New-York Historical Society
March 24 – June 4, 2017


In 2015, the New-York Historical Society received a magnificent gift of 15 Hudson River School paintings from the collection of the late Arthur and Eileen Newman. These new acquisitions will be displayed together for the first time since they hung on the walls of the Newmans’ Manhattan apartment, alongside selected examples from New-York Historical’s longstanding collections.

Inspired by the natural beauty of the Hudson River Valley region and the emotional intensity of the scenes captured by painters of the first self-consciously “American” school of art, Arthur and Eileen Newman acquired works by artists including Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, and Martin Johnson Heade. Collecting began as an avocation, for the couple’s personal pleasure and enrichment. But ultimately the Newmans’ sought to bring their private holdings to a public institution so that these gems of the Hudson River School could be shared with future generations.



Cole’s Sunset, View on the Catskill;



Church’s Early Autumn;

Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823–1900)
Wickham Pond and Sugar Loaf Mountain, Orange County, 1876
Oil on canvas
32 1/8 in. × 40 in. × 1 1/4 in
Collection of Arthur and Eileen Newman, Bequest of Eileen Newman, 2015.33.9
Photography, Glenn Castellano, Courtesy of the New-York Historical Society

and Cropsey’s Wickham Pond and Sugar Loaf Mountain, Orange County

join other paintings to reveal the legacy of the Hudson River School.


Complementing A Hudson River School Legacy, New-York Historical presents ​​The Inspiration:​ ​“​​​​The Hudson River Portfolio​,”​ curated by Roberta J.M. Olson, curator of drawings. ​In 1820 Irish-born ​​William Guy Wall embarked on a sketching tour of the Hudson River Valley​. A selection of ​his watercolors were engraved by English-born master printmaker John Hill in ​​​​The Portfolio, long-considered the forerunner of the Hudson River School of painters. ​A cornerstone of American printmaking and landscape, its topographical views cover 212 miles of the river’s 315-mile course―from Lake Luzerne in the Adirondacks to Governors Island near Manhattan.

William Guy Wall (1792–after 1864)
Preparatory Study for Plate 10 of “The Hudson River Portfolio”: View Near Fort Edward, New York, 1820
Watercolor, scratching out, selective glazing, and touches of gouache and black ink on paper, laid on card, laid on canvas
James B. Wilbur Fund, 1941.1119

On view are the eight rare watercolor models by Wall (the only known in existence), a bound copy of The Hudson River Portfolio,​ and other related works, all drawn from the New-York Historical’s rich holdings.

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction will be led by



Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled from 1982, a monumental masterpiece that has been virtually unseen since it last appeared on the market in May 1984. The landmark canvas is one of a number of iconic American post-war paintings in a sale that also features Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly, as well as European masters including David Hockney, Rudolf Stingel and Gerhard Richter. The work is estimated to fetch in excess of $60 million.

Grégoire Billault, Head of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Department in New York, commented: “It is an enormous pleasure to bring a Basquiat of this magnitude to the market. The scale, subject matter, date and freshness, combined with recent record prices and increased demand for the artist’s work, make May the ideal time to present a masterpiece of this caliber – a truly outstanding achievement of recent art history – to the market.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat completed Untitled in 1982 at a time when he was virtually unknown to the art world. Exhibited only in a small group exhibition called Fast at Alexander Milliken Gallery in New York from June to July of that year, Untitled entered the distinguished private collection from which it is being offered just two years later in 1984, when it was purchased at auction for $19,000. Never loaned for public exhibition since its acquisition 33 years ago, the appearance of the painting to market is made all the more remarkable given that it has been known only from a small thumbnail picture in the artist’s catalogue raisonné.

Untitled is among the most important paintings by the artist still in private hands. The vast 72 1/8 by 68 1/8-inch canvas marks a critical moment in the artist’s career, executed in the same year that the artist had his seminal first solo exhibitions at Annina Nosei Gallery in New York and Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles. Intricate layers of forcefully applied and impastoed oilstick, acrylic, and spraypaint in a spectrum of electric color coalesce in an intensely worked, rich surface that exemplifies Basquiat’s singular command as a master colorist and draftsman. Exploding in a torrent of irrepressible gestural energy that reflects Basquiat’s early beginnings in graffiti, the painting further inaugurated the beginnings of a new mode of figurative painting that took hold of the New York art world in downtown Manhattan in the early 1980s.








Basquiat’s exceptional rendering of a single skull-like head draws many parallels with the artist’s most celebrated works, perhaps most significantly Untitled from 1981 in the collection of The Broad, Los Angeles. The canvas is populated with a range of Basquiat’s greatest icons: most remarkably dominated by the complexly detailed anatomical head, the three-pointed crown and all-over scrawled typography. The work is estimated to fetch in excess of $60 million.



The first painting in the catalogue for the momentous 1999 exhibition, Andy Warhol: Hammer and Sickle at Thomas Ammann Fine Art in Zurich, Hammer and Sickle occupies a lofty place in Andy Warhol’s oeuvre. Dated 1976-77, the present work was acquired by renowned gallerist and founder of the Dia Art Foundation Heiner Friedrich and his wife Philippa de Menil the year after it was painted (estimate $6/8 million). The finest work of Andy Warhol’s late 1970s series and notable for its pristine paint application, this composition is one of four known large-format paintings that match the icon on the Soviet Flag, of which two are held in museums: the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum Brandhorst in Munich.



The large-scale Untitled #13 from 1980 is quintessential Agnes Martin. Enveloping the viewer with stunningly soft and muted colors, and mesmerizing patterns, the work is reminiscent of the artist’s full-scale works from 1968, when she moved to New Mexico. Previously exhibited in San Francisco, New York, Amsterdam, Paris, and many other locations, the acrylic, gesso, and graphite on canvas comes to auction this season with a pre-sale estimate of $5/7 million.

With gestural brushwork and a beautiful combination of bold and pastel tones, Silex Scintillans is an energetic and vibrant work that highlights many of the most celebrated aspects of Cy Twombly’s creative output in a rare triptych format (estimate $5/7 million). Titled after Henry Vaughan’s Silex scintillans – a collection of religious poems published in 1650 – the present work embodies the artist’s newfound interest in the late 1970s and 1980s of classical themes and inspirations, including religion, love and fate.

Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild utilizes the artist’s signature spatula technique to scatter accents of red, yellow and blue across a 78 3/4 by 63-inch canvas painted in luminous ivory. Acquired in the year it was painted from Galerie Liliane & Michel Durand-Dessert in Paris, and having remained in the same distinguished collection for over twenty-five years, Abstraktes Bild makes its auction debut on 18 May with an estimate of $12/18 million.

Rudolf Stingel’s Untitled is an exceptional paradigm of the artist’s electroplated copper reliefs. The 2012 work, estimated to fetch $5/7 million, is particularly rare in its monumental configuration of six joined panels, measuring 94 1/2 by 141 3/4 by 1 1/2 inches overall.

Building, Pershing Square, Los Angeles is a critical early landmark of David Hockney’s era-defining painted visions of Los Angeles, encapsulating the very genesis of his lifelong enchantment with the magnetic allure of Southern California (estimate $6/8 million). Significantly regarded as one of the very first paintings Hockney made after arriving in the city in January of that year, the work was included in his first American exhibition at Charles Alan’s gallery. Acquired in April 1974 by the pioneering Los Angeles dealer Paul Kantor, Building, Pershing Square, Los Angeles has remained in the same family collection until the present day.

Also by the artist, Gauguin’s Chair has been shown in major exhibitions around the world including David Hockney: Espace/Paysage at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 1999 and David Hockney: Maleri 1960-2000 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek from 2001-2001. Estimated to fetch $2.5/3.5 million, the work is an outstanding example of the artist’s mastery of color and form.

Heritage Auctions' American Art Signature Auction May 3 will feature masterworks by trailblazers such as Thomas Moran, E. Irving Couse, Birger Sandzén and Norman Rockwell. Additionally, a significant selection of Early American Modernist works on paper from the collection of Dr. and Mrs. Henry and May Ann Gans will prove a true highlight for savvy collectors.

WESTERN ART


 
Leading the sale is Thomas Moran's Mountain Lion in Grand Canyon (Lair of the Mountain Lion) (est. $600,000-800,000). Previously owned by distinguished Western Art collector William Thomas Gilcrease, the painting's impeccable provenance further underscores its importance within Moran's oeuvre. Although Gilcrease donated the majority of his collection to his eponymous museum in Tulsa, he kept Mountain Lion in Grand Canyon for himself, ultimately gifting it to his daughter, Des Cygne. The painting has remained in the family of Des Cygne's husband, the late Corwin D. Denney, a Gilcrease Museum board member and philanthropist in his own right.

