Art History News

Abstract Expressionism
Royal Academy of Arts, London 24 September 2016 – 2 January 2017
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao 3 February – 4 June 2017

In September 2016, the Royal Academy of Arts will present the first major exhibition of Abstract Expressionism to be held in the UK in almost six decades. With over 150 paintings, sculptures and photographs from public and private collections across the world, this ambitious exhibition encompasses masterpieces by the most acclaimed American artists associated with the movement – among them, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Phillip Guston, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Aaron Siskind, David Smith and Clyfford Still, as well as lesser-known but no less vital artists.

The selection aims to re-evaluate Abstract Expressionism, recognising that though the subject is often perceived to be unified, in reality it was a highly complex, fluid and many-sided phenomenon. Likewise, it will revise the notion of Abstract Expressionism as based solely in New York City by addressing such figures on the West Coast as Sam Francis, Mark Tobey and Minor White.

To ensure an exhibition for the 21st century, informed by new thinking, Abstract Expressionism will re- examine the two main strands into which these artists have often been grouped in the past. Namely, the so-called ‘colour-field’ painters, such as Rothko and Newman, versus the ‘gesture’ or ‘action painters’, epitomised by de Kooning and Pollock. The art of the former has been held to focus on the contemplative or sublime use of colour, whereas the latter supposedly demonstrated spontaneity and improvisation in their work through bold gestural mark-making. Yet these categories are simplistic, belying the deeper concerns that linked many of the artists.

For example, various Abstract Expressionists developed the ‘all-over composition’ by rejecting the formal concept of an image with a single or central focus. Instead, they thought in terms of energised fields, whether of vibrant colour or linear dynamism. Concerns such as myth-making, the sublime, monochrome and an urge to stress the human presence even in abstraction also connected the artists. Similarly, their creations challenged conventional notions of scale with dimensions that ranged from minute intimacy to epic grandeur – dramatic innovations that the exhibition will highlight.

For the first time, the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, which holds 95% of the artist’s work, will loan nine major paintings to the exhibition, establishing the artist at the very forefront of Abstract Expressionism. The paintings by Clyfford Still will be presented in a dedicated gallery within the exhibition.

Jackson Pollock’s monumental Mural, 1943 (University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa) and Blue Poles, 1952 (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra) will be displayed in the same gallery for the first time, a juxtaposition unlikely to ever be repeated.

Further highlights will include Arshile Gorky’s Water of the Flowery Mill, 1944 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); Willem de Kooning’s Woman II, 1952 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York); Franz Kline’s Vawdavitch, 1955 (Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago); Mark Rothko’s No. 15, 1957 (Private Collection); Lee Krasner’s The Eye is the First Circle, 1960 (Courtesy Robert Miller Gallery, New York); and David Smith’s Hudson River Landscape, 1951 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York).

Works by artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Lee Krasner and Ad Reinhardt will also feature amongst others. In addition to Aaron Siskind and Minor White, the photographers will include Harry Callahan, Herbert Matter and Barbara Morgan.

Dr David Anfam, co-curator of Abstract Expressionism said: “Abstract Expressionism will explore this vast phenomenon in depth and across different media, revealing both its diversity and continuities as it constantly pushed towards extremes. It will bring together some of the most iconic works from around the world in a display that is unlikely to be repeated in our lifetime.”

Abstract Expressionism has been organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London with the collaboration of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The exhibition is curated by the independent art historian, David Anfam, alongside Edith Devaney, Contemporary Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts

Dr Anfam is the preeminent authority on Abstract Expressionism, the author of the catalogue raisonné of Mark Rothko’s paintings and Senior Consulting Curator at the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver.

Catalogue

Abstract Expressionism will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. Authors include David Anfam, author of the now-standard textbook Abstract Expressionism (1990); Susan Davidson, Senior Curator, Collections and Exhibitions, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Edith Devaney, Curator of Contemporary Projects, Royal Academy of Arts; Jeremy Lewison, former Director of Collections at Tate; Carter Ratcliff author of Fate of a Gesture: Jackson Pollock and Postwar American Art (1996) and Christian Wurst, researcher on The Catalogue Raisonné of the Drawings of Jasper Johns (forthcoming).

Jackson Pollock, Blue poles (Number 11, 1952), 1952. Enamel and aluminium paint with glass on canvas,
212.1 x 488.9 cm. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. © The Pollock-Krasner Foundation ARS, NY and DACS, London 2016;

Clyfford Still, PH-950, 1950.
Oil on canvas, 233.7 x 177.8 cm.
Clyfford Still Museum, Denver (c) City and County of Denver / DACS 2016.
Photo courtesy the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, CO

Franz Kline
Vawdavitch, 1955
Oil on canvas, 158.1 x 204.9 cm
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Claire B. Zeisler 1976.39
(c) ARS, NY and DACS, London 2016
Photo: Joe Ziolkowski

Mark Rothko
No. 15, 1957
Oil on canvas, 261.6 x 295.9 cm
Private collection, New York
(c) 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko ARS, NY and DACS, London

Willem De Kooning
Woman II, 1952
Oil, enamel and charcoal on canvas, 149.9 x 109.3 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, 1995
Â© 2016 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York and DACS, London 2016

Arshile Gorky
Water of the Flowery Mill, 1944
Oil on canvas, 107.3 x 123.8 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(c) ARS, NY and DACS, London 2016
Digital image (c) 2016. The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence

Lee Krasner
The Eye is the First Circle, 1960
Oil on canvas, 235.6 x 487.4 cm
Private collection, courtesy Robert Miller Gallery, New York
(c) ARS, NY and DACS, London 2016

LYMAN ALLYN ART MUSEUM PRESENTS:

A major exhibition of works painted by J. Alden Weir and other American Impressionists in his circle.

considers the unique inspiration that American Impressionists drew from the eastern Connecticut landscape.

The exhibition, curated by Dr. Anne E. Dawson, Weir scholar and Professor of Art History at Eastern Connecticut State University, brings together for the first time more than forty works from museums and private collections across the country. A Good Summer’s Work opens on May 7 and runs through September 11, 2016.

American Impressionist J. Alden Weir (1852-1919) is most often associated with his studio at Weir Farm National Historic Site in Branchville, Connecticut, yet many of the artist’s finest works were created at his little known retreat in Windham, Connecticut, where he painted each summer for nearly four decades.

Many of these paintings are inspired by the beauty of the rurallandscape as well as the interplay of industry and nature in places like nearby Willimantic. Prominent artists in Weir’s circle, including John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam and Emil Carlsen, whose paintings are also featured in the exhibition, were frequent visitors to the Windham studio; both Hassam and Carlsen also painted there.

Weir painted some of his finest canvases at his home in Windham in eastern Connecticut’s picturesque ‘Quiet Corner.’ Weir’s eastern Connecticut property was one of two working farms he owned in the state. His Branchville farm, in the western part of the state, is now Weir Farm National Historic Site, Connecticut’s only national park and one of only two national parks devoted to an artist. Shedding light on Weir’s life and work in Windham, A Good Summer’s Work aims to correct an imbalance in Weir scholarship and connect new audiences with Connecticut’s artistic heritage and inspiring natural resources.

The Spring House, Windham, c. 1910-1919. J. Alden Weir. Private Collection.

Drawing on Dr. Dawson’s extensive research, A Good Summer’s Work: J. Alden Weir, Connecticut Impressionist enriches our understanding of the rural retreat movement in Connecticut and introduces new audiences to the ways that artists have found inspiration in its landscape.

The exhibition is accompanied by a companion book, Rare Light: J. Alden Weir in Windham, CT, 1882- 1919, edited by Dr. Dawson with essays contributed by other art historians. The book includes all major works from the exhibition and others. An educational website, WeirinWindham.org, and a documentary, “Love at First Sight: J. Alden Weir in Windham, CT,” created by Dr. Dawson and her students, are now available.

Programming for the exhibition will include gallery talks and lectures; a film screening of Connecticut: Season of Light, Betsy White, producer; a bus trip to Weir Farm; subsidized school field trips; adult group tours; hands-on art classes related to exhibit themes and free children’s art activities.

The Weir exhibition has been produced with generous funding from the National Endowment for the Arts; The National Park Service; The Frank Loomis Palmer Fund, Bank of America, Trustee; Hendel’s Inc.; and Americana Furniture.

Joan Miró (1893 – 1983) once famously declared that he wanted to “assassinate” painting. Today he is widely regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20 th century. From February 26 through June 12, 2016 Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt presents an until now little discussed aspect of his oeuvre in a focused solo exhibition: Miró ’s preference for large - scale formats and his fascination with the wall.

In his painterly practice, the wall was the starting point – both as an object to be depicted and as an inspiration for the textural quality of his w orks. Miró distanced himself from the simple reproduction of reality and equated the picture plane with the wall. He explored the structure of its surface and aimed to dissolve the boundaries of the image space. His particular approach with the wall explains the care with which he selected and prepared the materials and the grounds of his pictures at every stage of his career . Miró’s paintings hereby gained the haptic qualities and textures of wall surfaces. The artist used whitewashed canvas, coarse burlap, Masonite (hardboard), sandpaper and tarpaper in order to create unique visual worlds of outstanding materiality .

The exhibition at the Schirn covers over half a century of Miró’s oeuvre, beginning with his emblematic painting

The Farm / La Ferme (1921/22 ),

continuing with his iconic dream paintings of the 1920s, his key work

Painting (The Magic of Colour) / Peinture (La Magie de la couleur)

from 1930, his works and frieze formats painted on unconventional grounds in t he 1940s and 1950s and ending with the artist’s late works , such as the monumental triptych

Blue I – III / Bleu I – III (1961)

and the extraordinary Painting I – III / Peinture I – III ( July 27, 1973).

The Schirn exhibition brings together around 50 works from imp ortant museums and public collections across the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, as well as important private collections, and aims to present a new approach to Miró’s art.

Max Hollein, director of Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, illustrated the focus of the exhibition as follows: “The importance Miró accorded the wall in his painterly oeuvre is fascinating. His works are powerful, monumental and bear witness t o an incredibly original approach – especially when viewed in the flesh. Miró fans and those less familiar with his work will be able to discover unexpected art works in the exhibition. The Schirn’s aim is to provide insights into less well - known work complexes or themes within the oeuvre of the established master artists of art history: the present exhibition highlights crucial aspects that provide new aspects to looking at Miró’s work.”

Curator Simonetta Fraquelli said of the artist: “ Miró viewed both reality and its representation in art in material terms. For him, the wall was thus not merely an object to be depicted: its materiality also dictated the intensely physical, tactile quality of his images. In this way, the matter of reality corresponded to the matter of his paintings. This move away from a straightforward reproduction of reality to the equation of the picture plane with a wall in formed his work from the outset.

TOUR OF THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition starts with the early masterpiece The Farm / La Ferme (1921/22), (above) in which the artist depicts the brick wall of the stable alongside the goings - on on the farm of the Miró family in Montroig, South of Barcelona meticulously, in great detail and in an extraordinarily poetic way. The wall with all of its “blemishes”, such as blades of grass, germ buds, insects, stains or cracks in the grout are rendered in minute detail. The fact that Miró’s visual language references modest, unadorn ed walls is mad e clear by the juxtaposition of this piece with the three - part large format work

Painting / Peinture of 1973/74. Radical and monochrome, these paintings also provide a counterpoint to Miró’s works in bright colors.

The exhibition pairs works from the early and late phases of his career, bringing together works that use similar painting grounds or everyday materials of the same kind. In the mid - 1920s, Miró dripped and splashed paint onto blue ground ing in order to create the impression of old, weather - worn walls.

