Granville Redmond (American, 1871–1935), Sand Dunes, n.d. . Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 in. Private collection.
Granville
Redmond (American, 1871–1935), Carmel Coast (Carmel Sand Dunes and
Cypress), n.d. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches. Collection of Paula
& Terry Trotter.
Widely considered one of California’s top early artists, Granville
Redmond (1871–1935) produced a body of work that captures the state's
diverse topography, vegetation, and color. His paintings range in style
from contemplative, Tonalist works that evoke a quiet calm, to dramatic
and colorful Impressionist scenes.
Born in Philadelphia, Redmond contracted scarlet fever as a toddler,
which left him permanently deaf. Soon after, his family moved to
California. Today, Redmond is best known for his colorful Impressionist
oils depicting the California landscape ablaze with poppies and other
native flora.
Silent film star Charlie Chaplin, Redmond’s friend and supporter,
said of these paintings, “There’s such a wonderful joyousness about them
all. Look at the gladness in that sky, the riot of color in those
flowers. Sometimes I think that the silence in which he lives has
developed in him some sense, some great capacity for happiness in which
we others are lacking.”
From 5th September until 1st March 2020 the Fondazione Musei Civici di
Venezia, in conjunction with the City of Antwerp, VisitFlanders and the
Flemish Community, presents From Titian to Rubens. Masterpieces from
Antwerp and other Flemish Collections, an exhibition curated by Ben Van
Beneden, director of Rubenshuis in Antwerp.
The magnificent Doge’s
apartments will be transformed into veritable ‘constkamers’, rooms
filled with exquisite art demonstrating the riches of Flemish
collections. Featuring masterpieces by artists including Titian, Peter
Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck and Michiel Sweerts, the exhibition offers
a dazzling array of works, and the finest group of Italian and Flemish
art to come to Italy.
Three icons of Venetian painting return to their
hometown of Venice:
Titian’s Jacopo Pesaro presenting Saint Peter to
Pope Alexander VI,
Jacopo Tintoretto's The Angel Foretelling Saint
Catharine of Her Martyrdom,the altarpiece of the former San Geminiano church,
covered by the press worldwide as David Bowie’s Tintoretto’,
and
Titian’s Portrait of a Lady and her Daughter
(thought to be a depiction
of Titian’s mistress Milia and their daughter Emilia).
These
masterpieces from Flemish collections, both public and private, are
rarely lent and some have never, until now, been shown in public.
A special section
of the exhibition will be devoted to Flemish star composer Adriaan
Willaert who settled permanently in ‘la Serenissima’ to become Maestro
di Cappella of the Basilica di San Marco in 1527. It was Willaert who
founded the celebrated Venetian School of music that was to instruct,
among others, Giovanni Gabrieli and Claudio Monteverdi.
This fall and
winter, the Frick presents three canvases by Édouard Manet (1832–1883)
from the collection of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California,
marking the first time the paintings will be exhibited together
elsewhere since their acquisition.
Considered the father of
Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and, by some, twentieth-century
abstraction, Manet was a revolutionary in his own time and a legend
thereafter. Beyond his pivotal role in art history as the creator of
iconic masterworks, Manet’s vision has come to define how we understand
modern urban life and Paris, the so-called “capital of the
nineteenth-century.”
The works in the exhibition encapsulate three
“views” of the artist’s life and work. Each canvas offers an opportunity
to consider the range of Manet’s pioneering vision.
Madame Manet
(ca. 1876) encourages visitors to consider how the artist’s biography
impacts the way in which his paintings are understood,
while the
pristinely preserved Fish and Shrimp (1864) prompts an appreciation of his sheer technical skill.
Finally, The Ragpicker
(1867–71, possibly reworked 1876-77) demonstrates Manet’s innovative
combination of references to contemporary visual culture and Old Master
painting.
Manet: Three Paintings from the Norton Simon Museum
is the seventh in a series of acclaimed reciprocal loans with the
California museum. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue—which
features new scholarly material on technical analysis, provenance, and
dating—were organized and written by David Pullins, formerly Assistant
Curator, The Frick Collection.
In anticipation of the presentation in New York, conservators at the J.
Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles treated the three canvases, restoring
their original luminosity. Technical study at the Getty in collaboration
with research conducted at the Frick has resulted in a better
understanding of Manet’s technique and his habit of reworking his
paintings.
Manet: Three Paintings from the Norton Simon
Museum is the seventh in a series of acclaimed reciprocal loans with the
California museum. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue—which features new
scholarly material on technical analysis, provenance, and dating—were organized
and written by David Pullins, formerly Assistant Curator, The Frick Collection.
In anticipation of the presentation in New York, conservators at the J. Paul
Getty Museum in Los Angeles treated the three canvases, restoring their
original luminosity. Technical study at the Getty in collaboration with
research conducted at the Frick has resulted in a better understanding of
Manet’s technique and his habit of reworking his paintings.
COLLECTING MANET
Compared with his
numerous acquisitions of Old Masters, Henry Clay Frick’s interest in avant-garde
French painting was limited. In 1914, he purchased his sole canvas by Édouard
Manet,
The Bullfight (1864), and
installed it in his private study on the second floor of his Fifth Avenue
mansion, alongside Edgar Degas’s Rehearsal (1878–79). By contrast,
industrialist Norton Simon was deeply committed to nineteenth-century French
art. Besides amassing one of the nation’s most important collections of Old
Master paintings, he acquired superb examples by the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists,
and Nabis, and the museum that bears his name is recognized as one of the
world’s richest repositories of paintings, pastels, and sculptures by Degas.
The Norton Simon
Museum’s three works by Manet will be presented in the Frick’s Oval Room, in
dialogue with the Old Master paintings in the adjacent galleries. Much like The
Bullfight, Henry Clay Frick’s single,
exquisite Manet(on view during the exhibition in the North Hall), these works
will allow us to better appreciate a great master and his pivotal place in art
history between tradition and the avant-garde.
MADAME MANET
Madame Manet hung in
Simon’s home for more than a year before he remitted final payment to Wildenstein
& Company, in 1957. Much like Henry Clay Frick, Simon was notorious for his
insistence on living with a possible acquisition and understanding its
relationship to his existing collection before finalizing the purchase. Manet’s
future wife, Suzanne Leenhoff, arrived at the Manet family home in 1851, as a
piano instructor for the adolescent Édouard and his brother, Eugène. They married
twelve years later. By the time ofhis death, in 1883, Manet had painted Suzanne
at least thirteen times. The Simon’s portrait gives the impression of being
among the most immediate, rapidly brushed records that Manet left of his wife,
but technical analysis reveals that the artist actually worked with great deliberation
in order to achieve this effect.
While the raw canvas is visible to the naked eye
and the dress is composed of quick, dramatic strokes, the painting’s layers of
thin washes and shiny glazes—which required drying between applications—attest
to the artist’s laborious process. Moreover, technical analysis reveals that
Manet first portrayed his wife wearing a black hat, which he later obscured:
the resulting pentimento has left a halo around her head. Revisions were
typical of Manet, particularly in his portraits. One of his favorite models, Isabelle
Lemonnier, recounted that“he was endlessly starting my portraits over again. He
destroyed I know not how many studies in front of me.”
Research for the exhibition places Madame
Manet early in the chronology of a group of paintings executed between 1876 and
1879 that relate to
In the Conservatory, a double portrait of Jeanne Julie
Charlotte Guillemet and her husband, Jules (Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin). It
seems that Manet asked his wife to sit for preliminary studies of the work, in
orderto explorethe pose and colors. After Manet’s death, many unfinished
canvases that remained in his home and studio (including Madame Manet) were
alteredto make them more desirable for sale. These posthumous alterations—carried
out by several lesser artists, seemingly with the blessing of Manet’s widow—ranged
from completing unresolved parts of the composition to forging Manet’s
signature, as was the case with Madame Manet.
