Claude Monet ’s Secret Garden

August 31, 2017, 11:57 am

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Vancouver Art Gallery 
June 24 to October 1, 2017

Claude Monet’s Secret Garden presents thirty-eight paintingsspanning the career of one of the most important figures in Western art, focusing on the phenomenal body of work produced in Giverny, a small village in northern France where Monet resided from 1883 to the end of his life in 1926. A  creative endeavor in their own right, the gardens that Monet designed and cultivated in Giverny became the central inspiration of his art. Its waterlilies — populated with exotic strains fromas far as South America and the Middle East — weeping willows and the famed Japanese bridge endure as some of the  most iconic imagery in art.

These audaciously expressive works represent the summation of Monet’s lifelong dialogue with nature that guided him into radically new territories of  painting. “Monet’s  unique vision, remarkable output and reputation as an intrepid documenter of nature gave  full expression to modern life in France. We are proud to bring to Vancouver these pioneering artworks drawn from the unparalleled collection  of the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris. They trace  the arc of a career that spanned over sixty years and that continually overturned conventions to  experiment with new ways of rendering the world,” says Gallery Director, Kathleen S. Bartels. “We welcome audiences to immerse themselves in the extraordinary and innovative vision that  transformed European painting and paved the way for avant garde modernist art movements in the 20th  century.”  

Claude Monet’s Secret Garden maps out Monet’s career beginning in the late nineteenth century during his involvement with the Impressionist group of French painters.

Monet’s 1872 painting Impression, Sunrise gave the movement its name and encapsulates its insistence on the primacy of immediate visual perception. The Impressionists cast off historical subject matter and turned to the world around them. Their art gave expression to modern life in France, a country rapidly altered byindustrialization and urbanization in their time.  

“This sensation of an ever-changing world reverberates through Monet’s art. Together with the other Impressionists, Monet spearheaded a radically new approach to painting,” says  Ian M. Thom, Senior Curator – Historical. “In Monet’s art, technical innovations arose from the desire to find a means of  expressing his individual perceptions of the world; and above all it was the experience of nature that  was the driving catalyst of his painting.”

Claude Monet’s Secret Garden also surveys the diversity of subjects in his art,from the portrayal of modern life in his early figure studies to the inventive treatment of light in his scenes of the Parisian countryside and views of the River Thames. These works attest to Monet’s dedicated experimentation and novel approach to painting, which sought to capture the fleeting appearances and colors conjured by variable light with unique sensitivity.  

Collaboratively organized by the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris and the Vancouver Art Gallery, this exhibition is curated by Marianne Mathieu, Deputy Director of the Musée Marmottan Monet, responsible for Collections and Communication; and Ian M. Thom, Senior Curator – Historical at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Outstanding review

 

Claude Monet

Les Roses, 1925–26

oil on canvas

Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Photo: © Bridgeman Giraudon/Press

Claude Monet

Nymphéas, 1903

oil on canvas

Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Photo: © Bridgeman Giraudon/Press

Claude Monet

En promenade près d’Argenteuil, 1875

oil on canvas

Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Photo: © Bridgeman Giraudon/Press

Claude Monet

Nymphéas, 1916–19

oil on canvas

Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Photo: © Bridgeman Giraudon/Press

Claude Monet

Le Train dans la neige. La Locomotive,

1875

oil on canvas

Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Photo: © Bridgeman Giraudon/Press

Claude Monet

Londres. Le Parlement. Reflets sur la

Tamise, 1905

oil on canvas

Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Photo: © Bridgeman Giraudon/Press

Claude Monet

Sur la plage de Trouville, 1870–71

oil on canvas

Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Photo: © Bridgeman Giraudon/Press

Claude Monet

Glycines, 1919–21

oil on canvas

Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Photo: © Bridgeman Giraudon/Press

Claude Monet

Champ d’iris jaunes à Giverny, 1887

oil on canvas

Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Photo: © Bridgeman Giraudon/Press

 

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Old Masters Now: Celebrating the Johnson Collection

September 3, 2017, 3:18 pm

≫ Next: Leonardo to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Robert Lehman Collection

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Philadelphia Museum of Art 
November 3, 2017–February 19, 2018


This major exhibition will focus on one of the finest collections of European art to have been formed in the United States by a private collector. The exhibition will present about 90 out of the John G. Johnson Collection’s nearly 1,500 works, including early Italian and Renaissance paintings by such masters as Botticelli, Bosch, and Titian, important seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings including Rembrandt and Jan Steen, and others by the contemporary French masters of Johnson’s day, notably Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, and the Impressionists.

The exhibition will mark the centenary of Johnson’s gift of his collection to the city of Philadelphia and will offer a close look at some works that curators and conservators have analyzed and cared for over the years, exploring issues of attribution and authenticity, and undertaking other forms of detective work to form a better understanding of Johnson’s collection.

On June 19, 1864, the United States warship Kearsarge sank the Confederate raider Alabama off the coast of Cherbourg, France, in one of the most celebrated naval engagements of the American Civil War. The battle was widely reported in the illustrated press and riveted public attention on both sides of the Channel. When Kearsarge later anchored off the French resort town of Boulogne-sur-Mer it was thronged by curious visitors, one of whom was the artist Édouard Manet. Although he did not witness the historic battle, Manet made a painting of it partly as an attempt to regain the respect of his colleagues after having been ridiculed for his works in the 1864 Salon. Manet's picture of the naval engagement (below)

and his portrait of the victorious Kearsarge belong to a group of his seascapes of Boulogne whose unorthodox perspective and composition would profoundly influence the course of French painting.


Highlights of the exhibition include

Édouard Manet’s The Battle of the U.S.S. “Kearsage” and the C.S.S. “Alabama,” 1864,

and James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s Purple and Rose: The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks, 1864,

as well as major works by Dutch and Netherlandish painters, including

Judith Leyster’s The Last Drop, c. 1639,

and Rogier van der Weyden’s The Crucifixion, with the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist Mourning, c. 1460,


and Italian paintings including Titian’s Portrait of Archbishop Filippo Archinto, 1558,

and Masolino and Masaccio’s Saints Paul and Peter, 

and John the Evangelist (?) and Martin of Tours, c. 1427–28.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Museum is publishing a digital catalogue, which includes thematic essays, archival resources, and detailed entries on 70 artworks. The essays focus on the formation and stewardship of the collection. The catalogue will be widely available to researchers of all kinds, and free to access.

Curators

Jennifer Thompson, The Gloria and Jack Drosdick Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, and Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection; with Christopher Atkins, The Agnes and Jack Mulroney Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, and Manager of Curatorial Digital Programs and Initiatives; Teresa Lignelli, The Aronson Senior Conservator of Paintings; and Mark S. Tucker, The Neubauer Family Director of Conservation.

Leonardo to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Robert Lehman Collection

September 4, 2017, 9:05 am

≫ Next: Renaissance Venice. The Triumph of Beauty and the Destruction of Painting

≪ Previous: Old Masters Now: Celebrating the Johnson Collection

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 4, 2017–January 7, 2018

Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 4, this exhibition will trace the development of European drawing from the Renaissance to the early 20th century through works by such celebrated masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer, Rembrandt, Tiepolo, Ingres, Seurat, and Matisse.

Drawn from the Museum’s acclaimed Robert Lehman Collection and featuring approximately 55 drawings, the exhibition will present a dynamic array of styles, techniques, and genres—from compositional studies for mythological and biblical narratives to panoramic landscapes and arresting studies of the human form.

The selection will also illustrate the different facets of the artists’ creative processes—

 

from Leonardo’s keen anatomical observation in his Study of a Bear,

 

to Dürer’s awakening artistic self-consciousness in his Self-Portrait study,

 

to Rembrandt’s re-interpretation of Leonardo’s painted masterpiece, The Last Supper.

Leonardo to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Robert Lehman Collection is the first presentation to highlight the full range of Robert Lehman’s vast and distinguished drawings collection—numbering over 700 sheets—and to explore his significant activity as a 20th-century collector.

The exhibition is organized by Dita Amory, Curator in Charge, and Alison Nogueira, Associate Curator, both of the Robert Lehman Collection at The Met.

All the drawings in the collection

Renaissance Venice. The Triumph of Beauty and the Destruction of Painting

September 7, 2017, 8:16 am

≫ Next: Crossroads: American Scene Prints from Thomas Hart Benton to Grant Wood

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Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
20 June to 24 September 2017


From 20 June to 24 September 2017, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza is hosting Renaissance Venice. The Triumph of Beauty and the Destruction of Painting, an exhibition devoted to Venetian art of the sixteenth century – its first zenith – and featuring nearly 100 works by artists such as Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Bassano, Giorgione and Lotto. It sets out to show how the specific devices of Venetian painting, from the use of chiaroscuro and colour as the bases for representing figures and space to a closer attention to nature than was advocated by the classical tradition, more idealistic in its conception, embodied a fully Renaissance idea of beauty that was on a par with, and sometimes superior to, the art then being produced in Rome, Parma and Florence. 

Curated by Fernando Checa Cremades, professor of Art History at the Universidad Complutense, the show examines this hub of art production, which is essential to understanding the history of painting, through a careful selection of the subjects depicted by the masters who earned it universal fame rather than from a chronological or stylistic approach. It features an outstanding group of paintings and a few sculptures, prints and books from private collections and museums such as the Galleria dell ́Accademia in Venice, the Fondazione Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Galeria degli Uffizi in Florencia, the Musée du Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in London. 

Palma Vecchio. Two Nymphs in a Landscape (Jupiter disguised as Diana seducing Callisto), 1513‒14. Städel Museum Frankfurt am Main / Veronese. Lucretia, 1580‒83. Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna

After centuries of looking to the East, even China (Marco Polo’s famous voyages), the fall of Constantinople into Turkish hands in 1453, the defeat of the Serenissima Repubblica by Louis XII of France’s armies at Agnadello in 1509 and the shift in the trade routes following the discovery of America in 1492 changed Europe’s political, economic and commercial geography. Venice was in danger of being left on the fringes. 

