Pissarro seized by Nazis to be sold at auction after families settle

In an undated image provided via Christie’s, “The Anse des Pilotes, Le Havre,” by Camille Pissarro, painted in 1903. A Pissarro painting that was at the center of a dispute between the heirs of a Jewish couple whose art collection was seized by the Nazis before World War II and a Jewish family who bought it in 1994 will be sold at auction after the two sides reached agreement. Via Christie’s via The New York Times.

The details of the settlement were not disclosed, but Christie’s has placed an estimate of $1.2 to $1.8 million on the work, “The Anse des Pilotes, Le Havre,” which it intends to sell May 14 in New York.

Claude Monet, (1840-1926), Champ d'avoine et de coquelicots, signed and dated 'Claude Monet 90' (lower right), oil on canvas, 25.5/8 x 36.1/4 in. (65 x 92.1 cm.) Painted in Giverny in 1890. © Christie's Images Ltd 2022.

Christie’s has announced Claude Monet’s Champ d’avoine et de coquelicots, (estimate: $12 million – 18 million) will highlight the 20th Century Evening Sale during the Spring Marquee Week of sales. The 1890 masterwork comes to Christie’s from an Important Private French Collection along with two wonderful examples from the late 19th century offered in the Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale: Alfred Sisley’s Femme et enfant sur le chemin des près, Sèvres (estimate: $400,000 – 600,000) and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot’s Le gros arbre (environs de Gournay) (estimate: $200,000 – 300,000). The group of three paintings is incredibly fresh to market, having been held in the same private family collection for decades, and in the case of the Monet, for over a century.

ALFRED SISLEY (1839-1899)
Femme et enfant sur le chemin des près, Sèvres
signed 'Sisley' (lower right) oil on canvas
14⅞ x 21⅞ in. (37.7 x 55.5 cm.)
Painted circa 1879
$400,000-600,000

JEAN-BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT (1796-1875)
Le gros arbre (environs de Gournay)
signed ‘COROT’ (lower left)
oil on canvas
15 x 22 in. (38.1 x 55.8 cm.)
Painted in 1865-1870
$200,000-300,000

Sisley’s Femme et enfant sur le chemin des près, Sèvres pictures a charming scene of a woman and child walking along a humble pathway within the larger context  of a wonderfully rendered rich landscape of greenery and sky. The works displays a remarkable variation in texture—from spontaneous strokes of blue to effect the color of the sky, to the thick layers of paint that articulate the natural foliage. This highly prized painting has remained in the same private collection for nearly 60 years; this spring will be the first time it will appear at auction.

Corot’s Le gros arbre (environs de Gournay) is an exquisite example by the master at the height of his powers. Corot perfectly captures a moment in time, creating a depth of landscape by the placement of the seated girl and cow in the foreground, the gnarled tree defining the middle ground, and the rock formation, architectural elements, and hills beyond forming the background. These features all serve to draw the eye of the viewer gently though the painting; the result is a visually delightful depiction of a picturesque summer day in the French countryside.

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015)
Blue Red-Orange
oil on canvas
75 x 69¾ in. (190.5 x 177.2 cm.)
Painted in 1964-1965.
Estimate: $3,000,000-5,000,000

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010)
Lunar Episode
acrylic on canvas
68 x 70 in. (172.7 x 177.8 cm.)
Painted in 1959.
Estimate: $3,000,000-5,000,000

Christie’s has announced Property from the Estate of Sondra Gilman will be sold during the Spring Marquee Week of sales taking place this May in New York. Highlighting the group are three works by Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, and Kenneth Noland which will be included in the 20th Century Evening Sale.

Ellsworth Kelly’s Blue Red-Orange is exemplary of his ability to evoke feeling and human connectivity from abstract forms. In it, competing fields of vibrant color create a sense of drama, pushing the chromatic power of color to its limits. This tension between the strong presence of blue tightly juxtaposed within two slices of red creates the notion of a sculpture in relief. It is unique for its remarkable scale and early date, from his coveted early works of the 1960s.

Agnes Martin’s Untitled #8 employs paint and graphite to unearth truths about perception, intimacy, and spirituality. Included in the artist’s retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery in London, Untitled #8  exemplifies Martin’s belief that art should be an act of enlightenment. The work comprises six horizontal grey stripes, almost levitating above the canvas. Like an ethereal tapestry, the painting displays a wonderful interplay between foreground and background. It is a superb example of the artist’s work from the 1990s, evoking a meditative sense of calm, beauty, and otherworldliness.

Kenneth Noland’s Lunar Episode is a superlative early example of the artist’s bold and innovative target paintings that transformed gestural constructs of Abstract Expressionism into formally celebrations of pure color. Featuring concentric circles of vibrant yellow, orange, and blush set against a monochromatic gray and blue background, it is one of the most vibrant and important target paintings to come to market.

Washington Crossing the Delaware Offered in Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale

The Toledo Museum of Art Will Deaccession Three Impressionist Paintings That Could Fetch More Than $60 Million at Sotheby’s

When Steve Cohen’s 1932 Picasso comes up for sale at Sotheby’s on May 17, it will be joined on the auction block by three Impressionist paintings from the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA), which could net as much as $64 million—the largest institutional deaccession of the season.

The consignment includes Paul Cézanne’s Clairière (The Glade) from around 1895, estimated at $30 million to $40 million; Henri Matisse’s Fleurs ou Fleurs devant un portrait (1923), estimated at $15 million to $20 million; and a late Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Nu s’essuyant (1923), estimated at $3 million to $4 million. All three are guaranteed by Sotheby’s.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Nu s’essuyant (1912). Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

Proponents say that deaccessions free up funds for improving or expanding a museum’s offerings. The TMA was “conceived from its founding as an institution that would be actively deaccessioning, and we have been deaccessioning for decades,” said director Adam M. Levine, who took the reins two years ago. “All of the proceeds will be used to create what will be a transformative endowment for art acquisition in perpetuity.”

He continued, “The American Alliance of Museums, the Association of Art Museum Directors and the International Council of Museums, all say that thoughtful deaccessioning is part of collections care,” adding that the TMA’s sale complies not only with these organizations’ regulations governing member institutions but also with its own foundational principles.  

In an April 8 letter to TMA members, Levine explained that founders Edward Drummond Libbey and his wife Florence Scott left the museum acquisition funds on the condition that “artworks purchased with funds left by them may be sold so long as the proceeds are used to purchase other artworks.” This endowment is currently $40 million. 

