Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1974)

Joyce & Co. (Dutch arts collective)
Erwin (a novel)
1974
offset print (poster)
Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam

Billy Al Bengston
Punta Tintorera Dracula
1974
acrylic on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Joan Brown
Lamp on Table
1974
enamel on canvas
Seattle Art Museum

John Cole
Still Life in Yellow
1974
oil on canvas
Tacoma Art Museum, Washington State

Gene Davis
Untitled
1974
screenprint
Dallas Museum of Art

Terry Evans
Family with Tractor
1974
gelatin silver print
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Walker Evans
Going Out of Business IV
1974
dye diffusion transfer print
Art Institute of Chicago

Leonard Freed
Farmer collecting Water from a Spring, Gangi, Sicily
1974
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Jane Freilicher
One Cat, Two Fish
1974
oil on linen
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Mark Goodman
Donald York, Jr. standing beside his Father's Wrecker
Millerton, New York
1974
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Grace Hartigan
The Far-Away Places
1974
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Paul Jenkins
Phenomenon Jenkins-Land
1974
watercolor on paper
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Jasper Johns
Torso
1974
lithograph
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Alex Katz
Young Washington
1974
lithograph
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee

Karl Korab
Untitled
1974
lithograph
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Lucebert (Lubertus Jacobus Swaanswijk)
Four Figures against Blue
1974
watercolor, crayon and ink on paper
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

The Managers

In the bad old days it was not so bad:

     The top of the ladder

Was an amusing place to sit; success

     Meant quite a lot – leisure

And huge meals, more palaces filled with more

     Objects, books, girls, horses

Than one would ever get round to, and to be

     Carried uphill while seeing

Others walk. To rule was a pleasure when

     One wrote a death-sentence

On the back of the Ace of Spades and played on

     With a new deck. Honors

Are not so physical or jolly now,

     For the species of Powers

We are used to are not like that. Could one of them

     Be said to resemble

The Tragic Hero, the Platonic Saint,

     Or would any painter

Portray one rising triumphant from a lake

     On a dolphin, naked,

Protected by an umbrella of cherubs? Can

     They so much as manage

To behave like genuine Caesars when alone

     Or drinking with cronies,

To let their hair down and be frank about

     The world? It is doubtful.

The last word on how we may live or die

     Rests today with such quiet

Men, working too hard in rooms that are too big,

     Reducing to figures

What is the matter, what is to be done.

     A neat little luncheon

Of sandwiches is brought to each on a tray,

     Nourishment they are able

To take with one hand without looking up

     From papers a couple

Of secretaries are needed to file,

     From problems no smiling

Can dismiss. The typewriters never stop

     But whirr like grasshoppers

In the silent siesta heat as, frivolous

     Across their discussions,

From woods unaltered by our wars and our vows,

     There drift the scents of flowers

And the songs of birds who will never vote

     Or bother to notice

Those distinguishing marks a lover sees

     By instinct and policemen

Can be trained to observe. Far into the night

     Their windows burn brightly

And, behind their backs bent over some report,

     On every quarter,

For ever like a god or a disease

     There on the earth the reason

In all its aspects why they are tired, the weak,

     The inattentive, seeking

Someone to blame. If, to recuperate

     They go a-playing, their greatness

Encounters the bow of the chef or the glance

     Of the ballet-dancer

Who cannot be ruined by any master's fall.

     To rule must be a calling,

It seems, like surgery or sculpture, the fun

     Neither love nor money

But taking necessary risks, the test

     Of one's skill, the questions,

If difficult, their own reward. But then

     Perhaps one should mention

Also what must be a comfort as they guess

     In times like the present

When guesses can prove so fatally wrong,

     The fact of belonging

To the very select indeed, to those

     For whom, just supposing

They do, there will be places on the last

     Plane out of disaster.

No, no one is really sorry for their

     Heavy gait and careworn

Look, nor would they thank you if you said you were. 

– W.H. Auden (1948)

Lord Arundel's Collection

Simon de Passe
Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel
1616
engraving
British Museum

The portrait (below) copied to produce the engraved likeness above was painted around 1612-13 when Lord Arundel would have been in his early twenties.  An attribution of that painting to the well-known Michiel van Miereveld has long been rejected, and there have been no new suggestions.  Scholars cannot examine the panel because they don't know where it is – or if it has even survived since it was last recorded in the early twentieth century. 

Anonymous Artist
Thomas Howard, Early of Arundel
ca. 1612-13
oil on panel
location unknown

Anonymous Artist
Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel
1619
oil on canvas
Ingestre Hall, Staffordshire

Peter Paul Rubens
Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel with Retinue
1620
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Peter Paul Rubens
Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel
ca. 1620
oil on canvas
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

Anthony van Dyck
Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel
1620-21
oil on canvas
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Daniel Mytens
Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel
before an Art Gallery at Arundel House in the Strand
ca. 1618
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

Lady Arundel (above) with a partial view of one of the new-built art galleries at Arundel House.  She participated most actively in the acquisition and display of paintings, it is said, taking less interest in the statues and carved gems that fascinated Arundel himself.  Mytens painted him gesturing toward a display space for the ancient marbles he had exerted himself to obtain.  Through court posts Arundel controlled both commercial and political agents traveling in the Mediterranean and charged the most trusted with scouring out and purchasing such rarities for him – in Italy, in Greece and especially on the Ionian coast of Turkey where there had as yet been little competition from other antiquity hunters.   

Daniel Mytens
Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel
before an Art Gallery at Arundel House in the Stran
ca. 1618
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

Peter Paul Rubens
Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel
ca. 1629-30
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Wenceslaus Hollar after Anthony van Dyck
Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel
and her daughter-in-law Lady Elizabeth Stuart
ca. 1636
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Wenceslaus Hollar after Anthony van Dyck
Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel
and his son Henry, Lord Maltravers
ca. 1636
etching
Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Anthony van Dyck
Earl and Countess of Arundel with Children and Grandchildren
ca. 1631-32
drawing
British Museum

workshop of Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of the Earl and Countess of Arundel
ca. 1639-40
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Wenceslaus Hollar after Anthony van Dyck
Alethea Talbot, Countess of Arundel
1646
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Philip Fruytiers adapted after Anthony van Dyck
Grandchildren of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel
presenting him with Arms to lead the Scottish Campaign
1639
oil on copper
Arundel Castle, West Sussex

The Earl and Countess are seated on a dais beneath a cloth of state.  On the wall behind the family group two Holbein portraits from the Earl's collection can be identified.  They represent two famous ancestors – the poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (left) and his father, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk (right).  Both had withered under the elderly wrath of Henry VIII.  

Wenceslaus Hollar
Equestrian Portrait of the Earl of Arundel leading the Scottish Campaign
1639
etching and letterpress
(broadside)
Royal Collection, Windsor

When Charles I and the Scots Covenanters decided to go to war with each other in 1639, Lord Arundel was drawn in as well.  His status as hereditary Earl-Marshal of England led the King to appoint him Lord-General of the Army, though Arundel was by then well over fifty and with no military experience.  Hollar did his best, depicting the Earl in armour and on horseback in the center of a broadside promoting the King's cause (above).  Charles himself (with little more military experience than Arundel) rode north as well, accompanying the army, but from first to last this expensive expedition accomplished nothing.  The campaign itself was brief and inconclusive.  Hostilities were, as the saying goes, renewed the next year.  But by then Arundel evidently had found ways to opt out.  

François Dieussart
Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel
1637
marble
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

There is a story that Lord Arundel sent diplomatic inquiries to Gianlorenzo Bernini in Rome about the possibility of having his own portrait sculpted.  He would have known the flamboyant marble bust of King Charles by Bernini displayed at court (later destroyed in a fire) which had been modeled not from life but from portraits by Van Dyck sent over to Rome.  Arundel must have hoped for something similar, but the press of papal and royal commissions did not permit Bernini to accept.  Instead he is supposed to have recommended his former pupil François Dieussart, whose impressive bust of Arundel has come to rest in Oxford alongside the best pieces from the Earl's sculpture collection. 

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.