Edward Hopper (1882-1967), Rich’s House, 1930. Watercolour and charcoal on paper. 16 x 25 in (40.6 x 63.5 cm). Estimate: $2,000,000-3,000,000.
The Collection of David and Peggy Rockefeller: Art of the Americas, Evening Sale on 9 May at Christie’s in New York, a comprehensive survey of masterworks by the leading American artists of the 20th Century including Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Milton Avery, Thomas Hart Benton, John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer, among others.
The sale features
Diego Rivera’s 1931 masterpiece, The Rivals, which was commissioned by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and was given to Peggy and David the year after.
Willem de Kooning’s Untitled XIX from 1982(
Estimate
USD 6,000,000 - USD 8,000,000) and Gilbert Stuart’s George Washington (Vaughan type)
Estimate
USD 800,000 - USD 1,200,000are among the offerings.
Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition, 1916, will lead Christie’s Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art (estimate upon request). Suprematist Composition is among the groundbreaking abstract paintings executed by Malevich that would forever change the course of art history. The present canvas was last sold at auction in November 2008, when it established the world auction record for the artist, which it continues to hold today.* One decade later, Suprematist Composition is expected to set a new benchmark for the artist when it is offered at Christie’s New York on May 15.
Loic Gouzer, Co-Chairman, Post-War and Contemporary Art, remarked: “Malevich’s work provided a gateway for the evolution of Modernism. Malevich pushed the boundaries of painting to a point far beyond recognition, forever changing the advancement of art. Without the Suprematist Composition paintings, the art being made today would not exist as we now know it.”
Max Carter, Head of Department, Impressionist and Modern Art, New York, continued: “Malevich’s Suprematist abstractions didn’t break with the past so much as articulate the future. What an honor to offer Suprematist Composition, 1916 which has lost nothing of its revolutionary power in the century since it was painted, this spring.”
On 17th December 1915, the Russo-Polish artist Kazimir Malevich opened an exhibition of his new ‘Suprematist’ paintings in the Dobychina Art Bureau in the recently renamed city of Petrograd. These startling, purely geometric and completely abstract paintings were unlike anything Malevich, or any other modern painter, had ever done before. They were both a shock and a revelation to everyone who saw them. Malevich’s Suprematist pictures were the very first purely geometric abstract paintings in the history of modern art. They comprised solely of simple, colored forms that appeared to float and hover over plain white backgrounds. Nothing but clearly-organized, self-asserting painted surfaces of non-objective/non- representational form and color, these pictures were so radically new that they seemed to announce the end of painting and, even perhaps, of art itself. Suprematist Composition is one of the finest and most complex of these first, truly revolutionary abstract paintings. Comprised of numerous colored, geometric elements seeming to be dynamically caught in motion, it epitomizes what Malevich defined as his ‘supreme’ or ‘Suprematist’ vision of the world. The painting is not known to have been a part of the exhibition in the Dobychina Art Bureau but is believed to date from this same period of creative breakthrough and, if not included, was, presumably painted very soon after the show closed in January 1916.
It is clear, from the frequency with which Malevich later exhibited the picture, that he thought very highly of the painting. Malevich subsequently chose, for example, to include Suprematist Composition in every other major survey of his Suprematist pictures made during his lifetime. These exhibitions ranged from his first major retrospective in Moscow in 1919 to the great travelling retrospective showcasing much of his best work that he brought to the West in 1927. It was as a result of his last exhibition held in Berlin that Suprematist Composition came to form part of the extraordinarily influential group of Malevich’s paintings that remained in the West and represent so much of his creative legacy.
Hidden in Germany throughout much of the 1930’s, Suprematist Composition and the other works from this great Berlin exhibition, were ultimately to become part of the highly influential holdings of Malevich’s work in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Until 2008, when it was restituted to the heirs of Malevich’s family in agreement with the Stedelijk museum, Suprematist Composition was on view in Amsterdam as part of the Stedelijk’s unrivalled collection of the artist’s work.
Léger retained his modern aesthetic even as he drew from the art-historical canon
It is rare to sell one masterwork from the 1920s but this season we will be offering two, with the inclusion of Les trois femmes au bouquet (1922), another classic depiction of women in a domestic interior, also offered on 15 May. Again, Léger chose to meld tradition with modernity.
The grey trio look like they could have been fabricated out of steel and burnished chromium, yet they’re also clearly inspired by the Three Graces of Classical mythology, and here the interaction between the figures creates a dialogue and connection between the forms.
7
The 1930s was both an experimental and an extremely productive decade for Léger
In 1931 Léger made the first of three trips to the United States, having been commissioned to decorate the New York apartment of Nelson Rockefeller. He returned in 1935 and 1938 to complete a similar project for Wallace K. Harrison’s Consolidated Edison Building at the 1939-40 World’s Fair. In 1932 he resumed teaching at the Académie Moderne, a free school he had co-founded with Amédée Ozenfant in 1924. In 1935, just four years after his initial visit, he was given a major show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The latter half of the decade saw the completion of the monumental mural paintings Adam and Eve and Composition aux deux perroquets, a work he considered to be one of his most important. He also produced murals for expositions in Brussels and Paris, and set and costume designs for the Paris Opera.
8
Fernand Léger was a painter with a definite social agenda
Léger’s murals of the late 1930s were inspired by his belief that modern art could be an agent of change, a means of communicating an optimistic vision of a forward-looking socialist society. In 1935 a coalition of leftist and centrist parties, organised labour and intellectuals formed the Front Populaire in France. Léger believed this represented the dawn of a new and potentially transformational social consciousness — precisely the opportunity that would allow him to bring modern art out of the studio and into the everyday sensibility of the public. He spent the war in America, where he made a series of paintings inspired by the neon lights of New York. He returned to France December 1945 and, like Picasso, joined the French Communist Party. The optimism Léger felt at returning to his homeland was reflected in his painting — there is an easygoing vitality and an athletic physicality in the artist’s late works. Léger believed that an essential part of peacetime reconstruction was to bring a sense of enjoyment to the lives of citizens from all walks of life, and, for him, the circus represented the public spectacle par excellence — a genuine art of the people. His final masterwork, La Grande parade, état définitif (1954) capped a long line of circus scenes that he executed throughout his career.
9
Art from two periods of his career is especially sought-after
Interest in Léger’s work is ‘very strong right now’, says Jessica Fertig, Senior Vice President for Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s in New York. Demand is particularly robust for pieces executed during two periods of his career: ‘Just before the First World War, and the work featuring female figures from the early 1920s.’ Last year, Christie’s broke a world record for the artist with an example of the former (Contraste de Formes). This May, we’re offering two very fine examples of the latter. ‘The works from before the War — both Cubist and those moving beyond Cubism — have always done well at auction,’ Fertig says. ‘What’s interesting is that the early 1920s pieces are now widely considered in the same rank.’
10
Léger will be well-represented in exhibitions in 2018
Fernand Leger (1881-1955) Lger, F. Les trois femmes au bouquet signed and dated 'F.LEGER 22' (lower right); signed and dated again and titled 'Les trois Femmes au bouquet F.LEGER 22' (on the reverse) oil on canvas 25.5/8 x 36 in. (65.1 x 92.7 cm.) Painted in 1922
Provenance
Galerie Simon (D.-H. Kahnweiler), Paris (acquired directly from the artist). Galerie Pierre Loeb (Galerie Pierre), Paris (1926). Dr. G.F. Reber, Lausanne. Galerie Rosengart, Lucerne. Dr. Charles Bensinger, Chicago (1949). William Beadleston, Inc., New York . Donald Morris Gallery, Inc., Birmingham, Michigan. (acquired from the above). Acquired from the above by the present owners on 7 December 1982.
The Day Sale features a broad span of genres and eras, beginning with Impressionist and Modern Art, including works by Odilon Redon, Paul Klee, Kees Van Dongen, and Édouard Vuillard. The 19th Century European art section is highlighted by works from Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and Édouard Manet. A fine selection of Post-War and Contemporary artists include Alexander Calder, Lucien Freud, Jasper Johns and Bridget Riley, underscoring the full breadth of David Rockefeller’s collecting, well into his later years.
Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012), The Temptation of St. Anthony, painted in 1945-1946. Oil on canvas in the artist's painted frame. 47⅞ x 35⅞ in (121.4 x 91.2 cm). Estimate: $400,000-600,000. This work is offered in the Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale on 16 May at Christie’s in New York,
Vanessa Fusco, Head of Day & Works on Paper Sales:‘Dorothea Tanning’s Surrealist vision of the Temptation of St. Anthony is a fantastical painting, embodying the universal struggle between good and evil. The subject of St. Anthony has a long tradition in the history of art, from the medieval to modern era, and Tanning’s representation exquisitely renders the cowering Saint and the nude female bodies which emanate from his robes with expert precision.
‘In addition to the visual pleasure derived from this work, it has a fascinating history. Tanning entered her picture into an international competition in which artists were invited to submit paintings representing the Temptation of St. Anthony for inclusion in a film based upon Guy de Maupassant’s Bel-Ami. Fellow Surrealists Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Paul Delvaux, and Leonora Carrington all entered paintings into the contest, the jury for which included MoMA’s Alfred Barr, Jr., the collector and gallerist Sidney Janis and Marcel Duchamp.’
Lot 424: Henri Matisse, Grand Masque, aquatint, 1948. Estimate $50,000 to $80,000.
Old Master Prints
Highlights from the dawn of printmaking include a premier selection of engravings by Albrecht Dürer, as well as a rare engraving and stipple-engraving by Giulio Campagnola of Saint John the Baptist, 1505. Self-portraits by Rembrandt van Rijn include one In a Cap, Laughing, 1630, as well as one In a Flat Cap and Embroidered Dress, circa 1642. Also available is the four-volume set of Giovanni B. Piranesi’s Le Antichità Romane, 1756-84, featuring 220 engravings of ancient Roman structures. The book took eight years to research and produce, and established Piranesi as the authority in the field.
Rembrandt van Rijn, Abraham’s Sacrifice, etching & drypoint, 1655. Estimate $30,000 to $50,000.
Lot 196: Giovanni B. Piranesi, Le Antichità Romane, set of 220 engravings in four volumes, 1756-84. Estimate $40,000 to $60,000.
Lot 235: Eugène Delacroix, Tigre Royal, lithograph, 1829-30. Estimate $30,000 to $50,000.
Lot 231: Francisco José de Goya, Dibersion de España, lithograph, 1825. Estimate $60,000 to $90,000.
Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid 4/10/2018 - 8/5/2018
Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum September.
The Museo del Prado and the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum are presenting the exhibition Rubens. Painter of Sketches. Sponsored by Fundación AXA and with the collaboration of the Government of Flanders, it offers an analysis of Rubens as the most important painter of oil sketches in the history of European art.
Of the nearly 500 oil sketches executed by Rubens over the course of his career, this exhibition includes 73 loaned from leading institutions world-wide, including the Louvre, the Hermitage, the National Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum, and also from the collections of the Prado and the Boijmans (which have two of the largest holdings of this type). On display for four months in Room C of the Jerónimos Building, the sketches are shown alongside a number of prints, drawings and paintings by Rubens which provide a context for them, bringing the total number of works on display to 93.
Following its showing at the Prado, Rubens. Painter of Sketches will travel to the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in September.
In addition to focusing on the importance of Rubens within the history of the oil sketch and facilitating an appreciation of the unique qualities of his works of this type, the exhibition Rubens. Painter of Sketches presents the results of an exhaustive research project directed by the exhibition’s two curators: Friso Lammertse, curator of Old Master Painting at the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, and Alejandro Vergara, chief curator of Flemish and Northern schools painting at the Museo del Prado. The conclusions of their study are presented in the exhibition and also form the basis of the accompanying publication.
The practice of producing oil sketches within the process of creating a painting began in 16th-century Italy. Artists such as Polidoro da Caravaggio, Beccafumi, Federico Barrocci, Tintoretto and Veronese were the first to make use of painted oil sketches as vehicles to try out their ideas when devising a painting. However, their use of such works was limited, given that drawing was their principal preparatory method.
Basing himself on these precedents, Rubens’s innovative contribution consisted of developing this preparatory process and making systematic use of images painted in oil and on more durable supports than paper. Rubens used some of these sketches to elaborate his ideas on new compositions, or often to show to clients or as a guide for his assistants and collaborators. Depending on their different purposes, these sketches could be very sketchy or highly finished, as well as small or relatively large. They differ from the rest of the artist’s pictorial output in that they are less highly finished and detailed, the paint layer is thinner and the preparatory layer is frequently visible.
Rubens thus transformed the oil sketch into a fundamental part of his creative process, and the nearly 500 surviving examples by his hand reveal him to be the most important artist of this type of work in the history of European art.
The present exhibition brings together 73 examples, including five small sketches for the ceiling paintings in the Jesuit church in Antwerp, loaned by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2), the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, the Národni Gallery, Prague, and the Gemäldegalerie, Vienna; the Achilles Series, ( great site) the display of which is completed in the Prado’s Central Gallery of the Villanueva Building with an oil sketch from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, shown alongside the painting of
Achilles revealed by Ulysses and Diomedes by Rubens and his studio;
and the Eucharist Series from the Prado’s own collection, accompanied by an oil sketch loaned from the Art Institute of Chicago.
