JMW Turner in Buenos Ares moves on to Santiago! From September 26 of 2018 to February 17 of 2019, the National Museum of Fine Arts in B.A. staged an extraordinary exhibition of 85 watercolors which I was fortunate to view by British Romantic, Joseph Mallord William Turner.  Brought from the Tate Collection in London which contains 30,000 of Turner’s works (bequeathed by Turner after his death in 1850), the exhibition presents a detailed chronology of Turner’s life and artistic output as one of Britain’s greatest watercolorists.

From the age of 10, Turner was drawing the outdoors and by the age of 14, he was studying in the workshop of Thomas Malton where he began painting precise topographical studies of urban vistas in watercolors that would gain him early admission into the Royal Academy.  After studying under Sir Joshua Reynolds at the Academy, at the age of 18, Turner opens his own studio gallery and studies the collection of Thomas Monro which inspires him to experiment with watercolors and gouaches to produce atmospheric compositions.

Although he would occasionally paint in oil (with his first oil on canvas being exhibited in 1796 at the Royal Academy), Turner would favor watercolors which would be the source of his renown and financial success.  His career would span nearly 60 years and would produce works ranging from his early architectural works like the Cathedral of Durham shown here to magnificent and abstracted light-filled orchestrations of color that would capture the attention of art lovers for centuries.

From 1798 onward, Turner would receive many commissions in England to paint the estates of the wealthy and in 1802, he would travel to the continent for the first time and spend time in Paris studying paintings at the Louvre.  Two years later, he would open his own gallery in London for annual solo shows and for 30 years from 1807-1837, he would also serve as a professor at the Royal Academy.

In 1819, at 44, he travels to Italy visiting Rome, Naples and Venice.  His watercolors of Venice which explore masterfully light and reflections on the water will eventually become some of his most famous works.  In 1840, Turner makes his third and final visit to Venice which inspires him to produce a number of Venetian lagoon paintings that dissolve the unique architecture in washes of color that were called magical.

In 1845, in his 70s, Turner makes his final Continental tour through Normandy’s coast where he continues to experiment with the colors of sunrise and the reflections of rain on the stormy seas. Five years later, at the age of 75 (1850), Turner holds his last exhibition at the Royal Academy and dies the following year in 1851 in London where he is buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral next to his famous teacher Sir Joshua Reynolds.

The exhibition is now showing at the Centro Cultural de la Moneda in Santiago, Chile through July 28, 2019.

Shannon Robinson is the curator and chairperson of the biannual exhibition Windows to the Divine and the annual events by Collectors for Connoisseurship (most recently April 12-14, 2018 in Denver and May 23-26 in Paris).

More about Shannon…

On a road trip through Utah last week, we were stunned at the singular and sweeping panoramic vistas and geological rock formations of the national parks in Utah such as Arches National Park, Canyonlands, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Bryce Canyon. Given the breathtaking views around every corner, it became clear to us why Utah attracts so many artists and tourists.

Not surprisingly, the dramatic and spectacular natural wonders of Utah were the setting for the 2018 Escalante Arts Festival which was held from September 21 to September 30th. Motoring down the famed Scenic Byway 12 which was bursting with color from the miles and miles of towering Aspen trees, and then holding our breaths as we traversed the narrow Hogsback with its steep canyons on both sides of the road, we could not help but gasp in continual awe of the divine breath that sparked such marvels of nature. Along the way, we were also inspired by the Escalante Festival artists who were painting en plein air between Capitol Reef and Escalante. Connecting and conversing casually with artists as they paint outdoors is always a pleasure, but even more so in such scenery. If you have not made this trip yet, make it a priority and consider timing your visit with this annual festival which has been held for 15 years.

Such feasts for the eyes continued as we drove through Bryce Canyon National Park with its incredible and distinctive pinkish white and orange “hoodoos”– geological rock formations resulting from river and lake bed erosion and weather. 

