The Morgan’s impressive collection of Italian Drawings documents the development of Renaissance drawing practice from its beginnings in the fourteenth century and over the following two centuries.From the influence of medieval manuscript and painting workshops to the new practice of sketching, artists gradually moved away from imitation of standard models and to the invention of novel ways of thinking on the page and representing traditional subjects. As artists came to be recognized more as intellectuals than as craftsmen, a new class of collectors and connoisseurs created a market for autonomous drawings of classical subjects and other compositions. Portrait drawing emerged as an independent genre during this period, while artists invented new ways approaches to landscape drawing.
Giovanni Agostino da Lodi (active ca. 1467–ca. 1524),
Head of a Bearded Man in Profile to the Right, ca. 1500,
red chalk on paper. The Morgan Library & Museum,
1973.35:1, Gift of János Scholz. Photography by Janny
Chiu, 2018.
Invention and Design explores these developments and celebrates more than a century of innovation in drawing. This exhibition will be the first to focus on this material, featuring works by artists such as Mantegna, Filippo Lippi, Filippino Lippi, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Fra Bartolomeo, and Andrea del Sarto
David Zwirner is presenting a significant group of works by American artist Charles White (1918–1979) on the second floor of the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location in New York. On view for the first time since the 1970s will be four monumentally scaled ink and charcoal drawings made by the artist as studies for the figures in ]
his mural Mary McLeod Bethune, completed in 1978 for the Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Regional Library in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, as well as related preparatory works and ephemera documenting the project—White’s last major artistic endeavor during his lifetime.
White’s prodigious body of work, spanning prints, drawings, paintings, and murals, demonstrates a commitment to African American social causes, combatting racial and economic injustice with depictions of strength and resolve. His detailed, bold images of individuals and their relationships resonate universally, and yet remain grounded by his interest in history and his personal interpretation of truth, beauty, and dignity. As an artist, educator, and political activist, White was an integral part of the intellectual milieu in his hometown of Chicago, and later in New York and Los Angeles. During his time in LA, where he permanently relocated in 1956, White taught at the Otis Art Institute, where he mentored and influenced a younger generation of artists, including Kerry James Marshall and David Hammons.
In 1976, White was commissioned by the city of Los Angeles to create a large-scale painting for the Exposition Park library branch as part of a building ordinance that designated 1% of new construction budgets for art. Related to his earlier work in the mural division of the Works Progress Administration in Chicago in the 1940s, the resulting mural, finished one year prior to White’s death, can be seen as a culmination of several lifelong themes and still hangs at the library today. The mural pays tribute to an important black educator, civil and women’s rights leader, and government official, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955), whom White greatly admired and respected. The commission, White’s first mural since his WPA years, brought together his individual interest in teaching, learning, and research, alongside his enduring commitment to collective education and social consciousness.
The four large-scale ink and charcoal compositions at the center of this exhibition are the largest drawings that the artist created and—although they were intended as preparatory works—are exceptional in their level of finish and detail. White conceived of the foursome of multigenerational figures that comprises the mural’s composition as a black "family," with the individual figure standing in as a symbolic representation of learning, education, music, or culture. Each is isolated and realized individually in the charcoal studies, in which space is clearly defined to indicate how they fit together in the larger mural, with Bethune—a towering presence wearing flowing robes—at the center.
In conjunction with Charles White: Monumental Practice, the gallery will also present a selection of the artist’s paintings and drawings, dating from the 1930s through the 1950s, a significant period for the development of his social realist aesthetic. These works demonstrate White’s unwavering commitment to realism and thus underscore the central values of his practice. "To him," as Kellie Jones notes, realism "presented an art language that was understandable worldwide. Above all, the ‘communicability’ of the representational was key, ‘how it reflects the great experience of life and singles out that which is most significant and meaningful to its process’; these are portrayals of the subtle and daily human struggles for peace and freedom."1
1Kellie Jones, South of Pico: African American Artists in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), pp. 31–32.
George Washington University Museum and the Textile Museum February 13 - April 29, 2019
Memorial de Caen in Normandy, France, 75th anniversary of D-Day on June 6, 2019
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, December 2019 Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., Fall of 2020.
Seventy-eight years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous State of the Union address inspired artist Norman Rockwell to create his iconic “Four Freedoms” series of paintings, the works of art will be on display in the nation’s capital as part of a seven-city international tour. “Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms” opened Wednesday at the George Washington University Museum and the Textile Museum and will be on view through April 29.
Rockwell's (clockwise from left): “Freedom of Speech,” 1943; “Freedom of Worship,” 1943; “Freedom from Want,” 1943; and “Freedom from Fear,” 1943.
“Enduring Ideals” is the first comprehensive traveling exhibition devoted to Mr. Rockwell’s depictions of Mr. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms—freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear—and is a rare opportunity to see these masterpieces together outside their permanent home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
The exhibition, organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum, takes visitors on a journey from Mr. Roosevelt’s speech to wartime paintings and posters to Mr. Rockwell’s poignant later artworks that addressed social issues such as civil rights and the Vietnam War.
The exhibition will continue to Memorial de Caen in Normandy, France, to coincide with the 75th anniversary of D-Day on June 6, 2019; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in December; and the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., in the fall of 2020.
The exhibition also includes works by contemporary artists offering fresh takes on freedom. Maurice “Pops” Peterson’s “Freedom from What?” depicts a modern day African American couple putting their children to bed while looking over their shoulders for possible threats from the outside world. Bri Hermanson’s “To Have and To Hold” shows two women in a loving embrace in a nod to marriage equality. Gary Bist’s painting “Refugee Families in Winter” reflects on the many refugees who risk their lives in pursuit of safety, security and freedom.
The exhibition comes to the museum through a collaboration with the Albert H. Small Center for National Capitol Area Studies, which is dedicated to research on Washington as a center of government and the values that informed its development.
“Freedom of speech and worship, freedom from fear and want are ideals as powerful today as they were for Americans who fought in World War II,” museum director John Wetenhall said. “At a time and in a federal city where the true meaning of these values has become contested in the world of partisan and identity politics, it behooves us all to reflect back to when these very freedoms were in peril – ideals so powerfully embodied in Rockwell’s unforgettable icons.”
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), Golden Rule, 1961. Oil on canvas, 44 ½" x 39 ½". Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, April 1, 1961. Collection of Norman Rockwell Museum.
Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), Migrant Mother (Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age 32. Nipomo, CA), February or March 1936.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, [LC-DIG-fsa-8b29516]
Catalogue
Enduring Ideals illuminates both the historic context in which FDR articulated the Four Freedoms—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear—and the role of Rockwell’s paintings in bringing them to life for millions of people, rallying the public behind the War effort and changing the tenor of the times. In telling the story of how Rockwell’s works were transformed from a series of paintings into a national movement, the exhibition also demonstrates the power of illustration to communicate ideas and inspire change.
In addition to his celebrated paintings of the Four Freedoms, the exhibition brings together numerous other examples of painting, illustration, and more, by both Rockwell and a broad range of his contemporaries―from J.C. Leyendecker and Mead Schaeffer, to Ben Shahn, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks, among others―as well as historical documents, photographs, videos, and artifacts; interactive digital displays; and immersive settings. While exploring the response of an earlier generation to the plea for defense of universal freedoms, the exhibition also resonates with our own time.
The catalogue features essays by exhibition co-curators Stephanie Haboush Plunkett and James Kimble, by Laurie Norton Moffat, Director of the Norman Rockwell Museum, and by other contributors, including activist Ruby Bridges, artist and granddaughter of Norman Rockwell, Daisy Rockwell, and Ambassador William vanden Heuvel.
Cover image: Albert Bierstadt, A Golden Summer Day near Oakland (detail), c. 1873. Oil on paper on Masonite, 16 9/16 x 22 1/4 in. Crocker Art Museum, Judith G. and Steaven K. Jones Collection.
Judith and Steaven Jones began to acquire 19th-century American paintings in the late 1970s. The collection has grown to include 29 works that the Joneses will leave as a bequest to the Crocker. The collection constitutes the most important gift of American art from beyond California’s borders to ever come to the Museum. Many paintings in the collection are by Hudson River School artists, landscape painters centered around New York City who became known for their depictions of the Hudson River Valley and surrounding region, as well as locales farther afield. The collection includes key artists associated with the Hudson River School’s first generation: Asher B. Durand and Thomas Doughty; as well as the second: Albert Bierstadt, Alfred Thompson Bricher, Jasper Cropsey, Sanford Robinson Gifford, William Hart, John Frederick Kensett, William Trost Richards, and Worthington Whittredge. There are also still lifes by George Forster, John Francis, William Harnett, Severin Roesen, and Claude Raguet Hirst, plus genre paintings by Thomas Hicks, Eastman Johnson, Jervis McEntee, and Enoch Wood Perry.
Asher Durand, Pastoral Landscape, 1866. Oil on canvas, 18 3/4 x 29 1/16 in. Crocker Art Museum, Judith G. and Steaven K. Jones Collection.
Most recently, after deciding that the Crocker should be the ultimate home for these paintings, the Joneses added their first painting by Albert Bierstadt. It is a scene of the artist and his family picnicking near Oakland, which provides a thematic link between the Joneses’ East Coast paintings and the Crocker’s California views. Collectively, paintings in the Jones Collection communicate a spirit of American optimism, of transcendental wonderment in nature, of national abundance, and of nostalgia for ways of life that, even as the scenes were being painted, seemed already to be passing. Not only do the paintings celebrate nature with topographical accuracy, they moralize, induce piety, and appeal to viewers’ sense of nationalism by what they include or leave out. Asher B. Durand, for instance, believed that art should be representative, not just imitative, meaning that it needed to “satisfy the mind.” Two landscapes by Durand in the collection manifest his approach. Each is pastoral — the smaller limned in 1857 and the larger in 1866, shortly before and then just after the Civil War. Both include a stream flanked by trees and cows, the latter indicating that this is domesticated land, and that people cannot be far away. In the larger view, there are foreground flowers, possibly a symbol of hope in the wake of the war.
Some works in the Jones Collection blur the boundaries between landscape and genre painting; others depict scenes of everyday American life for its own sake.
Like Durand, most landscape artists in the first half of the century believed that humanity — or evidence of humanity — could be acceptably included in the landscape so long as it increased the communicative power of the natural scene and did not dominate the painting’s message. As the century wore on, this became increasingly true, as both artists and the public became ever-more interested in domesticated scenes.
John Frederick Kensett, School’s Out, 1850. Oil on canvas, 18 x 30 in. Crocker Art Museum, Judith G. and Steaven K. Jones Collection.
Some works in the Jones Collection blur the boundaries between landscape and genre painting; others depict scenes of everyday American life for its own sake. As with landscapes, genre paintings had the potential to moralize, induce piety or patriotism, and evoke nostalgia. Following the Civil War, genre scenes also helped unite the country by reminding viewers of shared experiences. John Frederick Kensett’s School’s Out is both a genre and a landscape painting, including children playing outside a distant one-room schoolhouse in a landscape that is itself the primary focus. The painting manifests an American “peace, security, and happiness” that artist Thomas Cole referred to as “freedom’s offspring.”
Severin Roesen, Still Life with Fruit and Wine, 1862. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in. Crocker Art Museum, Judith G. and Steaven K. Jones Collection.