The six oil sketches in the Prado from the Eucharist Series were the subject of an important restoration project in 2014. The results were presented to the public in the exhibition Rubens. The Triumph of the Eucharist as part of the Museum’s Restoration Programme sponsored by Fundación Iberdrola.
Also on public display for the first time is a manuscript copy of a lost sketchbook by Rubens known as the Bordes Manuscript which includes texts and drawings. It is the most important of the four known copies of the manuscript, which in addition to being a direct copy of the original contains two original drawings by the artist, one of them a study for the colossal sculpture known as the Farnese Hercules. The notebook entered the collection of the Prado in 2015 as a generous donation by the sculptor, architect and art historian Juan Bordes.
Curators:
Friso Lammertse, curator of Old Master Paintings, Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, and Alejandro Vergara, chief curator of Flemish and Northern Schools Painting, Museo Nacional del Prado
In 1955, Alfred Barr brought one of Claude Monet’s large Water Lilies panels into the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, at a time when these great “decorations,” still in the studio in Giverny, were beginning to attract the attention of collectors and museums.
Monet was presented at that time as “a bridge between the naturalism of early Impressionism and the highly developed school of Abstract Art” in New York, with his Water Lilies seen in the context of Pollock’s paintings, such as
Autumn Rhythm(number 30), 1950.
The reception of these later Monet works resonated with American Abstract Expression, then coming into the museum collections.
The exhibition The Water Lilies: American Abstract Painting and the Last Monet at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, now though August 20, 2018, includes a selection of some of Monet’s later works and around twenty major paintings by American artists. Shown with Monet's works are pieces by such artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Philip Guston, Joan Mitchell, Mark Tobey, Sam Francis, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Ellsworth Kelly.
One of America’s leading modern artists, painter William Glackens (1870-1938) had a keen interest in the work of Pierre-Auguste Renoir that has long been recognized. He saw the French Impressionist's works in New York galleries as early as 1908 and had unique access to the growing collection of his friend and colleague, Albert C. Barnes. However, Glackens’ specific debt to the art of this important French modernist has never been fully explored.
William J. Glackens, Lenna Dressed as Toy Soldier, c. 1923, Oil on canvas, Private Collection.
Pierre‑Auguste Renoir, The Young Soldier, c. 1880, Oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington,
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
William Glackens and Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Affinities and Distinctions fills this void by bringing together 25 works by each artist that illuminate Renoir’s influence on Glackens’ artistic development. It also reveals how changes in Glackens' work after 1920 illustrate his response to Renoir's late work, as well as that of other important European modernists in Barnes' collection in order to forge his own distinctive American modernism. On view at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale from October 21, 2018 through May 19, 2019, the exhibition defines Glackens’ late style for the first time (c.1920 to 1938), and also sheds light on the history of taste in American collecting from the late-19th to the mid-20th century.
William J. Glackens and Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Affinities and Distinctions is organized by NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale and is curated by Barbara Buhler Lynes, Ph.D., Sunny Kaufman Senior Curator. Following its presentation in Fort Lauderdale, the exhibition will also travel to other venues to be announced.
The exhibition demonstrates Glackens’ response to Renoir’s Impressionistic work from 1860 to the mid-1880s, which was avidly purchased by a wide variety of American collectors. Renoir’s late work from the mid-1880s to 1919 appealed to other influential collectors such as Leo Stein and Barnes. Glackens, who traveled to Paris in 1912 on behalf of Barnes, purchased works for his then fledgling collection. Glackens was the only American artist who subsequently had nearly carte blanche access to Barnes’ increasingly important collection of American and European modernist art, which consequently had a profound influence on Glackens' painting as demonstrated by Dr. Lynes in this exhibition.
Glackens presumably became aware of Renoir’s art as early as 1895, when he first visited Paris. However, his knowledge of Renoir did not play a role in the development of his work until after he attended the 1908 exhibition of 41 Renoir paintings at the Durand-Ruel Gallery, New York. When he was sent to Paris by Barnes in 1912, Glackens’ purchases included works by Renoir, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and others. These acquisitions sparked Barnes' growing interest in modem European art as well as his enthusiasm for the late work of Renoir. Glackens’ study of the late Renoirs and the other works in Barnes’ collection by Cezanne, Matisse and Charles and Maurice Prendergast, shaped his continuing realization of his own conception of the modern.
Publication
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue published by Skira, with essays by Bonnie Clearwater, Barbara Buhler Lynes of NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, Avis Berman, independent scholar, and Martha Lucy, Deputy Director and Curator of the Barnes Collection.
“Bloom Where You’re Planted” is a singular opportunity for visitors to see that collection, and its presence in the state museum of art, on the campus of the state’s flagship public university is fitting. The exhibition will allow the public to view an impressively cohesive collection that tells a story both of American life and of Mrs. Sanders’ support of the State Botanical Garden, art and all things that grow.
Dating from the 19th to the early 20th century, the paintings, furniture, porcelain and other works in the exhibition emphasize the diversity of American art at this time. The exhibition focuses on themes of childhood, nature, still lifes, interiors and depictions of the American West and Native Americans. Together, they touch on every major trend in American art during the period, which speaks to Mrs. Sanders’ eye as a collector and to the quality and scope of the works in general.
The collection’s visual art in particular highlights a number of influential artists. One will find names such as Thomas Sully, Mary Cassatt, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Moran, Winslow Homer, Ernest Lawson, and the impressionist Childe Hassam among others. The show’s curator, Sarah Kate Gillespie (curator of American art at the museum), is especially proud of the inclusion of two rarely seen works by John Singer Sargent in the exhibition.
The exhibition “Bloom Where You’re Planted: The Collection of Deen Day Sanders” features a vibrant and highly varied collection of American works of art, on view at the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia from May 19 to July 29, 2018. The collector has a number of impressive distinctions, especially in relation to her philanthropy to the University of Georgia and the State Botanical Garden of Georgia. She has served as president of the Garden Club of Georgia, National Garden Clubs Inc. and, most recently, as vice president of the World Association of Floral Artists, as well as on the boards of the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, the US Botanic Garden and the Diplomatic Reception Rooms in Washington, D.C. She has also spent a significant portion of her life building one of the most notable art collections in the state of Georgia, at Bellmere, the home of Deen and Jim Sanders.
Raspberries and Sweet Pea by August Laux
“Bloom Where You’re Planted” is a singular opportunity for visitors to see that collection, and its presence in the state museum of art, on the campus of the state’s flagship public university is fitting. The exhibition will allow the public to view an impressively cohesive collection that tells a story both of American life and of Mrs. Sanders’ support of the State Botanical Garden, art and all things that grow.
Albert Bierstadt, "Pacific Coast"
Dating from the 19th to the early 20th century, the paintings, furniture, porcelain and other works in the exhibition emphasize the diversity of American art at this time. The exhibition focuses on themes of childhood, nature, still lifes, interiors and depictions of the American West and Native Americans. Together, they touch on every major trend in American art during the period, which speaks to Mrs. Sanders’ eye as a collector and to the quality and scope of the works in general.
Asher B. Durand (American, 1796–1886), "Hudson River Scene," 1846. Oil on canvas, 32 x 32 inches. Collection of Deen Day Sanders.
The collection’s visual art in particular highlights a number of influential artists. One will find names such as Thomas Sully, Mary Cassatt, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Moran, Winslow Homer, Ernest Lawson, and the impressionist Childe Hassam among others. The show’s curator, Sarah Kate Gillespie (curator of American art at the museum), is especially proud of the inclusion of two rarely seen works by John Singer Sargent in the exhibition.
Frederick Childe Hassam, "The Giant Ailanthus October"
The museum will publish an exhibition catalogue including full-page color illustrations of every work on display as well as essays by Gillespie, Dale Couch, the museum’s curator of decorative arts,, Linda Chafin (conservation botanist at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia), UGA associate professor of history Akela Reason, UGA associate professor of education Jennifer Graff and others, which will be available for purchase in the Museum Shop.
Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition, 1916, will lead Christie’s Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art (estimate upon request). Suprematist Composition is among the groundbreaking abstract paintings executed by Malevich that would forever change the course of art history. The present canvas was last sold at auction in November 2008, when it established the world auction record for the artist, which it continues to hold today.* One decade later, Suprematist Composition is expected to set a new benchmark for the artist when it is offered at Christie’s New York on May 15.
Loic Gouzer, Co-Chairman, Post-War and Contemporary Art, remarked: “Malevich’s work provided a gateway for the evolution of Modernism. Malevich pushed the boundaries of painting to a point far beyond recognition, forever changing the advancement of art. Without the Suprematist Composition paintings, the art being made today would not exist as we now know it.”
Max Carter, Head of Department, Impressionist and Modern Art, New York, continued: “Malevich’s Suprematist abstractions didn’t break with the past so much as articulate the future. What an honor to offer Suprematist Composition, 1916 which has lost nothing of its revolutionary power in the century since it was painted, this spring.”
On 17th December 1915, the Russo-Polish artist Kazimir Malevich opened an exhibition of his new ‘Suprematist’ paintings in the Dobychina Art Bureau in the recently renamed city of Petrograd. These startling, purely geometric and completely abstract paintings were unlike anything Malevich, or any other modern painter, had ever done before. They were both a shock and a revelation to everyone who saw them. Malevich’s Suprematist pictures were the very first purely geometric abstract paintings in the history of modern art. They comprised solely of simple, colored forms that appeared to float and hover over plain white backgrounds. Nothing but clearly-organized, self-asserting painted surfaces of non-objective/non- representational form and color, these pictures were so radically new that they seemed to announce the end of painting and, even perhaps, of art itself. Suprematist Composition is one of the finest and most complex of these first, truly revolutionary abstract paintings. Comprised of numerous colored, geometric elements seeming to be dynamically caught in motion, it epitomizes what Malevich defined as his ‘supreme’ or ‘Suprematist’ vision of the world. The painting is not known to have been a part of the exhibition in the Dobychina Art Bureau but is believed to date from this same period of creative breakthrough and, if not included, was, presumably painted very soon after the show closed in January 1916.
It is clear, from the frequency with which Malevich later exhibited the picture, that he thought very highly of the painting. Malevich subsequently chose, for example, to include Suprematist Composition in every other major survey of his Suprematist pictures made during his lifetime. These exhibitions ranged from his first major retrospective in Moscow in 1919 to the great travelling retrospective showcasing much of his best work that he brought to the West in 1927. It was as a result of his last exhibition held in Berlin that Suprematist Composition came to form part of the extraordinarily influential group of Malevich’s paintings that remained in the West and represent so much of his creative legacy.
Hidden in Germany throughout much of the 1930’s, Suprematist Composition and the other works from this great Berlin exhibition, were ultimately to become part of the highly influential holdings of Malevich’s work in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Until 2008, when it was restituted to the heirs of Malevich’s family in agreement with the Stedelijk museum, Suprematist Composition was on view in Amsterdam as part of the Stedelijk’s unrivalled collection of the artist’s work.
Also:
Fernand Léger’s Les trois femmes au bouquet, 1922.
When Léger received a medical discharge in early 1917, ending his front-line service, he had not picked up a paintbrush in fully three years. Léger needed to catch up on later synthetic cubism, constructivism, abstraction, and neo-plasticism, as well as the new classicism. Remarkably, just four years later, Léger had achieved a position at the very forefront of the avant-garde. His first fully fledged manifesto of this new idiom was Le grand déjeuner (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), which he exhibited at the 1921 Salon d’Automne; a preliminary version of this masterwork will be offered in the present sale (see dedicated press release here). However, Les trois femmes au bouquet, painted in 1922, represents the next stage in the evolution of Léger’s unique vision of the Three Graces.
In Le grand déjeuner, Léger directly confronted the theme of the female nude, by which so many past masters had staked their claim to artistic greatness. Seeking a more authentically modern subject, the artist expanded his focus to encompass the example of 17th century genre imagery, in which simple daily routines provide a pretext for monumental figure painting.
Les trois femmes au bouquet, which centers upon the modest domestic luxury of a floral bouquet, is a key signpost in this development. Estimate: $12-18 million
Alberto Giacometti is represented by three works in the collection, including two sculptures and one painting. The group is led by La Clairière, conceived in 1950 and cast between 1950-1952. From 1948-1950 Alberto Giacometti created a series of multi-figure compositions that were shown in his second exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, in December 1950. The new sculptures proved to be a most astonishing development in his work. Whereas the most recently created highlights of his previous show had been large, figures and body parts, which were mainly male, the standing figures in Giacometti’s newest group sculptures were predominantly female. These works would establish the paradigm to which the artist would generally adhere for the rest of his career—woman as goddess and muse, modeled full-length, upright, immobile, viewed as if from a distance.
The chance arrangement of the figures in La Clarière, each in its own scale, rejects any conventional sense of distance and consistent perspective. There is no single, definitive vantage point—this sculpture virtually reinvents itself for the viewer each time one approaches it. Estimate: $10-12 million.
Joan Miró painted Femme entendant de la musique on 11 May 1945 —Germany had surrendered on 7 May, ending the Second World War in Europe. The western Allied democracies celebrated their V-E Day on the 8th, the Soviet Union the following day. Miró, residing in Barcelona, soon afterward received a letter from Henri Matisse dated Venice 8 May: “At last! Let us rejoice together.” One may appreciate in the animated calligraphy of Miró’s figures in this painting the artist’s joy at this welcome, long awaited news. For Miró, however they are more complex, as the events of the day were also a reminder of his own nation’s grim political reality. The whole of the Iberian Peninsula remained under fascist control, where it would remain for years to come. (Estimate: $10-15 million).
