• The Met Breuer
• July 12 - November 27, 2016

As part of the inaugural season at The Met Breuer, diane arbus: in the beginning will open on July 12, featuring more than 100 photographs that together will redefine one of the most influential and provocative artists of the 20th century. This landmark exhibition will highlight never-before-seen early work of Diane Arbus (1923–71), focusing on the first seven years of her career, from 1956 to 1962—the period in which she developed the idiosyncratic style and approach for which she has been recognized, praised, criticized, and copied the world over.

July 12–November 27, 2016

Exhibition Location: The Met Breuer, 2nd floor
Press Preview: Monday, July 11, 10 am–noon

As part of the inaugural season at The Met Breuer, diane arbus: in the beginning will open on July 12, featuring more than 100 photographs that together will redefine one of the most influential and provocative artists of the 20th century. This landmark exhibition will highlight never-before-seen early work of Diane Arbus (1923–71), focusing on the first seven years of her career, from 1956 to 1962—the period in which she developed the idiosyncratic style and approach for which she has been recognized, praised, criticized, and copied the world over.

The exhibition is made possible by the Alfred Stieglitz Society.

Additional support is provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.

“It is a rare privilege to present an exhibition this revelatory, on an artist of Arbus’s stature. More than two-thirds of these works have never before been exhibited or published,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Met. “We sincerely thank the Estate of Diane Arbus for entrusting us to show an unknown aspect of this remarkable artist’s legacy with the camera.”

Jeff Rosenheim, Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs, added, “Arbus’s early photographs are wonderfully rich in achievement and perhaps as quietly riveting and ultimately controversial as the iconic images for which she is so widely known. She brings us face-to-face with what she had first glimpsed at the age of 16—‘the divineness in ordinary things’—and through her photographs we begin to see it too.”

diane arbus: in the beginning focuses on seven key years that represent a crucial period of the artist’s genesis, showing Arbus as she developed her style and honed her practice. Arbus was fascinated by photography even before she received a camera in 1941 at the age of 18 as a present from her husband, Allan, and made photographs intermittently for the next 15 years while working with him as a stylist in their fashion photography business. But in 1956 she numbered a roll of 35mm film #1, as if to claim to herself that this moment would be her definitive beginning. Through the course of the next seven years (the period in which she primarily used a 35mm camera), an evolution took place—from pictures of individuals that sprang out of fortuitous chance encounters to portraits in which the chosen subjects became engaged participants, with as much stake in the outcome as the photographer. This greatly distinguishes Arbus’s practice from that of her peers, from Walker Evans and Helen Levitt to Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander, who believed that the only legitimate record was one in which they, themselves, appear to play little or no role. In almost complete opposition, Arbus sought the poignancy of a direct personal encounter.

Arbus made most of her photographs in New York City, where she was born and died, and where she worked in locations such as Times Square, the Lower East Side, Coney Island, and other areas. Her photographs of children and eccentrics, couples and circus performers, female impersonators and Fifth Avenue pedestrians are among the most intimate and surprising images of the era. From the beginning, Arbus believed fully that she had something special to offer the world, a glimpse of its many secrets: “I do feel I have some slight corner on something about the quality of things. I mean it’s very subtle and a little embarrassing to me but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.”

Nearly half of the photographs that Arbus printed during her lifetime were made between 1956 and 1962, the period covered by this exhibition. At the time of her death in 1971, much of this work was stored in boxes in an inaccessible corner of her basement darkroom at 29 Charles Street in Greenwich Village. These prints remained undiscovered for several years thereafter and were not even inventoried until a decade after her death. The majority of the photographs included in the exhibition are part of the Museum’s vast Diane Arbus Archive, acquired in 2007 by gift and promised gift from the artist’s daughters, Doon Arbus and Amy Arbus. It was only when the archive—a treasury of photographs, negatives, notebooks, appointment books, correspondence, and collections—came to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2007 that this seminal early work began to be fully explored.

 Among the highlights in the exhibition are lesser-known published works such as  



Lady on a bus, N.Y.C. 1957, .Boy stepping off the curb, N.Y.C. 1957-58,  



The Backwards Man in his hotel room, N.Y.C. 1961,



and Jack Dracula at a bar, New London, Conn. 1961,

as well as completely unknown additions to her oeuvre, such as  



Taxicab driver at the wheel with two passengers, N.Y.C. 1956 ,  



Woman with white gloves and a pocket book, N.Y.C. 1956,  

Female impersonator holding long gloves, Hempstead, L.I. 1959,



and Man in hat, trunks, socks, and shoes, Coney Island, N.Y. 1960.

Included among the selection of six square-format photographs from 1962 is the iconic  



Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962,

 a photograph that signals the moment when Arbus turned away from the 35mm camera and started working with the 2¼ inch square format Rolleiflex camera, a format that remained a distinctive attribute of her work for the rest of her life.

The photographs from her early career reveal that the salient characteristics of her work—its centrality, boldness, intimacy, and apparent artlessness—were present in her pictures since the very beginning. Arbus’s creative life in photography after 1962 is well documented and already the stuff of legend; now, for the first time, we can properly examine its origins.

Exhibition Credits

diane arbus: in the beginning is curated by Jeff L. Rosenheim, Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs at The Met.

Related Publication

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue which includes two essays: “in the beginning” by Jeff L. Rosenheim and “notes from the archive” by Karan Rinaldo, Senior Research Assistant. The book will be published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press (hardcover; $50).


Related article, more photographs: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/23/diane-arbus-at-the-met-breuer

This summer, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in collaboration with the Musée des Impressionismes Giverny is presenting an exhibition on the artist Gustave Caillebotte (Paris, 1848 – Petit Gennevilliers, 1894), one of the least known but also most original figures of the Impressionist movement. Caillebotte, Painter and Gardenerreveals this French artist’s thematic and stylistic evolution, from his early works painted in Haussmann’s modern Paris to his depictions of gardens, which would come to occupy a significant part of his output.

The Bowdoin College Museum of Art (BCMA) will present the first-ever exhibition to examine the emergence and evolution of symbolic, abstract, and conceptual portraiture in modern and contemporary American art. Titled "This Is a Portrait If I Say So: Identity in American Art, 1912 to Today", the exhibition takes its name from



Robert Rauschenberg´s renowned 1961 portrait of Iris Clert—a telegram that simply states, “This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so.”

On view June 25-October 16, 2016, the show includes more than 60 non-figurative portraits that pose provocative questions about what a likeness is; how a person’s individuality might be expressed effectively by another; how much a portrait can be influenced by the artist’s, as opposed to the subject’s, personality; and the very conceptualization of personal identity.

Covering more than a century of artistic development in the U.S., the exhibition features a broad range of media, including collages, drawings, new media works, paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures, and text-based conceptual portraiture, loosely divided into three chronological sections:

The first focuses on works from the 1910s and 1920s, assembled by Jonathan Frederick Walz, Director of Curatorial Affairs & Curator of American Art, The Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia . This section highlights artists such as Charles Demuth, Marcel Duchamp, Marsden Hartley, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Gertrude Stein, and their contemporaries.

 The second is dedicated to works from the early 1960s to 1970, selected by independent curator Kathleen Merrill Campagnolo, and featuring works by artists such as Eleanor Antin, Mel Bochner, Walter De Maria, Robert Morris, Yoko Ono, and Robert Rauschenberg among others.

The final section centers on works from the early 1990s through today, curated by Anne Collins Goodyear. This concluding section includes works by artists such as Janine Antoni, Mel Bochner, Roni Horn, Byron Kim, Glenn Ligon, Hasan Elahi, L.J. Roberts, and more.

By focusing on specific periods, the curators are able to delve into the political and social realities that shaped American identity across these decades, and to unearth the distinct relationships, imagery, and themes that characterized the work of many major artists engaged with creating new modes of portrayal. The exhibition’s chronological installation reveals intriguing parallels between these three time periods, revealing dynamic through-threads within the artistic depiction of identity from 1912 to the present, such as the turn to language, symbolic attributes, and the metaphorical significance of color and form.

Some of the earliest examples of conceptual portraiture in the show reflect Americans’ awareness of the political turmoil in Europe during WWI, and the fluidity between artistic and intellectual circles on both sides of the Atlantic. Exhibition highlights from this period include



One Portrait of One Woman, a 1916 portrait of Paris-based American writer Gertrude Stein by Maine-born artist Marsden Hartley, who lived in Europe from 1912-1916. Replete with mystical symbols, the painting shows a blue teacup atop a checked tabletop, with the word “MOI” written boldly beneath, addressing the respective identities and complex friendship of the artist and sitter.

