This image, which I recently snapped, means a lot to me.
My grandfather Seymour Bayuk (1931-2013) wanted to live near the water, so my grandmother, Rita Bayuk—who passed away Tuesday night at 86—brought the sea and a sailboat to their suburban Baltimore home. My grandfather, a civil engineer, built a sill beneath the painting; over the years, many shells adorned the ledge.
I have seen a lot of amazing trompe l’oeil paintings, much of it in Italy and Spain. But being in my grandparents’ house and seeing that painting, with its light-blue lunette suggesting infinite promise, I could smell and hear the waves. It was more real to me than what I beheld in European churches and museums. And I knew it was created with love, which is kind of like Fra Angelico painting sacred scenes with his tears.
The picture contains other elements. Some of my grandmother’s artwork, which fills her house, appears. And one can make out two mezuzahs (which contain scrolls with biblical texts) on doorposts; my grandparents shared their Orthodox Jewish faith, which was very important to them, with their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
More sad, a wire hints at the oxygen my grandmother needed at the end of her life, after she lost much mobility. I am still gathering my thoughts about all that she meant to me—I shared one idea at the funeral, during which my great-uncle, aunt, father, brother, and one of my sisters spoke, recorded on video here—but I owe my passion for art to her (and through her to my mother).
In the hours since her passing, I have been thinking about medieval royals, who saw distinguished ancestors looking down upon them, framed, from their castle walls. I wrote for Sojourners in 2017 about what it was like for someone to see her ancestor depicted in a Della Robbia work on view at the National Gallery—to essentially have a family album on such a prestigious wall.
My family is neither fabulously wealthy nor famous, but I think I have something better. Every time I walk by one of my grandmother’s works on my walls, I get to think of her and remember all the good times. The works do not portray her, and the artist never worked for kings nor princes nor did she command vast commission rates, but she touched the works and poured herself into them.
I would rather have her, of course, and I miss her terribly. But this is the next best thing of which I can think, and through them, she continues to teach me new things each time I look.
She will live forever in your heart, and in the hearts of your children.
What a lovely reminiscence, I'm enchanted by the way your grandmother brought the beach, ocean, and sky, and her artistic heart, into her home and your childhood. Baruch Dayan HaEmet.