Treasures from the Nationalmuseum of Sweden: The Collections of Count Tessin at the Morgan Library and Museum

            

    

Treasures from the Nationalmuseum of Sweden:

The Collections of Count Tessin

Morgan Library and  Museum, New York City

February 3 through May 14, 2017

Reviewed by Ed Voves

The eighteenth century has come back to life in a splendid exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. Focusing on a special loan from the Nationalmuseum of Sweden, visitors to the Morgan are enabled to grasp the importance of the gentleman connoisseur as the arbiter of the 1700's art scene.

Treasures from the Nationalmuseum of Sweden showcases the collections of eighteenth century oil paintings and Old Master drawings and prints which Count Carl Gustaf Tessin assembled during the 1730's and 1740's. Count Tessin then sold these impressive works of art to the royal family of Sweden. When Sweden's government opened a national museum of art in the nineteenth century, the Tessinsamlingen filled the galleries of the new facility with many of its finest works of art.

During the 1700's, Europe's Age of Enlightenment took hold in the minds of intellectuals like Carl Gustaf Tessin (1696-1770). As a young man, Tessin traveled throughout Western Europe but it was in France, which he visited on four occasions, that he found the greatest inspiration. In 1739, he returned to France as his nation's ambassador with the mission to secure French help to revive Sweden's dwindling political and economic power. Tessin expanded his diplomatic brief to purchase an array of art works to promote a cultural renaissance in Sweden.

This was not just a public-spirited endeavor. Tessin amassed his collection so that he would become a latter-day Medici. From his father, he had inherited the rank of surintendant or surveyor of the Swedish royal palace. Now, as Sweden's emissary to Versailles and a devoted patron of the arts, he could make his own mark. In the portrait he commissioned while in France, we see him surrounded by all the trappings of the realm of high culture.

Jacques-André-Joseph Aved, Count Carl Gustaf Tessin, 1740

Tessin's portrait supplies one of the more humorous elements in the exhibit. Tessin was Sweden's "unofficial" ambassador to France and, perhaps to make more of an impression, spent lavishly, dipping into his own resources. When it came to having his portrait painted, Tessin tried to save money by picking a more affordable artist, Jacques-André-Joseph Aved (1702–1766), rather than one of the "grand manner" masters like Hyacinth Rigaud.

Aved succeeded in presenting Tessin as a man of the Enlightenment, carelessly dressed but absorbed in his intellectual pursuits. But the painting sessions dragged on so long that Tessin's finances were just as strained as if he had commissioned Rigaud.

Tessin was indeed an Enlightenment intellectual. If not a philosophe of the caliber of Voltaire, he had a discerning intellect and the gift for cultivating the best artists and scholars of his time. He met the brilliant, ill-fated Watteau on a early trip to France and later added a number of Watteau's superb sketches to his collection, including this appealing  study of a young woman's head from four different angles.

Antoine Watteau, Four Studies of a Young Woman's Head, ca. 1720

Tessin also displayed the good taste and even better sense of befriending the long-lived master of genre painting, Jean Siméon Chardin (French, 1699–1779). Tessin purchased several of Chardin's works, including The Morning Toilette, the introductory work of art for this review. 

The Morning Toilette is one of the masterpieces of this wonderful artist, whom Kenneth Clark regarded as the "greatest painter of mid-eighteenth century France." The Morning Toilette was selected as an illustration for Civilization and it is worth quoting Clark's astute observation about Chardin:

Chardin's pictures show that the qualities immortalized in verse by La Fontaine and Moliere - good sense, a good heart, an approach to human relationships both simple and delicate - survived into the mid-eighteenth century...

It is significant that Clark noted qualities connecting Chardin to cultural masters of the seventeenth century. Tessin, as we shall see, possessed the same ability to grasp the merit of works of art from the 1600's. But Tessin was also an eighteenth century man of affairs. The oil paintings in which he took the greatest pride in collecting were not works by Chardin but "eye candy" by masters of the Rococo style like François Boucher.

Boucher (1703–1770) created a sensation at the Salon of 1740 with his mythology-themed, The Triumph of Venus. Tessin simply had to have it, even though his finances were starting to suffer, and it was the toast of his collection when he returned to Sweden in 1742. 