It was then, however, that an artistic awakening began, especially in painting and architecture, placing the city at the centre of a debate that started in Italy and spread to Europe in the late 1500s and above all the 1600s. Venice began to shape its own idea of beauty and became the main alternative to the aesthetic paradigms of Florence and Rome embodied by Raphael and Michelangelo. Whereas the classical or Tuscan-Roman approach attached greater importance to the intellectual aspect through drawing (disegno), previously conceived in the mind (idea), the artists of the Venetian school were more skilled at handling colour and the visual and sensual aspects of painting. 

The destruction of painting 

As in other parts of Italy, classicism did not remain in vogue for long. The late works of Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and Bassano show how, in varying degrees and highly diverse ways, each of these artists adopted a more “open”, loose brushwork – often described as patches or smudges – which not only questioned the values of disegno as one of the essential parts of painting but even the Renaissance idea of beauty based on idealising reality. 

This was not only a formal issue: the technique also imbued figures, landscapes and nature with greater expressiveness and life, a characteristic typical of the Baroque. From there it was a short step to heightening the dramatic elements of the image, which was very common practice in the paintings produced in the 1560s and 1570s by Bassano, Tintoretto and above all Titian, such as the Christ on the Cross (c. 1565). This matchless example of the dramatic qualities of the master’s final period draws the exhibition to a close. 

The triumph of beauty

Titian: Christ on the Cross, c. 1565. Patrimonio Nacional, Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial

Renaissance Venice. The Triumph of Beauty and the Destruction of Painting is structured into eight theme-based sections. 

Between East and West: The most beautiful city in the world 

The medieval splendour of the city of Venice captivated visitors throughout the 16th century. In 1500, a symbolic year, Jacopo de’ Barbari produced his View of Venice, the first realistic bird’s-eye view of a city. This extraordinary picture is shown in this room alongside portraits of Venetian authorities such as the 

Doge Mocenigo (Gentile Bellini), 

the procurators Gritti and Soranzo and a senator (works by Tintoretto), and a famous painting by Veronese in which two figures in Oriental dress illustrate the city’s cosmopolitan nature as a frontier between two worlds, East and West. 

Venice and the dream of Classicism 

The Renaissance cultural scene that Venice wished to be part of called for rapidly renovating the medieval city, whose Gothic and Byzantine architecture needed to be given a new, classicist appearance. Architects, humanists, publishers and collectors quickly set to work, studying the classical texts such as Vitruvius’s architectural treatise, the only surviving work on the subject, or writing new ones as in the case of Sebastiano Serlio and Vincenzo Scamozzi, who is represented in this room in a painting by Veronese. Ancient ruins appear in the background of many portraits of the period, such as another painting by Veronese housed in Budapest. Classical reading material, libraries and the collecting of antiquities are the characteristic features of the Venetian world, as attested by Moroni’s paintings and the bronzes on mythological subjects shown here. 

Beauty and melancholy of the Venetian Renaissance 

The desire for urban beauty (room 1) achieved through classicism (room 2) is embodied in a broad variety of aesthetic types. The dream of youth was conveyed in portraits of melancholic young men (represented here by key examples by Giorgione, Bernardino Licinio, Giovanni Cariani and Lorenzo Lotto); in allegories of music, the highest symbol of aesthetic perfection in the Renaissance (represented by a picture by Cariani); and in the evocation of a utopian and dreamed-of antiquity expressed in Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), undoubtedly the most attractive printed book of the Renaissance. 

Veronese. Portrait of the Architect Vincenzo Scamozzi, c.1585. Denver Art Museum, Charles Bayly, Jr. Collection 

Lorenzo Lotto.Portrait of a Young Man in his Studio, c.1528 – 1530. Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia 
 
Venetian images of women 

The survey of Venetian painting focused on beauty culminates in this section on paintings of women. Key works by Palma Vecchio, Titian and Veronese develop the idea of beauty in the genre of idealised female portraits, which also extends to mythological paintings where the main subject is Venus, the goddess of beauty, such as Lambert Sustris’s Venus and Cupid and Veronese’s Venus and Adonis, on view here alongside its companion piece, Cephalus and Procris. Veronese’s spectacular Rape of Europe from the Ducal Palace in Venice, one of the most important Renaissance paintings, brings this selection to a close. 

Midway between the image of female beauty and devotional painting, the iconography of Mary Magdalen was one of the most widely depicted by Titian. This room shows the three finest examples of the painter’s type of clothed Magdalen: a work executed for Cardinal Farnese and now in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples; a picture possibly painted for Alfonso de Ávalos; and a painting that was in the artist’s studio when he died. The latter is one of the masterpieces from Titian’s late period, and legend has it that he died embracing it.

The glitter of power 
The beauty created by Venetian painting was particularly important as an expression of the image of power, from two different perspectives. The first is the “glitter” of military power through its painted reflection in the characteristic armour worn by soldiers, of which there are key examples by Carpaccio and Titian. Viewers must have been fascinated by works of this kind, in which artists skilfully rose to the technical challenge of capturing the elusive gleam of metal. The second perspective, the representative significance of aristocrats’ palaces, is illustrated by two examples of architecture and painted decoration: the collaborative efforts of Titian and Giulio Romano in the Palazzo Te in Mantua, and of Palladio and Veronese in the palace of Iseppo da Porto in Vincenza.

Sebastiano Del Piombo
Portrait of a Young Woman, c.1508. Budapest, Szépmüvészeti, Múzeum 

 
Titian. Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, 1536. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi 

Venetian pastorals 

Theocritus’s Idylls and Sannazaro’s Arcadia are the literary basis for the last section illustrating how Venetian painting created beauty. Delightful, idealised depictions of nature provide settings for pastoral paintings on mythological subjects, such as those by Sebastiano del Piombo, Lorenzo Lotto, Palma Vecchio and others. 


But also for devotional paintings, such as that of Dosso Dossi and the marvellous Virgin and Child with Saint Catherine and a Shepherd Titian painted for Duke Alfonso I of Este during the early stages of his career. 

Jacopo Bassano’s magnificent pastoral scenes convey a more real image of nature in keeping with the agricultural interests of the Venetian patricians based in the terra firma, who found Palladio’s villas to be the highest expression of architecture.

Decline of the Renaissance 
 
The destruction of painting 



Jacopo Bassano. Pastoral scene, c.1568 Budapest, Szépmüvészeti Múzeum 
The Venetian painting technique, which shunned drawing and focused on colour and “patches”, carried within it the seed of its own destruction. Towards the end of their careers, many of the artists who developed this concept of idealised beauty illustrated in the previous rooms in paintings on subjects such as melancholy, music, women, power and nature produced paintings in which violent chiaroscuro or “harsh smudges” became totally predominant – so much so that even today scholars continue to debate on whether Titian’s works are finished. This room examines this question and provides a comparison of late works by Tintoretto, Jacopo Bassano and Veronese. 

The drama of theme

T

http://www2.museothyssen.org/microsites/prensa/2017/Venecia/imagenes.html

s like the Passion of Christ, coupled with the self-awareness of a period that viewed itself as the “decline of the Renaissance” and the end of an era, did the rest. 

Tintoretto. The Flagellation of the Christ, c. 1585 – 1590. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum 
King Philip II was the keenest Titian enthusiast of the entire 16th century. He also owned the most significant collection of works from the master’s late period, as attested by those in the Museo del Prado and the monastery of El Escorial. Of the Escorial pictures, the dramatic Christ on the Cross, which is less known to the public and brings this exhibition to a close, is a masterpiece of his late period and an excellent example of what we have called the “destruction of painting”. 




http://www2.museothyssen.org/microsites/prensa/2017/Venecia/imagenes.html

Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
20 June to 24 September 2017

http://www2.museothyssen.org/microsites/prensa/2017/Venecia/imagenes.html

From 20 June to 24 September 2017, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza is hosting Renaissance Venice. The Triumph of Beauty and the Destruction of Painting, an exhibition devoted to Venetian art of the sixteenth century – its first zenith – and featuring nearly 100 works by artists such as Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Bassano, Giorgione and Lotto. It sets out to show how the specific devices of Venetian painting, from the use of chiaroscuro and colour as the bases for representing figures and space to a closer attention to nature than was advocated by the classical tradition, more idealistic in its conception, embodied a fully Renaissance idea of beauty that was on a par with, and sometimes superior to, the art then being produced in Rome, Parma and Florence. 

Curated by Fernando Checa Cremades, professor of Art History at the Universidad Complutense, the show examines this hub of art production, which is essential to understanding the history of painting, through a careful selection of the subjects depicted by the masters who earned it universal fame rather than from a chronological or stylistic approach. It features an outstanding group of paintings and a few sculptures, prints and books from private collections and museums such as the Galleria dell ́Accademia in Venice, the Fondazione Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Galeria degli Uffizi in Florencia, the Musée du Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in London. 

Palma Vecchio. Two Nymphs in a Landscape (Jupiter disguised as Diana seducing Callisto), 1513‒14. Städel Museum Frankfurt am Main / Veronese. Lucretia, 1580‒83. Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna
 http://www.museothyssen.org/microsites/prensa/2017/Venecia/index.html 

After centuries of looking to the East, even China (Marco Polo’s famous voyages), the fall of Constantinople into Turkish hands in 1453, the defeat of the Serenissima Repubblica by Louis XII of France’s armies at Agnadello in 1509 and the shift in the trade routes following the discovery of America in 1492 changed Europe’s political, economic and commercial geography. Venice was in danger of being left on the fringes. 

It was then, however, that an artistic awakening began, especially in painting and architecture, placing the city at the centre of a debate that started in Italy and spread to Europe in the late 1500s and above all the 1600s. Venice began to shape its own idea of beauty and became the main alternative to the aesthetic paradigms of Florence and Rome embodied by Raphael and Michelangelo. Whereas the classical or Tuscan-Roman approach attached greater importance to the intellectual aspect through drawing (disegno), previously conceived in the mind (idea), the artists of the Venetian school were more skilled at handling colour and the visual and sensual aspects of painting. 

The destruction of painting 

As in other parts of Italy, classicism did not remain in vogue for long. The late works of Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and Bassano show how, in varying degrees and highly diverse ways, each of these artists adopted a more “open”, loose brushwork – often described as patches or smudges – which not only questioned the values of disegno as one of the essential parts of painting but even the Renaissance idea of beauty based on idealising reality. 

