Rembrandt: the Late Works at London's National Gallery

Rembrandt: the Late Works     

                                                 
The National Gallery, London   

15 October 2014 - 18 January 2015     

                                         
Reviewed by Ed Voves

 It is thanks to Anton Kerssemakers, a Dutch art enthusiast and friend of Vincent van Gogh, that we have the record of one of the most amazing spiritual encounters between a living artist and a long deceased "old master."

Kerssemakers accompanied van Gogh to the newly opened Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 1885. Van Gogh was transfixed by one painting in particular. He stayed rooted before it while Kerssemakers roamed the galleries admiring other works from the Golden Age of the Netherlands. After a while, Kerssemakers returned and there was van Gogh still standing in meditative communion with this iconic work of art.

The painting was Rembrandt's ‘The Jewish Bride’. Painted about 1665, four years before Rembrandt's death, this is indeed a painting to stop art lovers in their tracks.

'The Jewish Bride’ is now on display in London's National Gallery as part of a special exhibit, Rembrandt: the Late Works. I had the great pleasure of seeing this inspiring exhibition in the company of my wife, Anne. Works from Rembrandt's last years - beset by financial reverses and the tragic deaths of deeply-loved family members - reveal how the Dutch artist responded to cruel adversity by creating some of the greatest works of art of all time.

Of the host of magnificent paintings on view in the National Gallery, ‘The Jewish Bride’ is definitely the "show-stopper."  The crowds of art lovers respond to its magnetic appeal much as van Gogh did. Standing before ‘The Jewish Bride’ is a powerful experience. You feel that you have finally met and befriended people that you have known before. Once you are in the presence of this beautiful work, it is hard to tear yourself away.

Rembrandt, ‘The Jewish Bride’, 1665

It was the first time that I had ever seen the actual ‘The Jewish Bride’, which is formally entitled Portrait of a Couple as Isaac and Rebecca, known as ‘The Jewish Bride.'  Copies of this work, even the most skillful color reproductions, simply cannot do anything but approximate the way that the crimson and gold of the couple's robes illuminate their dusky surroundings.

Whether you call it 'The Jewish Bride’ or Isaac and Rebecca, there is no absolute certainty that this work was painted with either a Jewish theme or a specific Old Testament story in mind. Rembrandt was certainly sympathetic to Jews, in keeping with the religious toleration of the Dutch Republic. Throughout his life, Rembrandt painted biblical figures with Jewish features, including several portraits of a "Jewish" Jesus. But we simply don't know if this is a depiction of Isaac and Rebecca from the Book of Genesis or simply of a loving husband and wife.

A year later, Rembrandt posed the same female model as the mother in a painting entitled A Family Group. In this work - not on display in the London exhibit - the woman wears the same red dress. She assumes the same basic pose, the recipient of a touch of male affection. Only this time a baby boy places his hand above her breast, where the husband in ‘The Jewish Bride’ lightly grasps her bosom. Responding with heartfelt emotion, the woman places her hand on the husband and infant she loves.

The key to understanding ‘The Jewish Bride' and A Family Group is the "hand-eye motion" occurring in both pictures. The light, loving touch of the hands confirm the light of love in the protagonists' eyes. Seventeenth century painters routinely allegorized love. In the ‘The Jewish Bride’, Rembrandt painted the real thing.

The intense and genuine emotional qualities of ‘The Jewish Bride' are the characteristic attributes of all of Rembrandt's later work. This sense of real, actual feeling - as opposed to allegory - unites very dissimilar works in subject matter.

The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis and ‘The Syndics’ were painted around the same time, 1662. Their respective fates demonstrate the shifting fortunes which befell Rembrandt.  

Rembrandt, ‘The Syndics’, 1662

The Sampling Officials of the Amsterdam Drapers’ Guild, known as ‘The Syndics’ was a major success. The cloth makers who commissioned the painting placed it in their headquarters, the Staalhof. It proudly hung there until 1771 when it was transferred to Amsterdam’s town hall and eventually to the Rijksmuseum.

‘The Syndics’ was a critical success because the group portrait by Rembrandt presented the Dutch as they wished to be seen in the 1660's. The United Provinces had beat-off the Spanish invaders. The merchant classes, like these alert, intelligent men who are engaged in quality-control of a piece of fabric, were now masters of their own destiny.

The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis recalled earlier events in Dutch history. The Batavians were the ancestors of the Dutch, who launched a revolt against the Romans in 69 AD. Their leader, Claudius Civilis, chose his moment well and nearly succeeded. The Roman Empire was torn apart by civil war following the death of Nero and Civilis won several victories against the over-stretched Roman legions.

This theme certainly related to the circumstances of the Dutch revolt against Spain which began in 1566. It too had been a desperate struggle, lasting eighty years before Spain retreated. Rembrandt depicted Civilis as a one-eyed warrior swearing fellow Batavians to heroic deeds in a sacred grove of trees. This was based on the account by the Roman historian Tacitus, though the turban-like crown worn by Civilis comes straight from Rembrandt's imagination.

The burgomasters of Amsterdam who commissioned the painting of Civilis and the Batavians should have been pleased. They decidedly were not. The vast size of the original work, 550 cm high and 550 cm wide, showing the grove and other figures, is sometimes thought to have been a strike against the work. In fact, seven other works of equal size where also planned.

Rembrandt, The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis,1662

Why did Rembrandt's epic painting fail? The reason lies in its relative historical accuracy. Rembrandt depicts Civilis and his men as conspirators in a dark, dank forest rather than as heroes on horseback. Civilis and his warriors are ordinary men planning to fight for their freedom in a campaign that stood a good chance of failing - and ultimately did. The Romans always won the last battle.

The Dutch by 1660 thought of themselves as winners. They did not want to be reminded of the backs-to-the wall early years of the war with Spain. Despite scaling the painting down to its present size, 309 cm x 196 cm, Rembrandt's The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis was rejected. It was eventually sold and transported to Sweden.

Rembrandt succeeded with ‘The Jewish Bride' and ‘The Syndics’ because of his ability to evoke the essential character of the people he painted. Other painters could boast of their fidelity to detail. Rembrandt increasingly disregarded the fine points of clothing and accoutrements in favor of fidelity to the human spirit.  

