Art Gallery of Ontario 
Oct. 22, 2016 to Jan. 29, 2017
Musée d’Orsay 
Spring of 2017


This fall, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) invites visitors to accompany some of the greatest artists of the 19th and 20th centuries on a spiritual journey of self-discovery. Organized in partnership with the renowned Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Mystical Landscapes: Masterpieces from Monet, van Gogh and more breaks new ground by exploring the mystical experiences of 36 artists from 15 countries, including Emily Carr, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Vassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Georgia O’Keeffe and James McNeill Whistler.

This major exhibition, which features close to 90 extraordinary paintings and 20 works on paper, debuts on Oct. 22, 2016 and runs to Jan. 29, 2017, before opening at the Musée d’Orsay in the spring of 2017.

The years between 1880 and 1930 were marked by rampant materialism and rapid urbanization. Disillusioned with traditional religious institutions, many artists across Europe and North America searched for an unmediated spiritual path through mystical experiences. They conveyed their feelings of unity with nature and the cosmos in some of the most famous landscape paintings ever created. Gauguin found inspiration in the faith of peasants in rural Brittany; Monet sought solace from the First World War through hours of contemplation beside his waterlily pond at Giverny; and van Gogh looked for consolation in the starry skies over Arles.

Mystical Landscapes was conceived and developed by Katharine Lochnan, the AGO’s senior curator of international exhibitions, together with guest curators Roald Nasgaard and Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, in addition to Guy Cogeval and Isabelle Morin Loutrel of the Musée d’Orsay.

Over the five years it has taken to develop the exhibition, the AGO has been assisted by a multi-disciplinary advisory group drawn largely from senior faculty at the University of Toronto. Leading experts in the fields of theology, history, astrophysics, medicine and psychology have looked at nature mysticism and art through different lenses.

“These masterpieces convey experiences that cannot be put into words,” says Lochnan. “The feeling of connecting with a deeper reality—a power much greater than ourselves—is a mystical experience. These experiences may reach any of us through the contemplation of nature and the cosmos. We are moved by the beauty of sunrise and sunset, the stars in the night sky, the reflections of the moon on lakes, the power of the ocean waves and the vision of snow-capped mountains. These paintings convey the artists’ mystical experiences of something greater than themselves. It is primarily through the contemplation of nature that they have seen with greater clarity.”

Mystical Landscapes will take visitors on a journey through Europe, Scandinavia and North America, beginning on a path through the woods and ending with a view of outer space from a mountain top.

Highlights of the exhibition include:



Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night over the Rhone at Arles from 1888, which prompted him to write about feeling “a tremendous need of —shall I say the word—religion...so I go outside at night to paint the stars”;



Paul Gauguin’s vivid Vision after the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) from 1888, painted during his sojourn in rural Brittany;



Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (Nymphéas) from 1907, which he painted after hours of Zen-like meditation beside his Japanese water garden;



Edvard Munch’s The Sun, created to inspire students in the wake of his well-publicized nervous breakdown between 1910-1913



Georgia O’Keeffe’s Series I - from the Plains from 1919, showing the terrifying power of an approaching thunderstorm in Texas;

A series of mystical lithographs by the recently rediscovered French artist Charles-Marie Dulac, which illustrates St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of Creation.

“We have been given extraordinary support for this project from institutions around the world,” says Lochnan. “Many of the loans are ‘magnets’ in their home museums and are very seldom lent. This unprecedented level of generosity reflects the very genuine excitement and commitment to the ideas explored in this exhibition which have never been fully addressed through art historical research.”

Lenders include the Musée d’Orsay; Tate Britain; National Gallery of Canada; National Gallery of Scotland; National Museum, Stockholm; National Gallery, Oslo; National Gallery, Prague; Leopold Museum, Vienna; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Institute of Chicago; and many other institutions worldwide.

After stepping through its doors, visitors to the exhibition will feel an immediate sense of escape from the world outside. While designing the in-gallery experience, AGO Senior Interpretive Planner David Wistow has carefully considered ways to help audiences draw their own emotional connections to the art works. “We welcome people to contemplate the role of spirituality in their own lives, and their connection to a deeper reality,” says Wistow. “The artists’ mystical journeys prompt us to ask our own questions of, ‘Who are we, and why are we here?’”

An illustrated catalogue will accompany this exhibition—one of the most ambitious publications in the AGO’s history—and will be available in English and French. Featuring essays by 19 scholars and curators from across Europe and North America, including those who served in an advisory capacity, it will be for sale in shopAGO.




Mystical Landscapes: Masterpieces from Monet, van Gogh and more is organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto and the Etablissement public du musée d’Orsay et du musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.

Excellent article, more images: http://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/mystical-landscapes-brings-monet-van-gogh-masterpieces-to-toronto-1.3814343

Museo Nacional del Prado 
10/25/2016 - 2/19/2017
 
Peeters’s earliest dated oil paintings, from 1607 and 1608, are small-scale, detailed images representing food and beverages. The skill with which this 14-year-old artist executed such pictures indicates that she must have been trained by a master painter. Although there is no documentary evidence of her artistic education, scholars believe that Peeters was a student of Osias Beert, a noted still-life painter from Antwerp.

By 1612, the 18-year-old artist was producing large numbers of painstakingly rendered still lifes, typically displaying groupings of valuable objects, such as elaborately decorated metal goblets, gold coins, and exotic flowers. Her compositions often show these arrangements on narrow ledges, seen from low vantage points, against dark backgrounds.

In the Prado’s



Still Life with Flowers, Gilt Goblet, Almonds, Dried Fruits, Sweets, Biscuits, Wine and a Pewter Flagon (1611)

she appears in a headdress and ruff reflected in the flagon,



while in Still Life with Flowers, Gilt Goblets, Coins and Shells (1612),

from the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe, she holds up her brushes and palette.



Clara Peeters, Table with Cloth, Salt Cellar, Gilt Standing Cup, Pie, Porcelain Plate with Olives and Cooked Fowl (1611). Image courtesy of Museo del Prado.



A still life with Carp in a Ceramic Colander Clara Peeters 




Catalogue

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, ise the exclusive U.S. venue for Degas: A New Vision, the most significant international survey in three decades of the work of Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas (1834–1917). While Degas’s reputation has often been confined to his ballet imagery, the artist’s oeuvre is rich, complex, and abundant, spanning the entire second half of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th. Opening October 16, Degas: A New Vision will assemble some 200 works from public and private collections around the world, and showcase Degas’s abiding interests across painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, and sculpture.

The MFAH has developed this major retrospective with the National Gallery of Victoria, in association with Art Exhibitions Australia. Some 60 additional loans will be exclusive to the Houston presentation, including such major works as Dancers, Pink and Green, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as preparatory drawings reunited with the iconic paintings that evolved from them, including  





Ballet Scene from Meyerbeer's Opera “Robert the Devil.”

Not since the 1988 landmark retrospective Degas—organized by Henri Loyrette, then at the Grand Palais in Paris; Gary Tinterow, then a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and the late Jean Sutherland Boggs of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa—has the artist’s career been fully assessed. 

“The objective of Degas in 1988 was to piece together Degas’s work as a whole, in an accurate chronology; though it may seem surprising now, that had never been done,” said MFAH director Gary Tinterow. “That exhibition led to a revival of interest in Degas, and dozens of shows focused on individual subjects of his work—the bathers, the dancers, the jockeys, the portraits—or his influence on other artists. Now, we are able to benefit from that scholarship and, led by Henri Loyrette, the preeminent Degas biographer and scholar, put Degas back together again, and see the artist anew.”

“Degas: A New Vision will explore Degas’s measured continuity, his journey as he reworks one painting after another, and his total refusal to settle on a definitive composition,” commented Henri Loyrette, the Paris-based Degas scholar and former director of the Louvre who is the organizing curator of the exhibition. “This is the distinctive genius of Degas, which makes him both a precursor and particularly relevant to today. Each period looks at the artist in a different way. What can he tell us today? That is the basic purpose of this show.”

Exhibition Overview

Degas: A New Vision reveals the continuity within Degas’s work from the beginning to the end of his career, as he restlessly moved among the media of oil painting, drawing, pastel, photography, printmaking, and sculpture, all the while employing common themes and approaches, revisiting poses and motifs that he had used decades earlier, and reworking paintings that he kept in his studio.

Degas’s earliest work, from the mid-1850s, is rooted in the Renaissance; in one early self-portrait he depicts himself as a Florentine courtier. 

By the late 1850s, Degas had shifted to multi-figure compositions, among them the double portrait of his brother-in-law and sister, 







Edmondo and Thérèse Morbilli (1865). This vignette of daily life, set in a nondescript, bourgeois environment, reveals a fascinating interplay of the couples’ relationship: in this depiction, Thérèse remains no more than the shadow of her husband, half hidden behind the table, with one hand grasping her cheek and the other anxiously reaching for Edmondo.

From paintings like the Morbilli portrait, Degas moved to modern history painting based on classical subjects, experimenting as he deployed multiple figures on a canvas. 






In two studies for Young Spartans Exercising and Scene of War, both from the mid-1860s, Degas uses a range of expressive posture and unusual pose that had not been seen before in painting. In addition, both works feature posed figures that Degas would revisit in very different contexts 20, even 40 years later.

By the late 1860s, Degas had abandoned these mythological and classical subjects. “After a great many essays and experiments and trial shots in all directions, he has fallen in love with modern life,” the great critic, artist, and writer Edmond de Goncourt wrote in 1874, following a visit to Degas’s studio.

