The exhibition presents a spectacular selection of eighteenth-century Venetian art, with Canaletto's greatest works shown alongside paintings and works on paper by Sebastiano and Marco Ricci, Francesco Zuccarelli, Rosalba Carriera, Pietro Longhi and Giovanni Battista Piazzetta. The exhibition explores the many delights of eighteenth-century Venice, from the splendours of the Grand Canal and St Mark's Square to its festivals, theatre and masked carnival, bringing the irresistible allure of the most beautiful city in the world to The Queen's Gallery.
The Royal Collection contains the world's finest group of paintings, drawings and prints by Venice's most famous view-painter, Canaletto (1697-1768). These works were bought by the young George III in 1762 from Canaletto's agent and dealer Joseph Smith, British Consul in Venice, along with the rest of Smith's huge collection.
Smith first met Canaletto in the early 1720s, and quickly spotted his potential. Their relationship developed into an unofficial partnership of mutual benefit, and a friendship that was to last for over 40 years.
Canaletto’s paintings of Venetian views found a lucrative market among the British Grand Tourists in Venice who wanted paintings of the city to take back to Britain as souvenirs. Smith acted as Canaletto’s agent, liaising between artist and patron, handling payments and shipping works to Britain. At the same time Smith commissioned many paintings from Canaletto for his own collection, such as the series of 12 paintings of the Grand Canal that promoted his work to the many visitors Smith received in his palazzo.
Smith also supported Canaletto in more difficult times: in the 1740s the War of the Austrian Succession disrupted the steady stream of visitors to Venice, and as the artist’s workload declined, Smith commissioned a series of monumental views of Rome and a set of overdoor paintings. In 1746 Smith arranged for Canaletto to travel to Britain, where he stayed for almost ten years.
By 1762, when his collection was sold to George III, Joseph Smith had amassed the greatest collection in existence of paintings and drawings by Canaletto.
In 1762 the young monarch George III purchased virtually the entire collection of Joseph Smith, the greatest patron of art in Venice at the time. Thanks to this single acquisition, the Royal Collection contains one of the finest groups of 18th-century Venetian art in the world, including the largest collection of works by Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto.
Through over 200 paintings, drawings and prints from the Royal Collection's exceptional holdings, Canaletto & the Art of Venice presents the work of Venice's most famous view-painter alongside that of his contemporaries, including Sebastiano and Marco Ricci, Rosalba Carriera, Francesco Zuccarelli, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta and Pietro Longhi, and explores how they captured the essence and allure of Venice for their 18th-century audience, as they still do today.
Joseph Smith (c.1674−1770) was an English merchant and later British Consul in Venice, a post dealing with Britain’s maritime, commercial and trading interests. He had moved to Italy in around 1700 and over several decades built up an outstanding art collection, acting as both patron and dealer to many contemporary Venetian artists. Smith was Canaletto's principal agent, selling his paintings to the wealthy Grand Tourists who were drawn to Venice's cultural attractions. His palazzo on the Grand Canal became a meeting place for collectors, patrons, scholars and tourists, where visitors could admire his vast collection and commission their own versions of Canaletto's views to take home.
Canaletto The Mouth of the Grand Canal looking West towards the Carità, c.1729
Canaletto - The Royal Collection RCIN 400523. Title: The Grand Canal looking east
One of the most important of Smith's commissions from Canaletto was the series of 12 paintings of the Grand Canal, which together create a near complete journey down the waterway. Canaletto's sharp-eyed precision makes these views seem powerfully real, yet he rearranged and altered elements of each composition to create ideal impressions of the city. Two larger paintings are of festivals, including the 'Sposalizio del Mar', or 'Wedding of the Sea', which took place on Ascension Day and attracted crowds of British visitors. The Grand Canal was a subject frequently captured by Canaletto, including in a series of six drawings, among them Venice: The central stretch of the Grand Canal, c.1734. Intended as works of art in their own right, rather than as preparatory studies for paintings, the drawings are carefully constructed and rich in tone and detail.
Alongside the grand public entertainments, Venice boasted a thriving opera and theatre scene, especially during carnival season. The need to create stage sets within a very short period of time provided plentiful employment for Venetian artists. Both Marco Ricci and Canaletto worked for the theatre, where they learned how to manipulate perspective to heighten drama.
The exhibition includes several of Ricci's designs for the Venetian stage, such as A room with a balcony supported by Atlantes, c.1726. Marco Ricci also produced caricatures of opera singers, such as the drawing of the internationally famed castrato Farinelli, which were circulated among Joseph Smith and his fellow Venetian collectors and opera aficionados.
On display together for the first time are personifications of the Four Seasons by Rosalba Carriera, whose pastels were highly prized by European collectors. They were intended to be hung in private domestic spaces, such as dressing rooms, bedrooms or small antechambers. Carriera was one of the first artists to develop a commercial relationship with Joseph Smith, and her sensual pastel of 'Winter', c.1726, an allegorical female figure wrapped in furs, was one of the most admired works in Smith's collection.
Canaletto, Marco Ricci and Francesco Zuccarelli all contributed to the development of the genre known as the capriccio – scenes combining real and imaginary architecture, often set in an invented landscape, to create poetically evocative works. The ruins of ancient Rome in both Ricci's Caprice View with Roman Ruins, c.1729, and Zuccarelli's pastoral scene Landscape with Classical Ruins, Cattle and Figures, c.1741–2, convey a sense of the irrevocable loss of a great age.
There was a major revival in printmaking in Venice in the 18th century, with many publishers recruiting established artists, such as Giovanni Battista Piazzetta and Antonio Visentini, to provide designs for their publications.
Joseph Smith was an enthusiastic print collector and one of the major supporters of contemporary printmaking in Venice. Smith financed and directed the Pasquali press, which contributed to the circulation of Enlightenment ideas, such as those of Isaac Newton, and imported banned foreign texts into Venice, including the work of Voltaire.
Visentini was the chief draughtsman for the press, providing many hundreds of pen and ink drawings of initials and tailpieces, several of which will be on display in the exhibition.
Pablo Picasso,Femme dans un fauteuil, 1942, Estimate on Request
Pablo Picasso’s Femme dans un fauteuil of 1942, will be a leading highlight of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Saleon 20 June 2018. One of a major series of full-scale portraits, painted during the war, Femme dans un fauteuil depicts Picasso’s great muse of the period Dora Maar, the surrealist photographer and painter.
Dora brought great colour, beauty and vivacity into Picasso’s life during the difficultperiods of the Spanish Civil War and the German occupation of Paris. Dora Maar’s presence in Picasso’s life,from the moment they met in 1935 until the time their relationship ended around 1945, inspired some of the greatest portraits of the artist’s prolific career. Femme dans un fauteuil remained in the artist’s collection until his death when it passed toJacqueline Picasso and was eventually sold through the agency of Picasso’s dealer, Galerie Louise Leiris in Paris.It is a painting that has been rarely exhibited having remained in the artist’s family for many years. It was first shown in an exhibition of Jacqueline Picasso’s collection in 1986 and has largely disappeared from public view since that time.
The painting will be exhibited inHong Kong from 25to 28May and in London from 15to 20June 2018 before its sale on 20 June at Christie’s King Street.
Among the most highly worked portraits of Dora that Picasso painted during the Second World War, Femme dans un fauteuil features the iconic distortions which dominated his visions of his raven-haired muse and is notable for its strikingly beautiful colours and the dynamic way in which Picasso has described the sitter’s body. Many of the greatest depictions of Dora of the 1940s share the vibrant colours and dynamism of the present painting and it is perhaps for this reason that it was kept in the Picasso family for so many years.What is most unusual about the work is that it has been so rarely exhibited.
Created in April 1942, Femme dans un fauteuil was executed whilst Picasso wasliving in occupied Paris. Although he had received offers of sanctuary from friends in the United States and Mexico at the outbreak of the conflict, Picasso chose to remain in France, living a quiet life in his studio at 7 rues des Grands-Augustins.
Labelled a ‘degenerate’ artist during the Nazi campaign against modern art, the artist’s presence in the city did not go unnoticed by the German forces. While he was allowed to continue to work, Picasso was forbidden from exhibiting any of his art publicly. He remained under close and constant observation by the Gestapo, and his studio was visited on a number of occasions, during which he was questioned as to the whereabouts of friends and former colleagues now in hiding.
Jussi Pylkkänen, Global President, Christie’s:
“Dora Maar is without question Picasso’s most recognisable muse who inspired him throughout the war years in Europe. She remained a beacon of hope, beauty and compassion during this difficult period. We are honoured to have the opportunity tosell such a major work by Picasso, the Mozart of the 20thCentury, which has rarely been seen in public since its acquisition from the family many years after the artist’s death. It is a complex and striking portrait of Dora at her beautiful and noble best.”
Claude Monet (1840-1926), La Gare Saint-Lazare, Vue extérieure, 1877. Oil on canvas. Estimate on request. Offered in the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on 20 June at Christie’s in London
‘This superb painting describes Monet at his Impressionist best, capturing in quick, bold brushstrokes the energy of metropolitan Paris as described by the sound and fury of the steam trains as they left the Gare Saint-Lazare,’ says Christie’s Global President Jussi Pylkkänen.
In the Gare Saint-Lazare series Monet depicted the station from a variety of different positions, at different times of day and in different atmospheric conditions — marking the first occasion on which the artist committed himself to the pursuit of a single subject through a sequence of variations. This would come to be one of the defining aspects of Monet’s practice for the rest of his career. In April 1877, Monet included several of the Gare Saint-Lazare canvases in the Third Impressionist Exhibition. Before he executed La Gare Saint-Lazare, Vue extérieure, Monet had been living and working in Argenteuil, just outside Paris. Based in rural Montgeron in the summer of 1876, he returned to the capital in the new year eager to capture the bustling urban landscape. Monet’s friend, the artist Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), rented him a small ground-floor apartment near the station; just three months later, the series was complete.
Of the 12 Gare Saint-Lazare paintings, today only three remain in private hands. The remaining nine are in public institutions, including the Fogg Museum, Massachussetts; the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Gallery, London; the Musée Marmottan, Paris; and the Musée d’Orsay. Three of these museum works are currently included in Monet & Architecture, a pioneering show at London’s National Gallery which examines the central role architecture played in many of the artist’s compositions.
Kazimir Malevich’s Landscape (1911, estimate: £7,000,000-10,000,000) will be a major highlight of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on 20 June 2018, part of ‘20th Century at Christie’s’, a series of auctions taking place from 15 to 21 June 2018. The monumental, square-format landscape is from ‘The Red Series’, a group of works characterised by gestural brush strokes and an expressive use of colour, referencing both Fauvism and Cubism, and anticipating Malevich’s move towards Suprematism. Landscape was first exhibited in the ‘Moscow Salon’ in February / March 1911. It was subsequently shown the following year in St. Petersburg as part of ‘The Union of Youth’, where Malevich represented a radical collective known as ‘Donkey’s Tail’. In 1927, he was invited to Germany to show his work for the first time outside Russia and brought with him the best works of his career to date. Landscape was one such work and remained in Berlin after Malevich returned to Russia. Due to the rise of totalitarianism in Germany and in his home country, the artist lost control of his works abroad before he died in 1935. Landscape resurfaced after the war and was acquired by the Kunstmuseum Basel, where it hung for over 50 years, before being restituted to the heirs of the artist. It is now being offered from a private collection and represents the first time that work has come to auction in two generations. Landscape will be exhibited in London from 15 to 20 June 2018. Landscape is a ‘pure’ landscape painting whose motif of peasant dwellings surrounded by stylized treetops is borrowed from Russian primitive art. The use of colour to sculpt the forms represented recalls the techniques employed by Cézanne, while the block-like depiction of the buildings nods towards the Cubist compositions of Braque and Picasso. By distilling these diverse visual references, Malevich has created a powerful and profoundly unique work of art. He himself stated that ‘one was obliged to move both along the line of primitive treatment of phenomena, and along the line of Cézanne to cubism.’ The red-hot gleam on the horizon is a direct depiction of the sun, one of the unique features of the painting that foretells the primacy of colour that would define Suprematism. In the early 1930s, Malevich returned to creating ‘pure’ landscapes, producing Landscape with five houses, Landscape with a white house, and Red House, all of which are in the collection of the State Russian Museum.
For the first time in France, the Musée Cantini presents, from May 18th to September 23rd , the exhibition "Courbet, Degas, Cézanne ... Realistic and impressionist masterpieces from the Burell collection" .
The works are from the Burrell Collection, an eclectic collection of art acquired over many years by Sir William Burrell (1861-1958). Sir William Burrell was an exceptional collector of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with a collection of about 8,000 pieces from all eras and from all continents. In 1944, he offered his entire collection to the city of Glasgow. While some works have sometimes been lent, none have left the UK. The exhibition gathers some sixty works from the second half of the 19th century , compared to the works of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Marseille . The greatest masters of French painting are present: Courbet , Corot , Daumier , Millet , Fantin-Latour , Daubigny , Pissaro , Boudin , Monticelli , Sisley , Degas , Manet , Cezanne ... This exceptional selection illustrates the evolution of French painting from realism to impressionism . Visitors will be able to admire the masterpieces that Sir William Burrell purchased from the Scottish art dealer, Alexandre Reid , a major figure in the dissemination of Barbizon School painting and Impressionist painting. In the late 1890s, he sold Burrell his first Degas,
The Girl Looking Through Field Glasses, and then between 1915 and 1926, most of the paintings and drawings of the nineteenth century masters that are found in his collection.
In 1926, Sir William Burrell purchased Daumier'sLe meunier, his son anddonkey,
and Au café de Manet that the public will discover at the Cantini museum. In general, Burrell's taste went towards realism in nineteenth-century French painting as evidenced by a beautiful ensemble of Daumier or
A Millet's Shepherdess, artists among the most famous of the realist school with Courbet. His collection also contains treasures from the Barbizon School. Landscapes of Corot, Daubigny and the marines of Boudin transport us to the heart of an era while announcing the impressionist school with Manet, Degas and Sisley.
All these paintings bear witness to the questions of representation in the second half of the nineteenth century. As such, the works presented by Manet, Degas and Cézanne are masterpieces in direct connection with the twentieth century's modernity.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917) Aux Tuileries la femme a l ombrelle Huile sur Toile 27x20 cm Glasgow The Burrell Collection
Paul Cézanne: Zola’s House at Médan, oil on canvas, 590×725 mm, c. 1880 (Glasgow, Burrell Collection); photo credit: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY
This summer, Tate Modern will explore the art of the Weimar Republic (1919-33) in a year-long, free display, drawing upon the rich holdings of The George Economou Collection. This presentation of around seventy paintings and works on paper will address the complex paradoxes of the Weimar era, in which liberalisation and anti-militarism flourished in tandem with political and economic uncertainty. These loans offer a rare opportunity to view a range of artworks not ordinarily on public display – some of which have never been seen in the United Kingdom before – and to see a selection of key Tate works returned to the context in which they were originally created and exhibited nearly one hundred years ago.
Although the term ‘magic realism’ is today commonly associated with the literature of Latin America, it was inherited from the artist and critic Franz Roh who invented it in 1925 to describe a shift from the anxious and emotional art of the expressionist era, towards the cold veracity and unsettling imagery of this inter-war period. In the context of growing political extremism, this new realism reflected a more liberal society as well as inner worlds of emotion and magic.
The profound social and political disarray after the First World War and the collapse of the Empire largely brought about this stylistic shift. Berlin in particular attracted a reputation for moral depravity and decadence in the context of the economic collapse. The reconfiguration of urban life was an important aspect of the Weimar moment. Alongside exploring how artists responded to social spaces and the studio, entertainment sites like the cabaret and the circus will be highlighted, including a display of
Otto Dix’s enigmatic Zirkus (‘Circus’) print portfolio.
Artists recognised the power in representing these realms of public fantasy and places where outsiders were welcomed.
George Grosz, 'Suicide' 1916
Works by Otto Dix, George Grosz and Max Beckmann perhaps best known today for their unsettling depictions of Weimar life, will be presented alongside the works of under recognised artists such as Albert Birkle, Jeanne Mammen and Rudolf Schlichter, and many others whose careers were curtailed by the end of the Weimar period due to the rise of Nationalist Socialism and its agenda to promote art that celebrated its political ideologies.
The display comes at a pertinent time, in a year of commemoration of the anniversary of the end of the First World War, alongside Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One at Tate Britain and William Kentridge’s new performance for 14-18 Now at Tate Modern entitled The Head and the Load, running from 11-15 July 2018.
Magic Realism is curated by Matthew Gale, Head of Displays and Katy Wan, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. The display is realised with thanks to loans from The George Economou Collection, with additional support from the Huo Family Foundation (UK) Limited.