Levine stated that the museum would use the proceeds from the Sotheby’s sale “to create a new acquisition endowment, effectively doubling the Libbey Funds and leveling up our ability, in perpetuity, to broaden our collection with the highest quality works of art….These expanded funds will allow us to diversify our collection, seeking beauty without bias.”

Henri Matisse, Fleurs ou Fleurs devant un portrait (ca. 1924). Courtesy of Sotheby’s.

The works had been selected as a result of a months-long process which included reviews by Levine and TMA curators, the art committee and the board, which approved the sale unanimously.  

“These are all historic works,” the director told Artnet News this week. ”And we do have other examples in the collection, other amazing and iconic examples.”

The museum will hold on to a superior Cézanne painting, Avenue at Chantilly (1888), which has been frequently requested for exhibitions, Levine said. It also retains a life-size late Renoir sculpture, as well an earlier painting, The Green Jardinière (1882). It will also keep Matisse’s Dancer Resting (1940), as well as numerous works on paper by the artist. 

“Few artists have expressed such a depth of range in their artistic practice as Philip Guston, whose work spanned Depression Era murals to the heights of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s to a later figurative resurgence that showcased his unique perspective. In Nile, Guston’s incredible sensitivities to composition are on full display, and the painting is not only a landmark achievement during the greatest period of transformation in his career, but also in the evolution of post-war abstract art.”

Michael Macaulay, Sotheby’s Senior Vice President, Contemporary Art

NEW YORK, 4 April 2022 – Making its first public appearance in four decades this Friday at Sotheby’s New Bond Street galleries in London, Philip Guston’s Abstract Expressionist masterpiece Nile from 1958 is a monumental work that represents the pinnacle of Guston’s abstract practice, and is among the small group of works that established Guston’s reputation as one of the premier artists of 20th century art. Coming to auction for the first time this spring in Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction, Nile will be offered in tandem with several other exceptional works from the artist’s later, figurative period in the Contemporary Evening Auction, marking a significant moment for the market to celebrate the artist’s legacy as an undeniable master of the post-war period that will coincide with the highly-anticipated Philip Guston Now retrospective opening at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston this May.

For more than 40 years, the painting remained in the collection of Peter and Edith O’Donnell of Dallas, Texas, and will be sold in May to benefit the O’Donnell Foundation, whose philanthropic ethos continues Peter and Edith’s selfless legacy of passionately advancing a wide range of higher education causes; innovations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; medical research and public health programs; and an array of arts and culture initiatives. Since the Foundation was established in 1957, the O’Donnells were recognized with numerous accolades for their extraordinary and transformative contributions, which to date have totaled more than $900 million to a spectrum of extraordinary causes. Additional works from the O’Donnell Collection will be offered at Sotheby’s in May 2022 to support the Foundation.

Of the 29 works produced by Guston between 1956 and 1960, the pinnacle of his abstract expressionist output, there are 10 which stand above the rest as unquestioned masterpieces. Nile is one of these ten exemplary canvases, and one of only three remaining in private hands. The additional seven works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (promised gift); The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The large-scale work is estimated to sell for $20/30 million during Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction on 17 May – marking the highest auction estimate ever placed on a work by the artist.

Philip Guston’s Nile

Estimate $20/30 million

Executed at the heart of the artist’s esteemed abstract period during the late 1950s, Nile embodies Guston’s most radical period of transformation, when he developed an innovative working method that drastically affected his output. As a devoted student of the Italian Renaissance, a prolific traveler and reader, a music connoisseur, and an avid filmgoer, Guston was a formidable polymath whose art emerged from his depth of art historical knowledge, as well as a reservoir of diverse experiences and inspirations, including his work with the Depression era WPA and as a founding participant in the pioneering New York School.

It was during his period with his peers of the New York School that Guston developed his signature technique and style that is epitomized by Nile. While his contemporaries experimented with increasing the size of their canvases to create immersive experiences or increasing the size of their gestures, Guston increased his own proximity to the picture plane. Working so close that he lost all sense of space and depth - sometimes close enough for paint splatters to get in his eyes – Guston forged a new type of painterly intensity, reaching its apex in Nile.

Nile comes to auction at a time of renewed interest in Guston’s body of work. The Contemporary Evening Auction will feature two of his later figurative works, Remorse and Studio Celebration. Taken together, the May marquee auctions will present an in-depth overview of the best of his practice.

Nile will appear in a public exhibition for the first time in over forty years when it goes on view in Sotheby’s London galleries from 8 – 13 April, followed by Hong Kong from 24 – 27 April, before returning to New York from 6 – 17 May for exhibition ahead of our Modern Evening Auction on 17 May.

 With a new presentation of over 80 works by French and German Impressionists, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is taking a fresh look at one of the defining art movements of modernism as a European phenomenon. Paintings, sculptures and pastels are presented in new constellations in five redesigned halls in the Licht­wark Gallery. Major works by Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt, the »triumvirate of German Impressionism«, meet up here with French icons such as Édouard Manet, Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet. The show also brings in artists who have not been presented at the Hamburger Kunsthalle for a long time, featuring paintings by Alma del Banco, Paul Baum, Ivo Hauptmann, Maximilien Luce, Henri Martin and Lesser Ury. Accompanying the paintings are a number of sculptures and a selection of pastels – for example by Edgar Degas, Ludwig von Hofmann, Jean-François Millet and Max Liebermann. Impressionism: Franco-German Encounters is one of a series of new installations in the Hamburger Kunsthalle’s collection tour through eight centuries of art history that explore original new questions and present the collection in a fresh light.

To retell the story of Impressionism, exhibits are deliberately juxtaposed to illustrate how impulses emanating from France were taken up and productively developed in Germany: Claude Monet’s Waterloo Bridge (1902) thus appears in dialogue with Lovis Corinth’s View of the Kohlbrand (1911), Pierre Bonnard’s Lantern Procession on the Outer Alster (1913) meets up with Evening at Uhlen-horst Ferry (1910) by Max Liebermann, and Édouard Manet’s Jean-Baptiste Faure in the Opera »Hamlet« (1875/77) is shown side-by-side with The Black d’Andrade (1903) by Max Slevogt. The chapters »Portrait«, »Landscape«, »Staged Figure«, »City and Leisure«, »Still Life« and »Pastels« illustrate the themes and motifs addressed by painters on both sides of the Rhine, inquiring into their sources of inspiration and which mutual influences can be traced visually and historically.

