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Antiques
& Fine Art has selected twenty works of fine and decorative
arts that museums acquired in 2011. We are pleased to highlight
the generosity of donors and those supporting museums, which continue
in their the vital role of presenting great works to the public.
We thank those who have made such purchases possible, the continued
commitment of museums to acquire the products of our many cultures,
and the dealer and auction communities that have located the material;
all important symbiotic relationships. We hope you will make a point
to support museums and see the selected objects in person, and to
visit dealers, shows, and auction houses to learn from and acquire
antiques and art that will enrich your lives.
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The Art
Institute of Chicago
Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925–2008), Short Circuit (Combine
Painting), 1955. Oil, fabric, and paper on wood supports and cabinet
with two hinged doors containing a painting by Susan Weil (American,
b. 1930) and a reproduction of Jasper Johns (American, b. 1930) Flag
paintings by Sturtevant (American, 1930). 41½ x 38¼
x 4½ inches.
Contemporary collection (Modern Wing). Acquired from the artist’s
estate through the Gagosian Gallery, NYC (Grant J. Pick Purchase Fund).
The first major Rauschenberg Combine to enter the permanent collection
of the Art Institute, Short Circuit encapsulates themes that Rauschenberg
would pursue for decades and that make him one of the most important
artists of our time. James Cuno, president of the Art Insitute, stated
that the piece “will truly be a cornerstone of the collection.”
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Baltimore
Museum of Art
William Lamb Picknell (American, 1853–1987), Paysage (A Winter
Day in Brittany), 1881. Oil on canvas, 52¾ x 79? inches. Department
of American Painting, Sculpture & Decorative Arts. Acquired from
Thomas Colville Fine Art, Gilford, Connecticut (W. Clagett Emory Bequest
Fund, in Memory of his Parents, William H. Emory of A, and Martha
B. Emory BMA 2011.44).
Picknell’s landscape represents French-influenced American modernist
painting at a key point, when the dark “Old-Masterish”
canvases of the Munich School were giving way to light effects most
famously initiated by French Impressionists during the 1870s and early
1880s. Shown in the 1881 Paris Salon, a reviewer for the avant-garde
journal Gil praised Paysage as “one of the most remarkable pictures
in the exhibition.” A year earlier, Picknell had become the
first American ever to receive honorable mention as a landscape painter
at the Paris Salon.
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Carnegie
Museum of Art
Bakewell, Page and Bakewell (American, 1813–1827) water decanter
(1818–1819). Glass, H. 11½, D. 5 in. (with stopper);
H. 9½ in. (without stopper). Department of Decorative Arts
and Design. Acquired from Christopher Rebollo, Mechanicsville, Pa.
The Bakewell decanter and its mate are the earliest known cut and
engraved glass water decanters made in America. These decanters were
almost certainly part of the immense service made in 1818 and 1819
for President James Monroe, pieces of which have eluded scholars and
collectors until now. The clarity of the glass and the quality of
the cut and engraved decoration is second to none.
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Cincinnati
Art Museum
Romare Bearden (American, 1911–1988) Mill Hand’s Lunch
Bucket (Pittsburgh Memories), 1978. Collage of cut paper and fabric
with watercolor, graphite pencil, gouache, and felt-tip pen on masonite.
Collection ofAmerican Paintings and Sculptures. Acquired from DC Moore
Gallery, NYC, to whom it was consigned by the Romare Bearden Foundation
(The Edwin and Virginia Irwin Memorial and the John J. Emery Endowment,
2011.7).
Romare Bearden was among the most inventive American artists of his
time, particularly in his collages of the 1960s and 70s, which have
an unparalleled freshness and energy. Here he created an evocative
reminiscence of time he spent during his youth at a boarding house
in Pittsburgh run by his maternal grandmother and his step-grandfather.