"Once again, we have obtained a superb selection of American works from private sources, and we are thrilled to present fresh to market masterworks at various price points. Considered by many to be the premier painter of the American West, Thomas Moran captured the imagination of viewers at the turn of the century, and his works such as this helped inspire the creation of the National Park System,"said Aviva Lehmann, Heritage Auctions' Director of American Art.

Birger Sandzén (Swedish/American, 1871-1954), Creek at Twilight, 1927. Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches. Estimate: $300,000 - $500,000.

Birger Sandzén's Creek at Twilight (est. $300,000-500,000) from 1927 is a large-scale example of the artist's painterly virtuoso. Exemplifying his hallmark Fauvist palette and bold, energized brushwork, this monumental example showcases the artist's ability to truly dazzle his viewer. Purchased in 1927 directly from the artist's trunk by the graduating class of Washington High School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Creek at Twilight has remained in the school's possession to this day. Appearing at auction directly from the Washington High School Alumni Scholarship Foundation, proceeds from the sale will benefit the foundation's Continuing Education Scholarship Fund.

Creating a rare and special opportunity for collectors, Heritage Auctions is also offering



the masterwork by E. Irving Couse, The Pottery Connoisseur, circa 1930, (est. $100,000-150,000) along with the actual Zia pot featured in this striking composition. The Pottery Connoisseur was purchased directly from Couse's son, Kibbey, in 1964 by famed Taos School collectors Veda and Ward Vickery.

ILLUSTRATION ART


 
Study of Triple Self Portrait, 1960, (est. $150,000-250,000) is a superbly painted preparatory work for
what is certainly one of Norman's Rockwell's most iconic images. Here, the artist, with his back to the viewer and gripping his signature pipe, renders an idealized image of himself on canvas, providing an amusing contrast with his bespectacled reflection in the mirror.

The final painting, in permanent collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum, electrified the cover of the Feb. 13, 1960 Saturday Evening Post, which debuted the first installment of Rockwell's memoir, My Adventures as an Illustrator. The present study, executed in oil on photographic paper, originally was gifted to Rockwell's friend, Henry Strawn.

MODERNISM



 
Highlights include John Marin's Headed Down East, (est. $25,000-35,000),



Milton Avery's Bridle Path - Central Park West at 67th Street, (est. $25,000-35,000)



and Joseph Stella's Elevated Railroad, ($20,000-30,000).

Others highlights include, but are not limited to:



· Rockwell Kent's Greenland (Spring) (est. $50,000-70,000), which epitomizes the artist's Modernist interpretation of man's role within a vast wilderness



· Charles Marion Russell's early Indian portrait, Wolf Robe, of 1896 (est. $50,000-70,000)



· Frank Weston Benson's, Down Stream, a work on paper that relates to the artist's celebrated oil, Indian Guide, of 1927 (est.$40,000-60,000)



· Stevan Dohanos' delightful First Day of School, Saturday Evening Post magazine cover, Sept. 2, 1944 (est. $25,000-35,000)

Marmottan Monet Museum
23 February to 2 July 2017

The Marmottan Monet Museum is presenting the first monographic exhibition of Camille Pissarro organized in Paris in nearly 40 years. Meticulously selected, 60 of his most stunning masterpieces — eight of which are being shown in France for the first time — hail from the greatest museums of the world and the most prestigious private collections. This remarkable ensemble of works tracks the trajectory of Pissarro’s life, from his youth in the Danish Antilles through his large series of urban tableaux featuring Paris, Rouen and Le Havre, all of which culminate to create a little-known portrait of the “first of the Impressionists.”

At the start of the exhibition, a self-portrait of Camille Pissarro welcomes the visitor. Seven sections retrace his career and bring to light the originality of his oeuvre, demonstrating that, even as a young artist, Pissarro always distinguished himself from his contemporaries. His initiation into painting took place on an island, far from Paris and from the beaux-arts academies.  




Two Women Talking on the Seaside, 1856 (National Gallery of Art, Washington), loaned for the first time to France,with its exoticism and illustrates that Pissarro’s artistic beginnings had no parallel.

After moving to France in 1855, Pissarro quickly made the acquaintance of the future Impressionists. Like them, he was passionate about landscape and plein-air painting. He was, therefore, inspired by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and by Charles François Daubigny, as evinced by the canvas



Banks of the Marne (Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum), which hails from Glasgow. Following his research to environments surrounding Paris, he painted The Road to Versailles, Louveciennes, snow, 1870 (Stiftung Sammlung E.G. Bührle, Zurich) and The Road to Versailles, Louveciennes, winter sun and snow (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid), which are shown here for the first time in France. Pissarro was thus considered by Emile Zola as “one of the three or four painters of this time.”

The first to eliminate black and ochre pigments from his palette, Pissarro evolved to favor a lighter tone in his painting, typical of Impressionism. He would become one of the most engaged members of the group, and the only one to participate in all eight of their exhibitions. Numerous of his masterpieces, including


Le Déversoir de Pontoise, 1872 (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland)



and Place du Vieux-Cimetière, Pontoise, 1872 (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh) — which have not been shown in France for 35 years — demonstrate his artistic maturity and the triumph of Impressionism.

 Camille Pissarro, La Place du Théâtre-Français et l’avenue de l’Opéra, effet de pluie, 1898. Huile sur toile, 73, 6 x 91, 4 cm. Minneapolis, Institute of Art, fonds William Hood Dunwoody © Photo : Minneapolis Institute of Art. 

From 1883 onward, Pissarro explored the theme of the human figure and painted some of his most celebrated canvases, including



La Bergère, also known as Jeune fille à la baguette or Paysanne assise, around 1881 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris),



and Jeune Paysanne au chapeau de paille, 1881 (National Gallery of Art, Washington).


In 1886, he evolved yet again. Pissarro turned away from Impressionism and embraced the explorations of Georges Seurat and the neo-Impressionists. This exhibition presents the most important masterpieces of this period, including



La Cueillette des pommes, 1886 (Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki)



and La maison de la sourde et le clocher d’Éragny, 1886 (Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis).

Finally, the two last sections of the show explore the large portraits and urban series to which the artist dedicated an important part of his late career. An extremely rare ensemble of views of Rouen, of Le Havre, of Dieppe and of Paris — four of which have not been seen in France for a century — invite us to discover an extremely little-known aspect of Pissarro’s oeuvre.

Painter of landscapes and figures, of country and city, of earth and sea, “the first of the Impressionists” and a champion of pointillism, Camille Pissarro never ceased to reinvent himself. The exhibition at the Marmottan Monet museum brings to light the extraordinary diversity of his dignified and poetic oeuvre, one that attained dimensions both humanist and revolutionary. 

Phillips is pleased to announce that





will be offered as a highlight in the Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art on Thursday, 18 May. A magnificent tour-de force of his painterly virtuosity, Untitled II is one of less than ten works created in 1980, an important turning point in de Kooning’s career. Estimated at $12-18 million, this work has never been offered at auction. Since its creation nearly four decades ago, it has been exhibited twice – once at London’s Royal Academy of Arts in 1981 and once at New York’s Gagosian Gallery, in their de Kooning retrospective of 2007.

At 77x88 inches, Untitled II is an example of the largest of the three canvas sizes de Kooning used, reserved for his most ambitious projects. This painting is one of only a few paintings that he completed in 1980. The works from this period grew out of masterpieces from his highly acclaimed years of 1975-77. These bold, confident landscapes facilitated the transition from his earlier works to those created post-1981. Situated at this pivotal turning point, Untitled II takes a unique position within de Kooning’s oeuvre. On the one hand, the heavily painterliness of the background and energetic sweeps of the brush evoke de Kooning’s universally celebrated “pastoral" allover abstractions from 1975-1977. On the other hand, the present work also exemplifies the new-found sense of luminosity and open-endedness that de Kooning would further develop in a radically new visual language in the 1980s.

With Untitled II one sees an artist revisiting longstanding themes and formal elements, but also making his first forays into a new, radically different, visual territory. Shifting away from the tightly organized compositions and the heavily worked, dense canvases of his earlier years, de Kooning here puts forward a fluid space in which form, line and color blend into one another, foreshadowing the infinite white backgrounds and ribbon-like brushstrokes that would become the signature of his output in the 1980s.

Untitled II is the embodiment of the de Kooning’s newfound creativity after several years of episodic studio activity and marks the beginning of his celebrated final chapter. Widely celebrated upon its completion, it was notably exhibited the following year at the Royal Academy of Art’s A New Spirit in Painting exhibition in London.



David Hammons’ African-American Flag will alsobe offered in the Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art on Thursday, 18 May. Executed in 1990 in an edition of only five, this particular example has never been offered publicly and is estimated at $700,000-1,000,000. In 1990, it flew over Museum Overholland on the Museum Square in Amsterdam for the duration of the exhibition Black USA, and another original from the same edition has been in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art for ten years.

