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John Marin's Full Moon Over the City, No. 1
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Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter
First Major Exhibition on Afro-Hispanic Painter Juan de Pareja, the Subject of Diego Velázquez’s Iconic Portrait, to Open at The Met
Image: Juan de Pareja (Spanish, ca. 1608–1670). The Calling of Saint Matthew, 1661. Oil on canvas, 88 9⁄16 × 130 in. (225 × 325 cm). Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Photo: © Photographic Archive Museo Nacional del Prado
Exhibition Dates: April 3–July 16, 2023
Location: The Met Fifth Avenue, Galleries 955 and 960–962
Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter offers an unprecedented look at the life and artistic achievements of Juan de Pareja (ca. 1608–1670). Largely known today as the subject of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s iconic portrait by Diego Velázquez, Pareja was enslaved in Velázquez’s studio for more than two decades before becoming an artist in his own right. Opening April 3, 2023, this exhibition is the first to tell his story and examine the ways in which enslaved artisanal labor and a multiracial society are inextricably linked with the art and material culture of Spain's “Golden Age.” The presentation brings together approximately 40 paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts objects, as well as an array of books and historic documents, from The Met’s holdings and other collections in the United States and Europe.
“This exhibition takes us to the very heart of 17th-century Spanish painting to reveal Juan de Pareja’s incredible personal story,” said Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director of The Met. “By reexamining the narrative around one of the most celebrated works in the history of western portraiture, the presentation challenges us to question existing notions about historical art and objects—and introduces a remarkable artist whose name may be familiar to many but whose work had not been explored in depth.”
In the exhibition, representations of Spain’s Black and Morisco populations in works by Francisco de Zurbarán, Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, and Velázquez join works that chart the ubiquity of enslaved labor across media. The Met’s portrait, executed by Velázquez in Rome in 1650, is contextualized by his other portraits from this period and the original manumission document freeing Pareja. The exhibition culminates in the first gathering of Pareja’s rarely seen paintings, including his self-portrait, featured in his vast The Calling of Saint Matthew (Museo Nacional del Prado).
Additionally, the collection and writings of Harlem Renaissance figure Arturo Schomburg—who was vital to the recovery of Pareja’s work—serve as a thread connecting 17th-century Spain with 20th-century New York.
David Pullins, exhibition co-curator and Associate Curator in The Met’s Department of European Paintings, said, “The Met’s purchase of Velázquez’s painting in 1971 made headlines at the time, but scholars and the press said practically nothing about the man depicted. Not only does this exhibition shed more light on Pareja’s life but it also places emphasis on his agency as a creative force through his long overlooked paintings. Fleshing out Pareja’s story acts as a kind of wedge that makes space for entirely new narratives about the art and material culture of 17th-century Spain.”
Vanessa K. Valdés, exhibition co-curator and Associate Provost for Community Engagement and Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at The City College of New York, added, “Pareja’s artistic legacy reverberates across the canons of Western art and the African diaspora into our time. This project follows in the footsteps of Arturo Schomburg and joins the efforts of scholars who continue to recover the contributions of all peoples of African descent, including those of Afro-Hispanic heritage like Pareja, in order to better understand the full complexity and richness of the global Black experience.”
Exhibition Overview
Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter is organized thematically into four sections.
Pareja’s New York story began long before his portrait arrived at The Met. During the 1910s, as part of a broader project to recover evidence of excellence within global Black history, Schomburg pioneered a new understanding of Pareja. A Black Puerto Rican intellectual and collector who lived in New York, Schomburg traveled to Europe, spending time first in Seville, Granada, and Madrid, where he conducted research that reconstructed the multiracial society of Pareja’s time in which people of African descent had played a crucial, unrecognized part. The exhibition’s first section highlights Schomburg’s work through a core group of loans from The New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and other sources, including his landmark essay “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” photographs from his travels, and several books. Quotations from Schomburg woven throughout the remaining galleries emphasize the central role that retrieval plays in the rewriting of received histories.
Pareja was born around 1608 in Antequera, Spain, probably to an enslaved woman of African descent and a white Spaniard. Although no known documents from Pareja’s lifetime speculate on his family origins or skin color, archival records from 17th-century Spain offer ample evidence of a multiracial society in which artists and artisans engaged enslaved labor.
The exhibition’s second section illuminates the oft-obscured traces of enslaved labor in surviving objects from the era, demonstrated in polychrome wooden sculptures and other examples of woodwork, silverwork, and ceramics. Rare depictions of the region’s Black and Morisco (Spanish Muslims forced to convert to Catholicism) populations include
a monumental painting by Francisco de Zurbarán (The Met).
Three surviving versions of Velázquez’s painting of a kitchen maid—gathered together for the first time in this exhibition (from The National Gallery of Ireland; The Art Institute of Chicago; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)—center a person of color as the composition’s primary protagonist. This unprecedented configuration in European painting attests to the burgeoning market for such images during that period, a market which Bartolomé Estebán Murillo would later cater to in his painting
Three Boys (Trustees of the Dulwich Picture Gallery).
The exhibition’s third section focuses on the trip between 1649 and 1651 that Velázquez and Pareja took to Italy, where Velázquez painted his portrait of Pareja:
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Exhibited to great acclaim, the image paved the way for Velázquez to create an extraordinary series of portraits, including those of the papal retinue and friends. Velázquez’s portrait of Pareja secured a peculiar kind of celebrity for its subject and raises important questions about the relationship between portraitist and sitter when one is legally owned by the other. The trip was a turning point in Pareja’s professional and personal life: his enslaved status perversely afforded him rare access to monuments of European art that would inform his artistic voice. Velázquez also signed manumission papers (Archivio di Stato di Roma) in Rome, documenting his decision to free Pareja four years later and opening the door for Pareja’s choice to pursue his own career as a painter after their return to Madrid.
The exhibition concludes with the first-ever gathering of Pareja’s paintings, some of enormous scale, made after his manumission in 1654. By placing himself in dialogue with a group of artists known today as the Madrid School, whose lively palettes and compositions contrasted with Velázquez’s courtly sobriety, Pareja charted his own artistic path rather than following the style of his former enslaver.
On display are Pareja’s The Calling of Saint Matthew (Museo Nacional del Prado), which includes a self-portrait on the far left; (above)
The Flight into Egypt (The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art);
Portrait of José Ratés (Museu de Belles Arts de València);
and The Baptism of Christ (Museo Nacional del Prado). The latter features a trompe l’oeil “carving” of Pareja’s name into a rock, his most adamant claim to artistic authority. The gathering of these works marks a new chapter in the continued recovery of Pareja’s art.
Credits and Related Content
Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter is co-curated by David Pullins, Associate Curator in The Met’s Department of European Paintings, and guest curator Vanessa K. Valdés, Associate Provost for Community Engagement and Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at The City College of New York. The exhibition took shape in dialogue with an external advisory committee.
A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press, it is available for purchase from The Met Store.
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Soutine Kossoff
Aside from Soutine Portraits(Courtauld, 2017) at around 20 works, this is the largest group of Soutines shown together in UK since 1982, and the first since then to show both portraits and landscapes, providing a fascinating follow-up to The Barnes Foundation’s 2021 show Soutine / DeKooning.
The discovery of Soutine’s paintings in the early 1950’s was a significant moment for Kossoff, who was already finding his way towards the kind of direct and expressive use of paint he saw in his predecessor’s work. Soutine grew up in Belarus before migrating to Paris as a young man, while Kossoff was born and raised in London, his parents having arrived there fromUkraine as children. Although their life experiences were very different, the two artists shared an Eastern European Jewish heritage which perhaps brought a particular cultural sensibility to their work.To create transcendent works from the stuff of everyday life became Kossoff’s mission, as it had been Soutine’s. The main focus of Soutine|Kossoff is on the areas of interest shared by both artists: landscape and portraiture.
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The exhibition features seminal landscapes painted by Soutine in southern France in the early 1920s, with highlights including
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Chaim Soutine, Les Platanes a Ceret, c.1920 (oil on canvas). Collection Diethard Leopold. Image courtesy of Sotheby's
and
Cagnes Landscape with Tree,(c.1925-26,Tate).
From Kossoff come major paintings of railway junctions, building sites and other scenes of unexpected beauty found in north and north-west London, among them
Leon Kossoff, Children’s Swimming Pool Autumn Afternoon, 1971. ©Tate
© the artist's estate. Photo credit: Alfred East Art Gallery Permanent Collectio
Willesden Junction, Summer, No.2,(1966, Alfred East Art Gallery)
Visitors will have a rare opportunity to view
Kossoff’s stunning Nude on a Red Bed, November–December 1972
alongside works such as his powerful Seated Woman(1957)
and the striking Double Self-Portrait( 1969, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art).
A major group of Soutine portraits includes
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and
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Chaim Soutine, Le valet de chambre, c. 1927 (oil on canvas), THE LEWIS COLLECTION
A publication will accompany the exhibition.
Soutine|Kossofis curated by Hasting Contemporary’s guest curator James Russell, whose recent show Seafaring opened to a4-star review fromThe Daily Telegraph.
