Botticelli: Heroines and Heroes

February 1, 2019, 1:32 pm

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Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston 
14 February – 19 May 2019

Botticelli: Heroines and Heroes explores the work of the legendary Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, focusing on a genre called spalliera that Botticelli employed with staggering originality. The catalogue and exhibition, held at the Gardner Museum, Boston, include significant loans from European and American public collections. 

At the center of this exhibition is a spalliera reunited, the



Gardner’s Tragedy of Lucretia





and its companion The Tragedy of Virginia (Accademia Carrara, Bergamo).

Together with extraordinary loans of the same genre from European and American public collections, Heroines and Heroes explores Botticelli’s revolutionary approach to antiquity – from ancient Roman to early Christian – and offers a new perspective on his late career masterpieces.




Sandro Botticelli (Italian, 1444 or 1445-1510), Three Miracles of Zenobius,
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Catalogue





Accompanying the exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (14 February – 19 May 2019), Botticelli: Heroines and Heroes explores the work of legendary Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli (about 1444–1510).

Today the alluring and enigmatic Primavera forms the cornerstone of his modern fame, but its familiarity belies distant origins in the heady intellectual environment of Laurentian Florence and the residences of its moneyed elite. Part of a genre called spalliera, so named for their installation around shoulder (spalla) height, this type of painting introduced beautiful, strange, and disturbing images into lavish Florentine homes. With staggering originality, Botticelli reinvented ancient subjects for the domestic interior, paneling patrician bedrooms with moralizing tales and offering erudite instruction to their influential inhabitants.


Catalogue essays address Botticelli’s spalliera (Nathaniel Silver), their violence (Scott Nethersole), his textual sources (Elsa Filosa), and rediscovery in Gilded Age Boston (Patricia Lee Rubin). Entries include new insights for each work and up-to-date bibliographies, while a special section features archival materials devoted to Gardner’s pioneering acquisition of the first Botticelli in America.

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Gauguin: Voyage to Paradise

February 1, 2019, 3:41 pm

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Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, Sarasota, Florida

Feb. 10-June 30, 2019

Ten original dramatic woodcuts, wood engravings and lithographs that Gauguin created on his journeys to Brittany, Martinique and Tahiti will be the centerpiece of the Museum of Botany & the Arts, along with archival photographs of Tahiti by photographer Charles Georges Spitz (1857-1894), historic maps of Tahiti produced by explorers, historical photos of the colonial pavilions of the Universal Exhibition of 1889 in Paris, and other ethnographic sources that shaped Gauguin’s vision before he even set foot in Tahiti.




Paul, Gauguin, Nave Nave Fenua (Delectable Earth), Wood engraving and woodcut, no. 73, 1894–95, The Vera and Arturo Schwarz Collection of Dada and Surrealist Art in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.




Paul Gauguin, Pastorales Martinique, lithograph on zinc printed in black on yellow, sheet: 19 11/16 x 16 7/16 in, Gift of Selma Erving, class of 1927, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts.
 

     In the Tropical Conservatory, and throughout the Gardens, guests will encounter the colors of Gauguin’s well-known palette represented by flowering plants and lush, tropical displays of palms, ferns and fruit trees. Additional items such as floating canoes, a thatched hut and tropical pond, sentinel totems inspired by Tahitian tikis, huts reminiscent of Tahitian seaside fishing villages, a lush taro field and bamboo mountains will evoke Polynesian scenery.

Significance:   The exhibition will provide a comprehensive focus on Gauguin’s woodcuts and his connection with nature, a viewpoint on Gauguin that has never been exhibited in a natural setting before.

Curator: The exhibition is curated by Carol Ockman, Ph.D., curator at large for Selby Gardens and the Robert Sterling Clark professor of art history at Williams College.

Pontormo: Miraculous Encounters

February 2, 2019, 9:16 am

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An international traveling exhibition will bring works by the great 16th-century Florentine painter Pontormo (Italian, 1494-1557) to Los Angeles for the first time. Pontormo: Miraculous Encounters, on view at theJ. Paul Getty Museum from February 5, 2019 through April 28, 2019, features the artist’s recently restored altarpiece the Visitation (about 1528-1529). The exhibition was previously at New York's Morgan Library and at the Pitti Palace (Uffizi Gallery) in Florence.

“It is a privilege to bring the Visitation, one of Pontormo’s supreme masterpieces and one of the most enigmatically beautiful paintings of 16th-century Italy, to Los Angeles. This is the first time this painting has traveled to the United States. It is one of those exceptional paintings that, once seen, will never be forgotten, and I have no doubt it will be a revelation to our visitors both for its striking beauty and for its moving depiction of a key episode in recognition of Christ’s coming,” said Timothy Potts, director of the Getty Museum.

Organized by the Getty Museum in conjunction with the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence and the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, the exhibition presents works of exceptional importance by Pontormo, looking at his innovative oeuvre as a painter both of devotional subjects and of portraits.

Jacopo da Pontormo (1494–1557), 'Visitation' (c. 1528-29), oil on panel, Parrocchia dei Santi Michele e Francesco, Carmignano.

photo: Antonio Quattrone

Over six feet tall, the Visitation depicts Mary’s meeting with her cousin, Saint Elizabeth, when both were expecting their sons, Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. First recorded in 1677 by the historian Giovanni Cinelli, the painting remained virtually unknown until its re-discovery in 1904 in the small parish church of Carmignano, a hill town west of Florence. The intricate arrangement of the draperies and range of arresting colors in intense, saturated hues—fully revealed by its recent conservation—produce an effect of abstraction that was greatly admired by 20th-century artists and connoisseurs.

The recent restoration of the panel brought to light important information about the artist’s technique that illuminates the artist’s creative process. The Visitation is shown alongside the only known preparatory drawing for it, on loan from the Uffizi, as well as two painted portraits and their related drawings.

“By presenting the Visitation and two portraits produced in the same years alongside their preparatory drawings, this exhibition gives us a rare opportunity to reconsider Pontormo’s artistic evolution at a crucial stage in his career,” explained Davide Gasparotto, senior curator of paintings at the Getty Museum. “It is especially moving to think of a great master like Pontormo working at the height of his skill during such a tumultuous period, when his city was under siege. His elegant and accomplished work from this era is imbued with a compelling vulnerability and sentiment.”

The paintings and drawings presented in the exhibition were made by Pontormo between 1528 and 1530, during an ongoing crisis in Florence. Though Republican forces had driven out the powerful Medici family in 1527, the triumph was short-lived. Dramatic military clashes culminated in a devastating siege that returned the Medici to power, establishing their autocratic regime as dukes of Florence. Pontormo was not active in the city’s defense during the siege, but just before these events he had managed to purchase his home, a lifelong aspiration: he stayed in the city to protect his investment, seeking employment from the citizens who remained. These patrons commissioned portraits to record their appearance for posterity, wearing the latest fashions that demonstrate military readiness and active support of the Republic. They also commissioned devotional works, as they prayed for deliverance from military strife and starvation.

 

Pontormo’s Portrait of a Halberdier,1529-1530, a well-known painting in the Getty’s collection, depicts a young man standing before a fortress wall dressed as a soldier, holding a halberd (a combination spear and battle ax). The formidable dress and pose of the subject is betrayed by his youthful face and slim build. The subject of this sophisticated and elegant portrait was convincingly recognized as a young nobleman named Francesco Guardi (who would have been 14-15 years old) though it has also been speculated that it may depict Cosimo de’ Medici, the future Grand Duke.

Jacopo da Pontormo (1494–1557), Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni?), ca. 1530, oil on panel. Private collection. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill.

photo courtesy of Shepherd Conservation, London

Another highlight of the exhibition is the rarely seen Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap, another captivating portrait from the same year. The painting, perhaps depicting another young man engaged in the defense of the city, Carlo Neroni, was known to scholars through documents and engravings but thought lost until it was re-discovered in 2008. This exhibition offers the public a first opportunity to see this remarkable work — which belongs to a private collection — following its recent restoration.

The exhibition is curated by Getty Museum Senior Curator of Paintings, Davide Gasparotto and Bruce Edelstein, coordinator of graduate programs and advanced research at NYU Florence.





The accompanying publication, Miraculous Encounters: Pontormo from Drawing to Painting, is published by Getty Publications and edited by Gasparotto and Edelstein.

Detail of Pontormo's 'Visitation'

Whistler & Nature

February 2, 2019, 10:50 am

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Fitzwilliam Museum

8 January – 17 March, 2019

Whistler & Nature explores James McNeill Whistler’s (1834‐1903) revolutionary attitude and relationship towards the natural world throughout his life, as expressed in works ranging from his celebrated London Nocturnes to his European coastal and pastoral scenes.

This fascinating exhibition of around 90 oil paintings, works on paper and objects ‐ such as the Whistler’s sketchbook ‐ shows how his singular vison was underpinned by his enduring kinship with the makers of railroads, bridges and ships ‐ the cornerstones of Victorian wealth and trade.

James McNeill Whistler, The Bathing Posts Brittany, 1893 © The Hunterian University of Glasgow.

The exhibition is developed by Compton Verney, in partnership with The Hunterian, University of Glasgow. Professor Steven Parissien Compton Verney’s former Chief Executive said “Iconic portraits such as ‘Whistler’s Mother’ are world renowned, but less well known is the influence of nature on Whistler’s work. This exhibition was borne out of Dr Patricia de Montfort’s (University of Glasgow) innovative research into Whistler’s work from a particularly American standpoint and in the context of the US military. “

Whistler came from a family of soldiers and engineers, with his father, Major George Washington Whistler, originally a US army engineer. Like his father, Whistler’s brother was also involved in building America’s railroads, while the artist himself was a military mapmaker, first as an officer cadet at West Point Academy in 1851‐4 and subsequently in the Drawing Department at the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. “


Whistler’s close observation of nature and its moods underpinned his powerful and haunting visions of 19th‐century life. Finding a parallel between painting and music, Whistler entitled many of his paintings ‘nocturnes’, emphasizing the primacy of tonal harmony. His images explore the contrasts between the natural and man‐made worlds: rivers and wharves, gardens and courtyards, the ideal and the naturalistic, which will be explored in the exhibition through works such as 




The Bathing Posts, Brittany (c.1893) 



Nocturne: Chelsea (c.1881), 



Nocturne: Chelsea Embankment (1883/4) and 



Copy of 'Nocturne: Black and Gold ‐ The Fire Wheel' (1893), 

all from The Hunterian.

Whistlers’ singular vision was always defined by his enduring kinship with the makers of railroads, bridges and ships, the cornerstones of Victorian wealth and trade.

Whistler inherited a tradition of British landscape painting forged at a time when land was the predominant source of wealth. Whistler’s smoky images of warehouses, bridges, harbours and ships were themselves components of a new kind of productive, wealth‐generating landscape.

By the 1880s and 90s, Whistler’s images of parks, gardens, promenades and seaside resorts offer glimpses of the products of this wealth, in the form of suburban life and leisure, expressed in works such as 




Sketch for 'The Balcony' (1867/70), 



Cliffs and Breakers (1884), 
The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, Birnie Philip Bequest, GLAHA 46391



A Distant Dome (1901/04)The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, Birnie Philip Bequest, GLAHA 46392
and Sketch for ‘Annabel Lee’ (1869/70), 

all from The Hunterian.

With rapid brushstrokes, Whistler captured the fleeting movement of figures – sometimes battling against the elements, at other times poised serenely in elegant robes. 



The figures in Battersea Reach from Lindsey Houses (c.1864, The Hunterian), gaze out over the Thames, dwarfed by the vast, foggy expanse of the river that has been built up via layers of thin, liquefied paint, “like breath on the surface of a pane of glass,” as the artist himself put it. This is a view of nature constrained by man‐made structures – the shadowy outline of the warehouses and chimneys on the far shore, the mast and rigging of a Thames barge in the mid horizon.

Whistler and Nature showcases new research on Whistler’s technique, notably in oil, watercolour and etching, and his writings on art undertaken by academics at the University of Glasgow. It will also review Whistler’s work in the studio – his classicised figure studies in oil, pastel and chalk in the context of 19th‐century revivalism, an area that has so far received only limited research attention. Taken together, the exhibition themes shed new light on the Western classical tradition that underpins Whistler’s efforts to reinvent nature and the modern, and his reputation as the most innovative and modernizing American artist of his time.

