Spencer Alley: July 2015

Friday, July 31, 2015

No Olympia

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot
Bacchante by the Sea
1865
Metropolitan Museum
(gift of Louisine Havemeyer)

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot
Bacchante in Landscape
c. 1865-70
Metropolitan Museum
(gift of Louisine Havemeyer)

Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot
The Letter
c. 1865
Metropolitan Museum
(gift of Louisine Havemeyer)

The figure paintings above were made in the middle of the 19th century in France by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875). The figure paintings below were made in the middle of the 19th century in France by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). The owner of all these pictures was Louisine Havemeyer of New York. In her memoir From Sixteen to Sixty Mrs. Havemeyer explains why she pursued figure-paintings by these contemporary artists at a time when her friends and fellow collectors all preferred their depopulated landscapes. In some cases Mrs. Havemeyer's tycoon-husband would not permit the nudes to be hung at home where their daughters could see them and insisted that they be sent instead straight to the Metropolitan Museum without even a stop-off at the mansion on 5th Avenue. In the book, Mrs. Havemeyer further claims that she had the chance to buy Manet's Olympia (the most scandalous painting of the European 19th century) – and that she desperately wanted to – but Mr. Havemeyer absolutely put his foot down and prevented her.

Gustave Courbet
Young Bather
1866
Metropolitan Museum
(gift of Louisine Havemeyer)

Gustave Courbet
The Source
1862
Metropolitan Museum
(gift of Louisine Havemeyer)

Gustave Courbet
Madame Auguste Cuoq
c. 1852-57
Metropolitan Museum
(gift of Louisine Havemeyer)

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Between Wars

Paul Klee
May Picture
1925
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Red-Green & Violet-Yellow Rhythms
1920
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Tower in Orange & Green
1922
Metropolitan Museum

In the 1950s and 60s when I was a child and poking into art books at the public library, Paul Klee was the darling of publishers like Skira and Abrams. They produced the best commercial reproductions available at that time. Klee was regarded as the least threatening of "modern" artists and most accessible for the new middlebrow consumer of culture (and that was me!). Consequently, I was exposed to such a wealth of Klee whimsy at such an early age that in later life I never wanted to see another one of his pictures. That is why it surprises me to be attracted to this group from the Heinz Berggruen collection of Paul Klee at the Metropolitan Museum, donated in the 1980s. For one thing, the individual pictures are all unfamiliar (which is not too surprising, considering that Klee made more than 10,000 of them in the course of his career). The artist's darker side also seems more apparent in the Met collection, poised as he was between two European wars of mechanical annihilation.

Paul Klee
Black Columns in a Landscape
1919
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Falling Bird
1919
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
All Souls' Picture
1921
Metropoolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Yellow Harbor
1921
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
The Chair Animal
1922
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Still Life
1927
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Rough-cut Head
1935
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
Comedians' Handbill
1938
Metropolitan Museum

Paul Klee
The Hour Before One Night
1940
Metropolitan Museum

Barred from teaching by the Nazis and placed on their list of Degenerate Artists, Klee retreated to Switzerland in the early 1930s. He died there in 1940, the same year he painted the stark concluding picture above.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Vesuvius Quenched

Giovanni Battista Gaulli
Pope Alexander VIII (1610-1691)
c. 1689-91
Morgan Library

Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1576-1633)
drawing for bust in the Villa Borghese
1632
Morgan Library

Luigi Baccio del Bianco
Cardinal Fleeing on Mule from Violent Attack
1643
Morgan Library

Continuing the series of 17th century Italian drawings, and starting with ecclesiastical figures. Moderns often write as if the rich and powerful Roman Catholic Church maintained a tight grip of power on the whole of Italy unbroken for many centuries. Yet even during the most robust periods of the Church's political influence, surviving evidence often tells a different story. In the illustration above from the middle of the 17th century, citizens with basins as shields and rocks as weapons pursue a cardinal-prelate and his terrified mule, driving them out of their city.

Giovanni Balducci
Angels Appearing to Abraham
17th century
Morgan Library

Valerio Castello
Salomon's Sacrifice to the Idylls
17th century
Morgan Library

Giovanni Biliverti
Joseph & Potiphar's Wife
17th century
Morgan Library

Guido Reni
Study for the Figure of Holofernes
c. 1625-40
Metropolitan Museum

Marcantonio Bassetti
The Flagellation
17th century
Morgan Library

Giovanni Andrea Ansaldo
The Crucifixion
17th century
Morgan Library

Gioacchino Assereto
The Lamentation
17th century
Morgan Library

Gregorio de Ferrari
Vision of St. Teresa of Avila
17th century
Morgan Library

Filippo Napoletano
San Gennaro Saving Naples from an Eruption of Vesuvius
17th century
Morgan Library

In the final drawing, angels carry gargantuan buckets of water through the sky to quench volcanic violence under the direction of a cloud-borne Bishop-Saint.

Drawings are from collections at the Metropolitan Museum and at the Morgan Library.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Fame's Trumpet

Domenico Gargiulo
Study of Groom with Rearing Horse
Morgan Library

Another favored group of 17th-century drawings – created by little-remembered or entirely forgotten Italian masters – some from the Metropolitan Museum, others from the Morgan Library.