Five O'Clock 1910

Curator: We're looking at Rose O'Neill's painting, "Five O'Clock", dating back to 1910. What a delightful painting this is to savor, isn't it? Editor: Delightful is one word. My first thought is domestic tranquility… and perhaps a dash of late Edwardian leisure? The pears and the roses… and all that oil paint really sits *on* the canvas. Curator: The roses especially—they feel so lush, bursting with fragrance even from here! She has placed them with a kind of intuitive wildness and combined with the dappled light behind, it adds to that impressionistic effect, giving an idealized image of femininity, a moment suspended in time, really. It is dreamlike. Editor: And there is a deliberate orchestration, in my view, between the real, almost palpable elements—the silverware, porcelain, pears—and those dreamlike impressions. How deliberate was O'Neill's cultivation of those items—the real means of production and, arguably, the artist’s role in elevating everyday commodities to be, like, aesthetic objects of appreciation? Curator: I think it's precisely the intersection that you identify, the way those everyday objects reflect, in her art, the aspirations and quiet beauty that she felt keenly present around her. I like the idea that they hint at a longing for serenity. Did she find it in the process of painting? It makes me wonder about her own story. Editor: And, of course, we can't ignore the social element implied here. Think about the time it would take to make a piece of painted porcelain, say. Think about what tea drinking itself represents! Who has that sort of leisure? Is that kind of production equitable? It speaks volumes, doesn’t it? Curator: Perhaps she wanted the viewer to consider those questions too! To me, she wanted to capture a fleeting sense of calm, maybe to elevate the common, to ennoble those very objects, or those with them, frozen on canvas. Editor: That makes me see the painting slightly differently; the artist using her art, perhaps, to both represent a moment of privilege but also, with an emotional ambiguity. Not celebrating that production exactly, but meditating upon it? Curator: Well, Rose O'Neill’s work offers something to think about as well as admire, don't you think? Editor: Absolutely. It highlights the complexities behind our aesthetic choices.