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), L'Atelier, painted in Cannes, 24 October 1955. Oil on canvas, 74¾ x 31⅜ in (189.8 x 79.7 cm). Estimate: $5,000,000-7,000,000.
Pablo Picasso’s L’Atelier, dated 28 October 1955, brims with sundry accoutrementsof the artist’s profession.
This choc-a-bloc studio inventory is the fourth and most elaborate of the eleven Atelier canvases that Picasso painted between 23 and 31 October 1955:
The occasion of the October Atelier series coincided with Picasso’s 74th birthday—25 October—the first that he celebrated in “La Californie,” having purchased the villa in the spring of that year. “He quickly responded to the stimulus of the place in a series of what he called paysages d’intérieur: interior landscapes,” Marie-Laure Bernadac explained. “For Picasso, his studio is a self-portrait in itself.” Moreover, The Atelier series is a sequel to the fifteen canvases of Les femmes d’Algers completed in February 1955, a second eulogy Picasso devoted to his rival, friend and sole acknowledged peer—Henri Matisse—who died in November 1954. Estimate: $6-9 million.
The painted ceramic Tête de femme, 1953 (Musée Picasso, Paris) represents the classic studio encounter between artist and model.
No. 7 (Dark Over Light), 1954, will highlight Christie's May 17 Evening Sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art in New York (estimate in the region of $30 million). At nearly eight feet tall, No. 7 (Dark Over Light) belongs to a select group of canvases that were among the largest that Rothko ever painted. Its grand scale is matched only by the emotional intensity of its painted surface. Such a highly active painterly surface is a mark of Rothko’s paintings from this important period, but it is the scale on which it has been executed in No. 7 (Dark Over Light) that makes this particular work one of the most extraordinary; its broad sweeps and feathered edges reveal the artist’s ambition to create a pure and direct form of painting. No. 7 (Dark Over Light) is being offered at auction for the first time in over a decade.
Jussi Pylkkänen, Christie’s Global President, remarked: “No. 7 (Dark Over Light), comes from a small and highly sought-after group of monumental canvases by Mark Rothko. Standing before this radiant picture, one is immediately enveloped by the dramatic brilliance of Rothko’s artistic vision. Between its intensely kinetic surface and its epic scale, No. 7 is a consummate example of Rothko’s ability to convey pure emotional power. Given the international demand for canvases of this quality by Mark Rothko, we expect that No. 7 will draw enthusiasm from collectors around the globe."
Rothko’s stated aim was to dissolve the traditional, and what he thought of as artificial boundaries, between paint and canvas, between painter and idea, and ultimately between the idea and the observer. To the artist, what the viewer saw was not a depiction an experience, it was the experience, and to this end he championed what he considered to be the two fundamental elements of picture making—space and color—making these the sole protagonists of his aesthetic drama. Reaching its height in his iconic Seagram Murals, this painterly struggle dominated Rothko’s work for a little over a decade, as in 1968, on the instructions of his doctors, he was forced to retreat into making smaller paintings, often no larger than 40 inches. As a result, works such No. 7 (Dark Over Light) represents the fullest and purest expression of Rothko’s unique artistic vision, one whose visual and emotional power is present in abundance in this magisterial canvas.
No. 7 (Dark Over Light) belongs to a small group of paintings that Rothko executed in the mid-1950s which feature large passages of predominately dark, moody color. Primarily, his paintings from this period are known for the triumphant schema of fiery reds, golden yellows and deep oranges. But in a handful of canvases he also introduced opposing hues, such as can be seen in the present work along with Untitled (Violet, Black, Orange on Gray), 1953 (National Gallery of Art Washington), No. 203 (Red, Orange, Tan and Purple), 1954 and Untitled (Red, Black, White on Yellow), 1955 (also in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). These dark paintings reflected not so much a "darkening" of Rothko's mood as a deepening of feeling.
In addition to color, size was also an important factor in Rothko achieving the necessary emotional intensity that he desired. As he explained, “I paint very large pictures. I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them, however—I think it applies to other painters I know—it is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside you experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However, you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t something you command.”
No. 7 (Dark Over Light) was first acquired by Count Alessandro Panza di Biumo, Sr. in 1961. He was the brother of the legendary Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, widely considered to be one of the most important collectors of postwar American Art. Works from the elder Panza di Biumo’s holdings later formed the basis for the collection of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and in the 1990s, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum filled a yawning gap in its holdings when it acquired, in a combined gift and purchase arrangement, more than 300 Minimalist sculptures and paintings from the collection.
Among the Post-War Highlights is Willem de Kooning’s Untitled XVIII, 1976. Distinguished by its lavishly painted surface and riotous palette, Untitled XVIII epitomizes de Kooning’s last great cycle of “pastoral” paintings that ushered forth from the artist in a final flourish between the years 1976 and 1977. Widely considered to be among his best work, these large-scale landscapes—with Untitled XVIII a seminal example—evoke the bucolic splendor of the artist’s East Hampton studio at Springs. In exuberant strokes of effervescent, translucent paint, de Kooning captures and distills the essence of the seaside hamlet. Penetrated by an inner glow, the painting evokes the specific character of North Atlantic light, making it a harmonious ballet of color, form and gesture. Having featured in the seminal debut of de Kooning’s “pastoral” paintings at the Solomon R. Guggenheim in 1978, Untitled XVIII belongs to a select group of only about twenty paintings that the artist deemed worthy of exhibition, in what would be his first solo museum show in New York in nine years. Estimate: $8-12 million.
Amedeo Modigliani, Nu couché (sur le côté gauche). Signed Modigliani (lower left). Oil on canvas, 35¼ by 57¾ in.; 89.5 by 146.7 cm. Painted in 1917. Estimate in excess of $150 million. Courtesy Sotheby’s.
Amedeo Modigliani’s stunning Nu couché (sur le côté gauche) is estimated to sell for in excess of $150 million in Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on 14 May 2018 – the highest estimate ever placed on a work of art at auction.
Painted a century ago, Nu couché is the greatest work from the iconic series in which Modigliani reinvented the nude for the Modern era. Upon their debut exhibition in 1917, these striking and sensual images stopped traffic – quite literally – and prompted the police to close the show. Today, the series is recognized as one of the seminal achievements in Modern painting. The shock and awe that Modigliani’s nudes continue to elicit was evident most recently during Tate Modern’s celebrated retrospective of the artist’s work that included Nu couché.
In addition to being the finest example from the series, Nu couché is distinguished further as the largest painting of Modigliani’s entire oeuvre – measuring nearly 58 inches / 147 centimeters across – and the only one of his horizontal nudes to contain the entire figure within the canvas.
The majority of the 22 reclining nudes from the series are found in museums, with particular depth in the United States: the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York each hold three examples. Outside of the United States, institutions with reclining nudes include the Long Museum in Shanghai and The Courtauld Gallery in London.
Nu couché was acquired by the present owner at auction in 2003 for $26.9 million. In 2015, another reclining nude from the series sold at auction for $170.4 million, at the time marking the second-highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction.
Simon Shaw, Co-Head Worldwide of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department, commented: “This painting reimagines the nude for the Modern era. Modigliani depicted his models as confident and self-possessed in their sexuality. Nu couché is an incredibly sensual image, with the sitter’s gaze meeting the viewer’s head-on in truly mesmerizing fashion. While situating itself within a classical canon of nude painting, the work is radically innovative in style: Modigliani assimilates a world of visual cultures across the centuries, from Egyptian, Japanese, African, Indian and Iberian sculpture, from Renaissance frescoes through Romanticism to the cutting-edge of Cubism. Together these pictures signal a watershed in perhaps the greatest tradition in art – there is the nude before Modigliani, and there is the nude after Modigliani.”
Modigliani began painting nudes in 1908, but it was only after he abandoned sculpture in 1914 that he developed the unique idiom evident in Nu couché. His aesthetic was gleaned from the artistic precedents of Italian Renaissance and Mannerist painting, the linear simplicity of African carvings and the earth-toned palette and geometric modelling of Cubism – all of which can be seen in the present work.
The majority of Modigliani’s output was based in portraiture, which, more often than not, depicted those who surrounded him: fellow artists, poets, lovers and patrons. Aside from a veritable who’s who of the more bohemian artistic circles in Paris, Modigliani would also seize upon chances to find other sitters – though the opportunities for unpaid models were few and far between.
It was not until Modigliani’s dealer Léopold Zborowski stepped forward with both a space and paid models that Modigliani embarked on his great series of nudes. Zborowski provided the artist a stipend of 15 Francs a day, and paid the models five Francs to pose in an apartment just above his own at 3 Rue Joseph Bara.
Draped in sheets, perched on chairs, reclining on sofas or beds, the models are relatively anonymous – Modigliani did not paint his prime paramours in the nude. But while he may have had emotional distance from the sitters, he certainly did not have physical distance: the women dominate their space, filling the frame with stretching hands and feet, forearms and calves literally off of the edges of the canvas. Their nudity is self-assured and proud, not cloaked in myth or allegory.
In total, Modigliani completed 22 reclining nudes and 13 seated nudes between 1916 and 1919, with the majority – including the present work – painted in 1917. And from the first moment the works were displayed that year, they stopped traffic.
At the request of Zborowski, Parisian dealer Berthe Weill staged an exhibition of Modigliani’s paintings and works on paper. In the window of her gallery – by some accounts directly hung in the window, and by others clearly visible through it – were a number of the nudes.
Upon opening, crowds immediately gathered in the exhibition to witness the strikingly-real works, and traffic began to build up outside. Across from Weill’s gallery was a police station, and the commotion did not go unnoticed. An officer traipsed across the road and asked for the removal of the offending canvases, which he considered indecent. Weill’s refusal to do so found her in the police station speaking with the police chief. The show was closed with Zborowski only selling two drawings at 30 Francs each.
Over 100 years after its creation, the power of Nu couché to amaze and startle remains as potent as it did in 1917.
Rufino Tamayo’s powerful Perro aullando a la Luna from 1942 will be offered in the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on 14 May 2018. A masterpiece of Mexican modernism that captures the existential angst following the onset of World War II, the poetic painting is the last major work from Tamayo’s renowned Animal series remaining in private hands. Emerging from a distinguished collection after more than two decades, the work was first exhibited at Valentine Gallery in New York, and was once owned by Peter G. Wray — one of the foremost collectors of pre-Columbian and modern Mexican art in the US in the 1970s and 1980s.
Perro aullando a la Luna is estimated to achieve $5/7 million when it is auctioned this May at Sotheby’s New York. The work will travel to Hong Kong from 24-26 April – the first Latin American painting to travel to Hong Kong as part of Sotheby’s exhibition of highlights from the marquee May and November auctions – before returning to New York for public exhibition in the York Avenue galleries beginning 4 May.
Anna Di Stasi, Director of Sotheby’s Latin American Art in New York, remarked: “We are honored to offer this extraordinary work by Rufino Tamayo in our May Evening Sale of Impressionist & Modern Art, continuing our pioneering approach to presenting works by Latin American artists to collectors worldwide. Many of these artists worked with and have been exhibited alongside their European and American peers in renowned museums, galleries and other institutions; it is fitting that these immensely-creative minds are reunited in our global Fine Arts sales.”
Simon Shaw, Co-Worldwide Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department commented: “We are pleased to formally welcome our Latin American Art colleagues to the Impressionist & Modern Art department in New York. As we saw with the strong result for Wifredo Lam’s Sans titre during our November 2017 Evening Sale, collectors are ready to look in every corner of the marketplace for the best of the best. We look forward to continuing to expand our client base through this important and immersive initiative in both our Evening and Day sales.”
Following the successful integration of Sotheby’s Contemporary Latin American Art into its New York Contemporary Art sales this past November, Perro aullando a la Luna introduces Sotheby’s new Latin American Art sales strategy: a formal integration of Modern Latin American Art offerings into its sales of Impressionist & Modern Art in New York. This expansion will continue to grow the collector base for, and concentrate the broad appeal of, this dynamic area of collecting.
World War II played a critical role in informing Tamayo’s work of the early 1940s. While primarily-based in New York during this time, he created a series of unsettling pictures in which animals, and dogs in particular, serve as explicit symbols of unrest.
This particular group of paintings was directly inspired by Picasso’s monumental Guernica from 1937. Tamayo studied the mural-sized canvas in exhibitions in New York, ultimately drawing a number of parallels between the figures represented in the famed painting and the present work – Guernica prominently features both a threatening bull and a screaming horse. Tamayo’s paintings, however, were distinguished by their vibrant color palette instead of the muted hues that can be found in Guernica.
Tamayo’s sentiments of desperation, isolation and anguish are expressed through a host of motifs exhibited by the canine subject. The animal raises his head towards the moon, the veins of his throat strained as he howls towards the dark and desolate sky; his piercing white teeth are visible in his open mouth. Perhaps most notably, dry meatless bones appear in the foreground of the work – an attribute that’s shared among other works in this series, most importantly,
Animals (1941), now in The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
A quintessential painting inspired by pre-Columbian terracotta burial sculptures, the work embodies humanity’s angst during the early years of America’s participation in WWII. Executed in New York, where the artist first achieved international recognition as a leading exponent of modern art, Perro aullando a la Luna is one of the finest examples by Tamayo in private hands.
