What is the idea of a painter who wants to own the work of another painter? How is their collection different from that of museums and galleries? Who's Who's Love? Who is the love of almost all painters? To what extent was their own style influenced by their collection?
In the Commercial Press's new book, Art is an Adventure, follow the author as he dives into this extraordinary adventure and explores the passion of painters.
Author|Zeng Yan
The Commercial Press
Publication date|June 2024
The day after I arrived in London, I was just in time for the opening of the National Gallery's major exhibition, "The Painter's Painting: From Freud to Van Dyck". This is an annual exhibition that has been anticipated for a long time in 2016, and the National Gallery has been planning and preparing for it for four years. Among the more than eighty works are the collection of the bottom of the box, treasures borrowed from other museums and private collectors, and several paintings that are said to have disappeared from the public eye for two decades.
01
Start with Sigmund Freud
In the history of Chinese painting, the topic of "painter's painting" is actually not very special. In the tradition of Chinese literati, art appreciation has always paid attention to private collection and private appreciation, and handing over the collection is an important way to acquire calligraphy and painting and improve skills. Legend of the Northern Song Dynasty Li Gonglin, Mi Fu inscription of the "West Garden Collection" is the horse Wang Shu convened, although in history this collection is not real, but because of its spiritual significance so that the painters of the past generations repeatedly copied the painting. Most of the owners of the elegant collection are famous dignitaries or leaders of the literary and painting circles, and invite friends to the garden of the house, arrange wine and poetry, talk about books and paintings. If there are not a few collections worth seeing, how can the owner cope with such a scene? Therefore, it was common for a great painter to be a great collector at the same time, or to collect and paint well, which was common in ancient literati society.
Chinese art historians study the styles of calligraphers and painters in history, and they also have to discuss their collection context, such as Wen Zhengming, one of the "Four Masters of Wumen" in the Ming Dynasty, he and his descendants are great collectors. The hugely wealthy Xiang Yuanbian, whose family collected the Fubi royal family, and his descendants, such as Xiang Dechun and Xiang Shengmo, were also deeply nourished by the family's collection and became a generation of calligraphers and painters.
In the West, the situation is quite different. In Europe, the relationship between artists and churches has long been formed, and the role of churches in the dissemination of art is similar to that of modern public spaces. In the 18th century, a system of public museum collections began to take shape in Europe, which made the connection between artists and their private collections less obvious.
Although these accounts are sometimes found in the artist's biographies or solo exhibition materials, few studies have opened a period of art historical research through the intimate relationship between the artist and his paintings in the 20th century, from Lucian Freud and Matisse in the 20th century, all the way back to Degas in the late 19th century, and Frederic Lord Leighton and George Verdric in the mid-19th century Watts) and Lawrence (Sir Thomas Lawrence), 18th-century Reynolds (Sir Joshua Reynolds), and Van Dyck in the 17th century. By tracing the personal appreciation and collection of eight painters of different eras and styles, the exhibition sorts out the clues of the changes in European painting in the past three centuries in another way of viewing.
"Woman with a Hat", Matisse
The exhibition opens with paintings from the collection of British painter Lucian Freud. Sigmund Freud died in 2011 and offered to hand over Corot's painting "Italian Woman", which he had collected for ten years, to the National Gallery. Freud has a large collection of famous paintings, including Degas and Cézanne during the French Impressionists in the late 19th century, Constable in England in the 18th and 19th centuries, and his contemporaries Bacon and Frank Auerbach. But Corot's portrait of the Italian Woman remains one of the most fascinating in the exhibition.
The curator, Gabriele Finaldi, revealed that the idea for the entire exhibition of "The Painter's Painting" actually originated from Freud's donation. When the National Gallery finally welcomed Italian Woman to the museum in 2012, those who witnessed the original were amazed at how extraordinary it was.
Often considered to be the representative of the 19th-century Fontainebleau School in France, collectors covet his landscape paintings, but this collection of Freud shows that Corot's figure paintings are also so simple and perfect. According to curator Anne Robbins, Floyd bought it at an auction in 2001, and Corot's expression of the figure's volume and surprisingly rough brushstrokes impressed him too much to let go. When The Italian Woman was brought home, Freud placed it in the room on the top floor, as opposed to Auerbach's paintings and Degas's sculptures, which he could see every day in bed.