Jean-Paul Engelen, Worldwide Co-Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, said, “David Hammons is among the most important and fascinating artists of our time, defined by his political stance and refusal to confine himself to a particular aesthetic or medium. There is, however, a unifying thread in his oeuvre, with his works consistently being insightful, poignant, visually striking and politically engaged. His fickle relationship with the art world establishment and the inherent political commentary in his work reflect the complications of the time we live in, resulting in his unique way of visualizing the different truths we each experience. We are thrilled to offer his African-American Flag in our May Evening Sale, a captivating example from his remarkable career.”

In his work, Hammons frequently imbues potent symbols with a new meaning. From his basketball hoop sculptures Higher Goals, 1986, which commented on the limited opportunities available to young African Americans, to the arresting painting How ya like me Now, 1988, which depicts a young Reverend Jesse Jackson with white skin and blonde hair, Hammons has not shied away from topics which directly impacted his own life and which continue to be the everyday reality for a large portion of the American population. African-American Flag follows in this tradition – the red, white, and blue of the United States flag replaced with the red, black, and green of Marcus Garvey’s Pan-African Flag, which was first adopted by the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League in 1920.

Instead of working directly with the Pan-African Flag, Hammons use of its colors within the context of the traditional American flag is a reminder of the many contributions made by African Americans throughout the history of the country. Hammons combines the two objects to create a new flag of the United States, his work assuming a new, distinctly black power, which stands for those people the traditional flag has not always represented.



Peter Doig’s Rosedale will also be offered as the top lot in the May Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art in New York on 18 May. The large-scale painting was executed in 1991 and stands nearly seven feet tall by eight feet wide, depicting a Toronto home through a tapestry of snow and tree branches. Expected to realize in excess of $25 million, the work has never been publicly offered and is poised to set a new auction record for the artist.
Jean-Paul Engelen and Robert Manley, Worldwide Co-Heads of 20th Century & Contemporary Art, said, “Rosedale is a fresh-to-the-market masterpiece, emblematic of Doig’s instantly recognizable style and painted in the pivotal years of his career. This is the most impressive work by the artist to be offered at auction in recent years and we’re delighted to include it as the star lot of our May Evening Sale. Whitechapel Gallery’s recent announcement that he has been awarded their title of Art Icon for 2017 underscores Doig’s tremendous artistic significance and his continued contributions to the field of contemporary art.”

Rosedale dates from a pivotal moment in Peter Doig’s career, shortly after the artist’s graduation from the Chelsea College of Art and Design. Painted in 1991, the work was created for his celebrated solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, after he had won the prestigious Whitechapel Artist Prize that year. In the lead up to that exhibition, Doig produced a small number of large format canvases that represent the touchstone of his subsequent oeuvre, including Rosedale.

Depicting a grand Rosedale manor in Toronto’s ravine, the richly detailed surface is formed of abstract gestures that coalesce to reveal a home through the static of snow and thicket. Based on the artist’s own photographs, Doig described painting Rosedale “through the screens of nature,” painstakingly building up fragments of the house through the dense network of trees, as opposed to fully painting the architectural elements and then painting over them with the branches and snow in the foreground. Building on art historical and pop culture references ranging from Richter, Pollock, Bonnard and Munch to record covers, vintage postcards, and Doig’s own archive of photographs and memories of his early experiences in Canada, the visual play of impasto and glazes conjures the cinematic quality of a vintage film reel and the nostalgic glow of memory.

Link to images: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ppu0fnsafdbvuzi/2445-JDK.zip?dl=0

New York— On Tuesday, May 2, Swann Galleries will offer Old Master Through Modern Prints, with a prodigious selection of works completed before the nineteenth century.

Martin Schongauer, A Censer, engraving, circa 1485. Estimate $120,000 to $180,000

The top lot of the sale is an astoundingly detailed engraving,A Censer, circa 1485, by Martin Schongauer.  Scholars believe that Schongauer made this intricate work for the sole purpose of showing off his technical virtuosity.

Only two other impressions have been offered at auction in the last 75 years, and many of the 28 known impressions are in institutional collections. In excellent condition with no sign of wear, the present impression is valued at $120,000 to $180,000.

Martin Schongauer, The Madonna and Child with an Apple, engraving circa 1475. Estimate $70,000 to $100,000.

Schongauer is also represented in the sale by the circa 1475 engraving The Madonna and Child with Apple, expected to sell between $70,000 and $100,000.



The Visitation is a circa 1450 engraving by Master E.S., a still-unidentified artist believed to have been active in southwestern Germany. Master E.S. was likely a goldsmith, and his works on paper are some of the earliest known Western engravings. Fewer than 20 impressions of any of the mysterious master’s approximately 320 known engravings have appeared at auction in the last 30 years. The only other known impression of this work in North America is in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York ($70,000 to $100,000).



Iconic engravings by Albrecht Dürer are led by Knight, Death and the Devil, 1513 ($50,000 to $75,000).



Other important works by the master include The Sea Monster, before 1500;




The Four Horsemen, a woodcut, 1498;



 and Melancolia I, 1514,

each valued at $40,000 to $60,000.



The Ravisher, or a Young Woman Attacked by Death, circa 1495, is believed to be Dürer’s second attempt at producing an engraving for the blossoming European print market ($7,000 to $10,000).



James A.M. Whistler, Weary, drypoint on Japan paper, 1863. Estimate $40,000 to $60,000.

Rembrandt van Rijn, Landscape with Square Tower, etching and drypoint, 1650. Estimate $50,000 to $80,000.

An exceptional array of etchings by Rembrandt van Rijn features scenes both religious and vernacular. A rare early impression of Landscape with a Square Tower, 1650, leads the section with an estimate of $50,000 to $80,000.

Also available is



The Omval, 1645 ($40,000 to $60,000),


and Abraham Casting out Hagar and Ishmael, 1637, valued at $30,000 to $50,000.

Iconic works by Canaletto, Giovanni Piranesi and Francisco José de Goya complete the selection of Old Masters. The afternoon session of the sale will pick up in the nineteenth century with works by artists from both sides of the Atlantic.

James A.M. Whistler, The Doorway, etching, drypoint and roulette, 1879-80. Estimate $40,000 to $60,000.

Highlights include The Doorway, 1879-80, from James A.M. Whistler’s Venetian tour, which shows a woman doing laundry in a palazzo doorway onto a canal ($40,000 to $60,000).


From early twentieth-century America come works that reflect a rapidly modernizing way of life. Martin Lewis is well represented in the sale, with highlights including



Winter on a White Street, 1934, and

 

Martin Lewis, Wet Night, Route 6, drypoint, 1933. Estimate $30,000 to $50,0

Wet Night, Route 6, 1933 ($20,000 to $30,000 and, $30,000 to $50,000, respectively). Also available are scenes by



Edward Hopper, whose Evening Wind, etching, 1921 is estimated at $80,000 to $120,000, as well as works by Georges Bellows and Rockwell Kent.


The Modern section glows with works by Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Henri Matisse, Emil Nolde, Wassily Kandinsky and Fernand Léger. Scarce highlights include Otto Mueller’s Der Mord II (Liebespaar II), circa 1919, valued at $15,000 to $20,000.


Scions Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso are also represented en masse.

Pablo Picasso, Figure composée II, lithograph, 1949. Estimate $30,000 to $50,000.

Picasso’s Figure composée II, 1949, is expected to sell between $30,000 and $50,000,



while Braque’s Pal (Bouteille de Bass et Verre sur une Table), 1911, is valued at $15,000 to $20,000.

Museum Barberini, Potsdam
June 17–October 3, 2017

The summer exhibition focuses on the development of American art from Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism represented by masterpieces from The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., America's first museum of modern art.



Edward Hopper: Sunday, 1926, Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.



Arthur G. Dove: Red Sun,  1935, Phillips Collection,  Washington, D.C.



Mark Rothko: Untitled, 1968, Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., Gift of the Mark Rothko Foundation, Copyright: Kate Rothko-Prizel & Christopher Rothko / VG BILD-KUNST, Bonn 2016

Catalogue 





This book explores the development of modern American art through the works of its signature artists. This collection of rarely seen masterpieces from The Phillips Collection traces the development of American art from Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism. During the Gilded Age, American artists like Julian Alden Weir, John Henry Twachtman, Ernest Lawson, and others developed landscape paintings which set the course for modern art in America. Revelations such as these are common within the pages of this book, which examines Duncan Phillips’s interest in collecting and his promotion of living artists. Including essays by European and American experts, this publication of 68 works by 50 artists presents paintings by Maurice Prendergast, Arthur Dove, John Marin, Georgia O’Keeffe, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Charles Sheeler, Winslow Homer, Marsden Hartley, and Richard Diebenkorn. Together these magnificent works tell the tale of a nation and artistic expression growing in confidence and diversity.

