Carter Still Lifes at the Getty
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| Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, Bouquet of Flowers on a Ledge, 1619 |
LACMA has lent two more European paintings to the Getty Museum during construction of its new permanent collection building. Both are first-rate Dutch still lifes from the collection of Edward and Hannah Carter: Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder's Bouquet of Flowers on a Ledge and Adriaen Coorte's Still Life with Strawberries in a Wan-Li Bowl. The Bosschaert, painted on copper, is the still life innovator's most important work in a US museum, rivaled only by a similar composition of roses in a niche at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
The Coorte was the first to be "rediscovered" by 20th-century scholars, leading to a revival of the artist's reputation. It predates by 57 years Chardin's famous still life of strawberries, now the subject of an export battle between the Kimbell Art Museum and the Louvre.
Also on view at the Getty are LACMA paintings by Rosso Fiorentino, Hendrik Goltzius, Hals, Rembrandt, Michiel Sweerts, and Guido Reni.
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| Adriaen Coorte, Still Life with Strawberries in a Wan-Li Bowl, 1704 |
Comments
The deepest impression the collection left on me was a still life...
Jan van Huysum's (Dutch, 1682 - 1749) Vase of Flowers, of 1722
[acc. no. 82.PB.70].
To this day I still feel close to it, decades and a continent away.
Enjoy your time.
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103REY#full-artwork-details
Maybe when the concrete overpass is built and opened, confidence among benefactors in the value of LACMA will return.
Regardless, at least rare, high-quality artworks are still often up for sale and reasonably priced.
Good going, Michael and Board of Trustees!
Van Huysum [played a] pivotal role in the development of the flower and fruit still life. His luxuriant, curved bouquets reinvigorated the still-life genre and showed the influence of the French Rococo style, moving it away from the symmetrical arrangements of earlier painters such as Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621). By adjusting the still life to appeal to contemporary tastes, Van Huysum held a strategic position within the art market and continued to paint in the fine, precise manner made popular a century before by Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), the leader of the Leiden school of fijnschilders (fine-painters), a style that was still much sought after by collectors.
[Within] his oeuvre of 241 paintings, [h]is impressive arrangements could depict over 35 different types of flowers, which, before modern cultivation techniques, would never have been seen together at the same time of year. To overcome this, Van Huysum worked from sketches and painted some of his arrangements over two years, explaining why he signed his paintings with two dates.
Even longer ago, look at the way that ancient Egyptians built the massive structures known as the pyramids. No bulldozers, backhoes or cranes were required in their construction.
I appreciate the people of a society who strive to nurture, advance and protect that.
I don't appreciate people who now force a community to wonder whether window coverings will be polyester fabric or venetian shades.