Henri Toulouse-Lautrec brought the vivacity and energy of Parisian cabarets, café-concerts, and theater to life in his prints and posters, many of which were on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum in an exhibition entitled “Toulouse-Lautrec and the Spectacles of Paris” from October 13, 2012 through January 13, 2013. For the first time, the Art Museum will display its entire collection of forty-three prints and eight posters, including the poster Cyclist Michael, which went through extensive conservation in order to be included in this exhibition.

Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) was born into the aristocracy and received a classical education and academic art training. He came to artistic maturity as color lithography was gaining acceptance and posters were transforming the streets of Paris into outdoor art exhibitions. “Toulouse-Lautrec was a talented draftsman. Between 1891 and 1901 lithographic printmaking became central to his artistic output. His lithographs done directly on stone with crayon reflect his talent at capturing the essence of performers through their gestures and social persona on and off stage with humor,” says Kristin Spangenberg, Curator of Prints at the Cincinnati Art Museum. “He was one of the artists who raised the profile of the medium for artistic purposes as well as commercial purposes.”

Lithography because of it autographic nature and the introduction of the steam press made rapid production, multiple colors, and large scale lithographic printing ideal for advertising and commercial production. With the rise of the poster came the development of fine art printers with whom the artist collaborated. His posters integrating word and image bridged the gap between fine and commercial art. In the 1890s in addition to his awareness of the commercial value of his commercial work, Toulouse-Lautrec catered to a new class of bourgeoisie collectors by producing prints and posters before the addition of letters for the market. Over 120 years later, his surviving prints and posters still epitomize the spirit of fin de siècle Paris.

Visitors recognized great posters such as



Aristide Bruant in His Cabaret;



Jane Avril;



La Revue Blanche;



and At the Concert,

the last of which is of particular interest since he created the poster for the Cincinnati firm of Ault & Wiborg Co.

Other great prints such as



Mademoiselle Marcelle Lender, Half Length



and At the Moulin Rouge: La Goulue and Her Sister

were on display along with three of the ten plates from his series












Elles.

Viewers also saw Lautrec’s familiar portrayal of popular performers of his day to advertise entertainment, including



La Goulue;



Yvette Guilbert,



Aristide Bruant,



Sarah Bernhardt



and Marcelle Lender.

These performers were instantaneously recognized by his contemporaries.

From City Beat (images, link added):

Another familiar work is “The Jockey,” shown here in two states.



One is a first edition black and white,



the other five colors in the second state, second edition.

The jockeys stand in their stirrups, the foreshortened horses have all four feet off the ground, the tension and excitement are palpable. The label tells us that this late work (1899) reflects the artist’s youth on family estates in the south of France, where horses were a part of life, and underlines the fact that he came from an aristocratic background...

A lithograph, originally executed in olive green that has turned black with the years,



“Cyclist Michael” was commissioned by a bicycle company and shows a famous racer, Jimmy Michael, his trademark toothpick in his mouth, on a bicycle with a chain that could possibly power a locomotive. The chain is wrong, the company required a re-working:



but Toulouse-Lautrec for his own pleasure printed a few of these. This print required extensive conservation before it could be included here, but is a standout in the exhibition.

Toulouse-Lautrec was commissioned to do other commercial work besides posters, including song sheets, menus, book illustrations, and theater programs. He also published his own work. Edition sizes ranged from 25 to 100 and 2000 for the posters, all of which we have fine representative examples of in the collection. His posters with their bold typography, sweeping lines, brilliant colors, and startling patterns, reflect the influence of Japanese ukiyo-e prints.

More images:

Posters:



Ambassadeurs Aristide Bruant in his cabaret



Moulin Rouge: La Goulue

Vermeer and the Delft School, a major international loan exhibition, premiered at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from March 8 through May 27, 2001. Best known for quiet, carefully described images of domestic life as seen in works by Johannes Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, and others, Delft masters also produced history pictures in an international style, highly refined flower paintings, princely portraits, and superb examples of the decorative arts. Featuring 85 paintings – including 15 Vermeers – by 30 artists, about 35 drawings, and smaller selections of tapestries, gilded silver, and Delftware faience, the exhibition cast the familiar "Delft School" in a new light – one that emphasizes the roles of the neighboring court at The Hague, and of sophisticated patrons in Delft.

The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in collaboration with The National Gallery, London.

Although the paintings of Vermeer are often regarded as the culmination of realism in Dutch art, the exhibition reveals how earlier artistic developments in Delft paved the way for the achievements of Vermeer and his celebrated colleagues – Pieter de Hooch, Carel Fabritius, Emanuel de Witte, and others. The exhibition focused on the key decades of the 1650s and 1660s, but approximately one-third of the paintings on view date from the preceding 50 years.

The exhibition was organized both chronologically and thematically, with familiar and lesser-known artists exhibited together to illustrate common interests in style or subject matter during different decades in the century. Thus Vermeer's choice of themes, and especially his approach to space, preoccupation with light, and use of certain compositional schemes are seen as reflecting not only his own extraordinary powers of observation, but also his sophisticated understanding of current artistic conventions and contemporary trends in taste.

Vermeer was represented by 15 paintings in New York, including six works that were not seen in the 1995-96 monographic exhibition in Washington. There were 10 De Hoochs on view and 16 views of church interiors and other buildings by Emanuel de Witte, Gerard Houckgeest, Hendrick van Vliet, and others, as well as a selection of townscapes by Daniel Vosmaer and Egbert van der Poel. Several artists who briefly worked in Delft – Paulus Potter, Jan Steen, Adam Pynacker – were represented by outstanding works. Other painters who have been connected with the city, including so-called De Hooch School painters Pieter Janssens Elinga and Jacobus Vrel, were excluded because they never worked in Delft or the surrounding area. In addition to the well-known genre scenes, townscapes, and architectural views, the Delft School produced distinctive traditions of landscape and still-life painting, and these were also included in the exhibition.

Among the highlights of the paintings by Vermeer were such rarely lent masterpieces as



The Art of Painting (ca. 1667; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)



and The Procuress (1656; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden).

Other works by Vermeer in the exhibition included



The Little Street (ca. 1658; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam),



Girl with the Red Hat (ca. 1665; National Gallery of Art, Washington),

and the Metropolitan's own



Allegory of the Faith (ca. 1672).

Although they are similarly titled and were likely painted in the same year,



De Hooch's Portrait of a Family in a Courtyard in Delft (ca. 1658; Gemäldegalerie, Vienna)

and the more intimate and informal scene depicted in



The Courtyard of a House in Delft (1658; National Gallery, London)

differ greatly in both subject and style, revealing the artist's range in appealing to his patrons' wishes.

Two self-portraits by Fabritius as well as his much-loved



Goldfinch (1654; Mauritshuis, The Hague) were also on view.

The drawings and watercolors in the exhibition varied from preparatory sketches to finished drawings depicting views in Delft that are still recognizable today. A selection of delicate flower, shell, and other nature studies were among the highlights of works on paper. The tapestries in the exhibition included an extremely rare horse caparison – a full set of weavings to adorn a horse for parades and other celebratory pageants. On loan from the Royal Armory in Stockholm, the caparison was only used once and thus remains spectacularly vivid and well preserved. Other examples of decorative arts included cabinet bronzes and several pieces of silvergilt, illustrating the high level of artistry attained by Delft silversmiths.



The exhibition was accompanied by an illustrated catalogue published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press. The 626-page publication features essays by Walter Liedtke, Michiel C. Plomp, and Axel Rüger, as well as several contributions by other international scholars.

Vermeer and the Delft School was organized by Walter Liedtke, Curator, Department of European Paintings at the Metropolitan, in consultation with Axel Rüger, Curator of Dutch Paintings, National Gallery, London.

Following the Metropolitan Museum's presentation, the exhibition was on view at The National Gallery, London, from June 20 through September 16, 2001.

Outstanding Review:

http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/museums-national/vermeer-and-the-delft-school/286137/

Cincinnati Art Museum presents Edward Henry Potthast. Eternal Summer an exhibition on view June 08, 2013 to September 08, 2013.

Edward H. Potthast (1857-1927) was an American Impressionist from Cincinnati, most famous for his beach scenes of New York and New England. The exhibition will include lesser known subjects in the collection, such as



Man and Child on an Ox Cart(1900).


From artdaily.org:

Viewers can expect to see Potthast’s explorations of figure studies; humble Dutch and Brittany peasants; farmer laborers and cattle; landscapes; coastal views and fishermen; parks, often with frolicking children; and the public beaches of New England and the mid-Atlantic. All ages will enjoy programs and interactive learning stations, such as computer terminals at which visitors may explore the two-hundred drawings in the Art Museum’s sketchbooks. Eternal Summer looks at the social and historical context of Potthast’s subjects, including the popularity of simple peasant themes during the Industrial Revolution, the "Dutch craze," and the rise of middle-class leisure time and tourism. Bathing costumes, produced in response to the growing popularity of beach-going in Potthast’s day, will appear alongside his paintings. The exhibition builds on the Cincinnati Art Museum’s long-standing tradition of presenting significant scholarship on American art with the fully illustrated catalogue that accompanies the exhibition.

From Cincinnati.com: (images, link added)

Starting with 1889’s “Breton Girl”



and “Young Breton Girl – Study (Sunshine),”

Potthast showed an affinity for the free-seeming brushstrokes and love of vivid colors and outdoor light that marked French Impressionism. And in the 1910s and 1920s, he found his great subject – bathers on the beaches of metropolitan New York and New England... Potthast’s beach paintings succeed because they did reflect modern times – the changes in lifestyle and social customs brought on by the 20th Century. Those were the gloriously colorful, airy beach paintings like 1924’s “Blonde and Brunette,”



1915’s “A Holiday”



or 1921-27’s “Beach Scene (Couple on the Beach)".

From Fine Art Connoisseur:

For the Midwesterner Potthast, a significant trip to France in 1889 brought him into contact with artists like American Robert Vonnoh and Irishman Roderic O’Conor, from whom he learned his distinctly impressionistic style. Upon his return to Cincinnati in 1894, Potthast was a great critical success, acting as the vanguard of Impressionism in the city. Later, Potthast would move to New York, where he developed his famed light-filled beach scenes, painted with a bright and lively palette.

More Paintings of an "Eternal Summer" at the Cincinnati Art Museum:





Edward Henry Potthast, “Brother and Sister,” ca. 1915, oil on canvas, 24 1/8 x 20 1/8 in. Cincinnati Art Museum, Bequest of Mr. and Mrs. Walter J. Wichgar, 1978.333



Edward Henry Potthast (1857–1927), “Wild Surf,” oil on canvas board, 12 x 16 inches. Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York.



Edward Henry Potthast (1857–1927), Figures at a Fountain ca. 1900




Edward Henry Potthast (1857–1927), Dutch Interior, 1890, oil on canvas, 19 3/4 x 25 1/2 in. (50.1 x 64.8 cm), Cincinnati Art Museum, Gift of A. Howard Hinkle, Theodore Hallam, Frederick H. Alms, Ault & Wiborg, C. H. Krippendorf, F. A. Bradley, Bellamy Storer and Alexander McDonald, 1894.9




Edward Henry Potthast, "A Sailing Party," ca. 1924, oil on canvas, 30 3/16 x 40 1/16 in. Cincinnati Art Museum, Gift of Henry M. Goodyear, M.D., 1984.218





Edward Henry Potthast (1857–1927) Summertime




Catalogue:

Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910–1912, the first exhibition to unite many of the paintings and nearly all of the prints created by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque during these two exhilarating years of their artistic dialogue, was on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) September 17, 2011 – January 8, 2012.



Pablo Picasso, Spanish (1881-1973)
Man with a Pipe, 1911, Oil on canvas
35-3/4 x 27-7/8 in. (oval) (90.7 x 71.0 cm)
Collection of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth Texas
© 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The international loan exhibition, featuring 16 paintings and 20 etchings and drypoints, was organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Kimbell Art Museum, with its debut in Fort Worth, TX May 29 – August 21, 2011.



Georges Braque, Glass on a Table, 1909–10, oil on canvas. Tate, London. © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

During the years 1910 through 1912, Picasso and Braque invented a new style that took the basics of traditional European art—modeling in light and shade to suggest roundedness, perspective lines to suggest space, indeed the very idea of making a recognizable description of the real world—and toyed with them irreverently.



Pablo Picasso, Still Life with a Bottle of Rum, summer 1911, oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998. © 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

From Glasstire:

If there is one realm where Picasso takes command of the experiment and distinguishes himself from his friend, it is the Cubism-ization of persons, specifically but not surprisingly, the female nude. Though dark browns and bronzes dominate all of the paintings, black smoke-like currents surrounding the subject of one of Picasso’s nudes suggests a darkness of mind as well as palette, prompting one of his friends to say the artist “had gone mad.”



Pablo Picasso, Portrait of a Woman, 1910, oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. © 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Eik Kahng, organizing curator and SBMA Chief Curator notes, “The works that these two artists produced during this two year period remain some of the most difficult and enigmatic in all of the history of art. In this exhibition, we hope to recover the excitement and sense of the unknown that we know they both felt. It is not an exaggeration to say that Picasso’s and Braque’s experiment would clear the way for an entirely new definition of the work of art, now freed from the task of imitation in the conventional sense. All of the greatest art to follow in the 20th century is in one way or another indebted to their achievement.”

Following up on hints they found in the work of Paul Cézanne, and brimming with youthful bravado, Picasso and Braque created pictorial puzzles, comprehensible to a point but full of false leads and contradictions. Viewers pick up a few clues—a figure, a pipe, a moustache, a bottle, a glass, a musical instrument, a newspaper, a playing card— and these start to suggest a reality in three dimensions. The impression is that of a fast, modern world, with glimpses of models, friends, and the paraphernalia of drinking and smoking. But things never fully add up, either in detail or as a whole—and deliberately so. Teasingly elusive, the image is a construction of forms and signs that the artist has put together in a spirit of parody and play. The pleasure for the viewer is to let go of all normal expectations and enter into the game, which is an endlessly intriguing one.

More than any avant-garde artists before them, Picasso and Braque called into question conventional ideas about art as the imitation of reality. They collaborated so closely and like-mindedly (“roped together like mountain climbers,” in Braque’s own phrase) that their works of this period are sometimes difficult to tell apart. Their radical experiment in picture-making, which came to be known as Analytic Cubism, has been as far-reaching in its implications for art as the theories of Einstein for science.

Not surprisingly in light of its importance in the history of art, Cubism has been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions. Some of them have been dauntingly large, especially given the amount of time each of these highly complicated works demands of the viewer. The guiding principle of this exhibition was that less can be more. It offered the kind of small, carefully calibrated selection that invites the viewer to spend time exploring each work in detail.