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The Rossettis
Tate Britain
6 April – 24 September 2023
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, 1855 (detail) © Tate
In April 2023 Tate Britain will present a major exhibition charting the romance and radicalism of the Rossetti generation – Dante Gabriel, Christina and Elizabeth (neé Siddal) – showcasing their revolutionary approach to life, love and art. Moving through and beyond the Pre-Raphaelite years, the exhibition will feature 150 paintings and drawings as well as photography, design, poetry and more. This will be the first retrospective of Dante Gabriel Rossetti at Tate and the largest exhibition of his iconic pictures in two decades. It will also be the first full retrospective of Elizabeth Siddal for 30 years, featuring her rare surviving watercolours and important drawings. Christina and Dante Gabriel’s poetry will be interwoven with the artworks through spoken word and beautifully illustrated editions of their work.
The Rossettis led a progressive counterculture, blending past and present to reinvent art and life for a fast-changing modern world. The children of an Italian revolutionary exile, they grew up in London in a scholarly family and they began their artistic careers as teenagers. The exhibition will begin with a celebration of their young talent, opening with Dante Gabriel’s Ecce Ancilla Domine (The Annunciation) 1850, the stark and evocative painting for which his sister Christina and brother William Michael posed. This will be shown with an immersive installation of Christina’s poetry, as well as examples of Dante Gabriel’s teenage drawings, reflecting his precocious skill and his enthusiasm for original voices like William Blake and Edgar Allan Poe.
Works from the Pre-Raphaelite years will demonstrate how the spirit of popular revolution inspired these artists to initiate the first British avant-garde movement, rebelling against the Royal Academy’s dominance over artistic style and content. More personal forms of revolution will be explored through the Rossettis’ refusal to abide by the constraints of Victorian society. Works such as Dante Gabriel’s Found begun 1854, Elizabeth Siddal’s Lady Clare 1857 and Christina’s famous poem The Goblin Market 1859 will show how they questioned love in an unequal and materialist world. Following new research, the surviving watercolours of Elizabeth Siddal will also be shown in a two-way dialogue with contemporary works by Dante Gabriel, exploring modern love in jewel-like medieval settings. As a working-class artist who was largely self-taught, Siddal’s work was highly original and inventive, but has often been overshadowed by her mythologisation as a muse and her tragic early death.
The exhibition will take a fresh look at the fascinating myths surrounding the unconventional relationships between Dante Gabriel, Elizabeth Siddal, Fanny Cornforth and Jane Morris. The poetic portraits from the later part of Dante Gabriel’s career, such as Bocca Baciata 1859, Beata Beatrix c.1864-70 and The Beloved 1865-73, will be shown in the context of the achievements and experiences of the working women who modelled for them. The exhibition will also explore how the poetic and artistic evolution of the femme fatale informed works such as Lady Lilith 1866-8 and Mona Vanna 1866.
Alongside art and poetry, visitors will also be able to experience how the Rossettis’ trailblazing new lifestyles transformed the domestic interior through contemporary furniture, clothing and design. The exhibition will conclude by showing how the Rossettis inspired the next generation, including William Michael’s children who started the anarchist magazine The Torch, and how they continue to influence radical art and culture to this day.
Images
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti Venus Verticordia1868 © Private Collection
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti Beata Beatrix1864 © Tate Presented by Georgiana, Baroness Mount-Temple in memory of her husband, Francis, Baron Mount-Temple 1889
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Ecce Ancilla Domini (The Annunciation)1849-50© Tate, Purchased 1886
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Head of a Young Woman [Mrs. Eaton?]1863-65© Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University; Museum Purchase Fund
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti Monna Vanna1866 © Tate
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Girlhood of Mary Virgin1848-9 © Tate
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Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal Lady Affixing Pennant to a Knight's Spear1856© Tate
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Christina Rossetti Goblin Market1865© Tate
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Bocca Baciata 1859 ©Museum of Fine Arts Boston
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti Proserpine1874© Tate
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti Paolo and Francesca da Rimini1855© Tate Purchased with assistance from Sir Arthur Du Cros Bt and Sir Otto Beit KCMG through the ArtFund 1916
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti La Ghirlandata1873© Guildhall Art Gallery
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti Lady Lilith, 1866-1868 (altered 1872-1873) Delaware Art Museum, Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935
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Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Pearlman Foundation
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
May 21 through September 17, 2023
Also see
https://arthistorynewsreport.blogspot.com/2014/10/cezanne-and-modern-masterpieces-of.html
In the late 19th and into the early 20th century, European artists’ ability to travel along newly industrialized railway lines, and cross paths and share ideas, led to the transmission and evolution of varied artistic styles. Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Pearlman Foundation will present 38 outstanding works from the renowned collection assembled in the second half of the 20th century by New York collectors Henry and Rose Pearlman. Paintings and sculptures by Cezanne, Manet, Degas, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Pissarro, Toulouse-Lautrec, Modigliani, Soutine, Lipchitz and others will be seen within the context of their experience of transience—regional, national, and international. It will explore the friendships the artists developed in Paris, as well as the many varied locations and sites that shaped their work. The exhibition will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from May 21 through September 17, 2023.
“Henry Pearlman’s highly personal approach to collecting sought to capture the momentum of art and thought at the dawn of the modern era,” commented Gary Tinterow, Director and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “This exhibition is an exceptionally rare opportunity for visitors to see this distinguished collection outside of its home at Princeton University. For this presentation, we will be juxtaposing Pearlman pictures with works from the MFAH collection in order to broaden the representation of the artists, as well as to highlight Henry Pearlman’s distinctive point of view.”
Ann Dumas, MFAH consulting curator of European art, noted, “Henry Pearlman was fascinated by both the art and the lived experiences of the artists he collected. He was interested in work that reflected not only creative experimentation, but also meaningful exchanges and relationships between painters and sculptors. He was especially drawn to artists whose travels and emigration stimulated creative exchange and innovation, and so his collection highlights the dynamic and increasingly international artistic crossroads of Paris during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”
About the Exhibition
The installation’s organization will explore relationships, both personal and artistic, between artists, broader cultural movements and Pearlman as a collector.
The pairing of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin alludes to their mutual influence. Van Gogh’s search for inspiration led him from the Netherlands to England, Belgium, Paris, and eventually the South of France. Gauguin’s trajectory took him to Peru, France, Tahiti, and the Marquesas. The two artists met in Paris in the fall of 1887, and developed an alliance that profoundly influenced both of their work. Included here is Van Gogh’s Tarascon Stagecoach (1888), painted in Arles. Van Gogh produced this painting to impress Gauguin with how the qualities of light in southern France had transformed the younger artist’s own understanding of color and developing signature style. Presented in this gallery along with Van Gogh’s Tarascon Stagecoach is Gauguin’s Te Fare Amu (The House for Eating) (1895 or 1897), a polychromed woodcarving. The imagery connects to Gauguin’s personal interpretations of Tahitian myths, but the sculptural format evokes the Maori wood carvings that the artist had seen in New Zealand.
Chaïm Soutine, Jacques Lipchitz, and Amedeo Modigliani, all Jewish immigrants to Paris, each came there with new ideas about painting and sculpture, and each settled in the famed cosmopolitan artists’ residence La Ruche (The Beehive) in Montparnasse, where prolific cross-cultural connections fueled their creative output. Here, three portraits by Modigliani—two paintings and a limestone—and three landscapes and three portraits by Soutine express how these leading School of Paris artists remained true to figuration while distorting form for expressive ends. Four Lipchitz sculptures show both his expressive and his more naturalistic approach.
The exhibition also presents the strength of Henry Pearlman’s collection of Paul Cezanne’s paintings and watercolors. One section of the exhibition will consider the significance of Cezanne’s native Aix-en-Provence on his sense of self and his work. It will also evoke his times in Paris and the artistic relationships he forged there. Featured paintings include Cistern in the Grounds of the Château Noir (c. 1900), Route to Le Tholonet (1900–04) and Mont Sainte-Victoire (c. 1904–06), from one of Cezanne’s most iconic series.
Finally, Henry Pearlman sought out artists, developing lasting relationships with several, including Lipchitz and the Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka. With the advent of World War II, Lipchitz fled Europe for New York, where he was welcomed by Pearlman and other patrons, and critics. Kokoschka took refuge in London. Pearlman met with him there in 1948, and sat for his portrait, which is presented here, as is Lipchitz’s 1952 portrait bust of the collector.
The Museum will include in the exhibition several works from its own Audrey Jones Beck Collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early modern painting, which was assembled during the same period as the Pearlmans’ acquisitions. The synergy between the two collections will amplify the presentation of certain artists, notably Cezanne and Gauguin, and provide a perspective on American collecting in the mid-20th century, presenting enlightening contexts through which to view both collections.
About the Pearlman Collection
The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation Collection was assembled by Henry Pearlman (1895–1974), one of the finest such collections in private hands. Pearlman, the son of Russian immigrant parents, was born in New York City. A self-made businessman, he founded, at 24, the Eastern Cold Storage Insulation Corporation in New York, developing and manufacturing marine insulation. In January 1945 Pearlman happened to pass the window of a Manhattan auction house, and spotted a Chaïm Soutine landscape. Enchanted by the painting, Pearlman made a successful bid for the work—View of Céret (1921–22), on view in this exhibition—and that first purchase triggered a passion for collecting that endured for the rest of his life. He thrived on the thrill of the hunt and uncovering hidden masterworks, learning about the social bonds among artists and their mutual aesthetic influences. The Pearlman Collection has been on loan to the Princeton University Art Museum since the mid-1970s.
