Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing

June 5, 2019, 9:10 am

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The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London   

24 May – 13 October 2019


The Queen's Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh

 2 November 2019 – 15 March 2020 

Also see :https://arthistorynewsreport.blogspot.com/2018/02/leonardo-da-vinci-life-in-drawing.html

Attributed to Francesco Melzi, A portrait of Leonardo, c.1515–18©
 

More than 200 drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, the largest exhibition of the artist’s work in over 65 years, opens at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace tomorrow (Friday, 24 May 2019) to mark the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death. Selected entirely from the unrivalled holdings of the Royal Collection, Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing explores the full range of Leonardo’s interests – painting, sculpture, architecture, anatomy, engineering, cartography, geology and botany – providing a comprehensive survey of Leonardo’s life and a unique insight into the workings of his mind.

The exhibition follows 12 simultaneous exhibitions of Leonardo’s drawings from the Royal Collection at museums and galleries across the UK, which attracted more than one million visitors. In November 2019, a selection of 80 drawings will travel to The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh to form the largest exhibition of Leonardo’s works ever shown in Scotland (22 November 2019 – 15 March 2020). Together, these 14 exhibitions offer the widest-ever UK audience the opportunity to see the work of the Renaissance master.

Leonardo was revered in his day as a painter, but he completed only around 20 paintings. He was respected as a sculptor and architect, but no sculpture or buildings by him survive. He was a military and civil engineer who plotted with Machiavelli to divert the river Arno, but the scheme was never realised. As a scientist, he dissected 30 human corpses with the intention of compiling an illustrated treatise on anatomy, and planned other treatises on light, water, botany, mechanics and much else besides, but none of these was ever finished. As so much of Leonardo’s work was unrealised, many of his achievements survive only in his drawings and manuscripts. Few of Leonardo’s drawings were intended for others to see: drawing served as Leonardo’s laboratory, allowing him to work out his ideas on paper and search for the universal laws that he believed underpinned all of creation.

Exhibition curator Martin Clayton, Head of Prints and Drawings, Royal Collection Trust, said, ‘The drawings of Leonardo da Vinci are both beautiful and the main source of our knowledge of the artist.  We hope that as many people as possible will take this unique opportunity to see these extraordinary works, which allow us to enter one of the greatest minds in history.’

Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing is organised both chronologically and thematically. Leonardo’s work is characterised by a multitude of simultaneous pursuits – artistic projects that stretched on for years or even decades, and scientific interests that evolved from the 1480s onwards. In the breadth of his interests, Leonardo was the archetypal ‘Renaissance man’, yet the full extent of his accomplishments, explicitly demonstrated through these personal sketches, was unknown to his contemporaries and immediate successors.

Each thematic grouping in the exhibition contains examples of the artist’s finest drawings. Key anatomical studies include



The fetus in the womb (c.1511),


The heart and coronary vessels (c.1511–13)

and The cardiovascular system and principal organs of a woman (c.1509–10) (on which Leonardo’s thumbprint can be seen).

Preparatory studies for paintings include studies for Salvator Mundi (c.1504–8),  

The Madonna and Child with St Anne and a lamb (c.1508–19),

and the only six surviving preparatory studies for the Last Supper (1495–8). One of these is the sole compositional study that exists for the painting, fluidly sketched by Leonardo on a sheet of paper covered with other drawings.

The natural world is explored by Leonardo through detailed landscapes, studies of water and in numerous botanical studies developed by the artist in preparation for the now lost painting Leda and the Swan. Maps such as A map of Imola (1502) were created using highly accurate techniques of measurement.  Drawings of horses abound throughout Leonardo’s work, including studies for three equestrian monuments.


In addition to more than 200 works by Leonardo, the exhibition features a number of works by Leonardo’s contemporaries. These include the only two drawings of Leonardo made during his lifetime. One is the well-known formal portrait of the artist,(above)
drawn by his pupil Francesco Melzi (A portrait of Leonardo c.1515–18).

The second, on public display for the first time, is A sketch of Leonardo (c.1517–18), made by a second assistant. Completed in the years shortly before Leonardo’s death in 1519, these depictions of the artist, displayed alongside much of his life’s work, bring us closer to a sense of Leonardo the man.

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Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing (24 May – 13 October 2019)
The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London  
Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing (22 November 2019 – 15 March 2020)
The Queen's Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh     
Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing (1 February – 6 May 2019) took place at galleries and museums in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Derby, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Southampton and Sunderland.  


Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing by Martin Clayton is published by Royal Collection Trust, £14.95 in paperback, £19.95 in hardback from Royal Collection Trust shops and www.rct.uk/shop
Leonardo da Vinci: A Closer Look by Alan Donnithorne is published by Royal Collection Trust, £29.95 in hardback from Royal Collection Trust shops and www.rct.uk/shop

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American Impressionism: Treasures from the Daywood Collection

June 5, 2019, 9:28 am

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Mitchell Gallery, Annapolis, MD
August 23, 2019 - October 20, 2019

Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN
September 19, 2020 – December 13, 2020

Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, FL
July 31, 2021 – October 23, 2021

Drawn from the collection of the Huntington Museum of Art, American Impressionism: Treasures from the Daywood Collection features 41 elegant American paintings, originally from the private collection of Arthur Dayton and Ruth Woods Dayton. The Daytons (whose family surnames combine to form “Daywood”), were prominent art patrons in early 20^th century West Virginia who acquired over 200 works, 80 of which were oil paintings. Active at a time when art patronage played a major foundational role in the growth of many museum collections, the Daytons sought to preserve and share artworks that they felt captured the essence of American life.

This exhibition showcases work from a transitional time in American art, approximately the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, when artists abandoned the rigors of academic styles and subjects. They turned instead to intimate scenes of the cultivated countryside and figure studies of friends and neighbors that reflected the more modern influences of the Barbizon School, Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism. Robert Henri, George Inness, George Luks, Homer Dodge Martin, Gari Melchers, John Sloan, John Twachtman, and J. Alden Weir are among the notable artists featured in the exhibition, which serves as a luminous window into one couple’s experience in the world of art patronage.

Arthur Bowen

Davies

Esmeralda

ca. 1915
 

Ernest Lawson

End of

Winter

ca. 1906-

1918
 

John Henry

Twachtman

Horseneck

Brook in

Winter

ca. 1892-

J. Alden Weir

June -

Connecticut

1896

\

Manet and Modern Beauty

June 5, 2019, 9:36 am

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Art Institute of Chicago 
May 26 to September 8, 2019

J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center 
October 8, 2019, to January 12, 2020

The Art Institute of Chicago and the J. Paul Getty Museum will each present Manet and Modern Beauty, an exhibition on view May 26–September 8, 2019 at the Art Institute of Chicago and October 8, 2019–January 12, 2020 at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. This exhibition focuses exclusively on Édouard Manet and will be the first to center on his last years, bringing together an impressive array of genre scenes, still lifes, pastels, and portraits of fashionable women—favorite actresses and models, bourgeois women of his acquaintance, and his wife—as well as intimate male friends.

Called Jeanne (Spring)

 


and Autumn (Méry Laurent), the pair comprises the only two completed works in a project to portray the seasons through paintings of stylishly attired women.


These works are part of an impressive array of “femmes Manet,” both portraits and single-figure genre paintings of women that range across the social spectrum. Supplementing this display will be the delicate and rarely seen letters Manet wrote to his acquaintances, featuring exquisite illustrations of fruits and flowers.

Punctuating the presentation are major multi-figure paintings, including

 

In the Conservatory

and Boating,

both shown in the 1879 Salon, that focus attention on modern social and gender relations.  Together these works showcase the final flowering of Manet’s talent as he put his work, ever responsive to the moment, under the influence of modern life.

“With every artist, there is the artist we know and the artist we don’t know, and our job at the Art Institute, where we have such wonderful examples of all of the Impressionists, is to take you into the realm of something that you didn’t know,” said Gloria Groom, Chair of European Painting and Sculpture, David and Mary Winton Green Curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. “There are a number of Manet’s more familiar Salon paintings in the exhibition, but also delicate drawings, pastel portraits, and illustrated letters that speak to a more intimate, unknowable, unknown artist, one who always manages, despite his challenges, to take your breath away.”

