Displaying items by tag: Private Collection

A rare early color image of Vincent Van Gogh’s Six Sunflowers was recently located in Japan and reveals that Van Gogh had created a bold orange frame for the still life. The original framed painting, which was part of a private Japanese collection, was destroyed in an American bombing raid during World War II.

The image is part of an extremely rare portfolio produced in Tokyo in 1921 and has been reproduced in The Sunflowers are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece by the Van Gogh expert, Martin Bailey. The image is significant because it reveals that Van Gogh had intended to present his Six Sunflowers in a dramatic way – the bright orange sharply contrasting with the painting’s blue background. This framing technique would have been revolutionary in 1888 as pictures were traditionally hung in gilt frames or in the case of very modern works, white frames.

Van Gogh painted four pictures of sunflowers in 1888 with three, six, fourteen and fifteen blooms. The last two paintings are among some of the best-known artworks in the world and are housed in Munich’s Neue Pinakothek and London’s National Gallery, respectively. Three Sunflowers is currently part of a private collection and has not been exhibited in living memory.

An exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has reunited two versions of Vincent Van Gogh’s painting The Bedroom for the first time in years. The Van Gogh Museum owns the first version of the work and the second iteration is on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago; the latter has not been on view in Europe since 1990.

The presentation of the two paintings is the centerpiece of the second part of the exhibition Van Gogh at Work. The show, which commemorates the 40^th anniversary of the Van Gogh Museum, will be on view through January 12, 2014. The Van Gogh Museum’s version of the painting was created in the artist’s bedroom in the Yellow House in Arles after weeks of continuous work. Pleased with the final result, Van Gogh wrote a letter to his brother, Theo, outlining why he was so fond of the work. The Art Institute’s version of the painting was produced less than a year later while Van Gogh was staying in the Saint-Remy asylum. He asked Theo to send him the first painting so that he could make a second version of it. While the two paintings are undeniably similar, they exhibit subtle differences in color and the way Van Gogh painted the details of the composition.

The second portion of Van Gogh at Work will include several changes besides the introduction of the Art Institute of Chicago’s version of The Bedroom. The exhibition’s works on paper will be exchanged for other works on paper as they are sensitive to light and can only be on view for a limited amount of time. Recent loans that have just been added to the show’s line up include The Drinkers (After Daumier) from the Art Institute of Chicago and Lawn with Weeping Tree from a private collection.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York will honor the legendary gallerist and collector Ileana Sonnabend with an exhibition of works that were shown in her galleries in Paris and New York between the 1960s and 1980s. Sonnabend, who opened the Sonnabend Gallery in Paris in 1962, was instrumental in bringing American art of the 1960s, most notably Pop Art and Minimalism, to Europe. Sonnabend opened a New York outpost in 1970 and conversely, popularized European art of the 1970s, including the Arte Povera movement, in the U.S.

Ileana Sonabend: Ambassador for the New will open on December 21, 2013 and celebrates the Sonnabend family’s generous bequest of Robert Rauschenberg’s seminal mixed media assemblage Canyon (1959) to MoMA. The exhibition will present works by approximately 30 artists including Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, John Baldessari and Jeff Koons. Works will be pulled from MoMA’s own collection as well as other public and private holdings.  

Ileana Sonabend: Ambassador for the New will be on view at MoMA through April 21, 2014.

Maurice Prendergast: By the Sea, which is now on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine, explores the artist’s lifelong fascination with the sea. Maurice Prendergast, a pioneering post-Impressionist painter, spent much of the late 19^th century and early 20^th century capturing modern life on the coast of New England.

 By the Sea is the first retrospective of Prendergast’s oeuvre in over two decades. The exhibition presents more than 90 works in a variety of media from over 30 public and private collections in addition to Bowdoin College Museum of Art’s own holdings. The exhibition traces the development of Prendergast’s highly personal style, which is recognized for its use of jewel-like colors and pattern-like compositions containing flattened, free-form figures. The exhibition also includes Prendergast’s sketchbooks and oil studies, allowing visitors to see into the Modernist artist’s creative process.

Highlights include the watercolor The Balloon, which is part of a private collection and has not been included in earlier Prendergast retrospectives; St. Malo, a bright watercolor on loan from the Williams College Museum of Art, which was lauded as one of the first American introductions of the bold European Post-Impressionist avant-garde; and a number of works that the artist contributed to the seminal Armory Show of 1913 (also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art).

Maurice Prendergast: By the Sea will be on view at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art through October 13, 2013.

On November 4, 2013, Christie’s will auction works from the private collection of the prominent art dealer Jan Kruiger. The sale, which will take place five year’s after Kruiger’s death, is expected to garner over $160 million. A consequent sale of works on paper and sculpture will likely bring around $15 million.

