Displaying items by tag: acquisition

The National Portrait Gallery in London has acquired a 17^th century portrait of Lady Anne Clifford, an early feminist and patron of the arts. When Lady Clifford died in 1676 at the age of 86, she was likely Britain’s wealthiest woman. Clifford fought a lifelong battle for her inheritance from her father, George Clifford, Third Earl of Cumberland, which had been left to her uncle. Through archival research and dogged legal disputes, Lady Clifford established the justice of her claims.  

William Larkin painted the portrait recently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 1616 when Lady Clifford was 28 years old. The work was given to her cousin but then lost for centuries. It was traced by gallery owner Mark Weiss to a European private collection and purchased by the National Portrait Gallery for £275,000, including a £70,000 grant from the Art Fund charity.

Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery, said, “Lady Anne Clifford painted by William Larkin is a fascinating portrait of an important woman, and I am very grateful to the Art Fund and our generous individual supporters who have made the acquisition possible.”

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AK will soon debut a recently acquired painting by the American Modernist painter Edward Hopper. The work, titled Blackwell’s Island, was sold at Christie’s in May to a private collector for $19.2 million – the second highest price ever paid for a painting by the artist at auction. The Crystal Bridges Museum later announced that they had acquired the work from the private collection. The painting is slated to go on on view by mid-September in the museum’s Early 20th Century Art Gallery.

Blackwell’s Island depicts what is now known as Roosevelt Island, located off of Manhattan in the East River. The painting, which features a wide expanse of blue sky above swirling water and an industrial skyline, creates a sense of distance between the viewer and the impersonal subject. The composition promotes feelings of loneliness and isolation, which pervade much of Hopper’s work.

Crystal Bridges’ President, Don Bacigalupi, said, “This is a most ambitious composition for Hopper. He painted this work at the height of his powers and it exemplifies some of the best of Hopper’s style: a complex architectural composition with a full range of light and shadow, few people and drama of the past colliding with the present in the form of historic architecture meeting modern.”

While the Crystal Bridges Museum has a number of Hopper’s works on paper in its collection, Blackwell’s Island is its first major oil painting by the artist.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. announced that they have acquired 100 photographs from The Irving Penn Foundation. Irving Penn, one of the most celebrated artists of the 20^th century, revolutionized fashion photography and was also well known for his still lifes and portraits that frequently appeared in Vogue.

The recently acquired photographs include rare, mostly unpublished works from the late 1930s and 1940s, images of post-war Europe and iconic portraits of celebrated figures such as Agnes de Mille, Langston Hughes and Truman Capote. The collection also includes commercial photography, self-portraits and some of Penn’s most recognizable fashion images. Penn had donated 61 photographs, spanning from 1944 to 1986, to the Smithsonian during his lifetime. He also gifted 60 works to the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in 1990.

To celebrate the acquisition and the expansion of the Smithsonian’s Penn holdings, the museum will organize a touring exhibition of approximately 160 works that will open at the Smithsonian in the fall of 2015.

Edgar Degas’ (1834-1917) La Masseuse (The Masseuse), which was once owned by the German-born British painter Lucien Freud (1922-2011), has been given to the Walker Art Gallery as part of the British government’s Acceptance in Lieu (AiL) of law. The AiL is a provision under which inheritance tax debts can be written off in exchange for the acquisition of objects of national importance.

The Degas sculpture was one of three works by Degas bequeathed to England following Freud’s death. The Walker Art Gallery, which is located in Liverpool and houses one of the largest art collections in England outside of London, was granted the sculpture after a competitive process with other UK museums and galleries. La Masseuse, Degas’ only two-figure sculpture, will join the artist’s painting Woman Ironing at the Walker.

Xanthe Brooke, Curator of European Art at the Walker Art Gallery, said, ‘We’re very grateful to Arts Council England for allocating the sculpture to the Walker Art Gallery, where it will be appreciated by an enthusiastic and diverse audience.”

The Dia Art Foundation, which closed its two galleries in Manhattan in 2004, has gathered about half the money needed to build its new space in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood. While the organization has pushed their fundraising efforts into high gear, they are left without an acquisition fund for its collection, which includes works from the 1960s to the present.

The Dia Art Foundation announced that they will be holding a sale of paintings and sculptures at Sotheby’s in New York on November 13-14, 2013 to remedy that. The foundation hopes to raise at least $20 million by auctioning off works by Cy Twombly (1928-2011), John Chamberlain (1927-2011) and Barnett Newman (1905-1970).

The Dia Art Foundation’s collection includes works by modern and contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol (1921-1987), Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) and Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010). Philippe Vergne, the Dia’s director, has not commented on what works he’s hoping to acquired with the funds from the Sotheby’s sale.