At both venues, the exhibition will present more than 90 works of art, including approximately 50 paintings, numerous pastels and many works on paper (letters, watercolors, prints) and historical publications. At the Art Institute of Chicago the exhibition will also include historical costume accessories.

“What is so remarkable about Manet’s final years is how creative he managed to be in spite of his rapidly declining health,” notes Scott Allan, Associate Curator of Paintings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. “His heightened interest in pretty parisiennes, the still lifes of fruits and flowers that he painted while confined to the studio, the garden pictures he did while seeking rest cures in the suburbs, and the letters he wrote and illustrated with watercolor while he was away from his friends and Parisian society – all of these show the ailing artist’s passionate attachment to the delicate beauties and fleeting pleasures of this world.  Manet’s last works are among the most gorgeous and vibrant he painted but also, given his personal circumstances, the most poignant, and they reveal a more intimately human side of an artist so often lionized as one of the great heroes and rebels of modern art.”

Manet and Modern Beauty is organized by Gloria Groom, Chair of European Painting and Sculpture and David and Mary Winton Green Curator, the Art Institute of Chicago; and Scott Allan, Associate Curator of Paintings, and Emily Beeny, Associate Curator of Drawings, both at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Catalogue



This stunning examination of the last years of Édouard Manet’s life and career is the first book to explore the transformation of his style and subject matter in the 1870s and early 1880s. The name Manet evokes the provocative, heroically scaled pictures he painted in the 1860s for the Salon, but in the late 1870s and early 1880s the artist produced quite a different body of work: stylish portraits of actresses and demimondaines, luscious still lifes, delicate pastels, intimate watercolors, and impressionistic scenes of suburban gardens and Parisian cafés.

 

Often dismissed as too pretty and superficial by critics, these later works reflect Manet’s elegant social world, propose a radical new alignment of modern art with fashionable femininity, and record the artist’s unapologetic embrace of beauty and visual pleasure in the face of death.




Featuring nearly three hundred illustrations and nine fascinating essays by established and emerging Manet specialists, a technical analysis of the late Salon painting  



Jeanne (Spring), a selection of the artist’s correspondence, a chronology, and more, Manet and Modern Beauty brings a diverse range of approaches to bear on a little-studied area of this major artist’s oeuvre.

This volume is published to accompany exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago May 26 to September 8, 2019 and the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center October 8, 2019, to January 12, 2020.



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Gauguin: Portraits

June 6, 2019, 7:43 am

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National Gallery of Canada

Friday, May 24, 2019 to Sunday, September 8, 2019

National Gallery, London

 7 October 2019 – 26 January 2020
 

The National Gallery of Canada is the sole North American venue for a dazzling presentation by one of the 19th century’s most influential and complex artists – Paul Gauguin.

Inspired by Gauguin’s impressive sculpture of his friend Meijer de Haan, from the Gallery collection, this landmark investigation focuses on the mature years of the French artist’s career, when he moved away from Impressionism and toward more symbolist representations in his art.

Paul Gauguin, Portrait of Madame Roulin, 1888 (detail). Oil on canvas, 50.5 × 63.5 cm. Saint Louis Art Museum. Funds given by Mrs. Mark C. Steinberg (5:1959).

Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait with Idol, c. 1893, oil on canvas, 43.8 × 32.7 cm. McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas. Bequest of Marion Koogler McNay (1950.46)

Through imaginative self-portraits – in which the artist assumes various roles – as well as his unconventional depictions of friends, family, and women in France and Polynesia, the exhibition showcases Gauguin’s extraordinary creativity in the field of portraiture.

Paul Gauguin, 'Self-Portrait Dedicated to Carrière' (detail), 1888 or 1889; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon (1985.64.20); Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. 

Spanning the later years of his life and focusing solely on his portraits, this exhibition follows Gauguin’s move away from Impressionism towards Symbolism.

By adding carefully selected attributes or placing the sitter into a suggestive context Gauguin was able to make portraits that expressed meaning beyond their personalities. A group of self-portraits, for example, reveals how Gauguin created a range of personifications
 


 including his self-image as 'Christ in the Garden of Olives', 1889 (Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach).

Featuring paintings, works on paper and sculptures, Gauguin: Portraits brings together a unique and unforgettable selection of works from public and private collections around the world.
Organized by the National Gallery of Canada and the National Gallery, London.

More Images

About the Artist

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) spent part of his early childhood living in Peru, sailed the world in the French merchant marine and navy, and worked as a stockbroker. Starting out as an amateur painter, he became a full-time artist in the early 1880s and exhibited with the Impressionists. Increasingly dissatisfied with the limits of naturalism, Gauguin defied conventions of representation and experimented in different media, pushing colour and form into novel expressive capacities. He created a Symbolist form of visual art concerned with the realms of dreams, imagination and spirituality.
From 1886 onward he repeatedly spent time in rural Brittany and travelled to the French colonies Martinique (1887) and then Polynesia, seeking what he called “primitive” and “exotic” environments and subject matter. After an extended stay in Tahiti (1891–93) he returned to Paris where he aimed to confirm his role as an avant-garde leader. He left again for the islands of Polynesia in 1895 to live in self-imposed exile, cultivating his identity as an outsider seeking social and artistic liberation. Gauguin’s innovations and legacy became crucial for generations of artists both during his lifetime and well into the twentieth century.

Paul Gauguin, 1893. Image Source: Snark / Art Resource, NY

Bonhams Old Master Paintings 3 Jul 2019

June 6, 2019, 8:36 am

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Jan Brueghel the Younger

(Antwerp 1601-1678)

The Four Elements: An Allegory of Earth; An Allegory of Water; An Allegory of Air; and An Allegory of Fire 33.6 x 50cm (13 1/4 x 19 11/16in).; 32.9 x 48cm (12 15/16 x 18 7/8in).; 32.9 x 48cm (12 15/16 x 18 7/8in).; and 32.9 x 48.1cm (12 15/16 x 18 15/16in). (4)

An astonishing set of four oil on copper panels by Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601-1678) leads the Old Master Paintings sale at Bonhams New Bond Street on Wednesday 3 July. The Four Elements: An Allegory of Earth; An Allegory of Water; An Allegory of Air; and An Allegory of Fire have been miraculously well preserved as a quartet for almost 400 years, and the set has an estimate of £800,000-1,200,000.
The series is remarkable, primarily because its main subjects - the landscapes, figures, flowers and animals - have all been confirmed by art historian and Brueghel specialist, Dr. Klaus Ertz, to be by Brueghel's own hand. This is a rarity, as it was common practice for him to collaborate with many of his fellow artists, including Rubens and Hendrick van Balen.
Allegories of the Four Elements had become a well-established theme of Renaissance painting by the time Brueghel began this series, around 1625, yet he approached these with a youthful flair.
Writing in Bonhams Magazine, art historian and critic Susan Moore describes his innovative composition of An Allegory of Earth:"Dispensing with the usual Ceres, goddess of agriculture and fertility, he has produced instead a paradise landscape. Such gatherings of beasts had become a hugely popular genre, whether ostensibly representing mythological subjects such as Orpheus charming the animals, or biblical scenes. Here, a closer inspection suggests the latter, a sense of a procession of creatures making their way two by two towards a tiny ark visible in the background."
The vogue for 'paradise landscapes' were symptomatic of the era of the Scientific Revolution when connoisseurs began to assemble collections of natural history. Brueghel drew upon these collections for research so that he could depict flora and fauna with technical accuracy. The subject matter also gave him free rein to explore his love for exotic nature as well as to imbue his landscapes with religious and classical symbolism.
Andrew McKenzie, Department Director of Old Master Paintings, said, "It is extremely rare to find fresh examples of this importance coming to market. We are also very grateful to Dr Klaus Ertz for confirming the attribution, and that, in his view, the landscapes, animals, flowers and figures are all by the hand of Jan Brueghel the Younger."
For more on Brueghel and the Four Elements, read Susan Moore's full article in Bonhams Magazine, Issue 59, pages 30-33: https://www.bonhams.com/publications/bonhams_magazine/28142/

Eclipse Of The Sun: Art Of The Weimar Republic

June 6, 2019, 9:43 am

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Neue Galerie New York
 May 23, 2019- September 02, 2019 

This summer, Neue Galerie New York is pleased to present George Grosz’s monumental 1926 canvas Eclipse of the Sun, which is on special loan from the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York. The painting is the centerpiece of “Eclipse of the Sun: Art of the Weimar Republic,” a focused exhibition that includes additional paintings and drawings by Grosz, along with a selection of art by Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, Otto Griebel, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter, and Georg Scholz. Many of the works are drawn from the extended collections of the Neue Galerie, and together demonstrate the artistic output that coincided with a moment of extreme political unrest in Germany.