At his height, in the 1870s and 1880s, Degas pursued every facet, high and low, of modern life: café scenes, in his iconic  




In a café (1875), also known as L’absinthe; 






jockeys and steeplechases, in Out of the Paddock (Racehorses) (1868–72) 




and Before the Race (c. 1882); 



student ballerinas in Dance Foyer of the Opera at Rue Le Peletier (1872),  



The Dance Class (1873), 



and Dancers, Pink and Green (1890); 




everyday routines in the brothel, in The Name Day of the Madam (1879); 




life below stairs, in Women Ironing (1884–86). 

A trip to visit his mother’s family in Louisiana produced his famous 




A Cotton Market in New Orleans (1873). All are complex, multi-figure compositions with the focus on the incidental or the moment of anticipation: a young dancer about to perform a step; the top-hatted silhouette of a standing man in a room crowded with young ballerinas; the man reading the newspaper amid the bustle of the cotton exchange.

Still, Degas continued to mine his earlier work for poses and postures. 




The young lady leaning on her elbows toward a man at his desk in the 1870 interior Sulking, who looks up at the viewer as if interrupted, 




becomes the older woman in a pensive tête-à-tête in the 1885 Conversation.  

Degas would continue to explore variations on a single subject, such as the female nude, creating them in different media across more than half a century. A lesser-known aspect of this creative journey included a short, but intensive, foray into photography. Degas’s photographs—the majority of which were produced during the year 1895 and feature his inner circle of family members, friends, and fellow artists—reveal how the artist used the medium both as part of a creative continuum that included paintings and pastels and as an experiment with a new form of visual expression, resulting in photographic figure studies, portraits, and self-portraits that stand alone as works of art in their own right. Degas: A New Vision will unite over 20 of his surviving photographs for the first time since the 1998 exhibition Edgar Degas: Photographer, which debuted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and traveled to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.

“Thirty years ago, no one even considered Degas’s late work, but the 1988 exhibition changed the public’s mind,” Loyrette said. Tinterow added, “The revelation then was how strong and modern the end of Degas’s career was—allowing us to see, for example, how artists like Lucien Freud can show us the shocking modernity of late Degas, and how we can appreciate the extravagant color and expressive line.” Degas himself said that by the 1890s he had given himself over to “an orgy of color.” The two figures in  



Combing the Hair (The Coiffure, 1896; once owned by Henri Matisse) are rendered in a blaze of red;  


The Bathers and other late studies depict female nude figures—alone or in groups; some composed, others random. For Degas, these expressions of the female form showed women as they saw, rather than imagined, themselves.

Although organized chronologically overall, the exhibition will also present specific groupings devoted to a particular theme or technique. In all, some 200 works will trace Degas’s career, across painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, and sculpture. The exhibition is drawn from private collections around the world as well as public collections that include those of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the National Gallery of London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Harvard Art Museums; Yale University Art Gallery; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid; and the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland.

Publication

The exhibition will be accompanied by the monographic publication Degas: A New Vision, with principal essays by Henri Loyrette and a foreword by Tony Ellwood, director of the National Gallery of Victoria; Gary Tinterow, director of the MFAH; and Carol Henry, CEO of Art Exhibitions Australia.

High Museum of Art, Atlanta

The Feast of the Order of the Star, from the Grandes Chroniques de France, c. 1378–79. France, Paris. Ink, tempera, and gold on vellum. Bibliothèque  nationale de France. MS. Fr. 2813, folio 394 recto. 

The Hours of Jeanne d’Évreux, c. 1325–28. Jean Pucelle (French, active 1319–34). Ink and tempera on vellum; 9.3 x 6.1 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 54.1.2. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.

Legion of Honor, San Francisco
February 6–May 15, 2016

Pierre Bonnard, The Large Garden, 1895. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Musee d'Orsay © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

SAN FRANCISCO (March 17, 2015)—The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are pleased to announce Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia, the first major international presentation of Pierre Bonnard’s work to be mounted on the West Coast in half a century. The exhibition will feature more than seventy works that span the artist’s complete career, from his early Nabi masterpieces, through his experimental photography, to the late interior scenes for which he is best known.
The exhibition celebrates Bonnard as one of the defining figures of modernism in the transitional period between impressionism and abstraction. Several themes from Bonnard’s career will emerge, including the artist’s great decorative commissions where the natural world merges with the bright colors and light of the South of France, where windows link interior and exterior spaces, and where intimate scenes disclose unexpected phantasmagorical effects.

Among the many significant paintings on view will be Man and Woman (1900, Musée d’Orsay), in which the artist has depicted his lifelong companion and one of his constant subjects, Marthe de Méligny. Also featured will be such masterpieces as The Boxer (Self-Portrait) (1931, Musée d’Orsay) and The Work Table (1926–1937, National Gallery of Art); and decorative panels and screens, including View from Le Cannet (1927, Musée Bonnard) and Pleasure (1906–1910, Musée d’Orsay).
Pierre Bonnard: Painting Arcadia will offer a fresh interpretation of Bonnard's repertoire, and a reconsideration of the artist as one of the foremost practitioners of modernism.

Pierre Bonnard, "Self-Portrait of the Artist," 1930. Watercolor, gouche and pencil on wove paper. 65 x 50 cm. Collection Triton Foundation © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Pierre Bonnard, "Woman with a Cat, or The Demanding Cat," 1912. Oil on canvas. 78 x 77.5 cm. Musée d'Orsay © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Pierre Bonnard, "Man and Woman," 1900. Oil on canvas. 115 x 72.3 cm. Musée d'Orsay © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Pierre Bonnard, "The Dressing Table," 1908. Oil on canvas. 52 x 45.5 cm. Musée d'Orsay © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Pierre Bonnard, "The Checkered Blouse," 1892. Oil on canvas. 61 x 33 cm. Musée d'Orsay © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

 Pierre Bonnard, "The Large Garden," 1895. Oil on canvas. 168 x 221 cm. Musée d'Orsay © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Pierre Bonnard, "Dancers," 1896. Oil on cardboard. 28 x 36 cm. Musée d'Orsay © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
About the Artist

 Pierre Bonnard, "The Work Table," 1926-37. Oil on canvas. 121.9 x 91.4 cm. National Gallery of Art © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Pierre Bonnard, "Nude in an Interior," 1912-1914. Oil on canvas. 134 x 69.2 cm. National Gallery of Art © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Pierre Bonnard, "Homage to Maillol," 1917. Oil on canvas. 48 x 18.5 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Pierre Bonnard, "Self-Portrait," c. 1904. Oil on canvas. 18 1/8 x 18 ¾. cm. Private Collection © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Pierre Bonnard, "View of the Old Port, Saint-Tropez," 1911. Oil on canvas. 83.8 x 86.4. cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Pierre Bonnard, "House amoung the Trees ("My Caravan" at Vernonnet)," ca. 1918. Oil on canvas. 48.6 x 42.2 cm. The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
 

Born just outside of Paris in 1867, Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) was the son of a high-ranking bureaucrat in the French War Ministry. In 1887 he enrolled in classes at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he became a student and follower of Paul Gauguin. Gauguin’s teaching inspired a group of young painters known as Les Nabis (after the Hebrew words navi or nabi, meaning prophet), with whom Bonnard joined.

By the early years of the 20th century, the Nabis had disbanded, and for the remainder of his career, Bonnard resisted affiliation with any particular school. Instead, he alternated between the themes and techniques of the Impressionists and the abstract visual modes of modernism.

Bonnard worked in many genres and techniques, including painting, drawing and photography. From the domestic and urban scenes of his early Nabi period to the great elegies of the 20th century, Bonnard’s output is grounded in a modernity that was transformed by his knowledge of works from other cultures, including Japanese woodblock prints and Mediterranean mosaics.
Exhibition Organization

This exhibition is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, and the Fundación MAPFRE, Madri

Legion of Honor,  San Francisco 
February 25 through May 29, 2017

Claude Monet, La Grenouillère, 1869. Oil on canvas, 29 3/8 x 39 1/4 in. (74.6 x 99.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929, 29.100.112. Image: www.metmuseum.org

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are pleased to announce Monet: The Early Years at the Legion of Honor. This will be the first major US exhibition devoted to the initial phase of Claude Monet’s (French, 1840–1926) career. Through approximately sixty paintings, the exhibition demonstrates the radical invention that marked the artist’s development during the formative years of 1858 to 1872. In this period the young painter developed his unique visual language and technique, creating striking works that manifested his interest in painting textures and the interplay of light upon surfaces.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for visitors to see Monet’s mastery – before Impressionism,” says Max Hollein, Director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “Monet is ubiquitous – people tend to think there is nothing more to know about him. This exhibition is revelatory.”

With a selection of works gathered from some of the most important international collections – the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other public and private collections worldwide – Monet: The Early Years authoritatively demonstrates the artist’s early command of many genres, not only the landscapes for which he has become so renowned but also still lifes, portraits and genre scenes.

“The paintings from Monet’s early career are profoundly daring and surprising,” comments Esther Bell, Curator in Charge of European Paintings at the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco. “You see his mastery of light and texture everywhere – in his depictions of large and small moments, with friends and loved ones, in the solitude of forests and fields and in the quiet scenes of everyday life. Every stroke commands of our attention.”

This exhibition follows the Legion of Honor’s strong history of showing highly important moments in French Impressionism. By following Monet before Impressionism, visitors can see the emergence of his style and how he helped shape the movement.  