Turning northward, we were greeted with more visual delights as we toured the artist studio of Ron Richmond whose works have been exhibited in many of our national Windows to the Divine exhibitions. With his M.F.A. and B.F.A. from Brigham Young University, Richmond’s classical training has served him well over his 20-years as an exceptional painter of contemporary realism. 

Rich in symbolism, Richmond explains that his objects and figures explore the relationship of opposites such as “light and darkness, the living and the decaying, order and chaos, sin and redemption, the ethereal and the concrete.” Historian, Josh Probert compared Richmond’s juxtaposition of planes of color in his work to the color field paintings of Mark Rothko to the extent Richmond has the “ambition to ground deeper meaning of aesthetics through the accession of pure form” and “seems to occupy a certain niche wherein formal properties, combined with only slight references to narratives or (religious) principles, invite potential narratives to manifest themselves.”

As noted by writer Geoff Wichert in 15bytes, Richmond has found “a way to make art that is at once visually magical and yet substantial in content and meaning.”

Richmond’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and in London. Corporate collections include Saks Fifth Avenue, Credit Suisse, Continental Airlines and Omni Hotels.

Shannon Robinson is the curator and chairperson of the biannual exhibition Windows to the Divine and the annual events by Collectors for Connoisseurship (most recently April 12-14, 2018 in Denver and May 23-26 in Paris).

More about Shannon…

During our recent C4C trip to Paris, we were able to view the historic retrospective exhibition being held from March 29^th to July 23^rd at the Louvre Museum featuring 180 works by one of the titans of French painting—Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). The last major retrospective was held in Paris in 1963 on the 100^th anniversary of the painter’s death. 

While Delacroix is universally celebrated as the leading proponent of the “Romanticism” movement of the 1800’s this exhibition does not focus on the age-old debates about the competing 19^th century “isms” and how his work did or did not qualify as “romantic,” but rather, invites the viewer to learn more about the artists’ character, his multi-faceted interests and the inspirations behind his successful 40-year career. 

Two of the most striking observations about his character and interests are that he was extremely ambitious, entrepreneurial and successful at a young age and was a dedicated writer as well as painter. Writing was a regular activity for him as he wrote brilliant letters to friends, penned articles attacking art critics and wrote the “Journal” that was an important account of himself and his life. The writings of others were also strong influences on him and his work, including Byron, Goethe and Shakespeare (with the latter two being the sources of many lithographs produced by Delacroix in the late 1820’s). Indeed, rather than surrounding himself with his fellow artists, Delacroix’ passion for literature as well as music lead him to develop relationships with writers such as Alexandre Dumas and George Sand and the composer Frederic Chopin. And while he preferred the company of such friends, Delacroix also appreciated the importance of cultivating relationships that would further his career which is why he frequented salons and was even a member of the Paris City Council.

As the youngest child of a bourgeois family of the Napoleonic empire (his father was an ambassador and prefect and his brother, a general and baron) that was financially ruined and left him an orphan at the age of 17, Delacroix had a driving need for fame and glory which he sought to achieve through his painting. In his youth, at the age of 26, he achieved acclaim for his masterful contemporary history painting, The Massacre at Chios (1821 Greek revolt against Ottoman Empire occupation), which Delacroix painted in 1824 and exhibited in the Salon that year (building on the earlier success of The Barque of Dante exhibited in the Salon of 1822). And nearly two centuries later, when the 21^st century viewer stands in front of this monumental (4 meters in height) breathtaking depiction of the massacre of twenty thousand men, women and children, it is no wonder that the work received so much attention and praise by writers of the day such as Baudelaire who was so moved by its powerful portrayal of the barbarism of man. 

Having established himself as a prominent and successful French painter, Delacroix turned his attention away from history paintings. Inspired by the landscapes of John Constable and portraits by Thomas Lawrence, in 1825, he traveled to England and thereafter began experimenting with compositions that combined the lesser painting genres such as portraits or still life with a landscape as well as animal scenes that were given the gravitas of a portrait such as Young Tiger Playing with its Mother. 