 

George Grosz (1893-1959)
Eclipse of the Sun, 1926
Oil on canvas
The Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, N.Y.

© 2019 Estate of George Grosz / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

In Eclipse of the Sun, Grosz vividly captures the rampant political and social corruption that characterized Germany in the mid-1920s. Set against the backdrop of a city in flames, the central figure depicted is Paul von Hindenburg, the nearly-eighty-year-old president of Germany at the time this was painted, and easily recognizable for his walrus moustache. He proudly wears his military uniform, bedecked with medals and with a laurel leaf crown perched atop his bald head. Hindenburg’s portly physique is in sharp contrast to the group of slim and headless financiers in formal attire who join him around the table. They bask in the glow of a darkened sun illuminated with a dollar sign—an acknowledgment of America’s investment in Germany post-World War I. A corpulent “man of industry,” wearing a top hat and toting weapons and a miniature train under his arm, whispers discreetly in Hindenburg’s ear. But Hindenburg has focused his attention elsewhere—toward a spot just beyond the bloodied sword and funerary cross resting directly in front of him on the table. Rather bizarrely, a donkey wearing blinders decorated with the German eagle is balanced on a board tethered to a skeleton. The other participant in this motley group is a more somberly dressed but also headless man whose foot rests precariously on the prison bars below. Eclipse of the Sun was one of Grosz’s “favorite pictures” and it offers a microcosm of the Weimar Republic, alluding to the competing interests that struggled to control the fledgling democracy.

Grosz and his peers portray the cacophony of the metropolis and the unrest that characterized the birth of the Weimar Republic. It was a period of tremendous political and social tumult and marked by a burst of creative energy in Germany. In the aftermath of World War I, many artists moved away from an Expressionist approach in favor of one marked by a more harsh and objective depiction of the world around them. This became known as the Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity movement.

Grosz, in particular, used his vision to shine a spotlight on the rampant political corruption that marked this short-lived period of democratic governance. His scathing critique of the regime—he was a member of the Communist Party—made his life more difficult, and he ultimately chose emigration in order to ensure greater artistic freedom. Grosz came to the United States in 1932 and taught at the Art Students League of New York. In January 1933, he emigrated to America and became a naturalized citizen in 1938. He remained in the United States until 1959, when he returned to Berlin and died shortly thereafter.


ADDITIONAL WORKS ON VIEW
 
Grosz’s masterwork will be complemented by additional paintings and works on paper by the artist. Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Otto Griebel, Christian Schad, Rudolf Schlichter, and Georg Scholz will also be represented in the show.



Standout works include Grosz’s 1919 Panorama (Down with Liebknecht), a nightmarish rendering of the bloody Spartacist uprising in Germany early in 1919, which led to the political murder of leaders of the German Communist Party, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. The traces of red that wash over the image are linked both to the violent execution of Liebknecht, Luxemburg, and so many others, as well as to the hedonistic atmosphere that was a hallmark of Berlin in the 1920s.

Likewise Dix’s 1920 study for



the painting The Skat Players is a searing indictment of modern warfare. Based upon a scene Dix observed, it depicts three grotesquely crippled war veterans engrossed in the card game skat. The artist’s gaze is unflinching. He does not romanticize their battle scars nor does he seem to pity them either.

The Way Home (plate 2) [Der Nachhauseweg (Blatt 2)] from Hell (Die Hölle)

Date:

(1919)

Medium:

One from a portfolio of eleven lithographs (including front cover)

The Ideologists (plate 6) [Die Ideologen (Blatt 6)] from Hell (Die Hölle)

Date:

(1919)

Medium:

One from a portfolio of eleven lithographs (including front cover)

Also from the same period is Beckmann’s Hell portfolio of 1918-19, inspired by his actual experience of strolling through postwar Berlin. Beckmann captured a world in disarray and filled with apocalyptic visions.

The period of unrest that marked the birth of the Republic was followed by a brief period of economic prosperity. This gave rise to the emergence of the so-called “New Woman,” physically notable for her short hair, sexual liberation, and desire for self-determination. Artists were fascinated by this figure and how she coped with her newfound freedom. Dix, for instance, often trained his eye on women who struggled to find their place in a merciless world, many of whom fell into prostitution in a desperate attempt to support themselves. By contrast, the liberated women of Schad and Schlichter appear almost lifeless, as if they had become automatons, suggesting that the price of freedom came at the considerable cost of their souls.



For instance, Schad’s 1928 Two Girls portrays pleasure without passion, except perhaps for the voyeuristic observer.

Leonardo’s Legacy: Francesco Melzi and the Leonardeschi

June 6, 2019, 9:58 am

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National Gallery

now through June 23, 2019

The National Gallery in London is marking the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death with a display presenting the exceptional loan (now through June 23, 2019) of the recently restored 'Flora' by Francesco Melzi from the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

The painting is being displayed alongside ten other key works by the so-called ‘Leonardeschi’ from the National Gallery Collection in a free, month-long display in Room 12. This is the first time the painting has been seen in the UK and the first time it has been seen outside of Russia since its restoration.

Francesco Melzi (1493–1570) was a wealthy gentleman of Milan, and the favoured assistant and companion to Leonardo in his final years. As his primary heir, he was largely responsible for preserving Leonardo’s notebooks and drawings for posterity.

Though Leonardo’s writings and inventions were not given due recognition for centuries, the legacy of his painting style was immediate and substantial. The term ‘Leonardeschi’ has since been used to identify artists centred in Milan who were taught by or associated with Leonardo, or whose work bears his influence.

This exquisite painting by Francesco Melzi depicts Flora, the goddess of springtime and flowers, seated in a leafy grotto sprouting with fern and ivy. Flora’s exposed breast and the way she tenderly inspects a sprig of aquilegia – a symbol of fertility – emphasise her role as ‘mother of flowers’. On her lap she caresses a spray of jasmine, signifying purity, beside anemones representing rebirth.

Recent restoration undertaken by the State Hermitage Museum has uncovered the picture’s true colours, including the powerful ultramarine blue; and hidden details have been revealed, such as the flowers growing from the walls of the dimly lit grotto.

Infrared reflectography has also shown that Melzi ensured anatomical correctness by modelling Flora’s naked figure before adding her clothing.

The painting reflects the influence of Melzi’s teacher, Leonardo, to whom it was attributed at the time of its acquisition from the Dutch Royal collection in 1850. The female facial type with its downcast look is characteristic of Leonardo’s Milanese style, as is the mastery of subtle modulations of tone, known as ‘sfumato’.

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Leonardo’s Legacy

Francesco Melzi and the Leonardeschi

23 May – 23 June 2019

The rare loan of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci’s favourite pupil, Francesco Melzi, is the centrepiece of a special display marking the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death.
'Leonardo’s Legacy: Francesco Melzi and the Leonardeschi' celebrates the work of Leonardo’s followers, the ‘Leonardeschi’. At its heart is Melzi’s 'Flora', an exceptional loan from the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, which has recently undergone restoration. The National Gallery does not own a painting by Melzi, so this display gives the opportunity to view a picture by this important artist alongside nine key works by other Leonardeschi. This is the first time 'Flora' has been exhibited in the UK, and the first time it has been seen outside of Russia since its restoration.
The free display in Room 12 will run from 23 May to 23 June 2019. 

Flora

Image: Francesco Melzi, 'Flora', about 1520 © The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, 2019. Photo: Vladimir Terebenin

Who was Melzi?

