Displaying items by tag: unfinished

The subject of unfinished works of art and why they are interesting enough to be displayed in a public gallery is the topic of a newly curated exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery. 'Unfinished' takes center stage at the annual Summer Showcase which highlights some of the Courtauld’s outstanding permanent collection This special display focuses on the theme of the ‘unfinished’ artwork, bringing together unfinished paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century.

Paul Cézanne’s (1839-1906) The Large Bathers is currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The work, which is on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is being exhibited alongside the MFA’s own Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? by Paul Gauguin (1848-1903).

 The Large Bathers, painted in France between 1900 and 1906, is considered one of the most ambitious of Cézanne’s many works exploring the theme of nudes in a landscape. Serene and idyllic, the painting was left unfinished at the time of Cézanne’s death.

 Gauguin’s Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?, which was painted between 1897 and 1898, also features nudes in a landscape, but as means to illustrate the inevitable passing of time. Upon its completion, Gauguin said, “I believed that this canvas not only surpasses my preceding ones, but that I shall never do anything better – or even like it.” Gauguin attempted suicide after finishing the painting but was unsuccessful.

 Exhibited together for the first time in Boston, Large Bathers and Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? bridged the gap between art of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. In doing so, Cézanne and Gauguin influenced a generation of modern artists including Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Henri Matisse (1869-1954).

 The two paintings will be on view at the MFA through May 12, 2013.

Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) Virgin and Child with Saint Anne currently resides in the Louvre’s illustrious collection in Paris. Last year, the painting was the highlight of an exhibition at the French institution, which included compositional sketches, preparatory drawings, and landscape studies as well as related works by other artists. The work even made an appearance at the Louvre’s outpost in Lens, an industrial town in northern France. Considered his final masterpiece, da Vinci worked on Virgin and Child with Saint Anne for years, ultimately leaving the painting unfinished at the time of his death in 1519.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles recently put a different version of the painting on view. The work, which appeared in the Louvre’s exhibition, was made in da Vinci’s workshop, but not by his hand. It will remain on view with the museum’s Italian Renaissance paintings indefinitely.

The painting was bequeathed to UCLA in 1939 by California real estate developer Willitts J. Hole. The work was transferred to the Hammer Museum in 1995 after the university took over management and operation of the institution. Sadly, Virgin Child with Saint Anne has spent decades in storage. In fact, it hasn’t been prominently displayed since the 1940s when it hung in the UCLA library. The reason the work has languished in storage for so long is that the Hammer Gallery requires that any work displayed in its historical art galleries be a part of founder Armand Hammer’s personal collection. Since Virgin and Child with Saint Anne was a gift, it doesn’t qualify.

The painting arrived at the Getty in 2010 prior to being shipped to Paris for the Louvre exhibition. Museum staff analyzed, cleaned, and repaired some varnish before shipping the painting to Europe. Now that Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is back at the Getty, museum officials are happy to have the work on public display.

A division of the Italian police department that specializes in art thefts has located a 400-year-old copy of a lost Leonardo da Vinci fresco. Depicting the Battle of Anghiari, the masterpiece was never finished.

The copy, widely known as the Tavola Doria, once adorned a wall of Florence’s city hall, the Palazzo Vecchio, and illustrates a historic battle between Florence and Milan that took place in 1440. It is believed that da Vinci experimented with various fresco-painting techniques before he started work on the battle scene in 1503. Despite his efforts, the paints began to drip and da Vinci was never able to finish the fresco. Over the next few years, the piece deteriorated and the Italian painter, Giorgio Vasari, was commissioned to paint over what was left of the incomplete fresco.

Since the unfinished da Vinci painting no longer exists, copies of the lost artwork are extremely important to art historians and scholars. This particular copy, painted on a small wooden panel, was last seen in public 73 years ago at a Leonardo da Vinci exhibition held in Milan on the eve of World War II. After the exhibition, the work disappeared.

Experts have since determined that the panel was stolen from its owners in Naples and ended up in the hands of a Swiss art dealer. The work was sent to Germany for restoration in the 1960s, made a brief appearance in the 1970s at an art gallery in New York, and by the 1990s was the property of a wealthy Japanese art collector.

Finally back in Italy, the Tavola Doria will be on view at Florence’s Uffizi Gallery during 2013. The work will then spend four years in Japan as part of a loan agreement worked out with the Fuji Art Museum in Tokyo, where it was last exhibited.