In 1827, having achieved so much success, and inspired by Lord Byron’s poem of 1821 about the slaying of all of the possessions (wives, pages, horses and dogs) of the Assyrian King Sardanapalus prior to his own suicide, Delacroix abandoned any need to embrace classical and moral conventions and focused on the surface (gleaming skin and shimmering fabrics) of the canvas rather than its structure and anatomical accuracy by painting The Death of Sardanapalus. While the drama, emotion and opulence of the painting firmly established Delacroix as a “romantic” painter, the writhing orgiastic figures were considered scandalous and were subsequently rejected by the Salon.

After his successful iconic painting of the more acceptable Liberty Leading the People (shown above on opening wall of exhibition and hung in the Salon of 1831) which depicted the 1830 revolt by the people of Paris, Delacroix sought new inspiration during his 1832 travels to Morocco. There, he became enthralled with the colorful and exotic scenes of contemporary Moroccan society that were more akin to reenactments of classical history than the urban scenes that were now becoming the subject of the realist movement in France. Unlike The Death of Sardanapalus, as noted in this exhibition, with works such as the Women of Algiers in their Apartment, which he exhibited at the Salon of 1834, Delacroix was “able to explore the decorative force of his painting without depending on drama and passion.” 

Indeed, seeing so many of these Moroccan inspired decorative works in one exhibition was noteworthy. It was also interesting to examine his albums of drawings and notes which inspired Delacroix to paint over 72 paintings based on Morocco over the remainder of his life.

In conclusion, the exhibit curators summarized: “Delacroix’s oeuvre, which retained its coherence despite its successive changes, seems best defined by a quest for singularity and a belief in the expressive power of painting, rather than by the elusive term ‘Romanticism’.”

Shannon Robinson is the curator and chairperson of the biannual exhibition Windows to the Divine and the annual events by Collectors for Connoisseurship (most recently April 12-14, 2018 in Denver and May 23-26 in Paris).

More about Shannon…

While many Western art enthusiasts of the works of Vincent Van Gogh are well aware of the artist’s fascination with the art and culture of Japan, and the particular clamor for all things Japanese that was the rage in Paris in the late 18^th century (“Japonisme”), we may not be aware of the ongoing love affair by the Japanese for all things Van Gogh.  This past week, on the day before the exhibition closed in Tokyo, I found myself sandwiched in a crowd of hundreds of Japanese museum goers waiting patiently for admission to the Van Gogh & Japan exhibition staged at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The ambitious exhibition not only included 40 works by Van Gogh on loan from private collections and museums (Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam made key loans such as well-known works, The Sower (1888) and The Bedroom (1888)), but also included some of Van Gogh’s ukiyo-e prints from his own collection which make evident the Japanese influence on Van Gogh’s work (notably his cropping of images, lack of horizon, use of diagonals and strong colors and reverence for the importance of nature and its spirituality) as seen in the exhibition work, Les Alyscamps shown below.

Notably, the exhibition contained many passionate quotations by Van Gogh regarding his keen admiration of the Japanese approach to art and life equating the culture to an artistic utopia particularly with respect to its fraternity amongst artists (which he sought unsuccessfully to replicate in Arles with artists such as Gauguin). Ironically, although Van Gogh never traveled to his beloved Japan, it would be the Japanese who would make pilgrimages to Arles (as evidenced by the guestbooks filled with the names of Japanese artists who visited the home of Paul Gachet Jr., the son of Van Gogh’s doctor that were on loan from the Musée Guimet in Paris) and whose works as shown in the exhibition would be so influenced by Van Gogh.

If you missed it and will be in Europe this Spring, the exhibition will travel to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam for its final showing from March 23^rd to June 24^th.

 

Shannon Robinson is the curator and chairperson of the biennial exhibition Windows to the Divine (April 12-18, 2018) and the C4C Arts Weekends (Denver April 12-14 and Paris May 23-26 of 2018). More about Shannon…