4 Sep 2024 - 13 Jan 2025

Surrealism

The exhibition is organised both chronologically and thematically, structured into 14 sections that evoke literary figures who inspired the movement (Lautréamont, Lewis Carroll, Sade, etc.) and the poetic principles that structured its imagery (the artist as a medium, dreams, the philosopher’s stone, the forest, etc.).Designed like a maze, the “Surrealism” exhibition is an unprecedented dive into the exceptional creative effervescence of the Surrealist movement, born in 1924 with the publication of André Breton’s founding Manifesto.  

Combining paintings, drawings, films, photographs and literary documents, the exhibition presents works by the movement’s iconic artists (Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró), as well as those by the female Surrealists (including Leonora Carrington, Ithell Colquhoun, Dora Maar). 

Max Ernst, « L'ange du foyer (Le triomphe du surréalisme) », 1937 © Adagp, Paris. Vincent Everarts Photographie

The exhibition is organised both chronologically and thematically, structured into 14 sections that evoke the literary figures who inspired the movement (Lautréamont, Lewis Carroll, Sade, etc.) and the poetic principles that structure its imagery (the artist as a medium, dreams, the philosopher’s stone, the forest, etc.).

 

At the heart of the exhibition is a central “drum” housing the original manuscript of the Manifesto, an exceptional loan from the National Library of France. A multimedia screening accompanies the discovery of this unique document, providing insight into its creation and meaning.   

The Park Avenue Armory, Booth A12

October 30 – November 2, 2024

The late 19th through the first half of the 20th centuries saw the rise of several art movements, including Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Pointillism, and Symbolism. These movements set the groundwork for the development of modern art in the latter 20th century, and opened the door for artists to work abstractly and conceptually in the 21st century.

By looking at 19th and early 20th century artwork, we can gain insight into the artistic and historical complexities of this transformative period. The beginning of globalization allowed artists to see artwork made in other countries; to use paint and materials bettered by technical innovation; and to engage with the new societal focus on individualism, which in turn shed light on the gender, class, and racial dynamics of the time. Each of these forces appears in the works of Delacroix, Matisse, Bonnard and Cézanne, and hint at the major movements of modern and contemporary art on the horizon.


Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798-1863), Standing Female Nude Seen from Behind, Pencil on paper, 9 1/4 x 6 3/8 inches.

Eugène Delacroix was born in 1798 in France and lived there until 1863. In three small scale drawings shown here, we see his enormous talent for composition, which enabled him to be an effective muralist as well as an easel painter. The smallest sheet is from a “carnet” or sketchbook he made from life while on a brief diplomatic trip to Morocco in January 1832. It depicts a lithe and sinewy dancer he had seen in Tangiers, and this figure was used to create

Both of these important paintings subsequently inspired Matisse, who in 1912, also traveled to Morocco.


Moroccan Dancer, 1832, Pencil on paper, 5 x 4 inches.


Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867-1947), L'Escalier, c. 1932, Oil and gouache on paper, laid down on canvas, 25 1/4 x 19 1/2 inches.

A large and extraordinary oil on paper by Pierre Bonnard depicts an interior view of his home in Le Cannet, with his partner Marthe peering around the base of the staircase, and their dog looking up eagerly at the viewer. Bonnard shows us a postcard of his interior world, the influence of Van Gogh clearly seen in the bright yellow rays of light in the upper right corner of the composition.

Done while Henri Matisse was living in Vence, high in the hills over Nice, our charcoal is one in a series of large scale drawings of black models from the Caribbean and Africa. Matisse employed black models in creating the illustrated Fleurs du Mal, published in 1947, and produced a series of fourteen etchings dating from 1946 of La Martiniquaise, using models from Madagascar and the Congo.

Interestingly, our drawing was traditionally titled “Femme Assise” without the identification of the race or nationality of the model.


Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954), Femme assise, 1945, Charcoal on paper, 20 1/2 x 15 9/10 inches


Each artist’s individual technique and chosen subject matter is indicative of the shifting artistic consciousness of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though created at different times, under different circumstances, and within the framework of different artistic movements, the artworks in this show are in undeniable dialogue with one another while laying groundwork for what will come next.

Masterworks in line and color, each of these works are masterful in their ability to capture the moment in which they were made, and to resonate in the future.

Group Show: Masterworks of Line and Color is the latest in a series of exhibitions presented at the Art Show which include The Watercolors of George Sand (she/her/hers) (2023); Eugène Delacroix: The Enduring Power of Image (2019; essay by Jovana Stokic); Pierre Bonnard: Affinities (2018; essay by Karen Wilkin) and Under the Influence: Edouard Vuillard and Contemporary Art (2017; essay by Norman Kleeblatt).

 High Museum of Art 

Oct. 25, 2024-Feb. 16, 2025

Famed for her images of flowers and Southwestern landscapes, American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) spent several years of her prolific career exploring the built environment of New York City with brush in hand. This fall, the High Museum of Art will be the exclusive venue in the Southeastern United States to present “Georgia O’Keeffe: ‘My New Yorks’” (Oct. 25, 2024-Feb. 16, 2025). Featuring approximately 100 works across a range of media including paintings, drawings, pastels and photographs, the exhibition is the first to seriously examine how O’Keeffe’s urban landscapes fit within the diverse context of her art.

Organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition establishes these works not as outliers or as anomalous to O’Keeffe’s practice but as entirely integral to her modernist investigation in the 1920s — from her abstractions and still lifes at Lake George in upstate New York and beyond to her works upon arriving in the Southwest in 1929.

“Most of our visitors likely know O’Keeffe best for her floral paintings and works focused on the American Southwest, including her 1919 painting ‘Red Canna,’ one of the most visited works in our collection,” said the High’s Director Rand Suffolk. “This exhibition offers the wonderful opportunity to highlight this important, but perhaps less recognized period of O’Keeffe’s artistic life and demonstrate how her ‘New Yorks’ exemplify her innovation as a Modernist.”

In 1924, O’Keeffe and her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, moved to New York City’s newly built Shelton Hotel, then the tallest residential skyscraper in the world. Its soaring heights inspired a five-year period of energetic experimentation, across media, scale, subject matter, form and perspective. She created street-level compositions capturing the city’s monumental skyscrapers from below and suspended views looking down from her 30th-floor apartment. She called these works her “New Yorks” and through them investigated the dynamic potential of New York’s cityscape — the organic and the inorganic, the natural and the constructed.

These New York paintings are essential in understanding how O’Keeffe became the artist we know today. For this reason, the exhibition includes a significant portion of the artist’s New York paintings alongside select works that highlight her varied subject matter, including shells, flowers, abstractions and landscapes. This integration underscores how O’Keeffe centered her New York works in her innovative and experimental modernist investigation of form, line and color — an approach she continued upon her arrival in the Southwest. Additionally, the exhibition includes photographs by Stieglitz from the Shelton and other Manhattan high-rises, exploring the productive artistic dialogue that developed between them as each was inspired by their powerfully new urban environment.

The exhibition is curated by the Art Institute’s Sarah Kelly Oehler and Annelise K. Madsen. The accompanying richly illustrated catalogue features a series of essays that present new scholarship and viewpoints on this formative group of works.

“Georgia O’Keeffe: ‘My New Yorks’” was first on view at the Art Institute of Chicago in the summer of 2024 and will be presented at the High on the Second and Skyway Levels of the Anne Cox Chambers Wing.

Exhibition Organization and Support
“Georgia O’Keeffe: ‘My New Yorks’” is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago.

Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887–1986), Manhattan, 1932, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 1995.3.1. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC / Art Resource, New York.

Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887–1986), Chrysler Building from the Window of the Waldorf Astoria, New York, ca. 1960, gelatin silver print, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2006.6.1370. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887–1986), New York, Night, 1928–1929, oil on canvas, Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Nebraska Art Association, Thomas C. Woods Memorial, N-107.1958. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Photo by Bill Ganzel.

Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887–1986), City Night, 1926, oil on canvas, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, gift of funds from the Regis Corporation, Mr. and Mrs. W. John Driscoll, the Beim Foundation, the Larsen Fund, and by public subscription, 80.28. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

CLAUDE MONET

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RENÉ MAGRITTE

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PIERRE AUGUSTE RENOIR

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GUSTAVE LOISEAU

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ALFONS WALDE

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PAUL SIGNAC

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MAURICE UTRILLO

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Museum of Modern Art 

November 3, 2024, through February 22, 2025.

that have tangible manifestations in the everyday. Frida Kahlo’s My Grandparents, My Parents, and I, for example, utilizes a diagrammatic abstraction of a family-tree diagram. Works that explore the materiality of the body and its gendered implications include a selection of intimate drawings by Christina Ramberg, Rosemary Mayer’s diaphanous yet commanding sculpture Galla Placidia (1973)—a new acquisition to the collection—and Lorna Simpson’s poignant series of photographs, Untitled (1992), among others. A film and notebooks by Greer Lankton from the late 1970s reveal an artist whose sense of self was in ongoing transformation.

A number of artists have brought together abstraction and the human form as a means to imagine how boundaries between the human and non-human might be transcended, often through a fantastical merging with other animals or entities. From Thelma Johnson Streat’s jewel-like Rabbit Man (1941), through a constellation of works by Birgit Jürgenssen, to the imposing and intricate figure of Mrinalini Mukherjee’s Yakshi (1984), artists harness vibrant intersections of abstraction and figuration as a means to explore various forms of transcendence, whether as an escape from the limitations of the body or as a means to delight in and play with those same limitations, as a kind of freedom. Rarely seen works such as Bhupen P. Khakhar’s Kali (1965), which will be on view for the first time at MoMA, suggest the proximities between the human and the sacred, while important new acquisitions like Belkis Ayón’s Resurrection (Resurrección) (1998) and Ted Joans’s Long Distance (1976– 2005)—a more than 30-foot-long exquisite corpse drawing with over 130 contributors from around the globe—imagine new relationships between the individual and the collective.

PUBLICATION

The accompanying publication takes MoMA’s collection as a starting point for a consideration of abstract art in the twentieth century, exploring its intimate ties to the complex, ecstatic, and contradictory experience of having a body. An introductory essay by Lanka Tattersall explores the intertwining of abstraction and figuration in modern art as it converges with feminist, queer, and Black studies; contributions by the poet and artist Precious Okoyomon and Lambda Literary Award-winning writer Cyrus Dunham bring new language to bear on the relationship between our outer forms and inner lives. 148 pages, 180 color illustrations. Hardcover, $55. ISBN: 978-1-63345-165-0. Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and available at MoMA stores and online at store.moma.org. Distributed to the trade through ARTBOOK|D.A.P. in the United States and Canada, and through Thames & Hudson in the rest of the world.