Still-life painters, like their colleagues in other genres, also practiced a highly detailed, polished technique. They too sought to be true to nature and correspondingly strove to idealize or romanticize their paintings through a careful selection and combination of objects, their choices evidencing their faith in America and the potential of its terrain. Severin Roesen is well known for communicating the era’s optimism, and his Still Life with Fruit and Wine is bursting with produce. This is no memento mori intended to remind viewers of their mortality; it suggests just the opposite. Like other Roesen still lifes, it is, as art historian William H. Gerdts describes, “a visual expression of midcentury optimism, of God’s bounty upon the New World as a new Eden.” American Beauty & Bounty: The Judith G. & Steaven K. Jones Collection of Nineteenth-Century Painting is on view at the Crocker from October 28, 2018, to January 27, 2019.
Severin Roesen, Still Life with Fruit and Wine. 1862. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in. Judith G. and Steaven K. Jones Collectio
William Trost Richards, Delaware River Valley. 1864. Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 in. Crocker Art Museum, Judith G. and Steaven K. Jones Collection
Enoch Wood Perry, Ice Skating Party. ca. 1870. Oil on canvas, 20 x 15 in. Crocker Art Museum, Judith G. and Steaven K. Jones Collection
Jervis McEntee, Sitting by the Fire. 1865. Oil on canvas, 15 x 12 in. Crocker Art Museum, Judith G. and Steaven K. Jones Collection
John Frederick Kensett, School's Out. 1850. Oil on canvas, 18 x 30 in. Crocker Art Museum, Judith G. and Steaven K. Jones Collection
This February, the Meadows Museum, SMU, will examine the far-reaching influence of 19th-century Spanish painter Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (1838–1874) in the new exhibition Fortuny: Friends and Followers. During his lifetime and well into the early 20th century, Fortuny was extremely popular in both Europe and the United States. His proto-Impressionist style and “exotic” genre scenes influenced so many artists that the style came to be described with its very own “ism”: “Fortunismo.”
Fortuny: Friends and Followers will explore that legacy by bringing together works from a diverse group of artists, including William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891), John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), and James Tissot (1836–1902), as well as major works by Fortuny.
With almost 70 works by 23 different artists, the exhibition will address a variety of themes, including intimate representations of family and home, cosmopolitan life in Europe’s major cities at the time, and the connections between and among the artists themselves.
Included in the show are Beach at Portici(1874), the major painting Fortuny was working on at his death, acquired by the Meadows Museum in January 2018,
and The Choice of a Model(1868–74), an important work by the artist on long-term loan from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Also on view will be a number of drawings and illustrated letters from the album compiled by William Hood Stewart (1820–1897), Fortuny’s chief American patron. Also in the Meadows Museum’s collection, The Stewart Album(1860–90) impressionistically records the great American collector’s acquaintance with the Parisian artistic community, and is crucial to understanding Fortuny’s social world.
Fortuny: Friends and Followers is comprised of five thematic sections: “Modern Life and Family”; “The Artist and the Academy”; “A Genre of Nostalgia”; “The Allure of the ‘Exotic’”; and “Cosmopolitan Places.” Together they trace Fortuny’s artistic evolution and the ways he influenced a diverse group of artists, whether by his precise technique or his innovative subject matter.
In the first section, “Modern Life and Family,” the exhibition looks at depictions of domestic scenes that highlight the comforts of contemporary European life. The section’s lead work is the late masterpiece by Fortuny depicting family leisure time, Beach at Portici, which the artist painted beachside near a rented villa south of Naples. The painting, whose creation coincided with the rise of Impressionism, is an example of Fortuny’s experimental, sun-flecked style.
Other works include William Merritt Chase’s Mrs. Chase and Child (I’m Going to See Grandma)(from about 1899)
and The Visit(before 1869) by Alfred Stevens (1823–1906).
All of the paintings in this section take as their subject the intimacy of private life, whether in the home or on a beach holiday.
Drawing on works included in The Stewart Album, the second section, “The Artist and the Academy,” brings viewers into the European artistic community of the 1860s and 1870s through the sketches and illustrated letters of many of its participants.
For example, a sketch by Martín Rico y Ortega (1833–1908) depicts Fortuny painting in a studio alongside some of the artists and collectors in Fortuny’s Parisian circle in 1869. In addition to depicting his friends at work, Rico also included a group of collectors and dealers leaving the studio with their purchases.
The section “A Genre of Nostalgia” tracks the artistic trends of the mid-19th-century, as preferences shifted from large works that addressed major historical or religious themes to smaller, collectible paintings that focused on period costume and lavish interiors. One striking example of this is Fortuny’s painting The Choice of a Model which, with its elaborately staged scene, presents an array of men in ornate costume gazing at a posing nude female. Its Neo-Rococo style, with vibrant colors and extravagant architecture, are key elements of Fortuny’s style at this time.
Another artist whose work reflects these changes in taste was the Frenchman Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891). His Information (General Desaix and the Peasant)(1867), is an example of this historicizing approach, which privileges small details—like the exactre-creationof the uniforms of the Napoleonic soldiers—over the significant event. During this period, intellectual and artistic communities across Western Europe and in America found themselves increasingly fascinated by cultures that appeared foreign in their eyes.
In the section “The Allure of the ‘Exotic,’” the exhibition addresses this interest in “otherness,” and the growing demand for art that emulated or depicted these styles and settings. Included are works by Fortuny, such as a series of etchings that capture scenes and people from his travels to Morocco,
Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (Spanish, 1838–1874), Crouched Arab, c. 1871. Oil on panel, 3.5 x 5 in. (9 x 13 cm). Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Museum purchase with funds donated by Jenny and Richard Mullen and friends of the Meadows Museum, MM.2018.09. Photo by Kevin Todora.
and an oil study, Crouching Arab(Meadows Museum), that he executed in preparation for the figure in a larger painting.
American painter John Singer Sargent’s watercolor Study for “The Spanish Dancer”(1882), demonstrates United States audiences’ tastes for the flamenco music of Spain.
Also presented in this section is the work of Jean-Léon Gérôme, whose works
Turkish “Bashi-bazouk” Mercenary Soldiers Playing Chess(about 1870–73)
and Tiger on the Watch(about 1888), demonstrate his skill at presenting these so-named Oriental scenes.
The exhibition concludes with the section “Cosmopolitan Places,” which illustrates many of the sites and people that Fortuny and his artistic followers recorded in their art throughout their travels in Europe. Wherever these itinerant artists lived or worked, whether in grand apartments on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, along the canals of Venice, or near the seashore in Portici, they sought to document and interpret the world around them through their art.
For example, A Lady at the Paris Exposition(1889), painted by Luis Jiménez Aranda (1845–1928), is emblematic of the French capital’s importance to the art world,
while Martín Rico’s Rio San Trovaso, Venice(1903) captures another city beloved of artists and collectors.
Meadows Museum Curator Amanda W. Dotseth added,
“Today Fortuny is not a household name, but his popularity and influence in the 1860s and early 1870s cannot be overstated. He was one of thebest-selling artists of his time and lived a cosmopolitan lifestyle that seamlessly blended work with leisure. He traveled frequently between southern Spain, Paris, Rome, Naples, and Venice with an impressive entourage of friends and followers in tow. And, although he died at only thirty-six years old, his legacy long survived him through his works, which would inspire later generations of artists, from Vincent van Gogh to Dalí and Picasso.”
Fortuny: Friends and Followers has been organized by the Meadows Museum and is funded by a generous gift from the Meadows Foundation.
The exhibition is made possible thanks to loans from a number of museums in the United States, including: Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; New Orleans Museum of Art; San Antonio Museum of Art; as well as the Leva-Laves Collection and several private collections.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, co-edited by Roglán and Dotseth, that recreates the exhibition’s five sections with full-color reproductions of the exhibited works and thematic introductions by Dotseth. These support an art historical essay by Meadows Curatorial Fellow Daniel Ralston, who locates Fortuny’s life and work within the artist’s milieu and explores his lasting impact on both his contemporaries and later generations of artists. The publication concludes with short biographies of each artist featured within the exhibition.
The Surovek Gallery in Palm Beach, Florida, is presenting a new exhibition of around 65 works by Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), the famed Regionalist painter known for chronicling the beauty, joys and sorrows of everyday life in America. On view from February 7 to March 15, 2019,"Thomas Hart Benton: Mechanics of Form," the second presentation of Benton's art at the gallery, includes works in oil, watercolor, and other media.
Seminal works by Benton are on loan from private collections, along with the Thomas Hart Benton Trust, and a large selection is offered for sale. Highlights that span the artist's oeuvre include:
“Fisherman’s Camp, Buffalo River”, 1968;
Thomas Hart Benton, “Sea Phantasy I”, 1925-26. Oil on metal, 63 x 47 inches.
image: Surovek Gallery
“Sea Phantasy I”, 1925-26;
Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), Loading Hay, n.d., Watercolor and ink on paper, 14 1/2 x 22 in.
“Loading Hay”
Thomas Hart Benson, “The Processional”, 1944, Tempera on paper, 22 x 30 inches.(image: Surovek Gallery)
and “The Processional”, 1944.
"Thomas Hart Benton: Mechanics of Formstarted as a discussion between two fine art dealers obsessed with Benton and it blossomed into a collaboration that includes over seventy Benton works coming from private collections across the country," says Clay Surovek.
Thomas Hart Benton, “Youth Music - Study”, 1973. Oil on board, 14 ¼ x 17 ¾ inches.
image: Surovek Gallery
Surovek worked with Andrew and Kate Thompson of Lester Thompson Fine Art, NY, on the exhibition. "Both Andrew and I have been immersed in the work and study of Thomas Hart Benton for many years and we shared a vision to present Benton’s work in a new light. In assembling a diverse group of rarely seen paintings, the exhibition highlights the significance of his early Modern works and illuminates Benton’s entire career and his important place within 20th century American art," Surovek explains.
Surovek says the gallery had "the support of Jessie Benton and the rest of the Benton family," along with the Thomas Hart and Rita Benton Trust, "who have generously included a large group of early works that serve as the foundation of this exhibition."
Dr. Henry Adams, the Benton expert, helped in organizing the show and wrote a catalogue essay.
New York–Swann Galleries’ March 5 auction boasts property from the Ismar Littmann Family Collection, a 160-lot offering of German Expressionism and European Avant-Garde. The afternoon session of 19th & 20th Century Prints & Drawings features an array of works from notable Modern, nineteenth-century and American artists.
Compiled in a separate catalogue, the Littmann offering celebrates a singular collector. Ismar Littmann began collecting in the 1910s, and his habits and tastes were individual and contemporary to the time–a parallel to the independent spirit of the Breslau art scene. The personal relationships he held with the artists, particularly Otto Mueller, had a deep influence on him and resulted in a collection with depth and insight, consisting of not only works of art, but correspondence between the collector and artists. By the end of the 1920s Littmann had acquired more than 6,000 works. The Nazis’ rise to power put a strain on the collector’s livelihood as well as art patronage, and much of the collection was lost or destroyed. Littmann’s combined financial and personal losses, as well as the overwhelming persecution of his faith and culture, led him to commit suicide in September of 1934. Littmann’s eldest son was able to immigrate to the United States with a portion of the family collection that same year. These works, along with additional pieces sent later, have since remained with the family. Swann Galleries is very pleased and honored to have been trusted with the historic offering.
Lot 17: Lesser Ury, Allee im Tiergarten, Berlin, color pastels, circa 1920. From the Ismar Littmann Family Collection. Estimate $50,000 to $80,000.
Lot 112: Otto Mueller, Lagernde Zigeunerfamilie mit Ziege, color lithograph, 1926-27. From the Ismar Littmann Family Collection. Estimate $30,000 to $50,000.
Lot 393: Sonia Delaunay, La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France by Blaise Cendrars, color pochoir with watercolor on four joined sheets, 1913. Estimate $70,000 to $100,000.
