1786- the year of a lost Turner Watercolor

1796 was an incredibly interesting year.

It was the year American painter, Asher Durand, was born in New Jersey. Durand (not Duran Duran… ‘90s music lovers!) would go on to become one of the major proponents of the Hudson River school style of painting, celebrating, realism in landscape art, and its connection to the divine.

It was the year Catherine the Great died after decades ruling Russia and expanding the Russian empire.

It was also the year than a twenty-one year old English painter, J. M. W. Turner, painted this watercolor. It was forgotten about for years in the attic of a rural country estate in England, Kinsham Court.

Turner watercolor, Hampton Court Castle, Herefordshire, courtesy of Minster Auctions

It’s going on auction in March, so if you have some spare milk money, ( the estimate is running between £30,000 to £60,000), and love Turner, then this is your chance to pick up what could be a relative bargain.

The fifth Earl of Essex hired Turner to paint Hampton Court Castle in Herefordshire after he inherited it. Herefordshire, famous for its beautiful countryside and its Hereford cows, is in the West Midlands. Hampton Court then became the property of the Arkwright family at the start of the 19th century.

After a hundred years or so, John Arkwright sold Hampton Court and then relocated to Kinsham Court. Most likely the Turner sketch made the trip along with everything else. It was discovered by Arkwright’s descendants in the attic amongst a bunch of watercolors that had been up there for decades. That makes me feel not-so-bad about not having been in my attic for months, while at the same time making me realize I should go up there and check out what’s hanging around…even though I am 100% certain I will not find a long lost Turner watercolor.

Now, while the watercolor wasn’t signed, one of Minster’s experts, James Pearn, is positive that it’s a Turner, because of the stylistic elements that Turner was known for, including the way he laid down his brushstrokes.

Patterdale, With Ullswater beyond, Turner, courtesy of Sotheby’s

It’s interesting to note that just a few days ago on January 31, at auction at Sotheby’s, two different watercolors by Turner found new owners. One, Loch Lomond, West Scotland, sold right within its estimate range of $50-$80 grand at just under $61,000 while the second piece, Patterdale with Ullswater beyond, generated a bit more interest and sold over the estimate, bringing down the gavel at a little over $95,000. In light of these numbers, Minster’s auction estimate ( 38 to 72 thousand USD) isn’t too far off what the market seems to be willing to pay. We’ll see what happens in the first of minsters three annual fine art auctions in March.

Meanwhile, go check your attics, people!

We’re back!!

Sammy says as soon as she wakes up from her rash of recent museum excursions, she’s ready to share what she’s seen… but for now, she hit the snooze button until brunch…

Swedish painter Hilma af Klint & Lasse Hallstrom’s new feature…

so much going on in the art & film worlds this week so I thought I’d share one of my favorite artists and the film that’s bringing her to life for many who don’t know her.

This week’s news of note: Many of you have taken art history class with me in the past and might remember a series I did on the life & work of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint.

While we know and appreciate her today for the numerous large scale, often symmetrical, color filled abstracts and geometric works she painted, many of which she said were inspired directly by spiritual forces, this aspect of her creative life was relatively unknown to the general public during her lifetime.

Her work was years ahead of Kandinsky’s abstracts, yet she kept them hidden from the public, because they were so vastly different than her floral illustration work. Because she felt the abstracts would not be well received by a public that was not ready yet, she stipulated that nothing could be shown to the public for DECADES after her death…a sad delay that resulted in her being overlooked for her incredibly galvanizing, ground breaking work.

She began working on The Ten Largest in October 1907 after a vision inspired her to create beautiful images that explained the stages of life. Curiously, October seemed to be play a role in her life and its creative flow, as she was born and died in October ( 1862-1944) and created her first massive series of large scale works a month after having a vision about the process.

Hilma af Klint, part of series The Ten Largest. Begun October 1907

Still from 2022 feature Hilma, courtesy Nordic Entertainment Group

Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom has brought her story to the screen and the reviews at festivals are quite positive with tour de force Lena Olin as Hilma.

If your looking for a rapid paced, quick fire action film, this will not be for you…but if you’re looking for a finely crafted film that makes a connection to a tremendously, talented female artist who was overlooked and disrespected during her lifetime, then this film has your name, well actually Hilma’s name, all over it.

Preemptive closure at the Gardner Museum

As you know, Friday, March 17 was the 33rd anniversary of the robbery of the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum in Boston. 13 works were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990.

The museum closed early because of possible actions by climate activists from the group Extinction Rebellion, who were going to do some type of a guerrilla art action inside the museum.

As you recall, we’ve spoken about different climate protests in various European museums the past several months, and the trend has come to the US.
The museum released a statement regarding the early closure. In it they cited the museum: “ as a safe place of sharing art, community and conversation. Isabella was an advocate of all forms of art, as well as the environment, especially horticulture. While it is our mission to uphold Isabella’s values, we do not support this type of tactic that targets art institutions and could possibly put the Museum’s collection, staff and visitors at risk.”

empty frame which held Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee prior to robbers cutting it out and removing it. Courtesy Josh Reynolds/AP

What, if any, actions do you think museums should take in the face of possible protests inside their institutions?

What do you think about this closure of the museum in response to possible vandalism?

Do you think the art works stolen from the museum 33 years ago will ever be recovered?

Do you think they are irretrievably lost or damaged?

How do you feel about the blank spaces the museum keeps to honor the stolen pieces?

From Billionaires, Scottish Dukes, Rothschilds, Dutch Masters & American Watercolorists: My Rembrandt & Jerry Pinkney

Hello All & a happy December to you! 

Thanks to all for a great discussion this past Friday on the intriguing documentary MY REMBRANDT. This film, with its incredible insider access to some of the most glorious Rembrandt paintings in the world, explores why people are so fascinated with the Dutch Golden Age painter, centuries after he created incredible, world-changing images. The inner machinations behind the joint Louvre-Rijksmuseum $160 million purchase of a pair of portraits from current Baron de Rothschild were especially fascinating. 

The life size portraits that Rothschild had on either side of his bed for years were created in 1634 and depict Amsterdam trader Marten Soolmans and his wife Oopjen Coppit. 

Notice the texture, palette, expression & emotion…when compared to Rembrandt’s portrait of her husband, she seems to have a bit more spirit and brightness in her image. Was Rembrandt a bit more taken by her personality, or does this reflect the difference in purpose of representation between the pair of portraits: the husband, serious, a force to be reckoned with in his contemporary society; the wife, embodying the hallmarks of a good Dutch wife of her class?

Consider this: If you owned a Rembrandt as part of your massive collection of centuries of art from the Old Masters through to the twentieth century, would you lend it (or any of your collection, for that matter) out to museums around the world, or would you keep them in your residence for your personal, private enjoyment?

The film explores this question in presenting various private collectors and public institutions, including American collector Thomas Scott Kaplan, who owns the largest privately held collections of Rembrandts (15) and Dutch masterworks ( 250) in the world; and Richard Scott, the Duke of Buccleuch, whose his 80,000 acres of ancestral lands in Scottland houses a massive collection of Old World masterpieces, including Rembrandt’s Old Woman Reading from 1665.

Kaplan believes it is his responsibility to lend these masterworks out to public institutions so they can be enjoyed by the world at large, while The Duke, like other Uber wealthy collectors, keeps various works by the Old Masters in his private residence for his enjoyment only.

Portrait of Opjen Coppit, 1634 by Rembrandt courtesy of the Rijksmuseum 

It’s an interesting question to consider, and I’m quite sure, a much better one to actually have irl.

Next week we’ll discuss the work of Jerry Pinckney and his beautiful, striking important water colors on view at the Katonah Museum in New York.

Go, She Cried, from Minty: A Story of Young Harriet Tubman, 1996, by Jerry Pinkney. Watercolor, graphite, and gouache on paper. 12 3/8 in. x 20 3/8 in.

We’ll also look at the work of the incredible Winslow Homer and his use of various media in creating his awe inspiring images of America and her various, glorious landscapes.

Nor’easter, Winslow Homer, 1895/1881 courtesy of the Met

Sculpture Gardens at PepsiCo- incredible sculptures amidst gorgeous fall foliage

So this gorgeous Saturday saw us spend a lovely 2 hours in the warm autumn sunshine as my weekly Wednesday night Art class broke with tradition and met on location (!!!) in person (!!!) at PepsiCo’s World Headquarters in Purchase. Several devoted souls even jumped onto Zoom to try a spotty virtual experience. Why, you ask, did we switch it up this past weekend? Because the David M Kendall Sculpture garden was calling to us!

In front of Arnoldo Pomodoro’s Grande Disco 1

Picture this. The year -1965. The occasion- PepsiCo relocates its HQ out of the city to what was still mostly undeveloped forest and farmland, (Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s “cultural gem of the SUNY system” SUNY Purchase wouldn’t open officially until two years later in 1967 right across the street).

Donald M. Kendall, Chairman and CEO at the time, saw the former polo field as the perfect location for a new corporate cultural environment. He wanted to integrate three different art forms – architecture, landscape architecture, and large-scale modern sculpture

Kendall set PepsiCo on a path that has continued to value and share the fine arts in its continued role as corporate patron, public benefactor, critic, and connoisseur.

In front of Pomodoro’s Grande Disco 1 
(photo courtesy J.Miller) 

As we observed Saturday, Russell Page’s five year plan that extended the original landscape design has bloomed and grown into a visual delight in its own right. 

Carefully planned concepts of form, color and texture are carefully planned so that various elements of the landscape constantly change as the seasons progress. Page used a living palette – trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants, giving us an organic variety of colors, shapes and scents. These serve as a gorgeous setting for large scale contemporary sculptures by sone of the world’s most important artists.

Hepworth’s Meridian

So, into this setting we explored some of the art world’s heaviest hitters, including Pomodoro, Hepworth, Wynne, Dubuffet, Moore, Calder & Rodin. 

Come back here Wednesday night for my post that goes into greater depth on the artists and works we explored.

Meanwhile- be well & C’è vediamo!

Charles Schultz was right!

Arab Blues & Imperial Blue Porcelain

Hi All! 

It’s been quite a week and I had a riveting art history class Wednesday night, covering a range of topics from £ 1.5 million kitchen vases to throwing the West Coast W in a variety of Renaissance portraits. We also made the leap from Henry Vlll’s Superman pose, hands on hip, with a wide legged stance, to a new vaudeville star and public enemy number two- Legs Akimbo.

As you know, I like to keep you posted on interesting events happening throughout the art world (openings, exhibitions, auctions of note, etc…) and this week’s tidbit centered around the sale of a rare glazed porcelain vase that was bought over four decades for a few hundred British pounds by a British surgeon.

The striking glazed porcelain object then went to the surgeon’s son, where it sat in his kitchen, until a friend of the current owner noticed it and thought there might be more to the piece’s history.

Photo courtesy Dreweatts Auctioneers

It was authenticated as a rare Chinese vase from the Qianlong imperial court of the 1700s. The vase, intricately decorated with silver and gold cranes and bats on a blue background, would have taken several firings to achieve the incredible visual impact it has, as the enameling techniques utilized various colors that needed to be fired separately at different temperatures to achieve perfection.

The auction house set the estimate at between £100,00 and £150,000 British pounds sterling so it was quite the surprise when after tremendous interest from US, Asian and British bidders the gavel went down at £1,200,000 ( for a total of around £1.5 million with the buyers premium.)

( Note: next art class focuses on the work of Cecilia Beaux, an American artist, born in 1855, who was known for her incredible portraits. Together, with me, ProfValFranco, we’ll explore her beautiful images. We’ll ask why she has fallen off the radar of the contemporary art world, even though she was heralded as one of the greatest portraits artists of her time. By the 1930s, her reputation was at its peak, with her work receiving accolades internationally. She was even lauded as “the American woman who had made the greatest contribution to the culture of the world.”)

Our amazing week continued with our Friday night film: Arab Blues, set in modern day Tunisia and dealing with issues of being heard, immigration, repatriation, corruption, misogyny, and stereotyping and female psychotherapists. 

Not everyone looks positively on a woman and a couch in this French language comedy that explores the role of women, and talk therapy, in Tunis. How do people open to the concept of therapy with a female practitioner in a male dominated society, that tends not to talk about its problems? Released eight years after Tunisia’s 2011 revolution that introduced democracy, and two years before Kais Saeid took office as President, the film brings up issues of political freedom in conjunction with issues of women’s rights. Saeid, an alumni of the International Institute of Humanitarian law, set aside the 2014 constitution, dissolved the elected Parliament and just recently dismissed 57 judges in what is being called by observers a push for one-man rule.

The post-screening conversations brought up many varied observations and viewpoints, as well as discussions about societal and cultural norms.

Our next film, I’m Fine ( Thanks for Asking), follows a recently widowed mom as she tries to piece together enough money to get back into an apartment during the pandemic. Danny tries everything from braiding hair to delivering food on roller skates, but is it enough to get her and her young daughter out of a tent and into an apartment in the dry and dusty environs of Pacoima, California? At times humorous and heartbreaking, this film was shot during the constrictive times of the Covid lockdown. 

Thanks for joining me for weekly look at wonderful art and film lectures. Looking forward to seeing you this week as we explore more great art & film!

Regards, 

ProfValFranco

Heads up: revisiting Delacroix at the Met

Delacroix’s Head of A Greek Woman shadowing ProfValFranco at the Met. (Photo- ProfValFranco, Lighting courtesy of the Met)

Since it’s way too rainy to head out into flooded roads and cranky drivers for a museum visit today, I thought I’d revisit past exhibs at the Metropolitan’s exhibit in Delacroix from a few years back.

In 1824 Delacroix began work on his massive painting Scenes from the Massacre at Chios. He was going to enter it for exhibition at the Salon in Paris that year.

The image in back of me is the study he did for the matriarch in the group. He painted her from a model who posed in his studio, but the grouping of figures in the final work also pictured others, including a dead mother with her infant.

Notice the intensity of her gaze, so fearful as she looks off into the distance, the atrocities of the massacre all around her.

Head of a Greek Woman, Eugene Delacroix, 1824, courtesy of the Musee Des Beaux-Arts, Orleans photo by ProfValFranco

Delacroix’s study is done in the vein of a long tradition of creating expressive heads. This was a very important practice in formal French academic painting since it’s development as an alternative to the guild system in the mid-1600s. The Academie’s official Salon Exhibitions began in 1667 in Paris, and were held every 6 or twelve months. Inclusion in the field led to important commissions, as well as an increase in reputation and stature in the French art world ( and arguably the world at large…)

By 1748 and at least through to 1890 it was considered to be the greatest art exhibition in the Western world, even as the Impressionists were fighting against the academic style and the Academie’s control in the art world with their own counter-culture exhibitions beginning in 1874.

Consensus is that there were two studies that Delacroix exhibited alongside the larger painting, the other being Orphaned Girl at Cemetery.

Orphaned Girl at Cemetery, Eugene Delacroix, 1824, courtesy of the Musee Du Louvre

A visual interpretation of the events in Chios that began April 12, 1822 and lasted for several months, the images presented in the massive Massacre at Chios (it’s almost fourteen feet by just under twelve feet) are quite overwhelming. The invading Ottoman troops killed over 20,000 Greeks and took the survivors ( numbered at almost seventy thousand) as slaves.

This emotional masterpiece was actually quite scandalous for several reasons: the scale of the violence it depicted, as well as the purposeful lack of unity regarding the narratives & composition. Notice how there is no suggestion of hope in this image – just death, despair and ruin.

Scenes from the Massacre at Chios, Eugene Delacroix, 1824, courtesy of the Musee du Louvre

There’s no heroic figure to act as a contrast to the Ottoman soldiers, one most notably in a very dominant, strong position on horseback, rearing up in the right mid-ground, as his victims, are strewn about the ground, either dead or waiting to be taken as prisoners into slavery.

This image was meant to secure the 26 year old Delacroix’s reputation as a formidable talent. Regardless of the controversy surrounding the painting and the mixed responses it provoked, it was recognized as a work worthy of purchase by the director of the royal museums at the time, the Comte de Forbin. He was so intrigued by it that he risked his career by purchasing the painting against protocol without securing King Louis XVIII’s official approval first.

The painting continued to provoke controversy well into the TwentyFirst Century when the Greek government removed a copy of the painting from a museum in Chios in the autumn of 2009. Their action was meant to be interpreted as a token of “good faith“ that would lead to improved relations between the Greek and the Turkish governments. Public sentiment was so vehement against this move that the copy was reinstalled in the museum.

Art often archives the world around us, whether the actions are admirable or unconscionable. Think of events occurring today on the world stage. How would an artist like Delacroix present them in his work?

What is your reaction to the two studies and to the finished painting at large?

Until next time….

ProfValFranco

What I learned this morning…

Almost every morning before I start my day I do a little exploration on line…it’s a few minutes spent following random connections between subjects & it tickles & enlightens me much more than reading violent or cranky threads on Facebook, so I find it an enjoyable almost addicting, pursuit. I’ve gone from strings of royalty to Greek philosophers, into screamo while passing through Dadaism, so I thought I should share the morning routes my mind virtually explores…

Today, a trailer on the film Northfork ( I thought it would be a pleasant doc on Long Island wineries, but it’s actually a film on the coercion and shenanigans involved in imminent domain relocation of hold-out families during the construction of a massive dam project in 1955 nNrthfork, Montana. 

Courtesy Paramount Pictures

In actuality, the Glacier View Dam, which was initially proposed at the North Fork site of the Flathead River along the Western border of Montana’s Glacier National Park, faced fierce opposition from various conservation groups and as well as the National Park Service. The massive 416-foot tall dam, would have flooded in over 10,000 acres of parkland, and was never built. 

Proposed Dam, Courtesy U.S.Army Corps of Engineers

It stands ( symbolically, not literally…) as an example of the importance of environment conservancy, and is an interesting contrast to China’s completed Three Gorges dam. The largest hydroelectric dam in the world, it was officially built to stall the periodic flooding of the Yangtze River, but it’s main raison d’etre is to fuel China’s massive need for electric power. It has wreaked incredible havoc with the lives of millions of displaced people as well as destroying incredible natural environments and habitats.

China’s Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, image courtesy of France24

For an in-depth look at this 21st Century industrial megalith and the destruction of traditional farming life in rural areas of China that it has caused, consider watching Chinese-Canadian director Yung Chang’s wonderful, gut-wrenching documentary, Up the Yangtze.

From Up the Yangtze, courtesy EyeSteelFilm 2007

After the trailer for Northfork, a doc on the incomparable Josephine Baker jumped on.  Josephine Baker: The First Black Superstar, a BBC Wales/ForgetAboutIt Films co-production, explores the incredible life of this maverick at a time of suppression in the U.S. of both women and African-Americans. (Note to self: learn more about Josephine Baker, and explore why there hasn’t been a biopic on her life since the 1991 Josephine Baker Story, starring Lynn Whitfield…) 

Josephine Baker, courtesy BBC

After researching a bit into the socio-political climate in the States and Europe when Baker made her move across the Atlantic, I had to jump into the Jazz Age and then jump back into Dada…which led to a deeper exploration of Magritte’s eponymous painting, The Treachery of Images … ( art is always at the root of everything, somehow…) 

Rene Magritte, 1928-29, La Trahison des Images, courtesy of LACMA

The whole concept of representation versus reality ( this is nota pipe…) led to canadian Robert Gentleman’s development of the free software R, as well as being one of the brilliant brains behind the free software Bioconductor that analyzes data on genomes that results from specific kinds of molecular biology experiments. 

Courtesy Bioconductor.org

R, by the way, is a free, open source language and environment ( or system) that is rooted in GNU/Linux ( Linux is the original free open source software ) and is used for graphics and statistical computing. 

And you have to love an entity/organization/concept that leads off in its Help section with this advice: “Before asking others for help, it’s generally a good idea for you to try to help yourself” 

Wow! Talk about encouraging true independence! I’m at once extremely intimidated, and utterly enamored with R and the concepts behind Gnu/Linux and free, open-source computing. 

Courtesy r-project.org, 2016 c 

So far, my morning’s mental wandering made my wish that I had paid more attention back in the day to my required undergrad class on introductory computer programming. Dr. Hsu very patiently tried to guide us through binary basics, zeros and ones, and I still feel that had I paid more attention to really understanding the concepts of preliminary coding, my life today would be very different. 

Note to self: add “learn basic coding” to my bucket list.

…and that’s how my morning started off.