Displaying items by tag: Portraiture

Like Keats, Hank Williams and Kurt Cobain, the Austrian painter Egon Schiele was an artist who never made it out of his 20s. He succumbed to the Spanish flu in 1918 at the age of 28, leaving behind a last, tortured sketch of his pregnant wife, made a day before she died in the same epidemic.

But for someone whose cheerless credo was “All things are living dead,” Schiele squeezed a lot out of the few years he was given. On Thursday, the Neue Galerie, a temple to German Expressionism, opens “Egon Schiele: Portraits,” the first American exhibition to focus on Schiele’s portraiture.

Two and a half years ago, the Man Ray Trust hung out a shingle in the Wall Street Journal. ‘Come buy our archive,’ the story all but begged. Evidently, no buyer emerged for the 400 works because Sotheby’s has announced that the collection will be sold in 300 lots in Paris on November 15th. This will be the second largest sale of Man Ray’s works following the previous sale of estate works nearly 20 years ago:

At the core of the sale is a group of over 191 lots of  vintage photographs ranging from portraiture and fashion photography, including solarisation and gauze effects, to Surrealist compositions and iconic Man Ray photographs such as "Magnolia Flower" (1926), Starfish (1928), "Ostrich Egg" (1944) and "Mathematical Object" (1934).

LA-based photography non-profit the Lucie Foundation has announced the six photographers to be honored with its 12th annual Lucie Awards. During the November 2 ceremony at Carnegie Hall, Carrie Mae Weems will be honored for fine arts, Nan Goldin for portraiture, Martin Parr for documentary, and Nick Ut for photojournalism. Jane Bown will receive the Lifetime Achievement award and Pedro Meyer will be given the Visionary Award.

For almost 30 years, Leila Heller ran her gallery from the Upper East Side, making a name for herself as an art dealer and for her support of emerging and midcareer Middle Eastern artists, before setting up shop in 2010 on a gallery-lined stretch of West 25th Street.

Now, Ms. Heller is returning uptown with a 16,000-square-foot, six-floor space in Midtown Manhattan that she will operate in addition to the Chelsea location. The new gallery will open on Tuesday, with an inaugural exhibition on portraiture that will run through August.

The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. has organized several installations throughout the museum showcasing recent acquisitions alongside popular masterpieces and rarely exhibited works from its permanent collection. Divided among several intimate galleries, the installations are organized by theme, including sculpture, drawings, and portraiture.

Perpetual crowd-pleasers such as Edgar Degas’ “Dancers at the Barre,” Joan Miró’s “The Red Sun,” and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party” will appear next to rarely seen works, including Jean-Honore Fragonard’s drawing “Odorico Kills Corebo and Sets Out in Pursuit of Isabella” and Pablo Picasso’s bronze sculpture “Head of a Woman,” promoting the rediscovery of treasures in the museum’s holdings. Showing support for established and emerging artists alike, recent acquisitions, including contemporary works by living artists, will be exhibited on the museum’s second floor.

Dr. Dorothy Kosinski, the Phillips Collection’s director, said, “The juxtaposition of provocative new additions with iconic European masterworks demonstrates the museum’s commitment to founder Duncan Phillips’s mission to create an ‘intimate museum combined with an experiment station.’”

The Phillips Collection plans to display a selection of new acquisitions throughout the spring and summer, with a rotation of artworks in May.

On March 1, 2014, “An American Odyssey: The Warner Collection of American Painting” will open at the Frick Art Museum at the Frick Art & Historical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The exhibition features 50 paintings from the collection of Alabama businessman and philanthropist, Jack Warner. Warner, who is the former CEO of Gulf States Paper Corp., founded Alabama’s Tuscaloosa Museum of Art in 2011.

The exhibition, which spans the entire 19th century, includes works by Gilbert Stuart, Charles Peale Polk, Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Severin Roesen, William Merritt Chase, James McNeill Whistler, Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, Maurice Prendergast, John Henry Twachtman, and Mary Cassatt. The comprehensive show tracks the evolution of painting in the United States from early American portraiture to the romantic paintings of the Hudson River School and the rise of American Impressionism during the tail-end of the century.