From the Los Angeles Times: (image added)

Among this modest selection, however, are some of the finest Cubist paintings either artist made. They start with Picasso's fresh -- and decidedly strange --



"Man With a Clarinet," loaned from Madrid's Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and prominently installed on the center wall. Tall and narrow, like the enigmatic figure and his musical instrument, it translates rhythm and doleful sound into fleeting pictorial terms. The picture is constructed on a scaffolding of mostly diagonal lines interrupted by curves and arcs that allude to the musician's rounded, air-filled cheeks and the curved flare at the end of his reed-instrument. On this gangly scaffolding Picasso hung a flickering array of mostly short, horizontal brushstrokes of muted color, like laundry hanging out to dry in the Mediterranean sun.

"Man With a Clarinet" was painted in Paris after the two artists spent a productive summer in Céret, a rural French town in the foothills of the Pyrénées near the Spanish border. The painterly technique derives from Post-Impressionism. With a limited palette dominated by ochres and grays, the prismatic image appears shot through with rays of silvery light. The musician exudes all the tactile solidity of drifting smoke.

Picasso, Still Life with Bottle of Marc

Paintings in the exhibition came from a number of distinguished collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Menil Collection and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Tate in London, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, and the Robert B. and Mercedes H. Eichholz Collection. The etchings and drypoints were selected from several sources, most notably the extraordinary holdings of Cubist prints in the Melamed Family Collection.



The exhibition catalogue includes essays by some of today’s most talented scholars in the field: Eik Kahng, Charles Palermo, Harry Cooper, Annie Bourneuf, Christine Poggi, Claire Barry, and Bart Devolder. It is distributed by Yale University Press, New Haven and London. Tangerine from EAD.

In celebration of a gift of 110 William Trost Richards watercolors, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts presented the gift in its entirety in a focus exhibition September 29 - December 30, 2012. The watercolors were shown in conjunction with a selection of Richards oil paintings from both the permanent collection and select private collections. These jewel-like watercolor landscapes by the American Pre-Raphaelite artist delighted visitors with their intimate scale and technical mastery of the watercolor medium.



Most Westerly Rocks of Land's End, Cornwall, 1879, William Trost Richards. (Image courtesy PAFA)

Curator: Anna Marley, Curator of Historical American Art



William Trost Richards, An Essay at Twilight, Newport, 1877, Watercolor on paper, 3 5/16 x 5 inches, Promised gift of Dorrance H. Hamilton in memory of Samuel M. V. Hamilton, 22.5.2008

From Chestnut Hill Local:

The exhibit features popular Chestnut Hill retreats such as



“The Forest” (1868), a large and detailed painting of Devil’s Pool; and



“The Wissahickon” (1872), a stunning painting of the picturesque creek winding between wooded banks through Fairmount Park.

“The Forest” was lent to PAFA by the Palmer Museum of Art of Penn State University, and “The Wissahickon” is courtesy of Drexel University College of Medicine.

Whitney, a hugely successful businessman whose fortune came from the manufacturing of wheels for railroad cars, acquired at least one oil painting from Richards annually from the mid-1860s until 1872, and “The Forest” was one such purchase. It thus represents Whitney’s eager support of Richards’ career and was also likely Richards’ way of repaying Whitney for funding the artist’s travel abroad in the mid-1860s, further exemplifying the close working relationship between these men.

Hailed by critics as Richards’ Pre-Raphaelite “triumph,” “The Forest” captures the deeply shaded wooded dell known as the Devil’s Pool at the confluence of the Cresheim and Wissahickon Creeks in Chestnut Hill.

“The Wissahickon” depicts another scenic passage of Wissahickon Creek, here shown as a stream winding between tree-lined banks through a thickly wooded area of Fairmount Park. Set in Germantown, where the artist lived, and not far from Whitney’s summer residence in Chestnut Hill, this detailed rendering of a popular local retreat represents the close bond between these men both socially and geographically. The luminous canvas hangs in this exhibition with its earlier, low-lit counterpart, “The Forest,” just as it once was hung in Whitney’s own 19th-century Philadelphia art gallery.

William Trost Richards at the Newport Art Museum (June-September 2012)

...But by the 1870s, he had arrived at a blending of the two styles — dramatic and detailed depictions — and turned to primarily painting coasts and seas, especially the shores of Rhode Island after he began summering in Newport and environs in 1874. (The "Paradise" of the show's title refers to Middletown's Paradise Valley coast.)

Curator Nancy Whipple Grinnell includes representative samples of his seascapes — including Off the South Shore, his 1896 oil painting of a foggy, glowing green sea, and a 1899 painting of waves pounding a sandy beach at the foot of craggy



Guernsey Cliffs, Britain's Channel Islands.

They're quality paintings, but dry, photographic, crystalline.

The surprise comes via 110 postcard-sized watercolors that Richards sent in the 1870s and '80s to his friend and patron, George Whitney, a Philadelphia industrialist and art collector. They could be snapshots from Richards's travels — waves crashing against the rocky English coast, the sun setting between the cliffs of a winding Cornwall bay, a Newport marsh and pond, stormy skies, the streets of London, Stonehenge, bridges, cemeteries, the (now gone) Washington Elm on Cambridge Common in Massachusetts where (disputed) legend has it that George Washington first took command of the American army.

The reserve of his easel painting gives way in these little works to breathtaking scenes — all the more astonishing for what he's able to pack into 3-by-5 inches. The Daisy Field, Conanicut Island (1884) depicts a haystack and boulder amidst a rolling meadow speckled with flowers (Richards had a home perched on the Conanicut cliffs overlooking the sea). Ships dot the Atlantic in the distance; gulls hover on the breeze.

Read more: http://providence.thephoenix.com/arts/143041-william-trost-richards-at-the-newport-art-museum/#ixzz2WCTMsYuU (image, link added)

Catalogue:

Richards spent his time in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Newport, Rhode Island. Both places served to inspire and advance his artwork, but it was in Philadelphia where Richards met the prominent collector George Whitney. Whitney first collected Richards’s works in the 1860s, and he soon became Richards’s friend and patron. Whitney funded several of Richards’s travels abroad and was an energetic advocate for Richards’s work. Richards painted the miniature watercolor landscapes (or coupons, as he referred to them) as gifts to Whitney. The paintings were often included in Richards’s correspondence with Whitney and depict the pastures and rocky coastlines of New England as well as scenes from the artist’s travels to Scotland, England, and Italy.



When Whitney died in 1885, his estate was sold, and his collection of Richards’s finest paintings—eighty-seven in all—were forcibly dispersed. Only Whitney’s collection of the small watercolors remained together. Remarkably, these paintings recently found their way back to Philadelphia to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). Mirroring Richards’s life, these paintings also traveled between PAFA and the Newport Art Museum.

Marquand Books produced the 156-page catalogue, designed by Zach Hooker. The book’s tactile qualities—with embossed case stamping and an imprinted image on the cover—evoke the texture and intimate details of the paintings themselves. The entire collection of miniatures is featured in the catalogue. These watercolors, reproduced on a one-to-one scale, reveal the grace and sensibility of Richards’s artistic skill, and essays by Linda S. Ferber and Anna O. Marley illuminate the history of American landscape painting that surrounds these jewellike miniatures.

More images, link to the collection

The first American drawings acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art were by William Trost Richards (1833-1905), an artist associated with both the Hudson River School and the American Pre-Raphaelite movement. A number of these early acquisitions - donated to the Metropolitan in 1880 by the Reverend Elias Lyman Magoon - were displayed at the Museum this spring, along with recent significant acquisitions and works from a loan collection of Richards's miniatures. William Trost Richards in The Metropolitan Museum of Art was on display February 13-May 13, 2001

Born in Philadelphia in 1833, William Trost Richards studied in Florence, Rome, and Paris before settling in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was recognized initially for his landscapes - especially of the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire and southwestern Maine - but turned his attention to the sea beginning in about 1867. A leading artist of the American Watercolor Society, Richards was esteemed for helping lift the medium into higher prominence.

The exhibition at the Metropolitan featured works representing the entire range of subjects for which Richards was known. Noteworthy among his early works was



Palms,

a delicate drawing from 1855 which was acquired recently by the Museum.

Landscapes from the E. L. Magoon gift of 1880 included the watercolors



Moonlight on Mount Lafayette, New Hampshire (1873)



and Lake Squam from Red Hill (1874).

Among Richards's luminous and highly realistic paintings of the sea was the watercolor



A Rocky Coast (1877).

Complementing the works in watercolor, graphite, and ink from the Museum's collection were selections from a private collection of Richards's charming postcard-size watercolors of landscape and marine subjects in Pennsylvania, New England, and the British Isles.



Indian Summer, 1875, Oil on canvas, 24 1/8 x 20 inches, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Collis P. Huntington, 1900 (25.110.6))

The exhibition was organized by Kevin J. Avery, Associate Curator, Department of American Paintings and Sculpture.

The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria’s show, Oskar Kokoschka Exile and New Home 1938–1980, 11 April to 13 July 2008 paid tribute to the late works of Oskar Kokoschka, exhibiting 44 paintings and some 160 watercolours,drawings and graphic prints. (see examples below) More than half of the objects on view come from the holdings of the Albertina, whose collection of some 1200 of Kokoschka’s works is one of the world’s largest.

Self-assured and free from the influence of contemporary tendencies, the cosmo-
politan Kokoschka finally developed his own totally unique style from the 1930s
onward (in 1936 he was 50 years old). The way in which Kokoschka dealt with colours
and subjects then became increasingly confident; his sophisticated colouring created
the distinctive moods of his pictorial spaces. This was true no matter whether he was
working with oils, watercolours or coloured pencils.

Whereas in his early creative years Kokoschka’s works emanated from his own personal
experiences, beginning with his exile in Prague in 1934 his orientation shifted more
and more towards the outside world. The exhibition follows the unsettled life of the
artist, which became a veritable odyssey through the war-torn Europe of the 20th
century. In the years from 1933 to 1938, along with his “avant-garde”, Dadaist and
Expressionist colleagues, Kokoschka was branded a “degenerate” artist and various
works of his were included in almost all of the “Schandausstellungen” (exhibitions
intended to inspire disgust).

After his flight to England in 1938, Kokoschka produced a number of poignant
paintings related to current war developments. As a painter, he responded with
bitter parables to the dreadful events of those years. At least from that time on, his
political views became an integral part of his life and oeuvre, as a number of striking
works bear witness (“The Frogs”, 1968).

Like portraits, Kokoschka’s cityscapes portray the different temperaments, atmos-
pheres, world views and characters of Prague, London, Florence, Rome, Salzburg,
Berlin and Fribourg. The paintings are accompanied by diary-like sketchbooks,
which he always carried with him.

Figure groups and allegories, which express the bonds between characters joined by
fate (“Cupid and Psyche“, 1950−1955), are another important subject. And, recalling
his own stormy relationship with Alma Mahler, Kokoschka also cast a humorous
look at himself as a



“Rejected Lover” (1966).

Kokoschka confidently defines himself as an heir to a European heritage and in
his paintings, drawings, graphic prints and portfolios, addresses topics from world
literature





(“Odyssey “, 1964−1966)

and theatre (Raimund cycle, 1959/60). Music, which played a significant role in his life, is also transformed into shimmering filigrees of impastoed colour compositions

(“Morning and Evening”, 1966−1976) or, as in the portrait drawings of Jenny Abel playing the violin (1973), seems to resonate in the picture.

The last pictures that Kokoschka painted in his 80s deal with questions about life
and death. Examples are the paintings “Time, Gentlemen please” (1971/72) and
“Ecce Homines” (1972). They constitute a moving finale for the creative work of this
world-class Austrian artist.



A comprehensive catalogue was prepared for the exhibition: “Oskar Kokoschka.
Exil und neue Heimat 1934–1980” (Oskar Kokoschka, Exile and New Home 1938–
1980), edited by Antonia Hoerschelmann, with contributions from Gunhild Bauer,
Katharina Erling, Antonia Hoerschelmann, Werner Hofmann, Edwin Lachnit,
Artur Rosenauer and Heinz Spielmann. In German, 328 pages, 320 illustrations,
including 280 in colour.


Pictures from the exhibition:




1: In the Garden, 1934
Oil on canvas
Albertina, Vienna – On permanent
loan from the Batliner Collection



2: London, Tower Bridge II, 1963
Oil on canvas
Marlborough International Fine Art



3: Prague, Charles Bridge 1934
Oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague



4: Self Portrait, 1964
Watercolour
private collection



5: Storm Tide in Hamburg, 1962
Oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle / bpk
© Foto: Elke Walford



6: Nymph, 1936
Oil on canvas
National Gallery in Prague
Caption for each picture:
Oskar Kokoschka, © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka/VBK, Vienna 2008



7: Help the Basque Children!, 1937
Colour lithograph
Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague
© Photo: Ondrej Kocourek, Prague



8: The Red Egg, 1940-1941
Oil on canvas
National Gallery in Prague



9: Lobster on a Plate, 1945
Coloured pencils
Wienerroither & Kohlbacher,
Vienna
© Photo: courtesy of Wienerroither
& Kohlbacher, Vienna



10: Pumpkin, 1945
Watercolour
Albertina



11: Florence: View from the Mannelli Tower, 1948
Oil on canvas
Kunststiftung Merzbacher
(Merzbacher Collection)
© Photo: Kunststiftung Merzbacher

12: „Waking Slave” by Michelangelo; Accademia, Florence,1954
Sketchbook 31
Coloured pencils
Albertina



13: Time, Gentlemen please,1970–1972
Oil on canvas
Tate, London



14: Ecce Homines, Cardboard for the
mosaic of the same name in the St
Nikolai Church in Hamburg, 1972
Tempera on cardboard
Private collection, Hamburg
© Photo: Ines Otschik, Museen der
Stadt Aschaffenburg (City Museums
Aschaffenburg)



15: Tiger, 1969
Watercolour
Albertina




Prague 1934−1938

Kokoschka’s first stay in the city of Prague lasted longer than originally planned.
From 1934 on, his ancestors’ former domicile became the traveler’s refuge, but also
his center of rest and a second home after Vienna: the artist loved the open character
of the city, which offered itself as the first destination for many German refugees.
From 1933 to 1938, Kokoschka was condemned as a “degenerate” artist in Germany.
His works were removed from museums, his books confiscated. Already in 1935,
President Masaryk himself helped the internationally renowned artist to be granted
Czechoslovakian citizenship.

Kokoschka’s political commitment increased, which gradually also began to mani-
fest itself in his art. Yet, his work shows no break in the mid-thirties. During his four-
year stay in Prague, he painted city sceneries and allegories − actually continuing the
exploration of the subjects he had dedicated himself to during his years of traveling.
His Prague group of works may be said to be characterized by the unusually large
number of views of one and the same city, the agitated atmosphere of the sceneries
depicted, and the unreal, solitary feeling of his allegories.

Right at the beginning of his stay in Prague, Kokoschka fell in love with the nineteen-
year old law student Olda Palkovská. She became his friend, companion, and most
important discussion partner. Oskar Kokoschka and Olda Palkovská got married in
London in 1941. Olda would outlive her husband by 24 years. After Czechoslovakia
had been surrendered to Germany in the Munich Agreement in 1938, Oskar
Kokoschka and Olda escaped from the Nazis to England at the eleventh hour.