This process resulted in paintings reminiscent of graffiti, such as

Painting Poem ( Stars in the Sexes of Snails ) / Peinture - Poème (Étoiles en des sexes d’escargot) (1925)

or Spanish Flag / Drapeau espangnol (1925).

Miró often worked in series, and certain formats recurred throughout his entire oeuvre. Along with blue painting grounds, brown ones form the second largest group of paintings.

The exhibition includes the exceptional paintings Blue / Bleu (1925) and some of his widely acclaimed dream paintings, such as

Painting (Figures: The Fratellini Brothers ) / Peinture (Personnages: Les frères Fratellini) made in 1927.

The bright blue color used in these works is captivating and characterizes many of his canvases well into the 1960s, including the visually stunning tryptic

Blue I – III / Bleu I - III (1961), over three meters in width,

and the frieze - like Painting (For David Fernández Miró) / Peinture (Per a David Fernández Miró) ( November 28, 1964).

The color blue in these and other works has often been read as alluding to the sky. Yet the artist himself associated blue with memories of the walls of farm houses in his native Catalonia, which h ad been splashed with blue vitriol wash .

One of the key works in the presentation at the Schirn is the piece

Painting (The Magic of Colour) / Peinture (La Magie de la couleur) from 1930.

By employing a sparse, persuasive materiality and reduced formal language it references the wall per se like no other painting. Two large patches in red and yellow, surrounded by an empty space made up of white painterly ground ing , exemplify Miró’s effort to overcome traditional approaches to composing images. This painting really unlocks the meaning of his famous declaration of wanting to “ assassinate ” painting, as h e radically questioned previously accepted, basic rules of technique and composition in art. Here, Miró forwent all allusion and poetic context. Again, the white paint references the whitewashed farm houses of his youth.

In his attempt at overcoming traditional painting, Miró employed unconventional painting grounds as early as the late 1920s and 1930s, including untreated canvas, hardboard or sandpaper and materials such as burlap or tarpaper. This resulted in works with a special texture and materiality, for example the tarpaper collage

Head of Georges Auric / Tête de Georges Auric (1929),

the Signs and Figurations / Signes et figurations drawn on sandpaper in the years 1935 - 6 or the Paintings / Peintures on Masonite of 1936 .

The exhibition further showcases works that reflect Miró’s thoughts on the advent of the Spanish Civil War, the world - political situation in the late 1930s and the events preceding the Second World War.

The paintings executed in a bold style, in part on coarse burlap, such as

Figures and Birds in the Night / Personnages et oiseaux dans la nuit ( December 1939), were the ones that came the closest to paintings made on bare walls.

In 1937, Miró worked alongside Picasso for the pavilion of the Spanish Republic at the Paris World Fair. He here created his first mural in public space, which was regarded as being a strong political statement. His interest in landscape formats reminiscent of large friezes is to be discerned among others in Women and Birds / Femmes et oiseaux (1945).

After World War II, Miró increasingly focused on paintings in monumental formats. Included in the exhibition at the Schirn is the piece Painting / Peinture (1953) , which is almost four meters wide. It speaks of Miró’s enthusiasm for monumental murals and ceramics and is characterized by an exceptional freedom in terms of drawing, an energetic application of paint, strong contrasts and a strong sculptural quality.

The painting

The Awakening of Madame Bou - Bou at Dawn / Le Réveil de Madame Bou - Bou à l’aube (begun in 1939, completed April 29, 1960 ) , with its fine white lines seems almost as though painted onto a weather - worn wall and points to the later, ephemeral drawings made of the walls of his studio “Son Boter” in Palma de Mallorca.

The works Painting I - III / Peinture I - III , conceived as a triptych in 1973, occupy a special place in the exhibition. The engrossing blue patches illustrate Miró’s unshakable belief in the inspirational power of bare walls, consolidating his thoughts on murals, which were formative for Abstract Expressionism, and bear witness to his boundless creative vitality even in old age.

It was of vital importance to Miró that his work be publicly accessible. In accordance with his wishes the exhibition therefore ends with two extraordinary designs for ceramic murals for the public sphere, shown in original scale. He conceived the Wall of the Moon (Cartoon for the UNESCO Mural) / Mur de la lune (Marquette Mur de l’UNESCO) and the Wall of the Sun (Cartoon for the UNESCO Mural) / Mur du soleil (Ma rquette Mur de l’UNESCO) (both around 1957 ) for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The preparatory work for these reveal his extensive examination of the possibilities available in creating large format ceramics. At the same time, they are great examples of Miró’s artistic reaction to incidental drawings and the “blemishes ” found on bare walls – as well as his working process, which could begin with a small sketch or doodle and lead to a painting of monumental size.

An exhibition in cooperation with Kunstha us Zürich.

Shelburne Museum - Vermont June 18—October 30, 2016

Bennington Museum - Vermont July 1 through November 5, 2017.

Grandma Moses: American Modern takes a new look at this iconic artist through a modernist lens. Co-organized with Bennington Museum in Vermont, the exhibition showcases more than 60 paintings, works on paper, and related materials by Moses alongside work by other 19th- and 20th-century folk and modern artists. Grandma Moses: American Modern is on view at Shelburne Museum (Shelburne, Vermont) June 18 through October 20, 2016.

“Grandma Moses is best known for paintings of simple farm life and the rural countryside that established her reputation as a wildly popular latter-day folk artist,” said Shelburne Museum Director Thomas Denenberg. “This exhibition reexamines her work and explores the way she emerged onto the national stage both as a product of and foil to mid-century American modernism.”

Grandma Moses: American Modernexplores the work of the beloved self-taught American artist Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses (1860-1961), whose nostalgic and romanticized paintings were ubiquitous in post-World War II America. Her work exemplifies an ideal of small-town America that took root in the popular imagination in the 1930s and became a national institution by the 1950s. Although Moses’s paintings seem like pure nostalgia, they are in fact visually sophisticated paintings that melded her memories of growing up in a preindustrial America with her more recent experiences in an increasingly modernized, homogenous nation. Grandma Moses: American Modern counters Moses’s marginalization as strictly a “folk” artist and a phenomenon within popular culture to contextualize her work within a larger narrative of 20th-century American art. Her paintings will be paired alongside fellow folk artists like Edward Hicks and Joseph Pickett as well as her modernist contemporaries, including Morris Hirshield and Helen Frankenthaler. The exhibition features paintings from the permanent collections of Shelburne and Bennington museums along with major loans from the Galerie St. Etienne in New York.

Shelburne and Bennington museums are uniquely appropriate institutions for organizing Grandma Moses: American Modern. Both institutions have had important relationships with Grandma Moses, both during her lifetime and as stewards of her legacy. Electra Haveremeyer Webb, the founder of Shelburne Museum, and Moses became fast friends toward the end of their lives. Moses frequently visited the museum and one of Mrs. Webb’s final pursuits was organizing an exhibition of Moses’s paintings in 1960. Bennington Museum’s close identification with Grandma Moses dates to 1963 when Otto Kallir and Galerie St. Etienne created the first of several temporary exhibitions at the museum. These led to the “Grandma Moses Gallery,” where at times up to 80 paintings were on loan all through the 1970s. The museum’s long-standing interest in Moses has led to gifts and purchases. Today the museum holds the largest public collection of her work: more than 40 paintings, needleworks, the 18th-century tilt-top table she decorated with landscapes and then used as a painting table, her iconic apron, photographs, documents, and even the schoolhouse she studied in as a little girl.

Grandma Moses began painting in earnest at the age of 78, a phenomenal example of an individual successfully beginning a career in the arts late in life. A down-to-earth farm wife from rural upstate New York, Moses was understood in her lifetime as a memory painter, an artist from an earlier era and a simpler time who provided an ideology of hearth and home for the new patterns of life in suburban America. Images of her paintings have appeared on greeting cards, housewares, magazine advertisements, television, and in the movies. She won numerous awards in her lifetime and was awarded two honorary doctoral degrees; her paintings are included in museum collections around the country.

Grandma Moses: American Modernwill be accompanied by a beautifully illustrated catalogue published by Skira Rizzoli Publishing and with essays by Thomas Denenberg, Director of Shelburne Museum; Jamie Franklin, Curator of Collections at Bennington Museum; Diana Korzenik, professor emerita at the Massachusetts College of Art; and Alexander Nemerov, professor of art history at Stanford University.

Anna Mary Robertson (“Grandma”) Moses (1860-1961), The Old Checkered House, 1853, 1944. Oil on pressed wood, 20 3/4 x 28 in. Copyright © 2016 Grandma Moses Properties Co, New York. Bennington Museum, Museum Purchase. 2000.2.

Anna Mary Robertson (“Grandma”) Moses (1860-1961), A Tramp on Christmas Day, 1946. Oil on academy board, 15 3/8 x 19 3/8 in. Copyright ©2016 Grandma Moses Properties Co, New York. Collection of Shelburne Museum, Museum purchase. 1961-210.2. Photography by Andy Duback.

Grandma Moses at Auction

FEATURES A BROAD SPECTRUM OF 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY ARTISTIC MOVEMENTS

MODERNIST WORKS BY AVERY, DOVE, O’KEEFFE, WEBER

19^TH-CENTURY WORKS BY CHURCH, SARGENT, WHISTLER

Christie’s announces the spring sale of American Art taking place on Thursday, May 19 in Rockefeller Plaza. This comprehensive auction features 98 lots with works ranging from major American modernists, Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, and Max Weber, to 19^th-century masters, Frederic Edwin Church, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler. Several private collections highlight the auction including The Collection of Kippy Stroud, The Gail and John Liebes Collection, Property of H.F. ‘Gerry’ Lenfest, and The Collection of Lois and Harry Horvitz.

Leading the sale, is a large-scale painting by Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), Lake George Reflection, painted circa 1921-22, from the Collection of J.E. Safra (estimate: $8,000,000-12,000,000). Inspired by O’Keeffe’s frequent visits to the family home of Alfred Stieglitz, this work continues in the tradition of earlier Hudson River School painters inspired by the sublime topography of the region, but interpreted in O’Keeffe’s avant-garde style of abstraction. The painting can be viewed either vertically or horizontally and this ambiguity of orientation creates awork that is at once highly representational and wholly abstract.First exhibited in 1923 by the artist at the Anderson Galleries, the work was hung vertically, encouraging anthropomorphic comparisons most closely relating to her magnified flower imagery, which she was simultaneously exploring.

Four exceptional works by Georgia O’Keeffe highlight The Collection of Kippy Stroud, who was the founder of the Fabric Workshop Museum. Led by Red Hills with Pedernal, White Clouds, painted in 1936 (estimate: $3,000,000-5,000,000), this work embodies O’Keeffe’s lifelong fascination with shapes and colors found in nature as well as her close connection to the American Southwest.

Also included in the collection is an early abstract watercolor by O’Keeffe, Blue I, executed in 1916, (estimate: $2,500,000-3,500,000), which represents her investigation of pure abstraction and acts as one of the earliest and most original abstract images in the history of American art. Blue I is the current auction record for a watercolor by O’Keeffe, having previously sold for $3,008,000 at Christie’s New York.

From The Collection of H.F. ‘Gerry’ Lenfest isMax Weber’s (1881-1961), New York, painted in 1913 (estimate: $1,500,000-2,500,000), which is among the earliest works to depict America’s energized and technologically advanced era at the turn of the century. The large-scale oil on canvas was executed following the artist’s return to New York City after an extended stay in Paris. With a fusion of Cubist and Futurist elements, New York marks the moment of Weber’s breakthrough into his singular modernist style. This work debuted the same year it was painted, featuring prominently in Roger Fry’s first Grafton Group Exhibition in London, where Weber was the best represented artist in this significant international exhibition.