Impressionism emerged in France from the 1870s onward but began to wane in significance with the outbreak of the Second World War. In Germany, by contrast, Impressionist tendencies remained significant until well into the 1920s. Around the turn of the century, several German museum directors made a concerted effort to promote Impressionism through exhibitions and acquisitions. In Hamburg, for example, it is thanks to major German and French acquisitions by Alfred Lichtwark (1852–1914) and Gustav Pauli (1866–1938) that the Kunsthalle today possesses one of the most important collections of Impressionist painting in Germany.

The show however looks further to the advent of classical modernism in order to examine to what extent Impressionism remained relevant for the following generation. Max Beckmann, Emil Nolde and the artists’ group »Die Brücke« as well as the members of the Hamburg Secession all went through Impressionist phases, at least in their early works.

A richly illustrated catalogue (Wienand Verlag, 25 euros) presents the main Impressionist works in the collection in new and different constellations while introducing the various chapters in the presentation and explaining the historical background in a number of essays. Educational offerings to complement the presentation include a multimedia guide (also suitable for children aged 8 and over) in the Hamburger Kunsthalle app (German/English) and an activity booklet designed for families with children aged 5 in both analogue and digital form.

The project Impressionism: Franco-German Encounters is part of the plan to recast the different areas of the collection. Also redesigned is the Makart Hall, presenting the show MAKING HISTORY: Hans Makart and the Salon Painting of the 19th Century, the sculpture presentation ON HYBRID CREATURES: SCULPTURE IN MODERNISM and the area of Contemporary Art with the presentation something new, something old, something desired. The recast of the area of Classical Modernism is scheduled for 2023, the Old Masters are scheduled for 2024. The Hamburger Kunsthalle collection is one of the most important in Northern Europe. By retelling its many stories, the museum is endeavouring to present its treasures to the public in novel contexts and from diverse perspectives.

 Christie’s Announces 20/21 Marquee Week Day Sales

Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale | 13 May
The Collection of Thomas and Doris Ammann Day Sale | 13 May
Impressionist and Modern Works on Paper and Day Sale | 14 May
The Surrealist World of Rosalind Gersten Jacobs and Melvin Jacobs | 14 May
Picasso Ceramics | Online | 2 – 16 May

Property from the Family of Nina Van Rensselaer
WAYNE THIEBAUD (1920 - 2021)
Three Ice Cream Cones
oil on canvas
12 x 15 in. (30.5 x 38.1 cm.)
Painted in 1964.
$2,500,000-3,500,000

The Collection of Salvador and Christina Lang Assaël
CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926)
Soleil couchant, temps brumeux, Pourville
oil on canvas
24¼ x 29¼ in. (61.5 x 74.3 cm.)
Painted in 1882
$2,500,000-3,500,000

 xxx

The Wyeth Foundation for American Art has established a collection-sharing arrangement providing for more than 7,000 works of Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) to be maintained, conserved and exhibited for the general public at the Brandywine River Museum of Art and the Farnsworth Museum of Art, as well as making such works available for loans to other institutions and encouraging research into the life and legacy of Andrew Wyeth. 

The Foundation’s collection contains works from Wyeth’s seven decades as a working artist, including iconic temperas and watercolors, drawings, studies and sketchbooks. The collection was assembled primarily by the artist’s wife, Betsy James Wyeth, who was Andrew Wyeth’s muse and who also carefully documented his career.  The collection is deeply personal and gives significant insight into Wyeth’s artistic and career trajectory.

As part of this innovative partnership, The Brandywine River Museum of Art has begun a search to fill a new curatorial position at the Museum to be financially supported by the Wyeth Foundation. The new Wyeth Foundation Curator, Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection, will develop exhibitions, make works available for loan to other institutions, and foster research and scholarship on Andrew Wyeth including finalizing and publishing the catalogue raisonné of the artist. The collection will be maintained jointly at Brandywine in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, the two geographic regions where the artist lived and painted. Rotating presentations of works will be on view in both museums’ galleries throughout the year. Accessibility to the works in the collection for the general public, as well as curators, scholars, and students is a primary aim of the collaboration with the Wyeth Foundation.

Both the Brandywine and Farnsworth museums have longstanding relationships with the Wyeth family. Located in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, the Brandywine is focused on American art, and has generated some of the most well-received exhibitions and scholarship on three generations of Wyeth family artists. In 2017, the Brandywine’s Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect exhibition presented more than 100 of the artist’s most important paintings and works on paper, along with a catalogue publishing new perspectives on his work and career.

The Farnsworth, in Rockland, Maine, is also recognized for its close connections with and exhibitions of works of the Wyeth family.  The artist spent his summers living and working in midcoastal Maine. Its recent exhibition Andrew Wyeth: Maine Legacy highlighted the artist’s connections to the area. In both Pennsylvania and Maine, Wyeth was engaged by the landscapes and the people living there, finding inspiration for works that at once capture the majesty of nature and the everyday lives of the artists and their subjects.

“We are excited to formalize the Foundation’s partnership with the Brandywine River Museum of Art and the Farnsworth Art Museum to ensure that Andrew and Betsy Wyeth’s collection is well-maintained and available for the public to enjoy,” said J. Robinson West, the President of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. “Andrew Wyeth is so closely connected to both Chadds Ford and coastal Maine, with long relationships with both of these institutions. This collection management arrangement draws on the expertise of these two great museums in managing works of art, while also furthering the mission of the Foundation to support scholarship and exhibitions of Wyeth’s work, now and into the future, both at these two museums and around the world.”

Museum of Modern Art

May 1 – September 10, 2022 

 SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen 

 October 13, 2022, through February 26, 2023.

The Museum of Modern Art announces Matisse: The Red Studio, an exhibition focusing on the genesis and history of Matisse’s The Red Studio (1911), a painting that has remained among MoMA’s most important works since it was acquired in 1949. The large canvas depicts the artist’s studio filled with his paintings and sculptures, furniture, and decorative objects. This exhibition reunites the artworks shown in The Red Studio for the first time since they left Matisse’s studio. The presentation also includes never-before-seen archival material and related paintings and drawings. 

On view at MoMA from May 1 through September 10, 2022, Matisse: The Red Studio is organized by Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, and Dorthe Aagesen, Chief Curator and Senior Researcher, SMK – National Gallery of Denmark; with the assistance of Charlotte Barat, Madeleine Haddon, and Dana Liljegren; and with the collaboration of Georges Matisse and Anne Théry, Archives Henri Matisse, Issy-lesMoulineaux, France. Following its presentation at MoMA, the exhibition will be shown at the SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen from October 13, 2022, through February 26, 2023. 

