Monday, August 31, 2026

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1970)

Peter Max
Remembering the Flight
1970
screenprint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Norman Orr
Concerts at the Fillmore, San Francisco
1970
lithograph (poster)
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Asger Jorn
Untitled
1970
lithograph
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Philip Pearlstein
Figure Seated on Rug with Mirror
1970
lithograph
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Alice Neel
David Bourdon and Gregory Battcock
1970
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Christo (Christo Javacheff)
Wrapped Monument to Vittore Emanuele, Milan
1970
gelatin silver print
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Franz Gertsch
Portrait of artist Jean-Frédéric Schnyder
1970
lithograph
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Robert Motherwell
Alberti Suite no. 9
1970
polymer and acrylic on canvas
Huntington Museum of Art, West Virginia

Helen Frankenthaler
Wind Directions
1970
pochoir
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Richard Diebenkorn
Ocean Park no. 29
1970
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Andy Warhol
Flowers
1970
lithograph
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Frank Stella
River of Ponds
1970
lithograph
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

David Alfaro Siqueiros
Woman in Jail
1970
lithograph
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Leonard Baskin
Captain Ahab
1970
lithograph
Tacoma Art Museum, Washington State

Hans Zimmer
Als es noch Menschen gab
1970
screenprint
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Larry Rivers
Victims
1970
screenprint
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

We Too Had Known Golden Hours 

We, too, had known golden hours
When body and soul were in tune,
Had danced with our true loves
By the light of a full moon,
And sat with the wise and good
As tongues grew witty and gay
Over some nobel dish
Out of Escoffier;
Had felt the intrusive glory
Which tears reserve apart.
And would in the old grand manner
Have sung from a resonant heart.
But, pawed-at and gossiped-over
By the promiscuous crowd,
Concocted by editors
Into spells to befuddle the crowd,
All words like Peace and Love,
All sane affirmative speech,
Had been soiled, profaned, debased
To a horrid mechanical screech.
No civil style survived
That pandemonium
But the wry, the sotto-voce,
Ironic and monochrome:
And where should we find shelter
For joy or mere content
When little was left standing
But the suburb of dissent?

– W.H. Auden (ca. 1950)

Lord Arundel's Collections

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of King Henry VIII
ca. 1537
oil on panel
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Wenceslaus Hollar after Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of King Henry VIII
1647
etching
(copied from a painting in the Arundel Collection)
Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1532-43
drawing
(formerly in the Arundel Collection, where
incorrectly identified as Catherine of Aragon)
Royal Collection, Windsor

Wenceslaus Hollar after Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of a Woman
1647
etching
(copied from a drawing in the Arundel Collection
and incorrectly identified as Catherine of Aragon)
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Princess Mary, later Queen
ca. 1536
drawing
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Royal Collection, Windsor

Wenceslaus Hollar after Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Princess Mary, later Queen
1647
etching-
(copied from a drawing in the Arundel Collection)
Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Anne Boleyn as Queen
ca. 1533-36
drawing
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Royal Collection, Windsor

The Anne Boleyn drawing above is an authentic likeness, made from life.  The Anne Boleyn etching below was copied from a different drawing, possibly now lost.  It was believed in its day to represent Anne Boleyn, but this was one among many wishful attributions that have been discredited.  

Wenceslaus Hollar after Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of a Woman
(incorrectly identified as Anne Boleyn)
1649
etching
(copied from a drawing in the Arundel Collection)
British Museum

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Jane Seymour as Queen
ca. 1536-37
oil on panel
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Wenceslaus Hollar after Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Jane Seymour as Queen
1648
etching
(copied from a painting in the Arundel Collection)
Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Edward, Prince of Wales
ca. 1538
oil on panel
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Wenceslaus Hollar after Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Edward, Prince of Wales
1650
etching
(copied from a painting in the Arundel Collection)
Royal Collection, Windsor

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Edward, Prince of Wales
ca. 1540-43
drawing
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Royal Collection, Windsor

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Anne of Cleves
1538
oil on panel
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Musée du Louvre

Wenceslaus Hollar after Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Anne of Cleves
1648
etching
(copied from a painting in the Arundel Collection)
Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Hans Holbein the Younger
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba
(Solomon modeled on King Henry VIII)
ca. 1534
miniature in watercolor and gouache on vellum
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Royal Collection, Windsor

Wenceslaus Hollar after Hans Holbein the Younger
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba
(Solomon modeled on King Henry VIII)
1642
etching
(copied from a painting in the Arundel Collection)
British Museum

Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (1585-1646) consistently identified Hans Holbein the Younger (ca. 1497-1543) as his favorite artist.  Generally speaking, Holbein's work looked old-fashioned to early-baroque eyes and was not much coveted.  The Earl had two reasons for favoring it.  One was family piety – several of his direct ancestors had sat to Holbein.  Combined with that connection was a simple preference (otherwise absent at the Stuart court) for the arts and culture of the previous century under the Tudors.  Much evidence supports the view that Arundel saw himself as a Tudor holdover, marooned in a less congenial era.  

Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) was far and away the most prolific of the artists who entered Arundel's service or accepted his commissions.  The etchings reproduced above show Hollar working at Arundel House copying original Holbeins in the Earl's collection.  Of these there were certainly over a hundred, though the exact number of paintings and drawings can no longer be determined.  Hollar's prints served simultaneously to document the collection's contents and to spread its fame among other European potentates and connoisseurs.  

Aqueous

Eugène Delacroix
Study of a Coachman
ca. 1826
watercolor on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford


George Chinnery
Shipwreck in Storm
before 1857
watercolor on paper
British Museum

Edna Clarke Hall
Wuthering Heights - Catherine leaning against the wall
ca. 1900-1905
watercolor on paper
Tate Britain

John Singer Sargent
Portrait of Miss Marion Barnard
ca. 1909-11
watercolor and gouache on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

William Orpen
Bedroom Scene
ca. 1910
watercolor and ink on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Odilon Redon
The Blessing
ca. 1912
watercolor and gouache on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Charles Demuth
Vaudeville Dancers
1918
watercolor on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Paul Klee
The Bavarian Don Giovanni
1919
watercolor and ink on paper
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Oskar Kokoschka
Seated Woman
1922
watercolor on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Marie Laurencin
Girl with Bow
ca. 1920-30
watercolor on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Diego Rivera
May Day, Moscow
1928
watercolor on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Carl-Henning Pedersen
The Happy World
1943
watercolor on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Hans Hofmann
Untitled
1944
watercolor and gouache on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Ernst Wilhelm Nay
Composition (Brightly Colored Shores)
1960
watercolor on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Elizabeth Peyton
Lunch (Nick)
2003
watercolor on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Ani Hoover
Gray Shadow
2006
watercolor and ink on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Sam Gilliam
Untitled
2019
watercolor on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

A Crocodile

Hard by the lilied Nile I saw
A duskish river-dragon stretched along,
The brown harbinger of his limbs enamelled
With sanguine almandines and rainy pearl:
And on his back there lay a young one, sleeping,
No bigger than a mouse; with eyes like beads,
And a small fragment of its speckled egg
Remaining on its harmless, pulpy snout.
A thing to laugh at, as it gaped to catch
The baulking merry flies.  In the iron jaws
Of the great devil-beast, like a pale soul
Fluttering in rocky hell, lightsomely flew
A snowy trochilus, with roseate beak
Tearing the hairy leeches from its throat.

– Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1823)