Friday, November 13, 2026

John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined

The Yale Center for British Art presents John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined, a landmark exhibition of Constable’s bold, innovative open-air paintings, which radically transformed the trajectory of European landscape painting.

As the only major US exhibition to focus on the seminal British painter on the 250th anniversary of his birth, John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined offers a unique opportunity for American audiences to experience the breadth of the artist’s masterpieces. Bringing together a rich selection of Constable’s great works, the exhibition includes his remarkable cloud studies and plein air sketches alongside two of his “six-footers,” including Hadleigh Castle, one of the most iconic works of English landscape painting.

The exhibition, which opens September 3, 2026, and runs until July 25, 2027, also presents works that have never before been publicly displayed in the US, among them a study of Hampstead Heath that was recently acquired by the YCBA.

“What this exhibition allows us to show, for the first time at this scale, is the full arc of Constable's creative process, from his captivating cloud studies made rapidly outdoors, to the monumental canvases he spent years refining for public exhibition,” said Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director, YCBA. “The YCBA is uniquely positioned to tell that story, as it holds the largest museum collection of Constable's work outside the United Kingdom. We are excited to bring this depth of engagement with one of the most transformative painters in the history of landscape painting to US audiences.”

Trained within the picturesque tradition, in which long-established conventions governed what landscape painting should look like, Constable (1776–1837) boldly broke with its conventions in the early 1800s by making the direct study of nature his life’s work. Constable’s art was deeply personal, inspired by the landscapes of his childhood and the places he knew best. His extraordinary capacity to reproduce not only the appearance but also the feeling of nature in paint brought the landscape to life. Since their creation, his iconic pictures of the English landscape have shaped the image of Britain in the popular imagination.

“Constable was an astonishing artist,” said Edward Town, Associate Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, YCBA. “When looking at his work, it seems almost impossible that someone could handle paint so swiftly and confidently. There is something both joyful and enlivening about his work, epitomized in his wonderful sketches from nature, which are the foundation of this exhibition. No other artist, before or since, was able to mirror nature in the way that Constable did.”

The paintings in John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined will be shown alongside engravings and drawings that illuminate the remarkable breadth of Constable’s achievement as a painter, printmaker, and draftsman. Seen together, they reveal how his creative process developed across different media and offer a fuller understanding of an artist who profoundly influenced subsequent generations of painters.

The exhibition also includes key pieces by Constable’s contemporaries, such as John Linnell and Richard Parkes Bonington, that reveal the broader artistic context in which he worked. Through his direct engagement with the natural world, Constable established landscape painting as a serious and significant pursuit for artists.

John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined will run together with Sightlines: British Landscape Photography, 1840 to Now, which will be on view at the YCBA from July 23, 2026, through January 24, 2027.

Related Publication

Published by the Yale Center for British Art, and distributed by Yale University Press, Constable is a generously illustrated volume — the third installment in the YCBA Collection Series (following Turner and Blake) — that situates the groundbreaking landscape painter within the culture of his time and considers his rich legacy through the museum’s extensive holdings.

Leading historian of British art Tim Barringer surveys Constable’s practice across media and genres, tracing the artist’s response to landscape traditions and revealing the potent commentary on social change woven into his evocative rural scenes. Nicholas Robbins, whose scholarship investigates the relationship between art and environmental science, explores Constable’s cloud studies in the context of nineteenth-century discourses on climate.

As this publication reveals, the issues with which Constable’s art contends are as relevant today as they were in his lifetime.John Constable: The Landscape Reimagined explores Constable’s bold, innovative open-air paintings, which radically transformed the trajectory of European landscape painting. Working against the “picturesque” tradition, in which long-established conventions governed what landscape painting should look like, Constable made the skies, light, seasons, and atmosphere the central subjects of his art. Created outdoors and rooted in the direct observation of nature, his iconic pictures of the English landscape have shaped the image of Britain in the popular imagination.

These works are shown alongside engravings and drawings that illuminate the remarkable breadth of Constable’s achievement as a painter, printmaker, and draftsman. Seen together, they reveal how his creative process developed across different media and offer a fuller understanding of an artist who profoundly influenced subsequent generations of painters.

See below for key works from the exhibition, and click here to view works from the collection included in this exhibition.