François Boucher, The Triumph of Venus, 1740

The Triumph of Venus is a technically accomplished painting, recalling Botticelli's Birth of Venus. It, however, is almost completely devoid of "good sense, a good heart, an approach to human relationships both simple and delicate." 

Of course, taste in art changes over the centuries. The eroticism of this painting must have seemed potent indeed to Count Tessin and his colleagues back in Stockholm. Triumph anchors the exhibit at the Morgan, and, initially at least, exerts a striking presence in the gallery. But the longer one studies Boucher's magnum opus the more unappealing it becomes, like a rich dessert after a heavy meal.

 Gallery view of Treasures from the Nationalmuseum of Sweden at the Morgan Library

Boucher's genre scene, The Milliner, is a much more compelling work. It evokes to perfection the ideal of life in France during the 1700's, le douceur de vivre. Yet the effect is the same as with The Triumph of Venus. There is simply too much sweetness in this picture when the lives of the majority of the French people were marked by grinding toil and the loss of loved ones in the endless, futile wars of the age.

François Boucher, The Milliner, 1746

In 1749, only a few years after returning home, Tessin was forced to sell most of his paintings, including The Triumph of Venus, to King Frederik. As surintendant of the palace, Tessin would have had ready access to his former collection, a measure of compensation.

Tessin would have been better advised to spend his money on less glamorous, less pricey purchases. To his credit, when opportunity arose to buy works of truly enduring value, Tessin did not hesitate. This occurred in 1741 with the auction of the vast collection of drawings owned by Pierre Crozat, who had been Watteau's great patron.

It is these works by Durer, Rembrandt, Watteau and others that are truly treasures from the Nationalmuseum of Sweden. 

Rembrandt is represented by an impressive array of works ranging from a heart warming study of a woman teaching a child to walk to a vigorously sketched depiction of Three Thatched Cottages by a Road. This country scene, free of allegorical references, could be displayed next to a landscape drawing by Vincent van Gogh - to their mutual advantage.

Rembrandt, Three Thatched Cottages by a Road, ca. 1640,

The quality and diversity of the works on paper collected by Count Tessin are astonishing. Drawings in graphite, charcoal, ink, chalk, pastel and the "pencil" of watercolor demonstrate the range of accomplishment of seventeenth century artists that is often obscured by the mighty achievements in oil painting by titans from Caravaggio to Vermeer. 

Conversely, the ability in drawing by the eighteenth century artists favored by Tessin is also notable. Watteau's exceptional facility in sketching needs little comment here. A lesser known contemporary of Watteau, Antoine Coypel (1661-1722) is represented by a portrait sketch of a young woman model, so lively, so sparkling with intelligence that her penetrating gaze literally drew my attention from across the gallery at the Morgan.

Antoine Coypel,Young Woman, En Face, c. 1690's.

This outstanding portrait sketch was one of a series of studies. From these, Coypel could select  the head of the Virgin Mary or of Venus, depending on the subject of his current painting. Coypel was a "history" painter, for which one should read "allegory." There are none of his oil paintings in the Morgan exhibit. This is just as well, for his works in oil are didactic and overwrought. But with this portrait of a young woman, created with chalk and pastel, Coypel succeeded brilliantly. 

Why the visual arts of the Age of Reason were so marked by the glaring contrast between acutely perceptive sketching and frivolous, saccharine painting is one of the mysteries of the Enlightenment. 

That Tessin could dip into his dwindling resources to purchase one of Durer's supreme masterpieces, Portrait of a Young Woman with Braided Hair, is, however, a testament to his passion for art. 

Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of a Young Woman with Braided Hair,1515

Surveying the incredible range of his collection, one gets the sense that these works of art held a deeper meaning for Tessin than merely serving as mementos of his travels. Rather, l think these paintings and sketches were surrogates for the relics or devotional art works that Tessin would have acquired had he traveled about Europe a century or two earlier. 

By 1700, pilgrimages to Christian shrines were being replaced by the Grand Tour. Europe in the eighteenth century was entering a secular age, but idealists like Tessin were still searching for nobility, still looking for meaning and for works of art to express this yearning. 

Antoine Coypel, who was a cultural theorist as well as an artist, urged his fellow artists to undertake this spiritual quest as well. Painters, Coypel wrote should "express those sentiments and movements of the soul which rhetoric teaches are necessary if we wish to be heard by all the nations of the earth."