Highlighting the 19^th-century works is an exceptional landscape by Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), A New England Lake, (estimate: $3,500,000-5,500,000), painted in 1854. Executed during a momentous turning point in his career, this workrepresents the culmination of Church’s early years perfecting his notion of New England topography, but also a pivotal change in style integrating the more dramatic light and aura which would create his blockbuster works of the following years.

Other 19^th-century highlights come from the Gail and John Liebes Collection, including a stunning portrait by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), François Flameng and Paul Helleu, painted circa 1880 (estimate: $1,200,000-1,800,000)

and a large-scale floral still-life by John La Farge (1835-1910), Hollyhocks, painted in 1863 (estimate: $600,000-800,000).

The Western selection is led by Alfred Jacob Miller’s (1810-1874), Pawnee Running a Buffalo, painted in 1854, (estimate: $1,000,000-1,500,000), commissioned for the same family whose collection it has remained in until now.

Other Western highlights come from the Collection of Lois and Harry Horvitz, includingFrank Tenney Johnson’s (1874-1939), Through the Starlit Hours, painted in 1935 (estimate: $150,000-250,000).

From John Singer Sargent’s striking Poppies (estimate $4–6 million), to Norman Rockwell’s remarkable 1949 Post cover Road Block (estimate $4–6 million), this sale presents a range of styles and genres from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Highlights from the sale will be on view at Sotheby’s New York beginning 29 April, alongside Impressionist & Modern and Contemporary Art, with the full sale on exhibition beginning 14 May.

John Singer Sargent painted Poppies in 1886,(estimate $4–6 million) while at work on

Carnation Lily, Lily, Rose,

one of his most important works now in the collection of the Tate Britain. In the wake of the scandal caused by his daring

Portrait of Madame X,

Sargent departed for England from Paris. He sustained a head injury while swimming on a boat trip along the Thames, and a friend brought him to Broadway, a nearby village in the English Cotswolds, to recuperate. He began working on Carnation Lily, Lily, Rose almost immediately, painting with a newfound freedom to portray anything that inspired him. The present work is likely the only surviving depiction of the splendid poppies he observed in a garden there, and was most recently included in the museum exhibition Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse, co-organized by the Royal Academy of Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

The May auction also will offer Sargent’s Staircase in Capri ( estimate $1.8–2.5 million), inspired by the artist’s travels to the Mediterranean island in the summer of 1878. The painting was first owned by Auguste Hirsch, a French artist with whom Sargent shared a studio in Paris in the late 1870s. It was later acquired by Pamela Harriman, who served as the United States Ambassador to France in the mid-1990s.

Among the most sophisticated and complex compositions Rockwell created for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, Road Block (estimate $4–6 million) demonstrates the artist’s distinctive sense of humor and unparalleled gift for storytelling–two of the qualities that have incited comparisons between Rockwell’s work and filmmaking. Regarding his 1949 painting Road Block, NormanRockwell bemoaned: “Why, oh, why do I paint such involved and complicated pictures?”

The May sale also will include Rockwell’s Hobo and Dog (estimate $1.5–2.5 million), sold by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Appearing on the cover of The Post on October 18, 1924, it features one of Rockwell’s favorite models of the period: James K. Van Brunt.

Originally acquired directly from the artist by Philadelphia publisher Leonard E.B. Andrews in 1986, The Prussian © 2016 Andrew Wyeth / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York(estimate $2.5–3.5 million) is one of the best works in a series of images by Andrew Wyeth that depict the now famous Helga Testorf, a neighbor who became his primary muse for over 15 years. Wyeth executed this highly finished work in drybrush,a technique that allowed the artist to capture Helga’s physical likeness with a keen attention to detail, and to achieve a rich and sculptural surface.

Embodying Thomas Wilmer Dewing’s inimitable and highly sophisticated aesthetic, The White Birch (estimate $2–3 million) is a sumptuous landscape that he painted while staying in the artists’ colony of Cornish, New Hampshire. The work displays the wide range of diverse aesthetic sources that Dewing drew from during this period, as well as his ability to synthesize them into an aesthetic all his own.This masterpiece, which comes to auction in an original frame designed by Stanford White, also boasts an impressive exhibition history, having been shown extensively across the United States, Russia and Japan.

Additional highlights are two paintings by the modern master Milton Avery being offered by the Art Institute of Chicago.

Pink Cock (estimate $500,000–700,000), 2016© Milton Avery / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York was completed in 1943, as the artist developed what is now considered his mature aesthetic.

Lanky Nude, estimate $150,000–250,000), painted in 1950, represents Avery’s thoroughly modern interpretation of the traditional theme of the reclining nude. Both paintings showcase the unique manner in which Avery transforms a representational subject into an evocative, semi-abstracted arrangement of shape and color.

Several additional modernist examples include Georgia O'Keeffe’s powerful 1955 painting, Black Patio Door–Small, the only work from this important series still in private hands(estimate $500,000–700,000). © 2016 The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society

The Baltimore Museum of Art: October 23, 2016-January 29, 2017

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: March 11-May 29, 2017

Featuring two of the Bay Area’s artistic heroes, Matisse/Diebenkorn will be the first major exhibition to explore the profound inspiration Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993) discovered in the work of French modernist Henri Matisse (1869-1954). On view at SFMOMA from March 11 through May 29, 2017 after its initial presentation at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the expanded San Francisco exhibition will feature approximately 100 objects—40 paintings and drawings by Matisse and 60 paintings and drawings by Diebenkorn—from museums and private collections throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Following the trajectory of Diebenkorn’s career, the exhibition will illuminate how this influence evolved over time through different pairings and groupings of both artists’ work. As a Stanford University art student in 1943, Diebenkorn first saw the work of Matisse at the Palo Alto home of Sarah Stein, one of the French painter’s earliest champions.

While stationed at Quantico, Virginia, during World War II, Diebenkorn pursued a serious study of Matisse’s paintings in East Coast museums. These experiences introduced subjects, compositional strategies, a palette, and techniques that would later tremendously impact Diebenkorn’s work. Outstanding selections from his Urbana and Berkeley periods (1953-55), representational period (1955-67) and Ocean Park period (1968-80) will be shown side by side with seminal works by Matisse.

The exhibition will reveal the lasting power of Diebenkorn’s firsthand experiences of the French artist’s work, from the Matisse retrospectives he saw in Los Angeles in 1952 and 1966 to his visits to see the great Matisse collections at the State Hermitage Museum and the Pushkin Museum in the Soviet Union in 1964.

With a longstanding history in the Bay Area, Matisse’s expressive paintings were first introduced to San Francisco shortly after the 1906 earthquake, shocking the arts community with their startling colors and brushwork. The artist’s very first west coast survey was held at SFMOMA in 1936, a year after the museum was founded.

His work—specifically

Femme au chapeau (Woman with a Hat), 1905

—has become a historical anchor to SFMOMA’s painting and sculpture department.

Diebenkorn had deep personal and professional connections with the area, growing up in San Francisco’s Ingleside Terraces neighborhood; attending Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley; and excelling as a student and instructor at the San Francisco Art Institute (then the California School of Fine Arts), and as an instructor at the California College of the Arts. Though they never met, Matisse and Diebenkorn will be connected through this stunning exhibition as never before, allowing visitors to discover new views of the artists long-beloved in the Bay Area.

Matisse’s influence on Diebenkorn is most visible in the younger artist’s figurative works from the 1950s and 1960s, but also evident in the structure, composition,and light of his earlier andlater abstractions.

The exhibition is organized chronologically through Diebenkorn’s career beginning with some of the first Matisse works that Diebenkorn viewed in the Palo Alto home of Sarah Stein, one of Matisse’s first patrons, and at the BMA, The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.and The Museum of Modern Art in New Yorkin the 1940s. These works introduced the motifs, palette and techniquesthat later influenced the American painter.

A rich selection of exceptional paintings and drawings from Diebenkorn’s representational period (1955-1967) illustrate the artist’s shift from abstraction towards identifiable subject matter and will be paired with some of the French master’s own compositions that were of particular relevance. Diebenkorn continued to seek out Matisse’s example, most notably during a trip to the Soviet Union in 1964, where he saw the extensive collections of works by Matisse in the StateHermitage Museum and the Pushkin Museum.

This was followed by a visit two years later to a large Matisse retrospective in Los Angeles, where he saw over 300 works by the French master. Two highly significant abstract Matisse paintings that Diebenkorn saw in the 1966 retrospective will be featured in the exhibition.

Diebenkorn returned to abstraction soon after moving to Ocean Park in Santa Monica, California in 1967. He is best known for his color and light-filled abstract compositions produced there. The exhibition will conclude with a selection of his Ocean Parkpaintings(1968-1980) juxtaposed with a selection of Matisse’s most influential works.

Catalogue

A fully illustrated catalogue will be produced with essays by Matisse/Diebenkorn co-curators Katy Rothkopf, BMA Senior Curator of European Painting & Sculpture,and Janet Bishop, SFMOMA Weisel Family Curator of Painting and Sculpture. Both examine Diebenkorn’s interactions with Matisse’swork throughout his long career. It will also include an introduction by John Elderfield, Allen R. Adler Distinguished Curator and Lecturer at the Princeton University Art Museum and Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, who has curated groundbreaking exhibitions on both artists. Jodi Roberts, Associate Curator of Special Projects at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University will contribute an essay regarding the relationship between Matisse’s drawings and Diebenkorn’s own graphic work.The exhibition catalogue will be co-published with DelMonico Books/Prestel.

Richard Diebenkorn Untitled (Ocean Park), 1971 Charcoal on paper 26 1/4 x 18 5/8 inches Henri Matisse View of Notre Dame, 1914, Oil on Canvas 58 x 37 inches

Henri Matisse The Piano Lesson 1916. Oil on canvas, 8′ 1/2″ x 6′ 11 3/4″ & Richard Diebenkorn Ocean Park #16, 1968 Oil on canvas 92 1/2 x 76 in.

Full Images Credits:

Henri Matisse. View of Notre Dame. 1914. The Museum of Modern Art, New York: Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, and the Henry Ittleson, A. Conger Goodyear, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Sinclair Funds, and the Anna Erickson Levene Bequest given in memory of her husband, Dr. Phoebus Aaron Theodor Levene, 116.1975.©2015 Succession H. Matisse, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York

Richard Diebenkorn. Ocean Park #79.1975. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and with funds contributed by private donors, 1977, 1977-28-1. ©Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

Outstanding review

On May 10, Christie’s will feature

Clyfford Still’s PH-234, 1948 (estimate: $25-35m)

among the top lots of its New York Evening Sale of Post-War & Contemporary Art.

The majority of Still’s work resides in the collections of museums and institutions, including the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, making the appearance of PH-234 a rare opportunity to acquire an extraordinary and iconic example of Still's work at the heights of his artistic power. In its’ nearly 60 years PH-234 has only had two previous owners and was included in an major Still retrospective curated by James Demetrion at The Hirshhorn Museum in 2001, Clyfford Still: Paintings, 1944-1960.

Laura Paulson, Chairman, Post-War and Contemporary Art, America’s, remarked: “Clyfford Still’s paintings are among the most powerful and important produced in latter part of the twentieth century, and we are honored to present PH-234 in one of the rare instances that an example of this magnitude comes onto the market from the artist. PH-234 is a consummate masterpiece by Still, which conveys the essence of his awe-inspiring oeuvre. Demonstrating Still’s distinctive style and technique, PH-234 quickly reveals the rich and almost limitless possibilities of color, surface and space. Originally acquired in 1957 by visionary English collector, Ted Power, who was one of the first English collectors to acquire major examples of the New York School and Pop Art, PH-234 is a commanding representation of the visceral potency of Abstract Expressionism at its zenith.”