Publication
The exhibition will be accompanied by a free, richly illustrated, digital publication, which will include essays, an interview, and poems that will explore the themes of travel, migration, and creativity.
Amedeo Modigliani, Jean Cocteau, 1916. Oil on canvas, the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, on loan to the Princeton University Art Museum.
Vincent van Gogh, Tarascon Stagecoach, 1888, oil on canvas, the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, on loan to the Princeton University Art Museum / Photograph: Bruce M. White
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Object Lessons in American Art: Selections from the Princeton University Art Museum
This summer, from June 3 through September 10, 2023, the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut, presents a traveling exhibition organized by the Princeton University Art Museum. Object Lessons in American Art: Selections from the Princeton University Art Museum presents more than seventy examples of Euro-American, African American, and Native American art created between the eighteenth century and today. Together these works pose fundamental questions about artistic significance and how meaning changes across time, place, and context. “We are thrilled to be one of only three stops in the country, and the only one in the northeast, for this inspiring show,” states Executive Director Joshua Campbell Torrance. “It’s a unique opportunity for our audiences to see works by these marquee artists on display in the Florence Griswold Museum galleries.”
Marsden Hartley (American,1877–1943), Blue Landscape, 1942. Oil on board; 40.6 × 50.8 cm. Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund and Kathleen Compton Sherrerd Fund for Acquisitions in American Art (2015-6679)
The exhibition, curated by Karl Kusserow, the Princeton University Art Museum’s John Wilmerding Curator of American Art, focuses in particular on race, gender, and the environment. Works are displayed in discrete groups, each intended to provoke new considerations and raise timely questions about American history and culture. These juxtapositions serve as “object lessons”—gatherings of tangible artifacts that communicate an embodied idea or an abstract concept—to anchor debates about the country’s complex social, racial, and political history, thereby expanding our ideas about American art history.
“Object Lessons in American Art builds on centuries of collecting at Princeton that continues robustly today to re-examine objects both beloved and little known and, in doing so, affords opportunities to interrogate the American past and present in profoundly relevant ways,” notes James Steward, Nancy A. Nasher–David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director. “It invites the exhibition visitor into an active role in their own meaning-making.”
The exhibition emphasizes how a broad array of artists contended with, sometimes by obscuring, the most pressing issues of their—and our own—time. Included in the exhibition are works by the enslaved potter David Drake, whose craft was a bold statement of resistance, alongside recent works by contemporary artists such as Rande Cook, Renee Cox, and Titus Kaphar. One section features iconic portraits of George Washington, including one by Rembrandt Peale that lionizes the first American president as a godlike celebrity together with a photograph by Luke C. Dillon of the ruins of the slave quarters at Washington's home, Mount Vernon, to remind us of the complexities of the man and his legacy.
Other artworks emphasize the shifting role of women and their representation in the history of American culture. Among them is a finely rendered portrait of a “colonial dame” by Plainfield, Connecticut, artist Sarah Perkins. Later works, including paintings by Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, Georgia O’Keeffe, Grace Hartigan and several works by the anonymous feminist collective Guerrilla Girls, stress how much remains to be done for women to be fully integrated into our understanding of American art and history.
The continuously evolving relationship between American artists and the natural world functions as another of the exhibition’s pillars. While Indigenous American understandings of humanity’s place in nature often emphasize harmony, Euro-Americans have typically stressed human domination and the subjugation of the landscape to the human will. Among the works the exhibition investigates in this light are Fitz Henry Lane’s Ship in Fog, Gloucester Harbor, a seascape depicting the human and natural worlds as irrevocably intermingled, and the collective Postcommodity’s Repellent Fence(2015), for which the group and its collaborators anchored twenty-six balloons decorated with indigenous iconography across a two-mile expanse at the US–Mexico Border to comment on the arbitrary nature of modern geopolitical divisions.
“The innovative approach of this exhibition to interpret historical works of American art through a socially conscious lens is one that we have also implemented at the Florence Griswold Museum, where we consistently seek to make the lessons of art history relevant for audiences’ contemporary life,” explains Associate Curator Jennifer Stettler Parsons, Ph.D., who coordinated the show in Connecticut. For the Florence Griswold Museum’s installation, Dr. Parsons added an “Object Lesson” from Old Lyme, which nods to the Museum’s connection to Princeton University. Prompted by his wife, artist Ellen Axson Wilson, Woodrow Wilson visited the Lyme Art Colony while he was president of Princeton (1902-1910). Visitors are encouraged to look at the Wilson objects from the Museum’s permanent collection through the lenses of race, class, and gender and consider the Wilsons’ complicated legacy.
Object Lessons in American Art is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue distributed by Princeton University Press and edited and with a lead essay by Karl Kusserow, with additional essays by Kirsten Pai Buick (University of New Mexico), Ellery Foutch (Middlebury College), Horace Ballard (Harvard Art Museums), Jeffrey Richmond-Moll (Georgia Art Museum), and Rebecca Zorach (Northwestern University). It is available for purchase in the Museum’s shop and online.
This exhibition is curated by Karl Kusserow, John Wilmerding Curator of American Art, Princeton University Art Museum, and overseen at the Florence Griswold Museum by Jennifer Stettler Parsons, Ph.D., Associate Curator. Object Lessons in American Art is made possible by the leadership support of the Terra Foundation for American Art. The accompanying publication is made possible by the generous support of Annette Merle-Smith and by additional support from the Barr Ferree Foundation Fund for Publications, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University. At the Florence Griswold Museum, support comes from the Department of Economic and Community Development, Connecticut Office of the Arts, HSB, The Aeroflex Foundation, The David T. Langrock Foundation, Mrs. Kathryn Parsons and Mr. J. Geddes Parsons, Mr. Wayne Harms and Mrs. Barbara Harms, and WSHU Public Radio, as well as donors to the Museum’s Annual Fund.
About the Florence Griswold Museum
The Florence Griswold Museum, located in the heart of historic Old Lyme, Connecticut, has been called a “Giverny in Connecticut” by the Wall Street Journal, and a “must-see” by the Boston Globe. In addition to the restored Florence Griswold House, the Museum features a gallery for changing art exhibitions, education and landscape centers, a restored artist’s studio, twelve acres along the Lieutenant River, the Robert F. Schumann Artists’ Trail, and extensive gardens. Its seasonal Café Flo was recognized as “best outdoor dining” by Connecticut Magazine. The Museum offers a full slate of exhibitions, programs, virtual tours, and online resources. For more information, visit FlorenceGriswoldMuseum.org.
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American Watercolors, 1880–1990: Into the Light
This summer, the Harvard Art Museums present over 100 years of dazzling and imaginative artistry through the medium of watercolor. American Watercolors, 1880–1990: Into the Light showcases more than 100 watercolors by over 50 well-known and historically underrepresented artists selected from the museums’ deep and diverse holdings—a rare opportunity because of the light-sensitive nature of these works. From Winslow Homer to Richard Foster Yarde, from stunning natural landscapes to delicate still lifes and bold abstractions, there is something for everyone. The exhibition is on display through August 13, 2023, in the three adjacent University Galleries located on Level 3 of the Harvard Art Museums. An accompanying illustrated catalogue—designed to generate conversation about the watercolor movement—includes personal reflections on the medium and introduces new scholarship to the field through contributions from curators with specializations in historical European and American as well as contemporary art, a conservator of works on paper, and artist Richard Tuttle.
Into the Light was organized by a collaborative group of Harvard Art Museums curatorial and conservation colleagues: Joachim Homann, Maida and George Abrams Curator of Drawings; Margaret Morgan Grasselli, Visiting Senior Scholar for Drawings; Miriam Stewart, Curator of the Collection, Division of European and American Art; and Elisa Germán, former Emily Rauh Pulitzer Curatorial Fellow in Contemporary Drawings (now Lunder Curator of Works on Paper and Whistler Studies, Colby College Museum of Art); with contributions by Penley Knipe, Philip and Lynn Straus Senior Conservator of Works on Paper and Head of the Paper Lab, Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies; and Horace D. Ballard, Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. Associate Curator of American Art.
For generations of American artists, watercolor was a medium of innovation and experimentation. This challenging form of expression allowed practitioners to let loose their imagination and reflect on process and perception. While the visual vocabulary of American watercolors changed dramatically over the century—from vibrant floral still-life compositions and radiant summer landscapes to surrealistic fantasies and immersive abstract works—the medium’s unique ability to capture light fascinated artists throughout.
“This is a different presentation of watercolors and an unusually broad one,” said exhibition co-curator Joachim Homann. “There are the masterpieces by Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, and John La Farge that have endeared the medium to us, but there are many artists over subsequent decades who have engaged with watercolors, who came to the medium from different angles, different backgrounds, some of them with academic training and others as amateurs, who are also included.”
