Commonplace Treasures

At the entrance to the career retrospective of the artist Mary Pratt hangs a large, brilliantly coloured canvas titled Threads of Scarlet, Pieces of Pomegranate. It shows two pomegranates, one with its leathery red skin intact, the other broken in two, scattering seeds and bleeding red juice.

Mary Pratt painted Threads of Scarlet in 2005, the year her divorce from another iconic painter, Christopher Pratt, became final. They had at that point been separated for a dozen years. She writes in the accompanying text that she was embarrassed when she saw this canvas, with its obvious burden of pain, hanging in her dealer’s gallery: “So much of myself was on view.” Following the divorce, Christopher married Jeanette Meehan, his studio assistant.

Although their marriage is long over, Mary and Christopher Pratt are still joined in the public mind, two extravagantly gifted painters, both born in 1935, both graduates of Mount Allison University in...