The exhibition draws upon The Hunterian’s collection alongside other UK collections, and showcases new research on Whistler’s technique (notably in oil, watercolour and etching) and his writings on art undertaken at the University of Glasgow. It examines 19th century gradations of the productive versus the ‘wild’ landscape and review the work of Whistler – a modernising, innovative artist of his time ‐ in the context of 19th century historicism, areas that have so far received only limited research attention.



Exhibition book: Whistler & Natureby Patricia de Montfort.


The exhibition will be shown next at Newcastle upon Tyne’s Laing Art Gallery, before arriving in Glasgow in the spring of 2020.

Louis Dewis: A Belgian Post-Impressionist

February 4, 2019, 8:44 am

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Louis Dewis, The Couze Chambon near Murols, 1940, oil on board, 23 ½ x 28 ¾ in. On loan from The Dewis Collection, LC. Image Courtesy of the Orlando Museum of Art

More than a hundred works of the distinguished Belgian Post-Impressionist Louis Dewis, lost to the world for over 50 years, will be featured in Dewis’s first major museum exhibition beginning January 25th at the Orlando Museum of Art (OMA). Discovered by chance in the Paris attic of Dewis’s daughter by his American great-grandson, Mr. Brad Face, they were among thousands of the artist’s paintings, studies and sketches that had been stored there since his death in 1946. After this discovery, Mr. Face resolved to return his ancestor’s work to the public and find a home for the collection.

“Art critics of the early 20th century European art world noted Dewis’s unusual ability to communicate his emotions through his work,” commented OMA Director and CEO Glen Gentele. “And that certainly has been what we’ve seen with our Dewis mini-exhibition (presented May 18 - September 9, 2018). This remarkable collection of Dewis’s work and the fascinating story of his life are not to be missed” continued Gentele.

Louis Dewis, Dyle Bridge at Mechelen, Belgium, c. 1919-1921. Oil on canvas, 26 ¾ x 21 ¾ in. On loan from The Dewis Collection, LC. Image courtesy of the Orlando Museum of Art.

 
ABOUT LOUIS DEWIS

Louis Dewis (1872-1946) was born Louis Dewachter in Leuze, Belgium. He developed an interest in art early in life but was discouraged from pursuing a career as a painter by his father. As a young man he entered the family business, Maison Dewachter, the world’s first department store chain. A successful and innovative entrepreneur, Dewis dedicated himself to growing the business while privately devoting time to his artistic development. He later adopted the pseudonym Louis Dewis to comply with his father’s insistence not to associate the family name with the younger Dewachter’s “frivolous” pastime as a painter.

Louis Dewis, The Beguinage at Bruges, 1920. Oil on canvas, 31 ½ in x 39 in. On loan from The Dewis Collection, LC. Image courtesy of the Orlando Museum of Art.

Following the death of his father, Dewis’s painting career began to take precedence over the family business. Living in Bordeaux at the time, he had his first public exhibitions there and was active in the city’s artistic life. At one of these exhibitions, he was discovered by the Paris art dealer Georges Petit. Petit was a leading dealer of the period representing at times such masters as Monet, Renoir and Rodin. Petit offered to represent Dewis, if he would move to Paris and devote himself to painting. In 1919, Dewis took Petit’s advice, selling his share of the department stores and moving to the French capital.

Though Petit died a year later, Dewis went on to establish a successful career for the next two and a half decades. Dewis exhibited throughout France and Belgium in the 1920s and 30s, as well as in Germany and Switzerland. When the Second World War began, Dewis left Paris and settled in Biarritz on France’s Southern Atlantic coast. For the last few years of his life, the scenic coastal city and surrounding rugged countryside became the subject of his paintings.

Louis Dewis: A Belgian Post-Impressionist will present landscapes from important periods of the artist’s career following World War I. The years immediately after the Great War were distinctive in French art for a return to the motif of landscape, which is reflected in the direction that Dewis pursued. In part a response to the unprecedented devastation of the country and staggering loss of life, many artists during this time sought to celebrate the “soil” of France in landscape painting. Working in the towns, villages and open countryside throughout France, these artists strove to depict the unique and varied regions that together comprised the cultural vitality of the nation.

Following his death in 1946, Dewis’s daughter, Andrée Dewachter Ottoz, was intent on preserving everything related to his artistic career. She had the entire contents of his atelier in Biarritz packed and shipped to her Paris home. For 50 years much of Dewis’s work languished in storage and his career was overlooked by the art world of Post War France. Finally, through a chance conversation with her great-nephew, Mr. Face, the then 92-year-old Mme. Ottoz revealed the cache of paintings she had stored away for decades. Inspired by this astonishing discovery of the life’s work of a once prominent artist and family member, Mr. Face undertook the major commitment of caring for the collection and renewing public interest in Dewis’s career.

American Beauty: Highlights from the Richard M. Scaife Bequest

February 4, 2019, 10:06 am

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Martin Johnson Heade, New Jersey Salt Marsh, ca. 1875 - 1885, oil on canvas, 17 × 36 1/4 in. Brandywine River Museum of Art. Richard M. Scaife Bequest, 2015

This spring the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Penn., will present American Beauty: Highlights from the Richard M. Scaife Bequest, featuring the finest works from the bequest of Mr. Scaife—who left his impressive art collection to the Brandywine and the Westmoreland Museum of American Art following his death in 2014. Co-organized by the Brandywine and Westmoreland, American Beauty features 50 paintings—a top selection of 25 from each museum’s holdings—celebrating Scaife’s passion for the rich traditions of American art. The exhibition will be on view March 9 through May 27, 2019 at the Brandywine.

A long-time trustee of the Brandywine—as well as a newspaper publisher and philanthropist—Scaife was also a passionate collector of American art. He bequeathed his entire art collection to the Brandywine and Westmoreland, specifying that it be divided evenly between the museums with each taking turns to make their selection. This exhibition provides the first opportunity for the public to see the finest paintings from the Scaife collection.

For the Brandywine, Scaife’s gift added significant depth to its landscape holdings, introducing extraordinary works by Martin Johnson Heade, John Frederick Kensett and Albert Bierstadt, as well as American Impressionist paintings by Theodore Robinson and Julian Alden Weir. Westmoreland’s collection was similarly enriched, including a stunning landscape by George Inness along with several marine paintings and elegant figurative works by artists such as William Merritt Chase and Guy Pène du Bois. Together, these paintings present a fascinating glimpse of one man’s vision and an overview of the evolution of American art in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

“The Richard M. Scaife bequest was a watershed moment in the history of the Brandywine River Museum of Art,” said Thomas Padon, The James H. Duff Director of the Brandywine River Museum of Art. “The works of art selected from Mr. Scaife’s collection bolstered and broadened the Brandywine’s holdings and its connection to the American landscape tradition.”

"We are delighted to be working in partnership with the Brandywine for this exhibition,” commented Anne Kraybill, Richard M. Scaife Director/CEO of The Westmoreland Museum of American Art. “We are very thankful that Mr. Scaife left these works in trust to our museums to preserve for future generations to enjoy."

During his lifetime, Scaife surrounded himself with works of art at his two homes in Pittsburgh and Ligonier, Pennsylvania, as well as those in Pebble Beach, California and Nantucket, Massachusetts. In California and Massachusetts, he tended to collect the work of artists showing scenes of these locales. This was especially the case in Nantucket where he surrounded himself with nautical subject matter by both historical and contemporary artists. A broader selection of American art could be found at his two southwestern Pennsylvania homes, as well a handful of regional artists. Examples from all four of his residences are featured in this exhibition.

Mr. Scaife believed in art’s power to enrich our existence and its ability to help us better understand the world and the issues facing us. Through his bequest, these works of art, once enjoyed privately in domestic settings, have become part of the public realm. As he wrote toward the end of his life: “Beautiful art—paintings, music, literature, whatever—can transform our moods, lighten our hearts, make us think or change our minds, inspire us to be creative or live better lives.”



Theodore Robinson, Yacht Club Basin, Cos Cob Harbor, 1894, oil on wood panel, 10 × 13 1/2 in. Brandywine River Museum of Art. Richard M. Scaife Bequest, 2015



Guy Pène du Bois, The Appraisal, ca. 1946, oil on canvas, 30 1/4 × 20 1/2 in. Brandywine River Museum of Art. Richard M. Scaife Bequest, 2015. © Estate of Yvonne Pène du Bois McKenney



Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), Coast of California, n.d., Oil on paper mounted to canvas, 14 x 19 inches, Brandywine River Museum, Richard M. Scaife Bequest, 2015, 2016.11.2



John La Farge, Fountain in Our Garden at Nikko, 1886, oil on wood panel, 11 3/4 × 9 3/4 in. Brandywine River Museum of Art. Richard M. Scaife Bequest, 2015



George Inness, Moonrise, Alexandria Bay, 1891, oil on canvas, 30 ¼ x 45 ¼ in. Westmoreland Museum of American Art. Bequest of Richard M. Scaife, 2015

 

Thomas Cole’s Refrain: The Paintings of Catskill Creek

February 4, 2019, 10:22 am

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Thomas Cole National Historic Site
May 4-November 3, 2019

Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York
November 21, 2019, to February 28, 2020



Thomas Cole’s Refrain: The Paintings of Catskill Creek will open on May 4 in collaboration with Cornell University Press and the Hudson River Museum, with related programming in partnership with Scenic Hudson and Greene Land Trust.

The exhibition, curated by H. Daniel Peck, John Guy Vassar, Jr., Professor Emeritus of English at Vassar College, reveals new scholarship on Thomas Cole, scholarship explored in Professor Peck’s forthcoming book of the same title, published with Cornell University Press. Created during the eighteen-year period between 1827 and 1845, which spans Thomas Cole’s mature career, the artist's completed paintings of Catskill Creek constitute the most sustained sequence of landscape paintings he ever made.

The views in the paintings were all anchored along one short stretch of Catskill Creek near the Village of Catskill, where Thomas Cole lived and worked. The exhibition considers these paintings as a series for the first time, unified by place as well as their stable composition and recurring motifs, even as they exhibit variations reflecting the changes in the artist’s life and times. Cole’s repeated attention to the landscape of Catskill Creek signifies his deep attachment to it, and illustrates his development of a profound sense of place. Cole’s view of the Catskill Mountains that frames Catskill Creek can still be enjoyed from the porch of the Main House at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site today.           

"The exhibition tells the story of Cole’s discovery of Catskill Creek, with its Catskill Mountain background, and his ever deepening attachment to it over the course of eighteen years. The paintings contain mysteries— enigmatic figures, evocative human structures, and symbolic landforms – that tell stories of their own," notes H. Daniel Peck, Exhibition Curator and John Guy Vassar, Jr., Professor Emeritus of English at Vassar College.

"This is a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in Cole’s stunning paintings of Catskill Creek and to visit the very place along Catskill Creek that Cole fell in love with nearly 200 years ago. The stretch of land depicted in the paintings has been preserved as a public park that is located just a few miles from the historic site," said Elizabeth Jacks, Executive Director of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site.

Exhibition Overview

The exhibition follows Cole’s Catskill Creek paintings from the 1820s through the 1840s--almost the full course of his career--and includes twelve original oil paintings by the artist. Represented, as well, are paintings of the Catskill Creek scene by leading nineteenth-century artists who were inspired by Cole: Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, and Charles Herbert Moore.

The exhibition features Thomas Cole paintings from private collections that have rarely been seen in public:  
 

Thomas Cole, View Near Catskill, 1828-29. Oil on wood panel, 24 1/4 x 33 3/4 in. Framed: 31 1/2 x 41 x 2 3/8 in. Private collection.

View Near Catskill, 1828-29,

and Settler’s Home in the Catskills, 1842,

as well as major works from the collections of the New-York Historical Society, Yale University Art Gallery, The National Gallery of Art, Albany Institute of History and Art, Olana State Historic Site, the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, Detroit Institute of Arts, and The Currier Museum of Art.