“Now over 110 years old, The Red Studio is both a landmark within the centuries-long tradition of studio paintings and a foundational work of modern art,” says Ann Temkin. “The picture remains a touchstone for any artist taking on the task of portraying their studio. Matisse’s radical decision to saturate the work’s surface with a layer of red has fascinated generations of scholars and artists. Yet much remains to be explored in terms of the painting’s origin and history.” 

The core of the exhibition features The Red Studio alongside the surviving six paintings and four sculptures depicted in it. Created between 1898 and 1911, these objects range from familiar paintings, such as 

Young Sailor (II) (1906), to lesser-known works, such as 

Corsica, The Old Mill (1898), and objects whose locations have only recently been discovered. Three of these paintings— Bathers (1907), Le Luxe (II) (1907–08), and Nude with a White Scarf (1909)—belong to SMK, while the artist’s 1907 ceramic plate, depicted in the foreground, comes from MoMA’s collection. 

The exhibition also includes a number of paintings and drawings closely related to The Red Studio, such as Studio, Quai Saint-Michel (1916–17) and Large Red Interior (1948), which help to narrate the painting’s complex path from Matisse’s studio to its subsequent international travels and eventual acquisition by MoMA. 

A rich selection of archival materials such as letters and photographs—many never before published or exhibited—disclose new information on the painting’s subject, evolution, and reception. The exhibition also includes a video devoted to conservation science, which presents recent discoveries about the process of the painting’s making.

Matisse’s The Red Studio depicts the artist’s work environment in the town of Issy-lesMoulineaux, on the outskirts of Paris. The Red Studio was painted as part of a sequence of works requested by Sergei Shchukin, Matisse’s most loyal and courageous early patron. Shchukin eagerly purchased the painting’s predecessor, The Pink Studio, but declined to acquire The Red Studio. The painting remained in Matisse’s possession for 16 years, during which time it traveled to the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in London in 1912 and to New York, Chicago, and Boston for the 1913 Armory Show. The Red Studio was finally purchased in 1927 by David Tennant, the founder of the Gargoyle Club in London, a members-only club that catered to artists and aristocrats alike. The painting hung in the Gargoyle Club until the early 1940s; soon after, it was purchased by Georges Keller, director of the Bignou Gallery in New York. In 1949, The Red Studio was acquired for MoMA’s collection. Since that time, it has remained one of the Museum’s most influential works and has been especially beloved by artists throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. 

Nice review, more images

PUBLICATION: 

The exhibition is accompanied by a copiously illustrated volume that examines the paintings and sculptures depicted in The Red Studio, from familiar works to lesser-known pieces whose locations have only recently been discovered. A narrative essay by Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Dorthe Aagesen, Chief Curator and Senior Researcher at SMK in Copenhagen, traces the life of The Red Studio, from the initial commissioning of the work through its early history of exhibition and ownership to its arrival at MoMA. 

With its groundbreaking research and close reading of the work, Matisse: The Red Studio transforms our understanding of this landmark of twentieth-century art. 224 pages, 200 color illustrations. Hardcover, $55. ISBN: 978-1-63345-132-2. 

Co-published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen. Available at MoMA stores and online at store.moma.org. Distributed to the trade through ARTBOOK|D.A.P. in the United States and Canada, and through Thames & Hudson in the rest of the world. A Danish-language edition will be available through the SMK.

Details:

The Clark Art Institute’s latest exhibition presents four centuries of war imagery from Europe and the United States in As They Saw It: Artists Witnessing War, on view March 5–May 30, 2022. Spanning European and American art from 1520–1920, the exhibition of prints, drawings, and photographs shows how artists have portrayed periods of military conflict, bringing war off the battlefield and into the homes and lives of those who were often at a far remove from the scene. The exhibition is on view in the Eugene V. Thaw Gallery of the Clark’s Manton Research Center.

Visual media have long played a key role in documenting war. Especially for those far from the front, eyewitness imagery is crucial to understanding what may be happening on the battlefield. Yet artists’ depictions of the wrenching conditions and consequences of warfare may even transcend their historical origins to become lasting monuments to suffering and sacrifice. This exhibition brings together a diverse selection from the Clark’s holdings: both pro- and anti-Napoleonic imagery (including Francisco de Goya’s Disasters of War); Civil War photographs and wood engravings; and multiple perspectives on World War I. The exhibition features a special selection of recently acquired photographs of Black Americans in military service, documenting the contributions of people who have long been underrepresented in the historical record. 

“This exhibition gives us the rare opportunity to look at four hundred years of imagery that often shaped public awareness and sentiment related to conflicts that changed the course of history,” said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark. “From documenting battle scenes to capturing the depth of grief and suffering that accompanies war, these deeply moving images put a human face on the sometimes abstract idea of conflict and remind us of the toll of war.” 

Meslay noted that “to honor all those who have served their nation, we are welcoming all veterans, active-duty military members, and their families with free admission to the Clark from March 5 through May 30 in hopes that they will visit us to see this exhibition.”

The exhibition presents more than forty-five images by artists including Mathew Brady, Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet, Albrecht Dürer, Roger Fenton, Francisco de Goya, Winslow Homer, Georges Jeanniot, Édouard Manet, and James Tissot. These artists were not simply bystanders. Many of them served as soldiers or had been expressly commissioned as war artists. To a great extent, artists’ nationalities and backgrounds influenced the version of events they chose, or felt compelled, to present. Even those who worked far from the front lines were engaged in one side or the other of a battle of images—with representations of war playing a substantial role in how the parties to a conflict were perceived and how their actions were interpreted, both in the moment and long afterward.

“This exhibition accounts for both military and civilian experiences of war and presents a great diversity of perspectives, including some which have been historically underacknowledged,” said exhibition curator Anne Leonard, Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. “As They Saw It emphasizes the subjectivity of all war reporting and reminds us that photography, so often considered the gold standard for eyewitness documentation, was only one means of expression chosen by artists addressing the raw facts and messy consequences of war.” 

