Worcester, Massachusetts: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting

Worcester, Massachusetts: Seventeenth-Century Dutch PaintingAuthor(s): Christopher BrownSource: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 121, No. 921 (Dec., 1979), pp. 823+827-830Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/879794 .

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CURRENT AND FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS

Baltimore Museum of Art It is a safe rule that titles lengthen, as

the focus of a study narrows. The title of a current exhibition, Eighteenth Century Master Drawings from the Ashmolean just manages to fit on the spine of the catalogue. A taller book might have noted that these eighty-nine drawings lent by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, are divided among three schools only: England, France and Italy.

The advantage of such a carefully cir- cumscribed collection-show is that the viewer has the opportunity to peruse the holdings in a given field without having to trouble the curator for one solander box after another. However, considering the convenience of air travel to London and the bountiful natural light in the Drawings Department of the Ashmolean, as opposed to the peculiar itinerary of this exhibition and the scarcity of windows in American museums, the readers of THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE might be more in- clined to invest their dollars in transportation to Oxford, rather than to Baltimore, Minneapolis, Fort Worth or Cincinnati. 2

A list of the great draughtsmen of the eighteenth century would in large measure identify the masters represented in this selection - Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Gainsborough, Fuseli, Rowlandson, Piazzetta, Piranesi, Gan- dolfi, Canaletto, Guardi, for a

start--still, it seems curious that the host museums should have looked to Oxford for drawings from an epoch which has been collected in America with stupen- dous success. To name only the examples that come immediately to mind, incom- parable groups of drawings by Piazzetta, Watteau, Lancret and Boucher can be found as near as Chicago, by Piranesi at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, and by Tiepolo at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This is not to say that the Ashmolean collections of English, French, and Italian drawings of the eighteenth century are any less praiseworthy for their breadth and for the number of works of singular quality. In the present selection several of the English drawings, especially, stand out as landmarks in their authors' oeuvres. Gainsborough's large (48.8 by 30.4 cm) black chalk Study of a Woman, Seen from the Back (No.37) surprises by the forceful presence of the briskly retreating figure. A life study

(No.46) by Allan Ramsay of a nude in the classic pose of Venus tending to a thorn in her foot is delightfully piquant and much fresher than can be imagined from a photograph. A very great Romney is the Ashmolean Inferno (No.48), in which the artist has nearly blotted out the paper with bistre wash. His source for this dar- ing conception must have been Rem- brandt's cataclysmic The Three Crosses etching in its fourth state, where most of the plate has been obscured by long, cancelling strokes.

Among the Italian school a drawing acquired in 1977 with an attribution to Antonio Gionima (Bolognese, 1697-1753) can be identified as the study for a painting of Cleopatra Dissolving the Pearl (Private Collection, New York) (Figs. 77 & 78), here published for the first time. Comparison of the sketch in red chalk and the painting reveals some major revisions, e.g. the scene has been moved indoors to an unspecified chamber from out of the shadow of a Trajanic column and peristyle. The figures have become substantially weightier - this is a remarkably Baroque picture for its date --and the servant now eavesdrops less subtly. The New York painting has been plausibly attributed to Ercole Gra- ziana the younger (Bolognese, 1688-1765) by D. Stephen Pepper. However, the distinctions between the hands of Gra- ziani and Gionima can blur disconcer- tingly whenever Graziani, who usually works close to the manner of Lorenzo Pasinelli, strays close to the style of Giuseppe Maria Crespi, which always held Gionima in thrall. 3 The attribution of drawing and painting must remain open.

JOHN T. SPIKE

by Kenneth Garlick. 28pp. + 89 ills., (Interna- tional Exhibition Foundation, Washington, D.C.), soft cover, $12.50. 2 The exhibition opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art and will now travel to the Minneapolis In- stitute of Arts (until 30th December), the Kimbell Art Museum (18th January-2nd March, 1980), and finally to the Cincinnati Art Museum (15th March- 4th May).

3 For instance, a very similar composition ofJudith Presented to Holofernes (Minneapolis Institute of

Arts) was discussed as Graziani by Dwight C. Miller in the catalogue of the Chicago exhibition, 'Paint-

ings in Italy in the Eighteenth Century' (1970, No.55), but has recently been ascribed to Gionima by Renato Roli.

