Friday at the Norton Simon Museum

Last Friday, October 16th, I met my friend Bonnie for lunch at the Norton Simon Museum gardens in Pasadena.  We then roamed around the museum to see the new exhibitions.  

We arrived in a small gallery off the lobby to "Indoor/Outdoor:  Vuillard's Landscapes and Interiors."  This exhibit is the Norton Simon collection of Vuillard's 1899 lithographs.  The same year, he also created large-scale paintings commissioned for private, domestic spaces.  One is located in the main 19th century gallery.  The 14-foot-wide "decorative masterpiece" is entitled "First Fruits." The painting had been visiting Paris's Musee d'Orsay and the Art Institute of Chicago and arrived "home" this fall.

The description states that as in Japanese woodblock printing, each of Vuillard's colors required separately inked matrix.  Auguste Clot was the master printer who made the prints from Vuillard's creations.  Some prints used up to 7 separate lithographic stones, inked an printed in precise sequence.

Edouard Vuillard, French, (1868-1940) lived in Paris during the turn of the century and was friends with Bonnard, Denis and Toulouse-Lautrec.  The description states that he was best known for small-scale paintings of domestic interiors, populated by friends and family members and crowded with competing patterns: wallpapers, textiles, lattice windows.  "These patterns contribute to the emphatic flatness of his work, a sense that space recedes not into his pictures but up and across their surfaces, erecting a kind of screen or protective barrier between beholder and beheld."

Here are photos of my favorites:

"The Game of Checkers"

"Interior with Hanging Lamp"

"Across the Fields"

"The Hearth"

"The Cook"

"The Pastry Shop"

Next we went downstairs to an exhibit entitled "Fragonard's Enterprise:  The Artist and the Literature of Travel."  Works of Jean Honore Fragonard, French, (1732-1806) who was commissioned by Jean-Claude Richard de Saint-Non to sketch art scene on the Grand Tour of Italy that was in vogue for the wealthy Europeans.  Fragonard traveled from 1759-1761 and made copies of the important paintings and monuments scene in churches and palazzi..  He created hundreds of black chalk drawings were later published and sold.  The Norton Simon Foundation owns the largest single group of black chalk drawings recording this Italian journey, 139.

Here are some examples:

 

"Study after Ludovico Carracci 'Hercules Received on Olympus by Jupiter,'" Palazzo Sampieri Talon, Bologna.

"Study after Lionello Spada 'Joseph and Potiphar's Wife,'" Palazzo Ducale, Modena.

"Study after Ludovico Carracci 'Angels,'" Choir vault, Cathedral Piacenza.

Finally, we visited an exhibit  entitled " A Revolution of the Palette:  The First Synthetic Blues and Their Impact on French Artists."  The description states that the accidental discovery of Prussian blue revolutionized the range of colors available to painters.  Two more newly synthesized blue pigments, cobalt and ultramarine, emerged early in the 19th century.  Combined with commercial availability of pre-mixed oil paints in metal tubes, these synthetic blues fueled a revolution of the painter's palette and working methods.

Here are photos of some of the paintings in this exhibit:

"Happy Lovers," 1760-65 by Jean-Honore Fragonard, French, oil on canvas. 

 "Music," 1760-65 by Jean-Honore Fragonard.

 "Portrait of Theresa, Countess Kinsky," 1793 by Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, French, oil on canvas.

 "Baron Joseph-Pierre Vialetes de Mortarieu," 1805-1806 by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, French, oil on canvas.

 "Thatched Cottage in Normandy," 1872 by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, French, oil on canvas. " "Corot painted this scene at the age of 79, three years before his death."  He was hailed by the Impressionists as the father of modern landscape.  Corot preferred mixing his own greens, relying on cobalt and Prussian blue to create a wide range of hues and tones.

"Landscape in Martigues," 1869 by Paul-Camille Guigou, French, oil on canvas.