b'based on studies made not at the Sheep Meadow, but at the southeast cor-ner of the park in early spring as a record of the otherworldly blossoming of the 20 pear trees planted around Saint-Gaudens gilded equestrian stat-ue of General Sherman. Sadly, many of these trees were destroyed in a storm last year, and so Ruttenberg has come to realize how she needs to accept the fact that the painting cannot be developed any further. It began one day when she noticed how a puddle reflected these trees, the equestrian statue, the Bergdorf-Goodman building beyond them, and the large, still-bare trees where she was standing. She stopped in her tracks and made an elaborate sketch in her notebook, later deciding to paste this very sketch in the center of a vast canvas (protecting it with a plastic overlay that only adds to the glimmer), forcing a jump from one scale to a vastly larger Left: Detail from Tango, Im Your Man.Right: Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, by Auguste Renoir, 1876.'