About John Constable

The landscape paintings of John Constable (1776–1837) are among the most iconic images in British art, transforming the genre of landscape painting. Born in Suffolk, England, the son of a corn and coal merchant and a farmer, Constable took up painting as a youth and entered the Royal Academy Schools in London in 1799 to study as a painter. As an adult, he moved from London to Hampstead, which would provide the inspiration for his most acclaimed works. Constable’s astonishing capacity to reproduce not only the appearance but also the feeling of nature in paint brought the landscape radically to life, and his commitment to painting “on the spot” was part of a broader artistic approach that would profoundly influence subsequent generations of landscape painters—and shape how the English landscape is imagined and represented to this day.

Selected Works

John Constable, Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames—Morning after a Stormy Night, 1829

John Constable, Cloud Study, 1821

John Constable, Cloud Study, 1822

John Constable, Stratford Mill, 1819 to 1820

John Constable, Sir Richard Steele’s Cottage, Hampstead, 1831 to 1832

John Constable, Hampstead Heath, ca. 1825

John Constable, Barge Below Flatford Lock, ca. 1810

John Constable, East Bergholt Church, 1809

John Constable, Fen Lane, East Bergholt, ca. 1811

John Constable, Flatford Lock, between 1810 and 1811

John Constable, Hampstead Heath Looking Towards Harrow, 1821

John Constable, Hampstead Heath Looking Towards Harrow, 1821 to 1822

John Constable, Landscape at East Bergholt, ca. 1805

John Constable, Sketch for “The Hay Wain,” ca. 1820

Thursday, November 12, 2026

Hals-Rembrandt

Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem

November 2026 through 28 February 2027

From 6 November 2026 through 28 February 2027, the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem will present *Hals-Rembrandt*, an innovative exhibition featuring works by the iconic 17th-century artists Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Rijn. For the first time, paintings by these two grand masters will be displayed side by side. *Hals-Rembrandt* brings together nineteen masterpieces that invite visitors to compare, marvel, and—above all—truly look.

Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Rijn are among the most renowned portraitists of the 17th century. Both possessed an exceptional ability to capture their subjects with lifelike realism. From regents and regentesses to children, musicians, and merry drinkers, their paintings seem to dissolve the boundary between the canvas and reality. Yet, a closer look reveals just how distinct their individual paths were.

Two masters, two ways of seeing

Both Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Rijn are celebrated for their unique, loose painting style and their capacity to portray people with vivid, lifelike detail. Nevertheless, there are clear differences between the two. Rembrandt van Rijn’s process was one of exploration; he would add successive layers to reach the very essence of his subjects. Frans Hals, by contrast, appears to have worked with greater speed and precision, resulting in paintings that feel almost like snapshots of reality.

*Hals-Rembrandt* highlights these two distinct approaches. By presenting works by both artists in striking combinations, the exhibition reveals both what connects them and what sets them apart. Not only in terms of style and technique, but also in the way they perceived people.

Hals and Rembrandt lived during the same era, though they worked in different cities. Whether they directly influenced one another remains unknown; however, it is highly likely that they were aware of each other’s work, as both were already celebrated painters in their own lifetimes.

Looking becomes discovery

The exhibition is designed to be intimate. Rather than an overwhelming number of paintings, there is ample space for focused observation. Visitors are invited to discover details in postures, facial expressions, attire, and brushwork—for the longer you look, the more you see.

Nineteen masterpieces, brought together for the first time

The exhibition features eleven works by Frans Hals and eight by Rembrandt, drawn from various national and international collections. These works have never before been displayed in such a combination.

Collaboration with the Rijksmuseum

The exhibition was made possible thanks to an exceptionally generous loan of five paintings from the Rijksmuseum’s collection. A highlight is the inclusion of Rembrandt’s *The Sampling Officials* (1662), which bears clear parallels to the group portraits of regents painted by Hals.

Rembrandt’s *Portrait of Haesje Jacobsdr van Cleyburg* (1634) is displayed alongside Hals’ stately *Portrait of Cornelia Vooght* (1631), which belongs to the Frans Hals Museum’s own collection.