The Annenberg Space for Photography, a cultural destination dedicated to exhibiting both digital and print photography, announced its next exhibition – Not an Ostrich: And Other Images from America’s Library.
The exhibition, running from April 21 through September 9, 2018, is a collection of nearly 500 images – discovered within a collection of more than 14 million pictures – permanently housed in the world’s largest library at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Put together by the distinguished photography curator Anne Wilkes Tucker, the exhibition features the image entitled “Not an Ostrich” and a large selection of rare and handpicked works from the vaults of the library, many never widely available to the public. Each picture documents a special moment in America’s culture and history. Tucker, named “America’s Best Curator” by TIME, was granted special access to the photographic archives at the Library of Congress.
The images selected for Not an Ostrich: And Other Images from America‘s Library span three centuries of photography (1800s, 1900s, 2000s), simultaneously telling America’s story through evocative imagery, while revealing the evolution of photography itself – from daguerreotypes, the first publicly available photographic process, to contemporary digital images. The exhibition’s name, Not an Ostrich, refers to an actual image included in the collection – a photo of actress Isla Bevan holding a “Floradora Goose” at the 41st Annual Poultry Show at Madison Square Garden – and hints at the unexpected and unusual artifacts collected at the Library of Congress over its 218-year history, some of which will be on display inside the Annenberg Space for Photography.
Other pictures among the hundreds on display: The Wright brothers’ first flight, the earliest known portrait of Harriet Tubman, Harry Houdini bound in chains for a magic trick, action scenes from Vietnam war protests, Ku Klux Klan demonstrations, and an image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Not an Ostrich marks the first time an exhibition of this scale, featuring a selection of photographs from the Library of Congress, has been displayed on the West Coast, and represents a fraction of the Library’s full collection as a way for visitors to rediscover one of America’s most important cultural institutions. The full exhibition will include over 440 photographs from 1839 to the present, by 148 photographers – displayed both physically and digitally – including the works of Sharon Farmer, Donna Ferrato, Carol M. Highsmith, Danny Lyon, Camilo José Vergara, and Will Wilson, who will also be featured in the exhibit’s original documentary produced by the Annenberg Foundation in partnership with Arclight Productions.
“The exhibit Anne Tucker has put together is one that truly reflects America in images. Each photograph exposes us to just a fraction of the millions of American stories held in the Library of Congress, from the iconic to the absurd,” said Annenberg Foundation Chairman of the Board, President and CEO Wallis Annenberg. “Though cameras and technology have changed over the years, this exhibition shows us that nothing captures a moment, a time, or a story like a photograph.”
“What a pleasure and an honor it was to work with the Library of Congress selecting these photographs. Glamour, worship, invention, bravery, humor, cruelty and love – this collection of photographs preserves all examples of our humanity as well as chronicling America’s history in extraordinary photographs. The Library is an inexhaustible trove available for anyone to explore,” said Anne Wilkes Tucker, Curator Emerita of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
“The Library of Congress not only collects and preserves America’s cultural heritage but also works to make those comprehensive collections accessible to as many people as possible. I am so thrilled about this opportunity to present the Library’s rich photography collection at the Annenberg Space for Photography,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “I hope photography and history enthusiasts around Los Angeles and beyond who visit this unprecedented exhibition will have their curiosity piqued about all that is available to them at their national library.”
Not an Ostrich will remain on display from April 21 through September 9, 2018. Visitors can access the exhibition with free admission Wednesdays through Sundays from 11 AM to 6 PM, at the Annenberg Space for Photography (2000 Avenue of the Stars Los Angeles, CA 90067). For more information about Not an Ostrich: And Other Images from America‘s Library, visit: https://www.annenbergphotospace.org/exhibits/not-an-ostrich
In a landmark show at the National Gallery in spring 2018 – the first purely Monet exhibition to be staged in London for more than twenty years – there is a unique and surprising opportunity to discover the artist as we have never seen him before.
We typically think of Claude Monet as a painter of landscape, of the sea, and in his later years, of gardens – but until now there has never been an exhibition considering his work in terms of architecture.
Featuring more than seventy-five paintings by Monet, this innovative exhibition spans his long career from its beginnings in the mid-1860s to the public display of his Venice paintings in 1912. As a daring young artist, he exhibited in the Impressionist shows and displayed canvases of the bridges and buildings of Paris and its suburbs. Much later as an elderly man, he depicted the renowned architecture of Venice and London, reflecting them back to us through his exceptional vision. More than a quarter of the paintings in 'The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Monet & Architecture' come from private collections around the world; works little-known and rarely exhibited.
Buildings played substantial, diverse, and unexpected roles in Monet’s pictures. They serve as records of locations, identifying a village by its church
('The Church at Varengeville, Morning Effect', 1882, Collection of John and Toni Bloomberg. Promised gift to The San Diego Museum of Art.),
or a city such as Venice ('The Doge’s Palace', 1908, Brooklyn Museum, Gift of A. Augustus Healy 20.634),
or London ('Cleopatra’s Needle and Charing Cross Bridge', about 1899–1901, Eyles Family courtesy of Halcyon Gallery) by its celebrated monuments.
Architecture offered a measure of modernity – the glass-roofed interior of a railway station, like
The Gare St-Lazare (1877, The National Gallery, London) – whilst a venerable structure, such as
'The Lieutenance de Honfleur' (1864, Private Collection), marked out the historic or picturesque.
Architecture aided Monet with the business of painting.
A red-tiled roof could offer a complementary contrast to the dominant green of the surrounding vegetation
('From the top of the Cliffs, Dieppe (Du haut des falaises, à Dieppe ou La falaise à Dieppe'), 1882, Kunsthaus Zürich, Vereinigung Zürcher Kunstfreunde).
The textured surfaces of buildings provided him with screens on which light plays, solid equivalents to reflections on water
('Rouen Cathedral', 1893–4, Private Collection).
A man-made structure helps the viewer engage with the experience of a Monet landscape.
A distant steeple ('The Church at Varengeville', 1882, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts)
or nearby house ('Gardener’s House at Antibes', 1888, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade),
are marks of scale, responding to our instinct to read our physical surroundings in terms of distance, destination, and the passage of time involved in transit.
Architecture can stand in for absent human presence and suggest mood, whether it be awe at the grandeur of a historical monument ('San Giorgio Maggiore', 1908, Private Collection),
thrill at the vitality of a teeming city street ('The Pont Neuf', 1871, Dallas Museum of Art, The Wendy and Emery Reves Collection),
or loneliness at the solitude of the clifftop cottage ('The Custom's Officer's Cottage, Varengeville', 1888, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Annie Swan Coburn, USA).
'Monet & Architecture' will be displayed in three sections – 'The Village and the Picturesque', 'The City and the Modern', and 'The Monument and the Mysterious'– and will explore how one of the world’s best-loved painters captured a rapidly changing society though his portrayal of buildings. It will feature a rare gathering of some of Monet’s great ‘series’ paintings – five Dutch pictures from trips made in the early 1870s, 10 paintings of Argenteuil and the Parisian suburbs from the mid-1870s, seven Rouen Cathedrals from 1892–5, eight London paintings from 1899–1904, and nine Venice canvases from 1908.
'Monet & Architecture' will feature exceptional pairings, such as
both paintings of the church at Vétheuil, which Monet made immediately on arrival in the village in late 1878
(one Scottish National Gallery,
the other Private Collection).
One was shown at the 4th Impressionist exhibition in 1879, and the other at the 7th in 1882, but they have never been seen together. The National Gallery's well-known
The Thames below Westminster (1871) will be seen alongside a picture of the beach at Trouville (1870, Private Collection), made only months before with the same size canvas and a very similar composition.
Many world-famous and much-loved Monet pictures will be travelling to London:
the 'Quai du Louvre' (1867, Gemeente Museum, Den Haag), one of his first cityscapes;
the'Boulevard des Capucines, Paris' (1873, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow) shown at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 where it aroused controversy;
and the flag-filled 'The rue Montorgeuil, Paris, The National Holiday of 30 June, 1878' (Musee d’Orsay) made to celebrate the celebration of a national holiday.
Through buildings Monet bore witness to his location, revelling in kaleidoscopic atmospherics and recording the play of sunshine, fogs, and reflections, using the characteristics of the built environment as his theatre of light. He said in an interview in 1895 “Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat … I want to paint the air that surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat – the beauty of the light in which they exist.”
Claude Monet, Houses of Parliament, Sunset (Le Parlement, coucher de soleil), 1904, oil on canvas, 81 × 92 cm, Kunsthaus Zürich, Donation Walter Haefner,
The first book to focus on Monet’s work through his representation of architecture
In an innovative approach, Richard Thomson considers Claude Monet’s paintings of buildings in their environment, offering a reappraisal of an artist more often associated with landscapes, seascapes, and gardens. Buildings fulfilled various roles in Monet’s canvases; some are chiefly compositional devices while others throw into sharp contrast the forms of man-made construction against the irregularity of nature, or suggest the absent presence of humans. The theme was both central and consistent over five decades of his 60-year career.
Written by a renowned expert on Impressionism, this book covers Monet’s representations of historical buildings, inner cities, beach resorts, railway bridges and stations, suburban housing, and busy harbors—subjects spanning northern France, the Mediterranean, and the cities of Rouen, London, and Venice. In addition to 75 great paintings by Monet, this thematic, picture-led book includes a wealth of comparative material, such as postcards, posters, original travel photography, and rarely seen aerial photography that sets Monet’s work firmly in its historical, cultural, and social framework.
In an international exclusive, The Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) present MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art, a major exhibition of modern and contemporary masterworks from MoMA’s iconic collection, on view at NGV International in Melbourne, Australia, from June 9 through October 7, 2018.
MoMA at NGV is organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria, by Samantha Friedman, Associate Curator, Drawings and Prints; Juliet Kinchin, Curator of Modern Design; and Christian Rattemeyer, The Harvey S. Shipley Miller Associate Curator of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art; and Miranda Wallace, Senior Curator, International Exhibition Projects, NGV.
The exhibition features more than 200 works—many of which have never been seen in Australia—from a line-up of seminal 19th- and 20th-century artists, including Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Louise Bourgeois, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Diane Arbus, Agnes Martin, and Andy Warhol. Bringing the exhibition up to the present are works by many significant 21st-century artists, including Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Olafur Eliasson, Andreas Gursky, El Anatsui, Rineke Dijkstra, Kara Walker, Mona Hatoum, and Camille Henrot. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is a renowned institution dedicated to championing innovative modern and contemporary art. The Museum opened in Manhattan in 1929, with the vision to become ‘the greatest modern art museum in the world’. This is reflected in its interdisciplinary collection of almost 200,000 works by over 10,000 artists, shared between six curatorial departments: Architecture and Design, Drawings and Prints, Film, Media and Performance Art, Painting and Sculpture, and Photography.
The emergence of a ‘new art’ at the dawn of the twentieth-century will be represented by some of MoMA’s earliest acquisitions, including masterworks by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne. Works by pioneering Cubist and Futurist artists, including Pablo Picasso and Umberto Boccioni, will appear alongside the radically abstracted forms present in works by such artists as Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian, the surreal visual language of paintings by artists like Salvador Dalí and Frida Kahlo, and the spontaneity and tactility advanced in works by Alexander Calder and Jackson Pollock, and other prominent Abstract Expressionist artists.
Developments in art from the 1960s, from Minimalism through postmodernism, will be explored with the work of Roy Lichtenstein, Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, Lynda Benglis, Sol LeWitt, Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman and Keith Haring, among others. Significant works of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century art, including major pieces by Kara Walker, Rineke Dijkstra, Andreas Gursky, Olafur Eliasson, Huang Yong Ping, Mona Hatoum, El Anatsui and Camille Henrot, will foreground ideas that inform much contemporary art, such as those around cultural and national identity, and mobility in a globalised world.
2 this period, from late - 19th - century urban and industrial transformation, through to the digital and global present. In recognition of both MoMA and NGV ’ s long - standing dedication to the study and presentation of architecture and design, the exhibition explore s the deep - seated connections between 2 0th - century art and design practice, with a particular focus on developments that shaped Europe in the 1920s and ’ 30s and the globalized world of the 1960s and ’ 70s.
Unfolding across eight loosely chronological thematic sections, the exhibition opens with “Arcadia and Metropolis,” examining how artists at the dawn of the 20th century responded to the rise of cities. “The Machinery of the Modern World” highlights the simultaneity of foundational avant - garde movements (Futurism, Cubism, Orphism, Dada) and references MoMA’s 1934 Machine Art exhibition, while “A New Unity” presents the cross - media manifestations of the Bauhaus, de Stijl , the Russian avant - garde, and Joaquín Torres - Garcia’s School of the South. In “Inner and Outer Worlds,” iconic Surrealist paintings are seen alongside contemporaneous works that negotiate the relationship between interior and exterior landscapes. “Art as Action” highlights key examples of Abstract Expressionism and expands to include other forms of kineticism in the 1950s.
The exhibition’s largest section, “Things as They Are,” encompasses the varied production of the 1960s and ’ 70s, from Pop art to Minima lism and Post - Minimalism, followed by “Immense Encyclopedia,” focusing on gestures of appropriation and reflections of identity from the 1980s and ’ 90s. The last section of the exhibition, “ Flight Patterns,” considers contemporary ideas of movement, migrat ion, and globalization.
