Naples Collects – Extended labels
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 – 1973)
Personage, 1969
Oil on cardboard
Lety and Stephen Schwartz
Just four years before his death, Picasso received a delivery of art supplies at his home and
studio at Mougins on the French Riviera. The shipment was protected by large sheets of
corrugated cardboard. Even at the age of 87, Picasso’s imagination seized on the opportunity of
these irresistible blank surfaces. The result was twenty-nine Imaginary Portraits, a gallery of
pictorial inventions that have the vigor and daring of an artist just beginning his career. Picasso
produced a portfolio after these portraits together with the renowned lithographer Marcel
Salinas.
Kees van Dongen (Dutch, 1877 – 1968)
Au Casino, n.d.
Watercolor on paper
Lety and Stephen Schwartz
Cornelis Theodorus Maria “Kees” van Dongen was an avant-garde artist who is commonly
associated with the Fauvist painters but was also a member of the German Expressionist group
Die Brücke. Along with other Fauvists such as Henri Matisse and Maurice de Vlaminck he
exhibited at the controversial 1905 Salon d’Automne exhibition, the annual art survey that was
held in Paris since 1903 and that gained a reputation as a counterpoint to the more conservative,
official Paris Salon. Having developed the lush colors of the Fauvist style, he gained a reputation
for his sensuous, at times garish, portraits of the French Bourgeoisie and upper class, often
depicting his commissioners enjoying their leisure time. This ink drawing is an example of the
social events that became the subject of van Dongen’s late compositions.
Alexander Calder (American, 1898 – 1976)
Acrobat on Trapeze, 1975
Woven tapestry on Maguey sisal
Ba Ron Art, LLC on behalf of Ronald and Barbara Balser
In 1925, Alexander Calder was commissioned to illustrate the Ringling Bros. and Barnum &
Bailey Circus for the National Police Gazette, a popular tabloid- style magazine geared to the
general public. A year later, Calder produced his miniature wire circus, which he performed
many times in Europe and America ; it was a detailed rendition of several acts, including
acrobats performing stunts. The thin and wavy lines in this work evoke Calder’s circus wire
figures. The acrobat balances on a hoop suspended above the ring, practicing his routine before
the performance.
Andy Warhol (American, 1928 – 1987)
Moonwalk, 1987
Unique screenprint in colors on lenox museum board
Ba Ron Art, LLC on behalf of Ronald and Barbara Balser
Moonwalk is part of The Andy Warhol Portfolio, which was originally published in 1987. For
this work, Warhol appropriated two photographs taken by astronaut Neil Armstrong of his
colleague Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin Jr. during the first moon landing in 1969. The famous
photographs, which were published in Life magazine in August of that same year, show
Armstrong’s reflection on Aldrin’s helmet. Warhol altered the images by adding bright colors
and reversing the astronaut’s pose.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908 – 2004)
Allées du Prado, Marseilles, 1932
Gelatin silver print
Ba Ron Art, LLC on behalf of Ronald and Barbara Balser
“Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an
event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.”
With this famous quote Henri Cartier-Bresson, arguably one of the most revered and influential
photographers of all time, explained the essence of his practice, a concept which he coined The
Decisive Moment. Considered the master of candid photography, Cartier-Bresson’s inventive
work of the early 1930s helped define the creative potential of modern photography. As a cofounder of the now famous Magnum photo agency in 1947 with Robert Capa and David
Seymour, he travelled widely on assignments, most productively to the East. Cartier-Bresson
produced major bodies of photographic reportage on India and Indonesia at the time of
independence, China during the revolution, the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death, the United
States during the postwar boom, and Europe as its old cultures confronted modern realities.
This view from the promenade in Marseilles is taken in the period during which Cartier-Bresson
mostly photographed in the west and during which he was most concerned with form and
creating his own signature style – after 1947 he mostly shot in the east and his work had a
greater social and political importance. Today, a photographer is more likely to make the move
from photojournalism into art (not least because that’s where the big money lies), but CartierBresson took the opposite tack.
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 – 1973)
Nature Morte avec Musique, c. 1920
Color pochoir
Ba Ron Art, LLC on behalf of Ronald and Barbara Balser
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 – 1973)
Deux Figures, c. 1920
Color pochoir
Ba Ron Art, LLC on behalf of Ronald and Barbara Balser
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 – 1973)
Nature Morte a L'instrument de Musique, c. 1920
Color pochoir
Ba Ron Art, LLC on behalf of Ronald and Barbara Balser
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 – 1973)
Nature Morte sur la Table, c. 1920
Color pochoir
Ba Ron Art, LLC on behalf of Ronald and Barbara Balser
This series of color pochoirs, or stenciled prints, by modern master Pablo Picasso was produced
in France in 1920. It is likely these images were based on the costumes and sets Picasso designed
for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes Parade, which debuted in Paris in 1917. The colors and
shapes in these works evoke Picasso’s Synthetic Cubism phase from the 1910s, in which flat color
shapes form abstract images with some traces of recognizable objects.
Fernando Botero (Colombian, born 1932)
Bailarines (Couple Dancing), 2003
Bronze with brown patina
Ba Ron Art, LLC on behalf of Ronald and Barbara Balser
Drawing inspiration from a diverse array of influences, from Renaissance masters such as Giotto
and Paolo Uccello to the 20th-century Abstract Expressionist movement, Fernando Botero’s
signature style is characterized by the use of rotund figures and inflated forms. The couple in
Bailarines (Couple Dancing) holds a pose while dancing and looking in each other’s eyes. In his
distinctive style, Fernando Botero portrays the characters as voluminous figures who
complement each other. The movements seem controlled while the man’s bowler hat and the
woman’s polka dot dress give the figures an air of modern, playful elegance.
Do Ho Suh (Korean, born 1962)
Rubbing/Loving Project: Bathroom, Apartment A, 348 West 22nd
Street, New York, NY 10011, USA, 2014, 2014
Colored pencil on vellum pinned on board
Collection of Jody and Gerald Lippes
Best known for his intricate sculptures that defy conventional notions of scale and sitespecificity, Do Ho Suh draws attention to the ways viewers occupy and inhabit public space.
Making bathroom fixtures into a polyester fabric form, he transforms them into ghostly
specimen as part of a collection of six life-size replicas of various household appliances from the
artist’s apartment in Manhattan. The near-translucent fabrications reveal each item’s inner
workings, exposing the technical, semi-architectural framework of their build. The almost
weightless wire structures are an extension of his study of themes surrounding cultural
displacement, the establishment of relationships within new environments, and memories as
both physical and metaphorical manifestations.
Emilio Perez (American, born 1972)
Just Two Ears Just Two Eyes, 2007
Acrylic and latex on wood panel
Collection of Jody and Gerald Lippes
Emilio Perez is known as a painter’s painter, combining the inherent aspects of painting with
drawing in his unique stylistic process. His work is a combination of the spontaneity and
expressiveness of painting (purposefully in its loosest form) and the immediacy and graphic
quality of drawing. The artist generates his kinetic imagery by pushing paint in across a canvas,
building layer over layer, and then going back into the painting to “draw” with a blade cutting his
marks. Melding foreground and background, Perez’s hand-cut marks ebb and flow between
layers like the fluidity of ocean currents.
Jennifer Steinkamp (American, born 1958)
Diaspore 2, 2014
Digital video
Collection of Jody and Gerald Lippes
Jennifer Steinkamp is an installation artist who works with video and new media in order to
explore ideas about architectural space, motion, and perception. Using digital projection to
transform architectural space, providing the viewer with a synesthetic experience, she often
works in collaboration with musicians to integrate sound into her work. While her career began
with brightly colored abstract projections, since 2003 she has increasingly incorporated naturebased imagery into her work – gnarled trees that twist, turn, and change seasons ; rooms filled
with undulating strands of flowers. In doing so she has brought digital art into the mainstream
of contemporary art. Diaspore depicts a collection of virtual tumbleweeds, self-propelled
through a flat, white landscape. The renderings of the amalgamated shrubs, composed of sticks
and leaves, are mesmerizing, mimicking the movements one would experience in nature in ways
that are instinctually familiar. In this work, Steinkamp references both the anatomy of the plant
that disperses the seeds and spores, as well as the social phenomenon of diaspora. Drawing a
connection between the dissemination of people and culture across the work and the plant’s
ability to spread its seeds, Steinkamp uses technology to link the natural and human worlds.
Liam Gillick (British, born 1964)
Relied Contained, 2012
Powder coated aluminum, plexiglass
Collection of Jody and Gerald Lippes
Liam Gillick is a New York-based British conceptualist who is commonly associated with the
BritArt movement or Young British Artists, a generation of influential artists who graduated
from the distinguished Goldsmiths College in the UK between 1987 and 1990. Many of the
members of this group, which was led by Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, were originally
supported and collected by the businessman and art collector Charles Saatchi. Gillick’s practice
to date has encompassed a wide range of media and activities including sculpture, writing,
architectural and graphic design, film, and music, as well as various critical and curatorial
projects. The focus of his work evolves around evaluations of the aesthetics of social systems
with an emphasis on modes of production rather than consumption. Gillick is most recognized
for his handsome color-coded Plexiglas and aluminum sculptures often found in public spaces.