Monet: The Early Years will be on view at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco from February 25 through May 29, 2017. This is the first of two exhibitions curated by George Shackelford, Deputy Director of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas to examine the full artistic career of Claude Monet. The companion exhibition, Monet: The Late Years, will come to San Francisco in 2019. Esther Bell is the curator of both exhibitions for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

IN DETAIL

The presentation opens with the first painting Monet exhibited in public,

View near Rouelles (1858, Maranuma Art Park, Saitama Prefecture Asaka Kamiuchimagi, Japan). Created when the artist was just 18 years old, this work demonstrates his early mastery of oil painting through his brilliant handling of color and also prefigures his lifelong affinity for the subject of landscapes.

From 1864 to 1868, he was simultaneously interested in capturing the geographies of his artistic life, from the cool, gray coast of Normandy to the warm, lush forest of Fontainebleau.  

The Pointe de la Hève at Low Tide (1865, Kimbell Art Museum), which Monet exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1865 to critical acclaim, exemplifies his talent for conveying the dramatic atmosphere of a Normandy beach.


One of his finest treatments of the interior of the forest is  

An Oak at Bas-Bréau, the Bodmer (1865, private collection), his detailed study of a tree named for the Swiss painter Karl Bodmer. This work will be shown publicly for only the second time in this exhibition.

During this period, Monet also aspired to create large-scale figure paintings intended for Salon exhibitions. In 1865 he began an ambitious plein-air composition,

Luncheon on the Grass (1865–1866, Musée d’Orsay), in response to

a painting of the same title by Édouard Manet (which was lambasted by critics when it was exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863). Monet’s composition featured his future wife Camille Doncieux and friends Gustave Courbet, Frédéric Bazille and others having a picnic in the forest. Daunted by its large size, Monet abandoned the painting, which he eventually presented as collateral to a landlord when his rent was late. By the time Monet could afford to get the painting back, the canvas had become moldy. Monet cut the canvas into several pieces, two of which survive and are presented in this exhibition.

In contrast to the social conviviality represented in Luncheon on the Grass, the artist’s lesser-known still-life paintings from the same period, including  

Still Life with Melon (ca. 1872, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon), are focused on reproducing objects in sensual and meticulous detail. This emphasis is also reflected in  

Red Mullets (1869, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts), in which two stark and somber fish lay in opposing directions on a soft white cloth.

Monet was also proficient in creating portraits and genre scenes, many of which included members of his budding family. On view in the exhibition are two tender, affectionate paintings of his eldest son— 

Jean Monet Sleeping (1867–1868, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen)

and The Cradle—Camille with the Artist’s Son Jean (1867, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC), the latter also depicting Doncieux, by then his wife, who is set against a white curtain as she gazes over the infant.

The exhibition demonstrates Monet’s increasing mastery of painting the effects of light in multiple weather conditions. Such skills are notable in the two of eight works on loan from the Musée d’Orsay that show winter scenes,  

A Cart on the Snowy Road at Honfleur (1865)

and The Magpie (1869), which shows with chilling stillness a single bird clinging to a fence in a snow-blanketed landscape.

Fleeing the Franco-Prussian War, Monet left France in 1871. He first moved to London, where he painted images of vast public parks

(Hyde Park, London, ca. 1871, RISD Museum).

Upon his return to France in 1872, Monet moved to Argenteuil, a town about 12 miles downriver from Paris, along the Seine, where he produced extraordinary views of the sky and water. A group of paintings that depict the towpath along the river capture the appearance of the scene at different times of the day, prefiguring his serial experiments two decades later, when he would paint a single subject under a wide array of atmospheric conditions.

Regatta at Argenteuil (ca. 1872, Musée d’Orsay) displays the looser handling of paint that the artist would further develop in the successive phases of his career.Monet: The Early Years tracks the young artist to the end of 1872, the moment his mature style began to emerge.

 

 

On October 30, 2016, the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) will present the first exhibition in the United States to explore the indelible impact of the Protestant Reformation through major works of art, as part of an international initiative to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s “Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.” On view through January 15, 2017, “Martin Luther: Art and the Reformation” will feature paintings, sculptures, gold, textiles and works on paper—many of which have never before left Germany—as well as Luther’s personal possessions and recent archeological finds from his boyhood homes to shed new light on the critical religious, cultural and societal changes of this tumultuous and transformative period. The anniversary will be observed around the world on October 31, 2017.

“Martin Luther: Art and the Reformation”at Mia is organized in partnership with four German institutions—the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle, Luther Memorials Foundation in Saxony-Anhalt, German Historical Museum in Berlin, and Foundation Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha. The Luther House in Wittenberg, Germany is closed in 2016 for major renewals of its permanent exhibition for the Jubilee Year 2017, which has allowed key works to travel to Mia for this unprecedented exhibition.

“We are thrilled to commemorate this watershed moment in history with such an extraordinary exhibition,” said Kaywin Feldman, the Duncan and Nivin MacMillan Director and President of Mia. “Minnesota is home to one of the largest Lutheran populations in the nation, so this story has a special

resonance here. We are proud to partner with our peers in Germany, and look forward to engaging our local audiences and visitors from around the world with the art and objects that were at the heart of the Reformation.”

“Martin Luther: Art and the Reformation”places particular emphasis on Luther’s use of art as a tool for worship, teaching and propaganda. Among the works on view will be paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), who was inspired by Luther’s preaching to develop didactic paintings that vividly depict the viewer’s choice between salvation and damnation. Cranach’s narrative paintings illustrate biblical stories in brilliant colors and ravishing—sometimes gory—detail, and his stylized portraits capture the humanist spirit of the age. Additionally, several vandalized objects by other artists will be presented to underscore the intense emotional reaction in the wake of Luther’s protest.

A major portion of the exhibition devoted to Luther’s personal life will feature recent archaeological finds from his boyhood homes in the towns of Eisleben and Mansfeld, as well as his house in Wittenberg, the base for his history-making activities. Excavations, undertaken in 2004 and 2005, uncovered household goods that reveal new information about Luther and his family. A selection of those objects will be displayed for the first time in the United States and offer new insights into Luther’s daily life, especially his childhood.

“The objects in this exhibition have strong visual and emotional presence. Not only do they tell the fascinating story of the man and his impact on religion and politics, but they also continue to reverberate today,” said Tom Rassieur, Mia’s John E. Andrus III Curator of Prints. “With the incredibly generous support of our German colleagues, we are excited to be able to share spectacular works of art and new discoveries with the public, and to vividly bring Luther’s world to life for contemporary audiences.”

Exhibition Themes and Highlights

“Martin Luther: Art and the Reformation”is organized chronologically and comprises eight primary sections:

“Boyhood,” in which the archeological findings at Luther’s childhood homes will be displayed;
“Secular Power,” which features rare paintings, prints, sculpture depicting the rulers and courtly life of the era, as well as opulent status symbols belonging to the most powerful men of the age;

“Pre-Reformation Piety,” which presents paintings, carvings, goldsmith’s work, and vestments associated with late medieval and early renaissance Catholic practice;

“Luther as Monk, Scholar, and Preacher” includes the notorious indulgence chest of Wittenburg, a 1517 printed copy of the “Ninety-Five Theses,” and the final pulpit from which Luther preached—newly-restored for the exhibition;

“Luther’s Theology” features Lucas Cranach’s Law and Grace, the 157-panel Gotha Altar, and some of Luther’s own hand-written notes for his translation of the Bible;

“Luther’s House as the hub of the Reformation,” featuring the furniture from his studio, his personal possessions, portraits of Luther, his wife Katarina von Bora, and their associates, as well as additional archeological finds from Luther’s home—from jewelry and pen knives to tiles and glass—that embody his daily life and international status;

“Polemics and Conflicts” underscores the turbulence of the era through vandalized works of art, satirical woodcuts, weaponry and war trophies; and
 
“The Legend,” which highlights the establishment of Luther’s posthumous reputation through memorial objects such as the model for his grave marker, the debating stand of the University of Wittenburg, and relics that gave his followers tangible bonds to their spiritual leader.
Additional highlights from the exhibition include:

Sixteen paintings from Lucas Cranach the Elder’s studio, two-thirds of which are autographed, including



Martin Luther (c. 1541),

 


The Death of Holophernes (1531),




and Law and Grace (1529),

 one of the most influential allegories of the Reformation, which underscores Luther’s belief in faith as the path to salvation. Several of these works also showcase a shift from the lifelike compositions of the Renaissance to more stylized figural representations, solidifying Luther’s use of art as a tool for communicating to a broader public.



“Martin Luther: Art and the Reformation”is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, as well as a new book of essays, which will serve as a fundamental work resource in Luther studies for the next decade. In the book of essays, forty European and American authors tackle subjects that set the stage for Luther’s activities. They closely examine the various phases of his life, his theology and his translation of the Bible, as well as his intellectual, spiritual, and economic environment; the Reformation as a media revolution; his relationship with Jews and Muslims; reformation art and architecture, Lutheran memorial culture, Lutheranism in America, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, in addition to other topics. The volume of essays and exhibition catalogue have been developed in partnership with the German consortium, as well as the Morgan Library & Museum, New York and Pitts Theology Library at Emory University, Atlanta, which are also presenting exhibitions dedicated to Martin Luther and the Reformation this fall. The catalogue, which includes extensive information about the objects featured in all of the exhibitions, covers Luther’s childhood, his academic background and his time in Wittenberg, as well as pre-Reformation court art and piety, among other topics. Both volumes will appear in English and German.