IMAGES

Belkis Ayón. Resurrección (Resurrection). 1998. Collagraph on nine sheets of paper, overall 9′ 13/16″ × 7′ 1″ (276.5 × 215.9 cm). Unpublished. Printer: the artist, Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), Havana, Cuba. Edition: 4. Riva Castleman Endowment Fund. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 Belkis Ayón. Courtesy of the Artist’s Estate. Digital image © 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo by Robert Gerhardt

 

Claude Cahun. M.R.M (Sex), c. 1929-30. Gelatin silver print. 6 × 4″ (15.2 × 10.2 cm). Gift of Helen Kornblum in honor of Roxana Marcoci. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 Estate of Claude Cahun. Digital image © 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo by Jonathan Muzikar

 

Mrinalini Mukherjee. Yakshi, 1984. Dyed hemp. 8′ 1″ × 48″ × 29″ (246.4 × 121.9 × 73.7 cm). Committee on Painting and Sculpture Funds, and acquired through the generosity of Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin and the Modern Women’s Fund. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 Mrinalini Mukherjee. Courtesy of the MM Foundation. Digital image © 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo by John Wronn

 

Rosemary Mayer. Galla Placidia, 1973. Satin, rayon, nylon, cheesecloth, nylon netting, ribbon, dyes, wood, and acrylic paint. 8′ 2″ × 6′ 6″ × 7′ (248.9 × 198.1 × 213.4 cm). Gift of Alice and Tom Tisch and Committee on Painting and Sculpture Funds. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 Courtesy of the Estate of Rosemary Mayer. Digital image © 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo by Jonathan Muzikar

 

Maria Lassnig. Still from Encounter, 1970. 16 mm film (color, sound), 1 min. Gift of the Maria Lassnig Foundation. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 Estate of Maria Lassnig.
Digital image © 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

 

Margo Humphrey. The History of Her Life Written Across Her Face. 1991. Lithograph with copper leaf and collage additions, composition (irreg.): 29 15/16 × 29 5/8 in. (76 × 75.3 cm); sheet: 32 5/16 × 29 5/8 in. (82 × 75.3 cm). Publisher and printer: Rutgers Center for Innovative Printmaking, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Edition: 30. Purchase. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 The Margo Humphrey Trust. Digital image © 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo by Robert Gerhardt

 

Forrest Bess. Untitled. 1957. Oil on canvas with wood frame. 9 7/8 × 14 1/4″ (25.1 × 36.2 cm). Gift of Adam Kimmel. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Digital image © 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo by Thomas Griesel

 

Lorna Simpson. Untitled. 1992. Color instant prints (Polaroids) and engraved plastic plaques. Overall 7′ 6″ × 13′ 6″ (228.6 × 411.5 cm). Gift of UBS. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 Lorna Simpson, courtesy the artist and Salon 94, New York. Digital image © 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo by Jonathan Muzikar

 

Greer Lankton and Joyce Randall Senechal. Still from The Contortionist. 1978. Super 8mm film transferred to video (black and white, silent), 1 min. Gift of Joyce Randall Senechal. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2024 Estate of Greer Lankton, courtesy Joyce Randall Senechal. Digital image © 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

 

Suzanne Jackson. Wind and Water. 1975. Acrylic and pencil on canvas, two panels. Each: 97 × 60″ (246.4 × 152.4 cm). Acquired through the generosity of The Modern Women’s Fund, Alice and Tom Tisch, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz, Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis, Michael S. Ovitz, Ronnie F. Heyman, and Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © Suzanne Jackson, courtesy the artist and Ortuzar Projects, New York. Digital image © 2024 The Museum of Modern Art, New York, photo by Jonathan Muzikar

 

 

Barbara Hammer. Still from Sync Touch. 1981. 16mm film transferred to video (color, sound), 10:07 min. Purchase. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © Courtesy The Estate of Barbara Hammer and Company Gallery, New York. Digital image © Courtesy the Barbara Hammer Collection at the Academy Film Archive

 

Installation view of Vital Signs: Artists and the Body, on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York from November 3, 2024, through February 22, 2025. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar

 

Installation view of Vital Signs: Artists and the Body, on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York from November 3, 2024, through February 22, 2025. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar

 

Installation view of Vital Signs: Artists and the Body, on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York from November 3, 2024, through February 22, 2025. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar

 

Installation view of Vital Signs: Artists and the Body, on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York from November 3, 2024, through February 22, 2025. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar

 

 Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 13, 2024–January 26, 2025

National Gallery, London

March 8 through June 22, 2025

Featuring more than 100 paintings, sculptures, metalworks, and textiles, Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 will reunite works by some of the greatest Italian painters of the 14th century

This fall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present the first major exhibition in the United States focusing on early Sienese painting. Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 will examine an exceptional moment at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance and the pivotal role of Sienese artists—including Duccio, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini—in defining Western painting. In the decades leading up to the catastrophic onset of the plague around 1350, Siena was the site of phenomenal artistic innovation and activity. While Florence is often positioned as the center of the Renaissance, this presentation will offer a fresh perspective on the importance of Siena, from Duccio’s profound influence on a new generation of painters to the development of narrative altarpieces and the dissemination of artistic styles beyond Italy. The exhibition will be on view October 13, 2024, through January 26, 2025.

The exhibition is made possible by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, Alice Cary Brown and W.L. Lyons Brown, the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund, and the Diane W. and James E. Burke Fund.

Additional support is provided by Laura and John Arnold, a gift in memory of Regina Jaglom Wachter, The Huo Family Foundation, The Richard and Natalie Jacoff Foundation, Inc., the Robert Lehman Foundation, Trevor and Alexis Traina, the Malcolm Hewitt Wiener Foundation, and the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation.

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

The exhibition is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The National Gallery, London.
 
“Siena was an epicenter of artistic innovation and ambition in the 14th and 15th century. Its impact on the development of European art and on the development of painting cannot be emphasized enough,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “This monumental exhibition will bring together the most important group of early Sienese paintings ever assembled outside of Siena—offering a once-in-a-lifetime chance to explore the influence of this extraordinary artistic center.”

Stephan Wolohojian, John Pope-Hennessy Curator in Charge of European Paintings at The Met, said, “The distinctive artistic language of Duccio, the Lorenzetti brothers, Simone Martini, and their contemporaries completely recast the course of European painting. Examining the bold work of these Sienese artists allows us to trace the germination of many of the key ideas that preoccupied artists working in Italy in the following centuries.”

Drawing on the outstanding collections of The Met and the National Gallery, London, and including rare loans from dozens of other international lenders, the exhibition will highlight more than 100 works by a remarkable group of Sienese artists. It will feature paintings alongside sculptures, metalwork, and textiles, ranging from large works made for public display to intimate objects created for private devotion. Highlights will include Duccio’s Stoclet Madonna, Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Annunciation, and historic reunifications of major pictorial ensembles, such as the back predella of Duccio’s Maestà and Simone Martini’s Orsini Polyptych. Although none of these painters survived the plague of about 1350, their achievements had an immeasurable impact on painters and theorists in the centuries that followed.

Exhibition Overview
The exhibition is presented in 12 sections that broadly explore themes of geography and travel, artists and artistic personalities, and the reframing of painting to establish Siena as a major hub of artistic, economic, political, and religious activity before the Renaissance. It reunites elements of whole works that have been separated for centuries, resurrecting complete artistic visions that have been fragmented for the duration of the modern era. In bringing together these and other extant works that attest to a singular, fleeting moment in the history of European art, the exhibition illuminates the story of a thriving cultural center at the forefront of artistic innovation and achievement before most of its citizens, artists included, perished in the plague at mid-century.

The Met’s own Stoclet Madonna, one of the rare independent works by Duccio in America, is placed at the start of the exhibition, introducing the presentation to visitors and inviting them to explore key themes. In the first half of the 1300s, Sienese artists, especially painters, transformed the city, pushing their art to its limits to create large decorative schemes for its civic and religious buildings, while at the same time producing refined small-scale paintings that were collected and celebrated far outside the city walls. Despite the profusion of artistic output, this extraordinary chapter in the history of European art is known from only a small number of surviving works connected by a complex network of confluences. Notable among these remaining works, the Stoclet Madonna embodies the artist’s ability to synthesize different traditions and recast them in a new way within the frame of a painting. As Siena’s premier painter, Duccio received commissions for numerous devotional objects in both private and civic contexts.

Chief among Duccio’s commissioned works is the high altar of Siena’s cathedral, a large-scale image of the Virgin Mary enthroned known as the Maestà. This enormous double-sided painting, nearly 16 by 15 feet, was an ambitious undertaking that took five years to complete. The Maestà remained on the altar until 1506, when it was partially dismantled and later dismembered. Over the centuries, some fragments were lost while others were sold. This exhibition is the first time in centuries that the elements of the back predella are being seen together.

Another section explores the impact of Siena’s position as a major stop on the Via Francigena, a historic route that stretched from Naples and Rome to Paris and Canterbury in northern Europe. This highly traveled route generated an international traffic of people, ideas, and objects—including ivories, enamels, and textiles—through Siena, while also facilitating the dissemination of works by Sienese artists. 

Multipaneled paintings known as polyptychs were the most common form of altarpiece in the decades after Duccio completed the Maestà. Composed of independent panels, they could be painted in pieces and later assembled. One of Pietro Lorenzetti’s great altarpieces, his monumental Pieve Altarpiece, commissioned in 1320 for a church in Arezzo, has never before traveled from the setting for which it was painted, making this its first time in an exhibition.  

Siena’s connections with Mediterranean trade networks made it a key market for the circulation of luxury items produced by highly skilled weavers in Iran and northern China. These extraordinary cloths, woven with vibrantly colored threads and gold, were admired by Sienese artists, who, seeking to emulate their shimmering surfaces, carefully worked their motifs into their paintings.

Sienese painters were renowned for making some of the most refined and extraordinary works for private devotion. Highly prized by their patrons, they could be easily transported and are often recorded in inventories far from Siena. One exhibition section highlights the work of Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Pietro Lorenzetti, showcasing their different narrative and pictorial strategies. A major group of works are the reunited elements of Simone Martini’s masterpiece, the so-called Orsini Polyptych. One of the most complex and sumptuous portable devotional images of early Italian painting, this complex work was a great influence on painters in Northern Europe.

The exhibition also examines the work of Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti through their interest in narrative. The Lorenzetti brothers worked on projects both separately and together. Each contributed to a landmark series of altarpieces with scenes from the life of the Virgin that were painted as part of a larger program for Siena’s cathedral. These collective works placed narrative subjects at the center of the altarpiece, reframing the possibilities offered by the picture field. The exhibition includes both monumental works and detailed, smaller-scale narrative scenes. 

Another section juxtaposes sculpture and painting to highlight the rivalry and mutual exchange between artists working in these two genres. The models presented by Siena’s great sculptors at the beginning of the 14th century prompted painters to explore greater dimensionality and weight in their compositions. Decades later, Tino di Camaino, perhaps the most significant and innovative sculptor of his generation, responded to painters, adapting their visual forms and strategies to engage viewers. 

The exhibition concludes by reflecting on Simone Martini’s output in the 1330s, when, at the height of his career, he abandoned his successful practice in Siena and moved to Avignon, where he produced frescoes for the church of Notre-¬Dame des Doms and a major altarpiece for the Franciscan church. Much admired by members of the papal curia who were based there and by the humanist Petrarch, Sienese art planted the seed for a new type of painting north of the Alps, flowering in the courts of Bohemia and, later, Burgundy, as well as in other artistic centers throughout northern Europe.

Credits and Related Content
Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 is curated by Stephan Wolohojian, John Pope-Hennessy Curator in Charge of European Paintings at The Met; Laura Llewellyn, Curator of Italian Paintings before 1500 at the National Gallery, London; and Caroline Campbell, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland; in collaboration with Joanna Cannon, Professor at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Following the exhibition's debut at The Met, it will be on view at The National Gallery, London, from March 8 through June 22, 2025.

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition and be available for purchase from The Met Store. Published by The National Gallery, London, the catalogue features new scholarship, with chapters exploring masterpieces by four of Siena’s most illustrious painters—Duccio, Simone Martini, and Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti. 

This book explores a crucial turning point in Italian art when the prestige of painting reached new heights. Siena became the centre of a rich exchange of ideas, as painters took inspiration from marble and ivory sculptures, intricate metalwork, and precious imported silks to enhance the power of their work. Travelling beyond their native city, Sienese artists made their mark across Italy and into northern Europe.

Beautifully illustrated and featuring important new scholarship, chapters explore masterpieces by four of Siena’s most illustrious painters—Duccio, Simone Martini, and Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti—alongside objects in other media and from other countries and cultures, encouraging fresh perspectives and dialogues between these groundbreaking works/

Images

“The Raising of Lazarus” (1310-11), by Duccio di Buoninsegna.Art work by Duccio di Buoninsegna /

Courtesy Kimbell Art Museum

 Guggenheim Museum

November 8, 2024–March 9, 2025

Video: Harmony & Dissonance” at the Guggenheim

IMAGES

Robert Delaunay, Red Eiffel Tower (La Tour rouge), 1911–12. Oil on canvas, 49 1/4 × 35 3/8 (125 × 90.3 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection 46.1036. Photo: Midge Wattles, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Mainie Jellett, Painting, 1938. Oil on canvas, 29 15/16 × 25 7/16 in. (76 × 64.6 cm). National Museums NI, Ulster Museum Collection, Northern Ireland, Donated by the Thomas Haverty Trust. Photo: National Museums NI

Francis Picabia, Edtaonisl (Ecclesiastic) (Edtaonisl [Ecclésiastique]), 1913. Oil on canvas, 118 × 118 in. (299.7 × 299.7 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Armand Bartos, 1953. © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo: The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 

November 3, 2024, through February 16, 2025

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is the only U.S. venue for an ambitious exhibition of the work of French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin (1848–1903). Organized by independent curator Henri Loyrette, former director of the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and leading scholar of 19th-century French painting, the exhibition offers new perspectives on Gauguin’s life and work, artistic networks and influences, and contemporary legacies, both artistic and historical. Gauguin in the World will be on view at the MFAH from November 3, 2024, through February 16, 2025. The Houston presentation follows the exhibition’s debut in Australia in June, at the National Gallery of Art, Canberra, in partnership with Art Exhibitions Australia. 