Still’s reputation as one of the giants of Abstract Expressionism is built upon this mastery of the painterly process. Unique among his contemporaries, Still built up his richly textured surface by painting layer upon layer of richly pigmented oil paint carefully sculpting and applying each brush stroke. Still would often scrape away the surface only to rebuild it again, resulting in a surface both densely layered with color or often transcendent, conveying deep, mystical space. The spatial relationships created from this process and Still's vision, especially as seen in PH-234, result in a composition that is dynamic, almost topographical, and what ultimately defined Still's mastery of the canvas and set him apart from his colleagues such as Pollock, Newman and Rothko.

This painting was produced during the period immediately after Still's first great solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of this Century Gallery in February 1946. In the introduction to the exhibition Still's then friend, Mark Rothko, related Still's new art to the epic and transcendent dimension of "Myth" and explained how Still, "working out West, and alone," had, with "unprecedented forms and completely personal methods," arrived at a completely new way of painting. The simple, seemingly organic forms of Still's painting and its bold expansive fields of space and color made, "the rest of us look academic" Jackson Pollock observed at the time.
PH-234 was shown in Still’s first solo exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1951, and acquired in 1957 by E.J. "Ted" Power, one of the great collectors of international postwar art. Beginning in the mid-1950s, Power sought out the newest and most radical art he could find. He taught himself to discern what moved him and refined his eye to search for quality works by artists such as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman. He acquired PH-234 in January 1957 after becoming enthralled with the work of the Abstract Expressionists at the important exhibition of new American art organized by the Tate Gallery in London.

Still’s work, and examples such as PH-234, in particular represent the pinnacle of Abstract Expressionism—a pure form of painting that relies solely on its creator to express the power and intense visceral nature of its form. His best works have an inherent power that is perhaps best summed up by Still himself, who in a rare moment of retrospection characterized the fundamental raison d’etre of his work when he concluded, "You can turn the lights out. The paintings will carry their own fire" (C. Still, quoted in M. Auping, Clyfford Still, exh. cat. Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2002, p. 303). This painting carries this fire to its very core.

Top three lots for Clyfford Still at auction

1. 1949-A-No. 1, oil on canvas, 1949 | Sale of Sotheby's New York: Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Estimate: $25,000,000 - 35,000,000 | Price Realized: $61,682,500

2. 1947-Y-No. 2, oil on canvas, 1947 | Sale of Sotheby's New York: Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Estimate: 15,000,000 - 20,000,000 | Price Realized: $31,442,500

3. 1947-R-no. 1, oil on canvas, 1947 | Sale of Christie's New York: Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Estimate: $5,000,000 - 7,000,000 | Price Realized $21,296,000

An intimate family portrait by Lucian Freud painted in 1992; a pivotal example from 1864 of British Aestheticism at auction for the first time in 100 years by Frederic, Lord Leighton; and from 1778, an exquisite portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds on the market for the first time, are among the great works of British art to be offered in a sale alongside an exhibition which will launch Christie's 250^th anniversary in London this June.

Building on the success of Christie's pioneering series of curated Evening Sales to date, including Looking Forward to the Past and The Artist's Muse in 2015, Christie's will celebrate the artistic legacy of four centuries of British artists, with Defining British Art: Evening Sale (30 June) and Defining British Art: Loan Exhibition (17 June to 15 July).

Ever since James Christie first opened his doors for business in 1766, in St James’s London, where the headquarters remain today, Christie’s has championed British art and artists, with both Reynolds and Gainsborough among the regular visitors to Christie’s salerooms. The greatest masterpieces are those that define the artist; paintings and sculpture that reflect the quintessential nature of that artist’s lasting legacy. Christie’s Loan Exhibition and Evening Sale will present works which exemplify this.

Lucian FreudIb and Her Husband, 1992, is a scene of family affection: (Estimate on Request: in the region of £18 million). The tender brushstrokes that describe the entwined figures of Freud’s daughter Ib (Isobel Boyt) embraced by her partner Pat Costelloe, give a glimpse into the world of the artist’s family at a moment of extreme intimacy: Ib’s pregnancy. Freud’s paintings of his daughters trace an ever-growing tenderness between father and child that was only forged later in life, since Freud had been absent for much of Ib’s childhood. This painting has been exhibited in Freud’s major retrospective, ‘Lucian Freud: Recent Work’ (1993-4) which took place in London, The Whitechapel Art Gallery; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

At auction for the first time in 100 years, Golden Hours, 1864, by Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830–1896) is a celebration of youth, beauty, and love, three universal elements which transcend time and geographies (estimate: £3-5 million). Transporting the viewer to 16^th century Venice and the world of Giorgione, this work is recognised as a pivotal masterpiece of British Aestheticism, allowing the viewer to revel in the seductive atmosphere, and to dream. With most major works by Leighton in museum collections, this is one of the last remaining examples in private hands. Last seen in public 20 years ago, it was exhibited in the Leighton retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1996.

Never previously offered for sale, Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. Portrait of Lucy Long, Mrs George Hardinge - a society beauty - is one of the finest works by the artist to come to the market in a generation (estimate: £2-3 million). Preserved in remarkable condition, this is a prime example of the work of the first President of the Royal Academy, who was a close friend and advisor to James Christie. Offered from the collections at Harewood House, Yorkshire, it was originally painted for Georgina, Lady Peachey in 1778. A prime date for the artist, it has passed by direct descent through the Marquess’ of Clanricarde to the present day. Last included in a public exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1934, this painting has not been seen outside of Harewood for over 80 years.

6 APRIL - 1 AUGUST 2016

The Centre Pompidou is proposing a journey through the work of a singular figurein modernity and one of the 20th century’s most iconic artists: Paul Klee. This is the first major in France since the 1969 exhibition at the Musée National d’Art Moderne.

Featuring two hundred and thirty works loaned by the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern and various major international and private collections, this retrospective casts a fresh look on Klee’s work. It sheds light on the way he used irony through an approach originating in the early German Romanticism, consisting in a constant shift between a satire and the affirmation of an absolute, finite and infinite, real and ideal. In this respect, Klee’s use of irony is inspired by the philosopher Friedrich Schlegel: «Everything in it must be a joke, and everything must be serious: everything must be offered up with an open heart, and profoundly concealed.» This new approach also explores Klee’s relationship with his peers and the artistic movements of his time.

The exhibition is divided into seven thematic sections highlighting each stage in Klee’s artistic development:

I. Satirical beginnings

After his studies in Munich, Klee spent the winter of 1901-1902 in Italy. Faced with the grandeur of Antiquity and its Renaissance, the young artist became aware of his own place in history: that of an imitator obliged to continue a now outmoded classical idealism. His solution was satire: a modern mode of expression that could assert both high ideals and a critical view of the state of the world. « I serve beauty by depicting its enemies (caricature and satire) », he wrote in his diary. Based on this dialectical inversion central to Romantic irony, Klee began producing essentially graphic works, in which he expressed his often scathing thoughts on relations between the sexes, his relationship to society and his position as an artist. It was also a time when he experimented with techniques, trying out reverse glass painting and exploring plastic forms. This period culminated in the illustrations  for Candide ou l’Optimisme by Voltaire, a writer much venerated by Klee.

2. Klee and Cubism

Klee discovered Cubism in Munich in late 1911, and a year later during his stay in Paris. From then on, the formal inventions of Cubism nourished his pictorial explorations, often in a dialectical way. Whilst using a prismatic vocabulary, Klee’s childlike drawings are nevertheless an ironic representation of the Cubist decomposed figures that he found deprived of all vitality. In the series of watercolours painted during his formative stay in Tunis in 1914, he introduced effects of distance – for example by leaving the vertical bands of white paper that corresponded to the marks left by the elastic bands he used when painting outdoors. This distancing technique was also evident in his highly singular approach, where

he cut up finished compositions into two or more parts, turning them into independent works or combining them differently on new supports. Here Klee asserted a creative impulse whose roots lay paradoxically in the act of destruction.

3. Mechanical theatre

At the end of the First Wold War, Klee’s work began to feature the imagery of mechanised figures. Inspired by his experience in aviation maintenance, Klee transformed birds into planes, often in attack formation. He started using oil transfers: an indirect technique that depersonalised the lines of the drawing. The aesthetics of the machine were then much in vogue in Dadaist circles, from Francis Picabia to Raoul Hausmann. Klee’s contact with the Zurich Dadaists revived his interest in the representation of machines and equipment, and the effects produced by their mechanisms. As a teacher at the Bauhaus, he began to create hybrid beings, half-human, half-object. Through mechanical simplification, he used the motifs of automatons and puppets to condemn the loss of vitality and the narrowing of inner life brought about by industrial rationalisation, asking ironically « When will machines start bearing children? »

4. Klee and Constructivisms

The new watchword proclaimed in 1923 by Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus («Art and technology: a new unity») marked a turning point for the school. Klee was highly responsive to it. He then embarked upon a tightrope act, seeking a balance between his intuitive approach and the new contemporary dogmas. He took up certain aspects of modernist expression such as the grid, while sidestepping its rigidity. His paintings, structured by squares, in turn evoked musical rhythms, stained glass painting, tapestries, multi-coloured flowerbeds and aerial views of fields. The Bauhaus’s move to the modern city of Dessau in 1925 further induced the school’s movement towards the use of photographic techniques, ardently supported by its new teacher, László Moholy-Nagy. Klee reacted in his own way: rational aesthetics acted as a foil, enabling him to assert his antagonistic position more firmly. In his view, «laws should only provide a basis for self-fulfilment.»

5. Backward glances

In his last years at the Bauhaus, Klee began to multiply references to different epochs of the past. Inspired by his travels and the many books and articles he read on the subject, he introduced pictorial elements reminiscent of ancient mosaics, Egyptian civilisation and figures and signs carved on the walls of Palaeolithic caves. The prehistoric dimension in itself was a recurrent component in his imagination: fossils, caves, mountains in the process of forming, primitive plants and animals, sacred stones, undecipherable inscriptions on rocks and such like all allude to the past in varying degrees. Klee used imitation as a method of appropriation. The reproduction of the effects of time on both the object (wear and tear, mould, erosion) and its content imbued his works with a sense of parody. While Klee drew on the repertory of signs produced by «primitive» or non-Western cultures, he was only imitating the principles of their original structure.

6. Klee and Picasso

Picasso represented a particular challenge for Klee. His work dialogued with the Spanish artist’s with particular intensity at two periods in his life: at the beginning of his career in around 1912, and above all during the 1930s, after he saw the 1932 retrospective at the Kunsthaus in Zurich. Here Klee discovered Picasso’s « Surrealism », particularly his large paintings of female figures and his biomorphic metamorphoses: two new directions that powerfully influenced Klee after the Bauhaus period,and stimulated the work of his final years. This confrontation was nourished by the publication of numerous articles on Picasso in reviews such as Les Cahiers d’Art, to which Klee subscribed. After his first visit to Picasso’s Paris studio in 1933, the two artists met up at Klee’s house in Bern in 1937. That virtually silent moment revealed the tensions between these two giants of modernity. Their dialogue was imaginary, made up of appropriation and opposition, of secret admiration and critical irony.

7. The crisis years

Hitler’s coming to power in 1933 marked the end of Klee’s career in Germany and forced him into exile in Bern. He responded with a series of drawings that transposed the country’s predominant angst into violent cross-hatching. Von der Liste gestrichen [Struck from the list], a self-portrait in the form of a pseudo-Cubist African mask, treats Nazis politics with irony by parodying their own criteria

for exclusion. Klee liked to counter terror through a childlike, playful iconography, where signs are transformed into stickmen dancing not in joy but in fear. These figures may well allude to the general physical training encouraged by the Nazis. Their dislocated appearance reflected another source of anxiety for the artist: the serious illness that was beginning to stiffen his bodily movements. In 1935, Klee developed scleroderma, a wasting disease that gradually mineralised his body. As a result,

he simplified his graphic language, which now expressed contemporary suffering – both humanity’s and his own – with elementary force.