Notable lots include Otto Mueller’s color lithographs from 1926-27, Zwei Zigeunerinnen (Zigeunermutter mit Tochter) and Lagernde Zigeunerfamilie mit Ziege which are expected to bring $25,000 to $35,000 and $30,000 to $50,000, respectively. Max Pechstein’s portfolio of 50 lithographs, Reisebilder: Italien–Sudsee, 1919, depicting scenes from Italy and Germany (Estimate: $25,000-35,000), as well as the watercolor Russisches Ballet, 1912, and a woodcut, Sommer I, 1912, are among the highlights ($15,000-20,000 and $10,000-15,000, respectively). Further works include Allee im Tiergarten, Berlin, circa 1920, a color pastel depiction of an urban landscape by Lesser Ury, and a Nicolas Ghika oil on canvas, Intérieur avec chevalet d’artiste, circa 1920s, that portrays the artist’s studio. Both are estimated at $50,000 to $80,000.
The afternoon session following the Littmann Collection offers a broad selection of high-end prints and drawings. The top lot is Edvard Munch’s Kyss IV, 1902–a first-state woodblock print based on the artist’s oil painting of the same title. Only six other impressions of Kyss IV have come to auction in the past 30 years ($150,000-250,000).
Additional works by Modern masters include Sonia Delaunay’s color pochoir and watercolor illustration of Blaise Cendrars’ poem La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France, 1913, which explored the frustrated yet wonderous experience of living through a period of ever-accelerating modernity ($70,000-100,000); Natura Morta con Cinque Oggetti, 1956, a still-life etching by Giorgio Morandi($30,000-50,000); and Joan Miró’s La Permissionaire, 1974, ($40,000-60,000).
Nineteenth-century stalwarts include artist-friends (and rivals) Paul Gaugin and Vincent van Gogh, with remarkable works on paper: Noa Noa, 1893-94,a superb color woodcut by Gaugin, is estimated at $40,000 to $60,000, and Van Gogh’s Homme à la Pipe: Portrait du Docteur Gachet, 1890, the artist’s only known etching, comes across the block at $80,000 to $120,000. William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job, 1826, complete with 22 engravings, is expected to bring $30,000 to $50,000.
Highlights from the American section include Winslow Homer’s Mending the Tears, 1888–a line-based etching of rural women darning a fishing net ($10,000-15,000). Martin Lewis’s quintessential New York drypoint Rain on Murray Hill, 1928, displays the artist’s mastery of depicting nocturnal and atmospheric conditions ($15,000-20,000). Works by Thomas Hart Benton, Childe Hassam, and Joseph Pennell ensure a standout selection.
Exhibition opening in New York City February 28. The complete catalogue and bidding information is available at www.swanngalleries.com and on the Swann Galleries’ App.
We ask that all images be credited, wherever used, as Courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries.
Verrocchio, Master of Leonardo, on view March 9‒July 14, 2019 in Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, will present masterpieces by Andrea del Verrocchio in fascinating dialogue with works by his predecessors, contemporaries, and followers including Desiderio da Settignano, Domenico del Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Bartolomeo della Gatta, Lorenzo di Credi, and Leonardo da Vinci. This year marks the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death and the Palazzo Strozzi exhibition will be one of the most important commemorative events to be held in the world.
Giorgio Vasari wrote that Andrea del Verrocchio painted The Baptism of Christ for the Vallombrosan monks and that assisting him was “Leonardo da Vinci, his disciple, then quite young”. Leonardo, in the painting that is today conserved at the Uffizi Gallery, “painted therein an angel with his own hand, which was much better than the other parts of the work”. According to Vasari, this sealed Verrocchio’s fate, as he never again wanted to touch another brush “since Leonardo, young as he was, had acquitted himself in that art much better than he had done.”
Andrea del Verrocchio, celebrated and beloved in Florence, was much more than just the master of a workshop. His desire for change and innovation led him to experiment with a variety of arts, and he held a great passion for geometry. But his fame remained tied to his talent as a painter and sculptor. And while it is true that some of his pupils went on to become masters of the Florentine Renaissance, like Botticelli, Piero Perugino and Lorenzo di Credi, it was he that was entrusted with making the copper sphere that for centuries adorned the pride and joy of the city, Brunelleschi’s dome. The sphere was installed on May 27, 1471 and a lightning strike caused it to topple to the ground on January 27, 1601, which is today commemorated on the eastern side of piazza del Duomo, behind the apse, with a white marble plaque on the spot where the sphere landed.
Andrea del Verrocchio was beloved by the Medici, first by the family patriarch Cosimo the Elder and later by his son Piero, as well as by Lorenzo, who the artist immortalized in a wax statue – following the bloody Pazzi Conspiracy that killed his popular, younger brother Giuliano – to show his thanks to God for having spared the life of the ruler of Florence.
Curated by two distinguished experts on 15th-century art, Francesco Caglioti and Andrea De Marchi, the exhibition will showcase more than 120 works—paintings, sculptures, and drawings—and will be the first-ever retrospective dedicated to Verrocchio. The exhibition is part of a collaborative undertaking involving museums and institutions in and around Florence and elsewhere that has led to major conservation campaigns that allow visitors to experience many masterpieces restored to original splendor. One of the most important projects is the restoration of Verrocchio’s bronze masterpiece Putto with a Dolphin on loan from its permanent home, the Palazzo Vecchio Museum, where it is being restored in a laboratory in the Sala della Cancelleria (Chancery) and visible to the public.
Verrocchio, Master of Leonardo is organized by the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Musei del Bargello in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. where it will be on view September 29, 2019‒February 2, 2020, with the support of the Comune di Firenze, Regione Toscana, Camera di Commercio di Firenze, and a grant from the Fondazione CR Firenze. Intesa Sanpaolo is the main sponsor.
Andrea del Verrocchio (Andrea di Michele di Francesco Cioni; c. 1435‒88). Putto with a Dolphin, 1470‒c. 1475, bronze, 70.3 × 50.5 × 35 cm, Florence, Musei Civici Fiorentini – Museo di Palazzo Vecchio
The bronze statue of a winged boy standing on a partial sphere holding a wriggling dolphin is one of Verrocchio’s most famous and admired works. Inspired by Greco-Roman models and putti created by Donatello and his followers, this statue has extraordinary balance, motion, and dynamism.
A document dated 1496, drawn up after the death of his brother Tommaso, lists Verrocchio’s commissions for the Medici. It states that the “bronze boy” (bambino di bronzo), at the time complete with “3 bronze heads and 4 marble lion mouths” (3 teste di bronzo e 4 bocche di lione in marmo) was made for the Medici villa at Careggi. According to Giorgio Vasari’s art historical tome Lives (1568), it was commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent.
In 1557, Cosimo I had the putto moved to Palazzo Vecchio to crown the marble and porphyry fountain that Francesco del Tadda and Andrea di Polo were making based on designs by Bartolomeo Ammannati and Vasari for the center of the first courtyard, now known as the “Michelozzo Courtyard.” The statue stood there for four centuries, exposed to the elements and to the harmful effects of the water spouting from the dolphin’s mouth, as well as the stresses created by the various maintenance interventions that were conducted over time.
There is some partial documentation about three restorations done in the 20th century before the statue was moved indoors and replaced with a bronze copy by Bruno Bearzi. Initially, the Putto stood in the Sala della Cancelleria, and was later moved to the Juno Terrace to evoke the never-completed plans for the fountain that Cosimo I had wanted for the loggia (which has since been enclosed). The grand duke had ordered a painting of a winged gilded bronze putto with one foot on a dolphin’s head pouring water from a vase on the inside wall as a model for the fountain.
To allow visitors to the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio to witness the restoration work, the statue has been moved to the dedicated worksite set up in the Sala della Cancelleria.
The Friends of Florence Foundation has underwritten the restoration of the Putto with a Dolphin (1470‒c.1475) a statue by Andrea del Verrocchio, for the exhibition Verrocchio, Master of Leonardo on view March 9‒July 14, 2019 in Palazzo Strozzi. The presentation will also have a special section in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello. Verrocchio’s influential practice as an artist, goldsmith, and architect led him to develop a studio renowned for training artists including Leonardo da Vinci. The statue that Lorenzo the Magnificent commissioned for the Medici family villa at Careggi and was later moved to Palazzo Vecchio where it is held today, will be among Verrocchio’s masterpieces displayed in the exhibition.
“The statue’s art historical significance and its presentation in the exhibition in Florence and, later, at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. make this project a particularly important one for our Foundation,” said Simonetta Brandolini d’Adda, co-founder and president of the nonprofit Foundation. “On behalf of the Friends of Florence, I thank our generous donors, Ellen and James Morton, who made the restoration possible, along with the city of Florence and the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi for involving us in the conservation of an enchanting masterpiece by the great Florentine artist Verrocchio.”
The restoration, begun in 2018 and directed by Serena Pini curator of the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, is being conducted by Nicola Salvioli and monitored by Jennifer Celani, official of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e le Provincie di Pistoia e Prato.
The restoration of Putto with a Dolphin The restoration of Andrea del Verrocchio’s (c.1435‒88) Putto with a Dolphin is the first scientifically based, conservation intervention done on the bronze sculpture since the 1950s when it was removed from the fountain on which it stood and placed inside the museum.
The restoration process, which is on view to the public in the Palazzo Vecchio museum, is not limited to the statue’s exterior. Rather, comprehensive diagnostic studies provided important information. Several mainly non-invasive scientific analyses made it possible to tailor the cleaning procedures, identify traces of several previous treatments, and, importantly, learn more about Verrocchio’s technique—one of the project’s specific goals.
The conservation of the bronze statue is an extremely complex process. The surface was darkened by residual matter from previous maintenance work and there was evidence of old restorations some of which were done with aggressive techniques and inappropriate substances. Underneath those treatments were harmful calcareous residue from water that splashed on the surface for centuries.
Careful inspection beneath the surface remedied deterioration and revealed heretofore unknown details. Gentle cleaning with aqueous solutions alternating with specific solvents make it possible to remove all previously applied layers and reveal the statue’s original surface. This enabled a better assessment of the extent of the damages caused by age, contact with water, and exposure to focus treatment on resolving the issues that altered the patina. Work included spot-elimination of harmful corrosive products and the mechanical removal of various residues. Cleaning the now-stable, protective patina of the bronze is bringing to light hidden details. The final steps will be harmonizing the surface colors to balance the overall appearance and the application of protective solutions to help conserve the bronze over the long term.
Photographic documentation includes images taken, before, during, and after the restoration, and videos of the restoration phases and results. Photographs include images obtained under the microscope and endoscopic views as well as 3D scans and graphic mapping.
Technical Management: Serena Pini (Curator, Museo di Palazzo Vecchio - Musei Civici Fiorentini) Oversight: Jennifer Celani (Official of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e le Provincie di Pistoia e Prato) Restoration: Nicola Salvioli, Florence Diagnostic Studies: Barbara Salvadori (Istituto per la Conservazione e Valorizzazione dei Beni Culturali - CNR Firenze) with Juri Agresti and Salvatore Siano (Istituto di Fisica Applicata “Nello Carrara” - CNR Firenze) for the analysis of the alloys; and Sonia Mugnaini, Siena for the analysis of the casting clays. Documentation: Antonio Quattrone, Nicola Salvioli 3D Scans and Mapping: Nicola Salvioli
Autour de 'La Revolution 1937', a remarkable, and joyous work painted in the aftermath of the Second World War by the Russian-French artist Marc Chagall, leads Bonhams Impressionist and Modern Art Sale in London on Thursday 28 February. It is estimated at £300,000-500,000. The 1917 Revolution and subsequent Russian Civil War were key events in Chagall's artistic development. 20 years later – having moved to Paris in 1923 from his home town of Vitebsk – he embarked on his Révolution series. Over several, similarly structured, works, Chagall juxtaposes political upheaval, represented by the revolutionaries on the left side of the canvases, with artistic and domestic harmony in the form of musicians, roof tops, animals and lovers on the right. Separating these two worlds, the figure of Lenin is shown performing a handstand on a table, at which sits a rabbi contemplating the Torah.