Installation and performance works (Olafur Eliasson’s Ventilator , Simone Forti’s Huddle , and Roman Ondak’s Measuring the Universe ) will also run throughout the course of the exhibition.
Throughout, these works of art are displayed alongside objects from MoMA’s Architecture and Design collection, many of which draw out concerns common to architects, designers and artists — creating a new visual language for the modern era. These include: an architectural model by Le Corbusier that featured in MoMA’s first architecture exhibition in 1932; graphic designs, furniture and textiles by artists involved in the influential workshops of the Bauhaus; Tomohiro Nishikado’s pioneering computer game Space Invaders (1978); and the original set of 176 emoji developed by Shigetaka Kurita in 1999 – characters which have since multiplied and become the visual language of the digital age.
Internationally exclusive to Melbourne, MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art has been in development for more than two years and is curated by Samantha Friedman (Associate Curator, Drawings and Prints, MoMA), Juliet Kinchin (Curator of Modern Design, MoMA), Christian Rattemeyer (The Harvey S. Shipley Miller Associate Curator of Drawings and Prints, MoMA) and Miranda Wallace (Senior Curator, International Exhibition Projects, NGV).
The exhibition will be accompanied by a scholarly catalogue, a dynamic program of talks, tours and events, and the curated NGV Friday Nights programs, including live music, food and performances.
Ludolf Backhuysen, Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast, 1667, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund
During the 17th century, the Dutch were a nation of merchants, engineers, sailors, and skaters. Water was central to their economic prosperity and naval prowess, essential as a means of transportation, and popular as a site for recreation year-round. In a special exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, Water, Wind, and Waves: Marine Paintings from the Dutch Golden Age will explore the multifaceted relationship the Dutch had with water during their Golden Age. On view from July 1 through November 25, 2018, in the West Building, the exhibition features some 45 paintings, drawings, prints, rare books, and ship models drawn largely from the Gallery’s outstanding collection of Dutch art, with highlights by artists including Jan van Goyen, Aelbert Cuyp, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Willem van de Velde the Younger. Demonstrating the various roles water played in Dutch daily life, images range from quiet harbor vistas to stormy seascapes, wintry skating scenes to summery water views. In addition to a selection of loans from several private collectors and public museum, the exhibition will also present a number of works from the Corcoran Collection. “Much as the Gallery’s recent exhibitions Drawings for Paintings and Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting expanded our understanding of the network of Golden Age painters and their processes, Water, Wind, and Wavesprovides a broader picture of Dutch society at the time,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art, Washington. “The exhibition expands the definition of marine paintings to fully consider the variety of ways in which the Dutch relationship with water was manifested in the visual arts." Exhibition Highlights Today, some 400 years after the works in Water, Wind, and Waveswere created, water endures as a defining feature of Dutch society. Whether for innovations in the management of rising sea levels or the charming allure of its canals, the country is known for its strong relationship to the North Sea and the world’s oceans, and to its network of rivers, canals, and waterways. This lasting visual identity originated in the 17th century when the Dutch Republic emerged as a great sea power following the founding of the Dutch East India Company in 1602 and West India Company in 1621 and naval successes against the Spanish and English. Artists like Hendrick Vroom (1566–1640) capitalized on a growing audience for maritime scenes to create some of the earliest Dutch examples, including A Fleet at Sea (c. 1614). Drawing on his firsthand knowledge of naval architecture after years spent traveling by sea, Vroom captured a majestic 24-gun Dutch warship traveling through a harbor alongside coastal fishing and cargo boats. Later in the century, naval battles continued to be a popular subject, particularly while the Dutch were engaged in several wars with England in the 1650s and 1660s. In addition to their general maritime scenes, artists such as Willem van de Velde the Younger occasionally created large works commemorating specific battles. Van de Velde’s The Dutch Fleet Assembling before the Four Days’ Battle of 11-14 June 1966, with the ‘Liefde’ and the ‘Gouden Leeuwen’ in the Foreground (1670) shows two famed ships of the Amsterdam Admiralty—at left the Liefde (Love), a 70-cannon man-of-war ship, and at right the Gouden Leeuwen (Golden Lions), identifiable by the two back-to-back lions on its stern. The enthusiasm for marine imagery subjects also found expression in ship models. The Dutch ship building industry was unparalleled in Europe, both in size and in expertise. Ship models, which were manufactured by the same hands that produced largescale ships and sometimes reproduced actual ships, were valuable as both documents of Dutch naval architecture as well as finely crafted objects for display. The late-17th century model of a Dutch state yacht was likely created for an individual associated with the Admiralty of Zeeland, the southernmost coastal province of the Netherlands. The roundels on the model’s stern depict the Zeeland arms as well as the red castle of Aardenburg, perhaps suggesting that the owner lived in that small coastal town. Much as the admiralties, magistrates, and municipal organizations sought paintings representing their naval successes, investors in the Dutch East and West India Companies were drawn to scenes representing the maritime commerce that brought them their economic success. Works like Abraham de Verwer’s View of Hoorn (c. 1650) captured both the beauty and activities of ports and harbors. Set in the Zuiderzee, the large inlet of the North Sea, the painting shows a group of sailors aboard a large sailing ship (fluit) raising cargo brought by a smaller boat (wijdschip). The low vantage point from the water looking back at the city provides a full view of the many masts docked at the busy harbor. Water, Wind, and Waves also considers how water was a source of many favorite pastimes. In works like Rembrandt’s etching The Bathers (1651), men are seen finding respite from the heat in an isolated pond on a hot summer’s day. Especially popular during the first half of the century—which experienced some of the severest winters of the so-called Little Ice Age—were scenes of people of all ages and classes skating, playing kolf, ice fishing, transporting goods, and traveling with horse-drawn sleighs, as in
Winter Games on the Frozen River Ijssel, ca. 1626
Pen and black and gray ink with watercolor, gouache, and graphite on laid paper; laid down
7 13/16 × 13 1/16 in
19.8 × 33.2 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Hendrick Avercamp’s Winter Games on the Frozen River Ijssel (c. 1626)
and Adam van Breen’s Skating on the Frozen Amstel River (1611). In addition to their role as sites for leisure activities, inland waterways and canals were a vital—and efficient—means of transportation across the republic. As a result of unparalleled infrastructure, travel between cities took at most a couple of hours. Perhaps not surprisingly, ferryboats became a popular feature of marine subjects, favored by Dutch painters like Salomon van Ruysdael, whose
River Landscape with Ferry (1649) shows all sorts of passengers (including horses) being carried across the water.
Jan van Goyen’s View of Dordrecht from the Dordtse Kil (1644) depicts a craft called a kaag ferrying passengers who have embarked and disembarked from smaller row boats. Curators
The exhibition curators are Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., curator of northern baroque paintings, and Alexandra Libby, assistant curator of northern baroque paintings, both of the National Gallery of Art, Washington. A brochure, written by Libby, will be available in the exhibition and also online.
Aelbert Cuyp The Maas at Dordrecht, c. 1650 oil on canvas overall: 114.9 x 170.2 cm (45 1/4 x 67 in.) framed: 151.1 x 205.1 x 15.2 cm (59 1/2 x 80 3/4 x 6 in.) National Gallery of Art, Andrew W. Mellon Collection
Jan van Goyen View of Dordrecht from the Dordtse Kil, 1644 oil on panel overall: 64.7 x 95.9 cm (25 1/2 x 37 3/4 in.) National Gallery of Art, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund
Ludolf Backhuysen Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast, 1667 oil on canvas overall: 114.3 x 167.3 cm (45 x 65 7/8 in.) framed: 147.3 x 146.1 x 6.4 cm (58 x 57 1/2 x 2 1/2 in.) National Gallery of Art, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund
Willem van de Velde the Elder Dutch Ships near the Coast, early 1650s oil on panel overall: 59.4 x 83.5 cm (23 3/8 x 32 7/8 in.) framed: 68.6 x 93.4 x 3.2 cm (27 x 36 3/4 x 1 1/4 in.) National Gallery of Art, Gift of Lloyd M. Rives
Aelbert Cuyp A Pier Overlooking Dordrecht, early 1640s oil on panel overall: 44.5 x 75.5 cm (17 1/2 x 29 3/4 in.) National Gallery of Art, Gift of George M. and Linda H. Kaufman
Cornelis Verbeeck A Naval Encounter between Dutch and Spanish Warships, c. 1618/1620 oil on panel unframed (estimate): 48.8 x 140.7 cm (19 3/16 x 55 3/8 in.) framed (estimate): 65.7 x 158 x 5.72 cm (25 7/8 x 62 3/16 x 2 1/4 in.) National Gallery of Art, Gift of Dorothea V. Hammond
Willem van de Velde the Younger Ships in a Gale, 1660 oil on panel overall: 72.4 x 108 cm (28 1/2 x 42 1/2 in.) framed: 91.1 x 126.1 x 5.7 cm (35 7/8 x 49 5/8 x 2 1/4 in.) National Gallery of Art, Patrons' Permanent Fund
Abraham de Verwer View of Hoorn, c. 1650 oil on panel overall: 51.1 x 94.6 cm (20 1/8 x 37 1/4 in.) framed: 70.8 x 113.7 x 5.7 cm (27 7/8 x 44 3/4 x 2 1/4 in.) National Gallery of Art, Fund given in honor of Derald Ruttenberg’s Grandchildren
Willem van de Velde the Younger An English Ship Running onto a Rocky Coast in a Gale, c. 1690 oil on canvas unframed: 62 x 77.5 cm (24 7/16 x 30 1/2 in.) framed: 80.01 x 65.41 x 24.45 cm (31 1/2 x 25 3/4 x 9 5/8 in.) Kaufman American FoundationGeorge M.* and Linda H. Kaufman
File name: 3522-015.jpg Hendrick Cornelis Vroom A Fleet at Sea, c. 1614 oil on canvas unframed: 56.5 x 97.1 cm (22 1/4 x 38 1/4 in.) Private collection
Jan van Goyen View of Dordrecht from the North, c. 1651 oil on canvas overall: 63.1 x 87.2 cm (24 13/16 x 34 5/16 in.) framed: 92.7 x 116.2 x 12.7 cm (36 1/2 x 45 3/4 x 5 in.) National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection)
Willem van de Velde the Younger Before the Storm, c. 1700 oil on canvas unframed: 10 1/4 x 17 in. (26.04 x 43.18 cm) framed: 17 1/2 x 24 1/2 x 2 1/4 in. (44.45 x 62.23 x 5.72 cm) National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection)
Salomon van Ruysdael River Landscape with Ferry, 1649 oil on canvas overall: 101.5 x 134.8 cm (39 15/16 x 53 1/16 in.) National Gallery of Art, Patrons' Permanent Fund and The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund. This acquisition was made possible through the generosity of the family of Jacques Goudstikker, in his memory.
Jan van Goyen Ice Scene near a Wooden Observation Tower, 1646 oil on panel overall: 36.5 x 34.3 cm (14 3/8 x 13 1/2 in.) National Gallery of Art, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund
Adam van Breen Skating on the Frozen Amstel River, 1611 oil on panel overall: 44.3 x 66.5 cm (17 7/16 x 26 3/16 in.) framed: 55.88 x 78.74 x 5.08 cm (22 x 31 x 2 in.) National Gallery of Art, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, in honor of Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr.
Willem van de Velde the Younger The Dutch Fleet Assembling Before the Four Days' Battle of 11-14 June 1666, 1670 oil on canvas overall: 133.3 x 202.5 cm (52 1/2 x 79 3/4 in.) On loan from Moveo Art Collection
Aert van der Neer Winter in Holland: Skating Scene, 1645 oil on panel overall: 54.61 x 69.85 cm (21 1/2 x 27 1/2 in.) framed: 32.25 x 38.25 x 4 cm (12 11/16 x 15 1/16 x 1 9/16 in.) National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection)
Willem van de Velde the Younger Ships in a Stormy Sea, 1671-1672 oil on canvas image: 132.24 x 191.93 cm (52 1/16 x 75 9/16 in.) framed: 166.37 x 227.01 x 9.21 cm (65 1/2 x 89 3/8 x 3 5/8 in.) Toledo Museum of Art; Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummon Libbey, 1977.62
Reinier Nooms, called Zeeman Verscheÿde Schepen en Gesichten van Amstelredam (Various Ships and Views of Amsterdam): Part I, c. 1652 /1654 complete set of twelve etchings with drypoint on laid paper overall: 50 x 139.2 cm (18 1/2 x 54 in.) National Gallery of Art, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund
Rembrandt van Rijn View of Amsterdam from the Northwest, c. 1640 etching plate: 11.3 x 15.4 cm (4 7/16 x 6 1/16 in.) sheet: 11.8 x 15.8 cm (4 5/8 x 6 1/4 in.) National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection
Rembrandt van Rijn Six's Bridge, 1645 etching plate: 13 x 22.4 cm (5 1/8 x 8 13/16 in.) sheet: 13.9 x 23.6 cm (5 1/2 x 9 5/16 in.) National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection
Rembrandt van Rijn Canal with a Large Boat and Bridge, 1650 etching and drypoint plate: 8.5 x 11.1 cm (3 3/8 x 4 3/8 in.) sheet: 8.8 x 11.2 cm (3 7/16 x 4 7/16 in.) National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection
Pieter van der Werff Portrait of a Boy with a Miniature Three-Master, 1696 oil on canvas image: 48.3 x 39.2 cm (19 x 15 7/16 in.) framed: 66.5 x 57.5 x 4.9 cm (26 3/16 x 22 5/8 x 1 15/16 in.) The Leiden Collection, New York
The Jewish Museum presents an exhibition of 31 paintings by Chaim Soutine (1893-1943), the Expressionist artist known for his gestural and densely painted canvases, from May 4 through September 16, 2018. Chaim Soutine: Flesh highlights the unique visual conceptions and painterly energy that the artist brought to the tradition of still life. Soutine’s remarkable paintings depicting hanging fowl, beef carcasses, and rayfish are now considered among his greatest artistic achievements. These works epitomize his fusion of Old Master influences with the tenets of painterly modernism. Virtuoso technique, expressive color, and disorienting and unexpected compositions endow Soutine’s depictions of slaughtered animals with a striking visual power and emotional impact.