Ori Gersht (Israeli, born 1967)
If Not Now When 01, 2008
Lambda print mounted on Dibond
Collection of Jody and Gerald Lippes
Ori Gersht is a fine art photographer and professor of photography who has been widely
exhibited in museums and galleries since the early 1990s. Engaging the themes of life, death,
violence, and beauty, the artist turns his lens on sites of collective trauma, examining the powers
of time and landscape to preserve and erase history. His subtle, quietly beautiful photographs
and videos taken in Bosnia, Auschwitz, Ukraine, and Hiroshima infuse seemingly normal
landscapes with an eerie aura that hints at the location’s past. Engaging in the difficult arena of
pushing the photographic camera to its limits, while working in innovative ways with film and
video, truly distinguishes Ori Gersht from his counterparts. If Not Now When 01 is part of the
photographer’s Hide and Seek series (2008–2009) on marshlands in Eastern Europe and a
reference to Primo Levi’s 1984 novel of the same title, about Jewish partisans on the move
through Poland and Germany during the Second World War. Gersht traversed these deserted
landscapes, hiring a forester with a Jeep to help him try to find where the actual par-tisans had
hidden. The series is a poignant example of Gersht’s singular approach to his medium, one
informed as much by personal history as art history.
Teresita Fernandez (American, born 1968)
Golden (Scroll 2), 2014
Gold chrominance and India ink on wood
Collection of Jody and Gerald Lippes
Teresita Fernández is a sculptor who integrates architecture and the optical effects of color and
light to produce exquisitely constructed, contemplative spaces. In her sculptural environments,
Fernández alters space to create illusions, subtly modifying the physical sensations of the viewer
and dramatizing the role architecture plays in shaping our lives and perceptions. Her
installations evoke quietude and mystery, reflecting such diverse aesthetic influences as Roman
and Ottoman architecture and Japanese gardens. With lyrical and immaculately executed indoor
and outdoor works, Fernández is pushing the boundaries of sculpture and installation art into
the fields of architecture and landscape architecture.
Harry Bertoia (Italian, 1915 – 1978)
Sounding Sculpture (Sonambient), c. 1970
41 brass rods with Inconel alloy tops on brass base
Collection of Jody and Gerald Lippes
Harry Bertoia was a visual artist, sound art sculptor, modern furniture designer, and
philosopher. As an artist who was always interested in experimenting with, playing, and
enjoying his art, Bertoia came up with the idea for Sonambient sculptures almost accidentally,
while trying to bend a single brass wire and touching another wire. It provoked wonder as to
what two or three or twenty rods might sound like and this led to the production of thousands of
sounding sculptures. The artist made eleven musical recordings which are haunting, mysterious,
and at times church-like reverberations.
Bernar Venet (French, born 1941)
Two Indeterminate Lines, 1989
Rolled steel on steel plate
Terry and Bob Edwards
Bernar Venet is an internationally renowned conceptual artist who works in various media.
Following an intensive period of work with conceptual art, Venet halted his art production in the
mid-1970s while he lectured and taught and contemplated his theories of art. When he
recommenced sculpting, he created works based on mathematics and geometrical angles and
arcs. From these series, possibly as a reaction to Minimalism and as a conversation with his own
earlier work, he began a series based on randomly created lines. Among these creations are
Venet’s “indeterminate lines,” which the artist defines as a linear form that departs from
regularity according to no particular plan.
Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925 – 2008)
Eco-Echo IX, 1992
Transfers in ink on aluminum and plexiglass, steel, electric motor, bicycle wheel, bicycle chain,
anodized steel and hardware
Terry and Bob Edwards
Eco-Echo is a result of the combined technical expertise of artist and art historian Donald Saff
and the artistic genius of Robert Rauschenberg. This partnership created works which stretched
the boundaries of conception and medium, yet remained true to the artist’s intent. Having just
returned from the United Nations Earth Summit on environment and development in Rio de
Janeiro, environmental causes were paramount to Rauschenberg. With a base of raw materials
such as industrial aluminum, and recycled lead weights on the central element, Donald Saff
suggested further enhancing the ecological relevance of this work by installing sonars on the
base. These sonars enable the sculpture to only be actively rotating when viewers are in its
vicinity. With collage-like elements reproduced on each blade in Rauschenberg’s iconic style,
Eco-Echo is not only a feat of engineering, but a tribute to the artist’s ecological sensibilities.
Karel Appel (Dutch, 1921 – 2006)
Untitled, n.d.
Oil on canvas
Terry and Bob Edwards
As a painter, sculptor, designer, poet, and writer, Karel Appel is regarded as one of the most
influential Dutch artists of the post-war generation. He was one of the founders and foremost
figures of the European avant-garde Cobra movement (the name was coined from the initials of
the members’ home cities of Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam), which was active from
1948 to 1951 and sought to break away from existing art movements such as naturalism and
abstraction. Appel’s style distinguished itself through bold, expressive compositions inspired by
folk and children’s art, as well as by the work of Paul Klee and Joan Miró.
John Chamberlain (American, born 1927)
After Dogberry, 1993
Serigraph, relief print with collage
Terry and Bob Edwards
John Chamberlain was best known for his vividly colored and vibrantly dynamic sculptures
constructed from discarded automobile-body parts and other modern industrial detritus, which
he began making in the late 1950s. His singular method of putting these elements together led to
his inclusion in the paradigmatic and influential exhibition “The Art of Assemblage” at the
Museum of Modern Art in 1961, where his work was shown alongside modern masters such as
Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso. Chamberlain’s works boldly contrast the everyday,
industrial origin of materials with a cumulative formal beauty, often underscored by the given
paint finish of the constituents. The artist also explored many other mediums, including
sculpture, printmaking, painting, film, and photography. In his prints, Chamberlain transposed
dynamic color abstractions from his sculptures to two-dimensional surfaces.
Robert Motherwell (American, 1915 – 1991)
Untitled, 1950
Brush, pen, and ink
Terry and Bob Edwards
Fascinated by the Surrealist concept of automatic drawing, Robert Motherwell found in this
medium an original and unique expressive outlet. The quick, spontaneous markings suggest a
plethora of forms that attract the viewer’s attention more to form and gesture than to narrative
content.
Willem de Kooning (Dutch American, 1904 – 1997)
Two Women, 1966
Charcoal on paper
Terry and Bob Edwards
The schematic quality of this drawing is characteristic of Willem de Kooning’s gestural style. A
prominent artist in the Abstract Expressionist movement, de Kooning painted his famous
Woman series throughout several decades; it became a recurrent theme in the artist’s oeuvre.
The drawings, as well as the paintings show his aggressively gestural and seemingly spontaneous
artistic practice.
Henry Moore (British, 1898 – 1986)
Head, c. 1964, cast 1982
Bronze with brown patina
Terry and Bob Edwards
Born in Castleford, Yorkshire, Henry Moore’s semi-abstract sculptures oscillate between human
and organic forms. Although familiar with classical sculpture, Moore’s work was highly
influenced by examples of pre-Columbian art he viewed in British museums. This piece shows
the combination of elements characteristic of his style : organic and fluid forms, with unfamiliar
elements that resonate with Surrealism.
René Magritte (Belgian, 1898 – 1967)
Le Sens de la Profondeur (The Sense of Depth), 1950
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
Emerging around the same time (1924), the Belgian Surrealist movement was the second-largest
after the French movement, its two main hotbeds being Brussels and the province of Hainaut, in
the southern part of Belgium. Of all artists in this movement, Magritte was the most collegiate,
making a solid niche for himself while hugging close the Belgian group of which he was a
member right until the end of his life in 1967. A master of the absurd, his unique temperament,
probing intellect, and rich creative resources manifested themselves early and supported a
consistently distinguished artistic production throughout his life. If paradox was the fundament
of the Surrealist movement in Belgium, Magritte was the most paradoxical of all its proponents.
He presented an entirely respectable bourgeois front, happily married, living in the more
salubrious parts of Brussels, and painting not in a studio but a corner of the living or dining
room. Yet his whole life was spent subverting the bourgeois and their values. The Sense of Depth
is part of a series of twenty paintings depicting petrified organic and mundane objects that
Magritte started in 1950. He regarded the state of petrification as a visual expression of disaster
and death.
Claude Monet (French, 1840 – 1926)
Etretat, La Plage et La Falaise d'Aval, 1884
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
Besides building his final home in Giverny, Claude Monet painted in a number of locations in
Normandy. The Alabaster Coast around Étretat, the favorite seaside resort for Parisians, was
often featured in his masterpieces. Monet most often included the arch porte d’Aval and the
pillar Pointe d’Aiguille on the west cliff of falaise d’Aval in his compositions. The French writer
Guy de Maupassant, whom Monet frequently met up with in 1885, likened porte d’Aval to an
elephant dipping its trunk into the sea. The arch and the 51-meter-high pillar seem to be linked
viewed from the beach. Monet painted the scene many times at different hours of the day.
