Over the course of his long career,
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919) continually turned to the
human figure for artistic inspiration. The body—particularly the
nude—was the defining subject of Renoir’s artistic practice, from his
early days as a student copying the old masters in the Louvre to the
early twentieth century, when his revolutionary style of painting
inspired the masters of modernism.
In recognition of the centenary of
Renoir’s death, the Clark Art Institute and the Kimbell Art Museum
present Renoir: The Body, The Senses. This daring exhibition is
the first major exploration of Renoir’s unceasing interest in the human
form, and it reconsiders Renoir as a constantly evolving artist whose
style moved from Realism into luminous Impressionism, culminating in the
modern classicism of his last decades.
Co-organized by Esther Bell, Martha and Robert Lipp Chief Curator at the
Clark, and George T.M. Shackelford, Deputy Director at the Kimbell, the
exhibition will be on view at the Clark in Williamstown, Massachusetts
June 8–September 22, 2019 and at the Kimbell in Fort Worth, Texas
October 27, 2019–January 26, 2020.
Renoir: The Body, The Senses includes some seventy paintings,
drawings, pastels, and sculptures by the artist as well as works by his
predecessors, contemporaries, and followers. An international roster of
exceptional loans including
as well as major contributions from the
Clark’s renowned collection of the artist’s work:
The Ingenue
Pierre-Auguste Renoir Oil on canvas, 55,7 x 46,4 cm c. 1876 Massachusetts, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
Madame Claude Monet Reading
Pierre-Auguste Renoir Oil on canvas, 61,6 x 50,3 cm c. 1872 Massachusetts, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
Self-Portrait
Pierre-Auguste Renoir Oil on canvas, 39,1 x 31,6 cm c. 1875 Massachusetts, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
Jaques Fray
Pierre-Auguste Renoir Oil on canvas, 42,2 x 33,8 cm 1904 Massachusetts, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
survey the breadth of
Renoir’s career.
Renoir’s respect for tradition will be demonstrated by comparison with such paintings as
The Three Graces (Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1636, Dulwich Picture Gallery),
Andromeda (Eugène Delacroix, 1852, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston),
and TheRepose (Camille Corot, 1860, reworked c. 1865/70, National Gallery of Art).
His distinct approach to the subject of bathers will be underscored in a
comparison of works such as
his Bathers Playing with a Crab (c. 1897, Cleveland Art Museum)
and The Bathers
(Edgar Degas, c. 1895, Art Institute of Chicago).
Renoir’s profound
influence on future generations will be seen in Pablo Picasso’s Nude Combing Her Hair (1906, Kimbell Art Museum), among others.
“Our exhibition will survey Renoir’s long career through the lens of the
single subject that defines his legacy,” said Bell. “It’s the subject
that most compellingly demonstrates how truly radical—and so often
brilliant—he was.”
The exhibition investigates a number of themes central to today’s
consideration of Renoir’s art, chief among them his engagement with the
long tradition of the female nude as depicted in antique sculpture, in
painting since the Renaissance, and as espoused, in his time, by the
École des Beaux-Arts. Further themes include the concept of the female
body and the male gaze in the nineteenth century; Impressionist figure
painting and the effects of light on flesh; Renoir’s talent as a
draftsman; the relationship between Renoir’s treatment of the body and
that of such contemporaries as Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, and Paul
Cézanne; and his late—still much debated—paintings and sculpture, works
that inspired the next generation of modern artists.
“One hundred years after his death, Renoir still courts controversy,”
said Shackelford. “We expect today’s audiences will be both inspired and
challenged by the magnificent images of the nude that we’re bringing
together in Renoir: The Body, The Senses—and we’re looking forward to a lively discussion.”
The artist’s critical reception—then and now—is explored in the
exhibition and in the accompanying catalogue. During his lifetime,
Renoir was idolized by artists including Pablo Picasso, Pierre Bonnard,
and Henri Matisse, as well as renowned collectors Gertrude and Leo
Stein, Josse and Gaston Bernheim-Jeune, Albert Barnes, and Sterling and
Francine Clark. But he also experienced brutal criticism. In 1876,
critic Albert Wolff wrote in Le Figaro, “Would someone kindly
explain to M. Renoir that a woman’s torso is not a mass of decomposing
flesh with the green and purplish blotches that indicate a state of
complete putrefaction in a corpse...”—referring to Study: Torso, Effect of Sun, now
regarded as one of the high points of Impressionism. Today, Renoir
remains a polarizing figure worthy of scholarly investigation, unabashed
contemplation, and reconsideration by contemporary audiences.