Chaim Soutine, Still Life with Rayfish, c. 1924, oil on canvas. Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls Collection, 1997 (1997.149.1)
Chaim Soutine: Flesh presents works from the artist’s early years in Paris through the 1940s, showing his development from more traditional conceptions to the impressive achievement of his paintings from the mid-1920s. Pushing the limits of the tradition of still life, in tableaux evocative of violent dislocations, these paintings offer a tour de force of visual expression and visceral effect.
Soutine’s highly personal approach to the subject of still life and the depictions of hanging fowl and beef carcasses were influenced by his childhood memories growing up in a Jewish village in the Lithuanian part of western Russia (now Belarus). The strict Jewish observance of dietary laws, requiring the ritual slaughter of fowl and meat, provides a context for these emotionally charged images.
In 1913, at the age of 20, Soutine moved to Paris. He painted landscapes at various locations in France and created an important body of work in portraiture. Soutine’s study of Old Master paintings in the Louvre impacted his dramatic and novel compositions of a single object isolated in space.
Rembrandt’s famous painting, The Flayed Ox (1655), and the still lifes of Goya, Chardin, and Courbet were of particular importance to Soutine.
Soutine painted directly from life. He would bring dead fowl and rabbits, and carcasses of beef, into his studio to use as subjects for his paintings. These subjects began to occupy the entire canvas, allowing the artist to engage with the images as a painted surface. Soutine’s haunting imagery, energized brushstrokes, and rich paint have served as touchstones for subsequent generations of artists, from Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, to contemporary artists such as Frank Auerbach, Cecily Brown, and Damien Hirst.
The exhibition includes paintings from major public and private collections in the U.S. and abroad, including the Barnes Foundation; Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Art Institute of Chicago; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Princeton University Art Museum; Kunstmuseum Bern; Musée de l’Orangerie; and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, among others. It is organized into four sections: “A Modern Still Life,” “Fowl,” “Flesh,” and “The Life of Beasts.”
The first section, “A Modern Still Life,” showcases how Soutine embraced the modernist notion that gesture, material, and color are as much the subject of art as the objects depicted.
Fish, Peppers, Onions (c. 1919) shows the rich play of warm, earthy tones that is an established tradition of the still-life genre, yet, the effect is jarring — while the peppers and spring onions are identifiable, other objects are difficult to interpret.
“Fowl” highlights Soutine’s paintings devoted to this theme. While dead game birds are a staple of still life, the fowl Soutine painted are transformed in a way that departs from tradition. The bodies of the birds hang, pendulous, perhaps in motion. In these depictions, Soutine creates a powerful statement through his handling of paint.
In Dead Fowl (c. 1926), the abjection and horror of the blood-spattered meat makes the viewer uneasy, but an expressive beauty is integral to the overall composition. In these paintings, Soutine focuses on capturing the moment between life and death, a fixation which develops throughout his work of the 1920s.
In reworking the established still-life tradition, Soutine freed himself from the artistic conventions of the genre, particularly in his use of expressive color and brushstroke and in his focus on the portrait-like images of a single animal. This section, “Flesh,” reveals Soutine’s mastery of observation and his visceral handling of paint.
Soutine restaged Rembrandt’s The Flayed Ox in his studio, working from direct observation rather than copying the masterpiece.
In the resulting painting, Flayed Ox (c. 1925), Soutine reduced Rembrandt’s realistic setting to a single object on a ground of contrasting hue, creating both an intense perception of quivering flesh and an abstract surface of tone and texture.
Finally, “The Life of Beasts” includes paintings from the late period of Soutine’s life. At the outbreak of World War II, and due to the menace posed to France’s Jews by the German occupation, Soutine sought refuge in the countryside to the west of Paris, where he created many of the works on view in this section. These small paintings of animals possess a naturalistic quality different from his earlier works. They also suggest a vulnerability that is particularly poignant in the context of the threatening world situation.
The style of The Duck Pond at Champigny (1943) evokes the tradition of painting landscape outdoors, while the spirited brushwork and sensuality of surface anticipate abstraction. According to an inscription on the back of the painting, the work was painted in July 1943, a month prior to Soutine’s death.
The exhibition is organized by Stephen Brown, Neubauer Family Foundation Associate Curator, The Jewish Museum, with consulting curators Esti Dunow and Maurice Tuchman, authors of Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) catalogue raisonné (1993).
The exhibition is designed by Galia Solomonoff and Adriana Barcenas of SAS/Solomonoff Architecture Studio. Graphic design is by Topos Graphics.
EPILOGUE
In August 1943, Soutine was secretly rushed from the countryside to Paris to receive urgent medical care —his chronic stomach condition had been exacerbated by the stress of hiding during the Nazi Occupation. To avoid detection, he was taken in a hearse, using a circuitous route. He arrived at the hospital more than twenty -four hours later and died during surgery. Soutine was interred at the cemetery of Montparn asse. Among the few mourners were his companions, Marie- Berthe Aurenche and Gerda Groth, the artist and playwright Je an Cocteau, and Pablo Picasso.
Chaim Soutine, Still Life with Fruit, 1919, oil on canvas.Private Collection.
Photograph by Reginart Collections
Chaim Soutine, Chicken Hanging Before a Brick Wall, 1925, oil on canvas. Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland
Chaim Soutine, Carcass of Beef, c. 1925, oil on canvas. Collection of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York;Room of Contemporary Art Fund, 1939(RCA1939:13.2)
Chaim Soutine, Hanging Turkey, c. 1925, oil on millboard. The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, on long term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey
Chicken on a Blue Ground, c. 1925 Oil on canvas The Lewis Collection
Against a warm brown ground, the golden flesh of the plucked fowl emerges from the deep blue tones of the wing feathers and ruff. The bird is suspended from a skylight brace, which intrudes into the composition, disorienting the viewer. The turkey seems to be energetically swinging, an ambiguity that is amplified in its ruddy head: the beak gapes open, but the eye is closed, blinded in the ecstasy of the instant of passing.
Hanging Turkey, c. 1925 Oil on millboard The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, on long term loan to the Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey
This image is difficult to read. Certain details, however, are depicted precisely, including the louvered awning at top, the turkey’s extended wing feathers, and the cord tying its legs. The plucked flesh becomes a centrifugal force that spreads out in every direction, suggesting violent struggle and the an ger and horror of entrapment.
Dead Fowl, c. 1926 Oil on canvas The Art Institute of Chicago, Joseph Winterbotham Collection, 1937
This bird sprawls on a chair with legs and wings akimbo. Deep brown and blue tones provide a ground for the intense play of light and dark in the flesh, feathers, and head. The upended creature plunges downward, suggesting the acceptance and inevitability of death. Soutine creates a powerful statement through the handling of paint in his depictions of fowl. The abjection and horror of blood -spattered meat makes us uneasy, but an expressive beauty is integral to the overall conception. The artist’s intense and novel vision of the still -life tradition conveys sacrifice and tragedy.
Hanging Turkey, c. 1925 Oil on canvas Private collection, courtesy of McClain Gallery, Houston
FLESH
They say Courbet could give in his nudes all the character of Paris. I want to show all that is Paris in the carcass of an ox. Chaim Soutine
The beef carcass paintings have entered the mythology of Soutine’s creative process. Anecdotes abound of the artist hauling sides of beef from nearby slaughterhouses and hanging them from the rafters of his Montparnasse studio. There are reports of neighbors vehemently complaining about the stench of rotting meat and the artist’s practice of acquiring animal blood to revitalize the decomposing flesh. One tale relates the suspicion of murder when blood leaked under his studio door and into the hallway. On an other occasion the police came to confiscate the putrefying flesh, only to be lectured by Soutine on the overriding demands of Art. In reworking the established still -life tradition, Soutine freed himself from the artistic conventions of the genre, parti cularly in his use of expr essive color and brushstroke and in his focus on portraitlike images of a single animal. His fixation on capturing the moment between life and death develops throughout the works of the 1920s. The artist uses this motif as an armature to evoke powerful emotion in the viewer.
Flayed Ox, c. 1925 Oil on canvas Kunstmuseum Bern, Legat Georges F. Keller, 1981
Soutine restaged Rembrandt’s famous painting The FlayedOx in his studio, working from direct observation rather than copying the masterpiece in the Louvre. He reduced Rembrandt’s realistic setting to a single object on a ground of contrasting hue, creating both an intense perception of quivering, decaying flesh and an abstract surface of tone and texture. This painting was ori ented incorrectly at some point and signed by another hand — thus, the signature in the lower right corner is upside down.
Side of Beef with a Calf’s Head, c. 1923 Oil on canvas Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, Collection of Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume
In this composition, the display of meat is curiously prosaic: a rack, pegs, hooks, and a chain in the upper register provide a note of naturalism. At the same time, using sumptuous facture and high -keyed tones, the artist envisions the carcass as an organic silhouette. The head looks on reflexively, a savage meditation on life transfo rmed by death.
Carcass of Beef, c. 1925 Oil on canvas Albright -Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, Room of Contemporary Art Fund, 1939
Soutine obsessively painted carcasses as many as ten times in 1925 and 1926, each with a different visual result. This beast, hung by its hind legs and gutted, dominates a closely cropped composition empty of other objects. The striking contrast of deep red and yellow against the cooler blue of the background presents butchery as a dramatic spectacle. The artist once said that the beef paintings exorcised his memories of a harsh childhood. Kosher law, which the artist may have had in mind, prescribes that animals be killed efficiently, without pain or delay: the beast must be decapitated and drained of blood immediately. In the studio, Soutine repeatedly poured blood onto the decaying carcass to enhance its color, lending the meat a fresh appearance and preserving the image of slaughter.
Hare with Forks, c. 1924 Oil on canvas Private collection
In this painting, the form of the animal is voluptuously modeled in warm colors, set on a golden cloth against a dark upper register. Such imagery recalls the work of seventeenth -century masters of Dutch still -life painting, such as Jan Weenix. His reputation was based on scenes of the hunt and on elegant and exceptionally naturalistic paintings of dead game.
In Soutine’s work the view is from above and down onto the table, but without the extreme tilting effect of his
Still Life with Herrings. Like that earlier still life, this composition has two forks, now foreshortened, which seem to grip the hare with a sense of mastery.
Two Partridges on a Table, c. 1926 Oil on canvas Private collection
Many of the images of fowl communicate struggle, but others are more peaceful and express the stillness of death. Here, Soutine evokes the animals’ quiet acceptance of their fate with virtuoso brushwork.
THE LIFE OF BEASTS
The canvases from this late period of Soutine’s life capture the threatening political climate. At the outbreak of World War II, he and his lover, Gerda Groth, a German Jew, found themselves in immediate peril. Groth was arrested and deported to an internment camp in the French Pyrenees, but survived the war. Soutine went into hiding in the countryside to the west of Paris, where he created many of the works on view here. These small paintings of animals possess a naturalistic quality different from his earlier creations. In them, he continues to develop his still-life concerns: the raw material of human consumption is rendered with a haunting sense of the animals’ suffering. This effect reminds the viewer of the fundamental themes of agony and compassion.
Chaim Soutine’s art was the result of an exacting marriage of sensual paint to acute observation. From this highly personal style emerges work of g reat seriousness and grandeur.
The Fish, c. 1933 Oil on panel Private European collector
In this detailed depiction of a live fish, Soutine strove for a heightened realism. To achieve this effect, the artist turned for inspiration to his predecessor Gustave Courbet, whose 1872 painting of a trout has a similar composition. Soutine elaborated on Courbet’s motif, endowing his own version with a feeling of anguish and passion.
Chaim Soutine, Plucked Goose, c. 1933, oil on panel. Private Collection
The broken neck and naked flesh of this goose are presented with precision and sensitivity, in an image at once savage and sublime. There is an intriguing echo of earlier depictions by the artist:
in Fish, Peppers, Onions the bird is present as a macabre crockery ornament. Through the naturalism of the 1930s, the artist conveys sentiments of vulnerability and pathos.
The Duck Pond at Champigny, 1943 Oil on canvas Shmuel Tatz Collection
In this late painting of the rustic outdoors, the rich blue greens of the woods and pond suggest a yearning for immersion in nature. Its style evokes the tradition of painting landscape outdoors, while its spirited brushwork and sensuality of surface anticipate abstraction. According to an inscription by Marie -Berthe Aurenche, Soutine’s last companion, the work was painted in July, the month prior to the artist’s death.
