Displaying items by tag: Golden Age

One of the world’s finest collections of Japanese cloisonné enamels went on display at the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin on March 14, 2015. The collection, on loan from the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, provides an insight into one of Japan’s most exquisite art forms. "Seven Treasures: Japanese Cloisonné Enamels from the Victoria and Albert Museum," London is free to the public and continues at the Library until June 14, 2015.

Cloisonné enamels were among Japan’s most successful exports in the late 19th century, reaching a peak of artistic and technological sophistication between 1880 and 1910, a period referred to as the ‘Golden Age’. This exhibition showcases over one hundred enamels, almost 90 of which were donated from the collection of Mr Edwin Davies CBE, with the others from the V&A’s historical collection which dates from the Paris International Exposition of 1867.

During the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Augsburg, Germany enjoyed a cultural golden age. Situated at the confluence of two large rivers and near important Alpine passes, Augsburg had thrived on trade with Italy and enjoyed the influence of the Italian Renaissance. It was the home of two leading banking families, the Fuggers and Welsers, both of whom repeatedly made crucial loans to the often cash-strapped Habsburg emperors. Indeed, the Houses of Fugger and Welser were to the Emperors Maximilian I and Charles V what the House of Rothschild would be to the 19th-century governments of Europe. Consequently the grateful imperial favor bestowed upon Augsburg nurtured the city’s fine arts.

The Frick’s Center for the History of Collecting announces a new book series with the publication of its first volume, "Holland’s Golden Age in America: Collecting the Art of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals." This series, entitled The Frick Collection Studies in the History of Collecting, is co-published with the Pennsylvania State University Press, and will ultimately cover a broad range of art collecting, reflecting the Center's reach well beyond the parameters of the Frick's own scope to include topics on modern and non-western art. Comments Inge Reist, Director of the Center, “We aim to encourage new scholarship in this young field of art history through our annual acclaimed symposia and ongoing fellowship program, much of which leads to new publications. Complementing that activity is this series that enables the Center to make its own contribution to the growing bibliography on the history of collecting in America.” This and future volumes are drawn from papers given at the Center’s symposia. Upcoming books from recent events include "A Market for Merchant Princes: Collecting Italian Renaissance Painting in America" (February 2015), edited by Inge Reist; "Going for Baroque: Americans Collect Italian Paintings of the 17th and 18th Centuries," edited by Edgar Peters Bowron; and "The Americas Revealed: Collecting Colonial and Modern Latin American Art in the United States," edited by Edward Sullivan.

Americans have long had an interest in the art and culture of Holland’s Golden Age. As a result, the United States can boast extraordinary holdings of Dutch paintings. Celebrated masters such as Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, and Frans Hals are exceptionally well represented in museums and private collections, but many fine paintings by their contemporaries can be found here as well.

This spring, Christie’s will sell approximately 400 items from the collection of Huguette Clark, a reclusive copper heiress. The auction house has revealed that the trove includes Claude Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’, which has not been exhibited publicly since 1926 and is expected to fetch between $25 million and $35 million, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s ‘Young Women Playing Badminton,’ which is expected to bring between $10 million and $15 million.

Clark’s collection also includes musical instruments, Gilded Age furniture and rare books. The trove will be divided among two sales -- one on May 6 that will include the Monet and Renoir paintings, and another on June 18. The entire collection is expected to fetch more than $50 million. Before the sales, highlights from Clark’s holdings will go on view at Christie’s London and then at various locations throughout Asia.

Clark was the daughter of U.S. senator and copper tycoon, William A. Clark. Beginning in 1930, she led a largely reclusive life and when she passed away in 2011, she left behind an estate worth nearly $300 million. The proceeds from the upcoming sales will go to the estate, which will most likely be distributed between art institutions and distant relatives.

The Orlando Museum of Art is currently presenting the exhibition ‘Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough and the Golden Age of Painting’. The opening of the monumental show, which took place on January 25, 2014, marked the beginning of the museum’s 90th anniversary celebration.

The works on view are on loan from the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky and were created between 1600 and 1800, a period commonly known as the Golden Age of European painting. During this time, the number of artists and art collectors in Europe grew exponentially. The exhibition presents 71 works including portraits, religious paintings, landscapes and still lifes by artists such as Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, Jan Steen, Jacob Van Ruisdael and Thomas Gainsborough.

‘Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough and the Golden Age of Painting’ will be on view at the Orlando Museum of Art through May 25, 2014.