The display will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue from Tate Publishing: Magic Realism: Art in Weimar Germany 1919-33 Matthew Gale and Katy Wan 231 x 231 mm, 112pp ISBN 978-1-84976-588-6, £14.99
The Kunsthaus Zürich is to receive the collection of Gabriele and Werner Merzbacher as a long-term loan, one of the most important private collections of modern art. A total of 65 works have been promised to the Kunsthaus for at least 20 years. They include paintings by the great masters of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Fauvism, members of the ‘Brücke’ and ‘Blauer Reiter’ groups, and many more. The cooperation, which involves 65 paintings and a minimum commitment of 20 years, is a gesture of gratitude to Zurich and Switzerland by Werner Merzbacher, who was born in Oehringen, Germany, in 1928 and came to Switzerland as a child refugee in 1939, and a chance for him to share his passion for art with the public at large. The Kunsthaus Zürich has been given the opportunity to view almost 200 paintings and sculptures and select the works that best complement its own important holdings and the Bührle Collection, which also moves to the enlarged Kunsthaus from 2020.
The artists represented include leading figures from the key European art movements of the 20th century: Impressionism (Monet, Cézanne, Renoir), Post-Impressionism (van Gogh, Picasso), Fauvism (Derain, Matisse, Vlaminck, Braque), the ‘Brücke’ (Heckel and Kirchner), Germans persecuted in the Third Reich such as Nolde, Barlach and Beckmann, ‘Blauer Reiter’ members Jawlensky, Kandinsky and Münter, Italian Futurists (Severini, Boccioni), Russian Constructivists (Malevich, Goncharova and others), the Cubist Léger and Spanish artist Miró. Among the more recent artists of the 1950s to 1990s are Richard Paul Lohse and Sam Francis as well as Calder, González, Tinguely, Moore and Rickey.
A FEAST OF COLOUR FOR GENERATIONS
At the most immediate level, the works are linked together by the dominance of colour. They will combine to present visitors to the Kunsthaus Zürich with a dazzling panorama spanning the birth and evolution of the most significant schools and movements in modern art. The starting point of the collection is the exclusive group of exceptional works thatGabriele Merzbacher-Mayer inherited from her grandparents Bernhard and Auguste Mayer and that, since the 1960s, has been progressively enriched through further acquisitions of great art. Werner Merzbacher picks out those that touch him because, as he says, they resemble his own character. The selection that will be coming to the Kunsthaus therefore tells a dual story,of both art and a family.
INTERNATIONAL SUCCESSES
The collection assembled by the businessman and his family, who live in the canton of Zurich, has already been exhibited to great acclaim, drawing hundreds of thousands to exhibitions in Jerusalem (1998/99), various Japanese cities including Tokyo (2001), and London(2002).
Among the highlights of the Royal Academy show were:
There were several works each by Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirckner, Emil Nolde, Jawlensky, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rotluff. Certain works in the context of this exhibition create an unexpectedly forceful presence, for example,
the marvellous portrait byAlexejJawlensky, Lady in a YellowHat, c.1910, a determined vital work,
and Max Beckmann’s Woman with a RedRooster, 1941, a painting with implied drama and tension and strong formal preoccupations.
From 24 August to 27 November, 2016, the Van Gogh Museum presented highlights from the Merzbacher Collection.The paintings in the exhibition Van Gogh Inspires: Matisse, Kirchner, Kandinsky: Highlights from the Merzbacher Collection showed the impact Vincent van Gogh had on the most important artists of the early twentieth century.
The focus of the exhibition Van Gogh Inspires: Matisse, Kirchner, Kandinsky: Highlights from the Merzbacher Collection is on the way Van Gogh influenced the French Fauvists and German Expressionists. Fourteen works from the Merzbacher Collection are being shown at the Van Gogh Museum, representing the most important Fauvists (including Matisse, Derain, De Vlaminck and Braque) and German Expressionists (such as Kirchner, Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Pechstein). The selection includes Interior at Collioure (Afternoon Rest) by the Fauvist Henri Matisse, (above)
Autumn Landscape with Boats by the Blaue Reiter artist Wassily Kandinsky,
and the expressive Girl with Cat, Fränzi by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner of the group Die Brücke.
Each is an iconic example of the respective artist’s oeuvre. The private art collection assembled by Werner and Gabrielle Merzbacher is considered one of the finest in the world. All the loans are being shown in the Netherlands for the first time.
Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau, Kohlgruberstrasse, 1908. Photo: Werner and Gabriele Merzbacher Collection.
Van Gogh: ‘the father of us all!’
Vincent van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother Theo that ‘painters being dead and buried, speak to several following generations through their works’. Van Gogh did indeed become a shining example for generations of artists after him. Beginning in 1905, the Fauvists in France and the German Expressionists of Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter looked for ways to heighten the evocative power of their works. Van Gogh’s colourful, animated and emotionally charged paintings offered them a source of inspiration. The vitality of his work encouraged both the Fauvists and the Expressionists in their need to express their emotions through their art. These innovative artists took Van Gogh’s pursuit of freedom in form and colour to a new level. Or, as the Brücke artist Max Pechstein later declared: ‘Van Gogh was the father of us all!’
Inspiration
Maurice de Vlaminck, one of the French Fauvists, wrote:
‘I found in him some of my own aspirations. ...And at the same time a revolutionary sense, an almost religious feeling for the interpretation of nature. When I left the retrospective, my soul was deeply moved’
As a result, de Vlaminck’s paintings were imbued in the years that followed with the same kind of intensity as, for instance, Van Gogh’s shimmering wheatfields. With its colourful combination of bright tones and powerfully defined brushstrokes, The Potato Pickers immediately recalls Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows. De Vlaminck’s decision to structure the composition diagonally further heightens the scene’s dynamism.
Teacher and example
Van Gogh’s inspiration is similarly palpable in the works of the German Expressionists. The Blaue Reiter artist Alexej von Jawlensky went so far as to buy a painting by Van Gogh from Theo van Gogh’s widow. He wrote to her:
‘Van Gogh was to me both mentor and example. As a person and as an artist, he is precious and dear to me. To possess something by his hand was my deepest wish for many years.’
Alexej von Jawlensky, Dark Blue Turban (Helene with Dark Blue Turban), 1910, oil on cardboard mounted on wood, 72 x 69 cm, Merzbacher Kunststiftung
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid 26 June to 30 September 2018.
The monographic exhibition Monet / Boudin presented by the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza offers visitors the first opportunity to discover the relationship between the great Impressionist painter Claude Monet (Paris, 1840 -Giverny, 1926) and his master Eugène Boudin (Honfleur, 1824 -Deauville, 1898), the most important representative of mid-19th-century French plein airpainting.
This joint presentation of their work not only aims to cast light on Monet’s formative years, in which Boudin played an important role, but also to offer a vision of their entire careers and the origins of the Impressionist movement.
Curated by Juan Ángel López-Manzanares, a curator at the Museo Thyssen, the exhibition brings together around 100 works by the two artists, including loans from museums and institutions such as the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, the National Gallery, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, the MuseuNacional deBelas Artes, Río de Janeiro, and the Marunuma Art Park in Japan, as well as from private collections such as the Pérez Simón collection.
The exhibition is structured chronologically and thematically and is divided into eight sections. Monet / Boudinemphasises the two painters’ shared artistic concerns such as their interest in the iconography of modern life as reflected in scenes of summerholiday visitors on the beach at Trouville; changing effects of light, to be seen in most of their oils and pastels; and the largely untamed nature of the Brittany and Normandy coastlines.1. Picturesque landscape
The two artists met for the first time inthe spring of 1856 when they met in the Gravier stationery shop in Le Havre. Boudin, who was the older by 16 years, congratulated Monet on his work as a caricaturist, a field in which he was beginning to gain recognition, and encouraged him to continue studying and painting, inviting him to join him in this activity. At this date Boudin was embarking on his early mature work following a self-taught learning period based on copying the 17th-century Dutch masters. During this period he was producing plein air studies in the tradition of the Barbizon School landscape painting.
Not long after the young Monet accepted Boudin’s offer and started to draw and paint outdoors in the older artist’s company, becoming his student. Although his parents were not happy with this relationship, given that Boudin came from a modest family, Monet learned to depict light accurately, observing and composing landscapes from drawings and oil studies. After two years he possessed enough skill to produce his first canvas intended for public exhibition: View near Rouelles(1858), which depicts the landscape around Le Havre, as does Boudin’s Normandy Landscape(ca.1857-58). Both landscapes are balanced and relatively conventional in the arrangement of the motifs but they effectively capture bright daylight, one of Boudin’s ongoing artistic concerns which he passed on to his pupil Monet.
Over the following years Monet followed Boudin in the study of painters who reached their maturity in the 1830s such as Rousseau and Daubigny. His departure for Paris in 1859 could have removed him from the influence of Boudin but his frequent visits to Le Havre, their correspondence and the two painters’ artistic output demonstrates the close links which they maintained. As a result, the initial relationship between mentor and pupil changed to one of mutual admiration and inspiration.
Marine views
Previously considered a minor genre, from the second quarter of the 19th century marine
Claude Monet.View near Rouelles(1858). Marunuma Art Park, Asaka (Japan)
views became increasingly important and more sought-after by collectors. Boudin’s father was a harbour pilot and his childhood had close connections to the sea. His earliest drawings of boats date from the 1840s but it was from 1854 onwards that he depicted scenes of fishermen with particular frequency.
For both artists their evolution as marine painters was marked by their meeting in 1862 with the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind, considered one of the forerunners of Impressionism along with Boudin.
In addition to following Jongkind’s example Monet also looked at Courbet and Manet’s marine views and began to produce large-scale compositions painted outdoors. One example is
Claude Monet. The Beach at Sainte-Adresse (1867). The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection
The Beach at Sainte-Adresse(1867), one of the most important works from his early phase. In this canvas Monet employed cool, glittering tones which anticipate Impressionism and distance him from the grey tonalities of Boudin’s works. Furthermore, while Boudin tended to separate local Normandy people from Parisians, Monet mixed them together as a single social reality
Beach scenes
Formerly a small fishing village with a long beach, Trouville rapidly became a tourist destination for the middle classes and the aristocracy. Boudin discovered it in the early 1860s and returned every summer to paint the port, quaysides, the River Touques and beach scenes. With the latter he aimed to appeal to a wider clientele, including the summer visitors to the town. However, the fact that Boudin emphasised effects of light and weather over picturesque details meant that these works did not achieve the desired result. One example is
Concert at the Casino of Deauville, which he exhibited without success at the Paris Salon of 1865.
Over the years he opted for smaller, more vibrant compositions aimed at a more limited group of collectors and in 1870 he largely abandoned his beach scenes in order to focus more intensively on marine views, which were more in demand.
Monet and his family also moved to Trouville for the summer of 1870 where he tried out various beach scenes based on those of his master. However, in works such as
Camille on the Beach at Trouville(1870) and
The Beach at Trouville(1870)
Boudin’s anonymous figures, always seen from a distance as elements in the landscape, become specific individuals, including his wife Camille and Boudin’s wife Marie-Anne Guédès.
Pastels: sky studies
Around the late 1850s Boudin started to produce pastel sky studies in which he made use of the material’s flexibility to rapidly capture the appearance of the sky at different times of the day and in different seasons and weather conditions. Among the new generation of artists it was Monet who derived the most direct lesson from these studies, producing more than 100 pastels during his career. The earliest make use of outlines to define the motifs but he soon moved towards simpler compositions based on two or three strips of colour dotted with small, secondary elements.
As he mastered the technique, pastel became an autonomous medium which allowed him to try out compositions and effects that required very rapid work in order to capture variations of light and colour.
In recognition of his role in the emergence of Impressionism Monet invited his master to take part in the First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874.
Boudin exhibited three canvases, four watercolours and six pastels. In addition to five canvases Monet also showed seven pastels, which can be seen as a homage to his mentor. Baptised “the king of the skies” by Corot, Boudin continued to paint works of this type throughout his life, using brighter and more luminous colours in his late period and in the wake of Impressionism.
Variations
In the 1890s Monet’s work underwent a fundamental shift when he started to produce series on a single motif, using a similar viewpoint but painted in different weather conditions and under different types of light. The origins of this concept are largely to be found in the atmospheric variations present in the studies by Boudin, whose interest in changing effects of light on the landscape at different times of day already appears in his sketchbooks of the 1850s and in his pastel sky studies.
In 1878 Monet started to paint various groups of canvases in Vétheuil, including
and The Flood(1881) although the group of works that comes closest to his later series is the 16 oils on the Seine thawing in 1880.
Two years later in Pourville Monet employed the term “series” for the first time in a letter to the art dealer Durand-Ruel. In his subsequent painting campaigns he gradually restricted the viewpoints while increasing the number of canvases on Eugène Boudin motif, firstly devoting half-an-hour a day to each one then reducing this to just 7 minutes a session in order to capture an “effect.”
For his part Boudin executed around 200 variations on the quaysides at Trouville, capturing small differences in the atmospheric conditions. In contrast to Monet his work was intuitive and unsystematic, as well as responding more directly to collectors’ interests. Included in this section are various views of the church at Abbeville from the early 1890s and of the River Touques, all painted at different times of day.
Wild coastline
In the late 1870s Monet and Boudin’s friendship started to cool. This may have been due to Monet’s relationship with Alice Hoschedé before the death of his wife Camille, whom Boudin greatly appreciated, or to the economic crisis of 1875 which seriously affected the art market. Boudin nonetheless maintained his admiration for his former pupil and numerous works from the 1880s and 1890s reveal their shared interests, for example their views of the Normandy cliffs and the Brittany coastline.
In Monet’s paintings of the 1880s human figures lose their importance in comparison to nature. Dating from this period are
Claude Monet. The Needle Rock at Étretat, Low Tide(1883). Private collection, New York
The Needle Rock at Étretat, Low Tide(1883)
and Rocks at Belle-Île, Port Domois(1886).
The Cliff of Aval - Boudin, Eugène | Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza
Years later Boudin also painted at Étretat, executing sketches of boats on the beach and views of the cliffs. In 1897, the year before his death, he travelled around Brittany and painted a number of oils characterised by a mood of calm and balance in contrast to Monet’s more agitated views.
Light, reflections and atmospheric effects
The exhibition of pastels, watercolours and 150 oils by Boudin held at Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1883 definitively established the artist’s reputation. Having achieved a degree of financial stability he moved on in his work from the conservative tastes of his clientele, now also painting for himself and taking the Impressionist innovations into account. Dating from these years are marine views in which evening light is the principal element, such as
Low Tide(1884).
While in the 1880s Monet focused on both the power of the sea and on the study of light and atmospheric effects, in the following decade it was the latter that most attracted his attention together with an exploration of serial painting. The example of Corot, a key reference for both painters, became still more evident in Monet’s work of the 1890s, for example in
The Seine at Port-Villez(1894)
and Morning on the Seine, Giverny(1897).
The latter is part of a series of 24 canvases started outdoors and completed in the studio, all depicting the same stretch of the river but at different times of day.
Travels to the South
For two painters such as Monet and Boudin, who grew up and became painters under the grey and changing skies of Normandy, their encounter with the light of the Mediterranean must have been a revelation. This was certainly true for Monet: following a short trip to the Côte d’Azur and the Italian Riviera in the company of Renoir, in 1884 he lived in Bordighera for several months in order to paint. In 1888 he returned to Antibes where he once again painted the pink light of the Mediterranean.For health reasons Boudin made his first trip to the Midi in 1885, which may have influenced the more colourful palette which he employed from that date onwards.
It was above all during his visit to Beaulieu in 1892 that he fully grasped Mediterranean light while completing his canvases outdoors thanks to the fine weather. Like Monet, in 1893 Boudin went to Antibes and in 1895 he painted more than 70 canvases in Venice, works that he himself considered his “swansong”.
After Boudin’s death in 1898 Monet was on the organising committee of the posthumous exhibition devoted to him. Years later when rereading his correspondence with his master, he acknowledged that Boudin had been one of the first to recognise his abilities and had professed a constant admiration for him. In 1920 Monet fully recognised the importance of Boudin when his told his biographer Gustave Geffroy: “I have said it and I say it again: I owe everything to Boudin.”
Publications:
Catalogue with texts by Juan Ángel López-Manzanares, Laurent Manœuvre, Géraldine Lefebvre and a chronology by Elena Rodríguez; digital publication from the Thyssen Kiosk and a short, explanatory guide.
At the Met Breuer this summer, the exhibition Obsession: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele, and Picasso from the Scofield Thayer Collection will present a selection from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Scofield Thayer Collection of some 50 erotic and evocative watercolors, drawings, and prints by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Pablo Picasso, whose subjects, except for a handful, are nudes. The exhibition will provide a focused look at this important collection and mark the first time this brilliant group of works are being shown together; it also marks the centenary of the death of Klimt and Schiele.
An aesthete and scion of a wealthy family, Scofield Thayer (1889–1982) was co-publisher and editor of the literary magazine the Dial from 1919 to 1926. In this avant-garde journal he introduced Americans to the writings of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence, Arthur Schnitzler, Thomas Mann, and Marcel Proust, among others. He frequently accompanied these writers' contributions with reproductions of modern art. Thayer assembled his large collection of some 600 works-mostly works on paper-with staggering speed in London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna between 1921 and 1923.