Rembrandt, Study for the Figure of Esther in The Great Jewish Bride,1635

                                                
Count Tessin continued his impressive diplomatic career upon returning to Sweden, as well as becoming the leader of the Riksdag, Sweden's parliament. Tessin advanced to the rank of President of the Chancellery or prime minister, which he held from 1746 to 1752, and served as tutor to the heir to the throne. 

Tessin's brilliant career came to a sudden halt when he tried to preserve the Riksdag's independence from royal control. He retired to his estates and died in 1770. The prince he tutored absorbed Tessin's passion for the arts but not his belief in political liberty.The year after Tessin died, Gustavus III launched a reign marked by cultural patronage and authoritarian politics. Gustavus was assassinated at a masked ball in 1792 as the radical spirit of the French Revolution reached northward to Sweden.

Tessin's artistic legacy can be witnessed in the outstanding exhibit at the Morgan. It is a testament to the cultural contribution that a single, enlightened human being can achieve. Three centuries later, the "sentiments and movements of the soul" of Count Carl Gustaf Tessin are still making their presence felt.

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Introductory Image:                                                                                                         Jean Siméon Chardin (French, 1699–1779), The Morning Toilette, 1740–41, Oil on canvas, 49 x 39 cm. (unframed). Nationalmuseum of Sweden, Tessin Collection. NM 782 Photo: Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum     

Jacques-André-Joseph Aved, (French, 1702–1766) Count Carl Gustaf Tessin, 1740. Oil on canvas, 149 x 116 cm. (unframed).Nationalmuseum of Sweden, Tessin collection, NM 5535 Photo: Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum     

Antoine Watteau (French, 1684-1721) Four Studies of a Young Woman's Head, ca. 1720. Red, black and white chalk on buff paper, 55 x 42 cm. (mounted). Nationalmuseum of Sweden, Tessin collection, NMH 2836/1863 Photo: Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum

François Boucher (French, 1703–1770) The Triumph of Venus, 1740. Oil on canvas, 130 x 162 cm. (unframed).Nationalmuseum of Sweden, Tessin collection, NM 770 Photo: Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum 
    
Ed Voves (2016), Gallery view of Treasures from the Nationalmuseum of Sweden:
The Collections of Count Tessin, showing The Triumph of Venus by François Boucher, 1740.

François Boucher (French, 1703–1770) The Milliner, 1746. Oil on canvas, 64 x 53 cm. (unframed). Nationalmuseum of Sweden, Tessin collection, NM 772 Photo: Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum    

Rembrandt (Dutch, 1606–1669) Three Thatched Cottages by a Road, ca. 1640, Pen and brown ink and wash, with touches of white heightening, 42 x 55 cm. (mounted). Nationalmuseum of Sweden, Tessin Collection. NMH 2087/1863 Photo: Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum 

Antoine Coypel (French, 1661-1722) Young Woman, En Face, c. 1690's. Black, red and white chalk and pink pastel, on brown paper, 34.7 x 24.5 cm. (unframed). Nationalmuseum of Sweden, Tessin collection, NMH 2854/1863 

Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471-1528) Portrait of a Young Woman with Braided Hair, 1515. Black chalk and charcoal on brownish paper. Laid down. Framing line in black ink. Fold. 65 x 50 cm. (mounted). Nationalmuseum of Sweden, Tessin collection. NMH 1855/186 Photo: Cecilia Heisser/Nationalmuseum

Rembrandt (Dutch, 1606–1669), Study for the Figure of Esther in The Great Jewish Bride, 1635, pen and gray-brown and dark brown ink, brown and gray wash, on beige paper. 55 x 42 cm. (mounted). Nationalmuseum of Sweden, Tessin collection. NMH 1992/1863 Photo: Cecilia Heisser / Nationalmuseum

Art Eyewitness Looks at the Art Scene in 2016

Reflections on the Art Scene during 2016

By Ed Voves

A few years following World War II, the British writer Rose Macaulay (1881-1958) pondered the vagaries of human imagination, "half of whose desire is to build up, while the other half smashes and levels to the earth."