Rembrandt probed the psychological depths of humanity in each of the genres and techniques at which he put his hand. His self-portraits are among the most analyzed in this respect and the National Gallery exhibit has two of his best on display. 

Rembrandt, The Self-Portrait with Circles, 1665-69

These are the National Gallery's Self Portrait at the Age of 63 and The Self-Portrait with Circles from the Kenwood House collection. This famous work, created between 1665 and 1669, places an element of mystery into the mix. Was Rembrandt making a statement about his virtuosity in being able to paint a perfect circle? Or do these geometric shapes refer to the circle of human life, which was coming to a close for him?                                                                                                                                                  
Rembrandt offers no clues to these questions. The National Gallery exhibit wisely takes a thematic approach to Rembrandt's art rather than tracing its year-by-year "development." Rembrandt painted over 40 self-portraits throughout his artistic career. Likewise, he painted the same basic genre types. Where "development" occurs is in Rembrandt's psychological insight and his ability to evoke the mysteries of human life. That is what makes "late" Rembrandt so special.

Look for instance at A Woman bathing in a Stream, painted in 1654. Is this another rendering of "Susanna and the Elders"? Rembrandt had painted two earlier versions, both emphasizing the biblical heroine's chaste nudity. If Rembrandt intended to give this work a biblical connotation, it is quite beside the point. This masterful depiction of human and natural beauty needs no justifying theme.

Rembrandt, A Woman bathing in a Stream, 1654

Here the young woman, almost certainly modeled by Hendrickje Stoffels, Rembrandt's common-law wife, wades into the river, lifting her chemise as she goes. An ornate, crimson and gold dress, not unlike the one later worn by the ‘Jewish Bride' has been removed and left on the bank where its shimmering image is reflected in the mirror-like water. Rembrandt used quick, impressionistic strokes to paint the chemise, conveying the texture of the light cloth.

Such is the look of happiness and contentment on the young woman's face that this wondrous painting, one of the most beautiful works of art in the Western canon, might well be entitled "At Peace with the World."

As if to underscore the joys of life, Rembrandt made a rare brush and pencil sketch of Hendrickje the same year as A Woman bathing in a Stream. In what appears to be but a preliminary study, Rembrandt has in fact preserved a fleeting moment of time  for all time.

Rembrandt A young Woman sleeping, 1654

Rembrandt had few such moments of peace in the years following 1654. Two years later, he declared bankruptcy and in 1663 Hendrickje died of the plague. Titus, who posed frequently for his father,  died in 1668. Rembrandt's abiding love and pride in his son can be seen in the 1655 portrait of Titus as a young scholar and in a remarkable etching from a year later which shows how quickly youth yields to adulthood.

Rembrandt The Artist's Son, Titus, 1656

The sorrows of these years can clearly be seen by looking into Rembrandt's eyes in his Self Portrait at the Age of 63, painted just before he died in 1669. And look into the eyes of the dying Lucretia, the defiled, doomed Roman heroine who committed suicide to save the honor oh her family. The look of inexpressible pity that you glimpse there is not for her own plight alone but rather for all who suffer, in short for the whole human race.

Rembrandt The Suicide of Lucretia, 1666

Rembrandt's humanity is what kept van Gogh transfixed in awe before ‘The Jewish Bride.' Rembrandt's profound, moving works also impelled van Gogh to move onward with his own life and art. And that is what this inspirational exhibit at the National Gallery of London does for those fortunate to share in its insights.

"I should be happy to give ten years of my life if I could go on sitting here in front of this picture for a fortnight, with only a crust of dry bread for food,” van Gogh exclaimed to Anton Kerssemakers.

But then van Gogh added, "Well, never mind, we can't stay here forever, can we?”

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved
Images Courtesy of the National Gallery, London

Introductory image:                                                                                                         Rembrandt Self Portrait at the Age of 63, 1669 Oil on canvas 86 x 70.5 cm © The National Gallery, London

Rembrandt Portrait of a Couple as Isaac and Rebecca, known as ‘The Jewish Bride’, about 1665 Oil on canvas 121.5 x 166.5 cm Rijksmuseum, on loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest) © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (SK-C-216)

Rembrandt The Sampling Officials of the Amsterdam Drapers’ Guild, known as ‘The Syndics’, about 1662 Oil on canvas 191.5 x 279 cm © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (SK-C-6)

Rembrandt The Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis, about 1661-2 Oil on canvas 196 x 309 cm The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Sweden © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Rembrandt Self Portrait with Two Circles, about 1665-9 Oil on canvas 114.3 x 94 cm Kenwood House, The Iveagh Bequest, English Heritage, London 57 © English Heritage

Rembrandt A Woman bathing in a Stream (Hendrickje Stoffels?), 1654 Oil on oak 61.8 x 47 cm © The National Gallery, London

Rembrandt A young Woman sleeping (Hendrickje Stoffels), about 1654 Brush and brown wash, with white bodycolour; ruled framing lines in pen and brown ink 24.6 x 20.3 cm The British Museum, London 1895,0915.1279 © The Trustees of The British Museum

Rembrandt The Artist's Son, Titus, 1656 Etching 9.9 x 7 cm Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Presented by Chambers Hall, 1855. WA1855.278 © Copyright in this Photograph Reserved to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Rembrandt The Suicide of Lucretia, 1666 Oil on canvas 109 x 93 cm Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The William Hood Dunwoody Fund 34.19 34.19 © The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota

NEO-IMPRESSIONISM AND THE DREAM OF REALITIES: PAINTING, POETRY, MUSIC at the Phillips Collection

Neo-Impressionism and the Dream of Realities:

 Painting, Poetry, Music 

September 27, 2014, through January 11, 2015.

Reviewed by Ed Voves

In May 1886, the Impressionists held their eighth and last joint exhibition. Some of the great pioneers of  Impressionism - Claude Monet, Pierre Renoir and Alfred Sisley -  did not participate. But two young innovators, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, did exhibit paintings. 

Seurat displayed more than several new works of art. He unveiled a revolutionary technique - Pointillism. With this juxtaposition of thousands of minute dots of color on his canvas, Seurat created a sensation. His luminous A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte marked the beginning of a new age of art, a new way of seeing.  