Another American with strong ties to Parisian intellectual circles who features prominently in the exhibition is Charles Demuth. Demuth and Hartley knew each other well, as evidenced by another highlight from this section,  



Study for Poster Portrait of Marsden Hartley (c. 1923–24). The watercolor and graphite composition, which depicts a windowsill in front of a bright, snow-covered landscape, uses objects Demuth associated with his friend to capture Hartley’s persona.

“In the early twentieth century the general public often linked portraiture to flattering transcription and middle-class values; the genre provided strict, longstanding conventions that some modernist artists chose to bend or break,” said Walz. “Political and cultural shifts, including the development of an avant-garde and the breakdown of the traditional organization of sexuality, gave rise to themes that found continual expression in unconventional portraits throughout the century. For example, Gertrude Stein’s 1909 prose poem portraits presage Mel Bochner’s thesaurus-based likenesses of the 1960s and Charles Demuth’s poster portraits resonate with L. J. Roberts’s recent embroidery Portrait of Deb from 1988–199?.”
By the 1960s, the New York art scene was embracing Neo Dada, Fluxus, Pop, Minimal, and Conceptual art as alternatives to Abstract Expressionism. The eruption of new modes of expression coincided with a surge in the production of unconventional portraits. “While portraiture could not be considered a dominant genre during this decade which is often characterized by artworks that attempt to eliminate subjectivity and embrace systematic strategies for art-making, an undercurrent of interest in issues of identity can be seen in the work of a number of prominent artists of the period,” commented Campagnolo. “For the most part, the radical portraits of the 1960s feature subjects who were at the forefront of innovation in their chosen fields be it art, dance, music, or writing and offer surprising insights regarding the artist, subject, and historical moment.”

In addition to the exhibition’s namesake, highlights in the show from this period include



Rauschenberg’s 1964 Self-Portrait consisting of his thumbprint in ink and graphite on paper, created for a profile of the artist in The New Yorker.

Several of Robert Morris’ conceptual portraits are featured, including a cabinet-like sculpture containing labeled bottles of bodily fluids from 1963, simply titled Portrait.

Also present is Yoko Ono’s Portrait of Mary, a text-based call to action from her ground-breaking book Grapefruit, inviting viewers to examine and expand their assumptions about how identity is represented.

Exhibition highlights from the 1990s through today reflect artistic responses to developments like the emergence of the AIDS crisis, the decoding of the human genome, and the violent destruction of events on September 11th, which profoundly affected the expectations, demands, and the even the politics of the self and its representation. Glenn Ligon’s Runaway series from 1993 is a conceptual self-portrait consisting of contemporary descriptions of the artist juxtaposed with images garnered from advertisements of runaway slaves. Ligon turned to friends to provide the captions for this 10-work series, which vary so widely the notion of unified identity is called into question.




 "Emmett at Twelve Months #3,: 1994, egg tempera on panel, by Byron Kim, born 1961. Collection of the Artist. © The Artist / Image Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York and Shanghai.

Artist Byron Kim contributed one of the captions, underscoring the evolution of non-figurative portraiture within influential artistic circles. Kim’s work is also featured in This Is a Portrait If I Say So, and he will create a site-specific work for the exhibition.

Roni Horn’s Asphere (1986/1990) represents another highlight from this section. A non-symmetrical sculptural form that resists easy categorization, the work metaphorically represents the artist, who identifies with its emphatically non-conventional nature.

“From the early 20th century up to the present day we see the adoption of abstraction as a strategy for portrayal that resists the cooption of likeness for political or social purposes,” said Goodyear. “We can trace this theme throughout the exhibition—a testimony to the power of the use of non-traditional symbolic and conceptual portraiture as a means to reclaim the representation of self and other from inherited formulas that may threaten to suppress rather than express what it means to a unique individual.”



The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by Yale University Press. Featuring essays from Campagnolo, Goodyear, and Walz that examine their respective time periods in-depth, the catalog will also include a contribution from Dr. Dorinda Evans, professor emerita at Emory University, discussing the evolution of non-figurative portraiture in American art in the 19th century up until The Armory Show.

This summer Kunsthal Rotterdam is proud to present a large-scale retrospective of the world-famous Colombian artist Fernando Botero (1932). This selection from Botero’s own collection provides a panorama of the artist’s personal favourites from his considerable oeuvre. ‘Botero: Celebrate Life!’ will exhibit almost a hundred paintings, sketches and pastels as well as a few sculptures, including the enormous eye-catcher ‘Caballo’, Botero’s famous sculpture of a horse.

Homage to the Old Masters

 

The Arnolfini after Van Eyck, 2006, Fernando Botero

The National Art Center, Tokyo
July 13 – October 10 2016

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Italy and Japan, an exhibition of works from the Gallerie dell’Accademia will be held in Japan for the first time. The exhibition’s theme‐Venetian painting of the Italian Renaissance. While artists in Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, took as their principle the careful application of colors in a well-ordered composition on the basis of a clear design, the artists of Venice preferred rich coloring in bold, dramatic compositions and explored ways to directly communicate feeling and emotion. 

This exhibition will survey Venetian painting from the 15th to early 17th century through some 60 of the Gallerie dell’Accademia’s most important works. Arriving in Japan will be a dazzling array of masterpieces by painters ranging from Giovanni Bellini to Carlo Crivelli, Vittore Carpaccio, Tiziano Vecellio, Jacopo Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese. Of special note will be The Annunciation (Church of San Salvador, Venice), a late-period altarpiece of large scale by Tiziano, the great master of the Venetian High Renaissance. An exhibition thus focused on Venetian paintings of the Renaissance period has almost no precedent in Japan. It will be a precious opportunity to marvel at paintings that counted among the splendors of Renaissance Venice, City of Water. 

Section 1: Early Renaissance in Venice: Painters of the 15th Century

Section 2: Golden Age: Titian and His Followers

Section 3: Protagonists of the Later 16th Century: Tintoretto, Veronese and Bassano

Section 4: Last Phase of the Renaissance: Heirs of the Great Masters

Section 5: Venetian Renaissance Portraiture

In celebration of its 2016 centennial, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is marking its anniversary with a series of exceptional loans from select collections around the world. Some are directly related to works in the museum’s permanent holdings; others highlight an artist or object not currently represented in the collection. This year-long program includes masterworks from such eminent museums as The Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. More than a dozen works of art spanning five hundred years and representing cultures from four continents will be featured. 

This month, the museum announces the addition of seven generous loans to be installed in its galleries beginning now through September 3. Among these masterworks is Fulang-Chang and I, by
Frida Kahlo. The enigmatic self-portrait will be displayed side by side with a mirror in a matching frame that Kahlo intended would always be hung alongside the painting. These works invite dynamic juxtapositions and dialogues with objects from the CMA’s permanent collection, and will provide the opportunity for visitors to rediscover its renowned holdings, which constitute the core of the institution’s identity and global reputation.

Fulang-Chang and I, 1937 (assembled after 1939). Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907–1954). In two parts, oil on composition board (1937) with painted mirror frame (after 1939); framed painting: 56.5 x 44.1 x 4.4 cm; framed mirror: 64.1 x 48.3 x 4.4 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Mary Sklar Bequest, 277.1987.a-b. Image courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Photo: David Brichford. © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, New York. © 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 

Renowned for her self-portraits, Mexican painter Frida Kahlo produced more than 50 such works in an oeuvre of nearly 150 paintings, each offering intimate insights into her complex life. Museum visitors have a unique opportunity to commune with Kahlo as her enigmatic 1937 self-portrait Fulang-Chang and I is displayed together with the hand-decorated frame and mirror she created as its permanent companion. In this painting, Kahlo assumed her typical pose by turning her face roughly three-quarters to reveal one of her ears. Surrounded by lush, sage-colored jungle foliage, Kahlo’s pet spider monkey, widely interpreted as a surrogate for the children she was unable to bear with her husband, Diego Rivera, nuzzles near her chest, his glassy black eyes appearing to mimic the artist’s intent, searching gaze. This painting was featured in Kahlo’s first exhibition in the United States in 1938, held at Julien Levy Gallery, New York in 1938.

 Little Big Painting, 1965. Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923–1997). Oil and acrylic on canvas; 172.7 × 203.2 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art, 66.2. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Digital Image © Whitney Museum, New York. 