The playwright August Wilson was so moved by this collage when he
saw it reproduced in a magazine that it became the basis for his play
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
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Corning
Museum of Glass
Emile Gallé (French, 1846–1904), Victor Prouvé
(French, 1858–1943), Cristallerie d’Emile Gallé
Les Hommes Noirs (The Dark Men), Nancy, France, 1900. Glass, copper,
stain, H. 38.1 cm, D. 32. 1 cm, D. (rim) 16.8 cm, D. (base) 13.9 cm;
Handle: W. 30.8 cm, H. 45 cm, D. 41.5 cm. Dated and signed by both
artists. Department of Modern Glass. Acquired from Diva Fine Art,
Paris (Purchased in part with funds from the Houghton Endowment Fund;
James B. Flaws and Marcia D. Weber; Daniel Greenberg, Susan Steinhauser,
and The Greenberg Foundation in honor of Natalie G. and Ben W. Heineman
Sr.; James R. and Maisie Houghton; Ben W. Heineman Sr. Family; E.
Marie McKee and Robert Cole Jr.; Elizabeth S. and Carl H. Pforzheimer
III; and Wendell P. Weeks and Kim Frock Weeks. 2011.3.1).
Les Hommes Noirs remained in the possession of French glass manufacturer
Emile Gallé’s family until 2009. The vase was designed
by the Symbolist painter and Gallé’s childhood friend,
Victor Prouvé. It was made by Gallé as a testament to
the sanctity of civil rights, justice, and in the defense of the unjustly
accused. It was featured at the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris.
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Crocker
Art Museum
Stanton Macdonald-Wright (American, 1890–1973) Subjective Time,
1958. Oil on canvas, 72 x 60 inches. Collection of California Art.
Acquired from Peyton Wright Gallery Inc., Santa Fe.
Stanton Macdonald-Wright was one of America’s leading modernist
painters and a pioneer of abstract art. In 1912, together with Morgan
Russell, he co-founded the painting movement Synchromism, which produced
swirling compositions in a rich chromatic palette. Macdonald-Wright’s
Neo-Synchromist works from the mid 1950s surpassed the artist’s
earlier paintings by way of a heightened luminosity and deeper spirituality.
Subjective Time is one of the finest of these works.
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Denver Art
Museum
Alexander Phimister Proctor (American, 1860–1950), Q Street
Bridge Buffalo, 1912. Bronze. H. 13¼, L. 18, D. 9½ in.
Collection of the Petrie Institute of West American Art. Acquired
from James Graham & Sons, NYC (Funds from the Harry I. and Edith
Smookler Memorial Endowment, Estelle Wolf, and the Flower Foundation.
2011. 276).
In 1911, when the Fine Arts Commission of Washington, D.C., decided
to build the Dumbarton (or Q Street Bridge) they chose Proctor, who
was already acclaimed for his public sculpture, to decorate it with
two massive buffalo. These sculptures are Proctor’s most celebrated
large-scale works. In addition to the life-size bronzes Proctor produced
a 13½-inch tall “Q Street Bridge Buffalo.” Proctor
is recognized as one of America’s foremost sculptors of animals
and Native American subjects, especially at the monumental scale.
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Des Moines
Art Center
Yoshitomo Nara (Japanese, b. 1959) White Ghost, 2010. Painted stainless
steel and fiberglass, 12 x 12 feet. Contemporary Art. Acquired from
Marianne Boesky Gallery, NYC (Purchased with funds from John and Mary
Pappajohn).
Yoshitomo Nara’s White Ghost, was sited previously on Park Avenue
in Manhattan in conjunction with the artist’s major retrospective
at the Asian Society. The sculpture now occupies a prominent site
in the new John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park in downtown Des
Moines. This large-scale work of fiberglass and steel illustrates
the artist’s use of Japanese animation and its concept of cuteness.
Here, a cute young girl presents the innocence of childhood as well
as its impertinence and defiance.
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Detroit
Institute of Arts
The Waring Family American Gothic Center Table, ca. 1846–1851,
New York. Rosewood, H. 30¼, W. 40½, D. 35¾ in.
Collection of American Art. Acquired from Neal Auction Company,
New Orleans. Image courtesy of Neal Auction Company.
An icon of the Gothic Revival in the United Sates, this hexagonal
table was almost certainly based on a design by Alexander Jackson
Davis (1803–1892), the most influential American architect to
work in the Gothic style. Only ten examples of the table are known
to survive. All were likely made in New York City, probably in the
shop of Alexander Roux or Charles Baudouine. This is one of only two
examples of the table to have a reliable provenance back to the mid-nineteenth
century. The table was originally purchased for the Mobile, Alabama,
home of Moses Waring.
