#Worcester Art Museum

[arthistoryanimalia]

#WatercolorWednesday:

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925)

Muddy Alligators, 1917

Watercolor over graphite on paper

H 34.3 cm (13.5 in) x W 52.1 cm (20.5 in)

Worcester Art Museum 1917.86

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Ancient Egyptian stele (painted wood) showing a certain Ankh-auf-Mut adoring the seated deity Osiris. Artist unknown; Third Intermediate Period. Now in the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA.

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Right Gauntlet for King Philip of Spain (1527-1598), Worcester Art Museum.

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The Pregnant Woman, 1931 — Otto Dix

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US Authorities Seize $5M Looted Ancient Roman Bust From Massachusetts Museum

A bronze bust believed to depict the daughter of an ancient Roman emperor has been seized from an art museum in Massachusetts by New York authorities investigating antiquities stolen from Turkey

A bronze bust believed to depict the daughter of an ancient Roman emperor has been seized from an art museum in Massachusetts by New York authorities investigating antiquities stolen from Turkey.

The seizure is the latest in an ongoing investigation into a smuggling network involving objects looted from Bubon in southwestern Turkey and trafficked through Manhattan. A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg did not provide further details of the investigation.

The bust known as “Portrait of a Lady” was acquired in 1966 by the Worcester Art Museum about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of Boston. The seizure comes weeks after the Manhattan district attorney's office seized a statue thought to portray the Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius from a Cleveland, Ohio, museum.

Worcester Art Museum officials said in a statement that the bust taken from their possession dates from A.D. 160 to 180 and is believed to be a life-sized portrayal of a daughter of Marcus Aurelius or another Roman emperor, Septimius Severus.

Museum officials said they had “limited information” about the bust's history when they acquired it nearly six decades ago.

“We are very thankful for the new information provided to us,” said Matthias Waschek, the museum's director. “The ethical standards applicable to museums are much changed since the 1960s, and the Museum is committed to managing its collection consistent with modern ethical standards.”

The bust shows a young woman with a heavy-lidded gaze and hair carefully combed into waves.

Marcus Aurelius ruled as Roman emperor from A.D. 161 to 180 and was a Stoic philosopher whose “Meditations” have been studied over the centuries. Septimius Severus' reign from A.D. 193 to 211 was marked by his efforts to convert the government into a military monarchy.

Turkey first made claims about the Marcus Aurelius statue in 2012 when it released a list of nearly two dozen objects in the Cleveland museum’s collection that it said had been looted from Bubon and other locations. Museum officials said at the time that Turkey had provided no hard evidence of looting.

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2nd crookbarrow etching, drypoint.

[faithandarisadventures]

Voyager by Nevena Prijic November 5, 2023 Worcester Art Museum Worcester, Massachusetts

[nuanimistdatabase]

Artist Chip Koser carves a windmill from a block of ice.

[longlistshort]

(Frank Weston Benson, “Natalie”, 1917, Oil on canvas)

(Childe Hassam, “Gathering Flowers in a French Garden”, 1888, Oil on canvas)

(Luther Emerson Van Gorder, “In the Park”, before 1894, Oil on canvas)

Tampa Museum of Art’s current exhibition, Frontiers of Impressionism: Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum, features paintings by American and European impressionists and is a lovely reminder of the extraordinary works these artists created during this time period. The enduring popularity of the impressionists throughout the years makes sense when walking among these paintings. The use of color and brush work, as well as the details and beauty of the subject matter (not to mention the wealth and comfort often depicted)- make the viewer feel like they are being transported through time to the artist’s idyllic world.

From the museum-

In 2024, the term “impressionism” celebrates its 150th anniversary. Such a significant occasion inspires reflection on the profound impact that a relatively small group of artists in Paris made by positing a new mode of painting: one that favored painting outdoors over in a studio, immediacy over planning, the everyday over the grand, and the fleeting over the eternal. In doing so, the impressionists upended centuries of traditions in European art. This exhibition explores the radical impulses behind impressionism and its seemingly endless adaptability, as artists from around the world came to Paris to study and returned to their homelands, assimilating what they had absorbed and propelling the movement further.