These lines appeared in A Pleasure of Ruins, published in 1953. In this brilliant meditation on art and life, Macaulay surveyed the bittersweet experience of reflecting on the shattered remains of ancient civilizations. She also detailed the bizarre, chiefly 18th century British, mania for building artificial "ruins" or follies on country estates. If you could not travel to Rome to tour the Forum Romanum, then you could build your own version, smaller of course, in Sussex or Oxfordshire.

During the past year, I have had a number of "pleasure of ruins" moments while reviewing exhibitions for Art Eyewitness. 2016 was crowded with great exhibits, especially ones dealing with ancient times and modern war. All provided food for thought.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art showcased Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World, a stunning appraisal of later Greek art between the conquests of Alexander and the rise of the Roman Empire. 
                                                                   
A month before the Met's Pergamon exhibit previewed, the Onassis Cultural Center in New York City reopened its doors on March 24th, after being closed for renovation since the spring of 2012. The premier exhibit at the Onassis Center, Gods and Mortals at Olympus, looked at the course of Ancient Greek culture by focusing on the archaeological discoveries at the city of Dion in northern Greece overshadowed by the home of the gods on Mount Olympus.

In November, my wife Anne and I attended the press preview of the Met's exhibition, Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion, which I plan to review in coming weeks.

Anne Lloyd, Gallery view of the Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion exhibit

After leaving Masterworks, I was delighted to see that two of the monumental art works from the Pergamon exhibit remained on display in the lobby galleries of the Met. These are on extended loan from the Staatliche Museum in Berlin, which is being refurbished as the Onassis Cultural Center had been.

Anne took a magnificent photo of the fragmentary marble head of Apollo or Alexander. It is believed to have decorated the wall of the gymnasium of Pergamon. This city was the capital of the Greek dynasty which ruled much of what is now Turkey until the Romans marched in. The degree of skill which went into the carving of this monumental object needs to be emphasized because its very size is so striking that the artistry that went into its creation can easily be overlooked.

Anne Lloyd, Gallery view of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, showing Fragmentary Colossal Marble Head of a Youth, 2nd century B.C., from Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 

When I studied Anne's photo of the shattered head of Apollo/Alexander, I was immediately struck by the way the composition of her picture evokes paintings by Hubert Robert, the French eighteenth century painter who specialized in depictions of ruins, real and imagined.  
The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. mounted a spectacular exhibit of the oeuvre of "Robert of the Ruins" during the summer of 2016. I saw it just before it closed and was especially impressed by Robert's fantastical depiction of the Louvre - in ruins.

Robert painted View of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre in Ruins in 1796, shortly after he had been released from prison during the French Revolution. Artists and scientists who had enjoyed the patronage of the Ancien Regime were held in suspicion by the Republican tribunals and Robert was lucky to escape with his head on his shoulders. 

Robert's close shave with the Madame Guillotine coincided with the rampage of destruction that took place in France during the Revolution. It was not just the Bastille, hated symbol of Royal repression, that was destroyed but churches and sacred sites like St. Denis as well. 

Hubert Robert, View of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre in Ruins, 1796

The open vault of the ruined Louvre in Robert's painting so closely mirrors the curved ceiling of the Metropolitan's Ancient Greek galleries in Anne's photo that it causes me to cringe to contemplate these two images. Could the grim fantasy of Robert's painting actually occur to the Louvre, to the Met or one of our other beloved museums?

Given the on-going destruction of World Heritage sites like Palmyra in Syria by terrorist groups, the answer is - sadly - yes. And history shows that this is not just a contemporary phenomenon. The devastation of World War Two included a number of terrible cultural losses. The cloisters of Camposanto Cemetery in Pisa, for instance, were hit by Allied bombs in 1944 resulting in the destruction of some of the most important frescoes from the early Renaissance. 

The hand of Father Time is the ultimate and inevitable curator of Macaulay's "pleasure of ruins." Occasionally, what seems lost forever is rediscovered. Around 800 A.D., two cities on Nile delta in Egypt, Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus, were lost to erosion and the encroachment of the Mediterranean Sea. 

Christoph Gerigk, Franck Goddio during the excavation of the Stele of Nectanebo I

Artifacts are now emerging from these cities, one populated by Greek immigrants, the other - Canopis - a major Egyptian religious site. Beginning in the 1990's, a major underwater archaeological campaign has recovered a trove of statues, cult images and everyday objects abandoned to the rising tides over thousand years ago.