FISH
AND SHRIMP
Fish and Shrimparrived at the
Simon home early in 1959, on approval from Paul Rosenberg & Company. After
nearly eleven months of complicated payment proposals from Simon, Rosenberg
wrote to him in exasperation, “May I say again that I would be much happier if
you could make it a strait [sic] deal?” Again, the collector was thinking about
harmony across his collection: he recently had acquired two still lifes by Chardinand
was pursuing two floral still lifes by Henri Fantin-Latour. He finally agreed
to the price of $110,000 for Fish and Shrimp. In 1973, he consigned thirteen
works to Sotheby’s Parke-Bernet, among them Fish and Shrimp. (During the 1970s,
Simon regularly sold earlier acquisitions.) The still life went unsold, and although
it was offered back to Simon, he declined. Five years later, however, he bought
the painting back from the auction house at a greatly reduced price.The work is
finely preserved. Never relined, it retains the peaks and valleys of Manet’s
rich impasto. It comes from Manet’s first sustained engagement with still life,
around 1864.
In contrast to the challenging subject matter of his once
controversial but now celebrated Olympia (1863) and Luncheon on the Grass(1863),
these early still lifes gave critics the chance to appreciate Manet’s sheer
technical virtuosity.
In 1867, Émile Zola noted that his still lifes “begin,
happily, to be masterpieces for everyone ... Even the most vocal enemies of
Édouard Manet’s talent admit that he paints inanimate objects well.” A year
later, the painter Odilon Redon quipped, “Manet, who appears to us especially
well equipped for still-life painting, should limit himself to that.” While the
paint surface of Fish and Shrimp is best appreciated in person, the composition,
too, is exquisite: the table has been drawn close to the picture plane but
provocatively sits slightly askew, and the white wrapper draws attention to the
main subject, while the forms of the fish echo one another, with the salmon’s
tail flung upward and the nose of the needlefish pointed down.
THE RAGPICKER
The Ragpicker is a monumental,
institutionally scaled painting purchased from Wildenstein & Company by the
Norton Simon Foundation in 1968, in the wake of Simon’s creation of the Hunt
Foods & Industries Museum, in 1966. Forerunner of today’s Norton Simon
Museum, this innovative organization’s mission was to serve as a traveling
“collection without walls” that exhibited works of art throughout the United
States. Perhaps because Simon never intended to display The Ragpicker in his home,
he bought it almost immediately, within a month of it being proposed to him.
The
Ragpicker is one of a group of full-length figures that Manet retroactively
dubbed the “4 Philosophers” when he sold them to the art dealing firm Durand-Ruel,
in 1872. The series was inspired by Diego Velázquez’s dignified, penetrating
depictions of so-called beggar-philosophers, poor men of the streets who spoke
words of wisdom.
In addition to the impact the Spanish masters had on Manet following
his trip to Spain in 1865, the trope of the beggar-philosopher was widely
popular in Manet’s Paris. In response to the rapid changes made to the French
capital under Georges-Eugène Haussmann, writers including Manet’s friend
Charles Baudelaire celebrated members of the displaced urban underclass. In
particular, ragpickers—who redistributed discarded textiles and modest goods among
the lower social classes—represented a respectable, if downtrodden, laborer.
Although
The Ragpicker was the last in the series of “4 Philosophers,” new research
combined with technical study suggests that Manet completed it in two stages.
When he sold the painting to Durand-Ruel, it probably had a smooth surface,much
like the three other works in the series. But the agitated crosshatches visible
on the figure’s face and hands suggest that Manet revisited significant parts
of the canvas around 1875, during a time when he briefly explored this
technique. Cracks in the paint’s surface indicate that the face and hands have
multiple layers, likely applied sometime after the initial paint surface had
dried. As it happens, The Ragpicker was owned by businessman Ernest Hoschédé
between 1872 and 1878, and Manet is known to have visited the Hoschédé’s country
house, the Château de Rottembourg, in the summer of 1875 or 1876. It can be
assumed that he reworked the painting’s surface during his stay.
PUBLICATION
The exhibition is
accompanied by a beautifully illustrated catalogue written by curator David
Pullins. The volume includes important new technical information derived from
collaboration with the Getty and discoveries about Manet’s development as an
artist.
Afrocosmologies: American Reflections presents a window into
a dynamic cosmos of influences that shape contemporary American art.
This exhibition is a collaboration of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of
Art, The Amistad Center for Art & Culture, and the Petrucci Family
Foundation Collection of African-American Art. Drawing from over one
hundred art objects, with the Petrucci Family Foundation contributing
sixty-eight, these works of art span various media, present potent
voices, and pose multiple questions. Afrocosmologies is an
exhibition about presence, faith, authentic experiences, and
representations of gender within a family of people born to many
cosmological influences. With a predominant arc between the twentieth
and twentyfirst century, the exhibition brings together the work of an
incredible assortment of artists including Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey,
Elizabeth Catlett, Willie Cole, Melvin Edwards, Titus Kaphar, Lois
Mailou Jones, Kerry James Marshall, Alison Saar, Hale Woodruff, Shinique
Smith, and Kehinde Wiley along with many additional artists of note.
Afrocosmologies examines successive generations of African
American artists expressing their unique and evolving worldviews. Those
cosmologies illustrate particular aspects of American history but are
informed by African philosophical, ritual, and cultural systems that
migrated here in memory. It's human to look for order in the
universe--to develop a cosmology or system of belief. Art reflects this
search for understanding. From the late nineteenth century to now
African American artists have explored spirituality and culture by
telling stories and when finally allowed, creating imagery that
validated their connections to cosmology. Religion (faith), myth,
inherent humanity, non-traditional colors and patterns are all themes
emerging from the rich aesthetic traditions of West African and other
cultures. Afrocosmologies examines these works of art through four themes: Nature, Gods and Humanity, Ritual, and Origins.
"With such remarkable works of art to work with--seminal pieces
collected over the past century by the Wadsworth, a dynamic and emerging
spectrum of artists in the Petrucci collection, and The Amistad's
significant connection to history and New England--we wanted to attract
the widest possible audience," says Frank Mitchell, Executive Director
of The Amistad Center for Art & Culture and curator of the
exhibition. "The cosmology concept and its varying dynamism over time,
provided a natural framework for exploring issues of faith and community
that continue to define the field."
To more accurately and effectively present the contributions of
African American artists is to pave the way for corrective legitimacy
and complete the canvas of American history.
"When we took measure of
history at the Wadsworth Atheneum and The Amistad Center by looking at
the collections' growth and the exhibitions organized over the past
fifty years, we were reassured by our consistent commitment. Our
evolving vision has led to necessary conversations and the emergence of
consequential artists, right here at 600 Main Street," says Thomas J.
Loughman, Director and CEO of the Wadsworth. "In the Petrucci Family
Foundation collection we saw that same excitement and daring that we
prize at the Wadsworth. The Petrucci Foundation is a great partner in
helping us and The Amistad bring this vivid history and culture into
focus."
"We are a collection that has its genesis in a deep appreciation of
African American culture and are dedicated to acquiring works of art
that speak to the resilient, creative, and persistent humanity within
Black American culture," says Petrucci Family Foundation curator and
artist Berrisford Boothe. "Within the African American community and now
across America at large, conceptions of race, gender, and community
that once seemed fixed are now in flux or at least open for discussion.
What was once a binary system of black or white aesthetics, now involves
globally transplanted voices of color that exist within, are elevated
by, and add authentic cosmological dynamism to American cultural
conversations." In this continuing conversation, there must be
sensitivity, but also the recognition that America's history and its
impact cannot be eluded.
The Wadsworth is pleased to create a context for these ideas and for
the creative output of African American artists to be explored through
this exhibition's themes. Enslaved Africans brought a deep cosmological
appreciation of the natural world. It is a system that supported
relationships with gods and ancestors. The land had to be worked as
slaves, but the enslaved also lived through and worshipped in
partnership with water and land. The land always has been the setting
for nurturing new religious and syncretic practices. Nature: The World as We Experience It
includes works by Bob Thompson, Martha Jackson Jarvis, Howardena
Pindell, Richard Watson and others who take nature's presence as
inspiration to consider histories and imagine futures.
Gods and Humanity: Which Gods and Our Relationship to Them
includes works by artists such as Palmer Hayden, Willie Cole, Didier
William, Kenturah Davis, and Carl Joe Williams. Williams incorporates
portraits of Black mystical figures as everyday saints. Religious
tradition carried by many who endured the Middle Passage was conveyed
through stories, songs, and movement. Christianity limited the scope of
divinity but the familiar did not disappear as enslaved Africans
developed syncretic forms of worship that combined elements of both
traditions.
Worship sustained the captives and integrated diverse groups of
Africans who through spirituality, became united in their commitment to
freedom. Through works by Hale Woodruff, Richmond Barthé, Ralph Chessé,
Addison Scurlock, and others, Ritual: Shared Worship Experiences
looks at the new cosmologies, or ways of ordering the spiritual world,
that affirmed new identities and communities in the Americas.
Origins: Preparation for the Journeys presents the vitality of Afrocosmologies
through the art of Kerry James Marshall, John Biggers, Romare Bearden,
Barbara Bullock, Sharif Bey, Ed Johnetta Miller, and others. Generations
of African American artists and performers have struggled with ways to
present the experience of slavery and Africa's bearing. From
Reconstruction Era artists, to the Harlem Renaissance, to the Black Arts
Movement, and continuing today, there is a reassessment of history and
celebration of Africa's influence on contemporary culture.
Afrocosmologies will be on view October 19, 2019 through
January 20, 2019. During the exhibition, six artists whose work is
featured in the show will be participating in public programs at the
Wadsworth. All are welcome.
Exhibition Catalogue Afrocosmologies: American Reflections will be accompanied by
a 156-page, fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Frank Mitchell,
Berrisford Boothe, Claudia Highbaugh, and Kristin Hass--to be released
in October 2019.
Rome has long been a key destination for artists. At the beginning
of the 17th century, painters from across Europe flocked to the Eternal
City to see the revolution caused by painter Michelangelo Merisi da
Caravaggio (1571 – 1610). Everyone copied his stark contrast of light
and dark, powerful realism and dramatic sense of staging. The works
presented in this exhibition, all from the Museum and Gallery at Bob
Jones University, celebrate how Caravaggio shaped the Italian Baroque
and galvanized numerous followers.
Peter Paul Rubens (b. Siegen, 1577; d.
Antwerp, 1640), “Christ on the Cross,“ ca. 1610. Oil on panel, 45 x 30
3/4 inches. Museum and Gallery at Bob Jones University, Greenville, SC.
One of the main highlights is a
Crucifixion by Peter Paul Rubens, who spent more than eight years in
Italy.
Trophime Bigot (b. Arles, 1579; d.
Avignon, 1650), “St. Sebastian Tended to by St. Irene,” n.d. Oil on
canvas, 50 1/8 x 64 inches. Museum & Gallery at Bob Jones University
Greenville, SC.
Simon Vouet (Paris, 1590 – 1649),
“Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist,” 1614–27. Oil on
canvas, 39 x 29 1/8 inches. Museum and Gallery at Bob Jones University,
Greenville, SC.
Orazio Gentileschi (or studio) (b. Pisa,
1563; d. London, 1639), “The Martyrs Saint Valeriano, Saint Tiburzio,
and Saint Cecilia,” ca. 1620–21. Oil on canvas, 89 3/4 x 68 1/2 inches.
Museum and Gallery at Bob Jones University, Greenville, SC.
Giovanni Lanfranco (b. Parma, 1581; d.
Rome, 1647), “Saint Cecilia,” ca. 1620–21. Oil on canvas, 30 5/8 x 42
inches. Museum and Gallery at Bob Jones University, Greenville, SC.
The name of the Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, and architect
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) is synonymous with creative genius
and virtuosity. The exhibition Michelangelo: Mind of the Master
presents an unprecedented opportunity for museum visitors to experience
the brilliance of Michelangelo’s achievements on an intimate scale
through more than two dozen original drawings. Michelangelo’s genius is
especially evident through his breathtaking draftsmanship on sheets
filled with multiple figures and close studies of human anatomy.
Study for the nude youth over the Prophet Daniel (recto),
1510–11. Michelangelo Buonarroti (Italian, 1475–1564). Red chalk with
black chalk or charcoal; 34.3 x 24.3 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art,
Gift in memory of Henry G. Dalton by his nephews George S. Kendrick and
Harry D. Kendrick, 1940.465
These
working sketches invite us to look over the shoulder of one of Western
art history’s most influential masters and to experience firsthand his
boundless creativity and extraordinary mastery of the human form. These
drawings demonstrate Michelangelo’s inventive preparations for his most
important and groundbreaking commissions, including the Sistine Chapel
ceiling fresco, sculptures for the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici, and the
dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica.
Michelangelo: Mind of the Master
brings to the United States for the first time a group of drawings by
Michelangelo from the remarkable collection of the Teylers Museum
(Haarlem, The Netherlands), which was formed in the 18th century in part
from the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden (1626–1689).
Additional drawings from the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art
and the J. Paul Getty Museum round out the display.
A fully illustrated
catalogue accompanies the exhibition and includes essays by Emily J.
Peters (Cleveland Museum of Art), Julian Brooks (J. Paul Getty Museum),
and Carel van Tuyll van Serooskerken (Teylers Museum) that explore
Michelangelo’s working methods and major projects, as well as the
fascinating history of the ownership of his drawings after his death.
The exhibition Van Gogh’s Inner Circle. Friends, Family, Models
will give a broad view of the people who played an important role in
Van Gogh’s life and work. His complex relationships with family, friends
and fellow artists, students and models from Brabant to the south of
France were often strong and long-lasting, but sometimes ended in
estrangement. The exhibition includes prominent pieces from the
Netherlands and abroad. Drawings, letters, pictures and poetry give more
insight into his relationships. A surprising new perspective on one of
the world’s greatest artists.
Vincent van Gogh, L’Arlésienne (Madame Ginoux), feb.1890
Opening on September 28, Tacoma Art Museum will present Monet, Renoir, Degas,and Their Circle: French Impressionism and the Northwest,
a new exhibition that examines how the work of French Impressionists
and their immediate precursors made their way into Northwest public and
private collections. It also will include selected paintings by American
and Northwest artists to illustrate the spread of Impressionism across
the country.
“The purpose of this exhibition is deeply connected to the same
passion that drove the French Impressionists, to transform the way we
see,” said David F. Setford, TAM’s Executive Director and curator of
this exhibition. “It does this in two ways. First, it puts rarely seen
works from TAM’s European art collection into context and allows for an
expanded visitor learning opportunity. In addition, it is also the first
time that these Impressionist works from museums and private
collections in the Northwest have been seen together. It will provide a
lasting resource about French Impressionism and its historical impact
for curators and collectors in our region and beyond."
The exhibition is accompanied by a small publication including essays
by Setford and TAM curator Margaret Bullock, as well as an online
listing of French Impressionist works currently in Northwest public
collections. On view will be approximately fifty (50) works of art from
the following institutions: Frye Art Museum, Henry Art Gallery, Portland
Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, and Seattle Art Museum. These works are
complemented by selected loans from some of the major private
collections in the Northwest.
The exhibition will provide visitors the unique opportunity to enjoy
signature works by Gustave Caillebotte, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas,
Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir,
and Alfred Sisley among others. Filling out the story, paintings from
some of the most important precursors of Impressionism such as Eugène
Boudin, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, and Johan Barthold
Jongkind are included.
“To round off the exhibition, there will be a section of artworks
which demonstrate the influence of French Impressionism on Northwestern
and American painters–in other words, how East Coast and Northwest
artists adapted and interpreted the brushwork and use of light and color
in their own work,” notes Margaret Bullock, co-curator of the
exhibition.
This section will feature artists from the Northwest such as Edward
Espey, C.C. McKim, Clara Jane Stephens, and Fokko Tadama, and American
artists from further afield such as Cecilia Beaux, Childe Hassam,and
Theodore Robinson. “We are extremely grateful for the immense generosity
of our regional sister museums incollaborating to create this
exhibition,” notes Setford. “The treasures of French Impressionism that
will be brought together for this exhibition demonstrate the depth and
strength of the collections located in the Pacific Northwest."
The North Carolina Museum of Art this fall opens Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection (October 26, 2019–January 19, 2020). Few
artists have captured the public’s imagination with the force of
Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907–54) and her husband, the Mexican
painter and muralist Diego Rivera (1886–1957). The myths that surrounded
these two icons of the 20th century in their lifetime arose not only
from their significant bodies of work, but also from their friendships
(and conflicts) with leading political figures and their passionate,
tempestuous personal relationships.
“Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques
and Natasha Gelman Collection will emphasize a remarkable chapter in art
history that is at once Mexican and global,” says Museum Director
Valerie Hillings. “Diego Rivera’s personality, politics, and monumental,
social realist murals made him a celebrity during his lifetime. While
he once overshadowed his equally talented wife, Frida Kahlo’s fame has
far outstripped her husband’s in the years since her death. The NCMA is
honored to present this exhibition and Luces y Sombras: Images of Mexico | Photographs from
the Bank of America Collection, which will celebrate these artists’
culture of origin as well as the diverse sources of influence they drew
upon in creating their distinctive oeuvres.”
Kahlo and Rivera’s works are varied in scope and inspiration. She is
best known for her self-portraits, while he worked as a large-scale
muralist in Mexico and the United States. Kahlo’s work is
deeply personal, often depicting her own dreams, painful personal
experiences, and affinity with Mexican culture, while Rivera’s pursues
larger looks at history and cultural revolution. Both artists forged
the way for Mexican art as a significant element of the 20th century and
beyond.
Similarly important is the legacy of two of Kahlo and Rivera’s
patrons, Jacques and Natasha Gelman. The Gelmans became Mexican citizens
in 1942 and began amassing Mexican art, sustaining a growing collection
of Mexican modernists, like Kahlo and Rivera (with whom they became
close friends), as well as their compatriots Rufino Tamayo, David Alfaro
Siqueiros, and others. Their unparalleled collection shows the richness
of Mexican art through painting, drawing, photography, and film.
The
patriot, silversmith, and entrepreneur Paul Revere was forever
immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1861 poem, “Paul Revere’s
Ride,” but his genuine accomplishments are often eclipsed by the legend
of the midnight journey. This groundbreaking exhibition featuring more
than 150 objects re-examines Revere’s life, transforming visitors’
understanding of the innovative businessman through an in-depth
exploration of his accomplishments as a silversmith, printmaker, and
pioneering copper manufacturer. Organized by the American Antiquarian
Society, it draws from their unparalleled collection of Revere
engravings, and also includes glimmering silver tea services;
commonplace objects such as shoe buckles, thimbles, and medical tools;
and important public commissions such as a bronze courthouse bell, all
of which reveal facets of this versatile artisan’s career.
Paul Revere Jr. (1735−1818), engraver; attributed to Christian Remick (1726−73). The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated on King-Street, Boston on March 5th 1770 by a Party of ye 29thReg[imen]t, ca. 1770−74 Hand-colored engraving. Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History, GLC01868
Grant Wood (1892−1942), Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, 1931. Oil on Masonite. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1950, 50.117
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year. He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.” Then he said “Good night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war:
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide. Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore. Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,—
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all. Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,—
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats. Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then impetuous stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height,
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns! A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat. He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river-fog,
That rises when the sun goes down. It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon. It was two by the village clock,
When be came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball. You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load. So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
New-York Historical Society August 16 – December 8, 2019
Panoramas: The Big Picture explores
the history and continued impact of panoramas from the 17th to the
21st century, as they were used to create spatial illusions, map places,
and tell stories. Highlights include John Trumbull’s sweeping double
vistas of Niagara Falls (1808), sections of Richard Haas’ nearly
200-foot long trompe l’oeil panorama of Manhattan (1982), and Eadweard
Muybridge’s 17-foot photographic panorama of San Francisco before the
city’s devastating 1906 earthquake (1878). The exhibition examines and
reveals the impact that these and other panoramas had on everything from
mass entertainment to nationalism to imperial expansion. (Curated by Wendy Ikemoto, associate curator of American Art).
John Trumbull (1756–1843), Niagara Falls, from Two Miles Below Chippawa, 1808 [detail]
Oil on canvas
New-York Historical Society, Gift of Alexander Eddy Hosack, 1868.6.
John Frederick Kensett (1816–1872), View from Cozzens’ Hotel, near West Point, N.Y., 1863 [detail]
Oil on canvas
Robert L. Stuart Collection, the gift of his widow Mrs. Mary Stuart, S-189.
Leigh Behnke (b. 1946), Chrysler Building, 1996
Watercolor on two pieces of heavy watercolor paper with deckled edges
New-York Historical Society, Gift of Lawrence L. Di Carlo, 2006.29.