This was not only a formal issue: the technique also imbued figures, landscapes and nature with greater expressiveness and life, a characteristic typical of the Baroque. From there it was a short step to heightening the dramatic elements of the image, which was very common practice in the paintings produced in the 1560s and 1570s by Bassano, Tintoretto and above all Titian, such as the Christ on the Cross (c. 1565). This matchless example of the dramatic qualities of the master’s final period draws the exhibition to a close. 
The triumph of beauty 


Titian: Christ on the Cross, c. 1565. Patrimonio Nacional, Monasterio de San Lorenzo del Escorial

Renaissance Venice. The Triumph of Beauty and the Destruction of Painting is structured into eight theme-based sections. 

Between East and West: The most beautiful city in the world 

The medieval splendour of the city of Venice captivated visitors throughout the 16th century. In 1500, a symbolic year, Jacopo de’ Barbari produced his View of Venice, the first realistic bird’s-eye view of a city. This extraordinary picture is shown in this room alongside portraits of Venetian authorities such as the Doge Mocenigo (Gentile Bellini), the procurators Gritti and Soranzo and a senator (works by Tintoretto), and a famous painting by Veronese in which two figures in Oriental dress illustrate the city’s cosmopolitan nature as a frontier between two worlds, East and West. 

Venice and the dream of Classicism 

The Renaissance cultural scene that Venice wished to be part of called for rapidly renovating the medieval city, whose Gothic and Byzantine architecture needed to be given a new, classicist appearance. Architects, humanists, publishers and collectors quickly set to work, studying the classical texts such as Vitruvius’s architectural treatise, the only surviving work on the subject, or writing new ones as in the case of Sebastiano Serlio and Vincenzo Scamozzi, who is represented in this room in a painting by Veronese. Ancient ruins appear in the background of many portraits of the period, such as another painting by Veronese housed in Budapest. Classical reading material, libraries and the collecting of antiquities are the characteristic features of the Venetian world, as attested by Moroni’s paintings and the bronzes on mythological subjects shown here. 

Beauty and melancholy of the Venetian Renaissance 

The desire for urban beauty (room 1) achieved through classicism (room 2) is embodied in a broad variety of aesthetic types. The dream of youth was conveyed in portraits of melancholic young men (represented here by key examples by Giorgione, Bernardino Licinio, Giovanni Cariani and Lorenzo Lotto); in allegories of music, the highest symbol of aesthetic perfection in the Renaissance (represented by a picture by Cariani); and in the evocation of a utopian and dreamed-of antiquity expressed in Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), undoubtedly the most attractive printed book of the Renaissance.


Gentile Bellini. Portrait of Dux Giovanni Micebugo, c. 1478-1483. Venice, Fondazione Musei Civici, Museo Correr 
Veronese. Portrait of the Architect Vincenzo Scamozzi, c.1585. Denver Art Museum, Charles Bayly, Jr. Collection

Lorenzo Lotto. Portrait of a Young Man in his Studio, c.1528 – 1530. Venice, Gallerie dell’ Accademia 
Venetian images of women 

The survey of Venetian painting focused on beauty culminates in this section on paintings of women. Key works by Palma Vecchio, Titian and Veronese develop the idea of beauty in the genre of idealised female portraits, which also extends to mythological paintings where the main subject is Venus, the goddess of beauty, such as Lambert Sustris’s Venus and Cupid and Veronese’s Venus and Adonis, on view here alongside its companion piece, Cephalus and Procris. Veronese’s spectacular Rape of Europe from the Ducal Palace in Venice, one of the most important Renaissance paintings, brings this selection to a close. 

Midway between the image of female beauty and devotional painting, the iconography of Mary Magdalen was one of the most widely depicted by Titian. This room shows the three finest examples of the painter’s type of clothed Magdalen: a work executed for Cardinal Farnese and now in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples; a picture possibly painted for Alfonso de Ávalos; and a painting that was in the artist’s studio when he died. The latter is one of the masterpieces from Titian’s late period, and legend has it that he died embracing it.

The glitter of power 
The beauty created by Venetian painting was particularly important as an expression of the image of power, from two different perspectives. The first is the “glitter” of military power through its painted reflection in the characteristic armour worn by soldiers, of which there are key examples by Carpaccio and Titian. Viewers must have been fascinated by works of this kind, in which artists skilfully rose to the technical challenge of capturing the elusive gleam of metal. The second perspective, the representative significance of aristocrats’ palaces, is illustrated by two examples of architecture and painted decoration: the collaborative efforts of Titian and Giulio Romano in the Palazzo Te in Mantua, and of Palladio and Veronese in the palace of Iseppo da Porto in
Vincenza.

Sebastiano Del Piombo
Portrait of a Young Woman, c.1508. Budapest, Szépmüvészeti, Múzeum 




Venetian pastorals 

Theocritus’s Idylls and Sannazaro’s Arcadia are the literary basis for the last section illustrating how Venetian painting created beauty. Delightful, idealised depictions of nature provide settings for pastoral paintings on mythological subjects, such as those by Sebastiano del Piombo, Lorenzo Lotto, Palma Vecchio and others.

But also for devotional paintings, such as that of Dosso Dossi and the marvellous 

 

 

 

Virgin and Child with Saint Catherine and a Shepherd Titian painted for Duke Alfonso I of Este during the early stages of his career. 

 

 


Jacopo Bassano. Pastoral scene, c.1568 Budapest, Szépmüvészeti Múzeum 

 

Jacopo Bassano’s magnificent pastoral scenes convey a more real image of nature in keeping with the agricultural interests of the Venetian patricians based in the terra firma, who found Palladio’s villas to be the highest expression of architecture.


Decline of the Renaissance 
The destruction of painting 

 

 

The Venetian painting technique, which shunned drawing and focused on colour and “patches”, carried within it the seed of its own destruction. Towards the end of their careers, many of the artists who developed this concept of idealised beauty illustrated in the previous rooms in paintings on subjects such as melancholy, music, women, power and nature produced paintings in which violent chiaroscuro or “harsh smudges” became totally predominant – so much so that even today scholars continue to debate on whether Titian’s works are finished. This room examines this question and provides a comparison of late works by Tintoretto, Jacopo Bassano and Veronese. 

The drama of themes like the Passion of Christ, coupled with the self-awareness of a period that viewed itself as the “decline of the Renaissance” and the end of an era, did the rest. 

 

 


Tintoretto. The Flagellation of the Christ, c. 1585 – 1590. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum 

 
King Philip II was the keenest Titian enthusiast of the entire 16th century. He also owned the most significant collection of works from the master’s late period, as attested by those in the Museo del Prado and the monastery of El Escorial. Of the Escorial pictures, the dramatic Christ on the Cross, which is less known to the public and brings this exhibition to a close, is a masterpiece of his late period and an excellent example of what we have called the “destruction of painting”. 





Palma el Viejo, Portrait of a young woman called "la Bella", c. 1518-20. Oil on Canvas 95 x 80 cm. Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

 

Crossroads: American Scene Prints from Thomas Hart Benton to Grant Wood

September 7, 2017, 8:30 am

≫ Next: This Is Not a Selfie: Photographic Self-Portraits from the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection

≪ Previous: Renaissance Venice. The Triumph of Beauty and the Destruction of Painting

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San Jose Museum of Art 
November 17, 2017 through July 8, 2018

During the first half of the twentieth century, the United States experienced tremendous social and cultural change: the rapid industrialization of cities, the nation’s expansion westward, the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, the rise of Fascism in Europe, and America’s involvement in two global wars.  In response, many artists developed a uniquely American aesthetic based on realism and American subject matter. The San Jose Museum of Art will explore the era in the exhibition Crossroads: American Scene Prints from Thomas Hart Benton to Grant Wood, on view November 17, 2017 through July 8, 2018. The exhibition focuses on early twentieth-century American culture and society through lithographs, etchings, and wood engravings. The fifty-seven prints in this exhibition, produced between 1905 and 1955, encompass a broad range of art styles collectively known as “American Scene.”

“Printmaking flourished during the 1930s,” said Rory Padeken, associate curator. “Through the Federal Art Project, a unit of the US Government’s Works Progress Administration, artists were paid a weekly stipend and given access to expensive government printing presses. With the founding of Associated American Artists in 1934, even more artists could produce prints for relatively low prices—an art for the people—to be offered for sale in department stores and via mail order catalogues. Federal sponsorship and public support gave American artists an unprecedented sense of purpose and acknowledged the important contributions artists make to society.”

Donated to SJMA in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the prints in this exhibition will be on view together for the first time since 1985. Artists featured include Peggy Bacon, George Bellows, Thomas Hart Benton, Phillip Cheney, Don Freeman, Leon Gilmour, Edward Hopper, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Clare Leighton, Louis Lozowick, Luigi Lucioni, Reginald Marsh, John Sloan, Charles Surendorf, Diane Thorne, and Grant Wood, among others.

Exhibition highlights

Peggy Bacon, Aesthetic Pleasure, 1932; lithograph; 9 ¾ x 15 ¼ inches; Museum purchase with funds from the Friends of the Museum; 1982.01

Thomas Hart Benton, Cradling Wheat, 1939; lithograph and ink; 9 ½ x 12 inches; gift of Josephine Chandler, San Jose; 1982.76

Don Freeman, Above the Stars, n.d.; lithograph; 9 ½ x 12 inches; Museum purchase with funds from the Friends of the Museum; 1982.03

Leon Gilmour, Let the Living Rise, 1937; wood engraving; 8 x 11 ½ inches; gift of the artist; 1984.32.08

Edward Hopper, Night Shadow, 1921; etching; 7 x 8 3/8 inches; gift of Yvonne and Mike Nevens, in honor of the San Jose Museum of Art’s 35th anniversary; 2004.09

Louis Lozowick¸ Subway Construction, 1931; lithograph; 6 3/8 x 13 inches; Museum purchase with funds from the Friends of the Museum; 1982.08

Luigi Lucioni, Farm in the Hills, 1937; etching; 7 ¾ x 10 3/8 inches; gift of Josephine Chandler; 1981.15

Reginald Marsh, Switch Engines, Erie Yards, Jersey City, 1948; lithograph; 9 x 13 inches; Museum purchase with funds from the Friends of the Museum; 1980.38

Grant Wood, Seed Time and Harvest, 1937; lithograph; 7 ½ x 12 inches; gift of Miss Josephine Chandler; 1981.11

More Grant Wood in the exhibition:  (comprehensive paper on all his lithographs)

Grant Wood (1891–1942)

July Fifteenth, 1938

Lithograph on paper

Grant Wood (1891–1942)

Tree Planting Group, 1937

Lithograph on paper

also:

George Bellows,The Life Class

Thomas Hart Benton, A Drink of Water  1937; lithograph. gift of Josephine Chandler, San Jose; 1982.76
 

Martin Lewis. Building a Babylon, Tudor City, NY. 1929. Drypoint. . 12 7/8 x 7 7/8 

Louis Lozowick Crow's Nest. 1944 lithograph on paper image: 9 5/8 x 13 1/2 in.