Francesco Melzi (1493–1570) was born into a noble family in Milan. He became Leonardo’s favoured pupil after joining his Milanese workshop in around 1508. Melzi worked for Leonardo in Rome, and followed him to France, where he stayed until Leonardo’s death in 1519.
It is largely due to Melzi’s efforts that Leonardo’s notebooks and drawings have survived. Leonardo left ‘each and every one’ of his notebooks to Melzi, who took them back to Milan. The artist and biographer, Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574), visited Melzi in his old age, and reported that Leonardo’s ‘much beloved’ pupil had inherited his late master’s anatomical designs: ‘he holds them dear, and keeps such papers together as if they were relics’.
Melzi’s 'Flora' is so close to the style of his teacher that for many years it was thought to be by Leonardo himself. The female facial type with its downcast look is characteristic of Leonardo, and comparable to the face of the Virgin in The Virgin of the Rocks and The Burlington House Cartoon (both on display in Room 66). Melzi also uses Leonardo’s ‘sfumato’ technique of blurred outlines to model forms, while the depiction of the plants and Flora’s complicated hairstyle shows his understanding of Leonardo’s scientific discoveries. 
After being acquired by the Hermitage as a Leonardo in 1850, the picture has since been attributed to other prominent Leonardeschi – Bernardino Luini, Andrea Solario and Giampietrino– before finally settling on Melzi in 1899. Few works by Melzi are known: only two works signed by him have survived (both in Milan), and a few others are attributed to him, including a chalk portrait of Leonardo in the Royal Collection Trust. The attribution of 'Flora' to Melzi is based on the painting’s close similarities to another work which has been attributed to the artist: 'Vertumnus and Pomona', at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin (see image below). The attribution is also supported by the 18th-century art connoisseur Pierre-Jean Mariette’s record of a painting depicting Flora by Melzi in Paris which had been mistaken by at least one other scholar as a work by Leonardo himself.

Vertumnus and Pomona

Image: Francesco Melzi, 'Vertumnus and Pomona', 1518-28. Gemaeldegalerie - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin © Photo Scala, Florence/bpk, Bildagentur fuer Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin

Melzi has taken Leonardo’s meticulous approach to painting plants and also replicates the complex hair-styling he uses in other portraits.

Director of the National Gallery, Dr Gabriele Finaldil says, “We are delighted to be able to mark the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death with a display presenting the exceptional loan of the recently restored ‘Flora’ by Francesco Melzi .The State Hermitage Museum has long-standing and close ties to the National Gallery and this Room 12 display is a superb example of international museums working together.”

Professor Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg,says,
“We are excited to have loaned ‘Flora’ by Francesco Melzi to the National Gallery and to see her as the central focus of this fascinating display which explores the work of Leonardo’s closest friends and disciples. This represents the first time that ‘Flora’ has been seen outside of Russia since it was restored by Maria Shulepova, revealing details and rich colouring which had been lost for decades under layers of old varnish. We hope that visitors in London will enjoy seeing this rare masterpiece by Leonardo’s favourite pupil, and we are pleased to further strengthen our long and valued friendship with the National Gallery.”

Two works by Leonardo –



The Virgin of the Rocks




and The Burlington House Cartoon

– can be seen in Gallery 66 of the National Gallery.

Austrian Masterworks from Neue Galerie

June 7, 2019, 3:01 pm

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Neue Galerie New York-
Until September 02, 2019 

Highlights from the museum’s extensive collection of Austrian art from the period 1890 to 1940 are on view, including major works by Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Alfred Kubin, and Egon Schiele.

The display features an extraordinary selection of Klimt’s paintings,



including the early portrait of Gertha Loew (1902)

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918)
Adele Bloch-Bauer I , 1907
Oil, silver, and gold on canvas
Neue Galerie New York. Acquired through the generosity of Ronald S. Lauder, the heirs of the Estates of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer, and the Estée Lauder Fund
and the “golden style” portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907).

These are complemented by two works with unidentified sitters—

 

the Symbolist Pale Face (1903)




and The Black Feathered Hat (1910), which shows Klimt’s careful study of the art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

The late unfinished works,




 Ria Munk III (1917)




and The Dancer (1916-17),

offer unparalleled insight into Klimt’s working method. In both, he initially sketched an outline of the composition in charcoal and then painstakingly filled in the details with oil.

In addition, two of Klimt’s highly coveted landscapes are on view— 

 

Park at Kammer Castle (1909)

 
and the Forester’s House in Weissenbach II (Garden) (1914),

which were painted during his summer holidays on the Attersee, a popular lake in the Salzkammergut region of upper Austria.

An adjoining gallery features a prominent group of paintings by Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. Especially noteworthy are the early Expressionist portraits by Kokoschka, including

 

 Martha Hirsch (1909),  

 

Peter Altenberg (1909),  

 

Ludwig Ritter von Janikowski (1909),  

 

Rudolf Blümner (1910),




and Emil Löwenbach (1914).

Two late landscapes by Egon Schiele,  



Stein on the Danube, Seen from the South (Large) (1913)



and Town among Greenery (The Old City III) (1917),
 

are complemented by Schiele’s ethereal Danaë (1909).  This early work, completed in oil and metallic paint, was done when the young artist was still under the influence of his mentor Klimt.

Three sculptures by George Minne—The Kneeling Youths (1898) and The Bather (ca. 1899)—are notable both for their artistry and for their provenance. Born in Belgium, Minne exhibited his work at the Vienna Secession, where he quickly drew acclaim. Both Kokoschka and Schiele were influenced by Minne’s example, with his attenuated forms and evocations of pathos. The Kneeling Youths were originally owned by Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and were donated to the museum in 2007 by their heirs. The Bather once belonged to Fritz Waerndorfer, the initial financial backer of the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops).

Icons of modern design round out the presentation, including Josef Hoffmann’s Sitzmaschine and Adolf Loos’s Knieschwimmer, as well as an exceptional array of luxurious silver objects made by the Wiener Werkstätte after designs by Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, and Dagobert Peche. A stunning group of mirror frames by Peche in carved and gilt wood are highlights of the show, along with a selection of clocks by Loos, Hans Prutscher, and Joseph Urban.

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Christie's Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale London 18 June

June 10, 2019, 7:46 am

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• 20th Century Week at Christie's brings together the biggest names in Impressionist and Modern Art and Modern British Art across six auctions in London this June.
  The Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on 18 June is headlined by exceptional pieces by Léger, Picasso, Matisse and Schiele. Alongside these, 13 Surrealist and Dada works are offered from The Landscape of a Mind, an important private collection, including Yves Tanguy’s L’Extinction des especes II and René Magritte’s Le parc du vautour– both superb examples of their kind, offered at auction for the first time – and an iconic Mae West Lips Sofa by Salvador Dalí and Edward James.

Sale highlights

• Henri Matisse (1869-1954)Le collier d’ambre

  Estimate GBP 5,000,000 - GBP 8,000,000

  (USD 6,345,000 - USD 10,152,000)

  Lot 5
• Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)Homme et femme nus

  Estimate GBP 10,000,000 - GBP 15,000,000

  (USD 12,690,000 - USD 19,035,000)

  Lot 6
• Fernand Léger (1881-1955)Femme dans un fauteuil

  Estimate on request

  Lot 8
• Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)Femme et Minotaure

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

  (USD 1,903,500 - USD 3,172,500)

  Lot 10
• Otto Dix (1891-1969)Soldat mit Tabakspfeife

  Estimate GBP 500,000 - GBP 800,000

  (USD 634,500 - USD 1,015,200)

  Lot 9
• Yves Tanguy (1900-1955)L’Extinction des espèces II

  Estimate GBP 2,500,000 - GBP 4,000,000

  (USD 3,172,500 - USD 5,076,000)

  Lot 14
• Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)Figure aux tiroirs

  Estimate GBP 600,000 - GBP 900,000

  (USD 761,400 - USD 1,142,100)

  Lot 12
• René Magritte (1898-1967)Le parc du vautour

  Estimate GBP 2,500,000 - GBP 4,000,000

  (USD 3,172,500 - USD 5,076,000)

  Lot 19
• Henri Edmond Cross (1856-1910)Eucalyptus et oliviers

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

  (USD 1,269,000 - USD 1,903,500)

  Lot 27
• Paul Signac (1863-1935)Venise Le Rédempteur

  Estimate GBP 2,200,000 - GBP 4,000,000

  (USD 2,791,800 - USD 5,076,000)

  Lot 28
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)Les hauteurs de Trouville

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

  (USD 1,269,000 - USD 1,903,500)

  Lot 29
• Henri Laurens (1885-1954)Homme à la pipe

  Estimate GBP 700,000 - GBP 1,000,000

  (USD 888,300 - USD 1,269,000)

  Lot 4
• Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)Paysanne rêveuse assise, soleil couchant

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

  (USD 1,903,500 - USD 2,538,000)

Rembrandt in Print

June 10, 2019, 8:07 am

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Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool

1 June – 15 September 2019

 

Rembrandt in Print is an exhibition of 50 outstanding prints from the Ashmolean Museum, displayed together for the first time to mark 350 years since his Rembrandt's death in 1669.
Widely hailed as the greatest painter of the Dutch Golden Age and an unrivaled storyteller, Rembrandt was one of the most innovative and experimental printmakers of the 17th century. His works include intense self portraits, atmospheric landscapes, intimate family portraits, biblical stories and nude studies. Almost drawing-like in appearance, these images were created by combining spontaneous squiggly lines with his remarkable sense for detail.