Worcester, Massachusetts: Seventeenth- Century Dutch Painting The exhibition Seventeenth- Century Dutch Painting : Raising the Curtain on New England Private Collections opened at the Worcester Art Museum on 15th September and ran until November 11th. James Welu, Associate Curator at the Museum, has assembled forty paintings from collections in New England, very few of which have been published before. All the genres of Dutch painting are represented, although history painting is scarce. The collectors of New England are clearly reluctant to decorate their walls with religious, mythological or classical scenes, preferring genre, landscape, portraiture, still-life, marine pain-

ting and church interiors. There are a number of surprises in the

exhibition. A prominent place is given to a severely-arranged, hard-edged but sumptuously coloured still-life by the obscure Leiden painter, Johannes Han- not (Cat. No. 9). As Welu remarks in his thorough catalogue, this is the largest and most important of Hannot's works. It also provided the organiser with his sub- title, for it includes an illusionistic curtain apparently raised to reveal lobster, salt-cellar et al, Another new name was that of Jan de Vos IV, a fellow Leidenaar, to whom Welt attributes a large-scale ex- tensive landscape of 1641 (37 Fig.80). Vos's guardian, he has discovered, was Pieter de Neyn and that painter's in- fluence is apparent in the free, draughtsmanlike technique as well as the motif of the gnarled tree on the left. More familiar painters are seen in unfamiliar guise: Eglon van der Neer, for example, as a landscapist (19). Houbraken tells us that van der Neer was an enthusiastic gardener and such is the precision with which he painted the flowers in this painting that Welu has been able to identify at least a dozen different species. Pieter Quast is immediately recognisable in An Elegant Company (28) of 1639 but the dry, stiff handling hardly prepares us for the broad treatment of his Peasants in an Interior (27), a scene which represents the Five Senses.

Outstanding loans to the exhibition include Gerrit Berckheyde's Church of St Cecilia, Cologne (2); Jan de Bray's Peni- tent Magdalen (4 Fig.82), which would seem to be a portrait, perhaps of the artist's third wife; the puzzling fragment of an allegory by Honthorst (Apollo can be seen in the top right hand corner but the exact subject is unclear), which had been overpainted to appear as the head of a smiling girl (11 Fig.83); Hendrick Pot's Scene in a Bordello (25 Fig.71); and a bizarre representation of the Cosmos (40 Fig.79) by that rare painter Dominicus van Wynen, whose Schildersbent name was Ascanius. Welu deliberately imposed on himself the self-denying ordinance that the paintings should either have not been published before or should be little- known. Inevitably this resulted in a sadly apparent absence of major painters. He is conscious of this and in his catalogue in- troduction expresses the pious hope that Egbert van der Poel and Rombout van Troyen will stand for Rembrandt and Claes Molenaer and Jan Wijnants for Jacob van Ruisdael. Jan Steen is however in the exhibition, represented by an at- tractive and well-preserved Tavern Scene (30), probably from the mid-1660s.

The catalogue is excellent. All the items are fully discussed and comparative illustrations used extensively. For the in- terpretation of genre paintings Welu relies heavily on the Tot Lering en Ver- maak catalogue (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1976), making pertinent use of related emblems. In certain cases Welu has made important original contribu- tions, for example in his discussion of Adriaen van de Venne's Kalis-Boud (33)

829



CURRENT AND FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS

and of the Ascanius (40). There are new archival findings published for the first time here, not just concerning Hannot and Vos, but also Jan de Bray, Rombout van Troyen (though Welu has missed Altena's article on the painter in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Vol. 84 [October 1974], p. 215ff) and Jan Vonck.

In a few cases the condition of the paintings is worrying: the Bakhuizen (1) has suffered badly, as has the Portrait of a Young Man by Cornelis van Haarlem (6). Of the Pieter Molyn, Welu writes that it is 'thinly painted' which may be the case. What is certain, however, is that the surface is severely abraded.

The Lady at her Dressing Table attributed to Frans van Mieris (15) is more likely to be by Jan van Mieris, and traces of a signature can be made out in. the right hand corner of Jan Vonck's Still-

Life with a Kingfisher (35). CHRISTOPHER BROWN

Jewelry - Ancient To Modern The Walters Arts Gallery, Baltimore.