The installation’s three galleries present an astounding versality of watercolor in roughly chronological order. Beginning with rarely seen works by 19th-century artists such as Winslow Homer, John La Farge, John Singer Sargent, and Fidelia Bridges, the exhibition extends to the generation of celebrated modern artists, including John Marin, Edward Hopper, Jane Peterson, and Charles Burchfield. Mid-century experiments by Mark Rothko, Beauford Delaney, Philip Guston, and Dorothy Dehner attest to the potency of the medium for artists working in an abstract mode. The overview concludes with provocative and powerful works by Sol LeWitt, Richard Foster Yarde, Hannah Wilke, and Richard Tuttle, among others. Along the way, watercolors by Bill Traylor and Zelda Fitzgerald demonstrate that artists did not have to be trained professionals to do important work. Pavel Tchelitchew, Alfonso Ossorio, Eva Hesse, and George Grosz are some of the many artists born abroad who immigrated to the United States in the 20th century and went on to change the face of American art.
A display case in the first gallery offers a glimpse into the preparations, materials, and practices behind the watercolors on view and includes examples of pigments (raw sienna, cadmium yellow, rose madder, cobalt blue, and others), gum arabic, watercolor papers, and other tools that an artist might use, including a recently acquired complete watercolor kit, c. 1863–81, from Winsor & Newton, famed purveyors of artist tools. John Singer Sargent’s own watercolor tubes, brushes, and a scraper as well as sealing-wax sticks from Alfonso Ossorio’s studio are also included.
Said Homann: “Watercolor is a medium that allows us to tell a richer and more complex story of American art, and we are very proud to present a cross-section through a collection that is very dynamic and that has grown in the process of preparing this exhibition.”
Built over a period of more than 100 years with the purpose of studying and supporting contemporary practice, the Harvard Art Museums’ collection of watercolors embodies the museums’ long-term engagement with the art of the present. Through gifts, bequests, and purchases, many watercolors have been added to the museums’ collections in recent years, including works by Thomas Pollock Anshutz, Romare Bearden, Charles E. Burchfield, Dorothy Dehner, Beauford Delaney, Sam Gilliam, Edward Hopper, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, Hannah Wilke, and Richard Foster Yarde. Visitors may further explore the watercolors collection by scheduling a visit to the Art Study Center, where works not currently on view can be requested for close looking and personal study.
“Until now, this area of the museums’ celebrated collection of works on paper had not been comprehensively studied nor published, despite the visual appeal and continuing allure of watercolor,” said Martha Tedeschi, the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums. “We are excited to showcase the sense of experimentation that so many artists have discovered when working in watercolor, beginning in the 19th century and still today.”
Online Resources
Exhibition webpage: harvardartmuseums.org/americanwatercolors
Watch related videos—including explorations of watercolors by Zelda Fitzgerald, Edward Hopper, and John Marin, and a timelapse of the installation of a monumental work by Sol LeWitt—on the museums’ dedicated Vimeo channel or YouTube playlist.
Publication
The generously illustrated catalogue accompanying the exhibition American Watercolors, 1880–1990: Into the Light considers continuity and change in the American watercolor tradition over a century of production, through the lens of the Harvard Art Museums’ collections. In the spirit of the medium, the authors take a fluid and open-ended approach to the topic, offering both personal and scholarly reflections that invite readers to ponder the influence of these works on their own experience of the world. In addition to contextual essays, there are close readings of singular works and examinations of the unique material characteristics of the watercolor medium. Edited by Joachim Homann, Margaret Morgan Grasselli, and Miriam Stewart; with contributions by Horace D. Ballard, Elisa Germán, Penley Knipe, and artist Richard Tuttle. Published by the Harvard Art Museums and distributed by Yale University Press. Softcover, $45.
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The Greats of Six Centuries: Masterpieces from the Museo Nacional Thyssen- Bornemi
Marc Chagall. The Madonna of the Village, 1938-1942.
70 works from the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza travel to China for a major exhibition at the Museum of Art Pudong in Shanghai
The Greats of Six Centuries: Masterpieces from the Museo Nacional Thyssen- Bornemisza will be on display from 22 June to 12 November 2023
Organised in association with the celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of diplomatic relations between Spain and China
With the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Spanish Embassy in China and the Instituto Cervantes.
A selec�on of 70 pain�ngs from the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza will be on display between June and November at the Museum of Art Pudong (MAP) in Shanghai. This is a group of works representa�ve of the diversity of styles, genres and ar�s�c movements which characterise the Museo Thyssen, with a chronological span that extends from the Renaissance to the 20th century and featuring European and American pain�ng, portraits, landscapes, s�ll lifes and other genres by great names in the history of art such as Raphael, Rubens, Canaleto, Courbet, Manet, Van Gogh, Chagall, O’Keeffe....
The exhibi�on is produced by Shanghai Lujiazui Development (Group) Company Limited and co- organised by the Museum of Art Pudong and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. It is taking place in the context of the celebra�ons to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of diploma�c rela�ons between the Kingdom of Spain and the People’s Republic of China on the ini�a�ve of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Spanish Embassy in Spain and with the support of the Ins�tuto Cervantes. This is the first �me that such a significant group of works from the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza has le� Spain with the aim of introducing the Chinese public to the richness and variety of both its holdings and of Spain’s cultural heritage, promo�ng knowledge of them abroad and strengthening cultural �es with the People’s Republic of China.
Raphael. Portrait of a Young Man, ca.1518-1519;
Vincent Van Gogh. The Stevedores in Arles, 1888;
Located in the heart of Xiao Lujiazui in Shanghai, the modern Museum of Art Pudong (MAP) was built from September 2017 and opened to the public in July 2021. Designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel, the MAP is managed by the Lujiazui Group and has the principal mission of promo�ng public educa�on, devising cultural ac�vi�es, organising exhibi�ons and encouraging interna�onal exchange with the aim of becoming a cultural point of reference in Shanghai and a major pla�orm for interna�onal cultural exchange.
A survey of six centuries of Western art
The exhibi�on is organised to present a chronological survey, divided into eight sec�ons which extend from the Renaissance to 20th-century European and American art. The primary focus is on the genres, ar�sts, schools and movements that are par�cularly well represented in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, such as portraiture and landscape, Dutch and American pain�ng, Impressionism, Expressionism and the early avant-gardes.
Both for the number of pain�ngs and their quality, the genre of portraiture is undoubtedly the most notable within the Thyssen collec�on. This first sec�on features 15th- and 16th-century examples from the Flemish, German and Italian schools by ar�sts such as Rogier van der Weyden, Bernhard Strigel, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Raphael, Correggio and Bronzino, among others.
Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano). Cosimo de Medicis in Armour,
ca. 1545. Oil on panel, 76,5 x 59 cm
- Baroque pain�ng. Realism and emo�on
The second sec�on presents notable examples of the different genres that became both autonomous and increasingly appreciated from the late 16th century and par�cularly in 17th- century Holland, such as landscape, the s�ll life, interiors and pain�ngs of animals, including works by Ruisdael, Hobbema, Peter de Hooch and Van de Velde III. There are also examples of historical and mythological composi�ons, such as Rubens’s Venus and Cupid and by the French Baroque school.
Peter Paul Rubens. Venus and Cupid, ca. 1606 - 1611.
- The 18th century in Europe. Views, landscapes, portraits and other subjects
In 18th-century Italy the Baroque reached its height with the triumph of the urban view or veduta with Venice as its protagonist and Canaleto as its leading representa�ve. The ar�st’s large-format canvas of The Grand Canal from San Vio, Venice is displayed alongside the work of other Italians such as Longhi and Foschi, leading representa�ves of the French Rococo such as Wateau, Chardin and Vernet and of the English school of portrai�sts such as Reynolds and Zoffany.
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal). The Grand Canal from San Vio, Venice, ca. 1723 – 1724. Oil on canvas, 140,5 x 204,5 cm
The 19th century in Europe. Realism and French Impressionism
With works by Courbet, Manet and Pissarro, this sec�on shows the evolu�on of pain�ng from the mid-19th century. Landscape became the principal field of ar�s�c experimenta�on as plein air pain�ng and the direct observa�on of mo�fs triumphed, while the experiences of city life and its characters now appear as a pictorial subject. The sec�on concludes with the subjec�ve representa�on of nature achieved by Van Gogh and the decora�ve character of pain�ng exemplified by Bonnard.
Édouard Manet. Horsewoman, Full-Face (L'Amazone), ca. 1882. Oil on canvas, 73 x 52 cm.
- 19th-century American pain�ng
Maurice Prendergast. The Race Track (Piazza Siena, Borghese Gardens, Rome), 1898. Watercolor on paper, 35,6 x 46,6 cm.
The importance of landscape in 19th-century American art is revealed through a group of works that includes examples by the first genera�on of landscape painters. Of European origin or trained there, they adapted the Roman�cism of the sublime to the exuberant nature of the New World with a religious, patrio�c sen�ment. They are followed by the second genera�on, who were closer to the ideals of naturalism, and then, at the end of the century, by painters who reveal the influence of French Impressionism, employing a loose, colourist technique, such as Prendergast and Chase.
- The 20th century in Europe. Expressionism
Influenced by Van Gogh, Munch and Gauguin, the earliest Expressionist groups - the French Fauves and the Germans of Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter - rejected the ar�s�c conven�ons of naturalism and Impressionism, championing a new an�-naturalist concep�on of form and colour in the service of expressivity. Ma�sse, Kirchner and Kandinsky are among the leading names represented in this sec�on, which also includes the work of Russian ar�sts such as Larionov and Chagall.
Emil Nolde. Red flowers, 1906. Oil on canvas, 52,4 x 55,8 cm.