While he was a patient of Sigmund Freud in Vienna, he acquired a large group of watercolors and drawings by Schiele and Klimt, artists who at that time were unknown in America. When a selection from his collection was shown at the Montross Gallery in New York in 1924—five years before the Museum of Modern Art opened—it won acclaim. It found no favor, however, in Thayer's native city, Worcester, Massachusetts, that same year when it was shown at the Worcester Art Museum. Incensed, Thayer draw up his will in 1925 leaving his collection to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He withdrew from public life in the late 1920s and lived as a recluse on Martha's Vineyard and in Florida until his death in 1982.
Obsession: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele and Picassofrom the Scofield Thayer Collection is organized by Sabine Rewald, the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Curator for Modern Art in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published by The Met. An essay by James Dempsey, instructor at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an authority on Scofield Thayer, discusses the collector's professional and private life. In her essay, Sabine Rewald discusses in depth the works of the three artists.
Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918). Standing Nude with Orange Drapery (detail), 1914. Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper, 18 1/4 x 12 in. (46.4 x 30.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982
Egon Schiele, Girl (1918), donated to the Met by Scofield Thayer. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Egon Schiele, Reclining Nude (1918), donated to the Met by Scofield Thayer. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Reclining Nude with Drapery
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Artist:
Gustav Klimt (Austrian, Baumgarten 1862–1918 Vienna)
Date: ca. 1912–13
Medium: Graphite
Dimensions:
Sheet: 14 1/2 in. × 22 in. (36.8 × 55.9 cm) Frame: 24 1/2 × 30 1/2 × 1 in. (62.2 × 77.5 × 2.5 cm)
Pablo Picasso, Buste de femme de profil. Femme écrivant, signed Picasso (upper left), oil on canvas, 116.2 by 73.7cm., 45¾ by 29in. Painted in April 1932. Estimate upon request. Courtesy Sotheby’s.
Painted duringPabloPicasso’s ‘year of wonders’, this monumental , yetremarkably tender and intimate , painting o f Marie -Thérèse absorbed in the act of writing evoke sa private moment from the artist’s clandestine relationship with hismost beloved muse. Awakeor asleep, writing or reading, Marie -Thérèse appears in manifold guisesthroughout Picasso’soeuvre . In this painting , Picasso focu ses on her innocence and youthfulness, depicting herserenely penning her thoughts. Appearing at auction for the first time in over two decades ,Bustede femme de profil. Femme écrivant will highlight Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art EveningSale in London on 19 June 2018. In this painting, Marie -Thérèse’s unmistakeable profile and sweep of blonde hair are silhouettedin front of a window at the Château de Boisgeloup, the grand house outside of Paris acquired byPicasso in 1930. Her sensual curves are echoed by the diffused green light emanating fr om thegardens beyond the window – the deliberate juxtaposition of the horizontals and verticals of thewindow frame with the soft curves of her body masterfully emphasising her form. The palette ischaracteristic of Picasso’s key depictions of Marie -Thérèse during this year. The compositionrecalls both his celebrated Cubist paintings and the series of monumental sculpted heads that hecreated in 1931, again inspired by Marie -Thérèse . It is the intensity and passion of the paintingsfrom 1932 that mark them out as unique amongst the artist’s work. Marie -Thérèse Walter entered Picasso’s life one day in January 1927, capturing his attention atfirst sight on the streets of Paris at a time when his turbulent relationship with his wife Olga wasfloundering. An intenselypassionate– and creatively inspiring – relationship,this chance meetingwithMarie -Thérèsegalvanised his life and art . She quickly became a source of creative inspirationand veiled references to her appear in his art from that point on. However, it was only five yearslater in 1932 – following a landmark exhibition at Galerie Georges Petit , Paris – that the artistannouncedMarie -Thérèse as an extraordinary presence in his life and art through his paintings. Picasso almost never painted his muses from life, his depictions being inspired by the memory ofthem and the metamorphic power of his erotic imagination. With Marie -Thérèsein particular,the artist’s inspiration reached fever pitch in the long periods they were forced to spend apart.Here, he evokes her in a quietly contemplative mood – perhapspicturing herloveras she writes . EXHIBITION DATES New York 4 – 16 May Hong Kong 25– 31 MayLondon14– 19 June
At the University of Georgia, the Terry name is synonymous with UGA’s business school, but the influence of C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry extends far beyond that, including to the Georgia Museum of Art. Also on the campus of the university, the museum is the recipient of 14 paintings and works on paper from the Terrys’ collection that will be on view May 12 through August 5 in the exhibition “A Legacy of Giving: C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry.”
It would be rare and marvelous to receive a gift of a single work by Childe Hassam, John Henry Twachtman, Maurice Prendergast, Andrew Wyeth, Ernest Lawson, Winslow Homer, Gifford Beal or John Singer Sargent. To receive works by all of these artists at once, in a single gift, is extraordinary. Until Mrs. Terry made her gift, the museum did not own a painting by Sargent, only a drawing. These works also fill some gaps in the museum’s collection, allowing UGA students and the wider Athens-area community to benefit from seeing them in person.
William U. Eiland, director of the museum, said, “My reaction at hearing from Mrs. Terry that she was making this gift to the museum? Joy. Unaffected, pure joy. And gratefulness, on behalf of generations of students yet to enroll at the university.”
Mary Virginia Terry has said, “My husband and I just felt we wanted to give back because we had such good fortune.” They chose to focus on the arts, hospitals, education and children’s concerns because, “We felt those were important both for the future and for the needs we saw now.” Mrs. Terry is a modest person, who does not love the spotlight, but she accepts public recognition in the hope that her giving will serve as an example to others. For more than half a century, she has provided support to the University of Georgia that has helped it strengthen academic and research programs. The museum is proud and grateful to be among the beneficiaries of their kindness.
John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925) The Portal of S. Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, ca. 1903 Watercolor over pencil on paper 9 1/2 x 13 3/4 inches
Maurice Brazil Prendergast (American, 1859–1924) Autumn Scene, ca. 1920 Oil on canvas 15 1/4 x 19 inches
Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910) Two Girls on a Hillside, 1879 Watercolor over pencil on paper 7 x 10 inches
Christie’s Old Master s Evening Sale on 5 July 2018
Christie’s will offer Portrait of Clara Serena , the Artist's Daughter by Peter Paul Rubens in the London Old Masters Evening Sale on 5 July, during Classic Week (estimate: £3 - 5 million ).
Never intended for public display , this seminal work offers a rare glimpse into the private life of the greatest artist of the Northern Baroque. The portrait is on public view in New York until 5 May, later going on view in Hong Kong from 24 to 28 May, before being exhibited in London in the lead up to the sale .
Henry Pettifer, Head of Old Master Paintings, Christie’s London:
“Rubens’ paintings of his family members, freer and bolder than those of his wealthy clientele, count amongst his greate st achievements in portraiture. This spontaneous likeness of Clara Serena, his only daughter with his wife Isabella Brant , painted around the time of her untimely death at the age of twelve, is extraordinary for its intimacy and timeless appeal. Its appearance on the market this summer comes after the picture has featured in recent high profile exhibitions at the Rubenshuis in Antwerp and the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, and it is the first major work by Rubens to appear at Christie’s in London since the record breaking sale of
Lot and his Daughters in July 2016”
THE SITTER:
The Portrait of Clara Serena belongs with the collection of personal portraits rendered by Rubens of his children. Clara Serena was the beloved first child and only daughter of the artist, with his wife Isabella Brant. Little is known about her life, beyond the few intimately rendered portraits painted by Rubens, before she passed away at the age of just twelve and a half. The identification of the present portrait stems from the sitter’s resemblance to Rubens’s drawing of her mother at the British Museum and painting of Clara Serena at a younger age, in the Liechtenstein Princely Collection .
RE ATTRIBUTION:
In 2013, the Portrait of Clara Serena was deaccessioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art having been considered as by a follower of Rubens. It was only after a subsequent transformative restoration that i t was recognized again as a dazzling autograph work by Rubens, leading to its inclusion in the Rubens in Private exhibition at the Rubenshuis in 2015. More recently, the picture has been the focus of a dedicated exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh and it will be included in the forthcoming volume of the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard by Katlijne Van der Stighelen, due for publication in 2019.
UNIQUE & INTIMATE :
Given the highly personal nature and unique character of this picture , it holds a special place in Rubens’s oeuvre . Unlike any other portrait by the artist , the picture is painted with the intimacy of his preparatory sketches, while the face is more focused and drawn in greater detail, emitting the great psychological compl exity of his finished portraits. The disarming directness with which Clara Serena looks at the viewer was also not typical of contemporary portrait painting, reflecting both the intimacy of the moment shared between father and daughter, and displaying the deep affection with whi ch she was seen through Rubens’ eyes. Though this picture was never intended for public display, Clara Serena’s likeness now lives on as the private memory of the most public artist of the Flemish Baroque. CHRISTIE’S OLD MASTER & BRITISH PAINTINGS EVENING SALE LONDON, 7 JULY 2016
Sir Peter Paul Rubens’s masterpiece, Lot and his Daughters (circa 1613-1614) will be sold by Christie’s as the centerpiece of a curated week of sales, Classic Week*, in London this July. An outstanding example of Rubens’s early maturity and one of the most important paintings by the artist to have remained in private hands. The work has been hidden from public view for over a century and will be exhibited during Christie’s New York Classic Week (8 – 12 April 2016) and in Hong Kong (26 - 30 May 2016), before being offered in London Classic Week, leading the Old Master & British Paintings Evening Sale on 7 July.
Lot and his Daughters boasts a distinguished provenance, once forming part of the collections of wealthy Antwerp merchants; a Governor-General of the Spanish Netherlands; Joseph I Holy Roman Emperor; and the Dukes of Marlborough. It was included in the first volume of The English Connoisseur from 1766 and has since been listed in all the major publications on Rubens’s work. The sale of this painting by the quintessential artist of the Northern Baroque presents a rare opportunity for both international collectors and institutions.
At the time that Rubens painted Lot and his Daughters, his reputation as the most important and fashionable artist in Antwerp had already put him at the centre of the European artistic stage. Having worked in Rome at the court of Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, he was appointed court painter in Brussels to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella in 1609. During this period, Rubens produced some of the most well-known works of his œuvre, including two monumental altarpieces, The Raising of the Cross, commissioned in 1610 for the church of St Walburga, and The Descent from the Cross, painted in 1611–1614 for Antwerp Cathedral. In addition to these public works, Rubens carried out a number of private commissions, instilling traditional religious subjects, such as Lot and his Daughters, with an exciting new energy.
Exceptional Provenance
The recorded provenance of Lot and his Daughters begins with the first known owner Balthazar Courtois, an Antwerp merchant who died in 1668. Listed in the inventory of his estate, the painting was described as a ‘schouwstuck’ (chimneypiece). It has not been established whether Courtois commissioned the painting from Rubens, but the description of it in his Antwerp house accords with the almost certain appearance of this picture in an Interior Scene (circa 1625-1630), Frans Francken II (1581-1642) and attributed to Cornelis de Vos (1584/85–1651).
This magnificent painting has changed hands on only a few occasions. In 1668 it was inherited by Courtois’s son Jan Baptist, it then passed to the wealthy Antwerp merchant Ghisbert van Colen. In 1698 it was bought from van Colen by the military commander and avid collector Governor-General of the Spanish Netherlands, Maximilian II Emanuel (1662–1726), the Wittelsbach Elector of the Holy Roman Empire until his exile. The painting was then given to John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722) in 1706 by Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor (1678–1711), as a trophy in gratitude for the victories at Blenheim and Ramillies.
Marlborough’s collection included at least 10 other pictures by Rubens and placed Lot and his Daughters in the Great Room at Marlborough House in 1740 until eventually being moved to England's greatest early 18th-century country house, Blenheim Palace, where it was hung in the Library in 1766 and in the Dining Room by 1810, paired with Rubens’s Venus and Adonis (also from the collection of Maximilian II Emanuel). Around 1710-1720 the canvas was slightly extended at the top and bottom edges and the fine Blenheim frame in which it still hangs was added to complement the furniture of Blenheim Palace, designed by James Moore. The work remained in the Marlborough collection for at least a century until acquired by the entrepreneur, philanthropist and collector Baron Maurice de Hirsch de Gereuth (1831–1896) from whom it has been passed by descent.
Lot and his Daughters
The Old Testament tale, Lot and his Daughters (Genesis XIX: 30–38), had been a favoured subject with Northern European artists since the Renaissance with notable examples portrayed by Lucas van Leyden, Jan Massys, Joachim Wtewael and Hendrick Goltzius. Exploring the themes of vice and virtue, Lot and his Daughters is a cautionary story, which Rubens returned to throughout his career. Pulsating with life, this canvas illustrates the events after Lot and his family have fled the immoral city of Sodom having escaped to the desolate mountain town of Zoar. His two chaste daughters, fuelled by the desire to continue their lineage following the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, conspired to seduce their father and from who, according to the Bible, Jesus Christ was directly related through David’s great-grandmother Ruth, who was descended from Moab.
Sotheby’s Old Master sales (4–5 July)
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.
Christie's July 9th 2015
RUBENS
The works being offered are led by two superb studies by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, one of the greatest geniuses of the Baroque. Executed with exceptional verve and sensitivity, the Head of a bearded man, in three-quarter-profile, is an outstanding example of Rubens’s ad vivum portraits (estimate: £2-3 million, illustrated above). Painted circa 1620 on a composite panel, which was typical for studies of this type, it shows the artist’s remarkable skill in modelling features and expressing character with a singular spontaneity and bravura.
The second of the studies, painted on a similar scale but completed at a slightly earlier date, is a beautiful modello for Venus and Jupiter, demonstrating Rubens’s masterful delicacy of touch and fluency in execution (estimate: £1.2-1.8 million, illustrated above). Illustrating a story from the first book of the Aeneid, it forms part of a series on the story of Aeneas that Rubens began at some point after 1602. The picture has a particularly distinguished provenance prior to entering the Beit Collection: it formed part of the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds, before being sold in the Reynolds sale at Christie’s in March 1795, and later passing to the Earls of Darnley at Cobham Hall, who owned masterpieces by Titian and Veronese.
John Marin, Stonington, Maine, 1923. Watercolor and charcoal, 21 3/4 x 26 1/4 in. Colby College Museum of Art. Gift of John Marin Jr. and Norma B. Marin, 1973.047
Modern Wonder: The John Marin Collection opens at the Colby College Museum of Art, in Waterville, Maine, from June 5 to August 19, 2018.
“The life of today, so keyed up, so seen, so seemingly unreal yet so real and the eye with so much to see and the ear to hear…. What is it?” John Marin spent his lifetime answering this question. He looked at the towering skyscrapers and bustling streets of Manhattan, the rollicking waters and windy coast of Maine and saw great forces at work. Large or small, manmade or natural, Marin embraced these forces and made their expression the focus of his painting and printmaking. His watercolors, etchings, and oils sparkle and burst with the joy and delight of experiencing what the world looks, sounds, and feels like in a singular moment.
John Marin, New York City View, c. 1925. Watercolor and charcoal, 8 1/2 x 7 1/8 in. Colby College Museum of Art. Gift of John Marin Jr. and Norma B. Marin, 1973.048
Modern Wonder explores the verve and exuberance of John Marin and his art. Pulled from one of the largest collections of the artist’s works in the world, the exhibition covers the length and breadth of his career during the first half of the twentieth century, a period marked by massive technological advancements and the acceleration of everyday American life. With its vigorous lines, bright colors, and dynamic compositions, Marin’s art embodies a thoroughly modern view of the places he loved. The energy emanating from his work captivated audiences during his lifetime and it continues to inspire and astonish today.
Christie’s will offer Portrait of Clara Serena , the Artist's Daughter by Peter Paul Rubens in the London Old Masters Evening Sale on 5 July, during Classic Week (estimate: £3 - 5 million ).
Never intended for public display , this seminal work offers a rare glimpse into the private life of the greatest artist of the Northern Baroque. The portrait is on public view in New York until 5 May, later going on view in Hong Kong from 24 to 28 May, before being exhibited in London in the lead up to the sale .
Henry Pettifer, Head of Old Master Paintings, Christie’s London:
“Rubens’ paintings of his family members, freer and bolder than those of his wealthy clientele, count amongst his greate st achievements in portraiture. This spontaneous likeness of Clara Serena, his only daughter with his wife Isabella Brant , painted around the time of her untimely death at the age of twelve, is extraordinary for its intimacy and timeless appeal. Its appearance on the market this summer comes after the picture has featured in recent high profile exhibitions at the Rubenshuis in Antwerp and the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, and it is the first major work by Rubens to appear at Christie’s in London since the record breaking sale of
Lot and his Daughters in July 2016”
THE SITTER:
The Portrait of Clara Serena belongs with the collection of personal portraits rendered by Rubens of his children.