In an interview conducted for the exhibition catalogue, contemporary
artist Lisa Yuskavage, whose work prominently features the female nude,
discusses why Renoir endures as an artist worthy of continued
examination. “…Renoir doesn’t impress everyone. And yet he persists. I
really do think that the serious conundrum is why. I think that
is a worthwhile thing to try to understand. What is it that makes his
work persist? It’s not just because a lot of people like it. I think the
answer really lies in understanding who has loved it.”
Catalogue
The companion catalogue (Yale University Press) also features essays
from leading scholars of nineteenth-century painting, such as Colin B.
Bailey, Director of the Morgan Library & Museum; Esther Bell; George
T.M. Shackelford; Nicole Myers, the Lillian and James H. Clark Curator
of Painting and Sculpture at the Dallas Museum of Art; Martha Lucy,
Deputy Director of Research, Interpretation and Education at the Barnes
Foundation; and Sylvie Patry, Deputy Director of the Musée d’Orsay.
Yuskavage’s reflections on Renoir are included in a lively discussion
with Alison de Lima Greene, the Isabel Brown Wilson Curator of Modern
and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, exploring the
depiction of the body in relation to twenty-first-century feminist
dialogue.
Di Donna, 744 Madison Avenue, NYC April 26 – June 28, 2019
Di Donna Galleries announces Surrealism in Mexico,
an exhibition that explores the robust creative moment that emerged
between 1940 and 1955 as an international community of artists fled
World War II in Europe and settled in Mexico. There, many principles
that had defined the Surrealist movement were broadened and transformed
in response to a new topography, new cultures, and the experience of
exile, toward the creation of radically innovative new styles. This
vibrant art-historical episode was made possible through liberal ideas
about collaboration, immigration, and gender roles. It is particularly
relevant in the context of today’s cultural and political climate, where
such issues remain under intense scrutiny and debate.
Surrealism in Mexico is unprecedented in the United States
for its subject and its scope. The exhibition will feature paintings,
sculptures, drawings, photographs, and collages by artists including
Lola Álvarez Bravo, Leonora Carrington, Esteban Francés, Gunther Gerzso,
Kati Horna, Frida Kahlo, Agustín Lazo, Matta, Gordon Onslow Ford,
Wolfgang Paalen, Alice Rahon, Bridget Bate Tichenor, and Remedios Varo,
with loans from distinguished private collections, corporate
collections, and non-profit foundations in Mexico, the United States,
and Europe.
A fully illustrated catalogue with scholarly essays by
Mexico City-based curator Tere Arcq and Dr. Salomon Grimberg will be
published to accompany the exhibition.
In 1938, André Breton and his wife, the artist Jacqueline Lamba,
traveled to Mexico, where they were hosted by Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
Breton championed Kahlo’s work, while Kahlo’s home and studio became a
nexus for intellectual and creative dialogue. Moreover, Kahlo’s
unapologetic expressions of her own physical and psychological
conditions validated women’s experiences as a subject for artists such
as Carrington and Varo.
Di Donna Galleries is pleased to present four
paintings by Kahlo in this exhibition, including her famous painting
La Venadita (The Little Deer) (1946) and her commanding self-portrait Me and My Parrots (1941).
Carrington, Tichenor, and Varo typically worked in illustrative
styles, fusing autobiography, cosmic and ancient myths, and poetic
aspects of the natural landscape in developing their own unique forms of
magic realism. While the thematic sources of Carrington’s work, which
included alchemy, Gnosticism, shamanism, and other esoteric subjects
predated her arrival in Mexico, it was there where Carrington, away from
a stifling upbringing and the horrors of war, discovered the freedom to
cultivate a deeply personal and codified visual language.
Works such as
the exquisitely rendered
Leonora Carrington, Les Distractions de Dagobert, 1945
Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945)
reveal Carrington’s remarkable ability to evoke mysterious and intimate
rituals. Varo similarly found creative liberation in Mexico. Her
paintings often contain figures on expedition or conducting ritualistic
acts among the cosmos, as in
Papilla estelar (Celestial Pablum) (1958).
Paalen, Matta, Francés, and Onslow Ford developed new types of
abstraction in response to local history and geology.
Paalen developed
an alternative theory to Breton’s brand of Surrealism, followed by a
series based on totemic figures seen in grand canvases such as Tropical Night (1948),
that indicate the influence of both quantum physics and pre-Columbian
objects accessible to him at the time.
In 1941, Matta began a new series
of works inspired by the country’s landscape and the psychological
anxiety of wartime, sensitively alluded to in Centro del agua (Center of Water) (1941), which Matta painted while visiting Paalen.