Tamara de Lempicka (Polish, 1898 – 1980)
Portrait de Mrs. Bush, 1929
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
Included in a museum exhibition for the first time, this striking painting is perhaps one of
Tamara de Lempicka’s most accomplished portraits. The sitter, Joan Jeffery, was 19 years old
when her fiancé Rufus T. Bush commissioned the painting as a wedding present for his future
wife. With unparalleled mastery of color and form, de Lempicka portrays the sitter as a chic,
larger-than-life character. In the background, the towering New York sky-scrapers flank the
figure, further signaling the modern atmosphere of the city. Combining elements of Cubism and
Art Deco, Portrait de Mrs. Bush is a unique interpretation of the modern influences of the early
20th century.
Fernand Léger (1881 – 1955)
Les deux femmes à l'enfant, 1919
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
While serving in the military during WWI, Fernand Léger became fascinated by modern
technology, industry, and machines. Les deux femmes à l’enfant is part of a group of works
painted in the 1910s in which Léger employed geometric and tubular shapes to create
compositions of various subjects that often suggest a modern or futurist setting. The schematic
features of the anonymous figures in this work further contribute to the machine aesthetic Léger
was drawn to ; the use of geometric forms and flat planes of color evidence the influence of
Cubism on the artist’s compositional style.
Pierre Auguste Renoir (French, 1841 – 1919)
Baigneuse, nue assise, 1895
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
Renoir, like other members of the Impressionist movement, which he helped found, embraced a
brighter palette for his paintings, which gave them a warmer and sunnier feel. He also used
different types of brushstrokes to capture his artistic vision on the canvas. The form of the model
in this painting is suggested by soft movements of delicate variations of color. Famed for his
sensual nudes and charming scenes of pretty women, Renoir was a far more complex and
thoughtful painter than generally assumed. He looked to the French masters for artistic
inspiration as well as to Jean-Auguste- Dominique Ingres and Raphael, whose paintings he had
admired during his tour of Italy in 1881. The artist was not only motivated by his ambition to
rival the Old Masters and establish his place in the history of art, but also by his hope of creating
a commercially viable alternative to the highly popular paintings of nudes by William-Adolphe
Bouguereau.
Henri Matisse (French, 1869 – 1954)
Jazz, Tériade, Paris, 1947
Pochoir prints in folio
Private Collection
Henri Matisse’s Jazz is a limited edition artist’s book containing prints of colorful cut paper
collages, accompanied by the artist’s written thoughts. The portfolio, characterized by vibrant
colors, poetic texts, and circus and theater themes, marks Matisse’s transition to a new form of
medium. Matisse began work on it at the age of 74, after he was diagnosed with abdominal
cancer. Limited in mobility because of the surgery that left him chair and bed bound, he could
no longer paint or sculpt. Instead, he cut forms from colored paper that he arranged as collages,
and decoupage which became known as the “cut-outs” (gouaches découpées). Jazz was first
issued on September 30, 1947, by art publisher Tériade. Matisse loved the title, which was
chosen by the publisher, because it suggested a connection between art and musical
improvisation. The circus, the title originally suggested for the book, provided inspiration for the
majority of the motifs concerning performing artists and balancing acts. The figure of the circus
artist, usually depicted alone, is often seen as a metaphor for the artist himself.
Chuck Close (Monroe, WA, born 1940)
Emily / Fingerprint, 1986
Direct gravure etching
Private Collection
Famed American painter and photorealist photographer Chuck Close is known for using creative
and intricate patterns to portray his human massive-scale portraits. The Emily etching, with
counterparts in an oil-based ink painting and a litho-ink drawing on silk paper, was derived by
Close from a technique he initiated in the Fingerprint drawings of 1978. Using a photograph of
Emily as a basis, he constructed her face with multiple impressions of his own fingerprint. The
initial appearance of a straightforward portrait is complicated by an awareness of the artist’s
personal touch in making it, and by the fragility of the image that amplifies the slight wash of
anxiety across Emily’s face. Though a catastrophic spinal artery collapse in 1988 left Chuck Close
severely paralyzed, he has continued to paint and produce work that remains sought after by
museums and collectors.
Larry Rivers (American, 1923 – 2002)
De Chirico’s Dilemma, 1994
Oil on canvas mounted on sculpted foam core
Collection of Paul and Charlotte Corddry
An independent thinker and multi-media artist, Larry Rivers resists easy categorization. Neither
a true Abstract Expressionist nor a Pop Artist, Rivers developed a unique style of art making. Art
history became for him a source of inspiration ; characters from famous paintings by seminal
artists often appear in his works making appropriation part of a visual language that is at once
traditional and contemporary. In De Chirico’s Dilemma, Rivers channels the Italian Giorgio de
Chirico, a metaphysical painter from the early 20th century who often juxtaposed the traditional
and the contemporary. In this work, Rivers depicts scenes and figures from several de Chirico
paintings, creating an image that is both disorienting and familiar.
Jean Dubuffet (French, 1901 – 1985)
Paysage avec un Personnage, 1980
Ink and paper collage on paper
Collection of Paul and Charlotte Corddry
Throughout his career, Jean Dubuffet challenged traditional artistic notions. In the early 1940s,
he devoted himself entirely to art and quit his family’s wine business. Paysage avec un
Personnage shows the artist’s fascination with art brut by evoking the scribbles and flattened
figures of children’s drawings. His work conjures the raw principles of automatism and the
primal impulse in the art gestures of untrained hands.
Roy Lichtenstein (American, 1923 – 1997)
Water Lily Pond with Reflections, 1992
Screenprinted enamel on processed and swirled stainless steel
Collection of Paul and Charlotte Corddry
One of the most iconic artists, Roy Lichtenstein’s high-impact images deflated the macho
mystique of American art. During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James
Rosenquist, and Robert Indiana among others, he became a leading figure in the Pop Art
movement. His signature style, which he developed in the early 1960s, remained constant
throughout his career. He initially began exploring mass-media conventions of rendering threedimensional objects, with three-color printing and screens of Benday dots. Starting out with
images taken from phone books and newspaper ads and comic books – a golf ball, a spray can,
Mickey Mouse – Lichtenstein broadened his range of recognizable cultural icons to include
canonical works of art history : Matisse still lifes, Picasso nudes, Chinese landscapes. All were
part of an ongoing exploration of how objects are rendered in two dimensions, and how images
become iconic or meaningless, or both, when processed through a mass-market filter. This work
is from a group of six compositions that form Lichtenstein’s Water Lilies series which pay
homage to the water lily paintings of Impressionist artist Claude Monet. Lichtenstein first
referenced Monet’s work in 1969, with prints based on the French artist’s Cathedral and
Haystack paintings. As well as appropriating Monet’s imagery, Lichtenstein used Monet’s
method of working in series, creating multiple works on the same subject. In this and
Lichtenstein’s other reworkings of Monet’s water lily paintings, areas of the stainless steel have
been polished to convey the reflective quality of water. Lichtenstein had a long-standing
fascination with reflections which he explored as a motif in many other prints and paintings.
Friedel Dzubas (German-American, 1915 – 1994)
Lucasta’s Dream, 1979
Acrylic on canvas
Collection of Paul and Charlotte Corddry
A German-born abstract painter, Friedel Dzubas fled Nazi Germany and settled in New York
City in 1939 after studying art in his native land. During the early 1950s he shared a studio with
fellow abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler and started exhibiting his Abstract Expressionist
paintings. Dzubas brought to American painting a dynamic vision of pictorial space shaped by
his early exposure to German historical fine art and decorative painting. With works in many
important private collections and museums and with contemporary exposure in a variety of
exhibition venues shared with artists such as Jackson Pollock, Adolph Gottlieb, Morris Louis,
Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, and Jack Bush, Dzubas’ art was significant for the emerging
critical and artistic dialogue of his time.
Robert Beauchamp (American, 1923 – 1995)
Green Lips, 1985
Monotype
Collection of Jackeye and Curtis Finch, Jr.
Robert Beauchamp was a painter whose compositions throughout his career reflected his growth
as both an artist and a humanist visionary. The artist’s early work established him as an
important proponent of Figurative Expressionism, a movement that emerged from Abstract
Expressionism. A student of Hans Hofmann, Beauchamp’s early paintings contain all of the
basic tenants of modernist mastery. While Hofmann’s method of teaching focused on nonrepresentational formalism, during the mid-fifties some of his students abandoned abstraction
to develop figural formalism.
William Fields (American, born 1940)
Shekinah, 2003
Prismacolor pastel on paper
Collection of Jackeye and Curtis Finch, Jr.
Fields’ art is informed by his extensive studies of mystical traditions and by a lifetime of
personal experience with visionary consciousness. The artist’s pastel and pencil drawings are
almost all figural depictions of spirit beings to whom he relates in visions. The drawing itself is
elegant and restrained ; the works stand on their own in terms of craft. At first glance, the
images have a psychedelic vocabulary, but their power goes far beyond the ornamental design
effects of 1960s art. The figures are complex, with multiple faces and bodies. Often the larger
figure contains several figures turned toward each other across the mid-line, or looking out in
separate directions, and then those shapes make up the brow or shoulders of a more hidden
central being. The effect is to suggest a dynamic, relational presence.
Childe Hassam (American, 1859 – 1935)
Poppies, Appledore, 1890
Oil on canvas
Ann and Dick O’Leary
A prolific Impressionist painter, Childe Hassam was a regular visitor to the Isles of Shoals, nine
small, rocky, treeless islands off the New Hampshire coast. His acquaintance with the islands
was due to his poet friend Celia Thaxter, whose house on Appledore Island was a summer mecca
for writers, painters, illustrators, musicians, and other artistic visitors. Between 1890 and 1894,
the year of Thaxter’s death, Hassam painted many fine works there, some depicting the interior
of Thaxter’s cottage, others (the majority), outdoor scenes set either in or nearby her muchadmired flower garden. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was
instrumental in promulgating Impressionism to American collectors, dealers, and museums. He
produced over 3,000 paintings, oils, watercolors, etchings, and lithographs over the course of
his career, and was an influential American artist of the early 20th century.
William Merritt Chase (American, 1849 – 1916)
Mrs. Douglas John Connah, 1905
Oil on canvas
Ann and Dick O’Leary
William Merritt Chase’s confident technique reflects both his academic training in Munich and
his interest in French Impressionism. Like most of his American contemporaries, Chase was
eclectic, borrowing with pride and pleasure from many international styles, past and present.
The sitter in Chase’s portrait is the wife of Douglas John Connah, his friend who owned and ran
the Chase school, which later became the New York School of Art. Like many of Chase’s
portraits, this one transcends individual characterization and functions as an aesthetic
statement about the formal problems of composition, design, and color.
Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889 – 1975)
The Three Brothers, 1947
Oil and tempera on canvas
Ann and Dick O’Leary
Known widely for his murals of American life in the 1930s, Thomas Hart Benton became a
leading figure of Regionalist painting. His work challenged the modernist aesthetic popular at
the time and favored an American visual vocabulary focused on images of workers and rural
scenes. The Three Brothers depicts a view of nature from a close vantage point. The title of the
work refers perhaps to the three mushrooms in the foreground, which are surrounded by
beautifully rendered plants and flowers of different varieties and a towering tree in the
background.
Alex Katz (American, born 1927)
Jean Standing, 1976
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
Alex Katz is an American figurative artist who is known for his large paintings, sculptures, and
prints, whose bold simplicity and heightened colors are now seen as precursors to Pop Art.
Katz’s work is divided almost equally into the genres of portraiture and landscape. Since the
1960s he has painted views of New York, the landscapes of Maine, where he spends several
months every year, as well as portraits of family members, artists, writers, and New York society
protagonists. In 1965, Katz also embarked on a prolific career in printmaking and would go on to
produce many editions in lithography, etching, woodcut, and linoleum cut.
Barry Flanagan (Welsh, 1941 – 2009)
The Juggler, 1994
Bronze
Private Collection
The wide appeal of Barry Flanagan’s bronze animals (mostly hares, but also cougars, elephants,
and horses) seemed at odds with the more oblique nature of the artist’s early works, which were
made in humble materials, such as sand, sticks, and burlap. His art was associated with the
minimal and land art movements of the 1960s, frequently addressing process and language.
Flanagan defined himself as an English-speaking itinerant European sculptor. His restlessness
was apparent in short-lived ventures with collaborators, from skilled carvers in Pietrasanta,
Italy, to diorama enthusiasts meeting at the Museum Tavern, London, and in his many changes
of residence. Leaving Kentish Town in the early 1980s, he moved through a sequence of London
addresses, spending part of the year in Ibiza, as well as periods in Amsterdam, New York, and
Dublin.
Deborah Butterfield (American, born 1949)
Untitled, 2000
Bronze
Private Collection
Deborah Butterfield is an important American sculptor who began to show her work in the
1970s. For the past decades, the single subject of her art has been the horse, a motif on which
she has created a deeply moving series of variations, in style and materials. All of Butterfield’s
horses are mares, which she originally conceived as symbolic self-portraits.
Debora Moore (American, born 1960)
Red Lady Slipper, 2010
Handblown and off-hand sculpted glass
Private Collection
Debora Moore is a prominent American glass artist who was educated at Pratt Fine Arts Center,
Seattle and Pilchuk Glass School, Stanwood, Washington. Moore’s glass orchids are hand-blown,
unique pieces. Always intrigued by nature, the artist found her voice in glass by creating graceful
sculptures of flowers. She now concentrates her energy exclusively on orchids. Moore creates a
watercolor for each piece and works out the palette for her orchid flowers on paper first. She
then blows the flowers and leaves, taking her cue from nature, but heightening the color with
artistic license. While capturing the fragility of the flower in glass, Moore’s blooms are a
powerful homage to nature’s infinite possibilities.
Will Cotton (American, born 1965)
Ribbon Candy, 2010
Mono print lithograph with hand coloring
Private Collection
Will Cotton’s work, which primarily features landscapes composed of sweets, often inhabited by
human subjects, is informed by his awareness of the commercial consumer landscape that we
live in. Starting in the mid-1990s, the artist began to develop an iconography in which the
landscape itself became an object of desire. The paintings often feature scenery made up entirely
of pastries, candy, and melting ice cream. Cotton creates elaborate maquettes of these settings
from real baked goods made in his Manhattan studio as a visual source for the final works.
Interested in cultural iconography, Cotton’s art makes use of the common language of consumer
culture shared across geographical boundaries.
Gregory Scott (American, born 1957)
Depth, January 15, 2008
Photography, oil on canvas, and HD video
Private Collection
Gregory Scott has always blurred the lines between painting and photography, incorporating
paintings he made of himself, or his body, back into his photographs. The resulting images were
both humorous and odd, challenging the viewer’s perception of photographic truth. Then, at the
age of 49, Scott decided to go to graduate school to strengthen his knowledge of art history and
study video editing. In 2008, upon graduation, Gregory Scott stunned the art world with his
mixed-media video works that combined installation, photography, performance, video, and
painting. As more and more artists blur the lines between media, Scott has taken the idea to a
whole new level, presenting video-based wall pieces that are humorous and poignant,
contemplative yet accessible. Using himself as the model, Scott creates narrative pieces that
reference specific artists (Mark Rothko, James Turrell, Cy Twombly, Frank Stella) that have had
an impact on his life. Using illusion and surprise, he challenges the definitions placed on
photography, painting, and video, expanding its discourse and creating a dialogue with the
viewer.
Don Gummer (American, born 1946)
Study for Fountain II, 2001
Watercolor on paper
Charles L. Marshall, Jr. and Richard L. Tooke
Don Gummer (American, born 1946)
Cutting Corners I, 2002
Bronze with patina and concrete base
Charles L. Marshall, Jr. and Richard L. Tooke
Don Gummer is an American sculptor whose early work concentrated on table- top and wallmounted sculpture, later shifting his interest to large free-standing works, often in bronze. Since
the mid-1980s to the present, the dominant components in his sculptures have been planes
composed of parallel horizontal and vertical slats or bars. The repeated linear elements form
“systemic” geometric compositions, like those of Max Bill or Richard Lohse. Unlike the work of
these Constructivists, however, Gummer’s forms evoke motion. The sense of movement is
enhanced when the slatted forms resemble ladders, suggesting climbing and descending,
doubling back, or twisting and turning vertically and diagonally.
Jules Olitski (American, 1922 – 2007)
Glow of Morning, 2000
Watercolor and gouache on all rag paper
Charles L. Marshall, Jr. and Richard L. Tooke
Glow of Morning is an example of Jules Olitski’s Color Field paintings. Olitski applied gradating
shades of color creating a visual atmosphere that focuses on tonality rather than narrative. The
image suggests a dramatic sunrise ; a landscape bathed in natural light as it opens up to a new
day. Consistently committed to experimentation, Olitski worked with various mediums and
techniques in order to achieve color harmonies through striking contrasts.
Paul Signac (French, 1863 – 1935)
St. Tropez, c. 1920
Black crayon and watercolor on paper
Charles L. Marshall, Jr. and Richard L. Tooke
A celebrated Post-Impressionist, Paul Signac is famous for his use of Divisionism (the central
practice of Neo- Impressionism), a rigorous method invented in 1884 by his close friend Georges
Seurat, in which colors are applied to the canvas separately in dots or dabs, blended later
through the viewer’s own visual process. Signac’s bold sense of color would in turn be an
inspiration to the Fauvists André Derain and Henri Matisse, as well as Vincent van Gogh, whom
he counted among his friends. Signac was an avid sailor and enjoyed travel. He spent summers
in various parts of France, from Brittany to the Mediterranean Coast. He also made trips to
Switzerland, Italy, and the Netherlands. In 1891, saddened by the death of Seurat, Signac left
Paris, moving to Saint-Tropez on the French Riviera.
Stephen Knapp (American, born 1947)
Back Flight Nine, 2007
Light, glass, and stainless steel
Charles L. Marshall, Jr. and Richard L. Tooke
Stephen Knapp is an American artist best known as the creator of lightpaintings. He has gained
an international reputation for large-scale works of art held in museums, public, corporate, and
private collections, which are executed in media as diverse as kiln-formed glass, metal, stone,
mosaic, and ceramic. Knapp has written and lectured on architectural art glass, the collaborative
process, and the integration of art and architecture.
Richard Anuszkiewicz (American, born 1930)
Red Fission, 1958-1960
Oil on canvas
Charles L. Marshall, Jr. and Richard L. Tooke
Richard Anuszkiewicz’s work explores the effects caused by juxtaposing complementary colors
and geometric shapes. Associated with Op Art, a style of painting based on the creation and
perception of optical illusions that developed in the 1960s, Anuszkiewicz’s work invites the
viewer to focus on how these alter perception. Through the strict use of formal elements in this
work, Anuszkiewicz eliminates narrative and concentrates strictly on pictorial structure and
movement.
Ai Weiwei (Chinese, born 1957)
Self-portrait in Legos, 2014
Lego blocks
Collection of Charles and Elise Brown
Ai Weiwei is a world-renowned activist, architect, curator, filmmaker, and China’s most famous
artist. Open in his criticism of the Chinese government, Ai was famously detained for months in
2011, then released to house arrest. Some of Ai’s best known works are installations, often
tending towards the conceptual and sparking dialogue between the contemporary world and
traditional Chinese modes of thought and production. Ai has frequently used Legos to make a
political statement, recently creating mosaic portraits of people he called prisoners of
conscience, including Edward Snowden and Nelson Mandela, on the floor of Alcatraz, the
former prison in San Francisco Bay. The artist began posting portraits of other detainees in
plastic brick form after the Danish toy maker wouldn’t give him a bulk order because it
disapproved of the use of Legos for political works.
Leon Kelly (American, 1901 – 1982)
Bathers at Loveladies, 1966-1967
Oil on canvas
Collection of Charles and Elise Brown
Leon Kelly is best known for his contributions to American Surrealism, but his work also
encompassed styles such as Cubism, Social Realism, and Abstraction. Eluding stylistic
classification and name recognition, Leon Kelly nonetheless counts among the great Surrealists.
His abstract-leaning mystical paintings of anthropomorphic insect and bird-like creatures are
often considered alongside the works of Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and Yves Tanguy, who
inspired him.
Joan Mitchell (American, 1925 – 1992)
Arbres (Black and Yellow), 1991-1992
Color lithograph
Collection of Charles and Elise Brown
Joan Mitchell (American, 1925 – 1992)
Champs (Black, Gray and Yellow), 1991-1992
Color lithograph
Collection of Charles and Elise Brown
In 1950s New York, Joan Mitchell was a lively, argumentative member of the famed Cedar Bar
crowd, alongside Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and other notable first- and secondgeneration Abstract Expressionist painters. Based on landscape imagery and flowers, her largescale paintings investigate the potential of big, aggressive brushstrokes and vivid color to convey
emotion. “I try to eliminate clichés, extraneous material,” she once said. “I try to make it exact.
My painting is not an allegory or a story. It is more like a poem.” Towards the end of her life, in
1991–1992, Mitchell worked with Atelier Bordas in Paris on a series of lithographs entitled
Arbres and Champs (trees and fields in French). Each print has a basic structure that
experimentally varies within the series. In these works, space pushes and pulls with the use of a
limited amount of contrasting color values.
Mark Wagner (American, born 1976)
St. George's Shield, 2007
Currency collage
Collection of Charles and Elise Brown
Mark Wagner (American, born 1976)
Hampton Hedge, 2008
Currency collage
Collection of Charles and Elise Brown
Brooklyn-based collage artist Mark Wagner is well-known for his series of meticulously crafted
“currency portraits” made from deconstructed United States banknotes reassembled into the
faces of politicians and cultural figures. The artist claims that the taboo of destroying dollar bills
makes people pay attention to his work in a way they would not if he were using any other kind
of paper as a medium. Defacing currency for artistic purposes is allowed in Europe, but
technically illegal in America. Nevertheless, Wagner’s work is collected by institutions including
the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, the Library of Congress, and the
Smithsonian Institution.
Man Ray (American, 1890 – 1976)
Flying Dutchman, 1920
Oil on board
Collection of Brown Capital LLLP
Man Ray (American, 1890 – 1976)
Moving Sculpture, 1920
Vintage silverprint
Collection of Brown Capital LLLP
A prominent Surrealist painter and photographer, Man Ray captured in Moving Sculpture the
eerie image of laundry hanging on a clothesline in the evening hours. Against the dark
background, these everyday objects are transformed into unfamiliar, yet poetic sculptures. The
Flying Dutchman is based on Ray’s photograph. In the painting, another transformation takes
place: with added colors and a loose brushstroke, the laundry in the original image turns into
wing-like shapes that imbue the composition with subtle movement.
William Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825 – 1905)
The Bohemian, 1890
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
A leading proponent of 19th century European academic art, William-Adolphe Bouguereau is
regarded as the quintessential salon painter of his generation. Like many of his contemporaries,
he carefully studied form and technique and immersed himself in classical sculpture and
painting. During his life he enjoyed significant popularity in France and the United States, was
given numerous official honors, and received top prices for his work. Bouguereau was a staunch
traditionalist whose genre paintings and mythological themes were modern interpretations of
Classical subjects, both pagan and Christian, with a concentration on the naked female human
body. The idealized world of his paintings brought to life goddesses, nymphs, bathers,
shepherdesses, and madonnas in a way that appealed to wealthy art patrons of the era. Using
traditional methods of working up a painting, his compositions resulted in pleasing and accurate
renderings of the human form ; especially his painting of skin, hands, and feet was admired. The
Bohemian depicts a barefooted young woman sitting on a concrete bench on the south bank of
the Seine across from Notre Dame de Paris resting a violin in her lap. The subject is a model
whom Bouguereau used for other paintings as well.
Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824 – 1904)
Le Marabout: in the Harem Bath, c. 1889
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
Jean-Léon Gérôme was one of the most famous and commercially successful 19th-century
French academic artists. Drawing on the pictorial and literary imagination of his time, he
invented oriental scenes, using meticulously accurate detail and his open recourse to
photographs taken during his trips to disguise his strategy. Moorish baths are a core theme in
Gérôme’s oeuvre, allowing him to combine architecture and human form. Recalling a trip to
Bursa in Turkey, he commented wryly : “I was struck by the architecture of the baths, and it also
provided an occasion to make studies of nude figures. It was just a question of taking a look of
what was going on inside, and of replacing the women I saw with other women. But I had to
have a study of that interior, and as the temperature was very high, I had no qualms about
donning ‘the simple apparel of a beauty who has just been torn from sleep’ – in other words
going completely naked. So I sat on my stool, color box on my knees ; I was rather grotesque, but
one has to bend to all necessities. I had originally intended to make a self-portrait in this
situation, but I gave up the idea, fearing that my image ‘dal vero’ might not lead to wholly
fortuitous results.” (quoted in P. Roujon, Les peintres illustrés. Gérôme, Paris, 1912).
The present painting derives its power from its strong contrasts : for example, the incongruous
juxtaposition of a Marabou stork – a bird famed for its ugliness – and harem beauties idling
beside a shallow pool, or the iridescent color accents of the goldfish set against more muted
color planes. Gérôme was a frequent and talented painter of animals, often imbuing them with
an anthropomorphic character. The Marabou is drawn with extreme precision, particularly
when set against the unfinished figures in the background. The bird has a knowing, almost
humorous expression, and an upright, dominant stance, as if it were the keeper of the harem
and the women within.
Robert Rauschenberg (American, 1925 – 2008)
Half Dime (Urban Bourbon), 1989
Acrylic and enamel on mirrored and anodized aluminum
Pella and Jack Fingersh
Innovative, provocative, and prolific, Robert Rauschenberg consistently challenged the
boundaries of modern art. Originally from Texas, Rauschenberg studied with Josef Albers in
North Carolina and at the Art Students League in New York. By the 1950s, he had developed a
unique style of art making that incorpo-rated painting and what he called combines, canvases
that included found objects juxtaposed with painted images. These works, which included
emblems of American culture found in newspaper clippings and magazine advertisements
among other sources, clearly contradicted the introspective quality of Abstract Expressionist
painting. His work was more about the immediacy of the world around him than it was about
him or his identity as an artist ; for Rauschenberg art was a powerful tool for social criticism and
change. Informed by current affairs, his work often included images of politicians, astronauts or
celebrities that reflected significant icons of his time.
Half Dime (Urban Bourbon) is part of an experimental series created between 1988–1995 in
which the artist combines painting with silkscreened images on reflective metal surfaces. As is
usual with Rauschenberg’s works, Half Dime (Urban Bourbon) is composed of seemingly
disparate images that refer to elements of American culture, such as the Statue of Liberty or a
gas station. Other images are open to the viewer’s interpretation when considered in
juxtaposition with the aforementioned. This work is an example of Rauschenberg’s
experimentation with metal as a painting surface in the 1980s.
Robert Baser (Israeli, 1908 – 1998)
Untitled, n.d.