Chagall returned to the theme in the years following World War Two. Being Jewish, he had fled France after the German invasion of 1940, and lived in America until 1948 when he returned to the country he saw as home. Autour de 'La Revolution 1937' was painted at some point between 1945-1950, and is a reflection on the earlier series (the title translates as Around 'The 1937 Revolution'.) The tone is markedly apolitical and lighter. The figure of Lenin has been replaced by an acrobat – a favorite Chagall motif - and the rabbi is now an elderly violinist. The revolutionary crowd has shrunk to a small group of banner-waving protestors.
Bonhams Global Head of Impressionist and Modern Art India Phillips commented: "After the Second World War, Chagall made a deliberate decision to emphasize beauty and peace. From exile in New York, he had followed the fate of European Jewry with mounting horror. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, he chose to process his reaction to this unimaginable suffering through determined and conscious optimism."
Few artists have left behind as complete an account of their life and work as Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). In March 2019, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents Vincent van Gogh: His Life in Art, an exhibition showcasing key passages in the artist’s life, from his early sketches to his final paintings, and chronicling his pursuit of becoming an artist. The Museum is the only venue for His Life in Art, presenting more than 50 portraits, landscapes, and still lifes. The exhibition will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), from March 10 to June 27, 2019.
In a major collaboration, the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, which, together, hold the largest collections in the world of Van Gogh’s work, will lend pieces to Houston. Significant works will also travel from Musée d’Orsay, Paris; Wallraf–Richartz Museum, Cologne; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Art Institute of Chicago; the Dallas Museum of Art; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; and private collections.
“This exhibition will offer visitors a vivid portrait of Van Gogh’s evolution as an artist,” commented MFAH Director Gary Tinterow. “We are grateful to the Van Gogh and Kröller-Müller museums for lending so many of these rarely traveled masterworks from their collections for this exclusive presentation here in Houston.”
“The popular story of Van Gogh has tended to focus on his last few years and his death,” said David Bomford, curator of the exhibition and chair, Department of Conservation, and Audrey Jones Beck curator, Department of European Art, MFAH. “But there is a rich and complex narrative that starts much earlier, one that is defined by Van Gogh’s tremendous drive to become an artist.”
Exhibition Overview
The exhibition explores Vincent van Gogh’s early years as an artist in the Dutch village of Nuenen from 1883 to 1885; his renewed inspiration following exposure to fellow artists and city life in Paris; his further development in Arles, where he created series of landscapes and vibrant portraits; and lastly his inspiration from nature, reflected in the paintings he created toward the end of his life in Saint-Rémy and Auvers. In addition, facsimiles of Van Gogh’s letters will build out the narrative of the artist’s life. Incorporated throughout the exhibition, they trace his hopes of becoming a marketable painter in Paris, his longing to live among a community of artists, and his struggles with his personal relationships and his mental health.
Early Years as an Artist
Vincent van Gogh became an artist at 27, taking up painting in 1881 after stints as an art dealer, teacher, bookseller, and minister, all unsuccessful. His brother, Theo, encouraged him to concentrate on drawing, spurring Van Gogh to work on his technique and connect with other artists. He was largely self-taught, and his early work reflects an engagement with Realism and an interest in conveying both the physical and psychological conditions of his subjects. Van Gogh sent his work to Theo in exchange for the financial support his brother offered. “I’m sending you three scratches that are still awkward, but from which I hope you’ll nonetheless see that there’s gradual improvement. You must remember that I haven’t been drawing for long, even if I did sometimes make little sketches as a boy,” Van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother on April 2, 1881.
His development as a painter continued, as he produced farm scenes in the village of Nuenen following in the footsteps of admired artists such as Jean-François Millet. He studied and recorded every facet of rural life, realistically portraying with the harsh circumstances of farm laborers rather than idealizing them. During this time, Van Gogh’s character studies culminated in portrayals of rural life.
The Potato Eaters (1885), his first major painting and one of his best-known, will be on view, alongside sketches of the day-to-day life of villagers.
Van Gogh’s works from his time in Nuenen also feature an old church tower, which he painted as a tribute to those who had been laid to rest among the fields they had planted.
In Search of Renewal
From Nuenen, Van Gogh left for Antwerp to enroll in an art academy and take drawing classes in November 1885. Abandoning the theme of rural farm life, he shifted his focus to portraiture. Shortly following, he left for Paris where he moved in with Theo. The city inspired a brighter palette, while his friendships with Emile Bernard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec had a major influence on his work.
Featured in this section is a portrait of Agostina Segatori, the owner of Café du Tambourin, a gathering spot for Parisian artists that Van Gogh frequented.
While in Paris, he discovered a new source of inspiration in Japanese woodcuts, which he had begun to collect. Their influence is reflected in the bold outlines, dramatic cropping, and color contrasts of Van Gogh’s work.
After two years in Paris, Van Gogh grew weary of city life and longed for a setting like those in the Japanese landscapes he admired. He hoped to find it in the south of France, and relocated to Arles. “I noticed some magnificent plots of red earth planted with vines, with mountains in the background of the most delicate lilac. And the landscape under the snow with the white peaks against a sky as bright as the snow was just like the winter landscapes the Japanese did,” he wrote to Theo on February 21, 1888.
With this return to the countryside, Van Gogh developed a recognizable style of his own, characterized by long, rhythmic brushstrokes and thick layers of paint in increasingly brighter colors. Inspired by the bright light and the colors of southern France, he painted fields of wheat, vineyards, and vibrant portraits. But months of personal crisis followed.
Still Life with a Plate of Onions (1889) was one of the first paintings Van Gogh completed after returning home from the hospital where he was treated after slicing off his ear. On that day, January 17, 1889, he wrote to his brother Theo that he intended to begin working to get used to painting again and had already done a few studies. But Van Gogh’s mental health continued to fluctuate. He admitted himself to Saint-Paul-de-Mausole psychiatric asylum in Saint-Rémy in May 1889.
Nature as a Source of Enduring Inspiration
At the asylum in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh created dozens of paintings of the gardens of the institution, the fields outside his window, and of the few possessions that he had in his room. During this period, in which he produced some of his most iconic masterworks,
he also ventured into the wheat fields and olive groves. In his studio, he made a series of paintings after prints, resulting in such idyllic scenes as
Peasant Woman Binding Sheaves (after Millet). Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890), Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, September 1889. oil on canvas on cardboard
Peasant Woman Binding Wheat Sheaves (1889), once again inspired by the work of Millet.
In May of 1890, Van Gogh left Saint-Rémy for Auvers, seeking out the care of the doctor Paul Gachet at the suggestion of painter Camille Pissarro. Van Gogh spent his last weeks painting landscape after landscape,
including Ears of Wheat in June 1890, one of the latest of his works in the MFAH exhibition. He died from suicide on July 27 of that year.
Publication
This exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue highlighting the 50 drawings and paintings, drawn primarily from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.
Vincent van Gogh: His Life in Art surveys the artist’s creative evolution across his short but influential career. The narrative begins with Van Gogh’s drawings, which were the foundation of his early practice, and describes how he transitioned into painting by consulting instructional handbooks and copying images. Written by a team of international experts, the book follows his moves from the landscapes and peasant life of his native Holland to Antwerp, Paris, Provence, and finally the countryside north of Paris. In the brilliant light of southern France, he began painting portraits and landscapes while refining his characteristic style of rhythmic brushstrokes and expressive impasto in vivid colors.
In addition to the main essay with its overview of Van Gogh’s shifting techniques and artistic concerns, the publication features a pair of essays highlighting two museums with exceptional collections of the artist’s work: the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. Beautifully reproduced images showcase approximately 50 outstanding pieces from these and other institutions, from rough drawings to vibrant late-career canvases.
Today, hardly anyone knows who they were, even though they made a part of art history: artists such as Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Helene Funke, and Erika Giovanna Klien contributed significantly to Viennese Modernism and artistic trends that manifested after the First World War. To commemorate these artists, their art, and their emancipatory achievements, a long overdue retrospective has now been staged in the Lower Belvedere.
The exhibition expands the view of Viennese Modernism and focuses on those women who actively helped shape the art scene at the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time, women who wanted to become artists were still at a severe disadvantage. They were denied access to education and artists’ associations, and thus to exhibition opportunities. In spite of these hurdles, some of them managed to successfully build a career. In the predominantly male art business, they had to fight hard to gain a foothold. They found training opportunities and developed strategies to market themselves. By establishing their own artists’ associations, they were able to network and become active in the art scene. Many of them exhibited at the Secession, the Hagenbund, the Salon Pisko, and the Miethke Gallery. Despite the fact that, in recent years, the lives and works of some of these formerly renowned artists have been researched and compiled into retrospectives, their work is still underestimated in importance and barely appreciated for what it is.
This show brings these women back into focus. On view, in part, are rediscovered works – some of which are being presented for the first time ever – by those artists who were known in their time, but whose eminence today has completely vanished. They were nonetheless able to leave their marks on art movements such as Atmospheric Impressionism (‘Stimmungsimpressionismus’), Secessionism, Expressionism, Kinetism, and New Objectivity.
The exhibition expands the view of Viennese Modernism and focuses on those women who actively helped shape the art scene at the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time, women who wanted to become artists were still at a severe disadvantage. They were denied access to education and artists’ associations, and thus to exhibition opportunities. In spite of these hurdles, some of them managed to successfully build a career. In the predominantly male art business, they had to fight hard to gain a foothold. They found training opportunities and developed strategies to market themselves. By establishing their own artists’ associations, they were able to network and become active in the art scene. Many of them exhibited at the Secession, the Hagenbund, the Salon Pisko, and the Miethke Gallery. Despite the fact that, in recent years, the lives and works of some of these formerly renowned artists have been researched and compiled into retrospectives, their work is still underestimated in importance and barely appreciated for what it is.
This show brings these women back into focus. On view, in part, are rediscovered works – some of which are being presented for the first time ever – by those artists who were known in their time, but whose eminence today has completely vanished. They were nonetheless able to leave their marks on art movements such as Atmospheric Impressionism (‘Stimmungsimpressionismus’), Secessionism, Expressionism, Kinetism, and New Objectivity.
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) "Water Lily Pond" 1917-22. 130.2 x 201.9 51 1/2 x 79 1/2 in. The Art Institute of Chicago (Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco)
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Kimbell Art Museum have announced Monet: The Late Years, the first exhibition in more than 20 years dedicated to the final phase of Monet’s career. Through approximately 60 paintings, the exhibition will trace the evolution of Monet’s practice from 1913, when he embarked on a reinvention of his painting style that led to increasingly bold and abstract works, up to his death in 1926.
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) "The Artist's House Seen from the Rose Garden," 1922-24. Oil on canvas, 35 x 36 in. (89 x 92 cm). Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, France
Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Assembled from major public and private collections in Europe, the United States, and Asia, including the holdings of the Fine Arts Museums and the Kimbell, Monet: The Late Years will include more than 20 examples of Monet’s beloved water lily paintings. In addition, the exhibition will showcase many other extraordinary and unfamiliar works from the artist’s final years, several of which will be seen for the first time in the United States.
