The Very Rich Hours - The Very Rich Hours

Welcome to The Very Rich Hours, where you can find postings of each day’s sunset. I’ve been painting every sunset since January 1, 2006.

This journal is named for the 15th-century illuminated manuscript The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry (Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry).

Most of these sunsets are seen from the same vantage point, facing the Blue Ridge, north of Charlottesville, Virginia. Even when I’m traveling and the sunset has to be done later from sketches, all of these works are painted “alla prima” — wet in wet, without later revision or overpainting, in about the same time it takes to watch the sun go down.

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TABULA ROSA (THE RED SERIES)

VAN DOREN ON THE SUNSET SERIES

READ BEFORE XMAS!

TWEETS ILLUSTRATED

SUNSET SLIDESHOWS

Entries in The Holy City (1)

Monday

Jun012009

Sunset, Monday, 1 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.I hope this sky is sufficiently bigger than life to suit my dad, Theodore (Ted) Van Doren, who would have been 83 today. I’d been thinking about lines from the hymn “The Holy City” that I still (more than 29 years after his death) would like to put on his gravestone. (What’s on there now is not of interest, much like the story behind it.) Dad used to sing that song, along with his sister May at the piano, and his powerful voice would shake the walls. But he never could quite entirely get the highest note at the end ... witnessing him do the song was like watching someone try to break the world record in the pole vault. I think he’d appreciate the fact that one of the sites where I found the lyrics also carries an ad, “How To Sing High Notes.”

The best place I found for the lyrics was a site related to James Joyce, which also lets you play a pretty good rendition of one of the verses; this site also includes a discussion of Joyce’s use of the song. The version I found that most conveys the power of the song as Dad sang it was on YouTube, by the Beirut Orpheus Choir. Of course, the performance by Mahalia Jackson is in a class by itself.

Sampling different recordings of the song just about destroyed me.

The lines?

Methought the voice of angels

From heaven in answer rang.

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