Lucas Cranach the Elder Martin Luther 1528 ©Luther Memorials Foundation of Saxony- Anhalt

Lucas Cranach the Elder Marrtin Luther, 1529 © Deutsches Historisches Museum

Lucas Cranach the Elder Katharina von Bora, 1528© Luther Memorials Foundation of Saxony-Anhalt Lucas Cranach the Elder Martin Luther, 1529© Deutsches Historisches Museum

Lucas Cranach the Elder Judith at the Table of Holophernes, 1531© Foundation Schloss Friedenstein Goth

Lucas Cranach the Elder Damnation and Salvation, 1529© Foundation Schloss Friedenstein Gotha

Follower of Lucas Cranach the Elder Martin Luther on his Deathbed, before 1600© Deutsches Historisches Museum

 

Lucas Cranach the Elder Head of John the Baptist, c. 1530© Foundation Schloss Friedenstein Gotha

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
November 4, 2016–March 12, 2017

Velázquez (Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez) (Spanish, 1599-1660). Portrait of a Young Girl, ca. 1640. Oil on canvas. The Hispanic Society of America, New York, NY

Velázquez's portraits of a young girl (ca. 1640)



and of Cardinal Camillo Astalli-Pamphili (ca. 1650),

both from the collection of The Hispanic Society of America in New York City, were recently examined and treated at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The removal of extremely discolored varnish layers that had masked these paintings revealed Velázquez's remarkable technique and subtle sense of color in ways that had not been seen in more than a century. These two works, along with five other exceptional portraits created in the final two decades of the artist's career—including



The Met's iconic Juan de Pareja (1650)

—are being presented in Velázquez Portraits: Truth in Painting, on view at the Museum through March 12, 2017.

Although his formal state portraits of the leading figures of the Spanish monarchy are what established Velázquez (1599–1660) in his career, these bust-length likenesses he produced in Spain and during his travels in Italy are some of his most immediate and captivating images. Freed of the restrictions that apply to state and allegorical portraiture, Velázquez was able to capture in these paintings the temperaments, moods, and inner reflections of their subjects. In showing them roughly life-size, and setting them against a neutral background, Velázquez invested his subjects with a timelessness that makes them powerfully affecting to this day.

From the Met:

In his final decade, Velázquez’s handling of paint became increasingly free and luminous. This late style can be seen in

 María Teresa (1638–1683), Infanta of Spain (49.7.4Z)—a portrait probably made for her future husband, Louis XIV of France—and the breathtakingly beautiful portrayal of the royal family,

Las Meninas (The Ladies-in-Waiting) (Prado). The artist stands to the left before an enormous canvas on which he is painting the king and queen, who are reflected in the mirror in the background, but the real subject of the picture is the little infanta who has come to watch Velázquez at work. She stands between two ladies-in-waiting, who coax her to behave, and two court dwarfs and a large dog, all rendered with astonishing freedom and truth to nature.

The exhibition is organized by Stephan Wolohojian, Curator in the Department of European Paintings, and Michael Gallagher, Sherman Fairchild Conservator in Charge of Paintings Conservation, both at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Velázquez Portraits: Truth in Painting is featured on the Museum's website with essays about The Hispanic Society of America's paintings—one is by Michael Gallagher on a conservator's approach to treating Portrait of a Young Girl, and another is by Stephan Wolohojian on the colorful life of Cardinal Camillo Astalli-Pamphili.

Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford
November 5, 2016 – July 2017

Three historic scenes created by America’s first history painter, John Trumbull, are central to this installation exploring visual interpretation of the Revolutionary War (1775–1783). An additional work by Trumbull is also featured in the exhibition, as well as works by modern artists who revisited the legacy of the war in the 20th century in observance of major anniversaries such as the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth in 1932 and the nation’s bicentennial in 1976.

John Trumbull (1756–1843) served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and later created a series of eight paintings devoted to the subject, explaining once to Thomas Jefferson that he hoped the paintings would “diffuse the knowledge and preserve the memory of the noblest series of actions which have ever dignified the history of man.” After completing a second edition to adorn the rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., Trumbull began a third and final series in 1831. Due to his failing health Trumbull was only able to complete five of the paintings, all of which were purchased by the trustees of the Wadsworth Atheneum. Trumbull’s Revolutionary War scenes were some of the museum’s inaugural objects, and were displayed when the first gallery opened in 1844.

Three of those paintings,



“The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, December 31, 1775,”



“The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776”



and “The Capture of the Hessians at Trenton, December 26, 1776” are included in “Visualizing American Independence.”



 “The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775” is on view in the museum’s Morgan Great Hall,



and “The Death of General Mercer at the Battle of Princeton, January 3, 1777” is scheduled for loan to a peer institution.

Trumbull’s role as artist-historian encouraged later generations of artists to visually reinterpret the American Revolution and secure the legacy of its heroes. One of the most frequently portrayed subjects from this period is George Washington, whose image—especially after his death—became so symbolic that memorial portraits elevated him to a divine figure. Many portraits were made into engravings and mass-produced, providing artists with easy accessibility to Washington’s likeness for transfer onto textiles, decorative arts, jewelry, postage stamps, currency, and other objects.

John Trumbull: Visualizing American Independence includes a range of such renditions, including several 19th century ceramic jugs decorated with Washington’s image and a 1975 color lithograph by Alex Katz.

 
Sotheby’s New York hasannounced the 17  November  Contemporary Art Evening Auction . The sale commences with a selection of  works from  The Triumph of Painting: The Steven & Ann Ames Collection , a spectacular single - owner sequence comprised of masterworks of recent art history. In addition to superlative examples from titans of the 20th Century including Gerhard Richter, Willem de Kooning, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, and Jean- Michel Basquiat. The exhibition opens to the public 4  November 2016,

Richter’s unparalleled genius for abstraction, and his ability to compose, combine and balance color, is beautifully illustrated in  



 A.B., Still from 1986  (estimate $20/30 million) and  




 A.B., St. James from 1988 (estimate $20/30 million) 

while de Kooning’s mastery and contribution to Abstract Expressionism is showcased in his 
Untitled oil on canvas from 1976 -77 (estimate $8/12 million).  I

Thesale will offer a rare and important work by “The Radiant Child” of the art world, Jean -Michel  Basquiat. 

Jean - Michel Basquiat Brother’s Sausage 1983 48 by 187 ½ in., 121.9 by 476.2 cm. 

Composed by the artistin1983, at the height of his career, Brother’s Sausage is a frieze of six panels. Infused with themes of inequality, prejudice, wealth andcorporate greed, the artwork incorporates many of the artist’s signature details – poetic  expression and extensive layering. Featured on the cover of Basquiat’s catalogue raisonné, and formerly hung in the Parisian home of Enrico Navarra, publisher of the catalogue raisonné and champion of the artist,  Brother’s Sausage comes to auction this November with an estimate of $15/20 million.   




Measuring 72 by 144 inches,Woldgate Woods, 24, 25, and 26 October 2006 is a monumental work by a pillar of post-war British art, David Hockney. Making use of six canvases,  Woldgate Woods beautifully captures the light and color of the Yorkshire landscape.  Exhibited at the Royal Academy in the 2012 blockbuster exhibition, David Hockney: A Bigger Picture , the sale of this large-scale painting comes ten years after Sotheby’s redefined the market for the artist with  



The Splash .

 With an estimate of $9/12 million, Sotheby’s is once again set to establish a new record for Hockney at auction.

 From what has been called one of the most important  series of his career,  



Andy Warhol’s Self - Portrait  (Fright Wig) is an iconic and enduring image of the  artist, captured just months prior to his untimely death  in February 1987 (estimate $20/30 million). Among the last works ever produced by Warhol, Self- Portrait (Fright Wig) is also striking for its monumental  scale, monochromatic elegance and unmatched  sharpness of its silkscreened image.  


 

  
Sotheby’s New York  21 November auction of  American Art . The sale is headlined by Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post cover,  Which One? .The fall sale also includes strong examples of  modernism by artists including Milton Avery and Charles Ephraim Burchfield, as well as  Western art, which is well represented by Albert Bierstadt’s stunning  Yosemite and four  paintings formerly in the collection of Philadelphia sports owner and legend, Edward M.  Snider. Following an exhibition in San Francisco and with several highlights on view during the Impressionist & Modern and Contemporary Art sale previews in New York, the full offerings of American Art will open to the public on 19 November. 




Norman Rockwell’s  Which One? (Undecided; Man in Voting Booth) will be a major highlight of our 21 November 2016 auction of American Art in New York. Depicting the  public sentiment leading up to the  presidential election of 1944 , in which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran against  Thomas E. Dewey, this painting  epitomizes  Rockwell’s signature style , combining relatability and intellect, humour and all -American pride.  

Acquired by the Phipps Family in the1980s , the painting will be exhibited in New York starting  4 November 2016 alongside Impressionist, Modern & Contemporary Art, before the  American Art auction on 21 November, when it is estimated to sell for $4/6 million .   

1944: AN ELECTION YEAR 

Focused on the United States presidential  election of 1944, a hotly -contested race between Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,  running for his fourth term, and Republican Thomas E. Dewey, governor of New York, Which  One?is a superb example of Norman Rockwell’s  ability to highlight issues at the forefront ofnational discourse in a relatable manner. With questions of foreign and domestic policy, as well  as the general health of the incumbent, being called into question, Americans rallied to vote, taking part in an essential, American experience. In  Which One?  a Cedar Rapids resident represents the millions of undecided voters acrossthe country. Having educated himself with political pamphlets and newspapers,the formerjammed in his pocket and the latter still grasped in his hand, the voter continues to weigh his  options. While the image alone would have resonated with citizens throughout the United  States, Norman Rockwell’s  keen attention to detail,  demonstrated by the fine print of The  Cedar Rapids Gazette and the man’s bemused expression , bring s this undecided voter to life.     