Clara Serena was the beloved first child and only daughter of the artist, with his wife Isabella Brant. Little is known about her life, beyond the few intimately rendered portraits painted by Rubens, before she passed away at the age of just twelve and a half. The identification of the present portrait stems from the sitter’s resemblance to Rubens’s drawing of her mother at the British Museum and painting of Clara Serena at a younger age, in the Liechtenstein Princely Collection .
RE ATTRIBUTION:
In 2013, the Portrait of Clara Serena was deaccessioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art having been considered as by a follower of Rubens. It was only after a subsequent transformative restoration that i t was recognized again as a dazzling autograph work by Rubens, leading to its inclusion in the Rubens in Private exhibition at the Rubenshuis in 2015. More recently, the picture has been the focus of a dedicated exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh and it will be included in the forthcoming volume of the Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard by Katlijne Van der Stighelen, due for publication in 2019.
UNIQUE & INTIMATE :
Given the highly personal nature and unique character of this picture , it holds a special place in Rubens’s oeuvre . Unlike any other portrait by the artist , the picture is painted with the intimacy of his preparatory sketches, while the face is more focused and drawn in greater detail, emitting the great psychological compl exity of his finished portraits. The disarming directness with which Clara Serena looks at the viewer was also not typical of contemporary portrait painting, reflecting both the intimacy of the moment shared between father and daughter, and displaying the deep affection with whi ch she was seen through Rubens’ eyes. Though this picture was never intended for public display, Clara Serena’s likeness now lives on as the private memory of the most public artist of the Flemish Baroque.
Christ Presented to The People (‘Ecce Homo’) is considered to be among Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn’s (1606 - 1669) most significant achievements in any medium (estimate on request : in the region of $3 - 5million ) . One of the world’s most versatile, innovative, and influential artists, Rembrandt is viewed by many as the greatest printmaker of any generation . Epitomizing an artist at the height of his powers, both artistically and technically, this extr aordinary drypoint of 1655 dates from his t hird decade as a printmaker . Executed on a monumental scale, t he present work is one of only eight known impressions of the celebrated first state of this print and is the last known example in private hands . The other seven known impressions of this state are in major museum collections : Kupferstichkabinett der Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, The British Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Ashmolean Museum, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Musée du Louvre (R othschild Collection) and the Graphische Sammlung Albertina. Offered from The Collection of the l ate Samuel Josefowitz , it is on public view at Christie’s New York until 5 May ; going on view in Hong Kong from 24 to 28 May and then in London from 15 to 28 June and 30 June to 5 July , ahead of being offered for sale during Christie’s Classic Week in London, in the Old Master s Evening Sale on 5 July . Jussi Pylkkanen, Christie’s Global President : “Sam Josefowitz was amongst the greatest Old Master Print collect ors of his generation. Sixty years of connoisseurship and enthusiasm for Rembrandt led him to create an outstanding Rembrandt collection and the eventual acquisition of this masterpiece, which is the last known example of the drypoint in private hands. This impression is a celebration of the skills of Rembrandt, the master printmaker, and Sam Josefowitz, the most scholarly and respected of collectors.”
A masterful work, Christ Presented to The People (‘Ecce Homo’) is an extremely ambitious work, in technique, material and scale. The exceptional quality of this impression highlights Rembrandt ’s sophisticated command of drypoint, a technique which uses a sharp needle to scratch the design onto a copper plate. The rich, velvety line it creates is particularly expressive, but few really fine impressions are possible since printing flattens the tiny shards of copper (known as ‘burr’) which hold the ink.
Impressions on exotic papers were highly prized by collectors for their rarity, and by artist s for the way they held the ink; in this work Rembrandt used oriental paper, imported from Japan at great exp ense by the East India Company.
Global interest in the leading Old Masters continues to grow and Christie’s is proud to bring this magnificent drypoint to the open market at such an auspicious tim e. Christie’s is the market leader for works by the artist, having set the world record price at auction for Rembrandt when the oil
Portrait of a man with arms akimbo sold for £20.2 million in 2009.
The fact that Christ Presented to The People (‘Ecce Homo’) will be offered as part of Christie’s Old Master Evening Sale is a recognition of the rarity and importance of this work.
Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa Jun 10, 2018 - Sep 09, 2018
This summer, Philbrook Museum of Art, in Tulsa, presents an original exhibition celebrating the groundbreaking work of three legendary Impressionist artists: Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissarro.
Featuring more than 90 prints and key paintings on loan from institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Gallery of Art. Innovative Impressions is the first in-depth study to focus on the prints of these three artists together. It explores their remarkable graphic work and the techniques they developed through collaboration and experimentation.
The artists of the Impressionist group are known for their innovative painting methods– approaches that redefined the formal qualities as well as the subjects that were acceptable in art. Three of these innovators, Cassatt, Degas, and Pissarro, similarly expanded the boundaries of the print medium. In 1879 and 1880 they formed the most active core of a group of artists planning to create a periodical featuring their prints.
Through this collaborative effort, they challenged each other to develop a new language of printmaking whose visual and expressive potential went well beyond the traditional reproductive purpose of the medium. Indeed, the intimacy of small-scale works on paper at times spurred the artists to be even more daringly creative than they were in their paintings. Their interactions and engagement with printmaking varied over time, culminating in the 1890s, when each developed distinctive methods of introducing color into their work.
Innovative Impressions highlights the artists’ working processes by including multiple states, or versions, of several prints, allowing viewers to appreciate the experimental techniques through which the images were developed.
The exhibition also includes examples of Cassatt’s 1890–91 series of ten color prints–one of the most significant achievements of her career–as well as several prints that have rarely been exhibited,
Camille Pissarro
and a group of little-known monotypes by Pissarro, who was probably inspired by Degas to take up this technique.
“They were an unlikely trio of artists, from very different backgrounds,” said exhibition curator Sarah Lees. “Yet they learned from each other and from other artists in developing unusual approaches to making prints, especially when they worked together in 1879 and 1880. After their publication project fell through, they continued to keep up with each other, although sometimes their relations became more competitive than collaborative. But this exchange of ideas seems to have played a significant role in their creative processes.”
Edgar Degas:
Catalog
This hardbound, full-color edition with an illuminating essay by Philbrook curator Sarah Lees, this catalog tells the story of this stunning Philbrook-originated exhibition, the first in-depth study of Cassatt, Degas, and Pissarro together.
June 3, 2018–September 16, 2018 National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. October 14, 2018–January 20, 2019
Displaying exquisite designs, technical virtuosity, and sumptuous color, chiaroscuro woodcuts are among the most striking prints of the Renaissance. First introduced in Italy around 1516, the chiaroscuro woodcut, which involves printing an image from two or more woodblocks inked in different hues, was one of the most successful early forays into color printing in Europe. Taking its name from the Italian for “light” (chiaro) and “shade” (scuro), the technique creates the illusion of depth through tonal contrasts. Over the course of the century, the chiaroscuro woodcut underwent sophisticated technical advancements in the hands of talented printmakers such as Ugo da Carpi, Antonio da Trento, Niccolò Vicentino, Nicolò Boldrini, and Andrea Andreani, and engaged some of the most celebrated painters of the time, including Titian, Raphael, and Parmigianino. The medium evolved in format, scale, and subject, testifying to the vital interest of artists and collectors in the range of aesthetic possibilities it offered. For this first major presentation of the subject in the United States, some 100 rare chiaroscuro woodcuts will be brought together alongside related drawings, engravings, and sculpture. With its accompanying scholarly catalogue, The Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy explores the materials and means of its production, offering a fresh perspective on the remarkable art of the chiaroscuro woodcut.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents The Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy , the first major exhibition on the subject in the United States. Organized by LACMA in association with the National Gallery of Art Washington, this groundbreaking show brings together some 100 rare and seldom - exhibited chiaroscuro woodcuts alongside related drawings, engravings, and sculpture, selected from 19 museum collections.
With its accompanying scholarly catalogue, the exhibition explores the creative and technical history of this innovative, early color printmaking technique, offering the most comprehensive study on the remarkable art of the chiaroscuro woodcut.
Displaying exquisite designs, technical virtuosity, and sumptuous colo r, chiaroscuro woodcuts are among the most visually arresting and beautiful prints of the Renaissance. First introduced in Italy around 1516, the chiaroscuro woodcut was the most successful early foray into color printing in Europe. Taking its name from the Italian terms for “light” ( chiaro ) and “ dark ” ( scuro ), the technique involves printing an image from two or more woodblocks inked in different hues, employing tonal contrasts to create three - dimensional effects .
A distinctive characteristic of the tech nique was the ability to print the same image in a variety of palettes. Over the course of the century, the chiaroscuro woodcut engaged some of the most celebrated painters and draftsmen of the time, including Titian, Raphael, and Parmigianino , and underwent sophisticated technical advancements in the hands of talented printmakers active throughout the Italian peninsula.
The medium evolved in subject, format, and scale, testifying to the vital fascination among artists and collectors in the ran ge of aesthetic possibilities it offered. Embraced as a means of disseminating designs and appreciated as works of art in their own right, these novel prints exemplify the rich imagery and technical innovation of the Italian Renaissance.
The Chiaroscuro Woodcut is organized chronologically , exploring the contributions of the major Italian workshop s to chart the technique ’s development through the 16 th century .
It begins with Ugo da Carpi, the Italian progenitor of the technique, and his work in Venice and Rome (c. 1516 – 27 ).
It continues to the workshops of Parmigianino in Bologna (1527 – 30); Niccolò Vicentino (c. 1540s); Domenico Beccafumi in Siena (c. 1540s); the dissemination of the technique in smaller workshops throughout the Italian peninsula (c. 1530s – 80s); and concludes with Andrea Andreani in Florence, Siena, and Mantua (c. 1580s – 1610).
Ugo da Carpi
In 1516, Ugo claimed he had discovered a “new method of printing in chiaro et scuro [ light and dark ], ” and applied for a privilege from the Venetian Senate that would protect the process against copyists. Although Northern European artists had developed the technique a decade earlier, this hardly diminishes the significance of Ugo’s contribution to the medium , which was to become mo st widely practiced in Italy.
Through his technical proficiency and distinguished associations with Titian in Venice and Raphael in Rome, Ugo created chiaroscuro woodcuts of remarkable aesthetic sophistication and forged a new market for these prints. Within a brief period, he advanced the technique from a basic two - block linear mode
(Hercules and the Nemean Lion, after Raphael or Giulio Romano, c. 1517 – 18), to a more complex tonal approach using as many as four blocks
(Aeneas and Anchises, after Raphael, 1518).
Ugo occasionally collaborated directly with a designer.
His Saint Jerome,c. 1516, transmits the vitality of Titian’s energetic draftsmanship, which may have been laid down by the artist onto the block or transferred from a drawing.
Artist: Ugo da Carpi (Italian, Carpi ca. 1480–1532 Bologna) Artist: After Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio or Santi) (Italian, Urbino 1483–1520 Rome) Date: 1510–30 Medium: Chiaroscuro woodcut printed from two blocks in green-blue and black ink Dimensions: Sheet: 11 15/16 x 8 7/8 in. (30.3 x 22.6 cm) Classification: Prints Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1922 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number: 22.67.80
Marcantonio Raimondi (Italian, Argini (?) ca. 1480–before 1534 Bologna (?))
Artist:
After Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio or Santi) (Italian, Urbino 1483–1520 Rome)
Artist:
or Giulio Romano (Italian, Rome 1499?–1546 Mantua)
Date:
ca. 1520–22
Medium:
Engraving
Dimensions:
12 1/16 x 8 3/8 in. (30.6 x 21.2 cm)
Classification:
Prints
Credit Line:
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1949
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number:
49.97.121
But he also worked independently, availing himself of engravings as models for his chiaroscuros ( Ugo da Carpi, after Marcantonio Raimondi, Hercules and Antaeus , c. 1517 – 18 , and Marcantonio Raimondi, after Raphael, Hercules and Antaeus, engraving, c. 1517 – 18). While Ugo did not conceive his own designs, he performed or closely supervised all other aspects of production. His pioneering works, characterized by an admirable refinement of cutting, ink preparation, and printing, set the foundation for the technique’s efflorescence in Italy through the Renaissance.
Francesco Mazzola, called Parmigianino
The painter Francesco Mazzola, called Parmigianino, demonstrated a keen appreciation for prints as a means of disseminating inventions and expressin g be autiful draftsmanship. While his printmaking ventures began in Rome around 1526 , his investment in the practice deepened in Bologna, where he resettled in 1527 (following the sack of Rome ) until his return to his native Parma in 1530. There, he produced his own etchings and began his engagement with chiaroscuro. The chiaroscuro woodcuts issued from Parmigianino’s Bolognese shop match the painter’s graceful draftsmanship with skilled cutting, fine inks, and exacting printing, revealing the intimacy of his collaboration with his two cutters, Ugo da Carpi and Antonio da Trento.
Ugo’s masterwork Diogenes, after Parmigianino, (c. 1527 – 30) , an unparalleled achievement in the history of the technique , dates to this period. It depicts the Greek philosopher Diogenes seated before the barrel he made his home with a plucked chicken to the right, which allude s to his mockery of Plato’s description of man as a species of featherless biped .
Working closely with Parmigianino, Ugo orchestrated the designs of four interdependent and overlapping blocks to model the dynamic figure, capture the fluid movement of his drapery, and render the distinctive texture of the fowl’s exposed skin .
In contrast to Ugo’s painterly approach, Antonio’s refined cutting of supple, calligraphic strokes, witnessed in Nude Man Seen from Behind (Narcissus) , after Parmigianino, (c. 1527 – 30), sensitively transmits Parmigianino’s fluent drawing hand. (see below)
Impressions printed in different palettes demonstrate how changes in color not only alter tonal relationships, but equally affect the mood and treatment of a subject. examines the chiaroscuros of the most prolific Renaissance workshop.
Vicentino
While little biographic information is known about Vicentino, his name implies origins in the Veneto, and Giorgio Vasari (the 16 th - century artists’ biographer ) placed his activity after Parmigianino’s death in 1540.
Although some uncertainty has surrounded the attribution of many of Vicentino’s unsigned prints, study of cutting techniques , printing characteristics, and publishing histories provides new grounds for establishing his workshop’s oeuvre.
Most of his chiaroscuros were modeled on Italian designs from the mid - 1510s to the late 1530s, primarily ones by Parmigianino
( Circe Drinking [ Circella ] , after Parmigianino, c. 1540s )
and Raphael (attributed to Raphael, Miraculous Draught of Fishes, c. 1514 , and
Attributed to Niccolò Vicentino (fl. c.1530–50) after Raphael (1483–1520)
Chiaroscuro woodcut, printed from three blocks | 25.5 x 36.6 cm | RCIN 853019
Vicentino, Miraculous Draught of Fishes, after Raphael, c. 1540s ).
However, as Vicentino commonly worked from drawings independently of their creators, the chronology of his output remains unclear. Vicentino’s workshop introduced strikingly bold, saturated colors to the Italian chiaroscuro woodcut as evidenced in multiple impressions of Saturn, after Pordenone, c. 1540s, and its production prioritized expediency, pointing to the technique ’s increased commercialization. The substantial survival of impressions in diverse palettes testifies at once to the success of Vicentino’s practice and to the broadening audience for Italian chiaroscuro woodcuts.
Domenico Beccafumi
The foremost artistic personality of his native Siena, Beccafumi was charged with many of the city’s most prestigious commissions for paintings, marble inlay designs, and sculpture. He turned to printmaking late in his life, producing nine pure chiaroscuro woodcuts and six engravings printed with tonal woodblocks. Among Italian chiaroscurists, he is unique for having designed and cut his own blocks, and his prints are immediate, spirited expressions of his remarkable vision. The artist probed the possibilities of the chiaroscuro process at each stage of production. He used unconventional tools for cutting, resorted occasionally to printing by hand, and exploited fully the technique’s inherent potential for variation, changing the manner he inked and printed his blocks .
Among his most mature works are his closely related
Apostle with a Book
and Saint Philip ( both c. 1540s) , which are striking for their ambitious scale, bold palette, and palpably energetic cutting that assert the material of the wood Like his paintings and drawings, his prints display his fertile invention, bold draftsmanship, and fluent expression of dramatic chiaroscuro. reveals how, alongside the major practitioners, other Italian painters and printmakers also explored the chiaroscuro woodcut to great creative ends. The designs of Titian, Raphael and his circle, and Parmigianino, which were vital to the development of the technique, continued to be important sources through the middle of the century.
However, as enthusiasm for the novel technique spread to new artistic centers throughout the peninsula, different styles and manners were espoused. Notably, the painters Antonio Campi, Federico Barocci, and Marco Pino (Giovanni Gallo, after Marco Pino, Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist , 1570s – 80s ) introduced the technique to Cremona, Urbino, and Naples, cities that were not major print publishing centers.
