Where I Landed

By Barbara Crane

     Hoar Frost at Ennery, 1873, by Camille Pissarro, France

I’ve lived in France for decades but still feel an outsider.

Born in St. Thomas, I had Jewish parents of Creole-color,

wealthy merchants who never approved of my valuing

art more than money. At twenty-two I fled our little island

and painted in Venezuela for two years. I briefly returned

for goodbyes and then sailed to France for art and for life.

My father sent enough money to afford a student’s life

at the École des Beaux-Arts and Académie Suisse. Aside

from realism I learned from Corot and Courbet, I turned

to painting outdoors; I tried to catch the light and colors,

composing quickly my painterly impressions of the land,    

using a bright but still realistic range of hues and values.

What I did then crossed the line of my parents’ values.

I married a Catholic from a much lower station in life:

she was once my mother’s maid on our Caribbean island.

Julie makes me happy and buoys me up; she’s at my side

through lean times and my moods. Our children colored

my days the brightest. I taught art to all eight, by turns.

I painted our daughter Minette before she took a turn

and died of consumption at nine. That portrait’s value

is inestimable to me. But it’s light, shadow, and color

of landscapes that fed my family, as well as the lives

of others— fellow artists who at times were beside

themselves in debt. Cezanne was one, until he landed

on his feet with his ingenious still lifes and landscapes.

I guided quite a few young artists, helping them turn

into better painters than I. Still I stood by their sides,

because loyalty and collegiality are worthier values

than pride. And on the broader canvas that is our lives,

I wish our society were egalitarian and that the color

of skin mattered not a fig, only that character’s color

did. In that world we’d live simply, closer to the land.

In this painting I show you, a farmer is living his life

humbly, observing and preparing as the seasons turn.

He smells the earth and the frosty air. With his values

imagined to be mine, I feel I am walking at his side.

And as I walk this furrowed field of opalescent color

and darker values, I’m a citizen of no country’s land—

only of the turning earth from which I grow my life.

___________________________

Barbara Lydecker Crane has won the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Crown Contest, the Helen Schaible Sonnet Contest, and has twice been a Finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize. She has published five collections, including You Will Remember Me (2023, Able Muse) and Art & Soul (2025, Kelsay Books). She lives with her husband near Boston.