Dimanche 19 mai 2013
Last update on 17/05/2013
Last update on 17/05/2013
The latest news in the History of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the 1930's
Mexico at the Louvre. Masterpieces from New Spain, 17th and 18th centuries. 09/05/2013
Among the positive actions exerted by Henri Loyrette as head of the Louvre there is the undeniable effort to extend the scope of the painting and sculpture collections to previously unexplored territories. This was notably the case first for (...)
Signac, the Colors of Water 07/05/2013
When asked in an interview for Le Petit Parisien in April 1935 "What made you start painting ?", Paul Signac, then 71, answered : "It was Monet [...]. Monet, he added, who determined his fate as a painter on a day in June 1880 when, still a (...)
Le broyeur de sombre. Bourdelle, Early Drawings 27/04/2013
Here a Macabre Vision, there a Scene of Desolation rise in black or brown ink, India ink, graphite and charcoal... The dark drawings in "broyeur de sombre", as Bourdelle defined himself, are now displayed in full light, no doubt impregnated with (...)
Frans Hals. Eye to Eye with Rembrandt, Rubens and Titian 19/04/2013
Comparing is not enough. The Haarlem exhibition on Frans Hals, an "adoptive" native son, which attempts to associate the artist with 16th century Venetian painting and also with some of his contemporaries, is a perfect illustration of these (...)
Barocci : Brilliance and Grace 11/04/2013
The "Urbinate" : although this adjective refers to Raphael in the minds of many, it applies almost equally to Federico Barocci. Of these two Renaissance geniuses born in Urbino, the latter spent most of his life there after two stays in Rome (...)
Antoine Watteau, the Music Lesson 09/04/2013
"Your soul is a select landscape / Charmed by masks and bergamasques / Playing lutes and dancing and / Sad beneath their fanciful disguises". The music lesson proposed by the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels through Watteau’s art is (...)
L’Atelier de l’oeuvre. Italian Drawings at the Musée Fabre 27/03/2013
In little less than ten years, Eric Pagliano has published several catalogues of Italian drawings belonging to French museums and we have been fortunate to see all of the exhibitions surrounding them. After Orléans, Lyon and Grenoble, it is now (...)
Ferdinand Hodler 25/03/2013
An artist should be a forerunner, thus justifying an exhibition of his works. A forerunner of what ? Of modernity of course, the nec plus ultra being Abstraction. Ferdinand Hodler corresponds to this rule and today, we can enjoy looking at his (...)
Nicolas Colombel 09/01/2013
Since 1984 and the memorable exhibition highlighting 17th century painting in Rouen, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in this city had strangely enough not staged any other retrospectives of old master painting. This has now been remedied with the (...)
The Rothschilds in 19th century France 09/01/2013
"The only merit I see in myself is that of being able to compete as a millionaire with Mr. Aguado or Mr. Rothschild" says the Count of Monte Cristo to the young Viscount Morcerf in chapter 38 of the second volume of Alexandre Dumas’ novel. Under (...)
Lyon and Modern Art from Bonnard to Signac 1920-1942 07/01/2013
The Ziniars are ignoramuses - willingly assuming and claiming their status - who reject academic learning. This group of painters and sculptors was created in Lyon in 1920 with the aim of embodying modernity. Its members, Pierre (...)
Marguerite Yourcenar and Flemish Painting 20/12/2012
On the 25th anniversary of Marguerite Yourcenar’s death, two neigboring institutions, the Musée départemental de Flandre, in Cassel, and the Villa départemental Marguerite Yourcenar in Saint Jans Cappel, near Bailleul, are collaborating in the (...)
Versailles and the Antique 19/12/2012
With over 200 works - paintings, sculptures, drawings, tapestries, art objects, furniture - the exhibition evokes in a magnificent manner the fascination and the presence of the Antique at Versailles at the time of Louis XIV. This is a (...)
Fables in the Flemish Landscape. Bosch, Bles, Brueghel, Bril 18/11/2012
Images are "made to mean something different from what we see with our eyes", asserted Cesare Ripa. The Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille makes a brilliant demonstration of this axiom in an iconological exhibition highlighting the "fables in the (...)
Du côté de chez Jacques-Emile Blanche. A Salon at the Belle Epoque 11/11/2012
The Fondation Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent is presenting a superb exhibition showcasing Jacques-Emile Blanche (1861-1942). This is the first time such an extensive ensemble of the artist’s work is reunited in Paris since 1943, incredible as (...)
Two Exhibitions in Paris on Canaletto 07/11/2012
Anyone strolling through Paris, lovers of Italian painting and even the most uninformed know by now that Canaletto is the subject of two exhibitions currently showing simultaneously at two different venues, the first at the Musée (...)