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J. Paul
Getty Museum
Francesco Primaticcio (Italian, 1504–1570) Double Head, about
1543. Bronze, H. 153/16, W. 13¾, D. 7? in. Department of Sculpture
and Decorative Arts. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Department
of Sculpture and Decorative Arts. Acquired
from J. Kugel Gallery, The Netherlands.
Created in France, Double Head is closely related to the head of the
so-called Cesi Juno, one of the most famous antique marble statues
in sixteenth-century Rome. The piece was most likely conceived as
an independent work of art and is closely related to the series of
Bronze casts that French king Francois I commissioned Primaticcio
to make. The bronze remained in private collections through the 19th
and 20th centuries. In 1976 it became part of Pierre Berge and Yves
Saint Laurent collection.
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High Museum
of Art
Minnie Evans (American, 1892–1987) Untitled, 1946/51/68. Collage,
pencil, ink, crayon, oil on paperboard, Image/Plate: 20 x 24 inches
(without frame). Folk Art Collection. Acquired from Luise Ross Gallery,
NYC.
The High already holds five of Evans’ paintings in their permanent
collection, but this work is the first example of her most fully realized
creations in which she completely covered the surface with the arabesques,
plant forms, and mask-like faces typical of her later designs. Evans
is among the most highly regarded of self-taught artists. Her drawings
were inspired by the dreams and visions that came to her night and
day. She layered nature and spirit, plant and animal, human and divine
in symmetrical compositions of swirling intricacy.
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Historic
New Orleans Collection
Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin (1770–1852)
Portrait of Thomas Bolling Robertson, 1808. Chalk on pink paper mounted
on later paper and framed under eglomized glass, 22? x 16¾
inches (with frame: 26? x 20¾ inches). The Historic New Orleans
Collection, 2011.0408. Acquired from William Reese Company, New Haven,
Conn.
On the occasion of the bicentennial of Louisiana statehood, The Historic
New Orleans Collection has acquired an evocative silhouette of an
early statesman. Thomas Bolling Robertson (1773–1828) left his
native Virginia for Louisiana in 1808, having been appointed territorial
secretary by Thomas Jefferson. Robertson served the territory, and
later the state, in numerous capacities: as federal land commissioner,
attorney general, first congressman after statehood, third elected
governor, and federal district judge. Before leaving Virginia he sat
for a portrait by Saint-Mémin, a French-born artist best known
for his use of the physiognotrace?—?an instrument that traced
a sitter’s physiognomy, to which outline Saint-Mémin
added delicate facial and clothing features.
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Indianapolis
Museum of Art
Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla Body in Flight (Delta), 2011.
Carved and stained wood. Contemporary collection. Acquired from the
Gladstone Gallery, NYC (Purchase made possible through support of
several donors and IMA purchase funds).
Commissioned by the IMA for the U.S. Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia,
the 54th International Art Exhibition, the sculpture is a full-scale
reproduction of a state-of-the-art business class airline seat that
is activated through a performance by a female gymnast. The IMA will
present the work with scheduled performances in its Efroymson Family
Entrance Pavilion March 8, 2012, through April 22, 2012.
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Michener
Art Museum
Phillip Lloyd Powell (1919–2008) carved and painted pine door
and surround,
ca. 1975–1980. 142 x 66 x 18 in. Acquired from David Rago Auction
House, Lambertville, NJ (Funds provided by Sharon B. and Sydney F.
Martin).
Elaborately carved and painted pine door and surround, created for
Powell’s New Hope, Pennsylvania, residence. Powell’s signature
deep chip-carving technique is evident in the carved bands of geometric
configurations on its surface. A reflection of Powell’s own
pure creative impulses and the inspiration he received from the carvings
and decorative elements of furnishings and architectural elements
he encountered during his travels in Spain, Portugal, England, Sicily,
Morocco, and India in the late nineteen sixties and seventies.