Exile in London 1938−1945

Olda Palkovská and Oskar Kokoschka escaped from the Nazis in the last plane
leaving Prague. 1938 marked a completely new beginning for the artist who arrived
in London almost without a penny. He believed that most of his work was lost on
German territory. Kokoschka fell into a deep depression and creative crisis.
Only a longer stay in Polperro, a fishing village in the southwest of England, with
Olda in 1939 put an end to this predicament. Kokoschka began to work with
watercolors again for the first time since Dresden. The series of six painterly
watercolors was executed independently in parallel to various pictures in oil.
Kokoschka had never aimed at grasping a place’s atmosphere of light in watercolors
before. This approach paved the way for his colored pencil landscape drawings − a
technique the artist discovered for himself in Scotland in the summer of 1941.
Colored pencils and sketchbooks were to accompany Kokoschka throughout his
late oeuvre for more than thirty years until 1973. Perfecting his quick and rhythmic
stroke in both drawing and painting, the artist achieved a virtuoso mastery of this
technique, which requires utmost abstraction in matters of color. He emphasized the
details important to him with strong colors. These sketches anticipate the quickly
painted landscapes of the forties and fifties with their “numerous attack-like colored
surprises” (Kokoschka).

The Political Artist

Though Kokoschka was certainly no apolitical man in his early years, he was
primarily interested in his contemporaries’ psychological problems as an artist.
With the rise of National Socialism, the graphic artist’s and the painter’s attention
increasingly focused on society and finally on European and world politics. Leaving
Austro-fascist Vienna and going into exile in Prague in 1937, Kokoschka definitely
turned into a “political” artist. Labeled a “degenerate artist” in Germany, he put
the Czechoslovakian government to the test with his personally financed poster
campaign “Help the Basque Children!”: the poster was immediately forbidden by
the authorities in Prague. Kokoschka maintained his political attitude throughout
his years in exile; it was to become an integral part of his life and work until his ripe
old age.

While in London, Kokoschka mainly criticized British appeasement politics with
his satirical allegories. These paintings were shown in the Free German League
of Culture’s exhibitions presenting artists in exile. Kokoschka wrote articles, held
stirring speeches, and gave radio interviews in which he attacked the Nazi dictator-
ship in Europe and vehemently advocated supporting young emigrants.
After Word War II, Kokoschka financed another poster campaign, this time in the
London Underground. In the 1950s, Kokoschka dedicated several of his graphic
works to humanitarian purposes such as the Aid for Hungary initiative by the
Association of Swiss Lithographers.

After the end of the war, Kokoschka supported the re-establishment of Austrian
culture which he regarded as an essential foundation for a stable democracy and
lasting peace. In 1945, he wrote: “A creative man has to find out what darkens the
human mind in order to liberate it.”

After nine years of exile in England, the end of the war marked the beginning of
another period of restless journeys for Kokoschka. As his Czechoslovakian passport
posed a hindrance to his travelling ambitions in the Cold War, he became a British
citizen in February 1947. London remained the couple’s main place of residence
until they moved to Switzerland in September 1953.

At the first major postwar retrospective in Basel in 1947 and further exhibitions,
Kokoschka was enthusiastic to discover that many of his works had survived the
war. He and the former coproprietor of the Cassirer Gallery in Berlin, Dr. Walter
Feilchenfeldt, who had emigrated to Zurich, met each other again. Thanks to
Walter Feilchenfeldt’s recommendation, the important Swiss art sponsor Dr. Werner
Reinhart asked Kokoschka to do a portrait of him. Between sessions, Kokoschka
began to paint his first large-size landscape pictures after the war.

In conjunction with his exhibition at the Venice Biennial of 1948, Kokoschka did
various views of Italian cities with their perennial monuments as symbols of self-
assertion. He also made drawings of artworks, which, for him, revealed “the lasting
result” of the history of man after the damages caused by the war: they provided him
with particulars regarding “social change and man’s unceasing political struggle for
becoming human” (Kokoschka).

Travels from England 1945−1953

Kokoschka and Austria

Since his student days at the Academy, Kokoschka’s relationship to Austria was
strained. He deliberately chose the role of the outsider and “artiste maudit”.
Experiences like the dramatic separation from his mistress Alma Mahler, his serious
injury in World War I, or the later disregard for his work and himself in the 1930s’
corporative state confirmed Kokoschka’s negative notion of Austria.

Despite some efforts by the City of Vienna in this regard, Kokoschka did not seriously
consider to return to Vienna after World War II. Yet, he showed his commitment to
the country in various essays on Austrian culture and by articulating didactic ideas
concerning a reorientation of its education system.

After Kokoschka had been appointed Honorary Chair of the Secession, the artist’s
first monographic postwar exhibition in Austria was presented there.

The same year saw the ceremonial reopening of the Vienna State Opera. Kokoschka
received the commission to design a tapestry for its Gobelin Hall. In the following
year, he painted the rebuilt State Opera at the Ministry’s request.

Salzburg and the “School of Seeing”

While Kokoschka had his reservations concerning the official Austria, his relation-
ship with Salzburg remained largely unspoiled. The gallerist and art book publisher
Friedrich Welz played a decisive part in this. It was also on his initiative, that
Kokoschka painted the city in 1950.

The artist and his publisher planned to found a summer school, which, after
numerous bureaucratic obstacles had been overcome, could actually be established
as the Summer Academy of Fine Arts in 1953. Kokoschka’s first seminar was held
under the title “School of Seeing.” It was only in 1963 that the artist, because of his
age, gave up his teaching activities in Salzburg.

“I train my students to open their own eyes. My students are required to paint acting
people in motion: an experience that takes place either in a closed three-dimensional
space or outdoors. What has to be learnt is turning one’s entire attention to the
actual incident and coordinating the inner tension with the practical mastery of
the difficult technique of watercolor painting that cannot be corrected. Life is no
“nature morte”, no matter how much the theoreticians of abstract art would like
that” (Kokoschka on the approach of his “School of Seeing”).

Villeneuve, Switzerland 1953

In September 1953, Olda and Oskar Kokoschka moved to Villeneuve on the Swiss
shore of Lake Geneva. They had a house with a studio built for them on a plot with
a view of the lake in the neighborhood of Wilhelm Furtwängler, Charlie Chaplin,
and many other celebrities. The couple did not travel less after having settled in
Switzerland. Kokoschka appreciated the country spared by the war, in which his
first and most important exhibitions after 1945 had been presented. Many of his
works had been saved from the Nazis by being brought to Switzerland. The move to
Villeneuve marked the beginning of the externally most peaceful phase of his life,
which would last for 27 years.

He completed the monumental painting “Amor and Psyche” and began to work on
the “Thermopylae Triptych,” a symbol of resisting, for the University of Hamburg.
With his graphic works, such as those he did in support of the Aid for Hungary
program after the bloodily crushed uprising in 1956, he continued to speak up for
political freedom and humanitarian help.

During spring bloom of his garden in Villeneuve, Kokoschka avoided to travel. His
flower watercolors capture the light shimmering through the leaves and blossoms:
he aimed at capturing the immortal in transient forms.

Pictures of Cities 1953−1967

From Villeneuve, Kokoschka undertook extensive travels. Between 1953 and 1970,
he did one or two portraits of cities a year, painting no city more often than London.
In its vast sceneries of the late fifties and sixties, reality dissolves, the color becoming
transparent. Kokoschka is not interested in topographical features but in the
cities’ dynamic and vitality, which manifest themselves in the continuous change
and pulsating motion of their elements. He elevates the city to a living organism.
Beneath a high horizon, the urban panorama is bent to an approximately elliptical
form whose interior is frequently occupied by an expanse of water: a river bend, a
harbor basin, a bay.

Based on two focal points, the composition reveals a much larger section of reality
than the human eye’s natural field of view or a central perspective construction.
What could otherwise only be perceived in a juxtaposition of its singular elements
is forced into one pictorial surface by his CinemaScope-like expansion. Driven by its
inherent energies, the city seems to whirl around a stable core.

Kokoschka’s late pictures of cities evince the artist’s humanist attitude. He painted
and drew a number of German cities, where a regained prosperity had begun to
overgrow the scars left by the devastations of war. Only his picture of Berlin with its
view of the eastern sector became a political demonstration against the suppression
of freedom. The other cities present themselves as monuments of a self-assertion that
have stood the test of time. Like the entire city, its individual buildings are depicted
as volumes in lively motion, growing and soaring upward.

Theater and Literature: Myths of Mankind

Kokoschka had already proved himself as a dramaturge and director early on in
his career, yet only of his own literary works. The first work by another author he
interpreted was Mozart’s “Magic Flute” for the Salzburg Festival after the war. In
1958, he began to dedicate himself to a cycle of plays by Raimund for the Vienna
Burgtheater. Effortlessly moving across different times and places, Raimund’s fantasy
felt familiar to him. Executed with colored pencils, body colors, and watercolors
and relying on stumping and white heightening, Kokoschka’s theater drawings are
characterized by a particular long-distance effect and an unusual brilliance.
From 1963 on, Kokoschka devoted himself to illustrating the foremost cycles of
Greek, European, and Biblical myths during the winter months. He commenced
with Shakespeare’s “King Lear” in 1963 and began to work on his interpretation of
the “Odyssey” in the year after. Kokoschka did not regard Ulysses as a hero but as a
roguish vagabond recounting his restless life without remorse and embellishment.
It was the perennial wanderer on his quest for truth he identified with. According
to Kokoschka’s conviction, nonrepresentational, abstract art was not suited for the
humanist world-relatedness of artistic reflection.

Last Pictures 1970−1980

Even at the age of eighty-two, Kokoschka still took an interest in current political
events: “The Frogs” criticized the European nations’ indifference toward the military
dictatorship in Greece and the invasion of Soviet troops in Prague in 1968.
Music, which played an essential part in Kokoschka’s life, is transformed into pastose,
delicately shimmering tones in “Morning and Evening.” In his late pictures, light
finds expression as a dynamic emotional energy. Almost endowing things with a
meaning, it bridges opposites and visualizes the moment of inner understanding.
Both with “Morning and Evening” and with the series of portraits showing the
famous violinist Jenny Abel, the eighty-five-year old artist responded to pictorial
ideas of his early years and reinterpreted them.

From the sixties on, themes of youth and old age, love and fulfillment, death and
transience finally pushed to the fore. The focus of Kokoschka’s last pictures is on
inner experience. The iconography of his late years is determined by the sublimation
of ultimate existential issues into the generally significant. What is striking is the
artist’s readiness to face death, his situation, and truth. With an ironic smile, he titles
his last self-portrait, in which death opens the door for him, “Time, Gentlemen
please” − relating the closing-time call in English pubs to his premonition that he
would soon have to leave the stage of life.



OSKAR KOKOSCHKA Biography

See more images and biography here and here.

1886

March 1: born in Pöchlarn (Lower Austria) as the son of a Prague family of
goldsmiths.

1905_1909

Arts and Crafts College Vienna. Influenced by Gustav Klimt’s and Vincent van
Gogh’s works.

1910

Contacts with the artists of the New Secession in Berlin. Works for Herwarth
Walden’s magazine “Der Sturm.” First journey to Switzerland.

1911_1914

Assistant at the Vienna Arts and Crafts College. Love relationship with

Alma Mahler.

1914_1916

Voluntary military service in the cavalry. Returns to Vienna after having been
seriously wounded.

1919_1924

Professor at the Dresden Academy of Arts.

1924_1931

Numerous travels to Switzerland and Italy, to France, Spain, the Netherlands, and
England, as well as to Africa and the Near East.

1931

Returns to Vienna.

1934

Haunted by the civil war and the Austro-fascist dictatorship, Kokoschka emigrates
to Prague. Meets Olda Palkovská, his future wife.

1935

Czechoslovakian citizenship.

1937

Slandered as a “degenerate artist” by the Nazis. 417 of his works in German
museums are confiscated.

1938

Escapes the Nazi regime and goes into exile in London.

1947

UK citizenship.

1953

Moves to Villeneuve on Lake Geneva.

1953_1963

Runs School of Seeing at the Salzburg Summer Academy.

1974

Receives honorary citizenship of Austria.

1980

February 22: Kokoschka dies in Montreux.

Building on the success of the Victorian & British Impressionist Art auctions in 2012, Christie’s London has announced full details of the sale which will take place on 11 July 2013. Offered in two parts the sale features 123 lots and is expected to realise in the region of £12 million, making it the biggest auction of the category to be held at Christie’s in over a decade. The sale presents the opportunity for both established and new collectors alike to acquire works at a wide range of price points with estimates ranging from £3,000 to £5 million. Leading the sale is the long unseen masterpiece by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones Bt., A.R.A., R.W.S. (1833-1898),



Love among the Ruins (estimate: £3 million - £5 million).

Love among the Ruins is the most important work by the artist to come to auction since Laus Veneris was sold to the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle in 1971, and the painting has not been seen in public for over fifty years. A highly-significant work in the artist’s oeuvre, it has been much celebrated since it was first exhibited in 1873, at the Dudley Gallery in London. It went on to be shown at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878, where it established the artist’s international reputation, and was also shown at the exhibition which inaugurated the Birmingham Art Gallery in 1885-6 (the artist’s hometown), the Royal Jubilee Exhibition at Manchester in 1887, an annual loan exhibition at the Guildhall, London, in 1892, and in the Burne-Jones's retrospective exhibition at the New Gallery, London later that year.

Dating from 1873, this picture, whose title is taken from the Robert Browning poem of the same name, was created during perhaps the most fertile and inventive phase of his entire career. This was also the moment when his work was at its most Italianate and in Love Among the Ruins the Renaissance character of the architecture and the brilliant blue of the girl's dress clearly betray a vivid awareness of the Italian old masters.

This meditation on the eternal nature of love features Burne-Jones’ mistress, Maria Zambaco. She was married to Demetrius Zambaco, a doctor practising among the Greek community in Paris, in 1861, and had two children; in 1866 she left him and returned to London, where, at the age of twenty-three, she was introduced to Burne-Jones, her senior by ten years. Never before in his rather sheltered life had Burne-Jones encountered such a passionate and elemental creature, nor could the contrast with his quakerish and high-minded wife have been more complete. The emotional turmoil undermined his health, which at the best of times was never robust; and in January 1869 matters took a tragic turn when his bid to end the affair led to Maria attempting suicide in the Regent's Canal. Maria posed frequently for Burne-Jones during these years, and her features, unlike those of many of his models, are easily recognizable in paintings and drawings. The nature of the subjects for which she modelled creates a strong impression that Burne-Jones was deliberately using his art to celebrate and immortalize their love.

Love among the Ruins, which was last bought in 1958 for 480 guineas (£500), is now, well over a century since it was created, re-emerging to claim recognition as a work of unparalleled romantic intensity and true art-historical significance.

A portrait by Sir John Everett Millais, P.R.A. (1829-1896) of the artist’s three daughters,



Sisters

is his most important picture to appear at auction in many years (estimate: £2 million – 3 million).

