of the painting, and date: “Autumn – on the Hudson River, J.F Cropsey, London 1860.”

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