The Gentleman and the Kitchen Maid - Hardcover

Stanley, Diane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803713207 ISBN 13: 9780803713208

Publisher: Dial, 1994

Synopsis

When two paintings hanging across from each other in a museum fall in love, a resourceful art student finds a way to unite the lovers

About this title

Reviews

Grade 2-5-Stanley's imaginative tale, brought to life by Nolan's realistic illustrations, unfolds in a spacious, unnamed museum among a collection of paintings that appear to be by 17th-century Dutch masters. At night, portraits in the styles of Rembrandt, Hals, and others converse and gossip over the romantic feelings of the aristocratic gentleman in one canvas, whose gaze falls steadily on the painting of a kitchen maid across the room. During the day, all is quiet while visitors roam the hall and art students, like the young red-haired woman named Rusty, copy the famous paintings. Rusty notices on a return visit that the gentleman has lost his merry look, and that the kitchen maid has been removed to another gallery. Her solution is ingenious. She copies the maid on the same canvas as the gentleman and, back home on her own apartment walls, the two are forever bound in the same frame, locked in a mutual gaze of affection. This lighthearted story is deftly told and handsomely illustrated. More believable in its fantasy than the elaborate Rembrandt's Beret (Tambourine, 1991) by Johnny Alcorn, it serves the same purpose of adding a dimension of familiarity and human interest to the sometimes intimidating atmosphere of a great art museum.
Shirley Wilton, Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Stanley and Nolan lure readers with this playful puzzle. Rusty, an art student who comes to the city art museum to copy the works of Dutch masters, realizes that a kitchen maid in one painting and a gentleman in another have fallen in love. Of course the affair is hopeless: "there they were, trapped in their different worlds, frozen in time." Nosy neighboring portraits comment snidely ("the stern gentleman in black believed the servant girl to be at fault for looking over her shoulder in such a pleasant way"), but worse is to come: the museum directors move The Kitchen Maid to another room. But through her own art Rusty transcends all barriers: she unites the lovers in a single painting. Hats off to Nolan for his thorough research and credible renderings of paintings in the style of artists ranging from Rembrandt to Picasso (a note lists all 19 painters represented, and further states that the frames are modeled on those in the Yale Center for British Art). Stanley's supple storytelling admits a fresh, romantic grasp of the possibilities of art and imagination. Ages 5-8.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Scene: an elegant museum exhibit where a dapper gentleman (by Frans Hals or Rembrandt?) has long gazed affectionately from his frame at a wholesome lass with a basket of apples (typical Vermeer). Prim burghers in the room's other paintings disparage the inappropriate attachment, but an art student is intrigued. Remarking on their plight, she copies both lovers into a single new composition from which they can look happily into her room at home, where the other paintings are ``quite modern and open- minded.'' Just in time, too: in the museum, the kitchen maid has been moved, leaving her detractors to turn their disdain on a rowdy group scene. The disarming tale brings the 17th-century art to life in an original manner that's much abetted by Nolan's straightforwardly realistic paintings, which catch their piquancy in an appealingly informal style. Share this pre-museum treat with the art teacher. (Picture book. 5-8) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ages 5-8. In a museum gallery, a young artist copies the Dutch portrait of a young gentleman and becomes aware of what the other portraits in the room have been gossiping about for some time: the gentleman has fallen in love with the kitchen maid whose painting hangs on the opposite wall, and she with him. When the maid's portrait is moved to another gallery the next day, the artist sets things right as only she can--by painting the two together and hanging the picture on the wall of her apartment, where the other subjects of her paintings are more broad-minded than the talking pictures in the museum and their conversation more stimulating. There are so many reasons why this picture book shouldn't work, from the static gallery as setting to the romantic device as motive. But in fact, this fanciful plot works quite well, given children's inclination to see almost any painting as narrative art. Stanley's deft writing sweeps the story along without undo sentimentality, and Nolan's sensitive watercolor illustrations make each portrait in the museum a definite character in the story. An original. Carolyn Phelan

Edition details

• Publisher: Dial
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803713207
• ISBN 13: 9780803713208
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32