“Twentieth-century European and American art would never have developed in the ways that it did were it not for Gauguin,” commented Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “He was the key predecessor to the different strands of Modernism that developed through Picasso and Matisse, challenging what he perceived as a culture that had reached a dead end and renewing it by exploring and embracing non-Western art. Gauguin was controversial in his own time and remains so today. The scope of this exhibition, and the thoughtful, wide-ranging perspectives on Gauguin’s work offered by the catalogue’s authors, promise to illuminate the artist in all of his artistic complexity.”

Paul Gauguin, Trois tahitiens (Three Tahitians), 1899, oil on canvas, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, presented by Sir Alexander Maitland in memory of his wife Rosalind 1960.

“Gauguin in the World will offer an exceptional opportunity to understand the astonishing range of the artist’s achievement,” noted Ann Dumas, MFAH consulting curator for the exhibition. “Fusing influences as diverse as European Old Masters, Peruvian potters, and Egyptian tomb painters, Gauguin created not only sumptuous and richly colored paintings, but also developed entirely original methods of print making, and sculptures in wood and ceramic, dissolving conventional boundaries between art forms. His influence on avant-garde has been profound and continues in our own time.”

Paul Gauguin, Le toit blue or Ferme au Pouldu (The blue roof or Farm at Le Pouldu) 1890, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased 2024 with the assistance of the National Gallery Foundation

About the Exhibition 
Gauguin in the World chronicles what curator Loyrette characterizes as Gauguin’s “inner quest for elsewhere” through an expansive survey of his work, from its Impressionist beginnings in Paris, through a period of exploration to Denmark, Brittany, Provence, and Martinique, to its culmination in his last years in Oceania, where he created some of his most iconic paintings. While Gauguin in the World is a comprehensive survey of Gauguin’s prolific career, Loyrette underscores that the show’s narrative is constructed from the perspective of the artist’s last works: “When Gauguin landed in the Marquesas in September 1901, he knew that he had reached his journey’s end; he had at last found his ‘true homeland,’ the place to which he had always aspired. In the 20 months before his death, he continued to develop his art while, in his writings, he set out to review his career as a whole. This is the starting point for an exhibition that reveals that introspection and the art that preceded it, returning to the questions that haunted him as an artist—the challenges that he set himself and solved in his quest for his own identity.”

aul Gauguin, Portrait de Madeleine Bernard (Portrait of Madeleine Bernard), 1888, oil on canvas, Musée de Peinture et de Scupture, Grenoble, France. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.

The exhibition will be organized across six galleries, presenting the arc of Gauguin’s career from the 1870s through his final years, with half of the exhibition devoted to Gauguin’s work in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands. 

Paul Gauguin, Madam Roulin, 1888, oil on canvas, Saint Louis Art Museum.

Gauguin in the World includes 150 works of art drawn from 65 public and private collections worldwide, including: Musée d’Orsay, Paris; National Galleries of Scotland; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Louvre Abu Dhabi; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo; and the Musée de Tahiti et des îles, which is lending both their Gauguins and important 19th-century Marquesan sculptural works. 

About Paul Gauguin 
Gauguin was born June 7, 1848, to a French father, a radical journalist; and French mother of Peruvian heritage. In 1851, the family left Paris following the 1848 revolutions, destined for Peru and his mother’s family there. Gauguin’s father died on the voyage. Gauguin and his sister were raised by their widowed mother in Lima, initially, then France, in Orleans and Paris. Educated at boarding schools in Orleans, Gauguin enlisted at 17 as a pilot’s assistant in the merchant marine to satisfy his military service; he then joined the French navy. After a half-dozen years at sea, he returned to Paris. At 23, he secured a stock-broker job at the French Bourse, later marrying a Danish woman and fathering five children. Financially secure and interested in art, he entered the art world as a collector and patron. After meeting Camille Pissarro in 1874, the year of the first Impressionist exhibition, the two struck up a mentor/tutor relationship, and Gauguin began to paint in his spare time. He would submit to the Impressionist exhibitions over the next eight years but achieved little success as an artist. After the collapse of the French stock market in 1882, with his income now lost, Gauguin moved his family from Paris, first to Rouen and then to Copenhagen, where his wife was able to find work. There, Gauguin had a brief, unsuccessful stint as a carpet salesman. Frustrated by his lack of artistic success, Gauguin decided to escape Europe and make a voyage to French Polynesia, where he lived and resumed painting. He returned to Paris in 1893. Two years later, disillusioned by his failed attempts to succeed as an artist, he left France, and his family, for good, and settled in French Polynesia, ultimately at Hiva Oa in the Marquesas. Following years of deteriorating health, Gauguin died on May 8, 1903, at 54. 

Organization 
This exhibition is organized by Art Exhibitions Australia; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Catalogue 

A fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition. Edited by exhibition curator Henri Loyrette and featuring his major new essay on Gauguin, the publication will include contributions from Miriama Bono, Norma Broude, Vaiana Giraud, and Nicholas Thomas. 

• Miriama Bono, architect, painter, and director of the Musée de Tahiti et des îles, discusses Gauguin’s work in the context of the Pacific. Her essay views the exhibition as “an occasion for interrogating the posterity of Gauguin’s work among the Pacific populations, and more particularly for Tahitians and Marquesans.”  
• Norma Broude, feminist scholar and specialist in 19th-century French and Italian paintings, encourages an assessment of Gauguin in the context of the legacy of his maternal grandmother, a pioneering feminist and socialist activist, one that “will allow us to recognize the ways in which Flora Tristan’s grandson and his art were positively shaped by his family history and the evolving feminisms of his own era.”  
• Viviana Giraud, longtime official at the Maison de la Culture in Papeete, Tahiti, addresses Gauguin as a writer. “Gauguin’s writings are the least familiar part of his corpus; some were lost, some remained unpublished, and others were misunderstood or ignored. They deserve attention.”  
• Henri Loyrette, former director, Musée d’Orsay and Musée du Louvre, looks back over Gauguin’s life, work, and friendships from the vantage point of the artist’s last, ailing years in the Marquesas, weaving in and out of those key narratives to evoke Gauguin’s own experience: “Gauguin in 1902 in the Marquesas scrolls through his entire life in brief and disordered sequences, like so many freeze frames.” 
• Nicholas Thomas, Australian anthropologist and director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, England, explores the stubbornly irreconcilable facets of Gauguin’s work, from the premise that “paradoxically his art is not well known: Its heterogeneity and complexity have been obscured by the notoriety of the biography.”

LONDON – Building on the unprecedented success of the first sale from this fabled collection, Christie’s is pleased to present The Sam Josefowitz Collection: Graphic Masterpieces by Rembrandt van Rijn – Part II. Taking place on 5 December 2024 during Christie’s Classic Week, the auction will feature 90 fine and rare prints from this outstanding private collection. Rembrandt’s etchings were an enduring passion for the late Sam Josefowitz, whose collection of the Dutch master’s graphic works remains unparalleled by any other 20th-century collector.

The dedicated auction offers a compelling insight into Rembrandt’s masterful and experimental approach to printmaking, featuring a comprehensive selection of works encompassing his entire career: from the immediacy of his early self-portraits and studies of beggars, through the innovative depiction of Biblical scenes and landscapes, to his late years of the highly finished portraits of patrons and friends, studies of nudes, and one extremely rare erotic print. The collection includes several important masterpieces and many fine sheets whose historic provenance, in some cases, can be traced back to the 17th-century.

Tim Schmelcher, International Specialist, Prints and Multiples, Christie’s London: “We are delighted to present The Sam Josefowitz Collection: Graphic Masterpieces by Rembrandt van Rijn – Part II, following the remarkable success of last year’s sale. This collection stands as the finest private ensemble of Rembrandt’s graphic works, and its depth is truly unparalleled. Sam Josefowitz’s passion for Rembrandt’s prints was a lifelong pursuit, driven by the artist’s inventive techniques and profound humanity. This auction offers a rare opportunity to acquire some of Rembrandt’s most significant and elusive works, including masterpieces like The Three Crosses and the extremely rare The Monk in the Cornfield. These prints not only showcase Rembrandt’s technical brilliance but also his ability to evoke deep emotion and timeless narratives in the smallest of details. We are privileged to continue sharing Sam Josefowitz’s extraordinary vision with collectors around the world.”

Christ crucified between the two Thieves: 'The Three Crosses'  (1653) - this is Rembrandt’s most ambitious and demanding print, a tour de force of draftmanship and printmaking. The artist presents the narrative of the Passion of Christ at the decisive moment, scratching the dramatic scene directly into the copper plate. The impression, previously in the collection of Felix Somary, a renowned collector of prints by Rembrandt and Dürer, is a magnificent example of the fourth state: Rembrandt reworked the plate drastically from the previous state, depicting now a different scene of the narrative, the very instance in which Christ cries out, the moment of greatest drama, despair and chaos. The turmoil of light and darkness and the dramatic tones of the scene are rendered with the heavy vertical shading, with the drypoint a richly black, coal-like burr particularly pronounced and impressive in the Josefowitz impression.

Woman at the Bath with a Hat beside her  (1658) - of the ten prints Rembrandt created between 1658 and 1661, six depict nude or partially clothed women, a result of live drawing sessions likely attended by the artist. One of the most intimate examples is Woman at the Bath with a Hat beside her, where the black hat on the bench subtly hints at a male presence. The nude woman is seated frontally to the artist and the viewpoint is close to the spectator. The beauty of this etching lies not only in the figure’s pose but also in its open composition, the delicately worked plate, and the smooth Japan paper, which enhances the texture of her skin and the soft play of light on her body.

The Bridge at Klein Kostverloren on the Amstel ('Six's Bridge')  (1645) – one of Rembrandt’s most admired and rarest landscapes, almost opposite in style to the elaborate grandeur of his famous The Three Trees, Six’s Bridge is evidence of the artist’s ability to conjure up an image out of very little. Possibly executed (entirely or partly) en plein air, its pared-down composition and ‘unfinished’ look anticipate the approach later embraced by the French Impressionists and German Expressionists. With just a few lines, Rembrandt captures the expansive atmosphere of a bright summer’s day, while the low viewpoint, directional bridge, and perfectly placed spire between the trees create an elegant and harmonious composition.

The Monk in the Cornfield  (circa 1646) – this is one of the rarest works in Rembrandt's printed oeuvre, with only 18 known impressions, all but this one held in public collections. It has only appeared at auction once in the last thirty years. The rarity is undoubtedly due to their overtly erotic content: a copulating couple, a monk and a milkmaid, at the edge of a cornfield in summer, out of sight, as they believe, from any observers. While some impressions may have been destroyed out of moral inhibitions, The Monk in the Cornfield was never intended for a wider market, but only printed in small numbers for a close circle of friends and patrons.

Beggar seated on a Bank  (1630) - this engaging and expressive print has always been referred to as a Self-Portrait in disguise, combining two of Rembrandt’s preferred subjects of his early graphic works: himself and mendicants. The artist’s humanity and empathy towards destitute people couldn’t be more poignant: he literally put himself in their shoes and ragged clothes, a unique instance of ‘down-dressing’ in his printed oeuvre. The expression of fury in his face echoes his Self-Portrait open-mouthed, as if shouting: Bust (lot 2 in the sale). Formally, the etching stands out for its early use of light and shadow over descriptive lines, marking a new exploration of tonality in the artist’s early work.

Woman with the Arrow  (1661) - once belonging to Felix Somary, this is one of the rarest nudes in Rembrandt’s graphic oeuvre, and his penultimate print. The mysterious, evocative portrayal of a nude woman seen from behind, ambiguously holding an arrow, is the last of the six etchings of a nude or partially clothed woman the Dutch artist made between 1658 and 1661. The practice of nude drawing classes emerged in Amsterdam in the 17th century, among groups of like-minded artists and their pupils in their studios. The privacy of this setting led to a degree of naturalism in the depiction of the naked models and an informality entirely new in the history of art. The figure posing here turns her head to look at the face of a young man, partially obscured, gazing at her from the shadows, presumably one of Rembrandt's students.