Thomas Cole’s Refrain: The Paintings of Catskill Creek will be presented in the Thomas Cole Site’s reconstructed “New Studio,” a building designed by Thomas Cole at his home in Catskill, New York. After the debut at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, the exhibition will travel to the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, New York, where it will be on view from November 21, 2019, to February 28, 2020.



 

THOMAS COLE, North Mountain and Catskill Creek, 1838. Oil on canvas, 26 7/16 x 36 7/16 in. Framed: 40 1/4 x 50 3/16 x 4 1Ž2 in. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Anne Osborn Prentice, 1981.56

Thomas Cole, On Catskill Creek, Sunset, c. 1845-47. Oil on panel, 8 13/16 x 14 1/2 x 3/8 in. New-York Historical Society, Collection of Arthur and Eileen Newman, Bequest of Eileen Newman, 2015.33.8.

Thomas Cole, Autumn Landscape (View of Mount Chocorua), 1827-28. Oil on canvas, 38 5/8 x 48 1/2 in. The Jack Warner Foundation, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

THOMAS COLE, Catskill Creek, New York, 1845. Oil on canvas, 26 1Ž2 by 36 in. / Framed: 37 5/8 x 47 5/8 x 4 1/2 in. New-York Historical Society, The Robert L. Stuart Collection, Gift of his widow Mrs. Mary Stuart, S-157 




Catalogue 




The exhibition will be accompanied by a 186-page publication written by H. Daniel Peck, John Guy Vassar, Jr., Professor Emeritus of English at Vassar College, with forewords by Elizabeth Jacks, Executive Director of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, and Masha Turchinsky, Director of the Hudson River Museum. Thomas Cole’s Refrain: The Paintings of Catskill Creek will be published by Cornell University Press.

With new scholarship and interpretations of both Cole’s major and little-known works, the publication will also feature maps identifying the locations where Cole sketched. Professor Peck is the author of books about writers Henry David Thoreau and James Fenimore Cooper, and has published on painters Asher B. Durand and Georgia O’Keeffe. His work on this project was supported by an Andrew W. Mellon Emeritus Fellowship. The recipient of several NEH and ACLS fellowships, Professor Peck has chaired the Modern Language Association’s Division on Nineteenth-Century American Literature, and has served as director of Vassar College’s American Studies Program.

Thomas Cole, an internationally renowned artist, centered his art and life in Catskill, New York.  From his vantage point near the village, he cast his eyes on the wonders of the Catskill Mountains and the swiftly flowing Catskill Creek.  These landscapes were sources of enduring inspiration for him.

Over twenty years, Cole painted one view of the Catskill Mountains at least ten times. Each work represents the mountains from the perspective of a wide river bend near Catskill, New York. No other scene commanded this much of the artist's attention. Cole's Catskill Creek paintings, which include works central to American nineteenth-century landscape art, are an integral series. In Thomas Cole's Refrain, H. Daniel Peck explores the patterns of change and permanence in the artist's depiction of a scene he knew first-hand. Peck shows how the paintings express the artist's deep attachment to place and region while illuminating his expansive imagination.

Thomas Cole's Refrain shows how Cole's Catskill Creek paintings, while reflecting concepts such as the stages of life, opened a more capacious vision of experience than his narrative-driven series, such as The Voyage of Life. Relying on rich visual evidence provided by paintings, topographic maps, and contemporary photographs, Peck argues that human experience is conveyed through Cole's embedding into a stable, recurring landscape key motifs that tell stories of their own. The motifs include enigmatic human figures, mysterious architectural forms, and particular trees and plants. Peck finds significant continuities—personal and conceptual—running throughout the Catskill Creek paintings, continuities that cast new light on familiar works and bring significance to ones never before seen by many viewers.

Life in the Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Masterpieces from the Dordrecht Museum

February 4, 2019, 12:59 pm

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Columbus Museum of Art

February 1 – June 16, 2019

 

Life in the Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Masterpieces from the Dordrecht Museum, on view at the Columbus Museum of Art (CMA), is the result of an innovative international partnership with Dordrecht Museum, The Netherlands. Spanning more than three centuries, Life in the Age of Rembrandt features 17th-century art from the Golden Age of Dutch painting and concludes with works of The Hague School of the late 19th-century. This exclusive exhibition, shown only in Columbus, Ohio, showcases some 90 works, including 40 masterworks, many paired with a related object such as a print, a coin, Delft ware or silver. All the works in the exhibition are on loan from the Dordrecht Museum, The Netherlands.

     Called the cradle of the Golden Age, the city of Dordrecht is steeped in European Old World traditions, art and history and is the oldest incorporated port city in Holland. The influence of the Golden Age is still visible in Dordrecht’s many mansions, ancient warehouses, canals, churches, city walls, harbors and busy merchant streets. Dordrecht Museum is one of the oldest and most important fine art museums in Holland. It houses six centuries of Dutch paintings and presents a varied selection of temporary exhibitions each year as well as numerous programs and events for members and visitors.

     The Dutch Golden Age (17th century) was a period of great wealth for the Dutch Republic, including Dordrecht. As international trade expanded, cities and citizens grew in wealth and prominence. Art and science blossomed during this time as well. 

The majority of works in Life in the Age of Rembrandt were executed in the 17th century or Northern Baroque period, during which Dutch painting’s most famous master Rembrandt was active. In Dordrecht and elsewhere, 17th-century Dutch art was a mirror of daily life in Holland. The so-called "little masters" specialized in specific subjects such as portraits, landscapes, still lifes and genre scenes or depictions of everyday life.

     These paintings were owned by members of Holland's prosperous middle class, and rarely included overtly religious subjects, since the dominant Calvinist faith in Holland prohibited images of Biblical figures in churches. However, secular paintings were filled with hidden religious or moralizing meanings. 

Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp, Bed of Tulips, 1638,

Oil on panel

Collection of the Dordrecht Museum

The flowers in Bed of Tulips by Jacob Cuyp, for example, are a symbol of the vanity of physical beauty (because they quickly wilted and died) and of material greed, since they sold for exorbitant prices in the 17th century. Indeed, the Dutch economy crashed when the tulip market collapsed in 1637, one year before this painting was completed.

     The Fish Market (1627) by Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp, Dordrecht’s first important painter, depicts a fish vendor and two women in an open-air marketplace. The painting highlights the importance of maritime commerce in Dordrecht, and carries a warning against vice: fish-trading was commonly associated with base desires, hence an undertone of sexual innuendo hangs over the scene. 

 Two salt cellars representing a fish monger and a maiden will be installed adjacent to the painting. Designed by Anthony de Vos, they are an example of costly luxury items that will accompany certain paintings in the exhibition. In other cases, more common, everyday objects from the 17th-century such as ice skates, a helmet or a baby’s high chair will be paired with paintings, bringing the content to life for visitors.

     Life in the Age of Rembrandtis the first project stemming from an ongoing collaboration between CMA and the Dordrecht Museum, The Netherlands. The goal of the partnership is to celebrate the remarkable treasures of both museums while broadening perspectives and cultivating a global view of community. 

Through multiple–year exchanges, CMA and the Dordrecht Museum will build empathy and cultural understanding between people. Dordrecht Museum will lend to CMA old master works and in turn, CMA will lend to Dordrecht Museum a number of its outstanding American and European modern works of art. Not only is each museum sharing the strength of its permanent collection, but the exchange also allows each to present artworks not well-represented in their respective collections. 

In 2020, Dordrecht Museum will present the temporary exhibition Pioneers of Modernism, which will feature, among other works, Mary Cassatt’s Portrait of a Young Woman, c. 1898, on loan from the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio.

Jan van Goyen

View of Dordrecht, 1651

Oil on panel

Collection of the Dordrecht Museum, purchased with support of Vereniging Rembrandt,

Mondriaan Stichting,Stichting Vrienden van de Dordtse Musea and many other funds, corporate and private support 2008

Samuel van Hoogstraten

Masters of the Mint of Holland in Dordrecht, not dated

Oil on canvas

Collection of the Dordrecht Museum

Abraham Susenier

Still Life with Shells, 1659

Oil on canvas

Collection of the Dordrecht Museum, purchased with the support of a private sponsor from Dordrecht 1992

Aelbert Cuyp

Horsemen Resting in a Landscape,

Date unknown

Oil on canvas

Collection of the Dordrecht Museum, purchased with support of Vereniging Rembrandt 1978

Aelbert Cuyp

Portrait of the 20-year-old Duck Sijctghen,

1647

Oil on panel

Collection of the Dordrecht Museum, purchased with support of Vereniging Rembrandt, Mondriaan Stichting and Stichting Vrienden van het Dordrechts Museum 2004

 

Bartholomeus Assteyn

Still Life with Flowers, Shells and a Toad, 1631

Oil on panel

Collection of the Dordrecht Museum, loan from the Cultural Heritage Agency 1953

Samuel van Hoogstraten

Bird Still Life with Cat, 1669

Oil on canvas

Collection of the Dordrecht Museum

 

Abraham van Strij

The Drawing Lesson , Date unknown

Oil on panel

Collection of the Dordrecht Museum, purchased with support of Vereniging Rembrandt, particularly her Willem and Mary Reus-de Lange fund 2015

 

Rembrandt van Rijn

Self-Portrait with Saskia,

1636

Etching

Collection of the Dordrecht

Museum, loan from Teekengenootschap Pictura

Rembrandt van Rijn

Adoration of the Shepherds, 1654

Etching

Courtesy of the Dordrecht Museum, loan from Teekengenootschap Pictura

Antoine Waldorp, Mill with a view of Delft, 1836

Oil on canvas

Collection of the Dordrecht Museum

 

 

 

 

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History, Labor, Life: The Prints of Jacob Lawrence

February 5, 2019, 10:46 am

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Crocker Art Museum

January 27, 2019 — April 07, 2019

 

 

Jacob Lawrence, The Studio, 1996. Lithograph on paper, 30 x 22 1/8 in. © 2019 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Jacob Lawrence, Forward Together, 1997. Silkscreen on paper, 25 1/2 x 40 1/8 in. © 2019 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. This exhibition provides an overview of influential American artist Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000). Lawrence was primarily concerned with the narration of African American experiences and histories. His acute observations of community life, work, struggle and emancipation during his lifetime were rendered alongside vividly imagined chronicles of the past. The past and present in his work are intrinsically linked, providing insight into the social, economic and political realities that continue to impact and shape contemporary society today.

 

Jacob Lawrence, The Builders (Family), silkscreen on paper, 34” x 25.75”, 1974. © 2018 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Featuring more than 90 works produced between 1963 and 2000, the exhibition focuses on his graphic work and explores three major themes of his printmaking oeuvre. Lawrence’s recording and recollection of African-American and larger African diasporic histories are featured, as well as his vivid observations of dynamic city life in Harlem, New York City. Works in the exhibition include significant complete print portfolios, such as the “Toussaint L’Ouverture” series, as well as “The Legend of John Brown” series, amongst others.

History, Labor, Life: The Prints of Jacob Lawrence is curated by Storm Janse van Rensburg, SCAD head curator of exhibitions. The exhibition is organized by the SCAD Museum of Art and is made possible with support from the Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation.

Also see

http://arthistorynewsreport.blogspot.com/2018/09/history-labor-life-prints-of-jacob.html
 

Prints in the Age of Bruegel

February 9, 2019, 9:07 am

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27.02 > 23.06.2019 - BOZAR, Centre for Fine Arts
In co-production with the Royal Library of Belgium

 
The landscapes of Bruegel, a research project by Bas Smets
As part of the commemorative year around Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the BOZAR spring season is dominated by the artistic productions of the dazzling sixteenth century. With the double bill ‘The Age of Bruegel’, BOZAR presents two major exhibitions around the renaissance in the Low Countries: ‘Bernard van Orley’ and ‘Prints in the Age of Bruegel’.


 

So many men, so many minds. Allegory on the difficulty of Governance, Pieter Van der Borcht, ca. 1578, etching, S.I 1673, 210 x 239 mm © Royal Library of Belgium

Prints in the Age of Bruegel zooms in on the art of printing; the revolutionary new medium that conquered the world in the sixteenth century.Today, we think of Pieter Bruegel mainly as a painter, but in his time he made his name through engravings of his drawings. Bruegel was a true pioneer of the graphic arts, though he was far from the first or only one: his graphic work is merely the tip of the iceberg. There are many more jewels on paper to be discovered in the shadow of this giant.