Art Collectors’ Council purchases Cosimo Rosselli’s Saint Ansanus and Saint Anthony Abbot, panels that once formed the lower third of an altarpiece featuring the “Madonna”
Two newly acquired works by Cosimo Rosselli —Saint Ansanus (left) and Saint Anthony Abbot (right), both painted ca. 1470—rejoin Rosselli’s Madonna and Child in Glory (center) in The Huntington’s collections. Saint Ansanus (36 1/4 x 19 1/4 in.), Saint Anthony Abbot (36 1/4 x 19 3/8 in.), Madonna and Child in Glory (36 x 28 in.), tempera with gold leaf on poplar wood panel. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
The Art Collectors’ Council of The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens has purchased two panel paintings by Italian Renaissance master Cosimo Rosselli (1439–1507). Saint Ansanus and Saint Anthony Abbot, made in about 1470, originally formed the lower third of an altarpiece, the centerpiece of which was The Huntington’s own Madonna and Child in Glory, one of the core works in its Renaissance paintings collection.
Later this year, the panels will be reunited with the Madonna in the Huntington Art Gallery, among
Virgin and Child (c 1460) by Rogier van der Weyden, oil on panel transferred to canvas and relaid on panel, 19 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches
Rogier van der Weyden’s Virgin and Child
Portrait of a Man (ca. 1490) by Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1449-1494 tempera on panel, 20 3/8 x 15 5/8 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. The Arabella D. Huntington Memorial Art Collection.
Portrait of a Woman (ca. 1490)
Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494) tempera on panel, 20 3/8 x 15 5/8 in.
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. The Arabella D. Huntington Memorial Art Collection.
and Domenico Ghirlandaio’s pair of portraits of a man and woman.
All of these works, along with the Rosselli Madonna, were acquired by Arabella Huntington, wife of Huntington founder Henry Edwards Huntington, in the early 20th century for her lavish Fifth Avenue apartment. The new acquisitions were purchased by the Art Collectors’ Council at its annual meeting held in late April.
“The opportunity to reunite panels of an altarpiece is exceedingly rare,” said Catherine Hess, chief curator of European art and interim director of the art collections. “To bring together particularly ravishing works of fine condition, documented provenance, and importance to the history of collecting in America, is rarer still.”
An art dealer likely cut down the original Rosselli altarpiece into parts in the late 18th century to produce individual panels that could be sold more profitably, a common practice at the time, according to Hess. The altarpiece originally was made up of seven paintings—one is now in the Czech Republic’s National Gallery in Prague; two are in private collections; and one’s whereabouts are unknown. The altarpiece was reassembled (without the missing panel) in 2001 at the Cornell Art Museum in Florida.
Cosimo Rosselli, a Quattrocento artist active mainly in his native Florence was known for specializing in a brilliant palette. His early work displays the influence of the highly decorative “Gothic International” style of Alessio Baldovinetti and Benozzo Gozzoli. Rosselli had a long and successful career, culminating in the project to create wall frescoes for the Sistine Chapel. According to biographer Giorgio Vasari, Pope Sixtus IV awarded him the prize for the best work in the fresco series, beating out the renowned Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Perugino.
Saint Ansanus Saint Ansanus (284-304 AD), also known as “the Baptizer,” is patron saint of Siena. Tradition states that he became a Christian at the age of 12 and began a missionary apostolate in Siena but was persecuted, arrested, and eventually beheaded around the age of 20. Rosselli rendered him as a young and handsome man kneeling on a small raft-like cloud. The saint uses his right hand to make the Christian “sign of the cross.” The object in his left hand is an unguent box, which held oil for baptismal anointing. On his left shoulder leans the so-called banner of the Resurrection—displaying a red cross on white ground—that refers to Emperor Constantine’s holy vision before a battle of such a cross in the sky with the words, In Hoc Signo Vinces or “with this sign, you shall win.” Constantine did win the battle and he did convert to Christianity, paving the way for the religion to dominate not only the Roman Empire, but also, ultimately, all of Europe.
“Rosselli’s young Ansanus is truly a beautiful figure,” said Hess. “His clear face framed by curls recalls some of Leonardo’s angels, which date to just this moment in the 1470s.” Ansanus wears a fur-lined, bright orange tabard over a red shirt. “The juxtaposition of complementary hues—brilliant orange and sky blue—is particularly vivid.”
Saint Anthony Abbot Saint Anthony was an Egyptian monk, considered one of the first to retire to the desert for solitary meditation and self-mortification. While Ansanus appears as a fresh and handsome youth, the aged Anthony, who is said to have lived until the age of 105, reveals signs of his hermitage in the desert: a long gray beard and lined and darkened skin. The letter “T” on his left shoulder refers to the way Egyptians represented the cross of Christ in Anthony’s time.
“Both figures are linked by their similarly fervent, adoring gazes,” said Hess. “Using a sophisticated conceit, Rosselli presents the figures paired as complementary mirrored images. While Ansanus appears as a fresh and handsome youth, the aged Anthony reveals the signs of deprivation from years of desert isolation.”
Best known for his rich, colorful paintings of cakes, ice cream cones, and candy counters, California artist Wayne Thiebaud (b. 1920) has been an avid and prolific draftsman since he began his career as an illustrator and cartoonist. Featuring subjects that range from deli counters and solitary figures to dramatic views of San Francisco’s plunging streets, Thiebaud’s drawings endow the most common objects and everyday scenes with a sense of poetry and nostalgia.
Opening at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York on May 18, Wayne Thiebaud, Draftsman is the first exhibition to explore the full scope of the artist’s works on paper, including quick sketches, finished pastels, watercolors, and charcoal drawings. The earliest of the almost eighty-five works on view are cartoons from the 1940s, while the most recent feature landscape drawings inspired by the Sacramento River valley. The show will run through September 23.
“The Morgan is delighted to present this groundbreaking exhibition,” said Colin B. Bailey, director of the museum. “Understanding the importance of drawing in Wayne Thiebaud’s career is fundamental to understanding his art and his artistic development. Throughout the exhibition, Thiebaud’s ability to find inspiration in the prosaic and familiar is on vivid display. The Morgan is deeply grateful to the artist for his cooperation in the organization of the exhibition and for his generosity in agreeing to lend so many works to it.”
Wayne Thiebaud Cherry Tarts 1965-76
The exhibition will be installed in chronological order and divided into five sections:
I. Early Drawings
After studying at Frank Wiggins Trade School in Los Angeles in the late 1930s, Thiebaud began his career as a commercial draftsman, working as a cartoonist, designer, illustrator, sign painter, and advertising art director. The clarity and efficiency of advertising design became a major influence on his later work, as did the graphic stylization typical of cartoons and comics.
In the early 1950s, stimulated by his interest in art history, Thiebaud decided to become a painter. While teaching at Sacramento Junior College in 1956–57, he took a leave of absence to spend a year in New York. “I was very fascinated by people like de Kooning and Kline and went to New York expressly to try to meet them and hear what they were up to.” For a while Thiebaud adopted the gestural style of these Abstract Expressionist painters, as can be seen in the drawing of a Third Avenue store.
II. Foodstuff
During the 1950s, Thiebaud often drew shop windows and market stalls. At the end of the decade, he began zeroing in on the food on display: rows of pies, candy sticks, hamburgers. Combining a geometrical approach from his experience in advertising design with an attention to artificial lighting learned while working at Universal Studios in the 1940s, he created a new kind of imagery, which brought him instant fame when these works were first exhibited in New York in 1962. Working in different mediums, he has compared the process of moving from one technique to another to musical arrangements for different instruments, which preserve the form and melody of a piece while changing its timbre and texture.
Although some critics interpreted his subjects as social criticism, Thiebaud found poetry in “these fragments of actual experience” and acknowledged “some sort of American chauvinism” in his embrace of the everyday fare of diners and cafeterias. “These foods are only revolting to a gourmet,” he said, “others of us lap them up with considerable enjoyment.” His predilection for diners and cafeteria food led early critics to dub him “the truck driver’s dream” and “the Walt Whitman of the delicatessen.”
III. Tradition
During the 1970s, Thiebaud’s work began to show a greater engagement with tradition. He found inspiration in the old masters and in the art of Daumier, Degas, Bonnard, Morandi, and others. In his drawings he relied increasingly on techniques such as chiaroscuro, foreshortening, and hatching and cross-hatching. His figure drawings also changed, as he devoted more time to working from the model. This attachment to the past distinguishes Thiebaud from Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, to whom he has often been compared because of his fondness for depicting ordinary objects.
Thiebaud’s large charcoal still lifes of this period were made while he worked as a teacher at the University of California, Davis. After setting up objects in the classroom and assigning specific rules of composition, he would make his own drawing as a way of demonstration for his students. Though such a process reflects academic tradition, Thiebaud’s drawings also presented a modern sensibility with their empty center that conveys his admiration for Degas.
IV. Cityscapes and Landscapes
Thiebaud turned to the theme of cityscapes in the mid-1970s. Drawing played a major role in these works. “I’m not just interested in the pictorial aspects of the landscape—see a pretty place and try to paint it,” he states, “but in some way to manage it, manipulate it, or see what I can turn it into.” Attracted to the dramatic feeling generated by San Francisco’s plunging streets, he sought to replicate their dizzying effect. “I’ve never gone up and sketched from up high…it’s mostly just invented with perspective structures played around with to try to bring it together into some sort of cohesive character.”
Starting with quick sketches made from observation or memory, he then rearranged elements from these sketches into larger, more elaborate compositions, “erasing, smudging, and fussing around with form.” Adopting a similar method to depict the landscape of the Sacramento River valley, Thiebaud relied increasingly on his imagination to combine the flowing line of the meandering river and the repetitive patterns of the tilled fields into compositions that evoke vast jigsaw puzzles.
V. Sketches
Whether done as a daily exercise or to jot down ideas for paintings, Thiebaud’s sketches are an essential part of his activity as a draftsman and highlight the importance of drawing in his process. In compositional sketches, he worked out the size and placement of each element in relation to the others. At times he experimented with various light effects or vantage points. In many sheets, he used lines to frame different scenes, calling to mind the organization of a storyboard or the panels of a comic book.
Although some pages are devoted to a single theme such as ties, others feature studies of different subjects drawn side by side—for instance, a cake display next to a hat shop window. These sketches were made, Thiebaud says, “to find out something, to make notations, or just to experiment. You want to feel that these are things that will never be seen.”
Throughout his career, Thiebaud has made a rich variety of drawings to examine the relationship between medium and image, exploring what happens if one “transposes a thick, rich colorful painting into black and white in a sparse or less sensual medium.” From sketches to finished compositions, this exhibition illuminates the artist’s painstaking process and the evident pleasure he derives from the act of drawing.
The accompanying catalogue, Wayne Thiebaud, Draftsman, features 63 plates of works in the exhibition and 20 sketchbook pages. It also contains a foreword by director Colin B. Bailey, an essay by Isabelle Dervaux, and a conversation with Wayne Thiebaud.
Sotheby’s spring auction of American Art will be held in New York on 23 May 2018. Led by 13worksby Norman Rockwell from all periods of the artist’s decades-long career, the sale features 120+ lots that are together estimated at more than $40million. The auction also includes exceptional example by Frederic Edwin Church, N.C. Wyeth, Milton Avery, Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran– many of which are from distinguished private collections and are coming to auction for the very first time.
NORMAN ROCKWELL: AMERICA’S FAVORITE STORYTELLER
Leading the selection of works by Norman Rockwell is Blacksmith’s Boy –Heel and Toe (Shaftsbury Blacksmith Shop), sold to benefit the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (below, estimate $7/10 million). Commissioned for a 1940 The Saturday Evening Post story by Edward W. O’Brien, this monumental painting– measuring nearly six feet across –illustrates a horseshoe-forging contest, which O’Brien captured from the point of view of the local blacksmith’s son: “I’ll never forget that last hour. And never, I imagine, will any of those who watched. Both men were lost to everything now but the swing from the forge to the anvil, the heels to be turned and the toes to be welded.”
The drama of the competition is palpable as the two men captivate the growing crowd with their strength and skill. Working from photography and his own imagination, Rockwell exactingly depicts 23 figures in this impressive composition, including a self-portrait and two different representations of one of his favorite models, Harvey McKee –the undersheriff of the town of Arlington, Vermont.
Another exceptional example by Norman Rockwell is The Little Model from 1919(estimate $1/1.5 million). A gift from the artist to his aunt that has remained in the family collection for nearly a century, the work was completed for the 29 March 1919 cover of Collier’s, making it one of Rockwell’s earliest images executed on commission for a prominent American publication. Rendered in the artist’s early style and technique, The Little Model brilliantly captures a young girl’s wistfulness and longing to transform into a beautiful adult, a detail highlighted when it appeared on Antiques Road Show in 2011.
Rockwell’s Boy Playing Flute Surrounded by Animals (Springtime) is another major highlight of the auction, carrying an estimate of $1.5/2.5 million. Appearing on the 16 April 1927 cover of The Saturday Evening Post, the painting captures the artist’s pivotal transition from his early aesthetic to his most iconic style; the white background evokes his earlier vignette-style format while the near-photographic likeness of the animated animals dancing around the young boy’s feet foreshadows his mature works. Spirited and cheerful, the painting comes to auction for the first time from the collection of Jack and Bonita Granville Wrather – he the producer of television series such as The Lone Ranger and Lassie, she the Hollywood actress who brought Nancy Drew to life.