Sisters
was Millais’ prime contribution to the important Royal Academy of Arts exhibition of 1868 in which the nascent Aestheticist movement cemented its presence on the London art scene. Sisters and several works offered in Part 2 come from the collection of the late Baron Matthews who was elevated to the peerage in 1980. Victor Matthews (1919-1995) was Chief Executive Officer of Trafalgar House plc., which owned both the Cunard Steam Ship Company and the Ritz Hotel in London.



A portrait of Lady Campbell (1861-1933) was one of three pictures Millais exhibited in 1884 at the Grosvenor Gallery, along with his portrait of the Marquess of Lorne, Queen Victoria’s son-in-law, and



a portrait of Lady Campbell when she was a child, from fifteen years earlier (estimate: £400,000 – 600,000). It was characteristic of Millais to exhibit society portraits or images of politicians at the Grosvenor, where many of his patrons were frequent visitors. The work was painted in the month leading up to Nina Lehmann’s marriage, to Guy Theophilus Campbell, 3rd Baronet, of Thames Ditton. The opulence of this portrait and the interest in fashion and elegant environs was a later and more modern manifestation of the Georgian revival that Millais had spearheaded in the 1860s with portraits such as Sisters.

An important rediscovery will which will be unveiled in public for the first time in 50 years is a sketch for A Mermaid by John William Waterhouse, R.A. (1848-1917) (estimate: £100,000 – 150,000). In 1900 Waterhouse completed the large A Mermaid as his Diploma Work for the Royal Academy’s permanent collection. Perfectionistic and chronically tardy, Waterhouse must have agonised over this work because he knew that it would represent him forever. Through poetry like Tennyson’s The Mermaid and stories such as Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid (1855), the Victorians fantasized that water-women sought to experience human love and secure a soul by luring sailors. This notion was further reinforced by the best-known water-woman in search of love, Ophelia, whom Shakespeare compared to a mermaid as she drowned.

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was widely thought to be the leading portrait painter of his time. His Portrait of Lady Cynthia Blanche Mosley (née Curzon) (1898-1933), shows Cimmie, the second of the three daughters of George Nathaniel Curzon, later 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859-1925) and Viceroy of India, and Mary Leiter, daughter of Levi Leiter, a Chicago real estate magnate (estimate: £60,000 – 100,000). Cynthia followed her husband, Sir Oswald Mosley, M.P. (1896-1980), into politics, joining the Labour party with him in 1924. Tall, attractive and glamorous, she stood out and became an easy target for the Conservatives and for the press. She initially campaigned for her husband, but was quickly sought as a candidate in her own right, standing for Stoke-on-Trent. During the 1929 election she won her seat with one of the largest majorities of any female inter-war MP. She believed strongly in championing the underdog and in parliament spoke on women’s unemployment and widows’ pensions.

An important and rare sculpture by Frederic, Lord Leighton, P.R.A. , R.W.S. (1830-1896), An Athlete Wrestling with a Python, was the artist’s first and most celebrated sculpture (estimate: £250,000-350,000, illustrated left). From its debut it has been revered as a major work of art. Leighton’s paintings far outnumber his sculptures; apart from a handful of maquettes made to aid his painting, and designs for funerary monuments, Leighton produced only three distinct fine-art sculptures. Bronze reductions of the original such as the present lot were published in two sizes and this lot is a very rare example of the large version, measuring three feet in height.

VICTORIAN & BRITISH IMPRESSIONIST ART - PART 2

Part 2 of the sale will be held directly after Part 1 and will feature works by many of the greatest Victorian and British Impressionist artists. Highlights include Henley Regatta, a work traditionally attributed to James Jacques Tissot (1836-1906), which has now been credited to Frederick Vezin (1859-1933), an American-born artist who trained in Dusseldorf, Germany from 1876 until 1883 (estimate: £60,000 – 80,000). The misattribution appears to have been based upon an inscription on the painting’s stretcher which reads ‘J.J. Tissot à Mrs. Gebhard’. This has been taken to be the record of a work by Tissot himself, but Tissot owned many works by other artists and is known to have given some away as well as selling some, for example works by Degas, Manet and Pissaro.

A selection of works from the Eric Holder Will Trust will also be on offer. Eric Holder was one of the founders of Abbott & Holder, the much-loved firm of picture dealers known to generations of collectors. This company is still extant and follows many of the same traditions, although it no longer occupies the premises where he established it, and it operates in a market the shape and dynamics of which he would scarcely recognise. Highlights of the works on offer include a fragment of an unfinished canvas by Burne-Jones representing the death of the gorgon Medusa (estimate: £20,000 – 30,000) and The Grass of the Field by John William North, A.R.A., R.W.S. (1842-1924) (estimate: £50,000 – 70,000). Having first visited Algeria in 1873 North spent several months there annually, and many of his paintings from this period have Algerian themes.

‘God save the Queen’: Queen Victoria arriving at St Paul’s Cathedral on the Occasion of the Diamond Jubilee Thanksgiving Service, 22 June 1897, by John Charlton (1849-1917), captures the culmination of the celebrations for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee was a brief Service of Thanksgiving, conducted on the steps of St Paul’s. As she recorded in her Journal ‘No one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given to me, passing through those six miles of streets, including Constitution Hill’.

The fine selection of works on paper in Part 2 of the sale is led by The Altar of Hymen by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt., A.R.A., R.W.S. (1833-1898) (estimate: £60,000 – 100,000). The composition is based on one of the illustrations of William Morris’s poem ‘Pygmalion and the Image’ that Burne-Jones made in 1867. The present work is a version of one that Burne-Jones painted as a wedding present when Amy Graham, one of the six daughters of his patron William Graham, married Kenneth Muir-Mackenzie in 1874. It is being sold by a descendant of Sir Henry Tate (1819 – 1899) and is presented in its original tabernacle frame.

On the evening of 3rd July 2013, Sotheby’s London will stage an unprecedented auction event, by offering for the first time in living memory, two masterworks by El Greco in the same sale. More than 400 years since they were executed, these two rare and important paintings, estimated at £3-5 million each, will make their auction debuts.



Saint Dominic in Prayer (est. £3-5m) is one of the artist’s finest depictions of saints, notable for its encapsulation of his extraordinary imagination and highly individual technique. In this work El Greco depicts Saint Dominic simply dressed in his black and white habit in a moment of quiet piety in the wilderness. The very personal and earthy portrayal of the saint, juxtaposed against his transcendental surroundings, make Saint Dominic the intercessor between us and the divine. From his arrival in Spain in 1577, El Greco’s paintings tackle this question of the dualism between heaven and earth. There are four known versions of this composition, probably dating from circa 1600 onwards - the other three are in the collection of Placido Arango in Madrid, the Sacristy of Toledo Cathedral and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Previously in the collection of the Spanish painter Ignacio Zuloaga and dating from the period of El Greco’s maturity, around 1600-1610, the monumental



Christ on the Cross is the last of only three surviving large-scale versions of this composition by the great master. The others are in the collection of the Museum of Art, Cleveland and the collection of the Marqués de la Motilla in Seville. The original source for the figure of Christ is almost certainly a drawing by Michelangelo now in the British Museum, which El Greco would have known from early in his career. Combining the international mannerist tradition with his own mystic expressionism, the work creates an image of great power ideal for spiritual contemplation. A record price at auction for El Greco (£3.85 million) was achieved for a reduced autograph version of this composition at Sotheby’s in 2000, which is now held by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Frescoes by their very nature rarely appear at auction, but the Old Masters and British Paintings Evening Sale will offer



a perfectly detached, complete cycle of six magnificent frescoes by Giandomenico Tiepolo. Painted in a wonderfully intense gold palette, these works literally glow with radiance. Estimated at £3-5 million, they recount the glories and achievements of the Porto family of Vicenza from the 11th to the 17th centuries. Painted around 1760 by Tiepolo for the Palazzo da Porto Festa (built by Andrea Palladio), they illustrate the political shifts and events of Medieval and early modern Europe.

The frescoes were meticulously removed from the Palazzo circa 1900 when they were acquired by the Berlin industrialist and collector Eduard Simon, who had been advised by the renowned curator and historian Wilhelm Von Bode who founded the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. Simon installed them in his home in Berlin, which was designed by the renowned architect Alfred Messel. The frescoes were acquired in 1966 by Dr Gustav Rau. Gustav Rau (1922-2002) was a truly unique collector. Scion of a family of industrialists, he initially followed his father into the automotive business, but at the age of 40, decided to train as a doctor with the intention of working in the developing world. He sold the family business and moved to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he lived and worked for two decades, building a hospital at Ciriri and serving as a doctor for the surrounding community. Totally self-taught, Rau also developed a great passion for art. Several times a year he would leave his isolated village in Africa to return to the salerooms of Europe – often walking from Heathrow to Mayfair to save money on transport – to attend auctions. His taste and eye for quality were extraordinarily wide ranging and diverse and over several decades, he established one of the greatest art collections of the twentieth century, comprising over 2,000 works of art, the greater part of which he bequeathed in 2001 to UNICEF Germany. Proceeds of the sale will be used to fund long-term assistance programs for children, and especially to further assist the Ciriri hospital in eastern Congo.

Last offered at auction more than 200 years ago and exhibited only once since then,



Claude-Joseph Vernet’s outstanding View of Avignon from the right bank of the Rhône is estimated at £3-5 million. The work is Vernet’s only recorded painting of his birthplace, the city of Avignon, and was described by noted art historian Giuliano Briganti in 1970 as ‚one of Vernet’s finest views_. Executed in 1756, the painting was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1759 and was engraved by Pietro Antonio Martini in 1782. In the late 18th century it passed through a number of distinguished French collections including the celebrated collection of Pierre Louis Paul Randon de Boisset (1708-1776), Receveur général des Finances, and that of Ange-Joseph Aubert (1736-1785), Joallier de la Couronne. When compiling her seminal catalogue of Vernet’s works in 1926 Florence Ingersoll-Smouse traced the painting only to 1790, its subsequent history unknown, and reproduced it via Martini’s engraving. It remained ‘lost’ until it was discovered in 1954 in a private collection near Bristol and sold by Arthur Tooth & Sons in London. A dedicated press release on this work is available.

STILL LIFES

The Evening Sale boasts a quite remarkable survey of still life painting from some of very earliest examples of the genre dating from the beginning of the 17th Century, to the late 18th Century. The paintings of flowers in oils arose as an independent genre quite suddenly in the Netherlands just after 1600, due in part to an upsurge in interest in the natural world in Post-Reformation Northern Europe, combined with new developments in optics.



Executed in 1607-8, Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Still life with irises, tulips, roses, narcissi and fritillary in a ceramic vase is one of his best known compositions. Estimated at £600,000-800,000 it is one of Brueghel’s earliest works and an important addition to his oeuvre, painted concurrent with, or shortly after a small version in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The composition is typical of the years 1605-10 when the artist painted a small number of similarly arranged bouquets in ceramic vases. Critics and collectors alike have admired Jan Breughel’s flower pieces from their very inception and their popularity has never waned.

It is generally accepted that Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder is likely to have encountered Jan Brueghel and his work in 1606, because his flower pieces from that year onwards show an awareness of Brueghel’s style. Still life of roses, marigolds, aquilegia, violets, convolvulus, hollyhocks, peonies, cornflowers, forget-me-nots, Jacob’s ladder, lily of the valley and carnations in a wan-li kraak porcelain vase with a butterfly and a snail on a ledge, is however one of his very earliest works, painted circa 1601-5, estimated at £400,000-600,000. It bears many similarities to a work in the Fairhaven collection at Anglesea Abbey in Cambridgeshire.

Appearing at auction for the first time in over 100 years, Rachel Ruysch’s recently rediscovered masterpiece, Still life of roses, tulips, a sunflower and other flowers in a glass vase with a bee, butterfly and other insects upon a marble ledge of 1710 is expected to realise £1-1.5 million. The work, without doubt the most significant addition to her oeuvre in recent years, epitomises the final and greatest stage of Dutch flower-painting of the Golden Age, of which Ruysch was one of the finest protagonists. It was commissioned from the artist by Pieter de la Court van der Voort for 1,300 guilders and painted at a pivotal moment in Ruysch’s career. From the first decade of the 18th century, she made several pairs of still lifes and this work and its companion piece were held in the celebrated De la Court van der Voort collection in Leiden and later owned by the prodigious Leipzig collector Gottfried Winckler (1731-1795).

Still life with apricots and cherries by Luis Meléndez, one of the greatest European still life painters of the 18th century, is estimated at £1-1.5 million. The work, executed in 1773, was included in an exhibition of the artist’s work held at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. The work is a variant of a painting from Meléndez’s celebrated commission of 44 still lifes, produced for the Prince of Asturias (the future Charles IV of Spain), the majority of which are today in the Prado Museum. The painting is being sold by Rosendo Naseiro, who assembled one of the greatest collections of Spanish still life painting ever known.

The sale also features

A view of the Valkhof at Nijmegen seen from the west, with a ferry crossing the river Waal, a superb example of Salomon Van Ruysdael’s mature style. Painted in 1647, a year before the Treaty of Munster gave the Dutch Republic an enduring peace in which to enjoy its mounting prosperity, the work presents a boundlessly optimistic view of a settled world that was at ease with itself. The work, is estimated to realise £1-1.5 million.

Capturing the spirit of the United States through two centuries of artistic expression, From Colony to Nation: 200 Years of American Painting features more than eighty works dating from 1720 to 1918, drawn from the New-York Historical Society’s large holdings of American paintings. On view June 7 through September 8, 2013, the exhibition interweaves art history and American history into a richly textured visual panorama, with subjects ranging from early Colonial portraits to urban Impressionism. The exhibition also highlights the story of the artists, patrons, and collectors whose contributions informed the history of New-York Historical.

Many works in From Colony to Nation will be exhibited for the first time in decades, following conservation of both the paintings and their period frames. Among the exhibition highlights is



John Singer Sargent’s portrait Mrs. Jacob Wendell (1888),

a recent gift to the New-York Historical Society from The Roger and Susan Hertog Charitable Fund and Jan and Warren Adelson. The first painting by Sargent in New-York Historical’s collection, the work was created during the young expatriate artist’s first professional foray on American soil.

The exhibition is organized into six overarching themes that interweave art history and American history into a richly textured national narrative beginning in the early 18th century and ending in the early 20th.

Colonial Painting: Faces, Places & a Bible Story features a number of New-York Historical’s early portraits of the men, women and children who comprised the thriving populations of colonial New York and Philadelphia. Among the treasures on display are seven Beekman family portraits, dating from the 1760s and still in their original frames—a rare instance of an entire suite of portraits of a prominent family represented in a single collection. Also on view is



Charles Willson Peale’s monumental The Peale Family (1773-1809),

which brings together several generations in the artist’s studio for one of the most ambitious group portraits of the 18th century. The Peale family saga is played out over several decades and generations, coming to a close when the elderly Peale added a memorial portrait of his beloved dog Argus. Another exhibition highlight is the recent acquisition The Finding of Moses (ca. 1720), a rare scripture painting attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck. The Dutch community valued such Biblical narrative paintings for their religious content and as a reflection of their political experience, identifying with the exiled Israelites in their own struggles against the domination of Spain in the Netherlands and the English in New York.

