Collections: European & American Art

Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Athena Scorning the Advances of Hephaestus
Paris Bordone

The Venetian painter Paris Bordone was an important mid-sixteenth century Mannerist artist. He received prestigious commissions from the Venetian government, wealthy merchants, and nobles. Like most Mannerists, he focused attention on beautiful compositions and elegant original poses in his work. Although the original patron and setting for Athena Scorning the Advances of Hephaestus is unknown, scholars suggest that it may have been part of a decorative mural cycle on the walls or ceiling of a Venetian house.

Although most scholars are now in agreement that the painting represents Athena and Hephaestus, other titles have been suggested in the past, including Thetis and Hephaestus and Aphrodite and Hephaestus. The most convincing source for the iconography of the painting is, however, the following account by Apollodorus:

Athena came to Hephaestus, desirous of fashioning arms. But he, being forsaken by Aphrodite, fell in love with Athena, and began to pursue her; but she fled. When he got near her with much ado (for he was lame), he attempted to embrace her; but she, being a chaste virgin, would not submit to him, and he ejaculated on the leg of the goddess. In disgust she wiped of the semen with wool and threw it to the ground; and as she fled, the ejaculate fell to the ground, and Erichthonius was produced.

If one assumes that the painting depicts this classical story, the prominent representation of the bare thigh of Athena fits well into the narrative. During the Renaissance, the story and image might have been interpreted as an allegory of the productive power of unrequited love.

[The faint image of an arm and a hand to the left of Hephaestus reflects a change in the original composition. Bordone later painted over the arm, but the surface has deteriorated slightly over time, leaving the arm visible.]

Paris Bordone
Italian-Venetian (1500-1571)
Athena Scorning the Advances of Hephaestus
ca. 1555-1560
Oil on canvas
(61.78)
(Kress Study Collection, K 1112)

River Scene with Ruined Tower
Jan Van Goyen

Jan van Goyen, the great seventeenth-century master of Dutch landscape painting, received his early training in his native Leyden and in Hoorn. In 1617 he completed his studies under his Haarlem master, Esaias van de Velde, whose landscape paintings had a lasting influence on the younger artist’s mature style. After fourteen years in Leyden, van Goyen moved in 1632 to The Hague where he painted for the remainder of his life. During the 1630s he developed a style characterized by tonal nuances of golden browns and grays. River Scene with Ruined Tower, of 1637, is a typical work of this period, representing an expansive river scene under a dark cloudy sky.

Bathing Nymphs
Johann von Halbig

At the age of seventeen Johann von Halbig became a student of Johann Ernst Mayers at the Polytechnikum in Munich where he became professor in 1846. During his lifetime he received many commissions for portrait busts, architectural decorations, and funerary monuments, most notably that of Maximilian II in 1856. Ludwig I of Bavaria invited him to do various decorative work. Examples of van Halbig's architectural decorations can be found on the portal of the Alte Pinakothek (1835), the north gate of the Munich Hofgarten (1840), the entrance to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (1841-1843), and the main portal of the Wittelsbach Palace (1848), to name a few.

A prolific sculptor, von Halbig created almost one thousand naturalistic portrait busts. Some were commissioned for the Hall of Fame at Walhalla, for the Maximilianeum in Munich, and for the Hall of Liberation near Kelheim. Although von Halbig created many public monuments with allegorical figures in marble and bronze, his commissions for private individuals were few.

Bathing Nymphs is a late manifestation of the Neoclassical style promulgated in Germany by Schadow, Rauch, and Schwanthaler. It was sent to an American patron.

Portrait of a Musician
Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, in 1889. After studying painting briefly in Chicago, he traveled to Paris and enrolled in the Académie Julien (1908-1911). He later claimed that in Paris he “wallowed in every cock-eyed ‘ism’ that came along.” The artist eventually decided that a representational style best expressed his aesthetic and social philosophy.

In the 1920s and 30s Benton became associated with the American Regionalist movement. Like his contemporaries, John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood, Benton often represented the everyday life of poor and rural people in the Midwest. While many critics labeled the Regionalists as provincial, the artists themselves often espoused progressive and populist ideals, celebrating the lives of working class people who were often ignored in the cultural centers of urban America.

The model for Portrait of a Musician was a jazz bassist who played in a Kansas City nightclub Benton frequented in the 1940s. The painter was interested on representing African-American culture in Missouri, and he particularly enjoyed drawing and painting jazz players and folk musicians. Sculptural forms, exaggerated gestures and undulating lines characterize Benton’s style, and here he repeats the curved shape of the bass in the rhythmic contours of the musician’s face, hands, and body. This repetition of forms becomes a visual metaphor for the jazz music the bassist plays.

Anten-nalope
Nam June Paik

Nam June Paik grew up in Seoul, Korea, moving to Tokyo in 1950 during the Korean War. After studying philosophy and music in Germany, he became involved in the Fluxus movement of the 1960s with George Maciunas, Joseph Beuys, John Cage, and others. Members of Fluxus organized “performances” that blurred the lines between art, theater, music, and vaudeville. Following the lead of Marcel Duchamp and the Dada artists of the 1910s and 20s, these avant-garde performers placed objects, animals, and people in unusual contexts and allowed their movements, actions, and reactions to contribute to the meaning of the works.

In the 1960s, Paik’s experience with Fluxus inspired him to become a pioneer of video art. For him, the kinetic television screen was one of the twentieth century’s most universal and enduring icons. For five decades, Paik has been celebrated for his television sculptures and installations.