Exhibition catalogue

by Angela Lampe A publication with 312 pages and 300 illustrations, featuring new articles by internationally recognised Paul Klee specialists. Format: 23.5 x 30 cm. Hardback. Price: €44.90.

From his satirical beginnings to his reinterpretation of Cubism, productive exchanges with Dada and inversion of the Bauhaus dogmas to his final years of crisis, throughout his career Paul Klee endeavoured to assert total freedom with regard to the modernisms of his time, readily taking casting an ironic eye on their principles and disrupting their systems. The retrospective staged by the Centre Pompidou Paul Klee takes a completely new look at his entire output through the prism of Romantic irony. This richly-illustrated catalogue contains contributions from leading specialists on Klee and sheds light on the subversive character of his work.

PAUL KLEE Paul Klee, Ohne Titel (Zwei Fische, zwei Angelhaken, zwei Würmer Pen and watercolour on card 16,2 x 23,2 cm

PAUL KLEE Verkommenes Paar Couple mauvais genre, 1905 Reverse glass painting 18 x 13 cm  Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne   © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE Candide, chapitre 16: Tandis que deux singes les suivaient en leur mordant les fesses, 1911 Pen on paper on card 12,7 x 23,6 cm Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne  © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE (Lustig?) [Lachende Gothik] [(Drôle?) [Gothique joyeux]], 1915  Watercolour and pastel on paper, metallic paper borders on card  © Adagp, Paris 2016
28,9 x 16,5 cm  The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2016. Digital Image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence  © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE Vorführung des Wunders  Présentation du miracle,1916  Gouache, pen and ink on prepared fabric, mounted on card 29,2 × 23,6 cm The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2016. Digital Image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence  © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE  Angelus novus, 1920  Oil and watercolour on paper on card 31,8 x 24,2 cm  The Israel Museum, Jérusalem   © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE Landschaft bei E. (in Bayern) Paysage près de E. (en Bavière), 1921 Oil and pen on paper on card  49,8 x 35,2 cm  © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE Bild aus dem Boudoir  Image tirée du boudoir, 1922 Copy in oil and watercolour on paper on card  33,2 x 49 cm  Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE (Jugendlicher) Schauspieler=Maske [Masque de (jeune)=comédien], 1924 Oil on canvas on card nailed to wood 36,7 x 33,8 cm © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE von der Liste gestrichen Rayé de la liste, 1933 Oil on paper on card 31.5 x 24 cm
Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne Donation Livia Klee © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE Der Schöpfer  Le Créateur, 1934  Oil on canvas 42 x 53.5 cm  Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE Dame Daemon  Dame Démon, 1935  Oil and watercolour on prepared hessian canvas on card 150 x 100 cm Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE Tänze vor Angst  Danses sous l’empire de la peur, 1938 Watercolour on paper on card  48 x 31 cm  Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE  Insula dulcamara, 1938  Oil and colour glue paint on paper on hessian canvas  88 x 176 cm  Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne© Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE Liebeslied bei Neumond  Chant d’amour à la nouvelle lune,1939 Watercolour on hessian canvas 100 x 70 cm Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE  La Belle jardinière, 1939  Oil and tempera on hessian canvas 95 x 71 cm Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE Übermut  Exubérance, 1939  Oil and colour glue paint on paper on hessian canvas 101 x 130 cm  Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne © Adagp, Paris 2016

PAUL KLEE Angstausbruch III  Explosion de peur III, 1939  Watercolour on prepared paper on card 63.5 x 48.1 cm Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne © Adagp, Paris 2016

Paul Mellon was one of America's greatest art collectors and remains one of the National Gallery of Art's leading benefactors. Timed to coincide with the Gallery's 75th anniversary, In Celebration of Paul Mellon features 88 of the finest pastels, watercolors, drawings, prints, and illustrated books selected from his donations.

On view in the West Building from May 8 through September 18, 2016, this celebratory exhibition accentuates both Paul Mellon's generosity and his distinctive approach to collecting.

Paul Mellon played many crucial roles at the National Gallery of Art in carrying out the founding vision of his father, Andrew, who had laid plans for the museum before his death in 1937. The younger Mellon was a major donor of funds and works of art, a valiant advocate for the Gallery's architecture (both the East and West Buildings), and a supporter of its programs for scholars and for all who appreciate fine art.

Paul Mellon (1907–1999), with his late wife Rachel Lambert ("Bunny"), was among the most generous donors to the National Gallery of Art. Paintings and sculptures from their collection are always on view throughout the Gallery's permanent installations. The great majority of Mellon's gifts, however, were works on paper, which, because of their sensitivity to light, cannot be constantly displayed.

Mellon had a close personal relationship with his collection, whether they were American scenes by Winslow Homer or Maurice Prendergast; sensitive portrait drawings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres or Edgar Degas; sporting lithographs by Théodore Géricault or George Bellows; abstracting pen landscapes by Vincent van Gogh; visions of Parisian entertainments by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec or Jacques Villon; cubist compositions by Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, or Georges Braque; or delightful watercolors of a cucumber by Édouard Manet or butterflies by Odilon Redon.

Mellon had an intimate approach to living with the art he chose, admiring and arranging his treasures from day-to-day. He delighted in large works hung on the wall and smaller ones he held in his hands, and books he admired on his desk or lap.

Attempting to honor this personal approach, the exhibition is not ordered by formal museum chronology or separated by geographical schools. The exhibition juxtaposes artists from different nationalities and time periods in the hope that visitors will enjoy both the extraordinary quality of the art and experience the repeated visual delight that Paul Mellon felt.

George Bellows
Dempsey and Firpo, 1923/1924
lithograph
image: 45.9 x 56.8 cm (18 1/16 x 22 3/8 in.)
sheet: 55.5 x 66 cm (21 7/8 x 26 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

George Bellows
Preliminaries to the Big Bout, 1916
lithograph
image: 40 x 50 cm (15 3/4 x 19 11/16 in.)
sheet: 54.5 x 66 cm (21 7/16 x 26 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

George Bellows
Tennis Tournament, 1921
lithograph on chine applique
image: 46.7 x 50.7 cm (18 3/8 x 19 15/16 in.)
sheet: 62.5 x 66.5 cm (24 5/8 x 26 3/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Mary Cassatt
The Black Hat, c. 1890
pastel
overall: 61 x 45.5 cm (24 x 17 15/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Maurice Brazil Prendergast
Figures on a Beach, 1910/1915
watercolor over black chalk on wove paper
sheet: 36 × 50.6 cm (14 3/16 × 19 15/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Maurice Brazil Prendergast
Revere Beach, c. 1896
watercolor on wove paper
sheet: 25.4 × 35.5 cm (10 × 14 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

James McNeill Whistler
The Return of the Fishing Boats, c. 1885
watercolor on paperboard
overall: 21.2 x 12.7 cm (8 3/8 x 5 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art

James McNeill Whistler
Beach Scene, c. 1885
watercolor on off-white paper mounted on paperboard
sheet: 12.6 × 21.2 cm (4 15/16 × 8 3/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art

James McNeill Whistler
Study in Black and Gold (Madge O'Donoghue), 1883/1884
watercolor and gouache on white laid paper mounted on paperboard
overall: 24 x 17.2 cm (9 7/16 x 6 3/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art

Maurice Brazil Prendergast
The Mall, Central Park, 1900/1903
watercolor and graphite on wove paper
overall: 55.9 x 50.8 cm (22 x 20 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art

Winslow Homer
Native hut at Nassau, 1885
watercolor, graphite, and gouache on wove paper
sheet: 36.8 × 53.2 cm (14 1/2 × 20 15/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Winslow Homer
The Sick Chicken, 1874
watercolor, gouache, and graphite on wove paper
overall: 24.7 x 19.7 cm (9 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Winslow Homer
On the Stile, 1878
watercolor, gouache, and graphite on wove paper
sheet: 22 × 28.4 cm (8 11/16 × 11 3/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Winslow Homer
Boys Wading, 1873
watercolor and gouache over graphite on wove paper
sheet: 24.77 × 34.93 cm (9 3/4 × 13 3/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Winslow Homer
Berry Pickers, 1873
watercolor and gouache over graphite on wove paper
sheet: 24.45 × 34.93 cm (9 5/8 × 13 3/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Winslow Homer
In the Garden (Rustic Courtship), 1874
watercolor and gouache over graphite on wove paper
sheet: 22.23 × 32.39 cm (8 3/4 × 12 3/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Winslow Homer
Yachting Girl, 1880
black crayon, graphite, and white gouache on buff, wove paper mounted on fabric sheet: 25.72 × 40.32 cm (10 1/8 × 15 7/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Winslow Homer
Four Fishwives on the Beach, 1881
watercolor over graphite on wove paper
sheet: 40.64 × 58.42 cm (16 × 23 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

12 March - 26 June 2016

The Scuderie del Quirinale is hosting an exhibition, Correggio e Parmigianino. Arte a Parma nel Cinquecento (Correggio and Parmigianino. Art in Parma in the 16th Century) seeking to introduce its visitors to the fabulous art of Parma in the first half of the 16th century, proving that the great art of the Italian Renaissance was not limited solely to the three main centres of Florence, Venice and Rome.

This golden age in Parma was primarily a product of the genius of its unquestioned protagonists Correggio (1489–1534) and Parmigianino (1503–40). From the artistic output of Correggio, who travelled to Parma at the height of his career and stayed there for the rest of his life, the exhibition will be hosting not only a selection of masterpieces that illustrate his ability to convey an astonishing range of emotion and sentiment in religious paintings, but also some of his celebrated mythological paintings which were to have such a huge influence on later artists.

In the case of Parmigianino, who worked in Rome and in Bologna, the exhibition will not only be hosting a selection of his religious and mythological paintings but will also be highlighting his spectacular achievements in the field of portraiture.

In addition to their paintings, a selection of the two masters' graphic work will serve to point up the their radically different attitude to drawing, Correggio's basically functional approach contrasting with the incomparably richer and more varied output of Parmigianino, whom one might almost call a compulsive draughtsman.

Parmigianino, Conversion of St. Paul (detail) Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

In addition to these two great masters, whose work will of course comprise the meat of the exhibition, we will also be showing paintings and drawings by four other artists of the so-called School of Parma – Michelangelo Anselmi, Francesco Maria Rondani, Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli and Giorgio Gandini del Grano – who, while perhaps less well-known, were nevertheless equally talented, their work bearing out the contention that one of the most remarkable effects of Correggio's and Parmigianino's presence in Parma was precisely the emergence of a circle of pupils and followers. This section will also contain numerous little-known works that are virtually impossible to see because they are either in private collections or have never been displayed in public before now.

The exhibition Correggio e Parmigianino. Arte a Parma nel Ciquecento (Correggio and Parmigianino. Art in Parma during the 16th century) hosts such unquestioned masterpieces as

Correggio Parmese, 1489/1494 - 1534 Madonna and Child c. 1505/1510

the Barrymore Madonna from the National Gallery of Art in Washington,

Correggio Portrait of a Lady 1518 State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia Stock

the Portrait of a Lady from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg,

The Martyrdom of Four Saints Oil on canvas c1523 159 x 184.5 cm (62.6" x 72.64") Galleria Nazionale (Parma, Italy)

the Martyrdom of Four Saints from the Galleria Nazionale in Parma,

Allegri Antonio detto il Correggio, Noli me Tangere, Madrid, Museo del Prado

the Noli Me Tangere from the Museo del Prado in Madrid,

Correggio | Venus with Mercury and Cupid ('The School of Love')

the School of Love from the National Gallery in London

Danae, Correggio, 1531, Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy

and the Danaë from Rome's Galleria Borghese.