In May, Anne and I visited the British Museum to see an unforgettable exhibit of these works of art and daily life, Sunken Cities: Egypt's Lost Worlds. Incredible images of Franck Goddio and his team of divers, excavating treasures from beneath the waves of Aboukir Bay, were matched with the actual objects. Whether it was the imposing Stele of Pharaoh Nectanebo I (378-362 BC) or an exquisite statue of the god Osiris, the works on display in Sunken Cities were profoundly moving.

Christoph Gerigk, Statue of Osiris, ca. 664-610 B.C. 

The special nature of the Sunken Cities exhibit was reinforced by the fact that Anne and I nearly missed our chance to see it. We had tickets for the opening day of the exhibit but a protest by Green Peace over the sponsorship of the exhibit by British Petroleum nearly derailed our plans. The British Museum staff rose to the challenge and we were able to visit the exhibit next day.  

However well-meaning, the Green Peace protesters might have been better advised to encourage people to see the Sunken Cities exhibit than to prevent them from getting into the British Museum. If there is a more prescient warning of the dangers of Global Warming than Sunken Cities, I'll be very much surprised.

Sunken Cities also highlighted the special relationship of Greeks and Egyptians during ancient times.  These two ethnic groups generally lived in harmony. The tremendous cultural heritage of Egypt influenced Greek artistic expression while the vigor and intellectual achievements of the Greeks supplied an infusion of vitality to Egypt.  

The dynamism of Ancient Greece was very much in evidence in the exhibit,The Greeks: Agamemnon to Alexander the Great. Drawn from the collections of Greek museums, it traced the entire evolution of Greek culture from prehistory to Alexander's empire. 

Meda's Wreath, Gold wreath of myrtle leaves, Macedon, 4th century B.C.

This traveling exhibition displayed striking archaeological finds like the golden myrtle wreath discovered at the royal tombs of Macedon. It is thought to have been worn by Queen Meda, the fifth wife of Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander.

It was another work of Greek art dealing with a crown that deeply impressed me when I saw Agamemnon to Alexander at its final stop, the National Geographic Museum in Washington D.C. Carved from marble, this striking work from the fifth century B.C. is entitled Votive Relief of a Youth Crowning Himself. It was discovered at Sounion near Athens. 

Votive Relief of a Youth Crowning Himself, Athens, ca. 470-460 B.C

This bas relief, created in the austere "Severe" style, shows a victorious athlete placing an olive crown on his own head. It is a self-confident act, evoking the triumphant emotions of the Greeks following their defeat of mighty Persia in 480-479. 

War, however, begets more war. The victories of Athens and Sparta over the Persians planted the seeds of the self-destructive battles they soon began to wage against each other. Amid all of the wonderful 2016 exhibits which I saw, several had military themes which left unsettled feelings and unanswered questions in my mind. 

The Frick Collection mounted Watteau's Soldiers, a small but brilliant display of paintings and sketches by the least warlike artist imaginable, Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). 

Jean-Antoine Watteau, The Portal of Valenciennes, ca. 1710−11

Watteau was born in Valenciennes, on the border of France and Belgium. This was one of the most fought-over regions of Europe. Watteau's home turf provided him with the subjects for scenes utterly different from his scenes of wistful romance. Tired, dispirited troops populate Watteau's paintings and sketches, their once-smart uniforms now tattered and dingy gray.

In November, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts opened World War I and American Art. In May 2017, this searing, disquieting exhibit will travel to the New-York Historical Society, and then on to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville during the autumn. Seldom has the direct relationship between propaganda and the destructiveness of war been so convincingly presented.

Clagett Wilson, Front Line Stuff, ca. 1919

The menacing apparitions emerging from the detonating shells seem to be advancing on the embattled infantrymen in Clagett Wilson's Front Line Stuff. Clagett Wilson (1887-1952) served with the U.S. Marines in the thick of the 1918 campaign. He painted this watercolor shortly after the Armistice. It is an accurate depiction  of battlefield conditions but also of the psychotic state inflicted on the minds of the survivors.

Clagett Wilson went on to design Broadway theatrical sets. His World War I watercolors were forgotten and then rediscovered in the Smithsonian archives. The past yields both lost treasures and haunted images.

From the foregoing, you might derive the idea that 2016 was a year of doom and gloom. The art scene, however, provided much to be confident about and worthy of gratitude. 

