Edgar Degas was a prolific artist of dance. In this latest episode of Expert Voices, Sotheby’s specialist Brooke Lampley takes us through his fascination with dance, exploring how he perfectly captured every movement both on and off-stage. Ahead of Sotheby’s upcoming Art Impressionniste et Moderne Evening Sale (25 March 2021 | Paris) discover how his painting ‘Danseuse au Tutu Vert’ beautifully illustrates a dancer’s private moment backstage. Find out about the artist’s intense use of colour and how his chosen medium of pastel has truly stood the test of time.
Tag Archives: Art History
Paris Art History: Van Gogh’s ‘ Windmills of Montmartre’ (Video)
Vincent Van Gogh created many wonderful works during his time in Paris, not least some stunning paintings featuring the moulins of Montmartre. Sotheby’s upcoming Art Impressionniste et Moderne Evening Sale (25 March | Paris) offers one such highlight, ‘Scène de rue à Montmartre’. In this latest Sotheby’s video, specialist Etienne Hellman takes us on a tour of Montmartre, from the apartment where Van Gogh lived with his brother, to the very site where Van Gogh sat and created this incredible painting. Learn about the influence Paris had on Van Gogh’s oeuvre and how he executed this piece of Parisian history.
Art History: ‘Orientalism’ – Visionary Delights (Video)
Orientalist art transports and immerses the viewer into a place in time. 100 and more years after it was painted, it beguiles us even now. Sotheby’s upcoming Orientalist sale (22 – 30 March) which includes works from the celebrated Najd Collection, features fascinating landscapes from John Lavery’s depictions of Tangier to Edward Lear’s View of the Pyramids Road. As well as stunning scenery, artists captured the lives of water sellers, musicians and soldiers, providing valuable documentary evidence of how the Orient looked at a time when the region was still an elusive dream to many.
Cocktails With A Curator: Cimabue’s “Flagellation of Christ” (Frick Video)
In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon examines the only work by Cimabue in a public collection in the United States, a small panel depicting “The Flagellation of Christ.” Acquired by the Frick in 1950, the attribution of this work was a topic of debate until a sister panel was discovered in 2000, establishing that they once belonged to a larger ensemble by the 13th-century Florentine. (In 2019, a third fragment was discovered.) As a nod to the gold background, this week’s complementary cocktail is the Gold Rush, a drink invented in New York in the 1920s.
Cimabue, also known as Cenni di Pepo or Cenni di Pepi, was an Italian painter and designer of mosaics from Florence. Although heavily influenced by Byzantine models, Cimabue is generally regarded as one of the first great Italian painters to break from the Italo-Byzantine style.
To view this painting in detail, please visit our website: https://www.frick.org/cimabuechrist
Art: ‘After Raphael. 1520 -2020’ – State Hermitage Museum, Russia (Video)
A film about the Exhibition “After Raphael. 1520 – 2020” at the State Hermitage Museum. Director of the film – Manas Sirakanyan. The film was made with the support of the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, U.S. Embassy Moscow and the Hermitage Museum Foundation (USA)
Raphael is the most influential artist of the Modern Era. Over the course of five centuries, exponents of Mannerism and Academicism, Caravaggisti and masters of the Baroque, Romantics and Modernists have invariably compared their own work with Raphael’s legacy. What is the cause of such fame? What did his name represent in this or that historical period, and what does it represent today? What connects the artist’s followers in different centuries? The exhibition in the Hermitage is an attempt to answer those questions and to look at the art of the past 500 years through the lens of Raphael’s influence.
The large-scale display includes more than 300 exhibits – paintings, graphic art, sculpture and applied art from the Hermitage’s own stocks and twelve other collections in Russia and Western Europe. They include both famous masterpieces and previously unknown works. Dozens of paintings and pieces of graphic art are leaving the museum’s storerooms and being presented to the public for the first time, while a whole number of the exhibits are going on show after painstaking restoration in the Hermitage’s workshops.
The display opens with works by the master himself: a painting and drawings from European collections. Without claiming to be a full representation of the artist’s oeuvre, they serve to set the tone, as it were, and after viewers have “tuned themselves in” it will be easier for them to identify echoes of Raphaelesque harmony in the works from later centuries. The choice of graphic art for this purpose reveals another dimension to the main metaphor: it is specifically the beauty of the clear, precise line, so evident in the drawings made by the master’s own hand, that lies at the foundation of the aesthetics of Raphael himself and many of his followers.
Cocktails With A Curator: ‘David’s “Comtesse Daru”
In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” savor the exquisite details of “Comtesse Daru,” the only painting in the Frick’s collection by renowned French neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David. Join Curator Aimee Ng as she delves into the history of how this lovely, intimate portrait came to be painted by an artist largely known for producing monumental works in the service of Napoleon. This week’s complementary cocktail, the Orange Blossom, is inspired by the orange-blossom tiara that adorns the sitter’s head.
To view this painting in detail, please visit our website: https://www.frick.org/comtessedaru
Artists: ‘The Vibrancy Of The Scottish Colourists’
The Scottish Colourists were some of the most important and avant-garde artists working during the early 20th century. Their art was bold and vibrant and unlike anything that had been produced in Britain before. Sotheby’s upcoming sale ‘The Way of Colour: Pictures from the Harrison Collection’ (10 – 17 March) offers Fauvist inspired paintings by George Leslie Hunter, stunning still-lifes by Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell and Cezanne-like work by Samuel John Peploe.
Cocktails With A Curator: Antico’s “Hercules” (Video)
In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” we welcome the Frick’s new Assistant Curator of Sculpture, Giulio Dalvit. In his premiere episode, he discusses one of the important bronze statuettes in the collection, a “Hercules” by Antico. A celebrated artist of great technical virtuosity, Antico worked primarily for the powerful Gonzaga family in Mantua in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In celebration of Isabella d’Este, the marchioness of Mantua and one of Antico’s patrons, thisweek’s complementary drink is a glass of Malvasia, a sweet wine that Isabella would drink at breakfast. To view this object in detail, please visit our website: https://www.frick.org/anticohercules
Cocktails With A Curator: ‘Piero Della Francesca’
In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon explores Piero della Francesca’s “St. John the Evangelist,” one of the few major works by the Renaissance artist in the United States. This striking panel was originally part of a polyptych commissioned for the high altar of Sant’Agostino in Piero’s hometown of Borgo San Sepolcro. The polyptych was probably dismembered in the mid-16th century, less than one hundred years after it was made, and many fragments are now lost. Enjoy this week’s program with a bourbon-powered Saint cocktail or a refreshing Grapefruit Citrus mocktail.SHOW LESS
Cocktails With A Curator: ‘El Greco’s “Vincenzo Anastagi”‘ (Frick Video)
In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” journey to sixteenth-century Rome with Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon as he discusses El Greco’s “Vincenzo Anastagi,” one of three important paintings by the Renaissance artist in the Frick’s collection. Born in Crete, El Greco spent a formative seven years in Rome, where he painted this rare, full-length portrait of a minor aristocrat from Perugia then serving as Sergeant Major of Castel Sant’Angelo. Look closely at this unusual painting while sipping an Ouzo Lemonade, which gets its kick from the anise-flavored spirit popular in the artist’s birthplace.
To view this painting in detail, please visit our website: https://www.frick.org/anastagielgreco