Majestic panoramas will be displayed alongside late easel paintings, demonstrating Monet’s continued vitality and variety as a painter. This exhibition will redefine Monet—widely known as the greatest landscape painter of the Impressionists—as one of the most original artists of the modern age.
"Building on the strong history of partnership between our institutions, Monet: The Late Years was inspired by seminal paintings by Monet in the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Kimbell Art Museum,” said Eric M. Lee, director of the Kimbell, and Melissa Buron, director of the art division at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “Together, we are delighted to reveal a newly considered Monet in this thrilling exploration of his last works.”
Monet: The Late Years focuses on the period when the artist, his life marked by personal loss, deteriorating eyesight, and the threat of surrounding war, remained close to home to paint the varied elements of his garden at Giverny. His worsening vision and a new ambition to paint on a large scale stimulated fundamental changes in the tonality and intensity of his palette, toward vivid color combinations and broader, more apparent, application of paint. The complex surfaces of his canvases reveal layers of activity spread out over the course of days, months, and years. The result was a remarkable new body of work with increasingly feverish, dramatic brushwork. Far removed from his earlier, more representational production, the artist’s late paintings close in on a stylistic threshold into abstraction.
“The last dozen years of Monet’s life were a challenging time for the painter, who contended with personal loss and the afflictions of old age in his 70s and 80s,” said exhibition curator George T. M. Shackelford, deputy director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “But they were also among the most triumphant of his long career—because in his mid-70s, Monet decided to reinvent himself, mining his past, yet creating works that looked like nothing he had ever done before.”
Thematically arranged, the exhibition opens with a prologue concentrating on scenery from Monet’s outdoor studio at Giverny. Paintings from the late 1890s and early 1900s include depictions of the Japanese footbridge over the newly created lily pond, and the artist’s house as seen from the rose garden—all sources of inspiration that he would revisit in his late career.
Next, the exhibition enters the period between 1914 and 1919, when Monet returned to painting anew after a hiatus in work prompted by the loss of his second wife, Alice, and his eldest son, Jean.
Opening with the vibrant 1914–1917 Water Lilies from the Fine Arts Museums’ collection, (above)the section features a number of the dynamically rendered water lily paintings from this period, juxtaposed with audacious large-scale floral studies from the evolving scenery of his garden.
Continuing to study natural phenomena, the artist focused on elements that had been relegated to the fringes in earlier works, such as Day Lilies, Agapanthus, and Yellow Iris, in addition to Water Lilies, among the 20 paintings on loan from the Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.
Monet’s ambitions as a muralist, in contrast with his renewed activity as an easel painter, are explored next. With the completion of a vast studio building on his property in 1916, Monet was able to undertake significantly larger canvases, measuring between 14 and 20 feet wide, forming a series of mural-style paintings now known as the Grandes Décorations.
In such immersive, panoramic paintings as Agapanthus from the Saint Louis Art Museum, more than 6 x 14 feet in size—the artist paralleled themes undertaken in an important series of paintings of his water lily pond, each about 3 x 6 feet, their number rivaling the scale and ambition of his mural project.
Groups of paintings from his late garden series—several on view in the United States for the first time—conclude the exhibition. During his final years, while continuing to perfect his largest panels, Monet returned to working in smaller-format paintings, on the scale of his famous series paintings of the 1890s and early 1900s. Working again in his classic serial method, he revisited familiar motifs on his property, such as the Japanese bridge and the rose-covered trellises over the path leading from his house to the edge of his flower garden.
The exhibition showcases these works in greater numbers than ever before attempted: in addition to seven studies of the Japanese bridge at Giverny, six compelling portrayals of a tree with a twisting trunk and craggy outreaching branches are shown. Among these is Weeping Willow, a masterwork from the Kimbell Art Museum’s collection, painted in 1918–1919 in mournful response to the tragedies of World War I.
By his final years, Monet’s cataracts had affected the tonal balance of his perception. Nonetheless, as seen in
Path under the Rose Arches and The Artist’s House Seen from the Rose Garden, (above) both on loan from the Musée Marmottan Monet, the artist triumphed over this adversity by producing his most radical works yet. The expressive style of these paintings, with a complex layering of gestural strokes in red and yellow hues over blue and green, affirms Monet’s continued vitality as a painter and redefines him, in the near abandonment of subject matter in favor of increasingly rapturous execution, as a pioneer of abstraction.
Monet: The Late Years is a sequel to Monet: The Early Years, which focused on the artist’s youthful pre-Impressionist years—from ages 17 to 31—when he developed his unique visual language and technique, on view in Fort Worth and San Francisco in 2017.
Organized by George T. M. Shackelford, deputy director of the Kimbell Art Museum, and installed in San Francisco by Melissa Buron, director of the art division at the Fine Arts Museums. Monet: The Late Yearsis on view at the de Young museum from February 16 through May 27, 2019, and then at the Kimbell Art Museum from June 16 through September 15, 2019.
Catalogue
This beautiful publication examines the last phase of Monet’s career, beginning in 1913, bringing together approximately 60 of his greatest works from this period. More specifically, Monet: The Late Years focuses on the series that Monet invented and reinvented at Giverny, reevaluating many large-scale works that have long been considered preparatory studies, reexamining their relationship to and status as finished works. Essays by a roster of distinguished scholars address topics such as Monet’s plans for displaying his late paintings, the mechanics of his painting technique, and the critical and market reception of these works. Through this visually stunning reassessment, Monet’s late works, still astonishing a century later, recast the titan of Impressionism as a radical modern painter.
Bouguereau & America showcases more than forty masterful paintings by the French academic painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905). The exhibition explores the artist’s remarkable popularity throughout America’s Gilded Age, from the late 1860s to the early 1900s. During this period, owning a painting by the artist was de rigueur for any American who wanted to be seen as a serious collector: the artist’s grand canvases brought a sense of classic sophistication to newly formed collections. Their chastely sensual maidens, Raphaelesque Madonnas, and impossibly pristine peasant children mirror the religious beliefs, sexual mores, social problems, and desires of that period. Moreover, the exhibition offers an opportunity to examine how society’s perspectives can shift over time.
As the first major exhibition on the artist since the 1980s, Bouguereau & America will offer fresh perspectives on works that form the backbone of many museum collections.
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825–1905), Homer and His Guide (Homère et son guide), 1874. Oil on canvas. Layton Art Collection Inc., Gift of Frederick Layton L1888.5. Photographer credit: Larry Sanders.
Portrait of Frances and Eva Jonhston (detail; 1869), William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Private collection
William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s highly polished, sentimental paintings were stars of the Paris Salon in the late 19th century, and much sought-after by American collectors. This show looks at the reasons for the artist’s tremendous popularity and later falling out of fashion. Find out more from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s website. Preview the exhibition below | See Apollo’s Picks of the Week here
Washerwomen of Fouesnant (1869), William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester
William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s highly polished, sentimental paintings were stars of the Paris Salon in the late 19th century, and much sought-after by American collectors. This show looks at the reasons for the artist’s tremendous popularity and later falling out of fashion. Find out more from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s website. Preview the exhibition below | See Apollo’s Picks of the Week here
Washerwomen of Fouesnant (1869), William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester
With his paintings of cherubic children, melancholy Madonnas, and rustic scenes such as this, Bouguereau has come to encapsulate our image of artistic taste in America in the second half of the 19th century. During this time, he was one of the most desirable living artists for US collectors – when he died in 1905, an obituary observed that ‘no respectable amateur would mention his new fad of picture-collecting until he had secured a “Bouguereau” for his parlor’.
Portrait of Frances and Eva Jonhston (1869), William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Bouguereau’s fame brought him prestigious commissions in the US; this work depicts the two daughters of John Taylor Johnston, a railroad executive who would become the first president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The portrait reveals the artist’s great skill for painting children, as well as his knack for arresting compositions; the younger Eva looks directly at the viewer, ignoring her sister and her book.
Admiration (1897), William-Adolphe Bouguereau. San Antonio Museum of Art. Photo: Roger Fry
Edited by Tanya Paul and Stanton Thomas; With texts by Tanya Paul, Stanton Thomas, Eric Zafran, Martha Hoppin, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, and Catherine Sawinski
An in-depth exploration into the immense popularity of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s work in America throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries
Seeking to bring Gallic sophistication and worldly elegance into their galleries and drawing rooms, wealthy Americans of the late 19th and early 20th centuries collected the work of William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905) in record numbers.
This fascinating volume offers an in-depth exploration of Bouguereau’s overwhelming popularity in turn-of-the-century America and the ways that his work—widely known from reviews, exhibitions, and inexpensive reproductions—resonated with the American public. While also lauded by the French artistic establishment and a dominant presence at the Parisian Salons, Bouguereau achieved his greatest success selling his idealized and polished paintings to a voracious American market.
In this book, the authors discuss how the artist’s sensual classical maidens, Raphaelesque Madonnas, and pristine peasant children embodied the tastes of American Gilded Age patrons, and how Bouguereau’s canvases persuasively functioned as freshly painted Old Masters for collectors flush with new money.
Tanya Paul is Isabel and Alfred Bader Curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Stanton Thomas is curator of collections and exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Saint Petersburg, Florida.
Marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of the influential German school of art and design, Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening and Day Sales will present artworks by th ose who taught at the Bauhaus and those whose outputs were transformed by its teachings. Founded in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius , the Bauhaus – which resided in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin until it was closed down under pressure from the Nazis in 1933 – aimed to unite the disciplines of crafts, art and architecture. This core objective was conceived as a reimagining of the material world that would reflect unity in all the arts as a response to the rapid modernisation of life.
The auctions on 26 and 27 February will comprise works by key proponents of the emblematic movement, including Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, László Moholy -Nagy and Lyonel Feininger .
“Every work of art comes into being in the same way as the cosmos – by means of catastrophes, which ultimately create out of the cacophony of the various instruments that symphony we call the music of spheres. The creation of the work of art is the creation of the world .” Painted in February 1928 while Kandinsky was teaching at the Bauhaus in Dessau, this meditation on the essential beauty of circles embodies the aesthetic principles that he promoted to his students.
Circles dominated Kandinsky’s most meaningful compositions of this intellectually sophisticated period of his career, and he expounded upon their incomparable aesthetic values in his writing s. In this composition, the circles appear to be floating in space, like stars eclipsing and colliding with one another in their perpetual motion t hrough the cosmos . When the school moved to Dessau, having been closed by the National Socialists in Weimar, Gropius designed a housing estate for the Bauhaus masters.
Once Kandinsky completed this work, he hung it in the exotically coloured living room in the Masters ’ House that he shared with Klee – set against walls painted gold, pale pink and ivory. The painting’s first owner was businessman and collector Otto Ralfs, who went bankrupt in 1930s and sold it to Salomon Hale, a private collector of Polish origin, based in Mexico City. This was organised with the assistance of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who had wanted to purchase it for himself but was sadly unable to afford it.
Painted in Paris in 1941 , this wonderfully playful and optimistic work on paper belongs to the last great period of abstraction in Kandinsky’s art. Drawing on the severe geometric construction which characterised the works of his final Bauhaus years, in Paris he superimpose d a repertoire of stylised and biomorphic shapes that seem to have been borrowed from the realm of molecular biology (first explorations into which were occurring at the same moment) . Here, a variety of forms – both geometric and organic – are scattered across the surface of the paper, set against a neutral monochrome background .
OSKAR SCHLEMMER
Schlemmer tirelessly strove to achieve a synthesis of the arts, and of all those who taught at the Bauhaus, his works most completely embody its aesthetic and ideals. In 1920 the artist was invited by Walter Gropius to join the Bauhaus school , working as the ‘master’ of mural, wood and metal workshops – combining dance, stage and costume design as well as architecture with the three -dimensional medium of painting . His art focuses on positioning figures within a pictorial space, which he formed by opposing horizontal, vertical and diagonal planes.