The World of the American Artist features a selection of portrait of artists themselves featured in the exhibition along with depictions of noted art collectors and patrons. Expatriate artist Benjamin West’s London studio was the destination for a first generation of aspiring Colonial painters, including Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale (see below), and Abraham Delanoy, who painted West in 1766 at the height of the artist’s early fame as a history painter. Portraits of Asher B. Durand and Thomas Cole represent a later generation of American masters who focused upon the American landscape. Important collectors and patrons depicted in the exhibition include Luman Reed and Thomas Jefferson Bryan, whose collections formed the early core of New-York Historical’s collection.



Benjamin West (1738-1820), Charles Wilson Peale, 1767-1769. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Gift of Thomas Jefferson Bryan, 1867.293

The Early Republic: Patriots, Citizens & Democratic Vistas features founding fathers, New York merchants and Pennsylvania farmers, with several joined by their wives to create charming pairs. Iconic portraits of Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Lafayette portray the heroes of the Revolutionary generation. Gilbert Stuart portrays the dashing Schulyers as a newly married couple (1807), and Jacob Eichholtz’s captures the genteel charm of Pennsylvania country gentry in his portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Eichelberger (ca. 1819). Scenic wonders of the new nation include John Trumbull’s 1808 epic panoramas of Niagara Falls, contrasted with the 1818 record of a lively transportation hub at the New York waterfront captured by visiting Swiss painter J.H. Jenny.




Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828), Mrs. Philip Jeremiah Schuyler, 1807. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Gift of Louisa Lee Schuyler and Georgina Schuyler, 1925.3

A Second War of American Independence: The War of 1812 observes the bicentennial of the conflict from 1812-1815 with paintings portraying famous naval battles and renowned ships, as well as portraits of President James Madison and First Lady Dolley Madison, commanders and diplomats. By the time James Madison was first elected President in 1808, the nation was inching toward war with England after many years of British interference with American trade and the forcible removal of seamen from American merchant vessels. When the British refused to make concessions on maritime issues in dispute, the United States declared war in June 1812 to secure “Free Trade and Sailor’s Rights.” The conflict ended in a draw, but left a considerable legacy for Americans by fostering a national identity and empowering a strong standing army and navy. Many battles were fought at sea and these celebrated naval engagements inspired marine paintings, such as Thomas Birch’s Escape of the U. S. Frigate “Constitution” (1838) and



Thomas Buttersworth’s Escape of H.M.S. “Belvidera” from the U.S. Frigate President” (ca. 1815).

Native Scenery & American Narratives portrays American landscapes and coasts as emblems of national identity, as well as contrasting urban scenes that celebrate the hustle and bustle of life in the city. Thomas Cole’s brilliant synthesis of American scenery with old master landscape conventions, visible in two works on view that date from the 1830s, exerted a powerful influence on the next generation of artists. Asher B. Durand’s 1856 plein air Catskill study on view presents a more straightforward depiction of nature that was charged with spiritual meaning. John Frederick Kensett was one of the first major landscape painters to develop a strong interest in coastal terrain, a subject whose popularity grew as seaside tourism developed in the second half of the 19th century. More locally, urban work and leisure were portrayed by two gifted artists who are little-known today—Charles Cole Markham and Edmund D. Hawthorne, whose detailed paintings of the crowded Fulton Market and a fashionable porter house during the Civil War respectively bring mid-19th-century New York City to vivid life.



William Sidney Mount (1807-1868), The Truant Gamblers (Undutiful Boys), 1835. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, Gift of the New-York Gallery of Fine Arts, 1858.23



John Frederick Kensett (1816–1872), Pulpit Rock, Nahant (Nahant Rock and Seashore), 1859. Oil on canvas. New-York Historical Society, The Robert L. Stuart Collection, S-84



Thomas Cole (1801-1848), Autumn Twilight, View of Corway Peak [Mount Chocorua], New Hampshire, 1834. Oil on wood panel. New-York Historical Society, Gift of The New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts, 1858.42

The final theme, The Gilded Age: Identity, Nostalgia & the Modern City, showcases grand-manner portraits of New Yorkers and vibrant images of turn-of-the-century New York. The vogue for society portraiture during the Gilded Age accompanied the rise of great American fortunes amassed in the second half of the 19th century. Large-scale works are well represented in New-York Historical’s collections, with impressive portraits of prominent New York figures painted by Sargent, Beckwith, Healy, and Pennington. This period of transition was also characterized by nostalgia for the nation’s past, stimulated by the Centennial (1876) and the Columbian Exposition (1893) as well as a rekindling of popular interest in the great age of sail, exemplified in Charlton Chapman’s stirring battle paintings commemorating American victories in the War of 1812. Colin Campbell Cooper and Childe Hassam charted New York’s changing streetscapes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, capturing the architectural intricacies of the city’s older landmarks while documenting the skyscrapers that would transform Gotham into a modern metropolis.




Hassam’s Flags on 57th Street, Winter (1918) is a bird’s eye view, painted from the vantage point of the artist’s studio window looking down the snowy street toward the Sixth Avenue El, an elevated train railway.

Christie’s Old Master & British Paintings Evening Sale in London on Tuesday 2 July 2013 presents international collectors with 52 works from some of the category’s most sought-after artists and genres, many with distinguished provenance and some offered for the first time in centuries. With estimates ranging from £30,000 up to £10 million, the sale is expected to realise in excess of £30 million.

The remarkable variety and quality of the works in this sale reflects the diversity of the Old Master field and collectors’ sustained and growing interest in acquiring works of the highest calibre. Highlights range from a rich large-scale interior scene by the Dutch Golden Age master



Jan Steen (1626-1679), ‘Easy Come, Easy Go’: the artist eating oysters in an interior (estimate: £7-10 million)

and a glittering view of Venice by Canaletto (1697-1768) painted at the height of his powers,



The Molo, Venice, from the Bacino di San Marco (estimate: £4-6 million),

to one of the earliest independent still-lifes in the history of Western art by Ludger tom Ring II (1522-1584), Narcissi, calamine violets and periwinkles in a ewer, on a ledge with a sprig of rue (estimate: £500,000-800,000).

In addition to a head study painted ad vivum by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640),



Head of a bearded man in profile holding a bronze figure (estimate: £1.5-2.5 million), further highlights include



Nicolas Poussin’s (1594-1665) heroic portrayal of Hannibal crossing the Alps on an Elephant (estimate: £3-5 million), as well as an elegant half-length Portrait of Emily, Lady Berkeley by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) (estimate: £400,000-600,000).

JAN STEEN

Acquired by the 1st Earl of Lonsdale in 1763, it is exactly 250 years since ‘Easy Come, Easy Go’: the artist eating oysters in an interior by Jan Steen (1626-1679) last appeared on the art market (estimate: £7-10 million). A work of exceptional quality and inventiveness, it has long been regarded as one of Steen’s masterpieces and can now be considered the most important large-scale genre scene by the artist still to remain in private hands. Painted in 1660 at the pinnacle of Steen’s career, the picture reveals his mastery of composition and his supreme skill at rendering light, texture and detail. Beautifully preserved and executed in the artist’s most refined manner, the picture delivers a powerful moral message that is a testimony to Jan Steen’s genius as a narrator of genre subjects. Steen depicts himself as the central protagonist, eating oysters at a table in an elaborate interior. The key to the picture’s message is given by the allegorical programme of the elaborately carved chimneypiece, in which a personification of Fortuna stands between symbols of wealth and good fortune on the right, and poverty and bad luck on the left. Steen cautions that what is gained can just as easily be lost depending on the winds of chance. Casting himself as the decadent wastrel, he warns that over-indulgence and greed will lead inescapably to ruin, a message as pertinent today as it was in 17th-century Holland.

CANALETTO

Executed at the height of Canaletto’s (1697-1768) powers in the 1730s, The Molo, Venice, from the Bacino di San Marco is a beautifully preserved masterpiece from the artist’s famous sequence of views of the Molo from the Bacino, showing the greatest religious and secular monuments at the heart of Venice (estimate: £4-6 million). Bathed in a clear, luminous light, the celebrated buildings are meticulously described and are skillfully enlivened by the hustle and bustle of the boats and figures in the foreground. The observation of the figures is, as always with Canaletto, acute: the standing boatman in the large vessel on the far left is shown pulling back, straining his oar in an effort to avoid colliding with the smaller sandolo passing in front. This exceptional canvas – one of the largest of this type of composition – was supplied to Edward Howard, 9th Duke of Norfolk (1686-1777), who was a major British artistic patron of the day; it passed by descent in the family until the 1970s.

A further notable depiction of Venice is View of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice with the Punta del Giudecca by Francesco Guardi (1712-1793), which shows the island monastery with its celebrated façade designed by Andrea Palladio, in afternoon light (estimate: £400,000-600,000). From another Venetian artist of the time, Bernardo Bellotto (1721-1780), is an Architectural capriccio which was conceived in Dresden, during the artist’s second period of residence there from 1761 until the winter of 1766-1767 (estimate: £800,000-1,200,000).

POUSSIN

Hannibal crossing the Alps on an Elephant by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) is a striking and unconventional image of Hannibal, the legendary Carthaginian general, leading an historic invasion of Italy on the back of a war elephant (estimate: £3-5 million). It is one of the earliest masterpieces executed by Poussin after his arrival in Rome in the mid-1620s. A rarely illustrated episode of Ancient Roman history recounted by Livy, it depicts the military strategist and hero of the Second Punic War astride the great Asian beast, directing the massing troops on the long journey from Iberia, over the Pyrenees and the Alps, into northern Italy. Hannibal dominates the massive beast as he would soon dominate a conquered Empire and much of the western world: posture erect, arm outstretched toward his inevitable goal. The picture was acquired immediately after its execution by Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-1657) - the man who would become Poussin’s most loyal and enlightened patron and a scholar and intellectual with a life-long interest in antiquity and the natural sciences, who worked for the Barberini Pope Urban VIII. Cassiano dal Pozzo may have coveted this work as a depiction of one of the ancient world’s defining historical events and an accurate rendering of one of nature’s most impressive and mighty exotic animals. But Poussin would also have known that such a patron - as both a privileged member of one of the most forceful courts in Europe and an acolyte of the rapacious Barberini pope - would not have failed to appreciate his composition as an iconic image of charismatic leadership and ruthless power.

RUBENS
Heaof Head of a bearded man in profile holding a bronze figure is an impressive, vigorously executed and characterful head study by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), which throws light on Rubens’s creative method during a busy period in his career, after he had returned from Italy and established his pre-eminence in Antwerp (estimate: £1.5-2.5 million). It reveals a fascinating aspect of Antwerp’s cultural attitudes, as it was later enlarged on three-sides by Jan Boeckhorst (1605-1668), one of Rubens’s most intriguing early followers, and one of the city’s leading artists following the deaths of Rubens and Sir Anthony van Dyck, in 1640 and 1641, respectively.

Head of a bearded man in profile is one of the spontaneous, rapid studies painted by Rubens ad vivum from a model in the studio, to record a particular face - often from multiple angles – for use in larger, multi-figural compositions. It is a study for one of the kings in Rubens’s monumental Adoration of the Kings painted in 1616/7 for the Church of Saint John in Mechelen. The panel is recorded, since at least 1719, as belonging to the German princely house of Schönborn - a name long associated with one of the greatest cumulative contributions to the cultural landscape of Germany since the High Renaissance.

STILL-LIFE PAINTING

The strong offering of still-life paintings is led by Narcissi, calamine violets and periwinkles in a ewer, on a ledge with a sprig of rue by Ludger tom Ring II (1522-1584) (estimate: £500,000-800,000). This supremely elegant picture is one of the earliest independent still-lifes in the history of Western art. Born into a dynasty of German artists from Münster, Ludger tom Ring specialised in portraits and floral still-lifes, a genre in which he achieved unparalleled mastery, decades before the Dutch and Flemish painters of the Golden Age popularised it. In this panel, a simple, minimalistic arrangement of crisply designed narcissi and violets, set in an elaborate ewer bearing the artist’s signature, stands out against a dark background. The resulting stark contrast of patterns and colours prove strikingly modern. The artist’s surviving oeuvre is extremely small, making this picture an absolute rarity.

The cross category appeal of the best still-life paintings was made evident in the July 2012 sale when the works by Coorte drew widespread interest from new and established collectors. This season, highlights by the best known names in 17th-century still-life paintings are led by Tulips, roses, bluebells, Narcissus tortuosis, forget-me-nots, lily of the valley and cyclamen by Ambrosius Bosschaert I (1573-1621) who emerged as a pioneer in the genre of the flower still-life (estimate: £700,000-1,000,000). The skill of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, a leading still-life painter of the Golden Age, is exemplified by A tulip, roses and other flowers in a glass vase (estimate: £500,000-800,000). Further examples range from A leg of ham, a partly sliced lemon and slices of bread on pewter platter dated 1655, which is characteristic of Willem Claesz. Heda’s (1594-1680) finest breakfast pieces (estimate: £400,000-600,000), to a superbly restrained depiction of Quinces and medlars on a ledge by Jan Jansz. van de Velde (1619/20-1662), one of the most striking talents in still-life painting of the 17th century (estimate: £250,000-350,000).

NORTHERN RENAISSANCE ART

Two important works by Lucas Cranach the Elder are presented. Portrait of Albrecht von Brandenburg as Saint Jerome in a landscape by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) is an icon of Northern Renaissance art (estimate: £1.5-2 million, illustrated left). The picture is rare surviving evidence of the relationship between Albrecht von Brandenburg, the supreme Catholic dignitary in Germany in the early decades of the 16th century, and Lucas Cranach the Elder, an artist often described as Martin Luther’s foremost propagandist. The story of this portrait brings together three titans of the Reformation whose inextricably entwined destinies shaped this period of European history. This painting is the only one of four surviving portraits of Albrecht in the guise of Saint Jerome painted by Cranach, to remain in private hands. Providing another rare opportunity, Christ on the Cross is a unique, intimate depiction of this subject by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) (estimate: £500,000-800,000). This poignant work seamlessly blends extreme pictorial refinement with a heightened sense of pathos.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MASTERS

British paintings include a remarkably subtle half-length Portrait of Emily, Lady Berkeley, which is an exceptional example of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s (1769-1830) early work (estimate: £400,000-600,000). Emily, Lady Berkeley, was the second of the three daughters of Lord George Lennox, the younger son of Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond, whose father the 1st Duke was the illegitimate son of King Charles II. This vivacious and alluring portrait epitomises the qualities of the extraordinary artistic vision that underpinned Lawrence’s meteoric career and established him as the natural heir to Sir Joshua Reynolds and the dominant force in British portraiture. Further examples include a pair of works by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797): A view of Dovedale, Derbyshire and A view of the Convent of San Cosimato and part of the Claudian Aqueduct near Vicovaro in the Roman Campagna (estimate: £500,000-800,000). They were commissioned in 1786 by the artist’s great friend and patron, the Reverend Thomas Gisborne, to express the notion that the sublime might be found equally in the English and Italian countryside.