Also see:

https://arthistorynewsreport.blogspot.com/2024/10/sothebys-new-york-this-november.html

 Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction on November 18 presents an extraordinary selection of works spanning the breadth of Modern art, featuring significant works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Signac and Franz Marc, alongside remarkable masterworks in sculpture by Alberto Giacometti and Leonora Carrington. 

For the first time ever, Sotheby’s ModernEvening Auction will also include a spectacular work by Tiffany Studios: The Danner Memorial Window, the most valuable work by Tiffany’s to ever be offered at auction. Leading the sale is Torse de jeune fille, an early odalisque by Henri Matisse that marks a pivotal moment in his artistic evolution. This work reflects the stylistic transformation Matisse embraced after settling in Nice in 1917, where he would remain for the rest of his life. It showcases his meticulous construction of lavish interiors, with richly patterned elements framing the figure — a hallmark of his celebrated Nice period. 

Another highlight is Pablo Picasso’s Buste de femme (1949) ($9-12 million), a poignant portrait of Françoise Gilot, held in the esteemed Neumann Family collection since it was acquired from Picasso’s main Parisian dealer in 1951. Additionally, there is a vibrant masterpiece of pointillism by Paul Signac of Antibes ($6-8 million) as well as Leonora Carrington’s most significant and ambitious sculpture La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman) from 1951 ($5-7 million), emblematic of Carrington’s potent exploration of magic, alchemy and feminine power. The sale will also feature The Danner Memorial Window by Tiffany Studios ($5-7 million), coming to sale for the first time in over 20 years. 

Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction Highlights 

Henri Matisse, Torse de jeune fille, 1921–22 Estimate: $12-18 million The motif of the female nude, particularly of the Odalisque, is one of the most celebrated and enduring themes in Henri Matisse’s work. Torse de jeune fille marks an important early example of the style Matisse developed upon moving to Nice in 1917, where he would remain for the rest of his life. Saturated with the vivid hues and brilliance of Mediterranean light, the rich patterning framing the figure is a quintessential example of the lavish interiors Matisse meticulously fashioned in the backdrops of his work from this period. Comparable works from this period are rarely seen outside of institutional collections, making Torse de jeune fille a highly coveted painting. A similar subject achieved a record for the artist at auction in 2018, when Odalisque couchée aux magnolias sold for $80.8 million. 

 Pablo Picasso, Buste de femme, 1949 Estimate: $9-12 million Painted at the height of Pablo Picasso’s relationship with his partner and fellow artist Françoise Gilot, Buste de femme is a poignant portrait of one of the key figures in his life. Gilot was 40 years Picasso’s junior, yet already an established painter, when she first met the artist in May 1943. At the time, Picasso was still entangled in a turbulent affair with the Surrealist artist Dora Maar. Yet despite the existing relationship and the tumult of wartime Paris, Gilot and Picasso soon embarked upon a decade-long romance which would profoundly influence Picasso’s artistic output. After the war, Picasso and Gilot left Paris for the south of France in the summer of 1946, eventually settling in Vallauris where they would raise their two children, Claude and Paloma. The paintings and sculptures from this period reflect a heightened sense of vitality, chromatic richness, and artistic freedom following the turbulence and desolation of the war years. This painting comes with an illustrious provenance. Never before seen at auction, Buste de femme has been held in the Neumann Family Collection since 1951, when Morton G. Neumann – Picasso’s ‘Favorite American Collector’ as he was known – acquired the work from Galerie Louise Leiris. 

Paul Signac, Antibes. La Pointe de Bacon, 1917 Estimate: $6-8 million Paul Signac’s Antibes. La Pointe de Bacon from 1917 captures the luminous essence of the Côte d’Azur. In 1913, Signac and his partner, painter Jeanne Selmersheim-Desgrange, settled in Antibes, marking the start of a prolonged wartime residence on the northern Riviera following his departure from his villa in Saint-Tropez. Antibes. La Pointe de Bacon exemplifies the chromatic richness and compositional harmony which characterize this intense period of artistic growth. For Immediate Release One of fewer than 20 completed compositions from the wartime period, Antibes. La Pointe de Bacon is among the largest of this group that remains in private hands. A masterpiece of Signac’s rarefied wartime oeuvre, this work is being offered at auction for the very first time, having remained in the same family collection for several decades. 

Leonora Carrington, Temple of the Word, 1954 Estimate: $3-5 million Leonora Carrington’s Temple of the Word (1954) is the most celebrated work by the artist from the 1950s to appear at auction in more than a decade. Temple of the Word is dense with imagery drawn from Mayan cosmology, Irish folklore, alchemy, and medieval scientific texts. Carrington weaves these influences into an otherworldly scene, set against a stormy, mountainous backdrop that echoes the esoteric settings of works by her close friend Remedios Varo. Testament to its importance, the painting was chosen to illustrate the cover of Whitney Chadwick's seminal 1994 monograph on Carrington. The work last appeared at auction in 1993, where it set a record for the artist at that time. 

Tiffany Studios, The Danner Memorial Window, executed in 1913 Estimate: $5-7 million This glass masterpiece – created at the height of the artistic careers of Louis Comfort Tiffany and designer Agnes Northrop – comes from the esteemed collection of Alan Gerry, a long-term connoisseur of American art. The composition of the Danner Memorial Window immerses the viewer in an idyllic landscape, featuring flourishing fruit-laden trees on the banks of a winding, flowing river set against a sunset sky. The scene is further enriched by a field of brilliant red poppies dappled with the last rays of sun. The painterly effects of the window's glass selection rival the supreme works of Impressionist masters, capturing the true essence of light as seen in nature. The window was designed by Agnes Northrop, who quickly established herself in the 1880s as one of Tiffany’s most trusted artists and leading window designers in a male-dominated field.  It is among the most accomplished For Immediate Release examples of Tiffany Studios’ major window commissions and represents the most valuable work by Tiffany Studios ever offered at auction, achieving $2 million when it debuted at auction in 2000, a world auction record for a Tiffany window at the time. 

Mark Rothko: No. 6, 1947 Estimate: $3-5 Million Rothko’s No. 6 (1947) is one of several works offered from the collection of American sculptor and painter Herbert Ferber. It is a powerful example of Rothko’s early Multiforms created during the year he met Ferber. This painting was gifted to Ferber that same year, marking the beginning of a close and intellectually rich friendship between the two artists. No. 6 stands as a testament to their shared exploration of abstraction and philosophy, with Rothko’s expressive layers of color resonating with Ferber’s own abstract pursuits. As one of Rothko’s early forays into his signature style, this painting is an iconic piece that captures the artist’s transition to the large color fields for which he would become renowned. 

The most significant sculpture ever created by Leonora Carrington will be offered at Sotheby’s this November during the Modern Evening Sale. Steeped in the artist’s rich visual language, La Grande Dame (The Cat Woman) is an ambitious and imposing work capturing the essence of Carrington’s creative exploration in the 1950s, touching on themes of feminine power, mythology, and spiritual symbolism. Appearing at auction for the first time in almost 30 years, it is one of the most valuable works by Carrington to come to auction. 

Born from a collaboration with the artist’s friend José Horna, the larger-than-life sculpture is adorned with bright, narrative vignettes painted by Carrington in her rich surrealist style, echoing both ancient and modern traditions. From her butterfly-like face and placid expression to her balletic arms and long, elegant fingers, La Grande Dame’s form includes a rich tapestry of cultural references, including ancient folklore and witchcraft, and evokes the Modern sculptors of the European avant-garde, through its gleaming finish, geometric forms, and masterful use of negative space. 

In recent years, Carrington’s work, like that of many women artists of her generation, is finally experiencing market growth to levels that parallel her male peers, with Les Distractions de Dagobert, achieving $28.5 million at Sotheby’s in May. This marked a significant increase from her previous auction record of $3.3 million, set only two years earlier, establishing a new benchmark for the artist and affirming Carrington as the most valuable UKborn female artist, as well as one of the highest-selling Surrealist artists in history.

Sculpting Surrealism 

Leonora Carrington’s distinct surrealist style was first formed during her earliest experiences discovering the movement at the first International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936 – where she found kindred artistic spirits in Salvador Dalí, André Breton, Man Rayand Max Ernst, who like her were fascinated by dreams, the subconscious and the occult. When she settled in Mexico City in 1942, she found a vibrant artistic community of both international artists fleeing World War II, and of Mexican modern artists, from Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera and critically, profound friendships with Remedios Varo and Surrealist photographer Kati Horna.. 

By 1951, Leonora Carrington was immersed in a period of furious productivity and occult studies alongside Varo and Horna, crystallizing her mature style as a painter and producing some of the most rich, inventive work of her career across a range of media. 

In La Grande Dame Carrington masterfully weaves together iconographies of the divine feminine from across the globe; her kaleidoscopic references touch on cultures ranging from the ancient Egyptians and Celts to modern Mexico. She makes reference to Bastet, ancient Egyptian goddess of protection, pleasure, and the bringer of good health, who is often depicted as a cat – echoing the grandeur of Ancient Egyptian statues with its imposing size, geometric stylization, and vivid symbolism. Below the goddess are two bound figures allude to the history of witchcraft, peacefully situated in a lush grove with flowers and animals emerging from their chests, symbolizing rebirth. Surrounding them, creatures from Irish and Mexican lore – foxes, skunks, rabbits, and birds – represent spirits traversing between realms. 

La Grande Dame was long held in the collection of storied Surrealist patron Edward James; in years since, it has been widely exhibited across the globe, featuring prominently in exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery and Tate Modern in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice among many others. Its prominence follows a resurgence of interest in the long-overlooked women artists associated with the Surrealist movement. 

La Grande Dame stands as a manifestation of this golden period of creativity for Carrington, created in close collaboration with José Horna – a gifted woodworker and husband of Kati Horna; the work brings the artist’s otherworldly visions to life, in human scale. Adorned with lush narrative imagery throughout, the most vibrant scenes play cross the figure’s chest, where a woman with a goose-like head delicately holds an egg, which she offers to a smaller figure below. This image is echoed on La Grande Dame’s back – where, bathed in soft lavender, a wolf-like goddess cradles a dandelion spirit. The egg floats between them. A recurring, hopeful image for Carrington, the egg can embody the feminine power to create life – and, crucially, potential for rebirth and renewal. 

Leonora Carrington 

Born in 1917 to an upper-class Catholic family in rural Northwestern England, Leonora Carrington’s upbringing was shaped by strict social expectations and the magical folklore – first introduced to her by her Irish grandmother and nanny. After a rebellious youth and several school expulsions, Carrington began studying painting with Amédée Ozenfant in London in 1936. That same year, she met Max Ernst at a dinner party, igniting a romance that led her to Paris, where she joined the Surrealist circle. Known for her sharp wit and dedication to painting, Carrington quickly made her mark with vivid, gem-like works populated by fantastical creatures, culminating in her participation in the Exposition International du Surréalisme at the Galerie Beaux-Arts in 1938. By 1941, after a traumatic separation from Ernst and a period of confinement in a Spanish psychiatric institution, she married Mexican diplomat Renato Le Duc, who eventually brought her to Mexico City – her lifelong adopted home. 

In Mexico City, Carrington found a thriving art scene that combined local traditions with international influences. The city’s avant-garde was dominated by two groups: the celebrated muralists, who helped shape a post-revolutionary national identity, and artists like Rufino Tamayo, Frida Kahlo, and Maria Izquierdo, who explored fantasy and folklore. Numerous European artists and intellectuals, including some from Carrington’s Parisian circle, sought refuge in Mexico during the 1940s, joining a creative milieu that embraced her vision. Unlike New York galleries, which often sidelined surrealist women, Mexico’s leading gallerist, Inés Amor, championed artists like Carrington. In Mexico, she grew close to Remedios Varo, Kati Horna, and Gunther Gerzso, sharing in Surrealist games and creative pursuits. 

