A cat may look on an author

Since I've been in New York I've seen some wonders, and I'm not just talking about the well-dressed woman carrying a Christmas tree down Fifth Avenue. I ran through a year's quota of "oohs" and "aahs" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday, but what most impressed me was a cat in a canoe.

In the American wing the crowds flock to see Emanuel Leutze's massive Washington Crossing the Delaware, but I was more drawn to a smaller painting: George Caleb Bingham's Fur Traders on the Missouri. I was first drawn to the light but I was held there by the stillness of the scene, the lively expressions on the figures' faces, and the cat. I read somewhere that scans of the painting suggest that Bingham had originally sketched a bear in the bow of the boat, but I think I prefer the cat, a black hole of ineffable stillness standing alone even when allowing itself to be accompanied.

I thoroughly wore out my legs with walking yesterday but still managed to see only a small fraction of the museum. I especially enjoyed a room full of portraits of women, including several by Mary Cassatt, and I sat and pondered a room full of landscapes by artists whose work I employ in my Concepts of Nature class: Asher Durand, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Cole. I enjoyed seeing some John Singer Sargent portraits, but none of them grabbed me as powerfully as a few of his charcoal portraits I'd seen at the Morgan on Friday. William Butler Yeats and Henry James hung side-by-side, Yeats holding himself aloof while James's eyes pierced the viewer's psyche. These are the eyes that peered deep into the heart of Isabel Archer and then put what he saw there on the page.

I'd like to put that portrait of Henry James face-to-face with Bingham's cat, although I don't know how James would manage the canoe. Both figures compel viewers' attention, looking straight into our souls while holding their own in reserve. Of all the wonders I've seen in the city, these are among the few that have held my gaze--and looked back.