Romantics Shining Clear Light on Daily Existence
By ROBERTA SMITH
The first thing that distinguishes “Rooms With a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century,” a compact, quietly splendid exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is simply this: Its galleries have been painted a wonderful shade of oyster-grayish white. In the context of the Met, where the walls of special exhibitions tend toward plum, russet or evergreen, this pale, elegant hue is the visual equivalent of smelling salts.
