museums and institutions:
Attributed works:
I. Rue Tournique Bourlique, by Jean Dubuffet. Signed and dated 63. Canvas, 71 by 91 cm. Bequest of William K. Jacobs Jr., 1991. 107.9. In the early 1960s Dubuffet coined - but did not define - the word l'Hourloupe to describe the style he was inventing, which would characterise in one way or another the work of his final twenty years. In these works he plays with the tension between the movement of creatures in constricted urban spaces and the overall activity of a linear maze-like field. The earlier Hourloupe paintings, such as this, have a painterly surface and a rich palette, characteristics that re-emerged in the large paintings of the later 1970s. Rue Tournique Bourlique was bought by the donor two years after its first showing at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice.
Attributed works:
II. Landscape in the Roman campagna, by Charles-François Daubigny. Signed. Paper mounted on canvas, 41 by 86 cm. Purchased from the Fischer-Kiener Gallery, Paris, with funds from A. Augustus Healy Fund B and Isobel Schults, by exchange, 1991.214. In 1836 the young Daubigny followed the tradition of Corot and earlier trans-Alpine landscape painters by spending an extended time in Rome and the Campagna, concentrating on plein-air painting. Those few works that are known from the visit share with this painting a comparable facture and simplicity of composition. The originally of this work lies in its elemental construction of earth and sky and the absence of specific references to site more typical of an earlier plein-air tradition.
Attributed works:
III. The departure of the volunteers of 1792(La Marseillaise), by François Rude. Terracotta, 70 by 19 by 12 cm. Purchased from Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York, with funds contributed by Iris and B. Gerald Cantor, 1989.7. This relief is a near-final study for the famous limestone sculpture, known as La Marseillaise, that was commissioned from Rude in 1833 by Louis-Philippe in his effort to complete the sculptural programme of Napoléon's Arc de Triomphe as a gesture of political reconciliation. The theme posed the problem of dealing in allegorical form with an actual historical event the successful raising of a volunteer army in 1792 to defend the nation against the forces of other European powers. In this study the disposition of the six warriors and the Genius of Liberty is established, as is the rhythm and energy of the figural composition.
Attributed works:
IV. Portrait of Madame Tallien, by Bernard Duvivier. Signed and dated 1806. Canvas, 124.5 by 91.5 cm. Purchased from the Jean-François and Philippe Heim Gallery, Paris, with the A. Augustus Healy Fund B, 1989.28. The identity of the sitter is traditional and as yet undocumented. Mme Tallien was noted for being, among other things, a leader of style from the Directoire through the early Empire; the beautifully rendered surfaces of the several elements of the latest fashion in costume and décor combine with the elongated rounded shapes and pearly skin of the sitter to form a painting that is as much a portrait of a cultural period as it is of a specific individual. Born in Bruges and later becoming a French citizen, Duvivier studied in Paris in the 1780s under J. B. Suvée, a rival of David in the formation of the Neo-classical movement.
Attributed works:
IX. Artist's daughter by the sea, by Milton Avery. 1943. Signed lower right, Milton Avery 1943. Oil on canvas, 91.5 by 106.7 cm. Bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal, 1992.11.1. Two of the artist's favourite subjects - the seashore and his only child, March - are here combined. The eleven-year-old's informal manner, both childishly awkward and provocative, suggest the ambivalence of her transition into adolescence. This tender and joyful work, drawn from the memory of a family vacation in California, epitomises Avery's mature painting style of lyrically decorative yet masterly drawn compositions. This painting was acquired by the Lowenthals in 1944 from an exhibition of Avery's recent work at Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York.
Attributed works:
V. Riot IV, by Leon Golub. 1983. Signed lower right Golub. Acrylic on canvas, 305 by 367.7 cm. Gift of Susan Caldwell, 1991.272. Riot IV belongs to Leon Golub's Riot series and like the others, depicts the exploitation of political power. Here, a victim is beaten by two men, possibly mercenaries, frequently alluded to by the artist in the rest of the series. This painting is the first large-scale work by Golub to enter the collection of a New York museum.
Attributed works:
VI. Mummy, by Nancy Graves. 1969-70. Latex, steel, wax, paint and gauze, 274.3 by 91.4 by 106.7 cm. Purchase gift through Anselm and Marjorie Talalay, and anonymous donors. This work belongs to the first phase of Nancy Graves's output when her constructions put her in the forefront of American Artists then involved in redefining sculpture. As in this piece, she used a wide variety of traditional and unconventional media in her search for a directly expressive method of working that evoked primitive and ritualistic forms. Mummy immediately precedes such well-known pieces as Shaman (1970), a confrontational, multiple format hanging work. Egyptian references occur throughout Graves's early sculpture, drawings and films.