- The 20th century in Europe. The Cubist tradi�on
Invented by Picasso and Braque around 1907, Cubism broke with the tradi�onal representa�on of volume and space through an ar�s�c language based on fragmenta�on and simultaneity in order to give rise to a new dimension of the pictorial space. This is evident in a group of works that starts with examples by Braque himself and includes deriva�ons of Cubism by painters such as Léger from France, Feininger from the USA and the Hungarians Bortnyik and Huszár, as well as Italian Futurism.
Fernand Léger. The disc, 1918. Oil on canvas, 65 x 54 cm.
- Post-war European and American art
Abstract Expressionism dominated the American art scene a�er World War II while in Europe a range of Informalist movements prevailed. Both tendencies priori�sed a new concept of pain�ng based on gesture and colour. This is evident
in the works in this sec�on by Georgia O’Keeffe, Nicolas de Staël, Josef Albers and Charles Sheeler, among others. James Rosenquist’s pain�ng illustrates the emergence of Pop Art in the 1960s, with its exalta�on of everyday objects, consumer goods and adver�sements, while works by Andrew Wyeth and Raphael Soyer demonstrate the survival of realism in the second half of the 20th century.
Georgia O'Keeffe. From the plains II, 1954. Oil on canvas, 122 x 183 cm.
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1923: THE FACES OF AN ERA
Hamburger Kunsthalle
until 24 September 2023
To mark the 100th anniversary of the friends’ society Freunde der Kunsthalle e.V., the Hamburger Kunsthalle will pay tribute in 2023 to its major supporter with an exhibition of paintings, sculptures and works on paper from its Modern Art collection dating from the years around 1923. Around 60 exhibits have been selected that provide insights into artistic practice, social currents and historical events in Germany and Hamburg that year. The featured works, by artists including Alma del Banco, Rudolf Belling, Robert Desnos, Walter Dexel, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Karl Hofer, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Käthe Kollwitz, Karl Kluth, Rudolf Levy, Dorothea Maetzel-Johannsen, László Moholy-Nagy, Anita Rée and Friedrich Wield, will be loosely inserted into the permanent collection display devoted to Classical Modernism. They shed light on a dazzling period in history, giving viewers a vivid impression of the artistic fecundity of what is often called the »crisis year« of 1923.
1923 is today considered to have been a fateful year. Severe crises were unsettling the young Weimar Republic as the occupation of the Ruhr region, hyperinflation, rampant poverty and coup attempts put German democracy to the test. At the same time, though, the twenties witnessed a thriving art and culture scene as well as great enthusiasm for popular sports. Theatre, cabaret, dance events and concerts flourished, as did the cinema and literature. The culture of the day was political, avant-garde and marked by an impressive degree of diversity, with Impressionism, Expressionism, New Objectivity, Surrealism and applied arts at the state-run Bauhaus happily existing side-by-side.
A publication in the Kleine Reihe series will accompany the exhibition, featuring texts by Juliane Au, Gabriele Himmelmann, Florian Ludwig, Karin Schick, Jan Steinke and Andreas Stolzenburg (scheduled for June 2023, approx. 150 pages).
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Bonhams Prints and Multiples on Tuesday 27 June
• Host of Hockney lead British selection
• Chagall heads up European Masters
London – Famous images by Andy Warhol are amongst the highlights of Bonhams Prints and Multiples on Tuesday 27 June at Bonhams New Bond Street. Leading the selection is Chanel, from Ads, a screenprint in colours from 1985, which has an estimate of £80,000-120,000.
The screenprint master, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was obsessed with the proliferation of images, especially those of famous faces and of advertising imagery. The sale includes 11 prints by Warhol, including Oyster Stew, from Campbell's Soup II (estimate: £25,000-35,000), Electric Chair (estimate: £8,000-12,000), and two separate versions of Mick Jagger, from Mick Jagger Portfolio (estimated £60,000-80,000, and £40,000-60,000). The strong section of American Pop prints also features Crying Girl by Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997). Featuring his signature comic style imagery, the print has an estimate of £30,000 - 50,000.
Carolin von Massenbach, Head of Bonhams Prints Department in the UK, commented: "Bonhams Prints has always offered an incredibly strong and diverse selection, and this sale is a particularly wonderful example of what we have to offer, with some of the most famous prints by some of the biggest names. Our selection of American Pop Art prints is especially strong, with 11 works by the master of the medium – Andy Warhol. This is a perfect opportunity for collectors to own a picture of an icon, by an icon."
The sale will also feature a strong selection of British prints, led by The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire in 2011 (twenty eleven) (2011), an iPad drawing by David Hockney R.A. (British, born 1937), which has an estimate of £80,000 - 120,000. Other prints by Hockney include Untitled No.346, from A Bigger Book: Art edition B (2010/2016), estimated at £15,000-20,000, and Pool Made with Paper and Blue Ink for Book (1980), estimated at £25,000-35,000, demonstrating an array of works across the artist's career.
There will also be a number of works by Banksy (1974) in the sale, including the rare work Choose your Weapon (Bright Pink) (2011), which has an estimate of £70,000-100,000.
True to the diversity of the sale the European Masters selection on offer is also especially strong, led by a collection of prints by Marc Chagall (1887-1985), including Le Grand Bouquet (1963), estimated at £20,000-30,000.
Other highlights include:
• Di Faced Tenner (Pink) by Banksy (b.1974). Estimate at £50,000-70,000.
• Who Cares Wins (Unique), (2014/2021), Harland Miller (b. 1964). Estimate: £50,000-70,000.
• Pumpkin (2000) (Yellow) by Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929). Estimate: £20,000-30,000.
• Le Mort de Dorcon, from Daphnis et Chloé, (1961) by Marc Chagall (1887-1985). Estimate: £20,000-30,000.
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Christie's June 30 Impressionist and Modern Art
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Rembrandt: True to Life
The exhibition follows the evolution of Rembrandt’s work from his early years in Leiden in the 1620s through to his final years in Amsterdam in the 1660s. This significant breadth of work allows audiences to appreciate the inventive ways in which Rembrandt approached his subject matter, his brilliant re-imagining of biblical subjects, his profoundly expressive style, and the development of psychological complexity in narrative scenes and portraits.
The centrepiece of the exhibition is Rembrandt’s printmaking. Rembrandt was the first artist to comprehensively explore the possibilities of etching and it is through his prints that audiences can fully appreciate the breadth and depth of his work.
The exhibition contextualises Rembrandt’s prints through important loans from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. Displayed in thematic groups of portraits, religious motifs, landscapes, nudes, and scenes of everyday life, the prints and paintings tell the story of a remarkable artist and his creative skills.
One of the highlights is the iconic painting, Self-Portrait, 1659, which comes exclusively to Melbourne from the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Painted three years after Rembrandt declared bankruptcy, the painting shows the artist at the age of fifty-three. At this difficult time in Rembrandt’s life, he depicts himself with unrelenting honesty and profound psychological insight. Throughout his life Rembrandt made around eighty self-portraits, and ten of his etched self-portraits are shown throughout the exhibition, tracing the artist’s self-image over a thirty-year period, culminating in this masterpiece of Rembrandt’s expressive late painting style.
Another section of the exhibition examines the nude, the study of which was part of every artist’s training during the period. Rembrandt did not idealise figures according to classical proportions; instead, he placed primary importance on working naer het leven (from life).
In the etching Diana at the bath, c. 1631, he challenges the conventional representation of mythological goddesses. In this work, Diana, goddess of the hunt, is not a distant classical beauty, but an unidealised figure drawn from everyday life. A later critic described Rembrandt as ‘the first heretic of art’ because of his uncompromising realism.
The exhibition also features Rembrandt’s landscapes. His ability to capture the transitory qualities of light and air is unprecedented in the medium of etching. The three trees, 1643, is Rembrandt’s largest and most evocative landscape etching. The sky, with its massed clouds, diagonal passages of rain and bursts of light, creates a sense of drama. The heroic presence of the three trees carries moral overtones, and an analogy has been drawn with the three crosses of Calvary, where Christ was crucified between the two thieves.
The Hundred Guilder Print, c. 1648, is one of Rembrandt’s best known and most ambitious etchings. It combines several passages from the Gospel of St Matthew, bringing together a diverse group of people who gather around Christ, including the rich and the poor, young and old. The work is a technical masterpiece in its detailed rendering of figures, space and atmosphere. It is the culmination of the artist’s longstanding fascination with light and shade, which he explored in print and paint. In 1649, an impression of the print was sold for the exorbitant sum of 100 guilders, the price of a quality painting, which gave the etching its name.
The exhibition includes Rembrandt’s two largest prints, The three crosses, 1653, and Christ presented to the people: oblong plate, 1655 – each of these is presented in two different ‘states’. Rembrandt made continuous adjustments to take this image through a number of ‘states’ or changes. These works were completely transformed in the process, as Rembrandt added new elements that give the later impressions a different emphasis and mood. Seeing early and late states of these large-scale works side by side shows the artist’s ambition and his restless creative spirit.
The exhibition also features a small recreation of the artist’s Wunderkammer – or cabinet of curiosities – inspired by Rembrandt’s own collection of prints and drawings, shells and rare natural objects, musical instruments, weapons and exotic artefacts. Rembrandt often drew creative and artistic inspiration from the items in his collection, in particular for his biblical subjects, which are set in far-away places. Drawn from the NGV Collection, as well as the Melbourne Museum and the State Library of Victoria, the objects represent the exotic imports and luxury items that were traded in Amsterdam during the mid-seventeenth century.