Exhibition organised by the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

Self portrait with Saskia, 1636 Rembrandt © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

 

Self portrait etching at a window, 1648 Rembrandt © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

 

Self portrait open mouthed as if shouting bust, 1630 Rembrandt © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Sotheby's Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in London on 19 June

June 10, 2019, 9:21 am

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Three outstanding paintings from an important private collection including one of Claude Monet's iconic Nymphéas series will lead the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in London on 19 June. 

 

"As far as method of colouring is concerned, [the Impressionists] have made a real discovery, whose origin cannot be found elsewhere - neither with the Dutch, nor in the pale tones of fresco painting, nor in the light tonalities of the eighteenth century. […] Their discovery actually consists in having recognised that full light de-colours tones, that the sun reflected by objects tends (because of its brightness) to bring them back to that luminous unity which melts its seven prismatic rays into a single colourless radiance: light."

This is how the French writer and art critic Edmond Duranty articulated the approach of a new group of painters in his essay titled La Nouvelle Peinture, written at the time of the Second Impressionist exhibition in 1876. This group of avant-garde artists, now known as the Impressionists, held the first of their eight group exhibitions in 1874, in opposition to the official, government-sponsored Salon.

Claude Monet, Nymphéas , 1908, oil on canvas (est. £25,000 ,000 - 35,000,000 / $31,880,000 - 44,630,000) 

 

Thomas Boyd - Bowman, Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sales in London, said: “This beautifully lyrical and softly ephemeral Nymphéas painted in 1908 is a timeless reflection of Monet’s vision and innovation. Acquired in 1932, it has remained a hidden treasure in the same family collection for decades and will now make its very first appearance at auction.” 

 

Monet’s iconic series paintings – long considered the apogee of Impressionism – have in the past year reached new heights in the market. Most recently, at Sotheby’s in New York, his glowing haystacks from 1890 became the first work of impressionist art to exceed $100 million at auction, mere months after a record for a Venetian view wa s set at Sotheby’s in London. The most famous images of all remain those of Monet’s beloved waterlilies, which have left an indelible mark on the history of art and become entrenched in the public consciousness. 

 

The artist’s first steps towards true abstr action, this ground - breaking series is widely considered his greatest achievement. Monet’s meticulously designed water garden in Giverny verged on an all - consuming obsession, as the artist diverted the course of the river near his home and waded out into t he waters daily to preserve the pristine beauty of the waterlilies. The result was a kaleidoscope of colour on his doorstep, forever changing with an unending variety of tones and forms. Amongst Monet’s most desirable waterlilies are those from the period between 1904 – 1909 , when Monet stripped away the banks of the pond, eliminated the horizon line and transformed the water into a mirror for the sky. With its decidedly free brushwork, this painting represents the most sophisticated qualities of his earlier, precise explorations whilst anticipating the innovations that were to follow in the Grande s Décorations housed in the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris . 

 

This stunning example of the Nymphéas series comes to auction along with two other works from the same collection – one an earlier work by Monet , depicting the astonishingly rich fields around Giverny in the spring of 1885; the other a dazzling pointillist depiction of the landscape s urrounding Pissarro's home in a bucolic neighbouring village of Eragny, which he had purchased with financial aid from Monet.

 

 The most famous images of all remain those of Monet’s beloved waterlilies, which have left an indelible mark on the history of art and become entrenched in the public consciousness. The artist’s first steps towards true abstr action, this ground - breaking series is widely considered his greatest achievement. Monet’s meticulously designed water garden in Giverny verged on an all - consuming obsession, as the artist diverted the course of the river near his home and waded out into t he waters daily to preserve the pristine beauty of the waterlilies. The result was a kaleidoscope of colour on his doorstep, forever changing with an unending variety of tones and forms. Amongst Monet’s most desirable waterlilies are those from the period between 1904 – 1909 , when Monet stripped away the banks of the pond, eliminated the horizon line and transformed the water into a mirror for the sky. With its decidedly free brushwork, this painting represents the most sophisticated qualities of his earlier, precise explorations whilst anticipating the innovations that were to follow in the Grandes Décorations housed in the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris . 

The upcoming London Evening sale of Impressionist & Modern Art is also led by a stunning portrait of a youth by Modigliani Jeune homme assis, les mains croisees sur les genoux, by Amedeo Modigliani painted whilst the artist was living on the French Riviera.



 Amedeo Modigliani, Jeune homme assis , les mains croisées sur less genoux , 1918, oil on canvas (est. £16,000,000 - 24,000,000 / $ 20, 400,000 - 30,600,000 ) 

James Mackie, Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Department in London , said: “A tender and transfixing image of a youth, this intimate portrait presents an unidentified young model with a sense of empathy, poignancy and serene beauty characteristic of the artist’s most accomplished paintings. The work was bought directly from the artist’s dealer Léopold Zborowski in 1927, and has been in the same family collection since then. For decades it has only been published as a black and white image, and will now emerge in its full splendour at auction this month. ” 

Modigliani’s transcendent portraits of anonymous youths are among the rarest in his oeuvre , with just a handful of depictions of such male sitters known – many of which are housed in museums across the world. Towards the end of the First World War , as his health worsened, Modigliani sought safety and solace in the French Riviera. During his time in Provence, the artist felt a close connection to Cézanne and the legacy of his great portraits, an influence that is felt in these works. Having spent years immersed in the bohemian circles of Paris, in Nice and Cagnes Modigliani turned to painting anonymous sitters, execut ing a number of sublime portraits of pe a sants, servants, shop girls and children. The figures are ennobled with Modigliani’s elegance, but not at the cost of their innate character and humanity. With his mannerist elongated features and almond - shaped, vacant eyes , the model presents a powerful synthesis of all the characteristic traits t hat make Modigliani’s p ortraits so immediate and universal. mannerist elongated features and almond - shaped, vacant eyes , the model presents a powerful synthesis of all the characteristic traits t hat make Modigliani’s p ortraits so immediate and universal. 



  Pablo Picasso, Homme à la pipe , 1968, oil on canvas (est. £5,500,000 - 7,500,000 / $7,012,500 - 9,562,500) 

Conceived on a grand scale and painted with seemingly limitless energy and invention in the autumn of 1968 , Homme à la pipe is a striking example of Picasso’s ultimate burst of creativity . The emphatic swirls of paint that fill the background contrast with the strong verticals of the pipe and chair, creating a powerful dynamic within the composition. Having been acquire d by the present owner in 1984, the monumental work has never previously been offered at auction. The musketeer was a key figure, signalling an allusion to the Old Masters, and through that, the artist’s desire to paint himself into the European artistic canon . In these final years, Picasso immersed himself in masterpieces by the likes of Velásquez , Rembrandt , El Greco and Goya – projecting slides b lown up to a gigantic scale onto his studio wall . He then incorporated the subjects and motifs of art historic tradition into works that are profoundly modern in their spirit and style. Demand for the artist’s late works is now particularly strong , with a new world record for a 1960s work achieved in May at Sotheby’s New York, when a portrait of his wife Jacqueline Roque and their beloved Afghan hound sold for $54.9 million 




Camille Pissarro, Le Boulevard Montmartre, fin de journée , 1897, oil on canvas (est. £3,500,000 - 5,000,000 / $ 4,462,500 - 6,375,000 ) 

An outstanding work from one of the most important series of Pissarro’s urban views , Le Boulevard Montmartre, fin de journée brilliantly evokes the excitement and spectacle of the city at the fin -de -siècle – depicting the busy Parisian street with its pavement, buildings and trees bathed in a warm glow of the setting sun. Pissar ro’s series paintings of Paris in the late 1890s are amongst the supreme achievements of Impressionism, taking their place alongsid e Monet’s series of Rouen Cathedral, poplars and haystacks and the later waterlilies. The artist focuse d upon a single compositional device – the magnificent procession of the Boulevard Montmartre – working methodically for over two months at the window of his hotel room from dawn to dusk to depict the different combinations of light, weather and seasonal change. 



