Victorian Still Life #3

View inside the University Librarian's office: Executive Assistant Elaine Harris and Director of Development Aurilla Fusco discuss Library business under the Behnke painting, Victorian Still Life #3

When University Librarian Artemis G. Kirk was ready to decorate her fifth-floor corner office in Lauinger Library, she looked to the Art Collection for an appropriate canvas, believing that this would be a fine opportunity to display a quality work that otherwise might remain unseen in The Vault. The painting would have to meet several site-specific conditions, however: It must complement both the late modernist architecture of the building and the view from the office of historic Healy lawn; it must be congruent with the abundance of light that would bathe it from dawn to dusk, during all seasons; and it must fill the space of a ten-foot bare wall.

Fortuitously, the Art Collection had just the right painting: Victorian Still Life #3 (1984) by Leigh Behnke (b. 1946). Based in New York, Behnke is one of the leading exponents of "photorealism," defined by the Grove Dictionary of Art as a style involving "the precise reproduction of a photograph in paint." Behnke’s 42 x 82-inch diptych exploits the illusory qualities of painting not only in the "realist" depiction, but also in composing the same still-life elements—a lamp, a pitcher, two tomatoes in a plate—as they might appear reflected in mirrors, slightly rearranged, and under differing light. (Only the tulips in the left panel provide the most striking distinction between the two scenes.) Critics have noted this multiple compositional approach as one of the artist’s trademarks.

Behnke received her fine arts education at the Pratt Institute and since 1979 has taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Victorian Still Life #3 was donated by the artist’s husband, Don Eddy, also a pioneering photorealist painter. Shortly before it was donated to the University, Victorian Still Life #3 was shown at the exhibition "Nature Morte: The Museum Considers the Still Life," at the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art in Loretto, Pennsylvania. Behnke’s work has been included in exhibitions at galleries and museums throughout the United States, including a solo exhibition at the National Academy of Sciences here in Washington D.C.

"Everyone admires the Behnke painting, and I think it looks wonderful in my office!" said Artemis Kirk. Visitors to the University Librarian’s office have been impressed not only with the technical mastery of this unusual painting, but also with discovering that the Georgetown University Library has such a strong collection of art in its holdings.