The Worcester Art Museum pioneered new artistic horizons by embracing impressionism early in its history. The French and American impressionism collections at the Worcester Art Museum have long drawn visitors to the galleries. The first directors purchased works by Monet from his Parisian dealer, Durand-Ruel, as well as directly from American impressionists, making the Museum one of the first in the United States to collect impressionism actively as contemporary art. Over the past 125 years, this collection has grown, encapsulating the story of the movement’s roots and emergence in France and its subsequent expansion to the United States, Germany, Scandinavia, and beyond. Highlighting more than 30 artists, including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, and Max Slevogt, this exhibition demonstrates impressionism’s international allure, captured in subjects as far-flung as Monet’s famed Giverny lily pond to the natural wonders of the Grand Canyon.

Below are a few more selections from the show.

Max Slevogt, “Selbstbildnis im Garten (A Self-Portrait in the Garden at Godgramstein), 1910, Oil on canvas

Lovis Corinth, “Vordem Spiegel (At the Mirror)”, 1912, Oil on canvas

Thomas Cole, “View on the Arno, near Florence”, 1837, Oil on canvas

Paul Signac, “Golfe Juan”, 1896, Oil on canvas

John Singer Sargent, “Katherine Chase Pratt”, 1890, Oil on canvas

About the unfinished painting above (from the museum)-

A successful society portraitist, Sargent painted the elite from his international social circles. In June 1890, Sargent visited Worcester, Massachusetts, where he was inundated by requests for portraits. The sitter’s father, Frederick Pratt, a noted collector and eventual acting director of the Worcester Art Museum (1908 and 1917), became friends with the artist and invited him to return a few months later to paint his daughter, Katherine- although the idea for Katherine’s portrait originated in Sargent’s first trip to Worcester, when he had made a sketch of hydrangeas. Sargent’s vision of Katherine against a backdrop of flowers, however, proved less than satisfactory for his client and he abandoned the painting for another, more formal depiction. As an unfinished work, this painting reveals the immediacy of Sargent’s process, with careful attention to broad swaths of color and patterns in the brushwork to convey flower petals or folds of clothing.

This exhibition will be on view until 1/7/2024.

[markashtonlund]

Current Exhibitions

At the MFA in Boston. One of Monet’s Water Lilies. Those who follow this blog know my fondness for museums. My particular favorites are maritime, aerospace, and military museums. Exploring the great battleships of yesterday (Battleship Cove), the history of flight (New England Air Museum), and military history (American Heritage Museum), those types of museums never disappoint. Of course, with…

[arthistoryanimalia]

#ManuscriptMonday:

Ambassadors of the Egyptian Sultan al-Nasir Faraj ibn Barquq Present their Gifts of Tribute, Including a #Giraffe, to Timur in 1404.

illustration from Zafarnama by Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdishiraz, 1436

Worcester Art Museum 1935.26

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Holy Family, 1964 — Reginald Adolphus Gammon

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The Floating World: Masterpieces of Edo Japan from the Worcester Art Museum

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Chess Players by James Northcote

[faithandarisadventures]

WAMS History Board November 5, 2023 Worcester Art Museum Worcester, Massachusetts

[nuanimistdatabase]

Vassily Kandinsky

Russian, 1866-1944

Untitled, No. 629, 1936

Oil on canvas

Gift from the Estate of Mrs. Aldus Chapin Higgins, 1970.123

A founding member of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) and later a professor at the Bauhaus, Kandinsky was pivotal to German and Russian avant-garde art in the early 1900s. His treatise of 1912, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, advanced an aesthetic theory that assigned spiritual and emotional characteristics to colors and forms. Juxtaposing warm yellows and cold blues, for example, could produce corresponding "inner vibrations" in a person's soul.

Kandinsky painted this work in his later years in Paris, following his emigration from Germany after the rise of Nazism. Here, he invents new, fantastical forms that float freely in a space, liberated from the laws of gravity, interacting dynamically and playfully.