In her later decades, Leonora Carrington continued to delve into mystical and surreal realms, exploring themes of feminine power, mythology, and transformation that had defined her earlier career but with an even deeper resonance. She immersed herself in the burgeoning feminist movement in Mexico, and her work evolved to reflect her engagement with political, social, and ecological concerns. Even as her health declined, Carrington’s creative output remained dynamic, and with her final works and words, left an enduring legacy as a luminary of Surrealism and a powerful advocate for imagination’s role in reshaping reality

 Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona

25 October 2024 to 9 February 2025

• Rémi Labrusse
• One word, plus a photograph
• What is a painter?
• Miró discovers Matisse
• The power of things
• Two nudes
• Fauvism, only more brutal (Matisse’s lesson)
• ‘Allowing my hand to guide me’
• Figure, disfigure
• Starting over with painting (Miró's lesson)
• Go-betweens: a man's world? Decoration, assassination
• Another photograph
• Bibliography of works cited
• Véronique Dupas
• Comparative chronology 
  

The Now and Contemporary Evening Auction on 20 November features a selection of iconic works that have both reflected and defined American cultural life over recent decades. Highlights range from Willem de Kooning’s striking Untitled XXV (est. $9-12 million) to Lichtenstein’s Pop Art portrayal of the Oval Office (est. $1-1.5m), to a group of iconic Keith Haring subway drawings (estimates range from $40,000 - 700,000, on offer in the Contemporary Day Auction), to Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian (est. $1-1.5m), a banana fastened with duct tape to a wall that shocked the crowds in its debut at Art Basel Miami Beach and instantly went viral.

14. Willem de Kooning

Untitled XXV

Estimate:

9,000,000 - 12,000,000 USD

15. Ed Ruscha

The Wrap-up

Estimate:

4,000,000 - 6,000,000 USD

16. Roy Lichtenstein

Nude with Bust (Study)

Estimate:

3,000,000 - 5,000,000 USD

17. Roy Lichtenstein

Nude with Pyramid (Study)

Estimate:

1,000,000 - 1,500,000 USD

18. Roy Lichtenstein

Sleeping Muse

Estimate:

2,000,000 - 3,000,000 USD

19. Roy Lichtenstein

Still Life with Picasso (Study)

Estimate:

800,000 - 1,200,000 USD

20. Roy Lichtenstein

Oval Office (Study)

Estimate:

1,000,000 - 1,500,000 USD

22. Yayoi Kusama

Starry Pumpkin

Estimate:

2,000,000 - 3,000,000 USD

23. Ed Ruscha

Georges' Flag

Estimate:

8,000,000 - 12,000,000 USD

24. Christopher Wool

Untitled

Estimate:

2,000,000 - 3,000,000 USD

26. Agnes Martin

Untitled #12

Estimate:

2,000,000 - 3,000,000 USD

27. Gerhard Richter

Berg

Estimate:

4,000,000 - 6,000,000 USD

29. Jasper Johns

Evian

Estimate:

6,000,000 - 8,000,000 USD

30. Cy Twombly

Untitled

Estimate:

2,500,000 - 3,500,000 USD

32. Cy Twombly

Untitled (Snafu)

Estimate:

1,500,000 - 2,000,000 USD

33. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Red Kings

Estimate:

6,000,000 - 8,000,000 USD

34. Jasper Johns

Figure 8

Estimate:

3,000,000 - 4,000,000 USD

35. Yayoi Kusama

Mushroom

Estimate:

4,000,000 - 6,000,000 USD

36. Richard Prince

Slingerlands

Estimate:

1,000,000 - 1,500,000 USD

37. Jean-Michel Basquiat

Untitled

Estimate:

1,800,000 - 2,500,000 USD

39. Kenneth Noland

Golden Day

Estimate:

1,200,000 - 1,800,000 USD

41. Alex Colville

Dog and Priest

Estimate:

1,000,000 - 1,500,000 USD

42. Fernando Botero

Horse

Estimate:

3,000,000 - 5,000,000 USD

43. Richard Diebenkorn

Ocean Park #102

Estimate:

3,000,000 - 5,000,000 USD

44. Ad Reinhardt

Abstract Painting No. 23

Estimate:

1,500,000 - 2,000,000 USD

45. Cy Twombly

Untitled

Estimate:

2,000,000 - 3,000,000 USD

Cleveland Museum of Art

 December 8, 2024, through March 23, 2025

Pablo Picasso’s tireless experimentation with and on paper is the subject of the groundbreaking exhibition Picasso and Paper, organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) and the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in partnership with the Musée national Picasso-Paris. Showcasing nearly 300 works spanning his 80-year career, Picasso and Paper explores the artist’s diverse use of paper, a medium he used to challenge and transform the way we see art.

Picasso and Paper: virtual exhibition tour

Originally scheduled to appear at the CMA in September 2020, this highly anticipated exhibition has been reconstituted with an exciting selection of additional works. Picasso and Paper will begin welcoming the public on December 8, 2024, through March 23, 2025, in the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall and Gallery.

Women at Their Toilette, Paris, winter 1937–38.  Cut wallpapers with gouache on paper pasted onto canvas; 299 x 448 cm. Musée national Picasso-Paris, Pablo Picasso Gift in Lieu, 1979. MP176. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Adrien Didierjean. © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The exhibition’s highlights include Women at their Toilette (1937–38), an extraordinarily large collage (9 13/16 x 14 1/2 feet) of cut-and-pasted papers, exhibited for the first time in the United States; rarely seen Cubist collages; the artist’s private sketchbooks, including studies for his best-known paintings, including Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; constructed paper guitars from the Cubist and Surrealist periods; prints that offer an intimate view of Picasso’s complex working process; and an array of works related to the artist’s most celebrated paintings and sculptural projects.

“The CMA is excited to finally bring Picasso and Paper to Cleveland, its only venue in North America,” said Britany Salsbury, curator of prints and drawings. “Although Picasso’s name might most immediately bring to mind his paintings, paper was at the core of his experimentation throughout his entire life. Due to its rich chronological focus and its depth, this exhibition offers an opportunity for visitors to better understand Picasso and his contributions to art history, or for those already familiar to see him in an entirely new light.”

The exhibition presents these works on paper chronologically alongside a selection of closely related paintings and sculptures. 

The CMA’s La Vie (1903), from Picasso’s Blue Period, will be featured with preparatory drawings and other works on paper exploring corresponding themes. 

Head of a Woman (Fernande)

Pablo Picasso Spanish

Clay original: Paris, autumn 1909; Plaster model: Paris, late 1910; Bronze cast: Foundry Désiré or Florentin Godard, Paris, made to order for Ambroise Vollard between July 27, 1926, and March 11, 1927

In the Cubist section, Picasso’s 1909 bronze Head of a Woman (Fernande) (Musée national Picasso-Paris) will be surrounded by a large group of related drawings. Seen together, these groupings highlight the connections that Picasso saw between media, his fascination with the materials that he worked with, and the integral role that paper played throughout his artistic practice. 

“Paper offered Picasso an intimate space in which he could not only respond to events in his personal life and in the world around him, but also carry out radical formal experimentation,” said Salsbury. “Picasso and Paper traces some of the most significant shifts in modern art through his artistic practice with rarely seen artworks from the most internationally significant holdings of his work.”

Exhibition Catalogue

Picasso and Paper is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the Royal Academy of Arts. 

How Picasso’s genius seized the potential of paper throughout his career

Picasso’s artistic output is astonishing in its ambition and variety. Picasso and Paper examines a particular aspect of his legendary capacity for invention: his imaginative and original use of paper. He used it as a support for autonomous works, including etchings, prints and drawings, as well as for his papier-collé experiments of the 1910s and his revolutionary three-dimensional “constructions,” made of cardboard, paper and string.

Sometimes his use of paper was simply determined by circumstance: in occupied Paris, where art supplies were in short supply, he ripped up paper tablecloths to make works of art. And of course his works on paper comprise the preparatory stages of some of his very greatest paintings.

With reproductions of nearly 400 works of art and a series of insightful new texts by leading authorities on the artist, this sumptuous study reveals the myriad ways in which Picasso explored the potential of paper at different stages of his career. Picasso and Paper is published for an exhibition organized by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and the Cleveland Museum of Art in partnership with the Musée national Picasso-Paris.

The legendary life and career of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) spanned nearly the entire 20th century and ushered in some of its most significant artistic revolutions.

The book features essays by distinguished Picasso scholars and leading authorities in various aspects of technical art history, including William H. Robinson, formerly of the Cleveland Museum of Art; Ann Dumas of the Royal Academy of Arts; Emilia Philippot of the Musée national Picasso-Paris; and Claustre Rafart Planas of the Museu Picasso, Barcelona. Specific aspects of Picasso’s engagement with paper are addressed by Christopher Lloyd, an expert on Picasso’s drawings; Stephen Coppel, curator of prints and drawings at the British Museum; Violette Andres, photography curator at the Musée national Picasso- Paris; Johan Popelard of the University of Paris; and Emmanuelle Hincelin, a paper conservator with scientific expertise in the types of paper Picasso used at key moments in his career.

Neue Galerie

Oct 17, 2024 — Jan 13, 2025

 “Egon Schiele: Living Landscapes” investigates the importance of landscape in the Austrian artist’s work. Plants, natural environments, and townscapes determine the spaces Egon Schiele created in his paintings, and they also reflect the rich symbolism he employed that is centered around the human condition. In particular, plants are often endowed with an allegorical meaning. Flowers and trees assume the role of portrait subjects and convey an almost human appearance. Schiele’s landscapes always represent more than their apparent subject matter. His portrayal of nature and his rendering of towns and trees epitomize the life cycle and the human condition.

Schiele is arguably best known for his portraits, but he was also a gifted landscape painter. Even while a child, Schiele was a keen recorder of nature. As an adult, the Expressionist artist frequently sought escape from the pressures of life in Vienna, and found relief in rural surroundings. Beginning in the summer of 1910, Schiele made several trips to Krumau (today Český Krumlov, Czech Republic), his mother’s birthplace in Bohemia on the Moldau River (now Vltava River). Schiele gravitated toward highpoints on the outskirts of town where he could look down and have a bird’s-eye-view of the city and its inhabitants.

Egon Schiele
(1890-1918)
Town among the Greenery (The Old City III), 1917
Oil on canvas
Neue Galerie New York
In memory of Otto and Marguerite Manley, given as a bequest from the Estate of Marguerite Manley

His rapturous painting, Town among Greenery (The Old City III), one of the masterworks presented in the exhibition, is depicted from such a vantage point. While the exact location of this scene is unclear, it most likely represents an imaginative and composite creation based upon Schiele’s study of Krumau and its environs. Here, the city is sandwiched between dense and verdant clusters of trees. Uncharacteristically, Schiele has even populated the vibrantly hued streets with figures immersed in the details of daily life. Krumau, a picturesque medieval town with distinctive interlocking buildings and historic structures captivated him. He also collected postcards of Krumau, which became a part of his creative process.

On occasion, Schiele shifted his lens from a macro to a micro view, and focused his attention on singular plants and trees. Sunflowers were among his favorite motifs. He painted them in all stages of life — in full bloom to brown and withering. It is easy to imagine that his intention was to imbue these flowers with anthropomorphic characteristics. Schiele may well have been inspired by the example of Vincent van Gogh, whose work was shown in Vienna during Schiele’s lifetime, including in both 1906 and 1909.

Schiele also found resonance in emotive portraits of trees. Such pictures capture the desolate quality of late autumn, especially his series of spindly and seemingly lifeless trees. Schiele offered his personal impression of this shift between seasons: “I often cried with half-opened eyes when autumn came.” Such words are even more poignant given that Schiele died on October 31, 1918, just days after his pregnant wife Edith passed away herself. They were both victims of the influenza pandemic.

 Egon Schiele, Yellow Town (detail), 1914, oil on canvas. YAGEO Foundation Collection, Taiwan

Schiele’s landscapes are imbued with an existential message about the human condition. The hope and promise of spring and summer give way to decay and death before the cycle renews again. Hence, these luminous paintings are emblematic of life itself and carry universal implications.

“Egon Schiele: Living Landscapes” is organized by Neue Galerie New York. This exhibition is curated by Dr. Christian Bauer, Curator at the Egon Schiele Museum Tulln, and formerly the founding director of the State Gallery of Lower Austria in Krems. A specialist on Egon Schiele, Bauer has written numerous essays on the artist and edited books on him as well, including Egon Schiele: The Beginning (2013) and Egon Schiele: Almost a Lifetime (2015). William Loccisano is the designer of the exhibition and catalogue

Exhibition Catalogue

A fully illustrated catalogue, published by Neue Galerie New York and Prestel, accompanies the exhibition. The contributing authors are internationally distinguished experts on Schiele’s landscapes and representatives of museums and universities in Europe and the United States. 