As a key member of Pop Art, the groundbreaking 1960s movement focused on popular culture and mass media, Roy Lichtenstein often emulated the Benday dots of printing processes used for newspapers and comic books, a signature style that is instantly recognizable. Lichtenstein’s work often repeats, mimics, takes apart and reinterprets well-known artworks by a wide range of artists including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Gilbert Stuart, Morris Louis, Piet Mondrian and Willem de Kooning. In 1965, Lichtenstein debuted a new series of paintings called Brushstroke. In Little Big Painting, the most iconic of the Brushstroke series, Lichtenstein cleverly challenges Abstract Expressionism, mimicking the wild and free-form gestures of the 1950s art movement in a hypermechanical way. Ironically, there isn’t a brushstroke in sight. An essential critique of American culture and a significant achievement in itself, Little Big Painting reflects the importance of innovation.

Portrait of Emy, 1919. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (German, 1884–1976). Oil on canvas; 71.9 x 65.4 cm. North Carolina Museum of Art, Bequest of W. R. Valentiner. © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

Portrait of Emy is one of two powerful companion portraits painted in 1919 by German Expressionist painter Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. One portrait depicts the artist’s new bride, Emy Frisch, while the other depicts himself. Nearly identical in size and format, Portrait of Emy and Self-Portrait with Hat, gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art by the eminent art historian and key figure in the historical development of American museums W. R. Valentiner, feature explosive colors and radically abstracted forms. Schmidt-Rottluff’s intimate knowledge of Cubism, African sculpture and Fauvist color techniques surfaces powerfully in each portrait. Angular and geometric, each composition has saturated, unrestrained hues that attest to the artist’s direct and profoundly impassioned reaction to his subjects. In both portraits, Schmidt-Rottluff accentuated the asymmetrical treatment of the eyes, with emphasis on one enlarged pupil that stares hypnotically at the viewer, an exaggeration that references not only the direct transference of spiritual power between the figure and viewer, but also the importance of sight and visionary experience.

Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons), 1913. Vasily Kandinsky (French, born Russia, 1866–1944). Oil on canvas; 111 x 111.3 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Arthur Jerome Eddy Memorial Collection, 1931.511. © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 

One of thirty-six works titled Improvisation completed between 1911 and 1914, Cannons of 1913 remains one of Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky’s most influential contributions to modern art. In a 1913 letter to Chicago lawyer Arthur Jerome Eddy, Kandinsky remarked that the presence of cannons in the painting “could probably be explained by the constant war talk that has been going on throughout the year.” He further noted that “the designation of ‘Cannons’ selected by me for my own use, is not to be conceived as indicating the ‘contents’ of the picture.” This contradiction signals the artist’s continuously evolving approach to removing recognizable imagery from his paintings. As part of his quest to create purely abstract or nonobjective works, Kandinsky proposed that harmonious colors and forms could express transcendent, otherworldly sentiments instead of mere surface appearances.

Portrait of Helen Sears, 1895. John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925). Oil on canvas: 167.s x 91.4 cm. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Mrs. J. D. Cameron Bradley, 55.1116. Photograph © 2016 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Regarded as one of the most gifted portraitists in American art, Sargent is admired for his incisive characterizations and bravura technique. Both are pronounced in Portrait of Helen Sears, an image of the six-year-old daughter of a wealthy Boston couple. Here, the young girl is immersed in wistful reflection, lost in private thoughts and emotions seemingly inaccessible to those around her. Sears’s brightly lit hair, face and dress are rendered in vivacious brushwork, an exuberant application matched in accompanying hydrangea blossoms. Sargent’s flair for the theatrical is perhaps unmatched in this portrait, one of his most successful creations.

6 July – 30 October 2016

 Georgia O’Keeffe 1887-1986
Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 1932
Oil paint on canvas
48 x 40 inches
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas, USA
© 2016 Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/DACS, London
Photography by Edward C. Robison III

 Georgia O’Keeffe 

Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie's II 1930

Oil on canvas mounted on board2

4 1/4 x 36 1/4 (61.6 x 92.1)

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. 

Gift of The Burnett Foundation

©Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

In post-World War II America, the primacy of abstract art was clearly acknowledged, and by 1961, when Rockwell painted The Connoisseur, Abstract Expressionism had been covered in the popular press for nearly 15 years. Originated in the 1940s by Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko, among others, Abstract Expressionism was the first American movement to achieve widespread international influence.

The Connoisseur, Norman Rockwell. 1961. Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, January 13, 1962 Private Collection ©1962 SEPS: Licensed by Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN

For the first time, Norman Rockwell Museum will explore the contrast between the abstract and realist movements, placing works by Rockwell, Wyeth, and Warhol side by side with Pollock, Calder, Johns, and over 40 other preeminent artists. Rockwell and Realism in an Abstract World examines the forces that forged the mid-century dismissal of narrative painting and illustration, as well as the resurgence of realist painting during the latter half of the twentieth century, its presence and critical consideration today, and the ways in which our contemporary viewpoints have been shaped by post World War II constructs.


The exhibition features the art of prominent illustrators, painters, and sculptors whose autographic art spans more than 60 years, representing many dynamic forms of visual communication. Featured artists include: Marshall Arisman, Bo Bartlett, Austin Briggs, Alexander Calder, Alan E. Cober, Robert Cottingham, Robert Cunningham, Joe De Mers, Walton Ford, Eric Forstmann, Helen Frankenthaler, Bernie Fuchs, Sam Francis, Edwin Georgi, George Giusti, Ralph Goings, Cleve Grey, Brad Holland, Dan Howe, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Anita Kunz, Jacqui Morgan, Robert Motherwell, Barbara Nessim, Barnett Newman, Tim O’Brien, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, Al Parker, Bob Peak, Philip Pearlstein, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, Norman Rockwell, Peter Rockwell, James Rosenquist, David Salle, Saul Steinberg, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Robert Weaver, Thomas Woodruff, Andrew Wyeth, and Jamie Wyeth.

The National Gallery, London

23 June – 4 September 2016


This summer, the National Gallery explores great paintings from a unique perspective: from the point of view of the artists who owned them.

Spanning over five hundred years of art history, Painters’ Paintings presents more than eighty works, which were once in the possession of great painters: pictures that artists were given or chose to acquire, works they lived with and were inspired by. This is an exceptional opportunity to glimpse inside the private world of these painters and to understand the motivations of artists as collectors of paintings.


The inspiration for this exhibition is a painter’s painting: Corot’s Italian Woman, left to the nation by Lucian Freud following his death in 2011. Freud had bought the 'Italian Woman' 10 years earlier, no doubt drawn to its solid brushwork and intense physical presence. A major work in its own right, the painting demands to be considered in the light of Freud’s achievements, as a painter who tackled the representation of the human figure with vigour comparable to Corot’s.

In his will, Freud stated that he wanted to leave the painting to the nation as a thank you for welcoming his family so warmly when they arrived in the UK as refugees fleeing the Nazis. He also stipulated that the painting’s new home should be the National Gallery, where it could be enjoyed by future generations.

Anne Robbins, Curator of 'Painters’ Paintings' says:

“Since its acquisition the painting’s notable provenance has attracted considerable attention – in fact the picture is often appraised in the light of Freud’s own achievements, almost eclipsing the intrinsic merits of Corot’s canvas. It made us start considering questions such as which paintings do artists choose to hang on their own walls? How do the works of art they have in their homes and studios influence their personal creative journeys? What can we learn about painters from their collection of paintings? 'Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck' is the result.”

The National Gallery holds a number of important paintings which, like the Corot, once belonged to celebrated painters: Van Dyck’s Titian; Reynolds’s Rembrandt, and Matisse’s Degas among many others. 'Painters’ Paintings' is organised as a series of case studies each devoted to a particular painter-collector: Freud, Matisse, Degas, Leighton, Watts, Lawrence, Reynolds, and Van Dyck.
'Painters’ Paintings' explores the motivations of these artists – as patrons, rivals, speculators - to collect paintings. The exhibition looks at the significance of these works of art for the painters who owned them - as tokens of friendship, status symbols, models to emulate, cherished possessions, financial investments or sources of inspiration.

Works from these artists’ collections are juxtaposed with a number of their own paintings, highlighting the connections between their own creative production and the art they lived with. These pairings and confrontations shed new light on both the paintings and the creative process of the painters who owned them, creating a dynamic and original dialogue between possession and painterly creation.

Half the works in the exhibition are loans from public and private collections, from New York and Philadelphia to Copenhagen and Paris. A number of them have not been seen in public for several decades.

Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery says:

 “Artists by definition live with their own pictures, but what motivates them to possess works by other painters, be they contemporaries – friends or rivals – or older masters? The exhibition looks for the answers in the collecting of Freud, Matisse, Degas, Leighton, Watts, Lawrence, Reynolds, and Van Dyck.”

Lucian Freud (1922–2011)

Lucian Freud’s work remains at the forefront of British figurative art. Fascinated by the tactile quality of paint, Freud had a lifelong fascination with the great painters of the past, and often visited museums and galleries, “I go and see pictures rather like going to the doctor. To get some help”, he said. At home, Freud surrounded himself with works of art he could admire in the flesh: paintings by 19th century French and British masters - Constable, Corot, Degas – each exuding their own unique energy.