 
Louis LozowickGeorgia Landscape (Georgia Moss), 1943.  

Louis Lozowick . Quiet Harbor (Swimming Hole) Medium: Lithograph Year: Date of stone: 1932. Date of Impression: 1949

This Is Not a Selfie: Photographic Self-Portraits from the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection

September 7, 2017, 9:33 am

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San José Museum of Art

August 25, 2017 – January 14, 2018

Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA
2018

The San José Museum of Art will explore the fine art of photographic self-portraiture in the “age of the selfie” in a new exhibition on view August 25, 2017 – January 14, 2018. This Is Not a Selfie: Photographic Self-Portraits from the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection is organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and drawn from the most significant collection devoted to the subject, which was donated to LACMA by Audrey and Sydney Irmas beginning in 1992. The exhibition comprises 66 photographs ranging from early 19th-century experiments through contemporary digital techniques and includes works by Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, Catherine Opie, Cindy Sherman, Alfred Stieglitz, Lorna Simpson, and Andy Warhol, among others. SJMA is the first venue for This Is Not a Selfie, which will later travel to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.

An illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition. The catalogue includes an essay by photography historian Deborah Irmas as guest curator and 50 extended written entries by Eve Schillo, assistant curator, LACMA, and the curatorial team at the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at LACMA, along with a foreword by Susan Sayre Batton, Oshman Executive Director at SJMA.

“In their self-portraits, artists evoke not only who they are as people and what ideas they are exploring, but also who we are as a culture,” writes Irmas. “By presenting themselves, these artists allow us to look beyond them, to gain a deeper understanding of what it means for people to live in a complex world of images. With the selfie firmly in place, it is a particularly prescient moment to revisit the enduring pursuit of the photographic self.”

This Is Not a Selfie also includes works by Berenice Abbott, Mehemed Fehmy Agha, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Herbert Bayer, Hans Bellmer, Wallace Berman, Joseph Beuys, Ilse Bing, Christian Boltanski, Jonathan Borofsky, Claude Cahun, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Anne Collier, Eileen Cowin, Judy Dater, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Simryn Gill, Nan Goldin, Douglas Gordon, Pedro Guerrero, Lyle Ashton Harris and Renee Cox, Florence Henri, Bettina Hoffmann, Peter Keetman, Martin Kersels, Yves Klein, O. Winston Link, El Lissitzky, T. Lux (Theodore Lukas), George Platt Lynes, Danny Lyon, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Pierre Molinier, Jennifer Moon, Yasumasa Morimura, Vik Muniz. Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon), Paulo Nazareth, Bruce Nauman, Warren Neidich, Helmut Newton, Leonard Nimoy, Luigi Ontani, ORLAN, Chino Otsuka, Hirsch Perlman, Amalia Pica, Alphonse-Louis Poitevin, Sigmar Polke, Ilene Segalove, Malick Sidibé, Anton Stankowski, Ralph Steiner, Seneca Ray Stoddard, Wolfgang Tillmans, and William Wegman.

This Is Not a Selfie: Photographic Self-Portraits from the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection is organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Deborah Irmas as guest curator along with Eve Schillo, assistant curator, LACMA, with the curatorial team of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at LACMA. SJMA’s presentation is organized by Rory Padeken, associate curator.

Berenice Abbott
Portrait of the Author as a Young Woman (1930, printed circa 1951)

Diane Arbus,

Self-portrait in mirror (1945)

Gelatin-silver print

Image: 6 1/2 × 4 5/8 in. (16.51 × 11.75 cm) Mat: 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.64 cm)

The Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection

Henri Cartier-Bresson
Italy (1932)

Robert Frank
NYC, 1947 (1947, printed circa 1980) 

Lee Friedlander
New York City, 1966 (1966, printed 1970) 

Robert Mapplethorpe
Self-Portrait (1988)

Catherine Opie
Self-Portrait/Cutting (1993)

Cindy Sherman
Untitled, Film Still #5 (1977)
Descriptive: [woman at sink, in kitchen] 

Gelatin-silver print

Image: 6 3/4 × 9 1/2 in. (17.15 × 24.13 cm) Mat: 14 × 17 in. (35.56 × 43.18 cm)

The Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection (AC1992.197.112)

Alfred Stieglitz
Self-Portrait, Cortina (1890, printed circa 1934) Descriptive: [Italy]

 

A Cultivating Journey: The Herman H. Levy Legacy

September 7, 2017, 10:40 am

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McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton, Ontario
1 September – 9 December 2017

Vancouver Art Gallery
opening in March 2018

A Cultivating Journey examines and celebrates the collection of significant European historical and modern art donated to the McMaster Museum of Art by Herman Levy in 1984. Alone, this was a transformative moment for the Museum, but the Levy Bequest, announced in 1991 after his death, revealed substantial funds expressly for art purchases with the only proviso that they be non-North American in origin.  The openness and generosity of the terms allowed for a unique opportunity to support the Museum’s prime purpose of teaching and research, and to re-imagine the collection, bringing it forward into the late twentieth century in a purposeful and thought-provoking way.

Appropriately, the exhibition coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Museum this year.
Herman Levy was a life-long supporter of the University, the Museum and art history as well as the Art Gallery of Hamilton, which was located on the University grounds from 1953 to 1974.

Herman H. Levy was the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Alsace Lorraine who settled in Canada in the late 19th century. His grandfather established a very successful family-run business in Hamilton called Levy Brothers which specialized in diamond and jewellery importing, a business which the young Herman Levy himself joined in 1923. It was around this time that Levy also first developed his interest in art while completing an apprenticeship in fine jewellery and the diamond trade in Amsterdam. Regular visits to the city’s many museums and galleries allowed him time to look at art and develop his eye. Levy also made some of his first purchases at that time including early European woodcut prints and maps and thus established a lifelong practice — the careful examination, contemplation and experience of objects of quality. As he described it, “doing what I liked best — looking at beautiful things.”

The family business, Levy Brothers, flourished for many years until 1960 when Herman Levy made the decision to devote his energies exclusively to art. As he explained it, “I liquidated the company and retired from business to look at some paintings, sculpture and some types of Chinese art and Romanesque architecture.” Today, the Herman H. Levy Gallery at the McMaster Museum of Art presents changing exhibitions highlighting art from his collection. Work by such well-known artists as Gustave Courbet, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and Chaim Soutine reflect Levy’s personal taste and interests, in particular Impressionist and Post-Impressionist landscapes, portraits and still lifes.

A number of works from the Herman H. Levy Collection are also representative of the interests of his family. For example, paintings by the French artist Henri Le Sidaner or the drawings by American Marry Cassat were chosen with the involvement of Levy’s sister Elsie and, in fact, some of the early prints and paintings in the collection were actually purchased by his mother. To the greatest extent, however, the collection is the result of the efforts of Herman Levy and a process of extensive searching, careful examination and contemplation in which he engaged. Levy loved art and throughout his life was a serious collector, an advocate of lifelong learning and a consistent and generous supporter of the arts — whether through the encouragement of young artists and his support of organizations like the Hamilton Artists Inc., or his support of such institutions as McMaster University, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the National Gallery of Canada and the Royal Ontario Museum (which now houses his collection of historical Chinese ceramics).

Herman Levy’s ideas and influences continue to be felt at McMaster University in many ways. The design of the Herman H. Levy Gallery is reflective of the kind of domestic environment he created for the display of his collection in his home. The low ceilings, richly coloured walls and sparkling light all help to create a more intimate and contemplative experience for the visitor. When not on exhibit, the more than 140 paintings, drawings, prints and rare maps which also make up part of the Herman H. Levy Collection may be accessed by appointment by students, researchers or members of the public.

Herman Levy’s generosity has also ensured the growth of the University’s art collection. The receipt of the Levy Bequest in 1990 has made it possible for different aspects of the collection to be expanded. The purchases which have been made reflect in part Herman Levy’s own interests, but also give the collection greater scope in terms of historical, modern and contemporary art. A catalogue The Levy Legacy was published in 1996 to document this cultural legacy and a constantly changing programme of permanent collection exhibitions makes it possible for visitors to the Museum to see a selection of these works throughout the year.

The success of the Levy Bequest Purchase Programme has also brought McMaster University national and international attention as a result of numerous requests for loans to such leading institutions as the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; Kunsthaus, Zurich; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal; National Gallery, London; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Royal Academy, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Vancouver Art Gallery.


The exhibition works are drawn from the original Levy donation to the Museum (including paintings by Courbet, Derain, Monet, Pissarro, Soutine,Van Gogh), Bequest purchases, and selected works that Levy gifted to the Art Gallery of Hamilton. Included are Levy’s first purchases of Chinese artifacts. His dual passion for European and Asian art, was also reflected in the donation of his Asian collection to the Royal Ontario Museum in 1983-84 and a Bequest to the ROM for Asian purchases.

