The Best Non-Rembrandts
The MIA’s “Rembrandt in America” featured, by approximate count, 50 paintings – 25 by Rembrandt, 25 not so much. The spectrum ran from two authentically great works – the MIA’s own Lucretia and the Self-Portrait from Washington – to two sad pastiches – the Young Woman from Allentown and the Ringling’s Lamentation. Everything else fell […]
Rembrandt in America
Rembrandt van Rijn painted great works of art from 1628 to 1669. There wasn’t much art collecting in the United States in those years – of course, there wasn’t even a United States. The first Rembrandt painting came to America probably in 1884, more than 200 years after Rembrandt died. So it is not surprising […]
Rembrandt’s Hands
In honor of the visit by Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait from Kenwood House in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York has hung a large gallery (614) almost entirely with large portraits by Rembrandt and his followers or workshop (the latter all indubitably purchased by American collectors and donated to the Met as actual “Rembrandts,” only to […]
American Paintings – NY&SB
In the last two weeks I’ve had the opportunity to view two new installations of American paintings, 19th century through the Ashcan School, one at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the other at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Surprisingly, but perhaps because of my different expectations, the former was disappointing while the latter […]
Islamic Art at the Met
Based on a quick (two-hour) first visit to the new Met galleries devoted to the broadly-defined lands of the Middle East, my favorite object isn’t even in those eleven rooms: it is the painting of a Cairo mosque by Jean-Leon Gerome that is cleverly placed in the adjoining Paintings gallery featuring the Met’s Orientalist collection. […]