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Publication

Notable Acquisitions, 1983–1984

Each year Notable Acquisitions is published as an adjunct to the Annual Report. Whereas the Annual Report provides extensive coverage on the activities of most Museum departments, with a complete list of new accessions, Notable Acquisitions is intended to single out those works that we deem notable, quite literally, and that merit fuller explanatory texts. It is understandable but no less regrettable, therefore, that in some years, owing to the paucity of the Metropolitan's acquisitions funds, certain departments can neither afford objects of real distinction nor even find themselves in the happy circumstances of receiving major gifts or bequests. In 1983–84, fate has dictated that several departments, which during other fiscal years could demonstrate support from loyal donors or draw on various funds for outstanding purchases, are not represented. Oddly, they are the three departments that deal with antiquity: Ancient Near Eastern Art, Greek and Roman Art, and Egyptian Art; all, ironically, have been in the limelight within the past eighteen months as a result of major installations of their permanent collections. Occasionally, the acquisition of a very few objects or even of a single extraordinary one completely exhausts the Museum's financial resources. The superb Saint John on Patmos by Hans Baldung Grien, illustrated on the cover of this publication, falls into this category. That the picture should have preempted other possible purchases we readily forgive, so important is it to the Museum's holdings of German paintings, to which it adds a wholly new dimension. This was understood by an impressive number of magnanimous friends, whose names appear on the label so that they might be acknowledged by viewers of the picture, each of whom will undoubtedly derive benefit and enjoyment from it. Brooke Astor, counted among the donors of the Baldung Grien painting, is also linked to the purchase of an exceptional, indeed unique, helmet, a sallet that was allegedly forged, gilded, and enameled for Boabdil, the last Nasrid king of Granada, toward the end of the fifteenth century. The Museum acquired the work from the armory of Lord Astor of Hever, and we are most grateful to The Vincent Astor Foundation for its generous funding. The Cloisters Fund enabled the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters to purchase fifty-two delicately painted playing cards—the earliest known complete set—dating from the late fifteenth century, as well as a precious, exquisitely wrought saltcellar made in France in the mid-thirteenth century. Although The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection was accessioned in 1982, objects from it appear in this issue of Notable Acquisitions, as only now has it been comprehensively photographed, studied, published, and installed. Full due to this magnificent gift is given both in the Annual Report and in individual entries here. The entire collection is reproduced in the catalogue published by the Museum in June 1984 to coincide with the opening of The Jack and Belle Linsky Galleries.

Publication

Notable Acquisitions, 1981–1982

The cover of this year's Notable Acquisitions celebrates the work of Peter Paul Rubens, one of those rare figures in the history of art who completely dominate their age. In his oeuvre, "Rubens molded life with the clay of optimism and reproduced its fundamental rhythms in pictures of sheer brilliance, in which the whole process of his inventive genius, his exuberance, and love of life are transmitted in the brushwork; its daring, variety, and verve equal that of his subjects, creating a synthetic unity that is the triumph of Northern Baroque painting ... If Rubens's love of life can be seen even in the most somber historical and religious subjects, how much more clearly is it expressed in the numerous paintings of his alluring young wife, Helena ... These paintings exude uncommon warmth and richness; they are Rubens's most intimate creations, unabashed manifestations of the tenderness, joy, and serenity that marked the last years of his life." I wrote these words fifteen years ago in a small monograph on Rubens. At the time the Metropolitan Museum owned neither a family group nor a self-portrait by the artist. That one of his supreme and most personal works in this genre, a painting of truly princely provenance—the dukes of Marlborough, the Rothschilds, and most recently Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman—should now enter the collection is cause for jubilation. Judging from the knot of visitors this picture regularly attracts, I can safely say that Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment, and Their Son Peter Paul, arguably the greatest work by the artist in the United States, is already one of the most popular paintings in the Museum.