The exhibition is to be curated by Professor David Ekserdjian, who has devoted the last thirty-five years of his life to studying the School of Parma, producing numerous publications of merit in the process, including monographs on Correggio (1997) and Parmigianino (2006), both of which are widely acknowledged to have made a crucial contribution to the study of Italian art in the 16th Century.

Parmigianino, Conversion of St. Paul, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

John Constable
A Great Oak Tree, c. 1801
black chalk with gray wash
Overall: 54 x 44.4 cm (21 1/4 x 17 1/2 in.)
mat: 55.9 x 71.1 cm (22 x 28 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Paul Mellon

Paul Cézanne
Self-Portrait, c. 1880/1882
graphite on wove paper (sketchbook page)
overall: 22 x 12.5 cm (8 11/16 x 4 15/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Vincent van Gogh
The Harvest, 1888
reed pen and brown ink over graphite
overall: 31.7 x 24.2 cm (12 1/2 x 9 1/2 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Edouard Manet
Cucumber with Leaves, c. 1880
watercolor and gray wash on laid paper
overall: 33.7 x 26 cm (13 1/4 x 10 1/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

:
Edouard Vuillard
The Square, 1910
brush and black ink on thin brown wove paper
overall: 64.6 x 50 cm (25 7/16 x 19 11/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Edgar Degas
A Nude with her Maid by a Fireplace, 1880/1885
monotype on heavy laid paper
plate: 27.5 x 37.7 cm (10 13/16 x 14 13/16 in.)
sheet: 32.7 x 49 cm (12 7/8 x 19 5/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Théodore Gericault
The Boxers, 1818
lithograph on wove paper
image: 35.3 x 41.8 cm (13 7/8 x 16 7/16 in.)
sheet: 41.5 x 49.8 cm (16 5/16 x 19 5/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Vincent van Gogh
Harvest--The Plain of La Crau, 1888
reed pen and brown ink over graphite on wove paper
overall: 24.2 x 31.9 cm (9 1/2 x 12 9/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
A Seated Woman from Behind, 1892
oil on cardboard
Overall: 59.7 x 39.4 cm (23 1/2 x 15 1/2 in.)
framed: 90.2 x 70.5 x 7 cm (35 1/2 x 27 3/4 x 2 3/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Pierre Bonnard
A Promenade in Fancy Hats, 1891/1893
pen and brush and black ink with graphite on laid paper
overall: 30.9 x 37.6 cm (12 3/16 x 14 13/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Edgar Degas
A Young Woman in Black, 1861/1865
oil on wove paper
overall: 15.5 x 12.8 cm (6 1/8 x 5 1/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Edgar Degas
René de Gas, 1855
graphite on laid paper
overall: 30.5 x 23.7 cm (12 x 9 5/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Edgar Degas
A Woman Reading a Book (Lydia Cassatt), c. 1879
charcoal and black chalk with stumping and erasing, heightened with white chalk, on blue wove paper
overall: 48.9 x 31.8 cm (19 1/4 x 12 1/2 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Edgar Degas
Study for "Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery" [recto], c. 1879 graphite on wove paper
overall: 32.3 x 24.5 cm (12 11/16 x 9 5/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Paul Gauguin
Two Tahitians Gathering Fruit [recto], 1899/1900
traced monotype, printed twice, in brown and ocher on wove paper overall: 62.8 x 51.5 cm (24 3/4 x 20 1/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Vincent van Gogh
Postcard with Two Peasants Digging, 1885
pen and brown ink on a postcard
overall: 9.1 x 13.8 cm (3 9/16 x 5 7/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Claude Monet
Luncheon on the Grass, c. 1865
black chalk on blue laid paper
overall: 30.5 x 46.8 cm (12 x 18 7/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Edouard Manet
The Balloon, 1862
lithograph in black on laid paper
image: 40.3 x 50.8 cm (15 7/8 x 20 in.)
sheet: 43.7 x 54.4 cm (17 3/16 x 21 7/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Edgar Degas
A Fallen Jockey, c. 1866
black chalk and pastel on brown wove paper
overall: 26.6 x 35.2 cm (10 1/2 x 13 7/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Edgar Degas
A Jockey (M. de Broutelles), c. 1884
charcoal on cream paper
overall: 34.6 x 21.9 cm (13 5/8 x 8 5/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Edgar Degas
The Curtain, c. 1880
pastel over charcoal and monotype on laid paper mounted on board
sheet: 29 x 33.3 cm (11 7/16 x 13 1/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

Leading the Latin American Art Evening Sale on Wednesday, 25 May 2016 is the impressive

Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991), Maestros cantores, executed in 1949 (estimate: $2,000,000-3,000,000).

Maestros cantores vibrantly plays on a theme that preoccupied the artist throughout his career. Three street singers stand before us with mouths agape as if caught in the midst of open song. The central figure stands authoritatively in the foreground holding a mandolin, with fingers splayed unnaturally across the front, emphasizing the act and skill of playing the instrument. Two singers peer out from behind him on both sides in a staggered fashion, creating a dynamic zigzag effect that animates the composition. Tamayo concentrates on all three of the singers’ expressive faces, capturing the emotive essence of music. Bright hues of pink, purple, blue, and green throughout increase the sense of impassioned performance.

Tamayo often used music as one among many elements that make reference to the senses. Instruments and song provided the means to visualize sound and touch (the strings of the mandolin). Music also served as a cipher for the painter’s practice, a trope found in much modernist painting, most famously in Picasso’s takes on the subject. An abstract artistic language, music embodies the pursuit of non-literal representation.

Music also held special personal significance to Tamayo. He met his wife Olga, an accomplished concert pianist, while painting the mural at the National School of Music where she was a student, and Tamayo himself was also a gifted musician known for his guitar playing.

Since the date of its creation in 1949, this work has been exhibited internationally at major museums and institutions from Mexico City to Paris, Stockholm, London and Tokyo.

Diego Rivera's (1886-1957), Niña con rebozo, painted in 1938, comes from The Private Art Collection of Marta and Plácido Domingo (estimate: $1,000,000-1,500,000), which depicts one of the most decisive artistic phases of his professional trajectory. Upon Rivera’s return to Mexico in 1921, his view turned toward the creation of a new identity, elevating the contemporary local people in a vision for a modern Mexico. For the great muralist, children were the seeds for change. He lovingly recorded them in drawings and watercolors, and on exceptional occasions, on splendid canvases full of light and color as seen in the present work, which portrays a young girl caught in reflection.

Other highlights includeWifredo Lam’s (1902-1982), Le Sabbat (Immagine No. 5), painted in 1964 (estimate: $600,000-800,000) from The Collection of Guglielmo Spotorno,

Rufino Tamayo’s (1899-1991), Man in a Landscape, painted in 1961 (estimate: $500,000-700,000),

and from The Estate of Rocío Sagaón

Miguel Covarrubias’s (1904-1957), Desnudo, (estimate: $400,000-600,000).

The sale also presents a large selection of paintings and sculpture by Fernando Botero (B. 1932), featuring five circus-themed works from The Wynn Las Vegas Collection. Highlights include his monumental sculpture Seated Woman, conceived in 2002 and cast in 2004 (estimate: $700,000-900,000) and large-scale paintings

Tiger and Trainer, painted in 2007 (estimate: $700,000-900,000),

and Clown in his Trailer, painted in 2007 (estimate: $500,000-700,000).

This collection of works previously adorned the Las Vegas restaurant named after the artist—Botero—with the sculpture of the Seated Woman acting as the interior’s centerpiece.

Featured contemporary works include two exceptional landscapes by Tomás Sánchez (b. 1948), from The Brazil Golden Art Collection a monumental painting from Brazilian artist Luiz Zerbini (b. 1959), The Railway Surfer and the Ghost Train, painted in Rio de Janeiro in 1990 (estimate: $150,000-200,000), and an installation piece by Jesús Rafael Soto (1923-2005), Cuadrado amarillo y vibración, executed in 1988 (estimate: $150,000-200,000).

Christie’s announces the sale of three further major works by three of the great modern British painters of the 20^th Century which will be sold in London on the 30 June 2016. The paintings by Francis Bacon, Sir Stanley Spencer, offered from the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation,and L.S Lowry were executed in 1968, 1929 and 1951 respectively. Each defines a high point in the artists’ careers at moments when their invention established them as innovative geniuses of their generation. These highlights will be on public view in New York (6 to 12 May) and Hong Kong (26 to 30 May) alongside other renowned paintings by Lucian Freud, Lord Leighton and Sir Joshua Reynolds, before being sold in London, when Christie’s celebrates the artistic legacy of four centuries of British art at the global headquarters in London from 17 June to 15 July.

Francis Bacon’s landmark work Version No. 2 of Lying Figure with Hypodermic Syringe, 1968, is a soaring canvas that shows Bacon at his most formally inventive and is a rare example of a female nude in his practice (Estimate on Request: in the region of £20 million). Apparently based in part on a photograph of Henrietta Moraes, one Bacon’s inner circle and closest companions from Soho’s Colony Club, the work is one of the last of a major series of reclining figures on beds, a theme that had preoccupied Bacon since the late 1950s, that are amongst his most renowned works.

One of the few paintings of lying figures with syringes that Bacon made in the late 1960s, two others of which are now housed in the Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid and the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, the work was previously a centrepiece in the much celebrated Vanthournout collection. The painting also provides a rare insight into Bacon’s understanding of Abstract Expressionism and in particular the legendary painting of women by Willem de Kooning; the central figure of Bacon’s canvas is described by swathes of abstract brushwork that animate her entire being, describing not only an external appearance but also the psychological drama of the 20th-century human condition.

The work is one of the few reclining nudes to come to the market in recent years and follows the standout performance of Portrait of Henrietta Moraes, 1963, at Christie’s in May 2015.

Francis Bacon's Works at Auction
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The Garage, 1929, is one of an important series of five pictures - defining the industrial rebuilding and growth of Britain at the end of the 1920s - by Sir Stanley Spencer, R.A. (1891–1959), a key artist in the history of 20th century figurative painting. This is one of the largest and most successful works in the series commissioned by the Empire Marketing Board on the theme of Industry and Peace. Painted in 1929, when industry was critical to the future of the country and the Empire, and with the Wall Street crash looming, the car industry would prove vital to the regeneration of the country. Britain was seeking to replicate the new modern success story which had blossomed in America with the Ford Motor Company.

One of the finest works by Spencer from this period to come to auction, this panorama captures not only a technological but social phenomenon: depicting women and men working together as equals; intrepid, modern, forward looking and glamorous. Celebrated for his visionary style and intensity of technique, this magnificent painting exemplifies Spencer’s characteristically complex figurative work. Compositionally, the rich curves and angles of the cars and the equipment tie the multiple characters together, creating an overarching balance and harmony.

This remarkable painting is being offered for sale by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, which will use the proceeds to further develop its worldwide support of vital projects that enhance arts education and participation, improve access and increase diversity across arts, culture and heritage. The painting is estimated to realise between £1.5 and £2.5 million.
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Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A. (1887-1976) dedicated 40 years of his career to depicting the urban and industrial landscape of the North of England, drawing inspiration from his surroundings, particularly around Manchester where he lived from 1909 to 1948 (estimate: £1.5-2.5 million).

Painted in 1951, Industrial scene is a highly complex landscape, combining many of Lowry’s trademark motifs to create an extensive urban panorama. Filled with figures and houses against a background teeming with factories with billowing smoke from towering chimney stacks, this is one of the artist’s most compositionally successful and well-balanced industrial scenes. Characteristically, this is not a topographically accurate view but one that Lowry composed from many recognisable landmarks which recur throughout his work.