Edited by Christian Bauer

This book highlights the intimate relationship between landscape and portraiture in the work of the Austrian Expressionist artist Egon Schiele (1890-1918).

Plants, natural environments, and townscapes determine the spaces Egon Schiele created in his paintings, and they also reflect the rich symbolism he employed that is centered around the human condition. In particular, plants are often endowed with an allegorical meaning. Flowers and trees assume the role of portrait subjects and convey an almost human appearance. Schiele’s landscapes always represent more than their apparent subject matter. His portrayal of nature and his rendering of towns and trees epitomize the life cycle and the human condition.

This catalogue, accompanying a spectacular exhibition on view at the Neue Galerie New York, will investigate the importance of landscape in the artist’s work. The contributing authors are internationally distinguished experts on Schiele’s landscapes and representatives of museums and universities in Europe and the United States.

Hardcover
220 pages
Prestel, 2024
9.25 x 11.25 inches
ISBN 9783791377483
Egon Schiele, Neue Galerie Exhibition Catalogue

The King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace 

Through 9 March., 2025

Drawing the Italian Renaissance brings together around 160 drawings by artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, as well as lesser-known names, to demonstrate how drawing flourished between 1450 and 1600. Over 30 works are on display for the first time, and a further 12 have never been shown in the UK.

Star works by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo highlight the variety of works on display, from functional design sheets to highly finished drawings. A busy sheet by Leonardo shows the artist in the early stages of laying out a new composition of the Virgin and Child (c.1478–80). The drawing is dominated by a sketch of the Virgin Mary, her head drawn in two possible positions, with the infant Christ and John the Baptist on her knees. Scattered around this are a multitude of other heads – a young child, an old man, lions and even a dragon – as the artist made the most of the large sheet of paper to capture his stream of ideas. 

Leonardo’s study The drapery of a kneeling figure (c.1491–94) for the painting The Virgin of the Rocks, now in The National Gallery, is more worked up, but still we get the sense of the artist hard at work in the studio with ink all over his fingers, through a partial fingerprint left in the bottom corner. 

In contrast, Michelangelo’s A children's bacchanal (1533), a bizarre scene created as a gift for a Roman nobleman with whom he had fallen in love, is a meticulous and remarkably accomplished drawing, with each figure built up using tiny strokes of red chalk. The drawing is in perfect condition, allowing us to see every touch of the artist’s hand.

The exhibition also shines a light on lesser-known artists who produced some of the finest drawings of the period. A striking example is a dynamic study of a young man from c.1580–85, newly reattributed to Pietro Faccini, and last exhibited in Rome over 50 years ago. The strong jaw, fleshy lips, and pared-back use of oiled charcoal are all typical of the Bolognese artist, who fell into obscurity due to a lack of surviving paintings.

Reflecting the continued importance of drawing for artists and creatives today, The King’s Gallery’s will host its first Artists in Residence programme for this exhibition, organised in partnership with the Royal Drawing School. The artists Jesse Ajilore, Joshua Pell and Sara Lee Roberts – whose work ranges from computer game design to urban landscapes – will be drawing in the gallery on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays throughout the exhibition’s run, bringing a fresh perspective to the Renaissance masterpieces on display. Visitors to the exhibition will also be encouraged to try their hand at drawing, with paper and pencils available in the gallery, and will hear from one of the artists, Jesse Ajilore, on the complimentary multimedia guide.

Available now in Royal Collection Trust shops is a brand-new workbook specially designed to accompany the exhibition. Be Inspired: To Draw Like a Renaissance Master features an introductory essay by curator Martin Clayton and drawing exercises that encourage users to sketch along with the masters of the Italian Renaissance. 

IMAGES

Raphael, The Three Graces, c.1517–18 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust



Attributed to Pietro Faccini, The head of a youth ,c.1590 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with infant Baptist, and heads in profile, c.1478–8  © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

Michelangelo Buonarroti, A children's bacchanal,153 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

Annibale Carracci, A landscape with a lobster, c.1590 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

Ludovico Carracci, A seated male nude, c.1590 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

Bernardino Campi, The Virgin and Child, c.1570–80 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

Federico Barocci,The head of a Virgin, c.1582 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

Attributed to Marco Marchetti da Faenza,A design for a candelabrum, c.1560–80 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

Paolo Veronese,A prophet or philosopher, c.1557 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust



Michelangelo Buonarroti,The Virgin and Child with the young Baptist, c.1532 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

Attributed to Titian (c.1488–1576)

• Attributed to Fra Angelico (c. 1400-1455)

  Recto: The bust of a cleric. Verso: A group of figures c.1447-50 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

• Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 - 1564)

  The Virgin and Child with the young St John c.1532 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

• Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

  A costume study for a masque c.1517-18 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

• Parmigianino (Parma 1503-Casalmaggiore 1540)

  Studies of dogs c.1522-23 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

• Bartolomeo Passarotti (1529-92)

  St Jerome  c. 1580 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

• Alessandro Allori (Florence 1535-Florence 1607)

  Fortitude, Prudence and Vigilance c.1578 © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

 On 25 January 1504, Florence’s most prominent artists gathered to advise on an appropriate location for Michelangelo’s nearly finished David. Among them was Leonardo, who – like Michelangelo – had only recently returned to his native Florence. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504 explores the rivalry between Michelangelo and Leonardo, and the influence both had on the young Raphael. The exhibition presents over 40 works, including Michelangelo’s Taddei Tondo, Leonardo’s Burlington House Cartoon and Raphael’s Bridgewater Madonna, as well as some of the finest drawings from the Italian Renaissance. 

Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John (The 'Taddei Tondo'), c. 1504-05. Marble, 106.8 x 106.8 cm. Royal Academy of Arts, London. Bequeathed by Sir George Beaumont, 1830. Photo: Royal Academy of Arts, London, Photographer: Prudence Cuming Associates Limited

The exhibition opens with Michelangelo’s only marble sculpture in the UK, his celebrated Taddei Tondo, c. 1504-05 (Royal Academy of Arts, London), which is shown together with its related preparatory drawings. The Taddei Tondo was created in a defining moment of the Italian Renaissance: the febrile atmosphere of Republican Florence, when Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael briefly crossed paths, competing for the attention of Florence’s most influential patrons. The relief left an indelible impact on Raphael, as can be seen most notably in 

the Bridgewater Madonna, c. 1507-08 (Bridgewater Collection Loan, National Galleries of Scotland), 

Raphael, The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist ('The Esterhazy Madonna'), c. 1508. Tempera and oil on panel, 28.5 x 21.5 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

and the Esterházy Madonna, c. 1508 (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest), both of which are displayed nearby. 

Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St Anne and the Infant St John the Baptist (‘The Burlington House Cartoon’), c.1506-08. Charcoal with white chalk on paper, mounted on canvas, 141.5 x 104.6 cm. The National Gallery, London. Purchased with a special grant and contributions from the Art Fund, The Pilgrim Trust, and through a public appeal organised by the Art Fund, 1962.

The central gallery is devoted to Leonardo’s Burlington House Cartoon, c. 1506-08 (The National Gallery, London), which returns to the Royal Academy for the first time in over 60 years. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue present new research regarding the original context of the cartoon. 

The exhibition culminates with drawings showcasing the mythic encounter between Leonardo and Michelangelo. In 1503, the Government of Florence had commissioned Leonardo to paint a monumental mural, the Battle of Anghiari, in its newly constructed council hall. In late August or early September 1504, around the time Michelangelo’s David was installed on the ringhiera in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, Michelangelo was asked to paint the accompanying Battle of Cascina. Neither project was ever completed, but the exhibition brings together Leonardo and Michelangelo’s much-admired preparatory drawings from various collections across Europe, including an important group lent by His Majesty The King from the Royal Collection, providing a fascinating insight into the approach of both artists as they developed their compositions.  

(Also see ​​​​​​​https://arthistorynewsreport.blogspot.com/2024/11/drawing-italian-renaissance.html

The exhibition concludes with a drawing by Raphael, c. 1505-06 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), in which he painstakingly copies the central scene of Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari.  See a similar one (or an incorrect reference?): 

Gérard Edelinck (1640 - 1707) (printmaker)
after Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577 - 1640) (designer)
after Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) (artist)
© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

https://www.ashmolean.org/collections-online#/item/ash-object-843613

Organisation 

Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in partnership with Royal Collection Trust and the National Gallery, London. 

The exhibition is curated by Scott Nethersole, Professor for History of Art and Architecture at Radboud University, and Per Rumberg, the Jacob Rothschild Head of the Curatorial Department at the National Gallery, with Julien Domercq, Curator at the Royal Academy, and Natasha Fyffe, Genesis Future Curator at the Royal Academy. 

Catalogue 

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with texts by Scott Nethersole and Per Rumberg. In this beautifully designed book, Scott Nethersole and Per Rumberg take Michelangelo’s celebrated Taddei Tondo as their starting point, and examine the rivalry between Michelangelo and Leonardo, and the influence of both on the young Raphael. Some of the finest examples of Italian Renaissance drawing are reproduced, including Leonardo’s Burlington House Cartoon and studies by Leonardo and Michelangelo for their murals commissioned by the Florentine government for the newly constructed council hall in the Palazzo della Signoria. Details Extent 160 pages Illustrations 80 images 

MORE IMAGES

Raphael, after Michelangelo Buonarroti, David, c. 1505-08. Pen and brown ink on paper, 39.6 x 21.9 cm. © The Trustees of the British Museum

Michelangelo Buonarroti, Male Nude, c. 1505-06. Black chalk on paper, 40.4 x 22.5 cm. Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Leonardo da Vinci, A Rearing Horse, c. 1503-05. Red chalk on paper, 15.3 x 14.2 cm. © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2024 | Royal Collection Trust

Bastiano da Sangallo, after Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Battle of Cascina (‘The Bathers’), c. 1542. Oil on panel, 78.8 x 132.3 cm. Holkham Hall, Norfolk, Collection of the Earl of Leicester. By kind permission of the Earl of Leicester and the Trustees of Holkham Estate

Michelangelo Buonarroti, Studies of Male Heads, Helmets for Soldiers and Facial Features, c.1504. Pen and brown ink and black chalk on paper,

20.5 x 25.3 cm. Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett. Photo: © Hamburger Kunsthalle / bpk. Photography: Christoph Irrgang

Ashley Gibson Barnett Museum of Art

October 5, 2024, through February 23, 2025

This exclusive exhibition features more than 80 paintings from private collections in the Netherlands and was developed in partnership with the Hoogsteder Museum Foundation. It marks the first time these rarely-seen works are being shown in the United States.

While many museum visitors are familiar with French and American Impressionism, the story of Dutch Impressionism is less widely known and studied less often. As embodied by The Hague School, Dutch Impressionism evolved over two generations, as artists in The Hague initially drew inspiration from the landscape painting of French artists of the Barbizon School, including Theodore Rousseau, Jean-Francois Millet, and Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, and then in turn instilled in a new set of young painters the ideals of plein-air painting back home.

By the late 19th century, The Hague School had gained international fame with its brushy, magnificent depictions of vast skies over endless flat, open country and expressively-rendered scenes of everyday life in the city and countryside. With a mix of open-air studies, studio-based paintings, and even artists' sketchbooks and etchings, the exhibition traces out the incredible story of Dutch Impressionism from its roots in Barbizon, where its most prominent artists began their artistic journeys, to the countryside of Oosterbeek, Dutch farming villages, and even the dunes of The Hague with depictions of fisherfolk along its beaches. Most prominent among the Hague School artists were Willem Roelofs, the Maris brothers (Jacob, Matthjis, and Willem), and Willem de Zwart, all of whom have dedicated chapters in the exhibition, featuring their works alongside those of more than 30 other male and female artists of the movement.

"Impressionism is a perennial hit with museum audiences, but a large-scale exhibition of Dutch Impressionist masterworks offers a new and fresh take on the story of modern art for our visitors," said Dr. H. Alexander Rich, executive director and chief curator of the Museum. "All of the works in the show usually reside in private homes, and we are thrilled to welcome The Hague School to our galleries for our audience's exclusive enjoyment."

Visitors to the Museum will discover that, in addition to developing their own variations upon impressionist styles and manners, the artists of The Hague School defined what we now see as the traditional Dutch landscape, with its windmills, outstretched cloudy skies, and cattle, which remain the characteristic image of the Netherlands today.