Oskar Schlemmer, Tischgesellschaft (Group at Table) , oil and lacquer on canvas, 1923 (est. £1,000,000 - 1,500,000)
“The figure is static, the space is movement .” Painted a year after the creation of his ballet, Tischgesellschaft was Schlemmer’s first painting to show a group of people in perspectival space . This space is defined simply by a vertical line at the top, which deno tes the corner of a room that is dominated by a dramatically foreshortened table . The exaggerated dive of the table into the background causes an almost Surreal effect, and Moholy -Nagy illustrated this work in his discussion of the importance of dream and the language of the subconscious in the art of the Surrealists . The figures are rendered in solid, gently curved shapes , evok ing a sense of classical harmony and give the composition a meditative quality . The human shape is contained in regular, linear, geometric patterns, and purified of all individual features , reminiscent of the te achings of Plato, the Egyptians and Greeks, Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer.
Oskar Schlemmer, Am gel änder, fünf - figuren - gruppe (By the Handrail, Group of Five Figures) , pencil and coloured crayon on paper affixed to the artist’s mount, circa 1931 (est. £40,000 - 60,000)
Offering an insight into the artist’s working process, and the idea of sublime perfection in his art, this refined drawing depicts five women, each holding onto the handrail of a staircase , superimposed upon each other. Schlemme r achieves a perfect harmony despite the opposing planes of movement, imbuing the figures with a meditative, calming poise as they climb ever higher. The theme of the staircase proved particularly compelling for the artist and this series culminated in the monumental Bauhaustreppe of 1932, today on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY - NAGY
László Moholy - Nagy , Segments , tempera and traces of pencil on canvas, 1921 (est. £300,000 - 500,000) “
Art is the most complex, vitalising and civilising of human actions. Thus it is of biological necessity.” Maholy -Nagy firmly believed that the art of the present must parallel contemporary reality – and the new technological advancements – in order to communicate meaning to its publi c. Thus he c onsidered traditional, figurative painting obsolete and turned to pure geometric abstraction – attempting to define an objective science of essential forms, colours, and materials, which would promote a more unified social environment . This work demonstrates Maholy -Nagy ’s characteristic innovative boldness , establishing a dialogue between the elongated black bar and the semi -circular shapes, as well as between these finely painted elements and the coarse appearance of the bare canvas . The piece also explores a way of representing light and shadow through the purely abstract vocabulary.
LYONEL FEININGER
Feininger illustrated the front cover of the Bauhaus’ founding proclamation, depicting the united vision of the artistic movement with a radiant image of a gothic cathedral
Lyonel Feininger, Brücke II (Bridge II) , oil on canvas , 191 4 - 15 (est. £4,000,000 - 6,000,000)
One of Feininger’s most accomplished and striking oils painted in the cubist manner , Brücke II , prefigures the artist’s involvement with the Bauhaus by a few years. It was inspired by a small Gothic bridge over the Ilm River near Weimar – a region that provided some of the most iconic motifs in his work . Employing a geometric faceting of forms, the broken -down diagonals of the bridge and its surroundings are at once complex and legible.
Demonstrating a strong influence of French Cubism, particularly the landscapes of Georges Braque, Feininger depicts the scene on a monumental scale and renders the modest stone bridge with a sense of majestic splendour. Between 1912 and 1919, the bridge featured in seven oils and several works on paper, tracing the trajectory from his earliest Cubist- inspired style pieces to the more abstract, broken -down forms of his later painting . The series was a turning point, as the move to greater freedom of form revolutionised his entire oeuvre and provided a stepping stone towards the pure forms abstraction developed at the Bauhaus .
Lyonel Feininger, Wüste see (Desert Sea) , oil on canvas, 1945 (est. £140,000 - 1 80,000)
“Reminiscence, for which I, like all of us, possess an unusual talent, is the most common source for the best in my work .” Feininger did not create art for purely aesthetic reasons, but rather because of an urge to bring his innermost memories to life , and capturing a fleeting memory was at the core of his creative process. Feininger moved to New York in 1937 after almost fifty years in Germany, and expressed his longing for the Baltic Sea with a series of watercolours and paintings depicting his beloved seaside .
Completed on 9 February, just two months before the end of World War II, Desert Sea is a reflection of both blissful and melanchol ic memories of summers spent swimming, sailing and fishing . Though Feininger managed to leave Germany, he worried about his friends who remained behind, and mourned the destruction of his adopted country. The deep dark colours and almost violent black slashes of the work are in stark contrast to earlier brighter and more tranquil depictions of the motif, as two lonely figures cling to each other against the immense red sky with a tiny ship only just visible on the horizon . The rich reds and ochres, rather than the tranquil blues of his other seascapes, reference the striking rock formations of the California desert and are emblematic of the graphic style of Feininger’s later period.
PAUL KLEE
Paul Klee, Junger Blaumond (Young Blue - Moon) , gouache and watercolour on paper mounted on paper, 1918 (est. £70,000 - 100,000)
A delicate and luminous watercolour representing a seascape by night , created by Klee at a time when colour returned to the forefront of the artist’s oeuvre for the first time since his celebrated series of Tunisian landscapes in 1914. Inspired by a Chagall exhibition in Berlin i n 1917, Klee introduces a palette of tender and transparent washes of colour complementing the fine lines of his drawing. The motif of the moon was of great importance to the artist, and the vibrant blue colour ing here can be associated with the Blaue Reiter group’s search for the ‘spiritual in art’ . In 1920 Walter Gropius invited Klee to join the staff of the Bauhaus at Dessau, where he taught various aspects of design, from book -binding to metalwork.
This presentation, which is the second part of the celebratory exhibition marking the Principality of Liechtenstein’s Tricentennial, is devoted to the Viennese watercolor from the Biedermeier era to realism.
Nearly 100 of the most beautiful watercolors point to the vast knowledge underlying the princely collecting passion while providing a correspondingly overview of the watercolor artistry of this era.In the Viennese tradition of watercolor painting, the spontaneous handling of light and coloration plays a central role, conveying an intensity and presence that can hardly be achieved in other media.
One sees this in how the brilliant magnificence of aristocratic home decor is reflected by Rudolf von Alt in his depictions of the Viennese Liechtenstein palaces’ representative interiors that that the family commissioned from over a period of several decades. The Princely Family maintained numerous estates outside of Vienna, as well—and Alt’s incomparably lively impressions of the palaces of Valtice and Lednice along with their respective environs now provide us with important reminders of a bygone world full of beauty and opulence.
In the context of this exceptionally multifaceted era of Austrian artistic creativity, Viennese portraiture is of overriding significance: Moritz Michael Daffinger’s representative portraits of the Liechtensteins and other members of Viennese society impress the viewer alongside Peter Fendi’s quick watercolor sketches of the Princely Family.
As an exemplary overview of only the finest works on paper, this exhibition at the ALBERTINAMuseum illustrates the exceptional diversity to be found in the graphic art collection of a princely family that, as a side-effect of its extensive artistic patronage, was constantly surrounded by watercolors and watercolorists in their everyday lives.
Wall Texts Introduction
It is primarily for their monumental works by Rubens that the House of Liechtenstein's art collections are known around the globe. Alongside the ALBERTINA Museum, the Princely Collections in fact also conserve the finest and most significant holdings of watercolors from the Viennese Biedermeier. The nineteenth century was one of the most prospering periods in the princely dynasty's long history: the climate of political détente following the Congress of Vienna in 1815 entailed an economically strong position that enabled the princes to commission works from the leading artists of their day.
The epoch's most important collector was Prince Alois II(1796–1858), who together with his wife, Princess Franziska (1813–1881), became an essential driving force behind Viennese Biedermeier art. His patronage culminated in the interiors by Rudolf von Alt (1812–1905)who, as a sensitive chronicler, documented the stately style employed for the decoration of the princely palaces and masterfully rendered the textures of stucco, wall coverings, chandeliers, and precious furniture.
On the other hand, Peter Fendi (1796–1842), a declared genre painter, devoted himself to the intimate everyday life of the princely couple's children, capturing them with unparalleled lightness and vivacity while they were absorbed in their play or their studies. Joseph Hoger (1801–1877) worked as a drawing teacher for the Liechtensteins' offspring and accompanied Alois ll on his travels.
Under Prince Johann II(1840–1929) it came to generous donations to institutions at home and abroad: not only museums in Vienna owe their comprehensive Biedermeier holdings to his collection, which comprised several hundreds ofworks by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Friedrich Gauermann, and Friedrich von Amerling.
In recent decades, Prince Franz Josef II(1906–1989) and particularly Prince Hans-Adam II (born in 1945) have succeeded in making numerous important purchases in this field: a great connoisseur, Prince Hans-Adam II acquired substantial groups of masterpieces by Rudolf von Alt and his contemporaries. Today the Liechtenstein collections comprise more than 1,000 works by the best watercolorists of the nineteenth-century.
Princely Splendors
In the early nineteenth century, ''portrayals of rooms'' became a fashionable genre in Viennese society. The glamorous splendor of aristocratic domesticity is reflected in the stately interiors of the Liechtenstein palaces Rudolf von Alt (1812–1905) depicted over the decades at the family's request. The artist had broken free from the frontal ''peep-box'' perspective that had previously been common, preferring a vantage point in a corner of the room instead, which allowed for broader glimpses and vistas. The sunlight, falling in through the tallwindows, creates subtle reflections on chandeliers, polished furniture, and glossy parquet flooring, demonstrating Alt's great virtuosity in the depiction of space, light, and materiality His interior views of the residences on Herrengasse and Bankgasse, in which figures are mostly absent, exhibit the extraordinary wealth of these domiciles of the high aristocracy.
Shortly after his accession to power in 1836, Alois II von Liechtenstein and his family moved from the primogenitor's palace on Herrengasse to the Rasumofsky Palace in the Landstrasse district. The prince had the former residence of the Russian ambassador Andrey Rasumofsky, which he had initially only rented, renovated in next to no time. He eventually purchased it and resided there until the modernization of the palace on Bankgasse was completed.
In their watercolors, Rudolf von Alt and Josef Höger (1801–1877) documented the temporary domicile, which was surrounded by a vast English landscape garden. From City to CountrysideAs early as the 1760s, the Vienna Academy required from artists to draw ''in full light'', i.e. before nature. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, painters and draftsmen continued to pour into the countryside from the cities, leaving their studios for fields, forests, and mountains. As a consequence, the alpine lands became an important source of motifs, with Salzburg and the Salzkammergut as places artists and their patrons alike had yearned to visit since Romanticism. On their journeys, leading watercolorists like Joseph Höger (1801–1877) and Rudolf von Alt (1812–1905) created typical and idealized views of Austrian scenery and its most prominent landmarks.
In line with the practice of noblemen hiring watercolorists to document their expeditions in the form of pictures, Alois II von Liechteinstein set out on a journey to Salzburg and Upper Austria shortly after his accession to power in 1836 in the company of Joseph Höger. His series Views of the Salzkammergut made during this journey comprises cleverly chosen vistas of towns such as Traunkirchen and Bad Ischl, as well as picturesque lakesides, mountain pastures, and glaciers. Sketches made in situ like House on a Lake, which is only partially colored, tell us about the genesis of these marvelous documents of how the world was experienced through the medium of drawing.
Rudolf von Alt also went to Salzburg early in his career, revisiting this region as a source of inspiration time and again, until his old age. He frequently employed the highly immediate technique of ''pure'' watercolor for his sketches made en plein air.
