Inside The Getty

Portrait of Thérèse, countess Clary AldringenJohn Singer Sargent, 1896.
Oil on canvas, 90 x 48 in. (228.6 x 121.9 cm).
Renée and Lloyd Greif, Los Angeles, California
Article here.

I wrote about the architecture of The Getty Center in my last post and the stunning Rembrandts a couple of posts before that. Today I will feature a few more of my personal favorites from The Getty Museum.

Stepping backwards in time, I begin with the John Singer Sargent's Portrait of Thérése, countess Clary Aldringen. Sargent's life-sized portrait stands tall and proud in the gallery.

Source: The Getty

His quick brushstrokes express the compelling presence of his statuesque subject.

Portrait of Thérèse, countess Clary AldringenJohn Singer Sargent, 1896.
Oil on canvas, 90 x 48 in. (228.6 x 121.9 cm).
Renée and Lloyd Greif, Los Angeles, California
Article here.

According to a Getty article the countess is portrayed here after she's had three children. I'm consoling myself by believing that she paid Sargent handsomely to shrink her waistline into an impossibly small hourglass.

Portrait of Thérèse, countess Clary AldringenJohn Singer Sargent, 1896.
Oil on canvas, 90 x 48 in. (228.6 x 121.9 cm).
Renée and Lloyd Greif, Los Angeles, California
Article here.

Since my love affair with Paul Cézanne started last fall, I continue to be inspired to see his work. In stark contrast to the regal presence of the Sargent portrait, Cézanne's melancholy pose for this young Italian woman does not convey an ounce of vanity. 

Young Italian Woman at a Table

Paul Cézanne, French, about 1895 - 1900

Oil on canvas,  36 1/8 x 28 7/8 in.

Description here.

I am in awe of Cézanne's commitment to understand the use of space on the canvas using the same familiar props over and over again. Above all, I was thrilled to see the budding spark of cubism in the background.

Still Life with Apples, Paul Cézanne  (1893 - 1894), French
Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 x 32 1/8 in.
Description here.

While Cézanne used his props as a constant to explore the use of space, Claude Monet studied the effects of light on the same landscape. He painted these haystacks at least thirty times as the seasons changed . The light  in this example is wondrous.

Wheatstacks, Snow Effect, Morning, Claude Monet

French, Giverny, 1891

Oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 39 1/4 in.

Description here.

A mere 75 kilometers away from Cézanne's Aix-en-Provence, Vincent Van Gogh painted Irises in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Each iris is captured as a portrait. One by one, each is expressed with its individual attitude, height, and angle. The strength of the explosive blues are given by the orange flowers in the background and the rust earth in the foreground. Can you imagine this painting without these essential reds? Of all the works of art I saw this day, the movement in this dynamic painting was the crescendo of the day.

 

Irises, Vincent van Gogh
Dutch, Saint-Rémy, France, 1889
Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 5/8 in.
Description here.

Stepping back more than one hundred years, I found Augustin Pajou's bust of an ideal female head. She is beautiful and demure with every hair in place.  She was designed as a model to ornament a balcony in Versaille. To see the companion sculpture, click here.

Ideal Female Head, Augustin Pajou (1769 - 1770 ) French
Terracotta on white marble socle
Description here.

Albert Cuyp paintings always get my attention because he is a household name in Amsterdam with a street, outdoor market, and even a supermarket chain named after him. His paintings always convey the essence of the Dutch low countries.

A View of the Maas at Dordrecht, Aelbert Cuyp

Dutch, Dordrecht, about 1645 - 1646

Oil on panel, 19 3/4 x 42 1/4 in.

Description here.

I can understand why Frans Hals is my mother's favorite Dutch portrait artist. The Getty Center and the Rijksmuseum jointly conserved these 400-year-old paintings with beautiful results.

Lucas de Clercq and Feyna van Steenkiste

Frans Hals, the Elder (c. 1580 – 26 August 1666), after conservation

Description here.

The oldest piece I include here is the soft pink glass and gold-leaf Pilgrim Flask from Murano.

Unknown
Italian, Murano, late 1400s or early 1500s
Free-blown colorless (slightly pink) glass with gold leaf, enamel, and applied decoration
14 13/16 x 7 7/8 in.
Description here.

I'm hoping, by posting this, that I will return to that extraordinary island before long. 

How I Brainwashed My Kids To Come To Art Museums With Me

The Night Watch,Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)

When my children were eight and five, we planned a trip to Europe. My daughter had not been there since she was two and this would be my son's first trip there. I was eager to show them where I came from and I wanted to share some of the same things I was exposed to when I was in elementary school in Amsterdam. I told my kids how once a week, fifth graders would take a field trip to the Rijksmuseum and a docent would give a lecture on one masterpiece. I also told them about our nervous snickering when once a nude was the subject of the week.



I set forth on my brainwashing mission six months prior to the trip. On our weekly trips to the Palo Alto Children's library, I started to toss children's art history and artist biography books in our basket. We read biographies of Rembrandt, da Vinci, and Monet and I brought out my coffee table books on Van Gogh and the Getty Museum. We solved jigsaw puzzles of Monet's water lilies and the Garden at Sainte-Adresse and played the Art Memo concentration game.








My son decided that Van Gogh was his favorite artist and my daughter was eager to visit Monet's garden at Giverny just like Linnea did.








Our first art stop was the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, our kids made a bee line for Rembrandt's Nightwatch. They wanted to see if they could discern where the canvas was repaired after a maniac slashed it in 1975. They wanted to see for themselves just how big it really was and they wanted to imagine the painting before it was cut off on all four sides in order to fit it between two columns. They mourned the fact that two characters were lost due to this unfortunate "cropping" of the painting.

Reproduction of original Nightwatch

When they chose to spend close to a half hour in front of this one painting, I had tears in my eyes, because I then knew my efforts paid off.

Photo by ijansch at Flickr

At the Louvre, they naturally wanted to see "Mona Lisa" like every one else, but there were hoards of people standing in front of them and they encapsulated poor Mona in a box since I last saw her making it nearly impossible to enjoy the painting. They didn't stay long and asked to see Vermeer's "Lacemaker". They couldn't get over how tiny it is, I had to pick my son up so he could see, and they were impressed with the minute details in the painting.

Photo by ijansch at Flickr

Throughout our trip, our read-aloud book every night was From the Mixed-Up Files from Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a book about a brother and sister who ran away from home to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Our children laughed with glee when the main characters crossed the velvet rope to sleep in a sixteenth century bed and they were curious to see a sarcophagus like the one where Claudia hid her violin “suitcase”.

I used Rick Steves' Mona Winks: Self-Guided Tours of Europe’s Top Museums for all practical information like museum hours, location, and for tips on getting the best deal on ticket prices. Steves’ hint to use the side entrance to the Louvre saved us precious time. The book does a very good job giving the lay of the land up front and then describes the most famous works of art within the walls of these museums. He gives a brief history of this hit parade of art with accompanying black and white thumbnail pictures. I followed his suggestion to break apart the book at the binding (this is very counter-intuitive if you are a publisher) and only carried relevant chapters with me.

We followed Steves' advice and went to the museum store first to choose everyone's favorite postcards of the artwork in the museum and used these as a basis for a treasure hunt. The last thing in the world my kids wanted to do was enter a museum and methodically stop at every painting. On the other hand, asking guards the location of a specific painting and running as quietly as possible through the halls was plain old fun. I learned that the key was to always remember to let them set the pace; I was happy they agreed to set foot in the museum in the first place.

Now, nine years later, my son still enjoys going to museums every few months, but my daughter, except for major exhibits like King Tut, prefers to go shopping with me.