This room includes examples of these, such as Corot’s 'Italian Woman' (about 1870, The National Gallery, London), displayed here just as Freud showed it in his drawing room: between a small Degas bronze ('Portrait of a Woman', after 1918, Leeds Museums and Galleries (Leeds Art Gallery)), and a sketch sent to him by his friend Frank Auerbach as a birthday card (2002, Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge).

Freud’s attachment for the paintings he owned – here,

 L’Après-Midi à Naples
Paul Cézanne
1876-1877
© Photo courtesy of the owner

a rarely seen Cézanne brothel scene ('Afternoon in Naples', 1876–77, Private Collection)

 Portrait of Laura Moubray
John Constable
1808
© National Galleries of Scotland

and delightful Constable portrait ('Laura Moubray', 1808, Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh) – is explored in his section, which also looks at the influence of these works on his own investigations into the human figure.



The exhibition features Freud’s own striking 'Self Portrait: Reflection' (2002, Private Collection)



and a nude portrait, 'After Breakfast' (2001, Private Collection).

Henri Matisse (1869–1954)

Matisse started acquiring pictures long before he had encountered success and could afford to do so; his collection also grew through gifts and exchanges with fellow artists. He famously swapped pictures with Picasso: he sent the Spanish artist a drawing in 1941 as a thank you for Picasso looking after his bank vault in occupied Paris.

Picasso responded with the majestic, spectacularly sombre

Portrait of a Woman: Dora Maar
Pablo Picasso
20 January 1942 Private collection, United Kingdom

© Photo courtesy of the owner/Christie's, London © Succession Picasso/DACS London 2016

'Portrait of Dora Maar' (1942, Courtesy The Elkon Gallery, New York), sent to Matisse as a get-well present, after decades of a complicated friendship tinged with rivalry.

La Maison verte, Venise
Paul Signac
1905 Private collection 

© Photo © Christie's Images / Bridgeman

A fine Signac ('The Green House', Venice, 1905, Private Collection) illustrates Matisse’s practice to swap works of art with painter friends,

Three Bathers
Paul Cézanne
1879-1882

Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris

© Petit Palais / Roger-Viollet

while an iconic work by Cézanne, 'Three Bathers' (1879–82, Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris) shows how the pictures Matisse owned served his own art directly.

Having bought it in 1899 – then a great financial sacrifice – Matisse kept it for 37 years, during which, he said, he “came to know it fairly well, though [he] hoped, not entirely”. This painting

Young Man with a Flower behind his Ear
Paul Gauguin
1891
Property from a distinguished Private Collection,© Photo © Christie's Images / Bridgeman Images

and his Gauguin'Young Man with a Flower behind his Ear' (1891, Property from a distinguished Private Collection - courtesy of Christie's) informed Matisse’s own bold, simplified style, as his work was evolving towards a greater degree of abstraction, evident in his spectacular sculpture 'Back III' (1916–17, Centre Pompidou, Mnam/Cci, Paris), borrowing from his Cézanne.

Combing the Hair ('La Coiffure')
Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas
about 1896
© The National Gallery, London

We know tantalisingly little about the circumstances surrounding Matisse’s purchase of Degas’s Combing the Hair (about 1896, The National Gallery, London) yet the painting can be viewed from the vantage point of Matisse’s own work, rich in such scenes – as reflected in his 'The Inattentive Reader' (1919, Tate).

Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas (1834–1917)

A supreme master of technique and unrivalled experimentalist, Degas was an astute observer of modern life, yet his art remained embedded in tradition. He was also one of the greatest collectors of his time. “Degas carries on…buying, buying: in the evening he asks himself how he will pay for what he bought that day, and the next morning he starts again…” a friend wrote in 1896. Degas often traded his own paintings or pastels against the pieces he coveted most (Manet, 'Woman with a Cat', 1880–2, Tate). He acquired a wide range of works, from Old Masters paintings to pictures by artists considered, at that time, avant-garde, such as Cézanne’s' Bather with Outstretched Arm' (1883–85, Collection Jasper Johns).



Degas collected the work of Manet, doggedly tracking down the dispersed sections of The Execution of Maximilian (about 1867–8, ©The National Gallery, London) after the death of his friend.


He purchased great numbers of works of art by his heroes Ingres



(Oedipus and the Sphinx, about 1826,


 and Angelica saved by Ruggiero, 1819–39, both National Gallery, London)



and Delacroix ('Hercules rescuing Hesione', 1852, Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen and



'Study of the Sky at Sunset', 1849–50, The British Museum, London), focussing his attention on paintings which held a particular emotional significance for him and collecting those works as an act of homage. He also supported struggling artists – Gauguin, Sisley - by buying their works



(Sisley, 'The Flood. Banks of the Seine', Bougival, 1873, Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen), providing them with much-needed financial support.

Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830–1896) and George Frederic Watts (1817–1904)

One of the most renowned painters and sculptors of the Victorian era, and the leading figure of its art establishment, Leighton was aware of the power of art to convey social prestige and guarantee professional progress. He displayed in his sumptuous Holland Park studio-house the magnificent ensemble of pictures and objects he had purchased. Among them were Italian Renaissance paintings which showed his refined taste (Possibly by Jacopo Tintoretto, Jupiter and Semele, about 1545, The National Gallery, London) but also mid-19th century. French landscapes alluding to his continental training.


Corot’s Four Times of Day (about 1858, The National Gallery, London) formed the centrepiece of his drawing room, an enlightened choice showing Leighton’s advanced appreciation of French landscape painters. There, the Corot panels served as a source of inspiration as much as interior decoration, resonating with Leighton’s own landscapes, arguably the most individual part of his artistic production ('Aynhoe Park', 1860s, and 'Trees at Cliveden', 1880s, both Private Collection).

The painter George Frederic Watts, Leighton’s friend, neighbour, and regular visitor to his house, would have been impressed by the vast array of pictures in Leighton’s collection. The two artists shared a love for Italy and a desire to belong to the great artistic tradition reaching back to the Renaissance; in his 'Self Portrait in a Red Robe' (about 1853, Watts Gallery) he depicted himself in the robes of a Venetian senator. Determined to make art accessible to all, Watts gave the few paintings he owned to public galleries – not least the imposing Knight of S. Stefano (probably Girolamo Macchietti, after 1563, The National Gallery, London).

 Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830)

Lawrence was the leading British portraitist of the early 19th century. He was largely self-taught and hugely influenced by Sir Joshua Reynolds, following in his footsteps to become President of the Royal Academy. Like Degas, Lawrence was a voracious, obsessional collector, using the proceeds of the sale of his society portraits to amass an incomparable collection of Old Master drawings - an inventory upon his death listed some 4,300 drawings, including Carracci’s immense A Woman borne off by a Sea God (?) (about 1599, The National Gallery, London) and a number of paintings including Raphael’s Allegory (about 1504, The National Gallery, London) and Reni’s Coronation of the Virgin, (about 1607, The National Gallery, London).

This section of the exhibition places Lawrence’s collecting within his social world. The paintings he acquired established his reputation as a great connoisseur; his advice was much sought by influential friends such as John Julius Angerstein and Sir George Beaumont, whose collections came to form the nucleus of the National Gallery holdings. Beyond his acquisitive zeal, the prodigiously gifted Lawrence also sought to gain information about his favoured artists’ methods. An exceptional loan from a private collection, his portrait of the Baring Brothers (Lawrence, 'Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, John Baring and Charles Wall', 1806–07) demonstrates his absorption of the tradition of Renaissance male portrait, here injected with Lawrence’s trademark dash and virtuosity.

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792)

As the inaugural President of the Royal Academy, Reynolds was one of the most significant figures of the British art world in the 18th century; for him, collecting was a life-long passion, which he likened to “a great game”. Reynolds had a vast collection of drawings, paintings and prints that informed both his teachings and supported his ideas about what constituted great art – style of Van Dyck (The Horses of Achilles, 1635–45, The National Gallery, London), Giovanni Bellini (The Agony in the Garden, about 1465, The National Gallery, London), after Michelangelo (Leda and the Swan, after 1530, The National Gallery, London), Poussin (The Adoration of the Shepherds, about 1633–4, The National Gallery, London) and



Rembrandt (The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, about 1634–35, The British Museum, London).


Gainsborough’s'Girl with Pigs' (1781–2, Castle Howard Collection), bought by Reynolds in 1782, also illustrates Reynold’s interest for the work of his contemporaries, demonstrating the breadth of his taste, but also its changeability - soon after, Reynolds tried to exchange his Gainsborough for a Titian.

Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641)

Van Dyck was England’s leading court painter in the first half of the 17th century. Before enjoying success, he worked in the studio of Rubens, himself a great collector; following his master’s example, Van Dyck would soon acquire his own impressive array of Italian pictures. While he owned paintings by Raphael and Tintoretto, Van Dyck was almost single-minded in his passion for the work of Titian. Inventories made on the artist’s death list 19 works by Titian, most of which were portraits, including the Vendramin Family (1540–5, The National Gallery, London) and Portrait of Gerolamo (?) Barbarigo (about 1510, The National Gallery, London).

This room focuses on Van Dyck as collector, through his intense interest for the work of Titian, to whom he may owe his ingenious compositional devices (Lord John Stuart and His Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart, about 1638, The National Gallery, London) and technical freedom ('Thomas Killigrew and William, Lord Crofts (?)', 1638, The Royal Collection/HM Queen Elizabeth II). The resonance between Titian’s and Van Dyck’s depictions of figures is just one of the stories to be explored within this final section of the exhibition.

For more information, visit nationalgallery.org.uk

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston August 9–December 4, 2016,
National Gallery of Art in Washington from February 5–June 4, 2017.

Powerful expressions of faith, hope and love are manifested in brilliant colors that characterize the Della Robbia glazed terracotta sculptures from the Renaissance, explored in an exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). Della Robbia: Sculpting with Color in Renaissance Florence is the first major exhibition in the US dedicated to Della Robbia sculptures, which have endured for more than 500 years. Their shine and colors, including deep cerulean blues and opaque whites, remain unchanged from the time of their creation—a lasting testament to Renaissance ingenuity.

Florentine sculptor Luca della Robbia (1399/1400–1482) invented the groundbreaking glazing technique in the 15th century, and the exhibition showcases 46 works of art by his family and associated workshops.



The Visitation (about 1445, Church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas, Pistoia), an extraordinary masterpiece, is one of six important loans from Italy that have never been seen in the US before.



The Brooklyn Museum’s lunette of the Resurrection of Christ (about 1520–24) is presented at the MFA following a year-long conservation project—one of several undertaken for the exhibition.

The Della Robbia family workshop flourished in Florence for about a century, producing expressive artworks for all spheres of life. Luca della Robbia created his glazed terracotta technique in the 15th century, and it was immediately recognized and celebrated as a new invention. He shared its secrets with his nephew and principal collaborator Andrea della Robbia (1435–1525), who in turn passed them on to his sons Giovanni (1469–1529/30), Luca the Younger (1475–1548), Marco (1468–1534), Francesco (1477–1527/28) and Girolamo (1488–1566). Portraying both sacred and secular themes, Della Robbia sculpture gained a strong presence in public spaces—from street corners to churches—and private homes.

“Della Robbia sculpture is a quintessentially Florentine Renaissance art form, one that seems to transport us to the 15th-century city,” said Marietta Cambareri, Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture and Jetskalina H. Phillips Curator of Judaica, Art of Europe, who organized the exhibition. “Praised in its own day as ‘almost eternal,’ and seen as a new invention not known in antiquity, Luca della Robbia’s technique of glazed terracotta displays the creative ingenuity and graceful beauty that characterized the Renaissance and that continues to astonish and beguile us today.”

The exhibition begins with works made for domestic settings, exploring notions of hope and prosperity for one’s city and family. Della Robbia sculpture was often acquired to mark significant family events such as marriages and births, and the objects became part of the lives and histories of their owners.



Giovanni della Robbia’s brightly colored lunette of the Resurrection of Christ (about 1520–24, Brooklyn Museum) once adorned the upper section of a garden gate in the Tuscan villa of the Florentine Antinori family, who commissioned it in the early 16th century. The family’s coat of arms marks the lower corners of the 11-foot-wide relief, and the Marchese Antinori—possibly Niccolò or his son Alessandro—is prominently shown praying before the resurrected Christ. The sculpture is composed of 46 separate pieces and underwent a year-long conservation treatment in preparation for the exhibition, with generous support from the current generation of the Antinori family. The relief, now restored to its original splendor, has not left Brooklyn since it was donated to the museum in 1898.

Portrait busts were also popular in Florentine Renaissance homes. Bust of a Young Boy (about 1475, Museo Nazionale del Bargello) offers a touching example of naturalism, expressed through the child’s fleeting expression and parted lips that convey a sense of living breath. Like other contemporary portrayals, the work illustrates a new Renaissance interest in capturing the individuality of children. Naturalistic representation using the Della Robbia technique is also demonstrated in Virgin and Child with Lilies (about 1460–70) from the MFA’s collection, in which the baby Jesus acts like a real child, turning away from his mother to reach for the lilies, the figures seated on a grassy meadow of flowers.





The extraordinary loan of Luca della Robbia’s The Visitation (about 1445)—his masterpiece in the medium he invented—travels to Boston from the church of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas in Pistoia, shown in the US for the first time. The sculptural group of two figures anchors the second section of the exhibition, which highlights expressions of love—especially the bond between mother and child. It presents an intensely moving interaction between Mary, pregnant with Jesus, and her elderly cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist.  

The Visitation was widely reproduced in the 20th century—there were at least six casts in American collections by 1910, including one in the Renaissance cast gallery at the MFA’s original Copley Square building. The work also attracted at least one American artist of the time—John Singer Sargent made a sketch of the sculpture, probably from the original group in Pistoia.

Across from The Visitation,



the Nativity with Gloria in Excelsis (about 1465–70) from the MFA’s collection shows a newborn Jesus at the heart of the composition, framed by Mary and Joseph, both of whom are kneeling. Their poses signal their recognition of the child’s holiness and provide models of prayer for worshippers. Angels hold a musical staff with the words “Gloria in excelsis Deo (Glory to God in the highest),” the opening to a hymn sung during Mass.

Several Madonna and Child reliefs, by far the most common form of domestic sculpture in the Renaissance, are on view. Particularly fine examples come from the Detroit Institute of Arts, the National Gallery of Art and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. These reliefs share exemplary technical quality, affective expression and the power to inspire devotion.

Two versions of Luca della Robbia’s Madonna of the Niche shown side by side,


 one from the MFA (about 1445–55)



and one from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (about 1445–55), depict a tender moment between Mary and Jesus, with the baby leaning into his mother’s body, her left hand wrapping around him and her right hand clasping his right foot as if to keep him from stepping too far.




The important loan of a relatively unknown work by Luca, the large-scale Madonna and Child (about 1450–60) from the Oratory of San Tommaso Aquino in Florence, demonstrates his mastery of a wider range of colors than the classic blue and white, showing that his primary use of the two colors in other works was an artistic choice. Conservation of the piece was funded by Friends of Florence, a US nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and enhancing the cultural and historical integrity of the arts located in the city and region of Florence.




Andrea della Robbia generally followed his uncle’s choice of blue and white, but his Mother of Sorrows (about 1525, Saint Louis Art Museum) demonstrates his exploration of an expanded palette to enhance the emotion expressed in the face and mourning gesture of Mary. The sculpture, meant to evoke a sympathetic response, is thought to be part of a group that included the body of Jesus as the focus of Mary’s grief.



A monumental piece by Andrea della Robbia, Prudence (about 1475), a personification of one of the cardinal virtues, features an abundance of greens and yellows in a particularly impressive garland filled with grapes, pinecones, cucumbers, lemons and a variety of other fruits. The roundel has been restored by conservators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who have reconfigured the garland based on its original sequence, discovered during the project.

In addition to further experimentation with color, other works show the Della Robbia leaving sections of clay unglazed. The flesh of both Mary and Jesus represented in Giovanni della Robbia’s Pietà (about 1510–1520, National Gallery of Art) is rendered in unglazed terracotta, making the sculpture less brilliant in appearance and thereby more somber and appropriate for its religious function, helping to inspire contemplation.

Expressions of faith are further explored in the exhibition’s final section, which also showcases development of the glazed terracotta technique beyond the Della Robbia family, featuring several works by a rival workshop established around 1480 by the sculptor Benedetto Buglioni (1459/60–1521). While one Renaissance account claims that a woman working in the Della Robbia home and shop leaked trade secrets to Buglioni, it is more likely that he actually trained with the Della Robbia before establishing his own business.