The ensuing artistic revolution, which quickly received the title of Neo-Impressionism, is the subject of a splendid exhibition at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. Neo-Impressionism and the Dream of Realities: Painting, Poetry, Music traces the transformation of Seurat's meticulous configurations of colored dots into a major cultural event in the rise of Modernism.

Two key features of the exhibition need to be quickly addressed. A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is not on view at the Phillips collection. This vast masterpiece, the pride of the Art Institute of Chicago, is in too delicate condition to travel on loan. The second noteworthy point is that the outstanding array of paintings on view in the Phillips exhibition illustrate a theme which is not dependent on any one work of art, even one of the stature of La Grande Jatte.

Art scholars usually focus upon Neo-Impressionism's adaptation of scientific color theory to art. Curator Cornelia Homberg, however,  has shifted the focus of Neo-Impressionism to its relationship to Symbolism, the great cultural movement in Europe during the 1880's and 1890's.

Symbolism aimed to discover and represent the inner wisdom of humanity. Henry van de Velde, the Belgian painter who played a major role in the rise of Art Nouveau, affirmed that this was the parallel goal of Neo-Impressionism, as well. Van de Velde wrote in 1890, that the Neo-Impressionists aimed "to establish the Dream of realities ... to strive for the pursuit of the Intangible and meditate - in silence - to inscribe the mysterious Meaning." 

Seurat's role was, of course, pivotal to the birth of Neo-impressionism. His radiant Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy, painted the same year as La Grande Jatte, readily enables visitors to the Phillips exhibition to grasp the nature of  pointillist technique. 

Georges Seurat, Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy, 1888. 

Naturalism is another matter. Seurat's Port-en-Bessin is very different from one of Monet's views of the famous natural arch at Etretat, also on the coast of Normandy. Monet painted  scenes of Etretat at different times of the day to reflect actual moments of reality. Seurat's  Port-en-Bessin has a stylized, almost childlike feel  to it. The scene of fierce fighting during the 1944 D-Day landings, Port-en-Bessin is subdivided into three clearly demarcated zones, land, sea and sky, like a medieval depiction of the realms of God's creation.

Seurat also created remarkable theater-inspired works, which appear in the exhibition at the Phillips. Woman Singing in a Café Chantant, 1887, and At the Gaîté Rochechouart (Caféconcert), c. 1887–88, show a direct kinship with La Grande Jatte in the positioning of the figures. These distinctive works, which have the tone and quality of photographs, demonstrate that Seurat embraced the culture as well as the science of his era.

Georges Seurat, Woman Singing in a Café Chantant, 1887.

Just as Neo-impressionism was gaining momentum, Seurat contracted diptheria and died with shocking suddeness in 1891. That year also saw the premature death of Albert Dubois-Pillet, a French army officer who was a gifted Neo-Impressionist artist.  A little before these calamities had come the rejection of Pointillism by Camille Pissarro after several years of experimentation.

Albert Dubois-Pillet, Little Circus Camp, n.d.

These tragic events placed the burden of leadership of the Neo-Impressionist movement upon the shoulders of Seurat's devoted friend, Paul Signac. It was Signac who wrote the key text,  From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, published in 1899. In his book, Signac asserted that Neo-Impressionist art "thanks to its constant observation of contrast, its rational composition, and its aesthetic language of colors, includes a general harmony and a moral harmony."

Seurat labored for two years, 1884 to 1886, painting La Grande Jatte.  While it is true that he made many preparatory studies for this landmark painting, Seurat's approach was more of a musical composer than a transcriber of nature. He carefully placed the Sunday afternoon pleasure seekers on his landscape as a composer arranges the notes of his or her symphony, creating  "a general harmony and a moral harmony."

When Signac began to paint a great series of seascapes, he added the names of musical movements to the titles of many of his paintings. This was not a culture-conscious ploy, but rather an accurate visual reflection of musical cadence.

Paul Signac, Setting Sun. Sardine Fishing. Adagio. Opus 221, 1891.

Look at Signac's Setting Sun. Sardine Fishing. Adagio. Opus 221 from the series The Sea, The Boats, Concarneau. The armada of  small fishing boats and the gentle, rippling  movement of the sea perfectly evoke the slow, graceful tempo of an adagio in music. Signac, an experienced sailor with his own yacht, skillfully united nature and art, music and painting in this brilliant work.

Signac was a charismatic figure. Under his leadership, the Neo-Impressionism movement rallied. Signac was also left-wing in his politics  and was sympathetic to the Anarchist movement. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an 1886 sketch by Signac, The Gas Tanks at Clichy,which shows an Anarchist slogan, "Death to the Cops" scrawled on the wall of a blighted area of Paris. Signac's painting, based on this sketch, has gone missing.

Signac was joined by another artist with a radical political background, Maximilien Luce. Arrested by the French police in 1894 on suspicion of involvement in the assassination of President Sadi Carnot, Luce was later acquitted. Art critics at the time claimed that Luce's paintings were steeped in political ideology. But his beautiful depiction of Paris by night, Le Louvre et le Pont du Carrousel la Nuit, is typical of the lyrical nature of much of his work.

Maximilien Luce, The Louvre at the Pont du Carrousel at Night, 1890. 

Signac also found ready allies in the Belgian avant-garde group, Les XX or "The Twenty." These gifted, forward-looking Belgians had in fact sought to establish ties with Seurat and Signac from the very beginning. Emil Verhaeren, one of the leading art critics in Belgium, visited the Eighth Impressionist exhibition and sent word about La Grande Jatte back to Brussels.

Octave Maus, the secretary of Les XX, did not need much convincing. Maus called Seurat “the Messiah of a new art.” A year after the last Impressionist exhibit, Seurat was invited to exhibit with the Belgian group and Signac followed in 1888. 

Willy Finch, Georges Lemmen and Théo van Rysselberghe responded with alacrity to seeing La Grande Jatte. They changed their personal painting styles to embrace Pointillism but were ambitious to make their own mark. Lemmen and van Rysselberghe, talented portrait painters, made a concerted effort to adapt Pointillism to capturing the outward likeness and the inner being of those around them.