Rembrandt’s *Johannes Wtenbogaert* (1633) is positioned next to Hals’ *Portrait of a Man* (c. 1635)—a piece from the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam that is undergoing restoration specifically for this exhibition. National and international loans

Other museums and collections are also contributing exceptional works to the exhibition. Rembrandt’s *Titus at His Desk* (1655) comes from the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. This painting will be displayed alongside two paintings of fishermen’s children from the collections of The Phoebus Foundation and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA).

The Mauritshuis in The Hague is lending Rembrandt’s *Laughing Man* (c. 1629–1630). This work will be shown next to Frans Hals’ *Laughing Young Man with a Flute* (c. 1630), from the Staatliche Schlösser in Schwerin, Germany.

Furthermore,

*Children Making Music* (c. 1628) by Hals—recently acquired jointly by the Frans Hals Museum and the Mauritshuis—will be on display alongside Rembrandt’s *Musical Company* (1626). This early work is normally on long-term loan from the Rijksmuseum to Museum De Lakenhal.

MORE IMAGES

Frans Hals, Zingend meisje, ca. 1628, olieverf op paneel, 20,3 x 20,3 cm, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, en Mauritshuis, Den Haag. Gezamenlijk aangekocht door het Frans Hals Museum en het Mauritshuis met steun van de Vereniging Rembrandt (mede dankzij haar Nationaal Fonds Kunstbezit, haar Dorodarte Kunst Fonds, haar Arent Fock Fonds, haar Themafonds 17de-eeuwse schilderkunst en de jaarlijkse bijdrage van het Cultuurfonds), het Nationaal Aankoopfonds van het ministerie van OCW, het Mondriaan Fonds, de VriendenLoterij, de Turing Foundation, de Vereniging van Vrienden van het Frans Hals Museum, het Fonds De Man, de Gemeente Haarlem en enkele particuliere donateurs.

Frans Hals, Singing girl, c. 1628, oil on panel, 20,3 x 20,3 cm, Frans Hals Museum, Harlem, and Mauritshuis, The Hague. Jointly acquired by the Frans Hals Museum and the Mauritshuis with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt (thanks in part to its National Art Collection Fund, its Dorodarte Art Fund, its Arent Fock Fund, its 17th-Century Painting Thematic Fund and the annual contribution from the Culture Fund), the National Acquisition Fund of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Mondriaan Fonds, the VriendenLoterij, the Turing Foundation, the Friends of the Frans Hals Museum, the De Man Fund, the Municipality of Haarlem and a number of private donors.

Frans Hals, Vioolspelende jongen, ca. 1628, olieverf op paneel, 20,3 x 20,3 cm, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, en Mauritshuis, Den Haag. Gezamenlijk aangekocht door het Frans Hals Museum en het Mauritshuis met steun van de Vereniging Rembrandt (mede dankzij haar Nationaal Fonds Kunstbezit, haar Dorodarte Kunst Fonds, haar Arent Fock Fonds, haar Themafonds 17de-eeuwse schilderkunst en de jaarlijkse bijdrage van het Cultuurfonds), het Nationaal Aankoopfonds van het ministerie van OCW, het Mondriaan Fonds, de VriendenLoterij, de Turing Foundation, de Vereniging van Vrienden van het Frans Hals Museum, het Fonds De Man, de Gemeente Haarlem en enkele particuliere donateurs.

Frans Hals, Boy playing the Violin, c. 1628, oil on panel, 20,3 x 20,3 cm, Frans Hals Museum, Harlem, and Mauritshuis, The Hague. Jointly acquired by the Frans Hals Museum and the Mauritshuis with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt (thanks in part to its National Art Collection Fund, its Dorodarte Art Fund, its Arent Fock Fund, its 17th-Century Painting Thematic Fund and the annual contribution from the Culture Fund), the National Acquisition Fund of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Mondriaan Fonds, the VriendenLoterij, the Turing Foundation, the Friends of the Frans Hals Museum, the De Man Fund, the Municipality of Haarlem and a number of private donors.