This painting highlights the way that Lowry often painted from an elevated viewpoint, giving the hurrying figures in Industrial scene a particularly diminutive feel, as they become almost engulfed within the urban sprawl that fades into the background, pulling the viewer into the heart of the scene. Lowry was fascinated with exploring the changing face of industry on both the landscape and the human figure. He painted some of his most successful industrial landscapes in the early 1950s, many of which are now held in public collections; the present work provides collectors with a rare opportunity to acquire an exemplary work from a private collection.

The National Gallery of Art maintains the largest public collection of art by the American artist Mark Rothko (1903–1970). Following the publication in 1998 of its landmark catalogue raisonné of Rothko's works on canvas, the Gallery embarked on research into Rothko's works on paper. The culmination of this effort will be an online resource compiling the drawings, watercolors, and paintings on paper. Expected to be launched to the public in phases between 2016 and 2018, the online resource will be followed in 2020 by a two-volume catalogue raisonné print publication.

Mark Rothko: The Works on Paper will document and illustrate some 2,600 works by Rothko located in public and private collections worldwide. Demonstrating the range of the artist's creative achievements, the online and print publications will be the definitive scholarly references for Rothko's works on paper, an oeuvre largely unknown to art specialists and the public alike. The Gallery continues to seek information about drawings, watercolors, and paintings on paper to be considered for inclusion in the catalogue raisonné.

Anyone with information regarding works on paper by Rothko should contact Laili Nasr by e-mail at l-nasr@nga.gov or by phone at (202) 842-6779.

"Assistance from both public institutions and private collectors has been, and will continue to be, essential to the success of this project," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. "In the interest of compiling the most comprehensive record possible, we hope that current and previous owners will contact us to provide information about drawings, watercolors, and paintings on paper by Rothko, a towering figure in 20th-century American art. We are grateful to private collectors, public institutions, galleries, and auction houses for their invaluable assistance to date. We are especially thankful to the artist's children, Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko, for their continuing support of this important project."

Mark Rothko: The Works on Paper follows the award-winning catalogue raisonné, Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas by David Anfam, copublished in 1998 by the National Gallery of Art and Yale University Press, which documented 834 known paintings.

Rothko's Works on Paper

During the 1920s and 1930s Rothko produced more than 1,500 figurative works in watercolor, ink, graphite, and crayon on loose sheets of paper and in sketchbooks. These include landscapes of various locations, most prominently Portland, OR, to which he immigrated in 1913 from Dvinsk, Russia (now Daugavpils, Latvia), and places where he frequently summered, such as Lake George, NY, and Cape Ann, MA. From 1924, when Rothko settled in New York City, the geometries of the metropolis and the psychology of its inhabitants figure in urban views and subway scenes. Throughout this early phase of his career, Rothko also produced dozens of landscapes, nude studies, intimate domestic scenes, and portraits of family and friends. Very few of these early works have ever been reproduced.

In the 1940s Rothko's work entered an experimental phase as he explored a range of styles rooted in expressionism, symbolism, and surrealism and utilized subject matter drawn from mythological, classical, biblical, ethnographic, scientific, and other sources. At mid-decade, he produced a remarkable body of luminous surrealist watercolors featuring biomorphic shapes; the fluidity of these works was integral to Rothko's transition toward complete abstraction.

Between 1947 and 1949 Rothko's works, which later came to be known as "multiforms," eschewed figural associations and were marked by asymmetrically arranged patches of color hovering within a chromatic field. The artist would eventually develop the so-called multiforms into his signature style: soft-edged rectangles set against a ground of uniform color in a vertical format.

Rothko worked on paper throughout the 1950s and 1960s, often mounting paintings executed in acrylic, oil, watercolor, or some combination thereof on panels or stretched canvases. After a debilitating illness he turned almost exclusively to painting on paper from 1968 until his death in 1970.

The Authors and Advisors

The catalogue raisonné is being compiled and written by Adam Greenhalgh, associate curator, National Gallery of Art, and Laili Nasr, project coordinator and contributing author, who has been involved with the Rothko catalogue raisonné project at the Gallery since its inception, with guidance from an advisory committee: Franklin Kelly, deputy director and chief curator; Judith Brodie, curator and head, modern prints and drawings; Harry Cooper, curator and head, modern art; and Judy Metro, editor in chief, all at the National Gallery of Art. All information associated with the ownership of works of art documented in the catalogue raisonné is held in confidence by the National Gallery of Art, and all wishes for anonymity will be fully respected.

Mark Rothko and the National Gallery of Art

In 1986 the Mark Rothko Foundation determined that its mission to conserve its collection of Rothko's art and to enhance and promote the artist's legacy through scholarly research and exhibitions would be best served by strategically placing his canvases and works on paper in selected major international museums. Before disbanding in the same year, the Foundation designated 35 institutions to receive the art, among them the Art Institute of Chicago; the Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; the Menil Collection, Houston, TX; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; the Museum of Modern Art, NY; and the Tate Gallery, London. As the principal recipient of the Mark Rothko Foundation's largesse, the National Gallery of Art received more than 1,100 works—paintings on canvas and works on paper—as well as research materials, including conservation records and exhibition reviews.

In 2007 Rothko's children, Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko, further enhanced the Gallery's holdings by donating to its library an unpublished manuscript by their father,which was published as The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art, edited by Christopher Rothko (Yale University Press, 2006).

In 1984 the exhibition Mark Rothko: Works on Paper, circulated by the American Federation of Arts, opened at the Gallery and traveled throughout the United States. In 1998 Jeffrey Weiss, then the Gallery's curator of modern and contemporary art, organized Mark Rothko, a retrospective that traveled to New York and Paris. In 2003 a special installation, Rothko's Mural Projects, was mounted to mark the centennial of Rothko's birth. In the same year an exhibition was organized by the Gallery to commemorate the centennial of Rothko's birth; presented by the U.S. Department of State, it opened at the State Art Museum at Riga, Latvia, and traveled to the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. In 2014–2015, a retrospective of some 50 works was presented at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Since receiving the gift from the Mark Rothko Foundation in 1986, the Gallery has extended temporary and long-term loans of more than 300 works by Rothko to nearly 200 museums, galleries, and embassies worldwide.

A rotating selection of Rothko's canvases will be on view when the East Building galleries of the National Gallery of Art reopen on September 30, 2016.

Catalogue Raisonné Scholarship at the National Gallery of Art

The Rothko catalogues raisonnés join similar scholarly projects undertaken by the National Gallery of Art, including: The Prints of Roy Lichtenstein: A Catalogue Raisonné, by Mary Lee Corlett with Ruth Fine (1994); Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, by Barbara Buhler Lynes (1999; in collaboration with the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation); Gemini G.E.L., one of the first online catalogues raisonnés (launched 2001), compiled by Charles Ritchie, Claude L. Elliott, and Jonathan F. Walz, under the direction of Ruth Fine and Judith Brodie; and Alfred Stieglitz: The Key Set, by Sarah Greenough (2002).

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled (Woman wearing a hat), c. 1932
watercolor on paper
25.4 x 20.2 cm (10 x 7 15/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled (Portland, Oregon), early 1930s
watercolor and ink on paper
39.2 x 57.5 cm (15 7/16 x 22 5/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled (Seated woman), 1934/1936
watercolor on paper
28.0 x 22.4 cm (11 x 8 13/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled (Seated woman with dog), late 1930s
ink on paper
25.3 x 20.3 cm (9 15/16 x 8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled (Figures on a staircase), late 1930s
watercolor and graphite on paper
11.5 x 16.5 cm (4 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled (Seated figure), 1938/1939
watercolor on paper
26.4 x 30.8 cm (10 3/8 x 12 1/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled, 1944/1945
watercolor, tempera, graphite, and ink on paper
53.3 x 66.8 cm (21 x 26 5/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled, c. 1944/1946
watercolor, ink, and graphite on paper
38 x 53.3 cm (14 15/16 x 21 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled, c. 1944
watercolor, ink, and graphite on paper
53.2 x 37.8 cm (20 15/16 x 14 7/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled, 1945/1946
watercolor and ink on paper
103.5 x 69.9 cm (40 3/4 x 27 1/2 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled, 1945/1946
watercolor and ink on paper
57.8 x 79.5 cm (22 3/4 x 31 5/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled, 1949
watercolor on paper
104.3 x 69.2 cm (41 1/16 x 27 1/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled, 1961
ink and wash on paper
27.94 x 21.59 cm (11 x 8 1/2 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled, 1968
acrylic on paper
45.88 x 30.16 cm (18 1/16 x 11 7/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled, 1969
acrylic on paper
127 x 107 cm (50 x 42 1/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

Mark Rothko
American, born Russia, 1903 - 1970
Untitled, 1969
acrylic on paper
153.04 x 122.56 cm (60 1/4 x 48 1/4 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Copyright © 2005 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko

May 11–August 28, 2016

J. Paul Getty Museum

The J. Paul Getty Museum is exhibiting three of Rembrandt’s earliest known paintings, lent by the Leiden Collection in New York, in a special installation highlighting the recentlyrediscovered

The Unconscious Patient (An Allegory of the Sense of Smell), 1624 .

One of a series by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (Dutch, 1606 –1669) depicting the five senses, The Unconscious Patient, the artist’s earliest monogrammed signed painting, will be exhibited with two others from the series— Hearing and Touch —as well as other early Rembrandts.

“Rembrandt is unquestionably one of the greatest and most -loved painters of the European tradition, whose work still grips modern audiences as strongly as it did his own contemporaries,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum.

“This special installation provides a unique opportunity to witness him at the genesis of his career, some four hundred years ago, as a young man of only eighteen or nineteen just beginning on his professional career. While it is not yet the Rembrandt we know from his maturity, these works already demonstrate his experimental approach and show some of the emotional intensity that was to be an enduring features of his work. It is particularly appropriate to be bringing these works together for the first time at the Getty Museum, as we possesses the most significant collection of early Rembrandts in the United States. Complemented by other loans from Thomas Kaplan and Daphne Recanati - Kaplan’s Leiden Collection, this presentation represents a remarkable visual survey of the development of the artist. We, and other museums, are deeply grateful for Tom and Daphne’s continuing generosity in making his works accessible to a broader public.”

Until last year, only three of the five Senses were known to art historians.

The exhibition will feature The Sense of Smell along with

The Three Musicians (An Allegory of The Sense of Hearing) about1624,RembrandtHarmenszvan Rijn (Dutch,1606 – 1669) OilonPanel. Image Courtesy of the Leiden Collection, New York.

The Stone Operation (AllegoryoftheSenseofTouch)about1624, Rembrandt Harmenszvan Rijn (Dutch,1606 –1669)OilonPanel.Image Courtesy of the Leiden Collection, New York.

A fourth known picture from the set,

The Spectacle Seller (An Allegory of The Sense ofSight), is in the collection of the Lakenhal Museum in Leiden. The whereabouts of the fifth sense, an allegoryof taste, remains unknown.

“Rembrandt’s ability to convey emotions and create a compelling narrative on a small scale is fully evident in these fascinating and important paintings,” says Anne Woollett, curator of paintings at the Getty Museum. “Viewing these works with other important early paintings, including the Getty’s self -portrait

Rembrandt Laughing (1628)

and An Old Man in Military Costume (about 1630 –31),

shows Rembrandt’s desire to capture a range of human emotions and ages in paint, and how rapidlyhe developed in only a few short years. Thanks to the generosity of the Leiden Collection, the Senses allow us to trace this remarkable trajectory.”

In autumn 2015, The Sense of Smell surfaced at an auction in the United States. It has since entered the Leiden Collection, the private collection and gallery of Thomas S. Kaplan in New York that was already home to its sister pictures: The Sense ofHearingand The Sense of Touch.