Georges Lemmen, Portrait of Jan Toorop, 1886.

Lemmen's Portrait of Jan Toorop was one of the first Neo-Impressionist portraits. The subject was a Dutch Neo-Impressionist whose vivid pointillist landscape Broek in Waterland (1889) is displayed in the exhibit. Lemmen captured the prosaic pipe-smoking reality of daily life, while evoking the ineffable mystery that is inside each person.

The Phillips exhibition also displays van Rysselberghe's Portrait of Irma Sethe. This magnificent full-length portrait not only depicts a young woman absorbed in playing a violin but it brilliantly evokes the process of listening to music in the partly-obscured figure in the background.

Despite these accomplishments, Pointillism did not lend itself to portraiture.  By 1895, Lemmen moved to a style that was more in line with Impressionism. Van Rysselberghe persisted with Pointillism for nearly a decade more. A very close friend of Signac, he joined the circle of painters that based themselves around Signac's home at St. Tropez, still a minor fishing village on the Mediterranean coast. Eventually, van Rysselberghe relegated Pointillism to details of his work but no longer focused upon it as his preferred style.

Studying van Rysselberghe's  paintings, especially the portraits, one gets the sense that he was drawn to Pointillism because this demanding and difficult style was a bracing challenge to his abundant talents.

Theo van Rysselberghe, Canal in Flanders (Gloomy Weather), 1894.

In his Canal in Flanders (Gloomy Weather), painted in 1894, van Rysselberghe contradicted the theories on the use of complementary colors that were at the very heart of Neo-Impressionist doctrine. Where Signac had produced a text-book example of balancing dots of blue with gold and orange in his scene of fishing boats discussed above, van Rysselberghe used tones of blue and green, non-complementary colors. Yet, Canal in Flanders is an entirely successful example of Pointillism.

Signac succeeded in establishing a "Studio of the South"  at St. Tropez such as Vincent Van Gogh had tried and failed  to create at Arles a few years before. Van Rysselberghe, Luce  and another close friend, Henri-Edmond Cross, joined him on the Côte d'Azur, painting idyllic scenes of life lived in harmony with nature. 

Henri-Edmond Cross, Beach at Cabasson (Baigne-Cul), 1891-92.

Beach at Cabasson (Baigne-Cul), painted by Cross, is an almost perfect embodiment of later Neo-Impressionism at its best. The painting  also illustrates the appeal of the pastoral tradition in nineteenth century Europe, beset as it was by the baneful consequences of industrialism. The Arcadia of these innocent children, enjoying the pleasures of a golden afternoon by the sea, represented a world that was swiftly passing away.

By the turn of the twentieth century, Neo-Impressionism's day was nearly done. But before it yielded center stage to new artistic visions, the color-dappled oeuvre of Seurat and Signac produced one more surprise. 

In 1904, a struggling artist from the north of France came down to St. Tropez at Signac's invitation. Although he would only paint one great work in the pointillist style, this painting triggered the artistic breakthrough that led in due course to the "Shock of the New" art of the twentieth century.

This painting, which Signac bought, now hangs in the Musée d'Orsay. It is entitled Luxe, Calme et Volupté and the man who painted it was named Henri Matisse.

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Images Courtesy of the Phillips Collection, Washington. D.C.

Introductory Image:                                                                                                         Paul Signac, Place des Lices, St. Tropez, 1893. Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 32 1/4 in. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Acquired through the generosity of the Sarah Mellon Scaife Family. Photograph © 2014 Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Georges Seurat, Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy, 1888. Oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 32 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the W. Averell Harriman Foundation in memory of Marie N. Harriman, 1972.9.21

Georges Seurat, Woman Singing in a Café Chantant, 1887. Black and blue chalk, white and
pink gouache, pencil and brown ink on paper 11 5/8 x 8 7/8 in. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Albert Dubois-Pillet, Little Circus Camp, n.d. Oil on canvas, 10 3/4 x 16 1/8 in. Acquired 1927. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

Paul Signac, Setting Sun. Sardine Fishing. Adagio. Opus 221 from the series The Sea, The Boats, Concarneau, 1891. Oil on canvas, 25 5/8 x 31 7/8 in. Mrs. John Hay Whitney Bequest. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Maximilien Luce, The Louvre at the Pont du Carrousel at Night, 1890. Oil on canvas, 25 x 32 in. Private Collection

Georges Lemmen, Portrait of Jan Toorop, 1886. Chalk on paper, 23 x 17 in. Collection Museum de Fundatie, Heino/Wijhe en Zwolle, The Netherlands

Theo van Rysselberghe, Canal in Flanders (Gloomy Weather), 1894. Oil on canvas, 23 3/4 x 31 1/2 in. Private collection

Henri-Edmond Cross, Beach at Cabasson (Baigne-Cul), 1891-92. Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 36 3/8 in. The Art Institute of Chicago, L. L. and A. S. Coburn, and Bette and Neison Harris funds; Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection; through prior acquisition of the Kate L. Brewster Collection

Assyria to Iberia: Ancient Art at the Metropolitan Museum

Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age

September 22, 2014–January 4, 2015

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age is the third in a series of landmark exhibitions exploring the birth of Western civilization. Mounted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Assyria to Iberia traces the spread of writing, commerce, art, religion - and war - from Mesopotamia, the "land between the rivers" to distant shores as far away as Iberia, modern-day Spain.  

Assyria to Iberia highlights the role of two remarkable realms. The Phoenician city-states of Tyre and Sidon, located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in modern-day Lebanon and Syria, are given pride of place in the exhibition.  But these merchant-adventurers share the stage with the menacing Assyrian Empire that eventually conquered the Middle East from Egypt to the Persian Gulf. 

The timeline of the exhibit extends from the collapse of Bronze Age civilization around 1100 B.C. to the revival of the fabled city of Babylon during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, 604–562 B.C.

Relief of a striding lion from Babylon

One could easily be tempted to view the story of the savvy, seafaring Phoenicians and the bloodthirsty Assyrians in terms of "good and evil." The Hebrew Bible, which began to be compiled during this period, certainly viewed the warlike Assyrians in negative terms. 