The Sterling and Francine Clark Institute in Williamstown, MA recently received its most considerable gift of American paintings since its founding in 1955 and is holding an exhibition to celebrate the major acquisition. George Inness: Gifts from Frank and Katherine Martucci presents eight landscapes by the influential American painter George Inness (1825-1894) dating from 1880 to 1894. The works will appear alongside two Inness paintings collected by the Clarks themselves. The show will highlight Inness’ later work when he moved away from his signature plein-air style towards a more conceptual aesthetic that relied on the use of light and shadow.

The Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg significantly influenced Inness and inspired the artist to look at nature through a more spiritual lens. Inness moved away from straightforward depictions of the natural world towards a style that blended realism with a sense of otherworldliness. Inness achieved this through color, composition and painterly techniques that involved the gentle blurring of natural forms.

Highlights from the exhibition include Sunrise in the Woods, The Road to the Village, and Green Landscape. George Inness: Gifts from Frank and Katherine Martucci will be on view through September 8, 2013.

Winslow Homer: Making Art, Making History is currently on view at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA. The exhibition presents the most comprehensive collection of Winslow Homer’s (1836-1910) works assembled by a single person since the American landscape painter’s death and one of the finest collections in any museum in the U.S. The first complete catalogue of the Clark’s Homer collection, which was authored by Marc Simpson, the show’s curator and a renowned Homer scholar, complements the exhibition.

Sterling Clark began collecting artworks by Homer in 1915 while living in Paris. He maintained a steady fascination with the artist throughout his collecting career, which eventually led to Clark’s acquisition of more than 250 works by Homer dating from 1857 to 1904. Winslow Homer: Making Art, Making History will feature Clark’s entire collection including 60 oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and etchings, 120 rarely seen wood engravings, and a selection of loaned works.

Highlights from the exhibition include Undertow (1886) along with six preparatory drawings for the painting, the well-known painting Two Guides (1877), and a selection of watercolors that are rarely shown.

Winslow Homer: Making Art, Making History will be on view at the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute of Art through September 8, 2013.

After acquiring a considerable number of important drawings, the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City has mounted an exhibition to showcase their recently added works. Spanning from the Renaissance through the 19^th century, the drawings were acquired through gifts, purchases, and bequests. Over 100 of these works will be featured in Old Masters, Newly Acquired.

The Morgan has greatly improved its Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Symbolist holdings by acquiring a number of works by such artists as Édouard Manet (1832-1883), Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940), and Odilon Redon (1840-1916). The museum also acquired over forty Danish drawings including sheets by several Golden Age masters including C.W. Eckersberg (1783-1853) and Johan Lundbye (181-1848). The Morgan added to their British watercolor collection with works by John Martin (1789-1854) and Samuel Palmer (1805-1881). William M. Griswold, director of the museum, said, “The Morgan’s collection of drawings is among the finest in the world, and the institution has been very fortunate to have long-standing relationships with some of America’s most important collectors. This exhibition celebrates their connoisseurship and their commitment to the Morgan.”

Old Masters, New Acquired will be on view at the Morgan Library & Museum through August 11, 2013.

A painting by renowned Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) will be the highlight of Masterpiece London, which takes place at the Royal Hospital Chelsea from June 27 through July 3, 2013. Now in its fourth year, the show presents the finest art, antiques, and design from across the globe.

While works ranging from furniture, jewelry, and books to classic cars, watches, and whiskey will be offered, there is one particular artwork generating tons of pre-show buzz. Geoffrey Diner, a Washington, D.C.-based art dealer, will present Roy Lichtenstein’s Puzzle Portrait (1978), which has not been seen in public in 30 years and has never appeared at auction. Similar paintings are part of the Guggenheim Museum’s and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collections in New York. Puzzle Portrait is expected to garner around $10 million.    

Diner has revealed little about the painting’s provenance other than the fact that it was sold in 1984 to “a prominent American collection.” Diner purchased the painting privately last year and the change of ownership still has not been registered in the Lichtenstein Foundation archives. The identity of the previous owners will be revealed to the buyer upon acquisition of the painting. The future buyer will also be given the personal correspondence between them and the artist from the original transaction.

The Art Institute of Chicago announced that they have acquired Thomas Hart Benton’s (1889-1975) Cotton Pickers (1945), a critical example of American Regionalism, a realist modern art movement that gained popularity during the 1930s. Regionalist artists forsook urban life in favor of creating scenes of everyday rural life in America. Benton was a pioneer of the movement and is considered a pivotal figure in American art.

Cotton Pickers is a rare example of Benton’s large-scale paintings and it is the first oil painting by the artist to enter the museum’s collection. It will bolster the Art Institute’s world-renowned collection of paintings from the period, which includes Grant Wood’s (1891-1942) iconic painting American Gothic (1930) and John Steuart Curry’s (1897-1946) Hogs and Rattlesnakes (1930). The addition of Cotton Pickers helps the Art Institute tell the story of Regionalism more fully. Judith Barter, the Field-McCormick Chair and Curator in the American Art Department, considers the painting one of the museum’s most important acquisitions in the last several decades.

Cotton Pickers will be exhibited alongside American Gothic and Hogs and Rattlesnakes.