Henry Walters was a discerning, rather than a mange-tout or a corner-one-field collector. This exhibition (13th October - 20th January) is based on the jewellery which he left to his native city with his private museum, supplemented by fur- ther family bequests, by judicious buying on the part of the curators (including purchases from Henry Brummer in 1942 of items ultimately going back to other parts of Henry Walters's collection), and some donations. It bears the stamp of a cultivated gentleman's taste of his genera- tion, and is extremely important in its emphasis on jewels as works of art rather than conspicuous consumption. It contains many distinguished and some unique pieces. Showing them together in one display has been a well-timed, but also a courageous act, for jewels are notoriously easy to keep in store, and reluctant to yield up their secrets to scholarly inquiry. The comprehensive, fully illustrated catalogue' has been compiled by the Director, Richard H. Randall Jr., resi- dent curators and an English art historian (for the important Renaissance section); the detailed entries are supplemented by an introductory essay for each period. Considering this major effort, it is ir- ritating to find so many minor slips, in proper names, in captions, in contradic- tory statements and dates,-- including Henry Walters's year of birth and reputed purchases after his death - in a volume of such significance especially in the fields where the collection is richest.

The exhibits are arranged in an agreeable sequence of small rooms; add- ed interest and variety are provided by associated objects, drawn from the museum's own splendid resources: an Etruscan statuette displaying its bangle;

painted jewels in the margin of an il- luminated Book of Hours; an eighteenth- century lady portrayed admiring a 'sulphur' from a cabinet of gems; Veronese's Contessa Porto toying with a golden marten's head above a cabinet containing just such a jewel. The objects range from Mesopotamian stone amulets to those of Henry Walters's own day. His earliest reputed purchase, in 1893, of a group of cylinder seals, is sadly not on show; yet it surely pointed the way to an abiding interest in engraved gems. In this taste he was fortunate in his day, for the first decade of the twentieth century saw the Newton-Robinson, the Guilhou and the Marlborough sales. Not surprisingly for his time, there are no island gems and few earlier than the classical Greek, but from the Hellenistic and Roman periods onwards they are conspicuously present in almost every section. It was therefore somewhat disconcerting to find another group of famous gems from the same pro- venances nestling among the classical collections of the museum itself and not removed to the exhibition.

One suspects that it was less the con- straints of the setting, than a wish for 'balance' which was responsible: for the later centuries are thinly represented. Henry Walters perhaps did not care for the niaiseries of nineteenth-century sen- timentality, though he did, appropriate- ly, patronise Giacinto Melillo, the reviver of 'archaeological' jewellery and engraved gems. The emphasis, despite any 'balanc- ing' effort, rests on the two periods when the goldsmith's and the glyptic arts were at their apogee: the arts of the ancients and the splendours of renaissance and mannerism. The riches of Etruscan gold work include the unique inscribed Daedalus bulla, the Greek, magnificent pendants and earrings, the Hellenistic, an important Hercules knot diadem - but each section has its 'stars': among them the inlaid Egyptian fish .pendant, the butterfly necklace from the South Russian Olbia treasure, the migration period horse trappings, an enamelled paternoster bead and a cameo-set reli- quary pendant, and Lalique's great Tiger Necklace. The renaissance and mannerist group, with its lavish series of enamelled pendants, contains among other treasures the Esterhazy Marriage Collar and the elaborate marten's head with its esoteric imagery. (Figs.84 & 86)

The remainder, from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, is here rightly subsumed under one heading, for, apart from another series of gems and Melillo's necklaces, it is scrappy; though it, too, has its pleasures, - several, like the delicious French 'sparklers' and some of Fabergd's less vulgar productions, possibly bought by Henry Walters more as ladies' fripperies, as perhaps was the preposterous Tiffany 'Iris Brooch' of American sapphires, measuring 91~ in- ches, - a fitting emblem of the age of Newport mansions and railroad fortunes (of which his was one) and one of his earliest purchases. It is pleasing to reflect that only a few years later he bought the

whole of Lalique's St Louis exhibition: these wonderfully imaginative creations form a fitting conclusion to this distinguished collection.

GERTRUD SEIDMANN

'Jewelry Ancient to Modern. Edited by Anne Garside. (Viking Press, New York), $35

Calendar Exhibitions, Events, Museum Publications, Acquisitions, Announcements, etc.

Berkeley, California, University Museum. To celebrate the centenary of Franz Marc's birth, the museum has gathered forty of his finest works in American collections, including Deer in the Forest and Blue Horses. Until February, after which the show goes on to Fort Worth and Min- neapolis.

Berlin, Nationalgalerie. Kirchner retrospective: a major reexamination of his work. Until January, then at the Haus der Kunst, Munich.