Prints in the Age of Bruegel is a co-production with the Royal Library of Belgium. The exhibition sketches a lively image of print production in the Southern Netherlands during the era of Bruegel, with numerous etchings, woodcuts and engravings by Bruegel and such contemporaries as Lucas van Leyden, Albrecht Dürer, Pieter Coecke van Aalst, Michiel Coxcie and others.



Anonymous in the manner of Bosch

Christie’s The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale, 27 February 2019

February 9, 2019, 11:14 am

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Sixteen Artists including René Magritte, Joan Miró, Oscar Domínguez, Max Ernst, James Ensor and Salvador Dalí

Launching 20^th Century at Christie’s on 27 February 2019, The Art of the Surreal sale will follow the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale. This year’s 18^th edition of Christie’s annual The Art of the Surreal auction includes Surrealist works spanning from 1890 to 1974, with 34 lots by 16 artists. The sale includes seven works by René Magritte, led by Le lieu commun (1964, Estimate on Request), one of the finest and largest examples of his iconic bowler-hatted men. Never-before seen at auction, the work offers a unique view of the wandering figure both full-face and hidden behind a column in an ambiguous landscape of either impossible or multiple reality. Six works by Max Ernst and four by Joan Miró are also offered, alongside a rare discovery by Salvador Dalí, one of the experimental works of Joan Miró’s ‘dream’ paintings, and a rediscovered, large and enigmatic work by Oscar Domínguez, unseen in public since its creation in 1934. The works from the sale will be exhibited in London from 21 to 27 February 2019, with 20^th Century at Christie’s continuing until 7 March.

Olivier Camu, Deputy Chairman, Impressionist and Modern Art, Christie’s: “The 18^th edition of our annual themed sale promises to be exciting, with newly discovered paintings by Dali and Dominguez, as well as Magritte’s masterpiece Le lieu commun. It’s an honour to present this work at auction for the first time. It is the most important and iconic representation of Magritte’s bowler-hatted man to be auctioned since the sale of Le fils de l’homme in 1998, which reached a phenomenal price at Christie’s New York. Formerly in the collection of Gustave Nellens, who received it from the artist, Le lieu commun is one of the eight largest paintings Magritte did in this hyper-realistic style of the bowler-hatted man, four of which are now in museums.”

René Magritte

• René Magritte (1898-1967)Le monde poétique II

  Estimate GBP 1,500,000 - GBP 2,500,000

  (USD 1,938,000 - USD 3,230,000)

  Lot 103
• René Magritte (1898-1967)Moments musicaux

  Estimate GBP 750,000 - GBP 1,250,000

  (USD 969,000 - USD 1,615,000)

  Lot 102
• René Magritte (1898-1967)Le pain quotidien

  Estimate GBP 2,000,000 - GBP 3,000,000

  (USD 2,584,000 - USD 3,876,000)

  Lot 105
• René Magritte (1898-1967)Le lieu commun

  Estimate on request

  Lot 108

 

René Magritte (1898-1967)La belle captive

Estimate GBP 2,000,000 - GBP 3,000,000

(USD 2,584,000 - USD 3,876,000)

Lot 112

Led by Le lieu commun, six additional works by René Magritte will be offered for sale. In La belle captive (1931, estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000), René Magritte presents, for the very first time, the image of a painted canvas standing on an easel, depicting the exact same scene that its presence within the picture seems to obscure. This was to become a familiar device for the rest of his career. In Composition on a Sea Shore (1935-36, estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000) three incongruous and impossible objects are positioned amidst a sun-soaked beach: a sheet of corrugated metal interspersed with spherical bells; a picture-within-a-picture; and an amorphous, flesh-coloured column or pillar, an object that is completely unique within the artist’s oeuvre. Floating amidst the clouds, the body of a statuesque nude woman is framed by the jagged opening of a darkened cave in Magritte’s Le pain quotidien (1942, estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000). Never-before seen at auction, Le pain quotidien has remained in private hands since the time of its conception. Additional works include Le monde poétique II (1937, estimate: £1,500,000-2,500,000), Moments musicaux (1961, estimate: £750,000-1,250,000) and Les barricades mystérieuses (1960, estimate: £350,000-450,000).

Max Ernst

 

Max Ernst (1891-1976)Aux antipodes du paysage

Estimate GBP 400,000 - GBP 600,000

(USD 516,800 - USD 775,200)

Lot 121

Max Ernst (1891-1976)Ohne Titel (Muschelblumen)

Estimate GBP 260,000 - GBP 350,000

(USD 335,920 - USD 452,200)

Lot 127

•  

  Max Ernst (1891-1976)Projet pour le monument aux oiseaux

  Estimate GBP 100,000 - GBP 200,000

  (USD 129,200 - USD 258,400)

  Lot 130
• Max Ernst (1891-1976)Mer et soleil or Tremblement de terre

  Estimate GBP 500,000 - GBP 800,000

  (USD 646,000 - USD 1,033,600)

  Lot 120

Bathed in the strange light of the cosmic sun wheel at the centre of the composition, the enigmatic Mer et soleil (1926, estimate: £500,000-800,000) belongs to a series of works that Max Ernst created in the late 1920s in which he explores spontaneous, unconscious painterly effects and techniques in the construction of his compositions. Painted in 1936, and previously owned by Doris Copley and Dorothea Tanning, Aux antipodes du paysage (1936, estimate: £400,000-600,000) is a powerful illustration of the constantly evolving nature of Max Ernst’s Surrealist vision. The group is completed by three early works, Projet pour le monument aux oiseaux (1927, estimate: £100,000-200,000), Ohne Titel (Muschelblumen) (1928, estimate: £260,000-350,000) and L’homme et la femme (circa 1929-30, estimate: £80,000-120,000), and an oil from 1962, Où naissent les cardinaux (1962, estimate: £700,000-1,000,000).


Salvador Dalí

 

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)Sans titre

Estimate GBP 1,000,000 - GBP 1,500,000

(USD 1,292,000 - USD 1,938,000)

Lot 125

Recently discovered, Sans titre (1932, estimate: £1,000,000-1,500,000) is a microscopically detailed painting from 1932, which introduces one of Salvador Dalí’s most frequently rendered obsessions of the early 1930s. It depicts a red pole, possibly a staff or a fisherman’s mast, protruding from the small, rectangular window of a Catalan fisherman’s shack similar to the one in Port Lligat where, in 1930, Dalí and his new love Gala Eluard had chosen to live and embark upon their love affair. Appearing as opposites and yet unified, the pole and the window represent Dalí’s theory surrounding the physical characteristics of objects, here conjoined in a way that symbolises the sense of surprise and co-dependence that he found with Gala.

Oscar Domínguez

Óscar Domínguez (1906-1958)Violette Nozières or Elle rêve

Estimate GBP 600,000 - GBP 900,000

(USD 775,200 - USD 1,162,800)

Lot 107

Oscar Domínguez’s absorbing and enigmatic painting Violette Nozières (Elle rêve) (1934, estimate: £600,000-900,000) is an exciting discovery, which was only previously known from a small black and white photograph. It was purchased directly from the artist shortly after its creation and has remained in the same family collection ever since. Among the artist’s rare early surrealist masterpieces, the large composition is imbued with the raw sexuality and violence so characteristic of Domínguez’s oeuvre, combining elements of semi-automatism with precisely rendered details and figures to create a powerfully fantastical, dream-like image, where every element goes through a metamorphic process in front of our eyes. At the heart of the composition, a majestic lion boldly stares down the shadowy faceless figure of a soldier, who raises his arm as if to shoot at the defenceless young woman that lies in the beast’s stomach. While for the most part its symbolism remains determinedly elusive, Violette Nozières (Elle rêve) draws inspiration from the notorious scandal of the same name, which had gripped France throughout 1933 and 1934:  Violette Nozière’s poisoning of both her parents, followed by her attempt to disguise it as an apparent double suicide. Filled with a seemingly endless array of mysterious vignettes and symbols, connected through oblique visual hints, Violette Nozières (Elle rêve) is a surrealist tour-de-force that captures the potency of Domínguez’s unique creative vision.

Joan Miró

 

Joan Miró (1893-1983)Peinture

Estimate GBP 1,200,000 - GBP 1,800,000

(USD 1,550,400 - USD 2,325,600)

Lot 126

Peinture (1927, estimate: £1,200,000-1,800,000) is one of the final and most experimental works of Joan Miró’s radical and much celebrated series of ‘oneiric’ or ‘dream’ paintings, which the artist began in Paris in 1925 at the height of his involvement with Surrealism. Personnage (1967, estimate: £300,000-400,000) is part of a pivotal series of painted bronze ‘Assemblage-Sculptures’ by the artist. In the late 1960s, Miró wholeheartedly embraced sculpture in his continuing quest to expand the limits of art, and, following an earlier suggestion by Alberto Giacometti, in 1967 fused his sculpture with painting by adding colour to these works.
Further artists representing the broad range and influence of the movement include Yves Tanguy, Alberto Giacometti, André Masson, Victor Brauner, Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Paul Delvaux, Antoni Tàpies, Jean Arp and finally two artists that were precursors to the movement, Giorgio de Chirico and James Ensor.

Art & Empire: The Golden Age of Spain

February 9, 2019, 11:24 am

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The San Diego Museum of Art presents the exhibition Art & Empire: The Golden Age of Spain, featuring more than 100 outstanding works by leading artists from Spain and its global territories during the pivotal years of around 1600 to 1750. On view May 18, 2019 through Sept. 2, 2019, the exhibition showcases a wide variety of exquisite paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts produced throughout the Spanish-speaking world. This exhibition is the first in the U.S. to examine the notion of “Golden Age” beyond the shores of the Iberian Peninsula by bringing together works from Spain’s European, American, and Asian realms.

Francisco de Zubarán, Virgin and Child with Saint John, 1658. Oil on canvas. Gift of Anne R., Amy and Irene Putnam. 1935.22 San Diego Museum of Art

“Art & Empire: The Golden Age of Spain showcases the broad scope of the Spanish empire and helps bring context to some of the international treasures within the Museum’s permanent collection,” said Roxana Velásquez, Maruja Baldwin Executive Director of The San Diego Museum of Art. “Our renowned collection of Spanish art is on view alongside important works from private collections and major institutions around the world. This is an opportunity for San Diego and its visitors to see works by the most influential Spanish artists, including Diego Velázquez, whose work has transcended time and continues to inspire new generations of artists.”

Juan Sánchez Cotán, Still life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber, ca. 1602 Oil on canvas. Gift of Anne R. and Amy Putnam. 1945.43 San Diego Museum of Art

Artists featured in the exhibition include Diego Velázquez, Peter Paul Rubens, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Francisco de Zurbarán, Jusepe de Ribera, El Greco, Juan de Valdés Leal, Juan Sánchez Cotán, and many more. This exhibition also marks the first time in the Museum’s history that all five of the Spanish masters represented on the Museum’s building façade—Velázquez, Murillo, Zurbarán, Ribera and El Greco—will be shown together at the Museum.

Sofonisba Anguissola, Portrait of a Spanish Prince (probably Philip II), ca. 1573. Oil on canvas. Gift of Anne R. and Amy Putnam. 1936.51. San Diego Museum of Art

Art & Empire: The Golden Age of Spain brings to life the extraordinary moment when Spain’s visual arts, architecture, literature, and music all reached unprecedented heights. More than 100 works of art are organized into five sections including The Courtly Image: Portraiture in the Hispanic World; The Birth of Naturalism; Art in the Service of Faith; Splendors of Daily Life; and Global Materials and Trade, and represent more than 10 countries, including Belgium, Italy, Mexico, Peru and the Philippines.

In addition to organizing the exhibition, Dr. Michael Brown, the Museum’s Curator of European Art, is editor and contributing author of the accompanying, fully illustrated publication, which features essays by renowned art historians including Jonathan Brown, the preeminent authority on Spanish art, as well as Benito Navarrete Prieto, Sofía Sanabrais, and Jorge Rivas Pérez.