Santi Buglioni (1494–1576) was a distant relative of Benedetto, who trained Santi in the art of glazed terracotta, adopted him and left him his workshop. Three of his nearly life-size preaching saints are gathered in the exhibition—Saint Bernadino of Siena (about 1550, private collection), Saint Francis (about 1550, Uffizi Gallery in Florence) and Saint John of Capistrano (about 1550, Los Angeles County Museum of Art). The large-scale figures combine unglazed clay with colored glazes, and their size clearly tested the limits of the material—large cracks are evident in all three of them. Produced about 20 years after Giovanni della Robbia’s death, when Santi Buglioni’s shop was the only one in Florence still creating works in glazed terracotta, the preaching saints stand as the swan song of the disappearing technique, among the very last works to employ it in the Renaissance.

Also in this section is the MFA’s St. John the Baptist (about 1505–15) by Giovanni Francesco Rustici, an artist who did not specialize in the Della Robbia technique, but sometimes adopted it for expressive purposes. He likely relied on a member of the Della Robbia workshop to glaze the sculpture, which displays a distinctly creamy color—an experiment that emphasizes the highlights and shadows of the modeled clay and recalls the experimentation with traditional techniques that characterized the work of Rustici’s friend and mentor, Leonardo da Vinci.

While the Della Robbia workshop in Florence essentially dissolved around 1530, Girolamo della Robbia continued to produce sculpture in France, creating works for King Francis I, who favored the most up-to-date Italian styles. A series of Girolamo’s busts, meant to be set into roundels, is on view in the exhibition, including his 1529 portrait of Francis I, King of France, on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is the only identifiable independent portrait of a known sitter by a member of the Della Robbia workshop.

The use of glazed terracotta declined in the 16th century, as marble and bronze became the preferred materials for sculpture, but the medium experienced a renaissance during the 19th century. Isabella Stewart Gardner, for example, acquired two Della Robbia works in the process of furnishing her Venetian-style palazzo in Boston. One of them, a Sacramental Tabernacle (1470s, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum) attributed to Andrea della Robbia, is on view in the exhibition.

American collectors who could not locate or afford original Della Robbias instead bought fine reproductions, made in Florentine ceramic factories that had developed a technique that mimicked the pure, opaque colors and hard, shiny surfaces characteristic of the original Renaissance works. The Virgin Adoring the Child (about 1910), modeled after a work by Andrea della Robbia, was made by the Cantagalli workshop in Florence and purchased in Italy around 1912 by a family in Massachusetts.

Della Robbia Materials and Technique

Recent technical research by scholars and conservators working on Della Robbia: Sculpting with Color in Renaissance Florence, including at the MFA and other institutions, has shed new light on the Della Robbia technique, which shows a profound understanding of the clay medium and inventive adjustment to the composition of the glazes. The raw, calcium-rich clay was gathered from Arno riverbeds and then carefully refined to make it especially suited for glazing—a process that optimized the fit between clay and glaze, minimizing flaws in the surface. After the sculptures were formed by hand-modeling or through the use of molds, they were placed into a kiln for an initial firing. Once the ceramic body had cooled, the glazes—prepared using the Della Robbia’s secret recipe—were applied and the work was fired again. The recipe involved greater percentages of lead and tin, which enhanced the opacity and brilliance of the glazes. Larger sculptures, such as the Resurrection of Christ, were manufactured in sections to facilitate firing in the kiln—as well as permit safe handling and export of the sculptures from Florence to locations throughout Europe. Today, survival of the sculptures’ vibrant glaze colors testifies both to the durable nature of the materials and the Della Robbia workshop’s unrivaled technical expertise.

Della Robbia Reproductions in Boston

Countless reproductions of the best-known Della Robbia sculptures were produced in the 20th century in a wide variety of material—including plaster, mosaic and concrete, as well as glazed terracotta—and repurposed in a range of both indoor and outdoor settings. Many can be seen around Boston. Beyond the exhibition, Boston residents can see a version of Luca della Robbia’s lunette of the Madonna and Child with Angels decorating the portal of St. Mary of the Assumption School in Brookline. Buildings owned by the Brigham and Women’s Hospital—formerly known as the Boston Lying-In Hospital—and Boston Children’s Hospital also feature roundels based on Andrea della Robbia’s reliefs of swaddled children, which decorated the loggia of the Ospedale degli Innocenti foundling hospital in Florence, designed by Brunelleschi.

Italian Renaissance Sculpture at the MFA

The MFA’s collection of Italian Renaissance sculpture is as old as the Museum itself—the first acquisitions date to 1876, when the Museum opened its doors. Since then, the MFA has expanded its holdings of Italian works from one of art history’s most creative periods (1400–1600). The Museum showcases approximately 90 Italian Renaissance works, primarily sculpture and decorative arts, including Donatello’s marble relief Madonna of the Clouds (about 1425–35). It was bequeathed to the MFA by Quincy Adams Shaw, a wealthy Bostonian with a renowned collection of Italian Renaissance sculpture. Shaw also gave the Museum four Della Robbia works, acquired from Stefano Bardini, a major Florentine dealer. They include three by Luca della Robbia—Nativity with Gloria in Excelsis (about 1465–70), Virgin and Child with Lilies (about 1460–70) and Madonna of the Niche (about 1445–55), all on view in Della Robbia: Sculpting with Color in Renaissance Florence—as well as Virgin and Child (about 1500–25) by Andrea della Robbia, on view in the Italian Renaissance Gallery. In total, the Museum owns 12 works by Luca, Andrea and Giovanni della Robbia and their workshop, as well as two other Renaissance works made using the glazed terracotta technique.

The Antinori Family

Conservation of the Resurrection of Christ by Giovanni della Robbia at the Brooklyn Museum was made possible with generous support from the Antinori family. Now in its 26th generation with sisters Allegra, Alessia and Albiera Antinori all involved in the family-owned wine company, the family has always shown passion for and commitment to the arts. The restoration project is important to the Antinori and continues their legacy of supporting both Renaissance and contemporary art. Masterful works of art commissioned and collected over the centuries by family members are on display at their state-of-the-art Antinori Chianti Classico winery in Florence—among them the Antinori family crest created by Giovanni della Robbia in the early 1500s and contemporary art installations and exhibitions curated by Alessia Antinori over the past decade.

Related Programming

This fall, the MFA offers an array of programming related to Della Robbia: Sculpting with Color in Renaissance Florence. In addition to a two-lecture course on the Della Robbia on September 20 and 27, the Museum hosts the Attingham/Albainey Memorial Lecture on “Della Robbia Sculpture: Renaissance Invention/Modern Rediscovery” on October 16. The MFA will also offer a wide selection of in-gallery programming related to the exhibition. For more information on events and programming, visit mfa.org/programs.

Publication




The exhibition is accompanied by Della Robbia: Sculpting with Color in Renaissance Florence by Marietta Cambareri, with contributions by Abigail Hykin and Courtney Leigh Harris and produced by MFA Publications. In recent years, renewed attention from art historians, backed by sophisticated technical studies, has reintegrated the Della Robbia into the mainstream of Renaissance art history and illuminated their originality and accomplishments. This beautifully illustrated companion to the first major Della Robbia exhibition in the US brings readers into the workshops of these ingenious artists to experience one of the great inventions of the Renaissance and the enduring beauty it captured. The hardcover book (176 pages, 130 color illustrations) is available for purchase in MFA shops and online for $45

Philadelphia Museum of Art 
 March 1- May 14, 2017

Americans learned to love watercolor in the years between 1860 and 1925. The work of the two most influential American watercolorists, Winslow Homer (1836–1910) and John S. Sargent (1856–1925) centers this look at the remarkable transformation of the reputation and practice of the medium in the United States.

The exhibition begins with the creation of the American Watercolor Society, founded in 1866 to promote the medium, which united artists of all ages, styles, and backgrounds. The movement created stars—Homer, William T. Richards, Thomas Moran, John La Farge, Edwin Austin Abbey—who would remain dedicated to the medium for decades.

Other artists, such as Thomas Eakins and George Inness, rode the wave through its peak in the 1880s. Together, their work produced a taste for watercolor among younger artists and eager collectors that would endure through the turn of the century.

Thanks to the legacy of Homer, Sargent, and their contemporaries, the next generation--such as Charles Demuth, John Marin, Charles Burchfield and Edward Hopper--would choose watercolor as a principal medium.  

American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent examines how within fifty years, modernists rebuilt the reputation of watercolor as a powerful and versatile “American” medium.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue produced by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press.