During the exhibition, the NGV will seek to deepen its acclaimed Rembrandt collection through an appeal to acquire the important print Abraham Francen, Apothecary c. 1657. The work is an etched portrait from late in the artist’s career of his close friend Abraham Francen, a stalwart supporter of Rembrandt during his financial difficulties. Francen was also a passionate collector, like Rembrandt, and is shown in his chamber surrounded by objects in his collection. This etching provides a rare glimpse into the environment of the cultivated collector in 17th century Amsterdam. The work will also be included in the exhibition.
As part of the NGV Scholars Series, an exclusive talk by world-leading Dutch art expert Dr Marjorie E. (Betsy) Wieseman, Curator and Head of the Department of Northern European Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. will be held on 31 July. Dr Wieseman will use examples from the NGV’s extensive holdings of Rembrandt work to contextualise the most recent scholarship on the seventeenth-century Dutch master.
Tony Ellwood AM, Director, NGV, said: ‘The NGV is home to the most important collection of works by Rembrandt in the Southern Hemisphere and this NGV-exclusive exhibition celebrates one of our major strengths: our outstanding print collection. Rembrandt was a master printmaker and his experimentation in the medium reveals his insatiable curiosity and sheer versatility as an artist.’
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Picasso, El Greco and Analytical Cubism
Museo Nacional del Prado
Until September 17, room 9B of the Villanueva building houses the exhibition "Picasso, El Greco and Analytical Cubism", an exhibition that, sponsored by the Friends of the Prado Museum Foundation and with the collaboration of the Community of Madrid, focuses in the cubist work of Picasso and the late work of El Greco.
Although almost all the authors agree in limiting the influence of El Greco almost exclusively to Picasso's youth, this exhibition suggests that it was much more profound and lasting, since it was especially crucial for the development of Cubism and, in particular, for the period Analytical Cubism, in works such as El aficionado or Accordionista .
In this room are also testimonial documents that highlight Picasso's particular vital and artistic link with the Prado Museum, a relationship that began in his years as a copyist and ended with his appointment as director.
With the opening of this exhibition, the number of temporary exhibitions that can be visited at the Prado Museum rises to six, a figure never reached to date: “Guido Reni”, “Herrera 'el Mozo' and the total Baroque” and “Emilio Sanchez Perrier (1855-1907). Drawings” in the Jerónimos building, and “Portraits of Sorolla” and “Spanish Masterpieces from the Frick Collection” together with the itinerary “Calderón and painting” in the Villanueva building.
Image of the presentation of the exhibition. Photo © Museo Nacional del Prado
Registered in La Celebración Picasso 1973-2023, an exhibition program that commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the Spanish artist and that has the collaboration of Telefónica in Spain, the exhibition "Picasso, El Greco and Analytical Cubism", curated by Carmen Giménez, shows the most radical correlation between these two artists to reflect on a fundamental aspect: the ascendancy of the Cretan over the Malaga when he entered cubism. This exhibition offers the opportunity to understand the relationship between the two artists, two original sensibilities that speak of the redefinition of the artistic fact through volume and color, composition and perspective, space and light, and the challenge of dogma. academic and classical tradition.
Among the many and very diverse influences of other masters that come together in Picasso's work, that of El Greco is perhaps the earliest and most decisive, since it began at the end of the 19th century, when the man from Malaga, almost a teenager, lived in Madrid and He is a student at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts. From his letters and drawings from that formative period, it is known that he spent more time in the Museo del Prado copying the great masters than in the Academy itself. 'El Greco, Velázquez, inspire me', can be read in a drawing from those years. 'I, El Greco' he wrote down in another drawing. Quite a declaration of intent for a young student barely seventeen years old, sensing in El Greco's work the germ of what he would precisely have to rid modern painting of. El Greco at that time was not a value.
It is true that El Greco enjoyed a certain fame from the time he settled in Spain in 1577 until his death in 1614, but ever since he died, a local legend has been woven about the crazy distortion of his pictorial style in his last years that ended up obscuring subsequently his critical reputation. It was not until almost the end of the 19th century that he began to claim it, thanks to the young European avant-garde of this period. El Greco took three centuries to be understood, but once recovered from oblivion, he provided Picasso with the keys to definitively break with the art of the past and the pillars of traditional representation.
In the abundant artistic literature written on Picasso, almost all the authors insist on the evidence of the link between El Greco and the artist from Malaga, but almost all agree that this influence was almost exclusively during his youth, not only because of his notebooks from period between Madrid, Barcelona and Paris, but considering that it was crucial for the so-called "blue period". However, this influence was much deeper and more lasting and was especially crucial to the development of Cubism and, in particular, to the phase of Analytical Cubism, with its flattening of perspective and vertical format. A confrontation of the respective works of both artists focusing on the cubist work of Picasso and the late work of El Greco, in the direct format that allows an exhibition, opens new perspectives,
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Basquiat. The Modena Paintings
The Fondation Beyeler is now presenting “Basquiat. The Modena Paintings”, eight large-scale works that Jean- Michel Basquiat painted in 1982 in Modena, Italy for an exhibition that in the end never took place. More than 40 years later and for the first time, Fondation Beyeler reunites eight masterpieces, now held in private collections in the United States, Asia and Switzerland, which comprise Basquiat’s most celebrated and valuable works. The exhibition comes 13 years after the Fondation Beyeler mounted a comprehensive retrospective devoted to the artist. Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) ranks among the most significant artists of the late 20th century. He shot to international fame in the early 1980s, as figurative painting experienced a renaissance. One of the art world’s most flamboyant personalities, Basquiat started out in the New York underground scene as a graffiti poet and musician before fully devoting himself to visual art. His highly expressive paintings, bursting with energy, soon gained widespread admiration. Aged only 21, he was the youngest artist invited to take part in Documenta 7, held in Kassel in the summer of 1982. Championed by Andy Warhol, he advanced to international art stardom. As the son of a Haitian father and a mother born to Puerto Rican parents, he was the first Black artist to break through in an art world dominated by white protagonists. In addition to Andy Warhol, Basquiat also worked with Keith Haring, Francesco Clemente and Debbie Harry among other artists and musicians. Up to his sudden death in August 1988 and over the course of less than a decade, he produced an extensive body of work comprising more than 1000 paintings and objects as well as 3000 works on paper.  Jean-Michel Basquiat, UNTITLED (DEVIL), 1982. Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 238.7 x 500.4 cm. Private Collection. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Photo: © 2023 Phillips Auctioneers LLC. All Rights Reserved. Following the heyday of conceptual and minimal art in the 1960s and 1970s, Basquiat succeeded in establishing a new figurative and expressive formal idiom. His works, populated with comic-like figures, skeleton silhouettes, odd everyday objects and poetic slogans, are vibrantly colourful and richly potent, merging motifs derived from pop culture and cultural history, as well as political and economic themes, into a critical commentary of consumer society and social injustice, in particular racism. Basquiat held his first solo show in 1981 at the Galleria d’Arte Emilio Mazzoli in Modena, still under the pseudonym SAMO©, which had originated in his collaboration with graffiti artist Al Diaz. Basquiat had come to the attention of Italian gallery owner Emilio Mazzoli just a few months earlier at the group show “New York / New Wave” curated by Diego Cortez at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1) in Long Island City. In Modena, Emilio Mazzoli provided Basquiat with work premises and painting supplies to produce new works. In the early summer of 1982, at Mazzoli’s invitation, Basquiat returned to Modena for his first European exhibition under his real name. In Modena, Mazzoli made a warehouse available to artists to work in. Among these artists was Mario Schifano, who over several years regularly came to Modena to paint. When Basquiat arrived in the city, he came upon several finished paintings by Schifano, as well as primed and blank canvases. Their monumental dimensions appealed to him and he used them for his own work. Basquiat thus produced a group of paintings each measuring at least two by four metres, all larger than and unlike anything he had painted to that day. By inscribing the back of the canvases with the indication “Modena” and his signature, he identified them as a cohesive group of works. Disagreements between art dealers Annina Nosei (who had been Basquiat’s representative in New York since late 1981) and Emilio Mazzoli led to the cancellation of the planned exhibition in Modena. In a 1985 interview with the New York Times, Basquiat expressed frustration when looking back on his second stay in Modena: “They set it up for me so I’d have to make eight paintings in a week”, and working in the provided warehouse premises felt to him “like a factory, a sick factory. I hated it.” In the end, Mazzoli paid Basquiat for the works he had produced and the artist returned to New York. The eight canvases painted in Modena eventually found new owners through Annina Nosei. Bruno Bischofberger bought four paintings (Profit I, Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump, Untitled [Woman with Roman Torso (Venus)], The Guilt of Gold Teeth), while the other four entered various international collections. Today, all eight paintings are held in different private collections in the United States, Asia and Switzerland. While some of them have occasionally been reunited in retrospectives, others have only rarely been publicly shown. The exhibition project originally conceived by Emilio Mazzoli has not been studied and covered in any depth to date. And yet, not only are the paintings produced in Modena among the most significant in Basquiat’s oeuvre and arguably some of the most valuable