"Becky Suss: The Dutch House" at The Baker Museum of Art

"The Dutch House (Drawing Room)"

If you're a reader of Ann Patchett's books, you might be thinking, "What a coincidence!" when you read the title of this post. After all, Patchett wrote a novel with the same name a few years back. It turns out it's not a coincidence at all. 

A few years back, Chatanooga's Institute of Contemporary Art approached artist Becky Suss about doing a show that incorporated some aspect of Tennessee or the South. She began to think about the books of writers from the region. It didn't take long to land on Patchett's "The Dutch House," a book Suss had read and enjoyed. Patchett is from Tennessee, so that base was covered. Suss' work explores issues of domesticity and memory, which are big themes in the novel. So there was a second checkmark. And it just so happens that the novel is set in the town where Suss grew up. Point, set, match. Before long Suss was at her easel creating a series of paintings depicting the fictional mansion that plays such a big role in "The Dutch House."  

When creating her work, Suss did more than just look to the descriptions of the Dutch House in the novel. Patchett's story is set in Elkins Park, a tony suburb of Philadelphia. So Suss did a deep dive into the architectural and domestic details of Lynnewood Hall, a Gilded Age mansion in Elkins Park. The Delft tiles around the fireplace in Suss' "Drawing Room," for instance, were popular in that era. For her portraits of the Van Hoebeeks (the original owners of the Dutch House) that hang above the fireplace, Suss looked to portraits of James Buchanan "Buck" Duke and his wife. Duke was a particularly apt choice because both he and the fictional VanHoebeek were 19th century tobacco magnates. Didn't all those guys look more or less alike? 

"The Dutch House (Observatory)"

The painting that most summoned the book to my mind was Suss' depiction of the study/music room with its full wall of windows. When we first meet Maeve and Danny, they are living in the Dutch House with their widowed father. The children are introduced to Andrea, the woman who becomes their evil stepmother. Spoiler alert: Dad and Andrea get married, and when he passes away Maeve and Danny are summarily ousted from their home. Over the course of the novel, the Dutch House becomes an obsession for the siblings, and in many scenes they sit in a car outside the home and lament their lives. In the book, the front of the home also has a wall of windows, allowing Maeve and Danny to see into the world from which they've been ejected. It is inexorably sad.

Suss went beyond creating depictions of the house in her series. She also gave a nod to some of the books the novel's characters are reading. The inclusion seemed apt (and clever) in an exhibit inspired by a book. In the story, Danny and his wife-to-be Celeste meet on an Amtrak train where they are ostensibly studying for their classes. And so the backdrop in Suss's paintings of Organic Chem and Adrienne Rich's Necessities of Life recalls Amstrak upholstery from the 1970s. It was much groovier than the worn burgundy upholstery I remember from my days of commuting via NJ Transit a couple of decades later. I liked it.   

You might wonder, as I did, whether Patchett has heard about the exhibit. Indeed she has. Suss wrote Patchett before she undertook the project to obtain the author's permission. Patchett happily agreed on the condition that she have the option to purchase one of the paintings. It could have been a bit awkward if the author said "thanks, but no thanks" after seeing Suss' work. But Patchett reportedly exercised her option, although I haven't been able to learn which of Suss' works now hangs in her home (or, perhaps, her bookstore). Maybe we'll have a chance to ask her when she speaks at Sarasota's Library Foundation luncheon next week. 

"Becky Suss: The Dutch House" has moved on from the Baker to Cheekwood Estate & Gardens in Nashville, where it will run through March 16th. If you happen to be in the area, check it out. For more on Suss and her work, click here.