Among the first major works of art in the exhibit, a statue from the British Museum conveys the Bible's fearful estimation of the Assyrians. The image is of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C.), the king who set Assyria, then a modest state in the north of present-day Iraq, on the march of conquest. His statue, a rare example of a full-bodied sculpture rather than bas relief, projects the image of inhumanity that the Assyrians carefully cultivated. Predatory eyes, an implacable, resolute stance, hands gripping weapons of war - a sickle and a mace - these were the attributes of a model Assyrian monarch. 

Statue of Ashurnasirpal II

The inscription on the king's tunic, below his battlement-shaped beard, proclaims Ashurnasirpal II as "great king, strong king, king of the universe, king of Assyria ... conqueror from the opposite bank of the Tigris as far as Mount Lebanon [and] the Great Sea, all lands from east to west at his feet he subdued." 

The curators of the Met's Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art brilliantly manage to navigate a middle course between Biblical loathing and Assyrian bravado. They document events from multiple perspectives – such as the military campaign of Assyrian King Sennacherib against the Hebrew state of Judah in 694 B.C.

Lord Byron's 1815 poem, The Destruction of Sennacherib, memorably recounted the Bible's version of the event in which the Assyrian armies were thwarted by Yahweh's "Angel of Death."

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,                                                             And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;                                                             And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,                                                     When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee...

According to the Hebrew account, the legions of Sennacherib were decimated by plague, melting, as Byron proclaimed "like snow in the glance of the Lord." The Assyrians retreated and Jerusalem was saved. 

The exhibition, however, displays another treasure from the British Museum, the Taylor Prism. This baked clay cylinder records in cuneiform script the cities of Judah that Sennacherib's troops put to the torch and the thousands of captives they seized. Hezekiah, King of Judah, is derided as being besieged in Jerusalem “like a bird in a cage.”   
The Taylor Prism makes no mention of Assyrian casualties. In a strikingly similar manner to modern-day propaganda, the Assyrians always depicted themselves doing the killing - never being killed. A carved battle scene in the Metropolitan exhibit shows in gruesome detail Assyrian troops slaughtering opponents from Elam. This is a work of art that does not invite lingering contemplation.

Another Assyrian bas-relief from the British Museum, Relief Showing a Lion Hunt, is only a little less grisly. But it merits close study, for there may be a subtext in this and similar works which show Assyrian kings killing lions. In his book, The World of Art, Robert Payne wrote movingly of the contrast between Assyrian monarchs and the animals they hunted. 

"A pitiless empire produced pitiless art," Payne noted, "the faces of all men are alike. Individuality is reserved for the animals which appear in the hunting scenes... "

In contrast to the impassive, formalized features of the Assyrian hunters, every effort was made to convey the uniqueness of the lions. Likewise, the sculptors highlighted the vitality and vigor with which these wild animals confronted the "civilized" men killing them for sport. Describing another hunting scene not in the Metropolitan exhibit, Payne wrote:

 A wounded lioness with paralyzed hind legs tries to drag herself along by the forelegs, and every curve of the sagging back and belly, and every tendon of the forelegs suggest the awareness of death, and all the sympathy of the artist flows to the lioness.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                                       

Relief showing a lion hunt

In the lion hunting scene on view in Assyria to Iberia, the features of each dead lion in the row of feline corpses is clearly individuated. The faces of the Assyrian hunters, from king to servant lackey, are drained of humanity. Were the bas-relief sculptors, who were likely captives or hostages from conquered lands, inserting a subtle comment about the Assyrian overlords?

If so, the Assyrians missed the point. They never stopped killing until death stalked them. 

In 612 B.C. a coalition of forces from Babylon, Persia and the Caucasus took advantage of a civil war among claimants to the throne of Assyria. They launched a devastating attack on Nineveh, capital of the over-stretched empire. With shocking suddenness, the "Thousand Year Reich" of the Assyrians was toppled, their trophy-laden cities sacked and set aflame. Like a mirage in the desert, the Assyrian empire vanished in the blink of an eye.

The seafaring Phoenicians lasted a lot longer and left a far richer cultural legacy. Instead of weapons of war, the chosen instruments of the Phoenicians were their navigational skills and monopoly of Tyrian red.  This purple dye made from seashells was in huge demand throughout the Mediterranean basin. With this export, the Phoenicians brought in annual shiploads of silver “tribute” to bribe the Assyrians and a little left over for themselves.

The distinctive feature of Phoenician art was the fusion of elements and influences from all over the Near East, Egypt and the Mediterranean to form an "Orientalizing" style. This was favored throughout the entire region. Greece and Italy, both emerging from the "Dark Age" following the collapse of the Bronze Age palaces, are prime sites for the discovery of "Orientalizing" art. Homer's Iliad extolled the ornate metal work traded by the Phoenicians.

A silver bowl, . . . that skilled Sidonian craftsmen wrought to perfection,
Phoenician traders shipped across the misty seas.

Bowl with Egyptianizing motifs 

Several of these Phoenician silver masterpieces are on display in the exhibit, including one found at Olympia, scene of the Greek Olympic Games beginning in 776 B.C. Another is this gilded silver Bowl with Egyptianizing Motifs. It was found in a 7th century B.C. grave in central Italy at Praeneste, a site associated with the Goddess of Fortune. 

It was another goddess, worshiped by the Phoenicians, whose image became a dominant motif of the age - and of the Metropolitan exhibit. Ishtar or Astarte, was the goddess of love and fertility. She appeared in many guises, including the face on the exhibition's signature piece, Plaque with Striding Sphinx. 

Usually shown wearing an Egyptian wig, Astarte was a beloved figure in almost all of the regions visited or colonized by the Phoenicians. These seafarers carried her image with them on their biremes, sometimes as a figurehead on these ships.

One of the most frequent poses of the goddess was in ivory carvings showing a beautiful woman peering through a window or between two columns. The Metropolitan exhibit displays a particularly exquisite example from the Louvre collection dating to the late 9th century - early 8th century B.C. 