Publication

Notable Acquisitions, 1984–1985

Once again, as in recent years, generous donors and patrons are mainly responsible for the Museum's acquisitions of major art works in 1984–85. The Metropolitan's own unrestricted purchase funds have been so outdistanced by soaring prices for works of art during the last decade that without the magnanimity and generosity of the Museum's friends, this year's group of new acquisitions would be of minor importance. 1984–85 was the year of twentieth-century art in regard to notable acquisitions. One bequest in this area is so large and so significant that it dominates all the Museum's other acquisitions for the year. Scofield Thayer, the pioneer collector of modern art and editor in chief of The Dial, a magazine of arts and letters founded in 1919, bequeathed to the Metropolitan his entire collection of more than five hundred works of art, a collection he formed between 1919 and 1924. The Dial provided a distinguished forum for avant-garde writers and critics—among them, e. e. cummings, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and Virginia Woolf—as well as furnished its pages for the reproduction of the works of art that Thayer specifically acquired for publication in his magazine. The Scofield Thayer bequest includes a constellation of thirty-eight works on paper by Egon Schiele, three prints and four paintings by Henri Matisse, twenty-three paintings and works on paper by Pablo Picasso, and thirty-five sculptures and drawings by Gaston Lachaise. Other remarkable acquisitions in the field of twentieth-century art entered the Museum's collection in the past year. Heinz Berggruen, the foremost collector of the art of Paul Klee, one of the most original and influential artists of this century, gave to the Museum ninety paintings and drawings by that artist, three of which are reproduced in this publication. The Berggruen gift has provided the Metropolitan with a group of Klee's works that is not a random selection but is, rather, an exceptionally informed, sensitive, and varied whole, representing Klee at every stage of his career and at his very best. The discernment of another collector strongly manifests itself in the nine important paintings and works on paper by Willem de Kooning—four of which are published herein—that were acquired by a combination of gift and purchase from the estate of Thomas B. Hess, the former Consultative Chairman of the Department of Twentieth-Century Art at the Metropolitan and a distinguished connoisseur of this artist's oeuvre. Many individual sculptures given to the Museum during the past year are deserving of special notice. A cluster of Rodin bronzes was given to the Metropolitan by B. Gerald Cantor, a collector who has devoted years of his life to the study of Rodin's art and whose benefaction has enriched the Museum's extensive holdings by this great French sculptor. An important work by the noted English sculptor Anthony Caro, entitled Odalisque, was given by GFI/Knoll International Foundation. In another area, Alice Heeramaneck, who remains a great friend of this institution, presented us with a superb Mughal nephrite-hilted dagger, which ranks among the finest of its kind. As on so many occasions in recent years, it would be impossible to write a foreword to this publication without thanking Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, whose gifts this past year have greatly enriched the quality and range of the Metropolitan's collection of European seventeenth-century paintings. In addition to two large and powerful Italian Baroque masterpieces—Guercino's Samson Captured by the Philistines and Domenichino's late and commanding altarpiece The Assumption of the Virgin with Saints Nicholas of Myra and Anne—the Wrightsmans presented to the Museum a work of poetic character, entitled Clothing the Naked, by the Flemish painter Michiel Sweerts, whose works are rare indeed, and Eustache Le Sueur's The Rape of Tamar. The Le Sueur canvas handsomely closes a gap in the Museum's holdings that we were made keenly aware of at the time of the exhibition France in the Golden Age: Seventeenth-Century French Paintings in American Collections, when a painting by that artist owned by the Art Institute of Chicago was chosen for the cover of the French edition of the catalogue.

Publication

Arms and Armor: Notable Acquisitions, 1991–2002

This publication chronicles more than a decade of collecting by the Department of Arms and Armor at the Metropolitan Museum. The refurbished galleries in The Pierpont Morgan Wing opened in 1991 with a new presentation of about eleven hundred of the finest pieces from the Museum's encyclopedic collection, and since that time the department's holdings have continued to grow, with more than one hundred and fifty items added by purchase, gift, or bequest. This volume includes 58 of the most notable acquisitions. Many are remarkable for their diversity and extraordinary quality, condition, and beauty, and some for their artistic or historic importance, while others fill gaps or serve as documents, adding to the knowledge of this field of study.