René Magritte, La magie noire , 1946, (detail) oil on canvas (est. £2,500,000 - 3,500,000 / $3,187,500 - 4,462,500) 

La magie noire stands as one of the most elegant examples of the theme that preoccupied Magritte in the 1940s, that of a female nude in an unidentified landscape. Here, the artist transforms his wife Georgette Berger into a modern - day Venus. Depicting her image in a classical manner, abiding by the laws of conventional beauty and proportion, she resembles a marble sculpture or mythical figure as much as a live model. This traditional representation is juxtaposed with the unexpected colouration of the figure, as her upper body gradually acquires the tone of the sky behind. The painting’s first owner was the artist’s brother Raymond Magritte, a successful businessman, who often supported the artist by buying his pictures, particularly in the early stages of his career. Frit representation is juxtaposed with the unexpected colouration of the figure, as her upper body gradually acquires the tone of the sky behind. The painting’s first owner was the artist’s brother Raymond Magritte, a successful businessman, who often supported the artist by buying his pictures, particularly in the early stages of his career. 

 

Women of the WPA

June 12, 2019, 7:41 am

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Georgia Museum of Art
 through Sept. 8, 2019

The Works Progress Administration (renamed the Works Projects Administration in 1939) was an American New Deal agency created to provide jobs for the unemployed, to build infrastructure, to document American history and to create new works of art. This exhibition complements “Celebrating Heroes: American Mural Studies of the 1930s and 1940s from the Steven and Susan Hirsch Collection,” organized by the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, and focuses specifically on the contributions of women to WPA art, including works by Lucienne Bloch, Marie Bleck, Marguerite Redman Dorgeloh, Helen Lundeberg, Minnetta Good, Jennie Lewis, Ann Nooney, Elizabeth Olds and others. Thanks to Lamar Dodd and museum founder Alfred Heber Holbrook, the Georgia Museum of Art’s collection has been historically strong in WPA-era artists, and we continue actively to collect both works of this time period and works by woman artists.

 

Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance

June 13, 2019, 7:52 am

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Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid 

5/28/2019 - 9/15/2019

 

Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance, an exhibition sponsored by the Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado, analyses the artistic importance of the early Florentine Renaissance between approximately 1420 to 1430, with a particular focus on the figure of Fra Angelico, one of the great masters of this period.
 
The exhibition, which includes 82 works loaned by more than 40 institutions in Europe and America, centres on
 

The Annunciation in the collection of the Museo del Prado, which is now presented in all its splendour following its recent restoration.



Shown alongside it are The Virgin of the Pomegranate, which recently entered the Museum’s collection, and an extensive group of works by the artist and by other painters of this period such as Masaccio, Masolino and Filippo Lippi, as well as sculptors including Donatello and Ghiberti.

Curated by Carl Brandon Strehlke, Curator Emeritus at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a renowned expert on Fra Angelico and other Florentine Renaissance painters, the exhibition is on display in Rooms C and D of the Jerónimos Building until 15 September.

Fra Angelico trained as a painter in Florence where the public commissions for sculpture and architecture undertaken by Brunelleschi, Donatello and Ghiberti led to a renewed interest in classical antiquity as a source of inspiration. Although he was an apprentice in the studio of the Benedictine monk Lorenzo Monaco, who cultivated a refined and elegant Gothic style, Fra Angelico fully committed himself to the new artistic language and, like his master, entered a religious house, San Domenico in Fiesole, where he took religious orders. His status as a monk did not prevent him from collaborating with other artists or from running a large workshop that provided paintings for both churches and important patrons in the city and elsewhere.

Among the altarpieces painted by the artist for his own monastery was The Annunciation now in the Museo del Prado and the centrepiece of the present exhibition. In that work Fra Angelico reveals his active participation in the renaissance of the arts that was taking place in Florence, given that alongside the younger Masaccio he formulated a new way of seeing which would come to dominate Western art until the modern age.

Dating from the mid-1420s, The Annunciation is the first Florentine altarpiece in the Renaissance style to use perspective to organise the space and in which Gothic arcading is abandoned in favour of a more orthogonal structure, following the precepts favoured by Brunelleschi. Due to his status as a monk, Fra Angelico’s abilities in the depiction of light, space, perspective and narrative have often been eclipsed by his merits as a theological painter.

The Annunciation arrived in Spain in 1611 and was probably the first work by the artist to leave Italy, while The Virgin of the Pomegranate was acquired in 1817 by the 1^st Duke of Alba at a time when the importance of the early Florentine Renaissance was being rediscovered. Two accounts thus overlap in the exhibition: Florence as seen by Fra Angelico and Fra Angelico viewed through Spanish eyes.

Eighteen Dominican Monks (c. 1421–24), Fra Angelico. National Gallery, London

Christ on the Cross (c. 1493–98), Pedro Berruguete. Diputación de Segovia

Édouard Vuillard: The Poetry of the Everyday

June 13, 2019, 8:09 am

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The Holburne Museum
24 May to 15 September 2019

This Spring, The Holburne Museum presents an extensive exhibition of works by Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940) including many that are rarely publicly displayed.

Vuillard was one of the leading figures in French art at the end of the 19th-century. He is famed for his small, subtle studies mostly of figures in interiors. The Poetry of the Everyday celebrates the unique qualities of his early work (from the 1890s) in which he balanced an obsession with patterned fabrics and wallpaper with subtle, domestic psycho-dramas to create paintings with a striking emotional intensity. Vuillard’s art is renowned for its modest scale, intimate subject matter and subdued colouring. The Poetry of the Everyday will include around forty paintings and prints, including a number of rarely seen oils from private lenders alongside major works from national and regional public collections.

Vuillard was a founder member of The Nabis, a group of painters who followed Paul Gauguin and Edgar Degas in emphasising the decorative qualities of a picture. Vuillard’s art is often compared to poetry because of the way he combined this emphasis on the formal qualities of a work of art with recognisable subject matter and implied narratives. He himself said, ‘Who speaks of art speaks of poetry. There is no art without a poetic aim.’

Though he painted numerous landscapes, several of which will be on show at the Holburne, Vuillard’s art is dominated by domestic interiors. While he often painted friends, a large part of his output is made up of pictures of the apartments that he shared with his mother and his sister. Vuillard described his mother, with whom he lived until her death in 1928, as his ‘muse’ and there are over 500 portrayals of her. Mme Vuillard was a seamstress, working from home, and the fabrics that filled their apartment clearly provided the artist with great stimulation. This he combined with the elaborately patterned wall papers which had become widespread in late 19th-century Paris as new printing techniques made them easier to produce and to afford.

While the women of his own family dominated much of his work, Vuillard’s output was much more diverse. Though at times almost abstract, his art captures the quiet dramas that go on in a tight-knit family, or in any domestic realm. Some works depict friends while in several others, mysterious figures appear to intrude subtly from the edges of the painting.



At first Two Seamstresses in the Workroom (1893, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art) appears purely to be a depiction of two young women stitching cloth. Vuillard illuminates the painting with bright, contrasting colours; a lamp casts a rich, amber glow making the blue of the woman’s blouse in the foreground command our attention. However, upon closer inspection we can see there is another person at the table. Their presence is evidenced by the merest hint of a flesh tone, but the characteristic shape of her forehead tells us that Madame Vuillard is here.

The Green Dinner.

Mme Vuillard provides a frame and initial focal point to The Green Dinner (1892, Private Collection), as Vuillard shows us a scene of typical family life, with his immediate relatives chatting after eating together. This painting reflects the close relationships of the Vuillards and another important figure in both the artist’s life and art, his older sister Marie.



The relationship between mother and daughter is demonstrated in the National Gallery of Scotland’s The Chat (1893) but is also remarkable for another feature – a sense of distance, rather than a close up, intimate portrayal of his subjects.