Nicolò Boldrini
Moreover, the introduction of new subjects, including landscape and genre by printmakers such as Nicolò Boldrini, discloses a continued ambition to innovate. Boldrini ’s magnificent Tree with Two Goats, late 1560s, is the only treatment of pure landscape in Italian chiaroscuro Production in these smaller workshops, often by artists and printmakers who engaged only occasionally with the technique, was generally limited in numbers.
Yet despite more episodic and attenuated production , the appreciation for chiaroscuro woodcuts was undoubtedly sustained through these decades. Crucially, as the century advanced, the great variety of prints that became available elicited critical standards in their appreciation among an ever more discerning audience.
Andrea Andreani
In a career spanning three decades, printmaker Andrea Andreani produced some 35 chiaroscuro woodcuts. He primarily took up the designs of artists in the various centers of his activity — namely Florence, Siena, and his native Mantua — working with esteemed living artists and adopting the inventions of great masters of earlier generations.
This section explores the printmaker who displayed a remarkable talent for establishing artistic connections and cultivating the favor of an elite local patronage.
Andreani always acted as his own publisher, and his output appears aimed principally at high - end collectors and art connoisseurs. Andreani brought great ambition to the medium, quickly becoming its most accomplished practitioner of late century. Notably, he produced the first chiaroscuro woodcuts in Italy composed from two or more sheets from multiple sets of blocks. These prints achieve a grand pictorial scale that rivals the impact of painting, signaling an important shift in function and taste.
Andreani also broadened the scope of subjects (for example, A Skull , after Giovanni Fortuna (?), c. 1588 , a compositionally sparse but technically complex chiaroscuro that is a vivid reminder of human mortality); moreover, he looked beyond traditional graphic sources for his models, including works of sculpture, bronze reliefs, and marble intarsia.
Three different views of
The Rape of the Sabine Women (153) By Giambologna. Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence.
Giambologna’s famous Florentine marble sculpture, Rape of a Sabine, were both Andreani’s first chiaroscuro woodcuts as well as the earliest Italian ones to record a sculptural work
The Rape of a Sabine. about 1584. Andrea Andreani (Italian, 1558/59–1629), After Giambologna (Jean Boulogne) (Flemish (worked in Italy), 1529–1608) ..
After 1600, Andreani shifted his practice to republish the chiaroscuro woodcuts of an earlier generation of printmakers. These final years of his career were spent looking back at the chiaroscuro medium, which he himself had brought to new levels of technical and visual refin ement. A vital aspect of the scholarly research were collaborative studies by art historians, conservators, and conservation scientists that explored the materials and means of chiaroscuro production .
The Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy is the first exhibition on the subject to integrate such interdisciplinary , technical research. LACMA’s presentation features findings from the conservation and material science investigations , including examples of some of the commonly used ink colorants , recreations of the printing process, and an overview of an extensive conservation treatment endeavor.
The Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy by Naoko Takahatake (Editor), with contributions by Jonathan Bober , Jamie Gabbarelli , Antony Griffiths , Peter Parshall , and Linda Stiber Morenus. Featuring more than 100 prints and related drawings, this book documents a decade of pioneering interdisciplinary research , combining studies from the fields of art history, conservation, and material science to present the first comprehensive assessment of the subject. Essays and entries by noted scholars trace the chiaroscuro woodcut’s creative origins , evolution , and recep tion , and provide authoritative interpretations of their materials and means of production. Brimming with full - color illustrations of rare , exquisite works, this groundbreaking study offers a fresh interpretation of these remarkable prints, which exemplify the beauty and innovation of Italian Renaissance art
(Right) Antonio da Trento, after Parmigianino, Nude Man Seen from Behind (Narcissus) , c. 1527 – 30, chiaroscuro woodcut from 2 blocks in light brown and black, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Muriel a nd Philip Berman Gift, acquired from the John S. Phillips bequest of 1876 to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, with funds contributed by Muriel and Philip Berman, gifts (by exchange) of Lisa Norris Elkins, Bryant W. Langston, Samuel S. White 3rd a nd Vera White, with additional funds contributed by John Howard McFadden, Jr., Thomas Skelton Harrison, and the Philip H.and A.S.W. Rosenbach Foundation, 1985, 1985 - 52 - 556, photo courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art;
Joslyn Art Museum June 2 through September 9, 2018
Treasures of British Art 1400–2000: The Berger Collection presents a rare opportunity to view one of the most important collections of British art in America. The paintings in this exhibition tell the complex history of Great Britain and how matters such as religious conflict, the rise and fall of the monarchy, industrialization, trade expansion, colonialism, and European influences shaped British artistic identity. With such a breadth of historical material and a diverse representation of subject matter, there is something for everyone to enjoy in this remarkable exhibition. Treasures of British Art 1400–2000: The Berger Collection is organized by the Denver Art Museum.
The exhibition is made possible by the Berger Collection Educational Trust. Treasures of British Art opens to the public at Joslyn Art Museum on Saturday, June 2, and continues through Sunday, September 9. About the Berger Collection Beginning in the mid-1990s, mutual fund fi nancier William M.B. Berger and his wi fe, Bernadette, set out to assemble a collection of British art that would reflect the historical and cultural significance of Great Britain.
In the course of three years, they amassed over 200 works dating from the mid-14th ce ntury to the present day, providing a remarkable survey of the development of art in Britain. In 1999, the Bergers created The Berger Collection Educational Trust and placed their vast collection on long-term loan to the Denver Art Museum (DAM), transforming the institution's holdings of European painting.
In recent months, the Trust has gifted 65 paintings from the collection to DAM. Treasures of British Art showcases 50 masterworks from this unique collection, many of them part of the gift to DAM, charti ng the course of British painting over six centuries. The diverse selection includes religious works, history paintings, portraiture, landscapes, and sporting scenes by both famous and less well-known artists, including Anthony van Dyck, Thomas Gainsborough, Benjamin West, Angelica Kauffman, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler, among others.
Selected highlights:
Landscape
Already in the eighteenth century, in creasing numbers of British artists traveled abroad to explore foreign landscapes and new subject matter. As part of the Grand Tour, Rome was the ultimate destination for artists seeking to experience the riches of antiquity and the Renaissance first hand. Over the course of the 19 th century, rising imperialism and exploration resulted in travel to more distant locations such as the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia.
Scottish artist David Roberts toured Spain, Morocco, Egypt, and the Near East, producing extensive topographical views of the locations he visited. He painted this landscape following a visit to Italy in 1853, the final stop on his travels before returning to London that same year. Although many of Roberts’ views are topographically correct, this image of St. Peter’s Basilica, in which much of the bustling city of Rome is omitted, is the result of the artist ’s rich imagination.
Sporting Art
From the 17th to 19th century, sporting scenes — representations of rural pastimes like hunting, games, and horseraces — were a distinguishing feature of British artistic identity. Horses became enormously pop ular among aristocratic sportsmen who commissioned portraits of their prized animals.
Although largely self-taught, George Stubbs is considered one of Britain’s greatest horse painters for his ability to combine rigorous anatomical accuracy with sensitive observation of his subjects. This painting depicts a majestic bay hunter, an ideal horse for hunting across open country, standing before a gently receding landscape.
Religion
When Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church and established the Church of England in 1534, religious images that had once been regarded as instruments of devotion became suspect for their potential to be used as idols and were subs equently removed from churches and monasteries.
Out of more than 30,000 lost altarpieces, this stunning panel is among the few to have survived the widespread destruction of such imagery during the English Reformation. This painting of Christ’s crucifixion is one of the most important objects in the Berger Collection and is currently the best- preserved religious panel painting of its period in existence. William M.B. Berger considered it the linchpin of his collection and faced fierce competition on the market when he purchased it in 1997.
Portraiture
When the patronage of re ligious art decreased dram atically because of the emergence of Protestantism, secular subject matter, including portraiture, increased in popularity among the royal court and aristocracy.
Foreign artists with international reputations were most popular for such commissions and consequently immigrated to England to work for the crown, exercising enormous influence on the development of the visual arts in Britain. Flemish artist Anthony van Dyck arrived in London in the early 17th century and is credited with revolutionizing the British portrait tradition.
As court painter to Charles I (reigned 1625 to 1649), Van Dyck portrayed his subjects with the elegance and virtuosity of Italian Renaissance painters, providing prestige and distinction to court cult ure of the period. In this work, the widowed Lady Dacre holds a double-headed rose that signifies both lost and future love in the fading and blooming blossoms. Modern Art The social and technological advances of the la te 19th and early 20th centuries as well as two world wars compelled artists to address the comp exities of the modern world, resulting in a profusion of artistic styles and expressive concerns.
Influenced by French artistic achievements of the period, specifically the Neo-Impressionist technique known as pointillism, Claude Francis Barry focused on shimmering cityscapes illuminated by fireworks. This painting represents the celebration held in London on July 19, 1919, to commemorate the end of World War I. Employing small dots of color, Barry featured the spectacular fireworks display over the important London landmarks of Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Bridge.
Courtesy of The Berger Collection at the Denver Art Museum
"Edward, Prince of Wales," painted by Hans Holbein the Younger, is an example of early British art on display at the Portland Museum of Art.
Courtesy of The Berger Collection at the Denver Art Museum
"The Crucifixion" from 1395 is a rare work on view at the Portland Museum of Art's "Treasures of British Art" show.
Benjamin West (1738–1820), Queen Charlotte, ca. 1776, oil on canvas, The Berger Collection at the Denver Art Museum, TL-19057; (
David Roberts (1796–1864), St. Peter’s, Looking Back on Rome, 1855, oil on canvas, Gift of the Berger Collection Educational Fund, 2018.17;
George Stubbs (1724–1806), A Saddled Bay Hunter, 1786, oil on panel, Promised Gift of the Berger Collection Educational Fund, TL-18021;
Courtesy of The Berger Collection at the Denver Art Museum
"Edward, Prince of Wales," painted by Hans Holbein the Younger, is an example of early British art on display at the Portland Museum of Art.
Courtesy of The Berger Collection at the Denver Art Museum
"Queen Charlotte," painted by Benjamin West in 1776, is one of 50 masterworks on view at the Portland Museum of Art's "Treasures of British Art" show.
British School, The Crucifixion, ca. 1395, tempera and oil with gilded tin relief on oak panel, Promised Gift of the Berger Collection Educational Fund, TL-18011;
Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), Dorothy, Lady Dacre, ca. 1633, oil on canvas, Promised Gift of the Berger Collection Educational Fund, TL-18887;
Sir Thomas Lawrence, PRA, Portrait of a Lady, ca. early 1790s. Oil on paper mounted on canvas; 30 x 25 in. (76 x 63.5 cm). The Berger Collection.
Sir Claude Francis Barry (1883– 1970), Victory Celebrations, 1919, oil on canvas, The Berger Collection at the Denver Art Museum, TL-24828, Reproduced by kind permission of Amyl Holdings SA, owners of the worldwide copyright to the works of Sir Claude Francis Barry, Bart. 1883–1970
Sir Claude Francis Barry, "Victory Celebrations," 1919.
Hans Eworth, “Queen Elizabeth I,” circa 1565-70.
Thomas Gainsborough, A Coastal Landscape, 1782-84. Oil on canvas; 25 x 30 in. (63.5 x 76.2 cm). The Berger Collection.
inSThis summer at the Legion of Honor, Truth and Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelites and the Old Masters is the first major international exhibition to assemble works by England’s nineteenth-century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with the medieval and Renaissance masterpieces that inspired them.
Through important loans of paintings, works on paper, and decorative arts from international collections, as well as more than 30 works drawn from the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the exhibition will demonstrate the Pre-Raphaelites’ fascination with Italian masters, including Fra Angelico, Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, and Paolo Veronese, as well as northern Renaissance painters such as Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling.
“This exhibition is a remarkable curatorial accomplishment,” says Max Hollein, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums. “Never before have extraordinary masterpieces such as
Botticelli’s Idealized Portrait of a Lady (Simonetta Vespucci) (1475, Städel Museum, Frankfurt)
Botticelli’s Idealized Portrait of a Lady (Simonetta Vespucci),
Raphael’s Self Portrait,
Van Eyck’s The Annunciation (ca. 1434/1436, National Gallery, Washington, DC
and Van Eyck’s The Annunciation
been displayed with Pre-Raphaelite treasures
John Everett Millais,Mariana.1851, Tate, London
including Mariana by John Everett Millais,
William Holman Hunt (English,1827-1905) The Lady of Shalott, c.1890 - 1905 Oil on canvas, 74 1/4 x 57 5/8 in. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund,1961.470 Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
Loans from major museum collections in Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in the United States have been gathered to explore how the renegade Pre-Raphaelites, represented by their most beloved works, engaged with the art of the past. The subject of how artists relate to their predecessors is eternal and one that still very visibly consumes artists of our own time.”
In 1848—a year of political revolution across Europe—seven young Englishmen with aspirations to rebel against the art world formed a secret artistic alliance. Calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the artists—including William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Everett Millais—opposed the Royal Academy of Art’s prevailing aesthetic tenets embodied by its first president, Sir Joshua Reynolds, whom they christened “Sir Sloshua.”
They appropriated the mandate that artists should seek truth in nature, “rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing.”
“The Pre-Raphaelites were deeply concerned with and inspired by their predecessors, but the name they chose for their brotherhood is a complicated misnomer,” says Melissa Buron, Director of the Art Division at the Fine Arts Museums and the exhibition’s curator. “In their first phase, the Pre-Raphaelites renounced the idealized figures depicted by High Renaissance painters who were followers of Raphael (the “Raphaelites”), esteeming early Italian artists instead. As they matured, they also emulated Raphael, and even later artists such as the sixteenth-century Venetian painter, Veronese.”
Although the Pre-Raphaelites’ initial style ostensibly rejected the aesthetics of Raphael, his followers, and the Baroque artists, these parameters fluctuated over the course of each artist’s career. Examples from Rossetti’s mature period, such as
Monna Vanna (1866, Tate, London)
and Veronica Veronese (1872, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington),
included in the exhibition, are perhaps the most evocative of this development.
These sumptuous paintings reveal a surprising shift in the appreciation for the Italian Renaissance, particularly sixteenth-century Venetian paintings.
Truth and Beauty will also trace the Brotherhood through the nineteenth-century “rediscovery” of Botticelli by English art critics and artists, which paralleled efforts by the second-generation Pre-Raphaelites to revive tempera painting techniques and materials.
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, "Love and the Maiden," 1877. Oil, old paint and gold leaf on canvas, 54 x 79 in. (137.2 x 200.7 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, European Art Trust Fund, Grover A. Magnin Bequest Fund and Dorothy Spreckels Munn Bequest Fund, 2002.176
The Fine Arts Museums’ masterpiece Love and the Maiden (1877) by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, painted in Florence, reflects the influence of the artist’s travels in Italy, and will be displayed near Botticelli’s Idealized Portrait of a Lady (Simonetta Vespucci) (1475, Städel Museum, Frankfurt). Six paintings by Botticelli will be on view—the most ever assembled for an exhibition on the West Coast.
Yet the Pre-Raphaelites’ sources of inspiration extended beyond the Italian old masters. Their subjects’ angular postures, the inclusion of symbolic details, and the jewel-toned color palettes of their paintings also emulated early Netherlandish artists, including Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling, whose panels Rossetti and Holman Hunt admired in Bruges on an 1849 “Pre-Raphaelite pilgrimage.”
This exhibition marks the first time that these iconic artworks—including Van Eyck’s The Annunciation (ca. 1434/1436, National Gallery, Washington, DC) and Millais’ dazzling Mariana (1851, Tate, London)—will be on view for West Coast audiences.
More than 30 paintings will be on loan from 25 private collections and museums including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the National Gallery, London; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. The Pre-Raphaelites’ attraction to their artistic forebears was not just in painting; Truth and Beauty will also feature books, furniture, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, tapestries, textiles, and works on paper. These multimedia arrangements will highlight the nuanced paradoxes of the Pre-Raphaelite mission, namely their efforts to be fundamentally modern by emulating the past, as well as their dichotomous criticism and veneration of Raphael and his artistic impact.
This dazzling book examines the inspiration behind the work of the Pre-Raphaelites and offers comparisons between the radical 19th-century artists and the masterworks they revered.
Started in the early 19th century by a group of British painters who rejected the sovereignty of the Royal Academy, the Pre-Raphaelites embraced the natural world and bright colors--as opposed to the dark palettes and amorphous lines that emerged in the wake of the Renaissance. Their mission was to be fundamentally modern by emulating the past. Now readers can appreciate their achievements in this volume that offers side-by-side comparisons of 19th-century masterpieces with the 15th- and 16th-century Early Italian and Early Netherlandish paintings that inspired them.
Veronese (1528-1588), Lucretia, ca. 1580-1583. Oil on canvas, 42⅞ x 35⅝ inches. Gemälderie of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (1561). Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Exquisite reproductions of works by Giotto, Fra Angelico, van Eyck, Botticelli, Titian, Veronese, and Raphael are presented alongside examples by William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and others. The book traces the evolution of the Pre-Raphaelites, and details how these painters were exposed to the early masters as they traveled and encountered the finest European collections.
