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Art for the Nation C O L L E C T I N G FOR A NEW

CENTURY

Art for the Nation COLLECTING FOR A NEW CENTURY

National Gallery of Art , Washington

The exhibition is made possible by Verizon Communications

The exhibition was organized by

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

the National Gallery of Art

CATALOCINC-IN-PUBLICATION

Exhibition Dates

DATA

CONTRIBUTORS

Melissa Beck Judith Brodie David Alan Brown

I October 2000-4 February 2OOI

National Gallery of Art (U.S.) Art for the nation: collecting for a

Copyright ©2000 Board of Trustees,

new century.

National Gallery of Art, Washington

p. cm.

Florence E. Coman

All rights reserved. This book may

Exhibition dates, I October 2000 -

Philip Conisbee

not be reproduced, in whole or part

4 February 2OOI, organized by the

Molly Donovan

(beyond that copying permitted

National Gallery of Art.

Ruth E. Fine

by Sections 107 and 108 of the

ISBN 0-89468-281-4

Nicolai Cikovsky Jr. Virginia Tuttle Clayton

Margaret Morgan Grasselli

reviewers from the public press),

1. Art, American — Exhibitions.

Sarah Greenough John Oliver Hand

without written permission from

2. Art, Modern—United States—

Gretchen A. Hirschauer

the publishers.

Exhibitions. 3. Art, European —

Gregory Jecmen

Exhibitions. 4. Art, Modern —

Kimberly Jones Franklin Kelly

U.S. Copyright Law, and except by

Produced by the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Europe—Exhibitions. 5. Art—

Chris Vogel, Production Manager

6. National Gallery of Art (U.S.)—

Douglas Lewis Alison Luchs

Edited by Julie Warnement

Exhibitions. I. Title.

CarlottaJ. Owens

Designed by Margaret Bauer

N65O5 .N295 2000

Typeset in Van Dijck and Cronos by

75°'-75—d" 1

Washington (D.C.)—Exhibitions.

Peter Parshall 00-033936

Duke & Company, Devon, PA, and printed on Phoenix Motion Xantur,

Charles Ritchie Andrew Robison Lynn Pearson Russell

ILLUSTRATIONS

Stacey Sell Julia Thompson

150 gms by Grafisches Zentrum

Front cover: Luis Melendez,

Drucktechnik, Ditzingen-Heimer-

Still Life with Figs and Bread, 17605,

April Watson

dingen, Germany

Patrons' Permanent Fund

Jeffrey Weiss

PHOTO C R E D I T S

Back cover: Maurice de Vlaminck, Tugboats on tht Sriite, Cbatim, 1906,

Page 261: ©2000 Estate of Alexander

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John

Calder/Artists Rights Society (ARS),

Hay Whitney; excerpt from Franklin

New York Page 300: Copyright Robert Frank from The Americans

Delano Roosevelt's opening night remarks, 17 March 1941, National Gallery of Art Title page: Edgar Degas, The Dance

NOTE TO THE READER

Leaon (detail), c. 1879, Collection

Dimensions are given in centimeters,

of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

followed in inches within parentheses,

Page 6: Louis-I^opold Boilly,

with height preceding width.

The Public in the Salon of the Louvre, Viewing the Painting of the "Sucre" (detail), begun 1808, Woodner Collection Page 320: Sanford Robinson Gifford, Siout, Kgyft (detail), 1874, New Century Fund, Ciift of Joan and David Maxwell

Arthur K.Wheelock Jr.

Contents

7

Director's Foreword

8

Collecting Art in the 19905 Catalogue of the Exhibition

10

Paintings

124

Drawings and Prints

244

Sculpture

264

Photography

304

Endnotes

318

Index of Artists

7

Director's Foreword

Marking the beginning of a new century, this exhibition celebrates the strength of the National Gallery of Art's permanent collection. The exhibition highlights the growth and enhancement of the collection during the past decade. Many of the finest works we have acquired during the past ten years have been gifts to the Gallery, while others were purchased with funds donated specifically for the acquisition of art. The exhibition includes approximately 2 percent of the Gallery's recent acquisitions. Selecting the show required us to make difficult choices among works of art of the highest quality. Although some choices reflect our wish to have substantial representation from each of the last five centuries, the selections have been influenced primarily by rarity, art historical significance, and quality. The exhibition is part of a series of exhibitions showcasing the permanent collection. The great bequest of Paul Mellon was presented last year. Twentieth-

century drawings will be featured in an exhibition in 2001. This show underscores the character, breadth, interest, and—most important—the quality of recent acquisitions and epitomizes the standards of excellence on which the nation's collection is built. We are profoundly grateful to Verizon Communications for its sponsorship of this exhibition. Verizon continues in the tradition of its predecessor companies, GTE and Bell Atlantic Corporations, who have been generous friends of the National Gallery for close to twenty years, having most recently underwritten Alexander Calder (1998) and Picasso: The Early Tears, 1892–1906 (1997). On the present occasion, Verizon has not only helped with the organizational costs but also contributed to the purchase of one of the new acquisitions, illustrated on page 217. We thank Charles R. Lee, chairman and co-chief executive officer, Verizon Communications, for his friendship and his encouragement of our efforts. The entire curatorial staff participated in the selection of the show and in writing the entries for this catalogue, working under the leadership of Alan

Shestack, deputy director and chief curator, who was responsible for coordinating the project. All contributors to the catalogue are listed on page 4. It is our talented, well-informed, and hardworking staff who, along with our magnanimous and discriminating donors, made possible the superb acquisitions recorded here. As you look through the pages of this book, and as you walk through the exhibition, I am sure you will agree that the National Gallery has added to the collection works of art that are the finest of their kind, and I trust that the exhibition demonstrates the continuing commitment of the National Gallery of Art to acquiring superb works of art from the late Middle Ages to the present day. EARL A. POWELL

Director

III

Collecting Art in the 19905

8

The permanent collection is the core and raison d'être of any important art museum. The collection gives the museum its personality, establishes its position in the hierarchy of art collections worldwide, and forms the basis for most of the other activities of the museum—conservation, education, and the special exhibition program. American museums, including the National Gallery, have certainly established new initiatives in recent times (public outreach and the engagement of the community, interpretive programs, and creative use of new technologies, to name a few); collecting, however, remains a very high priority for the National Gallery. Compared to the great national museums of Europe, our National Gallery is a young institution, whose collection can still be augmented in many areas. Collecting for art museums has become an increasingly difficult and challenging task in recent years. There have always been voices claiming that the great era of collecting is over, that the vast majority of great works of art have already found their way from private into public hands. But that dire statement

now actually seems to be coming true. The number of museum-quality paintings and sculptures that appears on the art market these days is very small. Art dealers are quick to admit that finding firstclass objects is now the hardest part of their business. Art is not a renewable commodity; the corpus of works by any given artist is finite. Once all the Rembrandts or Caravaggios are in museums, no amount of money is going to shake one loose. The opportunities to buy have been progressively reduced. As a result, the law of supply and demand comes into play, and prices for the great objects, and even just the fine ones, go sky high. When an unpublished and unknown work by an important artist emerges, it attracts tremendous attention and an extremely high price. Museum acquisition funds, like works of art, are also finite, and raising money for significant purchases is increasingly difficult, especially when prices reach eight figures. The National Gallery has been very fortunate in receiving the support of many collectors who understand that in order to continue acquiring art in a meaningful way, substantial sums must be provided to take advantage of the declining number of opportunities.

Other factors, however, constrain collecting in America today. Because many European nations do not wish to see their own cultural heritage diminished, they have put in place export prohibitions to protect their own cultural patrimony. Many works of art still privately held— in Italy, say, or in English country houses—will never leave their country of origin. On a personal note, when I first started shopping for works of art for a museum in the early 19705,1 could go to London for a brief time and easily find several dozen desirable acquisitions, priced in a range between $100,000 and $1,000,000. The task was deciding which of the many options to pursue. Today, one can go to Europe for an extended stay, call on major painting dealers in the primary art market cities, and find only two or three works worthy of an important museum. And, of course, these few works will have multimillion dollar price tags.

9

As the supply of great art continues to dwindle, curators are more and more frequently offered works of less than superlative quality or works in questionable condition. The astute and knowledgeable curator, able to place the work in the context of hundreds of similar works in museum collections, will immediately perceive the inferiority of the proffered work and not be seduced by the opportunity to fill a gap or add a famous name with a weak example. I am proud to report that our curators are constantly looking and learning, staying in touch with the primary art dealers in their fields so that our Gallery might get first refusal when some outstanding art object first comes on the market. Our curators are constantly judging and ranking works of art in the effort to be certain that only the finest works are recommended for acquisition by the Gallery. Wise and effective curators also stay in touch with art collectors in their own fields of specialization and are sure to let those collectors know which works would find happy homes in the National Gallery (where millions of visitors could view them each year). Historically, well over 75 percent of the works of art in American museums were donated rather than purchased. The enlightened tax laws

of the United States, which provide a full market value tax deduction for gifts of appreciated property, have encouraged the flow of important works of art from private collections to public museums. This is especially true of works of art whose quality has been sanctioned by informed judgment over time and whose dollar value has thus greatly appreciated. Some donors, of course, decide to give or bequeath their collections to art museums out of a sense of civic commitment or national pride; they believe, as did Andrew W. Mellon many years ago, that a nation is judged as much by its cultural accomplishments as by its prowess in business and industry. Many of our donors also share the belief that great works of cultural, historic, or aesthetic value belong in the public realm. Reading through this catalogue will make clear that all the works of art in the present exhibition were donated by astute and discriminating collectors, or were purchased with funds donated by generous supporters. Not one federal dollar has ever been spent on an acquisition.

The present exhibition presents approximately 150 works surveying the last five centuries of European and American art. This group of objects hardly does justice to the record of National Gallery of Art acquisitions, since it represents only a fraction of the works acquired during the past decade. The purpose of this exhibition, however, is to demonstrate the breadth and depth of our collecting and to show a sample of the paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and photographs acquired since our fiftieth anniversary exhibition in 1991. We work hard to maintain the level of quality set by our founding collections—Mellon, Kress, Widener, and Dale. In acquiring new works, we have often devoted entire curatorial meetings to lively discussion about possible "candidates." Many works are considered before a few are selected for presentation to the Board of Trustees for a final decision. In the end, we hope that we are living up to our mandate to present for the benefit of a broad public a survey of Western art with examples of the highest possible quality. ALAN SHESTACK

Deputy Director and Chief Curator

Paintings CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITION

io

Nuremberg The Raising of the Cross

Simon de Vlieger Estuary at Dawn

Thomas Cole Italian Coast Scene with Ruined Tower

Giovanni de' Busi, called Cariani A Concert

Jan van Huysum Still Life with Flowers and Fruit

Constant Troyon The Approaching Storm

Jacopo Bassano The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

Jean-Baptiste Oudry The Marquis de Beringhen

Winslow Homer Home, Sweet Home

Jan Brueghel the Elder River Landscape

Bernardo Bellotto The Fortress of Konigstein

Sanford Robinson GifTord Siout, Egypt

Osias Beert the Elder Banquet Piece with Oysters, Fruit, and Wine

Luis Melendez Still Life with Figs and Bread

Edgar Degas The Dance Lesson

Claude-Joseph Vernet The Shipwreck

William Michael Harnett The Old Violin

Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes Study of Clouds over the Roman Campagna

John Haberle Imitation

Louis-Leopold Boilly Cardsharp on the Boulevard

Vincent van Gogh Self-Portrait

Simon Denis View near Naples

Paul Serusier Farmhouse at Le Pouldu

Raphaelle Peale A Dessert (Still Life with Lemons and Oranges)

Martin Johnson Heade Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth

Hendrik Goltzius The Fall of Man Valentin de Boulogne Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats'} Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder Bouquet of Flowers in a Glass Vase Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino The Rebuke of Adam and Eve Peter Paul Rubens The Meeting of David and Abigail Adriaen Brouwer Touth Making a Face Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck Andries Stilte as a Standard Bearer

Lancelot-Theodore Turpin de Crisse View of a Villa, Pizzofalcone, Naples John Constable Cloud Study: Stormy Sunset Johan Christian Dahl View from Vaekere near Christiania Andre Giroux Santissima Trinita dei Monti, in the Snow

Childe Hassam Poppies, Isles of Shoals John Frederick Peto For the Track

11

Claude Monet The 'Japanese Footbridge Henri Matisse Open Window, Co/lioure Maurice de Vlaminck Tugboats on the Seine, Chatou Georges Braque The Port of La Ciotat Edouard Vuillard Place Vintimille Francis Picabia The Procession, Seville Edward Steichen Le Tournesol (The Sunflower) Georgia O'KeefTe Black White and Blue Charles Sheeler Classic Landscape Arthur Dove Moon Jean DubufFet Bertele bouquet fleuri, Portrait de parade (Bertele as a Blossoming Bouquet, Sideshow Portrait) Ellsworth Kelly Tiger Hans Hofmann Autumn Gold

Georg Baselitz Mann im Mond—Franz Pforr (Man in the Moon—Franz Pforr) Richard Diebenkorn Seated Figure with Hat Cy Twombly Untitled (Bolsena) Susan Rothenberg Butterfly Jasper Johns Perilous Night

Nuremberg

12

This rare example of an intact portable triptych from the late fifteenth century is further enhanced by its superb state of preservation. On the exterior wings are two of the most popular saints in Western art, Saints Barbara and Catherine, who represent the active and the contemplative life, respectively. Saint Barbara holds a ciborium above which floats a wafer of the host; she was often invoked as protection against sudden death without benefit of Communion. A brilliant philosopher, Saint Catherine stands upon a broken wheel, a reference to her attempted martyrdom, and holds a sword, which was used to behead her. Opening the triptych reveals one of the earliest depictions of the Raising of the Cross, a subject that began to appear in northern Europe in the late fifteenth century. An account of the attachment of Christ's body to the cross and its elevation does not occur in the Gospel narratives. Rather, it grew out of late medieval piety, in particular, the religious movement known as the Devotio Moderna (Modern Devotion), which amplified the narrative of Christ's Passion and urged its followers to empathize with Christ's

15™ C E N T U R Y

pain and suffering. Here, the event is spread over the three interior panels, unified by a continuous landscape. In the center panel a jeering crowd watches and gestures angrily as the cross is raised. For the contemporary viewer the tattered blue garments and the striped robe and red cowl worn by the men at the right would have identified them as disreputable and marginal members of society. Two very different groups of onlookers are found on the wings. On the left wing are the holy women: Mary Magdalene kneels in the foreground, Saint Veronica holds the sudarium bearing an imprint of Christ's face, while the weeping Virgin dries her tears with her light blue robe. On the right wing in the foreground the bad thief, identifiable by his shaved head and ragged clothing, awaits his crucifixion. At the top are dark ominous storm clouds that have begun to move into the center panel. The Raising of the Cross was first owned by a member of the Starck family of Nuremberg, as indicated by the coat of arms at the bottom of the center panel. The altarpiece was used for private devotion in an ecclesiastical or, more likely, a domestic setting. The artist also can be firmly associated with the city of Nuremberg and in particular with two of that city's leading painters, Hans Pleydenwurff

and Michel Wolgemut. When Pleydenwurff died in 1472, Wolgemut was quick to marry his widow and take over the workshop. The anonymous artist was almost certainly trained in this atelier, and the clear, vibrant colors, firm draftsmanship, and dynamic composition of The Raising of the Cross demonstrate his skill and importance. To the Gallery's already formidable collection of German art, this triptych adds a superb work from Nuremberg at the moment when Albrecht Diirer, who also apprenticed with Wolgemut, began his ascendancy. JOHN OLIVER HAND

Provenance: A member of the Starck family, Nuremberg. John, i6th earl of Shrewsbury, Alton Tower, Staffordshire; given in 1839 to Saint Mary's College, Oscott; French & Company, New York, by 1976.

The Raising of the Cross c. 1480/1490, oil on panel Center: 66 x 48.3 (26 x 19) Wings: each 66 x 23.5 (26 x 9^) Patrons 5 Permanent Fund 1997.100.1 a

13

Giovanni de 5 Busi, called Cariani V E N E T I A N , 1 4 8 5 / 1 4 9 0 - 1 5 4 7 OR A F T E R

14

Reproduced on the cover of the standard

length behind a ledge, derives from Gior-

monograph on Cariani, A Concert is widely regarded as the artist's masterpiece. The painting first came to light in the 19605, when it was attributed to Cariani with a dating of c. 1519. Born c. 1485 near Bergamo, the westernmost of the Venetian mainland territories, Cariani was trained in Venice, first in Giovanni Bellini's workshop and then among the circle of Giorgione. In Venice until 1517, he underwent further influences from Titian, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Palma Vecchio, the last of whom also came from Bergamo. Cariani returned to live in his native city twice, from 1517 to 1523 and again from 1528 to 1530; otherwise he was active in Venice until his death. This pattern of alternating between the two artistic centers, one a sophisticated metropolitan capital and the other a provincial city with strong ties to Lombardy, is reflected in Cariani's style, and nowhere more than in A Concert. The oblong composition, featuring a lute player and two companions shown half-

gione, as do the two themes that Cariani combined in his painting: The subject of a young man with his teacher goes back to Giorgione's Three Ages of Man^ in the Pitti Gallery, Florence, and to the National Gallery's own Giovanni Borgherini and His Tutor^ from the artist's studio, both dating from c. 1505 to 1510. Cariani united this theme with the even more popular one of music making, epitomized in Titian's famous Concert in the Pitti Gallery. The warm color in Cariani's picture—the green cloth draped over the ledge, the red garments and book, and, above all, the stunning red-and-pink hat worn by the musician, set off against a gray background—is also Venetian in origin. Cariani interpreted his Venetian models in a highly realistic Lombard manner. The musician accurately strums the six-stringed lute; near him are a white handkerchief with which to wipe his hands and a small box containing a spare string. Like the musical instruments, the costumes, especially the fur-lined cloaks, are treated with the utmost attention to texture and detail. All three figures, to

judge from their individualized features, must be portraits, although the sitters have yet to be identified. Most impressive is the corpulent musician. He bursts onto the scene, separating the tutor, who is shown holding a book on the left, from his aristocratic young pupil, who looks out at the viewer from the right. Cariani's earthy realism gives the musician a humorous air: with his head cocked as if seeking inspiration, he is one of the great comic inventions of Italian Renaissance painting. D A V I D A L A N B R O W N Provenance: Heinemann Collection, New York, by 1962.

A Concert c. 1518—1520, oil on canvas 92 X 130 (36V4 X 51 3/16)

Bequest of Lore Heinemann in memory of her husband, Dr. Rudolf J. Heinemann 1997.57.2

15

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes 1545, oil on canvas 143.5 x 243.7 (56 V z x 95 is/16) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1997.21.1

16

I?

JaCOpO BaSSanO

This painting, which came to light in 1989, is a major addition to the work of Jacopo Bassano. One of the four leading mid-to-late sixteenth-century Venetian painters, Jacopo is less well-known than are his contemporaries Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto. Only with the exhibition of his work in his native town of Bassano del Grappa in 1992 did the artist finally get the recognition he deserves. Aside from the quality and variety of his production, Bassano had the most extraordinary development of any sixteenthcentury Venetian master except Titian. After modest beginnings, Bassano's work exploded into greatness with a series of pictures dating from the 15408, which demonstrated his true measure as an artist. He overcame his provincial isolation and kept abreast of artistic trends by studying prints by or after other masters such as Raphael. Bassano's mannerist compositions of the 15408 and 15505, with their rich color and animated figures, gave way to the expressive lighting and more genre-like character of the works of the 15608. Thereafter, Bassano's art increasingly emphasized figures of peasants

V E N E T I A N , c. 1510-1592

and their animals. With their dark tonality, flickering brushwork, and somber mood, the best of his late pictures approach Rembrandt. As we learn from the painter's account book, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes was ordered in April 1545 by the Venetian governor of Bassano, Pietro Pizzamano. Returning to Venice later that same year, the patron took his picture with him, where, in 1547, Titian copied it for the background of an altarpiece he painted. In the Miraculous Draught of Fishes Jacopo typically drew on a print source for the composition—Ugo da Carpi's chiaroscuro woodcut of the same subject. The print in turn reproduces (in reverse) Raphael's great tapestry cartoon of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes of c. 1515, which, with the other cartoons in the series, is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Though relying here, as elsewhere, on a visual source, Jacopo nevertheless transformed the print he took as a point of departure. The aesthetic appeal of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes lies in the way the brilliant hues of rose red, ocher, and green are set off against the broad expanse of blue water. Jacopo's colorful tableau, extending across the width of the canvas, has an almost

vertiginous effect, in which the play of gestures and expressions of Christ, Peter, and Andrew on the left contrasts with the denser grouping of Zebedee and his sons James and John on the right. Uniting the two groups of apostles is the dramatic form of Andrew's billowing cape, a signature motif of the artist. Bassano further enlivened the composition through the careful observation of nature, reflected in Zebedee's oaring, the fish struggling in the net, and the view of his native town i n t h e upper right. D A V I D A L A N B R O W N Provenance: Commissioned 1545 in Bassano by Pietro Pizzamano, Venice. Private collection, London, by 1989; sold 1997 through Matthiesen Gallery, London.

Jan Brueghel the Elder F L E M I S H , 1568-1625

18

Jan Brueghel, whose delicate brushwork earned him the name Velvet Brueghel, was an artist of remarkable versatility. He is justly famed for his atmospheric landscapes and riverscapes, which come alive not only through the careful yet fluid strokes of his brush, but also through the activities of the figures who populate his scenes. He also painted flower bouquets, many of which include depictions of precious objects; mythological, allegorical, and historical subjects; and evocative scenes of hell. Brueghel apparently received his early training in Brussels, the city of his birth, but his first recorded works date to the mid-15905, when he was in Italy. His early style reflects the work of Paul Bril, a contemporary artist from Antwerp working in Rome and a close follower of Jan's father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. In 1597, after returning to Antwerp, Jan entered the Guild of Saint Luke and quickly established himself as an important member of the artistic community. He served as dean of the guild in 1602. In 1606 he became court painter for Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabella, regents in the Southern Netherlands. Brueghel, who often collaborated with other artists, including Peter Paul Rubens

and Joos de Momper, was highly valued by kings and princes throughout Europe for his refined and delicate images, many of which he painted on copper. Brueghel executed this exquisite small-scale work depicting an expansive river landscape in 1607, when he was at the height of his artistic powers. His image focuses upon daily life near the juncture of a broad river and a smaller tributary, which passes through a small village. Gentle pools of light, as well as changes in the color tonalities of the trees and water—from ochers and browns in the foreground, to greens in the middle distance, to blues in the distance— ease the transition into depth. Although the scene is fanciful, it must reflect life along the Scheldt, the main river passing through the low-lying Flemish countryside. The large church dominating the distant city on the horizon is recognizable as Saint Michaelis, the Antwerp cathedral. The foreground activities center on a tender moment when a boatman passes a baby to his father after having transported the family across the wide river. While a group of elegant ladies and a child awaits passage, other ferryboats filled with travelers, horses, and cattle approach the shore. Many other figures, including fishermen and families working around their homes, enliven the sunlit middle distance near the village.

Paintings such as this had enormous influence on Flemish art and, perhaps, on Dutch landscapes in the second decade of the seventeenth century. Brueghel's river views were certainly known to artists working in Haarlem, including Esaias van de Velde and Willem Buytewech, whom he may have met when he visited that artistic center in 1613 while accompanying Peter Paul Rubens on a diplomatic mission to The Netherlands. ARTHUR K. WHEELOCK JR.

Inscription (lower left): BRUEGHEL

ifdjo?

Provenance: Duke of Chandos, Stowe, thence by descent; Gallery Sanct Lucas, Vienna.

Riper Landscape 1607, oil on copper 20.7 x 32.1 (SVs x I25/s) Patrons' Permanent Fund and Nell and Robert Weidenhammer Fund 2000.4.1

19

Osias Beert the Elder F L E M I S H , A C T I V E 1596-1623

20

In their successful endeavors to convey a world of abundance and beauty, seventeenth-century painters presented sumptuous tabletop still lifes to delight the viewer's senses. Osias Beert was perhaps the most refined painter of this popular genre. The carefully crafted objects and expensive delicacies depicted by Beert celebrate his Flemish culture in a style that clearly articulates his mastery of textural effects and realistic detail. The eleven opened oysters arranged upon the pewter plate are striking examples of this realism: their amorphous forms appear to be so liquid that one can almost imagine the oysters5 easily slipping from their pearly white shells. Nearby, two exotic shells from distant seas emphasize the exceptional rarity of the foods in the expensive vessels arrayed on the table. Luxurious sweets decorated with gold leaf fill the Wan-li bowl in the foreground, while dried raisins, figs, and almonds overflow two other Ming period bowls. In the center, elegant sweets, including candied cinnamon bark and candied almonds that have been colored yellow, pink, and green, fill a

ceramic tazza. Quince paste, which was stored in simple, round wooden boxes, was another delicacy enjoyed at special festivities. Both red and white wine, so appropriate to this feast, are visible through the transparent glass of the elegant Venetian-style vessels made by Flemish craftsmen. Like many of his contemporaries, Beert minimized the overlapping of these exquisite objects by composing his scene with a high vantage point. This approach allowed him to maintain the individual character of each of his compositional elements and, significantly, to augment his splendid use of color. Drawing predominantly upon earth colors for his composition, Beert used warm browns for the succulent morsels and wine that he placed behind the cool blues and grays of the oysters and candies. His range of whites varies from the subdued, chalky tones he used to depict the exotic sweets in the foreground to the glistening sheen of the oysters. Beert's artistry is evident in his sensitive rendering of the oysters' reflections in the pewter plate and in the delicate modeling of thefapon de Venice vessel of wine, whose form he enlivened with varied reflections from his studio window.

Beert's mastery of illusionism and his carefully arranged compositions were the hallmarks of his style. Once he had established a compositional format with which he was comfortable, he frequently revisited it, subtly modifying the types of foods and their arrangement across the table. Such lavish still lifes are joyous, grand pronouncements of the abundance and beauty of his culture, of which he was undoubtedly proud. A R T H U R K. W H E E L O C K J R .

Provenance: P. de Boer, Amsterdam; purchased 1952 by private collector, Sweden; by inheritance to his son, Sweden; sale, Sotheby's, London, 6 July 1994, no. 17; Johnny van Haeften, London.

Banquet Piece with Oysters, Fruit, and Wine c. 1610/1620, oil on panel 52.5 x 73.3 (203/4 x 28%) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1995.32.1

21

The Fall of Man 1616, oil on canvas 104.5 x 138.4 (41 Vsx 54 V2) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1996.34.1

22

23

Hendrik Goltzius

DUTCH, 1558-1617

Hendrik Goltzius was honored across Europe during his lifetime for his extra-

the right of Adam's hand, refers to the Christian virtues of piety, temperance,

ordinary abilities as a draftsman and printmaker. Born in the Lower Rhine region

and chastity and represents a symbolic contrast to Adam's weakness of the flesh and infidelity to God. Goats, which are sometimes associated with Eve, signify a lack of chastity; Goltzius painted two. According to Van Mander, a cat could refer to an unjust judge. Here, the cat returns the viewer's gaze, reminding spectators not to enjoy what they should condemn, lest they, like the unjust judge, cause more harm than good. Thus, through these symbolic references, Goltzius suggests that humanity's fall from grace was tied to Adam's and Eve's inability to restrain their physical appetites. Through his artistic ability to re-create the look of the visible world, Goltzius entices his viewer to become emotionally engaged in this biblical narrative. He placed the almost life-size figures of Adam and Eve so close to the front of the picture plane that they seem to occupy a space coexistent with our own. Details of flesh, hair, even grass and plants are all painted in a bewitchingly believable fashion. The vine covering Adam's genitals, for instance, is so botanically accurate that it is easily identified as ground ivy. The individuality of Adam's feet, the boniness of his knees, the fleshiness around his waist, and the convincingly tactile quality of his skin all suggest a living presence. Although no preparatory drawings survive for such motifs, Goltzius must have worked from nature in creating them. Nevertheless the artist

of Germany in 1558, Goltzius moved to Haarlem in 1576 where he met Karel van Mander, the painter, poet, and art theorist. In 1590-1591, Goltzius traveled to Italy to study classical and Renaissance art. Goltzius, who turned his talents to painting only about 1600, drew inspiration from the classicizing images of his contemporaries Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem and Peter Paul Rubens. In 1616, Goltzius painted this magnificent image of Adam and Eve reclining like mythological lovers in the Garden of Eden. Traditionally, images of the Fall emphasized shame, punishment, and the origins of humanity's mortality. Goltzius' emphasis on seduction through believably represented physical beauty was new in northern painting in 1616. Eve, with her back to the viewer, has already taken the first bite of the apple and turns, with a knowing gaze, toward Adam. Mesmerized by his companion, Adam looks into her eyes with complete devotion. It is clear that they have encountered their first awakening of desire. Several animals comment symbolically on the pair's relationship. The serpent's sweet female face is a visual statement on the deceptiveness of appearances. The elephant, in the distance to

based Adam's pose on a drawing he made in Rome after an ancient personification of the Tiber River, a classical source that helps give dignity and restraint to the scene. Thus, through varied pictorial means, Goltzius created an early instance of what would be called the baroque style, a naturalistic manner of representation that depends upon the viewer's empathetic response to fulfill its meaning. LYNN P E A R S O N RUSSELL

Provenance: Possibly Boudewijn de Man, Delft; his sale, Delft, 15 March 1644, no. 2, as Ren Adam ende Eva. Possibly private collection, Amsterdam, 1671. Probably anonymous sale, Dupuy and Hubert, Paris, 3 June 1774, no. 34, as Adam & Eve. Camillo Davico, Turin, before 1936. Mario Micheletti, Turin, 1936; private collection, Switzerland, 1972. Sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, 15 May 1996, no. 51.

Valentin de Boulogne F R E N C H , c. 1591-c. 1632

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Valentin de Boulogne was born near Boulogne (from whence he takes his last name) in Picardy. He came from a family

of light and shade that lent such visual drama to his works. Like Caravaggio, the young Frenchman was also drawn to

of artists, but little else is known of his early life and training. Although he is not

the realistic depiction of his cast of characters, whether they were figures in a religious narrative or in scenes from contemporary low life. The subject of Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice is inspired by one of Caravaggio's most famous paintings, The Cheats (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth). Like Caravaggio's prototype, Valentin's painting shows a group of rough mercenary soldiers, types who idled about Rome in the seventeenth century waiting for employment and who are identifiable by their armor, worn piecemeal, and assorted livery. They are gaming at a table in a tavern or a dark alley, where two roll dice while two others, center and left, play cards. As the more finely dressed youth in a feathered cap at the left examines his cards, a fifth figure in the shadows behind him signals to his accomplice in the center the hand of the young dupe. Valentin presented a raw and sinister scene of contemporary street life, which is at the same time a moral admonition of the incaution and profligacy of youth. The crowding of the figures into the picture space adds to the tension of the scene. The painting is indebted to Caravaggio

firmly documented in Rome until 1620, he most likely settled there in 1613 or 1614. He spent the rest of his short life in Rome, where he worked for prominent patrons, such as Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who obtained for him the commission of an altarpiece for Saint Peter's in competition with Valentin's compatriot Nicolas Poussin (the two altarpieces are now in the Vatican Museums). Like Poussin and many other artists from north of the Alps, Valentin lived and worked in the area around the Piazza del Popolo, inside the northern gateway to the city. There he fell under the influence of Caravaggio, two of whose masterpieces—The Martyrdom of Saint Peter and The Conversion of Saint Paul—hung in the neighboring church of Santa Maria del Popolo. Although Caravaggio had died in 1610, his influence remained strong in Rome for the next two decades. Valentin was inspired by Caravaggio's chiaroscuro, the bold contrasts

not only for its subject, but also for the vivid sense of actuality with which Valentin invested his protagonists, for the strong chiaroscuro, and for the thinly and rapidly brushed execution. As was Caravaggio's practice, this work is painted allaprima, directly onto the prepared canvas without underdrawing or any other apparent preliminary work. This approach enhances the sense of spontaneity and the feeling that the spectator is catching a glimpse of illicit low life. P H I L I P C O N I S B E E

Provenance: Borros de Gaman9on, a mayor of Perigueux in the early nineteenth century; private collection near Bordeaux, 1989; sale, Arcole, Paris, ii December 1989, no. 58; Jacques Chevreux, Paris; Eric Turquin, Paris.

Soldiers Playing Cards and Dice (The Cheats^) c. 1620/1622, oil on canvas 121 x 152 (47 V2 x 59%) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1998.104.1

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Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder

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Ambrosius Bosschaert, a pioneer in the history of Dutch still-life painting, infused his flower bouquets with a sense of joy. He had an unerring compositional awareness, and delighted in combining a range of flowers with different colors and shapes to create a pleasing and uplifting visual experience. As in this exquisite work, Bosschaert generally arranged his blossoms symmetrically. Here, two spectacular blossoms, a yellow iris and a red-and-white striped tulip, surmount a bouquet that also contains a wide variety of species, among them roses, a blueand-white columbine, fritillaria, grape hyacinth, lily of the valley, and a sprig of rosemary. A dragonfly alighting on the iris and a butterfly on the cyclamen blossom that rests on the wooden table further enliven his composition. Bosschaert, who was born in Antwerp, moved to Middelburg after 1587 for religious reasons. Middelburg, a prosperous trading center and the capital of Zeeland, was renowned for its botanical gardens, the most important of which was established in the 15903 by the great botanist Matthias Lobelius. After Lobelius left for England in 1602, his herb garden was transformed into a flower garden, and almost certainly filled with exotic species imported from the Balkan peninsula, the Near and Far East, and the New World. Collectors at this time particularly admired bulbous plants such

DUTCH, 1573-1621

as the iris, the narcissus, the scarlet lily, the fritillaria, and, above all, the tulip— species whose bright colors and dramatic forms frequently accent early seventeenth-century flower paintings. Bosschaert, who may have trained with his father, probably began his career depicting rare and exotic flowers in such gardens, perhaps even for the botanist Carolus Clusius. Bosschaert certainly used such drawings to compose his paintings, which often include identical flowers, sometimes depicted in reverse. Bosschaert's career in Middelburg was extremely successful, both as a painter and as an art dealer. He was also an effective teacher, and was able to ensure that his distinctive style of painting was effectively perpetuated by his talented students, among them his sonin-law Balthasar van der Ast, and his sons Ambrosius the Younger, Johannes, and Abraham. In 1614, Bosschaert left Middelburg and moved to Amsterdam. He remained there only a short while before moving first to Bergen op Zoom (1615), then to Utrecht (1615-1619), and eventually to Breda (1619-1621), where he executed this painting. Bosschaert's style of flower painting became more naturalistic over time, as he developed techniques for painting petals with soft, velvety textures. He also introduced subtle tonal gradations in the background to enhance the sense of light flooding the image. Although he began to arrange his flowers more informally, often overlapping individual blossoms, he continued to compose symmetrical bouquets surmounted by one or two large flowers, including those that bloom at various

times of the year. These bouquets of blossoms that no gardener could have gathered reflected a fundamental theological concept held by both Catholics and Protestants. They believed that the blessings of God's creation were to be found in the extraordinary richness and beauty of the natural world. Thus, while accuracy was important in recording God's individual creations—flowers, insects, and shells—an imaginative melding of beautiful flowers from different seasons of the year celebrated the greatness of his munificence. Bouquet of Flowers in a Glass Vase occupies a special place in Bosschaert's oeuvre, for its inscription, filling an illusionistic plaque attached to the table's front, offers one of the most moving testaments to the artist's enormous reputation at the time of his death: "C'est 1'Angelicq main du grad Peindre de Flore AMBROSE, renomme jusqu'au Riuage Mort" (It is the angelic hand of the great painter of flowers, Ambrosius, renowned even to the banks of death). ARTHUR

K. WHEELOCK JR.

Provenance: Sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 7 April 1922, no. 54; private collector, England; John Mitchell & Sons, London; private collection, England; Edward Speelman, Ltd., London.

Bouquet of Flowers in a Glass Vase 1621, oil on copper 3I.6x2I.6(l27/16x8V2)

Patrons' Permanent Fund and New Century Fund 1996.35.1

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The Rebuke of Adam and Eve 1626, oil on canvas 121.9 x 172.1 (48 x6y 3 /4) Patrons' Permanent Fund 2000.3.1

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Domenico Zampieri, ^//^Domenichino I T A L I A N , 1581-1641

Domenichino was trained at the art academy run by the Carracci family in Bologna during the last decades of the sixteenth century. In 1602 he joined his master Annibale Carracci in Rome and assisted him with the fresco decorations of the galleria in the Palazzo Farnese. Subsequently, Domenichino executed major fresco cycles of his own in such Roman churches as San Luigi dei Francesi and Sant'Andrea della Valle, and at the monastery at Grottaferrata. Domenichino also painted altarpieces for churches in Rome and Bologna, smaller private devotional works, and landscapes. After Annibale's mental disorders brought his artistic career to an end about 1604, Domenichino took over his master's studio. In 1631 Domenichino went to Naples, where he spent the last years of his life executing important fresco decorations in the Treasury Chapel of San Gennaro; but his classicizing style did not find favor in the southern city, especially in its artistic community. Domenichino was celebrated throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the upholder of the classical tradition reestablished in Italian seventeenth-century art by the Carracci family. His art was especially

admired by French academic artists; Nicolas Poussin's paintings, for example, owe much of their clear narrative structure to works Domenichino executed in Rome in the mid-to-late 16208. The Rebuke of Adam and Eve perfectly illustrates Domenichino's classical style at the peak of his career. In a clear narrative sequence, God the Father, borne by cherubim and angels, descends to rebuke Adam, who blames Eve, who in turn points to the serpent as the cause of their fall from grace. Animals still roam freely in their earthly paradise, but the lion at the right is already metamorphosing from a friendly feline to an aggressive beast. The group of God and the angels is derived directly from Michelangelo's Creation of Adam (Sistine Chapel, ceiling) and should be read as a homage by the seventeenth-century painter to his great predecessor. But Domenichino's treatment of the narrative has an archaic, almost medieval feel, and indeed this subject is unusual in seventeenth-century painting. He may have looked back to the famous late thirteenth-century frescoes by Pietro Cavallini in San Paolo fuori le Mura as a source. Also unusual is his depiction of the Tree of Knowledge as a fig tree (based on the traditional description of the Fall in early Jewish texts) rather than as the apple tree of popular custom. The existence of a full-size

preparatory drawing in the Louvre is evidence of the particular care Domenichino devoted to this composition. Although first recorded in an inventory of the Colonna collection in Rome in 1714, The Rebuke of Adam and Eve is the type of painting done for display in grand picture galleries of the seventeenth century, such as those that still exist in the Palazzo Colonna and other noble houses o f Rome. P H I L I P C O N I S B E E Provenance: Colonna family, Rome, by 1714; Barberini family, Rome, by 1844; sold through Studio d'Arte Palma, Rome, to deputado Macado Coelho, Rio de Janeiro, 1948; private collection, Rio de Janeiro, 1976; sale, Sotheby's, New York, 4 June 1987, no. 96; Richard L. Feigen & Co., New York; Saul Steinberg, New York, 1989; sale, Sotheby's, New York, 28 January 2000, no. 63.

Peter Paul Rubens F L E M I S H , 1577-1640

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The Old Testament is filled with poignant stories of the often harsh and cruel world of ancient Israel, where, despite human frailties and personal betrayals, a nation was formed through spiritual faith, military valor, and the forgiveness and reconciliation of bitter antagonists. Rubens, perhaps more than any other artist, understood the forcefulness of these narratives and captured their powerful emotional impact in his expressive images. The story of David and Abigail is about reconciliation, a quality Rubens suggestively conveyed with the gentle forward movements of the two distinctive figural groups that have joined in this peaceful landscape setting. As Abigail kneels before David and offers him the gift of bread, this military leader, touched by her eloquence and humility, tenderly reaches toward her to help her rise. Rubens indicated through gaze and gesture that Abigail's sincere supplication and comely features have successfully persuaded David to forgo his intended attack against her husband. The narrative, which is recounted in i Samuel (25:2-42), describes an episode that occurred during David's exile in the wilderness in southern Judah. David, in need of provisions, sent some of his men to request aid from a wealthy sheep farmer named Nabal, whose herd David

had allowed to graze unmolested all winter. The sheep farmer curtly refused their requests. Infuriated, David set out with four hundred armed men to seek revenge. Abigail, having learned of David's impending attack, quickly packed generous provisions—including bread, wine, meat, and fruit—on the backs of asses, and set out to intercept David and his soldiers. There she pleaded with him to forgo his revenge, reminding David that he was fighting the Lord's battles and that he should not allow evil to enter into his life. After her successful mission, Abigail returned home and told her husband the following morning what she had done. Her joyous news caused her husband's heart to die "within him, and he became as a stone." Upon hearing of Nabal's death, David, rejoicing that God had acted to support his cause, sent servants to ask Abigail to marry him. Rubens painted this luminous oil sketch, which may have served as a model for a tapestry, in the early 16305, shortly after he had returned to Antwerp upon the conclusion of his diplomatic ventures in Spain and England. The fluid brushwork and flickering highlights that both model and accent forms, the deeply resonant colors, and the broad, atmospheric handling of the landscape all reflect Rubens' appreciation of Titian's and Veronese's artistic achievements— an appreciation rekindled in Madrid and London in the late 16208 when he had renewed his study of these Venetian masters.

The reasons Rubens chose this story after returning to Antwerp in March 1630 are not known. The emotional rapport between David and Abigail that Rubens so sensitively conveys may have appealed to him at this stage of his life. After all, in 1630 Rubens had fallen in love with and married Helena Fourment, who, like Abigail, brought nourishment and encouraged a peaceful existence. However, the pronounced compositional similarities between The Meeting of David and Abigail and The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek (c. 1624, National Gallery of Art), in which an Old Testament hero and his soldiers are offered bread and wine by the priest of Salem and his entourage, suggest that typological associations may also have underlain Rubens' decision to paint this work. Just as the meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek was understood to be a prefiguration of the Eucharist, so was Abigail seen as a prefiguration of the Virgin in her role a s intercessor. A R T H U R K . W H E E L O C K J R . Provenance: Wieszbicki collection, Warsaw, 1935; Knoedler's, New York, by 1957; Dr. and Mrs. Rudolf J. Heinemann, New York; by inheritance 1975 to Lore [Mrs. Rudolf].] Heinemann [d. 1996], New York; her estate.

The Meeting of David and Abigail c. 1630, oil on panel 46.4x68(i8 1 /4x26 3 / 4 ) Bequest of Lore Heinemann in memory of her husband, Dr. Rudolf J. Heinemann 1997.57.8

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Adriaen Brouwer F L E M I S H , 1605/1606-1638

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The uncouth youth in this painting confronts us with a recognizable, yet thoroughly unexpected gesture. Packed with an energy that far exceeds its scale, Adriaen Brouwer's unidealized depiction of this young Flemish peasant is an excellent example of seventeenth-century realism. Yet, as evident in the youth's aggressive behavior, this slice-of-life image also offers a visual critique of rural behavior and mores. The mocking gesture of Brouwer's youth is one that could well be found in a seventeenth-century tavern, but its tradition reaches back to depictions of Christ appearing before Pilate that drew upon the Scriptures: ". . . the men that held Jesus mocked him, and smote him" (Luke 22:63). In Brouwer's painting, the offensive and shocking gesture of this peasant is directed at the viewer. The unkempt hair, the stubble under his chin, and the knife stuck through his fur hat elicit a surprised, if not horrified, response. Additionally, Brouwer's vigorous handling of paint, with his character-

istically short, unmodulated brushstrokes, heightens this small painting's dramatic impact. Adriaen Brouwer's keen observation and biting wit suggest that he sought to create a "vulgar painter" persona. Numerous anecdotes also indicate that he led a colorful and dissolute existence. According to one account, Brouwer was frequently excluded from family celebrations because of his untidy appearance. Anticipating a certain wedding, he bought a fashionable costume that earned him an invitation. In the midst of the festivities, he took two pies and smeared them all over his fancy clothes. Brouwer then announced to the astonished guests that since it was the suit, rather than the man wearing it, that had been invited, it deserved to feast on the food. With Toutk Making a Face, Brouwer created an image that exposes human folly and forces the viewer, regardless of status, to confront a threatening and mocking world. Brouwer does not pretend to help us with this world; he only warns us of its existence and the fact that its disquieting face can appear at unexpected times. The mocking gesture also reminds

us, whether through our laughter or outrage, that we recognize with embarrassing familiarity the all-toohuman nature of his character. ARTHUR

K. W H E E L O C K J R .

Provenance: Eberhard Jabach, Paris, 1646, inv. no. 661; possibly Hudtwalcker, Hamburg, 1861; Nathan Katz; sale, Charpen tier, Paris, 7 December 1950, no. 9; P. de Boer, Amsterdam; W Reincke, Amersfoort; private collection, The Netherlands; Robert Noortman, Maastricht.

Touth Making a Face c. 1632-1635, oil on panel 13.7 x 10.5 (53/s x 4Vs) New Century Fund 1994.46.1

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Andries Stilte as a Standard Bearer 1640, oil on canvas ioi.6x 76.2 (40 x 30) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1998.13.1

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Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronck D U T C H , 1606/1609-1662

With great bravura, this fashionably clad member of the Haarlem civic guard stands with arm akimbo, staring out at the viewer. His proud character, accented by the panache of his brilliant pink satin costume and jauntily placed hat with its brightly colored feathers, suggests the confidence felt by the Dutch during the formative years of the republic. This remarkable portrait shows Andries Stilte, whose family coat of arms decorates the upper corner. Stilte is presented as a standard bearer or ensign of Haarlem's Kluveniersdoelen, the company of militiamen originally organized in 1519 as a firearms unit under the patronage of Saint Hadrian. He bears the blue standard and sash of his company; the style of the rest of his outfit was determined by his individual taste and wealth. Elaborate, brightly colored costumes such as the one Stilte sports were worn for banquets and ceremonial massings of the guard. During the Dutch revolt against Spanish control in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, militia companies served as a civic guard. By 1640, when Verspronck painted this work, civic guards had lost most of their military

character and had become more like gentlemen's clubs. Officers were chosen from the wealthy families of Haarlem and enjoyed remarkable social prestige. Andries Stilte, son of Mattheus Stilte and Hester Monnicx, was probably elected ensign in the Kluveniersdoelen in 1639. Stilte commissioned Verspronck to paint this portrait in 1640, the year that he resigned his rank to marry Eva Reyniers. According to Haarlem regulations, ensigns had to be bachelors. Subsequently, he was required to wear black! Verspronck was one of the foremost portraitists in Haarlem during the midseventeenth century. Little is known about his artistic background: he probably studied first with his artist father in his native city of Gouda. Johannes Verspronck may also have trained with Frans Hals, although the younger artist painted in a smoother and more modulated manner than did Hals. As in this work, Verspronck rendered faces and materials with great sensitivity, delighting particularly in the delicacy of lace and the luminous sheen of satins. The care with which he arranged elements of high visual interest is evident in the change he made in the sweep of feathers on Stilte's hat. Over the centuries, the top layers of paint have become more transparent so that today we can see traces of the plumes' original placement.

While many seventeenth-century Dutch artists, including Frans Hals, portrayed Dutch militia companies, Verspronck is the only one known to have executed a life-size portrait of an ensign. LYNN PEARSON

RUSSELL

Provenance: Jacques Goudstikker, Amsterdam, before 1917. C. von Pannwitz, Berlin, by 1917; by descent in his family until at least 1975. Otto Nauman, Ltd., New York; purchased 1988 by private collection; sale, Sotheby's, New York, 30 January 1998, no. 69.

Simon de Vlieger D U T C H , 1600/1601-1653

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By the mid-seventeenth century the Dutch were the greatest sea power in the world. Their ships sailed the seven seas, from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, assuring not only military security, but also wealth. Indeed, their farreaching trade brought to Dutch shores everything from exotic spices to rare bulbs. The Dutch fleet also satisfied more essential needs. For example, "flutes," Dutch transport ships that regularly sailed the Baltic, often brought lumber from Poland, which was essential not only for building and ship construction, but also for artists' panels such as the one used here. Simon de Vlieger, who lived and worked in Rotterdam, Delft, and Amsterdam, was one of the most important and influential Dutch marine artists. Active from the 16205 to 16408, he was the link between the turbulent tonal paintings of his teacher Jan Porcellis and the sun-

filled calm images of his student Willem van de Velde the Younger. De Vlieger was a versatile artist who was equally comfortable painting dramatic storms or stately parade pictures, all of which he enlivened with small figures carefully situated within the pictorial context. De Vlieger knew the sea and the ships that sailed it. He recorded accurately the distinguishing features of the various types of boats—from large warships to small fishing and transport vessels—and set them convincingly in the water. But it was De Vlieger's sensitivity to the atmospheric effects of water and sky along the North Sea that separates him from most other marine painters. No other artist was as effective as he in capturing the subtle ranges of grays and gray-blues found along coastal waters. De Vlieger's most innovative paintings, including Estuary at Dawn, capture the flavor of daily life along the Dutch coast. In this restrained and sensitive composition, De Vlieger depicted two workers applying pitch to the hull of a ship resting on a sandbar at low tide. Beside them smoke rises from the fire

heating the pitch, while above dramatic rays of light break through the vigorously painted clouds. In the background, clouds billow from the sides of a large Dutch ship as it fires a salute. The scene is simple, but the effects of light and atmosphere give the painting a tremendous sense of drama, qualities enhanced by the work's remarkable state of preservation. A R T H U R K. W H E E L O C K J R . Inscription (lower right): 5 DE ^LIEG[ER] Provenance: Edward Donner, Hurstbourne Park, Hampshire, England; Gurr Johns, London.

Estuary at Dawn c. 1640/1645, oil on panel 36.8 x 58.4(14^x23) Patrons' Permanent Fund and Gift in memory of Kathrine Dulin Folger 1997.101.1

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Jan van Huysum D U T C H , 1682-1749

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Jan van Huysum, more than any other artist before or after, could capture the dynamic energy of a profuse array of flowers and fruit. In this superb example, flowers overflowing their terra-cotta vase and peaches and grapes spilling over the foreground ledge create a sense of opulent abundance. Woven in and out of the densely packed bouquet of roses, asters, hyacinths, auriculae, irises, and hollyhocks are the rhythmically flowing stems and blossoms of tulips, poppies, and carnations. Van Huysum's lasting fame has centered on his exuberant arrangements and technical virtuosity. He could convey both the varied rhythms of a striped tulip's petal and the glistening sheen of its variegated surface. He masterfully integrated insects into his bouquet and suggested the translucence of dewdrops on petals and leaves. He delighted in enhancing the flowers' vivid colors, primarily pinks, yellows, oranges, reds, and purples, with striking light effects that add to the visual richness. He often illuminated blossoms situated at the back of the bouquet and silhouetted darker foreground leaves and tendrils against them.

Although trained by his father Justus van Huysum the Elder, Jan derived his compositional ideals and technical prowess from the examples of Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1606-1683 71684) and Willem van Aelst (1626-1683). Following De Heem's lead, Jan van Huysum organized his bouquets with sweeping rhythms that draw the eye in circular patterns throughout the composition. Like his predecessor, he also included flowers that do not bloom at the same time, for example, tulips and roses. From Van Aelst, on the other hand, Van Huysum learned the advantages of massing brightly lit flowers to focus the dynamically swirling rhythms underlying his compositions. The dark background of this painting is characteristic of works the artist painted in the second decade of the eighteenth century. One contemporary critic explained that "Van Huysum painted his flowers and fruit for many years on dark backgrounds, against which, in his opinion, they stood out more, and were better articulated."1 Responding to the evolving tastes of his patrons, he eventually changed his style and situated his floral bouquets against light backgrounds, which were usually outdoor garden settings.

Van Huysum was a secretive artist, forbidding anyone, including his own brothers, to enter his studio for fear that they would learn how he purified and applied his colors. However, it seems that he painted at least some of his flowers from life. In a letter to a patron, Van Huysum explained that he could not complete a still life that included a yellow rose until it blossomed the following spring. Indeed, this Amsterdam artist's keenness for studying flowers led him to spend a portion of each summer in Haarlem, then, as now, a horticultural center. Nevertheless, the remarkable similarities in the shapes and character of individual blossoms in different still-life paintings indicate that he also adapted drawn or painted models to satisfy pictori a l demands. A R T H U R K . W H E E L O C K J R . Provenance: Rothschild Collection, Vienna; Gallery Sanct Lucas, Vienna; Philip and Lizanne Cunningham, Alexandria, Va., 1994; Otto Naumann, Ltd., New York.

Still Life with Flowers and Fruit c. 1715, oil on panel 79 x 59-1 (31 Vs x 23 V4) Patrons' Permanent Fund and Gift of Philip and Lizanne Cunningham 1996.80.1

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The Marquis de Beringhen 1722, oil on canvas 147 x 114 (575/8 x 447/s) Eugene L. and Marie-Louise Garbaty Fund, Patrons' Permanent Fund, and Chester Dale Fund 1994.14.1

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Jean-Baptiste Oudry F R E N C H , 1686-1755

Oudry was the leading painter of stilllife and hunting scenes in France during the first half of the eighteenth century. Much admired by Louis xv, he portrayed favorite royal hounds and painted scenes of the king riding to the hunt, which was the monarch's sporting passion. On occasion Oudry painted portraits; The Marquis de Beringhen^ his masterpiece among them, most likely played a part in launching his artistic career at court. Henri Camille de Beringhen (16931770) came from a family that had served the French crown since the sixteenth century. After a military career, he inherited the title Premier Ecuyer de la Petite Ecurie du Roi (Master of the King's Private Stables) in 1724, in which capacity he organized the royal hunt. He was a success at court, and was endowed with a number of lucrative and honorary titles. It was Beringhen who introduced Oudry to the young Louis xv, and the artist soon joined the royal hunts as an observer. Beringhen was a keen patron of contemporary artists, especially Nicolas Lancret, Francois Boucher, and Oudry,

who provided decorations for his Paris town house and his country home at Ivry The Marquis de Beringhen is an elaborate image, in which Oudry combined portraiture, a still life with dead game, a living animal, and a landscape. The twenty-nine-year-old marquis, seated on a knoll at the base of a tree, is dressed in a linen shirt, a pale gray hunting coat lined with teal-blue velvet and trimmed with silver braid and buttons, breeches, and thigh-length boots. Strands of his powdered hair are caught at the back of his head in a black silk ribbon. In his left hand he holds aloft a red-legged partridge; with his right he pets a pointer. In the left corner is a still life of powder horn, fowling piece, game, and a game bag. In the distance two women converse on the terrace of a country house, which probably represents not an actual place, but a suitably gentlemanly setting that Oudry devised for Beringhen. Oudry's art is characterized by sharp observation of nature, a bold sense of the decorative, and brilliantly assured technique. There are especially lively passages of painting in the costume, such as the handling of the lace of Beringhen's shirt and the silver embroidery on his coat, and in the feathers of the partridge and the

fur of the hound. The Marquis de Beringhen epitomizes Oudry's approach to painting: the sophisticated elegance of the rococo style is combined with an acute sense of observation that is characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment. PHILIP CONISBEE

Inscription (lower right): feint par / JB. Oudry 1722 Provenance: Acquired in i860 by the marquis de Moustiers; by descent to the marquis de Moustiers, Chateau de Bournel, Rougemont, by 1950; Eric Turquin, Paris; Wildenstein, New York.

Bernardo Bellotto

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Nephew and pupil of the celebrated Venetian view painter Canaletto, Bernardo Bellotto began by depicting various locations in Venice in the precisely topographical style of his uncle. As he traveled throughout Italy, however, Bellotto gradually developed a distinctive and increasingly poetic manner of his own. The turning point in the artist's career came in 1747, when Augustus in, elector of Saxony and king of Poland, invited him to Dresden, where he became court painter. Though accurate enough to have served centuries later in the post-World War II reconstruction of the city, Bellotto's varied and imaginatively conceived views of Dresden transcend the limits of topography. When Prussian troops captured the Saxon capital in the autumn of 1756, Bellotto moved on to work for the courts of Vienna and of Munich, where his vedute (view paintings) became even more artistically complex. The influence of Ruisdael and other seventeenth-century Dutch landscapists played a crucial role in forming Bellotto's mature concept of landscape. After attempting unsuccessfully to resurrect his career in

V E N E T I A N , 1722-1780

Dresden (his munificent patron had died), Bellotto ended by working for Augustus' successor in Warsaw, the last great European center he recorded and ennobled through his art. Although Bellotto was primarily a painter of the urban scene, his Fortress of Konigstein, commissioned by Augustus III in the spring of 1756 and acquired by the Gallery in 1993, is one of five large canvases depicting the renovated medieval fortress in the countryside near Dresden. The other canvases in the series, of identical size and format, consist of images of both the interior and the exterior of the castle, viewed from a closer vantage point than that adopted for the Gallery's painting. The two exterior views are in the collection of the earl of Derby at Knowsley House, Lancashire, while the other two taken from inside the castle walls belong to the City Art Gallery, Manchester. The castle of Konigstein, almost unchanged in appearance today, sits atop a mountain rising precipitously from the Elbe River valley. Exploiting the picturesque quality of the site, Bellotto invested the Gallery's picture with a sense of drama and monumentality rarely found in eighteenth-century view painting. Bellotto's panorama effectively contrasts the imposing mass of the fortress, perched on a rocky precipice,

with the broad expanse of cloud-filled sky and with the bucolic scene of rustic peasants and their animals, picked out in the foreground by the flickering light. The middle ground is occupied by forests, fields, and pathways leading to the castle at the apex of the mountain. In Bellotto's interpretation, Konigstein castle becomes an awesome—and ironic—symbol of his patron's might at the very moment o f h i s defeat. D A V I D A L A N B R O W N Provenance: Commissioned by Frederick Augustus III, king of Poland and elector of Saxony; 2d and 3d viscounts Palmerston, London; ist earl Beauchamp, Madresfield Court, Worcestershire; Beauchamp sale, Sotheby's, London, ii December 1991; Bernheimer Fine Arts Ltd., London and Munich, and Meissner Fine Art Ltd., Zurich and London.

The Fortress of Konigstein 1756-1758, oil on canvas 133 x 235.7 (S2*/2 x 923/4) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1993.8.1

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Luis Melendez

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Luis Melendez was the greatest still-life painter of eighteenth-century Spain, and ranks as one of the greatest painters of the genre in all Europe. Soon after his birth in Naples, his family returned to Spain. His father, Francisco, was a well-known artist instrumental in the long-overdue founding of the Spanish Royal Academy of Fine Arts, provisionally established in 1744. He was named an honorary professor and Luis was admitted as a member with much promise in 1745. However, the father's haughty and difficult character, unfortunately also shared by the son, was their undoing. Francisco printed and circulated a petition denouncing the academy for imagined slights, and Luis personally delivered it to the academy director. Both father and son were dismissed from the powerful institution in 1748, and Luis' career was irrevocably damaged. Denied academy credentials and a prestigious study scholarship in Rome, Luis nevertheless traveled to Naples and Rome on his own. After a few years, he returned to Madrid, assisting his father and brother in painting choir books for the new royal palace. Much of what is known of Luis Melendez comes from his own writings. In 1760 his unsuccessful petition to Charles in makes no mention of the still lifes that he had been painting since 1759; the artist's famous letter of 1772 to the future Charles IV, however, centers on

SPANISH, 17T6-178O

this work. Melendez wrote of painting "the four Seasons of the Year, or more properly, the four Elements, with the aim of composing an amusing cabinet with every species of food produced by the Spanish climate." Melendez eventually

(leathery green and iridescent bluishpurple), the crusty bread, the wood grain of the bucket, the rubbery cork, and the shiny glass and copper surfaces show his mastery at portraying contrasting textures through the skillful manipula-

delivered forty-four such canvases to the royal residency in 1773, some just painted, some completed as many as fourteen years earlier. While his canvases were much appreciated by the royal family and private patrons, his difficult personality often worked against him. Melendez died in poverty in 1780. Melendez' previously unpublished Still Life with Figs and Bread contains many elements characteristic of the master's greatest works. His talent for rendering everyday objects with exacting detail is evident, as are his marvelous effects of color and light, which usually comes from the left, and subtle variations of texture. The bone handle of a kitchen knife projects over the edge of a rough, wooden tabletop into the viewer's space. The eye is led in a zigzag line from the plate of green and purple figs to the crusty bread, to a small barrel and wine flask, and finally to a cork keg or cooler. This cork barrel, with wooden staves, a copper-

tion of the fluid properties of oil. The vertical format and the combination of ordinary fruits and kitchen utensils placed in close contact with one another suggest a date in the 17608, before the larger and more ambitious horizontal canvases of the 17705. An x-ray done at the time of the painting's acquisition by the National Gallery reveals that the artist made many changes to the composition. Melendez originally painted a large wedge of cheese at the lower right, large, highlighted reddish berries instead of figs, and a few berries in place of the knife on the left. He also reworked the contour of the bread, the upper contour of the cooler, and the highlights on the flask.

handled container inside, and what seems to be snow or ice showing at the top, appears in several of his still lifes. The dish, whose undulating rim marks it as de castanuela (in the castanet style) from the Talavera region of Spain, is also a familiar object from his kitchen. The smooth bone knife handle, the subtle variations in the skin and hues of the figs

GRETCHEN A. HIRSCHAUER

Provenance: Mile Anna Petit, c. 1895 and thence by descent. Private collection, France. Edward Speelman Ltd., London.

Still Life with Figs and Bread 17605, oil on canvas 47.6 x 34 (18 3/4 x 13 3/s) Patrons' Permanent Fund 2000.6.1

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The Shipwreck 1772, oil on canvas 113.5 x 162.9 (44u/i6 x64Vs) Patrons' Permanent Fund and Chester Dale Fund 2000.22.1

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47

Claude-Joseph Vernet F R E N C H , 1714-1789

Claude-Joseph Vernet was one of the most famous landscape and marine painters in Europe during the second half of the eighteenth century. After his initial

France, where he returned in 1753 and began to paint a series of monumental views of the principal seaports of the realm, on commission from Louis xv. How-

schooling in his native Avignon and in Aix-en-Provence, the twenty-year-old artist traveled to Rome in 1734. He studied there for a brief time with the Frenchborn marine painter Adrien Manglard, but quickly established his own reputation. Vernet made sketching trips in and around Rome and along the Mediterranean coast as far south as Naples, capturing scenes that provided the basic repertoire of his art for the rest of his long career. He was soon sought after

ever, Vernet continued to paint landscapes and marine scenes for an international clientele, enjoying critical and commercial success until his death on the eve of the French Revolution. The Shipwreck epitomizes the type of marine subject for which Vernet was best known. It was commissioned, with a pendant Mediterranean Coast by Moonlight (location unknown since c. 1955), by Lord Arundell in November 1771. The Shipwreck formed a dramatic contrast with the peaceful moonlit coast scene, illustrating respectively the "Sublime" (eliciting a sensation of horror in the spectator) and the "Beautiful" (an agreeable and reposeful sensation), concepts that were much discussed in aesthetic discourse of the day. A ship flying a Dutch flag has foundered on a rocky seashore during a dramatic storm. Wind crashes the waves, bends a tree to breaking point, and sends clouds scudding across the sky, while a red zigzag crack of lightning illuminates a harbor town farther along the coast. Survivors from the wreck are distraught, exhausted, or just grateful to have clambered ashore. As the ship takes a final lurch against the rocks, desperate survivors slide down a rope in an attempt to gain the land. Such dramatic narra-

by Roman collectors, as well as by the international community of French diplomats in Italy and the many wealthy travelers from north of the Alps, especially the British making their Grand Tour. For these patrons Vernet painted views of Rome and Naples, and imaginary landscapes and coastal scenes that evoke, rather than describe, an idyllic Italian countryside and coastline. He usually painted landscapes in pairs or even in sets of four in order to depict nature in a variety of forms and weather effects. In 1750 Vernet was summoned back to

tive incidents along the shores of Vernet's shipwrecks were greatly admired by his public and his critics, and spectators responded with genuine emotion to his depiction of the plight of man in the face of an unrelenting nature. Shipwrecks were a real hazard of travel in the eighteenth century, much like the automobile or airplane crashes of our own time. Vernet painted the scene with lively brushwork, corresponding to the various effects of clouds, waves, and foam, for example; his figures, however, were carefully and precisely rendered. PHILIP CONISBEE

Inscription (lower left): J. Fernet /F. 1772 Provenance: Lord Arundell, Wardour Castle, 1772 to 1952; sold at Wardour Castle, 10 September 1952, no. 144; Galerie PopofF, Paris, by 1957; private collection, France.

Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes

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F R E N C H , 1750-1819

Valenciennes holds a position of considerable importance in the history of landscape painting of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. In 1800 he published the influential treatise on landscape painting Element de perspective pratique^ a I'usage des artistes^ suivis de Reflexions et conseils a un eleve sur la peinture^ et particulierement sur le genre du pay sage (which was still read by Camille Pissarro in the

Study of Clouds over the Roman Campagna is related in style and subject to several oil sketches from that series, for instance At the Villa Borghese: White Clouds (Louvre, Paris). The artist adopted an elevated site, with just a suggestion of the brown rolling slopes of the Roman countryside indicated along the bottom of the image. His true subject is the blue sky above, streaked with silvery white

i86os). In this book, Valenciennes recommended an almost systematic program of study by painting oil sketches out-ofdoors, the better for the young artist to understand nature's myriad appearances and to train his hand and eye in capturing them in paint. This theory was based on Valenciennes' own practice: since the early 17805 he had been painting a variety of oil studies in the open air, including a notable series executed during a period of study in Rome, between 1782 and 1785, most of which are now in the Louvre, Paris.

clouds. The sketch was painted rapidly, with a delicately applied and lively impasto that captures the changing cloud formations. Valenciennes' observation was exact and scientific, yet at the same time highly poetic in spirit. In his treatise, Valenciennes placed great importance on the study of the sky because it is the main source of light in landscape painting. He recommended that the artist should paint such studies of the sky and its cloud formations in order to learn the different ways light modifies the appearance of nature, and to train his hand and eye in capturing a variety of natural effects.

These sketches were not made for sale or exhibition, but for purposes of study, as part of the long process that would lead to the creation in the artist's studio of more finished exhibition pictures. Valenciennes also employed them to teach his students how to paint rapidly, and how to select and simplify the complex forms of nature into the limited pictorial compass of a few square inches. Although such works were not normally sold during the artist's lifetime, they were sometimes exchanged among painters and were often acquired by fellow artists in estate sales of studio effects. PHILIP CONISBEE

Provenance: Private collection, France; John Lishawa, London.

Study of Clouds over the Roman Campagna c. 1787, oil on paper on paperboard 19 X 32 (7 X /2 X I25/8)

Given in honor of Gaillard F. Ravenel II by his friends 1997.23.1

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Louis-Leopold Boilly

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Raised near Lille in northern France, Boilly trained with his father before moving in 1778 to Arras, where he studied with the trompe 1'oeil painter Dominique Doncre. In 1785 Boilly settled in Paris and painted trompe Poeil subjects, small portraits, and scenes of erotic gallantry. With the Revolution and the disbanding of the old royal academy, exclusive privilege to show at the Salon was no longer accorded just to academicians; in 1791 any artist could exhibit. And from that year onward, Boilly exhibited regularly at the Salon: in 1808 he showed Cardsharp on the Boulevard along with a pendant Toung Savoyards Showing Their Marmot (private collection, Paris). These paintings mark an important moment in his career, as they were among his first depictions of everyday Parisian street life. Democratic or even populist in subject, they were designed especially to appeal to the wide public that attended the annual Salon exhibitions. The boulevards of Paris—broad avenues lined with trees—had been a distinctive feature of the city since the eighteenth century, attracting crowds of strollers from all social classes, ven-

F R E N C H , 1761-1845

dors of all kinds, street entertainers, and purveyors of various licit and illicit pleasures. Cardsharp on the Boulevard shows several episodes on the boulevard du Temple, where, to the right, the scene is dominated by a cardsharp or conjurer, offering cards to a group of attractive young women and children. Various types look on, including the artist himself, the glum, skeptical figure portrayed in a bicorne hat at the center of the group. To the far right a trestle table displays a cup, balls, and dice, the articles of various other tricks. In the left background another crowd makes its way into the premises of a cafe and patisserie, while in the left foreground a young woman is engaged in the oldest profession. The companion picture shows other popular street entertainments, including young lads from Savoy displaying their pet marmot and playing the hurdy-gurdy Contemporary critics—and Salon visitors—appreciated Boilly's very fine technique and his ability to capture so many details of costume, custom, and character, which he skillfully worked into a coherent narrative whole. Cardsharp on the Boulevard was designed to appeal to a wide audience, and this delightful slice of Parisian life in the early years of the Empire is no less engaging today than it was in Boilly's time. PHILIP CONISBEE

Inscription: L. Boilly. 1806. Provenance: Duchesse de Berry; her sale, Bellavoine and Margny, Paris, 28 January 1848, no. 80; Forestier and Descharmes collection; their sale, A. Perrot, Paris, 11-15 December 1871, no. 6; Due de Persigny, Chateau de Charamande; his sale, Charles Pillet, Paris, 15 March 1876, no. 4; anonymous sale, Georges Blond, Paris, 13-14 December 1943, no. 68; anonymous sale, Sotheby's, Monaco, 23 February 1986, no. 310; Brod collection, London; anonymous sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, 27 January 2000, no. 67.

Cardsharp on the Boulevard 1806, °il on wood 2 4 > < 3 3 ( 9 V 6 X 13)

Gift of Roger and Vicki Sant 2000.5.1

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Simon Denis

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At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Simon Denis had a European-wide reputation as a painter of landscapes in Italy, where he lived from 1786 to his death in 1812. His reputation declined after his demise and has only recently been rehabilitated, as a number of his works have appeared on the art market in the last ten years. A 1992 auction in Monaco, for example, offered paintings and drawings from his studio that had come by descent through the artist's family. Denis was born in Antwerp, where he trained with the local landscape and animal painter Henri Antonissen. In 1775 he moved to Paris, where he worked and studied under the patronage of the painter and art dealer Jean-Baptiste Lebrun. In 1786 Lebrun encouraged Denis to visit Rome, where he settled, married a Roman woman, and established his successful career as a painter of landscapes. He painted idealized landscapes in the tradition of Claude Lorrain, topographical views,

B E L G I A N , 1755-1812

and sketches executed in the open air. He was elected to the Accademia di San Luca in Rome in 1803. He was appointed court painter to Joachim Murat, king of Naples, in 1808, and spent the rest of his life based in Naples. The French painter Francois-Marius Granet recalled in his memoirs that, when he arrived as a young artist in Rome in 1802, Denis advised him that he could profit by following his example and painting small landscapes in and around the city. Denis would certainly have encouraged Granet to paint open-air oil sketches, and ample evidence in their many surviving studies in oil on paper shows that both artists made this a regular activity. They were following the precepts and practice of their contemporary Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, a seminal figure in the history of open-air painting whose work is also represented in the present exhibition (see page 49). View near Naples is typical of Denis' oil studies made from nature: the delicacy and the lively variety of the painter's touch, the feeling of fresh observation, and his sensitivity to the nuances of outdoor light. Denis' point of view, characteristically unusual and decidedly not

"picturesque," looks forward to the informality of photography. It is not without humor that he pushed the peaks of Vesuvius into the far left background, playing down one of the most famous tourist sites in southern Italy in favor of some nondescript farm buildings and a local working landscape. The place appears to be near the agricultural village of Gragnano, inland from Castellammare to the south of Naples. This fertile and wooded area was much frequented by Neapolitans, who came to avoid the summer's heat of the crowded city. Denis very likely worked there in or after his permanent move to Naples in 1806. PHILIP CONISBEE

Inscription (verso): D. Provenance: Private collection, France; James Mackinnon, London.

View near Naples c. 1806, oil on paper on canvas 31.2 x 41.8 (12% x idVz) Chester Dale Fund 1998.21.1

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Raphaelle Peale A M E R I C A N , 1774-1825

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As the oldest son of Charles Willson Peale, Raphaelle Peale was the first in a dynasty of painters and botanists burdened by the names of famous artists and scientists that their father admired. In the first history of American art, published nine years after Raphaelle Peale's death and one of the very few notices taken of him, William Dunlap wrote that Peale, like his father, was "a painter

life painter. What Dunlap did not see as clearly was that Raphaelle Peale was one of the most gifted artists in America at the turn of the nineteenth century, and one of its most daring, for he chose still life at a time when that subject was held in low esteem. Raphaelle Peale did not have a happy or a tranquil life. He lived in uncertain times of revolution, war, profound social

None of this is seen or felt in the technical refinement, classic order, and serene beauty of his still lifes, least of all in what is surely his greatest and most perfect one, A Dessert.

of portraits in oil and miniature, but excelled more in compositions of still life. He may perhaps be considered the first in point of time who adopted this branch of painting in America."1 Dunlap was absolutely right about the excellence of Raphaelle's still lifes and, as far as we can tell, about his being America's first still-

and political change, and rapidly shifting values and tastes. Given the name of the greatest artist of modern times, Raphaelle Peale was freighted with an unbearable standard of perfection. His marriage was unhappy, he was irresponsible as a parent, and he was chronically unsuccessful as an artist. By his thirties his hands and legs were crippled by gout. He was so seriously ill from alcoholism that he was committed for "delirium," and from its effects he died at the age of fifty-one.

by inheritance to his sister, Charlotte Arnold, Minneapolis; her descendants, San Diego; Terry DeLapp, Los Angeles, in 1975; purchased 1976 by Jo Ann and Julian Ganzjr., Los Angeles.2

N I C O L A I C I K O V S K Y J R.

Provenance: James Fullerton, Boston, by 1818 until at least 1828. Oswald]. Arnold, Chicago and Minneapolis;

A Dessert (Still Life with Lemons and Oranges") 1814, oil on panel 34x48.3 (13 3 /8xi9) Gift (partial and promised) of Jo Ann and Julian Ganz Jr., in memory of Franklin D. Murphy 1999.44.1

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View of a Villa3 Pizzofalcone, Naples 1819, oil on canvas 41 x 54 (i6Vs x 21 ¥4) New Century Fund, Gift of Lois and Robert Erburu 1997.102.1

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Lancelot-Theodore Turpin de Crisse F R E N C H , 1782-1859

Turpin de Crisse came from an aristocratic family, but his father, a talented amateur artist, lost his life and the family fortune in the French Revolution. During the Directory he was supported by the comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, enabling him to study landscape painting and make a trip to Switzerland in 1803. At the Salon of 1806 he exhibited a painting, Rene's Farewell to His Sister., based on a literary subject from Chateaubriand, the French writer and statesman. During the Empire, Turpin de Crisse attended the court of Josephine as one of her chamberlains, but returned to his artistic career after her death and the fall of Napoleon in 1814. By this time an inheritance had made him financially secure. A frequent exhibitor at the Paris Salon until 1835, he traveled to Italy in search of landscape motifs in 1818, 1824, and 1830. Trusted by the Bourbons after the restoration of the monarchy, he held a number of official posts concerned with the administration of the arts and museums, and was elected to the Legion of Honor in 1825. After the Revolution of 1830, he retired to

his native town of Angers, and devoted himself to building a collection of antiquities and works of art, which he bequeathed to the local museum that still bears his name. View of a Villa, Pizzofalcone, Naples was probably painted in 1819 (according to an inscription on a related drawing), just after Turpin de Crisse's first visit to Italy. In 1826 he published a suite of thirty-nine lithographed views in and around Naples, Souvenirs du golfe de Naples, although the subject of our painting does not appear there. View of a Villa, Pizzofalcone, Naples shows a modest neoclassical villa, perched atop an overgrown, rocky cliff and grotto, with animals and passersby heading for the ancient tunnel to the right. The same site was depicted in the lyyos by the British painter Thomas Jones (Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea); the little villa, however, was constructed later, at some point between then and 1819. Turpin de Crisse's painting contrasts the crisply whitewashed villa with the undeveloped terrain below. The site in the Pizzofalcone neighborhood of Naples is much altered today, with a garage and parking lot, but the house above, although modified, can still be identified as the Palazzo Villino Wenner. Turpin de Crisse's painting is remarkable

for the artist's choice of an unusual and certainly unconventional site, in a city otherwise full of famous views and historic monuments. The finesse of his technique and the precision of his observation, combined with the surprising viewpoint, convey a vivid sense of place. Although this is a finished studio painting, it was very likely closely studied on the spot: the clear, bright light of the southern Mediterranean gives it an immediacy and a feeling of the outdoors. P H I L I P C O N I S B E E Provenance: Private collection, Berne; Marc Blondeau, Paris.

John Constable B R I T I S H , 1776-1837

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Among early nineteenth-century artists, John Constable was one of the most assiduous and systematic students of the sky. As a landscape painter he was acutely aware of the sky as the principal source of light and of the extent to which cloud cover, the formations of clouds, and atmospheric effects could influence the appearances of nature. Constable was keenly aware of contemporary scientific study of these natural phenomena, and followed current developments in the recent science of meteorology, as in Luke Howard's seminal essay "On the Modifications of Clouds," first published in serial form in 1803, and reissued in his book The Climate of London in 1818, or in Thomas Foster's book, Researches about Atmospheric Phenomena^ published in 1812. The artist felt that a thorough understanding of such natural phenomena would give his art greater truth to nature. In the early 18208 Constable lived in Hampstead, a village situated just north of London on an elevated, open, hilly heathland that made him especially aware of the sky and its ever-changing effects. It was during his residence there that he made many oil sketches of the sky itself and of the sky set off against the dark

foliage of treetops. He painted such works rapidly, usually in oils on paper, working directly from nature in the open air. The paper support enabled Constable to work fluidly, while the relatively absorbent qualities of the paper allowed the studies to dry more quickly than they would on canvas. Constable referred to these painterly exercises as "skying." He often annotated these studies with the date, time of day, wind direction, and the scientific nomenclature invented by Howard for the cloud formation depicted. Cloud Study: Stormy Sunset is typical of Constable's Hampstead oil sketches of the sky. It is freely and quickly executed, the colors brushed on with gusto, wet paint into wet paint. Yet it conveys vividly the effects of light, atmosphere, and movement in the western sky on a cloudy evening after a stormy day. This oil sketch is not visibly annotated, although Constable may have written on the back of the mounted paper or at the bottom of the image, where slight traces of pen strokes may be the tops of letters from an original annotation, trimmed off the sheet for aesthetic reasons at an unknown later date. This work is one of about forty extant cloud and sky studies by Constable. For him, such sketches were not so much works of art complete in themselves, as raw materials gathered in the field, empirical research

matter that would serve to better inform the naturalism of his more finished exhibition pictures worked up in the studio. Toward the end of his life, in the 18305, Constable's art became more emotionally charged. He increasingly regarded the sky as "the chief organ of sentiment" in landscape painting, and very likely looked to his cloud studies more for their expressiveness, than for their empirical or scientific content. P H I L I P C O N I S B E E Provenance: Ella Mackinnon, nee Constable; Sir Henry Newson-Smith; Sir Frank Newson-Smith, 1898; his sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 26 January 1951, no. 31; Leggatt, London; Agnew's, London; private collection; Salander O'Reilly, New York.

Cloud Study: Stormy Sunset 1821 — 1822, oil on paper on canvas 20.3 X27.3 (8 x io3/4) Gift of Louise Mellon in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 1998.20.1

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Johan Christian Dahl N O R W E G I A N , 1788-1857

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In 1811 Johan Christian Dahl moved from his native Bergen to Copenhagen, where the twenty-three-year-old landscape painter studied in the Academy of Fine Arts. Dahl combined an interest in Dutch seventeenth-century landscape painters such as Jacob van Ruisdael and Allart van Everdingen with the influence of the crisply observed Roman landscape views of his contemporary Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, whose work he discovered in Copenhagen. Dahl remained a specialist in landscapes, painting open-air oil studies, finished views, and imaginary landscapes based on memory and on the work of his Dutch predecessors. In 1818 Dahl traveled south, spending two years in Dresden, where he fell under the strong influence of the German romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich. At the invitation of the Danish prince Christian Frederick, Dahl traveled to Rome and Naples, where he painted oil sketches and finished views of Italian sites. In 1821 he returned to Dresden, remaining for

the rest of his life and sharing a house with Friedrich. Dahl made frequent trips to Norway and Denmark, and exhibited regularly in Copenhagen. View from Faekero near Cbristiania was painted in Dresden in January 1827, after one of Dahl's trips to Norway (he had visited Christiania, present-day Oslo, the previous summer). An annotated landscape drawing dated June 1826 survives (National Gallery, Oslo), showing the ship and nets hanging out to dry at Vaeker0. The painting is infused with a melancholy, nocturnal mood frequently found in the art of Friedrich, and the repertoire of romantic motifs—cloudcovered moon, rocky inlet, misty hills, haunting ship riding at anchor, drying nets, and the couple contemplating the nocturnal scene—can also be found in the great German painter's works. Indeed Dahl owned one of Friedrich's most characteristic and comparable landscapes, Two Men Contemplating the Moon, which he sold to the Royal Picture Gallery in Dresden in 1840. View from Vaekero near Christiania is one of Dahl's most Friedrich-like landscapes, and as such is a highly typical example of romantic landscape painting of the Dresden school. For all that it was

painted from memory, it has a remarkably fresh feeling for nature, especially in the subtle effects of light modulated by clouds, mist, and reflections. It was commissioned from Dahl by the Hamburger Kunstverein, an artists' cooperative and exhibiting society in Hamburg, Germany, where it was exhibited in 1827 and purchased by a Norwegian collector, Jacob All.

PHILIP CONISBEE

Inscription (lower right): Dahljanuar 1827 Provenance: Jacob All, Nes, Norway; N.H. All; P. S0nstehagen, Oslo; Mrs. Cappelen, Ulefoss; Mrs. Lovenskiold, Vaekero; Christian Blich, Oslo; Jean-Fran£ois Heim, Paris.

View from Faekero near Cbristiania 1827, oil on canvas 60.5 x 96.5 (23 13/i6 x 38) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1999.99.1

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Santissima Trinita del Monti^ in the Snow 1827—1828, oil on paper on canvas 22 X 3o(8 n /16X II 13 /1 6 )

Chester Dale Fund 1997.65.1

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63

Andre Giroux F R E N C H , 1801-1879

Giroux first studied painting under his father in his native Paris, and began to exhibit landscapes at the Salon in 1819. He entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1821 and won the Prix de Rome for historical landscape in 1825. This coveted prize took him to the Academic de France in Rome, where he studied until 1830. Many a French artist made the trip to Rome during this period, and Giroux numbered among his friends there such innovative young landscape painters as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Caruelle d'Aligny, Edouard Bertin, and Leon Fleury. Although idealized, historical landscapes won official academic favor, in practice Giroux and his contemporaries had a passion for working out-of-doors. They sought to capture their experience of nature as immediately as possible by painting in oils, usually on prepared paper, in the open air. A sense of immediacy is often conveyed by the sketchiness of these open-air studies, which were usually made quite quickly. Sometimes, however, these artists completed such works in the studio, bringing them to a greater degree of finish. Giroux and his

compatriots went on painting expeditions together, both in Rome and beyond its walls, into the surrounding campagna. In 1831 Giroux submitted a group of such oil studies made in Italy—probably the more finished type, rather than freely executed sketches—for exhibition at the Salon in Paris, where they won him a gold medal. This indicates a growing public and official acceptance, immediately following the Revolution of 1830, of a more naturalistic aesthetic. Santissima Trinita dei Monti, in the Snow was most likely painted from a window, rather than strictly in the open air: after all, such weather was hardly conducive for working outdoors! The view is taken from the north side of the Villa Medici, the seat of the Academic de France on the Pincian Hill in Rome, looking toward the famous church and convent of the title; the convent's snow-covered kitchen garden is in the foreground. We can speculate that the view was made from the artist's own window while he was a student at the Villa Medici. The date of 1827-1828, suggested by an old pencil inscription on the stretcher of the canvas, is consistent with Giroux's residence there. Beyond the church of Santissima Trinita dei Monti, the Palazzo Quirinale blocks the horizon; the obelisk to the right in front

of the church marks the top of the Spanish Steps. Giroux has captured the steely gray light of a cold winter's day, and brilliantly combines a sharp sense of topographical accuracy with a lively, sketchy, painterly touch. The National Gallery of Art has acquired two other paintings in oil on paper by Giroux during the last decade: Forest Interior with a Painter, Civita Castellana and Forest Interior with a Waterfall, Papigno (both gifts in 1994 of Mrs. John Jay Ide in memory of Mr. and Mrs. William Henry Donner). The former depicts one of Giroux's companions painting a waterfall in a woodland setting on one of their sketching excursions into the countryside around Rome; in the latter, Giroux himself painted a similar cascade on the spot. PHILIP CONISBEE

Provenance: Private collection, France; John Lishawa, London.

Thomas Cole AMERICAN, 1801-1848

64

Thomas Cole, generally considered

completion, he was beset by doubts

major statements on the theme of the

America's first important landscape painter,

and his mood became troubled. As he

mutability of man's creations and

first traveled to Europe in 1829. In

recorded in his journal on 19 May 1838:

the transience of life, it may be seen as

London that year he saw and admired the English painter John Constable's great Hadleigh Castle: The Mouth of the Thames— Morning after a Stormy Night (1829, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven), which depicted a ruined medieval tower standing on a high hill. While in Italy in 1831-1832, Cole saw and sketched similar scenes and upon his return to America painted a number of fine pictures of circular towers set in lonely landscapes. Cole began this painting to fulfill a commission for a scene from Byron's narrative poem, "The Corsair." Encountering difficulties with that subject, he shifted to a different source, Coleridge's introduction to "The Ballad of the Dark Ladie," which includes lines describing a moonlit scene with a ruined medieval tower. However, as Cole struggled to bring the painting to

When I remember the great works produced by the masters, how paltry seem the productions of my own pencil; how unpromising the prospect of ever producing pictures that shall delight, and improve posterity, and be regarded with admiration and respect.1 Feeling shackled by the demands of illustrating someone else's imagery, Cole

a pictorial version of ideas he also expressed in poetry: Or is it that the fading light reminds That we are mortal and the latter day Steals onward swiftly, like unseen winds, And all our years are clouds that pass quickly away.3 FRANKLIN KELLY

abandoned his poetic sources and made the picture into something more purely

Provenance: Possibly Hugh D. Scott,

his own. A few days later, on 22 May

Boston, Mass.; his daughter, Helen

1838, he wrote in his journal: I am now engaged in painting a Picture representing a Ruined & Solitary Tower that stands on a craggy promontory whose base is laved by a calm unruffled ocean. . . . I think it will be poetical, there is a stillness, a loneliness about it that may reach the Imagination. 2 Italian Coast Scene with Ruined Tower, probably the work Cole exhibited in Boston in 1839 as Italian Seashore, with Tower, was unknown to modern scholarship on Cole until its acquisition by the Gallery in 1993. As one of Cole's

Livingston Scott Greenway [1903-1980], Wellesley and Needham, Mass.; her son, James C. Greenway ill, Fairfield, Conn, and Easton, Md., [1962-1993]; sold through Martin Chasin Fine Arts, Fairfield, Conn.

Italian Coast Scene with Ruined Tower 1838, oil on canvas 86.4 x 16.8 (34 x 36) Gift of The Circle of the National Gallery of Art I993-55-I

65

The Approaching Storm 1849, oil on canvas on board 116.2 x 157.5 (453/4 x 62) Chester Dale Fund 199542.1

66

67

Constant Troyon F R E N C H , 1810-1865

Constant Troyon was one of the leading nineteenth-century animaliers, artists specializing in the depiction of animals in a landscape setting, and he is best known for large-scale bucolic scenes of cattle or sheep dating from later in his career, which ended when his health failed in the late 18508. The Approaching Storm, in contrast, is an earlier masterpiece. On the far bank of a watercourse a woman and child scurry toward a barge while two ferrymen, faced by bad weather, hasten to remove their poles from the riverbank to signal the closing of the ferry. The peasant staffage and rustic scenery signal Troyon's allegiance to the ideals of the Barbizon movement: the dignity of common man and the nobility of life in the countryside. The drama of the impending storm, with clouds towering over the meadows and dominating the diminutive figures, also places Troyon's composition within the romantic tradition.

The Approaching Storm attests to Troyon's admiration of the great English landscape painter John Constable (17761837). The work has the breadth and sweep of Constable's major exhibition pieces, his so-called six-foot paintings. Troyon also favored a larger scale for major compositions, even though it ran counter to the scale prescribed by the academic hierarchy, which placed landscape near the bottom of the range of artists' subjects. Troyon's attention to the details of the construction of the wooden ferryboat and landings echoes Constable's and the low point of view he adopted looking across a gentle watercourse toward a vista of pastures, woodland, and a village on a distant ridge recalls Constable's depictions of the Stour Valley. Troyon underscored his debt to the English painter by borrowing and adapting the pose and costume of the near ferryman from Constable's 1824 painting The Lock (Carmen ThyssenBornemisza Collection, Madrid). Appreciation for Troyon's mastery only emerged during the 19905. The Approaching Storm lay unknown in a pri-

vate collection from 1927 to 1995, when the National Gallery of Art acquired it. Contemporary critics ranked Troyon on a par with the Barbizon painter Theodore Rousseau, a ranking secured for our artist by paintings like The Approaching Storm. F L O R E N C E E. COMAN

Inscription (lower left): C. Troyon. 11849 Provenance: J. Grant Morris, of Allerton Priory, Woolton, Liverpool; sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 23 April 1898, no. 126, to Arthur Tooth & Sons, London; transferred to Arthur Tooth & Sons, New York, in April 1901; private collection, Chicago, by 1927; thence by descent; sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, 25 May 1995, no. 216.

Win slow Homer A M E R I C A N , 1836-1910

68

The exhibition of Home, Sweet Home in

Two union soldiers (infantrymen,

the spring of 1863 auspiciously marked

as the insignia on their caps show) listen

Provenance: Samuel Putnam Avery, New York, possibly 1863 to i86y;9

Winslow Homer's debut as a painter. The

as the regimental band plays "Home,

his sale, Leeds Art Galleries, New York,

painting was enthusiastically admired.

Sweet Home." In what might almost be

4-5 February 1867, 2d day, no. 59;I0

"Winslow Homer is one of those few

a description of Homer's painting, and

Mrs. Alexander H. Shephard [or Shep-

young artists who make a decided impres-

of the kind of experience Homer himself

herd], New York;11 Howard Young

sion of their power with their very first

must have had when he visited the front

Galleries, New York; M. Knoedler & Co.,

contributions," a critic observed. "He

in 1861 and 1862, the Union general

New York, in 1918.12 George M.L.

at this moment wields a better pencil,

Nelson A. Miles described an occurrence

LaBranche, New York, by 1944 until at

models better, colors better, than many"1

in the valley of the Rappahannock:

least 1950.13 Mr. and Mrs. Nathan

more established artists. Home, Sweet Home was a remarkable technical achievement for someone, like Homer, who was largely self-taught. In this, one of his very first paintings, Homer's contemporaries were able not only to take clear measure of his large artistic gifts, but also to sense qualities of mind and character that were important parts of what one of them called the "promise of a worthy art future." 2 They saw those qualities in the "delicacy and strength of emotion"3 of Home, Sweet Home, its "real feeling"4 and lack of sentimentality. They saw them, too, in

Late in the afternoon our bands were accustomed to play the most spirited martial and national airs, as "Columbia," "America," "E. Pluribus Unum," "The Star-spangled Banner," etc., to be answered along the Confederate lines by bands playing, with equal enthusiasm, "The Bonny Blue Flag," "Southern Rights," and "Dixie." These demonstrations frequently aroused the hostile sentiments of the two armies, yet the animosity disappeared when at the close some band would strike up that melody which comes nearest the hearts of all true men, "Home, Sweet Home," and every band within hearing would join in that sacred anthem with unbroken accord and enthusiasm.7

its directness, and in its intelligence: "There is no clap-trap about it. Whatever of force is in the picture is not the result of trickery, and is not merely surface work, not admitting of examination, but painstaking labor directed by thought." And they saw them in its modernity: It is "inspired by a fact of to-day."

6

5

The title of Homer's painting evokes the "bitter moment of home-sickness and love-longing"8 that the song inspired in the soldiers. The title also refers to the soldiers' "home," shown with all of its domestic details—a small pot on a smoky fire, a tin plate holding a single piece of hardtack—which Homer, who did the cooking and washing when he was at the front, knew intimately, and which, with surely intended irony, are very far from "sweet." N I C O L A I C I K O V S K Y J R .

Shaye, Detroit, by 1958 until 1984;H sale, Sotheby's, New York, 30 May 1984, no. 19, bought in; consigned 29 August 1984 to Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York; sold I February 1985 to private collection; sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, 5 June 1997, no. 12; purchased by Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York.15

Home, Sweet Home c. 1863, oil on canvas 54.6 x 41.9 (21 V2 x i6Vfc) Patrons5 Permanent Fund 1997.72.1

69

Sanford Robinson Gifford

70

Although many nineteenth-century American landscape painters traveled abroad in search of subjects, Sanford GifFord was one of the very few who ventured beyond England and the Continent. Early in 1869 he traveled the Nile from Cairo to the first cataract (actually rapids) and back. On 4 March he reached the village of Siout, which lay in the midst of an extensive and fertile plain below the Libyan Hills at the start of a great caravan route running through the Libyan Desert to the Sudan. The town was known for its picturesqueness and its history, having been the capital of the thirteenth nome (province) of Upper Egypt during antiquity and the birthplace of Plotinus, the great Neoplatonic philosopher. Gifford described the view that inspired this painting in his journal:

A M E R I C A N , 1823-188O

Looking westward, the town with its domes and minarets lay between us and the sun, bathed in a rich and beautiful atmosphere. Behind, on the right, were the yellow cliffs of the Libyan mts., running back into the tender grades of distance. Between us and the town were fields of grain, golden green with the transparent light. On the right was a tent with sheep and beautiful horses, the sunlight sparkling on a splendid white stallion. On the left the road ran in, with a fountain and figures of men and women and camels. The whole glowing and gleaming under the low sun. 1

facts of the scene it depicts and more about the very act of perceiving. As one of the artist's contemporaries wrote: Gifford's art was poetic and reminiscent. . . . It was nature passed through the alembic [a device that refines or transmutes through distillation] of a finely organized sensibility.2 FRANKLIN

KELLY

Provenance: J.I. Nesmith, Brooklyn, N.Y., by 1881. Vose Galleries, Boston, Mass.; to Webster and Douglas B. Collins, Longmeadow, Mass., by 1970; to Vose

Stout, Egypt is the most important

Galleries, Boston, Mass.; to Jerald Dillon

and the finest of Gifford's dozen or so

Fessenden, New York; to James Maroney,

known Egyptian works and ably demon-

New York, 1986; to Hirschl & Adler

strates his mastery of both atmospheric

Galleries, New York.

and linear perspective. The glowing light serves both to give tonal unity and balance to the overall composition and to reveal the myriad details of the scene with exceptional clarity. The result is a work that is less about the physical

Siout) Egypt 1874, oil on canvas 53.3 x 101.6(21 x4o) New Century Fund, Gift of Joan and David Maxwell 1999.7.1

71

The Dance Lesson c. 1879, oil on canvas 38x88(i4 1 5 /i6x345/ 8) Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 199547-6

72

73

Edgar Degas F R E N C H , 1834-1917

Degas' best-known works are those inspired by the ballet. For an artist committed to the depiction of modern life, the theater in all of its forms—the ballet, the opera, even the more raucous cafeconcerts—held a special appeal. What intrigued him the most, however, was not the formal, polished performance, but rather the behind-the-scenes, casual, candid moments of dancers rehearsing or resting. It is a theme that the artist was to explore time and again, not only in his ballet paintings but also in his horse-racing scenes. Painted c. 1879, The Dance Lesson is the first ballet scene in a distinctive group of some forty pictures, all executed in an unusual horizontal format. Degas had already begun to experiment with this format in some of his racing scenes in order to create an almost panoramic sense of space. In the ballet scenes, the setting was transformed into an oblong rehearsal room populated by dancers in various states of activity and exhaustion. This format, which has been likened to a frieze, has a decidedly decorative quality. Degas' fascination with the unexpected views and flattened forms of Japanese prints is also apparent: figures are sharply cropped

and placed off center, while the floor, which dominates the scene, seems tipped upward, an illusion that is accentuated by the elongated format. Like most of his ballet scenes, The Dance Lesson is a deceptively straightforward image. Although the overall effect seems spontaneous, the picture was carefully orchestrated from start to finish. Degas produced a compositional sketch in one of his notebooks (possibly after he had already started the painting), laying out several crucial components: the seated figure at the center, the window at the far right, and the double bass and open violin case at the far left. Into this basic framework he then introduced the figures of other dancers. Pulled from a number of his drawings and other paintings, these figures, like mannequins, were moved and arranged in artful configurations. The dancer adjusting her bow, for example, appears not only in a number of pastels but also in several paintings from this group of friezelike compositions (The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). Even after the forms had been placed within the composition, they were subject to change. Degas altered a number of details, many still visible to the naked eye: the angle of the seated dancer's foot; the positioning of the legs and back of the chair; and the violin case, which the artist painted out at an early stage.

When shown in the fifth impressionist exhibition in 1880, The Dance Lesson passed largely unnoticed, and what commentary it elicited was equivocal. The critic Joris Karl Huysmans admired other works Degas exhibited and praised the artist's keen observational skills. Nevertheless, he characterized this painting as "dismal," though more in response to the mood than to the execution. Paul Mantz, troubled by the artist's tendency to slip into caricature, was less enthusiastic, though he did praise its "transparently f i n e atmosphere." K I M B E R L Y J O N E S Provenance: Durand-Ruel, Paris; sold to G.G. Keansward Jr., Boston. Rev. George S. Fiske, by 1937. Mrs. ChesterBeatty, London. Paul Rosenberg & Co. Sold November 1957 to Mr. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.

William Michael Harnett A M E R I C A N , 1848-1892

74

William Michael Harnett was the bestknown and most influential still-life painter in America during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The Old Violin was in its time his most widely reproduced, most imitated, and most famous image. Stories of policemen controlling the crowds that it attracted when exhibited, particularly to restrain those doubting Thomases who wanted to touch it to confirm the reality of its illusion, are almost folkloric. Today it is universally considered not only one of two or three masterpieces by this artist, but also a masterpiece of trompe 1'oeil illusionism in general. The Old Violin was painted in 1886, shortly after Harnett returned from a six-year stay in England, Germany, and France. He was then an artist in full possession of his technical and imaginative powers, and at the height of a career that

would in a few years be cut short by his early death at age forty-four. The central object of the painting, named in its title, is a Guarneri violin that Harnett, himself an accomplished musician, acquired "at a great cost" in Paris. It hangs, improbably but convincingly, against a splintered and weathered door and partly covers a curling sheet of music containing the legible scores of an aria from Bellini's popular opera La Sonnambula and Edmond ServePs song, "Helas Quelle Douleur." The painting is signed in the lower left corner by the conceit of an envelope postmarked Paris and addressed to "W.M. Harnett" at his New York address, 28 East I4th Street. The painting is full of such subtleties of observation, replication, and invention. Upon these humble objects, represented with such deceptive precision, Harnett bestowed an exquisitely refined arrangement of form and color. The Old Violin is, moreover, a work of multilayered and richly textured meanings in the interplay between illusion

and reality, old and new, the momentary and the enduring. Few works of the late nineteenth century are as eloquently beautiful. N i C O L A I C I K O V S K Y J R . Provenance: Purchased 1886 at Cincinnati Industrial Exhibition by Frank Tuchfarber, Cincinnati; 1 mortgaged and forfeited 1912 to Atlas National Bank, Cincinnati;2 sold to William M. Haas, Cincinnati; offered c. 1934-1937 in lieu of a loan payment to Charles Finn Williams [d. 1952], Cincinnati;3 his wife, Elizabeth R. Williams, Cincinnati; transferred c. 1955-1957 to her son, William J. Williams, Cincinnati; sold 1990 to James Maroney, New York.

The Old Violin 1886, oil on canvas 96.5 x6o(38 x23 5 /s) Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Mellon Scaife in honor of Paul Mellon 1993.15.1

75

John Haberle A M E R I C A N , 1856-1933

76

John Haberle, with his contemporaries William Harnett and John Peto, was one of the most important trompe 1'oeil stilllife painters in late nineteenth-century America. Of them, Haberle was specially noted for his style (the microscopic painting of detail) and for his favorite subject (money). He was also an artist of great aesthetic sensibility and inventive power, as seen in the refined and subtle compositional arrangement of Imitation. Judging from the multileveled plays on reality and identity in Imitation—his signature, the imitated clipping on the imitated frame, and the imitated tintype portrait photograph—he was also richly endowed with a keen wit and intelligence.

When Imitation was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York in 1887, it became the first of Haberle's trompe I'oeil paintings to receive public recognition. It was acquired from the exhibition by the most important collector of American art of the period, Thomas B. Clarke (one of Winslow Homer's principal patrons). Clarke reported that the painting, "which created so much talk in the National Academy of Design," was particularly admired by William Harnett, who "said that he had never seen such reproduction anywhere."1 Among its many virtues, Imitation is in a pristine state of preservation. It is unlined and has its original varnish and frame, which still bears Thomas B. Clarke's monogram. N I C O L A I C I K O V S K Y J R .

Provenance: Purchased 1887 by Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York; his sale, Chickering Hall and American Art Galleries, New York, 14-18 February 1899, first day, no. 36; H. Staples Potter, Boston. Robert M. Snyder, Kansas City, Mo.; his son, Kenneth W. Snyder, Kansas City, Mo.; by descent to Mr. and Mrs. Peter L. Chapman;2 sale, Sotheby's, New York, 28 May 1987, no. 81; Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., New York.

Imitation 1887, oil on canvas 25.4 x 35.6 (iox 14) New Century Fund, Gift of the Amon G. Carter Foundation 1998.96.1

77

Self-Portrait 1889, oil on canvas 57.2 x 43.8 (22 Vz x 171/4)

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.5

78

79

Vincent van Gogh D U T C H , 1853-1890

Although his career was brief, lasting

artist retreated to his studio, refusing to

distinctive. The dark blue-violet of the

a mere ten years, Vincent van Gogh

go out even to the garden. This painting

smock and ground, the vivid orange

proved to be an exceptionally prolific and

is the first work he produced after recov-

of his hair and beard, create a startling

innovative artist. While he experimented

ering from that episode. In a letter to his

contrast to the yellow and green of

with a variety of subjects—landscape,

brother Theo written in early September

his face and heighten the gauntness of

still life, portraiture—it is his self-portraits

1889, he observed:

his features and his sallow complexion.

that have come to define him as an artist. Like his predecessor, Rembrandt van Rijn, Van Gogh was a devoted and probing practitioner of the art of self-portraiture. He painted no fewer than thirtysix self-portraits, undertaking his first forays just after his arrival in Paris in March 1886 and executing his last, culminant works during his stay at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Remy. The Washington canvas is one of the very last self-portraits Van Gogh painted. During the first months of his volun-

They say—and I am very willing to believe it—that it is difficult to know yourself— but it isn't easy to paint yourself either. So I am working on two portraits of myself at this moment—for want of another model— because it is more than time I did a little figure work. One I began the day I got up; I was thin and pale as a ghost. It is dark violetblue and the head whitish with yellow hair, so it has a color effect. But since then I have begun another one, three quarter length on a light background.1 This self-portrait is a particularly

The dynamic, even frenzied brushwork lends an uncommon immediacy and expressiveness to his portrayal. In its sheer intensity, it stands in sharp contrast to the other self-portrait he painted at the same time (Musee d'Orsay, Paris) in which the artist appears calmer and more self-possessed. Nevertheless, Van Gogh preferred the Washington painting as the one that captured the artist's "true character."2 K I M B E R L Y J O N E S Provenance: J.J. Isaacson, The Hague.

tary internment at the asylum, the artist

bold painting, apparently executed in

showed little interest in figure painting

a single sitting without later retouching.

by 1904 until at least 1939. Private

and concentrated instead upon the sur-

Here Van Gogh portrayed himself at

collection, Switzerland, by 1945;

H. Tutein Nolthenius collection, Delft,

rounding landscape. But in early July 1889

work, dressed in his artist's smock with

M. Knoedler & Co., New York; sold

while painting in the fields near the

his palette and brushes in hand, a guise

9 June 1947 to Mr. and Mrs. John Hay

asylum, Van Gogh suffered a severe break-

he had already adopted in two earlier

Whitney, New York.

down. Incapacitated for five weeks and

self-portraits. While the pose itself and

greatly unnerved by the experience, the

the intense scrutiny of the artist's gaze are hardly unique—one need but think of the occasionally uncompromising selfportraits of Rembrandt—the haunting, and haunted, quality of the image is

Farmhouse at Le Pouldu 1890, oil on canvas 72 X 60 (28 3/8 X 23 5/8)

Gift (partial and promised) of Alexander M. and Judith W. Laughlin

80

81

Paul Serusier F R E N C H , 1864-1927

Paul Serusier was born in Paris, and signed on as a student at the Academic Julien—the largest private art academy in Paris—in 1884. In the summer and autumn of 1888 he traveled in Britanny, where he visited for several weeks the village of Pont-Aven. At the Pension Gloanec, a gathering place of artists, he came into contact with Paul Gauguin. Gauguin and other painters were attracted by the remoteness of Brittany from the sophisticated art world of Paris, and they admired the relative simplicity of the Breton peasants' rural life, their picturesque regional costumes, and a traditional religious faith seemingly unchanged since medieval times. Serusier soon became an intimate of the artistic circle around Gauguin, including Emile Bernard and Maurice Denis, who called themselves the Nabis (derived from a Hebrew word for prophet). They did not wish to capture the appearances of nature

in a realistic manner, but rather to simplify form and color, and to arrange their sense perceptions into works of art that were decorative objects with a certain autonomy or independent artistic identity. Denis expressed these ideas most radically in his famous statement: "Remember that a painting—before being a war horse, a nude woman, or some anecdote—is essentially a flat surface covered with colors arranged in a certain order."1 Serusier's Farmhouse at Le Pouldu is based on his observation of a typical Breton farmhouse, with a woman in local costume crossing the yard. But he has simplified shapes, flattened forms, and reduced the complexities of sunlight and dappled shade to broad areas of color, bounded by clear outlines. This flattening out of forms and the employment of sinuous linear patterns to unify the picture surface was sometimes referred to by the Nabis as "synthetism," denoting the idea of an artificial pictorial unity that sets the work of art apart from mere natural appearances. Serusier's manner of painting is strongly influenced by

Gauguin and Paul Cezanne, notably in the deliberately applied rows of short, finely hatched brushmarks, quite visible in the sky, trees, thatch of the cottage, and the pile of hay. Rather than the conventional pictorial subjects of farmhouse, peasant woman, farmyard, gate, trees, and the fields beyond, it is their decorative organization that forms the true subject of Serusier's picture. PHILIP CONISBEE

Provenance: Rosensaft Collection, New York; Frank Lloyd, New York.

Martin Johnson Heade A M E R I C A N , 1819-1904

82

Heade was the only major American artist of the nineteenth century to make important contributions in landscape, marine, and still-life painting. Virtually all of his still lifes were floral pieces, starting with simple pictures of flowers in vases in the early i86os and culminating with a splendid series of roses, magnolias, and other flowers spread out on tables covered with velvet cloths. This painting, a prime and much-admired example from the latter series, is considered one of the finest still lifes of Heade's entire career.1 In 1883, after a lifetime of restless, uneasy personal relationships, and only modest critical and popular success as an

artist in the northeast, Heade married for the first time and settled permanently in Saint Augustine, Florida. There he found his first and only important patron, the oil and railroad magnate Henry Morrison Flagler, who would purchase the artist's works regularly during the i88os and 18905. At the age of sixty-four Heade had at last found personal and professional stability, and the renewed energy and interest in painting evident in his late still lifes, especially the magnolias, may have been inspired by these new circumstances.2 Certainly works such as Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth^ with their striking contrasts of brilliantly lit flowers and leaves set against a dark background, are among the most original still lifes of the nineteenth century. They are also for many observers strongly sensual, their

lush colors, full, curving contours, overall sense of opulence, and implied perfumed scent of the flowers suggestive, perhaps, of female nudes languidly reclining o n luxurious couches.3 F R A N K L I N K E L L Y Provenance: Victor Spark, New York, 1962-c. 1965; Dr. and Mrs. Samuel Finkelstein, New York, c. 1965-1995; by descent to private collection; consigned 1995 to Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York.

Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth c. 1890, oil on canvas 38.4 x 61.5 (15 Vs x 243/i6) Gift of The Circle of the National Gallery of Art in commemoration of its loth anniversary 1996.14.1

83

Childe HaSSam A M E R I C A N , 1859-1935

84

Childe Hassam was a regular visitor to the Isles of Shoals, nine small, rocky, treeless islands off the New Hampshire coast. His acquaintance with the islands was due to his poet friend Celia Thaxter, whose house on Appledore Island was a summer mecca for writers, painters, illustrators, musicians, and other artistic visitors. Between 1890 and 1894, the year of Thaxter's death, Hassam painted many fine works there, some depicting the interior of Thaxter's cottage, others (the majority), outdoor scenes set either in or nearby her much-admired flower garden. Poppies, Isles of Shoals presents a broad vista moving from a dense foreground of flowers to a background of rocks, water, and sky. This view, centered on an outcropping called Babb's Rock, was one of Hassam's favorites, for he

painted it many times. Although ample signs of man's presence were readily apparent from Celia Thaxter's garden, Hassam usually excluded them from his paintings. Here, only a passing sailboat hints that we are not in some pristine, wild environment. The composition is divided into three distinct and equal bands of space, in which different colors predominate: green and red for the flowers; blue, purple, and white for the rocks and water; and pale blue for the sky. Hassam's brushwork is equally varied, ranging from lush red and white strokes defining the flowers to long drags of pigment suggesting the multihued surfaces of the rocks. At the bottom he left areas of canvas bare, adding yet another color and texture. For anyone accustomed to academic landscape painting, seeing one of Hassam's Isles of Shoals paintings was, as one reviewer wrote, "like taking

off a pair of black spectacles that one has been compelled to wear out of doors, and letting the full glory of nature's sunlight color pour in upon the retina."1 FRANKLIN

KELLY

Provenance: John Stringer Tilney, Orange, N.J., 1900-1925; Mrs. John Stringer Tilney, 1925-1957; Marie Tilney Inge, Mobile, Ala., 1957-1965; Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1965; Mrs. Ralph Ritter, until 1987; Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1987.

Poppies, Isles of Shoals 1891, oil on canvas 50.2 x 61 (ip 3 /4 x 24) Gift (partial and promised) of Margaret and Raymond Horowitz 1997.135.1

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For the Track 1895? oil °n canvas 110.5 x 75-9 (43 */2 x 297/s) Gift (partial and promised) of Jo Ann and Julian Ganzjr. 1997.131.1

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8?

John Frederick Peto A M E R I C A N , 1854-1907

The still-life paintings of John F. Peto are notable not only for their sophisticated qualities of formal design and precise recording of the appearance and textures of the things they depict, but also for their psychological complexity.1 For the Track) one of his most accomplished late works, presents an array of worn and well-used objects connected with horse racing. Against a dark green painted door are displayed a red jockey's cap, a riding crop, a spur, a thinned and bent horseshoe, betting stubs, a racetrack announcement, a tattered image of a dark horse, and various fragments of torn paper, such as the illegible newspaper clipping at the top right. At the bottom, a dark

blue envelope or piece of paper seems to have fallen and become lodged between canvas and frame, enhancing the sense of illusion.

have been run, bets have been won or lost, and the rider's equipment—or, at least, these few bits of it—has been hung up, perhaps for good. But the abstract

Peto often painted pictures on commission that depict objects such as letters, cards, or pamphlets that made

power of Peto's composition and the sheer visual beauty of his bold colors counteract any sense of somber nostalgia, animating the painting with a remarkable aesthetic vitality. F R A N K L I N K E L L Y

reference to specific patrons. Presumably, the objects depicted in this work also had some personal significance, although we do not know for whom it was painted (an individual's name is not found anywhere on it). But whatever specific meanings it may have held, For the Track clearly refers to one of still-life painting's most enduring themes: the passage of time and the transience of earthly things. The worn surfaces, broken and rusty hinges, bent nails, and torn bits of paper all resonate with a sense of the past, the forgotten, and the discarded. The races

Provenance: Private collection; sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, I June 1984, no. 32; to Jo Ann and Julian Ganzjr., Los Angeles, Calif.

Claude Monet

88

In 1883 Monet moved his household, his two sons along with Alice Hoschede and her children, to the rural community of Giverny, where he leased a house that he was able to purchase seven years later. In early 1893, ne acquired a swampy area across the railroad tracks abutting his property and petitioned the village council for permission to divert a small stream into it. But it was only toward the end of that decade that he turned to the garden he created there as a rich source of artistic motifs. When Monet looked to his water garden in 1899, he painted twelve works from one single vantage point, focusing on the arching blue-green bridge and the microcosm of the water garden. Among the twelve was the National Gallery's Japanese Footbridge. Everything in the painting—from the bridge itself to the waterlilies and other plantings, to the shape and even the existence of the

F R E N C H , 1840-1926

pond—was formed by Monet. The artist, who as a leader of the impressionists had espoused the spontaneity of directly observed works that capture the fleeting effects of light and color, had in these later paintings subjected a nature he recreated to sustained, meditated scrutiny. When Monet exhibited these paintings at Durand-Ruel's gallery in 1890, a number of critics mentioned his debt to Japanese art. More telling, the impenetrable green enclosure—heightened in the National Gallery painting by the placement of the top of the bridge's arch just below the painting's top edge— harkens back to the hortus conclums (closed garden) of medieval images, while also evoking a dreamlike contemplative zone consonant with symbolist literature, especially poems such as "Le Nenuphar blanc" by Stephane Mallarme. Gustave Geffroy described this effect in his review of the exhibition (Le Journal, 26 November 1900), speaking of "this minuscule pool where some mysterious corollas blossom," and "a calm pool, immobile,

rigid, and deep like a mirror, upon which white water lilies blossom forth, a pool surrounded by soft and hanging greenery which reflects itself in it." F L O R E N C E E. COMAN

Inscription (lower right): Claude Monet / gg Provenance: Purchased January 1900 from the artist by Durand-Ruel, Paris; sold 1920 to the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; sold 1953 to Sam Salz, New York; sold to Henry T. Mudd, Los Angeles; by inheritance to his wife, Victoria Nebeker Coberly [Mrs. William B. Coberly Jr., 1917-1991], Los Angeles; her estate.

The Japanese Footbridge 1899, oil on canvas 81.3 x 101.6(32 x4o) Gift of Victoria Nebeker Coberly, in memory of her son John W. Mudd, and Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg 1992.9.1

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Henri Matisse F R E N C H , 1869-1954

90

Matisse's Open Window, Collioure is an icon of early modernism. A small but explosive work, it is celebrated as one of the most important early paintings of the so-called fauve school, a group of artists, including Andre Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, and Georges Braque, that emerged in 1904. Fauve paintings are distinguished by a startling palette of saturated, unmixed colors and broad brushstrokes. The effect is one of spontaneity, although the works reveal a calculated assimilation of techniques from post-impressionism and neoimpressionism. Open Window represents the very inception of the new manner in Matisse's art. 1 It was painted in Collioure, a small town on the Mediterranean coast of France to which Matisse traveled with Derain in the summer of 1905. Open Window was exhibited at the landmark Salon d'automne of 1905, where Matisse and other fauve painters were greeted with critical skepticism and public disdain. The "fauve" (savage beast) label itself originated in the art critic Louis Vauxcelles' newspaper review of the exhibition. Vauxcelles, who reproached Matisse for the diminishing coherence of form in his work, praised the artist as "one of the most robustly gifted of today's painters"; his use of the term "fauves," which appears twice, is actually ambiguous: it alludes both to Matisse's fellow painters in Salle VII of the Salon and to the insensitive public, who scorned

Matisse's work. Nonetheless, the press was soon referring to Salle vn as a cage aux fauves (cage of wild beasts), and, by 1906, this had become an accepted epithet for Matisse, Derain, and his fellow painters. 2 The lyrical beauty of Open Window belies the optical and conceptual complexity of the work, in which conventional representation is subordinated throughout by other pictorial concerns. During the time when this work was painted, Derain wrote that even the shadows in Collioure were a "whole world of clarity and luminosity."3 Matisse courts the maximum intensity of color, essentially eschewing chiaroscuro, the play of light and dark that creates an illusion of volume and spatial depth. Instead, the interior wall surrounding the window is equally divided into broad areas of blue-green and fuchsia, a contrast that is derived from the complementary opposition of green and red on the color wheel (this contrast recurs in the flowerpots at the bottom of the picture). Virtually the same, almost abstract, color relationship occurs in the background of Matisse's The Woman with the Hat (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), also from this period. Further, Open Window also contains a dazzling variety of brushstrokes, from long blended marks to short, staccato touches. Matisse represented each area of the image—the interior of the room, the window itself, the balcony, the harbor view—with a distinctly different handling of the brush, creating an overall surface effect of pul-

sating cross-rhythms. Finally, the composition of the work is a series of frames within frames: the wall contains the window; the window frames the middle ground; and the balcony crops the landscape. Comparing a painting to a window has been a conventional trope in art theory since the Renaissance. In making this comparison the very subject of a picture that is only cryptically representational (by the standards of the day), Matisse allowed Open Window^ Collioure to epitomize a new direction in modern art, one in which paintings develop an increasing autonomy from the things they depict. The open window (and the paintingwindow metaphor) would subsequently become a central motif in Matisse's oeuvre. JEFFREY WEISS

Inscription (lower right): Henri Matisse Provenance: Galerie Druet, Paris. Van de Velde, Le Havre, 1906. General Requin, Paris, 1915-1918. Private collection, Paris, in 1949. Carstairs Gallery, New York. Sidney Janis Gallery, New York; sold 6 August 1952 to Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, New York.

Open Window^ Collioure 1905, oil on canvas 5 5 - 3 X 46 (21 3/4 X iSVs)

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.7

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Tugboats on the Seine, Chatou 1906, oil on canvas 50.2 x 65.1 (i9 3 /4 x 25%) Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.744

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Maurice de Vlaminck

F R E N C H , 1876-1958

Vlaminck is often portrayed as the most unruly painter of the fauve school, an

Both Derain and Vlaminck lived in Chatou, a suburb of Paris in the Seine

Tugboats on the Seine can be closely compared to other paintings of the river

impression that reflects both on his per-

valley, and they began painting together there—as well as in other towns along

by Vlaminck from 1905 and 1906, such as The Seine at Chatou (Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection), which shows both a remorqueur^ or tugboat, and sailboats. The Washington painting is distinguished, however, by its decidedly unpicturesque composition: the tugboat approaching from the right is a cropped intrusion, and the artist has omitted strong, vertical foreground elements such as trees or the pier of the bridge, which, in related works, serve to frame the composition and clarify the definition of middle ground and background space. Vlaminck carries the coloration of the tugboats, which were painted with blue, white, and red bands, into the water. As a reflection, this effect lends a degree of naturalism to the painting, an element that often distinguishes Vlaminck's work from that of Derain and Matisse; the result, however, also evokes the French national colors, or tricolore^ an impression that i s essentially abstract. J E F F R E Y W E I S S

sonality (as it is revealed in his biography and writings) and his work. A self-taught artist, Vlaminck insisted that painting should be the unmediated expression of an artist's temperament, "emotive, tender, ferocious, as natural as life itself."1 Indeed, having been an anarchist sympathizer during the prewar period, he would later link the strident colorism and bold brushwork of his work to social and political dissent, a connection that was actually made by several art critics.2 In this regard, Vlaminck is largely responsible for the essential myth of fauvism as an audaciously undisciplined, spontaneous, or emotive style. Careful examination of Vlaminck's work shows, instead, that in 1905 — 1906 he was a brilliantly intuitive student of Van Gogh and Gauguin, whose works had been the subject of various important exhibitions in Paris at that time. It was a Van Gogh exhibition at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in 1901 to which Vlaminck himself credited his preoccupation with color, although his work did not fully develop the implications of Van Gogh's style until 1905, after Vlaminck had been exposed to the new paintings that Matisse and Derain had brought back from their trip to the south of France.3 Under the impact of their progress, Vlaminck's work exploded with pure color and broad strokes of paint.

the river—in 1900, at which time they rented a studio on the Ile-de-Chatou. The two artists had grown up in and around Chatou, a fairly quiet, picturesque spot that had been spared the kind of industrial activity that had recently influenced the character of other nearby towns such as Argenteuil. 4 In 1901, Derain entered military service, thus ending a fifteen-month partnership that would only be resumed in 1904. During the fauve years, Vlaminck and Derain painted many of the same sites, including views of and from the pont de Chatou, an old railroad bridge. Vlaminck in particular much preferred the suburban landscape to the sites of Paris (which, in general, did not occupy fauve painting), and his images of Chatou were personal paeans to familiar ground. Tugboats on the Seine is a brilliant example of Vlaminck's most accomplished fauve manner. Executed with broad, loose but loaded, densely accumulated brushstrokes, the surface of the picture teems with a calligraphic energy that typifies fauve painting, and is a special hallmark of Vlaminck's manner. This effect is heightened by the absence of shadows; the use of pure colors throughout the composition allows all areas of the image to occupy the picture plane with equal weight. Unlike Matisse and Derain, Vlaminck did not employ a mixed technique, and the uniformity of his brushstrokes serves, on a secondary level, to unify his work.

Inscription (lower left): Vlaminck Provenance: Private collection, Paris; Fine Arts Associates, New York; sold 13 March 1950 through John Rewald to Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, New York.

Georges Braque F R E N C H , 1882-1963

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Braque was raised in the Normandy port town of Le Havre, where he first studied art. His early work was characterized by a conservative impressionist manner derived from artists such as Eugene Boudin and Johan Barthold Jongkind. While the lessons of post-impressionism eluded him at first, he emerged as a modernist painter following his revelatory experience of fauvism at the Salon d'automne in 1905. Braque's own fauve period was a short one, occupying less than two years between 1906 and 1907. He was especially close to the painter Othon Friesz, a fellow Norman with whom he made four sojourns: to the Belgian city of Antwerp in the summer of 1906; to L'Estaque, in the south of France, in the fall; to the southern town of La Ciotat during the late spring of 1907; and back to L'Estaque in October. All four trips represent important painting campaigns during which Braque assimilated elements of fauvist style, ultimately converting them into the dense, constructive Cezannesque manner that preceded cubism. The Port of La Ciotat^ dating from spring 1907, typifies Braque's work in the south of France, where the golden tonality that distinguished his palette throughout this period had already been heightened by his exposure to the

southern light of L'Estaque. In the Midi, Braque also developed an increasingly abstract technique, allowing strokes and contours to gain an autonomous presence. The result was a flat, decorative quality that Braque shared with Friesz (although Friesz' sinuous brushwork is more closely related to the graphic mannerisms of art nouveau). While The Port manifests these elements, it is somewhat more naturalistic than Braque's more radical work from mid-1907. Open areas of ground and sky relieve the denser passages, coherently evoking deep space, and the distribution of lights and darks lends plasticity to the boats in the foreground. True to the innovations of fauve painting, however, colors are almost uniformly nondescriptive. The Port also contains certain ambiguities of the kind that Braque would continue to pursue in his cubist works— areas of indeterminate space, for example, and the highly cryptic representation of distant objects (here, boats in the water) with one or two thick strokes of the brush. Extended observation reveals a latent structural element: across the top and bottom of the scene, three sets of masts function as broken vertical lines, dividing the composition into four bands. The subject of The Port is a common one. Both Braque and Friesz painted many such harbor scenes in L'Estaque and La Ciotat. La Ciotat was a shipbuilding town, and its small harbor was dominated by a large dry dock facility that appears in the background of the present picture, where two steamers are shown. 1

Braque began exhibiting his fauve canvases, including five works produced during his trip to the Midi, at the Salon des independants in the spring of 1907. By the time of his return to L'Estaque that fall, Braque, whose interest had been piqued by the posthumous retrospective of Cezanne's work at the Salon d'automne, was exploring the implications of a structural relief style that would gradually but dramatically distance him from the patterned colorism o f fauve painting. J E F F R E Y W E I S S Inscription (lower right): Braque Provenance: Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris, no. 1037; sequestered by the French government during World War I and sold by the government at third Kahnweiler collection sale, Paris, 4 July 1922, no. 44; purchased by Constantin Rodenbach, Paris and Zurich; sold 28 March 1952 through Irma Hoenigsberg, Paris and Zurich, and Rene Gas for Galerie Andre Maurice, Paris, to Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, New York.

The Port of La do tat 1907, oil on canvas 64.8 x 81 (25V2X 3i 7 /s) Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney 1998.74.6

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Edouard Vuillard

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Although best known today for the small, intimate interiors he painted in the ISpos while affiliated with the group of artists known as the Nabis (prophets), Edouard Vuillard also produced a number of large decorative works, such as Place Vintimille^ for both public buildings and private residences. It was painted for Marguerite Chapin — later the princess of Bassiano—an American expatriate living in Paris whom Vuillard first met in March 1910 through his friend Pierre Bonnard. Shortly after this meeting she commissioned the artist to execute a large decorative panel, The Library (Musee d'Orsay, Paris), for her new apartment at n, rue de 1'Universite. Following its installation in late April or early May 1911, Chapin commissioned a second work from Vuillard, the Place Vintimille^ a five-panel decorative screen. Vuillard worked rapidly, and by early June 1911 the painting was mounted on a wood support backed by wallpaper and ready for installation in her home. The painting's subject is the place Vintimille (now the place Adolf-Max) in springtime, as viewed from the artist's Paris apartment. In the summer of 1908, Vuillard took up residence in a fifth floor apartment at 26, rue de Calais, which would remain his home for the next eigh-

F R E N C H , 1868-194O

teen years. During this time, he painted several street scenes from his window, including three panels showing the place Vintimille in wintertime that were commissioned by the playwright Henry Bernstein and that served as the inspiration for the Chapin screen. The format of Place Vintimille, however, clearly distinguishes it from these earlier paintings, which were closely related but ultimately independent panels executed as part of a larger group depicting the streets of Paris. By contrast, Place Vintimille was clearly a self-contained and articulated whole. While Vuillard was obviously intrigued by this format—he included screens into the backgrounds of several of his paintings—he only produced three such decorative screens, of which Place Vintimille is the last. In many respects, Place Vintimille is a quintessential example of the artist's mature style. Its subject is drawn from modern life, and it reflects Vuillard's fascination with Japanese art, a passion he shared with fellow Nabis. The format itself—that of a folding screen—was based on Japanese prototypes, while the composition, with its striking bird's-eye view, off-center composition, and casual array of cropped forms and patches of color, seems drawn from Japanese prints. Even Vuillard's seemingly novel choice of medium reflects the artist's personal style. Although he used oil paint through-

out his career, by the early twentieth century he was showing a marked preference for distemper, a glue-based paint. Here Vuillard juxtaposed the matte areas of color with the exposed portions of the beige cardboard, allowing the support to become an active part of the composition. The result is a richly patterned surface that retains a remarkable sense of freedom and freshness despite the work's imposing scale. K I M B E R L Y J O N E S Inscription: (lower left, far right panel): E. Vuillard Provenance: Commissioned 1911 by Marguerite Chapin [later the princess of Bassiano, born c. 1885]; her collection until at least 1924. Albert Sancholle Henraux [1891-1953] possibly by 1938 until at least 1945. Enid A. Haupt.

Place Vintimille 1911, distemper on paper laid down on canvas Five-panel screen: each panel 230x6o(90 9 /16 x23 5 /s)

Gift of Enid A. Haupt 199847-1

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The Procession, Seville 1912, oil on canvas 121.9 x 121.9(48 x48) Chester Dale Fund and Gift of Barbara Rothschild Michaels from the Collection of Herbert and Nannette Rothschild I99743-I

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Francis Picabia F R E N C H , 1879-1953

Before establishing himself as a pioneering member of the dada movement during and after World War I, Picabia experimented with various forms of modernist painting. Procession, Seville belongs to a group of works from 1912 in which the artist demonstrates a sophisticated and highly idiosyncratic assimilation of recent developments in cubism and futurism. 1 Fragmented planes, shallow space, and an allover pattern of flickering lights and darks are all associated with the analytic cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque; the quasi-abstract evocation of bodies in motion is an interest Picabia shared with Italian futurist painters such as Gino Severini and Umber to Boccioni, who were just beginning to exhibit in Paris. The paintings in this series, which includes several large-scale works, were produced between June and September. All of the pictures have descriptive titles that are often boldly inscribed on the painting itself; many of these, including Procession, Seville, relate to scenes of peasant and religious life that Picabia had witnessed on his honeymoon in Spain in 1909. Procession, Seville purports to represent a hillside religious procession, with nuns in black habits and white headgear. Figures coalesce into a mass in the center of the canvas, making their way up the rugged terrain, with blue sky showing in the upper-left and upper-right corners

of the composition. The restricted palette, dominated by blacks, whites, and grays, derives in principle from analytic cubism, but the acidic passages of blue and orange (presumably the nuns' faces) are peculiar to Picabia's work. Picabia's paintings from 1912 were often produced in formal and thematic sequences or groups, including several canvases devoted to images of the dance. The subject of the present painting is probably related to two other works from this period, Procession and Processional Music, both now lost. Despite Picabia's titles, the paintings of 1912 and 1913 were considered by various observers of the period as virtually abstract. Picabia participated in a number of exhibitions of avant-garde painting during the prewar period. Procession, Seville was shown in the Salon de la section d'or, an important early cubist exhibition that was held at the Galerie de la Boetie in Paris in October 1912. It was on this occasion that the poet-critic Guillaume Apollinaire attempted to codify recent developments in cubist and futurist painting: Picabia—along with Robert Delaunay and Marcel Duchamp—was an "Orphic" cubist devoted to "pure painting," an abstract idiom that was analogous to music.2 This comparison between painting and music, which was a common one during the prewar period, was frequently made by Picabia himself in interviews and statements about his work in 1913.3 Procession, Seville was also one of four works by Picabia that appeared in the landmark New York Armory exhibition of 1913,4 which introduced an

American audience to the most advanced developments of the time in modernist European and American art. The painting has an important provenance: it was originally acquired by Marcel Duchamp, Picabia's close friend since 1911; Duchamp sold the painting at a large auction of Picabia's works in his collection in 1926, at which time Procession, Seville was acquired by Andre Breton. JEFFREY WEISS

Inscription (lower right): Picabia', (upper right): LA PROCESSION /SEVILLE Provenance: The artist; Marcel Duchamp, Paris; sold, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 8 March 1926, no. y 5 to Mme Andre Breton, Paris; Leonce Rosenberg, Paris before 1953; Prince Igor Troubetzkoy, Paris; Simone Collinet, Paris; Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, by 1956; purchased 1956 by Herbert and Nannette Rothschild, Kitchawan, N.Y.; gift 1973 to their daughter and her husband, Barbara and Roger Michaels, Ossining, N.Y.

Edward Steichen

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A M E R I C A N , 1879-1973

During the first half of his career, Edward Steichen practiced both painting and photography. His early paintings consist of soft, monochromatic landscapes and portraits executed in a turnof-the-century tonalist manner that corresponded to the muted qualities of his photographic work. By contrast, during the late 19108, Steichen developed a striking, hard-edge modernist style.

images. The iconography of the present painting is obviously related to his activities both as horticulturist and photographer. Steichen also studied the intrinsic mathematical ratios of plant growth (as explicated by mathematicians such as Jay Hambridge and Theodore Andrea Cooke),2 deriving formal principles that he applied to a series of small, abstract tempera paintings of triangular shapes.

This dramatic departure is exemplified by The Sunflower^ which was apparently executed in 1920. Sometime between 1920 and 1923, in a crisis of faith, Steichen abandoned painting and destroyed all the canvases still in his possession. By this time, The Sunflower had already left his hands; it is, therefore, virtually the only surviving example of its kind.1 In 1906, after four years in New York, Steichen moved to France with his wife and children, settling in a country house in the town of Voulangis in Brittany, where he was able to pursue a passion for gardening along with his work in painting and photography Following World War I (during which he had served in the United States Army) Steichen returned to Voulangis, and remained there until 1922. In his garden, Steichen raised sunflowers, photographing them in a series of intense close-up

Conceived as illustrations for an unrealized children's book about the inhabitants of an imaginary land, these stark but fanciful images, called "Oochens,"3 are clearly relevant to the formal vocabulary of The Sunflower., especially the passages that surround the flower and vase. Given the fate of Steichen's late paintings, his stylistic development remains somewhat obscure. Clearly, The Sunflower also reflects certain wartime and postwar developments in European and American art, notably the new emphasis on machine-made or streamlined forms in the work of French painters such as Fernand Leger and Francis Picabia, as well as American painters such as Charles Sheeler, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Gerald Murphy. Steichen, who was extremely active in the modernist communities of Paris and New York, would have been closely familiar with this new, post-cubist tendency. The Sunflower stands apart, however, for its boldly simplified manner and its striking, off-key palette. Even more than other paintings of the period

around World War I, The Sunflower recalls the sculptures of Steichen's friend Constantin Brancusi (whom he photographed during the 1920$). Indeed, Steichen's vase bears a remarkable formal kinship to Brancusi's Maiastra (Tate Gallery, London), a swelling, streamlined figure of a bird in polished bronze that Steichen set in a dramatic installation in the garden at Voulangis. Like Brancusi's bird, The Sunflower is a highly refined synthesis of organic and industrial form. The Sunflower was exhibited at the Salon d'automne in Paris in 1922, an important venue for new painting.4 JEFFREY WEISS

Inscription (on stretcher): Edward J. Steichen / Voulangis par Crecy-en-Brie S. et M. /(Agent Lucien Foinet 19 rue Vavin) Provenance: Gift from the artist to Francis Jourdain, France, c. 1920/1922; by descent in his family until 1985; Robert Miller Gallery, New York, 1985-1999.

Le Tournesol (The

Sunflower)

c. 1920, tempera and oil on canvas 92.1 X 8l.9 (36V4 X 32 ¥4)

Gift of the Collectors Committee 199943.1

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Georgia O'Keeffe A M E R I C A N , 1887-1986

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Black White and Elm was painted at a critical juncture in Georgia O'Keeffe's life. In 1929 she began to spend several months of each year in New Mexico, away from both New York and her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer and promoter of American modernist painting and photography. As she embraced the clear light of New Mexico, her art changed and became cleaner, sharper, and both literally and metaphorically larger and more focused. Rejecting some of the emotionalism of her work from the 19205, she began to adopt a more distanced approach and to concentrate on simpler forms and cooler subjects, often with overt religious symbolism. The underlying structure of the parched land of the Southwest and its churches, crosses, and animal skulls became the object of her scrutiny. Like Black White and Blue., the best of her paintings after 1929 are infused with a religious, iconic, and even monumental quality. In addition, after 1929 O'Keeffe started painting larger canvases, perhaps as a result of the scale of the land itself or even of the magnitude of her revived ambition. During the 19205 she had made many small paintings, several not much more than 9 x 10 inches. Only New York—another big subject—had consistently motivated O'Keeffe to create large paintings. Her only other paintings of comparable size, Black Cross, New Mexico (1929, 39 x 30 Vi6 inches, The Art

Institute of Chicago) and Cow Skull: Red, White, and Blue (1931, 397/s x 35% inches, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), are New Mexico works of comparable ambition that were clearly inspired by O'Keeffe's fascination with the crosses that dot the Southwest landscape. "Anyone who doesn't feel the crosses," she told the critic Henry McBride, "simply doesn't get that country."1 O'Keeffe said little about her paintings, but in 1976 she wrote that Black and White (1930, Whitney Museum of American Art), an earlier version of Black White and Blue, "was a message to a friend— if he saw it he didn't know it was to him and wouldn't have known what it said. And neither do I."2 Messages, though, can usually be decoded. The friend was most likely a New Mexico male acquaintance who did not often, if ever, see O'Keeffe's paintings. 3 It could have been Tony Luhan, Mabel Dodge Luhan's Native American husband, whose quiet, dignified, enigmatic presence O'Keeffe greatly admired.4 In addition, because O'Keeffe repeatedly asserted that she could express herself better in color and form than in words, the "message" is also undoubtedly encoded in the color and structure of the painting itself. Black White and Blue presents the intersection of two quite different forms— one black and fluid, one blue and rigid— that are both pierced and about to be divided by a sharp white wedge. Again, parallels can be drawn to the dark and mysterious Tony Luhan, who also had a Native American wife whom he regu-

larly saw, provoking fits of jealousy and despair in Mabel that threatened to tear apart their union. However, the critical point is that O'Keeffe stated that she herself did not know what the message was. This was not a coy remark on her part. For O'Keeffe the very act of painting was a way of clarifying an experience for herself: it was not a way of illustrating an idea or explicating a cause, but simply the means she used to express her visual, emotional, sensual, and tactile experience of the world. It was her way of coming to terms with, of knowing and understanding, an experience. As she repeatedly insisted, her paintings embodied the "things that I had no words for ... the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify i n paint."5 S A R A H G R E E N O U C H Inscription (on panel, reverse): GO ^r; (on label, reverse): Black White and Blue 1930 Provenance: The artist; Edith Gregor Halpert, New York; sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, Inc., New York, 14 March 1973, no. 46 to Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth, Saint Louis.

Black White and Elm 1930, oil on canvas 121.9 x 76.2 (48 x 30) Gift (partial and promised) of Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth 1998.93-1

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Classic Landscape 1931, oil on canvas 63.5 x 81.9 (25 x 32 V4) Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth 2000.39.2

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Charles Sheeler A M E R I C A N , 1883-1965

Charles Sheeler was a master of both

shipped for sale. Sheeler's choice of this

painting and photography, and his work in one medium influenced and shaped his work in the other. In 1927 he was commissioned to photograph the Ford Motor Company's new River Rouge Plant near Detroit. Then the world's largest industrial complex employing more than

rather anonymous scene, rather than one connected with the production of automobiles, suggests that his interest lay

seventy-five thousand workers, the plant produced Ford's Model A, successor to the famed Model T. Sheeler's photographs were used for the company's advertising, but he found himself greatly inspired by the subject, which he declared "incomparably the most thrilling I have had to work with."1 In 1930 he began painting oils of the plant, creating over the next six years American Landscape (1930, The Museum of Modern Art, New York), Classic Landscape (1931), River Rouge Plant (1932, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York), and City Interior (1936, Worcester Art Museum). Classic Landscape depicts an area of the plant where cement was made from by-products of the manufacturing process. The silos in the middle distance stored the cement until it could be

in making a generalized portrait of the landscape of industry. That, in part, may explain his use in the painting's title of the word "classic," with its connotations of typical or standard. But "classic" also evokes the culture of ancient Greece and Rome, and Sheeler certainly implies that this modern American scene can be compared to the high achievements of the classical past. One might well be reminded of classical architecture by the templelike form of the silos and the pedimentlike roofs of the nearby buildings, but the matter clearly went beyond superficial resemblance. Like others of his day, Sheeler admired architecture that was functional and straightforward, with shape and plan determined by specifics of use rather than by conventions of style and decoration. For the great French architect Le Corbusier, whose influential Towards a New Architecture Sheeler probably read about this time, the timeless principles of good design embodied by ancient architecture were indeed still at work in "the American grain elevators and factories, the magnificent first-fruits of the new age."2

The iconic power and special importance of Classic Landscape were recognized from the time of its first public exhibition in New York in 1931. Through the years, it has become one of the most widely exhibited and best-known works of its era, and today it stands as a key masterwork of twentieth-century American art.

FRANKLIN

KELLY

Provenance: The Downtown Gallery, New York; Edsel B. Ford, Dearborn, Mich.; Mrs. Edsel B. Ford, Grosse Point Shores, Mich.; Edsel and Eleanor Ford House, Detroit, 1982-1983, by transfer; sale, Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, no. 5055, 2 June 1983, lot 210; Hirschl & Adler Galleries Inc., New York; Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth, Saint Louis, Mo., 1984-2000.

Arthur Dove

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In the summer of 1933, after much hesitation, Arthur Dove moved back to his family home in Geneva, New York, in order to escape the grinding poverty that was sapping his ability to focus on his painting. 1 Supported, in part, by Duncan Phillips, who sent a stipend in exchange for paintings, Dove enjoyed a remarkably productive period during his years in Geneva (1933-1938), which also coincided with a renewed interest in painting.2 He had abandoned his extensive experimentation with collage and in February 1932 decided "to let go of everything and just try to make oil painting beautiful in itself with no further wish."3 Once settled in Geneva, he continued these explorations by carefully examining his technique. He had always been fascinated with the materials of his art—he often ground his own pigments—and had avidly read such books as Jacques Blockx's Compendium of Painting and Maximilian Toch's Materials for Permanent Painting. In October 1935 he read, as he told Stieglitz, "every inch" of Max Doerner's recently translated Materials of the Artist.4 Intrigued by Doerner's description of the use of resin oil color and resin oil color with wax, which the author wrote produced colors with "a misty, pleasingly dull and mat appearance, and great brightness and clarity," Dove immediately began to experiment with these materials.5

A M E R I C A N , 1880-1946

This painting, made during the fall of 1935, depicts a tree covering the glowing moon. Derived directly from the landscape and light of the Finger Lakes region, the painting is composed of earthy colors, with shades of brown, yellow, green, and red ranging in intensity from pale muddy tones to richly saturated hues. Like other works from 1935, Moon incorporates some of Doerner's lessons. Painted with short, thinned, almost translucent brushstrokes over underlying hues of different intensity, Moon has a surface that seems almost to throb with luminosity and energy. But this technique also creates the impression of an all-enveloping atmosphere, like "walking on the bottom under water,"6 where the air surrounding objects is as weighty, charged, and meaningful as the things themselves. With its highly simplified composition, Moon looks forward to works that Dove would create in Geneva in 1936 and 1937. During these years, spheres and columns, the sun, the moon, and tree trunks came to dominate his imagery as he sought to create a "definite rythmic [sic] sense." He was interested not in "geometrical repetition," but in making his works "breathe as does the rest of nature" by using "the play or spread or swing of space [that] can only be felt through this kind of consciousness."7 Although the natural rhythms that Dove captured and the shapes he explored are undeniably sexual, often phallic in form, such allusions were not Dove's

intention. Rather, he sought to construct independent aesthetic forms that are real unto themselves and speak of his experiences of nature. In the fall of 1935 these experiences were grounded in the glowing, exuberant, even euphoric feelings that enveloped him in the light, colors, atmosphere, and almost palpable energy of the Geneva landscape. But he also strove to reveal the presence of the divine in the natural world. Moon, with its Redon-like, all-knowing eye and its tree that connects both the terrestrial and celestial worlds, speaks both of his symbolist heritage and his then-current fascination with theosophy.8 In Moon., Dove's spirit strove to burst forth into the light of the heavens, while his strength, his nourishment, and indeed his inspiration were firmly rooted in t h e ground. S A R A H C R E E N O U C H Provenance: Alfred Stieglitz (An American Place), New York. The Downtown Gallery, New York. Mr. and Mrs. Max Zurier, Los Angeles. John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco. Acquired 1985 by Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth.

Moon 1935, oil on canvas 88.9x63.5(35x25) Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Barney A. Ebsworth 2000.39.1

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Jean Dubuffet

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In 1945, DubufFet began to model his work on forms of figuration that lie outside the canon of "high art" and its conventions of beauty and taste. Known collectively as I'art brut, these included children's drawing, prehistoric cave painting, graffiti, and the art of the "insane." Dubuffet's interests correspond to a larger pursuit of putatively primitive and subconscious forms of expression among artists and writers in postwar France who had abandoned conventional notions of beauty and taste in their work and sought new means of authenticity in response to the crisis of the war. The painting Bertele bouquet fleuri is an outstanding example of the essential early period of Dubuffet's postwar work, in which the artist contributed to the invention of a new kind of easel painting. Above all, Dubuffet developed an original, aggressive approach to the medium itself, creating a dense compound of paint and aggregate materials—his so-called haute pate—that is applied to the canvas with brushes and knives in thick, uneven layers. This heavy, raw matiere is the physical equivalent of Dubuffet's crude assault on the human figure. In Bertele, oil paint is mixed with plaster and sand, producing a tough, intractable surface that resembles the face of an old wall. The figure is both painted over and incised through

F R E N C H , 1901-1985

this surface in a process that was, for Dubuffet, intended to reveal the artist's struggle with materials and tools. During 1946 and 1947, Dubuffet produced a large group of portraits of writers, artists, musicians, and other members of his circle, including poet and critic Rene Bertele, who is depicted here. With its exaggerated proportions, marionette-like gestures, and savage grimace, the figure of Bertele is at once monumental and caricatural, a menacing but grotesquely comic death's head perched atop a diminutive, round body. Starkly presented as a dark presence against a light ground, it possesses striking graphic power. The extended title of the picture is typical of Dubuffet, who compared most of his subjects to other unlikely creatures and things—in this case, ironically, a bouquet fleuri (blossoming bouquet); in addition, Dubuffet also describes the picture as a portrait de parade (literally, a sideshow portrait), associating it with the folk-art images and freak show subjects of the carnival fairground. The portrait of Bertele appeared in Dubuffet's second groundbreaking exhibition at the Galerie Rene Drouin in Paris in October 1947. The exhibition, titled People Are More Beautiful Than They Think, contained seventy-two portraits—both paintings and drawings—of Dubuffet's artistic and literary community in Paris. (Bertele is depicted in several works, each time resembling a skull.) Dubuffet himself

composed a wryly irreverent catalogue essay for the show in which he compared portraiture to landscape painting, explaining that the figure is, physically, just like a landscape, with "its towns and suburbs, its fairs, its fields and wild woods, putrescent ponds and unfrequented escarpments."1 Such a trope lays bare the coarsely fantastic imagination that enabled Dubuffet to reinvent both the appearance and the meaning of t h e portrait genre. J E F F R E Y W E I S S Inscription (upper left reverse on stretcher): Bertele bouquet fleuri portrait de parade /appartient a Rene Drouin Provenance: Galerie Rene Drouin, Paris. Maria Martins. Gerard Oury, Paris; Leon Lambert, Brussels, sold Christie, Man son & Woods, New York, 12 May 1987, no. 13 to Stephen Hahn, Santa Barbara, Calif.

Bertele bouquet fleuri. Portrait de parade (Bertele as a Blossoming Bouquet, Sideshow Portrait] 1947, oil, plaster, and sand on canvas I i 6 x 89(45 n /i6 x 35 Vie) Gift (partial and promised) of The Stephen Hahn Family Collection 1995.29.5

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Tiger 1953, oil on canvas (five joined panels) Overall size: 205.1 x 217.2 (8o3/4 x 85 ¥2) Gift (partial and promised) of the artist 1992.85.1

no

III

Ellsworth Kelly

Ellsworth Kelly realized his first abstractions during his stay in France from 1948 to 1954. In these extremely productive years, he created a body of work whose refinement of line, form, and color remains the fundamental language of his art. 1 In November 1951, Kelly left Paris for the Mediterranean fishing village of Sanary, where he remained until May of the following year. There Kelly produced his first monochrome polyptychs and studies for related works that he executed later. Tiger, painted in the winter of 1953 in Paris, was based on several studies produced in Sanary.2 The first of the studies incorporates the design for the painting into a larger format that turns the composition on its right side and adds green and blue horizontal panels in order to create a right edge.3 The subsequent studies for Tiger closely resemble the configuration and proportion of the final painting, indicating that Kelly used the studies as a testing ground for determining the size and shape of each rectangle. Kelly's abstract works are derived intuitively, even though they may appear to be based on mathematical formulae, such as the ratio of one panel to another or to the work as a whole.

A M E R I C A N , B O R N 1923

The colors for Tiger were taken from the study collages made from papier gommette, a colored gummed paper sold by Parisian stationers and used in French kindergartens.4 Kelly's use of this material reveals his particular interest in the objet trouve (found object), which is a key to understanding his visual world, for Kelly finds his abstract forms and contours in the negative spaces of his natural or urban environment. Whether recalling shadows from a barn, or the empty space of an opened window, Kelly often used shapes created in architecture for his abstract works. During this period, Kelly spent a lot of time looking at art and architecture in Europe. The geometric structures he saw probably provided source material for Tiger, however nondeliberate or indirect.5 Most noted are Matthias Griinewald's Isenheim altarpiece, which Kelly visited in 1948, and Le Corbusier's Marseilles apartment complex, Unite d'habitation, which Kelly saw in 1952. The Grtinewald multipaneled altarpiece, particularly, bears a structural correlation to Tiger's five joined panels, both in its multipart format and in its rectilinear cutout shape. Also, the palette of the altarpiece's intermediate presentation panel, notably that of the Resurrection on the right panel, coincides with the contrasting black, white, yellow, dark pink, and orange of Tiger.

Kelly's works from his years in France are characterized chiefly by his use of multiple rectangular planes, most of which are uniform in size within a given work. In Tiger, however, Kelly used for the first time differently sized, individually crafted stretchers in one painting, lending special significance to this work in his early oeuvre. The artist had each stretcher prepared by the Paris company Lucien Lefevre et Foinet, marking one of the first instances he employed this fabricator.6 Previously, Kelly had stretchers and wood panels made by an ebeniste (fine woodworker). Tiger is among the few paintings that Kelly produced in France in 1953, and among the last he made before his return to the United States in July 1954. M O L L Y D O N O V A N Inscription (center upper left panel reverse): EK PARIS 53; (left support bar reverse): #60 /TIGER Provenance: Gift of the artist.

Hans Hofmann A M E R I C A N , 1880-1966

112

Autumn Gold is an important example of Hofmann's most familiar body of work. These images are distinguished by heavy rectangular slabs of intense, unmodulated colors that hover or superimpose themselves on the surface of the picture and are, in certain places, secured by thick, vigorous passages in a lower key. In Autumn Gold^ incipient rectangles of color have been formed from the smaller dabs that Hofmann used in previous works, but here greatly enlarged. The rectangular forms first materialized in 1957, the year in which Hofmann created Autumn Gold> the following year, they would become more sharply defined, although painterly edges would continue to appear. In the words of the New York critic Clement Greenberg, Hofmann's commanding idiom was composed of a "fat, heavy, and eloquent surface" on which color is "saturated corporeally as well as optically" In his paintings, "presence" is related to "the picture's concentrated radiance, its effulgence and plenitude as an identity."1

Hofmann had been teaching art since 1915 (when he opened an art school in Munich), and, throughout his life, formal principles in his work were rigorously applied. The slabs—some created with a palette knife—possess a flat, aggressive opacity that is unique to the artist, while an impression of shallow pictorial space is created by subtle and deliberately calibrated adjustments of scale, by the relationship between colors, and by variations in tint and tone. Hofmann's work from this period is governed by a dynamic interaction of form, color, and material that he characterized as one of "push and pull."2 The premise, which Hofmann explained in numerous notes, is that the compositions represent a tension between mere flatness (which is "passive") and illusive depth (which is "sterile"). This tension was achieved by using purely pictorial means in order to approximate the perceptual and psychological experience of depth in nature. The result, for Hofmann, is a pictorial space that is "alive, dynamic, fluctuating and ambiguously dominated by forces and counter-forces, by movement and counter-movement, all of which summarize into rhythm and counter-rhythm as the quintessence of life experience."3

Hofmann shared his quasi-Utopian faith in the emotional or spiritual resonance of abstract form with the early pioneers of nonobjective art. His strict formal principles were, in turn, a significant model for many abstract painters in New York, where Hofmann had settled i n 1934. J E F F R E Y W E I S S

Inscription (lower right): ham hofmann 57; (on reverse): bans hofmann 1957 Provenance: The artist; Samuel M. Kootz Gallery, New York; sold 1958 to Robert and Jane Meyerhoff, Phoenix, Md.

Autumn Gold 1957, oil on canvas 132.7 x 1534 (52 j /4 x 6o3/s) Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection 1996.81.4

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Georg BaselitZ G E R M A N , B O R N 1938

114

Georg Baselitz was born Hans-Georg Kern in Grossenbaselitz near Dresden in what would become East Germany. He received his art education in both East and West Berlin, settling in the latter in 1958. There he gradually developed his figurative painting, thus challenging the orthodoxy of abstraction in the twentieth century. He has come to be regarded as a pioneer in the renewal of figurative painting and as a founder of the so-called international neo-expressionist movement. Man in the Moon—Franz Pforr is an outstanding example of Baselitz' early figurative painting and a powerfully evocative progenitor for his subsequent work. In 1965, while studying in Florence, Baselitz became interested in the sixteenth-century Italian mannerists Agnolo Bronzino, Rosso Fiorentino, Parmigianino, and Pontormo. He identified with their "daring, destructive approach to the heroic imagery of the Renaissance."1 He later admitted he is a "mannerist in the sense that I deform things. I'm brutal, naive, and Gothic."2 Inspired by his visit to Florence, Baselitz produced a group of paintings from 1965 to 1966, which he called his Helden or Hero paintings, of which Man in the Moon—Franz Pforr is an early example. Like the mannerists, Baselitz undertook a daring approach to his art, which for him entailed a return to figurative painting, a style long absent in

post—World War n art, particularly in his native Germany. The Hero paintings were critically acclaimed and Baselitz became the focus of international attention. The attenuated head and gross torso in Man in the Moon—Franz Pforr recall the mannerist tradition and the figurative distortion associated with it. Here, the snakelike/beastlike forms contort in and around the figure suggesting a sexual attraction/repulsion shared by many of the Hero paintings. The swollen, exposed fleshy areas are lushly painted, and at once convey a beautifully fantastic, mysteriously grotesque figure. Adding an almost lyrical quality to the image are the podlike forms emanating from the body in a pulsating rhythm. Painterly, colorful, and fluid swaths surrounding the figure's upper region contrast with the painting's dark, shallow background, causing the figure to emerge as a floating, glowing presence. This effect has been tied to the title's allusion to the man in the moon, the fabled nursery rhyme figure. 3 The title's allusion to the German Romantic painter Franz Pforr (1788— 1812) refers to yet another painterly tradition that Baselitz confronted. The Hero paintings portray not specific people, but types that convey historical and spiritual overtones. Man in the Moon—Franz Pforr evokes the romantic vision of Pforr and the legendary heroes in his work, such as Saint George Slaying the Dragon (Collection Noll, Frankfurt am Main). Baselitz' so-called Neue Types

(New Types) present heroes, often culled from the past, that fill the void of the artist's postwar Germany. Both the mannerists and the romantics appeal to Baselitz because of their reputations as outsider artists, a distinction with which he identifies. The struggle in Baselitz' work to resolve historic traditions in a disjointed environment has been seen as a metaphor for modern Germany, a country that until recently was divided against itself.4 M O L L Y D O N O V A N Provenance: The artist; Galerie Michael Werner, Cologne; private collection, Cologne, by 1988; purchased 1995 through Galerie Michael Werner, Cologne by Charles and Helen Schwab, San Francisco.

Mann im Mond—Franz Pforr (^Man in the Moon—Franz Pforr) 1965, oil on canvas 161.9 x 129.9 (63 3/4 x 51 Vs) Gift (partial and promised) of Charles and Helen Schwab 1995.96.1

115

Seated Figure with Hat 1967, oil on canvas 152.4 x 152.4 (60 x 60) Gift of the Collectors Committee and Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Rubin 1991.176.1

116

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Richard Diebenkorn

A M E R I C A N , 1922-1993

Several times throughout his career,

abstraction in the windowlike apertures

composition is partially derived from

Richard Diebenkorn shifted between

of the Ocean Park series. Despite these

his related watercolor Seated Figure with

abstract and representational modes—

shifts from representation to abstraction,

Hat (1967, private collection).3 While

each critical to his work. In 1983 an inter-

Diebenkorn continued to work from the

most of Diebenkorn's works on paper did

viewer remarked to Diebenkorn of his

figure throughout his career, often using

not directly influence his paintings, this

"capacity to move back and forth between

family members as models.

watercolor and this oil are among the

Seated Figure with Rat was among

closest translations of the same subject.

description, the artist replied, "makes it

figuration and abstraction." Such a

the last of Diebenkorn's monumental

In the painting, most extraneous objects

sound as though £ I know how to do it'

figurative works. The sitter, the artist's

are eliminated save for the drawn glass

and this is very far from the case." Rather

wife Phyllis, appears flattened, stationary,

in the figure's right hand. A brushy sun-

he proceeded with "the utmost trepida-

and anonymous, owing to the large

drenched yellow background reveals the

tion and great difficulty."1

hat concealing much of her profile and

blue underpainting found in many other

the compressed space of the picture

works both earlier and later. Although the

When the artist shifted from one idiom to the other, he was invariably look-

plane. She appears to be sitting in front

yellow field dominates the composition,

ing for a new challenge or for the next

of an abstract painting, in a stage set,

other nonrepresentational qualities do

step in the formal progression of his

or in a construction of the artist's imagi-

not. Seated Figure with Hat strikes a bal-

work. For example, after Diebenkorn rose

nation, replete with the figure's skirt

ance between Diebenkorn's figurative and

to acclaim with the Berkeley paintings,

falling over the brown and the blue fram-

abstract idioms, allowing the extraordi-

his brilliant series of abstract landscapes

ing edge, seemingly into the viewer's

nary strengths of each to come to the fore

made from 1953 to 1956, the artist chose

space. The narrow colored bands on the

on the same canvas. M O L L Y D O N O V A N

the subject of the figure to provide him

canvas' outer edges anticipate the quasi-

with a new set of pictorial problems:

architectonic elements in the Ocean Park

Provenance: The artist; Poindexter

series on which Diebenkorn began work-

Gallery, New York; private collection,

ing later that year.

U.S.; Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Rubin,

I came to mistrust my desire to explode the picture. . . . It was as though I could do too much too easily. There was nothing hard to come up against. And suddenly the figure paintings furnished a lot of this.2 The artist developed his mature figurative works from 1956 to 1967. By the end of that period, Diebenkorn began to flatten the pictorial space in his work, a direction that eventually led back to

Diebenkorn's formal concern with discrete areas of color and a simplified composition also prefigures the abstract mode he was about to enter. With regard to composition and refinement of color, the painting Seated Figure with Rat recalls Whistler's famous Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother ("Whistler's Mother") (1871, Musee d'Orsay, Paris), although the sitter faces the opposite direction. Diebenkorn's

New York.

Cy Twombly

118

Twombly is a reclusive, quasi-mythic figure of contemporary art. Born in Lexington, Virginia, the artist spent his early career in New York before moving to Italy in 1957, where he has lived ever since. Long celebrated as a painter's painter, Twombly remains less popularly known than the two most prominent members of his generation, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Twombly's work, however, was characterized almost from the beginning as a surprising and dazzling complement both to abstract expressionist painting (especially the work of Jackson Pollock) and the neodada practices of Rauschenberg and Johns. Twombly's development was also shaped by new postwar European art, including Jean Dubuffet and Italian artists such as Alberto Buri and Piero Manzoni, whose own work marked a striking departure from old conventions of beauty and taste. Deliberately unstable and momentary in its initial appearance, Twombly's pictures engage formlessness as a vernacular pictorial medium for intense personal rumination on mythological and poetic themes. With his agitated line, his scattered accretions of pigment, and his highly idiosyncratic

A M E R I C A N , B O R N 1928

evocation of the classical past as a haunting experience of time and change, Twombly has achieved a unique and deeply challenging body of work. Untitled (Bolsena) is one of a series of fourteen large paintings that Twombly created during August and September 1969, working by himself in the Palazzo del Drago, a desolate stone house overlooking the lake of Bolsena, north of Rome.1 Comprising oil-based housepaint, wax crayon, and lead pencil on warm ocher-white ground, the work marks an eruptive departure from the relatively uninterrupted sequence of dark-ground gray—or "blackboard"—paintings that Twombly had been producing since 1966. Both abstract and cryptically imagistic, the artist's vigorous yet fragile hybrid of painting and script here includes a loosened geometry of tumbling diagrammatic signs. Indeed, the sparse, variegated marks that characterize the Bolsena series stand significantly apart from the refined, allover scrawl of the gray paintings. Twombly derived these graphic forms from a group of drawings that he produced in January of that year on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. The surfaces of these works are endowed with an insistent presence, although wiped areas lend a subtle impression of shallow pictorial space.

Since the beginning of his career, Twombly has employed themes from classical mythology in his work, often inscribing names and places as a means of identifying motifs. In Untitled (Bolsena), mythological content appears in an unexpected guise: according to the artist, some of the signs in the Bolsena series allude to the Apollo space flight and moon landing that occurred in July 1969, just before he began this series of work. Numbers, diagrammatic images, and other marks apparently allude to the logistics of the Apollo mission, which filled the news that summer.2 These marks are set against areas of erasure and obscuring clouds of paint, passages that transform the surface of the work into a palimpsest—a metaphor for the passage o f historical time. J E F F R E Y W E I S S Inscription (upper left reverse): Cy Twombly 1969 Provenance: Karsten Greve, Cologne, by 1982-1985; Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, July 1985-March 1986; sold to private collection, New York, 1986; purchased through C&M Arts, New York.

Unfitted (Bolsena) 1969, oil-based housepaint, wax crayon, and graphite on canvas 203.2 x 244.2 (80 x 96 Vs) Gift of the Collectors Committee and Adriana and Robert Mnuchin 1995.73.1

119

Susan Rothenberg A M E R I C A N , B O R N 194$

120

Susan Rothenberg's intuitive approach to painting led her one day in 1973 to spontaneously sketch the image of a horse— a subject that would preoccupy her until 1980. She later recalled, "I had been doing abstract paintings, using a central dividing line so as to keep the painting on the surface and call attention to the canvas. . . . The horse was just something that happened on both sides of my line. The image held the space and the line kept the picture flat."1 Rothenberg's horse imagery signaled a return not only to painting but to painting recognizable forms following the predominantly abstract, object oriented minimalist era of the 19605 and early 19705. This "New Image Painting," named after a benchmark Whitney museum exhibition in 1978 in which Butterfly was featured, called attention to recognizable imagery while subverting its prominence through painterly application.

In Butterfly^ Rothenberg laid the intersecting black diagonals and the silhouetted black horse against a burnt sienna ground. This composition at once blurs the distinction between the formflattening diagonals and the horse's anatomy while creating tension between the static of the black bars and the implied motion of the horse. "The geometry," Rothenberg explained, "is a heavy black x whose crossing point inside the horse's black body disappears in black paint. The black point that forms the horse's body also forms the geometry, and there is some confusion between the legs and the bars. It is interesting that the black line disappears and then reemerges so that the x and the horse become one and the same."2 The title Butterfly alludes to the shape of the x. Rothenberg's primitive horses recall a friezelike classicism and suggest the chalky cave paintings at Lascaux. Rothenberg, however, added a psychological dimension to her work by endowing each horse with a distinct character. This image, with its lean black silhouette, appears rather formal and stiff, though its almost graphic severity is softened

by the brushy flickers of white texturing the canvas and the occasional white outline suggesting a shallow depth. As Rothenberg developed her expressionist brushwork and the illusion of depth in her work, she fragmented the horse imagery and eventually moved away from it entirely. She later remarked, "For years I didn't give much thought to why I was using a horse. I just thought about wholes and parts, figures and space."3 Rothenberg has continually—inventively— been able to balance an intuitive approach with formal concerns. M O L L Y D O N O V A N Provenance: The artist; gift to her daughter, Maggie Trakas; sold 30 January 1995 through Sperone Westwater, N.Y.

Butterfly 1976, acrylic on canvas 176.5 x 210.8 (69 V2 x 83) Gift of Perry R. and Nancy Lee Bass 1995.6.1

121

Perilous Night 1982, encaustic on canvas with objects 170.5 x 244.2 x 15.9 (671/8X961/8x61/4)

Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Col lection 1995.79.1

122

123

Jasper Johns A M E R I C A N , B O R N 1930

Johns has long been concerned with the visual and conceptual act of decoding. His various manners of painting and drawing, for example, frequently result in a congested accumulation of marks or signs, while his materials include encaustic (a thick, quick-drying wax medium that allows for a visible layering of brushstrokes) as well as objects that have been mounted on the canvas in the manner of assemblage and collage. These elements make Johns' work optically and physically dense; paintings acquire what the artist referred to as an "object quality," and the experience they elicit from the observer is slow and searching, as if form and meaning are at once tangible and obscure. In Perilous Night, such qualities are applied with unprecedented power and complexity to a new and unexpectedly expressive iconography. Perilous Night is composed as a diptych. The right half of the composition contains objects and images that are variously representational: three fragmented casts of a human arm, hanging from the top of the canvas by individual hooks; a painter's maulstick, which is attached to the right-hand edge; a handkerchief copied from Picasso's images of the Weeping Woman, "attached"

to the canvas by an illusionary nail; the silkscreened musical score of "Perilous Night," a song composed by John Cage; painted trompe 1'oeil wood grain (a depiction of Johns' own front door); a Johns Crosshatch picture, painted to look like a collage element; and a traced detail from Matthias Griinewald's Isenheim altarpiece showing the fallen soldier from the Resurrection panel, which has been transformed into a dark, illegible (or abstract) pattern. Enlarged and rotated, the Griinewald detail also occupies the entire left side of Perilous Night, The twosided composition is, then, laden with the artifacts of artmaking—the tracing, the copy, the replica, the three-dimensional facsimile, and an actual tool of the trade. Together these elements represent independent visual systems coexisting in a limbo state of unresolved relationships. Darkness ("perilous night") prevails throughout the work as a medium in which meaning is suspended. Nonetheless, Perilous Night possesses an iconographical complexity that was new to Johns' work. It heralded the beginning of a phase in which symbolic images are posted across the surfaces of paintings and drawings, often looking like separate objects that have been taped, pasted, or pinned to the support. As a body of work, their shared subject is the artist's studio as a hermetic space in which images,

instruments, and props are charged with unexpected meaning. Thematically, they are also joined by references to mortality and death. In Perilous Night, the hanging arms, like a butcher's display of body parts, are luridly clear; in contrast, the almost illegible Griinewald Resurrection detail (on both sides of the work) is shrouded in darkness rather than in an illusionistic, symbolic light. Indeed, the present work plainly traffics in the iconography of Crucifixion — helpless arms, wooden planks, nails, and the very phrase "perilous night" — as well as of redemption (the Resurrection). These elements are heightened by the diptych format, which allows Perilous Night to resemble a n altarpiece. J E F F R E Y W E I S S Inscription (stenciled lower right): J. JOHNS ^2; (upper left reverse): PERILOUS NIGHT /J Johns 1982

Provenance: Purchased from the artist through Leo Castelli Gallery, New York by Robert and Jane Meyerhoff, Phoenix,

Md., 1982.

Drawings and Prints CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITION

24

The Master of the Playing Cards A Poet Reading

Hans Holbein the Younger Tantalus

Master E.S. Madonna and Child in a Garden

Benvenuto Cellini Satyr

Andrea Mantegna Virgin and Child

Hans Hoffmann Red Squirrel

Filippino Lippi, Botticelli, Giorgio Vasari Folio from the Libra de* disegni of Giorgio Vasari

Joseph Heintz the Elder The Fall of Phaeton

Albrecht Diirer The Virgin Annunciate Hans Holbein the Elder Portrait of a Woman Raphael Eight Apostles

Anthony van Dyck The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine Aegidius Sadeler The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian Jacob Jordaens Saint Martin of Tours Healing the Servant of Tetrodius

Hans Baldung Grien Madonna and Child

ChristofTel Jegher, after Peter Paul Rubens Garden of Love

Andrea del Sarto The Head of Saint John the Baptist

Rembrandt van Rijn The Triumph of Mordecai

Ugo da Carpi, after Parmigianino Diogenes

Rembrandt van Rijn View of Houtewael near the Sint Anthoniespoort

Bernard van Orley The Stag Hunt

Rembrandt van Rijn Abraham Entertaining the Angels Alessandro Algardi Christ on the Cross

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione Noah Leading the Animals into the Ark Andrea Pozzo lllusionistic Architecture for the Fault of San Ignazio Ferdinando Galli Bibiena A Grand lllusionistic Ceiling Frangois Boucher Aurora Giovanni Battista Piranesi Fantasy of a Palatial Interior Giovanni Battista Piranesi Fantasy of a Magnificent Wall Monument Giovanni Battista Piranesi Fantasy of a Facade with Bizarre Ornaments Giovanni Battista Piranesi The "Canopus" of the Villa Adriana at Tivoli Jean-Honore Fragonard A Stand of Cypresses in an Italian Park

125

Jean-Baptiste Greuze The Well-Loved Mother

Odilon Redon

Francois-Andre Vincent

Camille Pissarro

The Drawing Lesson

La Fachere

Etienne-Louis Boullee

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Perspective View of the Interior of a Metropolitan Church

Seated Woman from Behind—Study for "Au Moulin Rouge"

John Robert Cozens

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Cetara on the Gulf of Salerno

Fashionable People at Les Ambassadeurs

Johann Georg von Dillis Waterfalls in a Mountain Forest

Saint George and the Dragon

(Aux Ambassadeurs: Gens Chic] Edvard Munch Moonlight

Louis-Leopold Boilly The Public in the Salon of the Louvre,

Jacques Villon

Viewing the Painting of the "Sacre"

La Parisienne (3 prints)

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Dr. Louis Martinet Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Pierre-Franfois-Henri Labrouste Caspar David Friedrich Moonrise on an Empty Shore Samuel Palmer Harvesting Edgar Degas Rene de Gas Charles Emile Jacque The Shepherdess

Peter Schlemihls Wundersame Geschichte (Peter Schlemihl's Wondrous Story} (7 woodcuts) Barnett Newman Untitled Sol LeWitt Wavy Brushstrokes

T h e Master o f t h e Playing Cards

126

Generally considered the first artist in history to make printed engravings, the Master of the Playing Cards combines that extraordinary historical importance with the evident beauty of his works, their fabled rarity, and the continuing mystery of his purpose for his invention. 1 This Poet is the master's first work of art in the National Gallery, and only the second in America.2 In this image the young man's elegant costume—his fur-trimmed long coat, low-waisted belt, and clogs—reminds us of contemporary works by Pisanello and Jan van Eyck, as do the exquisite sense of refinement in this man's character and pose, and the mysterious calm of the individual, rapt in his reading, set against a blank background but enveloped in the softest modeling of light, as if we witness a private moment of time suspended. The clue to this courtly youth's identity is the wreath almost hidden in the luxuriant curls of his hair. If it is a flower garland of the type exchanged by lovers,3 he would be a youth reading a love letter. However, the wreath is more likely laurel leaves, not flowers, indicating a poet, standing outdoors on low or clipped grass (perhaps in a garden), intently reading a poem on the carefully unfolded paper.

S O U T H G E R M A N , A C T I V E I N 1430S

We do not know the artist's name; a nineteenth-century art historian gave him the present name based on an interpretation of the majority of engravings assigned to him. Of the rare works surviving from this early period, only about seventy-five impressions are attributed by recent scholars to his hand. Almost all of these works represent single courtly figures (king, queen, richly dressed youth) combined with a single animal or flower, or variable numbers of birds, animals, or flowers of a particular type, which remind one immediately of playing cards organized into suits. Sometimes he printed his images from one copperplate; sometimes he combined multiple coppers on the same sheet. While many of his images might be appropriate as playing cards, they were probably not created to be directly used for that purpose— only one impression is actually pasted on a backing that is practical for such use.4 The refined quality of his draftsmanship, the extraordinary delicacy of his linear technique, and his careful control of light show that this artist was primarily interested in aesthetic effects, as well as in exploring variations in the new technique of printing engravings. Dated copies of his prints indicate when he worked. Where he worked is not as certain, though his prints do closely relate to paintings made in Strasbourg. For whom he worked is also unknown, though his patron was probably an aristocrat who would enjoy the subtlety of

his courtly figures, his exotic and hunted birds and animals, and his flowers and wild men, while appreciating the fascinating variations of his technical experiments. We do know that this master drew upon a rich tradition of model books, especially those used by manuscript illuminators, for many of his specific figures. Likewise, and perhaps this was the artist's intention, his images in turn quickly became used as models by innumerable followers, not only to make real playing cards but also to provide convincing courtly figures and animals for any setting. They even reappear painted in the margins of Gutenberg Bibles. He is thus simultaneously the artistic and the technical fountainhead for the entire history of printed engravings, and for their role in the wider cultural history of printing with its revolutionary creation and communication of exactly repeatable images. ANDREW

ROBISON

Provenance: Grafen Maltzan, Militsch, before 1881; purchased by American private collector; by descent; purchased by NGA through N.G. Stogdon, England.

A Poet Reading 1430$, engraving 13-3 x 9(5^ x 3 9 /i 6 ) Gift of Ladislaus and Beatrix von Hoffmann 1999.26.1

127

Ma.StCr E.S. SOUTH GERMAN, ACTIVE C. 1450-1467

128

The Master E.S. is the first printmaker in northern Europe for whom we have a substantial and sufficiently coherent body of work that constitutes a distinctive artistic personality. Among the more than three hundred engravings known by him, the Madonna and Child in a Garden is extraordinary for its striking appearance and its technical innovation. Gossamer lines of white outline figures who are framed by a canopy and embraced by an embankment supporting an open book of scripture and a pot of flowers. The enclosed garden refers to the Virgin's chastity, the crown to her regality, the book to her holiness, and the tiny bird in the child's hand to the flight of the Christian soul. The Master E.S. made this print in reverse of the usual intaglio manner for an engraving. By printing white ink on a sheet of paper coated in black, he inverted the normal relation of black and white in order to create something like the retinal effect of a negative afterimage. The motive behind this notable invention has been interpreted in various ways. The most common explanation is that he meant to replicate the look of a drawing done in white with a pen or brush on black paper. Although drawings of this sort were occasionally made in this

period, the technique did not become popular until a generation later when the use of prepared colored papers was widespread in the workshops of German artists, who most likely developed it with a mind to attracting the interest of collectors.1 A second explanation is

curiosities. The best context for understanding the mesmerizing abstract effect of this image is the experimental climate that prevailed among early printmakers actively exploring the possibilities of a new medium. The Master E.S.' engraving is the

predicated on the discovery of a delicate fifteenth-century carving in mother-

only surviving example of white line intaglio printing from the fifteenth cen-

of-pearl that closely resembles the engraving. Like mother-of-pearl, the print suggests a warm light glowing from an underlying surface; thus the engraving might have been intended as a model for such a carving.2 Both hypotheses rest on the assumption that the primary purpose of this print was an ulterior one. Certainly prints were very often employed as models for works in other media, but can that explain an inspiration that is as much aesthetic as it is technical in character? Moreover, the notion that the print attempts to mimic a drawing implies that a skilled engraver like the Master E.S. set out to make an engraving that would appear to be something else. This overlooks the fact that in the fifteenth century drawings were still objects of secondary importance intended for use in the workshop and not for sale. Prints, on the other hand, were made to be sold, not only to artists who might use them as models but also as religious objects and artistic

tury, and only four other impressions from the plate are known. Curiously no impression in black on white paper has yet appeared. Perhaps this is merely a result of loss, but more likely it is because the engraved lines were done with extreme delicacy and shallowness in order to receive the glutinous consistency of the white ink, and consequently the plate would not have registered effectively printed in black. The Madonna and Child in a Garden is compelling testimony that the Master E.S. was not only an artisan serving practical and spiritual needs but also a printmaker who regarded his work as something of value in its i right. P E T E R P A R S H A L L Provenance: Grafen Maltzan, Militsch in Silesia; N.G. Stogdon, England.

Madonna and Child in a Garden c. 1465-1467, engraving in white on paper prepared with black ink Diameter of plate: 10.6 (43/i6) New Century Gift Committee 1999.27.1

129

Virgin and Child c. 1470, engraving 27.7

X 2 3 . 1 (l0 7 /8 X pVs)

Patrons' Permanent Fund 1998.50.1

130

I3i

Andrea Mantegna P A D U A N , 1431-1506

Andrea Mantegna was the first Italian artist of renown to undertake engraving, and the Virgin and Child is the most refined and accomplished of the mere handful of prints that can be convincingly attributed to his hand. Mary, presented from a low viewpoint in isolation against a shadowed

tive swaddling clothes render us a vision of motherhood that is as familiar and convincing as it is wonderfully distinctive and unexpected. This is an exceptionally fine impression of what is perhaps the last engraving Mantegna made, and its execution dem-

background, warmly embraces her child. Absent the distraction of any natural or architectural setting, Mantegna concentrated full attention on the relationship of a mother alone with her baby. The monumental simplicity of Mantegna's composition carries a particular meaning in itself. Showing the Virgin seated on the ground evokes her humility, a virtue meant to render the holy figure accessible to the intimate emotions attending maternity. Her half-closed eyes, the delicacy of her hands that bundle the child to her breast, the undisturbed expression of his tiny face, the crossed legs gently tucked into the crook of her arm, and the protec-

onstrates the fullest extent of his command over a difficult and relatively unfamiliar medium. The main outlines of the figures are deeply incised with the engraving burin, and more refined parallel strokes are laid in with varying degrees of density to provide a softer tonal effect. Though his engravings are in every respect printed images, Mantegna designed them in a manner that incorporates the aesthetic qualities of different media. We can recognize not only the dramatic, controlled graphic strength of an engraving, but also the looser feel of a pen drawing, which is evident in the repeated parallel strokes that make up the shading. Finally, in its gravity and mass Mantegna's Virgin and Child evokes the stable presence of a sculpture hewn in stone. Here, much like his drawings and paint-

ings of the same period, Mantegna's attraction to classical art is strikingly evident. Indeed, the true genius of this image resides in the lapidary quality of the engraving, which remarkably seems to enhance rather than compromise the tenderness and humanity of its subject. Much later Rembrandt acknowledged the uniqueness of Mantegna's vision by adopting the pose for his etching Madonna and Child with a Serpent. P E T E R P A R S H A L L Provenance: Walter Gay, Paris; Fritz Lugt, Paris; N.G. Stogdon, England.

FilippinO Lippi FLORENTINE, 1457-1504 BottlCClll FLORENTINE, 1444/1445-1510 Giorgio Vasari FLORENTINE, 1511-1574

132

This glorious sheet bearing ten Italian Renaissance drawings on recto and verso is an exceptionally rare and beautiful folio from the famous Libra de' disegni assembled by Giorgio Vasari, the painter and architect who was also the first systematic collector of artists' drawings. Vasari's so-called book of drawings, which originally consisted of at least eight albums of large-scale pages like this one, was intended to complement and illustrate his historic book of artist biographies, Le Vite de3piu eccellenti pittori. Vasari himself arranged the drawings on the album pages with extraordinary care, grouping them by artist and striving for the most harmonious presentation. He then embellished and unified each page with his own ornamental and architectural framing designs drawn in pen and wash, some highly elaborate, some quite simple, according to the particular character of the drawings mounted on the sheet.

Vasari himself believed that all ten drawings on the recto and verso of this page were the work of Filippino Lippi, one of the leaders of Florentine painting in the last decades of the fifteenth century. 1 Alternate attributions for some of the drawings have been proposed by modern art historians, and current scholarship now gives the exquisite silverpoint study of a head of a youth and an arm on mauve-prepared paper on the recto to Filippino's teacher, Botticelli, on the basis of style; and the jewel-like gouache miniature of three standing saints on the verso to another follower of Botticelli, possibly Raffaellino del Garbo, who was famed for his watercolored drawings.2

The eight other drawings on the page, all by Filippino Lippi, range in date from about 1488, at the beginning of Filippino's five-year stay in Rome, to about 1501, near the end of his life. Together they show some of the diversity of style that is characteristic of his draftsmanship in his use of both metalpoint and pen, from the delicate, rather reserved Virgin in Prayer to the vigorously animated Torch-Bearing Angel^ both on the verso. Some of the studies, like Two Angels Carrying Torches^ are related to Filippino's work on specific paintings and frescoes, but others, most notably the sheet of figure studies on ocher-prepared paper on the recto, have never been connected to known compositions. Two drawings were inspired by Filippino's study of antiquities and the works of other Renaissance artists: Two Draped Figures by a Term on the verso is a variation on the sculpted bas-reliefs on the ancient Roman Sarcophagus of the Muses, now in the Kunsthistorisches

133

Museum, Vienna, while Putto Dancing^ also on the verso, appears to have been based in part on the terra-cotta sculpture Putto Poised on a Globe from the workshop of Verrocchio, which is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art. The purchase of this magnificent sheet not only transformed the Gallery's holdings of fifteenth-century Italian drawings, but also gave it its single most important work on paper. MARGARET MORGAN GRASSELLI

Provenance: Giorgio Vasari, Arezzo; purchased by Niccolo Gaddi, Florence, 1574; possibly Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel and Surrey, England; probably William Cavendish, 2d duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth; by descent to the nth duke of Devonshire; sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 3 July 1984, no. 46; Ian Woodner, New York; by inheritance to his daughters, Andrea and Dian Woodner, New York, 1990.

Folio from the Libro de' disegni of Giorgio Vasari (recto and verso) 1480/1504 and after 1524 various media with decoration in pen and brown ink, brown and gray wash, on light buff paper 56.7

X 45.7

(225/16 X l8)

Woodner Collection, Patrons' Permanent Fund 1991.190.1

134

recto

135

verso

Albrecht Dtirer G E R M A N , 1471-1528

136

The young woman in this drawing meekly glances up from her seat on the ground, not daring to lift her face. She raises her left hand in a gesture of surprise while her right hand holds the open book on her knees. Because these details of posture and movement are found, with some variations, in depictions of the Virgin at the Annunciation, the assumption has generally been that this is a study for a representation by Diirer of that sacred event.1 Since its first public exhibition in Nuremberg in 1971, on the occasion of Diirer's five hundredth birthday, most scholarly discussions of this sheet have been directed toward establishing its place within the chronology of Dtirer's drawings. The calligraphic amplitude of the drapery, the precise yet vigorous crosshatching, and the distinctive facial type of the Virgin are all compatible with some of Diirer's earliest surviving drawings, those made in the course of his Wanderjahn from 1490 to 1494. During

this unfettered interval following his apprenticeship to the painter Michael Wolgemut, Diirer endeavored to comprehend and assimilate the styles of the two greatest draftsmen of the day, the Master of the Housebook and Martin Schongauer. The eddying tide of drapery that spreads forward and across the lower part of the drawing, forming a broad visual base for the pyramidal composition, is analogous to that found in some of Schongauer's drawings, such as his Madonna with a Pink (Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) of c. 1475-1480. This arrangement of drapery, along with the overall position of Diirer's figure and the contrast of the fabric falling straight from the knees to the abundantly articulated edges, relates in particular to Schongauer's c. 1475 drawing of Saint Dorothy, also in Berlin. Among Diirer's own drawings, The Virgin Annunciate relates most closely to his Holy Family dated 1492/1493. A probable date of 1495/1499 for the present drawing would make it the earliest drawing by Diirer in the United States. V I R G I N I A T U T T L E C L A Y T O N

Provenance: E. Desperet, Paris (Lugt 721), sale, Clement, Paris, 7-13 June 1865, lot 215; C. Paravey, sale, Feral, Paris, 13 April 1878, lot no; Baron E. de Beurnonville, sale, Clement, Paris, 16-19 February 1885, lot 147; Martin Le Roy; Marquet de Vasselot, sale, Palais Galliera, Paris, 7 March 1967, lot 57; private collection, Bavaria; Rolf Kistner, Nuremberg, November 1985; purchased by Ian Woodner, New York, November 1985; by inheritance to his daughters, Andrea and Dian Woodner, New York.

The Virgin Annunciate c. 1495/1499, pen and brown ink 16.4 x 14.3 (67/i6 x 5%) Woodner Collection I993.5I.I

137

Portrait of a Woman (recto) c. 1508/1510, silverpoint, brush and black and brown ink, and black chalk heightened with white on white prepared paper 14.4x10.3(55/8x4) Woodner Collection 1991.182.18.a

138

139

Hans Holbein the Elder

Hans Holbein the Elder effectively initiated the great tradition of German Renaissance portrait drawing, and this elaborately swathed figure of a woman exemplifies his talent for capturing a living presence. One can readily see how closely he has attended to the contours of her face, the subtle transitions of her brow, and especially the areas around the eyes, the nose, and the mouth. Her voluminous white costume that conceals the hair—probably an indication of her married state—is only lightly suggested and serves mainly as a foil for her likeness. Although in their frankness, northern portrait drawings may sometimes seem cold and unforgiving, more often, as here, they are conceived with genuine tenderness and humanity. Drawings of this kind unveil the artist's exacting process of working from life, betraying how his eye shifted back and forth from the model to the small sheet of paper as Holbein selected first the stylus, then the brush, the chalk, and the pen, each in turn. He began by delineating the figure with delicate lines of silverpoint that are now only barely visible against the chalky surface of the white ground. He then delicately modeled her face with gray wash and black chalk

G E R M A N , C. 1465-1524

to lend it fullness, adding highlights in opaque white to her most prominent features and articulate touches of black pen to stress the curves of her eyelids and the set of her lips. Finally, the deeper shadows beneath the headdress and below the curve of the jaw gave added dimension to the head. At a later point the drawing was trimmed, set into another sheet, and elaborated in a way that may or may not follow the original outlines of Holbein's design. Sometime thereafter the ink smudges above and below accidentally transferred when paper still damp with writing was laid down on it. On the reverse of this drawing is a second study, one of an old man. It is much looser and more spontaneous in handling but of a type also familiar in Holbein's work. Most portrait studies from this period were done with the intent of including the figure in a painting, either as a donor or in the case of less formal studies as staffage for a religious subject. A drawing like this could also be used as the basis for a painted portrait. Making portrait studies was a common practice in the Renaissance painter's workshop, and they tend to vary in their degree of finish depending on these differing objectives. Several of Holbein's portrait drawings are apparently of members of his family, perhaps also of his friends or assistants in the workshop; in other words he often drew subjects who were readily available

to him. Such studies were frequently kept in sketchbooks for later use. The fragment of an inscription just to the right of the woman's headdress is probably contemporary with the drawing and seems to record a name. In its high degree of finish and its studied attention to detail, the Portrait of a Woman stands out as an unusually meticulous and formal drawing perfectly suited as a private possession in its own right. Like the work of many artists in the German Renaissance, the drawings of Hans Holbein the Elder convey a vitality and immediacy often absent in his paintings. The impact of Holbein's genius as a portraitist has no greater confirmation than the achievements of his son and most distinguished pupil, Holbein the Younger. P E T E R P A R S H A L L Provenance: Furstenburg collection; purchased by Ian Woodner, New York, July 1985; by inheritance to his daughters, Andrea and Dian Woodner, New York, 1990.

Raphael

140

UMBRIAN, 1483-152O

These two small fragments, only recently

tions for the tapestries knowing that the

would appear in the finished tapestry. At this point, Raphael made further

rejoined to form a single image, were

weaving process would reverse them.

part of a larger drawing made by Raphael

The arrangement of the figures in Eight

sketches incorporating a number of

as preparation for one of the tapestries

Apostles, therefore, worked in the opposite

changes in the composition: the grouping

for the Sistine Chapel. 1 Only one other

direction in the finished tapestry: the

of the apostles was rearranged and

fragment from the original sheet, a stand-

intensity of their reactions to Christ's

Christ's gesture became more specific.

ing figure of Christ, survives today.2 The

words increased as the viewer's eye, read-

Finally, the artist drew a finished modello,

complete composition, however, is re-

ing from left to right, moved closer to

which served as the basis for the full-

corded in a counterproof of the original

the figure of Christ. 4 This drawing, then,

sized, colored cartoon that was given to

drawing, now in Windsor. Although

records Raphael's thoughts about one

the tapestry weavers. While Eight Apostles

some scholars have suggested that Raph-

of the most important figural groups in

stands as an independent work of art

ael himself was responsible for cutting

the series.

3

apart the original drawing as he experi-

Like many central Italian artists,

mented with the tapestry's composition,

Raphael produced a painstaking series of

this method was not one he generally

preparatory drawings when planning a

today, Raphael himself would have regarded it instead as an integral tool in t h e preparatory process. S T A G E Y S E L L

used; the sheet was probably cut by a

composition. Eight Apostles is completely

Provenance: Possibly Pierre Crozat

later owner. The irregular shapes of the

characteristic of the artist's working

[1665-1740], Paris; private collection,

surviving pieces suggest that the sheet

methods. For the tapestry cartoons, he

sale, London, Christie, Manson & Woods,

was partially disfigured in some way and

first made rough compositional sketches

29 November 1977, lots 33 and 34; John

that a collector or dealer excised the

in pen and ink. 5 Workshop assistants

R. Gaines, Lexington, Ky, sale, New

undamaged figures.

used these sketches to create more fin-

York, Sotheby's, 17 November 1986, lot 8;

ished mode/It (compositional drawings).

purchased by Ian Woodner, New York;

was Christ's Charge to Saint Peter, the

The subject of the complete drawing

Next, Raphael worked up the figural

by inheritance to his daughters, Andrea

moment when Christ gave charge of

groups in greater detail by making red

and Dian Woodner, New York.

his church on earth to Saint Peter. This

chalk studies of posed models (the

episode represents not only a pivotal

Eight Apostles belongs to this stage of

moment in church history but also a

the preparatory process). He made eco-

crucial point in the series of tapestries:

nomical use of his models, who were

as the first tapestry on the north side of

usually studio assistants: in this draw-

the chapel, Christ's Charge to Saint Peter set

ing, for example, the third and fifth

in motion the narrative sequence for the

apostles are drawn from the same model,

entire wall. Raphael planned the composi-

while the second and sixth are drawn from another. } He then dampened the paper and pressed it against a second sheet, creating a counterproof that displayed the composition in reverse, as it

Eight Apostles c. 1514, red chalk over stylus underdrawing and traces of leadpoint; cut in two pieces and rejoined; laid down 8l x 2 3 . 2 ( 3 1 1 / 1 6 X 9 3 / 4 )

Woodner Collection 1993.51.2

141

Hans Baldung Grien G E R M A N , 1484/1485-1545

142

Hans Baldung is the most innovative and unorthodox master of the German Renaissance. Although he came from a distinguished and highly educated family of physicians and lawyers in Strasbourg, Baldung took an unusual step for someone of his circumstances by pursuing a career as an artisan. In 1503, probably after completing an initial apprenticeship in his hometown, he moved to Nuremberg and entered Albrecht Durer's workshop, where he remained until 1507. Two years later he returned to Strasbourg, where he settled down to pursue a remarkable career as a painter and printmaker. Baldung is without doubt Durer's most brilliant pupil, though in most respects he is better regarded as Durer's alter ego than his artistic offspring. Both Baldung's debt and his challenge to Durer's work are conspicuously manifest in his woodcuts, and powerfully evident in this Madonna and Child, made well after

Baldung emerged as a full and vital force. Here the Virgin Mary is portrayed in monumental dimension as the Queen of Heaven, wearing a crown and cloak, hallowed by the dove of the Holy Spirit, and heralded by a trinity of trumpeting angels. The roiling explosion of cloud forms threatens to engulf an eccentric architectural framework that seems barely able to contain the unstable composition. This miraculous epiphany of the mother and child is therefore as unsettling as it is vibrant and celebratory. The inclusion of a man arrayed in contemporary dress worshiping at Mary's feet and the stern profile set into the column above him have often puzzled interpreters of the print. The kneeling figure has been called a self-portrait, an unlikely proposition unsubstantiated by other supposed portraits of the master. Nor is this likely to be a portrait of a patron responsible for commissioning the work: he is not identified by a coat of arms or by other means, and donor portraits are in any case inappropriate in prints made for distribution on the open market.

Most likely the kneeling figure is present in order to indicate that Baldung has made us party to an ecstatic personal vision, an apparition of the Virgin and child called up through meditation and prayer. The celestial energy and intense piety of Baldung's Madonna and Child gain further implication when we consider that it was conceived on the very eve of profound religious disruption. In 1517 Luther posted his ninety-five theses on a church door in Wittenberg, formally initiating the Reformation in Germany. This movement went on to assault many of the basic tenets of Catholic orthodoxy, among them the cult of the Virgin Mary and the worship of devotional images such as this one. P E T E R P A R S H A L L Provenance: Sale, Karl and Faber, Munich, November 1953, no. 50; Colnaghi, London. N.G. Stogdon, England.

Madonna and Child 1515/1517, woodcut 37.9 x 26.1 (i45/i6 x 10 V4) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1999.101.1

H3

The Head of Saint John the Baptist c. 1523, black chalk laid down on panel 33 x23.i (13 x p V i e ) Woodner Collection 1991.182.14

144

145

Andrea del SartO

This perceptive study of a boy's head served as a preparatory sketch for Andrea del Sarto's painting Saint John the Baptist. Now in the Palazzo Pitti in Andrea's native Florence, the painting was commissioned by Giovan Maria Benintendi. Although Benintendi, a Medici supporter, eventually gave it to Cosimo I, duke of Florence, Saint John the Baptist was for a time the focal point of Benintendi's anticamere, a suite of rooms richly decorated with paintings relating to the theme of baptism. 1 As the patron saint of Florence, John the Baptist had a patriotic as well as a religious significance for Florentines. Depictions of the saint as a child or adolescent became particularly popular in the city's art during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. According to legend, the young saint had set out while still a child to live a life of penitence in preparation for his role as precursor to Christ.2 Andrea used this study in part as a means of exploring the complex and intense emotions associated with the boy's situation.

F L O R E N T I N E , 1486-1530

Andrea's working methods, like those of many of his central Italian contemporaries, were elaborate and thorough: for one of his major altarpieces, the artist apparently made over 150 preliminary drawings, many of them from live models.3 He may have used the model depicted in the National Gallery drawing more than once: The Head of Saint John the Baptist was for years mistakenly identified as a study for his painting The Sacrifice of Isaac.4 Although the pose and features of Isaac in that painting are related to those in this drawing, close similarities of expression and lighting confirm the study's primary connection to the Pitti Baptist. Like many of his contemporaries, Andrea favored black chalk for his head studies, probably valuing the atmospheric possibilities inherent in the medium. Although his preparatory practices varied somewhat throughout his life and he used and abandoned a number of different types of preliminary drawings, he made black chalk head studies at all points in his career.5 His sensitive handling of the medium in The Head of Saint John the Baptist allowed him to explore both problems of lighting and expression: the soft modeling conveys subtle tonal variations of

light passing over the boy's face, while more vigorous strokes define the tousled hair and twisting neck. Although the youth's features were idealized in the painting, the gravity and tension of his expression and his individualized appearance in the drawing lend this preliminary sketch the quality of a portrait. STAGEY SELL

Provenance: Guadagni Collection, Florence; William Drury-Lowe, Locko Park, England, acquired between 1840 and 1865; by descent to Capt. J.D.B. Drury-Lowe, Prestwold Hall, Loughborough, England, by 1953; private collection, sale, New York, Sotheby's, 14 January 1987, lot 32; purchased by Ian Woodner, New York; by inheritance to his daughters, Andrea and Dian Woodner, New York.

Ugo da Carpi, after Parmigianino I T A L I A N , c. 1480-1532

146

One of the most famous prints of the Italian Renaissance, Diogenes is widely regarded as Ugo da Carpi's masterpiece. Ugo was a pioneer in the technique of

ingly with the brown and greens printed by the three tone blocks and with the white highlights provided by the exposed paper, creating a coherent and unified

chiaroscuro woodcut, a color printing process that uses multiple woodblocks. The printmaker cuts a separate block for each color and prints the blocks consecutively. The proper registration of the blocks requires great care: if the paper slips slightly, the resulting image will appear blurred. Ugo was among the earliest printmakers to use this process, which he claimed as his invention. German artists, however, had already been making chiaroscuro woodcuts for several years before he began experimenting with the technique. Although most of Ugo's works are undated, he progressed from using a relatively simple combination of basic contours, provided by one key block, and a single color printed from a tone block, to a more complex integration of tone and line. Diogenes, made well into Ugo's career, is a spectacular example of this more sophisticated use of multiple blocks. The deep shadows and dark accents of the line block merge convinc-

composition. Most of Ugo's prints reproduce the designs of other artists: Diogenes is based on a drawing by Parmigianino. Most scholars believe that the printmaker did not work directly from Parmigianino's drawing, which is now lost, but that he instead copied an engraving by Gian Giacomo Caraglio after the same drawing.1 Others argue, however, that Ugo had access to Parmigianino's original design and that the Caraglio is a copy or alternate version: the chiaroscuro is certainly a more powerful image, and the two prints differ in a number of minor details. To make these changes or to enhance his source in this way would have been uncharacteristic of Ugo.2 A philosopher of the fourth century B.C., Diogenes of Sinopia was known for his austere way of life. He lived in a tub, depicted here at the upper left of the print. He was frequently shown with a lantern, which he used in broad daylight to search for an honest man among the Athenians. This attribute, which appears in the Caraglio print, is absent from Ugo's version of the composition. The rooster

in the background refers to an incident from the philosopher's life: mocking Plato's definition of man as a "featherless biped," he held up a plucked chicken and exclaimed, "Here is Platonic Man!"3 Chiaroscuro woodcuts were apparently used as substitutes for paintings, and many were destroyed by owners who tacked or pasted them onto walls. Although they were prized by collectors for centuries and many blocks were reprinted until they wore down, excellent impressions in good condition such as this one are rare. Diogenes is a valuable addition to the Gallery's collection of Renaissance chiaroscuro woodcuts. STAGEY SELL

Provenance: August Schoy [1838-1885], Antwerp (Lugt 64); Theodore-CharlesLouis Hippert [1839-1919], Brussels (Lugt 1377); sale, Galerie R.G. Michel, Paris, 10 May 1975, no. 14; Mr. and Mrs. Robert P. Mann, Ruxton, Md.; Mr. Stewart Mann, Ruxton, Md.

Diogenes c. 1527, chiaroscuro woodcut printed from four blocks 47-9 x 34 (i87/s x 13 3/s) Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund 1997.15.1

H7

Bernard van Orley B R U S S E L S , c. 1488-1541

148

Bernard van Orley, a native of Brussels, was one of the leading lights of the High Renaissance in the Netherlands. Probably trained by his father, who was also an artist, Van Orley enjoyed a successful career as court painter to Margaret of Austria and her successor, Mary of Hungary He was the head of a large and busy workshop in which he pursued a wide range of artistic activities, especially tapestry and stained glass design. Of the relatively few drawings by Van Orley that have survived, almost all are related to tapestries. This large, beautifully preserved hunting scene, for example, belongs to the early stages of his work on one of his most ambitious tapestry commissions, a series of twelve hunt scenes corresponding to the twelve months of the year. Known as Les Chasses de Maximilien (Hunts of Maximilian), the set was completed by 1532 and has long been regarded as one of the great monuments of the golden age of tapestry manufacture in Brussels.

The National Gallery study was made in preparation for the tapestry representing the month of August. The foreground figures and the landscape setting remained much the same throughout the development of the composition, though the background figures were considerably changed by the time the tapestry was woven. When The Stag Runt was still on the loom, a decision was made to extend the composition on the right side, presumably because it was going to hang on a larger wall than had originally been planned. 1 Five other compositional drawings for tapestries in the Chasses de Maximilien set are known: two in Leyden (March and September) and one each in Berlin (June), Budapest ^November), and Copenhagen (December).2 All are executed on the same scale with similarly lively pen work and delicate watercolor washes. Of special note in the National Gallery sheet is the beautiful rendering of the extensive forest landscape, which is said to represent a specific location in the foret de Soignes, a hunting preserve near Brussels.

The Sta? Runt is the National Galo lery's only drawing by Van Orley, who is also represented here by two early religious paintings. The large size and unusually fine state of preservation of the drawing, together with its spirited execution, make it an impressive centerpiece for the Gallery's collection of early Netherlandish drawings. MARGARET

MORGAN GRASSELLI

Provenance: Rev. Canon Henry Hamal, Liege (Lugt 1231), sale, Paris, 21-23 January 1805; private collection, France, sale, Piasa at Drouot, Paris, 20 November 1996, no. 175; W.M. Brady Co., New York.

The Stag Hunt 1528/1530, pen and brown ink with brown wash and watercolor over black chalk 38.8 x 56.8 (15 V4 x22 3 /8)

Gift of The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston 1997.69.1

149

Tantalus c. 1535/1540, pen and black ink with watercolors, heightened in gold Diameter of roundel: 5.1 (2) Gift of Ladislaus and Beatrix von Hoffmann and Patrons' Permanent Fund 1998.18.1

150

151

Hans Holbein the Younger G E R M A N , 1497/1498-1543

Although Hans Holbein the Younger is best known for his vivid and meticulous portrait paintings, he must be equally acknowledged for brilliance as a draftsman. Especially remarkable is Holbein's ability to work in minute scale and yet capture the emotional complexity of a story with fluidity and exactness. This drawing of the suffering of Tantalus is an exceptional instance of his talent. The earliest known account of the punishment of Tantalus occurs in Homer's Odyssey. Since Tantalus abused the favor of the gods, Zeus chose to make an example of him. Tantalus was bound in the underworld immersed to the neck in a stream surrounded by fruit trees. Every time Tantalus bent his head to drink, the waters receded, and whenever he lifted his lips to taste the fruit, the tree branches were wafted upward with the wind. He was thus eternally condemned to be "tantalized" by constant and unquenchable desires. In Holbein's drawing Tantalus' upturned face yearns for the apples lifted just out of reach while the water below laps tauntingly at his chin. His disabled hands hover feebly over the pool, unable to grasp the heavily laden branches arching above him. In this subtle detail Hol-

bein captured that familiar and terrifying immobility we experience in the throes of a dream. To further the poignancy of this longing, the artist lettered Tantalus' name in broken segments along the coils of a banderole as if to suggest the faltering cadence of a sigh. Holbein made the drawing during his second sojourn in England, where he worked primarily at the court of Henry vni. The choice of subject may have been entirely Holbein's own or his response to the specific preference of a patron. In either case the story is a cautionary tale meant for the rich and powerful. Indeed, unsettling moral examples that often seem to admonish their bearers were commonly invoked in Renaissance court circles. In format the Tantalus corresponds to a group of similar roundel drawings of subjects also relating to ill fortune. These were all designed to be crafted into pendants, brooches, or hat badges—ornaments of a type commonly worn by both men and women at the time.1 Since the Tantalus is done in watercolor, and the tree branches delicately heightened with gold, it was probably meant to be realized in Limoges enamel rather than in gold or silver. The rose, gray, and brown hues are so well preserved that the drawing very likely appears as fresh now as when first completed. Although undoubtedly made as a jeweler's design, it was evidently

esteemed as a work of art in its own right and accordingly valuable enough to be retained by its original owner. Subsequently, the Tantalus passed through the collection of Sir Thomas Lawrence, the distinguished eighteenth-century English portraitist and member of the Royal Academy of Art in London. PETER PARSHALL

Provenance: Charles Chauncey [1706-1777], M.D., London; Sir Thomas Lawrence [1769-1830], London; his nephew Matthew Holbecke Bloxam [1805-1888], England; Rugby School, Warwickshire; Henry Oppenheimer [1859—1936], London; his sale, London, Christie, Manson & Woods, 10-14 July 1936, no. 382; P.&D. Colnaghi & Co., Ltd., London; Philip Hofer [1898-1984], Cambridge, Mass.; by inheritance to his son Myron Hofer; sale, London, Sotheby's, 28 January 1998, no. 29; via Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London.

BenvenutO Cellini

152

Bcnvenuto Cellini felt contempt for what he considered the typically French, squat proportions of the grand gateway to the palace of Fontainebleau, and so he presented his master, King Francis I, with a splendid new design, in bronze, to fit over the existing stone. This so-called Porte Doree was never realized, but among the few and scattered plans and drawings is this exquisite Satyr, one of the figures intended for the jambs. The sheet is today recognized as one of the most important old master drawings in the United States: it is one of the few works of any kind by this artist to survive into the twenty-first century and the finest of his exceedingly rare drawings. 1 Cellini's swashbuckling autobiography, the basis of his celebrity and the inspiration for an opera and a Hollywood movie, is filled with tales of adventure and intrigue as well as of violence and mortal danger.2 Born in Florence, Cellini was trained as a goldsmith by Michelangelo Bandinelli and practiced this craft with unsurpassed brilliance. While working in Rome for Pope Clement vn from 1523 to 1530, Cellini carefully studied the works of great artists of the High Renaissance. Michelangelo's tomb for Pope Julius II apparently made an indelible impression on him, for more than a decade later he reinterpreted one of its slaves as the satyr for Fontainebleau seen

F L O R E N T I N E , 1500-1571

in the present drawing. 3 He was hired by Francis I in 1540 and spent the next five years in the king's service in France. Here he was able to work on large-scale sculpture, although very little of it was actually completed. Political machinations within the court and Cellini's own difficult personality made his departure for Florence in 1545 both urgent and final. Cellini described the plan for the Porte Doree in his autobiography. A halfcircle lunette over the door depicts the fabled discovery of the Fontainebleau nymph and spring by a hunting dog named Blue. This piece, cast in bronze in 1543 and today found in the Louvre, was the only part completed. On each side of the door, a satyr (about iol/2 feet tall, partially attached to the wall behind) supports the lunette. The Gallery's Satyr, on the left, turns his face back toward the door, as if startled by the impertinence of visitors daring to approach. A small bronze model of this satyr (The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles), with slightly different proportions and a more ferocious expression, corresponds closely to the Gallery's drawing.4 Perhaps the most striking attribute of the drawing is its remarkably detailed finish. Without compromising the tension or cohesion of the image, Cellini lavished attention on the modeling of the surface, showing each hollow and swell of flesh as it stretches over muscle, bone, and sinew. He accomplished this fine modulation with wash and some subtle hatching, and he outlined the figure in dark brown.

He also drew the satyr's face and head in a darker ink and articulated the facial features and hair more strongly than any other part of the drawing. The Satyr raises an unresolved and vexing question: at what point in the creative process, and for what purpose, did Cellini make this drawing? It might have been a preparatory study that he made in advance of a three-dimensional work. And yet, if Cellini had typically made preparatory drawings, more would probably have survived than the few that are known today. A suggestion that has received greater acceptance among scholars is that Cellini drew the satyr after the bronze model had been made, shortly before he left France, in order to have something to show for his work. He knew that the Porte Doree might never be completed in bronze and that he would probably never return to Francis' court. VIRGINIA

TUTTLE CLAYTON

Provenance: John Barnard, London (Lugt 1419); Sir Thomas Lawrence, London (Lugt 2445); Hans M. Calmann, London; William Schab Gallery, New York; Ian Woodner, New York, 1959; by inheritance to his daughters, Andrea and Dian Woodner, New York, 1990.

Satyr 1544/1545, pen and brown ink with brown wash over black chalk 41.6 x 20.3 (i63/s x 8) Woodner Collection, Patrons' Permanent Fund 1991.190.2

153

Hans Hoffmann

154

A leading artist in what is referred to as the Diirer renaissance of the late sixteenth century, Hans Hoffmann worked briefly at the Munich court of Wilhelm v of Bavaria before joining Rudolf n in Prague as court painter. During the artist's earlier Nuremberg period, he trained himself as a careful observer and portrayer of nature, honing his skills by making copies or variants after drawings by Albrecht Diirer in the collection of Willibald Imhoff. Hoffmann is greatly admired for his masterful studies of plants and animals from this period, a stunning example of which is Red Squirrel. Red Squirrel was first published by Campbell Dodgson in the December 1929 issue of Old Master Drawings: A Quarterly Magazine for Students and Collectors. Dodgson cited its relationship to another, slightly larger watercolor and gouache on vellum, Two Squirrels, One Eating a Hazelnut, then in the collection of Francis George Baring, earl of Northbrook. 1 The relationship between the two works and the authorship of the now ex-Northbrook watercolor have been the subject of considerable discussion since that time. The ex-North-

G E R M A N , C. 1545 / 1 S 5 0 - 1 5 9 1 /

brook piece bears a false Diirer monogram and a date of 1512. It was at one time attributed to Diirer but is now generally accepted as a copy by Hoffmann, perhaps after a lost original by Diirer. Crediting Kurt Pilz with the attribution to Hoffmann of the rendition of the two squirrels, Szilvia Bodnar, like Dodgson and others, recently described numerous differences in the orientation and details of the animal that appears in both of these watercolors, confirming that Red Squirrel is a variant of the ex-Northbrook work and showing that neither one is a slavish copy of the other.2 We cannot readily determine which of these watercolors came first: no original by Diirer is known; perhaps one never existed. In Red Squirrel, the more graceful of the two versions, Hoffmann's meticulous rendering of the squirrel cracking a nut is structured with minute hairline strokes in a variety of swirls and dashes that are layered not only to achieve the mass of the animal's body but also to suggest the light that defines its form and the softness, density, and rich variety of its fur. Hoffmann employed a rich palette: an array of browns—from ochers to sepias to umbers—enhanced by silvery grays that range from almost white to almost black in the crevices of the face, most

1592

intensely in the eye. Through his lively paint handling he achieved a visual strength imbuing the squirrel with a lifelike presence. We cannot eliminate the possibility that this beautiful watercolor was made from direct observation of nature rather than as a copy of another work of art. R U T H E. F I N E Provenance: Mrs. M.A. Parker, Wilmington, Kent, sale, London, Sotheby's, 24 April 1929, lot 287; Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Clark, sale, London, Christie, Manson & Woods, 30 March 1976, lot 147; Dr. Gustav Rau, sale, London, Christie, Mason & Woods, 7 April 1981, lot 147; purchased by Albrecht Neuhaus, Wiirzburg; purchased by Ian Woodner, New York, 9 May 1984; by inheritance to his daughters, Andrea and Dian Woodner, New York, 1990.

Red Squirrel 1578, watercolor and gouache over traces of graphite on vellum 25 X iy.8 (97/8 X 7)

Woodner Collection 1991.182.5

i55

The Fall of Phaeton c. 1590, pen and brown ink with brown and pink washes over black chalk, heightened with white; indented with stylus for transfer 5 0 x 6 2 (l9 U /16 X 247/16)

New Century Fund 1997.103.1

156

157

Joseph Heintz the Elder swiss, 1564-1609

This newly discovered, powerful drawing synthesizes and translates compositions and forms of Italian mannerism into the linear and expressive language of German art. Its obvious power, scale, finish, and bold quality, as well as its historical importance, make it the most important German mannerist drawing in our collection. In the later sixteenth century, as the centers of political and artistic power shifted in central Europe from Nuremberg and Augsburg to Munich, Dresden, and especially Prague, great princes imported and supported the best artists and formed valuable collections of art to lend glory to their courts. Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II made Prague the dominant artistic center; and while he supported many stylistic tendencies, besides the works of Albrecht Diirer and his followers, Rudolf preferred the elegant Italianate mannerism practiced by artists born in a variety of northern European regions. Heintz learned to draw and paint in Basel from Hans Bock. Like most of the successful artists of his generation, Heintz became an international figure: his travels began with a trip to Italy in 1584-1589, where he also worked

with Hans von Aachen, another northerner who would become a favorite of Rudolf II. Heintz was able to study and absorb the powerful works of art in Rome and northern Italy, especially those in the new mannerist style. For example, the extraordinary views of the tumbling horses in this drawing show clear knowledge of Michelangelo's presentation drawing The Fall of Phaeton (sent to Tommaso de' Cavalieri in Rome in 1533, now at Windsor); but Heintz made the horses bigger, more powerful in form, and more "romantic"—with flowing manes and tails, they snort flames and smoke. In the falling figure of Phaeton, Heintz may have echoed Pellegrino Tibaldi's mid15 505 ceiling fresco in the Palazzo Poggi, Bologna;1 but Heintz' Phaeton is more muscular and more expressive, with his starkly open eyes and expiring breath. And Heintz'Jupiter, in radically foreshortened perspective, evokes several Italian precedents, especially Lelio Orsi's Jupiter in Rape of Ganymede', his c. 1550 ceiling for the camerino of Costanza da Corregio in Novellara. In each of these cases, Heintz learned from Italian models, but transformed them into something more powerful, more intense, and more emotionally expressive.

The present drawing had two primary functions. 2 First, it was an unusually grand and highly finished modello^ including elaborate white heightening and pink wash, for presentation to a noble patron. Second, the drawing was used by Heintz as a cartoon, which he incised in order to transfer the image to a panel for the upper half of his painting of the same subject. The dating of early works by Heintz is much disputed, and complicated here by the existence of two autograph and virtually identical versions of the painting. I believe the work was most likely created for presentation to Emperor Rudolf n in 1591, when he named Heintz his Kammermaler. As both modello and cartoon, this drawing, according to Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, is the first major example known by any Rudolfine artist. A N D R E W R O B I S O N Provenance: Private collection, Normandy; by descent, sold through auction by Maitres Dumousset & Deburaux, Paris, 24 June 1996; purchased by P.&D. Colnaghi, London.

Anthony van Dyck F L E M I S H , 1599-1641

158

Van Dyck's distinctive drawing style, full of energy and movement, is at its very best in this National Gallery sheet. He began by outlining in black chalk the main figures, which he then further refined in pen and ink. Finally, he adeptly applied two different shades of washes to create shadow and mass. While Van Dyck's portrait paintings and prints have always been well represented at the National Gallery, examples of the artist's draftsmanship were limited to a superb landscape sheet and two figural studies. The Mystic Marriage is the Gallery's first preparatory drawing by Van Dyck for a religious painting. Though Anthony van Dyck is primarily known for his elegant portraits of British and Italian nobility, he also executed a number of religious and mythological works along with a significant group of landscape drawings. As a young artist, Van Dyck was employed as an assistant in the Antwerp workshop of Peter Paul Rubens. Van Dyck visited London in 1620 and spent the years from 1621 to 1627 traveling and working in Italy, particularly in Genoa. He returned to Antwerp in 1628 and in 1632 he was appointed court painter to Charles I. He worked in London until his premature death in 1641.

This drawing is one of a number of preparatory studies Van Dyck made in conjunction with the early painting The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of c. 1618 /1621, today in the Prado, Madrid. 1 The composition, in which three-quarter-length figures are arranged horizontally, was inspired by Venetian art. Van Dyck seems to have been especially influenced by the work of Titian, 2 which he had studied even before his departure to Italy in 1621. Van Dyck executed at least six compositional drawings for the Mystic Marriage, the National Gallery sheet is considered the penultimate study.3 In the early studies Van Dyck placed the Virgin and child on the right, but he later shifted this group to the left while also changing the number of attendant figures and their poses. In the final painting the main figures of the Virgin, Christ, and Saint Catherine are given even greater emphasis. Saint Joseph, who appears in the National Gallery study just behind the Virgin, is replaced by a column, and the group of four men standing behind Saint Catherine has been reduced to two. The National Gallery's Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine has an extremely distinguished history. In the eighteenth century, it was owned by the Dutch merchant Nicolaes Anthoni Flinck, son of Rembrandt's pupil Govaert Flinck. More than 225 drawings from his considerable collection, including this one, were bought by the second duke of Devonshire in 1724. Later dukes made

additional acquisitions, building one of the greatest private collections of old master drawings in the world.4 The Van Dyck Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine remained in this celebrated collection, housed at the family estate of Chatsworth in Devonshire, England, until 1987, when it was bought by the New York real estate developer Ian Woodner, a major private collector of old master drawings in t h e past f i f t y years. G R E G O R Y J E C M E N Inscription (by a 17th-century hand, lower center): NL Provenance: Nicolaes Anthoni Flinck [1646-1723] (Lugt95p), Rotterdam; William Cavendish, 2d duke of Devonshire [1672—1729]; by descent at Devonshire House and Chatsworth (inv. no. 989), sale, London, Christie, Manson & Woods, 6 July 1987, lot 12; purchased by Ian Woodner, New York, 1987; by inheritance to his daughters, Andrea and Dian Woodner, New York, 1990.

The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine c. 1618/1620, pen and brown ink with brown and gray washes over black chalk 18.2 x28.i (73/i6 x ii Vie) Woodner Collection I993.5I-7

i59

Aegidius Sadeler

160

Aegidius Sadeler was the most gifted member of a large family of Antwerp engravers and print publishers. Aegidius' highly accomplished skill led his friend and biographer Joachim von Sandrart to describe him as "a phoenix among engravers who surpassed all others in his art." 1 Aegidius first worked as an apprentice to his uncles Jan and Raphael Sadeler. In 1586, the Sadelers departed Antwerp for Germany, working in Mainz, Frankfurt, and Munich, where Jan and Aegidius were employed by Wilhelm v, duke of Bavaria. From 1591 to 1593, Aegidius traveled to Italy, and in the autumn of 1597 he was called to Prague to work for Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf n. Aegidius soon became the most important printmaker at Rudolf's court. 2 Although the majority of Aegidius' early work at the imperial court was devoted to producing elegant engravings after paintings by other artists, he did execute his own original compositions toward the end of his career. Of his few surviving drawings, the most impressive

F L E M I S H , C. 1S70-1629

is The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, done c. 1620. Discovered only about a decade ago, this sheet is a preparatory study for Aegidius' engraving, which was published by his brother Marco Sadeler,3 and is one of only two known preliminary drawings by Aegidius for prints representing a religious or mythological scene.4 Contrary to the more usual practice, the drawing was not indented for transfer, and is in the same direction as the print. Therefore, Sadeler might have made an intermediary contour drawing that he used to transfer the design to the copperplate. 5 The compositional drawing reveals two changes: Sadeler reworked Saint Sebastian's eyes (see pentimento) and the lower left putti (covering the original figures with a paper patch). The mannered, fleshy forms and soft, luminous chiaroscuro are characteristics of Aegidius' best late work. The curious blend of religious and erotic ecstasy that underlies The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian is highlighted on the print by a Latin poem contrasting physical and divine love. Aegidius made this drawing after spending some twenty years at the imperial court, demonstrating that he had become a talented draftsman as well as an engraver.

The National Gallery's collection of northern and central European mannerist drawings is one of the best in the United States. This exquisite Sadeler drawing is the first by the artist to enter this collection. It joins an impressive group of works by mannerist artists, including superb sheets by Aegidius' great contemporary, Hendrik Goltzius. GREGORY JECMEN

Inscription (lower right): EG: Sadeler Fecit Provenance: M.O. Brenner, sale, Amsterdam, R.WP. de Vries, 14 December 1911, no. 1459; private collection, sale, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 21 November 1989, no. 10; Bernard Houthakker, Amsterdam.

The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian c. 1620, black chalk, gray and brown ink, and gray wash heightened with white 41.4 X 3 1 . 5 (l6 5 /16 X I2 7 /16)

Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund 1992.18.1

161

Saint Martin of Tours Healing the Servant of Tetrodius c. 1630, watercolor and gouache over black chalk on four joined sheets 54.6

X 38.5

(21 l/2 X I5 3 /16)

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund and Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund 1993.9.1

162

163

JacobJordaens F L E M I S H , 1593-1678

Together with Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens was one of the three greatest artists from seventeenth-century Flanders. Born the son of a linen merchant, Jordaens, like Rubens, completed his apprenticeship under the artist Adam van Noort. In 1615 Jordaens was elected to the Antwerp painters' guild and later established a thriving workshop with a number of pupils and assistants. Outside his own workshop, Jordaens collaborated twice with Rubens: in 1634, on decorations for the triumphal entry of Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria; and in 16371638, on a set of paintings for Philip iv's hunting lodge Torre de la Parada, near Madrid. After the deaths of Rubens (in 1640) and Van Dyck (in 1641), Jordaens became the leading painter in Antwerp, where he received commissions from such prominent patrons as Charles I of England and Christina of Sweden.1 This large drawing is the final modello (finished compositional study submitted for the patron's approval) for Jordaens' major altarpiece Saint Martin of Tours Healing the Possessed Servant ofTetrodius. Painted in 1630 for the high altar of the abbey church of Saint Martin in Tournai, the

painting is now in the Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.2 Jordaens depicts an event in the life of Saint Martin, bishop of Tours, seen here standing at the far left of the composition. With his right hand raised in benediction, Saint Martin exorcises the evil spirit from the man being carried in by attendants. Tetrodius, the turbaned Roman official and master of the possessed slave, points and gazes down on the scene from a central balcony. Two earlier, smaller compositional studies for the painting exist, one in Antwerp and the other in the British Museum. 3 Neither one, however, is as close to the final painting as is the National Gallery drawing. This compelling work is a fine example of Jordaens' drawing practice and technique. He created a series of modelli for his paintings, using watercolor and gouache over preliminary work in chalk. 4 Jordaens' modelli are often on joined pieces of paper, either affixed together from the start or later when he decided to enlarge and rework the original sheet. In the present drawing, a strip of paper with an ornamental pattern was added to the top of four joined sheets; this area does not appear in the finished altarpiece. These painterly modelli are revealing records of Jordaens' changing thoughts on a theme and constitute the jewels of his graphic oeuvre. They also reveal spiritual energy and dynamic movement, both characteristics of the baroque style.

One of Jordaens' finest, this modello joins a group of works by and after the artist already in the National Gallery's collection: a portrait painting and two prints by Jordaens; four engravings after paintings by Jordaens, including Pieter de Jode li's engraving after the Saint Martin altarpiece; and four additional drawings by Jordaens, all very different in type, execution, and subject matter. GREGORY JECMEN

Provenance: H.R.H. Prince George, ist duke of Kent, and Princess Marina, Kensington Palace, London; by descent through family, Kensington Palace, London; P.&D. Colnaghi, London.

Christoffel Jegher, after Peter Paul Rubens F L E M I S H , 1596-1653

164

The Garden of Love is arguably the most impressive example of the woodcut print in the entire seventeenth century, and certainly Peter Paul Rubens' most ambitious engagement with the medium. Imposing in scale, and remarkable for the range of pictorial effects required by the subject, the Garden of Love is quintessentially Rubens: warmly sensuous, beautiful and adoring, brilliantly witty, and replete with charm. It is a celebration of love, and in particular a celebration of Rubens' second marriage, to Helena Fourment, who probably served as the model for the central figure. Helena appears to be holding court when, in a moment of detachment, she coyly glances outward to catch our attention. Beneath the vault of the artificial grotto, couples duck to avoid jets of water shooting from crannies in the rock, a practical joke common in baroque gardens. Arrayed across the foreground, elegantly attired ladies and gentlemen gather in conversation, some flirtatious, others reluctant and aloof, while cupids encourage the assembled company to dalliance. Once his success as a painter had been fully established Rubens initiated a prolific industry for making prints after his painted compositions. These graphic productions were intended to increase his fame as an artist by securing an awareness of his inventions beyond the distinguished circle of friends and patrons who

could afford to commission a painting. Except for one etching done by Rubens himself, these works were executed by artists skilled in printmaking. A great many of them were done under Rubens' close supervision. The vast majority are etchings and engravings, but a small number were accomplished in the elegant but less tractable (and less fashionable) medium of woodcut. All of these woodblocks were cut by Christoffel Jegher, the undoubted genius of seventeenthcentury woodcut technique. 1 Indeed, Jegher's extraordinary talent for translating Rubens' designs into woodcut drew Rubens to this medium. Most striking of all is the manner in which Jegher's prints convey the abstract vitality of Rubens' draftsmanship. Surely here above all Jegher has bequeathed to us the supreme example of the baroque woodcut. The Garden of Love is printed from two separate blocks for which complete preparatory drawings by Rubens survive. 2 Furthermore, preliminary proof states with Rubens' indications for reworking are extant for both blocks. Thus, the master clearly monitored the production of the print closely so that it would correspond to his exact expectations. The woodcut was probably conceived in two stages. The style of cutting differs from one block to the other, as does the spelling of Rubens' "privilege" (his copyright), which appears on both blocks. Strictly speaking, these independent claims to authorship would have been unnecessary had the print originally been designed as a whole. Whereas the compo-

sition of the right block is entirely selfsufficient, the left sheet is overlapped by the figure of the man seated in the grotto, a detail that would not have made sense absent the right side of the composition. Since Jegher also included his signature on both blocks, the difference in style indicates not a different block cutter, but a later stage in the evolution of Jegher's technique. As is true for most prints sponsored by Rubens, the Garden of Love derives from his painted work. In this instance, Rubens painted two versions of the subject, one now in the Prado, Madrid, and the other at Waddesdon Manor, England. 3 Although the chronological order of these two conceptions is still a matter of debate, Jegher's woodcut contains elements that appear in both, yet remains a fully independent composition in its own right. Most probably the print documents Rubens' thinking at an evolutionary stage between the paintings. PETER PARSHALL

Provenance: Private collection, Europe; Hill-Stone Inc., New York.

Garden of Love c. 1633, woodcut printed from two blocks 45.5 x i2o(iy 7 /8 X47V4) Director's Discretionary Fund 2000.16.1

165

Rembrandt van Rijn D U T C H , 1606-1669

166

Full of drama and movement, this print dating from the artist's middle years is one of Rembrandt van Rijn's most vivid biblical illustrations. It depicts a scene from the Book of Esther (6:1-12). Mordecai, an exiled Jew living in Persia, had uncovered a plot to assassinate King Ahasuerus. The king later asked Haman, his advisor and an enemy of the Jews, how he should honor a man who had greatly pleased him. Thinking that the king meant himself, Haman suggested that the victor should wear royal garb and ride the king's horse. Rembrandt chose to illustrate the moment when Haman, humiliated after realizing his error, leads the triumphant Mordecai, dressed as a king and riding on horseback, on a procession through town. They arrive at the king's gate to find a large crowd, including King Ahasuerus and Queen Esther, Mordecai's foster daughter, standing at a balcony at the upper right. The couple,

whose faces are thought to be portraits of Rembrandt and his wife Saskia, are not mentioned at this point in the text. 1 The Triumph of Mordecai has been related to one of the artist's best-known paintings, The Rifle Company of Captain Fram Banning Cocq^ commonly known as The Night Watch, of 1642.2 In both works Rembrandt explored the complexities of depicting a large group of people in front of an architectural setting. A large arch organizes the space and frames the major figures in each work. Rembrandt also employed in both the print and the painting the technique of alternating areas of strong light and dark to enhance movement and drama. He probably derived the print's composition from an engraving of the same subject by Lucas van Leyden (1489/1494-1533).3 This is the first print in which Rembrandt made extensive use of drypoint and successfully integrated that medium with etching. 4 His drypoint lines are bolder and stronger than in his earlier works, providing a richer, broader burr. Drypoint is used not just for an occa-

sional emphasis, but for entire fully executed passages. This is a particularly fine impression, especially in the strong burr, and was once owned by the nineteenth-century British printmaker and distinguished collector of Rembrandt prints, Sir Francis Seymour Haden. GREGORY JECMEN

Provenance: Edward Hippisley, his sale, London, Sotheby's, 23 May 1848, lot 137; Seymour Haden [1818 — 1910], London, his sale, London, Sotheby's, 15 June 1891, lot 436; Henry Studdy Theobald [born 1847], London, his sale, Stuttgart, H.G. Gutekunst, 12—14 May 1910, lot 590; Joseph R. Ritman, Amsterdam; purchased by Sotheby's and Artemis.

The Triumph of Mordecai c. 1641, etching and drypoint Plate: 17.2 x 21.3 (63/4 x 8%) New Century Fund 1998.25.2

167

View of Houtewael near the Sint Anthoniespoort (recto) c. 1650, reed pen and brown ink with gray-brown wash and touches of white and red chalk 12.5 x 18.3 (4 15 /i6 x 73/i6) Woodner Collection 1993.51.6.3

168

169

Rembrandt van Rijn

Perhaps the most frequently admired quality of this sketch is an economy of means that is typical of Rembrandt's drawings of the late 16408. With a few deft strokes of the pen and brush, the artist conveyed not only the basic elements of the landscape but also evanescent conditions of weather and light. The reeds in the middle distance sway in the breeze, and a haze hangs in the air. The contrast between the heavy lines in the foreground and the delicate, pale forms of the buildings on the horizon, barely indicated with a few disconnected strokes, suggests the moist atmosphere of the Dutch countryside. Rembrandt left the sky, which occupies the top half of the drawing, completely blank, allowing the pale brown paper to convey the impression of an overcast day. This particular compositional device, which Rembrandt used on a number of other occasions, also successfully communicates the flatness of the land and the immense quality of the sky in Holland. The panorama was already well established as a landscape type during the sixteenth century, with Rembrandt's predecessors depicting fanciful mountain scenes. He and his contemporaries, however, more often drew sweeping vistas of the local farmland. 1 Although landscapes never played a very important part in Rembrandt's painted oeuvre, they form a major group of his drawings and etchings. He made

D U T C H , 1606-1669

most of these landscapes from 1640 to 1652, setting off on sketching trips into the countryside around Amsterdam and recording the scenes with such accuracy that his favorite walks can be reconstructed today on the basis of the drawings that he left. 2 Like most landscape artists of the time, however, Rembrandt rarely made completely objective topographical records: instead, he manipulated elements of the scenery, moving or omitting buildings or other landmarks in order to form more pleasing or dramatic compositions. While he sometimes created imaginary landscapes, often relying on motifs drawn from Venetian art, Rembrandt was generally most interested in depicting the local countryside. He drew the little town of Houtewael, only about fifteen minutes from his home, on several occasions.3 His choice of subject was a traditional one: the walk to Houtewael was a popular outing for Amsterdam residents, who enjoyed strolling through the country and visiting the little town's famous taverns, and a number of Dutch artists before Rembrandt had sketched along the same route.4 The scenery around Houtewael changed dramatically when the Nieuwe Vaart was constructed in 1649. Because this broad canal would have been visible from the site where the artist sat to draw the landscape on the recto, some scholars date this drawing to early 1649.5 Rembrandt's habit of adjusting the scenery to fit his artistic needs, however, makes this earlier date far from certain. The View of Houtewael

is also stylistically consistent with Rembrandt's drawings dating from 1649 to 1650. Rembrandt's original purpose in making landscape drawings is unknown. He may have intended them partly as a library of motifs, which he or his students could consult when composing other works of art. Most of the drawings are unsigned and were not intended for the art market, but they were already admired and collected during the seventeenth century. The View of Houtewael belonged to a particularly fine collection of landscapes once owned by Nicolaes Flinck, whose father was Rembrandt's pupil Govaert Flinck. These drawings probably passed to Govaert directly after his teacher's death and have been treasured and admired ever since.6 STAGEY SELL

Provenance: Possibly Govaert Flinck [1615-1660]; Nicolaes Anthoni Flinck, Rotterdam [1646-1723] (Lugt 959); William Cavendish, 2d duke of Devonshire [1672-1729]; by descent at Devonshire House and Chatsworth (inv. 1032), sale, London, Christie, Manson & Woods, 3 July 1984, lot 63; John R. Gaines, Lexington, Ky, sale, New York, Sotheby's, 17 November 1986, lot 19; purchased by Ian Woodner, New York; by inheritance to his daughters, Andrea and Dian Woodner, New York.

Rembrandt van Rijn D U T C H , 1606-1669

170

From the more than three hundred prints made by Rembrandt van Rijn, only eighty-two of the original copperplates are extant today.1 With the exception of the National Gallery's plate, all of these copperplates have been seriously worn by later printings, which continued as late as the early twentieth century, and the vast majority have been reworked and rebitten. The plate for Abraham Entertainingo the Angels, to have been o ' presumed r lost since Rembrandt's death, was apparently acquired by a seventeenth-century Antwerp artist, perhaps Pieter Gysels or another artist in his circle, who painted a river landscape scene on the back of the plate.2 By 1946 the painting was in England, where it was sold to a private collector who, in 1997, decided to sell it at auction. 3 Only after removing the painting from its frame in the course of a routine examination did the auction house expert make the astounding discovery that the painting was done on the back of an original Rembrandt copperplate. Amazingly, the etched and drypoint lines in the plate, unreworked and unworn, still reveal traces of ink that

Rembrandt himself used when printing the etching. This plate reveals more of Rembrandt's original technique and hand than do any of the other surviving plates. The history of the plates at the end of Rembrandt's life and immediately after his death remains unclear. Scholars have conjectured that Rembrandt might have been forced to sell his copperplates during his bankruptcy proceedings in 1656, the year in which this print was made, or the plates might have been sold with Rembrandt's remaining property after his death in 1669. Though Rembrandt based the composition of Abraham Entertaining the Angels on a Moghul miniature of a non-Christian subject in his personal collection at that time,4 he cast the figures of this biblical story (Gen. 18:1-15) in very humanistic terms. The print depicts three angels, messengers from God, who appear one day at Abraham's home. As Abraham offers the visitors food and drink they tell him that his elderly wife Sarah will have a child. Abraham, acting as the gracious host, is seen at the far right, holding a pitcher. The astonished Sarah emerges from darkness at the open door. Ishmael, Abraham's son by Hagar, is playing with a bow and arrow on a parapet, completely unaware of the portentous event.

The National Gallery owns a particularly fine impression of the print Abraham Entertaining the Angels^ which was given by LessingJ. Rosenwald in 1943. G R E G O R Y J E C M E N

Provenance (1997.85.1.3): Acquired by an anonymous collector, Yorkshire, England, in 1946; purchased at Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 26 and 27 June 1997, lot 94. Provenance (1943.3.7160): Emil Schroter [died c. 1912], Dresden; LessingJ. Rosenwald [1891-1979], Philadelphia, purchase 1928.

Abraham Entertaining the Angels

Abraham Entertaining the Angels

(recto) 1656, etched copperplate 16.2 x 13.3 (63/s x 51/*)

1656, etching and drypoint Plate: 15.9 x 13.2 (6V4 x 5 3 /i6) Sheet: 16.2 x 13.5 (63/8 x 5 5 /i6) Rosenwald Collection

Gift of Ladislaus and Beatrix von Hoffmann and Patrons' Permanent Fund 1997.85.1.3

1943.3.7160

171

AleSSandrO Algardi

172

This rending depiction of Christ dying on the cross is remarkable not only for its intrinsic qualities of artistic brilliance, but also for the insights it provides into sculptor Alessandro Algardi's creative process. This drawing is the earliest in a series of three preparatory studies that Algardi made for a crucifix; they show the artist moving from this highly expressive initial concept set out with rapid, vigorous pen work, to a more carefully hatched study with a closer analysis of anatomy in a second pen drawing in the Galleria Estense Modena, and finally to a refined and highly finished study in red chalk with pen and ink that is today in the Uffizi in Florence.1 Algardi was born in Bologna in 1598, the same year that Gian Lorenzo Bernini was born in Rome. Although Algardi eventually became Bernini's chief rival in Rome, he was much slower to develop his creative genius. In 1617 he began his studies in Bologna at the Carracci drawing academy, which was then under the direction of Lodovico Carracci. Here Algardi acquired a taste for a gesture more graceful and an expression more understated than the impassioned theatricality characteristic of the Italian baroque. He worked mainly in terra cotta and stucco while in Bologna and in Mantua, which he visited in about 1619. In 1625 he arrived in the Rome of Pope Urban vin, where Bernini dominated.

B O L O G N E S E - R O M A N , 1598-1654

He found supporters among the Bolognese living in Rome, but at first worked primarily on restoring ancient sculptures. He did have the opportunity to work on some stucco sculptures and smaller, decorative pieces during the first few years, and by the early 16308 he was receiving commissions for important projects. His reputation grew and he accomplished some of his greatest sculptures later in that decade, though often as the second choice of patrons unable to hire the sought-after, terribly expensive Bernini. 2 Pope Urban viu died in 1644 after a twenty-one-year reign marked by lavish patronage of the arts, especially of Bernini. The pope's successor, Innocent x, was less disposed toward such cultural magnanimity. Algardi still had his allies in the papal court, however, and possibly prompted by one of them, he presented the pope with two small silver sculptures about 1647: a baptism of Christ and a crucifix. Both of these original silver pieces are lost, but the crucifix survives in bronze casts and was apparently the work for which the National Gallery's preparatory drawing was made.3 An inscription, not by Algardi's own hand, in the upper right corner of the drawing attributes it to him with a date of 1647.4 To depict Christ still alive on the cross was not unusual in the midseventeenth century, but to show him fastened to the cross with four nails as Algardi has, one for each hand and foot, was uncommon, at least in Italy. Bernini always represented Christ in the more customary Italian manner, crucified

with three nails, with one nail securing both feet. Although the use of three as opposed to four nails for the Crucifixion may have been a serious issue among some theologians at the time, Algardi's choice of four nails was probably made solely on artistic grounds, for this decision was stylistically significant. While Bernini favored the anatomical tension he could achieve by overlapping the two feet, which forced one knee dramatically outward, Algardi opted for greater stability and a more hieratic figure by showing the feet nailed separately, side by side. The simplicity and classical restraint for which Algardi is known are thus clearly apparent in the National Gallery's preparatory drawing, the most expressive among the three studies and the sculptures made of this image. VIRGINIA

TUTTLE CLAYTON

Provenance: Commendatore Conte del Pozzo, Verona; Commendatore Conte Isola; Conte Miroglio di Rosignana, 1795; Santo Varni; Claudio Argentieri (Lugt 486b); Pier Giulio Breschi (Lugt 2079b); private collection, sale, London, Sotheby's 15 June 1983, no. 61; private collection; David Tunick, New York.

Christ on the Cross 1647, pen and brown ink over red chalk 48.4 x 32.8 (19 Vie x I2 15 /i6) Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund 1992.42.1

173

Noah Leading the Animals into the Ark c. 1655, brush and oil 39.4 x 54.8 ( i 5 V 2 x 2 i 9 / i 6 ) Gift (partial and promised) of Gilbert Butler, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the National Gallery of Art 1991.221.1

174

175

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione G E N O E S E , 1609 OR B E F O R E - 1 6 6 4

One of the leading Genoese artists in the mid-seventeenth century, Castiglione enjoyed a considerable reputation throughout Italy as a painter, printmaker, and draftsman. Trained by Giovanni Battista Paggi and perhaps Anthony van Dyck, he specialized in representing pastoral scenes and the journeys of such biblical patriarchs as Abraham, Isaac, and Noah, subjects that allowed him to show off his skill in rendering a variety of animals and birds. As a printmaker, he made his reputation as an etcher and is credited with inventing the monotype print technique; as a draftsman, he distinguished himself through the virtuoso oil sketches on paper for which he is now most admired. Noah Leading the Animals into the Ark is an outstanding example of Castiglione's brilliant handling of the medium in those sketches: the exceptionally rich use of

color and bold sweep of the brush are characteristic of his very best work. In his preparatory studies for works in other media, Castiglione tended to use pen and ink, sometimes with wash, but his oil sketches, which meld so beautifully the visual effects of both drawing and painting, were intended to stand as finished works in themselves. The subject of the animals entering the ark was a particular favorite of Castiglione's, for he returned to it several times in a number of other drawings, two etchings, one monotype, and at least three paintings. 1 Here, Castiglione's imaginative representation of the scene conveys a delightful sense of noise and orderly confusion as Noah and one of his sons organize the animals into pairs. As is often the case in Castiglione's compositions, the procession of animals takes pride of place in the foreground, while the biblical story—indicated mainly by the presence of the ark at far right— is relegated to a secondary position.

The addition of this impressive sheet to the National Gallery's holdings of Castiglione's art on paper makes him one of the best represented seventeenthcentury Italian artists in its collection of prints and drawings. With its bravura handling, chromatic richness, and relatively large scale, this handsome work also ranks as one of the major masterpieces of the collection of Italian baroque drawings. M A R G A R E T M O R G A N G R A S S E L L I Provenance: Probably eighteenth-century French private collection, ijj6.2 Private collection, sale, Sotheby's, Monaco, 20 February 1988, no. 230; purchased by Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London; Gilbert Butler, New York.

Andrea POZZO

176

Pozzo's breathtaking vision of vast, deep space soaring up and into the heavens— almost creating the sensation of reverse vertigo—was a preliminary drawing, its setting still empty, for the final phase of his greatest work of art: the painted vault of the church of San Ignazio in Rome.1 The completed design for the vault, abundantly populated with figures, shows the ascension into heaven of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, and the promulgation of the Jesuits' mission throughout the earth. This extraordinary study is the only surviving preparatory drawing for Pozzo's San Ignazio project, and one of his few extant drawings for any of his grand architectural schemes. Construction of the church of San Ignazio began in 1626 and did not finish until late in the seventeenth century. Pozzo, himself a Jesuit, had already painted an illusionistic dome for this

I T A L I A N , 1642-1709

church in 1685, replacing the actual, architectural dome that was planned but could not be constructed. His dome painting was such a resounding success that he was asked to paint the vault of the church as well. He must have begun formulating his concept for the work about 1685, as soon as his painting for the dome was finished, and probably continued designing and drawing until shortly before the painting of the vault commenced in 1691. This quintessentially baroque ceiling painting seems to magically extend the real space of the building upward, seamlessly joining the actual architecture with the visionary space of the painting. It was immediately recognized as a brilliant and innovative success, and its impact can be found in baroque ceiling paintings throughout Europe. Pozzo was a highly renowned architect and master of perspective. He was born in Trento in 1642 and entered a Jesuit monastery in 1665. Having studied painting in Milan, Genoa, and Venice, he was asked to come to Rome in 1681 by the leader of the Jesuit order. We are

especially pleased to have acquired his drawing for the vault of San Ignazio because it relates to works already in our holdings from the Millard and O'Neal collections, in particular Pozzo's treatise Perspectiva pictorum et arcbitectorum, published in 1702. The first part of this two-volume work includes a group of plates and text explaining how the artist constructed the perspective for his San Ignazio vault painting. VIRGINIA

TUTTLE CLAYTON

Provenance: Italian art market; Lodewijk Houthakker, Amsterdam, 1986; Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London, sale, April-May 1993.

Illusionistic Architecture for the Fault of San Ignazio 1685/1690, pen and gray and brown ink with gray wash on two joined sheets 91.2 X 50.4

(35% X I913/16)

Gift of Robert M. and Anne T. Bass 1994.16.1

177

Ferdinando Galli Bibiena

178

A fundamental aspect of baroque art is vast illusory space. Especially in conjunction with real and fictitious architecture, enormous spaces were created through paintings that appear to open entire walls out to extensive rooms or landscapes, and to open ceilings out to the very heavens. Such vast illusory spaces were equally important for religious as well as mythological and secular works, in churches and palaces, and in monumental architectural schemes as well as in theatrical designs. A crucial figure in developing the artistry to create such vast illusory spaces was Ferdinando Bibiena. He is usually credited with discovering the famous technique for expanding such spaces in stage designs (the "scene from an angle"), but as a general architect he was equally concerned with vast spaces in ceiling and wall paintings. He founded the most important and successful family of theatrical designers in the baroque period,1 and his theoretical treatises on architecture, perspective, architectural painting, and stage design spawned innumerable

I T A L I A N , 16 5 7 - 1 7 4 3

imitators throughout Europe, from Naples to Stockholm and from Lisbon to Vienna. The exceptional size and high degree of finish of this grand drawing indicate it was prepared as a model, for presentation to a wealthy nobleman as a proposal for an illusionistic ceiling painting in a major salon of a palace. The coats of arms in the drawing show that the nobleman was a duke of Savoy and king of Sardinia. The patron was probably Victor Amadeus II, who may have been presented the work soon after he became king in 1718, and who had employed Ferdinando Bibiena earlier at the Royal Theater in Turin (1699-1703). Another, though less likely, possibility is the king's son Charles Emmanuel in, who ruled from 1730. In any case, the date of the drawing must be c. 1720-1740. As a work of art, the drawing has an extraordinarily bold effect resulting from the enormous scale combined with the remarkable handling of light and the exceptional sophistication of the integrated perspectival organization of a rich panoply of baroque architectural forms. The illusion creates three succes-

sive architectural storeys, each with a complex organization of arches, columns, balustrades, statues, and decorated ceilings. The complicated whole is bound together through two means: first, the general perspectival lines of the columns and graduated echoing circular forms of the arches and ceilings, and second, the remarkable washes that give an illusion of light flooding up at the lowest level from what would have been real windows in the salon, and then appearing to enter consistently from the illusory windows at each higher level and to radiate across the vast space, falling on the symmetrical architectural elements on the other side. In a masterstroke, Ferdinando topped his final level with heavens centered on Apollo, the god of light! A N D R E W R O B I S D N Provenance: Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London, 1991; E.V. Thaw, New York.

A Grand Illusionistic Ceiling c. 1720-1740, pen and brown ink with gray and brown washes over graphite 105.9 x 60.3 (4i n /i6 x 23%) Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund and Anonymous Donor 1994.73.1

179

Aurora T

733) red chalk heightened with white chalk on brown paper 37 x 23.1 (14 1/2 x pVfe) Gift of Gertrude Laughlin Chanler 2000.9.3

180

i8i

Francois Boucher F R E N C H , 1703-1770

Perhaps the most famous representative of mid-eighteenth-century French rococo taste and style, Francois Boucher enjoyed a long and successful career that culminated with appointments as First Painter to King Louis xv and director of the Academic royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris. An acknowledged master of the female nude, Boucher was widely admired for depictions of allegories and mythological subjects—especially the loves of the gods—which allowed him to show offhis skill in drawing and painting the feminine form. One of the earliest of Boucher's celebrated drawings of nudes is this study for the figure of Aurora in his painting Aurora and Cephalus of 1733 (Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nancy). 1 The model was almost certainly Boucher's young wife, seventeen-year-old Jeanne Buseau, whom he had married that same year. As this drawing shows, at thirty Boucher was

already a thoroughly accomplished draftsman. His strong, flowing contours and precise yet sensitive modeling create a figure that is both sculpturally rounded and palpably soft and fleshy The richly coloristic handling of the red and white chalks on the brown paper reflects his intimate knowledge of the drawings of Antoine Watteau, more than one hundred of which Boucher had copied in etchings published in the mid-iyzos. 2 Made at a time when drawing the female nude was still a new experience for Boucher, the figure of Aurora has a tender yet direct quality of observation that gives it a special visual and psychological appeal. The simple, graceful pose and the modestly downcast gaze convey an air of youth and innocence that is refreshingly different from the more sophisticated nude studies Boucher made in later years. With the gift of this and four other excellent Boucher drawings from the Chanler collection, Boucher became one of the best-represented artists in the Gallery's old master drawing collection:

twenty-one sheets by the French artist cover a wide range of styles, subjects, and media. As the earliest of these drawings, Aurora is a highly memorable starting point for the study of Boucher's draftsmanship at the National Gallery. MARGARET

MORGAN GRASSELLI

Provenance: Peter Jones, London; Basil Dighton, London; purchased by the Hon. Irwin Boyle Laughlin, 1918; by descent to his daughter Gertrude Laughlin Chanler.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi V E N E T I A N , 1720-1778

I 82

Piranesi expressed the magnificence of architecture through numerous designs showing the power of architectural masses, the compositional thrust as well as the balance of echoing architectural forms, and the expansive movement of architectural space. The subject of palatial interiors was treated by Piranesi repeatedly from his earliest maturity. They form, for example, four out of thirteen of his earliest published etchings, the 1743 Prima parte di architetture^ e prospettive. Such majestic halls with grand staircases and arched galleries punctuated by massive piers, columns, and pilasters are one typical theme of baroque stage designs and imaginary architectural drawings by predecessors Piranesi admired, such as Filippo Juvarra and Ferdinando Bibiena. 1 Liberated from practical considerations for constructing real buildings, such architectural fantasies allowed Piranesi to create visions of architecture grand beyond the finances of any pope or king. Piranesi saw these visions as provoked in spirit by the magnificence of ancient Roman architecture, but in the Chanler Interior we also recognize his experience of grand interiors in Roman baroque churches like Saint Peter's.

The richly colorful combination of pen and brown washes over red chalk was favored by the artist for large finished or presentation drawings from the end of the 17405 through the 17505. This technique enabled Piranesi to pick up some of the chalk in the washes and give them pinkish tones, adding even more variety to his browns, which themselves range widely from golden to umber. The fantastic monument at the center of the design relates this drawing to several other works by Piranesi from the end of the 1740s.2 Here the primary figure, draped in robes, stands on a sphere supported by curved dolphins, elevated on an inscribed plinth flanked by military trophies. The figure is crowned by an angel, presumably representing fame or victory, the latter interpretation supported by the bound captives as well as the trophies elsewhere in the design. However, here (as in his related designs), one would be mistaken to press Piranesi's iconography toward a specific identification or program. One should see these elements more generally as evocative contributions to the theme of magnificence in a royal or imperial structure. In many ways the central subject of this drawing is architectural space: expansive space, opening out from under the frame of the foreground arch; enormous space, in the central atrium; repeating spaces, organized under echoing domes;

perspectivally contradictory spaces under the arches of the bridge, impossible to relate to the principal design; and hidden spaces, behind billowing smoke. Using raking perspective on encircling galleries and successions of arches, Piranesi created enormous space and set it into continual motion to circulate with stately progression from the central court through vast areas hinted between and beyond what the eye can see. Among his drawings, the Chanler Interior is Piranesi's most magnificent presentation of the vitality, excitement, and mystery of architectural space. A N D R E W R O B I S O N Provenance: The Hon. Irwin Boyle Laughlin; by inheritance in 1941 to his wife, Therese Iselin Laughlin; by descent in 1958 to Gertrude Laughlin Chanler.

Fantasy of a Palatial Interior 1748-1750, pen and brown ink with brown washes over red chalk and some graphite 37.6 x 51.5 (l4 3 /4 x 20¥4)

Gift of Gertrude Laughlin Chanler 2000.9.20

183

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

184

V E N E T I A N , 1720-1778

The most crucial recent Piranesi discov-

elaborate parade helmets widens at each

or something like them, in a monumen-

ery was this drawing and the fantastic

side into giant roundels evocative of

tal plaster relief, suitable for a church or

facade (page 186), which first appeared

ancient medals or coins, all of which are

the formal entrance hall or salon of a

in public at a Christie's sale in 1989.

very appropriate for the commemora-

great British house, especially one that

Both drawings are part of a group of six,

tive function of a wall tomb. This field

might have contained one of Piranesi's

of similar size, date, and subject. 2 All

is surmounted by a frieze of maidens,

extraordinary fireplaces, which also

six include numerous classical motifs,

dressed in antique style with flowing

creatively adapt and reuse various ancient

set among Piranesi's most powerful and

garments, bestowing crowns and festoons

motifs. AN O R E W R O B I SON

extreme visual statements of his lifelong

on two male terms, topped by hints of

belief in the creative artist's freedom—

a monumental inscription. The drawing

Inscription: Piranesi.F.; Bought of Piranesi

and, indeed, the creative artist's need—

is extremely powerful in its bold chisel-

in Rome March 1770 by Joseph Rose

to adapt and change antique motifs for

ing of the large forms in the layered

new and original uses. Not for Piranesi

and symmetrical structure; in its swift

the bloodless classicism copying the

but sure delineation of the figures; and

ancients, or imitating the ancients, or

in its brilliant chiaroscuro from freely

carefully adhering to supposedly ancient

splashed, deep and rich brown wash.

l

rules! That would not be, in his words, "of a creating Genius," as he felt the truly great artist should be.

3

Of the six similar Piranesi drawings

This and the Woodner drawing (page 186) have an extraordinary and continuous provenance from the artist himself. They were both purchased directly from

mentioned, five show facades of build-

Piranesi in 1770 by Joseph Rose, one of

ings; this is the only exception. In format,

the most important eighteenth-century

it is reminiscent of the Renaissance wall

British architect-sculptors in stucco and

and tomb monuments that Piranesi would

plaster.4 Like Robert and James Adam,

have seen in Venice in the great churches

Rose was a higher class of practicing

of the Frari and San Zanipolo. Here

artist who made a Grand Tour to Italy

he has created a magnificent structure by

not only to learn from the ancients but

starting with a sarcophagus resting on

also to gather drawings, models, and

two projecting buttresses. Above, a field

other materials for his subsequent work.

of high-relief profiles of gods or heroes in

Rose even cooperated with Robert Adam on the decoration of many of his finest houses, both in London and in the country. How provocative to think of Rose hoping some day to carve these drawings,

Provenance: Purchased from the artist by Joseph Rose in Rome, 1770; presented to Sir Christopher Sykes, 2d baronet of Sledmere; by descent, sold, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 4 July 1989, no. 104; purchased by David Tunick, New York.

Fantasy of a Magnificent Wall Monument c. 1765, pen and brown ink with brown wash, traces of black chalk and some gray wash 60.6 X 47.2 (23 7 / 8 X l8 9 /16)

Patrons' Permanent Fund 1996.119.1

185

Fantasy of a Facade with Bizarre Ornaments c. 1765, pen and brown ink with brown wash over black chalk 60.1 X 47.2

(23 U /16 X l8 9 /16)

Woodner Collection 1991.182.17

186

i87

Giovanni Battista Piranesi V E N E T I A N , 1720-1778

This drawing shows just how far Piranesi was willing to go to defend the artist's need inventively to re-create classical forms rather than merely to copy or imitate them. He had already announced this theme in the dedication for his first publication, the 1743 Primaparte di architetture^ e prospettive^ and he defended the thesis throughout his life. 1 The initial impression of the drawing is dominated by its size and power and especially by the bizarre combinations of ornaments. In spite of this strangeness, this drawing, like the wall monument (page 185), counts as a highly finished or complete work; in this scale and with his signature, the drawing was intended not as an experiment or a private study but as a formal expression of his art either for presentation or sale. In the later 17508 and early 17608 Piranesi was deeply involved in an international debate among scholars and connoisseurs over the historical priority and relative merits of the architecture of the ancient Greeks versus the Etruscans and the Romans.2 By the mid-i76os, though, Piranesi rose above this Greco-Roman controversy, not changing his preference for the Roman but expanding his positive interest in and use of motifs from many ancient Mediterranean cultures, including Greek and Egyptian as well as Etruscan and Roman of all periods.

Piranesi's final statement of his view, coherent with his lifelong defense of free and creative adaptation, is succinctly stated in the introduction to his 1769 Cammini: An artist, who would do himself honour, and acquire a name, must not content himself

forms. This is achieved here, in spite of the quantity and prominence of bizarre ornaments, by clear emphasis on the vertical bounds of columns and pilasters, by the crisp horizontals separating friezes, and by the sharp edges of cornices. A N D R E W R O B I SON

with copying faithfully the ancients, but studying their works he ought to shew himself of an inventive, and, I had almost said, of a creating Genius; And by prudently combining the Grecian, the Tuscan, and the Egyptian together, he ought to open himself a road to the finding out of new ornaments and new manners. 3

Indeed, this is just what one sees in this drawing: a melange of widespread ancient motifs as well as motifs from what Piranesi considered specifically primitive Etruscan (the "Greek key" and wavepatterned friezes), evocative of Etruscan or Greek (the rigid fluted columns), Egyptian (the ankh symbol), and "later Etruscan" or Roman (the acanthus volutes and specifically the four central human and animal motifs, which are based on ancient Roman carved gems).4 Beyond these individual ancient motifs, the Woodner drawing is a splendid example of Piranesi's bold and swift style of pen work, especially remarkable in the figures on the capitals and on the friezes at bottom and top. His brilliant touches of dark wash model and enhance the forms. Finally, Piranesi always insisted that ornament, regardless of its amount or variety, should be adapted to the basic lines and divisions of architectural

Inscription: Piranesi /; Bought of Piranesi in Rome March 1770 by Joseph Rose

Provenance: Purchased from the artist by Joseph Rose in Rome, 1770; presented to Sir Christopher Sykes, 2d baronet of Sledmere; by descent, sold, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 4 July 1989; purchased by Ian Woodner, New York; by inheritance to his daughters, Andrea and Dian Woodner, New York, 1990.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

188

V E N E T I A N , 1720-1778

Surprisingly, since he was not a painter,

Hadrian built his great villa between A.D.

Piranesi was the most influential Italian artist of the eighteenth century, both in his lifetime and consistently for the two centuries since his death. Indeed, Piranesi's influence is all around us in the grandeur of the interpretation of classical architecture in the city of Washington, especially in Union Station and in the National Gallery's own West Building. Twentieth-century writers have emphasized Piranesi's architectural fantasies, with their strong compositions, romantic freedom, and intense emotion, but his views of Rome earned him the most fame in his lifetime and the most influence for the longest period after his death. For instance, Goethe found Rome disappointing to see in person after knowing Piranesi's views of it, which were much more impressive. One of Piranesi's boldest and finest drawn views of Rome, this work shows part of the ruins of Hadrian's villa at Tivoli. Piranesi was fascinated with the grandeur of these ruins and their indication of ancient magnificence. As early as the 17505 he visited Tivoli to study and sketch, sometimes taking Robert Adam or Charles Louis Clerisseau along. Emperor

118 and 138. The "Canopus" was apparently designed to imitate the Sanctuary of Serapis at Alexandria and decorated in an Egyptian style. Thus, Piranesi's interest in this specific section of the villa may reflect not only his constant theme of the magnificence of ancient Rome (in which he so influenced neoclassicism) and his remarkable ability to convey the grandeur of ruins surviving the onslaught of time and nature (in which he so influenced romanticism), but also his prescience in recognizing and using Egyptian art as a source of motifs for architectural decoration. As with so many of Piranesi's Roman views, this drawing is a fascinating amalgam of accuracy and transformation. Compared with the actual ruins, Piranesi's view enormously enhances the scale by the diminution of figures relative to the architecture, and creates a space that plunges much deeper by showing the building from an angle, a technique he learned from the baroque stage designs of Ferdinando Bibiena. However, Piranesi is quite accurate in the number and arrangement of architectural features, as well as in the character of surfaces—note his annotations to remind himself where the stucco and mosaic are located.

Piranesi did use this drawing to make an etched view of the same size that can be dated c. 1776. Comparing the two shows that his drawing was done in an amazingly spontaneous "shorthand," while the print incorporates a plethora of detail. Contemporary artists such as Hubert Robert, who watched Piranesi at work on views, were astonished at the fiery swiftness of his draftsmanship in exactly such intense sheets as this splendid example. 1 A N D R E W R O B I S O N Provenance: Dr. C. Jessen (Lugt I398a), sold Dorotheum, Vienna, 8 March 1910; purchased by Albertina, Vienna; transferred to Erzherzog Friedrich, 1919; Gustav Nebehay, Vienna; due de Tallyrand, Saint-Brice-sous-Foret; British Rail Pension Fund, London; Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London; private collection, New York; purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Ladislaus von Hoffmann through Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox.

The "Canopus" of the Villa Adriana at Tivoli 1776, red chalk over black chalk 38.9 x 53.9 (l5 5 /i6 x 21 V4) Gift (partial and promised) of Ladislaus and Beatrix von Hoffmann 1994.69.1

189

Jean-Honore Fragonard F R E N C H , 1732-1806

190

Among the most prized drawings by Fragonard, one of the greatest and most versatile draftsmen of the eighteenth century, are the large red chalk landscapes he made during his term as a pensionnaire at the Academic de France in Rome from 1756 to 1761. Particularly brilliant are those he created during the summer of 1760, when he stayed at the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, outside Rome, with his friend and patron, Jean-Claude-Richard, abbe de Saint-Non. Already accustomed to making landscape drawings directly from the motif as part of the curriculum at the academy in Rome, Fragonard seized the opportunity to refine his vision of landscape and to capture in unforgettable fashion the peculiarly poetic combination of tamed and untamed nature he found in the long-neglected formal gardens at Tivoli.1

That grand vision of nature continued in the drawings he made of other locations in and around Rome at about the same time, including this impressive view of cypresses in a garden that has yet to be identified. This one shares with the Tivoli views a number of characteristic

The acquisition of this spectacular view brought to the National Gallery's collection of drawings not only a Fragonard that completes in the most dramatic way the Gallery's holdings of his art, but also a landscape masterpiece that ranks among the very greatest in the collection.

features, including the sun-filled panoramic spaces, the towering cypresses, the wealth of picturesque details, and the frothy masses of foliage that threaten to overwhelm the park's walls and paths. It is closest in both mood and composition to one Tivoli drawing in particular, The Fine Group of Cypresses at the Villa d'Este, with a View of the Fountain of the Organ, in which the cypresses form a dense, dark mass silhouetted against the light-filled

MARGARET

park, where tiny figures are dwarfed by the huge trees.2 In both drawings are found a similarly rich texturing of every surface, the same delicate nuancing of the shadows, and comparably nervous sawtooth strokes and zigzags that energize the forms and animate the scene— all typical features of Fragonard's hand.

MORGAN GRASSELLI

Provenance: H. Dreux, sale, Paris, 3—4 February 1870, no. 43; J.-F. Maherault, sale, Paris, 27-29 May 1880, no. 52; M. Lemarie; Marius Paulme, 1921 (Lugt 1910), sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 13 May 1929, no. 82; Richard Owen, Paris; John Nicholas Brown, Providence, R.I., 1929; David Tunick, 1989.

A Stand of Cypresses in an Italian Park c. 1760, red chalk 2

3-5 x 37-7 (91/4 x H7/8) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1991.4.1

191

The Well-Loved Mother 1765, pastel with red, black, and white chalks and stumping on light brown paper 44 X 32.2

(iy 5 /16 X I2 U /16)

New Century Gift Committee 2000.15.1

192

193

Jean-Baptiste Greuze F R E N C H , 1725-180$

This tour de force pastel is a study for the

Diderot went on to praise the drawing

title figure in Greuze's painting The WellLoved Mother (private collection, Madrid), in which the materfamilias is both pleased and overwhelmed by the enthusiastic attentions of her adoring children. Exhibited at the Salon of 1765, together with a sketch of the projected composition, the study was critiqued by Denis Diderot, who remarked upon the unexpectedly erotic effect of the pose and expression of the mother when removed from the context of the composition:

specifically for its fidelity to nature and the "almost incredible gradations of tone in the forehead, and from the forehead to the cheeks, and from the cheeks toward the throat." 2 The model here is Greuze's young and voluptuous wife, Anne-Gabrielle Babuti, though in the final painting, which was completed in 1769 and had become by then a group portrait of the family of the marquis de Labordc, the mother's features are those of the marquise.

Do you sec this beautiful fishwife with her

Greuze was one of the great French draftsmen of the eighteenth century,

generously proportioned form and her head thrown back? The paleness of her face, the disorder of her head-dress, the mingled expression of pain and pleasure on her countenance betray a feeling which is swreeter to experience than seemly to paint. . . .That half-opened mouth, those swimming eyes, that attitude of abandonment, that full throat, that voluptuous combination of pain and pleasure make all honest women blush and lower their eyes at this place in the Salon. And yet, in the finished picture by its side, we have the same attitude, the same eyes, the same throat, the same combination of passions, and not one of these ladies sees anything in it to offend her modesty. 1

though his virtuosity tends to be somewhat underestimated today because of his predilection for moralizing and saccharine subjects. This bravura study, however, shows just what an extraordinary draftsman he could be. Especially brilliant is the contrast between the delicately blended pastels in the face and the bolder, more loosely descriptive strokes of both chalk and stump in the cap and bust. By any measure, this is an outstanding new masterpiece for the National Gallery, not only improving its representation of Greuze's art, but also enhancing the holdings of French eighteenth-century drawings in general and the collection of pastels in particular.

Equally remarkable as an objet d'art in its own right is the ornately carved and gilded frame that came with the drawing. It may well be the original, for both the style and the many allegorical references to nurturing, abundance, and self-sacrifice are suited to the time and subject of the study. MARGARET

MORGAN GRASSELLI

Provenance: Jacques Doucet, sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 5 June 1912, no. 73; Francois Coty, sale, Galerie Charpen tier, Paris, 30 November 1936, no. 21; private collection, France, and by descent, sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 15 November 1999, no. 59; Thomas Agnew & Sons, London.

Francois-Andre Vincent F R E N C H , 1746-1816

194

Rarely does a single work capture so completely the essence of an age as does this brilliant drawing of a young artist and his companion. In this charming couple is concentrated a whole tale of French elegance, taste, style, and gallantry, all conveyed with the inexpressibly graceful touch and nuance of a great draftsman. It comes as a complete surprise, then, that this excellent drawing is not the work of one of the famous "names" of the eighteenth century, such as Antoine Watteau, Fran9ois Boucher, or Jean-Honore Fragonard, but rather of a young artist, scarcely more than a student, who had learned his craft in the waning years of Louis XV and would not long afterward become a leading proponent of neoclassicism. Francois-Andre Vincent studied with Joseph-Marie Vien in Paris from about 1760 to 1768, when he won the Rome prize competition sponsored annually by the Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture. After three years in Paris at the Ecole royale des eleves proteges, he then traveled to Rome to become a pemionnaire at the Academie de France from 1771 to 1775. During his stay there, in 1773 and 1774, he met Jean-Honore Fragonard and his patron P.-J.-O. Bergeret de Grancourt, who spent several months in Rome, and accompanied them on a brief trip to Naples. As The Drawing Lesson clearly demonstrates, Vincent was greatly influenced by Fragonard, especially in his use of the brown wash technique that Fragonard

favored at that time. Vincent so completely absorbed the lessons of Fragonard's drawings that a number of his unsigned compositions came to be attributed to Fragonard himself and have only recently been returned to Vincent's oeuvre.1 Indeed, were it not for the signature at lower left on The Drawing Lesson^ it would undoubtedly have been assigned long ago to Fragonard's hand. The composition originated in a painting made by Vincent in 1774 in Rome and exhibited in 1777 at the Salon in Paris (now private collection, New York).2 The painting had probably been acquired by Bergeret almost at the moment of its completion on 10 March 1774, and perhaps because the painting had so quickly left his possession, Vincent seems to have taken the opportunity offered by its exhibition in 1777 to repeat the composition in drawing form. The poses and setting remained identical, but some subtle alterations in the expressions and physiognomies changed the visual impact of the composition and gave both the man and the woman a different, more youthful appearance. The strong individualization of the sitters in the painting led to considerable speculation as to who they were, but no one suggestion has yet met with universal approval.3 The drawing may have been intended to be a more generalized representation of the same pair, or Vincent may have chosen to change their identifications and portray two different people. Comparison with a youthful Self-Portrait by Vincent, formerly attributed to Fragonard (Musee Frago-

nard, Grasse), makes one wonder whether the young draftsman in the drawing could also be a self-portrait, for there are some striking similarities in the shapes of the face, eyes, mouth, and chin. The question then arises as to who his female companion may have been. (Vincent did not marry until 1800, though he knew his future wife, Adelaide Labille-Guiard, from her childhood and had been one of her teachers. He also enjoyed a close friendship with another artist, Marie-Gabrielle Capet. Neither of these women seems to resemble the young woman in the drawing, however.4) Whoever the sitters may have been, the overall importance and brilliance of the drawing are crystal clear, for its singular appeal lies in the gorgeous execution and the perfect blend of gesture, expression, pose, and setting. This drawing is one of the great masterpieces of French eighteenth-century draftsmanship, and as such immediately ranks as one of the glories of the National Gallery's drawing collection. MARGARET MORGAN GRASSELLI

Provenance: Paul Cailleux, Paris (stamp at lower right, not in Lugt), and by descent; Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, London, 1997; private collection; Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, 2000; private collection.

The Drawing Lesson 1

777 > brush and brown wash over graphite 32.5

X 37.7 ( l 2 1 3 / 1 6 X I4 1 3 /16)

Gift (partial and promised) of an anonymous donor

195

Etienne-Louis Boullee

196

One of the great visionary architects of the Age of Enlightenment, Boullee exerted a profound influence on the course of French architecture well into the nineteenth century, even though few of the buildings he designed were ever built. Trained first as a painter with JeanBaptiste-Marie Pierre and then as an architect with Jacques Francois Blondel, he quickly aligned himself with the embryonic neoclassical movement. He was an inspired teacher and a distinguished academician as well as a founding member of the Institut de France. In the late 1780$, he wrote the treatise Architecture^ essai sur I'art, which remained unpublished until 1953.

FRENCH, 1728-1799

Between 1780 and 1782, when Boullee was controller of buildings at the Ecole militaire in Paris, he produced a number of drawings related to at least three different variant designs for a metropolitan church. 1 This one, with a seemingly endless nave and vast vaults that utterly dwarf the central altar, is thought to belong to Boullee's earliest work on the project.2 It illustrates to elegant effect his view that the regularity and symmetry of geometrical volumes, which are imbued with infinite variety by the play of light, are the basis of beauty Especially dramatic here are the rich optical effects created through the use of repetitious, almost mesmerizing patterns of ceiling coffers and row upon row of Corinthian columns. The cloud-borne hosts hovering in the dome, which appear only in this variant of the design, add an unexpected touch of whimsy to a project that is in every other respect a perfect model of neoclassical grandeur.

Boullee's drawings are extraordinarily rare outside France, with only a handful gracing American public and private collections. This lone representative of his work in the National Gallery is an outstanding example of his vision and style. It is a key work in the Gallery's substantial holdings of French eighteenthcentury drawings as well as in its growing collection of great architectural renderings. M A R G A R E T M O R G A N G R A S S E L L I Provenance: E. Terry; J. Kugel, 1972; Lodewijk Houthakker, Amsterdam, by 1974; Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox, Ltd., London,1991.

Perspective View of the Interior of a Metropolitan Church 1780/1781, pen and black ink with gray and brown washes over traces of graphite on cream paper, with a framing line in brown ink 59.4x83.9(23 3 / 8 x33 1 /i 6 ) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1991.185.1

197

John Robert Cozens B R I T I S H , 1752-1799

198

J°nn Robert Cozens set out for Italy in 1782 on a tour that was to last seventeen months. Engaged by William Beckford of Fonthill Abbey fame 1 to record the most spectacular views and buildings, he produced seven sketchbooks, now in the collection of the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. This watercolor from 1790 is based on a drawing from one of those sketchbooks, a scene made from the Gulf of Salerno, dated 29 September 1782.2 It was Cozens' practice to use sketches from

While Alexander sought the imaginary and ideal in landscape, John Robert sought the topographical, but with such penetrating insight that his work rises above mere description. Such is the case with this watercolor, made eight years after the indicated sketch. The friezelike line of buildings along the foreground shore is reduced to pure geometry and stands in vivid contrast to the rugged cliffs that soar behind it. Outline is assigned a subordinate role, while color, nearly

in the case of Thomas Girtin and Joseph Mallord William Turner, both of whom knew Cozens' work and made copies after it. The National Gallery has one other watercolor by John Robert Cozens, another Italian view of a more solemn nature than this light-filled sheet. The present watercolor is one our most resplendent of the period and confirms what Constable wrote, that "Cozens was all poetry."4

life as the basis for finished watercolors and to make multiple versions of his most popular subjects. The view of Cetara, a picturesque fishing village on the Amalfi coast, was executed in four versions, all in watercolor.3 Cozens was born in London, the only son of the distinguished artist and drawing master Alexander Cozens. The elder Cozens spent much of his career occupied with pedagogical systems for inventing and constructing landscape compositions.

monochromatic and built up stroke by stroke, is used for the creation of mass and tone. The composition is punctuated with a select number of restrained details, such as the darkly shadowed arches of the buildings and the elongated reserve of white paper that stretches along the shoreline. Topographical recording was here elevated to the realm of true feeling. Cozens is justly famous for his entire oeuvre, but his Italian watercolors are especially coveted. His important rank within the history of British land-

Provenance: Dr. Thomas Calvert Girtin, Great Britain; George W Girtin, Great Britain; Thomas Girtin, Great Britain; Tom Girtin, Great Britain, 1991; Leger Galleries Ltd., London.

scape painting is undisputed, and his influence on the next generation of landscapists is well documented, particularly

JUDITH BRODIE

Cetara on the Gulf of Salerno 1790, watercolor over graphite 36.6 x 52.7 (l43/8 x 203/4)

Gift in honor of Paul Mellon by the Patrons' Permanent Fund with additional support from Dick and Ritchie Scaife, Catherine Mellon Conover, Rachel Mellon Walton, Mr. and Mrs. James M. Walton, and an anonymous donor 1992.19.1

199

Waterfalls in a Mountain Forest 1797, watercolor over pen and gray ink and graphite on two joined sheets 35.2

X 30.5

( l 3 7 / 8 X 12)

New Century Fund 1997.25.1

200

201

Johann Georg von Dillis G E R M A N , 1759-1841

Dillis was among the most innovative landscape artists working in Munich during the romantic period. His artistic aims were far in advance of his contemporaries', and his influence was considerable, yet his work is scarcely known outside his native land. Although the same can be said for numerous German artists of the period, Dillis' standing is further complicated by the fact that nearly his entire graphic output, an estimated ten thousand works, is in German public collections. 1 Consequently, American collections rarely include his drawings, particularly an example as dazzling and beautifully preserved as the present one, the first work in any medium by Dillis to enter the National Gallery's collection. After taking his formal art training at the Munich academy and working as a private drawing instructor, Dillis was appointed supervisor of Munich's Gemaldegalerie in 1790 and, later, its director. This position allowed him to travel widely throughout his lifetime, expand-

ing his knowledge of European art, in particular the English romantic movement that so influenced his own work. Time and again, the artist was able to capture the momentary qualities of light and color with breathtaking skill. In part, he accomplished this by working out-of-doors, carefully observing nature. He was also inspired by the English watercolorists, but above all he seems to have been endowed with an intuitive ability to paint fluently—free from academic restraints. Dillis was able to grasp the immediacy of a scene, enhancing it in the present work by literally immersing the viewer in the setting, with little or no distance to establish any sense of reserve. Monochrome painting, particularly in sepia wash, was held in high regard in Dillis' day, but not so painting in watercolors. Dillis was one of the first German artists to promote transparent watercolor as an independent art form. In the National Gallery work, Dillis started out with a monochromatic gray wash, followed by luminous watercolor. Golor commences in the upper right quadrant of

the sheet and spills downward, mirroring both the fall of water and the fall of light. As in nature, light transforms shadow into radiant color. An outstanding watercolor by Dillis is a significant addition to the Gallery's collection of German romantic drawings. This artist was foremost in promoting the watercolor medium and establishing a style for realistic draftsmanship among Munich landscapists, and his work prefigures the realism of later German artists such as Adolph Menzel. More important, however, the present sheet possesses all the qualities one would want in a superb landscape by Dillis: marvelous atmosphere, lustrous color, and fluid brushwork. J U D I T H B R O D I E Provenance: HD (Lugt undescribed); Galerie Arnoldi-Livie, Munich.

Louis-Leopold Boilly

2O2

Louis-Leopold Boilly's The Public in the Salon of the Louvre^ Viewing the Painting of the "Sacre" depicts a crowd before Emperor and Empress, or Sacre, a monumental painting by Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon's court painter. The canvas was placed on display in the Louvre in 1808 and provided the public its first opportunity to view (by proxy) the magnificent spectacle of Napoleon's 1804 coronation. 1 The event served as a perfect vehicle for Boilly, whose interest in picturing audiences culminated in complex and sophisticated paintings of life in contemporary France. By staging groups of viewers looking at viewers, this drawing has the effect of telescoping inward. We ourselves, forming the first group, look toward the visitors Boilly depicted at the Louvre, who in turn look toward the audience in David's the Sacre, who themselves look toward the participants in the coronation spectacle. Boilly's drawing provides a window into the urban middle class in Napoleonic France. The full spectrum of Parisian society, from workers to bourgeois, from young to old, gathers to take in the exhibition. Such a convivial representation of the masses reinforces the themes of unity and social diversity that were a liberal ideal of the French Revolution. Boilly's crisply rendered details emphasize the variety of fashions of the period: ladies' gowns, gentlemen's hats, children's attire, and hairstyles all contribute to the rich array. Figures, too, are characterized by a

F R E N C H , 1761-184$

wide variety of poses, gestures, and facial features. Scholars have scrutinized Boilly's works for portraits of the artist's circle, for the artist often used his friends and family as models. However, he was more inclined to select striking faces and use them for effect. Indeed, as an experienced portraitist, Boilly was a shrewd observer of physiognomy who also developed a formidable skill as a caricaturist. Among his most popular works was a humorous set of lithographic caricatures, Les Grimaces^ published in 1823. The present sheet is the last preparatory compositional sketch for a painting of the same title. 2 Boilly worked out his complex arrangements of figures in drawings such as this, often constructing his compositions from studies of individual figures and figure groups. Here, Boilly laid out areas lightly in graphite, then rendered outlines with pen and ink, and finally used carefully controlled washes in restrained tones to describe luminous form. By structuring his composition in a few strong horizontal bands, he gave the work a simple abstract base on which he could anchor this complex figure group. The neoclassical style ascendant in French art of the time is clearly represented by the theatrical arrangement of figures, restrained color, and emphasis on line. Boilly's father was a master sculptor as well as an art dealer in La Bassee, a provincial town in northern France. Growing up in the studio, the young Boilly taught himself his craft, eventually building his trade as a painter of intimate scenes and portraits in the towns of Douai and Arras before moving to Paris

in 1785. In 1794, at the height of the French Revolution, his genre scenes of bourgeois gallantry were denounced by Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Wicar, of the Societe populaire et republicain des arts. As a means of displaying loyalty to the spirit of the Revolution, Boilly created The Triumph of Marat', a homage to the wellknown French revolutionary. This painting marked Boilly's shift to complex, multifigure compositions such as The Public in the Salon of the Louvre^ Viewing the Painting of the "Sacre" and signaled his turn toward a more public art that concentrated on the depiction of Parisian life. Boilly enjoyed success in the Salon and was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor in 1833, but his work fell out of fashion after the restoration of the monarchy. Today, he is recognized as one of the most important early recorders of urban life in Napoleonic France. CHARLES RITCHIE

Provenance: Antoine-Vincent Arnault, sale, Coutelier, Paris, 15 — 18 April 1835, lot 20; W.W. Hope, sale, Pouchet, Paris, 12 June 1855, lot 32; Eugene Tondu, apparently his sale, Fillet, Paris, 24 April 1865; Emile Delagarde, by 1930; E.M. Hermes; sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, 28 November 1984, lot i; purchased by Ian Woodner, New York; by inheritance to his daughters, Andrea and Dian Woodner, New York, 1990.

The Public in the Salon of the Louvre, Viewing the Painting of the "Sacre" Begun 1808, pen and black ink with gray wash and watercolor over traces of graphite 59.5 x 80.3 (23 7/i6 x 315/s) Woodner Collection 1991.182.8

203

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres F R E N C H , 1780-1867

204

During his four-year Prix de Rome fellowship, Ingres frequently crafted pencil portraits as gifts for French colonists in Rome. The beauty of these images brought renown and commissions, often from British tourists coveting mementos. Although these sales were a financial blessing for the artist (who needed money after his stipend expired), they were also a chore and a distraction from his greatest enthusiasm, history painting. Ingres probably never imagined his drawings in graphite would one day stand among the great portraits of Western art. Dr. Louis Martinet was drawn in Paris not long after Ingres' return from his first Italian sojourn. The two probably met and became friends in Italy in 1821 — 1822 while the doctor was personal physician to Prince Francisco Borghese.1 Martinet was born in Paris in 1795 and was awarded his medical degree in 1818. After his tour in Italy, he assumed directorship of the Hotel-Dieu faculty clinic in Paris and became editor-in-chief of the Revue medicale. He also distinguished himself as a chevalier in the Legion of Honor. Late in life Martinet moved from Paris to Vannes in Brittany. Unmarried and childless, he hoped to rekindle a relationship with a widow whose father had forbidden their marriage in his youth. 2 Martinet died not long afterward in 1875.

Ingres' drawn portraits come from a long tradition of French miniatures, which emerged with Francois Clouet (1522 or before—1572) in the court of Francis I. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, tools and materials, particularly graphite pencils, were developing rapidly Britain's blockade of France in the 17905 cut off natural graphite supplies and sparked a competition to find a way to manufacture high quality pencils from inferior graphite. Improved methods soon yielded a greater variety of pencils and a more consistent product that artists could exploit in sophisticated ways. Ingres, for example, frequently used two drawing pencils. In this work, he executed large sections, including numerous pentimenti in Martinet's right arm, in a harder, grayish pencil and accented other areas, details in the curling hair, with softer, blacker graphite. Ingres also had at his disposal a new and varied range of machine-made artist's papers, some with fine surfaces such as the smooth, wove sheet seen here. Its toothy topography contains raised fibers that grasp and meld with the particulate graphite. When all but the heaviest pressure is applied to the pencil, networks of white valleys remain in the terrain of the paper, revealing a luminous darkness that mimics the shadows we see in the everyday world. Further, the artist could create delicate blind indentions in the soft paper. This linear scoring of the paper has recently been observed in Ingres' drawings; 3 for example, Dr. Martinet's left eye is accentuated by indentations above the eyebrow and along the upper nose. The artist employed an actual shadow

by using relief to enhance the presence of rendered form. Such effects are most effective when works are displayed, as they then were, on table easels with side lighting from windows. To create yet another effect, such as the reflected glint in an iris, Ingres gently cut into the surface of the paper, slicing fibers out of darkened areas in order to make exquisite pinpoints of light. Ingres' portrait of Martinet was translated to lithograph by the Italian engraver Luigi Calamatta, a close friend of Martinet's as well as a well-known engraver of Ingres' work. For many years, the drawing of Dr. Martinet was only known in the print form. 4 CHARLES

R I T C H IE

Inscription (lower right): Ingres a Son cher Docteur/et ami. 1826. Provenance: Louis Martinet [died 1875], Vannes; prior to 1870 given to Goupil Doctor's College (possibly Dr. Auguste Goupil [died 1877], Paris); no. 118 in an unidentified French auction catalogue (from old mount); Arthur Veil-Picard [died 1944], Paris, after 1903; by inheritance to his son, Arthur Veil-Picard, Paris, until 1954; purchased by Georges Seligmann, New York, 1954; purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va., 1954.

Dr. Louis Martinet 1826, graphite 32.3 x 24.7 (l2 n /l6 x 9 3 A)

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon I995.47-50

205

Piem-Franfois-Henri Labrouste 1852, graphite 31 X 23.5

(l2 3 /16 X 9 l /4)

Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 1995.47.52

206

207

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres F R E N C H , 1780-1867

Architect Henri Labrouste was born in Paris in 1801. He enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1819 and won the Prix de Rome in 1824. During his Roman tenure from 1824 to 1830, he developed his concept of romantic rationalism, which deems architecture to be a form of communication expressing the beliefs of the society that creates it. Such values echo the rational mind-set and technical sophistication of the mid-nineteenth century. Labrouste opened an atelier in 1832 upon his return to Paris. His progressive ideals were extremely popular with his students, though at odds with the conservative Academie des Beaux-Arts. His first important project, the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve in Paris, was designed and built between 1843 and 1850 and is hailed as the first integration of cast and wrought iron construction in a major public edifice. The library reading room is often championed by modernists as an early example of vanguard industrial technology injected into monumental architecture. In it, thin, cast iron, Ionic columns carry iron arches with ironreinforced plaster barrel vaults along two identical aisles. Current critical perspectives have viewed Labrouste's work as more imaginatively functional than inherently beautiful. In 1855, Labrouste was appointed distinguished architect of the Bibliotheque nationale, and he subsequently made a bid for membership in the Academie des Beaux-Arts. He was supported by Ingres, although no seat was vacated until 1867, after the artist's death. The Bibliotheque nationale redesign project preoccupied Labrouste until he died in 1875.

Labrouste sat for his portrait, probably at the Bibliotheque nationale, in May 1852, after more than one hundred of his followers had commissioned Ingres to draw the architect. An account of the sitting has come down to us from the young artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir through the dealer Ambroise Vollard. Renoir, as a boy of eleven, had been sent to the Bibliotheque to copy illustrations for ceramic decorations. While there, he saw a crowd surrounding Ingres and his sitter. Renoir watched Ingres draw quickly. "He was holding a pad of paper, he made a sketch, threw it away, began another, and finally, in one stroke, he produced a drawing as if he'd spent eight days on it."1 The fluidity and speed of Ingres' execution can be sensed in the light skating lines that network the Labrouste drawing as pentimenti. For

on only one point at a time and are drawn naturally to detail. The intricate and complex structure of the face, holding the eyes as windows to the soul, is ever the target in the portrait. 2 The body remains ancillary. Ingres must have recognized the effectiveness of his fusion of the economical style of the figure with the polished style of the head. While twenty-four years separate Ingres' portraits of Dr. Louis Martinet (see page 205) and of Labrouste, judging which is the earlier work by style is nearly impossible. Ingres maintained the highest quality in these drawings without adjusting his method in the slightest. Nine of the eleven drawings by Ingres in the National Gallery's collection are portraits. One is a rare self-portrait also given by Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.

example, the artist proposed various locations for the armchair's forward arm. Labrouste strikes a meditative pose with finger to cheek, a gesture found in many of Ingres' portraits, including the masterful 1845 painting Vicomtesse Otbenin d'Haussonville^ nee Louise-Albertine de Broglie (The Frick Collection, New York) as well as the 1859 canvas of his wife, Madame J.-A.-D. Ingres, nee Delphine Ramel (Oskar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur). Labrouste's arms are locked in a diamond formation, with his head at the pinnacle. The viewer follows the path from the head to the shoulder to each elbow and back to the head, continually returning to the face with its nuances of highlight and shadow. This hierarchy echoes the eye's physiology and the way we see. Vision is most acute at the center of the field of view, at the fovea, a structure near the center of the retina. Our eyes can focus

CHARLES RITCHIE

Inscription (lower right): a Messieurs / les Elepes de /Monsieur Labrouste / architecte. /Ingres Del/1852 Provenance: Henri Labrouste [died 1875, Fontainebleau]; by inheritance to his daughter, Madame Frederic Simon, nee Anne-Marie-Julie Labrouste [living in Versailles until 1926]; sale, Paris, Hotel Drouot, 14 June 1946, lot 8; purchased by Gallery Wildenstein, New York; purchased by T. Edward Hanley, Bradford, Pa., 1950—1968; purchased by Eugene Victor Thaw, New York; purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Washington, D.C., 1969.

Caspar David Friedrich G E R M A N , 1774-1840

208

Friedrich is widely regarded today as the greatest of the German romantic artists. And yet his work was virtually ignored after his death, despite his position at the heart of the romantic movement in Dresden and his profound influence on German romanticism as a whole. His spare, sometimes eerie images must have struck nineteenth-century viewers as remote, even inaccessible, but to eyes and minds schooled in twentieth-century symbolism and modernism, Friedrich's works resonate. Friedrich's artistic approach to landscape and his fascination with the isolated object were not without precedent. The austere beauty of the north German countryside was an attraction for other artists, including Goethe, his acquaintance and sometime supporter, who had drawn individual clouds and rocks as early as the lyyos. What sets Friedrich apart from his contemporaries is his uncommon vision of the commonplace. He dismissed conventionally picturesque sites for those that seemed emblematic, and he invested them with an aura of devotion. Whether or not one accepts the

prevailing symbolic reading of Friedrich's images,1 the penetrating emotion of works such as this one cannot be denied. Hazy, luminous moonlight casts its glow on a rocky but otherwise barren shore, a subject of pure simplicity with implications of larger, more momentous concepts. The peacefulness and silence are almost chilling, and the effect is transcendent. Until he was twenty, Friedrich lived in a German village near the Baltic coast. After completion of a four-year art course in Copenhagen, he settled in Dresden, a then-emerging center for romantic literature and art. Friedrich's role was pivotal in advancing that development, but he drew on the city's artistic traditions as well, including the practice of painting in sepia wash. 2 Indeed long before he painted in oils, Friedrich made sepia works,3 which he continued to produce throughout his lifetime, particularly later when his deteriorating health made oil painting less feasible. The site of the present work is probably the beach of Stubbenkammer on the Baltic island of Riigen. From 1801 to 1826 Friedrich made repeated excursions to Riigen, where he concentrated on making precise studies from nature—cliffs, tree

trunks, rock formations—which became a permanent archive of motifs. Paintings and watercolors such as this one were based on these studies, then composed and refined in the studio. The motif of rocks on a shore is one that Friedrich explored again and again, typically with figures looking out to the distant horizon. This work is notable for the absence of figures. Indeed, the rocks themselves seem to be the dramatis personae. Because most of the paintings and drawings of Germany's greatest romantic artist are preserved in his native country and in Russia,4 it is rare to find drawings by Friedrich, particularly ones of this outstanding quality, in America. This wondrous work is by far the greatest German romantic drawing in the National Gallery's collection. J U D I T H B R O D I E Provenance: Professor E. Ehlers, Gottingen, by 1902; sale, Leipzig, C.G. Boerner, 1935, no. 84; Neff Collection, Stuttgart; C.G. Boerner, Diisseldorf

Moonrise on an Empty Shore 1837/1839, sepia washes over graphite with original black ink border 25.2

X 39.5

(915/16 X 15 !/2)

Patrons' Permanent Fund 1992.11.1

209

Samuel Palmer

2IO

This vivid watercolor by Samuel Palmer, one of nineteenth-century England's most gifted landscape artists, offers a view that is both peaceful and intensely charged. The scene is a harvest landscape, probably set in the countryside around Kent. Colorfully attired women glean stray stalks from the field while men pile sheaves onto a horse-drawn cart. A violet-blue storm looms in the distance, prompting them to cover, and hence protect, their harvest. In classic repoussoir fashion, two trees are positioned to the right, their leaves, stirred by a sudden gust of wind, reflecting an eerie, almost white-hot light. Watercolor is a medium well suited to capturing the fleeting effects of nature, but to fully exploit this medium's potential requires the sensitivity of an artist such as Palmer. The near electric energy that fuels the present work takes its power from the sky, where Palmer tempered his loose handling of broad washes by layering on strokes of color, a technique akin to Turner's but in conception closer to Constable's. The color in the narrow middle-ground band is fractured and iridescent, while in the foreground, Palmer paid exacting attention to texture

B R I T I S H , 18O5-1881

and illuminated the harvest scene in a light that is positively golden. Thus the transparent washes that convey light and atmosphere in the upper half of the sheet are countered by opaque color in the lower half, beautifully capturing the intangible nature of sky and the palpable quality of land. Palmer is perhaps best known for his early visionary works made in Shoreham from 1827 to 1832. In the mid-i830s he made a shift toward greater naturalism, and from about 1840 onward, in keeping with the grander designs of exhibition watercolors, Palmer favored intensely bright color and expanded scale. He also painted in a more tightly wrought manner with a tendency toward mixing watercolor with gouache, gum arabic, and other media in order to achieve the richness of oil paint. The present work from Palmer's midcareer is such an example; nevertheless, it is exceptional for uniting the freedom of his early work with the brilliant color and painstaking finish of his later work. Harvesting reveals a genuine appreciation of nature and a near meteorological understanding of atmosphere. Palmer worked almost exclusively on paper, specializing in watercolors, pen and ink drawings, and etchings. The National Gallery has three of his watercolors as well as a choice group

of his etchings. The watercolors comprise a visionary work from the artist's early Shoreham period donated by Paul Mellon; an exquisite Wales riverscape from about 1835, promised by Malcolm Wiener; and this beautiful work from about fifteen years later. With its mastery of atmosphere and ability to stir the senses, Harvesting is an outstanding contribution to the Gallery's collection of British watercolors. j u D i T H B R O D I E Provenance: A.H. Palmer, the artist's son; C.H.T. Hawkins by 1904; sale, London, Christie, Manson & Woods, 20 February 1928, no. 47; Robert Dunthorne & Son, London; sale, London, Christie, Manson & Woods, 26 July 1929, no. 31; Vicars, London; Royal Artillery Institution, Woolwich; sale, London, Sotheby's, 27 July 1960, no. 77; Agnew's, London; Mrs. Gilbert Troxell, New Haven, Conn., until 1987; Agnew's, London; British private collection; Agnew's, London.

Harvesting c. 1851, watercolor, gouache, and shell gold over graphite, with areas of gum arabic and scratching-out on paperboard 37.8 x 51.5 (i47/s x 201/4) Gift of The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston 1997.104.1

211

Rene de Gas (recto) 1855, graphite 30.5 x 23.7 (12 x 95/i6) Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 1995.47.32.3

212

213

Edgar Degas F R E N C H , 1834-1917

Brilliant as a painter and sculptor, Edgar Degas was no less distinguished when working on paper, as a printmaker and as a draftsman accomplished in an impressive range of media. Degas' drawings of the mid-18508 include studies from the model, mainly the male nude; copies of paintings and sculpture including works after Botticelli and Michelangelo; and affectionate portraits of his brothers, sisters, and other family members.1 Exemplary of the last category is this lovely graphite portrait of Degas' youngest sibling, Rene de Gas, drawn when the subject was ten years old and the artist, twenty-one. It is one of many studies Degas made in 1855/1856 that are related to an oil portrait now in the Smith College Museum of Art, North Hampton, Massachusetts.2 Rene described the process, remembering "that when he came home from school, he would barely have put away his books when Edgar would get hold of him and make him pose."3 Degas' early family portraits reflect the artist's profound admiration for Italian Renaissance and mannerist portraiture (which he studied both through originals at the Louvre and in reproduction) and for earlier nineteenth-century

French paintings, particularly portraits by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (whom Degas met the year Rene de Gas was drawn) and the art of Gustave Courbet. These interests coalesce in a drawing such as Rene de Gas. The three-quarter length, three-quarter frontal pose mirrors Italian portraits, such as those by Bronzino, for example. Degas' use of the linear graphite medium, in which he rendered his brother's head more fully than other elements of the composition with particular emphasis on his gaze, reflects the young artist's interest in Ingres. By contrast, areas of delicate tone throughout the beautifully structured sheet, including suggestions of a mantelpiece and details of patterned wallpaper in the background, provide the compositional coherence Degas admired in Courbet.4 Degas' complex handling of graphite permitted him not only to achieve diversity of line but to create tonal effects through hatching and crosshatching. He also used the side of his tool rather than the point to create broad areas and, possibly, employed a stump to create more generalized surface tone. That this is an exceedingly skillful and assured drawing for so young an artist is readily apparent, for example, in the contrast between Rene's strong fingers and the soft formless gloves he holds in

his hand. However, it was not effortlessly accomplished: after setting down his initial marks, Degas virtually revised or reinforced every one of them, carefully reworking the sheet as he sought the perfection of form. The verso of Rene de Gas bears lifelike studies of feet drawn in graphite, presumably also in 1855. Among Mr. and Mrs. Mellon's extensive gifts to the National Gallery is another portrait, also dating to 1855, entitled Rene de Gas. This small bust-length oil, like the Gallery's graphite drawing, is related to the Smith College portrait. R U T H E . F I N E Provenance: Rene De Gas; Marcel Guerin, Paris; Richard S. Davis, Minneapolis, Minn.; Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va., 1963.

Charles Emile Jacque F R E N C H , 1813-1894

2I4

Charles Emile Jacque's early reputation rested largely on his productive career as a printmaker. 1 Known for his idealized rural genre scenes, the Paris-born artist seriously turned his attention to painting in the 18408, but continued to make prints throughout his career. The rich landscapes of seventeenth-century Dutch artists, Aelbert Cuyp, Jan van Goyen, and Jacob van Ruisdael, and dramatic picturesque views of the French countryside by Georges Michel (1763-1843) sparked his enthusiasm for landscape painting. 2 These interests paralleled those of artists associated with the emerging Barbizon aesthetic, including Jean-Fran£ois Millet, Charles Daubigny, and Theodore Rousseau, who rejected the painting traditions of classicism and romanticism and turned their attention to the direct study of nature. They preferred the rustic countryside of Barbizon, a village north of the forest of Fontainebleau, to the noise and squalor of Paris. Their work was enormously admired by Jacque, and in 1849, along with Millet, he moved to the country as well.3 The tranquil pastoral surroundings of Barbizon profoundly inspired the subjects that Jacque would draw upon for the rest of his life. His passion for this new setting, its natural beauty and homespun residents, provided an important

turning point in his career. While he continued to explore the subject of farm life, his interest in the shepherds and shepherdesses tending their flocks, as seen in The Shepherdess, also evolved, and his mature style took shape. Jacque won medals for paintings in the Paris Salon in 1861 and 1864, and in 1867 he received the Legion of Honor. Such recognition led to commercial success both inside France and beyond its borders. The Shepherdess, a beautifully colored pastel from the height of Jacque's artistic maturity, is a stunning example of Jacque's creative energy and confident use of the medium. The drawing reveals his immense drafting skills, in particular, his talent for depicting farm animals, a subject much admired in mid-nineteenthcentury French realist art and one for which he was renowned. His seemingly effortless handling, loose and vigorous, of the pastel medium lends a sense of spontaneity to this bucolic scene of a young peasant girl taking a moment to rest from her labor while her dog keeps careful watch over her flock. Using brown paper to advantage, Jacque worked the drawing in a range of greens and browns, with touches of accent colors, notably, the woman's blue apron and yellow scarf. Jacque's careful observation of nature is evident in the individualized character of the sheep and the diversity of gestural markings describing the textural variety of the foreground grasses. The beautifully drawn grove of tall trees

in the middle ground draws the eye back to the rugged scenery and huge expanse of sky, which, rapidly sketched, adds to a sense of immediacy. The sensitive play of light and shadow holds foreground to background and masterfully knits together the composition. Evidence remains in the sky that this drawing was squared for transfer. Perhaps Jacque intended to translate the drawing into a painting. 4 The Shepherdess is a handsome addition to our strong collection of French drawings and a superb complement to the other Jacque drawing in the National Gallery's collection, Sheep in a Manger, an undated gray wash composition with watercolor a n d chalk. C A R L O T T A j . O W E N S Provenance: Private collection, Florida; sale, New York, Christie, Manson & Woods, 22 May 1996, lot 162. Purchased via Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox with funds from Mr. and Mrs. James Dyke.

The Shepherdess c. 1869, pastel on brown wove paper 52.6 x 94.9 (2On/16 x 373/s)

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James T. Dyke 1996.45.1

215

Odilon Redon

216

The essence of Redon's art is his internal, visionary universe, a theme captured in his titles for early series of lithographs: In the Dreamy Origins, or Night. After some rather traditional early landscape paintings, Redon found a voice for his intensely personal art in large-scale charcoals, what he called his noin, created from the iSyos through the early 18908. These mysterious images—frequently reinterpretations of figures from religion, myth, and literature—became his way of exteriorizing his imagination; then they became crucial sources for further work. "The events which wore on me took place long ago, in my head," as he wrote to Andries Bonger, the original owner of this work.1 Redon used the noin to create black-and-white lithographs that were his first public success and a major component in the revival of original lithography in France in the late nineteenth century. After collectors realized the noin' fundamental role for his prints, they clamored for them, leading to Redon's second major success in sales. But soon Redon, worrying he was losing works crucial to his art, refused to sell the noin and even tried to buy them back. In the early 18908, after becoming established as a uniquely major artist in black-and-white, Redon went through a personal crisis, perhaps religious, and decided he needed to change his art and to begin making works in color. His correspondence shows he felt that he needed some sort of "entrance" into color, and he hoped to make that through pastel. Between 1892 and 1895, Redon found his way by returning to the noin, choosing

F R E N C H , 184O-1916

some originally finished as charcoal, and heightening them with (or even converting them into) pastels.2 This Saint George is one of the earliest, most beautiful, and most important of these transitional works. The style and technique of the basic charcoal indicate a date in the i88os; the pastel was probably added c. 1892. The original signature, bottom right, probably became obscured during the heightening; Redon then signed it again at the top. The pastel is integrated with utmost sensitivity, for example, the few touches of yellow on the dragon's cheeks, the remarkably bluish black aureole above his head, and the delicate strokes of pink and blue between the charcoal of the aura radiating farther up. In terms of content, Saint George and the Dragon epitomizes many of Redon's central themes: the personal and dreamlike reinterpretation of religion and mythology; the enormous and virtually free-floating heads (here, of the quasimarine-like, quasi-serpent-like dragon); the radiating auras that transmit the nature or energy of his figures into their surroundings; the struggle between good and evil; and especially the theme of ambiguity.

as if they are fellow souls imprisoned in an evil (or plant or animal) body. In a final ambiguity, for Redon (as for Munch or Picasso), whole images or compositions

Ambiguity is central to Redon's art. Animal forms elide into human, plant forms into marine, marine forms into animal—life converts through primitive evolution into all forms, but life is related in all. 3 Likewise, good and evil are never simple in Redon: forms of good (the head of Christ, saints) may acquire strange distortions and disturbing overtones, while forms of evil (Satan, Mephistopheles, or, here, the dragon) look pained or lost and evoke sympathy,

Inscription (upper and lower right):

elide from one meaning or context to another. Also in this regard, Saint George plays a crucial role. If we take the basic image as a figure on a prancing horse using a long spear to attack a serpentlike creature, we can see Redon's continuing fascination with this image, artistically reinterpreted, in paintings, prints, and drawings spanning the next three decades: a classical centauress attacks a snake (1883); death on a pale horse pierces large globes of light with dark aureoles (1899); Briinnhilde attacks a serpent (1905); Saint George attacks the dragon (four later paintings, 19071910); a primitive winged centaur attacks a monster (1908); Perseus attacks the dragon guarding Andromeda (three paintings, 1907-1910); Roger attacks a dragon guarding Angelica (1909/1910); and even the horse alone—Pegasus—rears and attacks a serpent (1907). Thus, Saint George and the Dragon is a crucial work for Redon in style, in technique, and in content. A N D R E W R O B I S O N

ODILON REDON

Provenance: Andries Bonger, Almen (The Hague); Jacques Seligman, New York; Dr. George E. Murphy, New York; Annette Cross Murphy, New York; sold, Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, 16 May 1990; purchased by Artemis, London.

Saint George and the Dragon i88os and c. 1892, charcoal (i88os), heightened with pastel (c. 1892) 53-7 x 37-5 (21 Vfex 14%) Gift of Verizon Communications and the New Century Gift Committee 2000.14.1

217

La Vachere c. 1892, pastel and black chalk on gray-blue paper 60.4

X 34.8

(23 3/4 X 13 U/16)

Gift of Evelyn Stefansson Nef and Mr. and Mrs. James T. Dyke 1998.144.1

218

219

Camille Pissarro

More than any of his fellow impressionists except Edgar Degas, Pissarro was a skilled and dedicated draftsman who regarded drawing as the indispensable foundation of his art. He made hundreds of studies in a variety of media over the course of his long career, sometimes recording visual information for future use, sometimes making studies for specific compositions. Many of his most impressive sheets were drawn in pastel, the medium in which he could most closely approximate the layered strokes and luminous chromatic effects of his paintings. Among Pissarro's most striking pastels are several monumental studies of individual figures, including this one, which were made in preparation for his later paintings of country scenes. Many combine an intentionally naive

F R E N C H , 1830-1903

pose, appropriate to the bucolic subject matter, with a highly sophisticated handling of color and light. Here, for example, the woman's somewhat stolid stance and fixed, rather bemused expression are offset by the delicate mixture of colors in her skirt, the play of light over her form, and the bright patch of yellow sunlight on her straw hat. The drawing served as a study for the figure of a milkmaid in a gouache composition of about 1892, La Vachere (location unknown), which in turn served as the model for a painting of the same subject (location also unknown). 1 The woman in the gouache follows very closely the pose and expression of the pastel figure; in the painting, however, several slight changes make her rather more conventional and less individualized. The National Gallery's collections of Pissarro's paintings and prints have traditionally been remarkably strong, but the representation of his drawings

has not been quite as comprehensive. The acquisition of this arresting pastel provides both a strong focal point for the Gallery's Pissarro drawings and a powerful new example of impressionist draftsmanship. M A R G A R E T M O R G A N G R A S S E L L I Provenance: Artist's estate; M. and Mme. Andre Wormser, sale, Sotheby's, London, 2 December 1987, no. 451; Swiss private collection; Neffe-Degandt Fine Arts, London.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec F R E N C H , 1864-1901

220

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec began seriously studying art about 1882 in an atelier located in Montmartre, a northern district of Paris that was notorious for the risque entertainment and nightlife found in its cafes, dance halls, cabarets, and brothels. 1 As Lautrec's art matured, his avant-garde interests and burgeoning anti-bourgeois sentiments were stimulated by the ambience of Montmartre, and he moved there permanently in 1884. Initially an occasional visitor of these evening establishments, Lautrec gradually ventured further into this world, finding scores of subjects among the stage performers, prostitutes, and clientele that inspired much of his art. In 1889, Moulin Rouge opened. For several years it was the most celebrated dance hall in Montmartre, and Lautrec chose it as the subject and backdrop of many of his better known paintings, drawings, prints, and posters. Seated Woman from Behind is the sole preliminary study known for Au Moulin Rouge (1892— 1893, The Art Institute of Chicago), one of Lautrec's most masterful paintings from this pivotal period of his career. By this time Lautrec had already been included in numerous exhibitions, and the art world closely identified him with the bohemian lifestyle of Montmartre. Recognized for his penetrating observations of contemporary urban life, Lautrec was also gaining a reputation for depicting subjects that crossed over into areas of society that were not considered respectable.

The identity of the woman in Seated Woman from Behind—Study for "Au Moulin Rouge" is still debated. She is a dramatic centerpiece in the painting Au Moulin Rouge^ where she is depicted with dazzling red hair (rather than yellow as here), sitting with a group of four acquaintances at a table.2 This rapidly executed drawing is a concrete example of Lautrec's interests in capturing and summarizing the essential characteristics of his subject. 3 Its energetic style and distinctive draftsmanship are typical of Lautrec's drawings at this time, as is its technique, working with oil paint on cardboard, which the artist had begun favoring in the early i88os. As in so many of Lautrec's studies of single figures, he concentrated here on the specifics of the sitter's head. The layers of color defining the woman's fashionable blue chapeau with red plume and her bright yellow hair are painted with loose expressive brushstrokes. Confident with color, Lautrec emphasized the narrow left profile of the woman's face with a pronounced blue line, strikingly juxtaposed against her pink flesh. While color is important to this study, its linearity and compositional strength are paramount. Curving lines follow the graceful rhythm of her hair at the nape of her neck and the twists of her knotted bun. Similarly, undulating lines accentuate the flamboyant profile of the woman's hat, which dramatically accents the entire composition. But nowhere is Lautrec's mastery of line more evident than in his sparely drawn, lyrical silhouette of the figure's torso.

Long fluid lines of reds, blues, and gray render the contour of the woman's coat in simple economical means and keep the viewer's eye moving around the form. The coat's large ruffled collar fanning out over her shoulders mimics the movement of the darker curved lines at the seat of the coat that anchor her in this amorphous space. What Lautrec withheld from the composition is just as important as what he included; his choice to keep the space within the lines of the coat open is daring. Since very little defines the space in the drawing (except perhaps the small halos of color edging the face and the top of the hat), the flat shape of the coat and the two-dimensionality of the work are heightened. The drawing's powerful design and abstract qualities recall principles of Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts that impressed Lautrec and influenced the growing elegance of his style. The National Gallery of Art owns four other important drawings by Lautrec; two are subjects relating to Montmartre and are dated 1892. Moreover, the Gallery is extremely fortunate to have twelve of his paintings and an impressive collection of more than three hundred prints, many of which are representative of this exhilarating and immensely productive period of his brief career. C A R L O T T A j . O W E N S Provenance: Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.

Seated Woman from Behind— Study for "Au Moulin Rouge" 1892, oil on cardboard 59-7 * 394 (>3'/2x 15 V2) Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 1994.59.12

221

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

222

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, many Parisian newspapers, magazines, and journals employed the new photomechanical printing processes to reproduce illustrations. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, like so many young avant-garde artists at the time, capitalized on the increased activity in publishing and expanded his audience by doing illustrations for commercial publications. 1 As early as 1881, Lautrec was submitting drawings to various magazines, but not until 1886 were his first illustrations published, in Le Courrier franfais and Le Mirliton^ small journals promoting the entertainment found in Montmartre. As Lautrec's work became better known, the demand for it increased, as similar publications commissioned illustrations. In July 1893, a color illustration of this oil and chalk drawing, Fashionable People at Les Ambassadeurs (Aux Ambassadeurs: Gens Chic^ was included in the magazine Figaro illustre. This is one of seven drawings by Lautrec commissioned by the magazine for the journalist Gustave Geffroy's article "Le Plaisir a Paris: les restaurants et les cafes-concerts des Champs-Elysees." Les Ambassadeurs, one of the most famous cafe-concerts on the ChampsElysees, attracted middle-class and aristocratic patrons who craved popular entertainment similar to Montmartre5s,

F R E N C H , 1864-1901

but preferred a more upscale setting. Geffroy's article, written with a critical edge, described the bourgeois elite and their fascination with proletarian entertainment. 2 Lautrec's drawing, in which a jaunty young man in black evening dress is seated with a female companion in the balcony overlooking the stage at Les Ambassadeurs, was probably meant to characterize this affluent clientele. Lautrec's comrade Charles Conder, an Australian painter who moved to Paris in 1890, was the model for the dapper gentleman. His rigid pose and conservative bearing communicate his aristocratic status. On stage (to the left), the popular Parisian singer Yvette Guilbert is identified by her signature long black gloves. Probably anticipating the limitations of the photomechanical process that would reduce the drawing for publication, Lautrec sought out simple and effective means that could easily and expressively translate into the print medium. Perhaps for this reason the figures seem somewhat contrived and less in keeping with his usual distinctive spontaneity. Two preliminary studies were done for this oil drawing. 3 In them, Lautrec individually plotted the poses of the two foreground figures before relating them here in this setting. Nonetheless, the expressiveness of this drawing lies in the power of the lines. The figures are unmodcled and dramatically reduced to flat planes of color fortified by precise outlines.

The linear patterns and repetitive shapes exemplify Lautrec's mastery of rhythm and composition: for example, the decanter's spout and handle cleverly match the abstract shape of the man's cummerbund and the position of his left arm. The strong diagonal lines of the balcony and the intersecting vertical post compress the foreground and clearly define the space. The tonality of the drawing is limited in color, mostly green, blue, and black with touches of orange and white highlights, leaving the color of the paper to help define the composition. Lautrec's interest in illustration intensified over the years with prolific and creative results. His involvement in poster design and color lithography beginning in 1891 certainly profited from his work i n illustration. C A R L O T T A j . O W E N S Provenance: Depeaux, Rouen, by 1901, his sale, Paris, 25 April 1901, no. 63; Georges Bernheim, Paris; George Lurcy, his sale, New York, Parke-Bernet, 7 November 1957, lot 46; Keller; Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, Va.

Fashionable People at Les Ambassadeurs (Aux Ambassadeurs: Gens Chic) 1893, oil a 1'essence over black chalk on wove paper, mounted on cardboard 84.3 x65.5 (33 3 /i6x25 1 3 /i6) Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 1995.47.67

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Moonlight 1901, color woodcut Sheet: 46 x 47.3 (ig'/s x i85/s) Epstein Family Collection 1999.112.2

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225

Edvard Munch

In Moonlight) a woman's expressionless face levitates in the darkness, dominating the composition. Like many of Edvard Munch's archetypal images, this motif of the glowing, enigmatic face can be traced through canvases, sketches, and prints, each exploring differing techniques, compositions, and relationships between it and the surrounding world. A striking comparison can be made with an important early version, an 1893 painting of the same title belonging to the National Gallery, Oslo.1 The subject of Moonlight has its roots in the artist's important Frieze of Life series, a project for which the 1893 painting was created. The cycle was planned as a large-scale mural, but was never realized. Nonetheless, the Frieze of Life provided a constantly evolving collection of images that Munch offered as a modern conception of love and death; as such, it was filled with references to women, whom he perceived as powerful and at times threatening adversaries. Noted Edvard Munch scholar Arne Eggum suggested that Moonlight depicts Milly Thaulow or "Mrs. Heiberg," as Munch identified her in his writings. 2 Thaulow was an older, married woman with whom the much younger Munch had shared a secret relationship and his first kiss. His attraction to her had an overwhelming effect on him and served as inspiration for a critical body of work.

N O R W E G I A N , 1863-1944

One of the most innovative artists in the history of graphic art, Munch utilized the natural properties inherent in each printmaking medium to magnificent advantage. For example, in Moonlight•, the artist consciously inked the woodblocks so that the pattern of the grain would weave in and out of the image. These vertical striations were cultivated for their formal properties, as activators that spark texture in the dark surface of the print and as a means of harmoniously unifying the various sections through parallel lines. In this way, the wood grain draws attention to materials and technique, moving beyond subject to the object itself, a concept integral to modernism. Yet the subject is actually amplified by these striations. For example, Elizabeth Prelinger interpreted the vertical grain in the Moonlight prints as a force that acts to "cover the woman's face like prison bars."3 Munch's puzzle-manner of making a color image, yet another technical innovation, is clearly visible here. One block was cut for the primary image, while another was developed to carry the background color. Using a fretsaw, the artist cut the background block into parts and then applied different colors to individual sections. Reassembled, much like a jigsaw puzzle, they were printed as a unit. In this version of Moonlight^ a light green block with the woman's face was printed first. A three-part background block was separated into sections with window and foliage sections inked green and a central block inked brown. These were reassembled and printed. Finally, a black block

was overprinted. In this economical way, multiple colors were realized without overly complicating registration and without requiring the assistance of a professional printer. In addition, the process increased the opportunities for nonrepeatable accidental printing effects. Munch was energized by such chance events and was an early champion of the modernist unique print. Moonlight represents one of the earliest subjects Munch attempted in the woodcut medium. The original blocks were cut soon after he began to investigate the technique in late 1896. By 1901 he had reenvisioned the project and actually recut other blocks using a crisper, more economical line and adjusted the shape of the image slightly. The present impression, taken from those blocks, is an extremely dark version that is remarkable for the transparency and luminosity found in its prevailing shadow. Moonlight is the tenth Munch print given to the Gallery from the Epstein Family Collection, the finest private collection of the extraordinary and creative prints of Edvard Munch. In a major transformation of our holdings, it is now promised to the National Gallery of Art. CHARLES

RITCH IE

Provenance: Epstein Family Collection, Washington, D.C.

Jacques Villon

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After the glory days of the color print in eighteenth-century France, interest lagged until the end of the nineteenth century, when Paris witnessed a phenomenal rise in the popularity of the color print, particularly the color lithograph. One need only think of Toulouse-Lautrec and Bonnard to conjure images from this period. Yet despite the color lithograph's dominance, Jacques Villon (born Gaston Duchamp) chose the more traditional medium of color etching when he made his first autonomous prints. 1 La Parisienne is arguably Villon's most important color etching—one he explored to an unparalleled extent. He reworked the related plates through multiple states, continually adding etched and drypoint lines along with areas of aquatint, each time varying the color printing from impression to impression. He also refined the plates by steadily scraping away entire passages. The present group constitutes only three variant impressions from a total of ten in the National Gallery's collection—eight of which were acquired in 1999. Considered as a group, they are a remarkable testament to Villon's inventive approach, both to multi-

F R E N C H , 1875-1963

plate etching and to color. These works are also among the most spectacular sets of variant impressions in the National Gallery's collection. Jacques Villon was born to a remarkably artistic family. His brothers were the sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon and the multitalented Marcel Duchamp. Less of a revolutionary than Marcel, Jacques generally depicted fashionably dressed people from bourgeois society in his early prints. 2 The sitter for this print was Yvonne Bon, sister of a painter friend and later wife of Raymond DuchampVillon. She is seated on the edge of an armchair in a well-appointed fin de siecle interior. Behind her is an elaborate chimneypiece supported by caryatids and, to the left, an art nouveau firescreen. Above the screen hangs a sizable panel with the image of a peacock, its feathers spread fanlike. The artist's interest is focused not only on the woman's face and her sharply contoured profile but also on her finery. Villon experimented with an embossed pattern for the sitter's dress and hat, varying the color in these impressions from a barely perceptible white, to a pinkish-cream, to a deep brown that gives prominence to the fabric's craquelure-like pattern. The background varies in color and detail from impression to

impression, as does the chair's upholstery. Villon was clearly more focused on the dynamics of color, texture, and form than he was on accurate representation. Villon lavished more attention on this print—and to greater effect—than he did on any other in his lifetime. Beyond exploring state changes and variant printings, he revived this sitter in at least four other prints, each time in precisely this pose. Even more telling is the print's evolution. A chronological ordering of the ten variant impressions in the National Gallery's collection shows a clear progression toward refinement and simplicity. Villon gradually minimized the ornate interior and ultimately eliminated it altogether.3 In effect, this print pointed Villon in the direction of a more modern aesthetic. J U D I T H B R O D I E Provenance (1999.54.1—2): Lucien Goldschmidt, New York, as of 1970; Marjorie Kovler, Chicago; Elaine Briede, Chicago; sale, New York, Christie, Manson & Woods, 3 May 1999, no. 84 via David Tunick, New York. Provenance (1999.53.1): Andre Candillier, Paris.

La Parisienne 1902, color softground etching, drypoint, etching, aquatint, and embossing (in white) printed from multiple plates 45.2 x 34 (iy 13 /i6 x i33/s) New Century Gift Committee 1999.54.1

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La Parisienne 1902, color softground etching, drypoint, etching, aquatint, and embossing (in brown) printed from multiple plates 45 x 33-9 (i7 u /i6 x i33/s) New Century Gift Committee 1999.54.2

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La Parisienne 1902, color softground etching, drypoint, etching, aquatint, and embossing (in pinkishcream) printed from multiple plates 45 x 33-9(i7 n /i6x i33/s) Gift of Evelyn Stefansson Nef I999.53-I

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner G E R M A N , 1880-1938

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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is counted among the greatest figures in twentieth-century art. In 1905 he was one of four young artists trained as architects who founded the daring group in Dresden known as Die Brucke (The Bridge), for whom the art of the print, a medium capable of yielding multiple impressions of an image, was equal in stature to artistic media that produced unique works.1 As a painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker, Kirchner was extremely prolific: his print oeuvre alone numbers more than two thousand etchings, woodcuts, and lithographs, which were mainly executed by the artist himself rather than with professional printers. His use of each print process was profoundly experimental, and his editions were generally small with every impression somewhat different from the others. 2 Kirchner's life was beset by psychological difficulties, which worsened in the 19305 with the rejection and confiscation of his work by the Nazis; he committed suicide at age fifty-eight. The first graphic process Kirchner embraced was woodcut, used here for a visualization in seven parts of Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (Peter Schlemihl's Wondrous Story), published in 1813 by Adelbert von Chamisso. Kirchner's rendition is considered a pinnacle not only of

German expressionist art but also of twentieth-century printmaking. Each of the seven riveting images is dramatically composed, richly colored, and executed with a compelling and masterful directness that enhances the poignant, multilayered narrative flowing through the group. In Chamisso's story, Peter Schlemihl parts with his shadow in exchange for a parcel of gold only to discover that his shadowless state distinguishes and separates him from his community, bringing hostility upon him not only from strangers, but from his beloved as well. The "little gray man" to whom Peter entrusted his shadow offers to lend it back but the shadow refuses to return. Peter then unsuccessfully tries to attach himself to an ownerless shadow he spies in the distance. Each of these seven remarkable woodcuts bears a self-portrait of the artist, for Kirchner paralleled Peter Schlemihl's story with his own haunting personal narrative of love lost and the psychological devastation of war. Unsuccessful in acclimating to the army, Kirchner was released from service in December 1915, less than a year after he was drafted, and sent to a sanatorium. During this difficult period, the first of several such incarcerations, he created this majestic and intimate testament in a heroic effort to bear witness to his emotional pathos while en route to recovery from it. Kirchner's carving and printing methods and his use of color add formal strength to the emotional stance of the

narrative. Throughout the series, a variety of expressive cutting techniques is countered by delicately incised lines. Kirchner enhanced his vigorously worked surfaces by experimentally applying ink and pressure to the woodblock or woodblocks for printing. For example, in the title page, in which a linear self-portrait is in keeping with linear lettering, Kirchner printed multiple colors from a single block. By contrast, in plate 2, which shows Kirchner seated behind a large nude, Dodo, the great love of his life, he printed several colors from multiple blocks in a sensuous and painterly manner. In plate 3, the artist depicted his separation from Dodo (when he moved to Berlin in 1911/1912), by replacing her image at center stage with his own. Chaos in and surrounding the artist's head is suggestive of the chaos of his life. Moreover, his use of hard edges and flat colors may be seen as a metaphor for his own sharp anguish. Plates 4 and 5 portray Kirchner's difficulty in adjusting to military life—a structured environment very foreign to the freedom of an artist's studio. An extraordinary note in plate 4 is the vivid strength of Kirchner's eyes: he printed his nude figure with tan over black everywhere but in his strong black eyes, thereby reinforcing a concern for

231

achieving subtlety in minute details, despite what appears at first to be an expressive crudeness overall. Indeed, whether or not Kirchner printed from one or from several blocks, his distinctive application of ink to wood calls for a consideration of this set as a unique rather than as an editioned work.3 Pressed into the woodblock through Kirchner's apparent use of an etching press for printing, the paper itself was formed into low sculptural reliefs that add to the drama of the images.4 Kirchner is thought to have printed only five complete sets of his Peter Schlemihl narrative, giving all of them to close friends. The title plate of this set is dedicated to Dr. Frederic Bauer, Kirchner's primary doctor at a sanatorium in Davos, Switzerland, to which he moved for treatment in 1917. With four sets now residing in German and Swiss museums, the National Gallery's set is unique outside of Europe. It has swiftly become a centerpiece of our strong German expressionist prints and drawings collection. RUTH E. F I N E

Provenance: Dr. Frederic Bauer, Davos, acquired from the artist; private collection, Germany, after 1954; Wolfgang Wittrock, Dusseldorf.

Peter Schlemihls Wundmame Geschichte (jPeter Schlemihls Wondrous Story) 1915, seven woodcuts New Century Gift Committee and Gift of Ruth and Jacob Kainen 1999.68.1-7

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title page

plate i

plate 4

plate 2

plate 5

plate 3

plate 6

Peter Scblemibls Wundmame Gescbichte (Peter Schlemihl's Wondrous Story] Woodcut from one block Image: 29.2 x 26.2 (n Vz x io 5 /i6) Sheet: 41.2 x 354(i6 1 /4 x I3 15 /i6)

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Verkaufdes Schattem (The Sale of the Shadoui) Woodcut from multiple blocks Image: 32.2 x 22.1 (i2 u /i6 x 8 u /i6) Sheet: 41 x 34.8 (i6Vs x 13 n/16)

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Die Gehebte (The Loved One] Woodcut from multiple blocks Image: 28.2 x 23.5 (i i Vs x 9^4) Sheet: 40.9 x 35.2 (i6V8 x i3 7 /s)

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jiualen der Lie be (The Anguish of Love] Woodcut from multiple blocks Image: 33.2 x 21.8 (i3Vi6 x 8 9 /i6) Sheet: 40.9 x 35 (i61/s x 13 3A)

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Nach der Verfolgung des Schattenlosen durch den Mob der Gasse (After Punning the Shadowiest One through the Narrow Lane] Woodcut from multiple blocks Image: 33.4 x 24 (13 Vs x 9 7 /i6) Sheet: 41.2 x 34.5 (i6 1 A x i3 9 /i6)

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Schlemihl versucht mit dem Schatten zufliehen (Schlemihl Attempts to Flee with the Shadow} Woodcut from multiple blocks Image: 29.9 x 29.7 (i i 3A x 11 n/i6) Sheet: 41.3 x 35.4 ( i 6 V 4 x 13 15/i6)

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Das Mannlein narrt ihn, indem es den Schatten allein bei ibm vorbeispazieren Idsst, Schlemihl vermcht ihn zu fasten (The Little Fellow Fools the Shadow by Letting It Pass by Him. Schlemihl Tries to Catch /r) Woodcut from multiple blocks Image: 31 x 29.3 (i2 3 /i6 x u 9 /i6) Sheet: 42.7 x 37 (i6 13 /i6 x i4 9 /i6)

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Barnett Newman A M E R I C A N , 1905-1970

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Growing up in New York City and the Bronx, Barnett Newman was an avid visitor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1922, before graduating high school, he began taking drawing classes at the Art Students League. He continued to pursue his studies at the league while majoring in philosophy at City College, New York, where he wrote art and music reviews for the college newspaper.1 After graduating from college in 1927, Newman worked in his father's clothing business for a few years, and from 1931 to 1939 he was a substitute art teacher in the city's public high schools. During this period he became friendly with Milton Avery, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko. Unlike them, however, Newman did not exhibit his early work: he subsequently destroyed almost everything he had produced during the 19208 and 19305. When Newman stopped teaching in 1939-1940, he also ceased making art. He had become interested in botany, geology, and ornithology, and studied these subjects at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. According to art critic Thomas Hess, who was also editor of Art News magazine, Newman

wanted to "study nature with science" . . . and break out of the artist-in-a-studio environment. Instead of admiring landscapes, he wanted to investigate the beginnings of life, how it emerged, how its orders developed . . . [focusing] on the processes of genesis and on the creative acts of nature: in short, on what would become his main subject matter. 2

Newman returned to the studio in 1944; few oils on canvas exist from the next two years, a period in which he concentrated on making works on paper. More than a third of the eighty-three independent drawings the artist made from 1944 to 1969 date to those first two years.3 Untitled, 1945, is one of three sheets—all untitled, one each from 1944, 1945, and 1946—acquired by the National Gallery from the artist's estate in 1998.4 According to Annalee Newman, the artist's widow, this particular drawing is the first of five Newman described as surrealist. 5 In this respect, it may be associated with works on paper by his friends Gottlieb, Rothko, and Jackson Pollock, all of whom explored the spontaneous calligraphic gesture, psychoanalytic free association, and automatic drawing that were at the heart of the surrealist aesthetic. All of Newman's drawings from 1944 and a few from 1945 were made with a variety of color media, such as waterbased and oil paints, oil and wax crayons, and pastel. References to landscape space and natural forms are important to

these subtle sheets and are carried into the dramatic brush and ink drawings that immediately followed. Our 1945 untitled drawing is the most densely worked among the early ink drawings, with lyrical marks blanketing its surface and suggesting that here Newman was pushing his surrealist, nature-based inventions as far as he wished. After visually manifesting his interests in the natural sciences, he was able to move toward the elimination of all external referents and to create the metaphysical abstractions that engaged him for the rest of his life. In 1962, Newman emphasized the importance of drawing to his work: Drawing is central to my whole concept. I don't mean making drawings^ although I have always done a lot of them. I mean the drawing that exists in my painting. Yet no writer on art has ever confronted that issue. I am always referred to in relation to my color. Yet I know that if I have made a contribution, it is primarily in my drawing. R U T H E. F I N E

Provenance: Annalee Newman, New York; Susan Lorence, New York.

Unfitted 1945, brush and black ink 37.5 x 41.3 (i4 3 A x i6V4) The Nancy Lee and Perry Bass Fund 1998.59.2

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Wavy Brushstrokes 1996, gouache 153.7 x 294.6 (60V2 x 116) The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection 1999.118.1

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Sol LcWltt AMERICAN, BORN 1928

Drawing is a pervasive component in Sol LeWitt's oeuvre. 1 In 1958, about a decade after graduating from Syracuse University with a degree in art, he was making calligraphic compositions in graphite or pen and ink derived from paintings by such old masters as Piero della Francesca, as well as dramatic brush and ink renditions of canvases by Diego Velazquez. Also dating to 1958 are representational graphite drawings entitled Drawing oj My Loft at 458 West Broadway, Potted Plant, and Bedsheet. Painterly representations of the figure appear in drawings as late as 1961. This early work is marked by the sensuous response to materials that has been reflected in drawings, even the most stringent, throughout Le Witt's career. From 1962 to 1969, many of Le Witt's drawn sheets relate to his sculpture and bear "working drawing" as part of their titles. Often, a further notation indicates that they are for pieces "not done" and thus are the only record of particular ideas. In other instances, a work is detailed in multiple drawings (plans, elevations). By mid-decade, LeWitt had become an esteemed advocate on behalf of ideas at the core of conceptual art, defined by him as art in which "the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work" as distinguished from art in which "the concept may be changed in the process of execution."2 This approach

has enabled much of his sculpture and his wall drawings to be fabricated by others. 3 By contrast, thousands of unique works on paper, such as Wavy Brushstrokes, are drawn by LeWitt himself, as are many of his edition prints. 4 Le Witt's concepts and proposals for drawings become his titles: Four Basic Lines in Four Directions, In Four Colors, Superimposed', Short Straight Lines, Not Touching, Drawn at Random, and Evenly Distributed Over the Area; Wavy Brushstrokes. Graphite and black or color inks were his primary media through the 19605 and 1970s. Since about 1982, however, gouache has also been prominent in Le Witt's repertoire, and the resulting works are more painterly than linear. Geometric shapes and forms were essential to his drawings from the 19608 through the 19805. In the 19908, however, Le Witt's drawing language focused on bands or fields of color, including bands that are a physical record of the action of the artist's arm and the touch of a paintbrush to paper. The celebratory expansiveness of Wavy Brushstrokes and other gouaches of the 19905 seems remarkable in the context of an artist closely associated with dispassionate visual systems. The current traveling retrospective of Le Witt's work, however, suggests that the verbal language that is essential to his drawing strategies provides a cool, intellectual base for his art, whereas the visual results have a lyrical elegance and sensuous surfaces: together they represent a wedding of Apollonian and Dionysian impulses.

Le Witt's brushstroke drawings in gouache were initiated in 1992. They exist in vertical, horizontal, and square formats, and in multipanel compositions; and they employ the primary colors — red, yellow, and blue—and black and white. As expected, LeWitt explored all possible combinations of his scheme: straight lines in vertical, horizontal, and diagonal left to right and right to left orientations, as well as equally diverse wavy variations. Other gouaches of the 19908 employ less classic color combinations and a diverse array of brushstroke types: for example, Squiggly Brushstrokes; Irregular Brushstrokes; Irregular Grid, and a 1999 sheet entitled Loopy Doopy.^ Wavy Brushstrokes, with its interwoven bands of densely layered color, is an extraordinary addition to the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection at the National Gallery. LeWitt, an avid collector himself of the art of his contemporaries, was among the primary inspirations for the Vogels when they began to purchase art. 6 Counting both gifts and promised gifts, the Vogel collection includes one hundred of Le Witt's works on paper dating from 1965 (the year of the Vogels' first purchase of his work) through 1996. Many of the works have personalized notes from the artist to the collectors. RUTH E. FINE

Provenance: The artist; gift to Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, 1999.

Sculpture

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Follower of Giovanni Bologna, called Giambologna Venus and Cupid Circle of Hubert Gerhard Saint Sebastian Alessandro Algardi Christ at the Column North European Christ Crucified

CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITION

Randolph Rogers Nydia, The Blind Girl of Pompeii Auguste Rodin The Age of Bronze (L'Age d'Airain) Aristide Maillol Mediterranee Alexander Calder Vertical Constellation with Bomb

Christo Package 1974

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Follower of Giovanni Bologna., called Giambologna

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The most important Renaissance bronze statue to enter the collections since the founding of the National Gallery of Art, Venus and Cupid provided a happy culmination to former director J. Carter Brown's long search for a work of sculpture to grace the central fountain on the ground floor near the Constitution Avenue entrance. A sixteenth-century statue actually designed as a fountain figure, closely related to a celebrated Florentine masterpiece, seemed almost too good to be true. The lithe Venus, wringing water from her long hair, is a close variant of Giambologna's Florence (Venus) from the Villa Medici at Castello, now on view at La Pctraia, another villa near Florence. The Medici bronze was probably modeled in the I56os and cast c. 1570—1572. The similarities in size (Florence is 125 centimeters high) and pose are strong enough to suggest that the sculptor of the Venus and Cupid had access to Giambologna's model. However, differences in the movements and proportions indicate that the

Washington Venus is not simply a second cast of Giambologna's model, but an adaptation by a different artistic personality who preferred slimmer proportions, more restrained movements, and a more coolly classical facial type. Whereas Giambologna provided an urn under Venus' left foot to generate her twisting, sinuous pose, the Washington sculptor enlivened the composition with a dolphin that spouts water and supports Venus' small son Cupid. Pressing close to his mother's body and reaching out with a conch shell to catch the droplets falling from her hair, the plump little boy with his waving curls and impetuous action makes an appealing contrast to her cool elegance. The child is closely related in physical type to Giambologna's Fishing Boys of 1561/1563 (Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence). The style and the pronounced links with works in Florence suggest that this is the creation of an artist who had access to Giambologna's workshop, and thus was a close collaborator. Since a model for the Medici Florence appears in the background of a portrait of Giambologna in his studio (attributed to Hans von Aachen, c. 1585,

I T A L I A N , 16™ C E N T U R Y

private collection), the sculpture evidently meant a good deal to him, and he may have kept its clay or plaster form on hand. The Washington variant is a rare and witty example of the immediate influence of the greatest Renaissance sculptor after Michelangelo. Its prominent place in the ground floor sculpture installation creates a counterpart to the fountain in the main floor Rotunda, whose central bronze figure of Mercury is also an invention of Giambologna. ALISON LUCHS

Provenance: Baroness Sophia Elizabeth Wykeham [d. 1870], Thame Park, Oxfordshire. Private collection, England; offered at Christie, Manson & Woods London, 10 December 1991, lot 100, as the property of a family trust.

Venm and Cupid c. 1575/1580, bronze Height: 124.5 (49) Gift of John and Henrietta Goelet, in memory of Thomas Goelet, and Patrons' Permanent Fund 1991.242.1

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Circle o f Hubert Gerhard D U T C H / S O U T H G E R M A N , E A R L Y 1 7 T H C E N T U R Y

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A creation of supreme refinement as

one of which had to be flattened in the

uted to him. 6 But De Keyser's other

well as dramatic intensity, this Saint Sebastian is the first northern European male

wax model to permit attachment to a tree-shaped support. With one leg bent back, and the foot of the straight leg barely grazing the ground, the figure appears in almost weightless suspension. His face turns upward and his forehead wrinkles in an agony that searches the heavens for help. His long, fleecy curls, sinuously modeled, suggest the flow of melting wax. This Sebastian, of which only one other cast is known, 3 must have been made for a connoisseur who would relish the fluid yet precise modeling of hair and beard, the sharp particularization of

known bronze figures, which are generally fleshier, with fewer curls rendered in thicker spirals, differ from the Saint Sebastian, with its particularized, bony torso and its cascade of small, finely differentiated, rippling locks. A proposal has recently been made for an origin in Augsburg, a great south German center of goldsmith work, about 1620 or shortly thereafter.7 A sculptor active there could have studied with Gerhard, as Saint Sebastian's face suggests; gained familiarity with the heroic naturalism of Adriaen de Vries; and encountered works of the short-lived but influential sculptor Georg Petel. Such knowledge would have been reinterpreted here with a goldsmith's precision and a baroque flair for expression. A L I S O N L U C H S

nude of its scale and quality to enter the National Gallery of Art's sculpture collection. Saint Sebastian, a Roman soldier martyred as a Christian, appears frequently in painting and sculpture from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. According to legend, he was bound to a tree and shot full of arrows (an ordeal he survived, only to be clubbed to death later). The affliction with arrows led to his veneration as a protector against the comparable agonies of the plague, but his story also allowed artists to demonstrate to connoisseurs their ability to display an ideal young male nude in a pose full of expressive tension. The sculptor of this version was evidently familiar with the pose in paintings by artists such as Hans von Aachen (1552—1615), whose Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian was widely known through an engraving by Jan Miiller.1 Such works correspond to the taste for elegant sophistication fostered by the court of Emperor Rudolf II (ruled 1576-1612) at Prague. 2 The sculptor imagined the saint with a short but strongly articulated torso, muscular shoulders, expansive rib cage, narrow waist, and heavy buttocks,

veins, muscles, and bones, and the careful individualization of flexed fingers and toes. These features, along with the facial type and the finely punched and fringed drapery, suggest an artist associated with the Dutch-born sculptor Hubert Gerhard, who was active in southern Germany. Comparisons have been made to Gerhard's male figures in the Resurrection relief on his gilded bronze altarpiece (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London) made for Christoph Fugger of Augsburg in 1581 —1584. 4 The face of Mars in Gerhard's small bronze Mars, Venus and Cupid (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) might also be cited.5 An attribution has also been proposed to a Dutch contemporary of Gerhard, Hendrick de Keyser, with reference to a bronze Orpheus (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) convincingly attrib-

Provenance: Purchased at auction by Humphris Brothers from Sotheby's, London, 12 December 1991, lot 128.

Saint Sebastian Early iyth century, gilded bronze, attached to a wooden tree on a modern ebonized wooden socle Height of bronze: 47 (i8 Vfe) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1992.10.1

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Christ at the Column Model c. 16305, cast probably mid-iyth century, silver Height with base: 36.8 (14 Va) The William Stamps Parish Pund 1998.95-1

250

251

AleSSandrO Algardi B O L O G N E S E - R O M A N , 1598-1654

Alessandro Algardi was one of the few sculptors in baroque Rome able to step out of the pervasive shadow of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. While undeniably influenced by Bernini's dramatic flair, Algardi's style was inherently different, more delicate in form and restrained in expression. Like most Emilian artists of the seventeenth century, he was trained in the Carracci academy in Bologna, which stressed balancing classicism and naturalism. He later moved to Rome, where he established himself as a master marble carver and modeler of works to be executed in bronze and precious metals. This silver Christ at the Column is an exquisite example of Algardi's small-scale sculpture, a part of his oeuvre that has been termed his most personal, inventive, and expressive.1 Silver ropes bind Christ to a column affixed to an ebonized pearwood reliquary base decorated with silver mounts. The relic (currently unidentified) is visible through a glazed drawer set into the base. The figure, slightly slumped over, turns his head dramatically to his right as if evading the blows of his tormentors. The fine modeling and chasing of this figure result in a beautiful play of light across its well-defined muscles and the patterned folds of the loincloth. Details such as Christ's expressively bound hands and the loosely tied hair falling across his neck and back testify to Algardi's virtuosity.

This Christ belongs to Algardi's much-admired sculptures of Christ flanked by two flagellators, a design conceived by Algardi probably in the 16305. Examples are found in respected collections around the world. The majority are bronze, but Algardi expert Jennifer Montagu believes they were originally conceived for execution in silver.2 Whether the Gallery's Christ was independent or originally part of a Flagellation group is not known, for Algardi also made examples of Christ without the flagellators. The National Gallery is able to partly reconstruct one of these groups, as it also owns a silver Flagellator of the type that would have been positioned to Christ's right. The alloys of two statuettes match almost exactly, suggesting that they might have come from the same silversmith's shop. Interesting facets of this example include a tiny punch mark in the fringe of the loincloth at Christ's left hip. This mark could provide information regarding the manufacture or provenance. If read as a monogram conflating an F and a r, it might stand for Francesco Travani (1647—1682), a silversmith whom Cardinal Francesco Barberini Sr. paid for a silver Christ at the Column. Alternatively, the monogram could refer to a silversmith named Fantino Taglietti (1608 — 1650), who worked for Cardinal Antonio Barberini and who may have made a silver Christ on an ebony base with silver mounts mentioned in Anna Colonna Barberini's will. 3 However, this stamp also resembles a Napoleonic export mark, which would indicate that it was transported from one Italian city to another in the early nineteenth century. 4

The elaborately decorated reliquary base raises other questions. Could this base be original? While no close parallel for the National Gallery example has yet been found among seicento reliquaries, other examples of ebony (or ebonized wood) reliquaries with silver mounts do survive from the seventeenth to mideighteenth century. 5 Further investigation into the silver initials attached to the sides of the base may also help elucidate the figure's history. The monogram ins, with a cross rising out of the arm of the H and nails below it, dominates the right side. This is the symbol for the Society of Jesus, which was at the height of its influence during Algardi's lifetime. Algardi received several Jesuit commissions, including the bronze urn containing Saint Ignatius' ashes (1629, Gesu, Rome). If the base is original to the Gallery's Christ, the Jesuit symbol casts doubt on its creation as a Barberini commission, for the Barberini mentioned in the potentially relevant documents were not Jesuits. Algardi's importance in the history of baroque art, the sensitive workmanship of this silver, and the fascinating questions involving the punch mark and base make this one of the National Gallery's most interesting sculpture acquisitions in recent years. MELISSA

BECK

Provenance: Sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 7 July 1998, no. 138; Alex Wengraf Ltd., London.

North European

252

This devotional carving, with a power that belies its small size, is the National Gallery of Art's first purchase of a sculpture in ivory. Always a luxury material, ivory was imported into Europe from Africa by way of Egypt since Greek and Roman times, and remained in demand for centuries. After a decline in the trade in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when wars with the Ottoman Turks limited access to the sources, ivory carving in Europe rose to a new level of virtuosity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 1 An attribution for the Christ has thus far proved elusive, as often happens in the case of small-scale, unsigned works destined for private owners. But the emotional charge and consummate execution of this figure prove that a familiar artist's name is not necessary to recognize a masterpiece. Carved from elephant ivory, Christ's body was made in sections. Even if a tusk were large enough to yield the body and arm span in one piece, a considerable amount of the precious ivory would be cut away and wasted. Thus the arms were carved separately and skillfully attached. Carefully studying bone structure, musculature, and veins, the sculptor created a beautifully articulated body in agony. Fingers curl and toes clench in pain, the arms taut and straining with the pull

P O S S I B L Y G E R M A N , 17TH

O R 18TH

of the body's weight. The head falls forward onto the chest, turning slightly to the figure's left in a manner that stresses the powerful bent neck. Two plugged holes at the top o( the head may indicate that a halo or crown of thorns was once attached. The facial features are sharp, the delicate beard set so low that the cheeks appear almost clean-shaven. The loincloth, crumpled into deep, abundant folds, winds around a heavy looped rope. Gravity seems to pull down the head, the coiled hair, and the garment on Christ's left, while the hair and loose folds fly up on the right as if caught by a gust of wind. Research continues on the origin of this work. Most of the associations proposed are with German sculpture, but so far nothing securely by the same hand has been found. A resemblance has been suggested between the facial type of Christ and the warrior heads carved in stone by Andreas Schliiter (c. 1660— 1740) on the exterior of the Zeughaus in Berlin. 2 While this master did not work in ivory, his style could have influenced those who did. The treatment of the loincloth, rendered in crumpled, flying folds, resembles that in an ivory crucifix in the Castello Sforzesco, Milan, assigned to a German workshop of the seventeenth century. 3 The remarkable hair, swept upward as if by wind, may indicate training by a master such as the anonymous carver of the putti decorating an ivory goblet produced by Marcus Heiden

CENTURY

in 1631;^ in that case, the Christ would date well before 1700. The deep undercutting of the locks lifting from the back of the neck, however, surpasses the comparable passages in the Heiden associate's work, and the rendering of drapery is more complicated and spatially rich. The hair treatment does more than display the artist's dazzling technique and ability to make ivory appear mobile. It calls to mind the moment of Christ's death as described in the Gospel of Saint Matthew (27:45-52), when all nature seemed to experience a cataclysm: From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. . . . Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened.

The passage seems to imply a turbulent wind, driving dark clouds across the sky, tearing the curtain, and sweeping over the wracked earth. Lifting Christ's hair and drapery, this force evokes the death agony and its cosmic consequences. ALISON LUCHS

Provenance: Private collection, Daniel Katz, London; Julius Bohler Gallery, Munich, 1995.

Christ Crucified c. 1700, ivory 24 x 15 (97/i6 x 57/s) Pcpita Milmore Memorial Fund 1997.70.1

253

Randolph Rogers

254

Among the most memorable characters in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's hugely popular novel The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) is Nydia, a blind flower seller. In love with the noble-born Glaucus, who is engaged to lone, Nydia knows the hopelessness of her position and endures her suffering with quiet courage. On the fateful day in A.D. 79 when Vesuvius erupts and buries Pompeii, Nydia attempts to lead Glaucus and lone to safety through the darkness caused by the falling ash. In the crush of the fleeing crowds, the three become separated, and Nydia desperately seeks to find the others. As Bulwer-Lytton wrote: ... it occurred to Nydia, that as it had been resolved to seek the seashore for escape, her most probable chance of rejoining her companions would be to persevere in that direction. Guiding her steps, then, by the staff which she always carried, she continued, with incredible dexterity, to avoid the masses that encumbered her path—to thread the streets—and unerringly (so blessed was that accustomed darkness, so afflicting in ordinary life) to take the nearest direction to the sea-side. Poor girl! her courage was beautiful to behold! and Fate seemed to favor one so helpless. The boiling torrents touched her not...but spared that frail form

Weak,

exposed, yet fearless, supported by but one wish, she was the very emblem of Psyche in her wanderings.. .of Hope, walking through the Valley of the Shadow; a very emblem of the Soul itself—alone but comforted, amid the dangers and snares of life. 1

A M E R I C A N , 1825-1892

Nydia ultimately does rejoin and save Glaucus and lone, but realizing that her love will never be fulfilled, drowns herself in despair. Randolph Rogers was one of the most gifted of the many American sculptors who lived and worked in Italy during the nineteenth century. Like other neoclassical sculptors of the day, he sought subjects that would allow him to demonstrate an accomplished handling of the human form and technical understanding of the medium of marble, but which would also convey a strong moral message. Just a decade earlier Hiram Powers had gained fame and fortune with his Greek Slave (1843), skillfully blending the allure of a full-length female nude with a narrative text that stressed her chasteness and piety. With Nydia, Rogers followed a similar path, for although she is clothed, those familiar with the story would have delighted in the mix of sensual longing and doomed love. Furthermore, unlike Powers' Greek Slave, who stands motionless, Rogers' Nydia is dramatically animated. She is shown hurrying, hand to ear, listening for directional clues, as her drapery streams around her body and flutters behind her. In a particularly beautiful passage, Rogers arranged the clothing folded around her staff and cascading down below it. At her side a fallen Corinthian capital reminds the viewer of the death and destruction that surrounds her as she flees.

Nydia was a great success for Rogers, achieving a popularity rivaled by few contemporary sculptures and ultimately earning him more than $yo,ooo.2 In accord with accepted practice, Rogers first completed a full-size plaster model, which then served as the basis for marble versions that were cut and finely polished by skilled Italian masons. Smaller examples, measuring only 36 inches, and much less costly, were also made in substantial numbers, spreading the sculpture's fame far and wide. Full-scale versions such as this are far less common, and rank with Powers' Greek Slave and William Wetmore Story's Cleopatra as key works of American nineteenth-century sculpture. FRAN KLIN KELLY

Provenance: Eugene Leone, New York; Spanierman Gallery, New York.

Nydia, The Blind Girl of Pompeii 1860, marble Height: 1372(54) Patrons' Permanent Fund

255

AugUStC Rodin

256

The splendid image of Rodin's Age of Bronze (the artist's earliest surviving life-size figure) marks a revolutionary milestone in modern sculpture, in that it abandoned traditional iconographic references in favor of an untitlcd concentration on purely aesthetic form. After its first exhibition in Brussels in January 1877, contemporary critics suggested various negative identifications for the figure (as a potential suicide or as a vanquished warrior), which convinced Rodin to designate the positive connotation of an awakening consciousness as a more appropriate "label" with which to send the sculpture to the Paris Salon of the same year. Rodin's poetically allusive title The Age of Bronze thus hinted that the figure might suggest the dawn of human metallurgic skill, marking mankind's emergence from a long prehistory of tools made only from stone. But thirty years after its completion, Rodin still spoke of his originally more generalized conception of the sculpture, as a u [slow] awakening . . . from a deep dream."1 His close friend Truman Bartlett even thought of the figure as an allegorical self-portrait, perhaps symbolizing Rodin as a watchman shaking off slumber. Such a contemporaneous interpretation of this great work, as the idealized self-image of a warrior of a new age, endows with a particular weight its insistently realistic style, especially given Rodin's choice of model. Concerned as he was to achieve a wholly new and

F R E N C H , 1840-1917

intensely expressive figural form, Rodin was anxious to avoid using professional models, whose stock poses he felt would be inimical to his aspirations. He sought out a soldier as an exemplar of wellconditioned male anatomy. 2 Through contacts with a Belgian wireless communications unit he located a Flemish youth named Auguste Neyt, "a fine noble-hearted boy, full of fire and valor,"3 who began posing for the artist in October 1875. Rodin continued working and reworking the clay sculpture through the end of 1876, with a month off to study the works of Michelangelo in Italy. In 1877, to prove that he had not molded life-cast elements directly from Neyt's body, Rodin arranged for the photographer Marconi to record both the living model and the sculpture in comparative images.4 These demonstrate that Rodin's obsessive search for a series of dynamic silhouettes completely in the round (the figure's "profiles," as he called them) 5 had endowed the sculpture with its buoyant energy while emphasizing the dense, muscular potency of his soldier-model. This hauntingly vcristic sculpture's intense naturalism, coupled with its original lack of an allegorical or historicizing title, served principally to baffle and offend its first observers. The Salon reviewer Charles Tardieu (rather astonishingly) called it a "slavish likeness of a model with neither character nor beauty, an ... exact copy of a most commonplace individual." 6 Such a curiously negative judgment was of course as demeaning to Neyt as it was to Rodin, and (together with repeated allegations of life casting) helped to precipitate their second

collaboration: Marconi's invaluable series of comparative photographs. It was not until an official inquiry in 1879 upheld the conceptual originality of Rodin's creation that the French state acquired his original plaster and paid to have it cast.7 Three or four early plaster casts of The Age of Bronze differ from many later ones by an original omission of the shell of the right ear (as here) and by the absence of later fig leaves, as well as other details. Similar fine, early plasters are in Paris (Musee Rodin, from the artist's studio) and Saint Petersburg (presented by the artist to the Academy of the Fine Arts; transferred to the Hermitage in 1911). The Washington version was Rodin's first full-size figure to enter a public collection in the United States: it had been ordered from the artist in 1898 by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts at the urging of Truman Bartlett's son Paul, a friend of Rodin's. The sculpture, acquired as an up-to-date specimen of a masculine figure, was still in active use (located high on a copy stand in the casts gallery) in the academy's drawing classes a century later. DOUGLAS LEWIS

Inscription (top of base near left foot): Rodin Provenance: Purchased 1898 from the artist by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

The Age of Bronze (L'Age d'Airain} Model 1875-1876, cast 1898, plaster 180 x 71.1 x 58.4 (707/s x 28 x 23) Gift of Iris and B. Gerald Cantor, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the National Gallery of Art 1991.183.1

25?

Mediterranee c. 1906, marble 21.6 x 17.2 x 12.7 (8 */2 x6 3 /4 x 5) Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 1995.47.17

258

259

Aristide Maillol

At the beginning of the twentieth century, as he turned from a career as a painter and a graphic and tapestry designer to concentrate on sculpture, Aristide Maillol was shaping what would become the leitmotif of his career. The subject that inspired him was the female nude, carefully observed but transmuted by underlying geometric forms into a kind of architecture, evoking the timeless rather than the individual. Without losing sight of nature, Maillol strove for simplicity, balance, and serenity in composing his beloved type of full-bodied, youthful beauty. The figure that became known as Mediterranee was his first major success as a sculptor. In a design process extending from about 1900 to 1905, the sculptor developed the image of a woman seated on the ground, her head bent forward, one leg at rest on the earth with the foot crossing under the archway formed by the opposite raised knee. Maillol worked out his design in a series of drawings, small clay sketches, and large plasters. The final plaster version, no centimeters high and called simply Woman, appeared in the center of a room at the Salon d'automne in Paris in 1905. Maillol's friend Andre Gide contrasted the seated woman with the works of Rodin in the same exhibition. The Rodin works seemed to him "troubled, significant, full of pathetic clamor"; Maillol's woman, on the other hand, u is beautiful, she means nothing; it is a silent

F R E N C H , 1861-1944

work. I believe one must go far back in time to find such complete neglect of any preoccupation beyond the simple manifestation of beauty."1 The figure received the title Mediterranee only in the early 19205. Working titles had included Crouching Woman, Thought, Latin Thought, and Statue for a Peaceful Park.2 Maillol had continued to meditate on the subject after the 1905 exhibition; as the critic Judith Cladel wrote, "Does she not incarnate the land of light, the region of radiant intelligence, the Greco-Roman zone where she had her birth and the ancient race that populates its shores? She will finally be called Mediterranee."^ Maillol later commented further: I had thought of calling her Toung Girl in the Sun; then, on a day of beautiful light, she appeared to me so alive, so radiant in her natural atmosphere that I baptised her Mediterranean. Not The Mediterranean, a sea that we know well. That's not what I was after. My idea in sculpting her was to create a figure that was young, luminous and noble. All that, is it not the essence of the Mediterranean spirit? That's why I chose her name and why I want her to keep it. 4

Many who saw the 1905 plaster wanted versions in more permanent materials. Among these was the young German count Harry Kessler, a friend who became Maillol's greatest patron. He commissioned a full-sized stone version (now at Winterthur, Oskar Reinhart Collection); the French state commissioned a marble in 1923 (completed 1927; now in the Musee d'Orsay, Paris); and

bronzes were also cast from the exhibited plaster (examples are in the jardin du Garousel, Paris, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York). The Washington marble figure differs from the large versions particularly in the placement of the left hand, which is closer to the cheek than to the top of the head, and in the inward turns of the right hand and bent knee, which create a somewhat more restless composition. Similar variations appear in some small bronze versions cast after I905.5 According to Dina Vierny, Maillol's last model and curator of the Musee Maillol in Paris, Maillol carved this marble himself, without the help of assistants. Pierre Matisse, who acquired it from the artist about 1930, declared that the crack at the rear of the base occurred in the course of carving and was repaired by Maillol himself. 6 This small, rare carving joins the National Gallery's collection as the only marble sculpture by Maillol, and the only example of the design with which Maillol first won international acclaim as a sculptor. A L I S O N L U C H S Provenance: The artist; Pierre Matisse, c. 1930; Mrs. Solomon Guggenheim; by 1945;7 Richard S. Davis, Minneapolis; Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York; Governor Nelson Rockefeller; Paul Rosenberg and Company, New York, by 1966; Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, December 1966.

Alexander Calder A M E R I C A N , 1898-1976

260

In 1942, Calder invented a new format for his sculpture, producing a series of works that his friends James Johnson Sweeney and Marcel Duchamp would later refer to as constellations. These delicate, medium-sized, open-work constructions are composed of linear wire elements and small, carved biomorphic and geometric forms in painted and unpainted wood. Unlike Calder's mobiles, which arc suspended in open space where their individual parts are gently propelled by random air currents, the constellations, including Vertical Constellation with Bomb, are stationary objects that generally sit on a tabletop or hang against a wall. Calder turned to wood in these and other works of the early 19405 partly in response to the scarcity of scrap metal during the war years, although the small forms that are featured in the constellation series originate in certain mobiles of the mid-i93os. Clear affinities with the work of various surrealists, including Joan Miro, Jean Arp, and Yves Tan guy, are found throughout the constellations. Pierre Matisse formalized this comparison in 1943, when he exhibited Calder's constellations at his New York gallery along with recent paintings by Tanguy (who

had, by then, become Calder's neighbor in Connecticut). "It was a very weird sensation I experienced," Calder later recalled with regard to the 1943 exhibition, "looking at a show of mine where nothing moved."1 Vertical Constellation with Bomb appeared in the Pierre Matisse exhibition as well as in Calder's retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art later that year. While Arp and Miro had also created series of "constellations," only the examples by Arp—relief sculptures in painted wood, which he had been producing since the 19205—would have been known to Calder. As a metaphor for works consisting of small points or shapes distributed in loose but fixed configurations across a field or through space, the image of the "constellation" seems to have had special relevance to certain formal developments in abstraction between the two world wars. Allusions to cosmic space were, however, not new to Calder. Indeed, during the early 1930s, he had created a series of "Spheriques," standing sculptures that resemble orreries; in relation to these works, the artist later described the universe itself, with its "detached bodies floating in space," as "an ideal source of form." 2 With ten wooden elements (including the multicolored, falling "bomb"), Vertical Constel-

lation with Bomb is among the most complex of Calder's constellations. Somewhat more architectonic than other works in the series, it bears a playful but striking resemblance to Alberto Giacometti's The Palace at 4 A.M. (1932-1933, The Museum of Modern Art, New York), a delicate construction of linear elements and carved forms (the anthropomorphic figure in Giacometti's sculpture is quite close to Calder's bomb form). The Vertical Constellation is also unusual for the apparent deliberateness with which the artist repeated some of the forms in sets of two or three, varying their dimension and thereby creating the vague impression of diminishing perspective along wire "sight lines." J E F F R E Y W E I S S Inscription (on largest triangular center element): CA Provenance: The artist; Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls, New York, 1974.

Vertical Constellation with Bomb 1943, painted steel wire, painted wood, and wood 77-5 x 75.6 x 61 (30 V2 x 293/4 x 24) Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Klaus G. Perls 1996.120.8

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ChriStO AMERICAN, BORN BULGARIA, 1935

262

Christo made his first packages and wrapped objects as part of a group called Inventory while living in Paris in 1958. Thus began the artist's distinctive career of wrapping, covering, draping, and folding fabric over, through, and around everyday objects and constructed and natural forms. He eventually extended this practice of using fabric to include large-scale urban and rural sites; since the early 19605, he has collaborated on these outdoor projects with his wife Jeanne-Claude. Taking their work outside the confines of the conventional exhibition, Christo and Jeanne-Claude have maintained a creative independence that extends beyond galleries and museums. Christo is the sole author of the packages and wrapped objects, along with the studies for the outdoor projects. These works are the only collectable elements of his work, owing to the temporal nature of the outdoor projects. The critic David Bourdon called Christo's work "revelation through concealment,"1 for by covering and hence concealing a form, whether recognizable or not, Christo endows it with meaning. Beyond actual forms, the artist's interests range from contemporary art practices to ancient stylistic devices to political thought. The compositional elements of

Christo's enshrouded forms, for example, echo the drapery of classical Greek figural sculpture and Byzantine imagery, sources that trace back to Christo's native Bulgaria, which borders Greece and was once part of ancient Thrace.2 By extension, the fabric also alludes to the human body and to Christo's anthropological concerns. In discussing the medium, the artist cited a more contemporary and personal referent when relating the use of fabric to his Marxist background. He commented, "Friedrich Engels said that fabric made [modern] man different from primitive man . . . fabric is almost like an extension of our skin."3 Fabric has been the common denominator in Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work for over forty years, and has ranged in type from found materials to custom industrial weaves. The artists' formalist concerns embrace the properties of fabric: its folds, pleats, and drape, which are created by the ropes or lines that bind or support it. Beyond these physical dimensions, however, Christo and JeanneClaude's work infiltrates the social fabric of the time and place where it is created. Package 1974 was made in New York City specifically for Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, whom Christo and Jeanne-Claude had met in 1971. Christo chose for this work an ocher tarpaulin he had acquired

in 1968 as one of the sample fabrics for his proposal for wrapping the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1969. While the projects and wrapped objects obscure real forms, the packages often conceal ambiguous contents. This ambiguity endows the packages with an abstract quality that is engagingly ironic, given that they are packages and, as such, everyday objects. In making Package 1974^ Christo covered an undefined mass with tarpaulin and neatly bound it in rope tied in a horizontal, vertical, and diagonal orientation. The artist has said this sparse and predominantly rectilinear format was determined by the heaviness of the tarpaulin. 4 The pattern of rope in Package 1974, which is evocative of the minimalist grid of the mid-to-late 19608, contrasts with that of Christo's more randomly bound packages, whose allover array of lines on canvas is reminiscent of Jackson Pollock's webs of paint. M O L L Y D O N O V A N Inscription (on bottom): Christo 1974 Provenance: The artist; Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, New York, 1974.

Package 1974 1974, tarpaulin, rope, and wood 60.9 x 49.5 x 38.1 (24 x 19 V2 x 15) The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, Patrons' Permanent Fund and Gift of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel 1992.7.3

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Photography

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CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITION

William Henry Fox Talbot Orleans Cathedral

Edouard-Denis Baldus Toulon, Gare

William Henry Fox Talbot Oak Tree

Julia Margaret Cameron The Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty

Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawcs The Letter

Eugene Atget Etang de Corot, Ville-d'Avray

Gustave Le Gray Beech Tree^ Forest of Fontainebleau Nadar lion ore Daumier Eugene Cuvelier Forest Scene

Paul Strand Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco Paul Strand Rebecca Paul Strand Woods, Maine Charles Sheeler Doylestown House—The Stairwell Charles Sheeler Doylestorpn House—The Stove

Andre Kcrtesz Shadows of the Eiffel

Tower

Andre Kertesz Clock of the Academie Fran$aise, Paris August Sander Recipient of Welfare Assistance Berenice Abbott Vanderbilt Avenue from F.ast 46th Street Robert Frank Democratic National Convention, Chicago

265

William Henry Fox Talbot B R I T I S H , 1800-1877

266

The world was not quite ready for the strange, fuzzy little images William Henry Fox Talbot exhibited as "photogenic drawings" on 31 January 1839. Many thought they derived from watercolor, lithography, or mezzotint engraving, failing to perceive them as the wondrous workings of nature that Talbot saw. Even after vastly improving exposure time, image readability, and permanence, and discovering latent image development (which Talbot officially introduced and patented in 1841 as the calotype process),

prolific correspondence provided constant

tioned himself across from a tower, using

support and encouragement, conceded that daguerreotypes "surpass anything I could have conceived as within the bounds of reasonable expectation. . . . In scenes of great detail, every letter in distant inscriptions—every chip in the corner of every stone in every building is reproduced and distinctly recognizable with a strong lens. . . . Excuse this exultation." 1 Though distressed, Talbot remained undaunted, believing that his invention

he met with an unsupportive government and an indifferent public. Most were bedazzled by the astonishing veracity of detail produced by the daguerreotype (a process unveiled in France on 7 January 1839 and given to that nation under government auspices), and remained less than enthused with the calotype. Lack of familiarity stemmed largely from Talbot's restrictive patent, but lack of excitement had more to do with the public's preference for scientific verisimilitude over picturesque chiaroscuro. Even Talbot's dear friend and scientific colleague Sir John Herschel, whose

had simply been "misapprehended."2 He set about publicizing in newspapers and journals, and demonstrated the calotype (on a modest scale) in Italy, Germany, and Scotland. Rather than bemoaning the suffused tones of the calotype, Talbot emphasized the medium's artistic possibilities, especially its potential for mass reproduction and book illustration. Talbot first got the idea for a book about cathedrals in 1842. Setting off

a long focus lens that flattened space and emphasized the Gothic tracery. Successfully capturing the delicate play of light, Talbot presented the structure as not so much a massive church as an ethereal screen of curves and patterns. When photographing in the countryside, Talbot frequently chose subjects that celebrated nature, which he often acknowledged as photography's true inventor and ultimate source for artistic inspiration. As he wrote in his celebrated six-volume book of calotypes entitled The Pencil of Nature:

to France the following year with his exvalet and assistant Nicolaas Henneman, Talbot photographed structures in Paris, Rouen, Chambord, and Orleans. Though poor weather conditions and uncooperative city officials hampered his efforts, he met with unexpected success in Orleans and in June made this negative of the cathedral. Lugging camera and chemicals to the top of the church, Talbot posi-

A painter's eye will often be arrested where ordinary people see nothing remarkable. A casual gleam of sunshine, or a shadow thrown across his path, a time-withered oak, or a moss-covered stone may awaken a train of thoughts and feelings, and picturesque imaginm^s 3

Talbot's childhood tutor, George Butler, apparently agreed; he suggested trees as a subject for calotypes, for the medium might "exhibit the touch of the great artist, Nature." 4 Shown without compositional embellishment in a centralized view, Talbot's Oak Tree invites the sort of romantic rumination described. Arresting

267

the eye with its powerful silhouette, the leafless oak stands bare against the sky, its many gnarled limbs marking its age. Both Orleans Cathedral and Oak Tree are remarkable examples of the calotype. While several salted paper prints from the same negatives appear in other collections, few have the even tonal saturation of these works, which have beautifully survived the effects of fading over time. Both works were in the collection of Lacock Abbey, Talbot's ancestral home in England. Orleans Cathedral was purchased by the National Gallery of Art through donated funds in 1998. Oak Tree was in the David and Mary Robinson Collection, which was acquired by the Gallery in 1995. These photographs are cornerstones of the Gallery's collection: both are exemplars of early nineteenth-century British photography and the nascent years of the medium. A P R I L W A T S O N Provenance (1995.36.117): The Estate of William Henry Fox Talbot, Lacock Abbey; by inheritance to Matilda Talbot; Hans P. Kraus Jr., New York, by 1990; David and Mary Robinson, Sausalito, Calif, 1995. Provenance (1998.136.1): The Estate of William Henry Fox Talbot, Lacock Abbey; by inheritance to Matilda Talbot; Charles Isaacs Photographs, Malvern, Pa., 1998.

Orleans Cathedral June 1843, salted paper print from paper negative 18.6 x 23.1 (y 5 /i6 x p V f e ) Anonymous Gift 1998.136.1

268

Oak Tree mid-i84Os, salted paper print from paper negative 22.5 x i8.7(8 7 /8xyy8) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1995.36.117

269

Albert Sands Southworth A M E R I C A N , 1811-1894 Josiah Johnson Hawes A M E R I C A N , 1808-1901

270

Messrs. Southworth & Hawes would gratefully acknowledge the many favors of their friends^ and of the artists and lovers of art in Boston and vicinity . . . and invite them to an examination of the last most wonderful and most beautiful improvement in Daguerreotypes:, the transformation of shadows into substance— the change of pictures upon a plain surface into statuary and solidity. ALBERT SANDS SOUTHWORTH JOSIAH JOHNSON HAWES,

AND

1853

Only four years after Louis-JacquesMande Daguerre announced his startling discovery of a method to fix the image of nature in Paris in 1839, Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes entered into a partnership to create daguerreotype studies of their fellow Bostonians. Working together until 1862, they made vibrant and widely celebrated portraits of this country's leading citizens. Dignitaries such as Daniel Webster and Oliver Wendell Holmes came to the studio to have their portraits taken, as did prominent social, intellectual, and literary figures, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harriet Beecher Stowe. But numerous others, known today only by their portraits, also came. All were rewarded with photographs that, as one contemporary critic exclaimed, captured u the soul of the young nation." 1 In addi-

tion, at a time when other daguerreotypists rarely ventured outside their studios, Southworth and Hawes overcame numerous technical difficulties and made photographs of Boston's streets, its wharfs and shipyards, cemeteries and schools; they even took the camera into the operating rooms of Massachusetts General Hospital. Southworth and Hawes' aspirations for their portraits went far beyond those of the average photographer of their day. Whereas most daguerreotypists, simply concerned with rendering a likeness, used stock poses, painted backdrops, and even head restraints to firmly fix their subjects, Southworth and Hawes were celebrated not just for their technical expertise, but also for their penetrating studies, innovative style, and creative use of natural light. They sought to elevate their subjects "far beyond common nature" and embody their "genius and spirit of poetry," as Southworth wrote in 1871. "What is to be done is obliged to be done quickly. The whole character of the sitter is to be read at first sight; the whole likeness, as it shall appear when finished, is to be seen at first, in each and all its details, and in their unity and combination." 2 The Letter is the first work by these distinguished photographers to enter the National Gallery's collection. Among Southworth and Hawes' most accomplished studies, it is exceptional in its composition and mood. Most American daguerreotype portraits made in the 18405 and 18508 were frontal, bust-length

studies of single figures who rarely show any kind of facial expression because of the often long exposure times. The Letter, however, is a highly evocative study With its carefully constructed composition and tight pyramidal structure, it presents two thoughtful young women contemplating a letter. Through their posture and expression, these women seem to gain not only physical support from each other, but also emotional strength. Although the identity of the women is unknown, as is the content of the letter, this large and distinguished daguerreotype reflects Southworth and Hawes' aspiration to capture "the life, the feeling, the mind, and the soul" of their subjects.3 S A R A H C R E E N O U C H Provenance: The Estate of Josiah Johnson Hawes, by descent to son and daughters; Holman Print Shop, Boston, Mass., before early 19408; David Feigenbaum, Boston, Mass.; sale, Sotheby's New York, 27 April 1999, no. 20; Charles Isaacs Photographs, Malvern, Pa.

The Letter c. 1850, whole plate daguerreotype 21.6 x i6.5(8 1 /2x6 1 / 2 ) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1999.94.1

271

Gustave Le Gray F R E N C H , 1820-1882

272

After viewing the brilliant platc\s made by Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre, Paul Delaroche, the history painter and esteemed professor of the Ecole des BeauxArts, is said to have exclaimed, "From today painting is dead." 1 It was not long, however, before Delaroche realized photography's potential as both a means of artistic expression and as an aide-memoire to artists: painters, for instance, could make quick, otherwise unattainable studies using the process. One of the aspiring painters studying in Delaroche's studio who turned to photography was Gustave Le Gray. He began to experiment with the daguerreotype process in 1847 with Francois Arago, the director of the Paris observatory who had announced Daguerre's method to the Academic des sciences. In 1850, Le Gray published a treatise on his use of various photographic techniques: Over the course of several years, I have been led to make larger applications of photographic processes to reproduce nature scrupulously in all of its aspects. . . . I have realized the immense importance of these processes for art and the need for a method that is reliable without restriction in order to facilitate its use for artist and amateur. 2

The method he developed, the waxedpaper process, was ideal for plein-air work. Because the paper negative was saturated with beeswax and immersed

in chemicals, negatives could be sensitized long before they were exposed in the camera. The waxed-paper negatives, with their increased translucency, also allowed for finer detail. Le Gray advocated an appreciation of the intrinsic beauty of the photographic process, and warned against retouching: These gentlemen arc asking from a retouched paper print what they ought to have obtained by chemical means. The detail that they add thus becomes shrill and offensive as an artistic thing. . . . The most ordinary unretouched photographic print has a much superior artistic value than a print that has been retouched, even with the greatest care.3

Le Gray also investigated the collodion process, in which glass plates were coated with a thin film of collodion (guncotton dissolved in ether and alcohol) and sensitized with silver salts. Although collodion negatives allowed for even finer detail than the waxed-paper process, the collodion image required, as he wrote in 1852, u more depth and strength in its all-over effect."* Le Gray's examinations extended beyond his materials to his subject matter, which he approached in a highly original manner: The artistic beauty of a photographic print consists nearly always in the sacrifice of certain details; by varying the focus, the exposure time, the artist can make the most of one part or sacrifice another to produce powerful effects of light and shadow, or he can work for extreme softness or suavity, copying the same model or site, depending on how he feels.^

This ability to orchestrate light and shadow is clearly evident in the studies he made in the forest of Fontainebleau, including Beech Tree, Forest of Fontainebleau, the boldly direct composition of a single, grand, eternal tree whose wounded root only adds to the heroism of the image. Le Gray was an enormously influential photography teacher whose students became some of the most important photographers of the day, including Maxime Du Gamp, Henri Le Secq, and (through Le Secq) Gharles Negre. Lc Gray was a founding member of the Societe heliographique and of the Societe francaise de photographic, and he exhibited internationally in the i850s. Despite his successes, he was continually in financial difficulties, and in 1860, Le Gray dissolved his studio, abandoned his wife and children, and fled France. Several years later he resurfaced in Gairo, where he taught drawing and painting until his death. The rareness of photographs by Le Gray implies that he had a difficult time finding an audience. Though he sold few prints, he created, in his short career, an enduring legacy as a technical innovator, teacher, a n d author. J U L I A T H O M P S O N Provenance: David and Mary Robinson, Sausalito, Calif, 1985.

Beech Tree, Forest of Fontainebleau c. 1856, albumen print from collodion negative 31.8 x 4i.4(i2 3 /4 x i6V4) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1995.36.93

273

Honore Daumier 1856-1858, salted paper print from collodion negative 24.4 x 17.9(95/8 x 71/16) Patrons 5 Permanent Fund 1995.36.106

274

275

Nadar

F R E N C H , 182O-191O

This portrait of the renowned caricaturist and painter Honore Daumier was possibly not a commissioned work, but the result of a voluntary engagement with a fellow artist who paid considerably less than the one hundred francs that Felix Tournachon, known as Nadar, normally charged.1 Felix, who placed great significance on details of clothing and demeanor, depicted Daumier before a neutral backdrop, wearing a simple coat that barely conceals his bulk, with his penetrating and intelligent gaze undiminished by his heavy features and unkempt hair. It is a sensitive tribute to the modesty and humanity of an artist Felix greatly admired. At the time that Felix made this portrait, he was embroiled in a legal battle with his younger brother, Adrien, over the exclusive right to the name Nadar. 2 Felix was already celebrated for his drawings and caricatures for satirical newspapers when he arranged for Adrien, a painter, to learn the photographic process3 and to open his own photographic studio. When the business began to fail, the two collaborated, and Felix supplied financial backing, contacts, and his pseudonym, Nadar. After he was asked by Adrien to relinquish his share in the

studio, Felix was prompted to take legal action when Adrien continued the practice alone using the name Nadar jeune. In his lawsuit, Felix wrote that although the techniques of photography could be learned, other qualities could not: [I]t's the sense of light, it's the artistic appreciation of the effects produced by different and combined qualities of light, it's the applying of this or that effect according to the nature of the face that you have to reproduce as an artist. What can be learned still less is the moral intelligence of your subject, it's the swift tact that puts you in communion with the model, makes you size him up, grasp his habits and ideas in accordance with his character, and allows you to render, not an indifferent plastic reproduction that could be made by the lowliest laboratory worker, commonplace and accidental, but the resemblance that is most familiar and most favorable, the intimate resemblance.^

This interest in capturing the subject's inner character, honed by his experience as a caricaturist, may have had its roots in his studies as a medical student at a hospital specializing in the new field of psychiatry. Felix's congenial nature, and the unusually large size5 of his prints, attracted celebrities and other dignitaries to his studio and made him one of the most sought-after portraitists of his time. He described putting a sitter at ease during a session: "One sits down, one chats, one laughs, all while readying the lens," so that the subject, "warmed by all the affection," radiates "all his natural benevolence."6

Soon after the court ruled that Felix was "the only, the true Nadar," he moved to a vast studio, the expenses of which forced him to broaden his clientele and adopt conventions of the period, including shading the background to create an oval vignette, and experimenting with color processes and artificial lighting. His interest waned; leaving the day-today activities of the studio to assistants, he concentrated on photographing the landscape from a balloon, and on photographing the catacombs and sewers of Paris using new techniques in artificial lighting. He returned to the studio only when a sitter particularly intrigued him. After his son Paul took over the business in 1895, Felix lived in semiretirement and wrote articles and books until his death at age eighty-nine. JULIA THOMPSON

Provenance: David and Mary Robinson, Sausalito, Calif, by 1995.

Eugene Cuvelier F R E N C H , c. 1830-1900

276

The forest of Fontainebleau was a center of artistic activity in the mid-nineteenth century, and the village of Barbizon located nearby was home to some of the most important plein-air painters of the day, including Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jean-Francois Millet, and Theodore Rousseau. Eugene Cuvelier also came to Fontainebleau, though he turned his attention to photography. In 1861 Millet wrote to Rousseau from Barbizon: You must have seen Eugene Cuvelier. He showed me some very fine photographs taken in his own country and in the forest. The subjects are chosen with taste, and include some of the finest groups of timber that arc about to disappear. 1

Cuvelier studied with the two principal painters of the northern French city of Arras, Constant Dutilleux and Xavier Dourlens; he learned photography, however, from his father. Adalbert Cuvelier was a successful oil merchant who retired and devoted the rest of his life to photography. For him, photography was an art, not a trade, and the photographer's "aesthetic sensibility and knowledge must be embodied in his works just as those of a painter are expressed in his paintings." 2 Adalbert's few surviving photographs exhibit a technical skill and aesthetic qualities that not only won him the esteem of his fellow painters but also laid the foundation for Eugene's photographic work.

Forest Scene dates to the early i86os, during one of Eugene's many summer visits to Barbizon (he had first visited in 1856 with Dutilleux). 3 Like other Barbizon painters, Cuvelier sought to capture the experience of the forest as a place of solitary contemplation, rather than depicting points of interest. Although by this time guidebooks and footpaths had made the forest accessible to tourists, Cuvelier sought out secluded passages such as this scene, which reveals the hidden beauty of the grove of trees that seems to emerge from a lavender mist. Cuvelier lavished great care on his prints in order to achieve a tonal and textural richness. He frequently used paper negatives and the salted paper process rather than popular collodion negatives and commercially prepared albumen paper. Paper negatives were made of fine writing paper sensitized with silver salts, exposed in a camera, developed, and fixed. The process yielded images with a matte surface and a soft, atmospheric quality resulting from the texture of the paper negative— characteristics that were ideally suited for creating romantic landscapes. Cuvelier was inspired by the works of pre-impressionist painters who, in turn, were influenced by photographers. For instance, Corot, the premier landscape painter in France, knew Adalbert, who helped to introduce him to the clicheverre process, which combines elements of printmaking and photography 4 The depiction of light was significant to artists in both fields. Because photo-

graphic emulsions at that time were not equally sensitive to all colors of the spectrum, the overexposure of the sky was necessary in order to expose the landscape properly. This overexposure, combined with the grainy texture of the paper negative, produced a loss of definition of solid forms and caused their edges to blur or soften. Areas of light and dark registered as indistinct tonal shapes, evoking an effect rather than a precise image. This characteristic of photography began to appear in painting in the late i84os.5 After Corot's death, two hundred photographs described as different subjects, "after nature, by various artists," 6 were found in his studio. Whether or not some of these photographs were made by Eugene or Adalbert Cuvelier is not known. J U L I A T H O M P S O N Provenance: Possibly the Estate of Eugene Cuvelier; by inheritance to the descendants of Louise Ganne's sister Victoire; David and Mary Robinson, Sausalito, Calif, 1985.

Forest Scene Early i86os, salted paper print from paper negative 19.3 x 25.7 (7% x loVs) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1995.36.71

277

Edouard-Denis Baldus

278

F R E N C H , 1813-1889

Edouard-Denis Baldus photographed the train station in Toulon while on commission for the administrative council of the southern region of the Paris-LyonMediterranee (PLM) railroad. With

position of the album makes no mystery of Baldus' appreciation for the beauty of the industrial landscape, nor of his conviction that these neoteric structures were part of a historical continuum.

his characteristic eye for majesty, Baldus presents a grand yet simple view. Positioning himself central to his subject, with the slender train tracks receding from middle foreground into the frame's depths, Baldus entices viewers into a scene that sparkles with detailed clarity. From the crisscross geometry of iron and glass of the main station, to the crisp shadow cast by a tiny lamppost beyond, virtually every element shimmers in a sun-drenched setting devoid of people and extraneous detail. The image, secured in the glossy sepia tones of albumen, celebrates modern materials as it pays homage to "the Iron Horse" that was rapidly transforming the lives it connected along its newly opened southern rail line. Toulon^ Gare is the last work in a sequence of sixty-nine photographs in the album Chemins de fer de Paris a Lyon et a la Mediterranee, considered by some the finest photographic album from nineteenth-century France.1 Taken in its entirety, the album aligns the engineering feats of Second Empire France with the nation's past architectural grandeur. Using negatives made specifically for the project, as well as a selection culled from earlier commissions, Baldus juxtaposed images of Roman ruins and medieval monuments with those of newly built viaducts, railways, and tunnels. The com-

Like other peintres-pbotograpbes (painters-turned-photographers) of his generation, including Gustave Le Gray, Henri Le Secq, and Charles Negre, Baldus used the camera in a somewhat retrograde manner, with one foot in the past and the other poised for the future. This vacillating stance, ranging in tenor from repulsion to adoration for all things modern, prevailed in a society that saw old buildings reduced to rubble as elaborate new architectural enterprises rose in their stead. Several governmentsponsored projects employed the enthusiastic services of the peintres-pbotograpbes to document their campaigns. Baldus participated in many of these historic endeavors, including the Missions Heliograpbique of 1851 (which also included Le Gray, Le Secq, Hippolyte Bayard, and O. Mestral) and the construction of the new Louvre in 1855-1857. He also produced several elaborate albums, presenting one each to Queen Victoria and Napoleon in. By the time he received the PLM commission, Baldus had a wellearned reputation as one of the finest architectural and industrial landscape photographers of his day. That Baldus employed the wet plate collodion process, which relies on a glass negative, for Toulon, Gare is significant. Though Baldus was a master at orchestrating impressively detailed prints from paper negatives, the images he printed from glass negatives onto glossy albumen

paper allowed for even finer definition. Such photographs fed a public hungry for "transparent" images whose precision suggested (erroneously) the primacy of seamless technical vision over artistic intervention. 2 As the ease and clarity of the collodion process conjoined with innovations in print production, paper negative photography quickly faded. Baldus, a brilliant technician in both techniques, effectively made the transition. 3 An enthusiastic innovator, he investigated elaborate methods of combination printing and multi-negative panoramic views. His commanding sense of composition and tone, evident in Toulon, Gare, appealed to the imperial eyes of a nation whose focus on industry and expansion as the secular religion of the future was sharp and undeterred. Toulon, Gare came to the National Gallery with the collection of David and Mary Robinson, a gift that now forms the core of our collection of nineteenth-century French photography. A P R I L W A T S O N Provenance: David and Mary Robinson, Sausalito, Calif.

Toulon^ Gare 1861 or later, albumen print from collodion negative mounted on paperboard 274

X 4 3 . 1 (l0 1 3 /16 X l6 1 5 /16)

Patrons' Permanent Fund 1995-36.10

279

The Mountain Nymph^ Sweet Liberty June 1866, albumen print from collodion negative 36.1 x 26.7 (i4 3 /i6 x 10 l/2) New Century Fund 1997.97.1

280

28l

Julia Margaret Cameron B R I T I S H , 1815-1879

When Julia Margaret Cameron sent this photograph to her mentor and "high priest," the esteemed astronomer and scientist Sir John Herschel, he described it as "an astonishing piece of high relief," as if the young woman was "just let loose and then [was] half afraid that it was too good to last."1 With loose, tousled hair, Cameron's Nymph confronts her onlookers head-on. Her penetrating, though uncertain gaze, its strength undiminished over time, testifies to Cameron's sensitivity as an artist who sought nothing less than u to arrest all beauty" in her view. Cameron herself was anything but unsure when it came to promoting her art. When she made this image in June 1866, over two years after her first official success, the fifty-one-year-old artist was in the midst of her most productive years. By this time she possessed enough confidence to claim as her own a unique style of up-close, soft-focus portraiture. She ignored critics who attacked her technique as a slovenly affront to the detailed exactitude many thought to be photography's bailiwick. Cameron was also exhibiting and copyrighting her photographs, 2 which she hoped to place with influential friends and established institutions. In November 1864 and August 1865 she presented handsomely designed albums of images to Herschel and to Samuel Lloyd Jones, Lord Overstone (her private benefactor and a trustee of the National

Gallery, London). By December of 1865, both the British Museum and the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) had accepted and purchased significant numbers of her works for their collections. Cameron was an artist who sought to ennoble photography, to secure its place as a form of high art, one that would elevate the senses in the manner of religious revelation. When Cameron photographed men, she generally sought to arrest their genius, in keeping with the Victorian idealization of men of mark. When she turned her camera on women, her visions were more experimental and enigmatic. For Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty, Cameron drew, as she often did, from literature. The title derives from a line in Milton's L'Allegro (1631?): Come, and trip it as you go On the light fantastic toe, And in thy right hand lead with thce, The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;

process, a difficult technique that involved first coating the 15 x 12 inch glass negatives with a viscous mixture, then sensitizing and exposing the plates before the surfaces dried. Cameron contactprinted her negatives on hand-coated albumen paper so that the subjects' heads appear to be almost actual size or, as she often signed them, "from life." Cameron experienced difficulty preserving the negative for Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty, which suffered small surface cracks to the emulsion. 4 This photograph, acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 1997, joins three other works by Julia Margaret Cameron in the collection: Julia Jackson (1867), Mary Hillier and Two Children (1864), and Deathbed Study of Adeline Grace Clogstoun (1872). Cameron's work holds a significant place in the Gallery's collection as both a stunning example of British photography and as a hallmark of nineteenth-century portraiture. APRIL WATSON

And if I give thee honour due, Mirth, admit me of thy crew To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free

^

To personify this spirit of boundless, innocent joy, Cameron chose "Mrs. Keene," a young woman about whom little is known. While the subject conveys a spirit of unrestrained freedom, the means by which Cameron made the portrait were extremely cumbersome. Cameron worked in the wet collodion

Provenance: Mr. William Rubel, Santa Cruz, Calif.

Eugene AtgCt

282

Eugene Atget was born in Libourne, near Bordeaux. Orphaned at an early age, he was placed in the guardianship of an uncle. He left school sometime in his teens and went to sea, probably working as a cabin boy. Once back on shore, he trained as an actor at the Conservatoire national in Paris. Although he never finished his course of study, he joined a repertory group and over the next few years acted in the provinces, usually in minor roles. In the late i88os he abandoned the stage, and, after briefly experimenting with painting, took up photography. Atget initially specialized in such subjects as flowers and architectural details for painters, printmakers, and sculptors. This work soon led him to his major project: documenting the sites of old Paris that were threatened by demolition. Atget's equipment was simple. Because clear, sharp details were necessary to his work, Atget used a large view camera that held 7 x 9 inch glass negatives, standard at the beginning of his career but antiquated by the end, when smaller and more versatile cameras were available. He developed the negatives in his workroom and contact-printed them in sunlight on the roof of his apartment building. 1 He usually printed on

F R E N C H , 1857-1927

albumen papers, even well after most photographers had abandoned the process in favor of platinum and silver papers. After 1901 Atget expanded his project to include the area surrounding Paris, first the suburbs in the south, then those in the north. He often returned to a specific site over the course of many years in order to document the changes that had taken place. He visited Ville-d'Avray in the western suburbs of Paris several times and photographed "Corot's Pond,55 a frequent subject for the Barbizon painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, who had lived nearby. Perhaps to emulate the preimpressionist painter's style, Atget used the arrowroot process, a salted paper process in which the paper is sized with arrowroot starch. It yields images with a soft, velvety texture and a cool, gray-toviolet range of color—effects that are highly suited to the silvery atmosphere and idyllic setting of this work. Before World War I, Atget's photographs were bought by artists such as Andre Derain, Georges Braque, and Henri Matisse; after the war, the Americans Man Ray, Berenice Abbott, and Julien Levy all admired his work. Levy purchased as many Atget prints as he could; with Atget only parting with ten a day, Levy also searched through antiquarian booksellers for more. He confessed, "There is nothing I could ask for better than to roll myself between sheets of Atgets, each new one I find (and there are thousands) is a revelation."2

Shortly before he died, Atget's work came to the attention of the surrealists, who appreciated his ability to evoke meaning from the commonplace. After his death, through Abbott's tireless efforts, his prints came to the attention of those who appreciated their beauty and clarity, and who supported photography as a fine art. Atget had "no intellectual ax to grind," Ansel Adams wrote. His prints are "direct and emotionally clean records of a rare and subtle perception, and represent perhaps the earliest expression of true photographic art." 3 JULIA THOMPSON

Provenance: Julien Levy, New York, 1927; sale, Sotheby's, New York, 9 November 1983, no. 25; Weston Gallery, Carmel, Calif, by 1983; Carleton Willers; Simon Lowinsky Gallery, New York, by 1990; David and Mary Robinson, Sausalito, Calif, 1990.

Etang de Corot^ Ville-d*Avray 1900-1910, arrowroot print 16.3 x 2 2 . 2 ( 6 7 / 1 6 x 8 3 / 4 )

Patrons' Permanent Fund 1995.36.2

283

Paul Strand

284

In 1915, as he struggled to find a way to support himself through his art, Paul Strand embarked on a trip across the United States to photograph colleges and universities in the hope that students and alumni would buy his hand-colored prints. As a business venture it was a failure; however, the trip exposed him to the diversity of the American cultural, social, and natural landscape, while giving him time to consolidate many of the new ideas about modern art and photography he had learned at Alfred Stieglitz's gallery, 291. Strand had been particularly impressed by the formal strength and integrity of the work by Cezanne that Stieglitz had exhibited in 1911, as well as by the movement and vitality of cityscapes by John Marin that were shown in 1913. Many of Strand's works from his trip, including Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, demonstrate his attempts to photograph movement on city streets in a way that, while both abstract and controlled, also imparted a sense of the dynamism of urban life. In Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco Strand utilized the massive architecture of the building, with its bold variegated pattern of light and dark forms, to construct a powerful image that succinctly conveys the monumentality of the urban environment. By placing two small figures in the lower left and a tree in the right center, all of which are dwarfed by the surrounding architecture, he also made a work that speaks to the diminished role of both man and nature in this new world.

A M E R I C A N , 1890-1976

Throughout the next two decades, Strand's work was characterized by bold, forceful, tightly constructed photographs that impart not only a sense of monumentality and strength, but also dynamism and energy. Invigorated by the intellectual and artistic community in New York in the 19205, Strand was also challenged by his mentor, Stieglitz; and a number of the younger man's photographs from this time echo the older photographer's work. Stieglitz had made more than three hundred studies of his wife Georgia O'KeefTe; in the early 19205 Strand also photographed his wife Rebecca. However, while their subjects are similar (Rebecca even resembled and dressed like O'Keeffe) and while both photographers made closeup, detailed studies of their lover's face, hands, and body, the effect and indeed the ultimate meaning of their portraits are quite different. Whereas Stieglitz sought to construct a composite portrait of O'Keeffe that would in sum address what he referred to as the universal Woman, Strand shied away from making "an empty gesture of his own personality,"1 as he wrote, and instead strove to preserve the individuality and integrity of his subject. In all of his portraits of her, Rebecca retains a fierce sense of physicality, monumentality, and almost palpable energy. Dominating the picture frame, she locked eyes with the photographer, as if searching for herself, as if seeking to define herself in the external world. Like his portraits or his studies of machines made in the early 19205, Strand's photographs of trees, rocks, plants, and flowers, most of which were made in 1927

and 1928 in Georgetown, Maine, were also close-up, frequently dense compositions. At the time Strand wrote that he wanted to make photographs that were "sharply particularized," that created a strong sense of place, and "shoved us into the core of our own world—made us look at it," made us "experience something which is our own, as nothing which has grown in Europe can be our own." As in Woods, Maine, he wanted to reveal, as he continued, a "vision of the forces which animate objectivity."2 Much as he had done in his portraits of Rebecca, he wanted to demonstrate the individuality of each particular place, each rock, each tree that he photographed. As he said of his friend, the painter John Marin, "an American tree is entirely different from a French tree."3 It was that difference that both Marin and Strand sought to record i n their art. S A R A H C R E E N O U G H Provenance (1995.36.113): Nancy Medwell Fine Arts, Seattle, Wash., by 1985; David and Mary Robinson, Sausalito, Calif, 1985. Provenance (1991.216.6): The Estate of Paul Strand, by inheritance to Hazel Strand; Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation, Millerton, N.Y.; Southwestern Bell Corporation, Saint Louis, Mo., by 1990. Provenance (1991.216.13.3): Paul Strand Archive, Aperture Foundation, Millerton, N.Y.; Southwestern Bell Corporation, Saint Louis, Mo.

Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco 1915, platinum print processed with mercury 25.4 x 32.7 ( i o x 13) Patrons' Permanent Fund 1995.36.113

285

Rebecca 1922, platinum print 244

X 19.4 (9 5/8 X 75/8)

Southwestern Bell Corporation Paul Strand Collection 1991.216.6

286

Woods^ Maim 1927, platinum print 24.5 x 19.1 (9% x 7^2) Southwestern Bell Corporation Paul Strand Collection 1991.216.13.a

287

Charles Sheeler A M E R I C A N , 1883-1965

288

It's Sunday—but nothing can mar the beauty of this crisp Spring morning The scene takes place in a little country house—which is filled with the merriment of a weekend party— oj one—rather two—for the moment I had forgotten the stove which gives out a welcome warmth from its red opening . . . One of the characters (the one which is not smoking) light[s] a Benson & Hedges—The stove demands more fuel.1 CHARLES SHEELER TO WALTER ARENSBERC

In 1917, when he had been photographing for only a few years, Charles Sheeler embarked on one of his most important —arguably his best—series of photographs, a group of studies of a simple eighteenth-century house he shared with the painter Morton Schamberg in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Although Sheeler, like his roommate Schamberg, was trained as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he learned how to photograph in 1910 in order to support himself. The copy photographs that he made for galleries and private collectors such as Walter Arensberg brought him into contact with some of the most advanced art of the period. In addition, his frequent visits to Alfred Stieglitz's gallery 291 further deepened his understanding of modern European art, while his conversations with the older photographer encouraged his growing interest in the expressive potential of photography. Sheeler and Schamberg spent long weekends at the quiet, charming, but decrepit house in Doylestown. Although in the 19205 Sheeler would come to be associated with the depiction of American urban and industrial landscape, he clearly cherished the solitude he found in

Doylestown: "The little house would be so happy to receive you," he told Stieglitz in 1917, "and I can add from experience the advantage it has proven to call a halt in the midst of the rush—go out there, put one's windows up and let the fresh air clear out the atmosphere."2 Sheeler used his time in Doylestown to great advantage, consolidating many of the lessons he had recently learned about modern European art, especially from his study of Cezanne and Picasso. Working at night and using a harsh artificial light that cast strong shadows and revealed few details, he created a series of photographs with daringly modernist compositions that emphasized the flat, formal, and geometric design of the house. Just as important, though, in these photographs (including Doylestown House—The Stairwell and Doylestown House—The Stove] Sheeler demonstrated how American artists could merge this new European vision with the distinctly American subject matter of the vernacular architecture of rural Pennsylvania.

289

Shecler was particularly attached to the stove, which he called his "companion": he made two photographs of it and fifteen years later used this one (Doylestoipn House—The Stove) as the source for a crayon drawing. Situated in the center of our photograph, radiating "a welcome warmth," the gracefully defined nineteenth-century stove has obliterated the more traditional source of heat (the fireplace barely visible to the left) for this eighteenth-century room. Like Sheeler himself, the stove was a transplant from another era; it was a new object that had found a space and a function in an older environment. In this way, Sheeler found what his contemporary Van Wyck Brooks called "the useable past," and demonstrated how twentieth-century American art and life could draw strength and sustenance from the nation's cultural history. S A R A H C R E E N O U C H Provenance: Charles Sheeler Estate; William Lane, inherited by his widow, Mrs. Sandra Lane.

Doylestown House—The Stairwell 1917, gelatin silver print 24.5 x 16.9 (95/s x 6^8) New Century Gift (Committee 1998.19.2

290

Doylestown House—The Stove 1917, gelatin silver print 2

3-7 x i? (95/i6 x 6 n /i6) Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund 1998.19.3

291

Andre KcrtCSZ

292

Like so many others before or since, Kertesz became enamored of photography while he was a teenager. A native Hungarian living in Budapest, Kertesz perfected his technique in the years just before World War I, and after his release from the army, he began to explore both the style and distinctive vision that would come to characterize his art. Yet, with his quiet but fierce ambition, he feared that he would never be able to support himself with his art in his native country Again like so many others before or since, he immigrated to Paris in 1925, determined to shed his amateur status and support himself as a photojournalism His timing was fortunate: Paris in the 19208, like New York, London, and Berlin, witnessed an explosion in the

A M E R I C A N , B O R N H U N G A R Y , 1894-1985

number of periodicals and newspapers that illustrated their pages with photographs. Quickly discovering many publications willing, even eager, to publish his distinctive and highly personal glimpses of Parisian life, Kertesz flourished in this supportive environment. He soon befriended several of the leading artists of the period, from fellow Hungarian emigres to others such as Sergei Eisenstein and Piet Mondrian. However, while the formal strength of Kertesz' work intensified through his exposure to their art and while his photographs became informed with a knowledge of cubism, abstraction, and surrealism, his intention to reveal the poetry of everyday life remained constant. Shadows of the Eiffel Tower and Clock oj the Academie Franc aise, Paris are both works made for publication in periodicals. Commissioned by Paris Vu to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Eiffel

Tower, Shadows of the Eiffel Tower reveals Kertesz' proclivity to explore unusual and often quite startling points of view. Yet, unlike the dizzying studies of many of his contemporaries, Kertesz' photograph is imbued with a sense of calm and order. Taming both time, motion, and form, he constructed a photograph in which objects, people, and the cityscape fit precisely into an elegant, if somewhat removed still life. Clock of the Academie Francaise, Paris^ made for publication in a Dutch periodical, was taken from the attic rooms of the Academie fran9aise, looking through the transparent face of a clock toward the pont des Arts and the Louvre. Its bold

293

framing and dramatic composition demonstrate Kertesz' remarkable ability to see and present the world in a new way. Yet, as in Shadows of the Eiffel Tower or many of his other important works, Kertesz removed himself from the scene he depicted. Up above looking down, from an attic window to the city below, from the inside looking out, Kertesz often presented himself as removed from and not quite a part of the world he depicted. As an emigre in a foreign land, he keenly understood this sense of dislocation, and his art often expressed a feeling of separation, even occasionally loneliness and melancholy. S A R A H G R E E N O U G H Provenance (1996.149.1): The Estate of Andre Kertesz ; The Andre and Elizabeth Kertesz Foundation, New York. Provenance (1996.60.1): Howard Greenberg Gallery, N.Y.

Shadows of the Eiffel

Tower

1929, gelatin silver developed-out print I9.6x224(7 1 1 /i6x8 1 3 /i6) Gift of The Andre and Elizabeth Kertesz Foundation 1996.149.1

294

Clock of the Academie Franfaise, Paris 1929-1932, gelatin silver print 17.2 x 23.5 (63/4 x 9V4) Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation and The Andre and Elizabeth Kertesz Foundation 1996.60.1

295

AugUSt Sander

296

G E R M A N , 1876-1964

August Sander's Recipient of Welfare Assistance exemplifies his mature style at its finest: simply composed, unaffected, and direct. It is part of a monumental series that consumed him for nearly a quarter of

bicycled every weekend to Westerwald and photographed the peasants there. These Westerwald farm portraits later became the foundation for his large documentary project.

a century: using the "universal language" of photography to record members of all professions and social classes, Sander attempted to "arrive at a physiognomic definition of the German people."1 Sander became fascinated with photography when as an adolescent apprenticing in an iron mine in the small, west German village of Herdorf, he was called upon by the foreman to assist an itinerant photographer. With financial assistance from an uncle, he purchased his first camera, and over the next few years he worked in several photography studios. In order to produce the "artistic" portraits his clients favored, he mastered the gum bichromate and other painterly processes in vogue at the time, though he preferred more direct, naturalistic studies. In 1910 Sander opened his own studio in the Cologne suburb of Lindenthal, where he specialized in "simple, natural portraits that show the subjects in an environment corresponding to their individuality." 2 To attract business, Sander

In the early 19205, Sander met artists such as Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, Otto Dix, Anton Raderscheidt, and Wassily Kandinsky. Their stimulating discussions led Sander to realize the importance of his project, which he renamed "Man of the Twentieth Century." He began to make portraits expressly for the series3 and to sift through his earlier negatives, which he recognized for the first time as a treasure trove of pictures tracing the psychological makeup of the individual and society. He devised a hierarchical order, with the peasant as the foundation of society, high-level professionals and the upper classes at the top, and the homeless and infirm at the bottom. To symbolize the universal scope of his project, he identified his subjects by occupation or position, not by name. In 1929, Sander published Face of Our Time, a selection of works from his series. The critically acclaimed book was hailed as "a case of the camera looking in the right direction among people," providing "a photographic editing of society, a clinical process; even enough of a cultural necessity to make one wonder why other so-called advanced countries of the world have not also been examined and

recorded."4 The clarity of his images allied Sander with the new objectivity advocated by other contemporary artists, including Albert Renger-Patzsch, whose The World is Beautiful had been published the year before. Sander projected that his "Man of the Twentieth Century" series would encompass up to six hundred photographs. However, his view of physiognomy was at odds with the Nazi ideal, and in 1934 the Nazis destroyed the printing blocks of Face of Our Time and seized all available copies. Sander's archives were repeatedly searched, and many negatives were either confiscated or later destroyed in a fire set by looters. Although forced to abandon his project at this time, Sander was able to resume work after the war; he continued to photograph subjects and print from old negatives until he succumbed to a stroke at the age of eighty-eight. JULIA THOMPSON

Provenance: The Estate of August Sander, Cologne; by inheritance to Gunther, then Gerhard Sander, Cologne; private collection; Kathleen Ewing Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Recipient of Welfare Assistance 1930, gelatin silver print 22.3 x i 5 . 4 ( 8 3 / 4 x 6 V i 6 ) New Century Fund 1999.49.4

297

Vanderbilt Avenue from East 46th Street 9 October 1935, gelatin silver print 23.7 x 16.5 (95/i6 x 6V2) Gift of Marvin Breckinridge Patterson and Anonymous Gift 1998.65.1

298

299

Berenice Abbott A M E R I C A N , 1898-1991

In 1921, Berenice Abbott left New York City's bohemian Greenwich Village and moved to Paris to study sculpture. Like many of her fellow expatriates, Abbott was disenchanted by the rise of American commercialism after World War I and eager to join the artistic and literary milieu of Parisian cafe society. Financial difficulties and a serendipitous meeting with the artist Man Ray in 1923 led her to photography: Man Ray hired Abbott, a novice in the medium, to work as his darkroom assistant. Although she took the job primarily to support herself, she soon saw photography as a viable means for creative expression. By the time she left his employ nearly three years later, Abbott had earned a reputation as an esteemed portrait photographer and was able to establish her own studio on the Left Bank. In 1929, Abbott returned to New York to find a publisher for her book on the French documentary photographer Eugene Atget. 1 Seized by a new-found passion for the city, she decided to remain in the United States and embark on an ambitious documentary project: photographing New York in its entirety, from newly constructed skyscrapers, to private residences, tenement houses, civic centers, transportation systems, bridges, and city streets. Securing financial support

proved difficult at first, but Abbott's determination paid off when in 1935 the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration agreed to sponsor her work. The project, published in part in the 1939 book Changing New Tork^ reflects Abbott's mature documentary aesthetic. Informed by the sharp tonal contrasts and considered compositions of European modernism, as well as by a commitment to the "extraordinary potentialities" of an American subject, Abbott's photographs of New York City reflect her desire to interpret her subjects "honestly," "with love void of sentimentality, and not solely with criticism and irony"2 Abbott photographed Vanderbilt Avenue from East 46tb Street in the first month of the Changing New York project. Located in the vicinity of the Grand Central Terminal complex, on the middle east side of Manhattan, the five-blocklong avenue was lined with graceful, austere brick-and-limestone skyscrapers that rose to heights of thirteen to sixteen stories. The avenue typified the kinds of architectural canyons that reshaped the island of Manhattan during the city's skyscraper boom in the first decade of the century With a brilliant understanding of architectural geometry, Abbott emphasized the verticality of the skyscrapers, aligning edges of buildings and windows while arranging street signs and car roofs as perfect horizontal counterpoints. By allowing a sliver of sky to appear between the dark foreground and lighter background buildings, Abbott opened the

scene to a cascade of light that pours across fa$ades and trickles off tiny windowpanes. At street level, the ghosts of moving cars and waving flags testify to a human presence and time's passage. The scene avoids claustrophobic tension or a sense of human alienation. Instead, Abbott presented the city as an organic whole, a formal organization of the "living and functioning details of a complex social scene."3 As determined by its paperboard mount, this particular print of Vanderbilt Avenue from East 46th Street was one of in photographs in the one-person exhibition Changing New Tork^ which opened in October 1937 at the Museum of the City of New York. The show, Abbott's second one-person exhibition at the museum, garnered critical acclaim and brought the artist recognition from a broader general public. The exhibition, its related press, and the 1939 book fostered a turning point in Abbott's career, elevating her from the status of a relative unknown to that of an art-world celebrity. A P R I L W A T S O N Provenance: Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York.

Democratic National Convention, Chicago 1956, gelatin silver print 35.6 x 28 (14 x n) Robert Frank Collection, Gift of Robert Frank 1996.147.1

300

30i

Robert Frank

After nine months on the road, photographing all over the United States in preparation for his seminal publication, The Americans^ Robert Frank returned to his home and family in New York City in June 1956. He spent most of the summer developing and proofing the more than 650 rolls of film he had taken on his trip. As he sorted through his contact sheets, determining which negatives to print, several themes emerged: flags, jukeboxes, and politicians, for example. Even though he already had more than 20,000 frames, he felt compelled to return to Chicago in the middle of August to photograph the Democratic National Convention. It was a productive trip: of the eighty-three photographs published in The Americans in 1958, two were made at the Democratic National Convention. The Americans is one of the most influential photography books of the twentieth century. Unlike other photographic travel books of the 19505, it did not aim to tell its viewers all about this country, nor did it strive to create a list or recitation of the component parts of American civilization. Instead, Frank's book is much like an ode or a song, expressing his personal reaction to America

AMERICAN, BORN S W I T Z E R L A N D ,

in the 19505, his journey into what his friend the beat author Jack Kerouac called "the sad American night." The book speaks of the profound alienation Frank saw in the American people, of their lack of spiritual connection to their cities, towns, or the landscape around them. It addresses the role of patriotism and politics, business and the military, and it speaks of the deep-seated violence, racism, and conformity of American society, whose members seem to live, work, and relate to one another by rote. But Frank's book also reveals the sources of strength he found in American life, especially in its music, African-American culture, and alternative religious groups. Democratic National Convention is among the most powerful, harsh, yet hauntingly poetic of the photographs in The Americans. With its free, loose composition that appears almost randomly to crop figures on the left and right, it is typical of the seemingly uncrafted style of most of the photographs in this book. With its depiction of the American flag, the symbol of our country, used as bunting, Frank suggests how easily and seamlessly politicians turn the very things that should be venerated into empty, merely decorative, and meaningless objects. And, with its depiction of an almost belligerent tuba that completely obscures and diminishes its player,

1924

the photograph succinctly yet movingly illustrates the impersonal nature that Frank found in much of American society. Yet, despite its aggressive imagery, Democratic National Convention is also a strangely silent photograph; while it depicts a musical instrument, we see no evidence of the power of music and its ability to enliven a scene or nourish a people. The tuba, perhaps like its player, seems stifled, muted, unable to express itself. It is, as Kerouac wrote of another of Frank's photographs, "so unspeakably indescribable, [as] to make Marcel Proust shudder."1 S A R A H C R E E N O U G H Provenance: The artist, N.Y.

Endnotes and Index of Artists

302

303

Endnotes

Paintings

304

9.

The painting was marked "for sale" in the catalogue of the 1863 National Academy of Design

i.

H A R N E T T • Violin

1.

VAN H U Y S U M • Still Life

exhibition. According to Harper's Weekly 7, no.

Gazette, 16 September 1886, for the information

Quoted in Paul Taylor, Dutch Flower Painting

331 (2 May 1863)1274, the painting was labeled

that Harnett's painting "sold as soon as it was

1600-1720 (New Haven and London, 1995),

"sold" by the second day of the exhibition.

unpacked [in Cincinnati], and at his own price."

191.

The buyer was possibly Avery

Alfred Frankenstein (After the Hunt: William

10. The first day of the Avcry sale auctioned the

1.

2.

Harnett and Other American Still Life Painters

P E A L E • Dessert

"private collection of oil paintings by American

1870-1900, rev. ed., Berkeley, Calif, 1969, 78)

William Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress

artists, made . . . during the last fifteen years."

names Tuchfarber as the original purchaser

of the Arts of Design in the United States, 3 vols.

Home, Sweet Home was sold on the second day,

and disputes the legend that arose in the early

(New York, 1834), 2:51.

and appears in the "Catalogue of oil paintings,

twentieth century ("Found—A Celebrated

Provenance from curator's acquisition proposal

being the balance of the stock consigned to

American Painting," Mansfield News Journal

and catalogue of the 1981 exhibition of the

S.P. Avery." Avery seems to have owned the

[Ohio], 3 November 1934) of the painting

Ganz collection (An American Perspective^).

painting only in order to sell it; it was not part

having been previously purchased by Edward

of his personal collection.

Stokes, a New York hotelier. When The Old

James Fullerton lent the painting to the Boston Athenaeum's annual exhibition in 1828.

11. The name is spelled Shepherd in the 1984

Violin was owned by William Haas, however, it

Sotheby's sale catalogue, and Shephard in the

2. 3.

Quoted in Louis Legrand Noble, The Life

did hang in a lodging house, the Cincinnati

1997 Christie's sale catalogue.

C O L E • Italian Coast Scene 1.

12. According to Judd Tully and Jo Ann Lewis,

Parkview Hotel. 2.

The original loan agreement, with The Old

3.

Two statements by William J. Williams, 17 May

and Works oj Thomas Cole, ed. Elliot S. Vesell

"National Gallery Buys Rare Homer," The

(Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 195-196.

Washington Post, 20 June 1997: ci, 04, the

Noble 1964.

painting "had its first recorded gallery sale in

1990 and 15 March 1993, in Gallery curatorial

"Evening Thoughts," in Marshall B. Tymn, ed.,

1918, when it sold for $350 at M. Knoedler &

files, give provenance information.

Violin as collateral, is in Gallery curatorial files.

Co. in New York."

Thomas Cole's Poetry (York, Pa., 1972), 78-79.

13. He lent the painting to exhibitions at both the Whitney Museum of American Art and

H O M E R • Home, Sweet Home 1.

the Worcester Art Museum in 1944, and the

Master of Illusion [exh. cat., Museum of Fine

Thirty-Eighth Annual Exhibition. Fifth Arti-

Arts Springfield] (Springfield, Mass., 1985), 49.

14. They lent the painting to several exhibitions,

"Proteus," "Thirty-Eighth Exhibition of the

3.

New Tork Evening Post, 12 June 1863.

the Civil War [exh. cat., The Fine Arts Museums

4.

"The Lounger. The National Academy of

of San Francisco] (San Francisco, 1988), 142-

Design," Harper's Weekly 7 (2 May 1863), 274.

147; curator's acquisition proposal; 17 June 1997

"Atticus," "Art Feuilleton," The New Tork

letter from Stuart Feld (in Gallery curatorial

Leader, 9 May 1863.

files); and sources referred to in previous notes.

New Tork Commercial Advertiser, 24 April 1863.

7.

Nelson A. Miles, Serving the Republic (New York, 1911), 50.

tion supplied by Berry-Hill Galleries, and the 1987 Sotheby's sale catalogue. V A N G O G H • Self-Portrait 1.

Letter no. 604, The Complete Letters of Vincent

2.

Letter no. wi4, Van Gogh 1958, 3:458.

Van Gogh, 3 vols. (London, 1958), 3:201-202.

c i F F o R D • Siout, Egypt 1. Journal in (Egypt), 4 March 1867; quoted in Sanford Robinson Gifford [exh. cat., University

New Tork Evening Post, 12 June 1863.

of Texas Art Museum] (Austin, 1970), 29. 2.

"Sanford R. Gifford. His Life and Character as Artist and Man," in A Memorial Catalogue of the Paintings of Sanford Robinson Gifford, N.A. [exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art] (New York, 1881), 8.

Peter L. Chapman is the great-grandson of Robert M. Snyder. Provenance is from informa-

15. Full provenance taken from catalogue entry in Marc Simpson, Winslow Homer Paintings of

6.

2.

the first in 1958.

New Tork Commercial Advertiser, 24 April 1863.

8.

Quoted in Gertrude Grace Sill, John Haberle,

Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1950.

National Academy of Design. Third Article,"

5.

H A B E R L E • Imitation 1.

"The National Academy of Design. Its cle," New Tork Evening Post, 12 June 1863.

2.

See "The Art Gallery," Cincinnati Commercial

s E R u s i E R • Farmhouse at Le Pouldu i.

Maurice Denis, Definition du neo-traditionnisme, 1890.

305

v L A M i N c K • Tugboats

H E A D E • Giant Magnolias 1.

The inclusion of Giant Magnolias as one of five

1.

paintings by Heade in the exhibition A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting, 1760—

1955), 52. 2.

in 1983 — 1984, is evidence of the high place it is accorded in Ileade's oeuvre.

3.

i.

Reproduced in Steichen: The Photographer [exh.

York, 1997), 492-493. cat., The Museum of Modern Art] (New York, 1961), 73. 4.

o' K E E F F E • Black White and Blue

Modern Art] (New York, 1976), 30.

1.

As quoted by Henry McBride, "O'Keeffe in Taos," New Tork Sun, 8 January 1930; reprinted

4. John Klein, "New Lessons from the School

Boston 1983, 282.

Niven 1997, 495.

John Rlderfield, The "Wild Beasts": Fauvism and Its Affinities [exh. cat., The Museum of

1760-1910 [exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts] 3.

3.

See the discussion of Vlaminck in Ellen C. 348-359-

A New World: Masterpieces of American Painting (Boston, 1983), 282.

Penelope Niven, Steichen: A Biography (New

Oppler, Fauvism Reexamined (New York, 1976),

79/0, shown in Boston, Washington, and Paris

2.

2.

Maurice Vlaminck, Portraits avant deces (Paris,

of Chatou: Derain and Vlaminck in the Paris

in The Flow of Art: Essays and Criticisms of Henry

Suburbs," in Judi Freeman, ed., The Fauve

Mcttride, ed. Daniel Catton Rich (New York, 1975), 261.

M A S S AM • Poppies

Landscape [exh. cat., Los Angeles County Mu-

From a review of Flassam's exhibition at the

seum of Art] (Los Angeles, 1990), 128-129.

2.

B R A Q U E • Port

3.

O'Kceffe in Georgia O'Keeffe (New York, 1976), opposite plate 53.

Doll and Richards Gallery, Boston, c. 1891; undated clipping, probably from the Boston

Lisa M. Messinger, "Sources for O'Keeffe's

Alvin Martin and Judi Freeman, "The Distant

Imagery: A Case Study," in From the Faraway

Academy of Arts and Letters, New York;

Cousins in Normandy: Braque, Dufy, and

Nearby: Georgia O'Keeffe as Icon, eds. Christopher

quoted in Ulrich W. Hicsinger, Childe llassam:

Friesz," in )udi Freeman, ed., The Fauve Land-

Merrill and Ellen Bradbury (Reading, Mass.,

American Impressionist (Munich and New York,

scape [exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum

1992), 55—64, has written that the source of

1994), 86.

of Art] (Los Angeles, 1990), 235.

this painting is Edward Weston's photograph

P E T O • For the Track

P I C A B i A • Procession

tion). However, while O'Kceffe learned much

Transcript, Childe Hassam Papers, American

I.

The Ascent of Attic Angles (1921, private collecI.

Concerning Procession, Seville in the context

from photography, there is no evidence that she

mation Inside: The Art oj John F. Peto and the Idea

of Picabia's prewar work, see William Cam-

ever saw this photograph or knew of it. More-

of Still-Life Painting in Nineteenth-Century America

field, Francis Picabia: His Art, Life and Times

over, while she had met Weston in New York

[exh. cat., National Gallery of Art] (Washing-

(Princeton, 1979), 32-33.

in 1922, she probably did not consider him a

2.

Camfield 1979, 35-36.

"friend."

3.

See Maria Llui'sa Borras, Picabia (New York,

On Peto, see John Wilmerding, Important Infor-

ton, 1983).

1.

M A T I S S E • Open Window 1.

4.

1985), 98-

Hunter, January 1932, as quoted in Jack

For a lengthy discussion of this painting and its

4.

Camfield 1979, 43-45.

Cowart, Juan Hamilton, and Sarah Greenough,

historical context, see Jack Flam, Matisse: The

5.

Des Tableaux, aquarelles et dessins par Francis

Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters [exh. cat.,

Picabia appartenant a M. Marcel Duchamp.

National Gallery of Art] (Washington,

Man and His Art 1868-1918 (Ithaca and London,

1987), 205.

1986), 125, 127-129, 132, 134. 2.

s T E i c H E N • Sunflower

Roger Benjamin, "Fauves in the Landscape of

5.

See O'Keeffe 1976, opposite plate 13 and

For Steichcn's development as a painter, see

Alfred Stieglitx Presents One Hundred Pictures,

in Judi Freeman, ed., The Fauve Landscape

Anne Cohen DcPietro, "The Paintings of

Oils, Watercohm, Pastels, Drawings by Georgia

[exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art]

Kduard Steichen," in The Paintings oj Eduard

O'Keeffe, American [exh. cat., The Anderson

(Los Angeles, 1990), 252.

Steichen [exh. cat., The Heckscher Museum]

Galleries] (New York, 1923), unpaginated.

Andre Derain, Lettres a l^laminck (Paris,

(Huntington, N.Y., 1985), 17-43; an