Bologna and the Autun Pontifical. Unknown Masterpieces of the Early Trecento, 1330-1440. 02/11/2012
While a considerable number of exhibitions are on offer in Paris - probably too many as it is practically impossible to see them all - the provinces, however also provide enticing choices. We should thus not overlook regional museums some of (...)
Edgar Degas, The Late Work 31/10/2012
"If Degas had died at fifty, he would have left a reputation of being an excellent painter, nothing more ; it was after the age of fifty that his work opened up and he became Degas". The Fondation Beyeler develops Renoir’s reflection by (...)
Jordaens and Antiquity 23/10/2012
Antiquity does not necessarily come to mind when speaking of Jordaens. The exhibition at the Musées Royaux wants to show the error of our ways and after reading the excellent catalogue the demonstration seems to be rather convincing, explaining (...)
Camille Corot, Nature and Dreams 17/10/2012
"He surprises us slowly, he charms us little by little" wrote Charles Baudelaire in describing Camille Corot. This allure operates more quickly than expected however, as proven by the exhibition at the Karlsruhe museum and contradicts the (...)
Le Cercle de l’art moderne : Avant Garde Collectors in Le Havre 12/10/2012
Le Havre, "a sea port which intends to remain that way", as General de Gaulle might have said, was a "temple of commerce and money" at the turn of the 20th century, built notably thanks to the importation of coffee, cotton, spices and wood. The (...)
Impressionism and Fashion 02/10/2012
Fashion week in Paris, the meeting place for the world’s designers and couturiers. How does it relate to art history ? Apparently thanks to Impressionism, as stylish as ever, as "in" as today’s jeans (created at about the same time). In fact, (...)
The Coaches from Versailles on View at Arras 24/09/2012
We must admit : at first the partnership between Versailles and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Arras seemed to be a sensationalist operation, presumably useless and prejudicial, as are many of those initiated or approved by the president of the (...)
Suzanne Lalique-Haviland, Reinventing Décor 23/08/2012
She had an alchemist’s touch for transforming any material which fell in her hands, glass, porcelain, fabric, painting, into a work of art as demonstrated at the Exposition universelle des Arts décoratifs et industriels of 1925 where she (...)
Laurent Pécheux. A French Painter in the Italian Enlightenment 21/08/2012
An artist from Lyon who spent most of his career in Italy, first Rome then Turin where he became official painter to the King of Piemonte-Sardegna, Laurent Pécheux is however not very well known outside of the restricted circle of art historians. (...)
Real ? Fake ? The Italian Primitive Was almost Perfect 14/08/2012
"Raphael did not just suddenly fall down from the sky to honor the century of Julius II and Leo X.". With this assertion taken from his Considérations sur l’état de la peinture en Italie, dans les quatre siècles qui ont précédé celui de Raphaël (...)
1917 14/08/2012
Projecting an almost schizophrenic personality, the Centre Pompidou Metz is an anti-Centre Pompidou Metz. While the latter offers fifteen poor masterpieces absolutely unrelated and with no unifying theme, the former proposes a fascinating trip, (...)
Gustave Doré, Born a Painter 14/08/2012
No man is a prophet in his own country. Despite his success as an illustrator, Gustave Doré must have often reflected on this age-old maxim. The artist thought of himself above all as a painter but he was never acknowledged as such in France (...)
Bodies and Shadows. Caravaggio and European Caravaggism 13/08/2012
With the sole exception, almost forty years ago now, of the exhibition organized by Jean-Pierre Cuzin and Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée , which in fact included only French artists (or, some thought to be so at the time), there has not been a show (...)
Renaissance Feasts. Cooking and Table Treasures 13/08/2012
The château in Blois is highlighting Renaissance feasts by presenting objects - archeological and museum pieces - related to aristocratic dining in their context. This is a challenging choice as sources are rare and the 16th century is a (...)
The Last Night in Troy. History and Violence surrounding Pierre Guérin’s Death of Priam 09/07/2012
Among the restored paintings hung in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Angers for its reopening in 2004, there was a large, unfinished canvas by Pierre Guérin, The Death of Priam Despite its obvious quality and its presence in a public collection since (...)
Strange Face. Portraits and Figures in the Magnin Collection 09/07/2012
Brother and sister, Maurice and Jeanne Magnin bequeathed their art collection and the house where they were born, the beautiful hôtel Lantin, to the State in 1937 on condition that it maintained its aspect as a private collection and lived-in (...)
Géricault. At the Heart of Romantic Creation 05/07/2012
Does a painting formerly attributed to a great artist stop being beautiful or even interesting when this acknowledgement is withdrawn ? The question might appear to be absurd but not really given the attitude of certain curators who rush to (...)