Watercolor
Pella and Jack Fingersh
Robert Baser was one of the founders of the New Horizons (“Ofakim Hadashim”) group, an art
movement that started in Tel Aviv in 1942 and was based in modernism, especially French, yet
sought a unique style to express the reality of its members. Even though Baser was considered
among Israel’s best innovative sculptors until the late 1970s, he is especially known for his
watercolors.
El Anatsui (Ghanaian, born 1944)
1004 Flats II, 2002
Tropical hardwood and tempura
Simone and Scott Lutgert
El Anatsui is a globally renowned contemporary artist who transforms simple materials into
complex assemblages that create distinctive visual impact. Similar to many of his wood and
ceramic sculptures, 1004 Flats II introduces ideas about the destruction, transformation, and
regeneration of everyday objects. To create his beautifully crafted sculptures, Anatsui freely
utilizes local and craft products, such as Ghanaian trays and Igbo palm mortars, as well as the
natural materials of wood and clay. The aesthetic qualities of his wall-hung wood panels are
heightened by the inclusion of several uniquely colored tropical woods. His work can interrogate
the history of colonialism and draw connections between consumption, waste, and the
environment, but at the core is his unique formal language that distinguishes his practice.
Hans Hofmann (German, 1882 – 1966)
Untitled, 1959
Oil on canvas
Simone and Scott Lutgert
Born in Bavaria and raised in Munich, Hans Hofmann became a prominent artist and teacher ;
his influence reached both sides of the Atlantic and today is regarded as a leading figure in the
history of modern art. Hofmann closely studied the European moderns and was deeply
influenced by the paintings of Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, and Picasso’s Cubist works.
Committed to the pictorial principles that guided his conception of art as a self-contained
activity concerned only with art itself, he founded the Hans Hofmann School for Modern Art in
Munich, where he emphasized color and form over content.
In 1930, Hofmann traveled to the US to teach at the University of California at Berkeley and
later at the Art Students League in New York. A few years later, the artist established the Hans
Hofmann School of Fine Arts in New York City and became a force of influence for a group of
emerging avant-garde American artists. His famous “push and pull” theory underscores the
importance of composition to suggest depth and movement. Hofmann strongly believed all art
should be based on nature and not on personal or social concerns. This painting illustrates
Hofmann’s commitment to those principles ; its harmonious palette of earth tones evokes
natural elements and the structure of the composition suggests volume while still asserting the
flatness of the picture plane.
Will Barnet (American, 1911 – 2012)
Guitar Composition, 1947
Gouache on paper
Simone and Scott Lutgert
Quiet, harmony, and balance are some of the overarching themes that characterize Will Barnet’s
paintings. His images depict an atmosphere of anticipation, as if time has been suspended. In
Guitar Composition, the intimate interaction between the figures is mediated by the musical
instrument. Portrayed as the focal point in the center of the composition, the guitar, along with
the work’s title, refer both to music as well as to art making.
Eric Forstmann (American, born 1962)
Random Shelf Life, 2004
Oil on board
Simone and Scott Lutgert
Random Shelf Life is part of a series of paintings that elevates common everyday objects to a
higher status. Evoking the tradition of 17th-century still-life painting, each object is depicted in
great detail ; the dull texture of a plastic container contrasts with the shiny surface of a silver
vessel. Forstmann collects ordinary objects which he carefully stages on wooden shelves creating
contrasts and visual relationships based on the unexpected juxtapositions of colors, textures,
and the purpose of the items displayed. Adding another layer of meaning, Forstmann includes
himself in the image by painting his self-portrait in the reflection of the silver plate on the lower
left corner of the work. The artist is seen while working in his studio, perhaps in the process of
painting this image. This painting-within- the-painting recalls the masters of spatial illusionism
who also asserted their presence by including self-portraits in a reflection, such as Jan van
Eyck’s legendary work in the 15th century.
Dorcas Doolittle (American, 1901 – 1993)
The Volatile Stock Market, c. 1930
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
Making reference to the stock-market crash of 1929 and its aftermath, Dorcas Doolittle depicts a
chaotic world in this work. Geometric shapes suggest buildings and figures that push against the
picture plane creating movement and giving a sense of uncertainty. Inspired by avant- garde
styles such as Cubism and Expressionism, Doolittle employs a modern artistic idiom to address
current events.
Georges Robin (French, 1903 – 2003)
La Baie de Iffignac, n.d.
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
Viewed from an elevated vantage point, La Baie de Iffignac appears in this work as an idyllic
location surrounded by beautiful greens and unspoiled by traffic or industry. Perspective draws
the viewer to the center of the image where a pristine white house sits on the edge of the bay.
However, it is the general atmosphere of the scene that Robin most poignantly conveys to the
viewer; nature overpowers any suggestion of human presence and reminds us that its beauty
manifests itself in a grandiose manner.
Timothy Barr (American, born 1957)
Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard, c. 1990
Oil on Masonite
Private Collection
Timothy Barr (American, born 1957)
View from South Road with Ponds, c. 1980
Oil on Masonite
Private Collection
Timothy Barr’s style of painting, inspired by the works of the great landscape artists of the 19th
century, shows his skill in capturing the sublime beauty of nature. Instead of complex narratives
and human figures, the vastness of the land in View from South Road with Ponds is the
protagonist. Barr’s Luminist technique combines color and light to give landscape scenes an
almost sublime quality. In this work, the low horizon line gives prominence to the sky and the
dramatic cloud formations.
Elizabeth Washington (American, 1871 – 1953)
Spring in the Valley, c. 1930
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
Devoted entirely to the landscape, Spring in the Valley accentuates the beauty of nature. The
changing colors of foliage in the spring and the vastness of the land are the main sources of
inspiration for this beautiful piece by Elizabeth Washington. Born and trained in Pennsylvania,
Washington committed most of her career to landscape painting although she is also known for
her work on other subjects.
Helen Frankenthaler (American, 1928 – 2011)
Rainbow Arch, 1966
Acrylic on canvas
Private collection
A seminal figure in the history of Abstract Expressionism, Helen Frankenthaler began her
artistic training in New York under the tutelage of Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo and later,
Hans Hofmann. Frankenthaler was a prominent presence in New York art circles ; her
technique, evocative of Jackson Pollock’s, involved setting the unprimed canvas on the floor and
pouring paint on it to create areas of color. As is the case in Rainbow Arch, her images are
composed of rich fields of color that draw attention to the surface of the work and the act of
painting more than to narrative content.
Josef Albers (German American, 1888 – 1976)
Homage to the Square, 1969
Oil painting on panel
Private collection
In the Homage to the Square series, Josef Albers explores his interest in color theory, a
recurring theme in his work of the 1950s and 60s. Albers explored the perception of flat color
planes on the work’s surface through geometric abstraction. Best known as one of the most
influential art teachers of the 20th century, Albers was also a sculptor, designer, and painter.
After teaching at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, Albers immigrated to the US in 1933 and
settled in North Carolina. He became one of the most celebrated professors at Black Mountain
College where he designed the curriculum of the newly founded institution to focus on the visual
arts. Albers later became the chair of the Department of Design at Yale University in
Connecticut. Robert Rauschenberg, Eva Hesse, Kenneth Noland, and Richard Anuszkiewicz are
among the most notable students of this visionary artist and teacher.
Morris Louis (American, 1912 – 1962)
Number 2-71, 1962
Acrylic resin (magna) on canvas
Private collection
A leading figure in the Color Field painting movement, which emerged in Washington DC in the
1950s, Morris Louis’ work is characterized by rich, bright colors. The repetitive, vertical lines in
Number 2-71 emphasize the flatness of the pictorial space. In this work, Louis concentrates the
color areas towards the center of the composition, leaving blank the edges of the canvas.
Robert Motherwell (American, 1915 – 1991)
Elegy to the Spanish Republic #161, 1981
Acrylic and white chalk on canvasboard
Private collection
Robert Motherwell’s Elegies to the Spanish Republic series consists of more than 100 large scale
canvases that intended to express visually the mourning and yearning after the Spanish Civil
War (1936–1939). Motherwell found in Abstract Expressionism a way to address specific social
issues while at the same time reflecting on universal values and themes. In this work, the large
areas of dark paint contrast with the bright color in the background, perhaps alluding to
Motherwell’s interest in the dichotomy between life and death.
Richard Estes (American, born 1932)
Union Square, 1995
Oil on canvas on board
Private collection
Widely considered to be one of the central figures of the international Photorealist movement of
the late 1960s, Richard Estes often selects subject matter from cityscapes and details of window
displays. His paintings exemplify the high-finish of Photorealism without sacrificing elegant
brushwork. Exploiting the visual impact of reflected light on glass and other polished surfaces,
Estes’ technique creates vibrant images that simultaneously clarify the chaotic urban
environment and delight in its complexities.
Alicia Penalba (Argentine, 1913 – 1982)
No Title
Bronze
Olga Hirshhorn Collection
Alicia Penalba’s sculptural forms evoke rock formations common in the South American
landscape with which the artist was familiar growing up. Whether monumental in size or
smaller scale, these works fuse together nature and art. The organic forms of this piece suggest
ancient monuments and totemic sculptures whose abstract aspect has been the result of the
effects of time and the natural environment.
