Finally!! I Got to See Klimt's Judith II

This was a twenty-year epic struggle for me. Okay, I exaggerate -- but the twenty-year part is true.

Since the late 1990s I've been fortunate enough to view most of the important paintings by Gustav Klimt. But one eluded me. It was the second of his paintings dealing with the Biblical subject Judith beheading Holofernes.

The painting is housed in Venice's Ca' Pesaro museum located on the Grand Canal, but not close to the main tourist zones.

The first time I visited Venice, in the late 1990s, the museum was undergoing renovation and so the painting was inaccessible. My second visit was while on a bus tour with my late wife, and I could not fit visiting it due to all the tour group activities. I was on a cruise the third time I got to Venice. But arrival was delayed until early afternoon due to heavy fog, so I simply hung out in the tourist zone, having limited time available. About a week ago I arrived via another cruise ship and bought a one-day vaporetto pass that made getting to and from Ca' Pesaro easy. And, Happy Day!!, the painting was on display and not off on loan (unlikely, because it is perhaps the museum's most famous possession).

The image at the top of this post and most of those below were taken by me using an iPhone. Click on them to enlarge.

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Klimt's 1901 Judith I.

Image of Judith II (1909) found on the Internet.

As seen by my iPhone.

Lower part of painting featuring Holofernes.

Detail of Judith.

Seen at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

The tour bus arrived at the hotel soon enough for me to get my suitcase to my room and then quickly walk across town, arriving at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery about 35 minutes before its 5 p.m. closing. That gave me little time to check out the shop, get oriented to the somewhat confusing layout of the building, and still view some paintings of interest to me.

Below are some highlights from that short visit. Click on images to enlarge.

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The Departure of John and Sebastian Cabot from Bristol on Their First Voyage of Discovery, 1497 - by Ernest Board - 1906
I wrote about Board here, noting that this painting has interested my for a long time. It hangs in the entrance area of the museum and is covered by protective material that's reflective, preventing getting a decent photo of it. Seeing it in person was the main motivation for my visit.

The Delhi Durbar of 1903, The Governor's Procession or The State Entry - by Roderick MacKenzie - 1907
Directly opposite is this huge work depicting an aspect of the Empire at its zenith.

Detail of the above, photographed at the museum

Holidays - by Harry Watson - c. 1920

Detail of the above, photographed at the museum

The Mackerel Shawl - by Algernon Talmage - 1910
Its information plaque notes that Talmage mostly painted landscapes. Nevertheless, this is an eye-catching work.

Detail of the above, photographed at the museum

La belle dame sans merci - by Frank Dicksee - 1902

The Briar Rose - No. 3, The Garden Court (Bristol version) - by Edward Burne-Jones - c.1885-90
One of a series of four paintings crafted to fit in a room of the patron's house. It seems that Burne-Jones painted a second version of The Garden Court, as the museum does not have the original.

Above painting, photographed at the museum
The museum has above-average lighting, so my iPhone-based photos capture what I saw well. This painting was restored recently, so its colors are brighter than those in the previous, Web-based image of the Bristol painting.

The Guarded Bower - by Arthur Hughes - c. 1865
Hughes was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

Above painting photographed at the museum
It looks much better in its frame than in the previous, Interned-based image.

Ocean Liners: Speed and Style at the V&A

London's Victoria & Albert Museum has an exhibit titled "Ocean Liners: Speed and Style" that will be going on into June. Here is the V&S's web page for it, though it might disappear once the exhibit closes.

It's not a large exhibit, perhaps limited by the space available for such things, so I found it a bit over-priced at 18 pounds. But I found it enjoyable because the 1920s and 1930s have always fascinated me, and most of the items on display are from those times -- especially the 1930s.

Below are some photos I took when I was there in April.

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Collection of 1930s ocean liner furniture and décor.
Sadly, I neglected to take a documentation photo, so cannot tell you where the items originated.

Decorative relief, perhaps from the Queen Mary
Very Art Deco, and might have been from almost any new French, Italian or British liner, though the airplane looks like a British de Havilland Rapide (again, I failed to document the source).