Woman at the window ivory plaque

Scholars have debated - with some academic heat - whether these "women in the window" represent goddesses, temple prostitutes or simply beautiful women. There was an element of all three in Astarte. The ancient Hebrews, who feared and reviled the seductive power of Astarte as a threat to the worship of Yahweh, would have emphasized the second interpretation. But to the Phoenician mariners, sailing in their little ships, Astarte was their protectress. And the faces on these ivory carvings would also have also reminded them of their womenfolk back home.

The Phoenicians established colonies at Carthage in North Africa and Spain. Temples to Astarte were erected at these newly-occupied sites and one, recently found near Seville in Spain, has led to a major re-appraisal of the fabled Carambolo Treasure.

 Unearthed during building renovations back in 1958, the Carambolo Treasure consists of twenty-one pieces of 24-carat gold jewelry. These were initially thought to have been made by Iberian craftsman for rulers of the local Tartessos culture around 800 B.C. With the discovery of the temple to Astarte, this stunning necklace is now believed to have been part of the regalia of the high priest of Astarte's cult.

Necklace from the Carambolo Treasure

Astarte was not the only seductive woman whose dazzling face launched - or sank - a thousand ships during the age of the Phoenician mariners. 

Beguiling female heads also appear on several strange, flying creatures that once decorated the rims of bronze cauldrons which blazed with fire in palaces and temples. Part bird, part human, these are the Sirens described in Homer's Odyssey, whose melodious singing lured love-sick sailors to their doom. A hanging display of several of these bronze Sirens in the Met's exhibit brings home the dangers faced by Phoenician mariners and their Greek counterparts.

Cauldron and stand 

An impressive bronze cauldron, complete with its iron stand, was discovered in Cyprus, the "copper island" which was a prime trading destination of the Phoenicians. Dating to the 8th–7th century B.C., the cauldron testifies to the transition from the Bronze Age to the Age of Iron. The attached figures or protomes on the rim are male this time, Janus-headed bird men, and fearsome Griffins. The effect of viewing these extraordinary bronze visages set against leaping flames and smoke rising up from within the cauldron must have been mesmerizing.

Assyria to Iberia  is a worthy successor to its predecessors, The Art of the First Cities, presented at the Metropolitan Museum in 2003, and Beyond Babylon, the 2008 exhibit which surveyed the Bronze Age. However, despite the scale of the exhibit and the jaw-dropping beauty of some of the art works on display, there is a melancholy feel to this third installment of the Met's study of the rise of civilization. There are lessons here that should have been learned a long time ago - and still haven't been.

Along with the Assyrian battle and lion-hunting reliefs, the Metropolitan exhibit presents other works of art that evoke war lust and its consequences - ancient and modern.

This statue of a scorpion bird-man is one of the Tell Halaf Sculptures that the German archeologist Baron Max von Oppenheim (1860–1946) excavated in Syria during the 1920's. This mythological character derives from the Gilgamesh epic, the sacred text of Mesopotamia and the "Fertile Crescent" lands that extended through Syria to the Hebrew kingdoms and the Phoenician port cities. Oppenheim brought this fearsome gate guardian and other sculptures from Tell Halaf to an iron foundry in Berlin which he converted into a museum.

On November 18, 1943, the British air force launched a devastating series of incendiary bombing attacks on Berlin and on November 22 the Tell Halaf Museum was set ablaze. When the cold water of the fire hoses struck the superheated basalt of the statues, the ancient sculptures literally exploded into thousands of fragments. Oppenheim rescued these shards and pieces and they were stored in a museum located in Communist East Berlin. After German re-unification, in an amazing reconstruction effort lasting nine years, many of the shattered sculptures were restored.

Statue of scorpion bird-man

From a purely artistic standpoint, the Tell Halaf rescue effort provides an up-beat conclusion to Assyria to Iberia. It certainly validates the dedication, skill and scholarship of the Metropolitan curators and their colleagues around the world. Their efforts deserve the highest praise.

Yet, it needs to be remembered that the November 22, 1943 air raid killed 2,000 Berliners, many of them women and children, as well as destroying the Tell Halaf Museum. Perhaps it was the latest news of murder and mayhem from the Middle East that oppressed my spirits upon leaving the wonderful Assyria to Iberia exhibition.  

But what does it say about civilization in the twenty-first century that we can restore war-shattered statues from the age of the Assyrians and still go on killing fellow human beings with the cold, heartless demeanor of Sennacherib and Ashurnasirpal?

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Images Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Introductory Image:

Openwork plaque with a striding sphinx Ivory Excavated at Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), Fort Shalmaneser, Room NW 21 Neo-Assyrian period, South Syrian style, 9th–8th century B.C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1964 (64.37.1)
Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Relief of a striding lion Glazed and molded brick  Babylon, Processional Way Neo-Babylonian, 604–562 B.C. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum Image: bpk, Berlin/Vorderasiatisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/
Art Resource, NY (Photograph by Olaf M. Tessmer)

Statue of Ashurnasirpal II  Statue: magnesite; base: reddish stone Nimrud, Ishtar Sharrat-niphi temple Neo-Assyrian, ca. 875–860 B.C. The Trustees of the British Museum, London Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum

Relief showing a lion hunt  Gypsum alabaster Nineveh, North Palace Neo-Assyrian, ca. 645–640 B.C. The Trustees of the British Museum, London Image: © The Trustees of the British Museum

Bowl with Egyptianizing motifs  Gilded silver Praeneste, Colombella necropolis, Bernardini Tomb Phoenician or Orientalizing, early 7th century B.C. Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia, Rome Image: Bruce White

Woman at the window  Ivory and gold Arslan Tash, Bâtiment aux Ivoires, room 14
Late 9th–early 8th century B.C. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Département des Antiquités Orientales Image: © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY (photograph by Raphael Chipault)

Necklace from the Carambolo Treasure Gold El Carambolo (Camas, Seville)
7th century B.C.Museo Arqueológico de Sevilla; On permanent loan from the Municipal Collection of Seville Image: Bruce White

Cauldron and stand  Cauldron: bronze; stand: iron Salamis, Tomb 79 Cypro-Archaic I, ca. 8th–7th century B.C. Cyprus Museum, Nicosia Image: Bruce White

Statue of scorpion bird-man  Basalt Tell Halaf Citadel, Western Palace, “Scorpion Gate” Syro-Hittite, early 9th century B.C. Max Freiherr von Oppenheim-Stiftung, Cologne Image: bpk, Berlin/Vorderasiatisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/Art Resource, NY (Photograph by Steffen Spitzner)

Eakins to Tiffany: 19th Century Masterpieces at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Eakins to Tiffany:    

 The Return of The Gross Clinic to the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Reviewed by Ed Voves

America during the decades following the Civil War entered what Mark Twain memorably called the Gilded Age. Many historians dispute Twain’s irony.  "Gilded" like another term of that period, "shoddy," casts a negative estimation upon the society of the United States between 1865 to 1900 that is largely undeserved.

