Helen of California

The main reason I went to the De Young yesterday was to see the Masters of Venice show, on loan to us fortunate ones in San Francisco from the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. It is beyond words, but I will all the same find words to talk about it in a future post, because it is impossible not to wax enthusiastic. I have no photographs, of course, none being allowed. The appealing objects below are things I noticed and photographed later, in various permanent galleries.

Haig Patigian (1876-1950)

Helen of California [Helen Wills], 1927

Painting in background by Robert Henri (1865-1929)
Lady in Black with Spanish Scarf
(O. in Black with a Scarf), 1910

George Bellows (1882-1925)

Seated Nude, 1910-1911

George Hitchcock (1850-1913)
Tulip Culture (detail), 1889

Edmund Charles Tarbell (1862-1938)

The Blue Veil, 1898

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935)

Easter Morning (Portrait at a New York Window), 1921

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)

Caroline de Bassano, Marquise d'Espeuilles, 1884

Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)

Untitled XX (detail), 1977

Gottfried Helnwein (b. 1948)

Epiphany II (detail), 1998

Sean Scully (b. 1945)

Wall of Light Horizon, 2005

The Sean Scully immediately above is probably my favorite painting in the entire building. The great patron Nan Tucker McEvoy gave it to the museum shortly after it was painted. This picture was my whole introduction to Sean Scully, I had never heard of him before I encountered the work in this room.