British Painting from Turner to Whistler

February 9, 2019, 11:44 am

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The Fondation de l’Hermitage 

 1 February to 2 June 2019

The Fondation de l’Hermitage continues its exploration of the great centres of western art in the 19th century with an exhibition devoted to British painting from Turner to Whistler, taking in the Pre-Raphaelites. Nearly 60 paintings, on loan from the most prestigious collections in the United Kingdom and shown in Switzerland for the first time, offer an unrivaled survey of art produced during the golden age of the British Empire, highlighting its captivating originality.

Frederick Sandys, Vivien, 1863. Huile sur toile, 64 x 52,5 cm. Manchester Art Gallery © Manchester Art Gallery / Bridgeman Images.
 

Alongside Turner, whose dazzling oeuvre anticipated Impressionism, the exhibition pays tribute to artists who won renown through landscape painting, such as Atkinson Grimshaw, Baker Pyne, Brett, and Martin. 

Art that reflects changing times

Alfred Edward Emslie, Bending Sail after a Gale, 1881, oil on canvas, 68x102cm, Private Collection, ©photo TDR.

The exhibition places a special emphasis on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (Millais, Rossetti) as well as the Aesthetic Movement(Burne-Jones, Watts), two circles of artists who found powerful inspiration in literature, mythology and antiquity (Alma-Tadema, Egley, Hughes, Sandys, Scott).

George William Joy, The Bayswater Omnibus, 1895, oil on canvas, 120,6×172,5 cm, Museum of London, ©George William Joy / Museum of London.

The industrial revolution and the rapid development of cities and public transport give rise to compelling scenes that bear witness to different facets of modern life (Emslie, Fletcher, Hicks, Joy) along with its social repercussions (Collinson, Holl, Mulready, Nelson O’Neil, Walker).

James Collinson, At the Bazaar, 1857, oil on panel, 60,6×45,7cm, Sheffield Museum, Graves Gift 1929, ©Sheffield Museum.

British Painting from Turner to Whistler is the first exhibition devoted to British Victorian paintings in a Swiss museum and is intended to reveal the many artistic directions that dominated the visual arts in Britain after the death of Constable. Included in the exhibition are three works on loan from the Royal Collection which showcase the richness and diversity of paintings made during this period. 

 

 

Frank Holl, No Tidings from The Sea provides an example of a direct commission by Queen Victoria with the subject left to the painter's discretion.

 

Sir Joseph Noel Paton, Home (The Return from the Crimea)The Royal Collection © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

John Everett Millais, The Eve of Saint Agnes, 1863, oil on canvas, 117,8 x 154,3cm, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, ©Royal Collection Trust/Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019

The survey concludes with a section dedicated to Sargent and Whistler, cosmopolitan artists of American origin: bold and brilliant portrait painters, among the most celebrated of their era.

Balthus

February 11, 2019, 8:13 am

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Fondation Beyeler in Riehen / Basel
2 September 2018 to 1 January 2019

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

From 19 February to 26 May 2019

In 2019 the museum will be presenting an exhibition on the legendary artist Balthasar Klossowski de Rola (1908-2001), known as Balthus. The exhibition is jointly organised with the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen / Basel, where it will be seen from September 2018 to January 2019.

Considered one of the great masters of 20^th-century art, Balthus is undoubtedly one of the most unique painters of his time. His diverse, ambiguous work, which has been equally admired and reviled, pursued a direction that ran completely counter to the rise of the avant-gardes. Balthus himself named some of his influences derived from the tradition of art history, ranging from Piero della Francesca to Caravaggio, Poussin, Géricault and Courbet. A more detailed study of his work also reveals references to more recent movements such as Neue Sachlichkeit and his employment of devices derived from 19^th-century children’s book illustrations.

In his divergence from modernity, which could now be described as “post-modern”, Balthus evolved a personal and unique type of avant-garde art and a figurative style that defies classification. His particular pictorial language, with its use of solid forms and strongly defined outlines, combines the procedures of the Old Masters with certain aspects of Surrealism. The resulting images involve numerous contradictions, juxtaposing tranquillity with extreme tension; reverie and mystery with reality; and eroticism with innocence.




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The starting point for the exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler is Balthusʼs monumental painting Passage du Commerce-Saint-André, from 1952–1954, which has been on permanent loan to the museum for some time. This enigmatic work epitomizes the artist's intensive engagement with the dimensions of space and time in the image, and with their relationship to the figure and the object. With this focus, the exhibition will bring together some fifty important pictures from every phase of Balthus's oeuvre, looking also at the strategies employed in the staging of his often provocative images, and illuminating the elements of irony and mystery in his work. His pictures combine tranquility with extreme tension, and embody a wealth of contradictions, mingling dream and reality, eroticism and innocence, the factual and the unfathomable, the familiar and the uncanny, in a wholly unique way.

 The exhibition, curated by Raphaël Bouvier with the support of MIchiko Kono and Juan Ángel López-Manzanares, brings together paintings from every period of Balthus’s career from the 1920s onwards. It will cast light on aspects such as the different types of intellectual interaction between the dimensions of space and time that exist in his paintings; the relationship between figure and object; and the essence of his enigmatic oeuvre.

The Museo Nacional Thyssen - Bornemisza presents a retrospective exhibition on the work of the French artist Balthasar Klossowski de Rola (1908 ‒ 2001), known as Balthus  It is organised in conjunction with Fondation Beyeler in Riehen/ Basel, where it is on show until January 2019, with the generous support of the painter’s family. 

Hailed as one of the great masters of twentieth - century art, Balthus is undoubtedly also one of the most unusual painters of his time. His diverse, ambiguous paintings , as admired as much as they are rejected, developed in virtually the opposite direction to the avant - garde movements. The artist himself explicitly stated that some of his influences in art historical tradition were Piero della Francesca, Caravaggio, Poussin, Géricault and Courbet. A closer analysis also reveals references to more modern movements such as New Objectivity and the devices used in the illustration of popular nineteenth - century children’s books such as Alice in Wonderland. 

His indifference – which could be described as ‘post - modern’ – of modern trends, Balthus developed a unique, personal figurative style that defies classification. His particular pictorial language characterised by bold forms and very marked contours combines the procedures of the O ld M asters with certain aspects of Surrealism , and his images embody many contradictions, mixing calm with extreme tension, the dream world and mystery with reality, and eroticism with innocence. In his urban scenes and interiors but also in his landscapes and still lifes, the picture space becomes a stage set in whi ch the viewer is invited to take part , while time appears to grind to a stand still. 

The exhibition, the first retrospective to be held in Spain for more than twenty years, brings together 47 works, mostly paintings in large format, which cover all the stages in his career from the 1920s onwards . 

The selection includes a few of his most important works, such as  



The Street(1933), which will be on show in Spain for the first time ,  



 Balthus . Cathy Dressing , 1933 . Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d'art moderne/Cent re de création industrielle Acquired in 1977 / 

Cathy ’s Toilette (1933), 



 The Blanchard Children (1937),  




Balthus. The Golden Days , 1944 ‒ 46 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC gift of the Joseph H.Hirshhorn Foundation, 1966

The Golden Days (1944 ‒ 46),  

Balthus, Thérèse, 1938 Oil on cardboard on wood, 100.3 x 81.3 cm

Thérèse 




Balthus. Thérèse Dreaming , 1938
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998 

 and Thérèse dreaming, 

both dated 1938 and magnificent examples of his controversial portraits of young adolescents, 

 

Balthus (Balthazar Klossowski de Rola)

The Card Game, 1948-50
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
and the Museo Thyssen’s Card Game (1948 ‒ 50 ), the only masterpiece by Balthus in Spain. 

The last room shows the results of the technical study and recent restoration work carried out on this painting by the museum’s team of restorers. Mention should be made of the MoMA and Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, among other institutions and private collections, for the importance and number of works loaned for the show. 

Balthus (Par is, 1908 - Rossinière, 2001) 

The son of the art historian and painter Erich Klossowski and Elisabeth Dorothea Spiro, known as Baladine and also an artist, Balthus ( Balthasar) was born in Paris in 1908 and was raised in the intellectual and artistic environment of the city, where his parents had established themselves a few years earlier. 

Owing to the family’s German origins , they had to seek refuge in Berlin and Switzerland during the First World War . After the war, his parents separated and Baladine became Merline, the muse and lov er of Rainer Maria Rilke. Balthus and his elder brother Pierre went to live in Geneva with her. The poet ended up taking his father’s place and became his main mentor. In 1920 Rilke published a collection of watercolours by the young artist in the book Mitsou: quarante images par Balthusz; and from then onwards Balthus’s family nickname became his artistic name. 

Balthus returned to Paris in 1924 to devote himself to painting. Although he rejected other painters’ artistic teachings, he was guided by Pierre Bonnard, a family friend, at the outset of his career and he therefore started out in a postimpressionist style. However, what truly interested him was studying the Old Masters such as Poussin, whom he copied in the Louvre. I n 1926 he spent several months in Tuscany, where he steeped himself in the art of Piero della Francesca and Masaccio . The following year he received his first public commission: some frescoes for the church of Baetenberg. 

In the 1930 s he spent stints in Berne and Paris, where he made friends with André Derain and Alberto Giacometti, among other artists. His first one - man show in 1934 received favourable critiques but he did not sell any pictures. To earn a living he painted commissioned portraits and designed theatre sets and gradually made a reputation for  



Balthus. The King of Cats, 1935 Musée cantonal des Beaux - Arts de Lausanne. Gift of Fondation Balthus Klossowski de Rola, 2016

 himself among the Parisian elite. In 1937 he married Antoinette de Watterville in Berne , with whom he had been in love years earlier and who had previously turned him down. He showed his work in London for the first time in 1936 and in the United States in 1938 . He was called up w hen the war bro ke out , but was discharged the following year due to health issues. By the end of the 1940s he was firmly established as a prestigious artist. 

After separating from Antoinette, from 1953 to 1961 he lived in the Château de Chassy , in Morvan (Burgundy ) , where he embarked on a period devoted chiefly to female bathers and landscape. In 1961 his friend the French culture minister André Malraux appointed him as director of the la Académie de France in Rome. Engaged for 15 years in renovating the historic Villa Médicis building, which housed the Academy, he spent less time on his work. In Italy, however, Balthus began using a technique that recalls that of Renaissance frescoes. 

In 1962, during a trip to Japan as director of the academy, he met Setsuko Ideta and went on to marry her a few years later. During a trip to Switzerland, Balthus and Setsuko fell in love with an eighteenth - century building known as the Grand Chalet in Rossinière, which had been a hotel since the days of the Grand Tour, housing well - known travellers and artists. After acquiring and renovating it, the painter went to live there in 1977 with his wife and children until the end of his days. He died on 18 February 2001. 

Painting against the current ‘I have no wish to figure among samples of the latest novelties. I simply want to fulfill my own destiny as a painter (...) ’ ‘Every great painter teaches us to see. Balthus took us into a realm all his own. He was not a Surrealist, nor a realist, nor did he ever belong to any other ism. His paintings were sheer originals, unique and independent inventions, owing a bit to the past, but only as masterly craftsmanship, a bit to some scandalous subjects, but only as a way to get attention (as he once wrote in a letter), and in the end owing everything to their courageous appearance in our present .’ (Wim Wenders) Balthus’s first solo exhibition in 1934 featured only seven canvases , but they proved to be quite a revelation. His images, painted in the traditional manner but far removed from the figurative trends of the day, were steeped in psychological connotations and myste y .  

Balthus . The Turkish Room , 1965 - 196. Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d'art moderne/Centre de création industrielle, Paris. Adquisición del estado, 1967 

Balthus. The Street , 1933. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. James Thrall Soby Bequest , 1979 4 

 Balthus set out to provoke. At first sight his paintings look conventional, with an almost academic classicism, but they are not: underlying them is a much more complex psychological vision. The world is presented as a stage where dreams are interwoven with everyday life. They are disturbing, ambiguous images that cause fascination or rep ulsion, but never indifference. His narrative pictures are theatricalised psychological dramas, intimate scenes or domestic tragedies that are played out for the spectator over and over again . 

