Feather Work --- Day 5/5

Walk: de Young Museum
Distance: 1 mile (on those hard museum floors again)


Alexander Pope, The Wild Swan, 1900, oil on canvas

Another day at the museum, today the de Young,  for Ciwt which turned out to be about feathers.

Beautiful featherwork:
 
 Andes robe made of feathers (ca 1500)

   Royal Hawaiian Featherwork

           
Eskimo Down Jacket  
 
 Calot type hat made in Los Angeles, 1940

And the trompe l'oeil  painting above where the artist, Alexander Pope, has painted the feathers so perfectly they 'fool the eye.'  This trompe l'oeil effects was one of Pope's goals with the striking painting, but overriding that was his desire to make his viewers' attention and make them look at the beauty of the bird. Instead of shooting it.  The species was on serious decline in North America, and Pope, an active hunter, had  somehow turned a corner on his love of shooting the wildlife around him and became one of the first active North American spokespeople for conservation.