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
May 14–August 13, 2017

Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo
October 17, 2018–February 3, 2019

A Modern Vision presents a selection of the most iconic European paintings and sculptures from The Phillips Collection. Ranging from the early 19th century through the mid-20th century, the incomparable collection of "modern art and its sources," as Duncan Phillips characterized it, includes distinctive Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Expressionist masterworks.

Viewers will encounter paintings from the first half of the 19th century by Courbet, Corot, Daumier, Delacroix, and Ingres in dialogue with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces by Cézanne, Degas, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Manet, Monet, Redon, and Sisley.

 Central to the exhibition are important works by Bonnard, de Staël, Kandinsky, Matisse, Morandi and Picasso, artists who shaped the look of the 20th century. Many of these works have not traveled together in more than 20 years. A Modern Vision, in the words of Duncan Phillips, gathers "congenial spirits among the artists from different parts of the world and from different periods of time," demonstrating "that art is a universal language."

Museum of Fine Arts, BostonApril 9 to July 9, 2017 

Royal Academy of Arts, London
August 5 to November 12, 2017

Matisse in the Studio is the first major international exhibition to examine the roles that objects from the artist’s personal collection played in his art, demonstrating their profound influence on his creative choices. Henri Matisse (1869–1954) believed that these objects were instrumental, serving both as inspiration and as a material extension of his working process. In 1951, he described them as actors: “A good actor can have a part in ten different plays; an object can play a role in ten different pictures.”

Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954), Interior with an Etruscan Vase, 1940. Oil on canvas. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Gift of the Hanna Fund. Courtesy of The Cleveland Museum of Art © 2017 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The exhibition presents a selection of major works by Matisse from different periods of his career—including approximately 34 paintings, 26 drawings, 11 bronzes, seven cut-outs and three prints, and an illustrated book. The artworks are showcased alongside about 39 objects that the artist kept in his studios—many on loan from the Musée Matisse, Nice, as well as private collections—and publicly exhibited outside of France for the first time. They include a pewter jug, a chocolate maker given as a wedding present and an Andalusian vase found in Spain, as well as textiles, sculptures and masks from the various Islamic, Asian and African traditions that Matisse admired.

On view at the MFA from April 9 to July 9, 2017 in the Ann and Graham Gund Gallery, Matisse in the Studio travels to the Royal Academy of Arts in London from August 5 to November 12, 2017. An illustrated catalogue, produced by MFA Publications, accompanies the exhibition with contributions by renowned Matisse scholars. The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Royal Academy of Arts, in partnership with the Musée Matisse, Nice.

The exhibition was co-curated by Helen Burnham, Pamela and Peter Voss Curator of Prints and Drawings at the MFA; Ann Dumas, Curator of the Royal Academy of Arts; and Ellen McBreen, Associate Professor of Art History at Wheaton College and a prominent Matisse scholar.

“Matisse in the Studio offers the rare opportunity to observe the workings of a great artist’s mind. We are thrilled to be able to display so many objects from Matisse’s own collection and demonstrate their central importance to his creative process,” said Burnham.

Henri Matisse was one of the great artists of the 20th century, known for his extraordinary approach to color and composition. Born in Northern France, he studied in Paris and moved frequently during his long career, bringing his personal collection of objects with him from studio to studio, and eventually settling in Nice, in the South of France. While Matisse’s enormous impact on Modern art has been widely acknowledged, his sustained interest in the art of cultures outside of the French tradition in which he was raised has been little explored.

As Matisse stated, he did not paint an object so much as the emotion that it stirred in him. Exploring the various ideas and inspirations that the artist drew from his collection of objects, the exhibition is organized into five thematic sections: “The Object Is An Actor,” “The Nude and African Art,” “The Face,” “Studio as Theatre” and “Essential Forms.”

“The exhibition tells the story of Matisse’s lifelong engagement with African, North African and Asian cultures. Viewers will see Matisse in a new light, since these artistic borrowings raise so many relevant questions about how we continue to engage with cultural difference today,” said McBreen.

The Object Is an Actor
 
The exhibition’s introductory section focuses on a few frequent objects or “actors” that frequently reappear under various guises in several works spanning four decades of Matisse’s career. A 1946 photograph by Hélène Adant shows some of Matisse’s favorite objects, lined up in a row. On the back, an inscription by the artist reads, “Objects which have been of use to me nearly all my life.” A green glass Andalusian vase (early 20th century, Musée Matisse, Nice), which was purchased by the artist during a 1910–11 trip to Spain, can be seen in the middle of the photograph; the object itself is displayed in the gallery.

The anthropomorphic vase takes center stage in the still lifes



Vase of Flowers (1924, MFA Boston)



 and Safrano Roses at the Window (1925, Private Collection) (Right , above).

Matisse faithfully recreated the vase’s physical qualities in both paintings, but adapted its shapes and colors. This pair of works reveals his interest in the environments that objects can create—in each painting, the vase is surrounded by a particular space and light, as well as by other neighboring objects—changing how viewers perceive it.

In 1898, when Matisse married Amélie Parayre, he received a silver chocolate pot (19th century, Musée Matisse, Nice) as a wedding gift from his friend and fellow artist Albert Marquet. It appears in the company of other objects in numerous still lifes and drawings, including the never-before-exhibited watercolor Still Life and Heron Studies (about 1900, Private Collection).



The exceptional Bouquet of Flowers in a Chocolate Pot (1902, Musée Picasso, Paris), also featured in this section, was purchased in 1939 by Picasso, Matisse’s friend and artistic rival.

The Nude and African Art
 
This section focuses on ideas that Matisse borrowed from a wide variety of objects depicting the human figure. Around 1906, when he started collecting figures and masks from Africa, Matisse radically changed the composition and handling of the body in his work, developing a new mode of representation at odds with long-standing academic principles and social conventions.

The first African sculpture acquired by Matisse was a Vili figure from Congo (19th-early 20th century, Private Collection), purchased at a Parisian shop in the fall of 1906. He painted the Vili sculpture only once, in Still Life with African Statuette (1907), a rarely exhibited work from a private collection.



Standing Nude (1906–07, Tate Modern) is among the first major paintings to demonstrate a later, more specific response to the art of Africa, in the context of a larger early 20th-century fascination with ideas from cultures beyond the Western canon. Combining ideas from a nude photograph in a popular French illustrated journal with abstract elements borrowed from African sculpture, the painting is one of the more challenging nudes of 20th-century art.

Another work from the same time period, Still Life with Plaster Figure (1906, Yale University Art Gallery), shows an uncast version of Matisse’s bronze sculpture Standing Nude (1906, Private Collection), one of the first sculptures that he radically simplified and modified for expressive effect.

The bronze sculpture Reclining Nude I (1907, Collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York) appears in a number of works in the show, including Goldfish and Sculpture (1912, Museum of Modern Art, New York), where it is juxtaposed with a vase against a rich blue background.



A later painting, Woman on a High Stool (1914, Museum of Modern Art, New York) demonstrates an even more direct use of powerful elements commonly seen in African art, including a rigorous posture, elongated torso and ovoid face—emulating the forms and mood of a Fang reliquary figure from Guinea (19th-early 20th century, Private Collection) that Matisse owned.

A painting of the same year, Seated Figure with Violet Stockings (1914, The Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation Collection) features a similarly haunting woman. Matisse scratched the surface of the painting in a frenzied manner, covering the figure’s face with varied strokes that both negate her individual character, but strengthen her intensity, raising questions about the complex ways Matisse treats gender in his work.

The Face
 
Matisse also developed a new visual language for portraiture. Paintings and sculptures in this section reveal a shift in priority, to capture the character of his sitters rather than their physical likenesses. This new approach was strongly influenced by his collection of masks, including examples from the Punu, Yoruba and Kuba cultures of Africa. While Matisse, like many of his contemporaries, knew little about the masks’ histories, users or original contexts, he appropriated from their forms and functions, using them to illuminate otherwise unseen qualities of the wearer.



The stark simplicity of Matisse’s portrait Marguerite (1906–07, Musée Picasso, Paris) evokes the innocence of childhood that his daughter, 13 years old at the time, is poised to leave behind. Marguerite’s flattened features, including a profile nose positioned on a frontal face, are thickly outlined. Her face is separated from her neck, like a mask, by a crisp black band—a representation of the ribbon she wore to cover a tracheotomy scar. In the fall of 1907, when Matisse and Picasso exchanged artworks, Picasso chose this portrait and placed it on his studio wall near a mask by a Punu artist from Gabon, suggesting that he may have seen a connection.



A rare Self-Portrait (1906, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen)—one of four painted by Matisse over the course of his life—takes on a sculptural quality, as if he had roughly modeled his likeness rather than painted it. The painting lacks the narrative details present in Matisse’s earlier self-representations, such as a brush, an easel, studio surroundings and his eyeglasses—all of which emphasized his identity as an artist. Instead, this self-portrait draws focus to the expressive identity of Matisse’s fixed gaze, emerging from eyes roughly rendered in brown and blue contours.