The sca nt depth of the picture space, the limited, dramatic palette, the exaggerated ly classical feeling, the suggestive and striking figures, the irveiled or latent eroticism, the implicit violence and the sensation of time stood still all help create this mysterious atmosphere. The time of childhood , the enigma of reality The dream of a mythical and unattainable innocence underlies many of his paintings, as does an ambiguous vision of the transition from childhood to adulthood, especially with respect to sexuality and growing awareness of one’s own body. 

Balthus considered ‘the pursuit of childhood, its charm and secrets’ to be an essential part of his work and the motif of children playing and popular tales such as Heinrich Hoffmann ’s Shaggy Peter and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as the embodiment of a magical age became a chief source of inspiration and leitmotiv of his painting. The sleepy, self - engrossed, bored - looking figures awaiting idly, reclining in armchairs and on sofas, sometimes holding a mirror or a book, also recall Carroll’s tale where the story begins with Alice’s boredom. 

As in Balthus’s paintings, this is the situation that gives rise to revelation and creation. The artist wrote in his memoirs: 

‘ ( ... ) fixing them in the act of reading or dreaming prolongs a privileged, splendid and magic glimpsed - at time. Thus a book is a key to open a mysterious trunk containing childhood scents . (...) It is a gold - sprinkled time that avoids worldly alteration, time nimbused by a magic halo, time fixed in terms of what the smiling, dreaming girls see. It is surreal time in the true sense of the term. ’ 

Balthus was known for working slowly and spending a long time on each of his paintings, and began several at once. For him painting was an art of patience, a lengthy relationship with , and commitment to , the canvas . Patience can be seen to be a fundamental aspect of Balthus’s artistic conception and he worked in the manner of the Old Masters, which involved taking his time and for him represented an ideal in contrast to the modern concept of time characterised by speed and haste : ‘This is slow art, in which the work continues nonetheless.’  



Balthus. The Three Sisters , 1955. Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection 





 

Gainsborough’s Family Album

February 11, 2019, 3:02 pm

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Princeton University Art Museum

Feb. 23-June 9, 2019

Images of family may be a constant presence in contemporary life, but in the days before photography only the wealthiest had access to them. The British artist Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) created more images of his family than any artist before him—pictures of his wife, father, sisters, pets and most particularly his two young daughters—leaving a remarkable visual legacy that is both poignant and ahead of its time.

            Gainsborough’s Family Album gathers together more than 40 of Gainsborough’s depictions of his family for the first time in history, including 10 of the surviving portraits of Gainsborough’s daughters. The exhibition explores how these portraits not only expressed the artist’s warmth and affection for his family but also helped advance his career, from humble provincial beginnings to the height of metropolitan fame. In doing so, the exhibition demonstrates how Gainsborough reflected and helped shape new ideas of the family that endure today.

       Gainsborough’s Family Album is organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London, in association with the Princeton University Art Museum. Tracing the full arc of Gainsborough’s career through family portraiture, the exhibition draws from notable public and private collections from across Great Britain and the United States.

            The Princeton University Art Museum, where the exhibition will be on view Feb. 23 through June 9, 2019, is the only North American venue.

       “This historic exhibition and related publication relates a powerful and very modern story of familial love by one of the great masters in the European canon,” said James Steward, Nancy A. Nasher–David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, director. “Gainsborough’s interest in returning again and again to his family as the subject for his art shows us the artist at his freshest, most personal and least filtered, and offers surprising glimpses into new ideas of the family united by affection.”

       One of Britain’s most prominent and successful artists, Gainsborough was renowned as a portraitist of exceptional liveliness and subtlety, whose fashionable sitters appear to have deftly stepped inside compositions suffused with remarkable effects of light, air and feathery materiality. From modest rural beginnings, Gainsborough rose to become one of the most acclaimed painters of the age, depicting royals, aristocrats and the changing nature of Britain itself at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

       The exhibition is anchored by paintings of Gainsborough’s two daughters, Mary and Margaret, as they grew from young children into adulthood, including 

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), Painter's Daughters with a Cat, c.1760-61. The National Gallery, London. Bought, 1923. © The National Gallery, London.

The Artist’s Daughters Playing with a Cat (ca. 1760-61), 

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), Portrait of the Artist's Daughters, about 1763-64, Worcester Art Museum. © Worcester Art Museum

Mary and Margaret Gainsborough, the Artist's Daughters, at their Drawing (ca. 1763-64) 

and a formal, full-length double portrait of the two from about 1774, which has never been exhibited in the United States. 
 

L to R: The Painter’s Daughters Chasing a Butterfly by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1756. The National Gallery, London. Henry Vaughan Bequest, 1900; Painter’s Daughters with a Catby Thomas Gainsborough, c.1760-61. The National Gallery, London. Bought, 1923; Margaret and Mary Gainsborough by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1770-74. Private Collection

Featuring over 50 artworks from public and private collections across the world, Gainsborough’s Family Album will provide a unique insight into the private life and motivations of one of Britain’s greatest artists. The exhibition will include a number of works that have never been on public display in the UK, including an early portrait of the artist’s father John Gainsborough (c. 1746-8) and a drawing of Thomas and his wife Margaret’s pet dogs, Tristram and Fox.

L to R: Tristram and Fox by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1760s. Private Collection; The Artist with his Wife and Daughter by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1748. The National Gallery, London. Acquired under the acceptance-in-lieu scheme at the wish of Sybil, Marchioness of Cholmondeley, in memory of her brother, Sir Philip Sassoon, 1994; Thomas Gainsborough by Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1758-1759. National Portrait Gallery, London.

 Together, these works document the girls’ journey to adulthood at a time of limited rights and opportunities for women. Another highlight is the artist’s virtuosic portrait of his nephew and apprentice, Gainsborough Dupont, which represented in part Gainsborough’s desire to elevate portraiture as well as the continuity of his artistic legacy, since Dupont was intended to carry on the family business. These images will be seen alongside self-portraits, a portrait of the artist’s father, canvasses of his siblings, in-laws and other relations and two images in which the family dogs seem to stand in for the artist and his wife. Taken together, these works tell a compelling story of family intimacy and fatherly concern, community, the passage of time, artistic evolution and even mortality unique in the history of art.

Publication

       Gainsborough’s Family Album is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the National Portrait Gallery, London. It includes essays by exhibition curator David Solkin, emeritus professor of the Courtauld Institute of Art; Ann Bermingham, professor emerita of art history, University of California, Santa Barbara; and Susan Sloman, independent art historian and author. The catalogue also includes a chronology of Gainsborough’s life and an extensive family tree.

"I am sick of Portraits and wish very much to take up my Viol da Gamba and walk off to some sweet village when I can paint Landskips and enjoy the fag end of life in quietness and ease." Despite this famous protestation in a letter to his friend William Jackson, Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88) was clearly prepared to make an exception when it came to making portraits of his own family and himself. This book features over 50 portraits of himself, his wife, his daughters, other close relatives and his beloved dogs, Tristram and Fox.

Spanning more than four decades, Gainsborough's family portraits chart the period from the mid-1740s, when he plied his trade in his native Suffolk, to his most successful latter years at his luxuriously appointed studio in London's West End. Alongside this story of a provincial 18th-century artist's rise to fame and fortune runs a more private narrative, about the role of portraiture in the promotion of family values, at a time when these were assuming a recognizably modern form.
 

In the first of three introductory essays, David H. Solkin writes on Gainsborough himself, placing his family portraits in the context of earlier practice. Ann Bermingham explores Gainsborough's portraits of his daughters, with particular reference to two finished double portraits painted seven years apart and the tragic story arising from them. Susan Sloman discusses Margaret's role as her husband's business manager, its effect on the family dynamic and hence the visual representation of its members

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Slab City Rendezvous: Red Grooms, Mimi Gross, Yvonne Jacquette, Alex Katz, Neil Welliver

February 12, 2019, 6:45 am

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Red Grooms, Slab City Rendezvous, 1964, Oil on canvas with wood and cardboard, 56 1/2 x 60 in., Collection of Drs. Debra E. Weese-Mayer and Robert N. Mayer

On Saturday, April 13, 2019, the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine will open a major exhibition of close to forty works by 13 artists whose work contributed to Maine’s important place in the evolution of contemporary art. Entitled Slab City Rendezvous, this exhibition will include works by Rudy Burckhardt, Lois Dodd, Rackstraw Downes, Red Grooms, Mimi Gross, Yvonne Jacquette, Alex Katz, Neil Welliver, and Bernard Langlais, among others. Slab City is the name of the road in the Midcoast village of Lincolnville on which Katz and Dodd bought an old farmhouse in 1954, beginning the summer gatherings of these artist friends. The show will be on display in the museum’s Crosman Gallery through February 9, 2020.
Slab City Rendezvous, whose title comes from a 1964 painting by Red Grooms, features the work of a group of young New York-based avant-garde artists who in the years following World War II discovered the pleasures of summering and working in Maine. They became some of the most successful and important artists of their generation, charting new directions for contemporary art. Their work presented a return to realism and figuration in the face of Abstract Expressionism, the style then dominating the increasingly important center of international contemporary art in New York. Their accomplishments formed another chapter in the story of Maine’s ongoing role in American art.
This summer, the Farnsworth Art Museum will present the annual Maine in America Award to Rudy Burckhardt, Lois Dodd, Rackstraw Downes, Red Grooms, Mimi Gross, Yvonne Jacquette, Alex Katz, and Neil Welliver for their outstanding contribution to Maine’s role in American art. The presentation will take place during the museum’s 2019 Summer Gala, on Friday, July 19 on the Farnsworth campus.

Rembrandt, Vermeer & the Dutch Golden Age Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre

February 12, 2019, 8:55 am

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Exhibition will open at Louvre Abu Dhabi on 14 February 2019

    •    The exhibition features 95 artworks and objects including 15 paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn
    •    The exhibition will also include paintings and drawings by Rembrandt’s contemporaries in the Netherlands, as well as several small paintings by 17th-century fine painters, some of which were later owned by King Louis XVI of France
    •    Johannes Vermeer’s The Lacemaker (Musée du Louvre) and Young Woman Seated at a Virginal (The Leiden Collection), painted on canvas cut from the same bolt, will hang next to each other for the first time in 300 years at Louvre Abu Dhabi

Opening on 14 February 2019, the exhibition will survey Rembrandt’s artistic journey in Leiden and Amsterdam and his relationships with rivals and peers, including Johannes Vermeer, Jan Lievens, Ferdinand Bol, Carel Fabritius, Gerrit Dou, Frans van Mieris and Frans Hals.

During the Golden Age, the Dutch Republic established itself as a world leader in trade, science, and the arts. Set against this backdrop of cultural exchange, exploration and discovery, the show will explore the artistic traditions that flourished in Leiden and the wider Netherlands in this period, including the development of a new school of artists, called the fijnschilders (fine painters), best known for their exquisitely rendered scenes of daily life.

The exhibition will feature 22 paintings and drawings from across Rembrandt’s career and his workshop – from his early famed series of allegorical paintings of the senses, which demonstrate the artist’s youthful ingenuity and experimentation with expressions, composition and colour during his Leiden days, to later works created in Amsterdam, including sensitively-rendered portraits, a renowned self-portrait, Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes and Minerva in Her Study (both from The Leiden Collection), his monumental history painting of the goddess Minerva. These works are displayed alongside paintings by other masters from Rembrandt’s artistic circle, demonstrating the influence that this remarkable group of artists had on each other’s work.

On this extraordinary occasion, Johannes Vermeer’s Young Woman Seated at a Virginal (The Leiden Collection) and The Lacemaker (Musée du Louvre), two paintings on canvas cut from the same bolt, will hang beside one another for the first time in 300 years at Louvre Abu Dhabi.

95 artworks, including paintings, drawings and objects, primarily drawn from The Leiden Collection, one of the largest and most significant private collections of artworks from the Dutch Golden Age, highlighted with the Musée du Louvre exceptional collections. Loans from the Rijksmuseum and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France will complete the presentation. On view until 18 May 2019, the exhibition is curated by Blaise Ducos, Chief Curator of Dutch and Flemish paintings at the Musée du Louvre, and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, Curator of The Leiden Collection and a specialist in seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art.

