Displaying items by tag: Portrait

The Meadows Museum of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas has acquired a major work by Francisco Goya. Portrait of Mariano Goya (1827), which was acquired thanks to the Meadows Foundation and a gift from Mrs. Eugene McDermott, has not been on display in over 40 years. Completed just months before Goya’s death, the painting, which features the artist’s grandson, is one of less than a dozen portraits painted by the artist between 1820 and 1828. The masterpiece is currently on view at the museum.

Mark A. Roglán, the Linda P. and William A. Custard Director of the Meadows Museum and Centennial Chair in the Meadows School of the Arts, SMU, said, “The Meadows Museum will celebrate its 50^th anniversary in 2015, and the acquisition of this extraordinary work by Goya is a wonderful way to begin that celebration…The work stands as the pivotal linchpin in our growing collection. Indeed the acquisition of the Goya caps off many notable additions to our collection this year and marks a new phase in achieving Algur H. Meadows’ dream to create a ‘small Prado in Texas.’”

Spanning from the 10^th century through the 21^st, the Meadows has one of the foremost collections of Spanish art in the world. In addition to Portrait of Mariano Goya, the museum has five other Goya paintings and complete, first edition sets of all of his major print series.

Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado is hosting the exhibition Velázquez and the Family of Philip IV, a survey of the artist’s time as a portraitist in the royal Spanish court of King Philip IV. Sponsored by the organization Fundacion AXA, the exhibition will feature 29 works from the last years of Diego Velázquez’s career.

Velázquez and the Family of Philip IV will be presented in chronological order, beginning in 1650 when the artist was working in Rome and executed about a dozen portraits of individuals associated with the papal court. The show then moves on to Velázquez’s return to Spain in 1651 after much insisting from King Philip IV, and continues until the artist’s death in 1660. The show includes a number of works by Velázquez’s successors, his son-in-law Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo and Juan Carreño.

Velázquez and the Family of Philip IV will be on view at the Prado through February 9, 2014.  

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has unveiled John Trumbull’s life-size portrait of founding father Alexander Hamilton for the first time ever. The international financial services group Credit Suisse donated the painting to both the Met and the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas back in March. The painting had been on loan to the Crystal Bridges Museum since it opened to the public in 2011.

Credit Suisse acquired the striking portrait in 2000 when it absorbed the New York-based investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. Richard Jenrette, one of the bank’s founding partners, had assembled a remarkable art collection for the company that became part of Credit Suisse’s acquisition. Credit Suisse decided that giving the portrait to two well-known institutions would maximize the public’s enjoyment of the work by expanding its audience.

The painting, which was commissioned by the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1771 while Hamilton was serving as President Washington’s Secretary of Treasury, will remain on view at the Met until 2014 when it will return to the Crystal Bridges Museum. Eventually the painting will be on view at each institution for two-year stretches.

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas has acquired a portrait by John Singer Sargent depicting Edwin Booth, the renowned 19^th century Shakespearean actor and brother of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth. The Players, a private club for actors founded by Booth and his peers, commissioned the full-length portrait in 1890.

Edwin Booth was housed at The Players club until 2002, when debt forced the organization to sell the work to a private collector. The painting had only gone on public display twice before being acquired by the Amon Carter Museum: once in 1926 as part of Sargent’s memorial exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and from November 2003 to February 2004 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Andrew Walker, Director of the Amon Carter Museum, said, “Sargent is one of the most important American artists and we are thrilled to add another one of his masterpieces to our collection. We are particularly intrigued by this painting as it is among his most brilliantly conceived full-length male portraits.” The museum also owns Sargent’s Alice Vanderbilt Shepard, which was acquired in 1999.

Edwin Booth, which was purchased for about $5 million, is currently on its first extended display in the museum’s main gallery.

The prestigious Winter Antiques Show, which is in its 60^th year, will present a loan exhibition honoring the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Fresh Take, Making Connections to the Peabody Essex Museum will present over 50 paintings, sculptures, textiles and decorative objects from the Peabody Essex, one of the country’s oldest and most progressive museums. The exhibition will be on view during the entire run of the Winter Antiques Show, which will take place from January 24, 2014 to February 2, 2014 at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.

Highlights from Fresh Take, Making Connections to the Peabody Essex Museum include an 18^th century inlaid ivory chair from India, a mahogany dressing chest by Thomas Seymour (circa 1810) and a 19^th century portrait of the author Nathaniel Hawthorne by Charles Osgood. Jeff Daly, formerly a senior design advisor to the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will design the exhibition.  

Fresh Take will coincide with the Peabody Essex Museum’s 215^th anniversary. The institution recently embarked on a $650 million campaign and expansion that will place the museum among the top 10 art institutions in the country in terms of gallery space and total endowment.  