Furthermore, by balancing the composition and creating a sense of depth, one feels that he or she could step into the painting and into the shoes of the Cedar Rapids voter.  Which One? (Undecided; Man in Voting Booth) embodies the best of Norman Rockwell and hisability to capture American life. Having been in the same collection for over three decades, the November auction of American Art offers a rare opportunity for collectors andinstitutions to acquire a quintessential work by one of America’s most beloved painters of the 20th Century. 

NORMAN ROCKWELL: AMERICA’S STORYTELLER 

Norman Rockwell was, and continues to be, America’s storyteller. Best known for his covers for The Saturday Evening Post, his works of art captured the  zeitgeist of the day, including patriotism, racism and national security. In fact, with the public’s reliance on daily newspapers and weekly magazines like The Post for information and regular updates, hispaintings were an integral part of the conversation. Capturing them with warmth, w it and a sense of humor, Norman Rockwell appealed to the average American. In the words of Thomas S. Buechner, “because [Rockwell] illustrates them using familiar people in familiar setting with wonderful accuracy, he continue to grow as new generations live through the  same quintessentially American types of experiences that he so faithfully depicted in his art” (Norman Rockwell: A Sixty Year Retrospective, New York, 1972, p. 13).    

Additional significant Rockwells on offer this November include   


Pipe and Bowl Sign Painter (estimate $1.5/2.5 million ) 



and Organist Waiting for Cue (estimate $1.2/1.8 million) , 

both strong examples of the artist’s work for The Post in the  1920s. Remarkably, the former was the first image to appear on the cover of the publication in full color.  

A critical period in Milton Avery’s career is represented by two works painted in the  1940s when the artist developed his mature  style.   

Raymond’s Beach (estimate  $1/1.5 million ) from 1944 illustrates the influence the work of  such European artists  as Henri Matisse, George Braque and Pablo Picasso had on Avery during this period, as he began to eschew representational details  in favor of vibrant and non -associative  color areas within his compositions .The subject matter – his wife Sally sketching at the seashore –  is one that appears frequently throughout Avery’s  oeuvre even as he continued to develop his  style and aesthetic.



Woman and Orange Mandolin (estimate  $800,000/1,200,000) from 1947 and sold by the Estate of Maxine Pines also exemplifies the  artist’s distinctive brand of modernism. Encouraged by his new French art dealer, Paul Rosenberg, Avery continued to simplify forms and increase his reliance on color to organize space and express mood, helping to position the artist as one of the earliest American  practitioners of chromatic abstraction. 

Six works by the celebrated  American watercolorist CharlesEphraim Burchfield are also included in the American Art sale. Spanningnearly 50 years of Burchfield’s career from 1915 to 1963, many of these  works have been off the market fortwo decades. Leading the group is  




September Wind (estimate  $300/500,000).  A testament to the artist’s deep reverence for the natural world, this vibrant and dynamic watercolor from 1963  emphasizes the ephemeral beauty of the changing seasons.



Western selections in the November auction are highlighted by Albert  Bierstadt’s Yosemite (estimate  $1.5/2.5 million ), a stunning depiction of the territory that, at the time this work was painted, was largely unexplored.  Yosemite also includes a rare self - portrait of the artist and was likely  previously owned by the Commanding  General of the Union Army and former United States President, Ulysses S. Grant. 



Painted in 1905, Thomas Moran’s  Cascade Falls is a dynamic view of one of the Yosemite Valley’s most dramatic waterfalls, which the  artist first encountered in 1871 while traveling on a commission for Scribner’s magazine (estimate $800/1,200,000) .  

Christie’s announces the fall sale of American Art on November 22 will offer 101 lots encompassing a range of styles and artists of 19^th century, Impressionism, Modernism, Regionalism, Western and Illustration art. The sale features one of the strongest selections of American Impressionist paintings to appear on the auction market, including pioneers of the genre such as Childe Hassam, Frank Weston Benson, Frederick Carl Frieseke and John Leslie Breck, among others. Other sale highlights include works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Andrew Wyeth, Newell Convers (N.C.) Wyeth and Stuart Davis.

Biography - Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York

By embracing tonalism and Impressionism, Chauncey Foster Ryder devised his characteristic style distinguished by a bold application of nuanced colors in poetic landscapes. The artist was born in Danbury, Connecticut in 1868 and lived in New Haven during his youth. He moved to Chicago in his twenties and enrolled at The Art Institute of Chicago around 1891.

Like many of his peers, Ryder traveled to Paris at the turn of the century to engage in the thriving art scene. He studied with J. P. Laurens at the Académie Julian in 1901 and also painted under the guidance of Raphael Collin. During his time abroad, Ryder exhibited annually at the Paris Salons. While his early work was inspired by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, around 1903 Ryder’s paintings began to transform and incorporate broad brush strokes and expressive impasto, a stylistic path he continued to develop throughout his career.

Ryder maintained a studio in Paris until 1910, yet he returned to the United States around 1907 and began exhibiting with Macbeth Gallery in New York City. Although he lived in New York, the artist spent much of his time in Wilton, New Hampshire.In 1915, he became an associate member of the National Academy of Design and was promoted to academician five years later. From 1920 to 1927, Ryder and his wife spent their summers on Monhegan Island in Maine, and he also worked and exhibited in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Art historians have noted Ryder’s mature style for the unique energy and rhythm that imbue his stylized depictions of nature. In his seminal book on American tonalism, David A. Cleveland writes about the genre’s trajectory into the 1920s: “it was transformed by artists like Chauncey Ryder… into renderings of nature with bold impasto and strong tactile values, demonstrating that a poetic use of tone and a powerful handling of paint could produce works of both abstract complexity and stirring emotion.” Contemporary critics also commented on the poetic and romantic quality of Ryder’s landscapes.

Over the course of his career, Ryder developed his diverse skills through classes at the New York Watercolor Club, National Arts Club, Society of American Etchers, California Printmakers, Chicago Society of Etchers, and the American Federation of the Arts. While he was best known for oil paintings, Ryder also worked with watercolors. His paintings won many awards and he exhibited widely throughout the United States and in London and Paris. Ryder’s work now resides in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of art, National Gallery of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others.

Chronology

1868 Born in Danbury, Connecticut
ca. 1891 Studies at The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
1890s Teaches at Smiths Art Academy in Chicago, Illinois
1901 Moves to Paris for ten years; Studies at the Académie Julian with J.P. Laurens and with Raphael Collin
ca. 1907 Moves back to the United States
1915 Appointed an associate member of the National Academy of Design
1920 Promoted to academician at the National Academy of Design
1920–27 Ryder and his wife spend summers on Monhegan Island, Maine; Paints at Old Lyme, Connecticut
1949 Dies in Wilton, New Hampshire

Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York

 

Chauncey Foster Ryder (1868–1949)
Indian Summer
Oil on canvas
32¼ x 44⅛ inches
Signed lower left: Chauncey F. Ryder

 

Chauncey Foster Ryder (1868–1949)
Nose in Shadow, Mount Mansfield, Vermont
Oil on panel
6⅜ x 8⅝ inches
Signed lower right: Chauncey F. Ryder; on verso: Nose in Shadow. / Mt. Mansfield, VT.; estate stamp on verso 

 

Chauncey Foster Ryder (1868–1949)
The Brick House, Mount Vernon, New Hampshire, ca. 1920–25
Oil on canvas
22⅛ x 28 1/16 inches
Signed lower left: Chauncey F. Ryder 

 

Skinner

 

 

Christie’s has announced complete details of its upcoming Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art on November 16. Forty-nine works by the major artists of the era, including Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet,Chaim Soutine, Paul Cézanne,among others. The evening sale is expected to achieve in excess of $200 million.



Wassily Kandinsky’s Rigide et courbé (Rigid and Curved) (estimate: $18-25 million), undoubtedly the most important Paris period painting by Kandinsky to ever appear on the market, is a highlight of its November 16^th Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale in New York. Rigide et courbé (Rigid and Curved) is one of the most celebrated and dynamic compositions, of grand scale. The canvas is densely packed with lively geometric vignettes and a thoughtfully textured surface composed of sand mixed with paint, a technique Kandinsky used only in his Paris paintings of 1934-1935. The present work, first owned by Solomon R. Guggenheim who acquired it from Kandinsky in 1936, has been extensively published and highly exhibited from 1937-1949. Estimated at $18-25 million, the painting is undoubtedly the most important Paris period painting by Kandinsky to ever appear on the market. It is being offered from an important private American collection and has not been on the market since 1964. The upcoming sale preview marks the first time in over 50 years that the work will be publicly displayed.

Conor Jordan, Deputy Chairman of Impressionist and Modern Art, remarked: “With its dynamic sweep of upward energy, Kandinsky’s Rigide et courbé, a late masterpiece from the mid-1930s, unseen in public for over fifty years, evokes an epic paean, a rhapsodic song of thanksgiving suggesting the bright hope the artist saw in his new home in Paris following his flight from Nazi Germany. Abstract forms, runic symbols and mythic references, summoning Kandinsky's life and career, intertwine with veiled allusions to contemporary events, across the broad dimensions of this technically audacious canvas which is richly worked in oil and sand. It ranks among the greatest Kandinskys still in private hands.”