“An American Odyssey: The Warner Collection of American Painting,” which was organized by the Warner Foundation, will remain on view at the Frick Art Museum through May 25, 2014.

The Louvre in Paris, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and the Terra Foundation in Chicago have announced the third installation in their four-year collaboration focusing on the history of American art. "American Encounters: Anglo-American Portraiture in an Era of Revolution," which is currently on view at the Louvre, examines how portraiture style evolved in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as American and European painters were influenced by each other.

The exhibition features five works that have never before been exhibited together -- "George Washington after the Battle of Princeton," attributed to Charles Wilson Peale; "Portrait of Hugh Percy, Second Duke of Northumberland" by Gilbert Stuart; "Lieutenant Robert Hay of Spott" by Henry Raeburn; "George Washington (The Constable-Hamilton Portrait)" by Gilbert Stuart; and "George Washington, Porthole Portrait" by Rembrandt Peale. When its presentation at the Louvre ends on April 28, 2014, the exhibition will travel to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (May 17, 2014-September 15, 2014) and to the High Museum of Art (September 28, 2014-January 18, 2015).  

Guillaume Faroult, the Louvre's Curator of Paintings, said, "The potential for new scholarship and education that comes from bringing these five portraits together is exactly the spirit of our international collaboration and shows how much all of our institutions have to gain from it, as now our visitors are familiarizing themselves with American painting and are greatly anticipating this third installation."

Britain’s Culture Minister, Ed Vaizey, has placed a temporary export bar on one of Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s finest works dating from his time in the UK. The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest suggested that a hold be placed on the self-portrait, giving potential buyers time to raise the £12,500,000 needed to keep the work in the UK.

Van Dyck played a pivotal role in the development of portraiture in Britain during the time he spent there (1620-21, 1632-35, 1635-41) and the artist was highly regarded by King Charles I who awarded him knighthood, a home and an annuity in 1632. Although Van Dyck produced a number of self-portraits during his career, the work in question is widely regarded as one of his best and acknowledged as being a source of inspiration to other artists.

Vaizey said, “We have recently had a number of successes in preventing national treasures from being permanently exported from the UK thanks to the generosity of donors and the fundraising efforts of our museums and galleries. I hope that placing a temporary export bar on this magnificent painting will allow time for a UK buyer to come forward and ensure it remains here in the UK.”

The decision on the export license application for the painting will be deferred until February 13, 2014. This period may be extended until July 13, 2014 if a serious intention to raise funds to purchase the painting is made.

American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe will open at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on August 17, 2013. The exhibition will draw from MoMA’s extensive collection of American art made between 1915 and 1950. Using some of the finest paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and sculptures from the period, American Modern will illustrate the evolution of society and culture during the first half of the 20^th century.

Subjects explored in the exhibition will include urban and rural landscapes, scenes of industry, still lifes and portraiture. Works by modern art masters such as George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz and Andrew Wyeth will be arranged thematically.

American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe will be on view at MoMA through January 26, 2014.

Freeman’s Auctioneers and Appraisers in Philadelphia announced that they will be selling over 90 photographs from the art collection of the global beauty products company, Avon. The works will be part of the Photographs & Photobooks sale, which will be held on September 10, 2013. A portion of the proceeds from the sale will benefit the Avon Foundation for Women, a charitable organization dedicated to breast cancer research and ending domestic violence.

Works from the Avon Collection is comprised entirely of photographs by female artists such as Louise Dahl-Wolfe (1895-1989) and Cindy Sherman (b. 1954-). The offerings include landscapes, portraiture and fashion photography and span six decades. Sheri McCoy, CEO of Avon, said, “The Avon art collection represents many impressive female artists and we are happy to partner with Freeman’s to share these significant pieces of work.”

The Avon Collection also includes modern and contemporary sculpture, paintings and works on paper. The collection currently resides in Avon’s global headquarters in New York City.