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Milwaukee
Art Museum
John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815) Portrait of Alice
Hooper, 1763. Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 inches. Collection of American
Art. Acquired from Hirschl & Adler Galleries, NYC (Funds from
the Leonard and Bebe LeVine Art Acquisition Fund, the Virginia Booth
Vogel Acquisition Fund, with funds in memory of Betty Croasdaile and
John E. Julien, and gift by exchange of Chapellier Galleries, the
Samuel O. Buckner Collection, and the Max E. Friedmann Bequest, M2011.15).
Alice Hooper was the daughter of Robert “King” Hooper,
one of the wealthiest men in eastern Massachusetts. The portrait was
commissioned by King Hooper on the occasion of Alice’s engagement
to Jacob Fowle, Jr.
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Minneapolis
Institute of the Arts
Possible Dakota Woodland Shirts, North America, US, Great Lakes/Woodland
Region, 1720–1750. Animal hide (possible antelope), pigments,
cotton thread, sinew, 39¼ x 63? in. Arts of Africa and the
Americas, Native American Art Collection. Acquired from Christie’s,
NYC (The Robert J. Ulrich Works of Art Purchase Fund).
This unique shirt was created in the eighteenth century by Native
Americans living in the Great Lakes region and was acquired for a
French eighteenth-century kunstkammer. During the French Revolution
many of these objects—including this shirt—were dispersed
throughout Europe. Fewer than 35 objects from the early 1700s, decorated
with abstract painting from the Great Lakes and/or Eastern Plains
regions, survive in European collections. In acquiring the garment,
the MIA has brought the shirt back to its region of origin.
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Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston
Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933) 43 photographs from the East 100th
Street series, 1966–1968. Gelatin silver prints. Department
of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. Acquired directly from the artist
through his dealer, Howard Greenberg Gallery (Purchase with funds
donated by Haluk and Elisa Soykan and the Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow
Fund © Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos, photograph © Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston).
In 1967 New York photographer Bruce Davidson set out to record the
gritty reality of life on the block of East 100th Street between First
and Second Avenue, an area describedin the 1950s as the most dangerous
in the entire city. The acquired images comprise the resulting groundbreaking
East 100th Street exhibition at MoMA (1970); many consider these to
be among his most important works.
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Nelson Atkins
Museum of Art
Yinka Shonibare (British-Nigerian, b. 1926), Planets in My Head, 2010.
Mannequin, Dutch wax printed cotton, leather, and fiberglass. H. 42,
W. 26?, D. 19? in. Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art. Acquired
from the James Cohan Gallery, NYC/Shanghai (Through the generosity
of G. Kenneth Baum in honor of Ann Baum, on the occasion of her birthday.
Copyright of the artist).
Planets in My Head celebrates the mystery of the night sky and the
thrill of discovery. Additional works in Shonibare’s Planets
in My Head series include arts and literature.
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Philadelphia
Museum of Art
John Carlin (American, 1813–1891) Portrait Miniature of a Young
Boy, ca. 1850. H. 2? inches. Department of American Paintings. Acquired
from Elle Shushan, Philadelphia, Pa.
John Carlin was a deaf-mute born into poverty in Philadelphia. His
talent was noticed by Philadelphia’s star portrait painter of
the period, John Neagle (1796–1865), who took the young Carlin
as an apprentice. Carlin later left for Paris to study with master
Paul Delaroche (1797–1856) before returning to America. He established
a highly successful studio in New York City, exhibiting at the National
Academy from 1847–1886.
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Saint Louis
Art Museum
Tiffany Studios, Jack-in-the-Pulpit Vase, ca. 1905. Glazed earthenware,
H. 11¼, W. 4¾, D. 4½ in. Department of Decorative
Arts and Design. Acquired from Lillian Nassau, NYC (Marjorie Wyman
Endowment Fund, the Reuben and Gladys Flora Grant Charitable Trust,
the Lopata Endowment Fund; and the Decorative Arts Society, gift of
Mr. and Mrs. Harvard Hecker, and bequest of Richard Brumbaugh, by
exchange, 12:2011).
Tiffany’s first public exhibition of three pieces of Favrile
Pottery occurred in St. Louis in 1904. One of Tiffany’s most
original ceramic designs is a tall, cylindrical vase modeled on jack-in-the-pulpit
plants. Though examples of the Jack-in-the-Pulpit Vase are quite rare
today, Tiffany records indicate that the firm frequently published
and exhibited this design.
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