Rembrandt van Rijn, De Staalmeesters, 1662, olieverf op doek, 191,5 x 279 cm, Rijksmuseum, bruikleen van de stad Amsterdam

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Sampling Officials of the Amsterdam Drapers’ Guild, Known as ‘The Syndics’, 1662, oil on canvas, 191,5 x 279 cm, Rijksmuseum, on loan from the city of Amsterdam

Rembrandt van Rijn, Haesje Jacobsdr van Cleyburg, 1635, olieverf op paneel, 68,6 x 53,4 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Frans Hals, Lachende jongeman met fluit, ca. 1630, olieverf op paneel, 37,5 cm diameter, Staatliche Schlösser, Schwerin

Frans Hals, Laughing Boy with Flute, c. 1630, olieverf op paneel, 37,5 cm diameter, Staatliche Schlösser, Schwerin

Frans Hals, Regenten van het Sint-Elisabeth Gasthuis, 1641, olieverf op doek, 152 x 252 cm, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, schenking van de stichting Elisabeth van Thüringenfonds

Frans Hals, Regents of St Elisabeth’s Hospital, 1641, oil on canvas, 152 x 252 cm, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, gift from the Elisabeth van Thüringenfonds foundation

Frans Hals, Portret van Catharina Brugman, 1634, olieverf op doek, 115 x 85 cm, particuliere collectie

Frans Hals, Portrait of Catharina Brugman, 1634, oil on canvas, 115 x 85 cm, private collection

Rembrandt van Rijn, Titus aan de lezenaar, 1655, olieverf op doek, 77 x 63 cm, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Rembrandt van Rijn, Titus at His Desk, 1655, oil on canvas, 77 x 63 cm, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Frans Hals, Portret van een man, ca. 1635, olieverf op doek, 121 x 90 cm, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, foto Studio Tromp

Frans Hals, Portrait of a man, c. 1635, oil on canvas, 121 x 90 cm, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, photo Studio Tromp

Frans Hals, Portret van Cornelia Vooght, 1631, olieverf op paneel, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem

Frans Hals, Portrait of Cornelia Vooght, 1631, oil on panel, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem

Frans Hals, Vissersjongen, ca. 1638, olieverf op doek, 74 x 61 cm, KMSKA, Antwerpen

Frans Hals, Fisher Boy, c. 1638, oil on canvas, 74 x 61 cm, KMSKA, Antwerpen

Rembrandt van Rijn, Musicerend gezelschap, 1626, olieverf op paneel, 63,5 x 48 cm, Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, langdurig bruikleen van het Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Rembrandt van Rijn, Musical Company, 1626, oil on panel, 63.5 x 48 cm, Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, on long-term loan from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Wednesday, November 11, 2026

Jacqueline Marval: When in Paris

Dulwich Picture Gallery

2 Feb – 9 May 2027

Marval banner — Jacqueline Marval, L’Odalisque au Guépard,1900. Comité Jacqueline Marval – Nicolas Roux dit Buisson Jacqueline Marval, Biarritz, La Grande Plage, 1923. Musée d’Arts de Nantes Jacqueline Marval, Les Odalisques, 1902-03. Ville de Grenoble, Musée de Grenoble – J.-L. Lacroix

Dulwich Picture Gallery will present the first UK museum exhibition devoted to pioneering French artist Jacqueline Marval (1866-1932), a leading figure of the Parisian avant-garde. Driven by bold creative freedom and ambition, Marval carved out her own identity as an artist. She developed an original style through her innovative treatment of the female figure and reappropriation of her own image. As the artist of one of the earliest female nude self-portraits, Marval’s works challenged convention and reshaped representations of women in early 20th-century painting.

Bringing together more than 40 artworks from public and private collections across France and the UK, including seminal masterpieces, the exhibition will trace the artist's remarkable career from her arrival in Paris in 1895 to the ambitious works of her later years. It reveals how Marval established herself within the city's avant-garde, alongside contemporaries including Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Marie Laurencin, while developing a distinctive artistic language influenced by Fauvism and Post-Impressionism, as well as contemporary fashion, literature and performance.

Born Marie-Joséphine Vallet in the Western Alps, Marval reinvented herself upon moving to Paris aged 29, adopting a name and persona that reflected the independence and ambition that would define her career. The transformation followed a period of personal upheaval, including a difficult marriage and the tragic death of her young son; experiences that shaped her determination to forge a life and career on her own terms. Moving within the circles of the Fauves and Nabis, Marval exhibited in major French and international salons during her lifetime and was championed by the influential art dealers Berthe Weill, Eugène Druet and Ambroise Vollard.