A group of 18th-century French works are led by a joyful scene of countryside delights La Cueillette des Cerises, one of the most enchanting late creations by François Boucher (1703-1770) (estimate: £300,000-500,000). A further work by the great master of French rococo painting is La petite fermiere, 1769 (estimate: £250,000-350,000). The other French works of the period comprise an intimately sized, jewel-like cabinet picture La Surprise by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) (estimate: £120,000-180,000) and a seductive highly finished work La Lettre (estimate: £120,000-180,000) by Louis-Leopold Boilly (1761-1845).

This landmark exhibition at he National Gallery in London 13 October – 16 January 2011 presented the finest assembly of Venetian views by Canaletto and his 18th-century rivals to be seen in a generation. Bringing together around 50 major loans from the public and private collections of the UK, Europe and North America, Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals highlighted the extraordinary variety of Venetian view painting, juxtaposing masterpieces by Canaletto with key works by artists including Luca Carlevarijs, Michele Marieschi, Bernardo Bellotto and Francesco Guardi.

Featured works spanned the 18th-century, from one of the first accurately datable Venetian views by Luca Carlevarijs of 1707 to the death of Francesco Guardi in 1793. The age of the veduta (view) reached its zenith around 1740, by which time the acquisition of this choice souvenir had become an important element of the Grand Tour of Italy. In the first half of the century, aristocratic travellers, led by English milordi, fuelled a vibrant and highly competitive market for Venetian view painting which saw artists jostling for commissions and fame. Together they immortalised some of the best-loved landmarks of the city including the Grand Canal, the Piazza San Marco, the Rialto, the Molo, Santa Maria della Salute and the Lagoon.

Foremost among these artists was Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto (1697–1768). Trained, like many of his rivals, as a painter of theatrical scenery, he visited Rome in 1719, which inspired him to try his hand at view painting. In the late 1720s, in response to market demand, he began to replace the moodiness of his earlier works with views bathed in warm sunshine. Within a decade, Canaletto had come to dominate the genre. The exhibition featured some of Canaletto’s greatest masterpieces, including



'The Riva degli Schiavoni, looking West', about 1735 (Sir John Soane’s Museum, London),



The Stonemason’s Yard, about 1725 (The National Gallery, London),

and four more of his finest works from the Royal Collection including:



Canaletto (1697–1768), The Grand Canal with San Simeone Piccolo and the Scalzi, about 1740, © The National Gallery, London.



Canaletto, The Piazzetta Looking North.1727.Oil on Canvas.Royal Collection, UK.



Canaletto's The Entrance to the Grand Canal, looking East, with Santa Maria della Salute, 1744. Photo: The Royal Collection

Room 1 opened with a pivotal work by Canaletto’s earliest precursor and the founding father of Italian view painting,



Gaspare Vanvitelli (1652/3–1736): 'The Molo from the Bacino di San Marco', 1697 (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid).

Trained in the Netherlands and based mostly in Rome, Vanvitelli is thought to have visited Venice in 1695, a trip resulting in some 40 views over the following decades. Yet despite being filled with anecdotal detail, Vanvitelli’s Venice remained distinctly placid in comparison to the work of Canaletto and his contemporaries.

The immediate successor to Vanvitelli and the first view painter in Venice to depend on foreign patronage was Luca Carlevarijs (1663–1730). Important early works by Canaletto – including



'The Piazza San Marco, looking East', about 1723 (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid) –

were displayed alongside depictions of similar locations by Carlevarijs, the artist he had already begun to eclipse.

The largest room of the exhibition celebrated the floating city’s dramatic festivals, regattas and ceremonies, a highlight being Canaletto’s



'The Molo from the Bacino di San Marco on Ascension Day', about 1733–4 (Royal Collection).

Here too, for the first time, Canaletto’s masterpiece,



'The Reception of the French Ambassador Jacques-Vincent Languet…', about 1727 (The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg)

was displayed alongside the pioneering composition by Carlevarijs,



'The Reception of the British Ambassador Charles Montagu…', about 1707–8 (Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery).

During the 1730s and 1740s the only artist to pose a real threat to Canaletto’s domination was Michele Marieschi (1710–1743), perhaps the most spontaneous of the Venetian vedutisti. Comparisons made in Room 2 demonstrated Marieschi’s characteristically broad brushstrokes and fondness for unexpected view points, a highlight being



'The Rialto Bridge from the Riva del Vin', 1740s (The Hermitage, Saint Petersburg).

At the height of Canaletto’s fame, his workshop offered the finest training a view painter could receive. Among those to benefit was his precocious nephew, Bernardo Bellotto (1722–1780). By the age of 18 he could already imitate his uncle’s style with extraordinary dexterity and increasingly sought to introduce 'improving’ flourishes of his own. Having worked closely with Canaletto during his ‘cold’ period of 1738–42, an almost wintry light remained characteristic of Bellotto’s style for the rest of his career. Yet just as characteristic of Bellotto’s style were his uniquely vibrant blue skies, perhaps most dramatic in



'The Piazzetta, looking North', about 1743 (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa).

During the final decade of his life Canaletto had a new rival – Francesco Guardi (1712–1793) – who was to outlive him by 25 years and to provide a glorious final chapter in the history of Venetian view painting. By the 1770s Guardi was considered something of an authority on Canaletto’s work and throughout his career showed a willingness to borrow his compositions. Yet, as juxtapositions in the final section of the exhibition demonstrate, Guardi’s concerns were very different from those expressed by Canaletto.

In his promotion of nature over the works of man, Guardi anticipated the rise of romanticism in the 19th century, and crucially emphasised the fragility of Venice rather than its permanence. Out on the Lagoon, where Venice’s human element is at its most marginal, Guardi appears at his most poetic



(View of the Venetian Lagoon with the Tower of Malghera, probably 1770s, The National Gallery, London).

While Guardi took this composition from a drawing by Canaletto, his intense concern with mood transforms this quiet backwater into something else entirely.

'Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals' presents the finest view paintings of one of the world’s most enthralling and beautiful cities. As well as celebrating the great works of Canaletto, one of the best-loved artists in Britain, the exhibition highlighted the exceptional achievements of his now less well-known rivals and associates.

'Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals' was organised by the National Gallery, London, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and was curated by Charles Beddington, with Dawson Carr as coordinating curator at the National Gallery, London. Charles Beddington is an independent scholar and art dealer in London. He has published and lectured widely on Canaletto and other 18th-century Italian view painters. In 2006–7, he curated the exhibition 'Canaletto in England: A Venetian Artist Abroad' at the Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, and at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Dawson Carr is Curator of Italian and Spanish Painting 1600–1800 at the National Gallery, London.

The exhibition traveled to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, where it ran from 20 February until 30 May 2011.



Publication: 'Venice: Canaletto and His Rivals' ISBN: 978 1 85709 418 3
By Charles Beddington (with a contribution by Amanda Bradley)

The exhibition was accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue presenting the latest scholarship on the complex stylistic relationships between Canaletto, his associates and rivals – the major practitioners of Venetian view painting in the 18th century.

Charles Beddington has published and lectured widely on Canaletto and other 18th-century Italian view painters. Amanda Bradley is Assistant Curator of Pictures and Sculpture, The National Trust.

More images from the exhibition:



The Grand Canal with the Rialto Bridge from the South, c1780, by Francesco Guardi. Photo: National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC



Canaletto, The Entrance to the Grand Canal, looking West, with Santa Maria della Salute, about 1729 (detail). © The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection, gift of Sarah Campbell Blaffer (56.2)



Canaletto, The Entrance to the Grand Canal, looking West, with Santa Maria della Salute, about 1729, © The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection, gift of Sarah Campbell Blaffer (56.2).

This summer, 26 June – 8 September 2013, the National Gallery presents a captivating exhibition exploring the concept of music as one the most popular motifs in Dutch painting, and as a daily pastime of the elite in the northern Netherlands during the 17th century.

The exhibition aims to enhance viewers’ appreciation of some of the most beautiful and evocative paintings by Johannes Vermeer and his contemporaries, by juxtaposing them with musical instruments and songbooks of the period. Visitors will be able to compare 17th-century virginals, guitars, lutes and other instruments with the paintings themselves to judge the accuracy of the depictions, and understand the artistic liberties the painters might have taken – and why – to enhance the visual appeal of their work. Three days a week visitors can experience live performances in the exhibition space by the Academy of Ancient Music, which aim to bring the paintings to life with music of the period.

Forming the centrepiece of Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure are three magnificent paintings by Johannes Vermeer portraying female musicians, brought together for the first time in this exhibition. The National Gallery’s two paintings by Vermeer,



A Young Woman standing at a Virginal



and A Young Woman seated at a Virginal,

will be joined by Vermeer’s



The Guitar Player,

which is on exceptional loan from the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House.

Vermeer's



'The Music Lesson'

will also be on show, on loan from Her Majesty the Queen.

Music carried many diverse associations in 17th-century Dutch painting. In portraits, a musical instrument or songbook might suggest the talent or sophistication of the sitter, while in still lifes or scenes of everyday life, it might act as a metaphor for harmony, a symbol of transience or, depending on the type of music being performed, an indicator of education and position in society.

The captivating depictions of domestic musical performances in 'Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure' range from contemplative images of single musicians to lively concerts and amorous encounters between music-master and pupil. In addition to works by Vermeer, the exhibition will include paintings by Gerard ter Borch, Gabriel Metsu, Jan Steen, Pieter de Hooch and Godfried Schalcken.

Betsy Wieseman, Curator of Dutch Paintings at the National Gallery says:

“This exhibition presents a marvellous opportunity to understand the key role that music played in 17th-century Dutch art and society. We’re hoping that Gallery visitors will experience the same sort of pleasurable musical associations our 17th-century predecessors would have had when looking at these evocative paintings by Vermeer and his contemporaries."


The publication to accompany the exhibition is:



Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure
Marjorie E. Wieseman – Curator of Dutch Paintings at the National Gallery

Childe Hassam (1859-1935), a pioneer of American Impressionism and perhaps its most devoted, prolific, and successful practitioner, was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts (now part of Boston), into a family descended from settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Equally adept at capturing the charms of country retreats and the excitement of modern cities, Hassam became the foremost chronicler of New York City at the turn of the century. In our day, he is best known for his depictions of flag-draped Fifth Avenue during World War I.

From June 10 to September 12, 2004, The Metropolitan Museum of Art offered Childe Hassam, American Impressionist, an unprecedented exhibition of about 120 of Hassam's finest oil paintings, watercolors, and pastels, and some 30 prints. The retrospective celebrated Hassam's brilliant handling of color and light and examined his responses to the advent of the modern era in view of his credo that "the man who will go down to posterity is the man who paints his own time and the scenes of every-day life around him.

After establishing his reputation in Boston and studying in Paris – where he was unusual among his American contemporaries in his attraction to French Impressionism – Hassam returned to the United States and took up lifelong residence in New York. The exhibition featured many of Hassam's signature images of Boston, Paris, and New York – three cities whose places and pleasures he captured with affection and originality. Examples included



Boston Common at Twilight (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) from 1885-86;



April Showers, Champs Elysées, Paris (Joslyn Art Museum), painted in 1888;



and Late Afternoon, New York: Winter 1900 (Brooklyn Museum of Art).

While Hassam was unusual among the American Impressionists for his frequent depictions of burgeoning cities, he spent long periods in the countryside, where he found respite from urban pressures and inspiration for numerous important works of art. Hassam's many portrayals of the old-fashioned gardens, rocky coast, and radiant sunlight of the Isles of Shoals, Maine, are among his most cherished works and were represented extensively. Among them will be the 1894 interior scene



The Room of Flowers (private collection)

and the 1901 view



Coast Scenes, Isles of Shoals,

the first canvas by the artist to enter the collection of the Metropolitan Museum.

Hassam's views of Newport, Portsmouth, Old Lyme, Gloucester, and other New England locales exemplify the late 19th-century appreciation of the picturesque region redolent of early American settlement and colonial growth. An example was the 1905 work,



Church at Old Lyme (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo).

Increasingly challenged by modern life – and modern art – after 1900, Hassam chose to paint tranquil interior vignettes, iconic churches in the northeast, patriotic urban scenes –especially the memorable Flag series – and glimpses of East Hampton, Long Island, where he purchased a summer residence in 1919. These images were also highlighted.

Fascinating article, many more images.

The exhibition was organized by H. Barbara Weinberg, the Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture.



The exhibition was accompanied by an illustrated catalogue containing an overview of Hassam's career, thematic essays, a life chronology, and a chronology of exhibitions of his works during Hassam's lifetime. Authors include: (from the Metropolitan Museum) H. Barbara Weinberg, the Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings, Department of American Paintings and Sculpture, and Elizabeth Barker, Assistant Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints; Elizabeth Broun, the Margaret and Terry Stent Director, Smithsonian Art Museum, Washington; Erica E. Hirshler, Croll Senior Curator of Paintings, Art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Kimberly Orcutt, Assistant Curator of American Art, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; Carol Troyen, John Moors Cabot Curator of Paintings, Art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and independent scholars Kathleen M. Burnside, Stephanie L. Herdrich, Susan G. Larkin, Lisa Miller, and Dana Pilson. Assistance in organizing the exhibition and the accompanying publication was provided by Megan Holloway and Elizabeth Block, Research Assistants, Department of American Paintings and Sculpture, who are also co-authors of the chronologies.

This fall and winter, The Frick Collection will be the final venue of an American tour of paintings from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague. This prestigious Dutch museum, which has not lent a large body of works from its holdings in nearly thirty years, is undergoing an extensive two-year renovation that makes this opportunity possible. Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis will be on view in New York from October 22, 2013, through January 19, 2014. Among the paintings to be featured are:



• Carel Fabritius, “Goldfinch,” 1654




• Rembrandt van Rijn, “‘Tronie’ of a Man with a Feathered Beret,” ca. 1635


• Johannes Vermeer, “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” ca. 1665




• Jan Steen, “The Way You Hear It, Is The Way You Sing It,” ca. 1665


• Jacob van Ruisdael, “View of Haarlem with Bleaching Grounds,” 1670–1675


three more works by Rembrandt van Rijn:



Simeon’s Song of Praise, 1631;



Susanna, 1636,



and Portrait of an Elderly Man, 1667;


Frans Hals’s pendant portraits of



Jacob Olycan (1596–1638)



and Aletta Hanemans (1606–1653),

both painted in 1625;






Pieter Claesz’s Vanitas Still Life, 1630;




Nicholas Maes’s Old Lacemaker, c. 1655;



Gerard ter Borch’s Woman Writing a Letter, c. 1655;




Jan Steen’s Girl Eating Oysters, c. 1658–60,



and ‘As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young’, c. 1665;



and Adriaen Coorte’s Still Life with Five Apricots, 1704.3


Larger version of the exhibition:

de Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
DATES: January 26, 2013, through June 2, 2013
TITLE: Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis (35 works)

High Museum of Art, Atlanta
DATES: June 22, 2013, through September 29, 2013
TITLE: Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis (35 works)
The Frick Collection, New York
DATES: October 22, 2013, through January 19, 2014

From 27 February to 19 May 2013, the National Gallery in London presented Barocci: Brilliance and Grace, the first major monographic exhibition, dedicated to the art of Federico Barocci (1535-1612). The display assembles the majority of Barocci’s greatest altarpieces and paintings, together with sequences of dazzling preparatory drawings, allowing visitors to understand how each picture evolved. 'Barocci: Brilliance and Grace' showcased the remarkable fertility of Barocci’s imagination and the diversity of his working methods.