Budapest. Volume 51 of the Bulletin du Musge Hongrois des Beaux-Arts, 1978, has now ap- peared. It contains a reattribution to Pier Francesco Foschi of a copy after Andrea del Sar- to; a newly discovered work by Hendrick de Clerck; and a Concert by Wouter Crabeth, refer- red to by Benedict Nicolson in The International Caravaggesque Movement, but not previously illustrated.

Cardiff, National Museum of Wales. The sculpture of Wilhelm' Lehmbruck, shown at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art during the Edinburgh Festival, is now at Cardiff. If sometimes bland, the work has interesting reflec- tions of the great currents of European sculpture with which Lehmbruck came into contact. Until 20th January. Also at Cardiff, the Arts Council exhibition of drawings by John Everett Millais, until 16th December.

Chantilly, Mus&e Conde. The Madonna of Loreto in the Museum, long thought to be a copy after Raphael, has now been shown by Cecil Gould to be the original. Like the Julius II in the National Gallery, it bears a Borghese inventory number and was probably acquired by Scipione Borghese from Cardinal Sfondrato, who had removed both paintings, in more or less louche circumstances, from S. Maria del Popolo. The discovery is being marked by an exhibition organised by the Departement des Peintures of the Louvre. The arguments for reattribution are set out in the Departement's latest Dossier (No. 19) which ac- companies the exhibition. Until 15thJanuary.

Cincinnati Art Museum. Etchings by Jim Dine from the 60s and 70s, including thirteen self- portraits and the 'Thirty Bones of my Body'. Un- til 30th December.

Cleveland Ohio, Museum 'of Art. 'The Monet Triptych'. The museum's large canvas, Water Lilies, is temporarily reunited with the wings which originally flanked it, forming the cen-

trepiece of an exhibition of the museum's Monet holdings.

Edinburgh, National Gallery. 'Drawings by architects'. Until 24th December. Reviewed on p. 817.

Edinburgh, National Gallery. The catalogue of the Degas exhibition held during the Edinburgh Festival this year has been reprinted and is now available. The price is ?2.50.

Hamburg, Kunsthalle. An exhibition, largely documentary, to celebrate the life and work of Aby Warburg and reveal the scope of his interests and achievements. Until 6th January. Also at the Kunsthalle is an exhibition of Leonardo's Anatomical Drawings on loan from the Royal Library, Windsor. Until 16th December.

London, British Museum. 'The Century of Rubens and Rembrandt' - Dutch and Flemish seventeenth-century drawings from the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Until 13th January. Reviewed on p. 809.

London, Colnaghi's. English Drawings and Water- colouis from the eighteenth to the twentieth century: works by Lawrence, Reynolds, Turner, Wilkie and a dozen portrait and history studies by George Richmond. Until 20th December.

830



70. Minerva begsJupiter to save Ulysses, by Felice Giani. (Mus&e de Rouen). 71. Still life, here tentatively attributed to G. M. Crespi. 96 by 127 cm. (Museo Civico, Piacenza).

72. Minerva begsJupiter to save Ulysses, by Battista Ballanti Graziani. Stucco. (Palazzo Milzetti, Faenza).

73. Fair at Poggio a Caiano, by G. M. Crespi. (Mus~e de Caen).



79. Divine Cosmos, by Dominicus van Wynen. 48 by 31 cm. (Exh. Worcester Art Museum,

Mass.).

80. Panoramic Landscape, by Jan de Vos IV. Signed and dated 1641. Panel, 71.4 by 140.5 cm. (Exh. Worcester Art Museum, Mass.).

81. Scene in a Bordello, by Hendrick Pot. Signed. Panel, 35.5 by 41 cm. (Exh. Worcester Art Museum, Mass.):



82. The Penitent Magdalen, by Jan de Bray. Signed and dated 167(?). Panel, 72.6 by 56.2 cm. (Exh. Worcester Art Museum, Mass.).

83. Head of a smiling girl (fragment of an Allegory), by Gerrit van Honthorst. 42.5 by 35.1 cm. (Exh. Worcester Art Museum, Mass.).

84. Marten's head. Gold, enamels, rubies, pearls, Venice? 1550-60. (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore).

85. A group of Staffordshire soft paste porcelains, made by a company associated with Ralph Baddely and William Littler. (Exh. Stoke-on-Trent Museum). See Calendar.

86. Detail from The Esterhazy Marriage Collar. Gold, enamels, diamonds, rubies, emerald, paste pearls. South Germany or Hungary, early seventeenth century. (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore).



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Worcester, Massachusetts: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting