Monday, 1 February, 2010

J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, Los Angeles

The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center in Los Angeles houses European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, and European and American photographs. The Getty Center sits on a hilltop in the Santa Monica Mountains. From there, visitors can take in the disparate aspects of Los Angeles’s landscape—the Pacific Ocean, the San Gabriel Mountains, and the vast street-grid of the city. Inspired by the relationship between these elements, architect Richard Meier designed the complex to highlight both nature and culture. Meier positioned the buildings along a natural ridge in the hilltop. Travertine is one of the most remarkable elements of the complex. Meier chose stone for this project because it is often associated with public architecture and expresses qualities the Getty Center celebrates: permanence, solidity, simplicity, warmth, and craftsmanship. Natural light is one of the Getty Center’s most important architectural elements.

In the Museum, clear sight lines between interior and exterior spaces allow visitors to move in and out of the five gallery pavilions and always know where they are. A circular building to the West of the Central Garden houses the Getty Research Institute (GRI), is used primarily by Getty scholars, staff, and visiting researchers. Two buildings to the north and east of the Arrival Plaza house the Getty Foundation, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the J. Paul Getty Trust administration offices.

Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656), Musical Group on a Balcony, 1622 Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum

Participants in the study trip will have a private viewing of Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference. Distilling more than thirty years of scholarly research, this major international loan exhibition presents a singular opportunity to explore the differences between Rembrandt’s drawings and those of fifteen of his pupils and followers. In carefully selected pairings of celebrated drawings by Rembrandt and his pupils, the exhibition outlines these artistic differences and sheds light on the art of drawing in Rembrandt’s circle and the vibrant and creative life within the master’s studio. Participants may also visit the exhibition, Drawing Life: The Dutch Visual Tradition. This small exhibition of forty drawings from the Getty’s permanent collection features some of the most beloved genres depicted by 17th- and 18th-century Dutch artists. It also includes many recent acquisitions.

After lunch, participants will have the opportunity to explore the Getty’s holdings of early Netherlandish, Dutch and Flemish paintings, one of the largest and most dynamic areas of the paintings collection, with Scott Schaefer and Anne Woollett. Noteworthy aspects include the Tuchlein Annunciation by Dieric Bouts, several conservation loans, recent additions to the collection, and an expanded display of works by Rembrandt and his circle and Frans Hals, augmented by significant loans from a private collection. If desired, the tour could include paintings storage, and a chance to view the three large-scale paintings acquired with enthusiasm by J. Paul Getty as works by Rubens, but not considered autograph today. The tour will conclude with a visit to the paintings conservation studio.

Tuesday, 2 February, 2010

J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, Los Angeles

Symposium Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference

Lectures:

Peter Schatborn, Emeritus Head of the Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam:
“The Core Group of Rembrandt’s Drawings”.

Gregory Rubinstein, Worldwide Head of Old Master Drawings, Sotheby’s, London:
“An Artistic Dialogue: The Early Drawings of Rembrandt and Lievens”.

Jan Leja, Research Curator, Private Collection, New York:
“Ferdinand Bol before 1642: Three Case Studies”.

Holm Bevers, Senior Curator of Netherlandish Prints, Drawings, and Manuscripts at the Kupferstichkabinett, Museen zu Berlin:
“ Drawings by Jan Victors: The Shaping of an Oeuvre of a Rembrandt Pupil”.

William W. Robinson, Maida and George Abrams Curator of Drawings, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge:
“As if One was Painting with Colors”: Samuel van Hoogstraten and the Pictorial Drawing”.

Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, John Langeloth Loeb Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, New York:
“Rembrandt Drawings: Then and Now”.

Martin Royalton-Kisch, Senior Curator, Department of Prints and Drawings, The British Museum, London:
“Drawings by Rembrandt and His Pupils: Telling the Difference?”.

Moderator: Lee Hendrix, Senior Curator of Drawings, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Wednesday, 3 February, 2010

Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens is a collections-based research and educational center serving scholars and the general public. Surrounded by 120 acres of breathtaking gardens are four art galleries and a library showcasing magnificent collections of rare books and manuscripts, European art from the 15th to the early 20th century, and American art from the late 17th to the early 20th century. More than 500,000 visitors from around the world enjoy The Huntington each year, and nearly 1,700 researchers conduct scholarly studies among the vast collections.

The Huntington’s European art collection encompasses a broad range of styles, cultures and media, from antiquity to the 20th century. It features one of the most significant collections of British art outside the United Kingdom. The Huntington is best known for this collection, and for its Old Masters (including a Madonna and Child (ca. 1460) by Rogier van der Weyden),18th-century French tapestries and decorative arts, as well as American paintings.

Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400-1464), Madonna and Child, ca 1460 San Marino, Huntington Library

At the heart of The Huntington is the Library, which contains more than 6 million manuscripts, books, photographs, and other works in the fields of American and British history, literature, art, and the history of science, medicine, and technology. The collection of 18th-century British and French art is considered one of the finest in the nation, and The Huntington’s holdings continue to grow by gift and purchase, with especially significant acquisitions both in European and American art in recent years.

As of 1903, Henry E. Huntington and his superintendent, Wiliam Hertrich, worked together to mold the San Marino Ranch, a working ranch with citrus groves, nut and fruit orchards, alfalfa crops, a small herd of cows, and poultry, into a botanical garden of rare and exotic plants. They searched local nurseries and visited other plant collectors in the area to find mature and unique specimens. Mr. Huntington imported plants from many parts of the world to experiment with their cultivation in Southern California. Hertrich was instrumental in developing the various plant collections that comprise the foundation of the botanical gardens. The property—originally nearly 600 acres—today covers 207 acres, of which approximately 120 are landscaped and open to visitors. More than 14,000 different varieties of plants are showcased in more than a dozen principal garden areas.

Pdf-file with overview of Dutch art at Huntington art collections

Pdf-file with overview of Flemish art at Huntington art collections

Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena

Norton Simon occupied a major role in American industry of the 20th century. He began slowly collecting art in the 1950s to enjoy in his home. His taste for art grew rapidly, so much so that a Time Magazine article from 1965 noted that he “himself is no longer quite sure whether he is an art connoisseur who engages in business or a businessman who collects art.” Indeed, over the next 30 years Norton Simon created one of the most important private collections in the United States containing paintings, sculpture and works on paper from the 14th – 20th centuries, and one of the foremost collections of Indian and Southeast Asian art in the world.

The Museum was designed by Thornton Ladd and John Kelsey and opened to the public in 1969. The architects created a building that was “residential in atmosphere” but not in scale. The handmade umber tiles used for the exterior walls serve as a reminder of Pasadena’s many Craftsman-style homes as well as the San Gabriel Mountains that tower over the city to the north. The Museum’s original interior featured spacious curving galleries that facilitated the exhibition of large modern art pieces, which was the original focus of the institution. In 1977, Craig Ellwood and Associates transformed office space into additional exhibition galleries in the lower level. From 1996 to 1999, the Museum underwent a major interior renovation by Frank Gehry working with executive architect Greg Walsh. The interior walls were reconfigured to better display the varied masterpieces of the Norton Simon collections. The ceilings were raised and the skylights opened, allowing filtered natural light into the galleries.

Dutch and Flemish paintings play a significant role in the museum collection and Old Master painting in the Norton Simon Museum will be one of the spectacular surprises awaiting CODART members. Curators unfamiliar with the collection will discover paintings by well known artists from Raphael to Zurbaran. This is no less true for the collection of Northern European artists where participants in the trip will have an opportunity to see works by Dieric Bouts, Hans Memling, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn and Jacob van Ruisdael. Additional surprises to be found are fine examples by Nicolaes Berchem, Cornelis van Haarlem, Jan Lievens, Georg Pencz, Isaac Soreau and Johannes Cornelisz. Verspronk.

Simons first old master acquisition occurred in 1956, a female portrait presumed to be Hendrickje Stoffels. At the time it was attributed to Rembrandt (presently in the Alfred Bader Collection, as “studio of”). In 1959, Simon acquired Peter Paul Ruben’s portrait of Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia. Presently there are three Rembrandt paintings and eight works by Rubens drawn from the Bible, portraiture and mythology. The majority of the Northern European paintings were acquired by Simon from the mid 1960s though mid 1970s. Dutch portraiture remained a strong interest and includes fine examples by Gerard Dou, Frans Hals, and Nicolaes Maes. Landscape and still life have important representation in the galleries including fine examples by Ambrosius Bosschaert and Jan Davidz. de Heem or by Salomon van Ruysdael and Jacob van Ruisdael respectively. Genre paintings by Quiringh Brekelenkam to Gabriel Metsu and Jan Steen were also much loved by the collector. The same is true for early Netherlandish painting. In 1965, Simon’s collection increased substantially thanks to the acquisition of the Duveen Gallery inventory. Among the highlights were early Netherlandish paintings by Hans Memling and Gerard David.

To welcome the CODART study trip, the museum has scheduled The Familiar Face: Portrait Prints by Rembrandt to be on view. The participants will be introduced to another facet of Mr. Simon’s collection, his interest in Rembrandt as a printmaker. The specific day of CODART’s visit to the Norton Simon Museum, the curators will pull select works of art not on view in the galleries including a number of 17th century Dutch Tulip watercolors about which little is known.

A history of Mr. Simon as a collector which details his activities in the art market is forthcoming by Senior Curator Sara Campbell. Publication date is anticipated for the Autumn of 2010.

Rembrandt (1606/07-1669), Juno, ca. 1662-65 Los Angeles, Hammer Museum

Thursday, 4 February

Hammer Museum and Grunwald Center, UCLA, Los Angeles

The Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center (AHMACC) opened to the public in November 1990. Founded by Dr. Armand Hammer, the Museum was designed by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. At that time, the Museum featured galleries for Dr. Hammer’s collections – Old Master paintings and drawings, and a collection of works on paper by Honore Daumier and his contemporaries – as well as galleries for traveling exhibitions. Dr. Hammer died in December 1990, three weeks after the opening of the Museum. Upon his death, all construction was halted and the building was never completed, leaving many spaces unfinished. In 1994, the Museum established a partnership with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), to assume the management and operations of the institution. In 1995, the University relocated to the Hammer its collections and the staff of the Wight Art Gallery and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts.

Dutch and Flemish art are an important focus of the collections at the Hammer Museum and the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. The Armand Hammer Collection contains a number of old master works, including two paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn, as well as one by Peter Paul Rubens. The Grunwald Center holdings include about twenty Rembrandt etchings, as well as numerous prints by Dutch and Flemish artists, including Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens, Hendrick Goltzius, Abraham Bloemaert, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Jan van Goyen.

An early work by Rembrandt, Portrait of a Man Holding a Black Hat (ca. 1637), is part of the Armand Hammer Collection and dates from the period when the artist was a successful portrait painter in Amsterdam. The centerpiece of the Old Master collection is Rembrandt’s Juno (ca. 1662-65), created toward the end of the artist’s life. Rembrandt is also represented in a number of prints in the Grunwald Center collection, including Annunciation to the Shepherds (1634), The Angel Departing from the Family of Tobias (1641), Landscape with Obelisk (ca. 1650), Christ Preaching (La petite tombe)(1652), and Abraham’s Sacrifice (1655).

Concurrent with the CODART visit to Los Angeles, the Grunwald Center is presenting a special exhibition on Rembrandt prints that will be drawn from its own collection, as well as loans from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The exhibition will feature approximately forty works and will include various impressions and states of certain prints to show Rembrandt’s working process as a printmaker.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is the largest encyclopedic museum in the western United States, including significant collections of Asian, European, Latin American, American, and contemporary art. Originally part of the Los Angeles County Museum, founded in 1913 to house a collection of fossils and local history. LACMA was established in 1965 as an independent, non-profit institution supported by a combination of public and private funds. Since then its collections have grown substantially through the support of local collectors and benefactors.
Two of the founding fathers of LACMA, Howard Ahmanson and Edward Carter, the first president of the museum, have been the most significant supporters of the Department of European Paintings and Sculpture. Beginning in the late 1960s Edward Carter and his wife Hannah began collecting high quality 17th-century Dutch paintings with the intention of leaving the collection to the museum. With the death of Mrs. Carter last spring, the collection, consisting of landscapes, still lifes, cityscapes, seascapes, and church interiors has now come to the museum.

Clara Peeters (1594–ca. 1657), Still Life, ca. 1625 Los Angeles, LACMA

Through the continuing generosity of the Ahmanson Foundation, LACMA has acquired important history paintings, including Rembrandt’s The Raising of Lazarus, Honthorst’s Mocking of Christ, Goltzius’s The Sleeping Danae Being Prepared to Receive Jupiter, Michel Sweerts’s The Plague in an Ancient City, and Jan Steen’s Samson and Delilah. The collection also includes Rembrandt’s Maarten Looten and Frans Hals’s Pieter Tjarck. Currently in the process of being renovated, the reinstalled galleries of Dutch and Flemish paintings will reopen in January in time for the visit of the CODART study trip.

Visit to private collection, Beverly Hills

This visit includes 17th and 18th century paintings and Renaissance to 18th century sculpture.

Friday 5 February, San Diego

Timken Museum of Art, San DiegoThe Timken Museum of Art has its roots in the relationship between two sisters, Anne R. and Amy Putnam-members of the Timken family. The Putnam sisters spent decades acquiring European Old Master paintings. Initial paintings from the sisters’ collection were donated to San Diego’s Fine Arts Gallery (now the San Diego Museum of Art). Their later acquisitions were loaned to prestigious museums around the country until the Timken Museum of Art opened in 1965. The Timken Foundation of Canton, Ohio, funded the construction of the museum building.

The Timken Museum of Art, located in San Diego’s beautiful Balboa Park and celebrating its 45th anniversary in 2010, is a small choice collection of European Old Masters, American 19th-century paintings and Russian icons in a modernist pavilion of travertine, glass and bronze. The museum holds significant examples of Italian, French, Dutch, Flemish and American paintings, mostly collected by Amy and Anne Putnam of San Diego.

Most significantly for CODART members, the museum’s collection contains Rembrandt’s Saint Bartholomew (1657), Hals’s Portrait of a unknown man (1634), a Still life by Pieter Claesz. (1627), Metsu’s A Girl Receiving a Letter (ca. 1658), de Witte’s Interior of the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam (1657) and Jacob van Ruisdael’s View of Haarlem and Bleaching Fields (c1665-70). Flemish works include Petrus Christus’s Death of the Virgin (ca.1460-65), Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Parable of the Sower (1557), Rubens’s Portrait of a Young Man in Armor (ca. 1620) and Van Dyck’s Portrait of Mary Villiers, Lady Herbert of Shurland (ca. 1636). A collection catalogue and supplement are available.

On view from 22 January to 2 May is the exhibition Rembrandt’s Recession, examining the artist’s New Testament print subjects in the 1650s in the context of his personal and financial issues of the mid 1640s and 1650s. A catalogue of the exhibition, with essays by Timken director John Wilson and Stephanie Dickey of Queen’s University will be available. The exhibition is generously funded by Robert and Karen Hoehn.

The whole Timken collection is online at: http://www.timkenmuseum.org/1-collectionB.html

Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667), A Girl Receiving a Letter, ca. 1658, San Diego, Timken Museum

San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego

The San Diego Museum of Art, located in Balboa Park, opened as the Museum of Fine Arts on 18 February 1926. The museum building was designed by architect William Templeton Johnson. When the museum was first opened, the location of San Diego and its historical ties to Spain suggested to some that the museum ought to focus on Spanish art. However, Archer M. Huntington, founder of the Hispanic Society of America, advised to pursue a broader overview of art. Although best known for its collection of Spanish and Italian paintings, the San Diego Museum of Art also includes important works by Dutch and Flemish artists.

The greatest patrons in the area of European art have been the sisters Anne R. and Amy Putnam. In the 1930s and 1940s, with civil conflict in Spain and world war in Europe curtailing the art market, the Putnams still managed to make acquisitions. Despite the fame of the collection, the Putnams insisted upon anonymity, and no one outside the museum circle knew the identity of its star benefactors until year after the fact.

The highlights of the collection of Dutch and Flemish masters include a sketch by Rubens for the Triumph of the Eucharist tapestry series, Frans Hals’s lively small Portrait of Isaac Abrahamsz. Massa, Anthony van Dyck’s Portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria, a late landscape by Jacob van Ruisdael, trompe l’oeil still lifes by Samuel van Hoogstraten and Jacob de Wit, a Floral still life by Rachel Ruysch, and a large copper by Daniel Seghers. Earlier Netherlandish painting is represented with works by the Master of the Parrot and the Master of Frankfurt, among others.

The print collection includes a group of over 200 prints by Goltzius and his circle, as well as a group of etchings by Ferdinand Bol that will be the basis of the exhibition From Rembrandt’s Studio: The Prints of Ferdinand Bol, which will be on view during CODART’s visit to San Diego. Bol was primarily active as a painter, but like most of the artists who spent time in Rembrandt’s studio, he also worked as a printmaker and made a group of around 20 etchings.

These prints have been little studied, but impressions of nearly all will be included in the exhibition, where they will be juxtaposed with examples of Rembrandt’s own graphic work, thus allowing an examination of the relationship between the two artists while demonstrating Bol’s own particular talents as a printmaker.

Frans Hals (1582/83-1666), Portrait of Isaac Massa, 1635 San Diego Museum of Art

University of San Diego Print Collection, Hoehn Family Print Study Room, and Karen and Robert Hoehn Print Galleries, San Diego

Recently endowed by a generous gift from Robert and Karen Hoehn, the University of San Diego print collection features works by master printmakers including Goya, Dürer, Callot, Rouault, and Rembrandt. The collection strives to represent the history of printmaking from the 15th century to the present day; an active acquisition program will develop the collection to this end. This newly inaugurated collection serves as a resource for University of San Diego students, faculty, and staff as well as San Diego residents. Set within the impressive Spanish Renaissance campus of the University of San Diego, the Hoehn Family Print Study Room and the Karen and Robert Hoehn Print Galleries facilitate the study and enjoyment of work on paper throughout the academic year.

Spring 2010 exhibition: Prints in the Artist’s Studio: Rubens’s Print Collection Reconstructed

By analyzing Peter Paul Rubens’s copy drawings, correspondence, and finished works, this exhibition offers the first reconstruction of this great artist’s print collection. Although a great deal is known about his activities as a collector of paintings, sculptures, and antiquities, his print collection has not previously been studied. A selection of the illustrated books and Old Master prints that Rubens kept in his studio will demonstrate the kind of printed sources that he deemed especially useful. These include 15th-, 16th- and 17th-century German, Dutch, and Italian examples. Comparative material presented in reproduction will show how these objects were studied and employed by Rubens and members of his studio. This exhibition contributes to our understanding of the history of print collecting and to the history of workshop practice. By providing a look inside the seventeenth-century artist’s studio, this exhibition will emphasize the central role of prints in the training of artists and in their perpetual pursuit of originality.