Raffaëlli Loan at the Getty
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| Jean-François Raffaëlli, Young Breton Girl with Clogs, 1877. Raj and Grace Dhawan |
The Getty Center Museum is showing a Young Breton Girl with Clogs by Italian/French realist Jean-François Raffaëlli. Recently rediscovered, the Young Breton Girl is a fragment of a life-size family portrait shown to acclaim at the 1877 Salon, The Family of Jean-Le-Boîteux, Peasants of Plougasnou. The latter, or most of it, is in the Musée d'Orsay. It has three and a half figures, one cut vertically in half, and is dated 1876.
The Young Breton Girl has a prominent signature and the date 1877. It is on loan to the Getty from the collection of Raj and Grace Dhawan.
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| Jean-François Raffaëlli, The Family of Jean-Le-Boîteux, Peasants of Plougasnou, 1876. Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
Degas admired Raffaëlli and invited him to show with the Impressionists in 1880 and 1881, a move that infuriated Monet. The uncompromising naturalism of the Breton portraits shows why Raffaëlli impressed Degas. The cropped figures seen in many of Degas' pictures have been attributed to his interest in Japanese prints and photography. But it's hard to imagine a starker cropping than the standing man in The Family of Jean-Le-Boîteaux.
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| Reconstruction of The Family of Jean-Le-Boîteaux by Carmen Rosenberg-Miller (Burlington Magazine, Sep. 2021) |
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| Massimo Stanzione, The Pentitent Magdalene, about 1620. Private collection, Los Angeles |
Also on view through the summer is a Botticelli Madonna of the Magnificat.
Comments
But the lone portrait background is sky-ish blue, the group's not.
The dividing line of the wall and floor in the lone portrait is vague and suffuse, the group's straight and clear.
Is there contemporaneous evidence (photo or document) that the original work contained at least 5 persons, including a young girl?
How do we account for the variance in the dates? That would mean the later one is apocryphal, right?
The Getty label says, "This recently rediscovered painting is a fragment of a life-size family portrait that Raffaëlli exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1877." As far as I can tell, Raffaëlli showed only one life-size family portrait at that Salon, The Family of Jean-Le-Boîtex. A quick Google search did not turn up any record of the painting's 1877 appearance or any mention of the "rediscovered" Young Breton Girl.
One guess is that the painting originally had 5 (or more) figures; for some reason Raffaëlli was unhappy with it and decided to cut it in two (like Manet with his Dead Toreador); later, the left-over Breton Girl was reworked as a stand-alone figure, resulting in a not-quite matching background and justifying the new signature and date. It's possible the cutting was early in the painting's evolution, before the 1877 Salon.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436076
And, interestingly, it has an L.A. connection. It was donated to the Met in 1959 by none other than Edward C. Carter, the man who later lavished LACMA with a gift of 50 stunning Dutch paintings from the 17th C.
I surmise his collecting interest changed from Baroque Italian painters to Baroque Dutch ones, to the Met's benefit.
See his taste for the Italian at...
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437745
Perhaps the separation occurred following the Salon.
The Getty's got some 'splainin to do.
How do we get them on the phone?
> a Botticelli Madonna of the Magnificat.
Don't ever recall seeing that blog entry, from only around 4 months ago.
To most people (including me), compared with hearing, say, "Degas" or "Michelangelo," the name "Jean-François Raffaëlli" or "Massimo Stanzione" will elicit a blank stare.
During any era, there's so much talent out there, it really does come down to creative-political-economic trends and the influence of gatekeepers.
In any field or skill, there are always versions of this (smh):
https://youtu.be/hli-9maxDjY?si=4KAJBM2f8rgYETpf
Skilled, gifted, talented people always make me feel like I have a bit of Downs Syndrome.
What are your thoughts on these artists' works? Are they undeserving of our attention because you may never have heard of them before?
I get a heads-up from Oxford when they drop a new issue of their Journal on the History of Collections. I don't subscribe but I read it occasionally at the Watson Library.
The latest issue has an interesting article titled "The art of rivalry: The Jules S. Bache collection, its formation and its donation to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1919–44." The author is Anne Hilker.
*
I raise this article because it illustrates how narrow-minded some museums and curators can be about what art they think is worthy.
*
The Met's permanent European paintings collection is flush with paintings with the credit line "The Jules Bache Collection" or "The Jules S. Bache Collection." And these paintings on display are good. Very good.
But based on my reading of the abstract, the Met rejected this collection when it was offered as a gift. The artists featured in the Bache Collection include...
Filippino Lippi
Goya
Vigee Le Brun
Hans Memling
Luca Signorelli
van Dyck
Velazquez
Carlo Crivelli
Titian
Watteau
Frans Hals
Rembrandt
Fragonard
Gerard David
Petrus Christus
Jacometto
etc., etc.
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OK, there are also plenty others of his pictures that are deemed "imitator"; "workshop"; "follower"; or "style of".
The point is dozens of legit masterpieces are with us here because Bache wanted them for us. The Met, not so much.
Read, below, the Oxford abstract and learn that, but for twists of fate and dire circumstances swirling outside the museum walls, the Met never would have accepted Bache’s gift, and New York would have been poorer as a result.