Anten-nalope is part of a series of animal sculptures Paik designed in the 1990s. The assemblage is made from television cabinets, a vintage phonograph horn, an antique telephone mouthpiece, and other components. Paik was inspired by Neolithic cave paintings of animals, and the Anten-nalope encourages viewers to contemplate their relationship with nature in a technological age. Today many people are more familiar with animals on a video screen than they are with actual living creatures.

Works on Paper

Virgin and Child on a Crescent with a Diadem
Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer was the most innovative and influential printmaker of the German Renaissance. The son of a goldsmith, he probably learned engraving techniques from his father. The simplicity and monumentality of this small devotional image, modeled tonally with a complex series of hatched and crosshatched lines, illustrates Dürer’s mastery of the engraving techniques.

Dürer was a shrewd businessman, and he designed many of his prints to appeal to a broad audience. Here the artist represents the Virgin Mary as the “woman clothed in the sun,” described in the Book of Revelations. This subject was especially popular during the sixteenth century.

Albrecht Dürer
German (1471-1528)
Virgin and Child on a Crescent with a Diadem
1514
Engraving
(71.109)

David in Prayer
Rembrandt van Rijn

The son of a miller, Rembrandt van Rijn became one of Amsterdam’s most successful artists in the 1630s. While his paintings appealed to wealthy patrons, the artist also produced numerous prints that were affordable to members of the middle class. Rembrandt mastered the tonal qualities of etching, creating dramatic light effects and powerfully expressive images.

This print illustrates a story narrated in the second Book of Samuel in the Bible, in which King David prays for forgiveness after his adultery with Bathsheba and his involvement in the death of her husband. Rembrandt’s use of chiaroscuro (the dramatic contrast of lights and darks) creates a sense of emotional drama in this otherwise quiet scene.

Portrait of a Woman in a Riding Costume
Jean-Baptiste Isabey

The French artist Jean-Baptiste Isabey studied under the neoclassical master, Jacques-Louis David. His career in portraiture began in the late 1870s with commissions to paint the likenesses of Marie Antoinette and the Dukes of Angoulême and Berry. Isabey later became a well-known miniaturist, working under Napoleon and King Louis Philippe.

The Portrait of a Woman in a Riding Costume is a beautiful, highly finished work that reflects the newly elevated status of drawing in the eighteenth century. Although the name of the patron/patroness is unknown, the image was clearly designed to be displayed and admired. The woman pictured wears a mannish riding outfit that would have been seen as very modern in the late eighteenth century.

Femme portant un seau
(Woman Carrying a Water Bucket)
Pierre Auguste Renoir

Pierre Auguste Renoir is best known as one of the leading French impressionists of the nineteenth century. Celebrated for his ability to represent light-filled landscapes and energetic scenes of everyday life, Renoir is most famous as a painter. Late in his career, however, the artist devoted an increased attention to drawing, becoming interested in establishing a greater sense of structure and volume in his paintings. Renoir was especially influenced by the red chalk studies of the eighteenth-century French artist Jean-Antoine Watteau.

Femme portant un seau dates to around 1890, a crucial point in the development of Renoir’s late style. The artist used parallel and broken strokes to suggest flickering light and movement. His representation of the transient nature of visual experience is consistent with the Impressionist aesthetic, while his volumetric representation of form reflects his interest in classical draughtsmanship.

Sculpteurs, modèles et sculpture
(Sculptors, models and sculpture)
Pablo Picasso

Born in Málaga, Spain, Pablo Picasso received most of his early training in Barcelona before settling in Paris in 1900. He spent much of the first half of his career in the French capital city, where he worked as a painter, sculptor, and printmaker. This etching is plate 41 in the series “The Sculptor’s Studio” from the well-known Vollard Suite (a group of ninety-seven etchings produced between 1930 and 1936 and printed by Ambroise Vollard). During this period of his career, Picasso was interested in combining classicized linear drawing with abstract elements in his work.

Sculpteurs, modèles et sculpture represents two bearded males, (presumably the sculptors), a seated male figure (perhaps a model, a sculptor or a sculpture), a female figure looking through a window (a model?), and an abstract sculpture representing a woman. The grouping encourages viewers to contemplate the relationship between creator, creation, and model. It is not absolutely clear which figures are meant to represent “real” people, and which represent art objects. The fact that all the figures are ultimately Picasso’s creations adds to the image’s ambiguity.

Birth of Spring
Charles White

A Chicago native, Charles White was born in 1918, the son of working class parents. He participated in the “Chicago Renaissance,” a mid-western movement of the 1930s, 40s and 50s that, like the earlier “Harlem Renaissance,” was characterized by socially critical, cultural expressions by African Americans. In the late 1940s, White began to devote his attention to the creation of monumental finished drawings in charcoal, wash, and ink. His large drawings often took months to complete, and his imagery focused on the social and spiritual lives of African Americans.

The Birth of Spring was created in 1961, during the early years of the American Civil Rights movement. White did not use models, so the figure represents no specific individual. Instead, the drawing reflects the artist’s interest in images that appeal to the viewer’s spiritual and social consciousness. The woman’s somber face and weathered hands testify to a life of physical and emotional pain, yet she rises out of the darkness into the open space above. Historian Peter Clothier described the figure as an “ancestral presence” removed from time and place, existing somewhere between America and Africa.” White published a reproduction of Birth of Spring in a limited edition portfolio entitled Portfolio 10 (distributed in 1961 by Pro-Artis Publishing Company, Los Angeles). All the drawings reproduced in this portfolio represent optimistic images of African Americans. Titles in the series such as the Birth of Spring, Let the Light Enter, Awaken from the Unknowing, and Move on Up a Little Higher reflect the artist’s interest in the social progress of black people in America.