Study for Normandie interior

Decorations from the Normandie

Display evocative of mid-1930s fashions for passengers in First Class ship sections. In the background is a repeating sequence from a contemporary movie. I must confess this gives me a strong sense of false-nostalgia.

Deck chair from unidentified (by me) ship

Now comes the Big Surprise -- for me, anyway. It's the model of the 1932 streamlined ocean liner designed by Norman Bel Geddes.

Establishment shot to provide sense of scale

Front quarter view

Rear quarter view

The Clark: A Fine Museum

Williamstown is in the northwest corner of Massachusetts. It is the home of Williams College, one of the so-called Little Ivies -- small, elite colleges in the Northeast that in some respects are comparable to the more famous Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Penn and so forth.

Also in Williamstown is the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, founded by Singer Sewing Machine heir Robert Sterling Clark. Its web page is here. A major part of the Institute is its museum which houses some outstanding paintings.

It happened that for more than four years I lived and worked in the Albany, New York area, about 45 miles west of Williamstown. During that time, I'd drive through Williamstown maybe three or four time a year. And never visited The Clark. That's because I was focusing on demography and my interest in art was at a comparatively low ebb. Moreover, I was still somewhat in the brainwashed-by-modernist-ideology zone and besides, not a fan of French Impressionism. So if I'd been informed about the Clark and its collection, it wouldn't have interested me.

In more recent times, I've become aware of what The Clark has. But by then I was living in Seattle and seldom got to the East Coast, let alone western Massachusetts. In September I finally arranged a trip to visit a number of art museums that I either hadn't seen before or hadn't visited in years. Which is how I got to The Clark at last.

Indeed, its collection is very good. Below are some of the paintings I saw. The images are pulled from The Clark's website and can be enlarged slightly.

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Fumée d'ambre gris - 1880 - John Singer Sargent
This is one of my very favorite Sargent paintings.

Nymphs and Satyr - 1873 - William Bouguereau
And this is my very favorite Bouguereau. So that Sargent and this Bouguereau made the visit well worth the effort. Below are some other paintings of interest.

Carolus Duran - 1879 - John Singer Sargent
Sargent studied under Duran, and painted this well-known portrait.

Self-Portrait - 1857-58 - Edgar Degas

Rouen Cathedral, The Façade in Sunlight - 1892-94 - Claude Monet
One of a large series featuring the cathedral at different times of day.

Waiting - c.1887 - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Not the usual sort of Lautrec work.

The Bridle Path, White Mountains - 1867 - Winslow Homer
Again, something different from what the artist is known for.

Crossing the Street - 1873-75 - Giovanni Boldini
Painted after Boldini moved to Paris, but before he developed his flashy, bold, portrait style.

Friends or Foes? (The Scout) - 1902-05 - Frederic Remington

Thomas Hart Benton's "America Today" Mural at the Met

When I was in New York City last year, my visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was rather hurried, so I didn't have time to track down Thomas Hart Benton's "America Today" mural, installed at the Met in 2014. This month, I had more time and found it.

The Met's website discusses America Today here, and here is a link to their publication dealing with the mural: very useful. I discussed Benton's early career here.

The mural was commissioned for the board room of The New School for Social Research's 1931 building designed by Joseph Urban. It was later purchased by Equitable, an insurance company in New York and displayed in linear fashion along a hallway. Then it was donated to the Met which restored it (with some difficulty: read the publication noted above) and displayed in a setting corresponding to the space of the New School boardroom where it initially appeared.

Below are a few photos I took, giving you an impression of how the mural is displayed at the Met. Not all panels are shown -- you can find plenty of images on the Internet. My purpose here is to remind you that the mural is there to be enjoyed when vising New York and the Met.

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When entering the gallery where America Today is housed, the panel Instruments of Power confronts you.

Panning to the right, we find Changing West.

Continuing to the right past Changing West are Midwest, Deep South, and City Activities with Subway.

Here is the door to enter the display.  At the left is City Activities with Subway.  Above the door is Outreaching Hands, and to the right is City Activities with Dance Hall.  To my mind, the City Activities panels are the most interesting of the lot.