Louis Eilshemius (American, 1864 – 1941)
Girl on Rock, Sea, Hills, n.d.
Oil on canvas
Olga Hirshhorn Collection
Louis Eilshemius (American, 1864 – 1941)
Farmhouse, 1902
Oil on canvas
Olga Hirshhorn Collection
Louis Eilshemius (American, 1864 – 1941)
Lovers’ Tryst, 1917
Oil on canvas
Olga Hirshhorn Collection
Louis Eilshemius (American, 1864 – 1941)
Seated Nude at Pond Holding Tree Branch, n.d.
Oil on canvas
Olga Hirshhorn Collection
Louis Eilshemius was an American painter of Swiss decent, born into a wealthy family from New
Jersey and educated in Europe and at Cornell University. Although academically trained, and a
tempered-Impressionist landscape and figure artist at the outset of his career, Eilshemius’
paintings did not begin to win the attention and praise they deserved until long after he had
abandoned painting altogether, a decision the artist made because he was exhausted from
exposing his work to rancor and neglect. His paintings, which today exist by the hundreds in
collections across the US and Europe, portray females with unusually wide eyes who sit, stand,
or lie in stiff, zombie-like poses. In many instances the figures appear to be riveted to something
– or someone – beyond the picture plane. In the 1930s critics viewed Eilshemius’ paintings as
primitive, or belonging to the realm of folk art or outsider art, despite the fact that the artist had
a top-notch education. Until a decade ago, Eilshemius was almost entirely written out of the
history of American painting. In his own lifetime, it was largely owing to the esteem he enjoyed
among other artists – especially Marcel Duchamp, who discovered him in 1917, but also Milton
Avery, Abraham Walkowitz, and Louise Nevelson – that he was remembered at all.
Jean Alexandre Joseph Falguière (French, 1831 – 1900)
Portrait of Woman, n.d.
Oil on canvas
Olga Hirshhorn Collection
A student of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Falguière was a painter and sculptor who won the
Prix de Rome at age 28. Born in Toulouse, he trained in the studio of the sculptor François
Jouffroy and subsequently worked as a freelance artist in Paris. In 1864, he presented his works
at the Paris Salon for the first time. His works show an influence by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and
Naturalism. From 1870 onwards, he achieved an artistic breakthrough. From 1873 he devoted
himself increasingly to painting, preferring repre-sentations of portraits and landscapes.
Frederick Arthur Bridgman (American, 1847 – 1928)
Lawn Tennis Club, Dinard, c. 1891
Oil on canvas
Olga Hirshhorn Collection
Though Frederick Bridgman is best known for his Orientalist depictions of North Africa which
were first inspired by his mentor, Jean-Léon Gérôme, he evolved from this subject matter later
in his career. In the 1890s, he began to paint landscapes and genre scenes, including the present
work, one of a group of tennis themes that Bridgman completed during that decade. A noted
tennis player himself, Bridgman’s enthusiasm for the sport is embodied in this lively portrayal of
a mixed doubles match. By the early 1880s, England’s fervor for tennis had reached France, and
local tennis clubs soon formed in Dinard, Cannes, and Le Favre. Though the exact location of the
court depicted is unknown, Bridgman brilliantly captures many of the details of a day of
competitive fun informed by his devotion to the sport. This work appears to be a composition
study for the painting Lawn Tennis Club, which Bridgman completed in 1891.
Robert de Niro (American, 1922 – 1993)
Women at the Well, 1965
Oil on canvas
Olga Hirshhorn Collection
Painter, sculptor, and poet Robert De Niro, Sr. was a substantial contributor to post-war
American art for his dedication to painterly representation. While his contemporaries eschewed
the figurative style of the Old Masters, De Niro reveled in it. Yet, he manipulated this
representative imagery in highly imaginative ways, using reality as a framework in which to
evolve his intensely expressive brushstrokes and colors. This vivid, innovative, representational
work established De Niro as a distinct figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement. De Niro
studied at the renowned Black Mountain College under Josef Albers from 1939 to 1940. While
Albers’ highly analytical approach to painting did not appeal to De Niro’s more instinctive style,
the experience and international perspective of the Bauhaus master nonetheless left a lasting
impression.
Henri Lachieze-Rey (French, 1927 – 1974)
Untitled, n.d.
Oil on canvas
Olga Hirshhorn Collection
After studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the end of the 1940s, Henri Lachièze-Rey
went back to Lyon, and then settled for a few years in Saint-Tropez. He painted Intimist and
sensitive pictures, cafés, and theaters in particular. Lachièze- Rey was keen on recreating the
atmosphere of daily life playing with low angle compositions where the influence of Bonnard
and Vuillard is noticeable. He is also associated with the Sanzistes, an art movement founded in
Lyon in 1948 that was inspired by Pointillism, Fauvism, the Nabis, and Surrealism.
John Seery (American, born 1941)
Abstract (Untitled), n.d.
Oil on canvas
Olga Hirshhorn Collection
John Seery is an American artist who is commonly associated with the Lyrical Abstraction trend,
a movement that encompassed work by artists such as Brice Marden, David Reed, and Larry
Poons in the late 1960s and 70s, also has been applied at times to the work of Arshile Gorky,
Richard Diebenkorn, and Robert Motherwell, and by definition could feasibly extend to the work
of many abstract artists to this day. It’s a painterly, emotional and decidedly non-Hard-edge
type of abstraction.
Frank Bowser (American, 1892-1987)
Pennsylvania Farm, 1963
Watercolor
Olga Hirshhorn Collection
Frank Bowser (American, 1892-1987)
Landscape, 1963
Watercolor
Olga Hirshhorn Collection
These two watercolor landscapes are of the hand of retired Navy Medical Corps captain Frank
Bowser, an amateur painter originally from Pennsylvania who moved to Key West. A reserve
officer, he was called to active duty in the Navy during World War II. As a member of the
American Physicians Art Association, he won several prizes for his work, which evoke a style not
dissimilar to that of primitive folk art painting.
Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946 – 1989)
Isabella Rossellini, 1988
Gelatin silver print
Eloise and Elliot Kaplan
Robert Mapplethorpe’s vast, often provocative, and powerful body of photographs has
established him as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His work featured an
array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and stilllife images of flowers. The sitter for this portrait is the Italian actress, filmmaker, author,
philanthropist, and former model Isabella Rossellini, who is the daughter of Swedish actress
Ingrid Bergman and Italian director Roberto Rossellini.
Lynn Davis (American, born 1944)
Fingal's Cave II, Scotland, 2006
Gelatin silver enlargement print (gold toned)
Eloise and Elliot Kaplan
Lynn Davis is a photographer who is primarily renowned for her large-scale black-and-white
compositions of monumental landscapes and cultural /architectural icons. Davis was good
friends with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and was an apprentice to the great Berenice
Abbott, who trained under Man Ray. The genius of this sparse composition and controlled
modeling of light produce a restrained majesty. Fingal’s Cave is a sea cave on the uninhabited
island of Staffa, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, known for its natural acoustics. The cave’s
size and naturally arched roof, and the eerie sounds produced by the echoes of waves, give it the
atmosphere of a natural cathedral.
Prudencio Irazabal (Spanish, born 1954)
Untitled 3 x 8, 2000
Acrylic on canvas
Eloise and Elliot Kaplan
Prudencio Irazabal has worked in the field of painting since the 1980s, basing his investigation
on color and light and encoding a series of conceptual indicators of the media’s remotest history.
His works speak of the pictorial fact itself and are characterized in formal terms by subtle
gradations of color applied in countless barely perceptible glazes. The formless, indistinct stains
thereby created produce deep and intense effects, so that the resulting works are defined at once
by extreme transparency and brightness and by the imperceptible points of convergence
between brushstrokes and superimposed layers of color. Irazabal confronts the viewer with the
wonder of perception, which is always mixed in with emotion and imagination. His works have
no qualms about appearing seductive, while the artist keeps an ongoing challenge to a more
complex way of thinking and painting actions.
Norman Percevel Rockwell (American, 1894 – 1978)
Two Men Reading Detective Stories, 1927
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
Norman Percevel Rockwell (American, 1894 – 1978)
Politicians on Parade, November 8, 1924
Oil on canvas
Sharon and Timothy Ubben
Norman Percevel Rockwell (American, 1894 – 1978)
Portrait of a Railroad Station, December 23, 1944
Oil on canvas
Sharon and Timothy Ubben
Best known for his cover illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post, Norman Rockwell
depicted hundreds of scenes of everyday life in America during his long and prolific career.
Often with humor and with great attention to detail, Rockwell’s America is portrayed as simple
and idealized. In Portrait of a Railroad Station, the figures look relaxed and happy as they carry
gift boxes and suitcases ; the “Christmas Greetings” sign in the background clues the viewer to
the occasion as does the figure wearing a Santa Claus suit in the center of the composition.