HE Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, commented: “The very inception and early success of Louvre Abu Dhabi was founded on our close friendship with France and our multi-layered partnerships with global museums and art institutions. In 2019, the UAE is celebrating the Year of Tolerance, which is testament to our long standing tradition of nurturing a culture of openness and exchange. The exhibition ‘Rembrandt, Vermeer & the Dutch Golden Age’ illustrates not only the importance of cross border cultural collaborations, but also how artistic creativity has always been at the heart of great historic moments.”

Manuel Rabaté, Director of Louvre Abu Dhabi, stated: “As Louvre Abu Dhabi’s first international exhibition of the year and part of our 2018-19 cultural season ’A World of Exchanges’, the exhibition ‘Rembrandt, Vermeer & the Dutch Golden Age: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre’ underscores the connections between artists that, no doubt, made this period “golden”. This is the very first time a blockbuster exhibition of the Dutch masters comes to the UAE and it is extremely special that two Vermeer paintings from the same piece of canvas are hung next to each other for the first time in 300 years. I would like to thank our partners, the Musée du Louvre and The Leiden Collection, for making it possible.”

Jean-Luc Martinez President-Director of the Musée du Louvre, shared: “The great diversity of audiences, from the Emirates, Europe and the Indian sub-continent, and the wonder we observe on these visitors’ faces validate Louvre Abu Dhabi’s commitment to provide a global survey of the universal history of art. With its fifth exhibition, ‘Rembrandt, Vermeer & the Dutch Golden Age: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre’, Louvre Abu Dhabi presents the finest works from the magnificent Leiden Collection alongside masterpieces from the Dutch collections of the Musée du Louvre, including Vermeer’s The Lacemaker. Assembled by Thomas S. Kaplan and his spouse Daphne Recanati Kaplan, The Leiden Collection is utterly unique: it has toured the world, travelling from Paris to Abu Dhabi via Shanghai and St Petersburg. In Abu Dhabi, visitors will be able to contemplate many works by Rembrandt and his artistic circle, numerous incredible examples of ‘fine painting’ by the Leiden School, as well as two Vermeers; enabling visitors to grasp the contribution of Dutch culture to the history of European and international painting.”

Lara Yeager-Crasselt, Curator of The Leiden Collection, New York, commented: “Rembrandt, Vermeer & the Dutch Golden Age’ traces two main narratives – Rembrandt’s development as an artist, as seen through The Leiden Collection’s 15 works by the artist, and the development of genre painting in 17th-century Holland, as shown through The Leiden Collection’s extraordinary depth of works by the fijnschilders (fine painters). When brought together with important selections from the Musée du Louvre’s collection, these works offer a distinctive glimpse into the dynamics of artistic exchange that shaped the art of the Dutch Golden Age, while enabling visitors to follow Rembrandt from his early career in Leiden through his ultimate flourishing in Amsterdam, where he stimulated artistic innovations among his pupils and peers.”

Highlights from the Musée du Louvre’s collection include: Johannes Vermeer’s The Lacemaker (1669-70); Gerrit Dou’s Self-Portrait with Palette in a Niche (ca. 1660-65); Ferdinand Bol’s Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well (ca. 1645-46), gifted from The Leiden Collection in 2017; and an engraved nautilus shell (ca. 1660-80). Notable works of art from The Leiden Collection include: Johannes Vermeer’s Young Woman Seated at a Virginal (ca. 1670-72); Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes (1634); Gerrit Dou’s Scholar Interrupted at His Writing (ca. 1635); Jan Lievens’ Boy in a Cape and Turban (Portrait of Prince Rupert of the Palatinate) (ca. 1631); and Rembrandt van Rijn’s Young Lion Resting (ca. 1638-42). The exhibition also includes a very rare and beautifully-crafted 17th century ship model from the Rijksmuseum. It is the first time such an object will travel to the UAE. 

Blaise Ducos, Chief Curator of Dutch and Flemish paintings at the Musée du Louvre, declared: “During the 17th century, exceptional economic, social and political circumstances enabled one country, The Republic of the United Provinces, to become the world’s leading economic power. The Dutch were living in what they considered a ‘Golden Age’. In this context, major artistic figures like Rembrandt or Vermeer flourished. Through the confrontation of masterpieces from the Musée du Louvre and The Leiden Collection, this exhibition tells this extraordinary story. This show does not intend to provide a panorama of Dutch painting in the 17th century, but by mentioning different glimpses, first and foremost through Leiden’s sight; it refers to the culture of artistic exchange within which Vermeer worked.”

The exhibition will unfold throughout six sections:
    •    At the Heart of the Dutch Golden Age;
    •    Extraordinary Beginnings: Rembrandt van Rijn in Leiden;
    •    The Center of the Golden Age: Rembrandt van Rijn in Amsterdam (this section includes a special cabinet of prints and drawings);
    •    Fine Painting in Leiden: Gerrit Dou, Frans van Mieris, and their Contemporaries;
    •    Picturing Everyday life in the Dutch Republic;
    •    Historical Lessons and Tales of Morality.

Thomas Kaplan, founder of The Leiden Collection, observed: “My family considers Louvre Abu Dhabi to represent the single most important cultural initiative of our generation – and this exhibition of treasures from the Dutch Golden Age to be our greatest ‘passion project’. By bringing The Leiden Collection to Abu Dhabi in collaboration with the Musée du Louvre, we gratefully honour our deep relationship with France as well as our profound partnership with the Emirates, the shared values of which extend from wildlife conservation to preserving endangered cultural heritage. We also pay homage to the genius of Rembrandt and Vermeer, whose transcendent influence and illuminating insights continue to inspire artists and the public across the globe and right up to the present time. More than any other painter’s legacy, we believe Rembrandt’s ability to touch the soul represents a uniquely fitting expression of this visionary Franco-Emirati project seeking to promote tolerance and the common civilization of mankind.”

Alongside the exhibition, Louvre Abu Dhabi will announce a rich cultural programme featuring film screenings curated by Emirati artist Hind Mezaina, a pop-up costumed performance in the museum galleries as well as talks and workshops, including a lecture given on opening day by The Leiden Collection and Musée du Louvre curators.

The exhibition runs from 14 February to 18 May 2019.

Entrance to the exhibition is free with the museum ticket. Children under 13 enter the museum free. Visitors can tour the exhibition through a multimedia guide that is available in Arabic, English, and French.

For more information on the exhibition or ticket bookings, please visit www.louvreabudhabi.ae or call Louvre Abu Dhabi at +971 600 56 55 66.

For more information and all the images below go to:

https://arthistorynewsreport.blogspot.com/2017/01/masterpieces-of-leiden-collection-age.html



Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)
Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes
1634
Oil on panel
New York, The Leiden Collection

© The Leiden Collection, New York




Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675),
The Lacemaker
ca. 1669-70,
Oil on canvas mounted on panel,
Paris, Musée du Louvre
©RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre)/Gérard Blot

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)
Young Woman Seated at a Virginal
ca. 1670-72
Oil on canvas
New York, The Leiden Collection


© The Leiden Collection, New York

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)
Jeune femme assise au virginal
vers 1670-1672
Huile sur toile
New York, collection Leiden


© The Leiden Collection, New York

ة
Cornelis van Bellekin (about 1625-after 1711)
Nautilus shell engraved with scenes of the Roman divinities Bacchus and Diana Bathing
ca. 1660-80
Nautilus shell (mother of pearl) engraved and blackened, turned wood and gilt bronze
Paris, Musée du Louvre

© Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN – Grand Palais / Martine Beck-Coppola




Jan Lievens (1607-1674)
Boy in a Cape and Turban (Portrait of Prince Rupert of the Palatinate)
ca. 1631
Oil on panel
New York, The Leiden Collection

© The Leiden Collection, New York


Gerrit Dou (1613-1675)
Self-Portrait with Palette in a Niche
ca. 1660-65
Oil on panel
Paris, Musée du Louvre

© RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Tony Querrec





Gerrit Dou (1613-1675)
Scholar Interrupted at His Writing
ca. 1635
Oil on panel
New York, The Leiden Collection

© The Leiden Collection, New York


Ferdinand Bol (1616-1680)
Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well
ca. 1645-46
Oil on canvas
Paris, musée du Louvre

© RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Adrien Didierjean

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)
Bust of a Bearded Old Man
1633
Oil on paper, mounted on panel
New York, The Leiden Collection
© The Leiden Collection, New York

Dutch warship
1648
Wood, rope, lead, textile and paint
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
© Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Mark Rothko

February 12, 2019, 9:35 am

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The Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

12 March - 30 June, 2019



Mark Rothko (1903-1970)
No. 16 (Red, White and Brown)
1957, oil on canvas
© 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Bildrecht, Vienna, 2019
© Photo: Kunstmuseum Basel


Mark Rothko (1903–1970) was among the most remarkable artists of the twentieth century. This exhibition, the first ever to be mounted in Austria, brings together more than forty of his major works and presents a survey of Rothko’s artistic career, from his early figurative paintings of the 1930s, through the transitional years of the 1940s to the groundbreaking mature works of the 1950s and 60s.
  


Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1959/60 © The Collections of Christopher Rothko

The artist’s children, Kate and Christopher have been closely involved in the project from its very beginning, and have themselves kindly lent a number of paintings from the family collection. 

Presented within the Kunsthistorisches Museum, whose historical collections trace some five thousand years human creativity from Ancient Egypt to the Baroque, the exhibition provides a unique opportunity to examine Rothko’s deep and sustained interest in the art of the past. From his earliest visits as a student to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and his first encounters with Rembrandt, Vermeer and classical art and architecture, to his trips to Europe to see its churches, chapels and Old Master painting collections in Paris, London, Venice, Arezzo, Siena, Rome, Pompeii and Florence, Rothko dedicated himself to the study of historical art and architecture.  

The exhibition underlines the influence of specific places on his stylistic development, from Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library and Fra Angelico’s murals in the convent of San Marco in Florence, to the Greek temples of Paestum and the Baptistery of Torcello in Venice. When Rothko broke with tradition in the latter part of his life to create a radical new form of artistic expression, he did so with extensive knowledge and respect for what had come before. In the words of the critic John Berger, Rothko looked back “in a way such as no painter before had ever done”.

The exhibition reveals the radical development of Rothko’s work across several decades, from his early figurative paintings of the 1930s, through the transitional years of the 1940s to the groundbreaking mature works of the 1950s and 60s. At the heart of the exhibition is an entire gallery of large-scale mural paintings produced in 1958-59, originally commissioned for the Seagram Building in New York. This is followed by a final gallery of classic paintings from the last decade of Rothko’s life that demonstrate how he learnt from the techniques of the Old Masters, layering colour in the manner of Titian and developing a sense of ‘inner light’ similar to that of Rembrandt. 

Curated by Jasper Sharp with the close support and advice of Christopher Rothko, the exhibition will be presented in the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s Picture Gallery. Major loans have been secured from the Rothko Family and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in addition to museums including the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, the Jewish Museum, New York, Kunstmuseum Bern, Kunsthaus Zürich and Kunstmuseum Basel.

Hidden Treasures/ Impressionist and Modern Art 27 February 2019 at Christie's in London

February 12, 2019, 1:43 pm

≫ Next: Phyllis Mills Wyeth: A Celebration

≪ Previous: Mark Rothko

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Christie’s 20th Century Season will launch on 27 February with Hidden Treasures: Impressionist & Modern Masterpieces from An Important Private Collection, a prestigious collection of 23 seminal works by the leading Impressionist and Modern artists. Hidden Treasures will be led by

Claude Monet, Saule pleureur et bassin aux nymphéas, 1916-1919. Oil on canvas. 78¼ x 70¾ in. Estimate on request. Offered in Hidden Treasures on 27 February at Christie's in London

Claude Monet’s Saule pleureur et bassin aux nymphéas (1916-19, Estimate on Request).