Matisse’s Jeannette series of five sculptures reveals him exploring various personifications of the same model, Jeanne Vaderin, and emphasizing different aspects of her character. Three sculptures—Head of Jeannette I (1910, cast 1953), Head of Jeannette III (1911, cast 1966) and Head of Jeannette V (1913, cast 1954), all from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, show Matisse progressively moving from a naturalistic portrait to a stripped-down essence of the model.

This section also introduces another model, Lorette, whom Matisse met in 1916. In



The Italian Woman (1916, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York), Lorette’s black, staring, yet inwardly focused eyes and heavy brow contribute to a mask-like countenance. Her long black hair both separates her figure from the background and joins her to it—evoking the idea of veiling and unveiling.

Over the course of a year, Lorette appeared in nearly 50 of Matisse’s paintings, transformed through various costumes and poses. 



Lorette with a Cup of Coffee (1917, Art Institute of Chicago) shows a close-up view, seen from above. The checkerboard pattern of a small hexagonal wooden table with a mother-of-pearl inlay (early 20th century, Musée Matisse, Nice), likely of Tunisian origin, is visible in the lower right of the painting. The visual similarities of the model and the table—both painted with cool silver-whites, dark browns and blacks—compress the space of the intimate painting.

In later works from the 1920s, the complex patterns from Matisse’s objects would not just complement figures, but also provide the overall frame through which figures are seen and, in some cases, structure the entire composition.

Studio as Theatre
 
In the 1920s, while working in Nice, Matisse began to paint a series of interiors, often featuring a French model placed against a decorative, richly patterned background and performing the role of a North African “odalisque”—an outdated term with sexist overtones, used to describe a female concubine in a harem. The artist’s working space in his apartment at Place Charles–Félix was like a theater set, continuously staged and redesigned with elaborate props and textiles, many from the Islamic world. While Matisse had seen Islamic interiors firsthand during previous travels to Spain and Morocco, many of his objects that defined his 1920s interiors—largely from North Africa—were acquired in France. This section explores the complex fictions he created from North African culture, as well as the implications of those ideas for viewers today.

Matisse owned half a dozen haitis—pierced and appliquéd cotton textiles of North African origin (often referred to as moucharabiehs after the fretwork wood or stucco screens that are their closest architectural counterparts in Islamic design). A blue-green example with two arched panels from North Africa (early 19th-early 20th century, Private Collection) makes an appearance in


The Moorish Screen (1921, Philadelphia Museum of Art) as a dominant motif in a collage of richly decorative patterns that also includes rugs and wallpaper. The haiti potentially reads as a solid tiled wall, blocking the viewer’s understanding of the rest of the architecture by hiding the juncture where two walls would logically meet. Two models in ethereal white dresses are pitted against the profusion of decorative surfaces, challenging the tradition of primary focus on the human figure within an intimate genre scene.

Matisse similarly plays with the spatial relationship between figure and background in



Reclining Odalisque (1926, Metropolitan Museum of Art), where he diffuses the gaze away from the model, Henriette Darricarrère, by surrounding her with a rich ornament of patterns and colors. A large textile with a floral pattern abruptly transitions into the abstract patterns of Matisse’s large red haiti (late 19th–early 20th century), such that every part of the surface is an extension of another.



Purple Robe with Anemones (1937, Baltimore Museum of Art) also implies an exchange of energy between the model and the objects that surround her, including a pewter jug (late 18th century, Musée Matisse, Nice) filled with flowers and a small painted table, likely from Algeria (early 20th century, Musée Matisse, Nice). The curved lines on the jug relate directly to the wavy lines on the woman’s dress and on the wall behind her, while the floral forms on her skirt are echoed in the chair and the table.

Several of Matisse’s paintings and works on paper, beginning in 1928, depict an elaborately painted octagonal wooden chair (19th century, Musée Matisse, Nice), likely of Algerian or Moroccan origin. Its arms and supports are often represented as an extension of the model lounging in it.



In the drawing Seated Odalisque and Sketch (1931, Baltimore Museum of Art), the model’s raised and bent legs mirror the arcade opening between the legs of the chair just behind her.

Another drawing, Lisette in a Turkish Chair (1931, Centre Pompidou) shows the model’s extended leg emerging from where viewers might expect to find the leg of the chair, to which her forms have been melded.



In Odalisque on a Turkish Chair (1928, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris), Matisse further explores these poetic connections between bodies and objects in paint. He uses flesh-like pink tones for the chair’s brown wooden frame, so that the model’s right arm forms a continuous V with one of the chair’s spindles, which seems to rise from her elbow as if they were connected. Here, the painted floral decoration of the original chair has been removed to focus attention on the structural parallels with the model’s body. These patterns migrate to other surfaces, however, like the hanging fabric, embroidered vest and belt, chessboard and blue-and-white vase, so that the entire painting takes on the decorative qualities of the chair.

This section also includes one of Matisse’s last great canvasses, 




Interior with Egyptian Curtain (1948, The Phillips Collection), in the company of the actual Egyptian khayamiya, made by a tentmaker in Cairo, that is featured in it. This display is a powerful demonstration of the exhibition’s theme: that Matisse did not simply replicate the objects in his collection; instead, he was inspired by decorative traditions for the distinctive ways of seeing and making that they offered him.

Essential Forms
 
During the mid-1930s, Matisse’s art underwent a radical transformation, in which drawing played a crucial role. He began rendering people and objects in a visual shorthand that made them seem to float within the abstract space of the paper. Employing an increasingly linear and graphic pictorial language, Matisse’s imagery gradually transformed into ensembles of distilled pictorial signs for the things represented.




In late 1941 and early 1942, Matisse created a series of drawings—most of women, often represented in conjunction with floral motifs—that were later published in a large portfolio,  





Henri Matisse: Themes and Variations. The portfolio consists of 17 themes, each of which is designated by a letter of the alphabet and followed by numbered variations. A variation from the G theme (1941, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem) is on view in the exhibition, showing an example of Matisse’s developing graphic shorthand for objects.

A few months after finishing the Themes and Variations drawings, Matisse began to work seriously with cut-and-pasted paper as an independent medium. His first extended cut-out project was an illustrated book called Jazz, published in 1947. For Matisse, the process of making cut-outs, which he described as “cutting directly into vivid color” and “drawing with scissors,” involved a new kind of liberty—taking an object out of its tangible space and translating it into a flat sign. The Jazz composition



Forms (1947, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum), for example, contains extremely condensed signs inspired by a Hellenistic female torso (1st or 2nd century AD, Musée Matisse, Nice) from his collection. He explicitly noted that he varied the shapes of the blue and white torsos to give them different weights, as well as to create the impression of different angles.

The space of many of Matisse’s early cut-outs is organized in terms of a grid, as in



Panel with Mask (1947, Designmuseum Danmark), where the background is divided into five rectangular panels. The horizontal panel at the top contains a mask, seen face on, while the two bottom panels contain plant forms. The most radically imaginative signs appear in the two vertical panels just below the mask, which contain highly abstracted representations of animals: a barely recognizable reindeer or caribou on the left, identifiable by its rack of antlers; and an equally abstracted profile of a skull, with its prominent mandible and teeth, on the right.

Matisse made no major paintings after 1948, but continued to draw, showing a marked preference for brush and ink, which could create thick, bold lines.




A 1951 photograph by Philippe Halsmann depicts the artist in his bed, making cut-outs in his bedroom-studio in Nice, with above him a calligraphy panel from China (Qing dynasty, 19th century, Musée Matisse, Nice), a model for Matisse of alternate approaches to representation and sign-making. A series of four simplified drawings of a standing model hangs below the panel, one under each character. Similar gestural marks can be seen in a drawing from





Matisse’s Acrobat series (1952, Centre Pompidou, Paris), where the curving forms of the body are powerfully compressed within the frame. With Chinese calligraphy as an example for his late works on paper, Matisse animated his subjects with a combination of absolute control of ink and seemingly effortless spontaneity.

Additional studio photographs, including one taken by Matisse’s assistant Lydia Delectorskaya in 1952, reveal the calligraphy panel’s role in the development of his cut-outs in progress, especially in the conceptual play with the spatial relations between figure and ground.

While an “allover” effect, in which everything seems to happen at once, usually dominates Matisse’s cut-outs, the exhibition also reveals his experimentation with overlapping and radiating forms. This can be seen in  



Mimosa (1949–51, Ikeda Museum of 20th Century Art) and





maquettes for the front and back of a red chasuble (late 1950–52, Museum of Modern Art, New York) designed for the Chapel of the Rosary of the Dominican Nuns of Vence.

