Acquisitions '02-'05

Still Life with Dutch Jar and Bust of Dante (1884) demonstrates William Michael Harnett's (1848-1892) virtuosity at depicting a wide range of textures-wood, metal, textile, leather, paper, and ceramic, for example. The books, sheet music, violin, and other objects shown were carefully chosen to evoke the enduring quality of culture, from the bust of the medieval poet Dante to a book written by the Renaissance writer Tasso and a score of La Traviata by the 19th-century composer Verdi. By contrast, the nearly consumed candle, torn and stained sheet music, and book with a dangling cover, and a precarious placement of a number of the objects depicted, convey the idea that material things and, by extension, life itself are fleeting.

In this pair of portraits, the artist, Franz van Mieris, depicts himself and his wife with meticulous and charming detail. One of Holland's most popular and well-paid artists during the 17th century, van Mieris was a leading member of the Leiden School of fine painters. His virtuoso technique is demonstrated in the way he captures a variety of textures, a delicate whiff of smoke, and his wife's coy gestures. These paintings and a painting by Jan Fyt, which have been on loan to the Museum since 1987, were gifts from the Estate of Erna C. Neuman de Vegvar.

The Museum received this unique hand-crafted basket as a gift in honor of David Brigham, former Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of American Art. These labor-intensive baskets, which start out as eight-foot black ash logs, combine traditional skills with classical forms to create contemporary pieces of art. The artist's work is also represented in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass.

Jan Fyt was a specialist in the painting of game. In his day, Fyt's pictures of dead game were considered trophies of the hunt and were produced in great number. Fyt also popularized the practice of incorporating this type of still life into landscape painting.

Norman Bluhm was prominent among the gestural painters who established themselves in the 1950s, the so-called “second-generation Abstract Expressionists.” Bluhm, a World War II pilot, took advantage of the GI Bill to study art in Europe following the war and then came to New York, associating with artists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Grace Hartigan and others. Jaded Silence, which hangs in the Museum's Donnelly Gallery, was acquired through a grant from The Judith Rothschild Foundation, the Austin S. Garver Fund, and the generosity of the Estate of Norman Bluhm.

After studying in Paris under Adolphe William Bouguereau at the Académie Julian, Lovis Corinth moved to Berlin in 1900 where he had a one-man exhibition and opened a school of painting for women. He married his first student, Charlotte Berend, some twenty years his junior, who became his youthful inspiration. Recognized early in his career as one of Germany’s leading Impressionists, Corinth developed a more expressionistic style following a stroke in 1911. At the Mirror, painted during the first year after his stroke, invites us to explore the subjects of illusion and creativity. The images in the mirror, including the artist standing behind his wife, are less detailed than the Impressionistic rendering of the figure of Charlotte in the foreground. Corinth depicted his wife’s face in such an expressionistic way to suggest a skull-like image, adding a vanitas theme to this work. One of Corinth’s most exhibited paintings, At the Mirror remained in the family of the artist until it was recently acquired by the Museum.

Images of racetracks were popularized by artists such as Manet and Degas in the late-19th century. Toulouse-Lautrec’s printer, Henri Stern, suggested the subject to the artist after Toulouse-Lautrec emerged from a stay in a psychiatric ward in May of 1899. The location can be identified as the Bois de Boulogne by the windmill in the background. The artist chose an odd, foreshortened angle and cool, muted colors inspired by Japanese prints. The horses themselves seem to float as all four legs are lifted off the ground at once, an effect then recently captured in photography and published in a book by Eadweard Muybridge.

Many of Manet’s lithographs reflected his interest in political issues and his outrage at the horrors of war. The Barricade portrays French soldiers shooting at Parisian citizens when the city formed a commune at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. Angry that the French government agreed to allow the Prussians to occupy Paris, Paris declared independence, barricading the city. The French government organized an attack on the city and reclaimed it, but at the cost of 20,000 Parisian lives. Many atrocities were committed by the French army, which Manet may have witnessed. He based this composition of lined-up soldiers on a previous, politically centered series of works, The Execution of Maximilian. His use of quick strokes and limited background detail give the print the impression of battered buildings and heavy smoke.

David Maisel began making aerial landscape photographs after a visit to the devastated aftermath of the 1983 eruption of Mount Saint Helens, where he also encountered the heavily logged forests of the Pacific Northwest. He has since used this format to re-map the scars of environmentally impacted landscapes-strip mines, clear-cuts, leaching fields, tailing ponds. Maisel's interest in human interventions in the natural world and his abiding inspiration from artist Robert Smithson's apocalyptic writings on the Great Salt Lake (in particular Smithson's idea of artists reclaiming sites that were devastated by industry), led him to photograph the Lake's perimeter and the brutal region of the Great Basin. This image pays homage to Smithson's earthwork, the Spiral Jetty (1969-70), which is above the surface of the Lake for the first time in decades. Ironically, this landmark of 20th century art is primarily known through documentary photographs rather than firsthand encounters with the sculpture. From Maisel's perspective, the 1500 foot-long jetty, encrusted with salt, is rendered a delicate white curlicue surrounded by a surreal expanse of blood red and midnight blue water.