A Cultivating Journey Publication

An exhibition and scholarly publication is forthcoming. Contributors include:
Tabitha Barber (Curator of British Art 1550–1750, Tate)
Tobi Bruce (Director, Collections and Exhibitions, Art Gallery of Hamilton)
Dr. Lloyd DeWitt (Chief Curator, Chrysler Museum of Art)
Alex Kidson (Art Historian and Curator, England)
Dr. Alison McQueen (Professor of Art History, Director of the School of the Arts, McMaster University)
Kim G. Ness (Former Director/Curator, McMaster Museum of Art)
Dr. Caterina Y. Pierre (Professor of Art History at the City University of New York at Kingsborough Community College).

A Cultivating Journey will tour to the Vancouver Art Gallery, opening in March 2018.  Other venues and dates, to be announced.


Gustave Caillebotte  (French, 1848-1894)

Voiliers au Mouillage sur la Seine, à Argenteuil / Sailboats at Anchor on the Seine at Argenteuil, 1883

Oil on canvas
Collection of McMaster Museum of Art, Gift of Herman Levy, Esq., O.B.E.

Georges Lemmen  (Belgian, 1865-1916)

La Meuse / The Meuse River

late 19th-early 20th Century
Oil on wood
Collection of McMaster Museum of Art, Gift of Herman Levy, Esq., O.B.E.

Claude Monet  (French, 1840-1926)
Waterloo Bridge, Effet de Soleil, 1903

Oil on canvas
Collection of McMaster Museum of Art, Gift of Herman Levy, Esq., O.B.E.

Camille Pissarro  (French, 1830-1903)
Pommiers en Fleur, 1870

Oil on canvas
Collection of McMaster Museum of Art, Gift of Herman Levy, Esq., O.B.E.

Vincent van Gogh  (Dutch, 1853-1890)

Untitled, Still Life: Ginger Pot and Onions, 1885

Oil on canvas
Collection of McMaster Museum of Art, Gift of Herman Levy, Esq., O.B.E.

Now’s the Time

September 8, 2017, 5:47 am

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Sheldon Museum of Art through December 31, 2017
Now’s the Time riffs on bebop musician Charlie Parker’s 1945 tune of the same title to underscore the influence of the New York School artists on the trajectory of post–World War II American art. Featuring painting, photography, and sculpture made between the late 1930s through 1970, Now’s the Time presents notable works from Sheldon's permanent collection by artists including Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, Lee Krasner, Norman Lewis, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, David Smith, and Clyfford Still.
Mark Rothko's "Yellow Band"   Clyfford Still, 1945’s “PH-794." Lee Krasner’s “Invocation” from 1969-1971.
Excellent article, more images

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Mark Rothko: Reflection

September 8, 2017, 7:33 am

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11 Masterpieces by Mark Rothko at MFA, Boston

• Boston , Massachusetts
• September 5, 2017

• american art

Mark Rothko, 'Untitled,' 1955. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mrs. Paul Mellon, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art. © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, an immersive display of 11 masterpieces by Mark Rothko (1903–70), on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., invites visitors to contemplate the power of art to shape human experience.

The installation opens with a juxtaposition of Rothko’s early painting  

Thru the Window (1938), on public view in the U.S. for the first time, and

Artist in his Studio (about 1628) by Rembrandt (1606–1669), from the MFA’s collection—both portraits of artists reflecting on the act of painting.

Contrary to notions that Rothko’s work represented a dramatic break from past traditions, the side-by-side comparison positions him within the broader history of Western art. The additional 10 Rothko paintings showcase the full sweep of his career—from early surrealist work to multiform compositions to classic color field paintings—and trace his exploration of the expressive potential of color. Enveloped by the large-scale paintings in an intimate setting, viewers can experience Rothko’s work as the artist had originally intended.

Comprehensivebioand images: Mark Rothko  National Gallery of Art 

Asher B. Durand: To Begin

September 8, 2017, 7:39 am

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In 2015, an important early work by the American landscape painter Asher B. Durand entered the Palmer Museum of Art’s collection at Penn State University. The 1833 painting—the artist’s first commissioned landscape—is the focus of Asher B. Durand: To Begin Again. The exhibition, from Sept. 5 to Dec. 10, 2017, examines a pivotal turning point in the long career of Durand, a leading figure of the Hudson River School.Durand, who worked primarily as an engraver and an occasional portraitist in the 1820s, pursued landscape painting in earnest by the mid-1830s.

The exhibition celebrates this new acquisition, explores Durand’s significant contribution to the history of landscape painting in the United States, and features several major works from both public and private collections.

DETAIL: Asher B. Durand, Boonton Falls, New Jersey, 1833, oil on canvas. Purchased with funds from the Terra Art Enrichment Fund, 2015.143. (Palmer Museum of Art)

Asher B. Durand, Boonton Falls, New Jersey, 1833, oil on canvas. Purchased with funds from the Terra Art Enrichment Fund, 2015.143.

Asher B. Durand, after Thomas Sully, "John Quincy Adams," 1826

 
Asher B. Durand, after Charles C. Ingham, Catharine M. Sedgwick, 1834, engraving.

Larry Rivers: (RE)APPROPRIATIONS

September 8, 2017, 11:52 am

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Tibor de Nagy
September 6 through October 29, 2017

Tibor de Nagy Gallery presents the exhibition Larry Rivers: (RE)APPROPRIATIONS, consisting of over 20 paintings and sculptures by Rivers spanning half a century, from the mid-1950s to the late 1990s. The first major survey of Rivers’ work in New York in over a decade, the exhibition includes Rivers’ famous nude portrait of Frank O’Hara in boots, and highlights the artist’s strong interest in appropriation as well as the broad range of inventive methods and materials he employed over the course of his career. Works in the exhibition range from intimate graphite drawings to collage, large-scale paintings, life-size sculptures, and foam-sculpted relief-paintings.

“I’ll try to put it another way,” he said. “When I look at a thing, it isn’t love of reality, or feeling for objects or people, or love or death or anything like that that I’m trying to express. It’s the looking itself that interests me. Working from that is my way of painting.”

-Larry Rivers in Conversations with Artists, Selden Rodman 1961

Larry Rivers, Vocabulary Lesson (Polish), 1964-65. Oil on canvas, 22 1/4 x 33 inches. © Larry Rivers Foundation / Licensed by VAGA.

This is the fourth Larry Rivers exhibition since the gallery began representing the Rivers Estate in 2008. Comprising loans from private collections and works from the Larry Rivers Foundation and Estate, the exhibition will be on view September 6 through October 29, 2017. 

Larry Rivers "Cream Camel" (1980) acrylic on canvas, 50 1/2 x 39 in.

Rivers was a Bronx native who lived and worked between his 14th Street loft and Southampton studio. Tibor de Nagy’s (RE)APPROPRIATIONS exhibition presents vital works from Rivers’ diverse creative oeuvre and resonates with the gallery’s new Lower East Side location at 15 Rivington Street, where it has been located since June 2017. 

Larry Rivers
French Money (Nero), 1962
oil on canvas
36 x 59 1/2 inches

Larry Rivers became an artist in the 1940s, and was soon part of a New York avant-garde scene of dancers, musicians and writers. A saxophonist-turned-painter, he refused to adhere to any genre, and his puckish work has an air of jazz improvisation. He’ll be celebrated at (RE)APPROPRIATIONS, an exhibition spanning five decades of his work at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York.

Larry Rivers
Bill and Elaine de Kooning and 'Woman I', 1997
oil on canvas on sculpted foamboard
55 1/2 x 65 x 7 inches

Says Andrew Arnot, owner of Tibor de Nagy Gallery, “This is an exciting and important exhibition for us to present for our autumn 2017 debut on the Lower East Side. Rivers was a larger-than-life downtown figure, and showing his work in this space, at this time, and in this neighborhood, makes so much sense. Larry had an omnivorous eye, and that is apparent in every work we have on view. To observe the way his work evolved and changed over five decades, and the way he pioneered new techniques, is thought-provoking and inspiring.” 



At first glance, Larry Rivers’ diverse and varied visual modalities may appear disparate. Almost immediately, Larry Rivers developed a unique artistic language of interdisciplinary practices. From his early flirtations with Abstract Expressionism, Rivers would go on to trail-blaze the appropriation of pop imagery and incorporate newly available materials into his working vocabulary. Materiality was but one aspect of the artist’s heterogeneous interests; others were history, poetry, politics, sexuality, fashion, and the private and public spheres.

An erudite and autodidactic thread runs through his visual investigations. Employing such tropes as copying masterworks and “vocabulary lessons” as a basis for art-making, he often returned to those works as generative for his own point of departure. With the aid of historical distance and curated juxtapositions this exhibition re-contextualizes and clarifies the interdisciplinary nature of Rivers’ work.

Rivers was born in the Bronx as Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg. He changed his name to Larry Rivers in 1940 as he moonlighted as a jazz musician while studying music theory and composition at the Juilliard School of Music. He began painting in 1945, studying with Hans Hofmann and at New York University. The artist’s work has been widely exhibited and collected throughout the world. Within the last four years, seminal works were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of the City of New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Brooklyn Museum. His paintings are included in major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Tate Modern, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Centre Pompidou. 

The Corsini Collection: A Window on Renaissance Florence

September 8, 2017, 12:10 pm

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Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in New Zealand.
from 2 September 2017

Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
from February 2018

The art and lives of a Florentine dynasty is being revealed in Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki’s new exhibition The Corsini Collection: A Window on Renaissance Florence which opened on Saturday 2 September 2017.

Florentine Painter after Francesco Rosselli, The Execution of Savonarola and Two Companions at Piazza della Signoria, 16th–17th century. Oil on canvas. Florence, Galleria Corsini.

Drawn from the extensive private art collection of the eminent Corsini family in Florence, Italy, the exhibition features Renaissance and Baroque painting by artists such as Botticelli, Caravaggio, Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo.

Matteo Rosselli
The Triumph of David 1610
Galleria Corsini, Florence

It is the first time this collection has toured outside Italy and the first time a Florentine private collection is being displayed in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Corsini Collection provides a window onto the Corsini family’s continuing passion for art and their ongoing loyalty to the city of Florence, which have prevailed through the devastation of World War II and the inescapable forces of nature during the flood in Florence in 1966.