Christie’s will also present Swedish artist August Strindberg’s Inferno(estimate: $3-5 million) in its upcoming Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on November 16. Widely exhibited and published, Inferno has been in the collection of J.E. Safra since 1992, and marks the first time that any work by Strindberg has been offered at auction in New York since 1990.
Adrien Meyer, Christie’s International Director of Impressionist and Modern Art, comments: “Inferno strikes for its daringness and singular freedom. An avant-garde masterpiece through and through, this canvas implements the same philosophies revolutionized by Abstract Expressionist pioneers, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning, half a century later.”

Painted in 1901, the striking landscape depicts Strindberg’s conception of Inferno–Hell. The canvas is thickly painted as a field of light consuming darkness, spreading outward from the center of the canvas enveloping and overwhelming the light within. The effect draws the eye to the brilliant white radiance at lower right, the proverbial light at the end of this tunnel. Strindberg was especially attached to the present picture, which he retained for eight years.

In addition to his accomplished painting career, Strindberg also authored dozens of plays, novels, stories, poetry, autobiographies and articles on a range of diverse subjects. He studied metaphysical philosophy, para-physics, and occultism. Completed in 1897, Inferno was first the title of Strindberg’s most famous autobiographical tract. Based predominantly on actual experience, Inferno recounts the events that transpired during the artist’s Paris sojourn from late 1894, which followed the separation from his second wife, Frida Uhl. Living alone in Paris, without the prospect of theatrical success, Strindberg soon fell prey to hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and depression, while his proclivity for alchemic research damaged his health.

At the end of 1896 Strindberg returned to Sweden where his fortune began to improve. He commenced a prolific campaign of playwriting, completing nearly a dozen dramatic works during the next several years. In 1900, his well-received plays filled the theaters in Stockholm, and he fell in love with Harriet Bosse, a gifted actress 27 years his junior. They married a year later, but within months, rising tensions and jealousy fomented a new inferno into which Strindberg rapidly descended, the tumult of his emotions, including thoughts of suicide, filling the pages of his Occult Diary. This dark but fruitful time in Strindberg’s career yielded his most prolific body of paintings, including the present canvas, a clear apogee of this period.


Claude Monet’s Meule (Grainstack) (see previous post here)is one of the culminating and finest examples of Monet’s Grainstack series;



Chaim Soutine’s Le garçon d’étage (estimate: $6-9 million)i a prime example from the artist’s great series of Parisian hotel workers

Two works by Paul Cézanne, demonstrating the artists mastery of both watercolor,  



Théière et oranges (La Nappe)(estimate: $8-12 million),



and oil,  Paysage avec route et clocher (Île de France près de Melun)(estimate: $10-15 million),

his favored subjects of the French landscape and still life.

In keeping with increasing demand for major works by Pablo Picasso, the most heralded artist of the 20^th century, Christie’s will offer a diverse selection of 11 Picasso works from various collections, showcasing the artist’s major themes, varying styles and his many muses-- from two powerful portraits of his muse Dora Maar to a whimsical and oversized work of a seated man from his great late series, and a uniquely painted ceramic sculpture of an owl from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA)
October 9, 2016–January 16, 2017

International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice 
February 2017

William Merritt Chase (1849–1916) was a brilliant colorist, inventive designer and engaging storyteller. Praised for his observations of contemporary life, he was a leading American Impressionist, influential teacher and prominent international figure at the turn of the 20th century. William Merritt Chase, the first retrospective of the artist’s career in more than three decades, features approximately 80 of Chase’s finest works in both oil and pastel, drawn from public and private collections across the US.

The show opens with a glimpse into the artist’s studio, which served as a stage for his imagination and became a colorful backdrop for many of his paintings. Thematic groupings in the galleries explore his range of subjects—from jewel-like landscapes and urban park scenes to portraits of modern women and shimmering still lifes. Examining all four decades of his career, the exhibition offers a fresh look at Chase’s role in shaping American modern art—not only as a charismatic mentor to thousands of students, including Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper and Joseph Stella, but also as a pioneering, cosmopolitan artist in his own day. As O’Keeffe later remarked, “there was something fresh and energetic and fierce and exacting about him that made him fun.”

The son of a shoe salesman in Indiana, Chase studied art in Europe and then centered his career in New York—although his first solo exhibition took place at the Boston Art Club in 1886. He worked from the 1870s into the 1910s, adapting Impressionism to depict modern American subjects and helping to elevate the status of American art on the world stage. A devoted father of eight, Chase taught throughout his life in order to support his large family. He offered classes in New York City in the winter and on Long Island in the summer, took students to Europe, and in 1896 opened the Chase School of Art, now the Parsons School of Design.

While Chase is less well-known than his contemporaries Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler, his work and position at the heart of the American art world at the turn of the last century are gaining renewed attention from scholars and the public. William Merritt Chase was organized by four scholars of American art: Erica Hirshler, Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings at the MFA; Elsa Smithgall from The Phillips Collection; Katherine M. Bourgignon from the Terra Foundation of American Art; and Giovanna Ginex, an independent scholar for the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.

“Chase became a champion both for American art and the art of his time,” said Hirshler. “But he believed that a painter should have great respect for the art of the past. Inspired by the old masters and excited by the beauty he found in the world around him, Chase created bold compositions of everyday subjects, family and friends.”

The exhibition opens with a key work,  




Portrait (later titled The Young Orphan [An Idle Moment], 1884, National Academy Museum, New York), depicting a young girl seated in a red armchair against a red background. Chase sent it to the first exhibition of Les Vingt (The Twenty), an avant-garde group of Belgian artists, held in Brussels in 1884. He was one of only three American artists featured, alongside Whistler and Sargent. European critics praised Chase’s portrait, firmly establishing his place within the international art circle.

Studio as Theater
 
Chase turned his studio into a stage. From 1878 to 1895, he rented the two largest rooms in New York’s Tenth Street Studio Building, transforming them into one grand space used for both work and entertainment. He filled his studio with hundreds of objects from around the world—old master paintings, Japanese parasols, Renaissance furniture, Islamic lamps, fabrics, rustling chimes, great copper pots and dozens of exotic shoes. Assembled into harmonious arrangements, they appear as backdrops in more than a dozen interiors from the 1880s that showcase the artist’s glamorous and evocative space.

Chase’s studio scenes combine still life with real life. Fabrics and furnishings are depicted with great attention to texture and sheen, walls are crammed with paintings and porcelains, shelves are laden with miscellaneous ornaments. At times, unfinished pictures sit on easels and completed paintings in heavy gold frames rest on the floor. Sitters enliven these sets—often they are women, as seen in the canvases  



Studio Interior (about 1882, Brooklyn Museum), in which a woman examines a book of prints, and  



Tenth Street Studio (1880, Saint Louis Art Museum), where an elegantly dressed female figure reclines in a deep blue armchair. A dog sleeps on the rug below her, its paw resting on the train of her dress, while Chase himself appears in a shadowy corner of the composition, leaning forward to engage the woman in conversation.



Chase’s Self-Portrait (about 1883, An MFA Honorary Trustee and Her Spouse) is on view exclusively at the MFA. With the jaunty tilt of his head, palette in hand and a red note on his jacket, he refers to an old master he greatly admired, drawing inspiration from




Velázquez’s self-portrait in Las Meninas. Chase’s self-portrait, however, is rendered in pastel—a modern medium revived by avant-garde artists in the late 19th century. Considering pastel equal to oil, Chase co-founded the American Society of Painters in Pastel in 1882. The group’s monogram, stamped in red, can be seen in the upper right corner of the work.

The section also introduces Chase’s most frequent model—his wife Alice Gerson. Painted a year before their marriage in 1887,



Meditation (1886, Willard and Elizabeth Clark) is one of Chase’s most prized pastels. The portrait depicts Gerson in a hat, gloves and heavy jacket, holding a fur muff in her lap. Ready to go out, she has paused, losing herself in a moment of contemplation, chin in hand. Her eyes are fixed on the viewer and engage with the world—a recurring feature in Chase’s many depictions of modern women, who were reshaping society in the decades following the Civil War.

A European Education
 
Chase left his modest boyhood home in Indiana to study briefly in New York and then, in 1872, at the Royal Munich Academy. There, he developed a rich, dark and sculptural painting style and cultivated a lifelong passion for the old masters. With his portraits of modern women, however, Chase invented a genre for his own age.



At first sight, the MFA’s recently acquired Ready for the Ride (1877) recalls numerous portraits by Rembrandt, Hals, Rubens and Van Dyck. Painted in a three-quarter-length format with a restricted palette, the female subject is depicted in a Dutch-style tall hat and white collar. Two elements identify the work as a modern-day canvas: the woman’s straightforward gaze and the riding crop she holds. Her severely tailored dress and sturdy gloves are designed for riding sidesaddle in a fashion called en amazone—a reference to the legendary warrior horsewomen of Greek mythology. She glances back over her shoulder, ready to embark on an adventure. Marked by Chase as his “turning point,” Ready for the Ride was the first of the artist’s modern old masters to depict a new woman—a combination that would appear frequently throughout his career.

In 1877, Chase spent nine months in Venice with his American friends and fellow Munich students Frank Duveneck and John Twachtman. During the sojourn, Chase created at least 20 paintings and drawings, using a realist approach on a range of subjects. His scenes of Venice’s distinctive water-bound architecture and the riches of its fish markets are on view in the exhibition.  



A Fish Market in Venice (The Yield of the Waters) (1878, Detroit Institute of the Arts) displays an uncompromising realism, seen especially in the gleaming texture of the fish. The original composition featured a fisherman unloading his basket, but Chase painted over the figure about a decade later, transforming the work into a pure still life—a format for which he became recognized and praised.

