George Deem

Bruna Sevini and Whistler's Mother

Date:	1975
Medium:	Oil on canvas
Size inches:	c. 23 1/2 x 19 3/4
Size cm:	60 x 50
Signature:	Signed on the reverse
Location:	Greater Lafayette Art Museum, Lafayette Indiana

Greater Lafayette Art Museum, Lafayette, Indiana. Accession Number 1984.18. Anonymous Gift.

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Reference
Vermeer,A Lady Writing, c. 1665, National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Whistler, Whistler's Mother: Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, 1871, Musee d'Orsay, Paris.

The Photolithograph, 1979, has the title Bruna Sevini and Whistler's Mother

Bruna Sevini in the 1970s was employed at the American Embassy in Rome to read Italian newspapers and publications, from which she would select articles that she translated into English for the Ambassador to read, and for distribution to relevant Embassy staff members. When Bruna looked up from her desk as George Deem entered her office at the Embassy, he would see both Bruna Sevini sitting at her desk and the woman at her writing table in Vermeer’s painting, A Lady Writing. Like George Deem, Bruna Sevini had a sense of past time as persistent present reality, and they were good friends. (Ronald Vance, 2015).

Bruna Sevini says she is the only Sevini in Rome. I told her I am the only Deem in New York.
... In Rome for Sunday lunch with Bruna Sevini. Fried artichokes, a Roman specialty. Then a walk in the old ghetto. Bruna talking of things as streets and buildings brought them to her mind. Bruna says that the Jews of Rome were among the principal mourners for Julius Caesar, who had been their friend and protector. At that time the Jews did not live where the ghetto now is, but across the river, in Trastevere. Rome is fictional and small enough that one can see the beginnings of things and their persistence. The Eternal City. Anything that once existed in Rome is there still, a present reality, as in Thornton Wilder’s The Cabala. Later, a very Roman evening: dinner at L’Eau Vive, our waitresses a Vietnamese nun and a Senegalese nun, each wearing her national dress. When, at eleven o’clock, it came time for the Ave Maria, the Vietnamese nun danced on a narrow platform set up under the arch between the two dining rooms, slow movements to a recording of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” while another nun read, in French, the story of Bernadette and the Immaculate Conception. Then a superb chocolate mousse. (excerpt from “Extra Genre,” WhiteWalls: A Magazine of Writings by Artists #6, Summer 1981).

1977  Allan Stone has following paintings Bruna Sevini  1976  (from a handwritten list of 100 works)

Allan Stone Gallery, New York

Exhibition date:

November 1977

Works Shown:

Bruna Sevini and Whistler's Mother Composition in Red and Black (Rubens Vermeer) Danesbank Vermeer Easel Painting (Vermeer) Easel Painting, Verspronck Flying Vermeer: Wilbur Wright, Orville Wright Girl Before a Mirror (Picasso/Vermeer) Hands Off Mayakovski Home Italian Vermeer (Caravaggio) Magdalen/Mayakovsky Modern Vermeer Interior Mona Lisa Washington Mondrian in Vermeer's Studio Mondrian Vermeer New Vermeer, The Orchestrated Vermeer Pink Room with Vermeer and Mondrian Projection Sales Meeting 1938 Sebastian in the Kitchen Seven Separations Seventeen Vermeer in Florence Vermeer Interior Vermeer Repeat (Two Extra Buttons) Vermeer's Moving Waiting Room Yale