A Norwegian Visionary for the Getty
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| Peder Balke, North Cape, about 1850. Getty Museum |
Balke was largely forgotten until shows at the National Gallery (2014) and Metropolitan Museum (2019) revived interest in his work. The Getty picture shows North Cape, one of the northernmost points in Europe and now a tourist attraction accessible by car. Balke visited it under more difficult conditions in 1832. North Cape became Balke's Mont Sainte-Victoire, repeated in numerous variations from memory.
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| Peder Balke, The North Cape by Moonlight, 1848. Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| Detail of Getty North Cape |
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| Georges Lemmen, Young Woman Crocheting (Julie Lemmen), 1890-1891. J. Paul Getty Museum |
The Getty has also acquired an auction surprise by the little-known Belgian Neo-Impressionist Georges Lemmen. "Someone Just Made a Killing on This Obscure 19th-Century Painting" ran a May 2025 Artnet headline. They were speaking of Lemmen's 18-by-15 in. Young Woman Crocheting, auctioned by Sotheby's New York for $698,500. That was 10 times the high estimate. The picture has now turned up at the Getty, which says it purchased it from Gallery 19C.
Georges Lemmen (1865–1916) was a member of Les XX, the Belgian avant-garde group that included James Ensor and Fernand Khnopff. Each is prominently represented in the Getty collection. In 1887 Les XX showed Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte in Brussels. It came as a revelation to the group's artists, Lemmen included. He adopted a Pointillist style for two paintings of his sister Julie. The Getty picture (whose subject recalls Seurat's c. 1882 crayon drawing of his mother sewing, as well as precedents going back to Vermeer) was probably the first. The other, at the Art Institute of Chicago, is now displayed next to Seurat's masterpiece.
A Seurat painting has long eluded the Getty. Young Woman Crocheting thus becomes the museum' only painting in the Pointillist idiom. Lemmen was admired for his ability to create psychologically convincing portraits from dots. He created only a few such paintings before abandoning Pointillism for Art Nouveau.
Young Woman Crocheting is on view in gallery W205.
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| Georges Lemmen, Portrait of the Artist's Sister, 1891. Art Institute of Chicago |
Comments
For 20+ years I never left the Met without stopping to admire "An Eruption of Vesuvius," of 1824, by Johan Christian Dahl (Norwegian, 1788–1857). It was always credited on the gallery card as a long-term loan from a private collection. And I was always mortified that on my next visit I would see it gone.
Then, in 2019, the private collector, Christen Sveaas, gifted it and many other northern masterpieces that he owned to the Met, in celebration of the museum's 150th anniversary.
All good things come to those who wait..sometimes.
*
By the way, the credit line for the Met's own Peder Balke, "The North Cape by Moonlight," of 1848: Gift of Christen Sveaas, in celebration of the Museum's 150th Anniversary, 2019
As for the Lemmen, the one in the Getty seems more interesting than the one in the AIC.
Agreed. The sea in the Met's picture is at once more black and luminous than the Getty's one.
Re "Not sure if it means anything (either good or bad) that the Getty's work was owned by the Balke family until the end.":
It may be incidental. I'd be more likely to think it relevant if it were a family member's portrait or somesuch.
That indeed IS significant.
Its size is also considerably smaller than the Met's Balke "North Cape," oil on canvas, which is 24 x 33 in.
The Getty passed on Allen's Les Poseuses.
With these recent adds, the Getty seems to be bargain-shopping to round out the collection. If you are an aesthete or academic, these acquisitions make sense. If you are a tourist/casual, these acquisitions aren't going to motivate a return visit.
--- J. Garcin
Yes, I expect that the halcyon days of purchasing your Caravaggios and Velasquezes in the market, private or otherwise, are done.
Most people see a museum collection only once anyway, so LA can give folks a real look at what's out there. Then it's up to the viewers to decide that studying more important collections is worth their time and effort.
LA and countless other American collections play a key role in this regard.
The largest group purchase was the set of 14 drawings (inc. a Michelangelo and a Degas pastel) and a Watteau painting in 2017. The New York Times estimated the cost at over $100 million (over $136 million today).
In contrast, they're riding their brakes today.
No way to get ahead.
The history of LACMA is interesting because for over 50 years it has suffered from a series of poor choices or weak decisions, made by different directors, different staffers, different supporters.
In NYC, some of that has been evident for decades in the way its own building also now named for David Geffen, which is located in the city's center for the performing arts, has been handled. It was originally created not too many years before Brown's/Pereira's LACMA was constructed too.
"Rubes" regrettably exist throughout the world. Sooie, sooie. LOL.
Seven hundred million dollars’ worth of critical theory has landed on...Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, and it’s a pity, because the largest encyclopedic museum west of the Mississippi used to be there.
[The Geffen] pulses across LACMA’s huge campus, and when it gets to the hard stop of Wilshire Boulevard, it soars right over it. Get a bit closer and you realize this isn’t Tomorrowland.... In reality, it’s Soviet gray, all of it raw concrete. Did I miss a meeting? I sent my sister a picture of me inside the gallery...and she texted back: “Where are you? Leningrad?” [End quote]
^ LOL. Another review where the Govan/Zumthor containing too much gray concrete is pointed out. But that I can now live with---although not really. My main problem is now the Geffen Galleries have too many blank spaces. But the writer doesn't single that out. If she did, however, I didn't see it---the review is behind an ID-required wall. If she does share my main complaint, it would be the first time a review out of dozens does.
LACMA's director and staff (and history since 1965) have required a guest be very easygoing about a lack of professionalism.
Too many blank walls and barren floors in a museum leave the impression it has more space than objects to display in it. Which is really ridiculous since certain major works in LACMA's collection continue to gather dust in storage.
J. Garcin is correct. Govan and his staffers are rubes.
I asserted that YOU ARE A RUBE.
--- J. Garcin
> Govan/staffers are rubes
Actually, you claimed that people unhappy about Govan, Zumthor and/or the negative response of the Ahmanson Foundation towards them were rubes. But Govan/Zumthor and his supporters are just as much hicks as the others you point out are.
Sooie, sooie. lol.
Quite seriously, most directors, lots of staffers and others aligned with LACMA for decades have allowed some surprisingly un-professional things.
They've been hix from the stix.