Marie takes a central role in The Artist’s Sister with a Pot of Coffee (1893, The Fitzwilliam Museum). She sits very still, with a baleful expression. The flat, charcoal tones of her dress appear to be merging with the near-black patterned wallpaper behind her. The gold-coloured table cloth and blue-patterned, white cup and saucer to her left suggest a break from the drudgery of her chores, as evidenced by the broom leaning on the wall. Vuillard introduces a tragi-comic aspect to this very moving painting, by inserting the figure of his mother in the adjoining room.

Madame Vuillard Arranging her Hair, 1900, Oil on cardboard, laid on panel, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham © The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham.  

The Barber Institute’s Madame Vuillard Arranging Her Hair (1900) encapsulates Vuillard’s principal fascinations – his petit-bourgeois mother, domestic activities and life as it is lived, in this case, his mother pinning her trademark bun.



Vuillard’s apparent preoccupation with the patterns on soft-furnishings, wallpaper and clothing coalesce in The Manicure (1897, Southampton City Art Gallery). The painting reveals the influence of Gauguin’s ideas on the combination of subject matter, the artist’s feelings about the subject and the use of form, colour and line. Vuillard, a shy and sensitive man, creates an intimate atmosphere, dominated by the competing patterns of wallpapers and fabrics and psychological tensions between the subjects and Vuillard himself.

Though a majority will be of interiors – populated and not – there are also be a number of landscapes in the exhibition, including

 


Road Skirting a Forest (c.1896, Private Collection),  

 

and Landscape – House on the Left (1900, Tate).

Chris Stephens, the Holburne’s Director and curator of The Poetry of the Everyday says “To my mind, Vuillard made some of the most extraordinary and most beautiful pictures of the late 19th century, an unusually rich moment in art history. Like a true poet, he brilliantly balanced the formal qualities of colour and pattern with enigmatic psychological drama. Abstract and narrative, his paintings have a power made all the more compelling by their compact scale.”

Modern Movement: Figurative Works by Arthur Bowen Davies

June 19, 2019, 9:01 am

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Ogunquit Museum of Art, Maine  
through July 1

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Now through July 11, 'Modern Movement: Figurative Works by Arthur Bowen Davies' is on view at the Ogunquit Museum of Art in Maine.

Arthur Bowen Davies began to sketch and paint images of dancers in the mid-1890s and would dwell on that subject until the end of his career. Modern Movement suggests not only the illusion of movement within Davies’ works, but also the wealth of modernist styles and ideas which debuted in the Armory Show of 1913. That exhibition initiated a modern movement in the visual arts in the United States, with Davies largely responsible for selecting works and organizing gallery themes.
The exhibition title also serves as a reference to the modern dance movement that influenced Davies and his contemporaries. Isadora Duncan, in particular, shared Davies Hellenic adoration of dance. As Davies has been referred to as the father of modern art in America, Duncan has been called the mother of modern dance in America. While the Armory Show rocked the foundations of traditional visual art, Duncan’s trailblazing approach to what was then called aesthetic barefoot dance, transformed the world of theatrical dance.

On loan from the Maier Museum of Art, the exhibition features rarely exhibited works on paper and oil paintings. Arthur B. Davies Figurative Works on Paper from the Randolph College and Mac Cosgrove-Davies Collections and Arthur B. Davies

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George Miller and American Lithography

June 19, 2019, 9:15 am

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“Steel Valley,” 1936, Louis Lozowick, Lithograph, 9 3/8 x 13 ⅜ inches.

(Gift of Steven and Stephanie Wasser, 2017.74. Printed by George C. Miller, published by Associated American Artists.)

 

The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State will be hosting “George Miller and American Lithography,” an exhibition highlighting George Miller’s influential works and the role he played in making fine art lithography an accessible medium in the early years of the 20th century. The exhibition opens on June 18, 2019, and will be on view through September 15, 2019.

Drawn entirely from the museum’s own collection, the exhibition will bring together 38 prints by notable artists who worked with the master printer George Miller (1894-1965) to create some of their most memorable and recognizable works.

“In the years following World War I, lithography very quickly became a major means of expression for hundreds of artists in this country. The finest way to tell this story is to focus on the one person who was responsible for the success of so many artists who took an interest in exploring the medium, and that is George Miller,” said curator Patrick McGrady, referring to Miller’s contribution in the field of lithography.

At the turn of the century, quality lithographic printing was accomplished only by commercial firms for whom small editions were not economically viable. American artists either traveled to Europe to have their work professionally printed or struggled with their own presses to master the complicated process. After privately helping George Bellows and others to realize their lithographs, Miller, then head of the proofing department at the American Lithographic Company, quit his position in 1917 to set up his own workshop in New York City dedicated to fine art lithography.

For more lithographs by Gaeorge Miller: 

https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/george-c-miller-lithographer-10749

Francis Bacon Couplings

June 25, 2019, 3:27 pm

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Gagosian

June 6–August 3, 2019

The moment a number of figures become involved, you immediately come on to the storytelling aspect of the relationships between figures. And that immediately sets up a kind of narrative. I always hope to be able to make a great number of figures without a narrative.
—Francis Bacon
Gagosian is pleased to present Couplings, an exhibition of Francis Bacon’s double-figure paintings.
Bacon’s disturbing images—his portrayals of friends and fellow artists, and the deformations and stylistic distortions of classical subjects—radically altered the genre of figurative painting in the twentieth century. In Bacon’s paintings, the human presence is evoked sometimes viscerally, at other times more fleetingly, in the form of a shadow or a blurred, watchful figure. In certain instances, the portrayal takes the form of a composite in which male and female bodily traits are transposed or fused. This selective exhibition explores a theme that preoccupied Bacon throughout his career: the relationship between two people, both physical and psychological.


At the heart of the exhibition are two of the most uninhibited images that Bacon ever painted:



Two Figures (1953)

 

and Two Figures in the Grass (1954).

These interrelated works have not been seen publicly together since the major retrospective of Bacon’s work at the Grand Palais, Paris, in 1971. After completing Two Figures in the Grass, Bacon did not return to the subject until 1967, the year that homosexual acts in private were decriminalized in England and Wales.



That same year he painted Two Figures on a Couch (1967), which was last exhibited in London in 1968 and is also included in Couplings.

Finding that the physical presence of his subjects could prove inhibiting, Bacon painted his figures and portraits both from memory and from photographs—his own, as well as Eadweard Muybridge’s dynamic studies of people in motion, including male wrestlers.

Although Bacon was sometimes reluctant to specifically identify the subjects of his paintings, a number of the works in Couplings (a term the artist himself used) were inspired by his fraught, often violent and passionate relationships. His affair with Peter Lacy, a former fighter pilot whom he met in 1952, cooled off after Lacy moved to Tangier, Morocco, in 1956, where Bacon visited him every summer until 1961. But even after Lacy died in 1962, Bacon continued to paint portraits of him, recalling intensely intimate moments in their relationship.

In 1963 Bacon met George Dyer, a petty criminal from London’s East End. Dyer succeeded Lacy as Bacon’s lover and model and was the inspiration for many of Bacon’s grandest and most emotive paintings of the male nude. Three works in Couplings suggest a startlingly erotic and sometimes violent relationship between two men, such as the one Bacon and Dyer had: Two Figures on a Couch, the triptych Three Studies of Figures on Beds (1972), and Two Figures with a Monkey (1973)—the last two painted after Dyer’s suicide in 1971.

This is Gagosian’s third exhibition dedicated to Bacon’s work, following Francis Bacon: Late Paintings (2015) and Francis Bacon: Triptychs (2006).

The gallery is deeply grateful to the private lenders to this exhibition, as well as to Leeds Art Gallery, England, and Museo Tamayo, Mexico City.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with a previously unpublished interview with Bacon by Richard Francis; an essay by Martin Harrison, author of the acclaimed Bacon catalogue raisonné; and an introduction by Richard Calvocoressi, senior curator at Gagosian. The catalogue will be released in October 2019, to coincide with Frieze London.

Rembrandt’s Mark

June 25, 2019, 3:37 pm

≫ Next: From the Rooftops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space

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Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD)
14/06/2019—15/09/2019 

2019 marks 350 years since Rembrandt’s death. The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD), which hold one of the most significant collections of his paintings, drawings and prints, are celebrating the artist at this occasion with a large exhibition of his works. “Rembrandt’s Mark” centres around the graphic artist and draughtsman and takes a look at an artist who has been studied by artists more than any other.