The exhibition is organized chronologically and includes the following sections: 

Early Modern Battles and Military Strategy  
Much war imagery from 1500–1800 lacks an eyewitness dimension. Renaissance artists were often attracted to staged, reconfigured, or imagined battle subjects for the compositional challenge of arranging large groups of figures and rendering the human body in strenuous action. Major artists were also involved in designs for military fortifications and defense, on commission from their princely leaders. The difference is palpable, for example, between Albrecht Dürer’s diagrammatic Siege of a Fortress prints (1527), made as a theoretical demonstration of the efficacy of a fortification design, and two battle drawings (1793-94) made by Nicolas Antoine Taunay based on his observation of contemporary events.

The Age of Napoleon
The relentlessly ambitious French general Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) parlayed his legendary reputation as a military strategist into a ruthless quest for imperial domination within and beyond Europe. The suffering and destruction wrought by Napoleon’s military campaigns loom large in Francisco de Goya’s print series The Disasters of War. Subtitled “Fatal Consequences,” the album of eighty prints chronicles the horrors of the Peninsular War between Spain and France from 1808 to 1814, including atrocities committed against civilians and a terrible famine in Madrid. The very rare bound album of Goya’s print series is included in the exhibition, showing one page of the portfolio, while a full presentation of all eighty works is featured on-screen in the gallery and on the exhibition microsite at clarkart.edu/astheysawit.

The Crimean War
The Crimean War, which claimed an estimated 650,000 lives between 1853 and 1856, was the first major conflict in which photography played a significant documentary role. Named after the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea, the war was fought by an alliance between Britain, France, Turkey, and Sardinia against Russia. Religious tensions between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox believers had spurred Russia’s Czar Nicholas I to take advantage of a weakened Ottoman Empire and try to expand his influence into the eastern Mediterranean region.

Photography in the field posed many risks and challenges that required ingenuity and quick thinking. Other technological “firsts” from the Crimean War included explosive naval shells, railways, and telegraphs. These innovations revolutionized not just how war was waged but also how it was reported. With communication accelerated by mechanical means, the potential grew for people distant from the front lines to experience a more immediate sense of conflicts far away.

The American Civil War
Alongside wood-engraved illustrations, photography emerged as an essential reporting tool during the American Civil War. Mathew Brady was an early figure in what came to be known as photojournalism. His studio dispatched many field photographers, equipped with portable darkrooms, to capture the immediacy and atrocity of battle. Yet the history of documenting the Civil War cannot be summed up easily, given the anonymity of many photographers and the many pictured soldiers whose names are likewise unknown. Although insufficiently recognized in the historical record, more than 200,000 Black Americans served in the Civil War in the United States. The United States Colored Troops—army regiments comprising African Americans and members of other minority groups—were supplemented by thousands more who served in the Navy and segregated state regiments. The Clark’s works-on-paper collection has recently been enhanced by several new acquisitions that document Black soldiers’ essential contributions to the Union victory; these recent additions are featured in the exhibition.

The Siege of Paris, 1871
France’s war with Prussia (Germany) in 1870 was expected to score a quick victory for Emperor Napoleon III, but instead it led to the disastrous Siege of Paris and great suffering among the civilian population. During the siege, hunger and disease ran rampant, while routine shelling tore apart the fabric of the city. The emperor’s abdication in 1871 ushered in a tumultuous period of civil unrest and street violence known as the Paris Commune, in which an estimated 30,000 people died. Although some artists fled Paris during the strife, others, including Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, remained. Manet’s lithograph of The Barricade (1871) records the shooting of socialist Communards by French army troops, in an echo of the firing squad in his earlier composition The Execution of Maximilian (1867).

World War I
World War I was one of the deadliest conflicts in human history, with an estimated total of 40 million casualties. A series of lithographs by Georges Jeanniot (c. 1915–1916) present a searing representation of individual confrontations, both on and off the battlefield. World War I has a disproportionate representation in the Clark’s collection, perhaps stemming from museum founder Sterling Clark’s own experiences in the war. Having served a prior tour in Asia as an army volunteer just out of college (1899–1905), Clark was living in Paris with his wife, Francine, when the United States entered World War I in 1917. He rejoined the military at the rank of major in the Inspector-General Corps, serving as a liaison officer between the American and French forces until 1919. 

The exhibition is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Anne Leonard, Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.

Images

After Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910), The War for the Union 1862—A Cavalry Charge, 5 July 1862. Wood engraving on newsprint, image: 13 9/16 x 20 9/16 in. sheet: 15 7/8 x 21 9/16 in. Clark Art Institute, 1955.4346

After Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910), The Union Cavalry and Artillery Starting in Pursuit of the Rebels up Yorktown Turnpike, 17 May 1862. Wood engraving on newsprint, image: 9 3/16 x 13 13/16 in. sheet: 11 1/4 x 16 in. Clark Art Institute, 1955.4432

After Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910), The Surgeon at Work at the Rear during an Engagement, 12 July 1862. Wood engraving on newsprint, image: 9 3/16 x 13 3/4 in. sheet: 11 7/16 x 16 1/2 in. Clark Art Institute, 1955.4436

Hieronymus Hopfer (German, active c. 1520 - 1550), After Marco Dente (Italian, c. 1486–1527), After Raphael (Italian, 1483–1520), Combat of Cavaliers and Foot Soldiers, 1520–50. Etching on paper, sheet: 7 1/2 x 11 7/16 in. Clark Art Institute, William J. Collins Collection, 1960, 1960.239

Pierre-Georges Jeanniot (French, 1848–1934), The Survivors of a Massacre Used as Gravediggers, 1915. Lithograph on wove paper, image: 8 9/16 x 11 7/16 in. sheet: 13 1/4 x 19 1/8 in. Clark Art Institute, Gift of James Bergquist, 1988, 1988.251

Paul Delaroche (French, 1797–1856), Napoleon Crossing the Alps: The Guide, c. 1848. Black chalk with white heightenings on paper, sheet: 16 7/8 x 22 13/16 in. sheet1: 24 7/8 in. Clark Art Institute, 1990.10

Théophile Alexandre Steinlen (French, born Switzerland, 1859–1923), East Wind, 1916. Lithograph on paper, sheet: 19 5/16 x 24 7/8 in. Clark Art Institute, 1990.30

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828), Que valor! (What Courage!) from The Disasters of War, 1810-1820; printed after 1863. Etchings and aquatints on paper, bound, 10 1/16 × 13 3/4 × 1 7/8 in. Clark Art Institute, 2015.4.1-80

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828), Yo Lo Vi (I Saw It) from The Disasters of War, 1810-1820; printed after 1863. Etchings and aquatints on paper, bound, 10 1/16 × 13 3/4 × 1 7/8 in. Clark Art Institute, 2015.4.1-80