Publication

Nomadic Art of the Eastern Eurasian Steppes: The Eugene V. Thaw and Other Notable New York Collections

Four thousand years ago a remarkable culture, that of the pastoral nomads, emerged in the Eurasian steppes north of the Great Wall of China, in the vast expanse of grasslands that stretches from Siberia into Central Europe. By the first millennium B.C., material prosperity among the nomads had brought about a flowering of creativity and the evolution of a new artistic vocabulary. The pastoral peoples left no written record, but the artifacts that remain provide a key to understanding their culture and beliefs. Beautifully crafted and highly sophisticated and abstract in design, these objects are visual representations of the natural and supernatural worlds that guided their lives. An equestrian people, the nomads produced many objects associated with horses and the paraphernalia of riding. These were embellished primarily with animal motifs. The figures that populate these small objects—ibex and hedgehogs, deer and camels, griffins and dragons—at time exhibit violence and aggression, at times an appealing charm, but always spirit and vitality. This "animal style" would remain a significant source of inspiration in the decorative arts of the Eurasian continent for centuries to come. The artistic exchange between the pastoral peoples and their settled Chinese neighbors through trade, migration, marriage alliances, and warfare contributed to the cultural development of both groups. This book chronicles that exchange and tells of the legacy of their art, with iconographic analyses and detailed descriptions of nearly two hundred artifacts. The objects, a recent gift to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, are drawn from the distinguished collection of Eugene V. Thaw, with additional works selected from other New York collections and from the holdings of the Metropolitan Museum.

Publication

The Robert Lehman Collection, Volume XV: European and Asian Decorative Arts

This highly anticipated volume completes the comprehensive series, a model of its kind, cataloguing the extraordinary diverse holdings in the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum. Presented here are more than four hundred works in the decorative arts dating from antiquity to the twentieth century and ranging from intricately enameled watches (one was once owned by King Louis XIV) and exquisitely painted and jeweled snuffboxes to monumentally carved wood wedding chests, originating throughout Europe and Asia. Highlights include a superb seventeenth-century oval-shaped watch decorated with enamels by the master Susanne de Court of Limoges; a dazzling domed cup supported by a carved aragonite figure of a bearded Turk, replete with jewels and precious stones, crafted in early eighteenth-century Germany; and a French secrétaire from the 1780s set with painted enamels from the famed Sèvres Manufactory. Foremost scholars provide expert analyses of the works of art, including notable reassessments of Renaissance jewelry and furniture. In-depth discussions, many elucidated by new photography, constitute a fitting finale to this venerable series documenting one of the most distinguished privately assembled art collections in the United States. Provenance information, exhibition histories, and references are provided, and selected comparative illustrations are incorporated. The volume also includes a bibliography and an index.

Publication

The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, watercolors, and drawings constitutes one of the most remarkable gifts ever made to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. A centerpiece of the Museum's world-renowned holdings of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art, the Annenberg Collection reflects the discriminating taste, generosity, and inspired foresight of two exceptional benefactors. This revised and expanded edition of the original catalogue, published two decades ago, presents more than fifty masterworks by eighteen of the greatest artists of the period. Notable for the astonishing quality of its individual works and for its range, the collection celebrates the many facets of avant-garde art as it unfolded in paintings ranging from Corot's fresh-faced young girl of the early 1860s to Picasso's world-weary harlequin of 1905. The landscape of France is seen in alluring variety: sunlit garden scenes by the Impressionists and iconic vistas of Provence by Van Gogh and Cézanne join seaside views by Seurat and Braque in which Pointillist calculation gives way to riotous Fauve color. The scope of the artists' devotion to still life and flower painting embraces the exquisite harmonics of Fantin-Latour's fine-tuned bouquets as well as the bold grandeur of Monet's late water lilies. Other signature subjects are handsomely represented by works that showcase Degas's dancers and milliners, Renoir's rosy nudes, Gauguin's Tahitians, Lautrec's streetwalkers, Matisse's odalisques, and Vuillard's domestic interiors. Among the numerous highlights are such benchmark pictures as Cézanne's early portrait or his Uncle Dominique. Renoir's Daughters of Catulle Mendes, Monet's Camille Monet on a Garden Bench, Van Gogh's La Berceuse, and Picasso's At the Lapin Agile. This richly illustrated and fully documented volume includes in-depth discussions of each of the works of art, written by leading experts in the field. Their insightful texts, benefiting from the latest scholarly and technical findings, are accompanied by newly updated provenance information, exhibition histories, and references. A comprehensive bibliography and index are provided at the back of the book.