Further highlights include Paul Cézanne’s Nature morte de pêches et poires (1885-87, Estimate on Request)
 


and Vincent van Gogh’s historically important Antwerp period portrait Portrait de femme: buste, profil gauche (1885, estimate: £8,000,000-12,000,000), one of only two works painted in Antwerp specifically mentioned in correspondence with his brother Theo. (Fascinating article here.)

The collection precedes the Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on 27 February 2019.

The Evening Sale will be led by a group titled An Adventurous Spirit: An Important Private Collection Sold to Benefit a Charitable Foundation. The group consists of six paintings of rare importance and quality by Paul Signac, Gustave Caillebotte, Félix Vallotton, Édouard Vuillard and Giovanni Boldini.



Further highlights include Claude Monet’s Au bord du fjord de Christiania (1895, estimate: £4,500,000-6,500,000),

• Félix Vallotton (1865-1925)En promenade

  Estimate GBP 1,200,000 - GBP 1,600,000

  (USD 1,551,600 - USD 2,068,800)

  Lot 25
• Paul Signac (1863-1935)Le Port au soleil couchant, Opus 236 (Saint-Tropez)

  Estimate on request

  Lot 26
• Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)Le Penseur, petit modèle

  Estimate GBP 1,000,000 - GBP 2,000,000

  (USD 1,293,000 - USD 2,586,000)

  Lot 31
•  

  Le Corbusier (1887-1965)Deux figures au tronc d'arbre jaune

  Estimate GBP 2,000,000 - GBP 3,000,000

  (USD 2,586,000 - USD 3,879,000)

  Lot 32

Deux figures au tronc d'arbre jaune by Le Corbusier (1937, estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000),
Edgar Degas’s Danseuses dans une salle d'exercice (Trois Danseuses) (1873, estimate: £800,000-1,200,000),

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)Nature morte au crâne de taureau

Estimate GBP 4,000,000 - GBP 6,000,000

(USD 5,172,000 - USD 7,758,000)

Lot 37

Pablo Picasso’s Nature morte au crâne de taureau (1942, estimate: £4,000,000-6,000,000)

•  
• Kees van Dongen (1877-1968)Madame T

  Estimate GBP 1,000,000 - GBP 1,500,000

  (USD 1,293,000 - USD 1,939,500)

  Lot 39
•  

  Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894)L'Assiette de pêches

  Estimate GBP 800,000 - GBP 1,200,000

  (USD 1,034,400 - USD 1,551,600)

  Lot 43

and Alexej von Jawlensky’s boldly coloured Blaue Schürze (1909, estimate: £2,000,0003,000,000).

HIDDEN TREASURES
Tracing the key artistic movements that defined the late 19th and 20th centuries, the collection is comprised of 23 works. The earliest painting is Renoir’s Sentier dans le bois (1874-77, estimate: £7,500,000-10,500,000). Nearly three-quarters of a century later, Matisse completed Danseuse assise sur une table, fond rouge (1942, estimate: £4,500,000-7,000,000), a vibrant and striking exploration of the femme-fleur and chronologically the final painting in this group.

Leading highlights include Monet’s Saule pleureur et bassin aux nymphéas, (above)which was once in the collection of the artist’s son Michel. It is an incandescent monumental-scale canvas conceived in conjunction with his Grandes décorations, the series of 22 waterlily paintings that he donated to the French state to commemorate the end of the First World War.



Cézanne sought to distil the transient phenomena of nature into an ideal, abstract order. His magisterial Nature morte de pêches et poires is imbued with a dignity and restraint that befits the artist’s goal, and is one of the most modern and timeless of the artist’s iconic still lifes. The work was first owned by Ambroise Vollard, who acquired Nature morte de pêches et poires directly from the artist. Vollard was key to the popularity and sale of Impressionist masterpieces across Europe, and sold the work to the important early German collector of Impressionist art, Kurt von Mutzenbecher. The work then spent many years with another key German collector of Impressionism, Otto Henkell, before joining the renowned United States collection of Col. Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch in the 1960s. Nature morte de pêches et poires has not been seen in public for over 30 years.

The signature vigour of the brushwork, the vivid characterisation of the young female model, and no less the startling appearance of the large red hair ribbon –– a flourish without precedent in the earlier art of Vincent van Gogh — have made Portrait de femme: buste, profil gauche (above) the most often illustrated and representative of the small number of oil paintings that are known to exist from the painter’s three-month stay in Antwerp. He left for Antwerp on 28 November 1885 and soon after arrival indeed started painting the picturesque monuments of the city and sought out models for making portraits. None of the painted townscapes mentioned in his letters survived, but five portraits out of what must have at least been a group of nine did. Four are currently in the Van Gogh Museum, Portrait de femme, buste, profil gauche is the fifth. Further artists in the collection include Edgar Degas, Kees van Dongen, Aristide Maillol, Emil Nolde, Chaim Soutine, Maurice Utrillo, Édouard Vuillard, and Maurice de Vlaminck.

AN ADVENTUROUS SPIRIT
An Adventurous Spirit provides a remarkable view of a unique collection across many fields, from Impressionism to 20th Century Design, which was shown in beautiful homes in London, Saint Tropez and Saint Barths. Six major paintings by Paul Signac, Gustave Caillebotte, Félix Vallotton, Édouard Vuillard and Giovanni Boldini will highlight the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale.

 

The most important painting by Paul Signac to come to auction in 20 years, Le Port au soleil couchant, Opus 236 (Saint-Tropez) (1892, Estimate on Request) is one of the first and finest works that the artist painted in St Tropez. Rendered in Signac’s quintessential pointillist style, this painting is a masterpiece of the artist’s Opus works and is set to achieve a new auction record for the artist.

Gustave Caillebotte, Chemin montant, 1881, Estimate on Request. © Christie's Images Ltd 2019.

A rare, and only recently rediscovered Impressionist masterpiece, Gustave Caillebotte’s Chemin montant (Estimate on Request), painted in Trouville in 1881, brings together the two main aspects of the artist’s oeuvre: the iconic urban figure paintings of the 1870s, and his landscapes and garden scenes of the next decade.

 

Félix Vallotton (1865-1925)En promenade

Estimate GBP 1,200,000 - GBP 1,600,000

(USD 1,551,600 - USD 2,068,800)

Lot 25

With its daring composition and use of bold planes of colour, Félix Vallotton’s En promenade (painted circa 1895, estimate: £1,200,000-1,600,000) encapsulates the artist’s mastery of the pictorial vocabulary of Les Nabis. This masterful painting has been requested for the forthcoming exhibition on the artist to be held at the Royal Academy, London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2019.



Giovanni Boldini’s Portrait of John Singer Sargent (1890, estimate: £200,000-300,000) is a vivid testament to the friendship between two of the leading portraitists of fin-de-siècle Paris. This portrait, one of three that Boldini painted of Sargent, dates from a pivotal period in the artist’s career during which he received widespread acclaim for his unique form of portraiture, capturing a host of socialites and actresses, as well as fellow artists and friends, including Whistler, Verdi, Degas and Paul Helleu.

CLAUDE MONET

 
Monet had always been concerned with the transformative effects of winter, capturing the fleeting effects of ice, fog, snow and frost. Seeking to find the most authentic winter scenery, Monet travelled to Norway, arriving on 1 February 1895. Au bord du fjord de Christiania (1895, estimate: £4,500,000-6,500,000) depicts the crystal blue waters
of the fjord lapping against the small, isolated islands that dot this stretch of water.

LE CORBUSIER 

 

Le Corbusier (1887-1965)Deux figures au tronc d'arbre jaune

Estimate GBP 2,000,000 - GBP 3,000,000

(USD 2,586,000 - USD 3,879,000)

Lot 32

On a monumental scale, two nude figures serve as the abstracted protagonists of Le Corbusier’s masterpiece Deux figures au tronc d’arbre jaune of 1937 (estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000). Included in the important retrospective of the artist held in Zurich in 1938, this large and impressive composition, not seen in public since the early 1980s, presents the artist’s favoured motif of this period: the female nude.

PABLO PICASSO

 

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)Nature morte au crâne de taureau

Estimate GBP 4,000,000 - GBP 6,000,000

(USD 5,172,000 - USD 7,758,000)

Lot 37

 
Painted on 9 May 1942, the vibrant Nature morte au crâne de taureau (1942, estimate: £4,000,000-6,000,000) emerged during a period of intense reflection in Picasso’s painting, as he endured the hardships and claustrophobia of life in occupied Paris. Nature morte au crâne de taureau will be offered at auction for the first time on 27 February. Focusing on the ordinary objects in his studio, the people closest to him, and the comings and goings of his daily experiences in Paris, his paintings, drawings and sculptures during this period chronicle the everyday life of the city during German invasion.

ALEXEJ VON JAWLENSKY

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864-1941)Blaue Schürze

Estimate GBP 2,000,000 - GBP 3,000,000

(USD 2,586,000 - USD 3,879,000)

Lot 38

 
Painted in 1909, and seen in public for the first time in almost 100 years, Blaue Schürze emerged during one of the most intensively creative and experimental periods of Alexej von Jawlensky’s artistic career, as he endeavoured to translate his visions of the external world through a unique, inner subjective spirit.

EDGAR DEGAS

 
Edgar Degas’s Danseuses dans une salle d'exercice (Trois Danseuses) (1873, estimate: £800,000-1,200,000) is among the first depictions of dancers that the artist created and introduces the themes and motifs that would preoccupy the artist for the rest of his life: the dancer and the rehearsal studio, movement and light, artifice and spontaneity. This small scale tour de force has been in the same noble French family collection for over 80 years, and has not been seen at auction since the prestigious Rouart sale of 1912.

Phyllis Mills Wyeth: A Celebration

February 12, 2019, 3:31 pm

≫ Next: Invention and Design: Early Italian Drawings at the Morgan

≪ Previous: Hidden Treasures/ Impressionist and Modern Art 27 February 2019 at Christie's in London

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Jamie Wyeth, Connemara, 1987, Oil on canvas, The Phyllis and Jamie Wyeth Collection

Now on view at the Brandywine River Museum of Art, in Chadds Ford, Penn., a memorial exhibition celebrating the life of Phyllis Mills Wyeth (November 13, 1940–January 14, 2019) features a selection of portraits created by her husband, artist Jamie Wyeth. From the late 1960s onward, Phyllis Wyeth served as a muse to her spouse and these intimate works capture moments from her life across the decades of their marriage.

On view through May 5, 2019, Phyllis Mills Wyeth: A Celebration includes works in a variety of media by Jamie Wyeth that reflect Phyllis’ vibrant spirit and love of nature, horses, and her ever-present dogs.



Phyllis Mills Wyeth: A Celebration features 28 paintings and drawings, ranging from the Jamie Wyeth’s first portrait of her (Phyllis Mills, 1967)—depicted outdoors and covered in fallen leaves—to more recent work, such as the lushly painted Overslept (2018). Jamie Wyeth captured the many facets of his wife’s remarkable life, including several works that attest to her accomplishments in carriage driving, such as Into the Gorge (1975) and Connemara (1984), and to her success as a Thoroughbred horse breeder and owner, most notably in Winner’s Circle, Belmont Stakes (2012), celebrating the win of her champion horse Union Rags at that illustrious race in 2012.

Paintings such as

Catching Pollen (2012),  

 Jamie Wyeth, Stealing Holly from the Irénées, 2016, Acrylic, gesso, and oil on panel, The Phyllis and Jamie Wyeth Collection

Stealing Holly from the Irénées (2016),

 

Jamie Wyeth,1994 painting of his wife, "Southern Light." (© Jamie Wyeth. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

and Southern Light (1994), attest to Phyllis Wyeth’s love of nature and the distinctive landscapes surrounding her at home near Chadds Ford and in Maine.

Also on view are a selection of intimate domestic scenes, painted as Christmas gifts from her husband, and depicting her beloved dogs.

 

 Phyllis and Jamie Wyeth at the opening of the Brandywine River Museum of Art, 1971. Courtesy Brandywine Conservancy & Museum of Art Archives

A catalogue organized by the Brandywine will accompany the exhibition (late-February 2019). Phyllis Mills Wyeth: A Celebration will travel to the Farnsworth Art Museum (Rockland, Maine) and the Greenville County Museum of Art (Greenville, South Carolina) following its presentation at the Brandywine.