Took a day-trip to Salem yesterday to check out the Peabody Essex Museum. It was a blustery day, so my friend Robert and I didn’t end up tooling around Salem much. The museum itself has plenty to offer, so we weren’t at a loss for things to see and do.

Robert was looking forward to the “Artful Teapot” exhibition (which was delightful), and one on the Taj Mahal (which was somewhat less than spectacular, if you ask me). I myself was looking forward to the maritime paintings, and the PEM is chock full of ‘em. Its collection is world renowned. Now I’m a big fan of landscape, seascape and skyscape painting, but when you can get all three in one, well, that’s value, people.

I’m not a naval buff or a nautical history nut, or anything. For me, it’s really all about the paintings. The play of light and shadow, the drama of the composition. That’s what it’s about for me.

Some artists and works of particular interest: Fritz Hugh Lane, a contemporary of the Hudson River School, and a pioneer of what would come to be called Luminism, is well-represented here with the aptly luminous The Steamer Britannia in a Gale, 1842, and the mystical, transcendent Twilight on Kennebec , 1849 (both below).

Another Luminist, Francis Augustus Silva, is also well-represented at the PEM. His View of Boston Harbor near Castle Island, 1872 (below), represents everything I love about the Luminists. There is an element of the Romantic in their work–the quality of light, the colors, convey a mood, a spirit. Certainly Silva was well aware of this. He himself wrote (as J.I.H. Baur recollects in an article on Silva in the November 1980 issue of Antiques):

“A picture must be more than a skillfully painted canvas; — it must tell something. Some men can never paint from memory or feeling — they give us the cold facts in the most mannered way. Many of our artists learn certain artists’ tricks and then repeat them continually, with no idea of the deeper meaning of the art, but only of the outside of things, and very trivial things at that. All earnestness of purpose is lost, and with them art becomes a useless field of affectation where their tricks of color and handling are displayed. The subject must convey no sentiment — call up no emotion, awaken no interest.”

Of course, Silva’s outlined here everything the Luminists were against. According to Lane and Silva (and other great luminists, like Jasper Francis Cropsey, the incomparable Frederick E. Church, John Frederick Kensett, and the brilliant Martin Johnson Heade–click here for samples of their work) color and light were spirit itself. And their paintings were to be not merely seen but felt. I don’t know about you, but I feel them.

Aside from the odd Luminist masterpiece, which got me all panty and breathless (Robert was like, “Head between knees! I’ll go out and see if I can find you a paper bag so you don’t hyperventilate.”) there were plenty of works depicting great galleons tossed about by sea storms, shipwrecks, sea serpents, walruses and slaughtered whales, erupting volcanoes and other various and sundry natural disasters that were worth the price of the ticket by themselves.

But the PEM is so much more than nautical lore and gore. They had an exhibition called “The Owl in Art and Nature” in the interactive “idea lab” that was abfab. There was a whole wall of stuffed birds, and works that captured the uncanny nature of the creatures, like Passage, by Sachiko Akiyuma:

There’s also the Yin Yu Tang house which they moved stone by stone from the Chinese village of Huang Cun and rebuilt on the museum grounds. If that’s your thing. In fact, for any and all things Asian, this is the place. If you’re turned on by Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Asian “export art” you’re bound to go into seizures of ecstasy at the PEM. Just make sure you don’t swallow your tongue.

Salem’s about a half-hour by commuter rail from North Station, and the PEM is definitely worth the trip. Admission’s thirteen bucks.