The Palaces of Lednice and Valtice
Throughout the decades, Rudolf von Alt (1812–1905) documented important princely building projects: his works not only trace the modifications of the Viennese palaces, but also the reconstructions of the castles of Lednice and Valtice in Southern Moravia, which had been in the possession of the Liechtenstein family since the late thirteenth century and been rebuilt and enlarged several times.
By the year 1858 Lednice Palace presented itself in the English style of Gothic Revival. Alt had captured the magnificent estate before it’sadaptation in the form of a graceful and gauzy watercolor that also represents an important document in terms of architectural history. The palm hause, built in the context of the palace's reconstruction, was one of the earliest cast-iron structures in Europe and served to cultivate exotic plants. As a pictorial motif it offered the artist a welcome opportunity to exhibit his great skills: he devised a complex system of glimpses and openings, of glossy reflections in the glass and atmospherically condensed moods of light.
Such works as Alt's depictions of the Blue and Yellow Drawing Rooms at Valtice Palace attest to the affluent grandeur of the interior decoration: wallcoverings and curtains made of colored silk shine in bright daylight, flickering open fire and splendid furniture are reflected in smoothly polished parquet flooring. These incomparably vivid impressions of the palaces, which are no longer owned by the Liechtenstein family today, are precious memories of a past world full of beauty and opulence.
A New Intimacy
The most sought-after miniaturist and portraitist of his time, Moritz Michael Daffinger (1790–1849) worked for the upper classes and the higher nobility. From 1832 onward, Melanie von Metternich, the chancellor’s third wife, commissioned the artist to portray the guests they received at their house in watercolor: the pictures, frequently signed by the sitters themselves, show important protagonists of the national and international political scenes, including Alois II von Liechtenstein and his second cousin, Karl Franz Anton.
The Liechtenstein portraits by Peter Fendi (1796–1842) show Alois II, his most important patron, the latter’s wife Franziska, and their children in their domestic environment. These very private portrayals render the princes and princesses in a manner that is usually reserved for depictions of middle class everyday life. They give the impression of an entirely unprecedented approachability and an intimacy hitherto unknown in aristocratic contexts. Fendi captured the princely offspring in swift snapshots during their play or studies, conveying a sense of great ease and vivacity thanks todelicate washes and translucently shimmering colors.
Josef Kriehuber (1800–1876), an extremely diligent artist, likewise portrayed Alois II and his entourage: in likenesses that always stress the sitters’ individuality and at the same time flatter them through idealization, the artist depicted the prince in almost shockingly ordinary scenes, for example as a father with his daughter Marie Franziska on his lap.
The Pathos of Everyday Life
Peter Fendi (1796–1842) is considered the inventor ofViennese genre painting. His watercolors and paintings predominantly narrate episodes from the life of ordinary people and showcase sentimental scenes or moments of religiaus devatian intended to touch the viewers emotionally or arouse their sympathy.
However, his mostly small-sized pictures had little to do with the reality of life at the time but rather complied with the stereotypical ideas of his patrons, which in addition to the princely Liechtenstein family included other members ot the Viennese high nobility and the imperial household. Sensitive milieu studies, Fendi's compositions always tend to emphasize the pathos of everyday life and seek to arause deep emotions within the small and seemingly irrelevant. In his final years the artist gathered a number of students around him who were almost like family to him.
Carl Schindler (1821–1842), who was profoundly influenced by his teacher in terms of both motif and style, proved particularly talented. Like Fendi, Schindler preferred the ''pure'' watercolor and largely did entirely without body color: he employed heavily diluted pigments, generously applying washes one next to the other or as transparent, overlappingglazes. The white tone at the paper was deliberately made use at as a dynamizing element in areas that had been left vacant.
A Changing City
During a career lasting almost eight decades, Rudolf von Alt (1812–1905) witnessed the rapid changes in the Viennese cityscape, documenting them in his art in manifold ways. He conceived his first Viennese motifs in the early 1830s: subtly described fassades, a great sense of detail from staffage figures to rooftops, and glaring sunlight characterize the typical Biedermeier veduta, which would be developed and refined in the years to come. In addition to his popular interiors of castles and noble palaces, the artist also painted inferior views of public buildings: his view into the staircase of the old court opera, today's Vienna State Opera, conveys an atmospherically condensed impression of culturally advanced amusement during the 1870s. Daring perspectival foreshortening, subtly nuanced colors, and a brilliant technique combining generous washes and delicate brushwork make these works on paper masterpieces of watercolor art. Like his brother Franz Alt (1824–1914), the artist devoted himself to Vienna's familiar places and magnificent buildings until the end of his life: Saint Stephen 's Cathedral was a particularly cherished motif, which, by his own account, he ''drew'' more than a hundred times from both inside and outside.
Yearning for Distant Places
Almost all artists of the Viennese Biedermeier traveled extensively: the great demand for views of foreign countries made it necessary for them to constantly broaden their repertoires of motifs. Until the middle of the nineteenth century such undertakings were largely tackled with carriages or on foot, which was extremely strenuous and exposed travelers to unstable weather conditions and the constant danger of assaults. As its supplies were easy to transport, the watercolor offered itself as an ideal technique for sketching while on the road. Studies that were spontaneously carried out in situ and which continue to impress us because of their immediacy were mostly not regarded as final works of art but served as preliminary materials for the finished works on paper or canvas made in the studios during the winter months.
As early as the late 1820s, Rudolf von Alt (1812–1905) began going on journeys, initially accompanied by his father Jakob Alt (1789–1872), later also traveling by himself. Throughout his career he periodically visited the monarchy's most charming regions and towns, as well as those of neighboring countries. In his early period his portrayals of vedute and landscapes complied with the traditional canon of motifs considered worth depicting; especially ltalian views were highly coveted amongst collectors. Starting in the 1860s, the artist also dealt with more unusual subject matter, which he translated into large formats using a more liberal and generous application of color. Many of these outstanding depictions from Alt's journeys were acquired for the Liechtenstein collections by the ruling prince Hans-Adam II.
Alpine Worlds
From the very outset of his career, Thomas Ender (1793–1875), a master ot the watercolor technique, was promoted by members ot the higher nobility: Emperor Franz I, Prince Klemens Wenzel Lothar of Metternich and, above all, Archduke Johann would be important clients and patrons of his art throughout his life. As early as the late 1820s, Ender repeatedly traveled to the province of Salzburg and to East, South, and North Tyrol at the archduke's request, documenting charming cultivated landscapes and impressive mountain scenery an extensive hiking tours, some of which resembled pioneering expeditions.
The artist was particularly fascinated by the Pasterze, a glacier at the foot of Mount Grossglockner, which he captured from different perspectives in numerous versions in both watercolor and oil. Time and again he dealt with man's impotence in the view of God's overwhelming Creation.
Given a general interest in the experience of nature emerging in those days, Ender's depictions of glaciers marked a highlight in the field of landscape art thanks to their compelling precision in the rendering of topography: his nuanced depictions of the various surface textures of snow and ice and of the morphological peculiarities ot rocks and the vegetation were unique in their realism at the time. Ender's imposing mountain panoramas have essentially influenced the perception ofthe Austrian Alps as a tourist attraction and today are valuable documents tor both historians and glaciologists.
The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia
Feb. 22-July 7, 2019
Just as modern streaming services give us unprecedented freedom to watch television series in our own order, time and place, print series allowed viewers in the Renaissance Netherlands to enjoy the same sets of images as their peers in more personalized and accessible ways. The Print Series in Bruegel’s Netherlands: Dutch and Flemish Works from the Permanent Collection places 16th- and 17th-century Netherlandish prints in their original series context to explore the practices of looking at a succession of images. Many of these series illustrate cosmological, religious and social ideas, challenging Pieter Bruegel the Elder and other print designers to represent these themes in a manner that appealed to both personalized and general tastes. This exhibition also allows the visitor to consider the ways in which abstract ideas were illustrated in more recognizable contexts.
Hieronymus Cock, Netherlandish, c.1510–1570, after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Netherlandish, 1529–1569. Prudence (Prudentia) from the series The Seven Virtues, 1559 (detail). Engraving, 8 7/8 x 11 5/8 in (22.5 x 29.5 cm). Museum Purchase with Curriculum Support Funds, 1982.7.
Jan or Lucas van Doetechum (Dutch, 1530-1606), after Master of the Small Landscapes (Dutch,
1530- 1606).
Landscape With Woodcutters
from the series
Multifariarum Casularum, 1500-
1599.
Etching, 5 1/2 x 7 3/4 in (14 x 19.7 cm). Gift of Gertrude Weber, 1995.22.21
The Museum Barberini and the Denver Art Museum are currently collaborating on a large-scale Monet retrospective, exploring the role of the places that inspired the artist as well as his approach to rendering their specific topography, atmosphere, and light.
Denver's presentation of Claude Monet: The Truth of Naturewill uncover Claude Monet's (1840– 1926) continuous dialogue with nature and its places through a thematic and chronological arrangement, from the first examples of artworks still indebted to the landscape tradition to the revolutionary compositions and series of his late years.
From February 29 to June 1, 2020, the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany, will present the co-organized exhibition with the title Monet: Places.
Featuring key loans, the exhibition, at Denver and Potsdam, explores Monet's approach towards the depiction of sites and topographies that influenced his stylistic development, including Paris and London, the Seine villages of Argenteuil, Vétheuil and Giverny, the coasts of Normandy and Brittany as well as Southern travel destinations such as Bordighera, Venice and Antibes. Amongst the show’s many highlights are numerous depictions of Monet’s garden and pond in Giverny, including several variations of his world-famous waterlilies.
[Also on view this year, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (opening Feb. 16) and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth will show Monet: The Late Years, the first exhibition in more than 20 years dedicated to the final phase of Monet’s career.]
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the rise of Impressionism dramatically changed the evolution of European landscape painting. One of the movement’s most influential practitioners was Claude Monet, whose exceptionally prolific career spanned more than six decades. Although he was a highly versatile artist, Monet’s key interest lay on depictions of the natural world, characterized by a relentlessly experimental exploration of color, movement, and light. Inspired by the artistic exchange with his colleagues Eugène Boudin and Johan Barthold Jongkind, Monet’s early Impressionist compositions radicalized the practice of plein-air painting, as he largely rejected the studio in favor of working in open nature and directly in front of the motif.
More than any of his fellow Impressionists, he was deeply attracted to exploring the character of specific sites and locations in situ, from the sundrenched Riviera or the wind-swept, rugged coastline of the Belle-Île in Brittany to the picturesque banks of the river Seine. At the very heart of Monet’s artistic practice lay a keen interest in capturing the impression of a fleeting moment, as he tried to translate the most evanescent effects of the atmosphere into the material structure of paint.
“For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment”, Monet explained in 1891. “But its surroundings bring it to life – the air and light, which vary continually (…). For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives objects their real value.”
From his very first documented composition through to the late depictions of his farmhouse and water-garden in Giverny, the show Monet: Places offers a rich overview of his entire career, demonstrating his unique place within the French avantgarde of his time. The show engages with some of the major questions that were already touched upon by the museum’s opening exhibition Impressionism: The Art of Landscape, which attracted over 320,000 visitors in its three-month run in 2017.
Daniel Zamani, curator at the Museum Barberini, explains: “Monet’s career has been the subject of intense scholarly scrutiny, but our focus on the places that inspired him offers new insights into his artistic interests and methods. Our aim is to demonstrate just how significant specific topographies were at key junctures in Monet’s career and to look more deeply into how and why these places influenced his development as a painter.”