(cont'd)
The art of rivalry: The Jules S. Bache collection, its formation and its donation to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1919–44, by Anne Hilker
Oxford Journal of the History of Collections, Volume 36, Issue 2, July 2024, Pages 319–338
Published: 23 November 2023
In the years just before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the American banker and philanthropist Jules S. Bache (1861–1944) built a collection of European paintings and decorative art which, in the 1930s, was located at a crossroads in collecting practices and museum growth in the United States. His offer of the collection as a gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, made in 1936 on condition that it be separately named and housed, was at first rejected. He next opened his home to the public as a museum, burnishing his holdings with frequent exhibitions and publicity. In 1943 the Second World War forced Bache’s museum to close but brought the collection on loan to the Met, which had put its own masterworks into protective storage. Acquisition of Bache’s collection was now ‘imperative’, and the parties agreed on terms. At his death he contributed fifty-eight paintings together with items of sculpture, Georgian silver, enamel work, porcelain, tapestry, and furniture. Their transfer to the Met illustrates the competitive forces – personal, financial, institutional and geopolitical – that brought private collections to public museums in the USA before and during the years of global war.
LACMA for various reasons has ruffled the feathers of collectors of Japanese art (Joe Price) or European-decorative objects (Arthur Gilbert).
Going back much further, there is this example:
https://shop.getty.edu/products/hollywood-arensberg-avant-garde-collecting-in-midcentury-l-a-978-1606066669
> ...there’s none of that caricatured reflex
> we still see, that too-easy criticism that
> would make the Arensbergs sophisticates
> in a world of L.A. rubes. They note L.A.’s
> difficult relationship with modernist
> expression – fair enough – but they also
> take seriously the world the Arensbergs
> sought, and created, in their Los Angeles
> home.”
Also, when mentioning the way the political identity of a person will affect him or her, either positively or negatively (eg, author JK Rowling), the nature of a "New York City" (or "London," "Paris," etc) is analogous to a geographical version of a person adhering to the agreed-upon ideology.
Also, if no, did they ever consider [but then reject] L.A. as a permanent home for their collection?
A museum like LACMA didn't really exist. There were public galleries of art in pre-1965 LA, but they were combined with bones, fossils and other relics at LA's museum of natural history. Coincidentally enough, the incomplete Lucas museum is next to that same museum built in 1913, which in itself is not really all that long ago either.
https://www.artforum.com/features/collecting-in-los-angeles-213813/
^ LA has been an oddly late bloomer. But I guess it's better to eventually evolve to the next level than remain in lower gear, sort of similar to, say, a city of San Francisco or Seattle, etc.
In 1938 Walter Arensberg offered his collection to the Los Angeles County Museum (precursor of LACMA). The museum board turned it down on the grounds that avant-garde art would not be of interest to the general public.
Actors Vincent Price, Edward G. Robinson, and Fanny Brice pleaded with Arensberg to keep the collection in L.A., maybe at the (short-lived) Modern Institute of Art in Beverly Hills. In 1944 Arensberg donated the collection to UCLA—on the condition that the university build a museum to house it within five years. By 1947 it was clear that UCLA was letting the deadline pass, and the gift was revoked.
This triggered a nationwide search for a home for the collection. At various points UC Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Gallery were in the running. Arensberg settled on the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1950.
A few years later, the Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution branding modern art a "tool of the Kremlin."
Any lover of modern art must sojourn in Philadelphia to truly understand the field.
> that avant-garde art would not be of interest
> to the general public.
> A few years later, the Los Angeles City
> Council passed a resolution branding modern
> art a "tool of the Kremlin."
I didn't realize it was as ridiculously bad as that.
Poor judgment and foolish politicization annoy the hell out of me.
The 1940s-50s in LA were like a more absurd, unhinged version of Barry Munitz and the Getty in the 2000s or, more recently, Michael Govan (permanent collections should always rotate!!) and city officials in the 2020s. I also fully realize the 1960's-80's-era layout of LACMA really no longer cut it.
At in any time in LA's history: Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
The Getty gallery card could have been more thoughtfully expanded to give the viewer the reconstructed view from The Burlington article showing the entire family.
Educational opportunity lost.
Weren't you the same guy who suggested that if Mickalene Thomas were a white female she would NOT merit any curatorial attention?
As to the Arensberg's, the story of how their collection ended up at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is too complicated to fit your "gatekeeper" nonsense.
In this story, the artist plays the role of deal maker.
--- J. Garcin
I don't care for when people, instead of being judged based on their merit and talent, are judged based on their race, gender, sexuality, nationality, ideology, location/financial backslapping, etc.
As for the latter, I know that creative types, for reasons of opportunity (and to generate income) have long resided in certain areas of the US or certain sections of any nation, such as a Paris, London, Rome.
Various American artists who have been known to be cynical about [quote, unquote] capitalism have nonetheless gravitated towards a region associated with Wall Street and where lots of corporate dollars and money in general in the US are located.
But the story of the painting's fortunes in this century got stranger.
The painting was part of a general auction sale (lot 68) on March 13, 2020, at the SVV Farrando auction house in Paris. [see the link, below, for the catalog entry.] That auction house is a 20-minute cab ride from Orsay. The 64-million-croissant question is: Where was Orsay, and why didn't they buy this !?
Also, the lot estimate was a paltry EUR 4,000-5,000, and the sale result for the lot was only EUR 6,500. [Of course, "paltry" is a relative term: high if you're having problems paying the Con Ed; negligible if you're one likely to attend a Paris art auction.]
If The Burlington author herself didn't pick up the phone prior to the sale [no fault implied]and say, "Helluuuu, Orsay??," then surely, one would expect, the expert for old and modern paintings at SVV Farrando should have advised Orsay of this opportunity. Tragedy after tragedy of errors.
I don't know. Am I missing something?
Parisian art circles esteemed Raffaëlli during his lifetime, according to the author: "His paintings were regularly accepted for the Salon and commanded high prices." The author goes on: Raffaëlli's teacher, the very famous Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 – 1904), "advocated for [this painting] to be hung in a favourable location."
https://www.svvfarrando.com/en/lot/103484/11751188-jeanfrancois-raffaelli-1850192?search=&