Attributed works:
VII. Very large head, by Eduardo Paolozzi. 1958. Bronze, 182.9 by 91.5 by 61 cm. Gift of Richard C. Weisberg in honour of his parents Morris and Mildred, 1991.212. Very large head is a major gift to the Museum's growing collection of sculpture. It points to the explorations carried out by sculptors of the 1950s that ultimately led to a revolutionary redefinition of worldwide sculptural processes. Here, Paolozzi has used an assortment of found objects in the construction of a sculpture which suggests simultaneously an injured, hollow human being and a defunct robot. The artist developed a personal technique to achieve the work's dramatic surface. Taking random artefacts, he pressed them into slabs of clay to form a negative impression into which he poured liquid wax. When the wax solidified, it was cut and bent to form a model for the sculpture, which was then cast into a unique bronze piece through the lost-wax process.
Attributed works:
VIII. Ram's head, White Hollyhock-Hills, by Georgia O'Keeffe. 1935. Inscribed verso on paper label, Georgia O'Keeffe/An American Place/509 Madison Ave-N. Y. Oil on canvas, 76.2 by 91.5 cm. Bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal, 1992.11.28. O'Keeffe was fascinated by the American South-West, evolving from its desert elements an enigmatic and private imagery. In the early 1930s, the animal bones that she found near her home in New Mexico became a private symbol embodying all that she felt was essential and vital about this unusual landscape. In this work, a magical presence is conveyed in the way that the ram's skull and blossom appear like a vision, floating in the sky above the distant hills of her own land, the Ghost Ranch. Acquired by the Lowenthals from The Downtown Gallery in 1958, Ram's head greatly enriches the Museum's holdings of a dozen works by O'Keeffe ranging from an important 1916 quartet of water-colours to an oil of 1960.
Attributed works:
X. Evening storm, Schoodic, Maine No.2, by Marsden Hartley. 1942. Signed lower right, M H/42. Oil on canvas, 76.2 by 101.6 cm. Bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal, 1992.11.18. Hartley worked in Maine, where he had been born, every summer from 1939 until 1943, the year of his death. His base was the lobster-fishing village of Corea where he studied ocean swells breaking on the steep rock walls of this rugged coastline. The theme of the violent power of the sea preoccupied Hartley as it had the earlier American painters Winslow Homer and Albert Pinkham Ryder, from whose work he drew inspiration for his own interpretations, such as the powerful and sombre Evening storm. One of eight works by Hartley in the Brooklyn Lowenthal Bequest, this painting was originally acquired in 1945 from Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York.
Attributed works:
XI. Premonition of evil, by Adolph Gottlieb. 1946. Signed lower left Adolph Gottlieb. Oil and tempera on canvas, 101.9 by 91.8 cm. Gift of the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc. in honour of Esther Gottlieb and Lawrence Alloway, 1990.163. Adolph Gottlieb's pictographs, works painted in the 1940s and 50s, reflect the artist's interest in tribal art and represent his first efforts at reconciling elements of abstraction with an exploration of the unconscious drawn from Surrealism. His aim was to create a new method of expression, unique to American art, which sought to bring content to abstraction.
Attributed works:
XII. The mellow pad, by Stuart Davis. 1945-51. Signed lower right Stuart Davis. Inscribed verso The Mellow Pad Stuart Davis 1945-1950-1. Oil on canvas, 66 by 106.7 cm. Bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal, 1992.11.6. The mellow pad preoccupied Davis for half a decade, and is certainly the artist's most important statement from the late 1940s. With its complex proliferations of layered decorative configurations and colours, this work represented Davis's answer to the quest among American artists in the period for an 'allover' style. He also addressed the issue of informing a non-objective work with content by incorporating into the painting a variety of letters and signs referring to the vocabulary of jazz as well as to his own theoretical notions. Acquired by the Lowenthals from the Downtown Gallery in 1951, this work is one of four by Davis in the Lowenthal Bequest to Brooklyn, bringing the Museum's holdings to seven works ranging in date from a drawing of 1917 to Famous firsts, a painting of 1958.