The volume also features decorative arts, including stained glass and tapestries in emulation of Flemish and French textiles as well as "medievalized" ecclesiastic decorations. The result is an illuminating examination that delves into the Pre-Raphaelites' aesthetic vocabulary and broadens our understanding of their motives and inspiration.
Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on 20 June 2018
Pablo Picasso,Femme dans un fauteuil, 1942, Estimate on Request
Pablo Picasso’s Femme dans un fauteuil of 1942, will be a leading highlight of Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Saleon 20 June 2018. One of a major series of full-scale portraits, painted during the war, Femme dans un fauteuil depicts Picasso’s great muse of the period Dora Maar, the surrealist photographer and painter. Dora brought great colour, beauty and vivacity into Picasso’s life during the difficultperiods of the Spanish Civil War and the German occupation of Paris. Dora Maar’s presence in Picasso’s life,from the moment they met in 1935 until the time their relationship ended around 1945, inspired some of the greatest portraits of the artist’s prolific career. Femme dans un fauteuil remained in the artist’s collection until his death when it passed toJacqueline Picasso and was eventually sold through the agency of Picasso’s dealer, Galerie Louise Leiris in Paris.
It is a painting that has been rarely exhibited having remained in the artist’s family for many years. It was first shown in an exhibition of Jacqueline Picasso’s collection in 1986 and has largely disappeared from public view since that time.
Among the most highly worked portraits of Dora that Picasso painted during the Second World War, Femme dans un fauteuil features the iconic distortions which dominated his visions of his raven-haired muse and is notable for its strikingly beautiful colours and the dynamic way in which Picasso has described the sitter’s body. Many of the greatest depictions of Dora of the 1940s share the vibrant colours and dynamism of the present painting and it is perhaps for this reason that it was kept in the Picasso family for so many years.What is most unusual about the work is that it has been so rarely exhibited. Created in April 1942, Femme dans un fauteuil was executed whilst Picasso wasliving in occupied Paris. Although he had received offers of sanctuary from friends in the United States and Mexico at the outbreak of the conflict, Picasso chose to remain in France, living a quiet life in his studio at 7 rues des Grands-Augustins. Labelled a ‘degenerate’ artist during the Nazi campaign against modern art, the artist’s presence in the city did not go unnoticed by the German forces. While he was allowed to continue to work, Picasso was forbidden from exhibiting any of his art publicly. He remained under close and constant observation by the Gestapo, and his studio was visited on a number of occasions, during which he was questioned as to the whereabouts of friends and former colleagues now in hiding. Jussi Pylkkänen, Global President, Christie’s:
“Dora Maar is without question Picasso’s most recognisable muse who inspired him throughout the war years in Europe. She remained a beacon of hope, beauty and compassion during this difficult period. We are honoured to have the opportunity tosell such a major work by Picasso, the Mozart of the 20thCentury, which has rarely been seen in public since its acquisition from the family many years after the artist’s death. It is a complex and striking portrait of Dora at her beautiful and noble best.”
Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art EveningSale in London on 19 June 2018. In this painting, Marie -Thérèse’s unmistakeable profile and sweep of blonde hair are silhouettedin front of a window at the Château de Boisgeloup, the grand house outside of Paris acquired byPicasso in 1930. Her sensual curves are echoed by the diffused green light emanating fr om thegardens beyond the window – the deliberate juxtaposition of the horizontals and verticals of thewindow frame with the soft curves of her body masterfully emphasising her form.
The palette ischaracteristic of Picasso’s key depictions of Marie -Thérèse during this year. The compositionrecalls both his celebrated Cubist paintings and the series of monumental sculpted heads that hecreated in 1931, again inspired by Marie -Thérèse . It is the intensity and passion of the paintingsfrom 1932 that mark them out as unique amongst the artist’s work. Marie -Thérèse Walter entered Picasso’s life one day in January 1927, capturing his attention atfirst sight on the streets of Paris at a time when his turbulent relationship with his wife Olga wasfloundering. An intenselypassionate– and creatively inspiring – relationship,this chance meetingwithMarie -Thérèsegalvanised his life and art . She quickly became a source of creative inspirationand veiled references to her appear in his art from that point on. However, it was only five yearslater in 1932 – following a landmark exhibition at Galerie Georges Petit , Paris – that the artistannouncedMarie -Thérèse as an extraordinary presence in his life and art through his paintings. Picasso almost never painted his muses from life, his depictions being inspired by the memory ofthem and the metamorphic power of his erotic imagination. With Marie -Thérèsein particular,the artist’s inspiration reached fever pitch in the long periods they were forced to spend apart.Here, he evokes her in a quietly contemplative mood – perhapspicturing herloveras she writes .
Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale 1 March 2017
Pablo Picasso, Plant de tomates, oil on canvas, painted in Paris between 6- 9 August 1944 (est. £10,000,000-15,000,000)
Symbolic of victory in Europe, Picasso’s series of five paintings of a tomato plant in bloom in the Paris apartment he shared with his lover Marie-Thérèse are ripe with personal as well as wider political and cultural significance – a way of reflecting the spirit of hope and resilience that characterised this time. The most complex and visually striking example from the most sought- after series of the war period, Plant de tomates has been in a private collection for four decades since it was sold at Sotheby’s New York in 1976. This exquisite work is expected to fetch £10,000,000 – 15,000,000 as part of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening sale in London on 1 March 2017. In the summer of 1944, Picasso was staying with Marie-Thérèse at the Boulevard Henri IV in the weeks before the Liberation of Paris from the Nazis by the Allied Forces. Picasso began to take notice of the potted tomato plant that was growing besides the window of the apartment. These were not uncommon in civilian households throughout Europe at a time when food rations limited the amount of available produce for consumption. Seeing the resilient plant as a sign of hope as it continued to bear fruit, Picasso painted five canvases of the plant on a window sill between August 3 and August 12, 1944 – varying in degrees of abstraction. Thus he recorded this consequence of war as a source of admiration and a metaphor of human perseverance in times of strife. In this work, the branches of the plant are weighed down with the heavy tomatoes – their arched shapes standing in contrast with the strong horizontals and verticals of the window, which fragment the composition into a grid-like form. For his palette, Picasso chose vibrant shades of red and green to emphasise the lush and fertile nature of the plant. The background view outside the window is painted with varying shades of yellow and grey, calling to mind the smoke and gunfire that could be heard throughout the city during these frightening last weeks of the war. Rarely has Picasso invested a still-life with such meaning and sociological importance. Although not an active member of the Resistance movement, Picasso’s artistic activity during the war was deemed as heroic by many of his contemporaries around the world. His art was blacklisted by the Nazi regime and he was not permitted to exhibit his pictures publicly by government decree. However, by this point in his career, Picasso was financially secure and the paintings that he completed during this period remained in his studio – only to be exhibited after the war.
A series of photographs that renowned photographer Cecil Beaton took of Picasso’s studio at rue des Grands-Augustins, several of them showing this work, gives remarkable insight into Picasso's work during this period. In the days leading to the Liberation – and in the midst of his painting of the tomato plant series – Picasso met with several British and American journalists and soldiers who wished to praise him for his accomplishment at his studio.
Pablo Picasso
Femme nue assise
oil on canvas
Painted in Mougins between 3
8 January 1965.
Estimate: £9,500,000-12,500,000
Painted at the home that Picasso shared with Jacqueline in Mougins, Femme nue assise is one of a series of large powerful canvases on the theme of the seated female nude that bear witness to the extraordinary energy and creative urge that characterised the artist’s later years. The painting has a monumental, sculptural presence and is invariably depicted with a powerful sense of the tension
between the invisible artist and his sitter.
Painted in confident brushstrokes, Picasso was able to isolate the symbols of erotic desire and threat embodied in the female nude – subjects that fascinated and preoccupied him. The motif of a nude figure seated in an armchair occurred repeatedly throughout Picasso’s career. While varying in style and depicting different women that marked each period of the artist’s life, these always served as a vehicle of expressing the palpable sexual tension between the painter and his model.
The female figure here is inspired by Jacqueline Roque, the last love of Picasso’s life. Jacqueline’s striking features are accentuated in an angular, fragmented manner – the roots of which go back to the artist’s cubist experiments. Whilst borrowing elements from his own artistic past, Picasso created an image with a force and freedom he only achieved in the last decade of his career.
Pablo Picasso
Femme assise dans un fauteuil sur fond blanc
oil on board Painted on 25th March 1953 Estimate: £6,500,000-9,500,000
“Je vois souvent une lumière et une ombre” – Pablo Picasso
Femme assise dans un fauteuil sur fond blanc is a striking monochromatic portrait of Picasso’s lover Françoise Gilot that encapsulates his unique technical ability and at the same time, it is a personal, intimate work revealing the artist’s emotional state. Picasso’s monochrome works have recently been the subject of a highly acclaimed exhibition Picasso Black and White at the Guggenheim in New York, in which this work was exhibited.
The period when Picasso was living in the south of France with Françoise and their two children is known as his Mediterranean Years, marked by a great personal fulfilment that filtered into his portraits of her – resulting in some of his most elegant and innovative artistic explorations. Using only white paint, Picasso reverses the traditional notion of line and background and thus pushes the boundaries of two-dimensional representation. He allows passages of unpainted brown board to play the role of the line that describes the features of his sitter, and this linear treatment renders the work extremely sculptural.
oil on canvas 38 1/8 by 51 1/8 in. Painted between 20th and 26th March 1967.
Estimate
$8,049,600 - 11,764,80
Nu couché et tête d’homme is a stunning brilliantly coloured example of one of Picasso’s favourite themes, that of the artist and model. This series of works proved to be one of his most passionate and energetic projects, inspired by the final love of his life, Jacqueline Roque.
In this example, the male figure is depicted as a musketeer – rendered with a wealth of vibrant colours, yet his presence is a mere bust dominated by his nude companion. This vainglorious musketeer is a form of self-portraiture for the artist, and the iconography of this is indicative of Picasso’s self-awareness in the last decade of his life. The motif of the reclining nude, reminiscent of Titian, is an example of Picasso’s later works featuring subjects that referred back to great classic examples. Picasso no longer had anything to prove, so his main interlocutors in these works belong to the past.
Jacqueline was Picasso’s devoted second wife, who remained with him until his death in 1973, and his renderings of the unmistakable raven-haired beauty outnumber those of any other woman in his life. In this work, the female figure possesses Jacqueline’s recognisable strong nose and dark hair and her voluptuous curves and unrestrained pose represent the object of the artist’s desire. Positioned directly in front of the viewer, Jacqueline is identified as the universal and ultimate feminine representation. The love that Picasso felt for his wife is reflected in the passionate vitality of the colours and the excitement radiating from this canvas.
May 15, 2017 Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale
Pablo Picasso. Femme assise, robe bleue. Oil on canvas. Painted on 25 October 1939. Estimate: $35,000,000-50,000,000.
On May 15, Christie’s will offer Femme assise, robe bleue by Pablo Picasso as a highlight of its Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale (Estimate: $35,000,000-50,000,000). Painted on 25 October 1939, Femme assise, robe bleue is a searing portrait of Picasso’s lover, Dora Maar. Painted on the artist's birthday just after the beginning of the World War II, the work is filled with the unique character, distortions and tension that mark Picasso’s greatest portraits of Dora; at the same time, there is a tender sensuality present in the organic, curvaceous forms of the face which provides some insight into their relationship.
This picture was formerly owned by G. David Thompson, to whom the great curator and art historian Alfred H. Barr, Jr. referred as, 'one of the great collectors of the art of our time.' (A.H. Barr, Jr., 'Foreword', auction catalogue, Parke-Bernet, New York, 1966, n.p.). Giovanna Bertazzoni, Deputy Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art, remarked,
“Femme assise, robe bleue is an extraordinary portrait of Picasso’s great Muse and love, Dora Maar. It exhibits all of the most exhilarating qualities that Dora brought out in Picasso’s work: the striking palette, ornate headwear, and remarkable complexity conveyed by Dora’s distorted features. The rich, thick twirls of oil depicting the mass of her hair (which Picasso was mesmerised by) and the shapes of her hat convey the impetus and passion at the core of this portrait. We are bringing Femme assise, robe bleue to the market at a time when the demand for Picasso’s portraits of one of his greatest subjects, Dora Maar, is at an all-time high. The canvas is a powerful example of Picasso’s creative imagination and the passion which Dora inspired in him.”
Francis Outred, Chairman and Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art, EMERI continued:
“Femme assise, robe bleue is a timeless icon of artist and muse which speaks to collectors across the centuries and continents. Coming from a major European collection, the picture holds within it an incredible story. It originally belonged to Picasso’s dealer, Paul Rosenberg but was confiscated in 1940 soon after its creation. Later in the War it was intended to be transported to Germany but was famously intercepted and captured by members of the French Resistance, an event immortalised, albeit in fictional form, in the 1966 movie The Train, starring Burt Lancaster and Jeanne Moreau. In real life, one of the people who helped to sabotage the National Socialists’ attempt to remove countless artworks from France towards the end of the war was in fact Alexandre Rosenberg. The son of Paul Rosenberg, he had enlisted with the Free French Forces after the invasion of France in 1940. The painting was subsequently owned by the Pittsburgh steel magnate and legendary collector, George David Thompson, from whose collection many works now grace the walls of museums in the United States and Europe. We fully expect the romance and power of this painting and its remarkable story to capture the hearts and minds of our global collectors of masterpieces from Old Masters to Contemporary, this May.”
Dora Maar was one of Picasso's most important Muses. His affair with Dora came in the latter years of his relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter. Marie-Thérèse had been young, blond and athletic, with a sunny disposition and a sweet character; Picasso's time with her had resulted in flowing, sensual images.
Dora was a marked contrast, as is demonstrated by Femme assise, robe bleue: a complex, troubled character, intellectual and creative, a photographer and an artist in her own right. She was a sparring partner for Picasso, a challenging voice, having already been an established figure in Surreal circles by the time the pair were introduced. Picasso often presented Dora with her signature hats that she often sported, a quality that distinguishes her among Picasso’s muses at first glance. Certainly in Femme assise, robe bleue the hat is present and correct, a striped purple confection with what appears to be a green feather or foliage of some sort. These hats often add a playful air to Picasso's paintings of Dora. They also serve as a counterbalance to the severity with which he presented her features, as is the case in the shifting, vulnerable flesh of Femme assise, robe bleue.
Some critics have linked the pictures of Dora specifically to tension caused by the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. However, it appears that Picasso, whose paintings often functioned as a barometer for his own state of mind, had found a Muse who was perfectly suited to his tense depictions of that period. It was both Dora's personality and a wider sense of unease at the situation in the world that Picasso managed to express in these bracing paintings.
Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art Sale on 27 June 2017
Pablo Picasso’s tender portrait Femme écrivant (Marie-Thérèse) (1934, estimate: £25,000,000-40,000,000) will be a leading highlight of Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, in London on 27 June 2017 as part of 20th Century at Christie’s, a series of sales that take place from 17 to 30 June 2017.
Painted on 26 March 1934, Pablo Picasso’s Femme écrivant (Marie-Thérèse) is a joyous, colour-filled and deeply personal portrayal of Marie-Thérèse Walter, the young, blond-haired woman who, when she entered the artist’s life in January 1927, influenced the course of his art in an unprecedented manner. Femme écrivant is one of the greatest portraits of Marie-Thérèse, a radiant and intimate depiction of Picasso’s lover, which, along with the preceding paintings of the early 1930s, epitomises one of the finest phases in the artist’s career. The painting will be on view in Hong Kong from 5 to 9 of June 2017 before being exhibited in London from 17 to 27 June 2017.
Marie-Thérèse’s presence in Picasso’s life aroused a creative explosion; her youthful innocence, vitality, devotion and love was responsible for a renaissance in every area of his artistic production. By the beginning of 1931, her image began to saturate his sculpture and painting in radiant, euphoric form. Enthroned in an ornate brown leather studded chair, pictured in the midst of writing a letter, in Femme écrivant, Marie-Thérèse is seated in front of what appears to be a window, the daylight and pale blue sky of the outside world flooding into the secluded room in which she writes and illuminating her delicate features.
Picasso painted Femme écrivant (Marie-Thérèse) in Boisgeloup, the secluded and picturesque château situated near Gisors, a small Normandy village northwest of Paris that he had bought in the summer of 1930. It was here that Picasso painted what are now recognised as the greatest depictions of Marie-Thérèse;
works such as the 1932 Le Rêve (Private Collection; Zervos VII, no. 364 sold at Christie’s, New York, 10 November 1997 for a record $48,402,500),
Femme nue, feuilles et buste (sold at Christie’s, New York, 4 May 2010 for a record $106,482,500)
and Femme nue dans un fauteuil rouge (Tate Gallery, London; Zervos VII, no. 395).
