Visit to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

I visited the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute  over the weekend and was very impressed with their collection of American and European art from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. There were fantastic paintings by Monet, Remington, Pissaro, Sergent, and Homer. What I really fell in love with was the Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931) collection. The Clark has the largest collection of Boldini paintings in America. His paintings at the Clark were mostly small, but done with an impressionist style that was intricate, colorful, painterly, and vibrant. He painted landscape and street life in Paris where he lived and was famous for his portraits as well.

Portrait of Mrs. Howard Johnston by Giovanni Boldini.
Sterling Clark settled in Paris and began collecting works of art, an interest he inherited from his parents. When he married Francine Clary in 1919, she joined him in what quickly became a shared passion. Together they created a remarkable collection of paintings, silver, sculpture, porcelain, drawings, and prints with complete reliance on their own judgments and tastes. In 1950 the Clarks founded the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute as a permanent home for their collection, and the museum first opened to the public in 1955. Since its conception, the Institute has had a dual mission as both a museum and a center for research and higher education. It is in this spirit that the Clark has expanded over the last five decades to become the influential institution it is today.

A variety of special exhibitions is offered throughout the year, bringing together works from collections around the world and presenting them in intelligent, enlightening, and visually appealing installations. Recent exhibitions have included Dove/O'Keefe: Circles of Influence; Toulouse-Lautrec and Paris; Like Breath on Glass: Whistler, Inness, and the Art of Painting Softly; The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings; Gainsborough, Constable, and Turner: The Manton Collection; Consuming Passion: Fragonard's Allegories of Love; and Remington Looking West.

The current exhibit is of John Constable, including works by his son, Lional. Coming in November, Albreckt Durer, the German Renaissance painter and printmaker. I highly recommend that you see this collection and their regular collection.

Picture courtesy of Artrenewal.com.

Thomas Eakins - A Favorite of Mine

Thomas Eakins is an artist that I admire greatly for his individuality and his devotion to his art. He studied anatomy vigorously and taught his students that understanding anatomy and the movement of the body is paramount to learning how to draw and paint the human figure. His portraits were a departure from the traditional romanticized portraits of his era and before. They vibrate with emotion, the personality of the sitter is apparent immediately. His use of color and light is so striking. He was very concerned with accuracy and tried to instill this on his students. I like his realistic style, though I am more of a modern impressionist painter. Eakins also pioneered using photography with his work and studied the movement of the body using photography. What I am most impressed with, however, is his devotion to working from life. I included some examples of his work here.

Max Schmitt in Single Scull

Miss Amelia Van Buren