A Tent in the Rockies, 1916, John Singer Sargent, (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum)



Diamond Shoal, 1905, Winslow Homer (Private Collection)



Guide Carrying a Deer, 1891, Winslow Homer (Portland Museum of Art, Bequest of Charles Shipman Payson)

Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky
May 28 – October 2, 2016

 

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (American, 1834 ‑ 1903), Nocturne, 1878. Lithotint on blue‑gray paper laid down on white wove paper, 6 3/4 x 10 1/4 in. (17.2 x 26 cm.) Collection of the Speed Art Museum, James Abbott McNeill Whistler Lithographs from the Steven L. Block Collection, gift of Steven L. Block, and an additional gift from Mrs. W. L. Lyons Brown.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) influenced two generations of European and American artists in the late nineteenth century. As provocative in personality as he was in art, Whistler was a major player in the artistic turmoil of the times. Whistler’s new approaches included a disdain for the narrative and moral traditions of French and British art and the promotion of his belief in “Art for Art’s sake” meaning that art was an end in itself. He was skilled in multiple media creating over 500 oil paintings in addition to pastels, watercolors, drawings, and exceptional prints. His etchings, lithographs, and drypoints—executed with meticulous care on the finest papers—gained him substantial fame.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, The Giudecca; Note in Flesh Colour, 1879-1880. Pastel on gray wove paper, (15.9 x 25.4 cm) Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts.

This exhibit encompasses a sampling of Whistler’s subjects and media. The Steven L. Block Collection from the Speed Art Museum, forming the core of the exhibition, is a comprehensive and rich resource to study the full range of the artist’s lithographic career. It is complemented by etchings and drawings from the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, and paintings from other private and public collections.

New Britain (CT) Museum of American Art
 July 08, 2016–October 02, 2016

Newell Convers Wyeth, “One more step, Mr. Hands,” said I, “and I’ll blow your brains out”, 1911, Oil on canvas, 47 x 38 1/8 in., New Britain Museum of American Art

One of the most unique and exceptional aspects of the NBMAA’s permanent collection of over 1,800 artworks is The Sanford B.D. Low Illustration Collection, named in memory of the Museum’s first director.\

Conceived in 1965, the collection was founded by well-known illustrators Stevan Dohanos, Robert Fawcett, Howard Munce, Arthur William Brown, Henry Pitz, and Walt Reed, who established the Sanford B.D. Low Memorial Illustration Committee. Carrying on Low’s desire to preserve and promote the great art of illustration, the Committee invited America’s preeminent illustrators to donate their work to the Museum. Today, the collection comprises nearly 1,800 works, making it one of the nation’s three largest.

From July 8–October 2, 2016, the Museum will present Masterpieces of The Sanford B.D. Low Illustration Collection. Providing a veritable history of American illustration, the show will highlight the work of groundbreaking artists such as Howard Pyle, Frederic Rodrigo Gruger, J.C. Leyendecker, Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, and many others. During their time, these artists captured distinctly American values through story and advertisement illustrations, as well as iconic cover illustrations for publications such as Scribner’s Magazine and The Saturday Evening Post.

Relatable images such as



John Falter’s idyllic Boys and Kites (1950)



and Stevan Dohanos’s Fourth of July Parade (1947) graced American households and influenced pop culture during some of the most significant cultural transformations of the early twentieth century. Other artists, such as Howard Pyle, illustrated stories and works of fiction, whose subject matter transcended the boundaries of the United States. Likewise, much of the pulp art in the Low Illustration Collection depicts narratives that take place beyond America, and even Earth.

Masterpieces of The Sanford B.D. Low Illustration Collection will take visitors on a journey through American illustration, a genre of art that has continued to impact our everyday lives and the formation of a diverse national identity.

 

Richard CalkinsBuck Rodgers in the 25^th Century, National Newspaper Service, Chicago: 1936, Gouache, pen and ink, 26 ½ x 18 ¼ in., The Robert Lesser Collection, 2009.22.78LIC

Allen Anderson

A 196-page catalogue has been produced in conjunction with this exhibition

Fenimore Art Museum Cooperstown, NY
May 28 – September 5, 2016

La Revue Blanche, 1895. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), color lithograph. © Herakleidon Museum, Athens, Greece, courtesy PAN Art Connections, Inc.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is most famous for his posters that depict the nightlife of Paris, although he only created thirty, of which thirteen were actually intended as cabaret and theater advertisements. The rest were used to advertise books, products such as bicycles, and a professional photographer. His images captured the imagination of his contemporaries and generations to follow, as well as helped define the end of the 19th century period and what is known as "La Belle Epoque." They remain a testimony to his artistic acumen and his enduring art.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec “La Troupe de Mademoiselle Eglantine” 

 

This exhibit, from the collection of Herakleidon Museum, Athens, Greece, uses examples of Lautrec’s sketches, drawings, books, albums, and original posters to examine his artistic process.

The exhibit also incorporates costumes from several of the Metropolitan Opera’s productions of La Boheme – Puccini’s unforgettable tale of love, youth, and tragic loss during “La Belle Epoque.” With more than 1,200 performances, La Bohème is the most frequently staged opera at the Met. Other select pieces from the Met’s archives including, photographs, playbills, jewelry, and props will also be on view.

The Saint Louis Art Museum will present Impressions of War, an exhibition featuring The Disasters of War, Francisco de Goya’s 80-plate contemplation of war and its aftereffects, as well as additional series of prints by three artists whose works equally respond to the darker side of war and its aftermath.


Organized as a counterpart to the upcoming exhibition Conflicts of Interest: Art and War in Modern Japan, Impressions of War shows alternative approaches to the tragedies of war. The free exhibition will be on view in galleries 234 and 235 from Aug. 5 through Feb. 12, 2017.

Responding to the French occupation of Spain by Napoleon Bonaparte between 1808 and 1814, The Disasters of War stands as one of the major achievements in the history of European art. Although Goya made the prints between 1810 and 1820, they were not formally published until 1863, more than three decades after his death.

The series broke ground with the intensity of its focus on war’s cruelties, yet the prints also shed light on the bravery of the Spanish people on the ground in the face of foreign occupation.

The artist’s fearless and personal approach to the topic of war sets it apart from official military imagery celebrating triumphs on the battlefield or the deaths of great generals. Instead, some plates concentrate on unmentionable brutality between soldiers and civilians as evidenced by the harrowing display in This is Worse, while others highlight the heroism of individuals, such as in Neither do These, in which women resist sexual attacks from the enemy.

Impressions of War also includes print series by three other artists in France, Germany, and the United States from the 17th to the 21st centuries in which the artists respond—as Goya did—on a personal rather than an official level.

Jacques Callot produced the earliest European print series chronicling the “miseries” of the great upheaval—largely sparked by religious conflict—that rocked Europe during the mid-17th century, establishing a tradition that inspired many artists after him. Callot’s petite scenes portray in exceptional detail the deeds and misdeeds of enlisted men and civilians during unstable times.
Max Beckmann’s portfolio Hell scrutinizes the bloody political clashes and material hardship that afflicted Berlin in the months following World War I. In Martyrdom, for example, Beckmann portrays the murder of the prominent communist leader Rosa Luxemburg, whose lifeless, outstretched body he depicts in the form of a cross.

Daniel Heyman’s Amman Portfolio—the most recent of the four series—responds to the earlier series even as it departs from them. Heyman was invited to witness interviews of Iraqi citizens who had been detained and tortured in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and he produced eight descriptive drypoint portraits with fragments excerpted from the traumatic interviews.
Impressions of War is curated by Elizabeth Wyckoff, curator of prints, drawings, and photographs; Leah Chizek, research assistant; and Ann-Maree Walker, senior research assistant, and Gretchen Wagner, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Prints, Drawings, and Photographs.

Exhibition website

Kunsthaus Zürich
3 June – 25 September 2016
 
This ground-breaking exhibition is part of events to mark the 100th anniversary of the Dada movement, which came into being in Zurich. The retrospective explores the historical sweep of Picabia’s (1879 –1953) provocative career – from his early successes as an Impressionist painter and his essential contribution to Dada, via his controversial pin-up girls and through to his abstract works created after the Second World War. Picabia remains a hotly debated figure among the great artists of the 20th century, owing to his distinctive eclecticism and persistent, deliberate contradictions.



Throughout his life, he reflected on the operation of style, subverted categorizations and set his face against systems of value judgment that distinguished high art from kitsch and conservatism from radicalism, and this in a self-critical manner and with acerbic humour. For all the demystification of painting that underpinned his Dada activities, Picabia continued to paint frenetically until his death while at the same time constantly reinventing the technique.

While the works from Picabia’s Dada years are well known, his oeuvre as a whole and his propensity for working in a wide variety of painting styles still await more in-depth examination.

Taken as a whole this comprehensive exhibition, which opens the Festspiele Zürich 2016, shows the extent to which Picabia’s work questions the principles of the modern. It comprises some 200 works, including around 150 paintings, complemented by a meticulously compiled selection of works on paper, avant-garde magazines for which he wrote or which he published himself, and examples of his film and theatre production.