Nearly forty years after the completion of Springtime comes Little Girl Looking Downstairs at Christmas Party, one of Rockwell’s most recognizable images. Painted for the cover of the December 1964 issue of McCall’s, the work depicts a forlorn young girl looking from the top of the stairs at the merry cocktail party taking place downstairs that she cannot join. A gift from the artist and being offered for the first time, this beloved image will be presented with a pre-sale estimate of $1/1.5 million.
AN EXQUISITE PORTRAIT BY N.C. WYETH
Also appearing at auction for the very first time is N.C. Wyeth’s Portrait of a Farmer (Pennsylvania Farmer) from 1943, which was formerly in the collection of the artist’s wife. Wyeth created this striking portrait by synthesizing his memories and experiences of his Pennsylvania home: the architectural elements are common to the Chadds Ford area,while the subject is based upon a local farmer whom Wyeth encountered carrying a pig under his arm.The artist discussed Portrait of a Farmer in a 21 January 1943 letter to his daughter Henriette, writing: “In spite of all, my present large panel of the squealing pig is vastly superior to anything to date.” In keeping with the true quality of this work, the painting will be offered this May with an estimate of $2.5/3.5 million.
LUMINOUS LANDSCAPES FROM LEADERS OF THE HUDSON VALLEY SCHOOL: FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH, ALBERT BIERSTADT & THOMAS MORAN
Also sold to benefit the Berkshire Museum is Frederic Edwin Church’s Valley of Santa Isabel, New Granada (estimate $5/7 million). One of the finest panoramic landscapes of his oeuvre, this rare and extraordinary painting showcases Church’s incredible attention to naturalistic detail, romantic sentiment and unmatched ability to capture light. Completed in 1875 after he achieved broad critical and popular success with works such as
Heart of the Andes
and The Icebergs,
held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Dallas Museum of Art respectively, the work is one of Church’s final paintings.
Albert Bierstadt, another master of the Hudson Valley School, is represented this season with a
View of Nassau, The Bahamas (estimate $700/1,000,000). One of a small series of works inspired by his visits to this tropical paradise– a location also frequented by American artists including Louis Comfort Tiffany and Winslow Homer– in the mid-1870s and through the early 1890s, the work is distinguished by its impressive scale, vivid hues, saturated sunlight and attention to architectural detail.
A Showery Day, Grand Canyon by Thomas Moran is another significant landscape by a major 19thcentury artist presented in the May sale. The painting depicts the terracotta peaks of the canyon shrouded in silvery clouds, capturing the majesty of one of the Unites States’ greatest natural treasures. Offered by a private American collection with a pre-sale estimate of $800/1.2 million, the work last appeared at auction nearly twenty years ago at Sotheby’s New York.
MILTON AVERY’S MODERN MASTERPIECE
American modernism is highlighted by
Milton Avery’s spectacular The Seamstress (estimate $2/3 million). The vibrant work from 1944 captures the artist’s embrace of color as his primary expression of emotion. Last offered at auction in 1998, the painting belongs to a group of 17 works from The Collection of Patrick & Carlyn Duffy– Patrick Duffy who unforgettably portrayed Bobby Ewingon the hit show Dallas 40 years ago. Lovingly curated by the couple over 45 years, the works from their collection will be offered at Sotheby’s over three auctions this May and October, the last of which will be led by
Andrew Wyeth’s1964 watercolor The Bachelor.
REALIST RENDERINGS BY EDWARD HOPPER FROM THE COLLECTION OF STEVE MARTIN
American realism is represented by two Edward Hopper drawings from the collection of Steve Martin.
Study for ‘A Woman in the Sun’, a charcoal drawing executed in 1961, was the foundation for
the painting of the same name in the collection of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Estimated at $150/250,000, the work was purchased in 2005 along with
Study for Summer Evening’, another preparatory study for
a major oil painting of the same title, which carries an estimate of $200/300,000.
POSTCARDS FROM THE WEST: WESTERN WORKS BY CHARLES MARION RUSSELL & FREDERIC REMINGTON
The Western Art offerings this season are highlighted by works by Charles Marion Russell, Frederic Remington and Olaf Carl Seltzer from the Jack and Bonita Granville Wrather Collection.
Russell’s When Guns were the Locks of the Treasure Box is a spectacular watercolor, gouache and pencil on paper that conveys the sense of excitement and adventure that the American West inspired (estimate $150/250,000).
Frederic Remington’s Western Stage Managers is also a noteworthy addition from the Wrather Collection. A striking scene with a pre-sale estimate of $60/80,000, this work has been exhibited extensively across the Midwest, including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of a bearded Venetian nobleman, bust length, Oil on oak panel, 60 by 48 .6 cm. Estimated in the region of £3 million
Unseen on the market for 60 years, this remarkable depiction of a Venetian Nobleman was almost certainly cherished by the artist who kept it until his death in 1640. A cquired by the great Dutch co llector Hans Wetzlar in the early 1950s , it has remained in the possession of his descendants ever since . One of only a few portraits by the artist to come on the market in recent years , it is estimated in the region of £3 million. George Gordon, Worldwide Co - Chairman of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings Department , said:
“ Rubens is known as the “Prince of the painters” and his legacy is far reaching. His timeless modernity and immediacy is evident in this painting which encapsulates several strands of his creative, emotional and intellectual life. With its bravura brushwork which shows no hint of hesitancy, this is a portrait of a man as real to us as he was in the artist’s mind. Almost 400 years after being created , this is a painting that gives the viewer immense pleasure, and one in which we can feel Rubens’ own joy in creating it. ”
The Master behind the Subject Painted in the 1620s, at the height of Rubens’ career, the work depicts an imposing and evidently po werful man in the prime of life fixing the viewer in his penetrating gaze. Although Rubens almost certainly based this study on a Venetian prototype, quite probably by Tintoretto, his subject is largely the product of his own immensely creative imagination . Far away from Tintoretto’s portrayals of men who almost seem to be wilfully obscure, the work is testament to Rubens’ idea of a forceful Italian nobleman, a Renaissance man who is accustomed to power and leadership. As in his best pictures , the Flemish Master has imbued this portrait with much of his own personality. While not a self - portrait, it is a study of a man in whom Rubens recognises himself – another successful man of his own times, and perhaps too, like Rubens, something of a polymath. Rubens’ Fascination for Italy Painter, designer , print - maker, sculptor, architect , diplomat, peace - treaty broker, at the helm of the largest studio of his time, Rubens was the first great artist - collector in Northern Europe and the fact that he almost certainly owned the present portrait until his death is testament to its importance. This work also reflects Rubens’ love of Italy, which once discovered, remained an essential part of his artistic and cultural influence. During his eight years in Italy, be tween 1600 and 1608, the artist, then in his twenties, worked for important patrons, including the Duke of Mantua. In Venice he found inspiration in the work of his predecessors Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto. In Rome, the art of classical Antiquity made a great impression on him. He studied it avid ly, creating a number of drawings, which he would regularly go back to later in his career. In Rome, he also experienced the direct influence of his contemporary, Caravaggio. However closely he is identified with Flemish art, Rubens never ceased to be in part an Italian artist, as this exceptional portrait shows us. Works from the collection of Baron Willem van Dedem
This summer, Sotheby’s will offer for sale a selection of works from the collection of esteemed connoisseur and benefactor, the late Baron Willem van Dedem (1929–2015), as part of its flagship Old Master sales (4–5 July). A testament to Baron van Dedem’s exceptional taste and eye for quality, the group of works to be offered features outstanding examples by leading Dutch and Flemish masters, including Balthasar van der Ast, Jacobus Vrel, Peter Paul Rubens and the brothers Jan Brueghel the Elder and Pieter Brueghel the Younger.
A successful businessman and a philanthropist, Baron van Dedem was a passionate collector and connoisseur of Dutch and Flemish Old Master painting. Visiting the Delft art fair for the first time in 1957, he made his first artistic purchase six years later, eventually assembling what would become one of the finest private collections of Dutch and Flemish 17th Century paintings in Europe of his time. Refined and improved over many years, the collection encompassed all the specialisms of Dutch and Flemish art, including history and genre painting, portraiture, still life, landscape and seascapes, offering a comprehensive overview of paintings from the Golden Age.
Baron Frits van Dedem, the son of Willem van Dedem said,
“ Since none of the family-members have the same intense passion and knowledge of collecting Old Masters, we trust the sale of these works will provide a chance for other discerning collectors to acquire beautiful works of art they will love and enjoy as much as our father did. At the same time we look forward to a vigorously competitive auction such as the ones in which he participated with great success and excitement! ”
George Gordon, Sotheby’s Co-Chairman of Old Master Paintings Worldwide , said
“ This exceptional selection of works stands as a fitting testament to Willem van Dedem’s discernment as a collector. Though he was constantly surrounded by people from whom he could easily have relied on for advice, he was a man who determinedly followed his own path, always trusting his own eye and instincts when it came to making purchases — his choices based on a deep understanding of how artists in the Dutch and Flemish 17th Century thought and saw. ”
As President of the Board of The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) at Maastricht from 1997 until his death in 2015, Baron van Dedem played an active role in the art world and was well known as a generous benefactor. Committed to strengthening the holdings of Dutch public collections, he donated and bequeathed numerous masterpieces to major national institutions, namely the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and The National Gallery in London, in order to share his passion for 16th and 17th century painting as widely as possible.
Works by David Teniers the Younger, Jan van Kessel the Elder and Adriaen Coorte gifted by the Baron to The National Gallery in London were recently put on public display. The Mauritshuis in The Hague earlier received a significant gift of paintings from Baron van Dedem, including still lifes by Pieter Claesz and Willem Kalf, landscapes by Frans Post and Salomon van Ruysdael, and a scene of dancing peasants by Roelant Savery.
Emilie Gordenker, Director of The Mauritshuis , commented on his generous gift, “ This donation is one of the most significant ever made to the Mauritshuis. Every one of the five paintings is a masterpiece and an excellent addition to the museum’s collection. ” Johnny Van Haeften, Art Dealer , said
“ Working with Willem van Dedem was always a pleasure and a joy. His infectious enthusiasm and curiosity about his paintings, those that he wished to acquire, and those that were already in other private or public collections was a real outpouring of genuine passion. He could not get enough of Dutch and Flemish paintings, whether they be on display elsewhere, or generously sharing his collection with groups of collectors or museum curators from around the world. It gave him enormous pleasure to discuss Dutch and Flemish art in general and he was a collector of the old school: faultlessly charming, courteous and diligent, he was a connoisseur collector of the highest calibre.”
Emanuel de Witte Interior of a gothic protestant church oil on oak panel, uncradled £60,000-80,000
Gerard Terborch Portrait of a man oil on oak panel £80,000-120,000
Jan van de Velde III Still life with oysters and smoking supplies oil on oak panel £30,000-40,000
Lucas van Valckenborch An expansive landscape with a river valley and a rushing mountain stream oil on beech panel £200,000-300,000
Jan van Kessel II Flowers in a basket on a partly draped table oil on oak panel, single plank, uncradled £120,000-180,000
Jan Brueghel the Elder and Hendrick van Balen Diana and her nymphs after the hunt oil on oak panel £600,000-800,000
Balthasar van der Ast Flower still life in a glass beaker on a stone ledge oil on copper £600,000-800,000
Jacobus Vrel A cobbled street in a town with people conversing oil on oak panel £300,000-400,000
Pieter Brueghel the Younger Christ with the Woman Taken in Adultery oil on oak panel £300,000-400,000
Jan van Kessel and Gonzales Coques Still life with flowers and Portrait of a man oil on copper £70,000-100,000
H. Van Steenwijk the Younger A palatial interior with a couple oil on copper £15,000-20,000
Andries van Eertvelt A four-masted ship flying the flag of Zeeland, another vessel beyond oil on oak panel £60,000-80,000
Jan de Beijer Amsterdam, the Nieuwe Kerk and the back of the Town Hall seen from the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal oil on panel £10,000-15,000
Pieter Coecke van Aelst the Elder A triptych: the Adoration of the Magi oil on oak panel £200,000-300,000
Gerrit Berckheyde The Hague: view of the plaats and the buitenhof oil on canvas £300,000-400,000
Rembrandt The Goldweighers Field etching and drypoint £30,000-50,000
Peter Paul Rubens Christ on the Cross oil sketch on oak panel £600,000-800,000
Clara Peeters Still life with flowers in a glass vase oil on copper £250,000-350,000
Jacob Adriaensz. Backer A kneeling woman black and white chalk, grey wash, on grey-blue paper £12,000-18,000
Hans Bol Summer and winter (pair) a pair, both gouache heightened with gold, on vellum laid on panel £50,000-70,000
18th Century follower of Jan van der Heyden A Cappriccio view of the Oude Delft and the Gemeenlandshuis oil on oak panel £10,000-15,000
A selection of highlights from the sale will travel the world ahead of the sale in London on 4–5 July. Amsterdam: 2 – 3 May 2018 New York: 19 – 21 May 2018 Hong Kong: 25 – 28 May 2018 London: 30 June – 4 July 2018
and Gilbert Stuart’s George Washington (Vaughan type)
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