Displaying items by tag: national gallery of victoria

One of the most world’s most iconic paintings is heading to Australia for the first time in 2016. James McNeill Whistler’s iconic “Portrait of the Artist’s Mother” will travel from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), where it will be explored from a variety of perspectives. The exclusive display of “Whistler’s Mother” is one of the highlights of the NGV’s exhibitions and programs for Autumn and Winter 2016.

The National Gallery of Victoria recently announced a major donation of artworks by the daughters of the late Melbourne philanthropist Loti Smorgon who died in 2013 at the age of 94. Mrs Smorgon was predeceased by her husband, Victor, who passed in 2009 aged 96.

The decision to donate the works was made by Mrs Smorgon’s daughters, Ginny, Vicki, Bindy, and the family of the late Sandra. It consists of Andy Warhol’s “Portrait of Loti” 1981, Renoir’s “Jeune femme assise décolleté” 1891, Jeffrey Smart’s “Winter carnival, Viareggio” 1988, and Henry Moore’s sculpture “Reclining figure distorted” 1979-80 along with the related prepatory work “Reclining figure distorted – Sectional line” 1979.

The National Gallery of Victoria has taken off display its “yes-no” van Gogh portrait and agreed that despite it having been in Victoria’s collection for 74 years, it rightfully belongs to two unnamed South African sisters, heirs to an estate dispersed under duress during the rise of Hitler.

In what amounts to the first successful Nazi restitution claim on an artwork in an Australian public collection, NGV’s trustees agree Head of a Man was owned by the late Jewish industrialist Richard Semmel until 1933 when he sold it under duress at auction in Amsterdam.