The exhibition is a collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where it will be on display from November 2016.



A lavishly illustrated catalogue (368 pages, around 300 illustrations) containing new scholarly essays by Cathérine Hug (incorporating comments by Peter Fischli, Albert Oehlen, Rita Vitorelli and other personalities), Anne Umland, George Baker, Carole Boulbès, Masha Chlenova, Michele Cone, Briony Fer, Gordon Hughes, David Joselit, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Bernard Marcadé, Arnaud Pierre, Rachel Silveri, Juri Steiner, Adrian Sudhalter and Aurélie Verdier, is published by N.V. Mercatorfonds (Brussels). It is available in bookstores and the Kunsthaus shop.

Related article and  illustrations

Presented by the Winnipeg Art Gallery in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada, Chagall: Daphnis & Chloé showcases 42 lithograph prints by the artist, widely considered the crowning achievement of his career as a printmaker. The exhibit run until September 11.

The collaboration features Russian-born Jewish artist Chagall, a pioneer of modernism, and his illustrations of Daphnis & Chloé, depicting the semi-erotic tale written by the ancient Greek poet Longus. “Chagall: Daphnis & Chloé presents some of the treasures of the national collection seldomly shown in public given their fragility. The exhibition highlights Chagall’s unique style and fanciful, richly coloured imagery.

Marc Chagall Philetas's Orchard, from Daphnis and Chloe

From Christie's:
 

Daphnis and Chloéis a timeless tale of innocence, cruel fate, loyalty, betrayal, vengeful gods and even dastardly pirates, but one in which love ultimately conquers all. Almost nothing is known about the author — even his name is in doubt — although he was probably a native of Italy who wrote in Greek, familiar with the island of Lesbos where the action takes place. But the one thing we do know for certain is that it was written over 2,000 years ago. 

That the artist Marc Chagall came to illustrate it is due to a combination of factors, one of which was the turbulent state of his personal life during his years of exile in the U.S., during and after World War II. With the death of his beloved first wife, Bella, in 1944, Chagall lost the tranquility and security essential to his work. It was with a great deal of relief, then, that he met and finally married Valentina (Vava) Brodsky, in 1952.

Marc Chagall (1887-1985), Temple et Histoire de Bacchus (1961), lithograph in colours on Arches wove paper.

 

To mark this new, calmer phase in his life, Chagall embarked on a long honeymoon, travelling from Rome to Athens, then Delphi, and finally the island of Poros. The itinerary was suggested by his friend Tériade, not only a great supporter but also one of the most important art publishers of the 20th century. Tériade commissioned Chagall to provide a series of illustrations to Daphnis and Chloe, believing that Chagall was uniquely suited to depicting this tale of young love triumphing over adversity, and that exposure to the light and sun of the Greek islands would also be a perfect tonic for his long-suffering friend. It was probably no coincidence that Tériade, although a French national, was a native of Mytilene, capital of Lesbos.

Tériade was right. Chagall fell in love with the sea, the landscape and the light of the Peloponnese. On the trip he made a series of sun-filled gouaches and pastel drawings, preparatory studies for the 42 lithographs he would subsequently create back in Paris with the master lithographer Fernand Mourlot. The result has come to be regarded as one of the most beautiful illustrated books of the last century.

Our latest online sale, Daphnis & Chloé: Prints by Marc Chagall, runs from 28 April – 7 May 2015, and features all 42 works from this renowned suite. Each work displays the vibrant colors and the whimsical imagery for which the artist is justly famous.

Exhibition Dates:
October 7, 2016–January 16, 2017
Exhibition Location:   
The Met Fifth Avenue

The greatest French follower of Caravaggio (1571–1610), Valentin de Boulogne (1591–1632) was also one of the outstanding artists in 17th-century Europe. In the years following Caravaggio's death, he emerged as one of the most original protagonists of the new, naturalistic painting. Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio will be the first monographic exhibition devoted to this artist who is little known because his career was short-lived—he died at age 41—and his works are so rare. Around 60 paintings by Valentin survive, and this exhibition will bring together 45 of them, with works coming from Rome, Vienna, Munich, Madrid, London, and Paris. Exceptionally, the Musée du Louvre, which possesses the most important and extensive body of Valentin's works, will lend all of its paintings by the artist.

The exhibition is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Musée du Louvre.

Not since 1973, when an exhibition of the French followers of Caravaggio was held at the French Academy in Rome and at the Grand Palais in Paris, has there been an attempt to bring the achievements of this extraordinary painter before a large public. Therefore, this exhibition will be a landmark event not only for scholars and students, but also for art lovers, who will discover one of the giants of French painting. Although he is not well known to the general public, Valentin has long been admired by those with a passion for Caravaggesque painting. His work was a reference point for the great realists of the 19th century, from Courbet to Manet, and his startlingly vibrant staging of dramatic events and the deep humanity of his figures, who seem touched by a pervasive melancholy, make his work unforgettable.

In the early years of the 17th century, Rome was the cultural capital of Europe, where aspiring artists from France, Spain, Germany, and the Lowlands flocked to experience the great monuments of the Roman past as well as the masterpieces of Raphael and Michelangelo. But once there it was the novel art of Caravaggio—one of the great revolutionaries of Western art—that attracted them. Caravaggio famously rejected the grand tradition that looked to the past, espousing instead a new kind of art based on painting directly from the posed model observed under a raking light that enhanced its dramatic impact—a lighting effect that was emulated by filmmakers in the 1930s.

Caravaggio's revolution redrafted the artistic landscape of Europe and when he suddenly died in 1610 of malaria, the void he left was filled by two painters of genius. One was the famous Spaniard Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652) who in 1616 moved from Rome to Naples, where he spent the rest of his life; the other was the Frenchman Valentin de Boulogne who spent the whole of his short career in Rome.

There is scant information about Valentin's life before he arrived in Italy, although it is known that he was born on January 3, 1591, not far from Paris, in the small town of Coulommiers. He was the son of a painter and glazier and he had a brother, 10 years his junior, who was also a painter. It is likely that Valentin first apprenticed with his father, but nothing is known about his career before he arrived in Rome, where he is documented by 1614.

Like so many young artists from the north of Europe and Spain, Valentin arrived in Rome with little training but a strong desire to make a name for himself. Caravaggio's practice of painting directly from the model, eliminating the intervening training that had been thought essential to the artist, opened a new dynamic for aspiring artists, as did the emergence of the art market. Artists no longer necessarily required the connections provided by a well-established master. And their realistic vocabulary was no longer aimed only at erudite connoisseurs—it appealed to the masses, thereby challenging the authority of Antiquity, Raphael, and Michelangelo. It also introduced an existential subtext to conventional images, such as Valentin's Samson with the Jawbone of an Ass (Cleveland Museum of Art). Painted for Cardinal Francesco Barberini, the nephew of Pope Urban VIII, the picture incorporates a self-portrait of the artist.

Valentin's most frequent subjects are scenes of merriment, with music-making, drinking, and fortune-telling—themes associated with Caravaggesque painting, but treated in a hauntingly reflective fashion, as though meditations on the transience of the pleasures of life. But Valentin's greatest achievements were in the field of dramatic narratives and among the exhibition's highlights are the monumental  



Allegory of Italy (Finnish Institute, Rome), perhaps the most extreme statement of naturalism before Courbet;



and the prestigious altarpiece commissioned from Valentin for Saint Peter's Martyrdom of Saints Processus and Martinian (Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome). Much admired by contemporaries, the latter must have been studied by Velázquez, who visited Rome shortly after the painting was installed.



In The Judgment of Solomon (Musée du Louvre), Valentin presents the Biblical story of the young Solomon, deciding the fate of a baby claimed by two women, as an unfolding drama, with the viewer as active participant.


Valentin's life was cut short when, following a night of tavern-hopping, he contracted a fatal fever.



Also from the Louvre:





A Concert [c.1628]


Musician and Drinkers

The concert at the bas-relief (Le Concert au bas-relief).   The Fortune Teller c. 1628 Oil on canvas, 125 x 175 cm Musée du Louvre, Paris         Valentin de Boulogne - A Concert [c.1628]       Valentin de Boulogne - A Concert [c.1628] [Musée du Louvre, Paris - Oil on canvas, 175 x 216 cm]   Valentin de Boulogne - A Concert [c.1628] [Musée du Louvre, Paris - Oil on canvas, 175 x 216 cm]

The Grimaldi Forum, Monaco presents a major exhibition, Francis Bacon, Monaco and French Culture from 2 July to 4 September 2016. The exhibition, curated by Martin Harrison, editor of the Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, takes place with the support of The Estate of Francis Bacon in London, and the Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation based in Monaco.