The exhibition follows the evolution of Marval's artistic vision and her enduring engagement with the figure. At a time when representations of women were largely shaped by male artists, Marval offered an alternative perspective, often using herself as a model. The exhibition opens with highlights including Odalisque au Guépard (1900) and her celebrated masterpiece Les Odalisques (1902-03); works that depict Marval’s own facial features and radically reimagine a traditionally male-dominated subject through a female lens.

The exhibition goes on to explore Marval's close engagement with the cultural life of Paris, including her contribution to the decoration of the newly opened Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1913. A former seamstress, she maintained a lifelong fascination with costume, movement and theatrical spectacle; influences that resonate throughout her practice. Works from the 1920s capture the glamour and energy of modern Paris, where Marval’s portraits of performers and socialites, including Kiki de Montparnasse and French film star Dolly Davis, develop a more expressive and experimental style.

Marval's most significant projects are brought into focus in the final room: Biarritz and Cinderella. Her paintings of Biarritz, created in the early 1920s, capture the cosmopolitan energy of the fashionable seaside resort through an increasingly liberated visual language that moved towards abstraction while reflecting the changing styles and social freedoms of the era. This spirit of reinvention continued in 1928, when Marval was invited to produce a series of lithographs inspired by Cinderella. The fairytale held a particular resonance for the artist, echoing her own journey from modest beginnings to the independent life she forged for herself. Reimagined through a distinctly modern sensibility, these works reveal an artist whose creativity, ambition and capacity for self-invention remained undiminished to the end of her career.

Lucien Roux, Curator of the exhibition, said: “This exhibition marks a turning point in opening up new perspectives on Marval’s work. With a particular focus on her bold figurative compositions - especially her representations of women, modern approach to the nude, and her portraits and self-portraits - the exhibition reveals the freedom of Marval’s creativity and the breadth of her inspirations, including fashion. Dulwich Picture Gallery’s innovative exhibition programme and rich history is the ideal setting to highlight Marval’s contribution to the evolution of painting in early 20th-century Paris.”

Jennifer Scott, Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery said: “I am thrilled that we are celebrating Jacqueline Marval through this major show, re-positioning her as a vital artistic talent. Her distinctive energy and wistful fairytales transport us to Marval’s Paris. The most extraordinary artist you've never heard of, until now."

Drawing on loans from UK private collections, French museums and the Comité Jacqueline Marval, the exhibition highlights the growing international recognition of an artist whose contribution to modern painting in early 20th-century Paris is once again receiving the attention it deserves.

The exhibition is curated by Lucien Roux, Scientific Director of the Comité Jacqueline Marval, and is presented in partnership with the Comité Jacqueline Marval and supported by The Christian Levett Collection, FAMM (Female Artists of the Mougins Museum) and the Topinambour Trust.

Les Odalisques (The Odalisques), (1902 -1903) by Jacqueline Marval

Tuesday, November 10, 2026

Phillips Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale New York 17 November

Also see IN SEARCH OF THE AMEDEO MODIGLIANI’S 'TÊTE

Monet and Mitchell: Alike in Difference

Claude Monet’s swan song, Joan Mitchell’s pivot, and the shared insights of two crucial masterworks.

Claude Monet La Maison dans les roses and JOAN MITCHELL, Composition, 1965.

Right: CLAUDE MONET, La Maison dans les roses, 1925. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, New York.
Left: JOAN MITCHELL, Composition, 1965. Modern & Contemporary Art: Morning Session, New York.

Offered across Phillips’ upcoming Evening Sale and Morning Session in New York, works by Claude Monet and Joan Mitchell present a familiar area for comparison and consideration. These two artists — different in nationality, generation, and approach — shared a love for the same geography and a relentless pursuit of the boundaries of painting as an art form. This intriguing paradox has long been part of art world discourse, and in 2023 reached new heights in the exhibition Monet – Mitchell at Fondation Louis Vuitton. By hanging Claude Monet’s late Giverny works alongside Mitchell’s grand-scale canvases created in France, the exhibition foregrounded a historical continuity that critics and fellow artists had begun discussing as early as the 1950s. Then, as Monet’s critical revival was at its apex, Mitchell took part in exhibitions that compared the late artist’s work to the Abstract Expressionist movement of which Mitchell was a defining figure. Such comparisons deepened upon Mitchell’s relocation to France in 1959, and her later move to Vétheuil, near the home Monet once occupied. The exhibition didn’t treat Mitchell as a grand heir to Impressionism, nor did it argue Monet to be a progenitor of Abstract Expressionism, but it illuminated how both painters used their experience of landscape as a catalyst for profound invention — for Monet, the sensation of his beloved garden, and for Mitchell, the nuanced feeling of memory.