Claude Monet, Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge, 1899. Oil paint on canvas; 35 5/8 x 35 5/16 in. Princeton University Art Museum: From the Collection of William Church Osborn, Class of 1883, trustee of Princeton University (1914-1951), president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1941-1947); given by his family, 1972-15. Image courtesy Princeton University Art Museum.
“Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge” (1899),
“The Parc Monceau” (1878),
“Path in the Wheat Fields at Pourville (Chemin dans les blés à Pourville)” (1882) and
Claude Monet, The Canoe on the Epte, about 1890. Oil paint on canvas; 52.55 x 57.5 in (133.5 x 146 cm). Purchase, 1953. Inv. MASP.00092. Collection Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand. Photo by Eduardo Ortega.
“The Canoe on the Epte” (1890).
Monet traveled more extensively than any other impressionist artist in search of new motifs. His journeys to varied places including the rugged Normandy coast, the sunny Mediterranean, London, the Netherlands and Norway inspired artworks that will be featured in the presentation. The exhibition will uncover Monet's continuous dialogue with nature and its places through a thematic and chronological arrangement, from the first examples of artworks still indebted to the landscape tradition to the revolutionary compositions and series of his late years.
"We're thrilled to organize and present this monumental exhibition, which will provide a new perspective on such a beloved artist," said Christoph Heinrich, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the DAM. "Visitors will gain a better understanding of Monet's creative process and how he distanced himself from conventions associated with the traditional landscape genre of painting."
Drawn from major institutions and collections from across the globe, Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature will include works as early as
Claude Monet, View from Rouelles, 1858-61. Oil paint on canvas; 18-1/2 x 25-5/8 in. Marunuma Art Park.
View from Rouelles (Marunuma Art Park, Japan), the first painting Monet exhibited in 1858 when he was 18 years old,
and as late as The House Seen through the Roses (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), a 1926 work completed in Giverny only a few months before Monet’s death.
Claude Monet, Boulevard des Capucines, 1873-1874. Oil paint on canvas; 31-5/8 x 23-3/4 in. (80.3 x 60.3 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: the Kenneth A. and Helen F. Spencer Foundation Acquisition Fund, F72-35. Photo courtesy Nelson-Atkins Media Services / Jamison Miller.Other highlights include the Boulevard des Capucines (1873-74) from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,
Claude Monet, Under the Poplars (Sous les Peupliers), 1887. Oil paint on canvas; 28-3/4 x 36-1/4 in. Private collection.Under the Poplars (1887) from a private collection and
The exhibition also will include six Monet paintings from the DAM collection;
Claude Monet French, 1840-1926 Waterloo Bridge 1903 Oil paint on canvas Funds from Helen Dill bequest, 1935.15
Claude Monet French, 1840-1926 Le Bassin des Nympheas 1904 Oil paint on canvas Funds from Helen Dill bequest, 1935.14 four of them were part of the Frederic C. Hamilton Collection bequest in 2014:
Artworks by acknowledged mentors such as Eugène Boudin and Johan Barthold Jongkind, from whom Monet learned to capture the impression of fleeting moments en plein air, will also be featured.The presentation of Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature will explore Monet’s continuous interest in capturing the quickly changing atmospheres, the reflective qualities of water and the effects of light, aspects that increasingly led him to work on multiple canvases at once. Additionally, the exhibition will examine the critical shift in Monet’s painting when he began to focus on series of the same subject, including artworks from his series of Haystacks, Poplars, Waterloo Bridge and Water Lilies.
"Throughout his career, Monet was indefatigable in his exploration of the different moods of nature, seeking to capture the spirit of a certain place and translating its truth onto the canvas," said Angelica Daneo, curator of European painting and sculpture at the DAM. "Monet's constant quest for new motifs shows the artist's appreciation for nature's ever-changing and mutable character, not only from place to place, but from moment to moment, a concept that increasingly became the focus of his art."
Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature will also delve into the artist's increasing abandonment of any human presence in the landscapes he created, a testimony to his commitment to isolate himself in nature. This creative process simultaneously established an intimacy with his subject, which culminated later in Giverny, where he created his own motif through meticulous planning, planting and nurturing of his flowers and plants, which he then translated onto the canvas
This landmark exhibition, which will fill three galleries totaling about 20,000 square feet, is organized and curated by the DAM’s Angelica Daneo, Christoph Heinrich and Alexander Penn and Museum Barberini’s Director Ortrud Westheider. Major lenders include the Musée d'Orsay, Paris; Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
A catalog accompanying the exhibition, and published by Prestel Publishing, will include essays by renowned scholars, including Marianne Mathieu, James Rubin, George T.M. Shackelford and Richard Thomson, among others. The publication will be available in The Shop at the Denver Art Museum and through the online shop. A related academic symposium will be held in Potsdam, Germany, in January 2019.
Group tickets and event reservations will go on sale December 17, 2018. Single ticket sales will be announced at a later date.
Claude Monet, The Artist's House at Argenteuil, 1873. Oil paint on canvas; 23-11/16 x 28-7/8 in. (60.2 x 73.3 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago: Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection, 1933.1153. Photo credit: The Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY..
Albertina Museum 20 September 2019 –6 January 2020
With its nearly 140 works, the Albertina Museum is home to the world’s most important collection of drawings by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). And this exhibition, rounded out by valuable,rarely shown international loan works, focuses on Dürer’s drawn oeuvre—presenting it as an artistic achievement that is in every respect equal to his paintings and printed graphics.
The historical backgroundof the Albertina Museum’s Dürer holdings islikewise a matter ofconsiderable distinction:their provenance can be traced back to 1528 without any gaps, thus representing a group of works from the artist’s workshop that have been together for nearly 500 years. This collection prominently featuresfamily portraits and both animal and plant studies as well as the lion’s share ofDürer’s head, hand, and clothing studies on colored paper.These holdings thus offer a uniquely ideal starting point from which to reconstructhis personal conceptionof drawing done in a workshop setting, allowing one to also gain an understanding of his personal, early-humanist concept of art.
When one observes a work on paper such as the Praying Hands: Is this miracle of analytical observation and incomparably precise reproduction not far too ambitious for the purpose for which it is assumed to have been created—namely, to serve as a preliminary study?And to what purpose associated with typical workshop practices should one attribute a work like the famous Young Hare?
While Dürer was not the first artist north of the Alps to produce such studies, his creations indeed do go far beyond the tradition of other such exemplary15th-century works on paper in terms of their consummate technical, compositional, and artistic quality, a quality that frequently even extends to his carefully placed monogram signature.
These drawings, casual tours de force and display pieces of superlative quality, consciously probe the outer limits of that which is artistically and technically feasible. And Dürer, thus equipped with a collection of his own drawings, was in possession of an artistic treasury of sorts that enabled him to showall visitors to his workshop a concise and impressive demonstration of his God-given talentas consummate proof of his artistry.
It was particularly in the medium of drawing the Dürer succeeded in hismost daring artistic feats, achievements that were as yet unthinkable in the painting and reproducible media of his day.
As “master drawings”, Dürer’s works on paper stand at the dawn of drawing’s autonomy as an artform. And it was with this intent, though still within the protected sphere of the workshop, that he created these exquisitely precious works that would pave the way for the esteem that the medium of drawing was to be accorded in the future.
Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) Opening Feb. 16, 2019
Pulsing with life, Paris in the 1870's was transforming – thanks to wider streets, increased traffic, an explosion of factories in the suburbs, and faster and more frequent steam-powered trains. No one in France was immune to the rapid pace of change, least of all artists. This winter the AGO presents a groundbreaking new exhibition, exploring how French Impressionist artists and their contemporaries, famous for their lush landscapes and sea vistas, were equally obsessed with capturing the spirit of the industrial age. Opening in Toronto on Feb. 16, Impressionism in the Age of Industry: Monet, Pissarro and More features over 120 artworks, including numerous loans from across Europe and North America. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Caroline Shields, Assistant Curator, European Art.
“This exhibition invites us to journey through this period of immense change, experiencing its thrills and challenges alongside the artists. As our cities and technologies rapidly change, it’s a journey that continues to resonate today,” Dr. Shields says. “Seeing these works together for the first time provides an incredibly rich addition to the story of Impressionism as we know it.”
Organized thematically, and featuring paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, sculptures, and period films, the exhibition opens with the dramatic rebuilding of Paris in the 1860’s and 1870’s. The Paris Opera was among the many monuments built during this period, and in an image by the renowned architectural photographers Delamet & Durandelle from 1865, View of Auditorium Floor from Stage (Paris Opera), the building appears in its earliest stages, draped in scaffolding.
Pissarro’s Place du Théâtre Français, Paris: Rain, (1898) on loan from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, offers a plunging view toward the Opera and down the new boulevard constructed by urban planner Baron Haussmann.
Steam-powered trains and boats, coupled with new bridges, dramatically changed life in France, affording workers the ability to commute daily between the suburbs and the city.
Claude Monet, Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877. Oil on canvas, 60.3 x 80.2 cm. Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection, 1933.1158.
A painting by Claude Monet, Arrival of the Normandy Train: Gare Saint-Lazare (1877), captures the bustling energy of a train station as steam and iron mix overhead. The exhibition shows how artists used the frequent subject of trains and train stations to express the thrill of speed and feats of engineering.
Factories sprang up in the suburbs and transformed life there. A symbol of change, productivity and national pride, towering factory smokestacks became a hallmark of landscape paintings of this period.
The exhibition features several extraordinary examples including
Edgar Degas, Henri Rouart in front of his Factory (1875) on loan from the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
and Maximilien Luce’s, Factory in the Moonlight (1898) on loan from the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
The industrial age created incredible demand for new material comforts. In portraits of laundresses, shopkeepers and domestic labourers, Impressionist artists spotlight the labour behind the leisure.
James Tissot’s The Shop Girl (1883-85, AGO) provides a glimpse into decadently appointed retail shops of Paris. Through the lens of works like
Mary Cassatt’s Children in a garden (The Nurse), (1878) on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the exhibition highlights the prevalence of women in domestic, retail, and service-sector labour.
As Paris grew and more people flocked to the cities and suburbs to work in factories, many artists fled Paris in search of an idealized, simpler way of life.
Pissarro, a mentor to many Impressionist artists, captures that idyllic sentiment in The Pork Butcher, on loan from the Tate, London.
The countryside wasn’t the only escape. Around the turn of the 20th century, Monet left France, turning instead to London for inspiration. There, he produced a series of dazzling urban landscapes featuring trains and factories, not unlike those he had left behind. Three such views of London by the master artist close the exhibition,
one of Waterloo Bridge. In each work, the sky overhead is a misty mix of industrial smog and fog, as the sun rises and sets over the Thames River.
Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated hardcover catalogue, edited by Dr. Caroline Shields, and featuring essays by Joseph Clarke, Mary Hunter, James Rubin and Monique Johnso.
This generously illustrated book examines the relationship between 19th-century Impressionism and industry in Europe.
The late-19th century was a time of new technology, industry, and modernity. People were enthralled with their changing world and artists were not an exception. Fascinated by progress in every form, artists depicted factories, trains, and construction sites. Artists such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, and Camille Pissarro began to paint the world around them, from laundresses in the basements of Paris to rural laborers in fields. This book focuses on how Impressionist artists engaged and treated the topic of industry in their art. Chapters discuss how Paris was transformed into a bustling, modern city, the role of women in labor, and the demographic shift from rural to urban centers. Paintings, drawings, and prints, along with archival photographs help to illustrate this rich and complicated moment in art history.
Severin Roesen, Still Life with Fruit and Wine. 1862. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in. Judith G. and Steaven K. Jones Collectio 
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