Recently, The Sense of Smell was on view at TEFAF Maastricht where it caused a stir and commanded a great deal of attention. Two other Rembrandts from the Leiden Collection,

Portrait of a Girl Wearing a Gold -Trimmed Cloak (1632)

and Portrait of a Rabbi (about 1640 –45),

among other Dutch seventeenth -century paintings, have been at the Getty Museum on long-term loan and will be shown in conjunction with the Senses.

It is likely that Rembrandt painted the Senses in his hometown of Leiden in about 1624 to 1625, following his training with Jacob van Swanenburg (1571 –1638) and prior to six months in Amsterdam studying with the illustrious hi story painter Pieter Lastman (1583 –1633). The Senses attest to Rembrandt’s close relationship with his friendly rival in Leiden, Jan Lievens (1607 –1674), whose

Card Players(1623 –24),

also from the Leiden Collection, will be included in this special installation.

After being exhibited at the Getty Museum, the Senses as well as Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Girl Wearing a Gold -Trimmed Cloak and Portrait of a Rabbi will be exhibited internationally.

The catalyst for The English Rose – Feminine Beauty from Van Dyck to Sargent - a salute to 400 years of society beauties - is a portrait recently acquired by the Museum via Arts Council England, in lieu of inheritance tax from the estate of the Duke of Northumberland.

Olivia, Mrs Endymion Porter, by court painter Van Dyck, was painted c1637, when the artist was at the height of his career. One of his finest female portraits, it depicts Mrs Porter, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria (whose portrait also features in the show) in shift and pearls, displaying the ‘careless romance’ that is evident in many of Van Dyck’s images.

Whilst this is an intimate domestic portrait commissioned by her husband, it also demonstrates his wealth, status and prestige by the fact that he could afford to engage the King’s painter.

The exhibition’s themes centre on the artists represented, their sitters and fashions, and will follow a chronological order from the 17^th to the 20^th Century. Alongside The Bowes Museum’s two Van Dyck’s will feature paintings by Gainsborough, Reynolds, George Romney, John Singer Sargent and Peter Lely, loaned from galleries around the UK including the National Gallery; the V&A Museum, London; Dulwich Picture Gallery; The Holburne Museum, Bath, and the National Galleries of Scotland.

Many of the sitters are as famous as those engaged to paint them. Mrs Sarah Siddons, the outstanding ‘tragic’ actress of her time, most famous for her dramatic portrayal of Lady MacBeth, reportedly had Gainsborough experiencing difficulties with her nose, leading him to exclaim ‘Confound the nose, there’s no end to it’.

"The Linley Sisters", by Thomas Gainsborough (Dulwich Picture Gallery) - Elizabeth (left, standing, aged 18) with her sister Mary.

Fascinating beauties Elizabeth and Mary Linley, part of the famous 18^th Century musical family known as ‘The Nest of the Nightingales’, also sat for Gainsborough, in the only known painting depicting both sisters together. The former had a colourful life; betrothed to a man of her father’s choice, a duel was fought between him and a then penniless Richard Brinsley Sheridan, soon to become a leading playwright, with Sheridan eventually winning her hand.

Although the sisters’ extraordinary talents saw them perform privately for royalty and publicly at Covent Garden, both were forbidden to sing in public after marriage.

While female artists were thin on the ground in the 17^th Century,

Mary Beale is represented in a self portrait, c1675; not unusual in those days, as there were few models to sit for them. Holding an artist’s palette, it depicts a woman determined to challenge society’s intended role for her.

Adrian Jenkins, Director of The Bowes Museum, said: “We are delighted to celebrate the gift of this wonderful Van Dyck portrait, which will be central to our forthcoming exhibition.

“We also thank the Arts Council for their decision to retain this important painting in the North of England, where it will enhance The Bowes Museum’s permanent collection.”

Johns (born in 1930) made his breakthrough on the American art scene in the latter half of the 1950s, with paintings based on widely known symbols like the American flag, targets, numbers and letters. His art broke with the subjective and spontaneous painting of the abstract expressionism that had dominated American art in the 1940s and 1950s. Together with artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Johns was a precursor to the 1960s' pop art in the US. He also had close relationships at this time with other artists, including the choreographer Merce Cunningham and the composer John Cage. An important source of inspiration for Johns was Marcel Duchamp and his conceptual approach to creating art.

Johns explicitly distanced himself from the idea of art as subjective expression. He thus forms something of a counterpoint to the expressionist tradition that Munch helped found. It is therefore particularly interesting that Johns at a later stage became interested in Munch's art. His first direct encounter with Munch was at an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1950, when Johns was 20. We do not know much about what kind of impression Munch's art left on the young Johns, but some 25 years later – from the late 1970s – references to Munch started appearing in his work. This was a period of important changes in Johns' art, in terms of both motifs and form. He started including figurative elements, spatial perspective, references to time and existential issues in his pictures. He has been inspired by Munch's treatment of topics such as love, fear, illness and death, among others. At the same time he was also interested in Munch's experimental approach to art.

This exhibitionaims to show that Munch has had a far greater influence on Johns than was previously known. The exhibition consists of about 130 works – paintings, prints, drawings and photographs. An important factor is the way Munch's late self-portrait

BRUKES-M0023-Selvportrett

Between the Clock and the Bed (1940–1942) is linked to Johns' series of abstract cross-hatch works that became something of a signature motif for him in the 1970s. The similarity between Johns' cross-hatch pattern and the pattern on the bedspread in Munch's self-portrait was not originally intended. However, from 1980–1984 Johns chose to use this similarity explicitly in a series of paintings with the same title as Munch's painting:

Between the Clock and the Bed by Jasper Johns - Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Between the Clock and the Bed, 1981 by Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns
Between the Clock and the Bed, 1980 and 1988
Ink and watercolor on plastic
Sight: 13-1/4 x 22-1/2 inches. Sheet: 18-1/4 x 26-1/4 inches

Another part of the exhibition focuses on how Johns has been inspired by another of Munch's self-portraits,

Self Portrait with Skeleton Arm, 1895

a lithograph in which Munch places a skeleton arm under his own portrait, as an emblem of death.

Johns was also interested in Munch's suggestive use of shadow and the human figure. This is particularly noticeable in a series of paintings from the second half of the 1980s where Johns introduces the human figure as a subject in his pictures for the first time. This reflects a new existential element in his art.

Jasper Johns + Edvard Munch is a joint project with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond, USA. After its spell at the Munch Museum, the exhibition will be shown there in autumn 2016. The curator of the exhibition is John Ravenal, the former curator at VMFA, and the current director of the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum outside Boston, USA. Ravenal is the editor of

the exhibition catalogue, which is published by Yale University Press. It is fully illustrated and contains an article written by Ravenal.

Yokohama Museum of Art
June 25 – September 11, 2016

The National Museum of Modern Art, in Kyoto,
September 27–December 4, 2016

The American-born woman artist, Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), was active in Paris during the latter-half of the 19th century. During a period when professional women artists were still rare, Cassatt carried through with her intention to become an artist and travelled to France to study painting. In France she searched for a new form of expression and participated in the Impressionist exhibitions where she established her own individual style of painting focusing on everyday family scenes as her subject matter. Cassatt’s works became highly recognized in both France and the United States, and in 1904 she received La Légion d’honneur Chevalier from the French government. Furthermore, Cassatt formed friendships with American art collectors such as the wealthy Louisine Havemeyer, becoming their advisor and contributing to the development of the American art scene.

Mary CASSATT, Mother About to Wash Her Sleepy Child（detail） 1880. Oil.

Cassatt can be considered as one of the more popular Impressionist artists in Japan but she has mainly been recognized as a pioneer woman artist and as a painter of mother and child scenes, whilst her entire oeuvre still remains relatively unknown. The last Cassatt exhibition to be held in Japan was in 1981 and only a few of her works can be found in Japanese collections. This exhibition is the first large-scale retrospective exhibition of Cassatt’s works to be held in Japan in 35 years and will provide an important opportunity to show the artist’s works together.

The exhibition will display approximately 80 carefully selected works which will include oil paintings, prints, pastels and drawings, spanning from her early to late career, in three exhibition sections.

From the collection of the Terra Foundation for American Art,

Summertime by Mary Cassatt,

Jenny and Her Sleepy Child by Mary Cassaat,

and The Breeze by Mary Fairchild MacMonnies (later Low) are exhibited in Mary Cassatt—Retrospective.

Mary Stevenson Cassatt (1844–1926), Mother and Two Children, c. 1905, Oil on Canvas, Anonymous Gift, 1979.1 Westmoreland Museum of American Art

The Westmoreland Museum of American Art announces that Mother and Two Children, c. 1905 by Mary Cassatt will travel to Japan to be included in Mary Cassatt Retrospective organized by the Yokohama Museum of Art.

Edgar DEGAS Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: Museum of Antiquity
1879–80 soft ground etching, drypoint, aquatint, etching (9 / 9 state)　h. 27.0 × w. 23.7cm

In addition, the exhibition will show the works of contemporary artists of her time with whom Cassatt had interactions such as Edgar Degas and Berthe Morisot, and will examine their relationship with Cassatt. Furthermore, the exhibition will display the Byōbu-e (folding screen) formerly belonging to Cassatt and also Ukiyo-e prints which influenced the artist, and will analyze in depth what Cassatt mastered from Japanese art.

Auction June 5th Grogan & Company

On Sunday, June 5th Grogan & Company will hold its annual June Auction. he highlight of which is undoubtedly Mary Cassatt’s striking oil portrait, Augusta with Her Forefinger on Her Cheek, which measures 26 ¾ x 22 3/8 in. and carries an estimate of $100,000-200,000.

In the portrait, Augusta, who was the subject of several of Cassatt’s oils, stares out at the viewer with deep, doe-like brown eyes, a coy expression on her face, with her mouth closed and the hint of a smile in the dimples at each edge of her lips. She seems relaxed, leaning on her right arm, with her right forefinger resting on her cheek as she sits in quiet repose. The creamy skin of her décolletage is enveloped by the bright blue textured silk and masterfully rendered white lace of her robe.

Painted by Cassatt in 1910, the portrait of Augusta was with Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris until at least 1914, at which point it sold to James Jewett Stillman (1859-1918), a wealthy financier and an avid art collector. Upon Stillman’s sudden death in 1918, the work passed by bequest to Stillman’s son, Dr. Ernest Goodrich Stillman of New York, who ultimately gave the painting to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1922. Augusta hung in Cleveland for many years and was exhibited at museums across the United States throughout the mid-20th century. In 1969, the museum deaccessioned the work and, in 1971, the family of the Chestnut Hill gentleman purchased the painting at Hirschl & Adler in New York.

“This portrait of Augusta is truly a museum-quality by Cassatt – one that we are delighted to have the chance to offer at auction. We hope that prospective bidders and fans of Cassatt alike take the opportunity to come view Augusta and contemplate this example of Cassatt’s masterful portraiture while it hangs in our Charles Street gallery,” remarks Georgina C. Winthrop, fine art specialist.

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PAUL KLEE L’IRONIE À L’ŒUVRE

Paul Mellon's American Works on Paper at National Gallery of Art: Bellows, Cassatt, Homer, Prendergast, Whistler

Correggio and Parmigianino. Art in Parma in the 16th Century

Paul Mellon's European Works on Paper - National Gallery of Art: Cezanne, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, van Gogh

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Christie’s London 30 June 2016: Francis Bacon, Sir Stanley Spencer & Laurence Stephen Lowry, R.A

Catalogue Raisonné of Mark Rothko's Works on Paper

The Promise of Youth: Rembrandt’s Senses Rediscovered

The English Rose - Feminine Beauty from Van Dyck to Sargent

Bowes Museum

14 May - 25 September 2016

Jasper Johns + Edvard Munch

Between the Clock and the Bed, 1981 by Jasper Johns

Mary Cassatt Retrospective and Auction

Edgar DEGAS Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: Museum of Antiquity