The Cleveland Museum of Art acquired a rare enamel-on-copper copy of Titian’s (1485-1576) iconic 16^th century masterpiece Bacchus and Ariadne by the English enamel painter Henry Bone (1755-1834). The museum purchased the 19^th century work at Christie’s London on July 4, 2013 for $478,346. Curator John Seydl made the winning bid over the telephone from a London hotel in an effort to disguise the museum’s interest from other bidders.

The enamel measures 16 inches by 18 inches, which is exceptionally large for the medium typically used to execute portrait miniatures. The work includes an ornate gilt-wood and gesso frame and serves as a prime example of Bone’s innovative and widely admired enamel technique.

After being shipping to Cleveland, the Titian copy is expected to hang in the museum’s early 19^th century gallery, which features French and English art.  

On July 2, 2013, a U.S. District judge decided the fate of 15 contemporary artworks once belonging to the disgraced financier and attorney, Marc S. Dreier. Dreier was convicted of fraud in 2009 for selling hundreds of millions of dollars in fake promissory notes to hedge funders and a section of his collection has remained in limbo ever since.

Judge Jed S. Rakoff ruled that the art holdings, worth $33 million, will be turned over to New York’s Heathfield Capital Limited, the company that suffered the greatest from Dreier’s scam. The works going to Heathfield Capital include a piece by the conceptual artist John Baldessari (b. 1931), an untitled work by Keith Haring (1958-1990), one work by Alex Katz (b. 1927), three by Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), an untitled work by Mark Rothko (1903-1970) and three pieces by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) including the iconic Jackie portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The bulk of Dreier’s collection was sold in 2010 at Phillips and the profits were reserved for creditors of Dreier’s law firm.

Drier is currently service a 20-year sentence at a federal prison in Minnesota.

Opening on October 2, 2013 at Tate Britain in London, Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm will be the first exhibition to explore the history of physical attacks on art in Britain from the 16^th century to the present day. The show will present famously marred works while exploring the religious, political and aesthetic motives that have provoked these violent acts.

The exhibition will include Statue of the Dead Christ (1500-20), which is being loaned to the Tate by London’s Worship Company of Mercers where the work was discovered beneath the chapel floor in 1954. The work was attacked by Protestants during the Reformation and is missing a crown of thorns, arms and lower legs. It is the first time that the Mercer has loaned the work since it was discovered nearly 60 years ago. John Singer Sargent’s (1856-1925) portrait of Henry James, which was attacked by a suffragette at the Royal Academy in 1914 with a knife, will also be on view. A less violently disgraced work is a portrait of Oliver Cromwell that was hung upside down by a devote monarchist. The work is on loan from the Inverness Museum in Scotland.

Art Under Attack: Histories of British Iconoclasm will be on view at Tate Britain through January 5, 2014.

Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure, which is now on view at the National Gallery in London, presents the art of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) and his contemporaries alongside rare musical instruments and songbooks. A reoccurring theme in Dutch painting, the presence of a musical instrument represented a variety of things such as the social position of the sitter if present in a portrait.

The paintings on display include the National Gallery’s two works by Vermeer, A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal and A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal; The Guitar Player, which is on loan from the Kenwood House in north London; the Royal Collection’s Music Lesson; and a work from a private collection. In total, the exhibition present 5 of the 36 Vermeer paintings known to exist. A selection of music-themed paintings by other Dutch golden age artists such as Jan Steen (1626-1679) and Pieter de Hooch (1629-1684) complement the Vermeer works. Musical instruments on view include a virginal (a type of harpsichord), lutes and an extravagantly decorated guitar.

Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure will be on view at the National Gallery through September 8, 2013 in the museum’s Sainsbury Wing.

An 18^th century portrait of the German Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach commissioned by the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe has been returned to its rightful heirs after 70 years. The oil painting by Angelika Kauffmann went missing from the duchess’ descendants’ palace in Poland during World War II. The work did not resurface until 2011 when a Polish consignor brought the work to Sotheby’s.

The painting was returned to the city of Weimar during a ceremony at the Weimar palace. Michael Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, the heir of the painting, has decided to loan the work to the city permanently. Upon its completion, the work, which is said to be worth hundred of thousands of euros, hung in the Roman House in Weimar, which was also commissioned by Goethe. The painting was later moved to the palace in Weimar and then to a family residence in Silesia, which is now part of Poland.

A Sotheby’s employee in London was the first to spot the painting on a German database for lost art. After reporting its reappearance to Weimar city officials, Sotheby’s held on to the painting until an agreement was reached. An exhibition of the work at the Roman House is being planned for next year.