Modern Conditions
 
The 1880s marked transitions in Chase’s personal life, as well as a new direction in his art, with a move away from his dark Munich manner. After their marriage in 1887, Chase and his wife Alice moved in with his parents in Brooklyn and had their first child—Alice, nicknamed Cosy—the oldest of six daughters and two sons. The setting inspired new subject matter for Chase—the beauty of everyday life, depicted with an increasingly brighter color palette. Working en plein air, or outdoors, like the French Impressionists, Chase began to paint scenes of leisure in urban parks. A City Park (about 1887, Art Institute of Chicago) depicts a well-dressed young woman on a bench in Tompkins Park. Her features are blurred, perhaps in acknowledgement of contemporary etiquette that advised women never to catch the eye of a stranger in public places. Nevertheless, she is alert and facing the viewer—the model, like her setting, is modern.



The MFA’s Park Bench (about 1890) depicts another young woman, lost in thought in Central Park, her novel forgotten in her lap.


Chase also found new inspiration within his growing family.



The Open Air Breakfast (about 1888, Toledo Museum of Art) presents a scene of a casual morning meal in the garden of the extended Chase family home in Brooklyn. Alice tends to Cosy, seated in a high chair. Chase’s sister Hattie stands with a racquet, Alice’s sister Virginia lolls in a hammock, and Fly, the family greyhound, sleeps in the shade. The painting is a celebration of modern suburban leisure, rendered in a bright palette with a light touch.

Posing and Composing
 
Chase produced a large number of portraits throughout his career, in which he combined the lessons he learned from the old masters he admired with a distinctly new perspective. These works celebrate the forthright stance of modern women, experiment with color contrasts and harmonies, and showcase the artist’s great joy in the glistening properties of paint.

Chase’s most successful and compelling likenesses were not commissions, but portraits he solicited, intending to use them as entries in major exhibitions. His sitters were often his wife, friends, fellow artists or students.


Chase’s arresting Portrait of Dora Wheeler (1882–83, The Cleveland Museum of Art) depicts his first student, a painter and illustrator who studied with him in the late 1870s, in a meditative pose in her own studio. Wheeler’s blue dress is juxtaposed with the vibrant yellow of the embroidered Chinese (or Chinese-inspired) textile in the background.


Chase sent the painting to the prestigious Paris Salon in 1883, where it was shown with



Sargent’s The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882), now in the MFA’s collection and on view in the Art of the Americas Wing.

In 1885, Chase met and befriended Whistler while traveling in London. At Whistler’s suggestion, they painted each other’s portraits.



Chase’s James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1885, Metropolitan Museum of Art) captures the artist’s cultivated theatrical persona. Whistler was not amused—he called Chase’s painting a “monstrous lampoon” and broke off their friendship. Still, Chase greatly admired Whistler. After their meeting, he made a series of paintings of women in shimmering monochromatic color schemes that pay homage to Whistler’s aesthetic.

Others pay homage to the past—among them is Chase’s striking portrait of his student,





Lydia Field Emmet (1892, Brooklyn Museum), which presents her in a commanding pose often used in old master portraits of men, investing her with authority as she embarked on her own career.



Another large-scale work—Portrait of Mrs. C (Lady with a White Shawl) (1893, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)—combines dark, rich colors with confident brushwork. It was described by Chase as his “greatest picture.”

Chase’s engagement with texture, sheen and arrangement of forms in space was not unique to his portraits of people. He explored the same qualities in his still lifes. This section features three of them, including the MFA’s




Still Life—Fish (about 1908), one of Chase’s most admired works and the first of his paintings to enter the Museum’s permanent collection.

Chase and Japonisme

Following the opening of trade between Japan and the West in the 1850s, a fad for all things Japanese swept both artistic circles and popular culture in Europe and the US—a movement referred to as japonisme. Japanese prints, ceramics, textiles, furniture and decorative arts flooded the Western market, intriguing artists and inspiring them to incorporate them into their work.

Chase’s studio was filled with a number of items from Japan: umbrellas, kimonos, fans, prints, books and costume dolls. Paintings featuring these objects not only highlight his penchant for accumulating an eclectic array of objects, but also reveal his fascination with Asian design.



The setting of A Comfortable Corner (about 1888, Parrish Art Museum) includes a Japanese screen and a large bronze vessel, along with Asian textiles. The model, wrapped in a blue kimono over Western petticoats, shoes and stockings, holds a fan and rests on a red Western-style divan. Chase uses the edges and borders of the rug, sofa and screen to provide an underlying geometrical structure to his composition. The pose of the model, the solidity of his forms and animation of his brushwork, however, prevent the composition from looking anything but Western.



My Baby Cosy (1888, Private Collection) is a pastel that depicts Chase’s oldest daughter in a blue-gray garment, with a tightly wrapped red obi holding her in place like a swaddling band.

Cosy also appears in the full-length  



Mother and Child (The First Portrait) (about 1888, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)



and Shinnecock: Studio Interior (1892, Terra Foundation for American Art), where she examines a Japanese album on the floor of her father’s studio.

Chase’s interest in Japan was both aesthetic and personal—he deeply admired Japanese goods and in 1888, he named his second daughter Koto, after the Japanese painter Koto House, who had been one of his favorite students.

Art in the Open Air
 
From 1891 to 1902, Chase and his family spent summers at Shinnecock, on Long Island, where he was the founding director and star attraction of the Shinnecock Summer School of Art—the first American school devoted to plein air painting. He welcomed hundreds of students every summer, teaching two days a week and spending the rest of the time with his family and at his own work. The rural setting encouraged more casual pursuits—picking flowers, digging in the sand and collecting seashells—and Chase continued to celebrate leisure within his paintings.



Idle Hours (about 1894, Amon Carter Museum of American Art) encapsulates the joy of the family’s seaside summers, depicting Alice immersed in a book and one of the girls gazing up at the sky.



In The Big Bayberry Bush (about 1895, Parrish Art Museum), three of the girls—Cosy, Koto and Dorothy—are scattered in the wild grass and scrub surrounding their house, which appears in the distance. All of them wear white dresses, but their sashes, ribbons and stockings add notes of blue, yellow and red to the composition—their father plays with these primary colors just as his daughters play in the sandy dunes. Praised for their fresh depiction of light and cheerful subjects, the works—although not entirely Impressionist—point to Chase’s knowledge of European trends and desire to experiment with a brighter palette.

The Shinnecock Summer School of Art closed in 1902. Almost annually from 1903 until 1913, Chase organized summer classes in Europe, immersing himself and his students in old master paintings at museums, as well as contemporary art. Sunlit views of Florence and Venice from this period are featured.

Life in the Studio
 
Home and studio remained inseparable throughout Chase’s career. His famous space in the Tenth Street Studio Building had served as a place for work, sales and entertainment, but in 1895, Chase closed it and auctioned off the contents.

His later studios also served as family spaces. The lack of boundary between Chase’s public and private worlds is most evident in his home at Shinnecock. The house had a designated studio, but it also served as a living area where his wife and children could lounge and play.  



The Ring Toss (about 1896, The Halff Collection) depicts an older Cosy taking the lead in an indoor game, ready to throw a rope ring around a standing pin, while her sisters Koto and Dorothy await their turn.

At times, the entire ground floor of the Shinnecock house became a temporary studio. The large pastel  



Hall at Shinnecock (1892, Terra Foundation for American Art) captures Alice and two of the daughters in the elaborately decorated great hall. Chase’s own reflection can be seen in the mirrored black armoire. Alice appears in Chase’s Shinnecock studio in 



For the Little One (about 1896, Metropolitan Museum of Art), a portrait of her sewing a long white garment for one of their children. The image, although modern in style, presents a comforting image of conventional family life—as does the double portrait



Mrs. Chase and Child (I’m Going to See Grandma) (about 1889, San Antonio Museum of Art), which shows Cosy wistfully turning away from play as Alice fusses over her two-year-old daughter’s coat.

Several solo portraits of Alice, created during their marriage, are featured.




An Artist’s Wife (1892, Private Collection) catches her studying one of her husband’s paintings. Alice appears in a Dutch costume, turning to look over the back of her chair. The conceit recalls 17th-century portraits by Frans Hals, although Hals most often used it for depictions of men.




Self-Portrait in 4th Avenue Studio (1915–16, Richmond Art Museum) is one of Chase’s last efforts. The artist shows himself at work, palette in hand. The canvas on his easel bears only the earliest traces—an enthusiastic nod to work yet to come.

Publications

 

An illustrated MFA Publications volume, William Merritt Chase, written by Erica Hirshler, Croll Senior Curator of American Paintings, provides a compact introduction to Chase’s paintings and pastels.



Hirshler also contributed to William Merritt Chase: A Modern Master, the fully illustrated exhibition catalogue published by Yale University Press in association with The Phillips Collection. The publication features essays by Hirsher and her co-curators Elsa Smithgall from The Phillips Collection; Katherine M. Bourguignon from the Terra Foundation of American Art; and Giovanna Ginex, an independent scholar for the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia. It also includes an essay by John Davis, the Terra Foundation’s Executive Director of Global Academic Programs; and a foreword by Frederick Baker, an expert on the artist and co-author of the Chase catalogue raisonné.

The Holburne Museum, Bath
11 February to 4 June 2017


The Holburne Museum has announced the UK’s first exhibition devoted to the Bruegel dynasty, including recent attributions for two paintings from the Museum’s own collection. Bruegel: Defining a Dynasty will unravel the complex Bruegel family tree, revealing the originality and diversity of Antwerp’s famous artistic dynasty across four generations through 35 works, including masterpieces from the National Gallery, Royal Collection Trust, the National Trust, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Ashmolean Museum and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts.