Political corruption - symbolized by "Boss" Tweed of Tammany Hall and the "Whiskey Ring" bribery scandal that reached into the highest levels of the U.S. Government - was rampant. However, the 1870's and 1880's also witnessed an amazing outburst of artistic creativity. This was the era of Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art recently re-opened the dialog on American art during the post-Civil War era. The occasion for this re-appraisal was the return of The Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins to the museum's American galleries. The Gross Clinic portrays the great surgeon, Dr. Samuel Gross, lecturing to medical students at the Jefferson Medical College while operating on a young patient afflicted with an infected thigh bone. 

The Gross Clinic is arguably the greatest American painting of the nineteenth century. It is likewise one of the nation's most significant works of art when viewed from the perspective of America's social development.

Thomas Eakins, The Gross Clinic, 1876

Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross, as it is officially known, was painted in 1876, after exhaustive research and intensive preliminary studies. It is a very big painting, measuring 8 feet (240 cm) by 6.5 feet (200 cm). Originally purchased by admiring students of Dr. Gross for $200, the painting was redeemed for the hefty sum of $68 million, produced in a dramatic 2007 fund-raising campaign that saved The Gross Clinic from being sold away from Philadelphia. 

An art work of this magnitude surely deserves a gallery all to itself.

This is exactly what the curators of the Philadelphia Museum of Art did not do when they re-hung The Gross Clinic this summer. Instead, The Gross Clinic was closely integrated with other major American masterpieces of the period to create a visually and intellectually stimulating display.

Technically speaking, this revamped presentation of Eakin's 1876 masterpiece is a "reinstallation." The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) share ownership of The Gross Clinic, which rotates between the two institutions for presentation to the public.  

When it was recently displayed at PAFA, The Gross Clinic was positioned in a way to heighten its singular, almost majestic, individuality. In its present setting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Gross Clinic shares the gallery walls with other works of art in very close proximity. During the nineteenth century, paintings were hung floor-to-ceiling and the Philadelphia Museum of Art evokes this Victorian era-approach to art to perfection.

Ironically, The Gross Clinic was rejected by the art jury of the Centennial Exposition, the "world's fair" that celebrated the one hundred year anniversary of America's independence in 1876. Eakin's painting was relegated to the back wall of the U.S. Army’s exhibit of a model military hospital, hanging above camp beds draped with mosquito netting. 

In a way, The Gross Clinic is a sublimated Civil War picture. It depicts heroic measures undertaken by Dr. Gross to rescue a threatened human body, just as Lincoln and the Union forces had saved the endangered body politic during the war. But few of the ten million visitors to the Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia wanted to be reminded.

Progress and prosperity interested Americans in 1876. Across the room from The Gross Clinic, another huge masterwork by Eakins captures the contrast between the accepted standards of American society at the beginning and at the culmination of the so-called Gilded Age. 

Eakins’ The Agnew Clinic depicts Dr. Hayes Agnew performing a mastectomy in 1889 before students of the University of Pennsylvania's Medical Department. The parallel theme with The Gross Clinic was deliberate. But there the similarities end. Dr. Agnew and his team of surgeons are dressed in spotless surgical smocks, using sterilized instruments and have a professional nurse in attendance. 

An actual nurse at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania modeled for Eakins. Her name was Mary U. Clymer. The look of knowing compassion on her face makes Eakin's depiction of Miss Clymer one of his most appealing portraits. 

Thomas Eakins, The Agnew Clinic, photogravure print

This bond between nurse and patient, however, did not save The Agnew Clinic from a storm of controversy. Perhaps anticipating the outcry over the unflinching realism of the scene, Eakins went to the exceptional length of painting a black-and-white version of the work to insure that photogravure prints made from the painting would be of exceptional quality.

The Agnew Clinic was displayed in 1893 at Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition. It won a gold medal - but not much public approval. That went to a painting entitled Breaking Home Ties which was voted the most popular painting at the Chicago exhibition.

A poignant narrative scene, Breaking Home Ties shows a young man beginning his life's journey as he bids farewell to his family. Sadly, the painter of this work, Thomas Hovenden, was nearing the end of his life's journey. In 1895, Hovenden died trying to save a little girl who had wandered on to train tracks near his home in Philadelphia's suburbs. Hovenden and the child were struck and killed by a rail locomotive, the supreme symbol of nineteenth century progress. 

Thomas Hovenden, Breaking Home Ties, 1890

The Irish-born Hovenden had painted Breaking Home Ties in 1890. That year, a report from the U.S. Census Department revealed that westward frontier development had ceased, "there can hardly be said to be a frontier line." Young Americans like the central figure in the painting were no longer being urged to "go West." Instead, they were heading to America's booming industrial cities.   

"The frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history,” announced historian Frederick Jackson Turner in an influential lecture presented in Chicago in 1893 that later became known as the Frontier Thesis.

José Maria Velasco, Valley of Oaxaca, 1888.

American painters had long been fascinated with the West. Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, by Thomas Moran, and a similar, if smaller, work, Valley of Oaxaca, painted in 1888 by Mexican artist José Maria Velasco, highlight the frontier "thesis" of American art. Other works in the gallery by John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt reveal that the geographic trend noted by the U.S. Census was also taking place in the American art world. Indeed, it had started well before 1890.

Sargent and Cassatt were American artists who responded to the call of Western civilization in Europe rather than the Western frontier. They were joined by the talented African-American painter, Henry Ossawa Tanner, who went on to create some of the greatest religious art ever painted by an American artist.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Annunciation, 1898

Sargent, Cassatt, Tanner and other Europe-bound artists were thus pioneers of a different sort, helping to create a global, international focus for American art.

