Displaying items by tag: watercolors

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum announced that they discovered a previously unknown oil sketch by English Romantic painter John Constable. The sketch of trees, which dates back to 1821 or 1822, was found tucked beneath another work by the artist, “Branch Hill Pond: Hampstead.” Conservators had removed the painting’s lining while preparing for the upcoming exhibition, “Constable: The Making of a Master.”

Constable’s daughter donated the contents of the artist’s studio -- including 92 oil sketches, 297 drawings and watercolors, and 3 sketchbooks -- to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1888. The recently discovered sketch is currently on view at the institution.    

The Dallas Museum of Art is currently hosting the traveling exhibition Hopper Drawing: A Painter’s Process. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York organized the show, which is the first of its kind to focus on the drawings and working process of American painter Edward Hopper.

The exhibition features over 200 works including drawings, watercolors, prints and paintings drawn mainly from the Whitney’s revered collection of the artist’s work. Hopper Drawing reveals a mostly unknown side of the renowned artist, allowing visitors an intimate glimpse into Hopper’s mind at work. Maxwell L. Anderson, the Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum, said, “Through this presentation, we are able to better understand the gestation of Hopper’s ideas and the transformations they underwent from paper to canvas.”

Hopper Drawing will be on view at the Dallas Museum of Art through February 16, 2014.

The New-York Historical Society is exhibiting a recently acquired sketchbook of drawings and watercolors by the Post-Impressionist American artist, Maurice Prendergast (1858-1924). The sketchbook, which is from the final years of the artist’s life, features 152 lined and paginated leaves. The volume includes many seaside scenes and park views populated by figures in endless variations.

Dr. Roberta J.M. Olson, curator of drawings at New-York Historical, said, “We are thrilled to add this volume of sketches to the collection of the New-York Historical Society, which holds the oldest public drawings collection in the United States. This sketchbook offers keen insights into Prendergast’s creative output during his final years and the intense graphomania that he demonstrated throughout his career.”

The sketchbook is currently on view in the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture. For preservation reasons, the watercolors require turning ever three months. The sketchbook’s 152 pages can be seen in their entirety on a nearby digital monitor thanks to turn-the-page technology.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston presents the exhibition The Inscrutable Eye: Watercolors by John Singer Sargent, which includes eight paintings that explore the artist’s relationship with the museum’s founder, Isabella Stewart Gardner. The show runs concurrent to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s exhibition John Singer Sargent Watercolors.

Sargent and Gardner shared a long-lasting friendship after meeting at the artist’s studio in London in 1886 by arrangement of their mutual friend, the writer Henry James. Besides the watercolors, the exhibition includes personal mementos such as letters and photographs that span their lifelong friendship.

The Gardner Museum is home to numerous works by Sargent as Gardner acquired 42 of his paintings during their acquaintance. The institution’s holdings span every stage of Sargent’s career and include genre paintings, formal oil paintings, watercolors, studies for public murals and personal sketches. Gardner acquired many of the watercolor paintings on display through buying gifts Sargent made for his friends as they came onto the public market.

The Inscrutable Eye: Watercolors by John Singer Sargent will be on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum through January 20, 2014.

The Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is currently hosting the exhibition Off the Beaten Path: Early Works by James McNeill Whistler. The show commemorates the 155^th anniversary of Whistler’s beginnings as an artist, which was sparked by a trip from Paris to the Rhineland. Before setting off on his expedition, Whistler established two goals – first, to visit Rembrandt’s home city of Amsterdam and second, to make his mark on the art world.

While he never made it to the Netherlands during his voyage, Whistler created drawings, etchings and watercolors depicting what he saw along the way. Later in his career, these early country scenes and portrayals of innkeepers and shopkeepers would go on to shape Whistler’s selection of subject matter, composition, use of light and shadow, and perspective.

Off the Beaten Path will be on view at the Freer Gallery through September 28, 2014.

Collectors Charles and Irene Hamm have donated $1 million and 165 works from their collection of coastal art to the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, CT. The collection includes oil paintings by Robert Henri, Thomas Hart Benton and Rockwell Kent as well as watercolors by Fairfield Porter and William Trost Richards. The generous monetary gift will help fund the construction of an 18,000-square-foot New Wing, which will include a Charles and Irene Hamm Gallery. The bequest will also increase the museum’s endowments for operations and acquisitions.

John R. Rathgeber, Chairman of the museum’s Board of Trustees, said, “With the donation of Charles and Irene Hamm, the New Britain Museum will have one of the most outstanding collections of coastal art in the country.” The museum plans to hold thematic exhibitions drawn from the Hamm’s holdings. A number of the significant works will be loaned to other institutions throughout the country and, in the future, the New Britain Museum plans to organize a traveling exhibition of highlights from the Hamm Collection.

Charles Hamm, a successful advertising and financial mogul, and his wife Irene, an educator, have been collecting for several decades. Charles’ affinity for maritime scenes was spurred by his love of sailing.

Construction is expected to begin on the New Britain Museum’s New Wing in 2014.

The Denver Art Museum has received a significant gift from local collector Henry Roath who has pledged to donate approximately 50 artworks by masters of the American West including Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran and Frederic Remington to the museum’s Petrie Institute of Western American Art. Roath’s collection, which is considered one of finest private collections of western American art in the country, focuses on art of the American southwest, especially works from members of the Taos Society of Artists. Roath has also donated $500,000 to the museum in an effort to establish a fund for future acquisitions.

The works that make up Roath’s gift range in date from 1877 to 1972 and include oil paintings, watercolors and bronze sculptures. Highlights include Thomas Moran’s Snowy Range, an 1896 landscape painting of the Grand Tetons, and two casts of Frederic Remington’s seminal sculpture Bronco Buster. The Roath collection is currently on loan to the museum and will remain on view in two of the institution’s western American art galleries.

Roath said, “I want the collection to be accessible to the public. The Denver Art Museum has made a strong commitment to art of the region and has a bold program. I’m excited for visitors and the public to be able to experience the masters of the American West firsthand.”

Catherine Hutin-Blay, the daughter of Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) second wife, claims that a handyman stole over 400 of the artist’s sketches and watercolors from her. Hutin-Blay inherited a sizable chunk of Picasso’s oeuvre when her mother passed away as well as the home in the south of France where her stepfather and mother are buried.

Hutin-Blay believes that between 2005 and 2007 Freddy Munchenbach made off with 407 Picasso originals. She became suspicious after a number of works surfaced at auction in 2011. Munchenbach worked as a handyman for Hutin-Blay as well as the daughter of Picasso’s art dealer, who noticed pieces were missing from her own collection.  

The works, which are said to be worth less than $3,000 altogether, carry a much lower estimate than other Picasso works. The thief will most likely be unable to sell the works as collectors rarely buy art lacking authenticity, provenance and a legal title.

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.

A multimillion-dollar art collection built by poet T.S. Eliot’s widow, Valerie, will be sold at Christie’s London on November 20, 2013. The collection includes works by Francis Bacon (1909-1992), Lucian Freud (1922-2011), and J.M.W. Turner (1775-19851). Ms. Eliot, who passed away in November at the age of 86, amassed her collection using royalties from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music Cats, which was based on her husband’s whimsical poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Ms. Eliot’s collection, which resided in the London home she shared with her husband, is expected to garner around $7.6 million.

Highlights from the collection include drawings and watercolors by 18^th and 19^th century British artists including Turner, Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), and John Constable (1776-1837); a sculpture by Henry Moore (1898-1986); and a lush landscape titled The Cathedral, Hackwood Park by Winston Churchill (1874-1965). There will also be portrait miniatures from the 16^th through the 19^th centuries, furniture, and jewelry for sale.

Proceeds from the Christie’s auction will benefit the Old Possum’s Practical Trust, an arts charity created by Ms. Eliot.