More info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_School

The Kimbell Art Museum  

November 10, 2024–February 9, 2025

This exhibition brings together paintings by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Gerrit Dou, Jacob van Ruisdael, Maria Schalcken, and other celebrated artists from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s renowned collection. These are joined by six Dutch paintings from the Kimbell’s collection, along with prints, maps, and stunning decorative objects in silver, porcelain, and more, from the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. Exploring how Dutch dominance in international commerce transformed life in the Netherlands and gave rise to an extraordinary cultural flourishing, the exhibition also benefits from new scholarship that contextualizes seventeenth-century Dutch art within the complexities of its historical context.  

“The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s collection of Dutch and Flemish masterpieces—and its Center for Netherlandish Art for the study and interpretation of the works—is renowned,” said Eric Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “We’re grateful to the Boston museum for its generosity in sharing this collection so that audiences can experience its treasures here in Texas.” 

The seventeenth century in the Netherlands saw unprecedented artistic production due to a Dutch economy fueled by international trade. Many consider the period to be the first age of globalization. Artists painted still lifes to showcase items procured from around the world—porcelains from Asia, spices and silks from India, and sugar and tobacco from North and South America. Lavish bouquets were painted to showcase imported flowers such as the popular tulip from Turkey. Stirring seascapes depicted ships in port and at sea, visual symbols of the maritime-based trade economy. Dutch cityscapes and landscapes were commissioned as the Netherlands became a cosmopolitan world power, reflecting civic and national pride. The extraordinary art of this period continues to be deeply admired today.

Throughout the exhibition, artworks will be presented through the lens of global exchange. The first section, titled The World at Home, opens the exhibition with ostensibly domestic items, many of which have diverse origins. Still-life paintings depict Asian porcelain, American tobacco, Indonesian shells, Turkish tulips, and more. The paintings will be juxtaposed with examples of Chinese porcelain, Dutch Delftware, and silver. 

In the second section, titled The World Beyond, grand paintings of ships at sea are complemented by maps, prints, and decorative objects that would have been collected from ports around the world. The next section, Amsterdam as a Cosmopolitan Hub, shows depictions of the capital city as it emerged as Europe’s busiest port and a center for economic and cultural expansion. Next, The World of Faith includes paintings and sacred items that demonstrate how religion and religious tolerance continued to be central to daily life in the Netherlands, even as global trade and colonialism developed. Global Citizens features painted and printed portraits that tell us who the Dutch were in the seventeenth century—a time when the Netherlands was among the most diverse regions of Europe. Through their dress, their surroundings, and their poses, we learn how the Dutch portrayed individuals from diverse socioeconomic classes, or how they viewed the proper balance between moral ideals and the pursuit and display of material wealth. 

Even as they embraced the foreign and the exotic, the Dutch discovered the beauty of their native land, and Celebrating the Familiar includes new types of naturalistic landscapes that took inspiration from the flat and watery terrain of the Netherlands. And finally, Conspicuous Consumption displays largely fictional scenes of everyday life, often showcasing a range of foreign goods that would suggest their subjects’ wealth, interests, or vanities. Decorative arts in this section include paraphernalia for the new rituals of smoking and tea drinking, vessels for storing costly imported sugar, and more.

Throughout the exhibition, in keeping with the theme of a global world, new scholarship will position these magnificent products of Dutch prosperity against its darker side—aspects of which were seldom overtly depicted in the works of art themselves. The harsh realities of poverty, child labor, the exploitative colonization of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and above all the role of the Netherlands in the transatlantic slave trade were depicted in a benign guise, if at all, but these realities fueled the economy that made the works of art possible.

ORGANIZATION AND CATALOGUE

Dutch Art in a Global Age: Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston brings together more than 125 works of art including paintings, prints, maps, books, porcelain, and metalwork. Six paintings from the Kimbell collection join artworks from the MFA Boston and its Center for Netherlandish Art. 

CATALOGUE

The exhibition is accompanied by a 224-page, full-color catalogue, conceived by Anna C. Knaap, Assistant Curator of European Paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Christopher D. M. Atkins, Van Otterloo-Weatherbie Director of the Center for Netherlandish Art. 

The catalogue includes contributions from an international roster of scholars, including Pepijn Brandon, Professor of Global Economic and Social History at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History, the Netherlands; Simona Di Nepi, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Curator of Judaica at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Stephanie S. Dickey, Professor of Art History and Bader Chair in Northern Baroque Art at Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario; Michele L. Frederick, Associate Curator of European Art and Provenance Research at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; Hanneke Grootenboer, Professor of Art History at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands; Katherine Harper, Curatorial Fellow, Prints and Drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Courtney Leigh Harris, Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Mary E. Hicks, Assistant Professor of History and the College at the University of Chicago; Rhona MacBeth, Director of Conservation and Scientific Research, Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo Conservator and Head of Paintings Conservation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Katrina Newbury, Saundra B. Lane Conservator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Christine Storti, Head of Furniture and Frame Conservation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Gerri Strickler, Objects Conservator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Claudia Swan, Mark Steinberg Weil Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Washington University in St. Louis; Jeroen van der Vliet, Head of Collections, Het Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and Benjamin Weiss, Leonard A. Lauder Senior Curator of Visual Culture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 

IMAGES

Willem Claesz Heda, "Still Life with Tobacco", 1633, oil on panel, 20 x 29 3/4 in. (50.8 x 75.6 cm). Gift of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, in support of the Center for Netherlandish Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Gerard Ter Borch, The Card Players, about 1659, 47.6 × 36.8 cm (18 3/4 × 14 1/2 in.). Promised gift of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, in support of the Center for Netherlandish Art, L-R 360.2017

April 21 – August 3, 2025 

September 22, 2025 – January 11, 2026

Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the artist’s death, Sargent and Paris will include approximately 100 works of art, from preparatory sketches to daring masterpieces, culminating in the iconic Madame X

Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 21, 2025, Sargent and Paris will explore the early career of John Singer Sargent (born 1856, Florence; died 1925, London), from his arrival in Paris in 1874 as a talented 18-year-old art student through the mid-1880s, when his infamous portrait Madame X was a scandalous success at the Paris Salon. Featuring a substantial collection of paintings, watercolors, and drawings, the exhibition will also include a select group of portraits by Sargent’s contemporaries. The exhibition is the largest international exhibition of Sargent’s work since 1998 and the first ever monographic exhibition of Sargent’s art in France. 


Sargent and Paris is organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

 “This magnificent exhibition will shed new light on a transformative period in the life and career of one of America’s most important painters,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “By situating Sargent’s work within the context of the city that formed and inspired him, Sargent and Paris will illuminate this influential artist’s meteoric rise, providing new insights into his unique talent and skill in capturing the vibrant society he inhabited.” 

Stephanie L. Herdrich, Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Painting and Drawings at The Met, said: “Sargent’s career was indelibly shaped by the time he spent in Paris. Over the course of one remarkable decade, he created the boldest and most daring paintings of his oeuvre. Sargent and Paris will showcase these visually stunning and ambitious works, shedding new light on his distinctive artistic vision. We are thrilled to partner with the Musée d’Orsay to reunite this collection of great works in New York and Paris.”

Sargent and Paris opens with the 18-year-old Sargent’s arrival in Paris in 1874 to pursue his ambition to become an artist. The precocious drawings and sketches that impressed his fellow students in the atelier will be featured along with his evocative paintings of the French capital. Across the decade that followed, Sargent was immersed in a cosmopolitan circle of artists, writers, and patrons, as he navigated a successful path through the French exhibition system, achieving acclaim and awards. This formative decade culminated with the portrait he later described as “the best thing I’ve done,” the infamous Madame X. 

Over the course of this pivotal period, Sargent achieved increasing recognition with his bold, ambitious portraits and genre scenes. The style for which he is now renowned was cultivated through in-depth study of the great art of the past and present, deftly adapted for the colorful, high-octane Parisian society in which he had become resident. As a seasoned traveler from a young age, Sargent also found subjects through excursions in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and North Africa. 

Sargent soon excelled at creating flattering, if provocative, portraits that gratified his patrons and their desire for social status. Sargent and Paris will examine the enduring fascination with society and celebrity that inspired the artist to create the now iconic Madame X. The exhibition will look in depth at the portrait, its creation, and the ensuing scandal, and for the first time ever, Sargent and Paris will reunite Madame X with its numerous preparatory drawings and paintings. A nearby gallery will display portraits of Parisiennes by the artists who inspired Sargent and with whom he competed for commissions and recognition, including his teachers Carolus-Duran and Léon Bonnat and artistic role models such as Édouard Manet. 

The exhibition will present a nuanced understanding of the painting at the heart of a scandal that is as infamous now as it was in 1884 along with an appreciation for the originality and brilliance of Sargent’s art, underpinning the more sensational aspects of artistic society in 1880s Paris. 

Credits and Related Content

Sargent and Paris is curated by Stephanie L. Herdrich, Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Painting and Drawing, with the help of Caroline Elenowitz-Hess, Research Assistant, both at The Met; and Caroline Corbeau-Parsons, Curator of Drawings and Paintings, and Paul Perrin, Head of Curatorial and Director of Collections, at the Musée d’Orsay. 

Fully illustrated catalogues in English and French, with contributions from the exhibition’s curators and other leading scholars, will accompany the exhibition: A fascinating look at John Singer Sargent’s formative years as a young painter in Paris, a city that helped forge his artistic identity and sparked his rise to the pinnacle of the nineteenth-century art world

 Sorry for all the typos - source is Sotheby's preess Spanning Renaissance Italy, the Great Painters of the Baroque, Through to 18th-Century Aristocratic England and Leading 19th-Century Names:

•  A Magnificent “Spanish Pointer” by George Stubbs *The Earliest of All of His Depictions of Dogs* 
• Returning to Sotheby’s After Half a Century Rediscovered Paintings by Botticelli, Artemisia Gentileschi & Rubens 
• A Unique Painting Reworked & Repainted by Gustav Klimt After His Artist Brother’s Untimely Death 

Artemisia GenHleschi, Mary Magdalen in medita.on (esHmate: £2,000,000 – 3,000,000) An incisive storyteller, Artemisia Gen2leschi is known for her powerful depic2ons of women from history, and indeed her images of biblical heroines are among her most compelling crea2ons. Throughout her career she was drawn to paint Mary Magdalen, whose life of sin and repentance offered rich narra2ve poten2al. Never-before-seen at auc2on, this newly-iden2fied 1620s work depicts the Magdalen in a rugged coastal seGng that evokes the wilderness where she lived in solitude – referencing the saint’s sea voyage to the southern coast of France, where, according to legend, she sought refuge. With starkly contras2ng areas of light and dark and showing a bold approach to the arrangement of its female subject, the pain2ng blurs the boundaries between the sacred and the profane. 

The auc2on also offers a recently rediscovered early work by her father, Orazio GenHleschi, The Holy Family with the young Saint John the Bap.st (esHmate: £300,000 – 400,000). It had remained unknown un2l its reappearance in 2023, when it was recognised as an important addi2on to the small body of the ar2st’s work on copper. 