Continuing the pan to the right, we have City Activities with Dance Hall, City Building, and Steel.  Farther to the right and not shown is Coal.

City Building, and Steel.

At detail from City Activities with Dance Hall. The woman with the red hat is Elizabeth England, Jackson Pollack's future sister-in-law. The woman at the lower left is Benton's wife Rita. Benton includes himself at the far right.

Sergei Bongart Paints Walser Greathouse

Sergei Bongart (1918-1985), emigré Ukrainian painter, had a successful career in America as an artist and teacher. His early training included a sound grounding in traditional painting, but he also was strongly influenced by Russians whose styles were Impressionism-derived. There is not a lot concerning Bongart on the internet, so this post of mine is about as good a place to start as any.

The present post features a Bongart painting that captured my interest at this exhibit at Seattle's Frye Museum. The exhibit showed a few examples of art acquired for the museum by each its various directors over the years since its establishment in the early 1950s to supplement the founding collection of Charles and Emma Frye. Many examples from the founding collection are always on display in accordance with the Fryes' wishes. The more recent acquisitions are less often seen, and I had never laid eyes on that Bongart.

The subject of Bongart's portrait is Walser Sly Greathouse who was executor of the Frye estate and when the museum they wished to establish was opened in 1952, Greathouse was its directer, a position he held until his death in 1966. The Bongart painting does not have a precise date, being classified as "circa 1966." So it likely was posthumous with regard to Greathouse. On the other hand, Bongart and the Frye were on very good terms, and 21 of his paintings have entered its collection since 1961. Five of these were acquired before Greathouse died, so Bongart knew him and didn't just create the portrait from photos and nothing else.

The Greathouse portrait by Bongart was acquired in 1967 in part using funds from friends of Greathouse, so it probably can be regarded as a commissioned work. It was painted on masonite using acrylic paints.

What caught my interest was the contrast between the sketchy, colorful setting and the subdued, traditionally painted face that, despite all the Bongart pyrotechnics, is the strong focus of the work.

Let's start with two examples of Bongart's style when painting people. First is the brightly done "Girl with Red Shawl" from around 1975.

And using a different color scheme is "Man with Turban" c. 1965.

A photographic portrait of Walser Greathouse made many years before his death. This and the following photo are from the Frye web site.

Greathouse showing paintings at the Frye Museum, perhaps around the time it was opened.

Bongart's portrait of Greathouse. The reds of the furniture are more intense than indicated here. Given such shocking brightness, one would expect this to distract from Greathouse. But no: The cool-colored (again coloring a bit distorted by the camera, grays being less obvious) head and face remain the painting's focus. A real tour-de-force by Bongart.

Detail showing Greathouse's face.  The rest of the painting, aside from his face and hands, is sketchy -- even the attire shown here.  So it is the comparative lack of sketchiness on the face that also attracts our attention.

A Bouguereau at the Meat Packers

The photo above was taken at the Frye meatpacking facility in Seattle's Georgetown neighborhood perhaps sometime around 1940. The reason why all those paintings are there is because they were overflow from the home of Charles Frye and his late wife Emma who had an extensive collection. The painting at the upper left is Dans le bois (also called "The Sisters") a late (1905) work by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) the prolific French painter whose works were not worth much when the photo was taken, but now can be bought at auction for more than a million dollars.

The packing plant was destroyed in 1943 when one of the three prototype XB-29 bombers experienced an engine fire and crashed into it. The entire crew was killed, including famed test pilot Eddie Allen, and more were killed in the plant. The Bouguereau was not destroyed, and perhaps there were no paintings there at the time. What was lost was documentation for the Frye collection. More about the crash and the Frye collection is here and here. Some background on the Frye Museum, where the collection now resides, is here.

The two photos above and the one following are excerpts from the Fry Museum web site. This photo shows part of the collection when it was housed in the Frye residence.

Another Frye residence photo. Here the Bouguereau can be seen in the corner next to a portrait of Mrs. Frye.

And here is that Bouguereau as captured by my camera June 11th of this year.