Sandro Botticelli and Workshop, Madonna and Child with Six Angels c1500, tempera and oil on board. Galleria Corsini, Florence

Auckland Art Gallery Director Rhana Devenport says it is a privilege to exhibit this exceptional collection in New Zealand.

Anton Domenico Gabbiani Glorification of the Corsini Family: Sketch for the Ceiling Fresco of the Presentation Room of the Palazzo (detail) 1694–95
Florence, Galleria Corsini

‘Our audiences will have the opportunity to experience the fascinating history of an extraordinary family, who turned their love and passion for art into a true vocation, gathering artworks that span from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries,’ she says.

Preserved over time, these masterpieces, as well as fascinating historical objects, demonstrate the period’s celebration of the fine and decorative arts in an immersive Gallery experience.

The story of Florence is also being explored throughout the exhibition. Often called the cradle of the Renaissance, Florence saw a growth of independence in its political, economic and religious spheres. These developments arose from families, such as the Corsini, who strove to influence the way their city held its place within broader Italian politics.

Portraits, landscape, mythological and religious paintings, as well as sculpture, works on paper, furniture, costumes, embroidery, games, kitchen equipment and a lavish dining room set for six, portray the life of this family at the Corsini Palazzo and their patronage of the arts.

The exhibition has been curated by Dr Ludovica Sebregondi with Auckland Art Gallery’s Mary Kisler, Senior Curator, Mackelvie Collection, International Art.

Mary Kisler, who spent time in Italy researching the collection, says the exhibition is a perfect window on the world of Florence, both historically and today.

‘The Corsini Collection has many insights and stories to share about Florence. It tells of a great Italian family, of politics, of the church, of war and wealth and, of course, it tells the story of their art.’

This exhibition is organised by the Galleria Corsini, Florence; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; and MondoMostre, Rome, with the support of the Italian Embassy, the Italian Cultural Institute, Sydney and Dante Alighieri, Auckland.

UTRILLO, URBAN SOLITUDE,

September 9, 2017, 6:41 am

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Galerie Alexis Pentcheff will celebrate Maurice Utrillo’s (1883-1955) prominent position within the School of Paris in his first retrospective in Marseille, from September 22 to November 4, 2017.

Since 2009, Galerie Alexis Pentcheff has been highly involved in Marseille’s cultural scene, showcasing the finest of Impressionist and Modern Art. Today, the gallery presents its forthcoming exhibition, "UTRILLO, URBAN SOLITUDE," which is viewable online. The gallery will display an extremely rare collection of thirty-nine original works that will highlight Utrillo’s greatest achievements and his influence on the 20th century art scene.

All of the works come from private collections and will be available for purchase. This new show will look at Utrillo’s legacy through the prism of a contemporary and novel interpretation, bringing into focus his idiosyncratic vision of Montmartre’s landscapes.

Son of the sulfurous Suzanne Valadon, Maurice Utrillo was born on the day after Christmas in 1883. Throughout his life, Utrillo will remain a highly troubled man for whom painting will become an enlightening necessity. While painting will alleviate his darkest thoughts, he will reveal an extraordinary and genuine talent.

Like his mother, who was a painter and a model, Utrillo is an autodidact. He will find inspiration in the greatest figures’ artistry, scrutinizing their representations of his mother. The artist will therefore develop a highly personal style from his attentive observations and knowledge, suggesting a sincere and authentic approach of painting, while setting aside any ostentation.

Through this retrospective, Galerie Alexis Pentcheff pays tribute to a major artist gifted with an incredible sensitivity and provides new perspectives on his atypical work. While Maurice Utrillo has often been mentioned to embody the cursed artist myth, he is most importantly the perfect incarnation of the School of Paris (École de Paris).

Maurice Utrillo, Rue Saint-Vincent sous la neige, Montmartre, Circa 1955, Oil on canvas, 38,1 x 42,6 cm

Maurice UTRILLO (1883 - 1955) Eglise Saint-Denis de la Chapelle, Paris, 1933

Church: A Painter's Pilgrimage

September 11, 2017, 9:03 am

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Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) 

Oct. 22, 2017 to Jan. 15, 2018

Reynolda House Museum of Art, Winston-Salem, NC

Feb. 8 to May 13, 2018 

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT 

June 2 to Aug. 26, 2018

“Church: A Painter’s Pilgrimage”focuses on American artist Frederic Church’s paintings done in the Middle East, Athens and Rome. Church was the most popular and financially successful painter in mid-19th-century America, best known for his large paintings of wild places in North and South America, the North Atlantic and the Caribbean. But from the late 1860s until the late 1870s, many of his most important paintings represented ancient cities or buildings that he had seen on his 1867 to 1869 trip to the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

While Church’s paintings of the Americas are primarily concerned with nature, his major paintings of Middle Eastern, Greek and Roman themes concentrate on human history. The exhibition compares numerous pencil drawings and oil studies that Church completed during his trip to the major paintings he completed back in his studio.

A catalog accompanies the exhibition.

This exhibition has been organized by the Detroit Institute of Arts. Generous support has been provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Henry Luce Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. A significant loan of objects has been provided by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

• “El Khasneh, Petra,” 1868, Frederic Church, brush and oil on paperboard. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York. Gift of Louis P. Church, 1917-4-485-a  

• “Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives,” 1870, Frederic Church, oil on canvas. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri Gift of the Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation, F77–40/

 

• “Olana from the Southwest,” about 1872, Frederic Church, oil on paperboard. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York. Gift of Louis P. Church, 1917-4-666  

• “Parthenon at Night, Athens,” 1868, Frederic Church, oil and black chalk on paperboard. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York. Gift of Louis P. Church, OL.1917-4-671  

• “Standing Bedouin,” 1868, Frederic Church, oil and graphite on paper. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum , New York. Gift of Louis P. Church, 1917-4-752-a  

 
 
 

• “Syria by the Sea,” 1873, Frederic Church, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts.  

 
  
 

•  “The Parthenon,” 1871, Frederic Church, oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Bequest of Maria DeWitt Jesup, from the collection of her husband, Morris K. Jesup, 1914 (15.30.67) 

 
 
 

•  “The Urn Tomb, Silk Tomb. and Corinthian Tomb, Petra,” 1868, Frederic Church, oil on paper mounted on canvas. Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, NY. New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. OL.1981.52 

 
 

• “View of Baalbek,” 1868, Frederic Church, oil and pencil on board. Detroit Institute of Arts  

Max Beckmann: World as a Stage

September 13, 2017, 11:59 am

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Kunsthalle Bremen
September 30, 2017 to February 4, 2018

Museum Barberini, Potsdam
February 23–June 10, 2018

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) was fascinated by the world of the theater, the circus, and music halls as metaphorical settings for human relationships and world affairs. In his oeuvre one finds numerous paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures which allude directly to these subject areas and convey his idea of the world as a stage.



This exhibition focuses extensively on the imagery and history of ideas in Beckmann’s  “world theater” and illustrates how the painter and author of two hitherto neglected dramas viewed himself as a “theater manager, director, and scene-shifter.”

The core of the exhibition is formed by the extensive holdings of the Kunsthalle Bremen, which possesses one of the largest Beckmann collections in Germany including paintings and a nearly complete collection of the artist’s printed works. It is supplemented by loans from major German and international museums and private collections.

Catalogue:

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Richard Diebenkorn: Beginnings, 1942–1955

September 14, 2017, 9:41 am

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Crocker Art Museum 
October 08, 2017 — January 07, 2018


2018
Owsley Museum at Ball State University in Muncie, IN, 
Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR. 

2019
Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, 
Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD.

Organized by the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation in conjunction with the Crocker, this traveling exhibition is the first to solely examine the work Diebenkorn made prior to his switch to figuration. It focuses on the artist’s stylistic and technical origins in oil, watercolor, gouache, ink, crayon, and collage, tracing Diebenkorn’s evolution from representational landscape, to semiabstract and Surrealist-inspired work, to his mature Abstract Expressionist paintings from the Sausalito, Albuquerque, Urbana, and early Berkeley years.

 Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled, 1943. Watercolor, graphite, and paper tape on paper, 15 1/4 x 22 in. (38.7 x 55.9 cm). Catalogue raisonné no. 86 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

Accompanied by a fully illustrated scholarly publication by Crocker Art Museum Associate Director and Chief Curator Scott A. Shields, the exhibition counters the prevailing notion that Diebenkorn began his career as a painter in the Abstract Expressionist style. In fact, Diebenkorn himself placed his beginnings in representation. “Though his evolution was rapid, he [Diebenkorn] did not suddenly arrive on the scene as an Abstract Expressionist prodigy,” asserts Shields. “He investigated many styles and ideas to get there.”

• Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled. 1949. Oil on canvas, 45 1/8 x 37 3/8 in. Catalogue raisonné no. 665 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation.

The examination is a landmark contribution to the study and understanding of Diebenkorn, who Shields asserts is “the greatest artist California has yet produced.” Later periods in the artist’s development have been surveyed in exhibitions and publications, but Beginnings is both the first full-scale exhibition and publication to chronicle the artist’s paintings and drawings from early to mid-1940s, as well as the mature abstractions that the artist started to make later in the decade while on the faculty of the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) in San Francisco.

Focused exclusively on paintings and drawings made between 1942 and 1955, Beginnings features 100 works from the collection of the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, most of which have never before been publicly exhibited. These little-known works range from World War II drawings and watercolors of soldiers and military bases, to abstractions that unite the forms of Surrealism and the fractured planes of Cubism, to gestural works on paper. The show concludes with one of the artist’s first mature figurative paintings,

 his 1954 Untitled (Horse and Rider),

 laying the foundation for the representational drawings and paintings soon to come (1955–1966).
Beginnings reveals the forces that shaped Diebenkorn as a young artist: the landscape; his service in the U.S. Marines; and his teachers and mentors, most notably painter David Park, whose artistic and paternal guidance lasted until Park’s early death in 1960. It also evidences the influence of artists he admired, including Arshile Gorky, Joan Miró, and Willem de Kooning; as well as the writings of art critic Clement Greenberg.

“Diebenkorn’s early works show the artist rapidly assimilating art from various time periods and locales,” argues Shields.