Onslow Ford’s ambitious painting The Luminous Land
(1943), which will be shown in New York for the first time, is an
abstracted interpretation of the lake and mountain setting of his home
in the remote town of Erongarícuaro, centered around an erupting
volcano. In Mexico, Onslow Ford admitted that his growing attachment to
nature and its impact on his psyche led him away from Surrealism.
For artists in this exhibition who had been part of the Surrealist
circle in Europe, the practice of living and making art in Mexico
quickly demythified notions of the country that had been constructed
across the Atlantic. The fertile art-historical moment addressed by Surrealism in Mexico
comprises pictorial innovations involving both figuration and
abstraction, united by investigations into the physical and unseen
worlds, as artists adapted conventional Surrealist strategies to the new
experience of being in Mexico. This remarkable period of expansion, in
both aesthetic and conceptual terms, resulted in work that would come to
define major episodes in these artists’ careers, and transform notions
of Surrealism beyond Europe’s borders.
More than a century after Marcel Duchamp’s (1887–1968) readymade Fountain
was rejected from display in New York and over five decades since the
last significant exhibition of his work came to Australia, the Art
Gallery of New South Wales presents The essential Duchamp. This must-see exhibition from the Philadelphia Museum of Art also marks the 50 year anniversary of the artist’s death.
The essential Duchamp is the most comprehensive survey of
the art and life of Duchamp ever to be seen in the Asia Pacific region,
bringing together over 125 works from the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s
world-renowned collection. The travelling exhibition began in 2018 and
concludes its tour at the Art Gallery of NSW
in Sydney, following on from the Tokyo National Museum, Japan and the
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea.
Dr Michael Brand, director of the Art Gallery of NSW, said The essential Duchamp
features work spanning the artist’s six-decade career, exploring
Duchamp’s formative years alongside iconic works and key documentary
materials.
“Tracking the achievements of Marcel Duchamp is to map some of the most seismic shifts in 20th century art history. The essential Duchamp
reveals the life and work of an artist whose provocative and unorthodox
approach dramatically expanded the possibilities for making art.
“Duchamp began building his reputation as a major disruptor of the art world when he exhibited Nude Descending a Staircase (No.2)
1912 at the 1913 Armory Show in New York. Yet, even as this magnificent
and innovative take on Cubism established his name, Duchamp’s
relentless efforts to challenge conventions saw him abandon painting and
embark into uncharted artistic territory including the legendary
readymades and the development of Rrose Sélavy, his female alter ego,”
Brand said.
“The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds the world’s largest and most
significant collection of Duchamp’s work together with an incomparable
library and archival holdings relating to the artist, making The essential Duchamp a rare opportunity to experience his work in depth,” Brand added.
Timothy Rub, George D. Widener director and CEO of the Philadelphia Museum of Art said the Museum is proud to partner with the Art Gallery of NSW for a second time to bring another ambitious and innovative exhibition to Sydney, following the success of America: painting a nation in 2013.
“The gift of the Louise and Walter Arensberg collection in 1950,
with its great concentration of works by Duchamp, was a landmark event
in the history of the Philadelphia Museum of Art establishing it as a
world renowned destination for modern art. We are delighted to share it
with new audiences in the Asia-Pacific region.
“Duchamp’s reputation has never stood higher than it does at present
among artists working around the world. Fifty years after his death the
passage of time has seemed only to clarify and to strengthen the
argument that his work represents an inflection point in the history of
art, the significance of which has not been fully appreciated,” Rub
said.
Dr Matthew Affron, exhibition curator and Muriel and Philip Berman
curator of modern art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, said The essential Duchamp tells the story of Duchamp’s making and unmaking as a painter, revealing an influence that continues to resonate.
“Duchamp’s legend has proliferated internationally. His impact is
seen today in artists’ engagement with multiples and facsimiles, in
critical reflection on the display of art in galleries and museums, and
in work that deals with commodity culture or explores the connections
between gender, sexuality, and art.
“Duchamp wanted to exclude his personal taste and the technical
skill of his hand from his work in order to make ideas paramount and
bring forward the intellectual value in art. The essential Duchamp explores his insistent pursuit of independence and freedom in both art and life,” Affron said.
Nicholas Chambers, exhibition coordinating curator and senior
curator of modern and contemporary international art at the Art Gallery
of NSW, said the exhibition is unprecedented in Australia due to the depth and breadth of the representation of Duchamp’s career.
“From his early paintings as a teenager to his portable museums of
miniatures late in life, and including important works that have not
before been seen in the Asia Pacific region such as Portrait of Dr. Dumouchel 1910, Sonata 1911, and Chocolate Grinder (No. 2)
1914, this exhibition offers rare insights into the development of both
Duchamp’s art and his enigmatic persona,” said Chambers.
The essential Duchamp is accompanied by a richly illustrated publication
which tells the artist’s story through four key periods. Written by
exhibition curator Matthew Affron with additional contributors: Cécile
Debray, director at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris; Alexander Kauffman,
Andrew W. Mellon–Anne d’Harnoncourt Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow,
Philadelphia Museum of Art; Michael R. Taylor, chief curator and deputy
director for art and education, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
and John Vick, collections project manager, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Essential Duchamp, organized by the Philadelphia Museum of
Art, will present a rich and engaging account of the life and work of
one of the most original and influential artists of the twentieth
century, Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968).
Marcel Duchamp profoundly changed the way in which we think about the
creation and interpretation of art. He earned his celebrity a century
ago when his painting Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) (1912)
was exhibited at the groundbreaking Armory Show in New York, where it
sparked reactions ranging from admiration to outrage. Twenty-five years
later, Duchamp observed to an interviewer that the painting and its
scandal had in some ways overtaken his story, leaving him "only a
shadowy figure behind the reality of that painting." Our understanding
of his complaint must be tempered, however, by the knowledge that
Duchamp preferred to glide in relative silence through the world of the
avant-garde. An aura of mystery was fundamental to his persona.
Organized by Matthew Affron, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of
Modern Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the exhibition will
consist of approximately one hundred and forty works of art and
important archival and documentary items, nearly all drawn from the
Museum's collection. It will be arranged as a survey of Duchamp's more
than sixty years of activity as an artist. Threaded throughout the
exhibition and central to its narrative structure will be the story of
Duchamp's life in France and the United States. The exhibition will be
divided into four sections.
The Essential Duchamp was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
1. A Painter’s Life
Duchamp took up painting as an adolescent in the summer of 1902, and
for the next eight years he drifted among various idioms of innovative
art: Impressionism, Symbolism, and Fauvism. This modernist
apprenticeship led to a brief but extremely original engagement with
Cubism and the production of numerous important works including Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)
(1912), the composition that had a scandal at the Armory Show in New
York and made its author an art celebrity in the United States. But in
the autumn of 1912, the twenty-five-year-old Duchamp to a momentous
decision: he resolved to abandon the painter's craft and seek new ways
of working.
The first chapter in the life and the work of Marcel Duchamp is the story of his making and unmaking as a painter.
Starting in 1912 Duchamp worked toward the execution of his magnum opus, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
(1915-23), a picture on glass that overturned the ground rules of
painting as conventionally understood. In 1913, the first of his
so-called readymades came into being. Readymades, functional objects
deprived of their utilitarian identity, blurred the line between fine
art and mass production and challenged commonsense notions about the
priority of the artist's hand and the difference between original and
copies in art.
In 1915, Duchamp emigrated to New York City. It was there, in 1917, that a notorious object entitled Fountain triggered the first public discussion of the idea of the readymade.
＊Readymades The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds 6
readymades out of 12 crated by Duchamp. From the collection, this
exhibition will present Bicycle Wheel, Bottle rack, and Fountain.
＊The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even("The Large Glass") *The exhibition will show the 1980 replica (Komaba Museum, The Universty of Tokyo) of the 1915–1923 original This famous work was left unfinished after Duchamp worked on it
from 1915 to 1923. The glass was accidentally shattered after the work’s
first public display at the Brooklyn Museum in 1926. Duchamp repaired The Large Glass and accepted the cracks as part of the work.
3. Rrose Sélavy
Duchamp spent the better part of the interwar period based in Paris.
Having already abandoned the activity of painting, he now shifted his
professional energies to playing chess. But he also invented an artistic
female persona named Rrose Sélavy, and used this assumed identity to
pursue new activities in the art world. Duchamp pursued experiments in
word-play (puns and verbal games) and also made unconventional art works
based upon his long study of the principles of perspective and optics.
These concerns dovetailed in "Anemic Cinema", the short avantgarde film
he produced in 1926 with the assistance of his frequent accomplice, the
photographer Man Ray. Meanwhile, by the mid-1930s, Duchamp had become
more and more interested in an outgrowth of the readymade idea, namely
the notion of producing and marketing replicas in limited editions of
his earlier and more recent works. This idea led to the painstaking
fabrication of a portable museum of miniature replicas, (From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Sélavy Box in a Valise)
(1935–41). Throughout the interwar period, and then once again as a
wartime emigre in New York, Duchamp also worked as a fellow traveler of
the international Surrealist group (Duchamp became an American citizen
in 1955).
4. Our Lady of Desire
In the final two decades of his life, Duchamp achieved legendary
status, first among artists and art-world insiders and then in the
broader culture. During this same period, he went almost totally
underground as an artist. Working in near-total secret within his New
York studio, he created his final masterpiece, Étant donnés
(1946–66). This room-sized, three-dimensional construction built around a
life-case mannequin of a female nude offered a final reflection on
themes that had preoccupied Duchamp across his career: the nature of the
erotic, the artistic implications of modern engineering, science, and
mathematics, the aesthetics of realism and the psychology of vision. In
1969, after the artist's death, Étant donnés was placed in proximity to its epic predecessor The Large Glass,
which some years before had joined the principal collection of
Duchamp's art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was only once Étant donnés was revealed to the world that the unifying logic of the rest of his late production, which was related to it, became apparent.
Duchamp Sitting by a Replica ofFountain
Photographer unknown
Gelatin silver print; 1965
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library and Archives: Gift of
Jacqueline,Paul and Peter Matisse in memory of their mother Alexina
Duchamp
Teeny Duchamp beside the Doors forEtant donnésin or near La Bisbal d' Empordà
Photographer unknown
Gelatin silver plate; Early 1960s
Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Jacqueline, Paul and Peter Matisse in memory of their mother Alexina Duchamp
The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) presents the debut exhibition of an
outstanding collection of American painting, furniture, and decorative
arts that was assembled by philanthropists, Carolyn and Peter Lynch,
over the course of fifty years. A Passion for American Art: Selections from the Carolyn and Peter Lynch Collection
takes visitors on the personal collecting journey of a couple that
shared an extraordinary life together.
Through travel, exploration, and
intellectual curiosity, the Lynches amassed a broad-ranging collection
that includes spectacular, classic furniture from Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia; paintings by Childe Hassam, Martin Johnson Heade, Winslow
Homer, and John Singer Sargent; works by modern furniture master Sam
Maloof; and pottery by Otto and Gertrud Natzler.
Also featured are three
significant works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Childe Hassam, and J.O.J. Frost
that were recently donated to PEM by Peter Lynch in memory of his late
wife, Carolyn Lynch. By embracing an organic approach to collecting and
by freely integrating multiple subjects, time frames and media, the
Lynches created lively conversations about artistic creativity, regional
styles, and evolving traditions in America. A Passion for American Art
is on view at PEM from May 11 through December 1, 2019.
This
jewel-box exhibition celebrates the couple’s abiding love of nature and
of American history through 120 works of decorative art, 36 pieces of
furniture, 35 paintings and sculptures, and 10 Native American artworks.
The majority of the works are pristine examples of American creativity
from the 18th and 19th centuries – an era when many artists echoed the
latest styles and forms from Europe while also striving to express new
American ideals, beliefs, and regional tastes.
Publication:
Published by the Peabody Essex Museum, the major 224-page publication, A Passion for American Art: Selections from the Carolyn and Peter Lynch Collection, celebrates
the outstanding examples of American painting, furniture, decorative
arts, and Native American art from the Carolyn and Peter Lynch
collection. This luxuriously illustrated book traces the couple’s growth
as collectors, their cultural and aesthetic affinities and their
relationships with artists and fellow collectors. Writer Jeanne Schinto
offers a profile of the Lynches and a view into how the collection
expresses the couple’s distinctly American sensibility. PEM’s Carolyn
and Peter Lynch Curator of American Decorative Art, Dean Lahikainen,
shares an introduction to the collection and a series of short essays by
PEM curators explore how the Lynches combined diverse works in the
living spaces of their homes. The exhibition catalog will be available
this spring at pemshop.com.
"This
exhibition allows us to marvel not only at the range of American
traditions and creativity but also appreciate how collecting can amplify
a sense of place and express aesthetic and intellectual values,” says
Lahikainen.
PHILANTHROPISTS AND ART LOVERS Best
known for heading Fidelity’s Magellan Fund, the best performing mutual
fund in the world, Peter Lynch is also a major philanthropist. Together,
the couple established the Lynch Foundation in 1988 to support
nonprofit organizations in the greater Boston community. For many years,
Carolyn served as a PEM Trustee and Overseer and helped found the
museum’s American Decorative Arts Committee. In 2014, the Lynch
Foundation generously created an endowment for the PEM’s robust changing
exhibition program.
A Passion for American Art features
three works given to PEM’s American art collection by Peter Lynch in
memory of his late wife. These include Marblehead folk artist J.O.J.
Frost, American Impressionist painter Childe Hassam, and American master
Georgia O’Keeffe. PEM has presented solo exhibitions in recent years of
both Hassam’s and O’Keeffe’s works.
Frost’s 1925 panoramic masterwork, an oil on fireboard painting, called The March into Boston from Marblehead, April 16, 1861: There Shall Be No More War,
is of exceptional quality and scale. The local and national histories
referenced in the painting, coupled with the highly-detailed,
large-scale panoramic narrative scene, has broad appeal. The painting is
poignantly autobiographical, capturing Frost’s childhood memory of
watching his father alongside other Marblehead men depart on foot to
Faneuil Hall in Boston to enlist in the Civil War.
A key loan in PEM’s 2016 exhibition, American Impressionist: Childe Hassam and the Isles of Shoals, Hassam’s 1911 painting East Headland, Appledore, Isles of Shoals is a masterpiece within Hassam’s Appledore oeuvre. East Headland
is the first major American impressionist picture, and the first
Hassam, to enter PEM’s collection. The work also holds special
significance to the Lynch family as Peter took Carolyn to Appledore as a
birthday surprise to see the island and the site depicted in this
painting.
In Cedar and Red Maple, Lake George,
1921, O’Keeffe’s treatment of natural forms and unconventional contours
resulted in a modernist painting that abstracts, combines, and layers
the landscape in ways that – at the time – were unprecedented in
American art. The small but vivid canvas is characteristic of her
aesthetic responses to the Lake George landscape. This gift dramatically
bolsters PEM’s expanding and diversifying collection of works by women
and by modern artists.
Martin Johnson Heade, Orchid and Hummingbirds near a Mountain Lake, about 1875-90. Oil on canvas. Collection of Carolyn A. and Peter S. Lynch. Photography by Bob Packert/Peabody Essex Museum.
Freeman’s
has again artfully curated another strong sale for June, consisting of
nearly 160 lots and replete with many sought after artists. Many of the
usual suspects will make an appearance in both the American Art and the
Pennsylvania Impressionists categories, including William Glackens
(1870-1938), Martin Lewis (1881-1962), Joseph Stella (1877-1946) and
Charles Burchfield (1893-1967), as well as Fern Coppedge (1883-1951),
Edward Redfield (1869-1965), Walter Schofield (1867-1944), and Mary
Elizabeth Price (1877-1965). In addition, the sale will feature various,
renowned artists including Walter Palmer (1854-1932) and Hugh
Breckenridge (1870-1937).
An undoubted highlight of the auction is an important and
dramatically composed painting by Newell Convers Wyeth (1882-1945)
entitled “The Huge Monster Soon Came in Sight, Part of His Body
Appearing Above the Waves and Part Concealed” (Angelica and the
Sea-Serpent) (lot 85). Originally created as an illustration for Thomas
Bulfinch’s The Legends of Charlemagne, which was published in 1863 and
was an iconic collection of European fables and legends from the Middle
Ages. The lot boasts compelling provenance, having been gifted by the
artist to his friend Ralph Graves, whom he met in Washington, D.C. while
working on a series of murals for National Geographic, and has remained
in the same family ever since. According to the present owner, it is
“by far the best and most dramatic painting” of the series NC Wyeth
created for the publication.
Another
exciting highlight of the sale is a beautiful portrait by Cecilia Beaux
(1855-1942) of one of the artist’s childhood friends, entitled “Ethel
Page as Undine” (lot 19).
Another
exciting highlight of the sale is a beautiful portrait by Cecilia Beaux
(1855-1942) of one of the artist’s childhood friends, entitled “Ethel
Page as Undine” (lot 19). This painting is Beaux’s second of three
depictions of Ethel Page; the other portraits are in the collections of
the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Museum of Women in the
Arts in Washington, D.C. Page, who came from an affluent Philadelphia
family and is a direct descendent of Roger Williams (the founder and
first governor of Rhode Island) is shown here, dressed for a formal gala
event and depicted as Undine, the mythological water nymph. The work is
one of the artist's most successful paintings, for which Beaux won a
Mary Smith prize from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and
garnered Beaux considerable fame. The work is deeply inspired by James
Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and the Aesthetic Movement.
Well represented in the sale, as always, are the Pennsylvania
Impressionists.
Most notable is a serene winter scene (lot 121) by
Edward Willis Redfield; “The Frozen Creek” was completed in Point
Pleasant and originally in the collection of the artist’s granddaughter.
Additional highlights count Daniel Garber’s (1880-1958) “Cobb’s Creek”
(lot 154),
a Walter Elmer Schofield painting entitled “Road to the
Moors”, which was painted in England and was previously in the
collection of Mrs. Whitney, wife of the head of J.P. Morgan (lot 134).
Moreover, the sale will offer a number of works by renowned female
Pennsylvanian artists, counting five paintings by Fern Coppedge (lots
114, 126, 127, 144, 159), including a charming spring scene and an
impressive representation of the Grist Mill in Bucks County. In
addition, a beautiful, screen-like floral still life by Mary Elizabeth
Price, painted with gold and silver leaf, along with two other works by
the artist, will round out the category (lot 146).
The sale will offer several excellent watercolors, including
an
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) called “Frozen Wash” (lot 89), as well as an
enticing group of more modern works, including several gouaches by
Burchfield (lots 70-74) and a “mystical” watercolor by Stella (lot 76).
Additionally, there are several noteworthy still life lots, including
works by Herman Dudley Murphy (1867-1945) (lots 20 & 21) and John F.
Peto (1854-1907) (lot 18).
Sotheby’s American Art auction in New York on 21 May 2019 is led by Edward Hopper’s Central Park scene, Shakespeare at Dusk (estimate $7/10 million), as well as significant examples by American icons such as Norman Rockwell, Grant Wood, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Mary Cassatt. Highlights from the auction are now on view in Sotheby’s newly expanded and re-imagined New York galleries, with the full exhibition of all works opening on the 17th. EDWARD HOPPER’S SHAKESPEARE AT DUSK
Edward Hopper, Shakespeare at Dusk. Estimate: $7/10 Million. Courtesy Sotheby's.
Following the sale of Edward Hopper’s seminal Two Comedians last November, Sotheby’s is offering yet another outstanding work by the artist: Shakespeare at Dusk (estimate $7/10 million). Set in Central Park, this scene belongs to Hopper’s celebrated series of New York cityscapes—a
subject matter he explored early in his career while studying under
Robert Henri and continued until his death in 1967. Painted in 1935, the
work was previously held in the collection of John J. Astor VI,
prominent socialite and son of Colonel John Jacob Astor IV, who
tragically died in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.
A lifelong lover of poetry and prose, Hopper overtly
references the profound influence of literature on his emotional
response to specific times of day, particularly the evening in Shakespeare at Dusk. The poems that he quoted, often as explanations for his own art, frequently focus on the mood of dusk—its sense of mystery, anxiety, and eros born out of the varying effects of light and shadow. Shakespeare at Dusk depicts
two statues cloaked in shadow near a deserted southern end of the
Central Park Mall, which is illuminated by the vibrant afterglow of
sunset on the horizon. In the foreground, Hopper presents John Quincy Adams Ward’s
full-standing sculptural portrait of the celebrated playwright William
Shakespeare, with his head bowed in contemplative thought. The inclusion
of identifiable modern skyscrapers beyond the park is exceedingly rare in Hopper’s oeuvre and the present work is one of only a few New York scenes where the exact physical location is clearly apparent.
MILTON AVERY’S TWO FIGURES ON BEACH
Painted in 1950, Two Figures on Beach belongs to a remarkably innovative and productive period of Milton Avery’s celebrated career, and
exemplifies the distinctive blend of realism and abstraction that
defines his most admired aesthetic (estimate $1.2/1.8 million). Here,
Avery reinvents the traditional art historical motif of the reclining
female form through his distinctive and thoroughly modern vision, in a
scene that emanates leisure and tranquility.
JACOB LAWRENCE’S THE CARPENTERS
Recently discovered by Jacob Lawrence scholars, The Carpenters will
appear at auction for the first time after being held in the family of
its original owners, who purchased it from The Downtown Gallery soon
after it was completed in 1946 (estimate $500/700,000). Executed
following Lawrence’s military service during the Second World War, the work demonstrates the artist’s profound
interest in the depiction of African American workers and labor,
particularly in the post-war years. Lawrence would return to the subject
of carpenters again in the late 1960s, placing it among the most
persistent themes in his body of work.
MARY CASSATT’S DEPICTION OF MOTHERHOOD
Painted in 1914, Young Mother in a Floppy Hat and Green Dress with Her Child Outdoors epitomizes Mary Cassatt’s unmatched ability to capture the timeless bond between a mother and her child, a subject that accounts for one-third of her oeuvre (estimate $1.5/2.5 million). While Cassatt’s work from the 1870s reflected
her interest in the experience of modern women in Parisian society, by
the 1880s, her emphasis began to shift from the public to the private domains of women’s lives. In Young Mother in a Floppy Hat and Green Dress with Her Child Outdoors, Cassatt embraces a new visual language in order to convey the quiet, intimate moments spent within the domestic realm – including simple, daily interactions between mothers and their children.
ALL THAT IS GLORIOUS AROUND US: PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT AMERICAN COLLECTOR
A stunning selection of ten 19th century landscapes emerging from a private American collection are led by Sanford Robinson Gifford’s A Lake Twilight (estimate $1.2/1.8 million). Painted in 1861, the work is a dramatic depiction of the nation’s landscape at the brink of the Civil War.
Additional highlights from the group include
Frederic Edwin Church’s Ruins at Baalbek (estimate $1/1.5 million),
and Thomas Cole’s Sunset on the Arno (estimate $600/800,000).
NORMAN ROCKWELL’S CHRISTMAS HOMECOMING
A selection of three works by Norman Rockwell on offer include his preliminary study for the painting Christmas Homecoming, which appeared on the cover of the 25 December 1948 edition of The Saturday Evening Post (estimate $400/600,000). The work is the only image in the artist’s oeuvre in
which all members of his immediate family appear and are portrayed as
themselves. Rockwell's wife, Mary, embraces their eldest son, Jarvis, as
he arrives home for the holidays with Christmas presents
in hand, while the artist, his middle son Tom, and youngest son Peter
appear in the background. Rockwell’s friends and fellow artists, Grandma
Moses and Mead Schaeffer, are also rendered as family members. One of
Rockwell's favorite models, Sharon O'Neil, appears twice as a set of
twins in the immediate foreground.
A rare, late work by Britain’s favourite artist, J.M.W. Turner, will be unveiled in Moscow ahead of its sale at Sotheby’s
Old Master Evening Sale on 3 July. One of an important group of works
painted by the artist in the last ten years of his life, Landscape with
Walton Bridges, comes to the market for the first time in over 35 years
with an estimate of £3-4 million.
One of the preeminent figures that mark the pages of history – like
da Vinci, Darwin, Picasso or Einstein – who changed the way we see and
think about the world, Turner is an artist rooted in the aesthetic
philosophy and culture of his time. Perpetually engaged with the art of
both his predecessors and contemporaries, he was at the same time
possibly the first ‘modern’ painter; who directly inspired the
Impressionism of the nineteenth century, and presaged the Abstract
Expressionism of the twentieth.
Seemingly
inspired by a sense of sheer delight in the working of paint, Turner’s
visionary, experimental late works produced from the 1830s until his
death in 1851 are considered to be the artist’s supreme achievement, and
the pictures upon which his artistic significance ultimately rest.
Essentially explorations of the effects of light, Turner created the
works for himself, rather than for exhibition or for sale, retaining
them for the development of his art. With their bold application of
colour, their treatment of light and their deconstruction of form, these
late works revolutionised the way the painted image was perceived.
Applying the techniques he perfected in watercolour to the use of oil,
with successive layering of translucent colour thinly applied to the
surface, which imbue his canvases with a rich, hazy light, Turner gave
his works a potency and power that had never been achieved before, and
has seldom since.
This series of late works was inspired by compositions found in the
Liber Studiorum, the series of engraved views Turner had published
earlier in his career, around 1810-11. The central motif - Walton
Bridges - is also one that the artist had treated twice before in oils,
in 1806 and 1807. Clearly a subject with significant meaning to him, in
this work he sets the bridge in an idealised, Italianate landscape of
his own imagining.
Julian Gascoigne, Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings specialist
commented: “This spectacular series of late oil paintings, in which
Turner fondly revisits and reworks motifs long cherished in his mind,
show a great artist late in his career, with his reputation established
and his financial needs met, freed from the demands of public exhibition
and the constraints of his critics. Vigorously and freely painted, with
an emphasis on colour and light, rather than structure and form, he is
exploring the possibilities of his medium and painting for himself, not
for public consumption. Nearly two centuries later, however, seen
through the lens of the Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism that
would follow in the 19th and 20th centuries, we recognise them as the
first seeds of an idea, from which would be born modern art.”
One of a very small handful of late works to ever have left Turner’s
studio, and therefore not included in the Turner Bequest at Tate
Britain, Landscape with Walton Bridges was given to his landlady and
partner in later life, Sophia Booth, with whom the artist had lived in
Margate and London during the last years of his life. The work is now
the only one of this group of ten or so proto impressionist late
pictures inspired by the Liber Studiorum left in private hands.
In 1887 the painting was acquired by the great American financier
and collector Junius Spencer Morgan and spent the next hundred years as
one of the jewels in the crown of the celebrated Morgan Collection in
New York.
Landscape with Walton Bridges was unveiled in Moscow alongside
Pieter Brueghel the Younger’s Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap
(estimate: £1.5 – 2 million)
and Gerrit Dou’s The Penitent Magdalene
(estimate £800,000 – 1.2 million) from Sotheby’s Old Master Evening Sale
on 3 July, and works from the forthcoming Russian Paintings sale in
London on 5 June and the Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale in New
York on 15 May.
Landscape with Walton Bridges will also be exhibited at Sotheby’s New York (18 – 21 May) and Sotheby’s Hong Kong (28 – 30 May).