contemporary artworks to have been made by an artist altogether; the ultimately aborted project idea also constitutes a significant event in Basquiat’s artistic career. The Modena cycle The “Modena Paintings” share several motifs and stylistic features: all eight works are dominated by a monumental, often black figure set against a background of broad, gestural and expressive brushstrokes. Untitled (Angel) and Untitled (Devil), operating as a quasi-diptych, feature the eponymous figures of an angel and a devil as bust portraits with both arms raised – a posture that can be understood as both pleading and triumphant, and that is not only repeated in other paintings of the Modena cycle but more generally recurrent in Basquiat’s oeuvre. The skeleton suggested with rough horizontal strokes in Untitled (Devil) as well as the skull with deep eye sockets and nasal cavities also define the figures in Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump and The Field Next to the Other Road. Another trademark of Basquiat’s figures is the headdress, sometimes a halo and sometimes a crown of thorns, also featured in Untitled (Woman with Roman Torso [Venus]) and Profit I. Compared to the other works in the group, these last two paintings along with The Guilt of Gold Teeth display a greater density of Basquiat’s typical “scribbles”. The Guilt of Gold Teeth in particular, with its cryptic words, number combinations and dollar signs, prefigures later developments in his work. With Untitled (Cowparts), which features a larger-than-life cow with striking round eyes, the Modena cycle comes full circle insofar as the thick white brushstrokes used in Untitled (Angel) to accentuate the black body now trace the animal’s outline. With the exceptions of Profit I and The Guilt of Gold Teeth, in which the combination of acrylic, spray paint and oil stick establishes a dialogue with the medium of drawing, the Modena cycle emphasises painterly aspects. The visual collage of various images and words, otherwise so characteristic of Basquiat, is only on limited display. Overall, the Modena repertoire is less detailed and fragmented, and focuses on larger, more expansive depictions. The human and the animal body take centre stage. Unlike earlier works, the “Modena paintings” do not feature the impressions of big city streets usually favoured by Basquiat. Several of the eight paintings display the same hues, seen for example in the flat expanses of their backgrounds, as well as a similar use of loud red brushstrokes to emphasise the depicted figures. It was Basquiat’s practice to work on several canvases at once, as the different paint layers needed time to dry. |
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, THE GUILT OF GOLD TEETH, 1982
Acrylic, spray paint and oilstick on canvas, 240 x 421,3 cm
Nahmad Collection
© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York
Photo: Annik Wetter
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, BOY AND DOG IN A JOHNNYPUMP, 1982
Acrylic, oil stick, and spray paint on canvas; 240 x 420.4 cm
Private Collection
© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York
Photo: Daniel Portnoy
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, THE FIELD NEXT TO THE OTHER ROAD, 1982
Acrylic, enamel paint, spray paint, oil stick, and ink on canvas, 221 x 401.5 cm
Private Collection
© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York
Photo: Adam Reic
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, UNTITLED (WOMAN WITH ROMAN TORSO [VENUS]), 1982
Acrylic and oil stick on canvas, 241 x 419.7 cm
Private Collection
© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York
Photo: Robert Bayer
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, UNTITLED (ANGEL), 1982
Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 244 x 429 cm
Private Collection
© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York
Photo: Robert Bayer
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, PROFIT 1, 1982
Acrylic, oil stick, marker, and spray paint on canvas, 220 x 400 cm
Private Collection, Switzerland
© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York
Photo: Robert Bayer
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Salvador Dalí Exhibit The Divine Comedy
The Park West Gallery SoHo is set to display Salvador Dalí's expansive collection of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy (c. 1308-20), beginning June 16th, and for a limited time.
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One of the few institutions in the world to have this historic collection, Park West invites the public to their newest gallery located at 411 W Broadway. Featuring all 100 wood engravings, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see The Divine Comedy as it was meant to be experienced -- in its entirety, in the heart of New York City.
During his early years as a Surrealist artist, Spanish-born Dalí became famous and controversial for defying the limits of imagination through his bizarre and mind-boggling art. It was in the 1950s, when Dalí renounced Surrealism and embraced Catholicism, he created the 100 unforgettable illustrations from the Divine Comedy suite. The collection took over 14 years to complete.
Although it is a poetic narrative, The Divine Comedy is told sequentially, taking its readers along with Dante on a journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory, and Paradise. Each work is a masterpiece that blends art and literature in a way that only Dalí could achieve.
"We're delighted to present The Divine Comedy at our SoHo gallery," said John Block, Executive Vice President for Park West Gallery. "In this exhibit, Salvador Dalí's illustrative works depict Dante's imaginary travels toward salvation, but you will see how Dali reveals his own evolution as an artist. That's what makes it so compelling."
Park West Gallery SoHo is open 7 days a week, Monday-Wednesday 10am - 6pm, Thursday 10am - 7 pm, Friday-Saturday 10am - 8pm and Sunday 11am - 7 pm . Entry is at no cost, and their expert staff are available to guide visitors through the gallery.
Purgatory_1_by_Salvador_Dali
Inferno_17_by_Salvador_Dali
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SELFHOOD: Explorations of Being and Becoming in 20th and 21st Century Ar
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A SELLING EXHIBITION FROM JUNE 20 TO CELEBRATE THE REOPENING OF
THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
To celebrate the reopening of the National Portrait Gallery, Christie’s will hold Selfhood: Explorations of Being and Becoming in 20th and 21st Century Art, a selling exhibition focusing on art as a vehicle for the expression of self-identity as part of the gallery’s Portrait Mode campaign. Curated by the Private Sales team and opening at Christie’s King Street, London on 20th June, and on view until 13th July, the cross-platform exhibition will also be available online until 31st August and includes works by Tracey Emin, Lucian Freud, Alice Neel, Suzanne Valadon and many more.
The exhibition will aim to engage with artists that investigate, reclaim and celebrate the many iterations of self as a unique bodily, societal and psychological experience.
One of the highlights of the exhibition is Alice Neel’s portrait Nancy, depicting her daughter-in-law, and is on loan in the exhibition. Likely painted while Nancy was already pregnant, Nancy would soon become the subject of Neel’s famed series of pregnant sitters and new mothers. “She could keep up a really interesting conversation, she was concentrating on painting and trying to keep the subject loose and not frozen. The conversation was very animated, but she never stopped painting.” - Nancy Greene
Neel described herself as “a collector of souls,” referring to her deep and emotional introspection of those who posed for her. She had a particular interest in working with those who were not typically painted such as pregnant women, people of colour, labour leaders, children and members of the LGBTQ+ community. What is so distinctive about Nancy and Neel’s practice as a whole is that her portraits are timeless and focus on the individuality of each subject.
Neel has recently been the subject of a major travelling retrospective exhibition in Paris (The Centre Pompidou) and London (Barbican Art Gallery) in 2022-2023. Her works continue to make top prices at auction, with Christie’s having set the top four records for the artist, most recently in May 2023 with The De Vegh Twins achieving the second highest price at auction for work by Neel, selling for over $2.5M.
Painted in 1917 Suzanne Valadon’s Femme aux seins nus (Autoportrait) is an important loan in the exhibition. Living in Montmartre with her son throughout the 1880s and 1890s, she posed for some of Renoir’s most significant masterpieces, also serving as model to Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Valadon was self-taught and this radical portrait was painted when she was 52, the first of a series of candid nude self-portraits painted at a time when it was considered scandalous for a woman to paint herself bare, and defying the traditional version of the idealised, sensual female body. Baring her breasts both as a symbol of courage, beauty and vulnerability, Valadon would go on to challenge the status quo with alternative representations of the female body, foregrounding interrogatory self-portraits by post-war artists such as Alice Neel, Caroline Coon and Tracey Emin. Christie’s has achieved the three highest records for Valadon’s work at auction, and all top five auction records have been achieved in the global market since 2020, indicating renewed collecting interest in her work.
In a self-portrait by Marc Chagall he faces forward, making direct eye-contact with the viewer, a painting on his easel in the background featuring a woman in a red dress that evokes his second wife Valentina Brodsky, to whom the dedication and title of the work most likely refer to as “Tine”. The gouache was painted in 1965, a time of deep contentment and professional recognition, much of which was spent in the South of France with his loving partner.
Another central work in the exhibition is Lucian Freud’s Portrait of a Man. This work depicts Bernard Walsh, the renowned restaurateur and owner of Wheelers, one of Lucian Freud’s favourite Soho restaurants. A popular haunt for artist’s at the time, Freud would frequent Wheelers and spend long meals with the likes of Francis Bacon and Frank Auerbach. Freud frequently painted those who were close to him, and with Portrait of a Man, the significance of Bernard Walsh in the artist’s life is clear.
Contemporary highlights include Tracey Emin’s 2019 You Carried my Soul, depicting Emin’s most iconic, recognisable and revisited motif: the figure of a reclining nude (on loan). Throughout her painting practice, Emin explores the notions of love, longing, personal tragedy and a sense of physical vulnerability. Painting, a medium that the artist previously abandoned in 1990, has been consistently connected to the artist’s own bodily experience throughout her life. Emin moved back to her hometown of Margate in 2017, where she has recently opened a studio with an artist’s residency programme. Christie’s set the record for a painting by Emin last year when Like a Cloud of Blood sold for £2.3M.