In the second half of the 1940s, Diebenkorn attended and then taught classes at CSFA (now San FranciscoArt Institute) where, Shields says, “Diebenkorn learned from Clyfford Still that painting must not be pretty and from David Park that it should not be easy to make. Diebenkorn came to relish the search and struggle, making them critical components of his art and battling against his innate predisposition toward the refined, gracious, and elegant, creating a tension he exploited to maximum advantage.”

Beginnings brings to life the moment in Berkeley in 1954 when, just as Diebenkorn was being hailed as California’s leading Abstract Expressionist painter, he felt his art had perhaps become too polished, prompting him to shift to landscapes and the figure.

Beginnings originated during meetings in the mid 2010s between Shields and Andrea Liguori, ManagingDirector of the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation. Liguori was in the final stages of research and development of

Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné (Yale University Press, 2016), the definitive resource on the artist’s work (including sketches; drawings; paintings on paper, board, canvas; and sculptural objects), when she asked Shields to curate an exhibition for a multi-museum tour. Shields noted the rich variety and depth of the Foundation’s holdings of Diebenkorn’s early work and proposed it as the focus.

Said Liguori: “The variety in the artist’s output, and its response to the forces that influenced him in his art making, invited a much closer look. We hadn’t yet seen a museum exhibition of Diebenkorn’s work preceding 1950, and with the catalogue raisonné providing the public with the first complete look at the early productions, Scott instantly recognized its importance and was eager to explore it more deeply.”

Fully Illustrated Publication

Beginnings includes a fully-illustrated scholarly publication (Pomegranate, 2017) featuring nearly 200 hundred paintings and drawings in stunning new color photography produced by the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation.

Shields explores the artist’s journey of self-discovery involving pivotal artistic mentors and influences, including painter John Marin; Wolfgang Paalen’s magazine Dyn, wherein the artist viewed reproductions by William Baziotes and Robert Motherwell; Clyfford Still, whose influence at CSFA resulted briefly in Diebenkorn experimenting with dark, angular forms and colors; Hassel Smith; Willem de Kooning, the artist’s hero; Raymond Jonson, landscape painter turned transcendental abstractionist; Henri Matisse; and painter David Park and other practitioners of the Bay Area Figurative style.

Shields elucidates the “revolution,” as Diebenkorn put it, of Abstract Expressionism among San Francisco’s avant-garde in the late 1940s and charts the artist’s precocious rise as the region’s leading Abstractionist. He also explores the complicated and enduring relationship between Diebenkorn and Park, of which Diebenkorn said: “I was the younger, the learner in our relationship.”

Park and Diebenkorn, along with Elmer Bischoff, came together in 1954 for Berkeley drawing sessions from the live model, being joined by Frank Lobdell and sometimes Paul Wonner and William Theophilus Brown. The publication includes a foreword by Richard Diebenkorn Foundation President and scholar Steven A. Nash, PhD, as well as a chronology, selected bibliography, and exhibition checklist.

• 
  

  Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled, c. 1947. Oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 20 in. (64.8 x 50.8 cm). Catalogue raisonné no. 572 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

• Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled, 1945. Watercolor on paper, 15 3/4 x 12 in. (40 x 30.5cm). Catalogue raisonné no. 348 © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation

Casanova: The Seduction of Europe

September 14, 2017, 10:07 am

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Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

August 27–December 31, 2017

Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco  
February 10, 2018– May 28, 2018

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
July 1–October 8, 2018

• Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo The Charlatan 

Casanova: The Seduction of Europe explores the 18th century across Europe through the eyes of one of its most colorful characters, Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798 ). Renowned in modern times for his amorous pursuits, Casanova lived not only in Italy, but in France and England, and his travels took him to the Ottoman Empire and to meet Catherine the Great in Saint Petersburg. Bringing together paintings, sculpture, works on paper, furnishings, porcelains, silver and period costume, Casanova will bring this world to life.

• Jean-Marc Nattier (1685–1766)  Portrait of Manon Balletti (Mlle Marie-Madeleine Balletti (1740–1776), known as Manon Balletti, fiancée (1757–1760) of Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798), wife (1760) of Jacques-François Blondel (1705–1774)

Jean-Marc Nattier Thalia Muse of comedy and idyllic poetry,

Notorious today for his amorous pursuits, Giacomo Casanova (1725–98) was esteemed by his contemporaries as a charming conversationalist, expert on many topics, and an international man of letters. He traveled widely throughout the continent, with extended sojourns in his native Venice, Paris, London, and much of Eastern Europe, mingling with royalty, popes and luminaries such as Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin along the way. His travels took him to the Ottoman Empire and to meet Catherine the Great in Saint Petersburg.

This exhibition combines more than 250 paintings, sculptures, works on paper, decorative arts objects, period costumes and musical instruments drawn from European and American museums and private collections to illustrate the splendor of 18th-century Europe. Structured by the chronology and geography of Casanova’s life, the exhibition addresses such themes as travel; courtship and seduction; theatre and identity; and the pleasures of dining.

The visual riches Casanova would have encountered are evoked by masterpieces by

Canaletto (1697–1768),

François Boucher (1703–70),

Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806),

Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828), William Hogarth (1697–1764) and others. 

Of special note are three tableaux, illustrating, respectively, a visit to a convent in Venice, a morning toilette in Paris, and a dissipated night of cards in London—scenes composed of mannequins in 18th-century costumes amid period furniture. Thematic threads running through the exhibition include travel; courtship and seduction; theater and identity; and the pleasures of dining.

This exhibition is organized by the Kimbell Art Museum, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Catalogue

Casanova: The Seduction of Europe is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue produced by MFA Publications.

In eighteenth-century Europe, while the old order reveled in the luxurious excesses of the Rococo style and the Enlightenment sowed the seeds of revolution, the shape-shifting libertine Giacomo Casanova seduced his way across the Continent. Although notorious for the scores of amorous conquests he recorded in his remarkably frank memoirs, Casanova was just as practiced at charming his way into the most elite social circles, through an inimitable mix of literary ambition, improvisational genius, and outright fraud. In his travels across Europe and through every level of society from the theatrical demimonde to royal courts, he was also seduced by the visual splendors he encountered.

This volume accompanies the first major art exhibition outside Europe to lavishly recreate Casanova’s visual world, from his birthplace of Venice, city of masquerades, to the cultural capitals of Paris and London and the outposts of Eastern Europe. Summoning up the people he met and the cityscapes, highways, salons, theaters, masked balls, boudoirs, gambling halls, and dining rooms he frequented, it provides a survey of important works of eighteenth-century European art by masters such as Canaletto, Fragonard, Boucher, Houdon, and Hogarth, along with exquisite decorative arts objects.

Twelve essays by prominent scholars illuminate multiple facets of Casanova’s world as reflected in the arts of his time, providing a fascinating grand tour of Europe conducted by a quintessential figure of the eighteenth century as well as a splendid visual display of the spirit of the age.

American Impressionism: The Lure of the Artists’ Colony

September 14, 2017, 12:58 pm

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Knoxville Museum of Art  

August 11 through November 12, 2017

Drawn from the extensive collection of the Reading Public Museum, this vibrant exhibition examines the key role played by artists’ colonies in the development of American Impressionism.

Lyrical landscapes of snow-covered hills and sun-drenched harbors, portraits, and still-life paintings exemplify American artists’ varied approaches to Impressionism during the early twentieth century. Oil paintings and works on paper reveal the abiding interest they shared – capturing the effects of light and atmosphere in loosely brushed compositions.

Arranged by artists’ colonies from New England to Taos, New Mexico, and California, the exhibition explores the critical role of the colonies in the development of American Impressionism in the 1880s through the 1940s. Colony artists – surrounded and inspired by scenic locations – taught, collaborated, and escaped the daily rigors of their city studios.

Included are works by William Merritt Chase, Frank W. Benson, Guy Wiggins, Charles Webster Hawthorne, Edward Redfield, and American expatriate artists Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent. 

The more than 50 paintings and works on paper also includes works by Childe Hassam, Ernest Lawson, William Paxton, Robert Reid, Chauncey Ryder, John Twachtman, Julian Alden Weir, and many others.

Many of the nationally prominent artists represented in this exhibition have ties to East Tennessee and the KMA’s ongoing display Higher Ground: A Century of the Visual Arts in East Tennessee. More than a dozen participated in large art exhibitions held in conjunction with Knoxville’s 1910 and 1911 Appalachian Expositions, and the 1913 National Conservation Exposition. Their paintings appeared alongside those of several East Tennessee artists represented in Higher Ground, such as Catherine Wiley, Lloyd Branson, Adelia Lutz, Charles Krutch, and Hugh Tyler, to name a few. These sprawling and ambitious exhibitions were designed with the goal of bringing the “best contemporary art in America” to people of the region. The displays highlighted art currents of the day, and allowed East Tennessee artists to demonstrate their proficiency in a national context.

Among other ties, John F. Carlson served as a juror for the 1913 Expo art exhibition along with Knoxville impressionist painter Catherine Wiley. Robert Reid was one of Wiley’s art instructors during her studies in New York, and Mary Cassatt’s intimate domestic scenes inspired Wiley’s career-long interest in depicting women and children. As a result of these and other connections, this exhibition offers a broader national lens through which viewers can assess the work of Wiley, Branson, Lutz, Krutch, Tyler and other Higher Ground artists who also experimented with Impressionism.

Organized by the Reading Public Museum, Pennsylvania. Exhibition runs through November 12, 2017. Sponsors of this exhibition include UBS, Emerson Automation Solutions, and Sarah Stowers. Media sponsors include Big Wheel, Kurt Zinser Design, and WBIR.