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 25/06/2012
He was a major figure of Expressionism but not only, as demonstrated by the MAPFRE Foundation with about 153 works by Ernst Kirchner, highlighting in particular the last twenty years of his production, spent mainly in Switzerland. Assembled (...)
Nicolas de Leyde and Charles Milcendeau, Two Exhibitions and Two Catalogues 20/06/2012
The many exhibitions we cover sometimes entails a certain delay in treating them here on our site because we take care when reading the catalogues so as to offer well argumented and complete reviews. However, we cannot always do this as quickly (...)
El Greco and the Moderns 12/06/2012
The Düsseldorf Museum has achieved the challenging task of assembling about forty paintings by El Greco (and his studio), including The Opening of the Fifth Seal of the Apocalypse, The Laocoon and a version of The Disrobing, featuring them in a (...)
Saint Anne, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Masterpiece 04/06/2012
We generally think that the world’s greatest masterpieces have all been thoroughly studied, leaving nothing more for us to discover. In fact, this is not true as is masterfully demonstrated by the current exhibition now showing at the Louvre on (...)
Tours 1500. Art Capital 01/06/2012
The School of Tours, art in the Val-de-Loire, the art of leisure, Flemish influence, Italian presence... The theoretical discussions concerning French art during the early Renaissance carried out in the 20th century resulted in a rich vocabulary (...)
Tintoretto 28/05/2012
While Titian and Veronese have been featured in several monographic exhibitions in the recent past, Tintoretto, the third figure of the 16th century Venitian "Trinity" seems to have been overlooked. Perhaps due to the difficulties, even the (...)
Berthe Morisot 25/05/2012
Ten years after the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille and the Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny, the Musée Marmottan in Paris is presenting an exhibition highlighting the work of Berthe Morisot the first in the French capital in the last fifty (...)
Michelangelo in the Age of Carpeaux 23/05/2012
As if a reminder were needed, the importance of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s graphic work, long overshadowed by his sculpture, is once again center stage at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Valenciennes, the artist’s hometown. After "Daumier-Carpeaux : (...)
Die Brücke. The Origins of Expressionism 14/05/2012
Germany and France each had its separate Fauve movements but the boundaries between them remained open. The members of Die Brücke and Fauvism observed each other carefully, sharing the same desire to exalt color and liberate line, even if the (...)
Drawings from the Christian and Isabelle Adrien Collection 02/05/2012
The drawing exhibition currently on show at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes presents a fascinating aspect due not only to the high quality of the sheets but also in the way this ensemble was put together, a fact which is sure to set more than (...)
Gustave Moreau, Helen of Troy : Majestic Beauty 26/04/2012
Over the past few years, the Musée Gustave Moreau has organized exhibitions highlighting a particular aspect of the master’s art, a theme, a previously unexplored facet, a part of the immense oeuvre residing in this private residence on the rue de (...)
Maurice Denis, Eternal Spring 24/04/2012
Maurice Denis does not in any way correspond to the image of the doomed artist : not only was he Christian but he is also fashionably popular today (not always hand in hand ). After the retrospective staged by Orsay in 2007, a series of (...)
Cima da Conegliano. Master of the Venitian Renaissance 20/04/2012
Lorenzo Lotto, Le siècle de Titien, Splendeur de Venise or Titien, Tintoret, Véronese... Of all the Italian schools, the Venetian has always been the favorite of French museums for the major retrospectives staged over the recent past. At the very (...)
For the Love of Art. French Artists and Art Lovers in 18th century Rome 10/04/2012
Over the course of the 18th century, despite several exceptions, notably that of Venice, Italy’s artistic stardom began to fade and its dominance to recede in favor of French painting. For this reason, the history of French artists who traveled (...)
The Spirit of the Enlightenment Seen by Carmontelle 08/04/2012
"Those who did not live in the years around 1789 do not know the pleasure of life". Talleyrand’s famous statement to Guizot is perfectly illustrated by Carmontelle, the author of numerous small portraits of the so-called blessed society of the (...)
Eugeen Van Mieghem and the Port of Antwerp 06/04/2012
Far from the sight of waves splashing and sailboats bobbing in a marina, Eugeen Van Mieghem was fascinated rather by the activity in the industrial port of Antwerp. He spent his life trying to set down with brush and pencil what Emile Verhaeren (...)
From Seurat to Matisse, Henri-Edmond Cross and Neo-Impressionism 04/04/2012
Henri Edmond Cross, who died prematurely and childless, though he was a pillar of Neo-Impressionism, has been relatively ignored. Now, the exhibition at the Musée Matisse, in Le Cateau-Cambrésis after its stop at the Musée Marmottan from October (...)