Gallery view of the East Building, National Gallery of Art, showing works by  Constantin Brancusi, left to right: Maiastra (1911), Bird in Space (1925), Bird in Space (1927), Agnes B. Meyer (1929) Photo by Rob Shelley

The East Building of the National Gallery of Art was reopened in September with a brilliant configuration of the Modern collection at the NGA. The role of women in the arts was championed by sensational Metropolitan Museum exhibits on Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun and Diane Arbus. The Philadelphia Museum of Art presented fabulous exhibits of Pop Art, the art of Africa and the Mexican Renaissance. Ruins were nowhere in evidence.

If I were forced to pick one image to evoke 2016, it would be the portrait of Charlotte Brontë  by George Richmond. This stunning, truly iconic work anchored the phenomenal exhibit, Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will, at the The Morgan Library and Museum.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2016), Charlotte Brontë by George Richmond (1850)

A couple days after Christmas, Anne and I went back to the Morgan for a last look at this exhibit. The Richmond Portrait fairly glowed with the life force of Charlotte Brontë.
Melancholy spirits may choose to meditate on the "pleasure of ruins." But when you look into the eyes of Charlotte Brontë in the Richmond Portrait, you are struck and inspired by the vitality of the human soul. 

Ruins collapse and human bodies age, wither and finally perish. The human soul, when possessed of unquenchable spirit such as Charlotte Brontë had in abundance, endures.

Empires fall. Art lives.

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Introductory Image:                                                                                                         Anne Lloyd, Photo (2016), Gallery View of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, showing Statue of Athena Parthenos Greek, Hellenistic period, ca. 170 B.C.; copy of a mid-5th century B.C. chryselephantine cult statue of Athena Parthenos by Pheidias. On loan from the Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (AvP VII 24). 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2016), Gallery view of the Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, November 18, 2016 - February 5, 2017.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2016), Gallery View of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, showing Fragmentary Colossal Marble Head of a Youth, Greek, Hellenistic period, 2nd century B.C. Discovered at Pergamon, on upper terrace of gymnasium, 1879. On loan from the Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (AvP VII 283) Cat. 58

Hubert Robert (French, 1733-1808) View of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre in Ruins, 1796. Oil on canvas, 115 x 145 cm (45 1/4 x 57 1/16 in.) Musée du Louvre, Département des Peintures, Paris © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY (Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) 

Christoph Gerigk, Photo, Franck Goddio during the excavation of the Stele of Nectanebo I. © Christoph Gerigk / Franck Goddio / Hilti Foundation. (Image courtesy of the British Museum, London, U.K.)

Christoph Gerigk, Photo, Statue of Osiris, ca. Egyptian, 664-610 B.C. © Christoph Gerigk / Franck Goddio / Hilti Foundation. (Image courtesy of the British Museum, London, U.K.)

Meda's Wreath, Greek-Macedonian, 4th century B.C. Gold wreath of myrtle leaves and blossoms. Found in the antechamber of the tomb of Philip II of Macedon, at ancient Aigai, 1977. Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, Greece. (Image courtesy of the National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.)

Votive Relief of a Youth Crowning Himself, Greek, Severe style (Attic). ca. 470-460 B.C. Marble, 48x50cm. National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece ID GSM025 (Image courtesy of the National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.)

Jean-Antoine Watteau (French,1684−1721) The Portal of Valenciennes, ca. 1710−11. Oil on canvas (lined). 12 3/4 x 16 in. (32.4 x 40.6 cm) Framed: 18 11/16 × 21 5/8 in. (47.5 × 54.9 cm) The Frick Collection, New York City. Purchased with funds from the bequest of Arthemise Redpath, 1991. Accession number: 1991.1.173 (Image courtesy of the Frick Collection)

Claggett Wilson (American, 1887–1952) Front Line Stuff, c. 1919 Watercolor, pencil and varnish on paperboard, 18 3/4 × 22 7/8 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Alice H. Rossin, 1981.163.11 Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/Art Resource, NY (Image courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of Art)

Rob Shelley, Photo (2016) Installation view of Modern Art in East Building, Upper level galleries. Photo Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2016) Detail of Charlotte Brontë, 1850, by George Richmond, National Portrait Gallery Collection, London. (Image courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York City)