 

• Robert Reid (Stockbridge, Massachusetts 1862-1929 Clifton Springs, New York), Summer Breezes, ca. 1910-20. Oil on canvas, 33 3/4 x 39 inches, Reading Public Museum, Pennsylvania

 
 

• Frank Weston Benson, On Grand River, ca. 1930, oil on canvas

   

  William Merritt Chase, My Palette, ca. 1870-1880, oil on canvas

   
   William Merritt Chase, My Palette, ca. 1870-1880, oil on canvas 

• Charles Webster Hawthorne, A Study in White, ca. 1900, oil on canvas

 

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  Edward Willis Redfield, Winter in the Valley, ca. 1905-1915, oil on canvas
   
   

  Guy Carleton Wiggins, Gloucester at Twilight, 1916, oil on canvas

   

   
   
  Guy Carleton Wiggins, Gloucester at Twilight, 1916, oil on canvas

Zurbarán: Jacob and his Twelve Sons, Paintings from Auckland Castle

September 16, 2017, 6:52 am

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Meadows Museum,
September 17, 2017 – January 7, 2018

Frick Collection in New York
31 January – 22 April, 2018


Zurbarán: Jacob and his Twelve Sons,  Paintings from Auckland Castle , a series of 13 life - size paintings making their first trip to the  United States in the most important Zurba rán exhibition in 30 years. Proposed by the Meadows,  the project is co - organized with Auckland Castle in County Durham, England, and The Frick  Collection in New York, where it will be on view in the spring of 2018. This series of works was  purchased in 1756 by Richard Trevor, Bishop of Durham; Trevor subsequently redesigned  Auckland Castle’s Long Dining Room to house the paintings, which together comprise one of  the most significant public collections of the artist’s work outside Spain. The upcoming  restora tion of Auckland Castle — which involves the temporary deinstallation of the series from  the room where the paintings have hung for more than 250 years — presents this unique study  and exhibition opportunity. Before their display in the U.S., the paintings will undergo technical  analysis at the Kimbell Art Museum’s noted conservation lab. 
  
Francisco de Zurbarán was born in Fuente de Cantos, in Wes tern Spain, but spent most of his working life in Seville. Like Ribera, Zurbarán is also considered a Caravaggisti , particularly for his exceptional use of chiaroscuro. These 13 paintings (12 by Zurbarán and one a direct copy of the work by Zurbarán) are a visual narrative of Jacob’s deathbed act of bestowing a blessing on each son, foretelling their destinies and those of their tribes. Although each painting holds it’s own as an exceptional portrait, seeing the works together provides a unique experience for viewers, transporting them across history to make them a witness to that moment. 

At the Meadows, the paintings will be displayed together in one gallery. It is not known who originally commissioned the series, but they were auctioned from the collection of a Jewish merchant named Benjamin Mendez in 1756. Richard Trevor, Bishop of Durham, acquired the paintings for Auckland Castle, seeing in the public presentation of these works an opportunity to make a statement about the need for social, political an d religious understanding and tolerance between Christians and Jews in Great Britain. 

At the Kimbell Art Museum, the paintings will undergo in - depth technical study for the first time, including the use of infrared reflectography, ultra-violet light, x-radiography and pigment analysis. 

The goals of this work are twofold: first, to gain a better understanding of Zurbarán’s artistic process by exploring this unique series of related works; and second, to identify any additional needs for their ongoing conse rvation and care after they return to the U.K. Accompanying the exhibition and conservation research will be an illustrated catalogue containing scholarly essays exploring the series from various historical, religious and artistic perspectives.

This exhibition and study have been co - organized by the Meadows M useum, SMU; The Frick Collection; and Auckland Castle; in association with the Kimbell Art Museum. A generous gift from The Meadows Foundation has made this exhibition and study possible , with additional support from the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica and the Center for Spain in America. 

The Meadows Museum is the leading U.S. institution focused on the study and presentation of the art of Spain. In 1962, Dallas businessman and philanthropist Algur H. Meadows donated his private collection of Spanish paintings, as well as funds to start a museum, to Southern Methodist University. The Museum opened to the public in 1965, marking the first step in fulfilling Meadows’s vision to create “a small Prado for Texas.” 

Today, the Meadows is home to one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain. The collection spans from the 10th to the 21st centuries and includes medieval objects, Renaissance and Baroque sculptures, and major paintings by Golden Age and modern masters. Since 2010 the Museum has been engaged in a multidimensional partnership with the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, which has included the exchange of schol arship, exhibitions, works of art, and other resource.

Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664)

Jacob, ca 1640–45

Oil on canvas, 77 15/16 × 40 3/16 inches (198 × 102 cm)

Photo credit: Colin Davison, courtesy of Auckland Castle

Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664)

Reuben, ca. 1640–45

Oil on canvas, 77 15/16 × 40 3/16 inches (198 × 102 cm)

Photo credit: Colin Davison, courtesy of Auckland Castle

Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664)

Simeon, ca. 1640–45

Oil on canvas, 77 15/16 × 40 3/16 inches (198 × 102 cm)

Photo credit: Colin Davison, courtesy of Auckland Castle

Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664)

Levi, ca. 1640–45

Oil on canvas, 77 15/16 × 40 3/16 inches (198 × 102 cm)

Photo credit: Colin Davison, courtesy of Auckland Castle

Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664)

Judah, ca. 1640–45

Oil on canvas, 77 15/16 × 40 3/16 inches (198 × 102 cm)

Photo credit: Colin Davison, courtesy of Auckland Castle

Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664)

Zebulun, ca. 1640–45

Oil on canvas, 77 15/16 × 40 3/16 inches (198 × 102 cm)

Photo credit: Colin Davison, courtesy of Auckland Castle

Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664)

Issachar, ca. 1640–45

Oil on canvas, 77 15/16 × 40 3/16 inches (198 × 102 cm)

Photo credit: Colin Davison, courtesy of Auckland Castle

Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664)

Dan, ca. 1640–45

Oil on canvas, 77 15/16 × 40 3/16 inches (198 × 102 cm)

Photo credit: Colin Davison, courtesy of Auckland Castle

Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664)

Gad, ca. 1640–45

Oil on canvas, 77 15/16 × 40 3/16 inches (198 × 102 cm)

Photo credit: Colin Davison, courtesy of Auckland Castle

Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664)

Asher, ca. 1640–45

Oil on canvas, 77 15/16 × 40 3/16 inches (198 × 102 cm)

Photo credit: Colin Davison, courtesy of Auckland Castle

Francisco de Zurbarán

(Spanish, 1598–1664)

Naphtali, ca. 1640–45

Oil on canvas, 77 15/16 × 40 3/16 inches (198 × 102 cm)

Photo credit: Colin Davison, courtesy of Auckland Castle

Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598–1664)

Joseph, ca. 1640–45

Oil on canvas, 77 15/16 × 40 3/

16 inches (198 × 102 cm)

Photo credit: Colin Davison, courtesy of Auckland Castle

 

"Eyewitness Views: Making History in Eighteenth-Century Europe"

September 16, 2017, 6:59 am

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GETTY CENTER

May 9–July 30, 2017

Minneapolis Institute of Art
September 10 - December 31, 2017

Cleveland Museum of Art 
02/25/2018- 05/20/2018 
 

 
Giovanni Antonio Canaletto (Italian, 1697-1768) The Grand Canal in Venice from Palazzo Flangini to Campo San Marcuola, c. 1740. Oil on canvas. Bequest of Miss Tessie Jones in memory of Herschel V. Jones. Minneapolis Institute of Art.

The Rialto Bridge with the Festive Entry of the Patriarch Antonio Correr (detail), 1735, Michele Marieschi, oil on canvas. Osterley Park, The Palmer-Morewood Collection, National Trust (accepted in lieu of tax and transferred to the National Trust by Her Majesty's Government in 1984). Photo: National Trust Photo Library / Art Resource, NY  

This fall, the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) presents the first-ever exhibition to focus on view paintings as depictions of contemporary events. "Eyewitness Views: Making History in Eighteenth-Century Europe" features approximately 40 paintings from the golden age of European view painting. 

King Charles III Visiting Pope Benedict XIV at the Coffee House of the Palazzo del Quirinale, 1746, Giovanni Paolo Panini. Oil on canvas.

Departure of Charles III from Naples to Become King of Spain, 1759, Antonio Joli, oil on canvas. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Image © Museo Nacional del Prado / Art Resource, NY

Luca Carlevarijs (Italian, 1663–1730);

Regatta on the Grand Canal in Honor of Frederick IV, King of

Denmark (detail), 1711, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

The Bucintoro Departing from the Bacino di San Marco (detail), 1710. Luca Carlevarijs (Italian, 1663–1730). Oil on canvas; 134.8 × 259.4 cm. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 86.PA.600.

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni, Italian (Rome), 1708–87,

Pope Benedict XIV Presenting the Encyclical “Ex Omnibus” to the Comte de Stainville, 

Later Duc de Choiseul, 1757, oil on canvas, The William Hood Dunwoody Fund, 61.62

Minneapolis Institute of Art



Hubert Robert (French, 1733-1808); The Fire at the Opera House of the Palais-Royal, about 1781.
 Oil on canvas. Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston.

 

Bernardo Bellotto, Italian, 1722–80,

Procession of Our Lady of Grace in Front of Krasinski Palace,1778, oil on canvas, 

The Royal Castle in Warsaw–Museum

Pierre-Jacques Volaire, French, 1729–99,

The Eruption of Vesuvius, 1771,

The Art Institute of Chicago

Book: 

Eyewitness Views: Making History in Eighteenth-Century Europe

Getty Publications, May 9, 2017 - 256 pages

Canaletto, Bernardo Bellotto, Luca Carlevarijs, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Francesco Guardi, Hubert Robert—these renowned view painters are perhaps most famous for their expansive canvases depicting the ruins of Rome or the canals of Venice. Many of their most splendid paintings, however, feature important contemporary events. These occasions motivated some of the greatest artists of the era to produce their most exceptional work. Little explored by scholars, these paintings stand out by virtue of their extraordinary artistic quality, vibrant atmosphere, and historical interest. They are imbued with a sense of occasion, even drama, and were often commissioned by or for rulers, princes, and ambassadors as records of significant events in which they participated.

Lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched, this volume provides the first-ever comprehensive study—in any language—of this type of view painting. In examining these paintings alongside the historical events depicted in them, Peter Björn Kerber carefully reconstructs the meaning and context these paintings possessed for the artists who produced them and the patrons who commissioned them, as well as for their contemporary viewers.

This vital book represents a major contribution to the field of view painting studies and will be an essential resource for scholars and enthusiasts.