Rembrandt van Rijn, Selbstbildnis mit aufgerissenen Augen, 1630. Kupferstich-Kabinett © SKD, Photo: Andreas Diesend.

The one-of-a-kind collection at the Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden underpins the exhibition, which focusses on Rembrandt’s narrative compositions, his etched self-portraits and studies of his wife Saskia van Uylenburgh. The presentation comprises approximately 100 works from all of the artist’s creative periods and around 50 etchings and drawings by students of his workshop as well as works by subsequent artists who considered Rembrandt an authority and a source of creative inspiration.

The show, complemented by loans from national and international museums, including the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Courtauld Gallery in London, the Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, the Graphische Sammlung in Munich, the Städelmuseum in Frankfurt as well as from the Schenkung Sammlung Hoffmann and further private collections, sheds light on one of the most innovative and unconventional artists of all time.

The range of those who have explored Rembrandt in defining their own self-portrait extends from immediate successors and masters of the eighteenth century to contemporary artists. Among them we find artists such as Benedetto Castiglione (1609–1664), Jonathan Richardson (1667–1745), Christian W. E. Dietrich (1712–1774), Francisco de Goya (1746–1828), Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945), Max Beckmann (1884–1950), Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), A.R. Penck (1929–2017), Gerhard Altenbourg (1926–1989), Marlene Dumas (b. 1953) and William Kentridge (b. 1955).

Rembrandt remains timelessly captivating due to his radicality in selecting Christian and secular pictorial subjects, and in his unconventional interpretation of them. No less captivating is his pronounced love of experimentation – especially in the use of drawing and printing techniques – as well as his intellect, which is marked by reflection and humour. With a light touch, he throws off all conventions, almost playful yet wildly energetic. His dynamic, unmistakable mark creates pictorial worlds in which an altogether boundless interest in nature reveals itself. The mark he makes is also the utterly unique signature that he leaves behind. At the same time this mark is synonymous with his distinct creativity and thus with his personality.

Rembrandt’s mark is also the mark he left on art history, the footprint of his artistic work that can be followed. These aspects are presented in five sections:

The first section is Rembrandt’s Self. The artist as a person becomes as tangible through his signature as through his numerous self-portraits. Gathered together, the works in this section show the artist with different facial expressions and taking on different roles – from beggar to Oriental nobleman. They tell of both his self-inquiry and how he liked to present himself. Choosing the etching, Rembrandt used a reproductive medium that would serve his self-fashioning, as it did later artists.

The second section, Rembrandt and Saskia, is dedicated to Rembrandt’s wife who died in 1642 at the young age of 29 years. Around twelve drawings and etchings will be presented as a group for the first time. Included here are not only

 

the Dresden brush study of Saskia in bed



but also the famous Berlin engagement portrait done in silverpoint,

as well as the outstanding oil painting – created around the same time –

 

of a laughing Saskia, which is held today in the collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister.

In Rembrandt Learning, Rembrandt Teaching the perspective opens up to include artists with whom Rembrandt worked closely, be it as a student or later as a teacher. The artist comes into view in the forceful strokes he used to correct his students’ drawings or, for instance, when he sits with them before life models.

The central section, Work Process, probes pictorial invention in drawings and prints. Relatively rare in Rembrandt’s work, drawings used only in preparation for further works are included in the exhibition. The subject culminates in the famous

 

Hundred Guilder Print of 1648; its preparatory drawings are shown together for the first time.

 Also on show are three states of the great dry point work  

 

Ecce Homo, whose dramatic composition evolved in several steps.

The final section bears the title Light and Shadow, an important artistic means found in the oeuvre of the Netherlandish artist. Using this pair of opposites, Rembrandt succeeded not only in depicting the physical world but also in visualizing the dimension of cognizance. Above and beyond this, his frank observations about the range of human physical needs, including sexuality, created new pictorial subjects that left traditional motifs behind.

In its inclusion of artists who still today openly consider Rembrandt a dynamic authority and source of inspiration, the exhibition is not so much seeking to illustrate Rembrandt’s reception as such but rather to make apparent through these crown witnesses the artist’s enormous appeal, which has continued for centuries.

The exhibition “Rembrandt’s Mark“ is curated by Stephanie Buck with Mailena Mallach.



At the occasion of the exhibition, an extensively illustrated catalogue in German and English will be published by Paul Holberton Publishing.

From the Rooftops: John Sloan and the Art of a New Urban Space

June 26, 2019, 7:00 am

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The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, NY 12801
June 15 – September 15, 2019





John Sloan, A Roof in Chelsea, New York, c. 1941­­/51, tempera underpaint with oil-varnish glaze and wax finish on composition board, 21 1/8 x 26 1/16 inches. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, purchased through the Julia L. Whittier Fund. P.946.12.2.

The Ashcan School painter John Sloan (1871–1951) was preoccupied with the New York City rooftop perhaps more than any other American artist in the first half of the twentieth century. This setting factors in some of his most iconic and celebrated works, many of which focus on immigrant and working-class subjects. “These wonderful roofs of New York City bring me all humanity,” as Sloan was quoted in 1919. “It is all the world.”

This loan exhibition offers an in-depth examination of Sloan’s decades-long fascination with the life of the urban rooftop with nearly thirty of his paintings, prints, and drawings.



Louis Ribak, Manhattan Rooftops, c. 1930, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 inches. Palmer Museum of Art, Gift of Steven and Stephanie Wasser, 2017.102


The exhibition expands on the visual culture of “the city above the city” by featuring thirty additional works from more than a dozen notable contemporaries of Sloan. The changing fabric of the metropolis enabled new aesthetic and leisure possibilities up high, such as the roof garden entertainments painted by William Glackens and Charles Hoffbauer just after the turn of the century.

John Sloan, A Woman’s Work, 1912, oil on canvas

John Sloan, Love on the Roof, 1914, etching

Cecil Bell, Reginald Marsh, and Louis Ribak studied with Sloan and later depicted varied rooftop locales in the 1930s. Nocturnal scenes by printmakers Martin Lewis and Armin Landeck, candid photographs by Walter Rosenblum and Weegee, and surrealist-inflected paintings by George Ault and Hughie Lee-Smith are among the assorted examples complementing and contextualizing the story of Sloan’s sustained interest in rooftop spaces.



John Sloan, Red Kimono on the Roof, 1912, oil on canvas, 24 x 20 inches. Indianapolis Museum of Art, James E. Roberts Fund, 54.55.



From the Rooftops, which is organized by the Palmer Museum of Art of The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, is accompanied by a publication. 

Monet: Impression Sunrise

June 26, 2019, 7:01 am

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National Gallery of Australia

7 June – 1 September 2019 

Featuring Claude Monet’s pioneering painting Impression, Soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise) 1872, from which Impressionism takes its name, this exclusive exhibition brings together works from the impressionist master and other significant artists to examine the founding of an art movement—a defining moment in art history.

Impression, Soleil levant, which rarely leaves the museum walls in Paris, will be coming to a newly designed exhibition space at the NGA this winter, along with some forty impressionist and related paintings from the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, the Tate, and Australian and New Zealand collections.

Alongside Monet’s masterpieces are key paintings by JMW Turner, whose early works inspired Monet, James McNeill Whistler, Alfred Sisley and Eugène Boudin, among others.

The works reveal the formative characteristics of Impressionism—depiction of light, purer colour and capturing the momentary view—by a new generation of artists who abandoned their studios for the world outside.

Monet: Impression Sunrise is an unmissable opportunity to see a masterful painting that became emblematic of a cultural movement and trace its influence on the course of art history.

Claude Monet
Impression, sunrise [Impression, soleil levant]1872
oil on canvas
Gift of Eugène and Victorine Donop de Monchy 1940, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Claude Monet
Les Tuileries1876
oil on canvas
Gift of Eugène and Victorine Donop de Monchy 1940, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Claude Monet
On the beach at Trouville [Sur la plage à Trouville]1870
oil on canvas
Bequest of Michel Monet 1966, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Alfred Sisley
Spring near Paris. Apple trees in blossom [Printemps aux environs de Paris. Pommiers en fleur]1879
oil on canvas
Gift of Victorine and Eugène Donop de Monchy, 1940, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris