This is the first major exhibition since 1925 to explore Sargent’s expressive drawings in charcoal, illuminating the magnitude of his abilities as a portrait draftsman. The drawings in the John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum represent an important yet often overlooked part of Sargent’s practice. John Singer Sargent […]
In graphically spare prints and startlingly realistic portraits, darkly suggestive interiors, luscious still lifes and brooding landscape paintings, Félix Edouard Vallotton was a highly original Early Modernist artist. On view in an exhibition of some 80 works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC, through Jan 26, 2020. […]
There is a global trend among modern and contemporary museums to make the display of their collections more dynamic and to explore new concepts of audience engagement. The new MOMA demonstrates a commitment to lead the way. Time will tell how audiences will react. […]
A quick study: Who was Jusepe de Ribera? Who was St. Paul the First Hermit? And why did the artist paint the saint? The Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, has recently received an exciting long-term loan — from the Cummins Family Collection — of the painting St. Paul […]
Tenebrism is a word surprisingly seldom used in discussions of Caravaggio and other 17th-century painters. When it is, it is often thought to simply be another word for chiaroscuro. But it actually has a distinct characteristic that defines it. […]
Best known today for large-scale paintings that were provocative in the early 1860s, Manet shifted his focus and produced a different, though no less radical, body of work In the late 1870s and early 1880s. A major exhibitin at the Getty looks at these later years. […]
The whereabouts of a masterwork by 19th-century French painter Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) were unknown between the time of its recorded sale in 1850 until 2018, when it was discovered in a Paris apartment. Now it’s coming to live in the US. […]
If your exposure has been primarily to Western art, it can be difficult to fully appreciate the artistry of icons. Knowing something about the underlying iconography and typologies, and putting aside expectations of artistic originality and realism, will make these deeply symbolic images more accessible. […]
He’s such an obscure figure today that he doesn’t even warrant a Wikipedia entry — but he must have been Somebody, to have been the subject of this outsized painting by Charles LeBrun, court painter to King Louis XIV. In 2014, at the time of its acquisition, Thomas P. Campbell, then-Director of the Metropolitan Museum of […]
The “inside story” about works of art always get my attention, especially if it’s a lost-work-now-found, or a flea-market discovery that turns out to be worth millions! This story is both. […]