Jennifer Scott, the Holburne’s Director and co-curator of the exhibition notes, ‘This exciting new exhibition not only shines a light on the quality of the Holburne Museum’s Flemish paintings, but also on the wealth of paintings by the Bruegel dynasty in the UK.’




A key work in the exhibition will be Wedding Dance in the Open Air, an oil painting from the Holburne’s own collection which, following conservation work and technical examination, can be attributed firmly to the hand of Pieter Brueghel the Younger. Previously thought to be the work of a copyist or follower of Brueghel, it now takes its place as the only version of this popular scene in a UK public museum.



Together with Robbing the Bird’s Nest



and the Visit to a Farmhouse, 

also featured in the exhibition, this new discovery makes the Holburne Museum the primary collection of Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s work in the UK.

The exhibition will also show the




David Teniers the Younger’s Boy Blowing Bubbles from the Holburne’s own collection. Previously ascribed to ‘Imitator of David Teniers the Younger’, recent research undertaken by the Holburne Museum has revealed a new attribution to Teniers himself.

Bruegel: Defining a Dynasty is curated by the Holburne’s Director, Jennifer Scott, and Dr Amy Orrock, independent art historian and Bruegel specialist, and will provide the opportunity to understand and reimagine the Bruegel familial relationships, investigating the developments of the artists’ individual styles and the way in which they asserted both their artistic heritage and their independence. Visitors can compare the development of ‘Bruegelian’ iconography over 150 years, through works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, his sons Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder, their direct descendants (Jan van Kessel the Elder) and artists that married into the family (David Teniers the Younger). In particular, the exhibition will highlight Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s artistic talents, reinstating him as an important artist in his own right.

A book to accompany the exhibition Bruegel: Defining a Dynasty is written by Amy Orrock and published by Philip Wilson.

Known for his images of gritty New York from the beaches to burlesque halls, a new collection being shown at the University of Connecticut's William Benton Museum is spotlighting the rarely seen train-related work of artist Reginald Marsh.

On exhibition through Dec. 18, 2016, Steaming Ahead: Reginald Marsh Watercolors of Locomotives in the Permanent Collection of the William Benton Museum of Art showcases more than 25 of the painter's works including watercolors, lithographs and etchings.

Produced between 1927 and 1934, along with one piece from 1940, the pieces are from the permanent collection of the museum and are available for viewing in person at the museum or online via a virtual exhibition.

Primarily a watercolorist, Mash's earliest work was etchings. He was fascinated by the process, but worked almost exclusively in watercolor from the early 1920s until 1929.

"Steam locomotives by their nature are accessible to the senses," steam train expert Audrey Conrad says. "When you see one move, all of the parts are right out there in the open, you can see the rods moving and turning the wheels; you can feel the heat of the boiler and steam; you can smell the coal smoke and hot oil. At the time he was painting them, steam locomotives were not obsolete: they were the prevailing type of motive power in the U.S. and the world."

Because Marsh focused on steam locomotives, it is thought that the Erie Railroad terminal in Jersey City, New Jersey, was his favorite spot, given its proximity to his New York City studio.

Among the pieces are:






* Locomotive from 1929. Showing a lone locomotive without its tender, this view could have been provided from Marsh's access to unoccupied areas of the trainyards.





* Switch Engine LVRR from 1931. The etching depicts a Lehigh Valley Railroad Switch Engine class L-5 "camelback" locomotive built in 1916.



* The Parlor Car, painted in 1940, depicts one of Marsh's "sirens" - beautiful young women for which he is best known - along with the rotating chairs of the parlor car.




* The undated Railroad Engine and Passenger Car is a watercolor of the Central Railroad of New Jersey class J-1 2-6-2T type locomotive built in 1902 and used until the 1940s.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) 
November 4, 2016 through April 9, 2017

New-York Historical Society
May 26-September 3, 2017

Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville
October 6, 2017-January 21, 2018

The first major museum exhibition to revisit this unprecedented global event through the eyes of American artists, World War I and American Art will show how American artists translated their wartime experience, opinions, and perceptions in works that chronicle this transformative moment in American culture. The war’s impact on art and culture was multifaceted, as American artists spoke out against it, participated as soldiers on the battlefield and workers on the home front, designed enlistment posters and camouflage, served as official artists documenting the war, and helped shape postwar society in its wake.

One of the most ambitious projects that PAFA has ever organized, the exhibition’s approximately 160 works by 80 artists encompass a broad variety of stylistic approaches, viewpoints, and experiences through paintings, drawings, sculpture, prints, photographs, posters, and ephemera. A diverse array of both well-known and under-recognized artists is represented including Ivan Albright, George Bellows, Charles Burchfield, John Steuart Curry, Howard Chandler Christy, James Montgomery Flagg, Henry Glintenkamp, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, Carl Hoeckner, George Luks, John Marin, Violet Oakley, Georgia O’Keeffe, Joseph Pennell, Jane Peterson, Horace Pippin, Man Ray, Boardman Robinson, Norman Rockwell, John Singer Sargent, John Sloan, Edward Steichen, and Claggett Wilson.


World War I and American Art fully explores the deep and lasting impact of the war, following the chronological arc from prewar tensions to the reverberating after effects in the 1930s, and chronicling its devastating toll on haunted soldiers and ruined cities, relief and hospital workers, women and families.

“World War I and American Art examines a critical moment in history from both the home front and firsthand experience, allowing for images of intense patriotism and outraged dissent to recreate the charged atmosphere leading up to and during the war,” notes David R. Brigham, PAFA President and Acting Museum Director. “Artists both mirrored and participated in these debates, and the images they produced fueled discussions about the United States’ role in the world.”

The exhibition will also demonstrate how the conflict changed American art itself. World War I unfolded as the American art scene was rapidly changing and experiencing a growing range of aesthetic viewpoints, political agendas, exhibition and publication opportunities, and contact with European émigrés. Images made during the war reveal American artists in transition, using more experimental forms including abstraction to capture the apocalyptic tenor of the conflict but also drawing on a straightforward realist manner to make the human experience accessible to their audience.

The exhibition includes numerous high-profile loans, among them



John Singer Sargent’s monumental painting, Gassed, from the Imperial War Museums in London. Measuring approximately 20 feet wide by 7 feet tall, the composition depicts the aftermath of a mustard gas attack Sargent witnessed on the Western Front. The painting features a central group of wounded soldiers, depicted nearly life-size, walking toward a field hospital and past the bodies of their dead and injured comrades in arms.

Childe Hassam, Early Morning on the Avenue in May 1917, 1917, oil on canvas, 30 1/16 x 36 1/16 in. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy.

The painting, widely regarded as Sargent’s late masterpiece, conveys the waste and tragedy of conflict and is one of the most disturbing humanistic commentaries on war. Gassed brings together many themes that are essential to the story of the war and this exhibition: differing perspectives on the war and its larger meanings; the camaraderie of soldiers at camp and in the field; the harrowing pain of combat, the dignity of those who sacrifice for their country, and the heartbreaking realities of war, regardless of its justification.

Hugh Henry Breckenridge, Pestilence (War), 1918, oil on canvas, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia

This landmark exhibition is organized by PAFA and curated by Robert Cozzolino, former PAFA senior curator and currently the Patrick and Aimee Butler Curator of Paintings at the Minneapolis Institute of Art; Anne Knutson, an independent scholar and curator; and David Lubin, the Charlotte C. Weber Professor of Art at Wake Forest University.



It will be accompanied by an extensive schedule of public programs for all ages, as well as a fully illustrated scholarly catalog.

Although World War I has been characterized as “America’s forgotten war,” Cozzolino notes that “the war’s impact on American art and culture was enormous, for nearly every major American artist of the time produced work that addressed the conflict or contributed in some way to the war effort. It was prevalent in American culture before and after the nation entered the war in 1917.”

Kerr Eby, Where Do We Go?, c. 1919, lithograph, 18 x 23 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington.

“Among the most exciting discoveries made by the curatorial team is the degree to which modernists such as Marin, O’Keeffe, and others were immersed in news and the imagery of the war,” Cozzolino adds. “We are also thrilled to bring the work of little-known artists to light. Clagget Wilson and Carl Hoeckner, for instance, made some of the most haunting images of the war and have not had the chance to be seen in the context of other World War I artwork.”

 

George Benjamin Luks, Armistice Night, 1918, oil on canvas, 37 × 68 ¾ in. Whitney Museum of American Art.

World War I and American Art is organized around eight themes: Prelude: The Threat of War; Hartley and Hassam: Tenuous Neutrality; Debating the War; Mobilization; Modernists and the War; Battlefields; The Wounded and the Healers; and Celebration and Mourning. Arranged to follow the narrative of the war itself, the exhibition will show how artists chronicled their experiences of the unfolding war as it crept closer to home and then involved them directly as soldiers, relief workers, political dissenters, and official war artists.

Gifford Beal, On The Hudson at Newburgh, 1918, oil on canvas, 36 x 58 ½ in. The Philips Collection, Estate of Gifford Beal, courtesy of Kraushaar Galleries, New York

“Exhibits such as this contribute to a deeper understanding of our nation’s history in a way that words could never convey,” said Chris Crane, president and CEO of Exelon, and chairman of the Exelon Foundation. “We’re proud to partner with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to tell the story of the war’s impact on our society and culture through the eyes of artists who bore witness.”