Unknown, Portrait of a Civil War Veteran Wearing a Grand Army of the Republic Medal, c. 1866-1870. Tintype, 3 1/2 × 2 7/16 in. Clark Art Institute, Gift of Frank and Katherine Martucci, 2021, 2021.4.2

Mathew B. Brady, Blackburn's Ford, Bull Run, 1862. Albumen print, Image: 7 3/8 x 9 3/16 in. Mounting sheet: 10 7/8 x 13 11/16 in. Clark Art Institute, 1996.10

Mathew Brady Studio, Publisher: Taylor & Huntington, [Bermuda Hundred, Va. African American teamsters near the signal tower], 1864, printed later. Photographic print from glass negative on mount, Image: 3 1/16 × 6 5/16 in. Mounting sheet: 3 15/16 × 6 7/8 in. Clark Art Institute, Gift of Frank and Katherine Martucci, 2021, 2021.4.4

  Columbus Museum of Art

 March 4 through June 5, 2022

The first major museum exhibition to explore the early work of Roy Lichtenstein, one the most celebrated American artists of the 20th century, will be on view at the Columbus Museum of Art from March 4 through June 5, 2022. Roy Lichtenstein: History in the Making, 1948–1960 offers an in-depth view of the artist’s years in Columbus, Ohio, and includes approximately 90 works on loan from public and private collections in a range of media. With many works on public view for the first time, this unprecedented exhibition demonstrates the formal invention and provocative nature of Lichtenstein’s early work.

Roy Lichtenstein, Self-Portrait at an Easel, c. 1951–1952. Oil on canvas, 34 1/16 x 30 1/8 inches (86.5 x 76.5 cm). Private collection. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

Museo del Prado, 

 8th March to 12th June 2022

 In the first years of the 17th century, the Bolognese artist  Annibale Carracci made a commitment with the noble Spanish banker Juan Enríquez de Herrera to paint a fresco in the chapel of his family, founded by Diego de Herrera, in the church of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli in Rome.  The artist conceived the whole work, dedicated to the Franciscan saint Saint Didacus of Alcalà, and began the design of all the preparatory panels.  Due to an illness, from 1605 onwards the project had to be delegated to Francesco Albani.

During the decade of the 1830s, the frescoes were taken down and transferred to canvas, and shortly afterwards were sent to Spain.  Seven of the fragments were deposited in the Museo del Prado and the other nine, the ones that can currently be seen in the Museu Nacional, in the Royal Catalan Academy of Fine Arts of Sant Jordi. The location of the other three fragments that would make up the whole work is unknown, even though at that time it seems that they were deposited in the church of Santa Maria de Montserrato, in Rome.

The exhibition will be completed with a selection of drawings attributed to Carracci or to his studio, which came from the Acadèmia de Sant Jordi and from Europe, and the altar table from Santa Maria de Montserrato, another work by Carracci and his disciples.

The exhibition will first be presented in the Museo del Prado, from 8th March to 12th June 2022, and finally in the Palazzo Barberini.

Catalogue

Whitney Museum of American Art

May 7, 2022, to March 2023

Opening this weekend, At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism, an exhibition of over sixty works by more than forty-five artists that highlights the complexity of American art produced between 1900 and 1930, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

The exhibition showcases how American artists responded to the realities of a rapidly modernizing period through an array of abstract styles and media. At the Dawn of a New Age features artworks drawn primarily from the Whitney’s collection, including new acquisitions and works that have not been on view at the museum for decades. The exhibition provides a broader perspective on early twentieth-century American modernism by including well-known artists like Marsden Hartley, Oscar Bluemner, Elie Nadelman, Charles Burchfield, Aaron Douglas, and Georgia O’Keeffe, as well as groundbreaking, historically overlooked artists like Henrietta Shore, Charles Duncan, Yun Gee, Manierre Dawson, Blanche Lazzell, Ben Benn, Isami Doi, and Albert Bloch.

At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism is organized by Whitney Curator Barbara Haskell and is on view from May 7, 2022, to March 2023.

America’s early modernists came of age in a period marked by change and innovation. The onset of the twentieth century saw technological advancements combined with cultural shifts, including women’s suffrage and progressive political initiatives, that challenged existing social and economic norms. Against this backdrop of optimism in progress and modernity, many American artists embraced the new and experimental over the traditional and fixed by rejecting realism in favor of art that prioritized emotional experience and harmonious design.

“In the Whitney’s early days, the Museum favored realism over abstract styles,” said Curator Barbara Haskell. “It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that the Museum expanded its focus and began acquiring nonrepresentational works from the period. Gaps remain, but the Museum’s holdings of early twentieth-century modernism now rank among the collection’s strengths. By bringing together familiar icons, works that have been in storage for decades, and new acquisitions, At the Dawn of a New Age gives us an opportunity to reassess how we tell the story of this period of American art and celebrate its complexity and spirit of innovation.”

“At the Dawn of a New Age provides an opportunity to reconsider and expand interpretations of American modernism in the early 1900s through the unique lens of the Whitney’s collection,” said Jane Panetta, the Whitney’s Nancy and Fred Poses Curator and Director of the Collection.

“This show presents an exciting moment for us to feature new acquisitions from pioneering artists of that time, some of whom recently entered the Whitney’s collection for the first time. We’re thrilled to bring these works into the collection as we begin to address how the Whitney can continue to build upon our important holdings from this period.” 

At the Dawn of a New Age features paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, photographs, and woodcuts, revealing the variety of styles and media that artists used to express their experiences of modern life. Early explorations from well-known modernists, such as Georgia O’Keeffe’s Music, Pink and Blue No. 2 (1918) and Marsden Hartley’s Forms Abstracted (1914), are presented alongside works by previously overlooked figures, in particular women and artists of color, that are critical to expanding the Museum’s representation of this period. From the flat, stylized geometries of Aaron Douglas and Isami Doi to the simplified organic abstractions of Henrietta Shore and Agnes Pelton and the Symbolist landscapes of Pamela Colman Smith and Albert Bloch, the artists featured in the exhibition channeled vanguard European art styles into a distinctly American brand of modernism.

The exhibition presents a host of works on view for the first time in decades, including Albert Bloch’s expressionist landscape Mountain (1916), Yun Gee’s Chinatown cityscape Street Scene (1926), and Walter Pach’s Cubist tableau Untitled (Cubist Still Life),1914. 

Recent acquisitions featured in At the Dawn of a New Age include Isami Doi’s scenic linocut Moonlight (1924); Adele Watson’s coastal outcropping Untitled (Mountain Island Monk), 1931; Henrietta Shore’s nature abstraction Trail of Life (1923); and Aaron Douglas’s suite of Emperor Jones woodcuts. 

These works demonstrate the innovation and experimentation of early twentieth-century modernism and emphasize the capacity of abstraction to reflect individual responses to the changing period and the collective, groundbreaking spirit of the age.  

 Denver Art Museum

July 3 through November 6, 2022

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) will bring a trove of newly identified photographs by groundbreaking artist Georgia O’Keeffe to Colorado in 2022 in an exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) with the collaboration of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe.

Eyal Ofer Galleries

24 February 2022 – 29 August 2022

Surrealism was always international. This ground-breaking exhibition opening at Tate Modern this week reveals the broad scope of this radical movement, moving beyond the confines of a single time or place. Based on extensive research undertaken by Tate and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, it spans 60 years and 50 countries to show how Surrealism inspired and united artists around the globe, from centres as diverse as Buenos Aires, Cairo, Lisbon, Mexico City, Prague, Seoul and Tokyo. Expanding our understanding of Surrealism as never before, Tate Modern shows how this dynamic movement took root in many places at different times, offering artists the freedom to challenge authority and imagine a new world.

A revolutionary idea sparked in Paris around 1924, Surrealism prioritised the unconscious and dreams over the familiar and everyday. While it has often generated poetic and even humorous works – from Salvador Dalí’s Lobster Telephone to René Magritte’s train rushing from a fireplace – it has also been used by artists around the world as a serious weapon in the struggle for political, social, and personal freedom. Featuring over 150 works ranging from painting and photography to sculpture and film, many of which have never been shown in the UK, this exhibition explores the collective interests shared by artists across regions to highlight their interrelated networks. It also considers the conditions under which they worked and how this in turn impacted Surrealism, including the pursuit of independence from colonialism and displacement caused by international conflict. Among the rarely seen works are photographs by Cecilia Porras and Enrique Grau, which defied the conservative social conventions of 1950s Colombia, as well as paintings by exiled Spanish artist Eugenio Granell, whose radical political commitments made him a target for censorship and persecution.

Familiar Surrealist themes such as the exploration of the uncanny and unconscious desires are repositioned from a fresh perspective. Visitors can see iconic paintings such as Max Ernst’s Two Children are Threatened by a Nightingale 1924 alongside lesser known but significant works including Antonio Berni’s Landru in the Hotel, Paris 1932, which appeared in the artist’s first exhibition of Surrealist works in Argentina, and Toshiko Okanoue’s Yobi-goe (The Call) 1954, addressing the daily experience of post-war Japan. Photographs by Hans Bellmer focusing on the female body are contrasted with Ithell Colquhoun’s Scylla 1938 – a double image exploring female desire – and works by both French Surrealist Claude Cahun and Sri-Lankan-based artist Lionel Wendt, whose radical photographs present queer desire outside of a Western context.

The exhibition also considers locations around the world where artists have converged and exchanged ideas of Surrealism. From Paris at the Bureau of Surrealist Research; to Cairo, with the Art et Liberté group; across the Caribbean, where the movement was initiated by writers; in Mexico City, where it was shaped by the creative bonds of women artists; and Chicago, where Surrealism was used as a tool for radical politics. Special loans including the photographs of Limb Eung-Sik and Jung Haechang from Korea and a film by Len Lye from New Zealand, will offer further insight into the adaption of Surrealism across the globe. For the first time in the UK, Ted Joans’ incredible 36-foot drawing, Long Distance 1976-2005 is displayed, featuring 132 contributors from around the world. Accompanying Joans on his travels, this cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) drawing took nearly 30 years to complete and united artists located as far apart as Lagos and Toronto.

Surrealism Beyond Borders is organised by Tate Modern and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It is co-curated by Matthew Gale, Senior Curator at Large at Tate Modern, and Stephanie D’Alessandro, Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Modern Art and Senior Research Coordinator in Modern and Contemporary Art at The Met; with assistance at Tate Modern from Carine Harmand, Assistant Curator, International Art; and at The Met from Lauren Rosati, Assistant Curator, Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, and Sean O’Hanlan, Research Associate in Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Images

Salvador Dalí Lobster Telephone 1938 Tate Purchased 1981 © Salvador Dali, Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation/DACS, London 2022

René Magritte Time Transfixed 1938. The Art Institute of Chicago, Joseph Winterbotham Collection, 1970.426 © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2022

Max Ernst Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale 1924. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Purchase (256.1937) © 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

5 October 2022 – 12 March 2023

In autumn 2022, Tate Modern will present a once-in-a-generation exhibition of paintings, watercolours and drawings by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906). Famously referred to as the “greatest of us all” by Claude Monet, Cezanne remains a pivotal figure in modern painting who gave license to generations of artists to break the rules. Created amid a rapidly accelerating world, his works focus on the local and the everyday, concentrating on the artist’s own personal experiences to make sense of the chaos and uncertainty of modern life.

The EY Exhibition: Cezanne will bring together around 80 carefully selected works from collections in Europe, Asia, North and South America, giving UK audiences their first opportunity in over 25 years to explore the breadth of Cezanne’s career. It will feature key examples of his iconic still life paintings, Provençale landscapes, portraits and bather scenes, including over 20 works never seen in the UK before such as The Basket of Apples c.1893 (The Art Institute of Chicago), Mont Sainte-Victoire 1902-06 (Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Still Life with Milk Pot, Melon, and Sugar Bowl 1900-06 (private collection). New research into the colours, compositions and techniques used in these works will reveal how the artist’s bold approach challenged conventions and in ways that continue to influence painters working today.

Visitors to Tate Modern will discover the events, places and relationships that shaped Cezanne’s life and work. The exhibition will tell the story of a young ambitious painter from the southern city of Aix-en-Provence, determined to succeed as an artist in metropolitan Paris in the 1860s, yet constantly rejected by the art establishment. It will reveal how he befriended Camille Pissarro and associated with the impressionists in the 1870s, but soon distanced himself from their circle and the Parisian art scene to forge his own path, returning to his native Provence in relentless pursuit of his own radical style.

The exhibition will trace Cezanne’s artistic development from early paintings made in his twenties such as the striking portrait Scipio 1866-8 (Museu de Arte de São Paulo) through to works completed in the final months of his life like Seated Man 1905-6 (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid). 