Steering away from the events of WWII, Rockwell focused on the values of American life. In
earlier works, such as Two Men Reading Detective Stories and Politicians on Parade, humorous
depictions of iconic figures conjured images that were relatable to the masses.
Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628 – 1682)
View of Haarlem, c. 1670-1675
Oil on canvas
Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection
Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael was the pre-eminent Dutch Golden Age painter of landscapes.
Prolific and versatile, he depicted a wide variety of landscape subjects. Van Ruisdael’s numerous
views of Haarlem display panoramas of the flat Dutch countryside with a horizon that is
invariably low and distant and dominated by a vast, clouded sky. His work was in demand in the
Dutch Republic during his lifetime, and afterwards in England as well. Today it is spread across
private and institutional collections globally, with the National Gallery in London, the
Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg each holding more
than a dozen of his creations. Ruisdael paved the way for the Romantic style of the late 18th
century, and was influential for the Düsseldorf school of painting in the 19th century.
Salomon de Bray (Dutch, 1597 – 1664)
Study of a Young Woman in Profile, 1636
Oil on panel
Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection
Dutch Golden Age architect and painter Salomon de Bray painted mostly religious and
mythological scenes, along with portraits, landscapes, and genre paintings. An active and
accomplished draftsman, de Bray made architectural drawings and highly finished preliminary
studies for paintings. Together with his son Jan, Salomon de Bray was one of the foremost
Classicist painters. Depicting heads in profile, as he has done here, was a favored trait of the
Classicist painters, who certainly knew that by following a form that originated with Roman
coinage, they were inviting comparisons with the Antique. On the other hand, the vigorous,
painterly brushwork of this exquisite little picture has nothing to do with such a tradition, and is
much more modern. The way that de Bray painted it reveals a clear awareness of Rembrandt’s
work of the first half of the 1630s.
Isack van Ostade (Dutch, 1621 – 1649)
Ice Scene Near an Inn, 1644
Oil on panel
Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection
The Dutch genre and landscape painter Isack van Ostade, who died in his late twenties, left
behind a sizeable oeuvre of paintings and drawings, created in the space of just ten years. Like
his older brother and teacher Adriaen van Ostade he specialized in the peasant genre ; initially
he painted mainly interiors, but later used outdoor settings as well. His landscapes consist
primarily of scenes near country taverns or farms, and winter views. In the course of his short
career Isack van Ostade painted not only large, ambitious winter landscapes on canvas – of
which this work of 1644 is a fine example – but also smaller, more intimate pictures on panel.
His vivid compositions are often built up in a similar fashion along imaginary diagonal lines, as
here, where the eye is led from a low viewpoint towards the inn at the upper right, as well as to
the distant ice on the left. Along the frozen water, with at the left – as so often – a windmill in
the distance as the most important marker, we find figures skating, sledging, and playing colf.
Various activities in the foreground draw our attention as well : a harnessed grey horse waits
patiently as a sleigh-driver readies his full vehicle. This is a variation on the motif of a horse
dragging its load over the riverbank, which van Ostade often used in his winter landscapes. In
the left foreground stand a peasant couple and a child with a colf club near a push-sledge laden
with two barrels.
Gabriel Metsu (Dutch, 1629 – 1667)
Old Woman Eating Porridge, c. 1657
Oil on panel
Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection
Gabriel Metsu was a brilliant history, still life, portrait, and genre scene painter who mastered a
wide range of subjects, techniques, and styles over the course of his twenty-two-year career. A
gifted visual storyteller, his skill at evoking human emotions is exemplified in works such as Old
Woman Eating Porridge. In this remarkable composition it’s difficult to resist the temptation to
peer at each painstakingly executed, realistic detail : the hunk of yellow cheese illuminated by
light flooding in from an open window, the wrinkled skin of the elderly woman’s hands, and the
cat curled contentedly at her feet. In his day, Metsu was well-loved in Europe – but it has taken
nearly 400 years for his paintings to get much attention in the US. His painterly star faded in the
20th century, and Vermeer became the top Dutch boy. Vermeer, with his flattened backgrounds,
muted colors, and distant gazers, looked more abstract to modern eyes.
Balthasar van der Ast (Dutch, 1593 – 1657)
Flower Bouquet on a Ledge, Together with a Shell and a Grasshopper,
a Panoramic Landscape Beyond, 1624
Oil on copper
Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection
Balthasar van der Ast was a Dutch Golden Age painter who specialized in still lifes of flowers and
fruit, also often incorporating shells. In this refined and jewel-like copper, van der Ast pays
direct homage to his brother-in-law and likely teacher, Ambrosius Bosschaert. In particular, this
work appears to draw from two larger compositions by Bosschaert, each still lifes of flowers.
Like flowers, exotic seashells were highly desirable items in 17th-century Holland and vast prices
were paid by collectors for the best and rarest examples. They have traditionally been
interpreted as symbols of vanity and the transience of earthly beauty and possessions.
Richard Estes (American, born 1932)
Monte Carlo, 2010
Oil on canvas
Bruce & Cynthia Sherman
Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 – 1973)
Tête de Femme, 1960
Ink wash and gouache on paper
Bruce & Cynthia Sherman
Jacqueline Picasso, née Roque, met the artist in Vallauris during the summer of 1952 – while
working as a salesperson for Picasso’s great collaborators in the field of ceramics, George and
Suzanne Ramié and the artisans at their Madoura pottery workshop – and became his second
wife eight years later. She was his most frequently depicted muse, her distinctive features
captured in multifarious ways. Painted in 1960, Tête de Femme perfectly encapsulates both the
tenderness and the ceaseless thirst for innovation that characterized Picasso’s portraits of
Jacqueline. Picasso had indeed moved to Vallauris in order to be able to tap into its ancient
history and expertise of ceramic production.
Steve Schapiro (American, b.1934)
Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick and Entourage, New York, 1965
Gelatin silver print
George and Wynnell Schrenk
One of the most respected American documentary photographers, Schapiro was a disciple of the
great photographer W. Eugene Smith. Working for the world’s most prominent magazines
including Life, Time, Newsweek, and Paris Match, he photographed influential politicians,
celebrities, and newsmakers in American history over the last five decades. That he captured his
subjects during their pivotal and seminal moments lends his photographs an added significance.
They aren’t just remarkable portraits of remarkable people, but snapshots into our country’s
historical and cultural milestones.
Bert Stern (American, 1929 – 2013)
Marilyn Monroe, from the Last Sitting, 1962
Gelatin silver print
George and Wynnell Schrenk
In 1962, photographer Bert Stern shot a series of photos of Marilyn Monroe that have
collectively come to be known as “The Last Sitting.” Taken during several boozy sessions at the
Hotel Bel-Air, the photographs are arguably the most famous images ever captured of America’s
most famous actress: Monroe, sleepy-eyed and naked, sips from a champagne glass, enacts a fan
dance of sorts with various diaphanous scarves, romps with erotic playfulness on a bed of white
linens. Six weeks after she had posed, Monroe was found dead of an apparent barbiturate
overdose.
Bob Willoughby (American, 1927 – 2009)
Elliot Gould and Barbra Streisand at Beverly Hills Hotel pool, 1963,
1963
Gelatin silver print
George and Wynnell Schrenk
A distinguished Hollywood photographer, Bob Willoughby changed the way movie stars are
photographed. By documenting the film-making process and capturing famous faces in
unguarded moments of repose and vulnerability, he created a repertoire that forms a visual
who’s who of cinema and music in the 1950s and 1960s.
Garry Winogrand (American, 1928 – 1984)
John F. Kennedy, Democartic National Convention, Los Angeles,
1960, printed 1970s
Gelatin silver print
George and Wynnell Schrenk
Winogrand made a career studying what he called “the effect of media on events.” He took this
iconic photograph of John F. Kennedy during his acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic
National Convention in Los Angeles. Seen from behind, Kennedy shares the stage with an
electronic doppelgänger – a small, closed- circuit television set broadcasting his speech,
presumably for the benefit of backstage journalists. We see his brilliant analysis of public rituals
focused on the ubiquity of television in American society in the 1960s.
Claude Lawrence (born 1944)
Riff Tapestry, 2004
Oil on canvas
Lyn and E.T. Williams
Making a life primarily as a jazz musician during the 1970s and 80s, Claude Lawrence took up
painting, making compositions that mirror the lyrical and improvisational qualities of his music.
By virtue of his location far from the center of the art world and the fact that he was self-taught,
he was considered an outsider until prominent museums and collectors recently took an interest
in his work.
Alexander Calder (American, 1898 – 1976)
Umbrellas, 1965
Gouache on paper
Terry and Bob Edwards
Parallel to his sculptural practice, and expanding upon early work in illustration, brush drawing,
and painting, Calder started creating paintings in gouache during a yearlong stay in Aix-enProvence in 1953 and would continue to work in that medium throughout his life. Painting
quickly, he transcribed the vocabulary of his sculpture into a medium far more immediate than
the large-scale works in sheet metal produced simultaneously. Adapting certain aspects of his
sculptures relating to their angularity and kineticism, the gouaches present a synthesis of these
geometric forms with more earthly, representational subjects.