Portrait of Carol Rama (overleaf) is a striking example of Ewa Juszkiewicz’s distinct surrealist portraits and an ode to Italian painter Carol Rama, her signature braided hairstyle prominently displayed.
Often basing her portraits on little-known works, or canvases that were lost or destroyed, Juszkiewicz deliberately obscures her sitters’ identities, replacing their heads with fungi, hair, flowers, insects and drapery. In doing so, she seeks to provoke new associations, liberating her female protagonists from the male gaze and forcing them into bold confrontation with the viewer. They are no longer quiet, pristine specimens, but sensory, metamorphic hybrids, each alive with stories and secrets. By transforming her classical subjects into surreal apparitions, Juszkiewicz prompts the viewer to reflect upon the role of women in historical portraiture.
Other Exhibition Highlights:
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Picasso in Fontainebleau
October 01, 2023 – February 10, 2024
The Museum of Modern Art
Pablo Picasso. Three Musicians. Fontainebleau, summer 1921. Oil on canvas, 6′ 7″ x 7′ 3 3/4″ (200.7 x 222.9 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The Museum of Modern Art announces Picasso in Fontainebleau, a focused exhibition examining three months in a legendary artist’s career, when he created an astonishingly varied body of work between July and September 1921 in the town of Fontainebleau, France. This exhibition will reunite both monumental versions of Picasso’s Three Musicians and Three Women at the Spring with the other major works on canvas, small preparatory paintings, line drawings, etchings, and pastels he created in Fontainebleau. This will be the first time these works have been presented together since they left Picasso’s studio. Encompassing both Cubist and classic academic styles, these works will be complemented by never-before-seen photographs and archival documents.
Pablo Picasso. Three Women at the Spring. Fontainebleau, summer 1921. Oil on canvas, 6′ 8 1/4″ x 68 1/2″ (203.9 x 174 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Allan D. Emil. © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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THE ECHO OF PICASSO
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Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930s
The Met Fifth Avenue
September 7–December 10, 2023
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INGRES THE ARTIST AND HIS PRINCES
Chantilly, musée Condé, Jeu de Paume room
June 3 to October 1
A successful artist of the first half of the 19th century, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) is an unclassifiable and often visionary painter. Behind his apparent classicism there shines an originality and a search for perfection that are still fascinating. What are the roots of such a success? With the advent of the July Monarchy (1830-1848), Ingres found tremendous support in the Orléans family, which contributed to the creation of some of his greatest masterpieces. These close ties are the core of the exhibition at Chantilly: how the prince of artists became the artist of princes. Gathered from national and international collections, paintings and drawings commissioned or collected by the Princes of Orléans will be brought together at Chantilly, along with their studies and variants. They will shed light on one of the greatest French painters' perfectionist and methodical work. New analyses focusing on some of the artist's most important masterpieces, as well as previously unpublished or rediscovered works, will highlight the unique personality of one of the great figures in the history of art.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) Portrait of Ferdinand-Philippe d'0rléans, Royal Prince (1810-1842), 1842 Oil on canvas; H. 1,58 ; W. 1,22 m Paris, Musée du Louvre, Department of Paintings, R.F. 2005-13 © Musée du Louvre distribution RMN-Grand Palais-Angèle Dequier
This story begins with the privileged relationship between Ingres and the heir to the throne. One of his greatest patrons was the Duke Ferdinand d'Orléans, Prince Royal (1810-1842), King Louis-Philippe's eldest son, who acquired in 1839 his consignment sent from Rome, Oedipus and the Sphinx (Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1808). He commissioned him to paint the famous Stratonice (Chantilly, musée Condé, 1835-1840), and also asked him to paint his Portrait (Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1842). These three masterpieces linked to one of the greatest lovers of Ingres' art will be exhibited together for the first time. After their son, the Prince Royal's, accidental death on July 13, 1842, at the age of thirty-two, King Louis-Philippe and Queen Marie-Amélie decided to entrust Ingres with the creation of the stained-glass windows for the Saint-Ferdinand chapel, which was built less than a year after the tragedy on the very spot where the duke died, near the Porte Maillot in Paris. The stained glass windows depict the royal family's patron saints: St. Philip, St. Louis, St. Amelia, St. Ferdinand, etc., Ingres gave these characters the Orléans family members’ faces. The bereaved royal couple repeated the experience the following year at the royal chapel in Dreux (1844),
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) Stratonice, or The Illness of Antiochus, 1840 Canvas; H. 0,57 ; W. 0,98 m Chantilly, musée Condé, PE 432 © RMN-Grand Palais Domaine de Chantilly-Harry Bréjat
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (Montauban, 1780 - Paris, 1867) Self-portrait of Ingres at age twenty-four, 1804 (Salon of 1806) Canvas; H. 0,77 ; W. 0,61 m Chantilly, musée Condé, PE 430 © RMN-Grand Palais Domaine de Chantilly-Harry Bréjat
CHANTILLY, A SANCTUARY TO INGRES’ GLORY
In October 1847, Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale (1822-1897), also commissioned Ingres to paint stained glass windows for the Château de Chantilly's chapel. It had been bequeathed to him by his great-uncle, the last Prince of Condé, and he intended to restore it after the revolutionary destruction. Ingres and the Duke of Orléans' so special relationship was also partly the reason for the Duc d'Aumale's acquisitions, who donated Chantilly to the Institut de France and was one of the 19th century greatest French collectors. It was in memory of his elder brother, who had suddenly passed away, that the Duc d'Aumale acquired five major paintings and a large drawing by the artist. These are now kept at the musée Condé in Chantilly. This exhibition will shed new light on these masterpieces, thanks to the unprecedented reunion of the preparatory drawings and variants associated with them, which will show us round back into the master's studio. The exhibition also recalls that after Ingres's death, the Duc d'Aumale wanted to acquire Homer Deified (Paris, Musée du Louvre, 1865), a major work by Ingres and, in a way, his artistic testament, a project that was abandoned due to political events.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) Oedipus and the Sphinx Canvas Paris, Musée du Louvre © RMN-Grand Palais Musée du Louvre - Frank Raux
STRIVING FOR PERFECTION
gres was sensitive to criticism and a perfectionist, an eternally dissatisfied artist who sought the ideal beauty, constantly revisiting his compositions, modifying them and enriching them, sometimes after several decades. Recent scientific analyses (X-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, etc.) conducted at the Centre de Recherches et de Restauration des Musées de France (C2RMF) in the Louvre Palace, visually show how Ingres reworked and modified his greatest masterpieces. The Self-Portrait is one of them, painted when he was twenty-four possibly (Chantilly, musée Condé), begun in 1804 and completed around 1850; or the great Venus Anadyomene (Chantilly, musée Condé), undertaken in 1808 in Rome and completed in 1848. In this respect, Antiochus and Stratonice (Chantilly, musée Condé), commissioned by the Duc d'Orléans, is a case in point: while Ingres was inspired by his master David (Paris, École nationale supérieure des Beauxof the Orléans family, as well as in Carheil (Loire Atlantique) at the Prince of Joinville's home, and in 1842 commissioned a large religious painting for the Château de Bizy's chapel. The Duke of Montpensier, the Royal Prince's younger brother, soon became close to Ingres, commissioning a work from him in 1847 (Brussels, Musée Royal des Beaux-Arts). It is presented in a unique way by the exhibition. It is this family history, this privileged relationship placed at the heart of the exhibition that will give us the opportunity to rediscover an extraordinary artist's work and personality. chateaudechantilly.fr Arts, 1774), he then sought the ideal composition, producing up to three drawings and five paintings on this theme. Each work was thoroughly researched: Ingres was an admirable draftsman who multiplied studies of the whole and of details, and the exhibition brings together sketches and preparatory studies around each major work.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) Venus Anadyomene Canvas. H. 1,63 ; W. 0,92 m Chantilly, musée Condé, PE 433 © RMN-Grand Palais Domaine de Chantilly
EXTRAORDINARY LOANS
The exhibition is chronological, presenting more than 110 works that retrace, through commissions and princely collections, a panorama of Ingres' career, from his beginnings in Paris to his last years, including his two stays in Italy. The exceptional assistance of the Musée Ingres Bourdelle in Montauban has been key in bringing together nearly forty works by the master, thereby enabling us to study the genesis of the main works on display. The Frick Collection in New York is lending the famous Portrait of Mme d'Haussonville, a major Orléanist figure, which is leaving the New York museum as a special one-off. Major French and foreign museums will also participate in the project through numerous loans: Among others, in France, the Musée du Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Château de Versailles, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, the Institut de France, the Musée Fabre in Montpellier. Also in the United States the Metropolitan Museum of New York and the Hyde Collection (Glens Falls). And then again in the United Kingdom the Barber Institute of Birmingham. In Switzerland, the Kunstmuseum of Bern and the Napoleon Museum of Thurgau in Arenenberg; in Belgium the Royal Museum of Fine Arts; in the Netherlands the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam and the Museum of Amsterdam, etc. , besides numerous private collections. The scientific catalog that will accompany the exhibition will bring together the best specialists on the subject, leading to new advances in our knowledge of the artist. It will be an opportunity to discover little-known major works, some of which never before exhibited in France.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) Madame d'Haussonville, 1845 Canvas; H. 1.318; W. 0.92 m New York, The Frick Collection, 1927.1.81 © Frick collection
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