Sargent (1856-1925), who was born in Florence, Italy, spent almost his entire life in Europe. Sargent's "swagger" portraits of the rich and famous of Europe - and rich Americans visiting there - made him rich and famous. Likewise, Cassatt (1844–1926), after training at PAFA and briefly working in Chicago, joined the celebrated circle of the Impressionists.

The two paintings in the Philadelphia gallery by Sargent and Cassatt are transitional works, pointing in the direction they and American art would take in the years to come. 

John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Frances Sherborne Ridley Watts, 1877

Sargent's painting of a young lady with an imposing name, Frances Sherborne Ridley Watts, was in fact the portrait of his childhood friend, "Fanny" Watts (1858-1927). Sargent and his sisters had a network of friends from American families like their own, who lived and traveled extensively in Europe. Sargent painted Miss Watts while he was still studying with Carolus-Duran, one of the leading portrait painters of the era. The work retains much of Carolus-Duran's polished style. Otherwise, it is pure Sargent, a patron-pleasing likeness with acute psychological insight.

I recently attended an exhibition of nineteenth century society portraits at the New York Historical Society. The Sargent portrait among the group was unmistakable. It almost jumped off the wall. One could not say that about Mary Cassatt's On the Balcony, painted during a trip to Spain in 1873. Cassatt was still struggling to find her own voice as an artist when she returned to Europe in the autumn of 1871. She had received a commission to paint copies of the Renaissance artist, Corregio. On the Balcony is a derivative work too and only a Cassatt scholar would readily identify it as a Cassatt.

Mary Cassatt, On the Balcony, 1873

However, there is a very telling detail of On the Balcony that shows that the young Mary Cassatt was an artist with a great future ahead. 

There was a mania for Spanish painting during the mid-nineteenth century. Cassatt, like Sargent and Eakins, traveled to Spain to study the great masters of Spain's seventeenth century Golden Age. Cassatt's 1873 visit was an important step toward creating her own independent style. If On the Balcony is only an apprentice-caliber work, another painting done by Cassatt at this time, Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla, (Smithsonian Collection) was more revealing of her talent as a portrait painter.

Another American artist travelling in Europe around this time was Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933). Tiffany originally was motivated to be a painter. But after returning to the United States, where he exhibited Snake Charmer at Tangier, Africa, at the 1876 Centennial Exposition, Tiffany focused on decorative arts.

Fascinated with creating works of art in glass, Tiffany explored the range of effects, from jewel-like brilliance to subtle shades of opalescence. Then, in the 1890’s, Tiffany teamed with Arthur Nash, a master glass worker and chemist from England, to create one of the most exquisite forms of objets d'art of modern times.

Blending metallic oxides with molten glass to create iridescent art glass  - stained glass windows, lampshades, vases - Tiffany patented the process in 1894 under the  trademark name, Favrile. This brand name was based on the Old English word, fabrile, which means hand-wrought. 

Louis Comfort Tiffany, Flower Form Vase, c. 1900.

Tiffany’s Favrile glass pieces were deemed collectable treasures almost from the moment of creation. Louisine and Henry Osborne Havemeyer, pioneers in the collection of Impressionist painting, donated over fifty works of Favrile glass to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1896, an amazingly short time span in art appreciation. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has a breathtakingly beautiful example of its own on display, Flower Form Vase, which has been part of its collection since 1931.

There is incredible diversity of art works on display in this major installation of late nineteenth century works at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Hearkening back to the heroic age of Dr. Gross, American art of the period also looked forward to bold experimentation with color and form as exemplified in Favrile glass.

As the old American frontier faded, compelling democratic vistas emerged into view. A new age of American art and culture arose, neither golden nor gilded, but Modern to its core.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Images Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Introductory Image:

Thomas Eakins, American, 1844 1916. Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic), 1875.  (Detail)

Thomas Eakins, American, 1844 1916. Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic), 1875.  Oil on canvas, 8 feet x 6 feet 6 inches (243.8 x 198.1 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of the Alumni Association to Jefferson Medical College in 1878 and purchased by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2007 with the generous support of more than 3,600 donors, 2007

Thomas Eakins, American, 1844 1916. The Agnew Clinic, 1889. Photogravure,  7 7/8 x 11 inches (20.0 x 27.9 cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Samuel B. Sturgis, 19y

Thomas Hovenden, , American (born Ireland), 1840 1895. Breaking Home Ties, 1890. Oil on canvas, 52 1/8 x 72 1/4 inches (132.4 x 183.5 cm) Framed: 76 1/8 × 96 1/4 inches (193.4 × 244.5 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Ellen Harrison McMichael in memory of C. Emory McMichael, 1942.

José Maria Velasco, Mexican, 1840 1912. Valley of Oaxaca, 1888.  Oil on canvas, 41 7/8 x 63 1/4 inches (106.4 x 160.7 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of the Mauch Chunk National Bank, 1949

Henry Ossawa Tanner, American (active France), 1859 1937. The Annunciation, 1898. Oil on canvas, 57 x 71 1/4 inches (144.8 x 181 cm) Framed: 73 3/4 x 87 1/4 inches (187.3 x 221.6 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1899.

John Singer Sargent, American (active London, Florence, and Paris), 1856 1925. Portrait of Frances Sherborne Ridley Watts, 1877. Oil on canvas, 41 11/16 x 32 inches (105.9 x 81.3 cm) Framed: 46 1/4 × 37 3/8 × 3 1/2 inches (117.5 × 94.9 × 8.9 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Wharton Sinkler, 1962

Mary Stevenson Cassatt, American, 1844 1926. On the Balcony, 1873. Oil on canvas, 39 3/4 x 21 1/2 inches (101 x 54.6 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of John G. Johnson for the W. P. Wilstach Collection, 1906.

 Louis Comfort Tiffany, American, 1848 1933. Flower Form Vase, c. 1900. Favrile glass, 16 3/4 x 5 3/8 inches (42.5 x 13.7 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of J. Stogdell Stokes, 1931