Giovanna Bertazzoni, Deputy Chairman, Impressionist & Modern Art, Christie’s:
“Femme écrivant (Marie-Thérèse) was created in 1934 at the height of Picasso’s admiration for his youthful and captivating muse Marie Thérèse. The impact she had on his creative process began when they first met but truly took hold of his heart and hand in the portraits he executed in his studio in Boisgeloup. This portrait remained in the artist’s collection until 1961, demonstrating the deep affection he held towards Marie Thérèse and the emotional significance it had for the artist. Picasso’s portraits of his muses capture the imagination and attention of collectors worldwide, now more than ever. Picasso represents a truly global phenomenon in the present art market, attracting buyers from Europe, America and Asia. Mainland Chinese collectors are, in particular, very aware of the power of his revolutionary style, and the significant role he occupies in the canon of modern Western Art. It’s an exciting time to offer such a strong, iconic and private painting by Picasso on the open market, and we are eager to see how it will touch and move collectors around the world in the forthcoming weeks ahead of the auction.”
Pablo Picasso’s Femme écrivant (Marie-Thérèse) (1934, estimate: £25,000,000-40,000,000) completes the group of masterpieces from the June sale and is a radiant and intimate portrait that epitomises one of the finest periods of the artist’s career. It represents the pinnacle of the artist’s portrayals of one of his most celebrated muses.
Painted on 26 March 1934, Femme écrivant (Marie-Thérèse) dates from the pinnacle of Marie-Thérèse’s supreme reign in Picasso’s art. 1934 was a particularly prolific year for Picasso and was the final period that the pair spent wrapped in the uninterrupted bliss of their love. While Marie-Thérèse most often appears as a sensuously reclining, somnolent nude or a stylised vision enthroned in a chair, a passive object of adoration, in the present work Picasso has depicted her in an upright, active state, engaged in the act of writing a letter – a common form of exchange that Marie-Thérèse and the artist used to express their affection amidst the secrecy of their relationship.
Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art on 13 November 2017
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Femme accroupie (Jacqueline), Painted on 8 October 1954
Oil on canvas, 57 1/2 x 44 7/8 in. | Estimate: $20-30 million
Christie’s will offer Pablo Picasso’s Femme accroupie (Jacqueline), painted on October 8, 1954 as a central highlight of its Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art on 13 November in New York. Marking its first time at auction, Femme accroupie (Jacqueline) comes from a private collection, and is estimated to sell for $20-30 million.
Christie’s Global President, Jussi Pylkkanen, remarked,
“Jacqueline was a beautiful woman and one of Picasso’s most elegant muses. This painting of Jacqueline hung in Picasso’s private collection for many years and has rarely been seen in public since 1954. It is a museum quality painting on the grand scale which will capture the imagination of the global art market when it is offered at Christie’s New York this November.”
The brilliant primary colors in Femme accroupie (Jacqueline) illustrate a sunny day in the South of France during early autumn, 1954. Picasso and Jacqueline Roque, his ultimate paramour and eventual second wife, had begun living together in the Midi and would soon return to Paris to reside in the artist’s studio. The present painting is one of three large-easel-format canvases that Picasso painted on October 8th, in a flourish of portraits that celebrate the artist’s new mistress, declaring her newly established pride of place in the artist’s life and work.
In each of the three October paintings, Jacqueline is seated on the floor; in a compact, crouching pose, clasping her knees. From an open window behind her, golden light fills the room. The space is likely a corner of Picasso’s studio on the rue du Fournas in Vallauris, in a building that had previously housed a perfume factory, the scents from which still graced the air.
Jessica Fertig, Senior Vice President, Head of Evening Sale, Christie’s New York, continued,
“We are thrilled to be bringing to market for the first time this powerful portrait of Picasso’s great love Jacqueline. Picasso delighted in capturing Jacqueline’s beautiful features, here rendered with a wonderfully thick impasto. Picasso embarked on his late, great period, which his biographer John Richardson succinctly defined and characterized as “l’époque Jacqueline“—It is Jacqueline's image that dominates Picasso's work from 1954 until his death, longer than any of the women who preceded her.”
The color forms in Femme accroupie (Jacqueline) reflect Picasso’s admiration for Matisse’s distinctive cut outs. Less than a month after completing the present portrait, Matisse, who was the only living artist whom Picasso recognized as his peer, passed away. A month after that Picasso commenced work on his painted variations, which would finally number fifteen in all, on Delacroix’s two versions of Les femmes d’Alger. The series was ostensibly his tribute to the Delacroix-inspired odalisques of Matisse, to honor the memory of his longtime rival, but also an admired friend. The Femmes d’Alger paintings are also a declaration of affection for Jacqueline. An homage to Delacroix had been on Picasso’s mind for more than a decade, and the advent of Jacqueline, just as importantly as the idea of a tribute to Matisse, induced Picasso to undertake his own series of odalisques. Picasso had become intrigued at Jacqueline's resemblance to the odalisque crouching at lower right in the Louvre version of Delacroix’s harem scene, whose face is seen in left profile. Pablo Picasso’s Portrait de Femme Buste de femme au chapeau (Dora Maar) Painted on 28 May 1943 With its severely simplified, jagged composition, Portrait de Femme is an emblematic portrait of one of the artist’s most influential muses, Dora Maar. However, breaking from the wartime tension that often defines Picasso’s portraits of Maar, this canvas also encompasses a measure of humor and delight in her likeness. The large and striking hat worn by the subject, is a definitive element of Picasso’s portraits of Maar. She regularly sported whimsical hats, and Picasso often utilized them as a symbolic externalization of her inner moods, as well as a counterbalance to the severity with which he presented her features.
Sotheby's IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART 14 November 2017
Sotheby’s will present Pablo Picasso’s Buste de femme au chapeau as a highlight of their Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in New York on 14 November 2017. Characterized by its vibrant color palette, sharp angularity and bold form, the portrait is a salient example of the Madonna-and-Magdalene dichotomy that manifested in Picasso’s work while he was simultaneously involved with two of his greatest muses: Marie-Thérèse Walter and Dora Maar. This tumultuous time in the artist’s life in turn yielded one of the most groundbreaking and creative periods of his oeuvre. The daring oil painting is being sold to benefit charitable organizations including the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), and carries a pre-sale estimate of $18/25 million.
The present work illustrates a particularly turbulent time in the Picasso’s life – his mother died in January 1939, during a period of intense political upheaval throughout Europe and particularly in the artist’s native Spain. However, this period also provided the impetus for some of Picasso’s most revolutionary stylistic techniques. Unable to travel to Spain and living in a country facing increasing pressure from Nazi Germany, Picasso maintained relationships with both Marie-Thérèse and Maar. Both of the women, markedly different in their temperament and physical appearance, populated Picasso’s life and his paintings, and the present work is a strong manifestation of their shared influence throughout his oeuvre. While many attributes of Buste de femme au chapeau point to Marie-Thérèse − the blonde sweep of hair and bright-yet-soft tonalities of the palette − whispers of Maar are also reflected. In contrast with his depictions of a more passive Marie-Thérèse, the present painting is one of Picasso’s most animated, tactile and sculptural renderings of the young woman. Her figure is punctuated with incisions into the thick paint, adding dimension to her features. Maar’s presence appears vis-a-vis the artist's focus on Marie-Thérèse's hat. While the accessory may have been important to the sitter at the time, its significance in this painting is elucidated in retrospect. Maar was immortalized in Picasso's portraits as the wearer of stylish hats, and what may have been an flamboyant personal item to Marie-Thérèse at the time, becomes a symbolic indicator of her status as the saintly new mother of Picasso's daughter, and the antithesis of her new rival.
Christie’s New York in the Spring of 2018
A Picasso Rose Period masterpiece, executed in 1905, Fillette à la corbeille fleurie is a highlight of the collection (estimate in the region of $70 million). Rich in pathos in its depiction of bohemian life at the turn of the 20th century, this rare work is a technical tour de force of draftsmanship and atmosphere. The painting maintains a storied provenance; it was acquired in 1905 by brother and sister, Leo and Gertrude Stein, and passed to Alice B. Toklas upon Gertrude’s death in 1946, where it remained throughout Alice’s lifetime for another 21 years. In 1968, David Rockefeller formed a group of important art collectors to acquire the renowned collection of Gertrude Stein. Drawing slips of numbered paper from a felt hat, David Rockefeller drew the first pick in the syndicate, and he and Peggy were able to acquire their first choice of the Young Girl with a Flower Basket, and placed it in the library of their 65th Street New York townhouse.
Christie’s Impressionist And Modern Art Evening Sale, 27 February 2018
Pablo Picasso, Mousquetaire et nu assis, oil and Ripolin on canvas (1967, estimate: £12,000,000-18,000,000)
Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece Mousquetaire et nu assis (1967, estimate: £12,000,000-18,000,000) will be a leading highlight of Christie’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, in London on 27 February 2018 as part of ‘20thCentury at Christie’s’, a series of sales that take place from 20 February to 7 March 2018.
Painted with gestural, lavishly and passionately applied brushstrokes, it is among the first of the triumphant musketeers that appeared in Pablo Picasso’s art in 1967. This iconic figure is accompanied by a sensuous, seated nude. With her shock of dark hair, hieratic posture, and her large, all-seeing almond shaped eyes, there is no question as to the identity of this woman: she is Jacqueline, the artist’s final, great love, muse and wife, whose presence permeated every female figure in this final chapter of Picasso’s life.
With one eye towards the Old Masters and another towards contemporary art, Picasso shows himself still challenging the history of art, carrying out iconoclastic attacks, plundering the past and doing so in a strikingly fresh, gestural way. Steeped in eroticism, a sense of painterly bravado, and pulsating with a vital sense of energy, this painting paved the way for the themes, style and execution that would come to define this late phase of Picasso’s oeuvre.
Keith Gill, Head of Sale, Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, Christie’s, London: “Picasso’s late career was defined by sensuous paintings in which he cast himself as the virile artist alongside his voluptuous lover. The allegorical figures were used by Picasso not only to reference fictitious characters but were a means by which he could situate himself firmly within the art historical canon alongside the likes of Rembrandt, El Greco, Velázquez and Goya. He seemed to have a sense of urgency to his work in this period, as if trying to beat the passage of time, a feeling that is evidenced by the dense brushwork and bold gestures of ‘Mousquetaire et nu assis’. It is a privilege to present the painting as a leading highlight in the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale.” Throughout his life, Picasso had frequently been drawn to historical, classical, or mythological ‘types’: he was the melancholic harlequin, monstrous minotaur and the courageous torero. Now, in the final decade of his life, Picasso transformed himself for a final time into the brave, adventurous and virile musketeer, clad in ornate costumes, ready for daring escapades, romantic exploits and heroic deeds. In this final act of self-rejuvenation and artistic resurgence, this character became the façade that Picasso presented to the world during the remaining years of his life. For Picasso, the figure of the musketeer had a wealth of varied art historical origins: from Hals and Rembrandt, to Meissonier, El Greco, Velázquez and Goya. This striking, dark-featured character, part Spanish, part French, part Dutch, with his elegant seventeenth-century garb, could as easily have stepped out of Las Meninas as TheNight Watch. Picasso was fuelled by a desire to beat the inexorable passage of time, something that led him to paint with a new speed. In many ways, reminiscent of the Abstract Expressionists, his brushstrokes are thick and visceral, irrevocable gestures that boldly declare the hand of the artist himself, memorialising his presence in paint upon the canvas.
Keith Gill, Head of Sale, Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, Christie’s, London:
“Picasso’s late career was defined by sensuous paintings in which he cast himself as the virile artist alongside his voluptuous lover. The allegorical figures were used by Picasso not only to reference fictitious characters but were a means by which he could situate himself firmly within the art historical canon alongside the likes of Rembrandt, El Greco, Velázquez and Goya. He seemed to have a sense of urgency to his work in this period, as if trying to beat the passage of time, a feeling that is evidenced by the dense brushwork and bold gestures of ‘Mousquetaire et nu assis’. It is a privilege to present the painting as a leading highlight in the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale.”
Throughout his life, Picasso had frequently been drawn to historical, classical, or mythological ‘types’: he was the melancholic harlequin, monstrous minotaur and the courageous torero. Now, in the final decade of his life, Picasso transformed himself for a final time into the brave, adventurous and virile musketeer, clad in ornate costumes, ready for daring escapades, romantic exploits and heroic deeds. In this final act of self-rejuvenation and artistic resurgence, this character became the façade that Picasso presented to the world during the remaining years of his life.
For Picasso, the figure of the musketeer had a wealth of varied art historical origins: from Hals and Rembrandt, to Meissonier, El Greco, Velázquez and Goya. This striking, dark-featured character, part Spanish, part French, part Dutch, with his elegant seventeenth-century garb, could as easily have stepped out of Las Meninas as TheNight Watch. Picasso was fuelled by a desire to beat the inexorable passage of time, something that led him to paint with a new speed. In many ways, reminiscent of the Abstract Expressionists, his brushstrokes are thick and visceral, irrevocable gestures that boldly declare the hand of the artist himself, memorialising his presence in paint upon the canvas.
Also included in the sale:: Pablo Picasso’s Le coq saigné (‘The bled cock’ 1947-8, estimate: £2,200,000 – 2,800,000). Le coq saigné has been celebrated as one of the most visually complex and arresting works of the large series of still-lifes that the artist painted during and immediately following the Second World War. A sinuously interlocking composition of colour, planar form, line and pattern, the subject itself becomes almost entirely abstract.
Phillips’ 20th Century & Contemporary Art March 2018
Pablo Picasso Painting Sleeping Nude ‘The day I met Marie-Thérèse I realised that I had before me what I had always been dreaming about.’ - Pablo Picasso
Phillips has announced that Pablo Picasso’s monumental Sleeping Nude will be sold as the centerpiece of Phillips’ 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London in March 2018. This extraordinary large-scale portrait of Picasso’s muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter, was executed in 1932 and remained in Picasso’s own collection until the end of his life, when it was inherited by his widow, Jacqueline Roque, and subsequently by her daughter. Sleeping Nude is emblematic of an iconic period of Picasso’s oeuvre that was shaped by his devotion to Marie-Thérèse. The work was acquired in 1995 by the present owner, a European private collector. It will be on view at Phillips’ New York from 3 November, and Hong Kong from 23 November 2017.
Hugues Joffre, Senior Advisor to the CEO, said: “ ‘Sleeping Nude’ depicts one of Picasso’s greatest muses: Marie-Thérèse Walter. Against a background of frenzied lines, Picasso has painted Marie-Thérèse’s body through a series of swooping curves, hinting at his fascination with her sensuous body. This work, executed during an important creative surge in 1932, exemplifies the sinuous, sensual style of painting that gave way to a string of masterpieces that are now housed in museum collections throughout the world. 1932, and Marie-Thérèse are the current focus of a major exhibition at the Musée Picasso, Paris; ‘Picasso 1932. Année érotique’, which will then travel to Tate Modern, London in the Spring of 2018. In response to the solid and consistent demand for important 20th century art, Phillips will offer selected works from this period, and as such we are delighted to present ‘Sleeping Nude’ as the star lot of our March Evening Sale.”
‘I am Picasso! You and I are going to do great things together.’ - Pablo Picasso to Marie-Thérèse Walter, 8 January 1927
Picasso met Marie-Thérèse on 8 January 1927, having been so struck by her beauty and youthful vitality that he approached her outside the Galeries Lafayette. Marie-Thérèse was initially ignorant of Picasso’s identity and celebrity, but soon fell under his spell, embarking on a years-long affair with the artist. This would inspire what John Richardson has described as Picasso’s 'most innovative period since Cubism.'
During the first few months of 1932 Picasso painted a string of masterpieces depicting Marie-Thérèse, including Sleeping Nude. One of Picasso’s most recognised works from January that year, painted only weeks before Sleeping Nude, is Le Rêve, formerly owned by Steve Wynn and now in the collection of Steve Cohen. Other iconic works from this same period include Le miroir, Femme nue, feuilles et buste, which is now on long-term loan to Tate Modern, London, and Jeune fille devant un miroir, painted the day after Sleeping Nude and now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Looking at this array of works, all created within a matter of weeks, it is not surprising to find that 1932 is described as Picasso’s Annus Mirabilis.
Sleeping Nude is all the more distinguished because of its fusion of painting and drawing. The stained-glass-like lines that featured in many of Picasso’s paintings from the time are here shown against a backdrop filled with charcoal pentimenti. They add an almost Cubist dimension to Sleeping Nude, showing Marie-Thérèse from a number of angles. The present work is emblematic of the rare pictures that show Marie-Thérèse sleeping, a subject that introduces an incredible sense of intimacy. In Sleeping Nude, the viewer is invited into the very private world of love and desire the artist and his lover shared. The seminal works intimately depicting Marie-Thérèse which Picasso created in the early months of 1932, such as Sleeping Nude, appear to celebrate a release from the torment of carrying on an affair while still married to his ballerina wife, Olga Khokhlova.
It is a tribute to the importance of Sleeping Nude that it has featured in a large number of exhibitions and publications, and also that it remained in Picasso’s own collection until the end of his life. Discussing his inability to let go of some of his greatest works, Picasso once boasted, or perhaps confessed: 'I am the greatest collector of Picassos in the world.'
Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on 28 February 2018.
Monumental in scale, highly charged and painted in vivid colours, Le Matador is the culmination of a life-long obsession of Picasso’s that remained one of the most important themes throughout his career.
Pablo Picasso, Le Matador, oil on canvas, painted on 23 October 1970 (est. £14,000,000-18,000,000). Courtesy Sotheby’s.
The painting is a brilliant display of the virtuosity with which Picasso combined the complex elements that had shaped his life and art and stands as a defiant tribute to the heroic figure of the matador – embodying the artist’s own Andalusian machismo as the master of modern art takes centre-stage in the arena. Picasso had begun to feel that his time on this earth was running out, and so engaged in constant conversation with the great masters before him – Goya, Velasquez and Delacroix – following the traditions they had set in order to reinvent them and make a lasting mark. Appearing at auction for the first time, the work has been unveiled in Taipei and New York, before it is shown in the preview in London and offered in Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale on 28 February 2018. Helena Newman, Global Co-Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department & Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, said:
‘This powerful portrait exemplifies Picasso’s creative force in his final years and represents the culmination of a life-long obsession. Through the subject of the bullfight, Picasso explores the theme of life and death, creation and destruction, earth and sun, casting himself at the centre stage of the spectacle. We are thrilled to be presenting two prime examples of works by Picasso at his very best in one sale – Le Matador and Femme au béret et à la robe quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter) – both from key periods of the artist’s career.’ The bullfight became a symbol for the most public display of violence, bravery and ability and for Picasso its attraction certainly lay in its powerful contradictions: grace and brutality, entertainment and tragedy, and ultimately, life and death. This work is unique in conveying a human dimension that is lacking in many of the earlier depictions, with the matador’s stylised face and large, wide open eyes revealing a vulnerability and sense of mortality that reflect the artist’s own concerns.
Unlike his other depictions of the matador from this period where the figure is depicted against a plain, monochrome background, this painting uniquely combines the image of the matador resplendent in an elaborate costume with that of the arena. The lower half of the background represents the sand of the bullfighting ring, with hundreds of spectators in the upper half. The experience of being taken to the bullring by his father at the age of eight had a strong impression on Picasso, and his first painting, Le petit picador jaune, was of a matador on a horse in the arena observed by the spectators behind him. It is all the more fitting that at the end of his life, he returned to the celebrated imagery of the bullfights that he had grown up watching. Despite leaving Spain to live in Paris in his youth, Picasso retained a sense of Spanish identity, and the matador was the character that allowed him to draw attention to his heritage. During the last years of the nineteenth century Picasso stayed in Madrid, where he copied the old masters at the Prado, and was no doubt influenced by Goya’s bullfighting scenes. Picasso’s personal memories became intertwined with his artistic heritage, and in this final series of matador portraits the ghost of Goya is strongly present. Le Matador was included in the exhibition of Picasso’s last great works, organised by Jacqueline at the Palais des Papes in Avignon shortly after the artist’s death in 1973 – presenting the closing period of his oeuvre on the historical walls of one of the most important medieval Gothic buildings in Europe.
A Pablo Picasso painting depicting his muse Marie-Therese Walter with future lover Dora Maar emerging from the shadows behind is expected to fetch an eye-watering sum at a London sale next week.
The 1937 "Femme au Beret et a la Robe Quadrillee (Marie-Therese Walter)" is expected to reach $50 million (40 million euros) at a sale of Impressionist, Surrealist and Modern Art at prestigious London auction house Sotheby's on Wednesday.
It comes from a key era in Picasso's career, 1937, when he makes the great painting 'Guernica'," he added, referring to the masterpiece which portrayed the horrors of the Nazi bombardment of a Basque city during the Spanish civil war.
The painting also has a strong autobiographical appeal. The main subject of the piece, Marie-Therese Walter, was the Spanish painter's long time lover and muse. But the looming figure of Dora Maar, whom he met in 1936, emerges in the shadows behind Marie-Therese.
Christie’s’ Art of the Surreal 27 February 2018
Pablo Picasso , Figure , oil and charcoal on panel, 1930, estimate: £3,000,000 - 5,000,000
Picasso’s Figure of 1930, not seen at auction for half a century, is a powerfully architectural composition relating to MOMA’s Baigneuse of the same year, which clearly shows Picasso’s influence on later artists such as Henry Moore and Francis Bacon.
The centerpiece of the Sotheby’s May 14 Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale in New York will be Le Repos.
Pablo Picasso’s “Femme au Béret et à la Robe Quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter)” from 1937 was the prize piece in the Sotheby’s sale. 2018 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Sotheby's
Like Femme au Béret, this stunning masterwork from 1932—estimated to sell from $25–35 million—is a portrait of the Spaniard’s muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso’s so-called “golden muse,” and according to Sotheby’s Simon Shaw, “arguably the love of his life.”
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.
Christie’sImpressionist and Modern Art May 15, 2018
This spring, Christie’s will offer Pablo Picasso’s Le Marin, 28 October 1943 (estimate upon request), in the May 15 Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art. Executed at the height of Occupation, Le Marin, widely recognized as Picasso himself, clad in his iconic striped fisherman’s jersey, offers one of the most profound and revealing views into the artist’s wartime psyche. Adrien Meyer, Co-Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art, Christie’s New York, remarked: “From the depth and power of expression to his striped Breton shirt, Le Marin is an extraordinarily vivid portrait of the artist. We are delighted to debut this remarkable image in Hong Kong, which is such an integral region to the burgeoning market for the artist. Painted at Picasso and western civilization’s lowest ebb in World War II, Le Marin is art history and 20th-century history writ large. That Le Marin once hung in the legendary collection of Victor and Sally Ganz, makes this picture all the more exceptional.” Le Marin last appeared at auction in 1997, as part of the legendary sale of the Collection of Victor and Sally Ganz. Over their lifetime together, Victor and Sally Ganz assembled what is still one of the most celebrated collections of the 20th Century. “All in all, he was the best collector we had…” remarked Leo Castelli, “For anyone who wants to know this period, they must look at Victor and apply his lessons.” Of all the artists that they collected, the Ganzes were most committed to Picasso, acquiring his works exclusively over two decades, including Les Femmes d'Alger (Version 'O’), which became the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction when it realized $179.4 million at Christie’s New York in May 2015. Les Femmes d'Alger (Version ‘O’) continues to hold the world record for Picasso and is the second-highest result for any work at auction. Prominently hung in their Manhattan living room, Le Marin was purchased by Victor Ganz for $11,000 in 1952 from the publisher Harry Abrams. It was Picasso’s only male image in the Ganz Collection. According to his own testimony, Picasso’s earlier 1938 portrait of Maya in a sailor suit (gifted after the artist’s death to the Museum of Modern Art, New York) is also a self-portrait. This painting, like the present picture, was originally titled Le Marin. Jerome Seckler, who interviewed Picasso, recounted their discussion of that portrait: I described my interpretation of his painting, Le Marin, which I had seen at the Liberation Salon. I said I thought it to be a self-portrait... He listened intently and finally said, “Yes, it’s me, but I did not mean it to have any political significance at all.” I asked why he painted himself as a sailor. “Because,” he answered, “I always wear a sailor shirt. See?” He opened up his shirt and pulled his underwear—it was white with blue stripes!
Created only weeks after the most dangerous crisis Picasso faced in World War II, Le Marin reflects the artist’s emotional and psychological distress. In 1944 Picasso said, “I have no doubt that the war is in the paintings I have done.” Perhaps no painting which he made during the Occupation more directly conveys this feeling than Le Marin. At the outbreak of the war Picasso elected to stay in France, despite offers to move to Mexico and the United States, expressing at the time that “Most certainly, it is not a time for a creative man to fail, to shrink or to stop working”. Although Picasso was a Spanish citizen, the decision to stay in France required a great deal of courage. As the painter of Guernica, he was an internationally recognized anti-fascist. In a speech, Hitler had denounced him by name. German agents regularly visited his studio in search of incriminating evidence, during which they insulted him and destroyed his paintings.
It was previously thought that these threats never rose above the level of harassment. However, a letter found in the Archive Picasso, dated September 16, 1943 – just five weeks before he painted Le Marin – demonstrated that the Nazis planned to deport Picasso to a concentration camp. Picasso was saved only by the intervention of friends, Dubois and Cocteau, and especially by Arno Breker, Hitler’s favorite sculptor, who spoke to Hitler on the artist’s behalf. Other people in Picasso’s circle were not so lucky. Max Jacob, who had been one of Picasso’s closest friends, was deported to a concentration camp in the spring of 1944 and died there. That August, the Allies would liberate Paris. Estimated in the region of $70 million, this masterpiece of the Second World War is set to realize one of the five highest prices for the artist at auction.
Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art EveningSale in London on 19 June 2018.
Pablo Picasso, Buste de femme de profil. Femme écrivant, signed Picasso (upper left), oil on canvas, 116.2 by 73.7cm., 45¾ by 29in. Painted in April 1932. Estimate upon request. Courtesy Sotheby’s.
Painted duringPabloPicasso’s ‘year of wonders’, this monumental , yetremarkably tender and intimate , painting o f Marie -Thérèse absorbed in the act of writing evoke sa private moment from the artist’s clandestine relationship with hismost beloved muse. Awakeor asleep, writing or reading, Marie -Thérèse appears in manifold guisesthroughout Picasso’soeuvre . In this painting , Picasso focu ses on her innocence and youthfulness, depicting herserenely penning her thoughts. Appearing at auction for the first time in over two decades ,Bustede femme de profil. Femme écrivant will highlight
This July, Sotheby’s will present at auction one of the greatest and most beautiful watercolours by JMW Turner left in private hands.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A.,.The Lake of Lucerne from Brunnen, Watercolour over traces of pencil, heightened with bodycolour , 308 by 469 mm. Estimate: £1,200,000 – 1,800,000.
Commissioned in 1842 , The Lake of Lucerne from Brunnen is part of a celebrated group of 25 ‘finished’ Swiss landscapes that Turner made during the final decade of his life - a collection of works widely considered the pinnacle of the artist ’ s achievements in the medium. Offered with an estimate of £1,200,000 – 1,800,000, the work will be the highlight of the Old Master & British Works on Paper sale in London on 4 July.
Mark Griffith - Jones, Specialist, British Watercolours, Drawings and Portrait Miniatures at Sotheby’s said,
‘ It is such a privilege to get to know this superb work – whose beauty and history are so captivating. Major watercolours from Turner’s late Swiss period are justifiably held in the highest regard and this is the most important work to appear on the market in more than a decade.’
Depicting one of the most dramatic landscapes in the Swiss Alps, The Lake of Lucerne from Brunnen captures the view over the picturesque village of Brunnen on the eastern shores of Lake Lucerne with the magnificent vista of the Bay of Uri un folding before the viewer’s eyes. Inspired by Turner’s travels to the region between 1841 and 1844, the work was commissioned by Turner’s great patron Elhanan Bicknell to hang as a companion piece to the iconic Blue Rigi– one of three views of the Rigi mountains painted by the artist which now hangs in London’s Tate Britain having been sold for a record - breaking £5,832,000 in 2006.
Works from Turner’s ‘late’ Swiss series ha ve come to be seen as the ‘climax of a lifetime devoted to the expression of light and colour’ with o nly five of the 25 works n ow remain ing outside of museum collections. Lake Lucerne from Brunnen has remained in the same distinguished private collection since 1968 and was l ast seen in public at the seminal Turner - The Great Watercolours exhibition at London’s Royal Academy in 2001 .
The painting In this work, Turner has perfectly captured the complex effects of the early morning light and haze . The huge sky is filled with a golden light which floods the mountain uplands with warmth, while the deep blue waters of the lake rise up in weightless mists, giving the impression that the plunging cliffs and lake melt seamlessly to gether.
As Turner maps out the natural landscape, he carefully connects his scene with its history. On the left bank, far off in the distance, he indicates the position of the 14 th century Tell Chapel, where the legendary William Tell reputedly leapt to freedom, escaping his tyrannical Austrian overlords. On the right, high above the lake, Turner gives great prominence to the meadow of Rütli, a site that witnessed the birth of Swiss democracy in 1291.
Turner in Switzerland
In the August of 1841, Turner embarked on his first dedicated tour to Switzerland in almost 40 years. Throughout this tour, as was his life - long habit, Turner set about recording the landscapes, the architecture and the local people that caught his attention. His travels w ere recorded in the form of hastily conceived drawings, bold small - scale watercolours and exquisite sketches in full watercolour heightened with pen and ink - all of which now reside in the Tate Britain.
Upon his return to London, Turner submitted up to tw nty Swiss ‘sample studies’ and four completed landscapes to his agent, Thomas Griffith. Griffith showed apprehension, remarking that the completed works were ‘a little different’ from Turner’s ‘usual style ’ - such was their avant - garde nature. In the spring of 1842, Griffith invited four of Turner’s most important collectors to his London showroom in Waterloo Place just off Pall Mall; amongst them were the brilliant young art critic, John Ruskin, and the whaling magnate , Elhanan Bicknell. Four completed works and six subjects to be chosen from sample studies were presented to the group. Ruskin considered this set of ten landscapes to be the defining statements in Turner’s career as a watercolourist.
Bicknell initially purchased the completed Blue Rigi, one of three watercolours depicting the Rigi mountain in the Swiss Alps, commissioning the current work to hang as a companion. Trophy watercolour Two year after Bicknell’s death, the work was offered at a sensational auction of the late magnate’s collection. The Turners in the collection were rightly considered to be the jewels in the crown and whereas the Blue Rigi achieved £310.16 on the first day, Lake Lucerne from Brunnen trumped this, selling for £714 to one John Smith of Edinburgh. The work has since belonged to a number of distinguished collectors, including some the most important collectors of Turner’s work, finally being acquired by the father of the current owner in 1968
The tumultuous period between the two World Wars is the backdrop for this intimately scaled and timely exhibition, which explores the little known relationship between modern art and totalitarianism in the work of the French Fauves, Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958) and André Derain (1880-1954).
Maurice de Vlaminck, The Bridge (Le Pont) (detail)ca. 1912. Oil on canvas. SBMA, Gift of the Joseph B. and Ann S. Koepfli Trust.
Fauvism was characterized by the use of strident hues applied with gestural brushmarks for expressive rather than descriptive ends (derisively described by contemporary critics as the work of ‘Wild Beasts,’ in French Fauves) and was considered cutting-edge art of the most experimental kind at the dawn of the last century.
However, both Vlaminck and Derain chose to abandon this affiliation, embarking on divergent stylistic paths that caught the attention and eventually support of the arts administration under the Third Reich.
Through a selection of drawings and paintings from the permanent collection, this exhibition explores the way the representation of the human body, both in avant-garde terms, and then, as recontextualized by 1930s National Socialism in Germany, resulted in the coopting of a modernist idiom to advance the political agenda of the Nazis – an association that still sullies the critical reception of both of these artists.
André Derain, “Still Life with Pumpkin (La Citrouille),” 1939. Oil on canvas. SBMA, Bequest of Wright S. Ludington.
National Gallery , London 28 February – 19 May 2019
Exhibition organised by the National Gallery and the National Gallery of Ireland Paintings from a British private collection, never previously displayed or published, will be shown at the National Gallery in spring 2019, in the first exhibition in the UK devoted to Louis-Léopold Boilly, one of the most important artists of revolutionary France.
Forming the core of the exhibition, these 20 works represent the highlights of Boilly’s long career in Paris, from 1785 to the 1830s, where he witnessed the French Revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon, and the Restoration of the French Monarchy.
Boilly, Louis-Léopold: Gathering of Artists in the Studio of Isabey
The exhibition will show, through meticulously executed, detail-rich paintings and drawings, Boilly’s daring responses to the changing political environment and art market and his acute powers of observation and wry sense of humour.
Boilly, Louis-Léopold: Passey Payez, c 1803
Having painted intimate and controversially seductive interior scenes for an elite audience which saw the artist get into trouble with the authorities, Boilly’s art changed considerably with the Revolution. The interior views for private patrons, with simple compositions containing one or two figures, gave way to pieces intended for public exhibition, including ambitious urban vistas.
In these street scenes, Boilly became the first French artist to paint views of everyday life on Paris’s streets and boulevards.
The exhibition will include drawn and painted portraits, both of private clients and of his own family, and will look at Boilly’s engaging contribution to trompe l’oeil (a term that he himself invented for his submission to the Salon of 1800 where he used the art technique to "deceive the eye" through realistic imagery that creates the illusion that depicted objects exist in three dimensions). These works emphasise the revolutionary aspect of Boilly’s work: that he was not only working in a politically turbulent period, but also that he was actively involved in turning representation – and especially the relationship between different media – on its head.
The exhibition will introduce an artist who is little known in Britain, and will provide unparalleled context for the one painting by Boilly in the National Gallery’s Collection.
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Sir Claude Francis Barry, "Victory Celebrations," 1919. 
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