Sandro BoTcelli, The Virgin and Child enthroned (esHmate: £2,000,000 – 3,000,000) Acquired by Lady Wantage in 1904, this Floren2ne Renaissance pain2ng of the Virgin and Child by the young BoGcelli has remained in the same family collec2on for over a century. LiWle studied and largely known only from black and white photographs, the pain2ng was lost from view, its loca2on often listed incorrectly, and largely overlooked in more recent monographs and exhibi2ons. The composi2on of the work bears strong similari2es to BoGcelli’s Sant’Ambrogio altarpiece of circa 1470, which is now in the Uffizi – considered not only the ar2st’s first large-scale pain2ng but also one of his first altarpieces. Carried out on a smaller scale, this pain2ng was likely intended for a patron seeking an in2mate altarpiece for private devo2on. In the early 19th century, it was housed in the Convent of San Giuliano in Florence, and from there it went to a small chapel aWached to a group of farmhouses in a village near Florence, where it was venerated at a convalescent home for the sick. It then passed into the family of Giovanni Magherini Graziani. The pain2ng was sold by the celebrated Italian dealer, Elia Volpi, to Harriet Sarah Jones Loyd, Lady Wantage in May 1904 – and has been in her family since

 George Stubbs, The Spanish Pointer (esHmate: £1,500,000 – 2,000,000) This seminal pain2ng is the earliest and one of the most recognisable of all Stubbs’ depic2ons of dogs. Painted circa 1766-68, at the height of the ar2st’s career, it dates to the decade when Stubbs produced many of the pain2ngs for which he is most famous, including 

the National Gallery’s beloved Whistlejacket. The Spanish Pointer has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted and has only rarely appeared at auc2on. It is one of two versions of the subject by the ar2st – virtually iden2cal except for minor differences in the detail of the landscapes (the other is in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich, having passed into the collec2on of the Elector of Bavaria). This version was purchased from the ar2st, or perhaps commissioned, by the publisher, Thomas Bradford and served as the basis for the famous print, engraved by William WoolleW, published in 1768. Highly prized by sportsmen for their ability to locate and indicate the presence of game, par2cularly the partridge, pointers were first imported to England from the Con2nent at the beginning of the eighteenth-century. Stubbs faithfully captures the physiognomy of this now ex2nct ancestor of the breed which, through selec2ve crossing with na2ve types of dogs, would gradually evolve into the lighter, more broken coated pointer known today. It first appeared at auc2on in London in 1802, when it sold for £11. Not seen on the market for over half a century, its last appearance at sale was at Sotheby’s in 1972. 

Gustav Klimt and Ernst Klimt, Hanswurst Delivering an Impromptu Performance in Rothenburg (esHmate: £300,000 – 500,000) An itera2on of Ernst Klimt’s, monumental decora2ve panel made for and adorning the grand staircase of the Burgtheater in Vienna, this easel version was started in 1892. In December of that year, Ernst – a talented and ambi2ous ar2st two years Gustav Klimt’s junior – died unexpectedly aged twenty-nine. This large-scale and highly detailed pain2ng was completed by his grief-stricken brother (the Klimt family had also lost their father in July). During this 2me of emo2onal upheaval Gustav produced fewer works and this example is therefore a rare pain2ng executed at the height of his successful Ringstrasse period. In the finished oil, some of the faces in the original ceiling composi2on have been replaced with new portraits of family members, including Klimt’s mother, sisters and his surviving brother Georg. The pain2ng reveals Gustav’s commitment to his brother’s legacy, and his kindness in suppor2ng his widowed sister-in-law and fivemonth-old niece. Signed Ernst Klimt by Gustav, it was exhibited under Ernst’s name in 1895 and sold to a private Viennese collector for 8400 guilders. It last appeared at auc2on at Sotheby’s in London in November 1984, and has remained in the same private collec2on since. 

Rosso FiorenHno, The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Bap.st (esHmate: £2,000,000 – 3,000,000) A rediscovered masterpiece of Floren2ne Mannerism, this refined, vibrant, and characteris2cally eccentric Madonna and Child marks an important addi2on to the small corpus of surviving works by Rosso Fioren2no (1494–1540). Known only from black and white photographs un2l very recently, the picture was recognised by a key Floren2ne scholar and art historian, who in 2013 published it, though its whereabouts were s2ll untraced. Its reemergence now, and da2ng to between 1514 and 1517, allows for a greater apprecia2on of the ar2st's produc2on at a rela2vely early stage in his career. 

 Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos (esHmate: £300,000 – 500,000) Goya’s Los Caprichos, published in 1799, stands as his graphic masterpiece, displaying astonishing pictorial and technical inven2on across 80 plates. Created in the context of reac2onary Spain and the ‘terrors’ of Revolu2onary France, Goya feared that these sa2rical depic2ons would lead to trouble with poli2cal and clerical powers. However, when Los Caprichos came to the aWen2on of the Inquisi2on, Goya was saved by his admirer King Charles IV, who in 1803 demanded the remaining sets and the plates from Goya, which he claimed ‘he had expressly asked him to make’, providing a pension for Goya’s son in return. This complete first edi2on set is par2cularly fine and early, prin2ng with atmospheric tones and drama2c chiaroscuro. 

MORE IMAGES

1. Allgäu Master, mid-15th century

The Flagellation; Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane

Estimate:

30,000 - 50,000 GBP

2. Pieter Claeissens the Elder

A triptych: the Virgin of Sorrows and kneeling donor figures

Estimate:

150,000 - 200,000 GBP

3. Giovanni Battista Salvi, called Sassoferrato

The Virgin and Child

Estimate:

60,000 - 80,000 GBP

4. Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino

An old man wearing a turban and a fur-lined coat, here identified as Annas (originally Christ before Annas)

Estimate:

60,000 - 80,000 GBP

5. Hendrick van Balen and Jan Brueghel the Elder and Workshop

Moses striking the rock

Estimate:

300,000 - 400,000 GBP

6. Sir Peter Paul Rubens

The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine

Estimate:

600,000 - 1,000,000 GBP

7. Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Head study of a bearded, elderly man in profile

Estimate:

300,000 - 500,000 GBP

8. Hendrick Avercamp

Winter landscape with a duck hunter and his dog, skaters on a frozen river, and a village beyond

Estimate:

100,000 - 150,000 GBP

9. Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn

Christ Crucified between the two Thieves: 'The Three Crosses'

Estimate:

400,000 - 600,000 GBP

10. Salomon van Ruysdael

River estuary with sailing boats on the water and a town in the distance

Estimate:

300,000 - 400,000 GBP

11. Jacobus Vrel

Old woman seated with a young girl before a window

Estimate:

80,000 - 120,000 GBP

16. Jan van Goyen

View of the beach at Egmond-aan-Zee

Estimate:

100,000 - 150,000 GBP

18. Jacopo Amigoni

Self-portrait of the artist

Estimate:

60,000 - 80,000 GBP

19. Antonio Joli

Venice, the Bacino di San Marco looking east with the Punta della Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore

Estimate:

80,000 - 120,000 GBP

21. Thomas Gainsborough, R.A.

Portrait of Maria Catherine (b. 1779) and Amelia Goddard (1781–1866)

Estimate:

400,000 - 600,000 GBP

22. Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A.

Portrait of William Spencer Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire (1790–1858)

Estimate:

300,000 - 500,000 GBP

23. Robert Home

Portrait of a Maratha Chief

Estimate:

200,000 - 300,000 GBP

24. Eugène Delacroix

Hunters Lying in Wait for a Lion

Estimate:

700,000 - 900,000 GBP

25. Osman Hamdy Bey

In her boudoir

Estimate:

800,000 - 1,200,000 GBP

Ateneum Art Museum - Helsinki, Finland

6 September 2025–1 February 2026

Akseli Gallen-Kallela and the Secessionists met in early 20th-century Vienna 

The young artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries wanted to make a radical break away from old art ideals and move towards a new, freer conception of art. The most famous example of such a departure is the Vienna Secession, which was founded in 1897 under the direction of Gustav Klimt. 

The Gallen-Kallela, Klimt & Wien exhibition is about the Secessionists with whom Akseli Gallen-Kallela collaborated and in whose exhibitions he participated. The pulsating art scene of 20th-century Vienna and the integration of various international influences in the form of ideas and styles are highlighted in this exhibition, which features both modern art and modern design. At the same time, the exhibition marks the first showing of Klimt’s paintings in Finland. 

The main goal of the Secessionists was the equality of all art forms. Visual art, architecture, crafts, design and fashion were to represent a changed and modern world. The Secessionists were united by the development of a new identity and way of life, as well as an interest in monumentalism and the depiction of beauty. Secessionism was not a unified art movement, but it rather incorporated a broad array of styles, such as art nouveau, symbolism and impressionism. Women could not become official members of the Vienna Secession, but they participated in exhibitions and played a significant role as reformists. 

The exhibition features works, for example, by the following artists and designers: Emilie Flöge, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Ferdinand Hodler, Josef Hoffmann, Gustav Klimt, Broncia Koller-Pinell, Max Kurzweil, Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Koloman Moser, and Edvard Munch. 

The Gallen-Kallela, Klimt & Wien exhibition has been created in collaboration with the Belvedere Museum, Vienna. 

The exhibition is curated by the chief curator at the Ateneum, Anu Utriainen in cooperation with Arnika Groenewald-Schmidt, PhD (Belvedere Museum). The exhibition catalogue is published in Finnish, Swedish and English.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela: Self-Portrait in Fresco (1894), Private Collection, deposit, Finnish National Gallery. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

Akseli Gallen-Kallela: Spring, study for the Jusélius Mausoleum frescoes (1903), detail. Sigrid Jusélius Collection, deposit, Finnish National Gallery. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen

Gustav Klimt: Amalie Zuckerkandl (1917/1918). 1988 Widmung Vita & Gustav Künstler, Belvedere, Vienna. Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna

 Art Institute of Chicago

October 12, 2024 through January 12, 2025

The Art Institute of Chicago has announced Paula Modersohn-Becker: I Am Me, on view from October 12, 2024 through January 12, 2025. This exhibition marks Modersohn-Becker’s first museum retrospective in the United States. Showing the full range of her achievement over her career, the exhibition includes more than 50 paintings, 15 large-scale drawings, and five etchings.

Paula Modersohn-Becker charted her own path in turn-of-the-century Germany. Her frank portrayals of the bodily experiences of motherhood, pregnancy, youth, and old age introduced a bold perspective not often seen in early 20th-century art. The introspective Modersohn-Becker painted herself many times, including in the first nude self-portraits known to have been made by a woman.

“This exhibition is much anticipated and long overdue. It will allow visitors to see first-hand Modersohn-Becker’s forceful works of art, ones that have solidified her posthumous place as a feminist icon,” said Jay A. Clarke, Rothman Family Curator, Prints and Drawings. “The timeless images she created of young women in forest settings envisioned a deep affinity between the landscape and its occupants, viewing their identities as intimately intertwined. Her portraits, self-portraits, and figure paintings captured the inner essence of her subjects and depicted the female body frankly and knowingly.”

Modersohn-Becker’s innovative style, which emphasized expression over representation, placed her at the forefront of experimental art in Europe as she approached subjects such as figure drawing, landscape, still-life, and portraiture.

Together her works, and the exhibition’s title, which comes from one of Modersohn-Becker’s letters, show an artist deeply invested in both artistic and personal expression and self-determination.

Paula Modersohn-Becker: I Am Me is curated by the Art Institute of Chicago’s Jay A. Clarke, Rothman Family Curator, Prints and Drawings, and Jill Lloyd, independent scholar, Neue Galerie New York.

This exhibition is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and Neue Galerie New York.

Paula Modersohn-Becker
(1876-1907)
Upper Body of a Woman Leaning toward the Left, Alongside a Small Sketch of the Same Motif, 1898
Charcoal on paper
© Paula-Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung, Bremen

Paula Modersohn-Becker
(1876-1907)
Sheep in the Birch Forest, 1903
Oil tempera on cardboard
Meadows Museum of Art at Centenary College, Shreveport, Louisiana

Paula Modersohn-Becker
(1876-1907)
Girl Blowing a Flute in the Birch Forest, 1905
Oil tempera on canvas
© Paula-Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung, Bremen

Paula Modersohn-Becker
(1876-1907)
Standing and Kneeling Nude Girls in Front of Poppies II, 1906
Oil tempera on canvas
Lübecker Museen, Museum Behnhaus Drägerhaus gestiftet aus der Sammlung Dr. Kurt Wünsche, Zwickau
© Paula-Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung, Bremen

Paula Modersohn-Becker
(1876-1907)
Portrait of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1906
Oil tempera on cardboard mounted on wood
Paula-Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung, Bremen, on loan from a Private Collection
© Paula-Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung, Bremen

Paula Modersohn-Becker
(1876-1907)
Self-Portrait with Blue Glass, ca. 1902
Oil tempera on cardboard
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, acquired in 1968, formerly Hugo Borst Collection
© Paula-Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung, Bremen

Paula Modersohn-Becker
(1876-1907)
Still-Life with Clay Jug, Peonies, and Oranges, May/June 1906
Oil tempera on cardboard
Kunsthandel Wolfgang Werner, Bremen/Berlin
© Paula-Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung, Bremen

Paula Modersohn-Becker
(1876-1907)
Kneeling Mother with Child at Her Breast, 1906
Oil tempera on canvas mounted on wood
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Nationalgalerie Berlin
© Paula-Modersohn-Becker-Stiftung, Bremen