"Italian Woman", Corot
"For a painter, owning a painting means living with it at the deepest level and having an intimate, extremely intense creative dialogue in the process." Anne Robbins writes in the foreword to the exhibition. Because of the story brought by Freud and The Italian Woman, she thought of doing a warehouse inventory to see how many of the paintings in the collection, like The Italian Woman, had belonged to the private collections of great painters before entering the museum, or had been recommended by the painter to the museum. The list is surprising to see that there are more than 70 paintings that meet the above two selection criteria, most of which were once owned by the masters.
02
Fanatical Degas
There are eight exhibition halls of "Painter's Paintings", and the most avid collector is probably Degas. In the National Gallery's collection, there are at least fourteen paintings from Degas's private collection, not counting the seven of his own paintings that he kept in his possession during his lifetime and did not want to sell. Almost all of the collection came from an auction in Paris in 1918, when Degas's collection was put on sale just a year after his death.
In the gallery, along with Degas's paintings, there are also some old photographs of the original furnishings of his living room, which give us a glimpse of some of Degas's life during his lifetime. Degas's acquisitions took place mainly in the 90s of the 19th century, and judging from the paintings that hang on the walls and surround him every day, Degas has a high level of taste and a wide vision. With the exception of a few early Old Masters, his preference was mainly for paintings from the first half of the 19th century, such as Ingres and Delacroix, and although they were rivals in their artistic views – one neoclassical, the other romantic, and the stylistically very different, both were loved by Degas.
Café Concert in Reshoffen, Manet
Paintings of contemporaries, he loved Manet and Cézanne. He also bought a lot of works by other Impressionists, but we can understand that in addition to love, there is also an element of friendship. In the Impressionist group, Degas was not active in gatherings. He attends events at cafes, but doesn't socialize with other people. First, the class gap is too large, he was born wealthy, has no food and clothing, and does not need to sell paintings for a living; Second, he was not an outsider in his view of painting, and he had little interest in depicting landscapes and light, so he rarely went to the suburbs of Paris or the south of France to sketch with other painters. But he will do his best to help his friends who live and create by selling paintings, especially those who are younger than himself, and the way to help them is to buy their works in the most difficult moments of their lives.
The Post-Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro once recalled Degas's kindness and care in helping artists who were short of money. He helped Gauguin and bought his paintings at exhibitions. There were also several Nabi painters, such as Maurice Denis, Paul Célussier, Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Viall, who treated them as if they were Gauguin.
There was a habit of exchanging works between painters, and several of Degas's paintings were also obtained, such as Mary Cassatt's "Girl with Combed Hair", which Degas bought in exchange for one of his pastel paintings, "Woman Bathing in a Basin," at the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition in 1886.
The Pied Boy, Manet
Degas had good relations with many of the art dealers in Paris, and as a result, he had repeatedly exchanged his paintings for other famous paintings in their possession without paying cash, usually by jointly estimating a price, and then leaving several of his own works of equal value. In 1895, Degas took a portrait of Delacroix, Baron Winter, from his agent Montegnac, in exchange for three pastels of his own, valued at 12,000 francs. He also has two of Manet's most important paintings, The Woman with the Cat, and the Execution of Emperor Massimiliano (fragment), which was previously forbidden from public display, both of which were exchanged for his own works. The famous work "The Execution of Emperor Massimiliano" has three versions, including oil painting and lithograph, among which the oil painting is missing after Manet's death. Degas wanted to get his friend's painting back. He first asked Worral, the agent of the vast exchange, to help him find two fragments, the central part of the original picture and the lower left half of Massimiliano's body in the lower left of the picture, and then persuaded the other party to continue to inquire, and finally bought back the other two pieces that were scattered. The large painting we see now at the National Gallery is made up of four pieces stitched together, and the group portrait of several gun-wielding soldiers in the center of the picture is almost complete.