Highlights will include a room of outstanding paintings depicting the limestone mountain Sainte-Victoire, charting the dramatic evolution of his style through this single motif. Another gallery will bring together several magnificent examples of Cezanne’s bather paintings, a lifelong subject for the artist, including The National Gallery’s Bathers 1894–1905, one of his largest and most celebrated paintings created in the final stage of his career.

While Cezanne is often mythologised as a solitary figure, the exhibition will spotlight the relationships central to his life, particularly his wife Marie-Hortense Fiquet and their son Paul, immortalised in paintings such as Madame Cezanne in a Red Armchair c.1877 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) 

and Portrait of the Artist's Son 1881-2 (Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris). It will examine Cezanne’s intense relationship with childhood friend Émile Zola and will reveal how peers such as Monet and Pissarro were among the first to appreciate his unique vision. Many great artists even collected Cezanne’s works, with previous owners including Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Henry Moore. The exhibition catalogue will feature newly commissioned essays by contemporary artists including Kerry James Marshall, Lubaina Himid and Phyllida Barlow as a testament to Cezanne’s continuing legacy as an inspirational figure to artists today.

The EY Exhibition: Cezanne is organised by Tate Modern and the Art Institute of Chicago. It is curated by Natalia Sidlina, Curator, International Art, Tate Modern, Gloria Groom, Chair and David and Mary Winton Green Curator, Painting and Sculpture of Europe, Caitlin Haskell, Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator, Modern and Contemporary, Art Institute of Chicago and Michael Raymond, Assistant Curator, International Art, Tate Modern.

Images

Paul Cezanne Still Life with Apples 1893–1894. The J Paul Getty Museum 

Paul Cezanne Bathers 1874-5. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Joan Whitney Payson, 1975

Paul Cezanne Bathers c.1894-1905. Presented by the National Gallery, purchased with a special grant and the aid of the Max Rayne Foundation, 1964

Paul Cezanne The Bather 1885. Lillie P. Bliss Collection. Acc. no.: 1.1934.  New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). © 2022. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence

Paul Cezanne Seated Man 1905-6 © Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Paul Cezanne Sous-Bois 1894. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Wallis Foundation Fund in memory of Hal B. Wallis

Paul Cezanne Mont Sainte-Victoire 1902-6. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Helen Tyson Madeira, 1977, 

Why this era continues to fascinate contemporary audiences

Bowdoin College Museum of Art

June 25 to November 6, 2022

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Buste d’homme dans un cadre

signed ‘Picasso’ (upper left); dated ‘29.3.69’ (on the reverse)

oil on canvas

92 x 73 cm. (36 ¼ x 28 ¾ in.)

Painted in Mougins on 29 March 1969

Estimate on Request

Christie’s is pleased has announced Pablo Picasso’s Buste d’homme dans un cadre from the Estate of Sir Sean Connery, as a leading highlight of the 20th and 21st Century Art Evening Sale to take place on 26 May at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (estimate on request; in the region of HK$150 million/ US$19 million). Offered fresh to the market and extraordinary among Picasso’s late works for its orderly composition, graceful, decisive lines, and intensity of expression, this seminal canvas is one of the finest and most striking of the artist’s paintings from the last decade of his life.

Buste d’homme dans un cadre is an epic representation of Picasso’s iconic musketeer motif: the pan-European, 17th Century swashbuckling archetype of masculinity, deriving its inspiration from celebrated golden age master painters such as Rembrandt and Velázquez, and literary giants Shakespeare and Dumas. In this painting, the sitter bears the gaze of Picasso’s own intense black eyes, sporting a goatee worthy of the Cardinal Richelieu, a literary nemesis in Dumas’ famed novel The Three Musketeers which Picasso re-read in 1966, sparking his inspiration for the series. In Picasso’s version of Cardinal Richelieu in the present work, the subject displays an affable flair, through an intensely colourful palette depicting his distinctive hair and facial features; the strong gaze and wide collar of his costume recall the directness and intensity of Rembrandt’s self-portraits.

In this work, the style of paint application is indebted much more to Vincent van Gogh: dense swirling strokes of paint emanate throughout, curling within his ruff, around his head and even up over the top of the painted frame—whereupon Picasso modernises the clever trompe l’oeil compositional device—referencing the ornate gilt of Baroque ornamentation in a playful bright yellow, energetically articulated with rapid, gestural strokes and scrawls of black, white, and sable, reminiscent of Van Gogh’s unruly sunflowers and strong winds on wheat field

Stephane Connery, son of Sir Sean Connery, remarked, “Sean had an extraordinary sense of aesthetics, composition and movement honed by his career in a visual medium as well as his long marriage to Micheline, a fine and internationally exhibited painter. Further, he truly enjoyed visiting museums which sharpened his discerning eye. Our last visits included the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Barnes Collection, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., shortly before he decided to purchase "Buste d'homme dans un cadre". He loved and owned numerous works by Picasso, and upon seeing  "Buste d'homme dans un cadre" he was captivated by its expressive power and freedom. It seems fitting that this work would be sold in Asia as Sean had a tremendous affinity for Asia and its culture.

Before Sean passed away in 2020, he allocated a sizable portion of his estate to be used for philanthropic purposes. We — his family — are now working to create a fund that will offer support to organisations that reflect Sean’s interests and passions, and serve to keep his legacy of integrity, opportunity and effectiveness alive. These efforts will be focused in Scotland, where Sean was born, and the Bahamas, where he lived for over 30 years and adored like his homeland.”

26 May | Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Saule pleureur
oil on canvas
51 3/8 x 43 3/8 in. (130.5 x 110.2 cm.)
Painted in 1918 – 1919
Estimate: HK$95,000,000 – 135,000,000/ US$12,200,000 – 18,000,000

Exceptional for its all-consuming emotive intensity, the painting is executed with forceful brushstrokes in pulsating hues. Its hero is the giant willow tree, soaring upwards to the entire height of the enormous canvas, its tumbling foliage falling like a shimmering cascade of water from above. The regal strength and quiet dignity of the tree trunk is balanced in contrast with the tranquility and ethereality of the lily pond in the lower right corner, infused with the suppressed but pulsating energy in the air and glimmering light through the falling leaves from the great boughs of the tree. In sum, Saule pleureur is a dramatically beautiful work of genius, as well as a record of an important chapter in history. Even more poignantly, this is Monet’s manifestation of his faith in the redeeming power of resilience, hope, and optimism.