Highly revered by his patrons during his lifetime, Barocci combined the beauty of the High Renaissance with the dynamism of what was to become known as the Baroque, a genre he was instrumental in pioneering. From his earliest creations of the 1550s, he began to challenge pictorial convention by positioning his figures in dynamic spatial arrangements, anticipating by almost half a century the innovations of Baroque art. He was an incessant and even obsessive draughtsman, preparing every composition with prolific studies in every conceivable medium. Fascinated and inspired by people and animals, he infused his harmonious compositions with infectious charm and an unparalleled sensitivity to colour. Spiritually attuned by nature, Barocci was predominantly a painter of religious subjects, his approach epitomising the clarity and accessibility required by a Catholic church, then in crisis. Barocci’s unique warmth and humanity transformed familiar gospel stories and more unusual visions into transcendent archetypes with universal appeal.

Highlights of the exhibition included Barocci’s most spectacular altarpiece,



'The Entombment of Christ'

from the Marchigian seaside town of Senigallia



and 'Last Supper'

painted for Urbino Cathedral,

neither work ever having left Italy before.

Two other splendid late altarpieces for Roman churches, the



'Visitation' from the Chiesa Nuova



and the 'Institution of the Eucharist'

from Santa Maria sopra Minerva, were also displayed.

The exhibition also included Barocci’s finest portraits, smaller devotional paintings, his only secular narrative



('Aeneas Flight from Troy'),

and more than 65 preparatory drawings, pastel studies and oil sketches – the latter techniques pioneered by the ever experimental Barocci long before they became standard artistic practice.

Born in the Marchigian town of Urbino, Federico Barocci was one of the most talented and innovative artists of late 16th-century Italy. He flourished in a town that had become one of the great cultural centres of the Renaissance, and had also been the birthplace of his famous predecessor Raphael, by whom he was much influenced. He emerged as a promising young painter and, in the 1550s, moved to Rome for further study. During a second trip to Rome in the 1560s, Barocci lived and worked with a number of Rome’s leading painters. After participating in a fresco project for Pope Pius IV in the Vatican, he was allegedly poisoned by jealous rivals during a picnic. Suffering severely and in need of recuperation, Barocci returned to Urbino in 1563, where he remained for the rest of his career. When he died in 1612, he was not only among the highest paid painters in Italy, but also one of the most influential.

Many of Barocci’s most accomplished works remain in his home region of the Marches, Italy, on the altars for which they were made. Consequently, his name has not acquired the broad recognition of distinguished predecessors such as Raphael and Michelangelo, or successors such as Rubens, who, with other Baroque artists, drew inspiration from his sumptuous colour palette, expressive compositions and innovative techniques. Beloved by artists and art historians throughout the ages, those unfamiliar with Barocci’s art should prepare to be astonished by his brilliance and grace.

'Barocci: Brilliance and Grace' was curated by Carol Plazzotta at the National Gallery. It was first shown in a different form in Saint Louis, where it was curated by Judith W. Mann and Babette Bohn.



Catalogue:

'Federico Barocci: Renaissance Master of Colour and Line'
Judith W. Mann and Babette Bohn with Carol Plazzotta


More images from the exhibition here and below:



‘Madonna of the Cat’, (detai) Federico Barocci, about 1575.



Barocci, Study for ‘Christ on the Cross’

On Feb. 27 2004 the Smithsonian American Art Museum opened "Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum," an installation of some of its greatest paintings in the Grand Salon of its Renwick Gallery. This striking selection of more than 185 works were hung salon-style, one-atop-another and side-by-side to re-create the elegant setting of a 19th-century collector's picture gallery. This installation remained on view through 2005.

The works in this installation were selected from four strengths in the museum's permanent collection: Colonial and Federal artworks, American impressionism, Gilded Age treasures and art of the Western frontier including the Taos School.

The earliest paintings in this installation were from the time when the Colonies were transformed into a nation. These rare artworks by John Singleton Copley, John Trumbull and Charles Willson Peale displayed the growing self-awareness and optimism of the new nation. Other works included still lifes by Raphaelle Peale and Severin Roesen, and landscapes by Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand. This section of the installation also included Robert Scott Duncanson's view of a peaceful rural paradise,



"Landscape with Rainbow" (1859),

and Frederic Edwin Church's dramatic landscape



"Aurora Borealis" (1865).

Impressionist artists included in this installation, such as Childe Hassam:



Improvisation (1899)

John Henry Twachtman, William Merritt Chase, and Thomas Wilmer and Maria Oakey Dewing, often worked outdoors to capture brilliant effects of light and color to create luminous paintings.

Other artists whose works were included in the Grand Salon and display the freedom and sparkling qualities of the new impressionist style are Theodore Robinson, Mary Cassatt, Willard Metcalf and Henry Ossawa Tanner, who borrowed the French painter Claude Monet's signature subject for his own



"Haystacks" (about 1930).

Artists who painted during the last quarter of the 19th century, dubbed the Gilded Age by Mark Twain in 1873, captured the brilliance of turn-of-the-century society and a new current of sophistication in America. Artworks by some of the most important artists of the day such as Winslow Homer:



High Cliff, Coast of Maine (1894)

John Singer Sargent (below)

and Albert Pinkham Ryder:


The Flying Dutchman (about 1887)

were in this installation. Artists at this time were fascinated with exotic cultures, as seen in



Louis Comfort Tiffany's "Market Day Outside the Walls of Tangiers, Morocco" (1873)



Frederick Arthur Bridgman's Oriental Interior (1884) and



and H. Siddons Mowbray's "Idle Hours" (1895).


Also on view was Abbott Handerson Thayer's ever-popular



"Angel" (1887).

The three monumental landscapes by Thomas Moran



"The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone" (1872),



"The Chasm of the Colorado" (1873-1874)

and another view also titled



"The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone" (1893-1901)

remained on view in the Grand Salon. The two earlier paintings were on long-term loan from the U. S. Department of the Interior. Moran's western landscapes inspired Congress to establish the National Park Service and set aside Yellowstone as the country's first national park in 1872.

Other Western works on view are 29 portraits of Native Americans and scenes of Plains Indian life by George Catlin, who followed the path of explorers Lewis and Clark, traveling up the Missouri River into the Dakota Territories in the 1830s.

Victor Higgins, Joseph Henry Sharp, Ernest L. Blumenschein and several other artists in the installation were part of the Taos School, begun informally in the 1890s when artists visited the Southwest as an antidote to urban industry and the sophistication of Eastern cities during the Gilded Age. Their bold compositions, as seen in E. Martin Hennings's



"Riders at Sunset" (1935-1945),

used strong color and bright light to depict this region.

The nearby Octagon Room showcased works from the late 19th and early 20th century by artists such as Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Albert Pinkham Ryder, William Glackens, Maurice Prendergast and John Ferguson Weir that are also hung salon-style.

In the adjoining hallway,



John Singer Sargent's "Elizabeth Winthrop Chanler (Mrs. John Jay Chapman)" (1893),



Cecilia Beaux's "Man with the Cat (Henry Sturgis Drinker)" (1898)

and Robert Henri's "Portrait of Dorothy Wagstaff" (1911)

were among the portraits on view.

_________________________________________________________________
More from the Gilded Age::


The intimate world of women and children at home, seen in



An Interlude (1907) by Sergeant Kendall, offered a comforting refuge. Yet danger could invade even the sanctuary of the home, as portrayed by



J. Bond Francisco in The Sick Child (1893),

in which a mother keeps watch as her son hovers between life and death.

Artists and their patrons shared an ambition to present American civilization as having grown past its earlier provincialism to full maturity, equal to Europe's much-admired culture. Evocations of music abounded, as in



Thomas Dewing's allegory of Music (about 1895), where a prevailing gold palette evokes a musical tonality.

“An Impressionist Sensibility: The Halff Collection,” on view from Nov. 3, 2006 through Feb. 4, 2007 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, presented iconic works by some of America’s most talented and cherished artists. These selected paintings were from Marie and Hugh Halff’s collection, one of the finest private collections of late 19th- and early 20th-century American art.

“An Impressionist Sensibility” featured 26 paintings by William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent and John Twachtman, among other internationally known artists.

The works range from Ernest Lawson’s celebration of modern urbanism in his



Flatiron Building (1906-07),

to the exoticism of



Harry Siddons Mowbray’s Two Women (1893-96),

and the harmonious plein-air geometry of



Theodore Robinson’s The Anchorage,Cos Cob(1894).

The Halff’s collection spans the period in American art known as ‘The Gilded Age’, when Ruskin’s credo of ‘truth to nature’ gave way to Whistler’s rallying cry of ‘art for art’s sake.’

Marie and Hugh Halff, who live in San Antonio, acquired these masterpieces during the past 20 years. In addition to reflecting the Halff’s keen eye for the finest artworks from this period, the collection also is noteworthy for illustrating the consistency of their vision. The paintings in the collection are linked through a shared sensibility about American cultural aspirations at the turn of the century.

“An Impressionist Sensibility” charted the development of a generation of artists, how they helped shape the aesthetic taste of the nation and how they responded to the beginnings of modernist impulses in art and society. The exhibition showcased the artists’ distinctly American interpretations of impressionism, which began in France in the early 1870s. Every one of the artists in the Halffs’ collection studied in France between the 1870s and the 1920s. Chase, Sargent and others crossed paths in Paris, London and Venice, drawn by a shared desire to learn from both old and new masters.

Impressionism as part of a modernist strategy is exemplified in



“The New York Bouquet” by Childe Hassam. He was fascinated with modern transportation, skyscrapers and a sense of innovation. This painting presents the modern face of a city embracing its new position in international commerce.

Similarly,



Hassam’s “Clearing Sunset (Corner of Berkeley Street and Columbus Avenue)”

shows a city under construction, bustling with new growth and full of promise.

John Singer Sargent’s Venetian paintings, such as



“The Sulfur Match”



and “Sortie de l’église,”

also touch upon these new modernist tendencies, both in the subject matter he paints and in his technique. Sargent explores the working-class street life of Venice in scenes that he captures with rapid brushstrokes that have the immediacy of plein-air paintings.

From Glasstire (images added but article best read in its entirety):

While many of the paintings are light and colorful, three of the best have a dark, Velazquez-like moodiness. Sargent evokes Velazquez with his image of three women emerging from a church. Sortie de l’eglise, Campo San Canciano, Venice, (above) dramatically blends midnight blacks, vivid touches of reds and stone-washed whites. Sargent’s The Sulphur Match (above) is also dark and romantic, featuring the almost obscured face of a man bending to light a match while a woman in a white dress and red shawl leans back in a chair, two lovers lounging in a bar.

In the case of Chase, the artist was directly influenced by an iconic Velazquez work. He painted



Ring Toss, featuring three of his young daughters playing the game in his studio, after a trip to Spain where he made a copy of Velazquez’s



Las Meninas. The rich brown tones of the floor’s wood grain are contrasted with the murky black shadows of the background, almost forming a stage, with the girls pitching toward the viewer.

Chase, however, is primarily known as a landscape painter. His



Shinnecock Landscape with Figures

is a more characteristically sunny work. The scene is from Long Island, where Chas taught his famous summer classes.

Theodore Robinson’s ragged brushstrokes evoke a blustery New York cold spell in



Union Square, Winter.

He and Hassam were among several artists who took advantage of cheap rents in apartments near the square. Another New York winter scene is Ernest Lawson‘s The Flatiron Building,(above) with its distinctive jutting, prow-like visage seen through snow-laden tree branches.

Two of the most interesting landscapes are by Twachtman,who painted the river views from the porch of the Holley House in Cos Cob, Connecticut,during the winter and spring. Fog hangs heavy over a snow-shrouded landscape in Bridge in Winter, with only a few straggly wisps of bare tree branches. But spring is clearly underway in



From the Holley House,

with blue water running in the river and leaves beginning to sprout from the tree branches.

Images of women reflect the turn-of-the-20th-century fascination with Japan, or “japonisme," and the Middle and Far East, or “orientalism.” A woman wears a kimono in Charles Sprague Pearce’s



Lady with a Fan,

while the subjects of Harry Siddons Mowbray’s Two Women (Above)lounge like fantasies of a Near Eastern harem. Edmund Tarbell painted an American woman sitting on the floor, Japanese-style, while she cuts out kirigami patterns. Whistler began incorporating Japanesque elements into his work during the early 1860s, probably inspired by an exhibit of ukiyo-e prints by Hokusai at the London Exhibition of 1862.

William McGregor Paxton’s Vermeer-influenced portrait of a woman reading a newspaper is one of the most contemporary-looking paintings. But other female portraits reflect the influence of the romantic, soft-focus photography of the era known aspictorialism. In Robert Reid’s



Woman on a Porch with Flowers,

the woman’s dress seems to merge with the cut flowers and wildflowers in the scene.

Other paintings in the Halffs’ collection embrace the late 19th-century fascination with Japanese art and culture. A wave of Japanese influence swept across America and Europe in the 1860s with the rising popularity of mass-marketed decorative goods and exhibitions of prints in London, Paris and Boston. The impact of these works on American artists was fueled by James McNeill Whistler’s revolutionary approach to painting with his Asian-inspired subjects and compositions. Paintings by William McGregor Paxton, Charles Sprague Pearce and Edmund C. Tarbell embody this blending of elements from the East and the West often referred to as “japonisme.”

Works in the Halff collection were painted during a period of great change when American artists strove to create works that would be considered worthy of what would come to be called the “American Century.” These artists engaged in a conversation between old and new, tradition and innovation, and East and West, and their work served as a springboard for the next generation of American artists. The Halff collection is a powerful and intimate view into this transformative time.

An Impressionist Sensibility: The Halff Collection, was also on view from February 3-May 9, 2010 at The McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX.

Frank Weston Benson’s Elisabeth and Anna,


Catalogue:

The National Gallery Company, London put on display from 8 July - 20 September 2009 Corot to Monet: A Fresh Look at Landscape from the Collection. Drawing on the National Gallery’s extraordinary collection of 19th-century French landscapes, 'Corot to Monet' charted the development of landscape painting from the late 18th century to the year of the first Impressionist exhibition, 1874.

The exhibition featured some 90 small-scale paintings by the major artists of this genre. Fresh perspectives on familiar National Gallery works and new juxtapositions reveal the extraordinary achievements of these early plein-air painters and their far-reaching influence on the Impressionists.

At the end of the 18th century, artists from all over Europe were congregating in Rome, before setting out to paint in the Campagna and other picturesque locations, including the magnificent cascades at Tivoli.

The exhibition opened with some of the finest works of these pioneers of plein-air painting, including Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes and Simon Denis.

Many of these works were drawn from the renowned Gere Collection, entrusted to the National Gallery on long-term loan in 1999. Highlights included



Corot, 'The Roman Campagna, with the Claudian Aqueduct', probably 1826,

which, in a single layer of paint, perfectly captures a broad, sunlit landscape hung with majestic clouds.

By the first half of the 19th century, artists in France, including Corot and Théodore Rousseau, were also sketching their native scenery to great effect.



Rousseau’s 'The Valley of Saint-Vincent', 1830

– purchased from the Paris sale of Degas’s private collection in 1918 – captures the wild, unspoilt nature of the Auvergne with long, fluid brushstrokes.

In the western suburbs of Paris about 1820, Paul Huet was inspired by the grandeur of the


which he described as an ‘enchanted site…whose every bush I knew’.

This section of the exhibition featured a jewel-like masterpiece by the English-born artist, Richard Parkes Bonington, who spent most of his short life in France. During a tour to the Picardy coastline around 1825, the young artist completed this remarkable coastal scene of



'La Ferté',

confidently realising sand, sea and sky with broad sweeps of his brush.

Special attention was paid to the so-called Barbizon School, named after a small French town in the Forest of Fontainebleau where landscape artists including Rousseau, Jean-François Millet and Narcisse-Virgilio Diaz de la Peña gathered to work in the huge expanse of woodland, meadows, marshes and gorges. These pictures evoke Victor Hugo’s conviction that ‘A tree is an edifice, a forest a city, and among all the forests, the Forest of Fontainebleau is a monument.’



Diaz de la Peña’s 'Sunny Days in the Forest', 1850–60,

offers a lively celebration of spring skies and rich foliage, completed with an extraordinary eye for detail.

A major highlight was



Corot’s 'The Four Times of the Day',

about 1858 (on loan from the Loyd collection since 1997), completed for the studio of fellow Barbizon artist, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps. Corot completed all four panels in just a week, imbuing these imaginary compositions with personal reminiscences of Italy.

Late works by Corot and a selection of beach scenes by Eugène Boudin revealed the very tangible influence these artists had on the nascent Impressionists. Indeed, they hang alongside and in constant dialogue with



Monet’s 'The Beach at Trouville', 1870,

and other early works.

The captivating 'Beach at Trouville' focuses on his new wife and a friend, possibly Boudin’s wife, sat beneath their umbrellas on the beach. The speed and bravura of his handling of paint make this a seminal work of its genre. The sea breeze which agitates the distant flag in the picture left a still more physical presence on the canvas – grains of sand lodged in the artist’s wet paint.

Not long after, Monet made his first visit to London, fleeing from the Franco-Prussian War. In the bustling Victorian metropolis, he found inspiration in its parks and the river Thames. The final section of the exhibition examined two iconic views of London by Monet and fellow refugee, Charles-Francois Daubigny.



Monet’s 'The Thames below Westminster', 1871,

captures a sense of sublime stillness looking towards the recently completed Houses of Parliament and newly built iron Westminster Bridge.



In 'St Paul’s from the Surrey Side', 1871–3,

Daubigny peers through the leaden sky of a modern industrial city, delicately capturing the plume of smoke from a train over Blackfriars Bridge.

Painted on small-scale wooden panels or paper, the landscape oil sketches of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were often piled in the corner of the artist’s studio, little valued and largely ignored until generations later.

Organisation

'Corot to Monet: A Fresh Look at Landscape from the Collection' was curated by Sarah Herring, Isaiah Berlin Assistant Curator of Post-1800 Paintings.



Publication:



'Corot to Monet: French Landscape Painting'
By Sarah Herring, with Antonio Mazzotta

The exhibition was accompanied by a richly illustrated and accessible guide to landscape paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries at the National Gallery. Sarah Herring’s lively text introduces and explains the enduring appeal of these charming works, both to their original owners, and to the present day viewer. Published by The National Gallery Company, London. Distributed by Yale University Press.
ISBN: 978 1 85709 450 3

Other works from the exhibition:



Monet 1864 Coastal View “la Pointe de la Héve, Sainte-Adresse”



The Avenue, Syndenham, Camille Pissaro



Reviews

From July 15 through October 1, 2006 the Morgan Library & Museum presented highlights from its outstanding collection of Dutch drawings from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. When Pierpont Morgan purchased the Fairfax Murray collection of old master drawings in 1909, he acquired one of the most substantial groups of Dutch drawings from the seventeenth century—the golden age of Dutch art—as well as important sheets by eighteenth-century artists. Since the Morgan’s founding in 1924, the collection has grown significantly and now extends into the nineteenth century. The Morgan today preserves one of the most comprehensive groups of Dutch drawings in the country. Comprising approximately forty drawings spanning three centuries, the exhibition celebrated the contemporaneous publication of the catalogue raisonné of the Morgan’s Dutch drawings.

From Rembrandt to van Gogh opened with drawings by seventeenth century artists active in Holland. Principal themes of Dutch art emerge in portraits by David Bailly and Jan Lievens, marine views by Hendrick Avercamp and Ludolf Bakhuizen, and pastoral scenes by Nicolaes Berchem. A concern for natural history is revealed in a drawing of tulips by Anthony Claesz. II and a study of a camel by Samuel van Hoogstraten. Genre scenes of alehouse interiors by Adriaen van Ostade reveal the humorous aspect of Dutch art. Rembrandt’s achievement as a draftsman is represented by four sheets, accompanied by selections from the Morgan’s rich collection of drawings by the artist’s pupils, that serve to illustrate the master’s influence. The Dutch landscape is a recurrent subject in exhibited drawings by Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Abraham Rutgers, and Anthonie Waterloo.

The continuing tradition of draftsmanship during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is chronicled by a selection of sheets, including Italian landscape views by Isaac de Moucheron, a genre scene by Cornelis Troost, a powerful head study by Jacob de Wit, pastoral scenes by Aert Schouman and Jacob van Strij, and a watercolor view of the interior of the Oranjezaal (a room in the royal château Huis ten Bosch) by Tieleman Cato Bruining. A luminous vanitas image on vellum by Herman Henstenburgh and a robust study of flowers by Jan van Huysum are characteristic of the ongoing interest in still-life subjects. The exhibition concludes with landscapes by Johan Barthold Jongkind and by Vincent van Gogh, the greatest Dutch-born artist of the nineteenth century.

From Rembrandt to van Gogh: Dutch Drawings from the Morgan was organized by Jennifer Tonkovich, Associate Curator of Drawings and Prints, The Morgan Library & Museum.



The exhibition was accompanied by the catalogue Dutch Drawings in the Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, by Jane Shoaf Turner, which documents, discusses, and reproduces the more than four hundred drawings from this period in the Morgan’s collection.


From Rembrandt to van Gogh: Dutch Drawings from the Morgan

July 15 through October 1, 2006

Exhibition Checklist

Hendrick de Keyser (1565–1621)
Portrait of a Man in a Tall Hat, Seen Bust-Length in Profile to the Left
Pen and brown ink
2001.17. Purchased as the gift of the Markus family in memory of Frits Markus.

David Bailly (1584–1657)
Portrait of Daniel Heinsius (1580/81–1655), ca. 1630
Point of brush and gray and some brown wash, with pen and brown ink
I, 118. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.



Hendrick Avercamp (1585–1634)
River Landscape with a Man and Two Women in a Fishing Boat, One Woman Pulling up a Net, with a
Ship in the Distance at Right
Pen and black and brown ink, with green, blue, brown, and gray wash
Promised gift of Werner H. Kramarsky.



Willem (Pietersz.) Buytewech (1591/92–1624)
River Landscape with Sailboats
Pen and brown, black, and gray ink, brush and gray wash
Thaw Collection.



Pieter Saenredam (1597–1665)
Interior of the Nieuwe Kerck of Haarlem Looking from the North to the South, 1650
Pen and brown ink, watercolor in shades of gray, yellow, red, brown, and blue, with some red
chalk, over traces of graphite
Thaw Collection.

Simon (Jacobsz.) de Vlieger (ca. 1600/01–1653)
A Dutch Coastal Scene near Scheveningen, with Fishing Pinks Hauled up on Rollers and a Group of Fishing
People in the Center
Pen and brown ink, gray wash
III, 184. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Herman van Swanevelt (1604?–1655)
Joseph Recounting His Dreams to His Brethren (Genesis 37: 5–10)
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, over faint traces of black chalk
I, 270. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J.P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.



Rembrandt (Harmensz.) van Rijn (1606–1669)
Two Studies of Saskia Asleep
Pen and brown ink, brown wash
I, 180. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Rembrandt (Harmensz.) van Rijn (1606–1669)
Two Mummers on Horseback
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, with yellow and red chalks, some white chalk in ruffs
I, 201. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Rembrandt (Harmensz.) van Rijn (1606–1669)
Canal and Bridge Beside a Tall Tree, a Couple Seated on a Bank
Pen and brown ink, gray-brown wash (added by a later hand), on paper toned brown
I, 202. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Rembrandt (Harmensz.) van Rijn (1606–1669)
Three Studies for a “Descent from the Cross” (Mark 15:42–46)
Quill and reed pen and brown ink
Thaw Collection.



Jan Lievens (1607–1674)
Portrait of a Man
Black chalk
1976.49. Gift of Benjamin Sonnenberg.

Anthonie Waterloo (1609–1690)
Woodland Scene with a Duck Hunter
Black chalk, point of brush and black ink and gray wash
1964.5. Purchased as the gift of Alice Tully.



Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1685)
Alehouse Interior with Nine Peasants Smoking, Drinking, and Playing Cards and Tric-Trac
Pen and brown ink, watercolor and some gouache, over traces of black chalk; incised with stylus
1961.2. Purchased as the gift of the Fellows.

Attributed to Ferdinand Bol (1616–1680)
River Landscape
Pen and brown ink, watercolor, with touches of opaque white, over black chalk
I, 176. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Anthony Claesz. II (ca. 1616–ca. 1652)
Seven Tulips with Three Ladybugs
Watercolor and gouache
Promised gift of Charles Ryskamp.

Philips (de) Koninck (1619–1688)
Village Schoolmaster and His Pupils
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, with the addition of gum arabic in lower left corner on the
bench and jug, some corrections in opaque white
I, 213c. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Nicolaes (Pietersz.) Berchem (1620–1683)
Shepherdess Spinning by a Stream, with Cattle, Goats, and a Donkey, ca. 1665–66
Pen and point of brush and brown ink, brown wash, over faint traces of black chalk
I, 139. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.



Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (1621–1674)
Adoration of the Magi (Matthew 2:1–11)
Pen and brown ink, brown and gray washes, some opaque white, black and red chalks, and traces
of graphite
1970.1. Purchased as the gift of the Fellows.

Paulus (Pietersz.) Potter (1625–1654)
Sketch of a Steer
Black chalk
I, 141. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Karel Dujardin (1626–1678)
Study of a Long-Haired Young Man
Red chalk
III, 227. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627–1678)
Camel Seen from the Front
Pen and brown ink, brown wash
I, 204a. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.



Jan de Bray (ca. 1627–1697)
“Suffer the Little Children to Come unto Me” (Matthew 19:13–15; Mark 10:13–16; Luke 18:15–17),
1663
Brush and gray wash, over pen and brown ink
1999.18. Purchased as the gift of the Markus family in memory of Frits Markus.

Jan de Bisschop (1628–1671)
Caritas (after Peter Paul Rubens)
Brush and brown wash, over black chalk
1997.17. Gift of Anne-Marie S. Logan.

Jacob (Isaacsz.) van Ruisdael (1628/9–1682)
Sun-Dappled Trees on a Stream
Point of brush, black and gray washes, over indications in black chalk
1957.2. Purchased as the gift of the Fellows with the special assistance of Mr. and Mrs. H. Nelson
Slater.

Anthonie van Borssom (1630/31–1677)
View of Toutenburg Hunting Lodge in Maartensdijk, 1673–1677
Pen and brown and some black ink, watercolor, over black chalk
1982.73. Purchased as the gift of Mrs. Charles W. Engelhard.



Ludolf Bakhuizen (1631–1708)
View Across the IJ with the Village of Ransdorp in the Distance and a Dutch States Yacht of Amsterdam and
Other Ships Before a Moderate Breeze in the Foreground
III, 223. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Abraham Rutgers the Elder (1632–1699)
Road by a Canal Approaching a Village
Pen and brown ink, over traces of black chalk
2000.5. Purchased as the gift of the Markus Family in memory of Frits Markus.

Attributed to Nicolaes Maes (1634–1693)
Woman Asleep in a Chair
Pen and brown ink, brown wash, slight corrections in opaque white in the figure’s bodice and skirt
I, 199. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Abraham van Dyck (1635/6–1672)
Old Woman Seated, Holding a Book
Pen and brown ink, brown and gray washes, some red chalk and opaque white, over preliminary
indications in black chalk
I, 194. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Cornelis Dusart (1660–1704)
The Chair Mender
Pen and brown ink, point of brush and brown wash, over preliminary indications in graphite
I, 161. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.



Willem van Mieris (1662–1747)
Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (Genesis 39:11–12), ca. 1691–96
Gouache on vellum
2001.46. Purchased on the Sunny Crawford von Bülow Fund 1978.

Herman Henstenburgh (1667–1726)
Vanitas Still Life
Gouache, some areas of gum arabic, over faint traces of black chalk, on vellum
1982.95. Purchased on the Edwin H. Herzog Fund.

Isaac de Moucheron (1667–1744)
View of Rome with the Castel Sant’Angelo, 1742
View of the Abbey of Grottaferrata, 1742
Pen and brown and some black ink, gray wash, over graphite
Pen and brown and black ink, gray wash
III, 237a, III, 237b. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Jan van Huysum (1682–1749)
Flowers in an Urn and Bird’s Nest on a Stone Plinth, with a Statue of Apollo and Daphne in the
Background
Black chalk and watercolor
I, 164. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Jacob de Wit (1695–1754)
Head of Moses, ca. 1726
Brush and black, gray, and red washes
1998.5. Purchased as the gift of Diane Nixon.

Aert Schouman (1710–1792)
Panoramic Landscape near Windsor, 1766
Watercolor and gouache over traces of graphite
Promised gift of Charles Ryskamp.

Jacob van Strij (1756–1815)
Farm in Winter
Pen and brown ink, watercolor
I, 168b. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1909; gift of J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1924.

Tieleman Cato Bruining (1801–1877)
Interior of the Oranjezaal: View Toward the West, ca. 1860
Point of brush, ruling pen, and watercolor, with gum arabic, over pencil
1985.50:3. Purchased on the Sunny Crawford von Bülow Fund 1978.

Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819–1891)
Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, on the Côte-de-Grâce, near Honfleur, 1864
Watercolor, with some gouache, over black chalk
Thaw Collection.



Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
Workers in a Field, Saint-Rémy de Provence
Pencil and black chalk
Thaw Collection.