Saturday, December 24, 2016

Early 20th-century Painting

Pablo Picasso
Glasses and fruit
1908
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

     Some years ago I heard a story about a wealthy collector who decided to put a Picasso painting up for auction. He took it to the auction house and was told by the experts that they would not take it because they thought it was a fake. The man was outraged, and after a few rude comments about the credentials of the auction-house experts he took the painting directly to Picasso himself. He explained the problem to Picasso and asked him to verify it as truly one of his pictures. Picasso looked at the painting carefully, and then came back to the collector. 
   
     'I'm sorry,' he said. 'They are right. It is a fake.'
   
     'But that can't be!' gasped the man, 'I bought it directly from you fifteen years ago!'

     'Well,' said Picasso, 'I can make fake Picassos just as well as anyone else.'

– Joel Fisher, from an essay called Judgement and Purpose (1987) reprinted in the volume Failure (2010) from the series Documents of Contemporary Art  published by Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press

Carl Holsøe
Woman with fruit bowl
ca. 1900-1910
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Henri Matisse
The Yellow Flowers
1902
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Albert Baertsoen
Ghent Evening
1903
oil on canvas
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

André Derain
Church at Chatou
1909
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Maurice de Vlaminck
Bunch of Flowers
ca. 1909
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Jean-Louis Forain
Dancers in pink
ca. 1905
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Raoul Dufy
Fishmarket, Marseilles
ca. 1903
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Henri Manguin
The Prints
1905
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
The opera Messalina at Bordeaux
ca. 1900-1901
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Maximilien Luce
Bessy, Yonne, the Shaded Path
1905
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Georges Braques
Le Park at Carrières-Saint-Denis
1909
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Maurice Prendergast
Beach at St Malo
1907
canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Emil Nolde
Red Flowers
1906
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

I am grateful to Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza for the excellent reproductions.