Publication

Kimono Style: Edo Traditions to Modern Design, The John C. Weber Collection

Japan’s engagement with Western clothing, culture, and art in the mid-nineteenth century transformed the traditional kimono and began a cross-cultural sartorial dialogue that continues to this day. This publication explores the kimono’s fascinating modern history and its notable influence on Western fashion. Initially signaling the wearer’s social position, marital status, age, and wealth, older kimono designs gave way to the demands of modernized and democratized twentieth-century lifestyles as well as the preferences of the emancipated “new woman.” Conversely, inspiration from the kimono’s silhouette liberated Western designers such as Paul Poiret and Madeline Vionnet from traditional European tailoring. Juxtaposing never-before-published Japanese textiles from the John C. Weber Collection with Western couture, this book places the kimono on the stage of global fashion history.

Publication

Raphael to Renoir: Drawings from the Collection of Jean Bonna

Lovers of European drawing will take delight in this beautifully illustrated volume of 120 drawings that cover some 500 years of art history and represent a diversity of artistic schools in Italy, Northern Europe, France, and Great Britain. They were selected from the notable collection of Jean Bonna of Geneva, Switzerland, and they highlight the rich quality and diversity of the Bonna Collection. The drawings are as varied in their range of subject matter as they are in medium and artistic style, and they encompass fine examples by both major masters and less well-known artists. Narrative scenes, religious subjects, studies of the human figure, formal and informal portraits, animal and nature studies, landscapes, cityscapes, and seascapes predominate in the collection. The catalogue begins with such Italian artists as Andrea del Sarto, Raphael, Palma Il Giovane, Ludovico and Annibale Carracci, Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, and Giandomenico Tiepolo. The Northern European artists include the Master of the Farm Landscapes, Jacob Jordaens, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Lambert Doomer. Eighteenth-century accomplishments in French art are exemplified in exceptional works by Claude Lorrain, Pierre Puget, Charles Le Brun, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Pierre-Adrien Pâris, Jean-Siméon Chardin, and François Boucher. From the nineteenth century, there are emblematic works by such varied artists as Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, Théodore Gericault, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Odilon Redon, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat. Although many of the drawings in Jean Bonna's collection have previously been published and exhibited, the quality and scope of his holdings have not been explored so fully until this publication and the exhibition it accompanies. The works from the Bonna Collection are illustrated in color, and whenever possible, at their actual sizes. They are arranged chronologically by the artist's date of birth and are grouped according to the main artistic schools. This volume is introduced by an interview with Jean Bonna by George Goldner, Drue Heinz Chairman of the Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each drawing is then described in an entry, many of which have comparative illustrations that shed further light on individual works. The entries were written by the curators of the Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the curator of the Bonna Collection; and well-known specialists in their respective fields.

Publication

Japanese Bamboo Art: The Abbey Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v.74, no. 4 (Spring, 2017)

Bamboo is present in nearly every aspect of traditional Japanese life, yet Japanese bamboo art, with its refined beauty and technical sophistication, has been little known in the West until recent years. This publication provides an overdue introduction to these exquisite works, which represent a cultural tradition stretching back hundreds of years. The works illustrated and discussed are exceptional for their broad representation of many notable bamboo masters, and highlight key stages in the modern history of Japanese bamboo art.