 On Wednesday, May 10 at 11am, Doyle will hold an auction of Impressionist & Modern Art. The sale presents American and European paintings, drawings and sculpture from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  

 Guy Pène du Bois (American, 1884-1958), Protectrice, 1921, Signed, dated and inscribed, 25 x 20 inches. The Collection of Willa Kim and William Pène du Bois. Est. $100,000-200,000.

Highlighting the auction is a selection of important works by Guy Pène du Bois from the Collection of Willa Kim and William Pène du Bois, the son of Guy Pène du Bois. These pieces have remained in the artist's family since they were painted and are completely fresh to market.

Although Guy Pène du Bois was an emphatic advocate for new movements in art in the early 20th century, his own work cannot be easily associated with any of them. His idiosyncratic style, with its simplified forms and resonant color, as well as his often satiric point of view, are clearly evident in a remarkable 1921 image of two young women entitled Protectrice (est. $100,000-200,000).

Painted while Pène du Bois was living in France five years after the blunt, almost confrontational and brilliantly colored Protectrice, the carefully balanced composition of On the Balcony conveys the understated sophistication of a chic couple in conversation. While the muted palette and static forms would seem to suggest a quiet intimacy, the woman gazes out at the viewer as though discomfited by such an intimate moment (est. $75,000-150,000).

Works by American artists from other collections and estates include examples by Joseph Raphael, Everett Shinn, Aiden Lassell Ripley, Daniel Ridgway Knight, Guy Carleton Wiggins, Eric Sloan, Paul Cadmus and Ogden Minton Pleissner.

European works to be offered feature a bronze, Frère et Soeur (Brother and Sister), by Auguste Rodin (1814-1917) (est. $100,000-200,000). In 1890, when this work was conceived, Rodin was at the height of his heroic creative powers. That this artist -- in the midst of his decades-long work on the epic Gates of Hell, and having recently completed his moving and tragic Burghers of Calais -- was also capable of producing this exquisite essay in tenderness is a testament to his remarkable emotional range.



European paintings offer a view of the harbor at Brest from the early 1870s by Eugène Boudin (1824-1898) (est. $50,000-70,000). Born on the Normandy coast, Boudin devoted his art to the sea and its harbors and beaches, with all of their nuances of light and color. This work shows his mastery of the subtle effects of light and atmosphere on an overcast day.



Armand Guillaumin (1841-1927) is best known today as a landscape painter, but like Rodin, he, too, could express the warmth of family love. Madame Guillaumin et sa Fille from the early 1890s of the artist's wife and daughter enjoying a conversation outdoors is a testament to his powers in that vein, from the Estate of Mary Kettaneh (est. $20,000-40,000).

Also featured are works by Odilon Redon, Charles Burton Barber, Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin, Maurice Utrillo, Pablo Picasso, Paul Henry and Wassily Kandinsky.

The public is invited to the exhibition on view May 6 – 8, and May 9 by appointment. Doyle is located at 175 East 87th Street in Manhattan. The catalogue is available online at Doyle.com

Sotheby’s unveiled highlights from its upcoming Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art in New York. The 16 May 2017 auction will be led by Egon Schiele’s first masterpiece: Danaë. Painted in 1909, the work marks Schiele’s first major oil painting of a female nude, and is estimated to sell for $30–40 million. Sotheby’s marquee spring auctions of Impressionist & Modern Art and Contemporary Art will be on public view in our York Avenue galleries beginning 5 May.

AN EARLY MASTERWORK BY SCHIELE



 
Painted in 1909 when the artist was just 19 years old, Danaë is Egon Schiele’s first early masterpiece and an extraordinary example of his daring technique. Danaë introduces the artist’s iconic aesthetic, and epitomizes the Jugendstil movement’s influence at the time. The composition also pays homage to Schiele’s informal mentor, Gustav Klimt, who championed the young artist throughout his career.

Simon Shaw, Co-Head of Sotheby’s Worldwide Impressionist & Modern Art Department, commented:

“It is a privilege to offer this sensational masterpiece by Egon Schiele. Danaë makes a bold and compelling statement, introducing his unique vision: the flattened pictorial space, the angular line, the radical cropping and stippled flesh rendered in pinks and greens. We have witnessed strong demand for breakthrough masterpieces, from Munch’s Vampire to Picasso’s La Gommeuse, and we look forward to presenting Schiele’s Danaë to collectors and museums in May.”

MONET: FROM GIVERNY TO VÉTHEUIL


 
The selection of Impressionist pictures on offer this May are led by Claude Monet’s Le Bassin aux nymphéas, a powerful testament to the artist’s enduring creativity in his mature years (estimate $14/18 million). Monet’s paintings of his water lily pond at Giverny rank among the most celebrated Impressionist works. Painted circa 1917-20, Le Bassin aux nymphéas captures the famous pond that served as a boundless source of inspiration, providing the major themes that dominated his final decades. The enduring impact of these late paintings is evident in works of abstraction by artists including Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell and Gerhard Richter.



Monet’s Vétheuil is a stunning depiction of the artist’s hometown (estimate $4/6 million). This picturesque location was the site of some of Monet’s most successful Impressionist landscapes during this period, and continued to fascinate him well into his late career. Painted in 1880, the work has descended within the same family collection since 1914.

A RARE SUPREMATIST CANVAS BY MALEVICH


 
A strong group of early Abstract works are led by Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition with Plane in Projection of 1915 (estimate $12/$18 million) – a prime example of the artist’s “Suprematist” paintings, which are extremely rare. Coined by the artist during his exhibition at the 0.10: Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings in Petrograd in 1915 – in which the present work most likely hung – the term refers to Malevich’s fascination with the impact of color and form. For the exhibition, Malevich displayed 39 paintings detached from figurative subject matter. The appearance of Suprematist Composition with Plane in Projection of 1915 in the May auction is particularly timely: Malevich is a focus of the Royal Academy of Art’s recent exhibition Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932.

EXCEPTIONAL SCULPTURE
 
The evening sale features a number of outstanding sculptures, led by Shaping a Legacy: Sculpture from the Finn Family Collection. Over the course of more than 50 years, David and Laura Finn together have amassed a diverse and esteemed collection of modern sculpture. Through their collecting, they developed not only a staunch patronage but also enduring friendships with many artists – particularly Henry Moore. Mr. Finn photographed and published Moore's sculptures over a number of decades, playing a vital role in expanding the artist’s audience internationally.

Sculpture from the Finn Family Collection is led by Alberto Giacometti’s Buste de Diego (estimate $10/15 million), one of the artist’s most radical and engaging works. Measuring just over two feet in height, the work’s significant size contributes to its robust personification of the Existentialist movement during the contentious years of the Cold War. The bronze depicts one of Giacometti’s most frequent inspirations: his younger brother, Diego.

Speaking of Diego: the May sale offers Diego Giacometti’s striking Bibliotheque de l’île Saint-Louis (estimate $2/3 million), which ranks among the most important works of the artist’s career. Measuring over ten-and-a-half feet in height and twelve feet in length, the Bibliotheque de l’île Saint-Louis is among the artist’s largest-scale commissions.

A LATE SELF-PORTRAIT BY PICASSO


 
Painted in 1969, a little more than a week before his 88th birthday, Pablo Picasso’s self-portrait Tête d’homme (estimate $8/12 million) was first exhibited in a one-man show that the artist curated himself in the hallowed halls of the Palace of the Popes in Avignon. Its grand scale, sweeping Gothic arches and quatrefoil windows were ideally suited to the great scale and impact of Picasso’s paintings from the period, including the present work. In many ways Tête d’homme epitomizes Picasso’s obsession with and admiration for Vincent van Gogh, echoing several elements of that artist’s  




Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat from 1887.

AN EARLY PORTRAIT BY KLIMT


 
Painted in 1897-98, Gustav Klimt’s Dame im Fauteuil (Woman in Armchair) is a rare example of the artist’s early portraiture (estimate $7/9 million). The work also illustrates his affiliation with the Symbolist painters of the late-19th century. The female sitter is swathed richly in a matching red dress and hat, her narrow waist belted in a deep green. The serenity and delicate pallor of her face is echoed in the ghostly quality of the two outlined heads in the upper left of the composition.

BRAQUE’S PIANISTE


 
La Pianiste represents the pivotal moment in Georges Braque’s career when he synthesized his Cubist sense of space with the vibrant palette of his early Fauve years (estimate $6/8 million). Part of what is considered Braque’s first true series, and recognized as the beginning of his late period, La Pianiste is the only major example of this seminal group to remain in private hands. Other works from this series reside in the most important collections in the world: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

FEININGER’S PARISIAN DEBUT


 
Feininger made his debut into the world of avant-garde painting in Paris with the spectacular Fin de séance (estimate $6/8 million). The artist chose to include this impressive canvas in the annual Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1911, where it hung alongside works by Matisse and Kandinsky, as well as the debut of Picasso and Braque’s revolutionary Cubist compositions. When Feininger moved to the United States in 1937 on the eve of the war, Fin de séance was one of approximately 50 works from his early oeuvre that he left in the care of an associate in Quedlinburg, Germany. It was not until 1984, nearly 30 years after his death, that the pictures were finally returned to Feininger’s heirs in the United States.

PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTION
 
Works emerging from a Distinguished Private Collection include Impressionist pictures by Paul Signac, Alfred Sisley and Pierre Bonnard, as well as an important early sculpture by Alexander Archipenko.



The group is led by Signac’s Le Pin de Bertaud (estimate $3.5/5 million), a spectacular view of Saint-Tropez painted in 1899-1900 at the crescendo of his time as leader of the Neo-Impressionists.

Conceived in 1913 at the height of the Cubist movement, Blue Dancer is one of Archipenko’s greatest achievements as a sculptor (estimate $1.5/2.5 million). The compelling work demonstrates the dynamic relationship between the figure and its surrounding space with a gracefulness reminiscent of Degas’s bronze dancers.

Hermitage Amsterdam
7 October 2017 - 27 May 2018

For the first time ever, the Hermitage Amsterdam is to hold an exhibition devoted to one of the crowning glories of the State Hermitage museum in St Petersburg: its collection of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings.

‘Dutch Masters from the Hermitage: Treasures of the Tsars’ (7 October - 27 May 2018) will showcase a selection of 63 paintings by no fewer than 50 different artists, including six by Rembrandt. The vast majority of the works are from the State Hermitage’s collection of Dutch Golden Age paintings – the largest outside of the Netherlands – and most have not been back to the Netherlands since they were originally acquired for the Russian collection.

Grandest ever selection

The exhibition promises to be a feast of old favourites and new discoveries, with virtually all of the Dutch Masters represented, including: Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde, Ferdinand Bol, Gerard ter Borch, Gerard Dou, Govert Flinck, Jan van Goyen, Frans Hals, Pieter Lastman, Gabriël Metsu, Paulus Potter, Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan Steen, Joachim Wtewael and many others. The glory days of Dutch Golden Age painting, between 1650 and 1670, will be lavishly represented by 37 works.

In addition to world-famous masterpieces such as



Rembrandt’s Flora 



and Young Woman with Earrings,

one of Frans Hals’s renowned male portraits, and Bartholomeus van der Helst’s Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam, the exhibition will showcase lesser-known but still extremely impressive painters such as Willem Drost, Pieter Janssens Elinga, Arent de Gelder and Emanuel de Witte.

Love of the Dutch Masters

The exhibition will highlight the Russian Tsars’ love of Dutch Masters and explore the way individual masterpieces found their way to Russia. Peter the Great was among the earliest collectors of Dutch Masters, acquiring his first Rembrandt when he was just 25. His interest predated the craze that gradually swept across Europe. In the eighteenth century, Catherine the Great amassed a large collection, acquiring a number of private collections from throughout Western
Europe, nineteenth-century Tsars continued to build on her holdings, thereby helping to reinforce the growing international appreciation of Rembrandt and his contemporaries.

Many of the Royal purchases will be on display in Amsterdam, including



Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Scholar, 



Portrait of an Old Man in Red,

and Young Woman with Earrings (above).

‘Dutch Masters from the Hermitage: Treasures of the Tsars’ will be on show in the Nieuwe Keizersgracht wing of the Hermitage Amsterdam from 7 October 2017 until 27 May 2018. Online ticket sales begin in July. For more information please visit: www.hermitage.nl



Gabriël Metsu, Breakfast, c 1659–62 © State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

Soldier Bather

 Charles Sheeler, River Rouge Plant, 1932. Oil and pencil on canvas, 20 3/8 × 24 5/16in. (51.8 × 61.8 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art; Purchase 32.43

 Arshile Gorky, The Artist and His Mother, 1926-c.1936. Oil on canvas, 60 × 50 1/4in. (152.4 × 127.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art; Gift of Julien Levy for Maro and Natasha Gorky in memory of their father 50.17 © 2017 The Arshile Gorky Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY

Where We Are, a new exhibition of works from the Whitney’s collection made between 1900 and 1960, goes on view in the Museum’s seventh-floor Robert W. Wilson Galleries, beginning April 28. At a time when debate continues over what it means to be American, Where We Are proposes a framework of everyday relationships, institutions, and activities that form an individual's sense of self.

Where We Are brings together some of the Whitney’s most iconic works by Louise Bourgeois, John Steuart Curry, Edward Hopper, Jasper Johns, Jacob Lawrence, and Georgia O’Keeffe with rarely exhibited works by Elizabeth Catlett, Jay DeFeo, and Ellsworth Kelly, along with recent acquisitions by James Castle, Palmer Hayden, Archibald Motley, and PaJaMa.

Herman Trunk, Jr., (1894‑1963).  Mount Vernon, 1932.  Oil on canvas, 34 1/4 × 46 1/16in. (87 × 117 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase 33.26.  With Permission of The Herman Trunk, Jr., Foundation

“Where We Are surveys six decades during which artists responded in complex and diverse ways to dramatic changes in American history and culture due to economic collapse and recovery, cycles of war and peace, and new modes of personal expression,” remarked Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s Deputy Director for Programs and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator. “For his first installation of our holdings, David Breslin, DeMartini Family Curator and Director of the Collection, has fashioned a sensitive and stirring narrative that honors individual artists’ pathbreaking approaches to depicting American life and their often complex relationship to it.”

Charles Demuth (1883‑1935), Buildings, Lancaster, 1930. Oil and graphite pencil on composition board, 24 1/8 × 20 1/8in. (61.3 × 51.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of an anonymous donor  58.63

Where We Are is organized around five themes that suggest core aspects of one’s daily existence: family and community; work; home; the spiritual; and the nation. The exhibition, as well as each of its sections, is titled after a phrase in W. H. Auden’s poem, “September 1, 1939.” Auden, who was raised in England, wrote the poem in New York City shortly after his immigration to the United States and at the very outset of World War II. The title of the poem marks the date Germany invaded Poland. While its subject is the beginning of the war, Auden’s true theme is how the shadow of a global emergency reaches into the far corners of everyday life. The poem’s tone remains mournful but concludes with the individual’s capacity to show "an affirming flame.” Where We Are shares Auden’s guarded optimism, gathering a constellation of artists whose light might lead us forward.
 

In the portion of the exhibition devoted to family and community, newly acquired photographs by PaJaMa (the name assumed by Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margaret French for their collaborative photographs) give visibility to queer relationships that continue, in our time, to demonstrate the commonality of love. Elizabeth Catlett’s The Negro Woman series, in the section on work, acknowledges anonymous Black women’s labor and commemorates the courage, strength, and leadership of African American women. Exploring various domestic spaces, Edward Hopper’s paintings reveal how decisively the home structures our interior life, while Jay DeFeo and Mark Rothko sought recourse in spirituality and mysticism to reinvest art with mystery, awe, and wonder. Lastly, Diane Arbus, George Grosz, Jasper Johns, and others examine the icons and figures that symbolically stand in for the nation.

“The Whitney’s collection is a mirror of the American culture it represents,” said Breslin, “Beauty, diversity, difference, and complexity live together. Icons reside in proximity to the not-yet-known or the forgotten. The exhibition celebrates the breadth and compelling idiosyncrasies of the collection. Where We Are also suggests that each of us, like the gathering of works in the show, is a collection of experiences, activities, relationships, and contradictions.”

Where We Are is organized by David Breslin, DeMartini Family Curator and Director of the Collection, with Jennie Goldstein, assistant curator, and Margaret Kross, curatorial assistant.

Jacob Lawrence, The Letter, 1946-47. Tempera on composition board, 20 1/4 × 16 1/8in. (51.4 × 41 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roy R. Neuberger 51.11 © 2017 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Music, Pink and Blue No. 2, 1918. Oil on canvas35 × 29 15/16in. (88.9 × 76 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art; Gift of Emily Fisher Landau in honor of Tom Armstrong 91.90 © 2017 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY

Morris Louis, Tet, 1958. Acrylic on canvas, 94 1/8 × 152 1/8in. (239.1 × 386.4 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art; Purchase, with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art 65.9 ©2017 Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), rights administered by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY, all rights reserved
John Sloan, Backyards, Greenwich Village, 1914. Oil on canvas, 26 × 31 15/16in. (66 × 81.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art; Purchase 36.153 © 2017 Delaware Art Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY
Henry Koerner, Mirror of Life, 1946. Oil on composition board, 36 × 42in. (91.4 × 106.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art; Purchase 48.2
Edward Hopper, New York Interior, c. 1921. Oil on canvas, 24 5/16 × 29 3/8in. (61.8 × 74.6 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art; Josephine N. Hopper Bequest 70.1200 © Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper, licensed by Whitney Museum of American Art. Archibald Motley, Gettin' Religion, 1948. Oil on linen, 32 × 39 7/16in. (81.3 × 100.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art; Purchase, Josephine N. Hopper Bequest, by exchange 2016.15 © Valerie Gerrard Browne  Charles Demuth, My Egypt, 1927. Oil, fabricated chalk, and graphite pencil on composition board, 35 15/16 × 30in. (91.3 × 76.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art; Purchase, with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney 31.172 Elsie Driggs, Pittsburgh, 1927. Oil on canvas, 34 1/4 × 40 1/4in. (87 × 102.2 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art; Gift of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney 31.177

Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge
3 October 2017 to 14 January 2018

Denver Art Museum (DAM)
Feb. 11‒May 20, 2018

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is pleased to announce it will be the sole American venue for Degas: A Passionfor Perfection, an exhibition showcasing prolific French artist Edgar Degas’ works from 1855 to 1906. The exhibition is presented and organized in association with the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, whose Degas holdings represent the most extensive in the United Kingdom across the various media in which Degas worked.

The Denver venue will include more than 100 works consisting of paintings, drawings, pastels, etchings, monotypes and sculptures in bronze. Additional works by J.A.D. Ingres, Eugène Delacroix and Paul Cézanne also will be shown, adding significant depth to the exhibition’s narrative. Degas: A Passion for Perfection will be on view at the DAM from Feb. 11‒May 20, 2018, following its debut at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge.

“Degas was the quintessential independent artist, and this exhibition will give visitors a more intimate look into his creative process as well as his public and private life,” said Christoph Heinrich, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the DAM. “Several moments within the exhibition will encourage close, mindful looking, providing the opportunity for visitors to savor the range of media, subject matter and techniques that defined Degas as an innovator.”

Organized by Jane Munro, Keeper of Paintings, Drawings and Prints at the Fitzwilliam Museum, and curated locally by Timothy J. Standring, Gates Family Foundation Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the DAM, the exhibition will focus on the most prominent and recurring themes throughout Degas’ 60-year career. These will include his interest in learning from the art of the past and from that of his contemporaries, a lifelong fascination with the nude, a passion for horses and his strong interest in opera and dance. The DAM’s exhibition narrative will explore these themes through a range of media and compelling groupings.


 Some of the most well-known masterpieces on view will include the DAM’s own 




Dance Examination (Examen de Danse), 




Three Women at the Races (Trois Femmes Aux Courses) 




 and Woman Scratching Her Back.

“Degas was determined to succeed on his own terms by blurring the boundaries of traditional media and pushing them to extremes,” said Standring. “He excelled both as a colorist and a draughtsman, and met the challenges of new subject matter with experimental techniques. Degas invented an oil medium known as l’essence, in which the oils in oil pigment are leached out and then mixed together with paint thinner, and took his mark-making to new extremes by printing sticky ink drawings, known as monotypes.”

The presentation of Degas: A Passion for Perfection also will dive deeper into Degas’ obsession with repetition of subjects throughout his entire artistic journey. Visitors will see his transformation from a portraitist and painter of historical subjects to one interested in the contemporary life of late 19th century Paris. By experimenting constantly throughout his career he developed techniques that allowed him to capture modern subject matter through sharp and precise lighting, such as café concerts, street scenes with new electric lighting, sporting events and theatrical settings. He considered his work in all media a constant continuum.

Degas: A Passion for Perfection will be a special ticketed exhibition and will include a complimentary audio guide with a ticket purchase. An accompanying book published by Yale University Press, edited by Jane Munro, will be available in the exhibition’s exit shop and in The Shop at the Denver Art Museum. The publication will include essays from leading scholars, including one on Degas’s monotypes by Standring, as well as studies by conservation scientists and specialists in sculpture and printmaking.

 Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford
 April 29 – August 13, 2017

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art will exhibit two special loan s from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as part of the exhibition “Hand - Painted Pop! Art and Appropriation, 1961 to Now.” 




Andy Warhol’s “Water Heater” 

  

Roy Lichtenstein, Girl with Ball, 1961. Oil on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, Gift of Philip Johnson, 421.1981. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

and Roy Lichtenstein’s “Girl with Ball , ” both painted in 1961 in New York as opening salvos in the Pop art movement, will be on view alongside a selection of 14 Pop and Pop - inspired artworks belonging to the Wadsworth Atheneum and two private collections in this exploration of the development and legacy of Pop art . “Hand - Painted Pop!” will be on view April 29 – August 13, 2017. 

Evolving alongside Abstract Expressionism, epitomized by Jackson Pollock’s signature drip process, early Pop art paintings were visibly hand - painted. “Water Heater” and “Girl with Ball” were both painted entirely by hand in 1961, before mechanical processes — particularly silkscreening — came to define the movement. 


Additional works by Warhol in the exhibition witness that transition: 




“ Triple Silver Disaster” (1963) is screen printed on canvas , but still bears visible brushstrokes in the silver background ; a set of silkscreened “Marilyn Monroe” (1967) prints on paper are visibly slick and use a range of vivid and unmixed colors. 

In a clear departure from abstraction, Pop artists chose representational subject matter, focusing large ly on mass media including newspapers, magazines, film and television. They appropriated (borrowed, self - consciously) imagery and modes of visual expression, as the central message of their work was exploiting popular culture. Lichtenstein and Warhol drew “Girl with Ball” and “Water Heater” directly from newspapers ads; facsimiles of these source image s will accompany the paintings. 

The legacy of appropriation in art will be explored through additional works in the exhibition dated up to the present , all exhibited in conjunction with their source material. 

Hank Willis Thomas, Basketball and Chain, 2003, Digital C-print, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Gift of Jean Crutchfield & Robert Hobbs in honor of Susan Talbott, 2014.14.1

Hank Willis Thomas’ “Basketball and Chain” (2003) references Nike advertisement s from the 1980s; 

 Sam Durant, Like, man, I’m tired of waiting, 2002, Aluminum, acrylic, and light bulbs, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, The James L. Goodwin Fund, 2002.26.8

a Sam Durant light box bearing the titular phrase “Like, man, I’m tired of waiting,” (2002) is derived from a Civil Rights march photograph; and from Richard Prince’s controversial “Cowboy” series, the privately - lent “Untitled (Cowboy) (Rearing Horse)” (1997 ) is based on a photograph of a Marlboro advertisement published in “Time” magazine the same year. 

“As contemporary people , we have complicated views on appropriation . We live in a society that is saturated with image makers — everyone has a camera in their phone ” says Emily Hall Tremaine Curator of Contemporary Art Patricia Hickson. “ Still, we probably don’t view Lichtenstein’s meticulously hand - painted ‘Girl with Ball’ as a copy of a newspaper advertisement for a summer resort, despite the similarities between the painting and that source image. Alternatively, Prince’s photograph of the famed cigarette character — the “ Marlboro Man ” — has given many pause, largely due to the artist’s process. So what distinctions are we making? How do we draw the line?” 

“Hand - Painted Pop!” also features works by artists including Robert Arneson, Rosalyn Drexler, Robert Longo, Christian Marclay, Cady Noland, Richard Pettibone, Wayne Thiebaud , Tom Wesselmann and Dulce Chacón . 


 

Rosalyn Drexler, The Rescue, 1963, Liquitex and collage on canvas, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Gift of Joseph L. Shulman, 1965.44

 

Works by Marsden Hartley, Henry F Farny and Robert Henri lead the American Art Sale, 24 May 2017 at Bonhams New York.  

 

 

 Landscape No. 39 (Little River, New Hampshire) by Marsden Hartley, estimated at US$ (400,000-600,000), appears at auction after 42 years in a private collection. Hartley's colorist work is one of approximately 26 paintings the artist produced during the summer and fall of 1930. Landscape No. 39 captures the long-anticipated changing of the seasons in the region surrounding Franconia, New Hampshire.

Henry F Farny's Cheyenne Scout, estimated at US$ 150,000-250,000, also appears on the market for the first time, having remained with the same family since the first half of the 20th century. The painting depicts an indigenous American scout, standing alongside a glossy, chestnut horse, with two riders in the background. The landscape is precise and detailed, rendered in soft, cool, pastel hues. 

Other higlights include: 

 

• Hide and Seek (Study for Dryad) 

 

 

and Nude, 

 

estimated at US$ 300,000-500,000 and US$ 250,000-350,000 respectively by Andrew Wyeth. This year is a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Wyeth's birth, and a major retrospective of his work opening at the Farnsworth, Maine, is travelling across the United States.

• Robert Henri's Portrait of Miss Mildred Sheridan, estimated at US$ 150,000-250,000, has never-before been seen outside of Ireland. The sitter, then 16-year-old Mildred Sheridan, is presented in typical three-quarter format.