Claude Monet in his rose garden at Giverny, 1921.
Paris, Musée d'Orsay. Image: © Musée d'Orsay, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / Alexis Brandt

Comparing Monet’s La Maison dans les roses (1925) and Mitchell’s Composition (1965) reveals the oblique structural resonance between the two. It also exemplifies the decisive conceptual rupture within what Clement Greenberg described as a lineage of “all-over” painting. Greenberg — observing that traditional Western easel painting was uniquely defined by its social function to hang on a wall, subordinating the decorative to the dramatic — argued that modernism in each art form advanced itself by self-critically isolating what was most unique and inherent to its respective medium. For him, the reduction of painting to a decentralized, flat, and polyphonic surface finds no greater early example than Monet’s final decade. Greenberg’s argument that Monet lays the groundwork for postwar abstraction does echo Mitchell’s own sentiments on the artist — she once explained, “I like late Monet, but not early” — though she later resisted the comparison, objecting less to its logic than to what she saw as the gendered implication that her work was somehow derivative.

Joan Mitchell © Marion Kalter. All rights reserved 2026 / Bridgeman Images

“I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me—and remembered feelings of them, which of course become transformed. I could certainly never mirror nature. I would like more to paint what it leaves me with.”

—Joan Mitchell

CLAUDE MONET, La Maison dans les roses, 1925. — CLAUDE MONET, *La Maison dans les roses*, 1925. Modern & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, New York.

Nonetheless, Greenberg’s concept of an “all-over” painting is perhaps fully realized in this late Monet work, which art historian Daniel Wildenstein termed Monet’s “swan song” and a farewell to his beloved home and rose garden. Painted at Giverny during the summer of 1925, La Maison dans les roses stands among the final canvases Monet completed before his death in 1926. As the first and largest work of his second Maisons series, the work carries immense art historical importance, echoed by its cousins from the broader series being held in such notable collections as the Albertina, Thyssen-Bornemisza, Stedelijk, and Marmottan. The painting traces the fortunes of Monet’s failing and recovering vision following cataract surgeries, pushing the motif of his house framed by rich flora to the brink of the visible and redefining the art of painting along the way. As easy as it is to see how the central, expressive brushstrokes of Mitchell’s Composition can be seen to relate to the dense, interwoven brushstrokes saturating every square inch of La Maison dans les roses’ surface, it is just as important to understand that Mitchell arrived there through her own path.

Joan Mitchell Composition — JOAN MITCHELL, *Composition*, 1965. Modern & Contemporary Art: Morning Session, New York.

Exemplifying her landmark “Black Paintings” of the early 1960s, which marked a deliberate departure from the seamless fields of paint in her earlier works toward central masses of heavy, impasto paint, Composition sees Mitchell move beyond lyrical colorism to grapple with raw emotional states and heavy materiality. Yet the senses of both Monet and Mitchell were flooded with visions of a changing France when each artist executed their respective work forty years apart. Like Monet near the end of his life, Mitchell produced this work during a transformative period: in her case, following her permanent relocation to France in 1959, but predating her move to Vétheuil near the house where Monet once lived. And like the Monet, Composition is also significant within the context of her body of work, having been featured in her crucial posthumous solo exhibition at Robert Miller Gallery in 2002. It draws us in with tactile strokes of crimson, deep olive, and saturated blue clustered at the center of the canvas against an atmospheric misty white ground, which can almost be seen as intentionally defying Greenberg’s rhetoric of “all-over” painting. Yet still, the canvas eliminates illusionistic depth and rejects any narrative hierarchy. Seeing these two works together, we come to understand that such a modern decentralization in painting can accommodate both Monet’s immersive color fields and Mitchell’s own physical and emotional immediacy. It’s not that one follows the other — it’s that each lifts the other in historical context.