The sale at Christie’s will present a mere fraction of Kruiger’s personal collection. The remainder has either been sold privately or resides with his family. Highlights from the upcoming auction include Wassily Kandinsky’s landscape Herbstlandschaft, which carries an estimate of $6 million to $8 million, and Pablo Picasso’s sheet-iron sculpture Tete (Head), which is expected to fetch $25 million to $35 million.

While Christie’s and Sotheby’s were in close competition to helm the sale, Christie’s allegedly offered a more profitable financial package to Kruiger’s heirs, giving them a more significant percentage of the buyer’s premium.

Kruiger opened the Jan Kruiger Gallery of New York, which specialized in 19^th century, 20^th century and contemporary art, in 1967. It remained a fixture of the art world for decades.

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.

London’s Courtauld Gallery, which was founded by the English industrialist and renowned art collector, Samuel Courtauld, in 1931, boasts the most comprehensive collection of Paul Gauguin’s (1848-1903) works in the UK. The Courtauld’s Gauguin holdings include five major paintings, ten prints and one of only two marble sculptures ever created by the Post-Impressionist master.

Collecting Gaugin: Samuel Courtauld in the ‘20s presents the museum’s complete collection complemented by two works that were once in Courtauld’s private collection. Martinique Landscape and Bathers at Tahiti are on loan from the Scottish National Gallery and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts respectively.

Courtauld began collecting works by Gauguin in 1923 when he purchased Bathers at Tahiti, which he later sold, and The Haystacks, which the artist painted in France. Courtauld continued to collect Gauguin’s works until 1929 when he acquired Te Rerioa (The Dream), which resided in his London home for three years before being presented, along with most of his other Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works, as a portion of his founding gift to the Courtauld Institute.

Collecting Gaugin: Samuel Courtauld in the ‘20s will be on view at the Courtauld Gallery through September 8, 2013.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has acquired two major works of European art -- a self-portrait of Rembrandt (1606-1669) and a view of Venice’s Grand Canal by the Italian painter Canaletto (1697-1768). The portrait, titled Rembrandt Laughing (circa 1628), will round out the Getty’s collection of early works by the artist, which is the finest if its kind in the country.

The portrait of Rembrandt resided in private collections for centuries before appearing on the market in 2007. The work, which was only known through print reproductions, was attributed to a contemporary of Rembrandt until scholarly analysis and scientific testing proved it to be an authentic painting by the Dutch master. One of nearly 40 self-portraits by the artist, Rembrandt Laughing is the only one in which he appears in costume as he appears dressed like a soldier. The painting will be exhibited in the museum’s East Pavilion along with four other Rembrandt works – An Old Man in Military Costume (1630-31), The Abduction of Europa (1632), Daniel and Cyrus Before the Idol Bel (1633), and Saint Bartholomew (1661).

The painting by Canaletto, For the Grand Canal in Venice from Palazzo Flangini to Campo San Marcuola, is a superior work by the artist depicting everyday life in Venice during the 18^th century. The painting will be exhibited alongside Francesco Guardi’s (1712-1793) The Grand Canal in Venice with Palazzo Bembo (circa 1768), which features the same stretch of the Grand Canal as Canaletto’s painting.

The exhibition Photography and the Civil War, which is now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, brings together over 200 photographs of the American Civil War. Spread across 11 galleries, the landmark exhibition also includes photographic artifacts and objects from the time period. The portraits of young soldiers, promotional images of political candidates, and landscapes of the blood-soaked battlefields come together to tell the story of a violent four-year war that transformed America forever.

From 1861 until 1865, the American Civil War claimed 750,000 lives and Photography and the Civil War aims to examine the role of photography during this devastating conflict. Organized by the Met’s senior curator, Jeff L. Rosenheim, the exhibition includes loans from renowned private and public collections.

Photography and the Civil War will be on view at the Met through September 2, 2013.

Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale on May 14, 2013 in New York will include one of the most important paintings by Barnett Newman (1905-1970) ever to appear at auction. Onement VI (1953) is a seminal work by the American artist and one of the most significant pieces from the Abstract Expressionist movement. The painting, which measures 8 ½ feet x 10 feet, is expected to garner anywhere from $30 million to $40 million. The canvas will go on view at Sotheby’s on May 3, 2013 until it appears at auction later that month.

Newman, one of the foremost artists of the 20^th century, was a pioneer of color field painting as well as a key Abstract Expressionist. As an exhibitions organizer at the Manhattan-based Betty Parsons Gallery in the 1940s, Newman played a fundamental role in the careers of many of his friends including Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), and Clyfford Still (1904-1980).  

Onement VI, a massive canvas consumed by rich blue paint and sliced down the middle by a light blue streak, was a gift from the artist to his wife, Annalee. The painting remained in her collection for almost a decade and was acquired in 1961 by the well-known collectors Frederick and Marcia Weisman. That same year the painting appeared in an exhibition titled Abstract Expressionists Imagists at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum that helped define the modern art movement.

Onement VI is the final work in a series of six paintings by Newman. Four of the paintings are held in major art institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT, and the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, OH. Onement V currently resides in a private collection.