A glance at the time of acquisition of these paintings shows that Degas was the most frenzied buyer of the Parisian art market in the last decade of the 19th century. His close friend, artist Albert Barthorome, wrote in a letter to another mutual friend: "Degas has been ...... Buy, buy. Every night he asked himself how he was going to pay the bills for the things he bought during the day, but the next morning, he started again. "People in the circle heard about Degas's fetishes, and some people had bad intentions and began to raise prices with him at auctions, because they knew that whatever Degas had his eye on, he would get it at any cost.
03
The changeable Matisse
More than one memoir mentions that Picasso and Matisse fell apart after 1910, but more than one Picasso painting can be seen in the Matisse collection on display as a personal gift. The relationship between the two great men is not so simple and crude, they are rivals, but they are also friends on some complex level.
In 1941, during the fall of Paris, after Matisse moved to Nice in the south of France, he gave a sketch of himself to Picasso in Paris to thank him for taking care of his property in the bank vault in Paris. A year later, as a reward, Lao Bi gave Lao Ma two cubist portraits of the same title, "Dora Mar". The two paintings have been hung by Matisse in his room at the Reggina Hotel, where he was renting, along with paintings by Cézanne, Degas and Gustave Courbet, which he owned during that time.
"Gong Lae", Picasso
Matisse's collecting habits are different from those of Freud and Degas mentioned above, and his vision and tastes are always changing. When he entered a new stylistic variation, he sought out different paintings, so his collection was small in number, because he rarely kept the collection for a long time, and he always traded frequently with brokers, and he was willing to sell the paintings he had once obtained at any cost, if he wanted to buy something new he liked, or just to make a profit.
Among the exhibits is a Gauguin work on loan from a private collector, Young Man with Flowers Behind His Ears, which Matisse bought from Worrah in 1900. At that time, Matisse did not have enough money, so he used installments to pay for it, and it is said that he also pawned a wedding ring for his wife. Gauguin's small painting depicts an indigenous friend he met on his first trip to Tahiti in 1891: a handsome young man with a white gardenia pinned to his ear, his brown skin, pink shirt, black bow tie, and a blue background behind him create rich layers.
Matisse was immediately fascinated by its colors and lines when he saw the painting, and after owning the painting, his paintings of that period were also influenced by it. But just eight years later, in 1908, he was already planning to sell the painting, which he had obtained in every possible way. Matisse tried to trade it for a languid portrait of Renoir, but that didn't happen. It wasn't until 1915 that he finally sold the painting.
"Young Man with Flowers Behind His Ears", Gauguin
Another story takes place in 1899. When Matisse first saw Cézanne's The Three Baths in Volar's gallery, he was immediately intrigued by Van Gogh's Aliscan Cemetery, which he had just paid for, and turned to The Three Baths Many years later, he moved to Nice, struggling to buy another painting for two hundred francs, which he and his wife had to pay for two hundred francs. Of course, the painting was later sold by Matisse, who was always eager to have his next piece.
In contrast, Degas's "Combing Hair" is one of Matisse's longest-preserved paintings. The piece itself has a bit of a story. In 1918, the National Gallery of England bought the painting from the Degas Collection auction in Paris, and later some experts in the museum found the quality of the painting to be rough and cleaned it out of the collection. Matisse bought the painting from an agent and kept it until 1936, when it was sold through his son's gallery in New York. Interestingly, the next home to buy it was the National Gallery, which was chosen by Kenneth Clark, the curator at the time.
In the eighteen years that Matisse owned the painting, he never talked about it, but experts at the National Gallery believe that Matisse's interior paintings in the twenties and thirties do not exclude being influenced by Degas's painting, such as the depiction of fabrics, the bold use of orange and red in the picture. In the exhibition, they display side by side a "Careless Reader" on loan from the Tate Modern in England, a 1919 work by Matisse. Around the same time, he collected Degas's "Combing Hair". The researchers point out that these two paintings show why one painter was eager to own the work of another painter and what influence Tibetan paintings had on their own paintings.
The Inattentive Reader, Matisse
"Combing Hair", Degas
Of course, there is no other Tibetan painting that can compare to the place in Matisse's mind as Cézanne's "Three Bathed Girls". It was a fundamental change in Matisse's art, allowing him to learn to "paint like sculptures", and this influence lasted for him for the rest of his life. In 1936, Matisse said, "I have owned this painting for thirty-seven years...... I found my faith and resilience. ”
04
The painter's fan complex
Ingres's oil painting "Ruggiero Saves Angelica" is Degas's favorite object and is also featured in the exhibition. The title of the painting is taken from the famous story written by the Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto in the 16th century.
In 1819, Ingres painted a large painting of the Louvre, but perhaps it was the literary subject matter of this grand scene that allowed him to show his prowess in painting the female nude, and he later painted several paintings of the same title. The painting, which Degas owned, was once in the private possession of Frederic Reiset, a close friend of Ingres. He was the head of the Louvre's Drawings and Paintings, and was a highly respected scholar of art history. After his death, his collection was auctioned, and Degas bought the long-admired painting at any cost.
Fascinated by Ingres and the subject, Degas later managed to acquire an identical drawing of Ingres, now in the Harvard University Museum. In the history of art, Degas's "Dancing Girl" is considered to have a kind of inheritance relationship with the great Ingres sketches, and it seems to be well founded.
Four Dancers, Degas
Degas was equally feverishly eager to have Delacroix's paintings. After Delacroix became famous at a young age, he stood almost directly on the opposite side of neoclassicism, represented by Ingres. At the 1855 Paris Exposition Universelle, he and Ingres each had a separate exhibition hall, a bit like a confrontation between Romanticism and Neoclassicism. And Degas, however, is a "diehard fan" of the two of them at the same time. When he began collecting, both masters were still alive, and he almost exhausted his contacts to find opportunities to acquire their works.
Degas acquired more than fifteen paintings of Delacroix in his lifetime alone, not to mention other pastels, drawings and drawings. The Baron Skient, which he exchanged for three of his pastel paintings, is one of Delacroix's most elegant full-length portraits. At home, Degas used to juxtapose the painting with Ingres's beautiful portraits, whether it was deliberate or not. Perhaps from the seemingly incompatible techniques and concepts of the two opponents, Degas just found what he wanted.
The final ending of Baron Smith is also dramatic, and in 1918, Degas's private collection was put up for auction for the Louvre in Paris for the Baron's portrait with the National Gallery, and the National Gallery of England was ultimately determined to win, perhaps with something to do with the painting's strong Anglo-Saxon flavor – Delacroix painted a playboy in Parisian social circles, but his dress and the garden behind him were completely British. There is also a storyline that Delacroix had always been fond of the portraits of the 19th-century English painter Thomas Lawrence, who made a special trip to London to visit Lawrence in 1825 and painted them when he returned to Paris.
This Sir Lawrence, admired by Delacroix, is also on the list of "painters' paintings". In the second half of the exhibition, he and two other British masters of classical painting, Watts and Reynolds, become the protagonists.
Perhaps because British painting in the 17th and 19th centuries was not comparable to that of continental European countries such as Italy, France, and the Netherlands, as a non-British audience, this part of the content is a little bland. The collections of several English painters were mostly biased towards Renaissance masters such as Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, or later Rembrandt of the Dutch School and Van Dyck of the Flemish School, all of whom were orthodox and infallible aristocratic tastes. Especially at the end of the exhibition, Van Dyck and his "Titian's Room" seem to be the closest thing to a collection story. After Van Dyck's death, it was discovered that his collection included nineteen Titian paintings, most of them magnificent portraits. These paintings played an important role in Van Dyck's life, both as the master copy he copied in his studio and as the capital of his time. In 1627, Marie de' Medici, regent of Louis XIII of France, visited Van Dyck's studio when she came to Antwerp and arranged a special visit to his "Titian Room", a collection of Titian's paintings.
Thus, Van Dyck's artistic life reached its peak in the eyes of his contemporaries: he shared glory with Titian. Everyone loves Titian, doesn't they?
(This article is partly based on the materials provided by the exhibitor for media interviews)
Author|Zeng Yan
The Commercial Press
Publication date|June 2024