The New Mexico Museum of Art will be the only American venue to host the exhibition Renaissance to Goya: Prints and Drawings from Spain. The show, which opens at the New Mexico Museum of Art on December 14, 2013 and runs through March 9, 2014, was previously on view at the British Museum in London and the Prado in Madrid. It is currently on view at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

The exhibition spans from around 1400 to the mid-19th century and brings together for the first time prints and drawings by Spanish and other European artists working in Spain during this period. Renaissance to Goya is organized chronologically and by region and includes works from Spain’s “Golden Age” by such artists as Diego Velázquez and Jose de Ribera. Works by Francisco de Goya and his European contemporaries such as Giambattista Tiepolo demonstrate how printmaking and drawing dramatically gained popularity during the 18^th century and ultimately changed Spain’s artistic landscape forever.

Renaissance to Goya: Prints and Drawings from Spain is presented by the British Museum in collaboration with the New Mexico Museum of Art.

Very few artists attending art school in California in the 1920s were interested in the lush, romantic landscape painting that had dominated California art for the previous thirty years. Instead, they looked to the work by California artists dating back to the period of 1850 to 1880, when the state was forming. Some of the most interesting capture daily routines in the gold mining camps and street scenes in busy downtown San Francisco in the 1870s. Those works alongside the art of George Bellows and the Ash Can School served as inspiration for a new generation of artists interested in taking California art in another direction.

Johannes Vermeer’s (1632-1675) iconic and entrancing Girl with a Pearl Earring is currently on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta as part of the exhibition Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis. The show, which includes works by other Dutch Golden Age masters such as Rembrandt (1606-1669), Frans Hals (1580-1666) and Jan Steen (1629-1679), marks the first time the painting has been on view in the Southeastern United States. The exhibition’s 35 works are on loan from The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of only about three-dozen paintings attributed to Vermeer. The last time the painting visited the U.S. was during a retrospective of the artist’s work at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. in 1996. Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis debuted at the de Young Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco earlier this year and later traveled to the Frick Collection in New York. The High Museum has allotted Vermeer’s masterpiece its own gallery.

Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis will be on view at the High Museum of Art through September 29, 2013.

After acquiring a considerable number of important drawings, the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City has mounted an exhibition to showcase their recently added works. Spanning from the Renaissance through the 19^th century, the drawings were acquired through gifts, purchases, and bequests. Over 100 of these works will be featured in Old Masters, Newly Acquired.

The Morgan has greatly improved its Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Symbolist holdings by acquiring a number of works by such artists as Édouard Manet (1832-1883), Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940), and Odilon Redon (1840-1916). The museum also acquired over forty Danish drawings including sheets by several Golden Age masters including C.W. Eckersberg (1783-1853) and Johan Lundbye (181-1848). The Morgan added to their British watercolor collection with works by John Martin (1789-1854) and Samuel Palmer (1805-1881). William M. Griswold, director of the museum, said, “The Morgan’s collection of drawings is among the finest in the world, and the institution has been very fortunate to have long-standing relationships with some of America’s most important collectors. This exhibition celebrates their connoisseurship and their commitment to the Morgan.”

Old Masters, New Acquired will be on view at the Morgan Library & Museum through August 11, 2013.

Before the era of the paparazzi, Hollywood stars would pose for glamorous portraits for their adoring public.

Today an astonishing collection of never before seen photographs, featuring iconic figures from the Twenties to the Forties, go on show in London.

Images of stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable form part of a new exhibition called Glamour of the Gods: Hollywood Portraits, which opens at the National Portrait Gallery.

Organised by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the photographs come from the archive of the London-based John Kobal Foundation.

Images like these were instrumental in transforming actors into international stars. They were used as posters and postcards and still attract hordes of admirers.

This new collection of 70 photographs and prints will be shown alongside vintage film stills from classic movies including Lillian Gish in The Wind, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Swing Time and James Dean in Rebel Without  A Cause.

John Kobal was an avid film historian and collector of Hollywood film photography. He donated his entire collection of negatives and fine art photographs to his foundation prior to his death in 1991.

He began collecting film photographs in the 1950s, visiting Los Angeles frequently where his interest began to shift to the photographers behind the portraits.

Film and art critic John Russell Taylor, who has written an overview of the project, said: 'Of John it can be said with certainty that he did something no one else had thought at that time to do.

'When he became interested in the men behind the images, almost all of them were still alive and reachable.