British Cede Le Brun Portrait to the Met
In
17th-century France, Charles Le Brun was as hot as any artist could be.
He created work for the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, for the
Galerie d’Apollon in the Louvre, for Hôtel Lambert on Île St. Louis, for
the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte and for much of Versailles. Louis XIV
declared him “the greatest French artist of all time.” Whatever he
produced made an impact.
Now,
after a nail-biting three months for officials at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, Le Brun’s presence will make a difference there, too.
In
February, after the museum had agreed to buy a rare 17th-century
portrait by Le Brun, which had been in private hands in England since
the late 18th century, the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of
Art and Objects of Cultural Interest in England, issued a three-month
export ban on the painting, “A Portrait of Everhard Jabach and Family,”
to give British institutions time to match the $12.3 million price the
Met had agreed to pay for it.
Arguing
that it should stay in Britain, Nicholas Penny, director of the
National Gallery in London, wrote in a statement to the Export Reviewing
Committee: “There are only a handful of paintings by Le Brun in British
collections. All represent religious, historical or mythological
subjects, and most are much influenced by Poussin’s style. None is a
portrait.”
Luckily
for the Met, no British institution tried to buy the painting, which is
now being prepared for its journey to New York. “It’s a landmark in the
history of French painting,” said Keith Christiansen, the chairman of
the Met’s European paintings department.
The
painting depicts Everhard Jabach, a German banker and collector, posed
with his family in a sumptuous Parisian salon surrounded by tapestries,
classical statues and a whippet. (Jabach amassed a group of paintings
and drawings now in the Louvre.) Viewers can see that the painting also
includes a reflection of Le Brun himself in the mirror, at work on the
canvas.
“It
takes you right to the heart of French culture and in many ways is the
French equivalent of Velázquez’s ‘Las Meninas,’ which is also an
allegory about the relationship of painter, patron and the act of
painting,” Mr. Christiansen said, referring to the landmark canvas in
the Prado in Madrid.
Monumental
in scale — 7.6 feet by 10.6 feet — “A Portrait of Everhard Jabach and
Family” was believed for decades to have been lost. Le Brun had painted
two versions of it for Jabach, and during the 18th century they were
kept in two different houses in Cologne, Germany, where they were seen
by the likes of Goethe and Joshua Reynolds. The second version was
acquired by the Kaiser Freidrich Museum in Berlin in 1836 and destroyed
in 1945, during World War II. It is known only from black-and-white
photographs.
The
Met’s painting has been in a private collection in England since
1791,when Jabach’s descendant Johann Matthias von Bors of Cologne sold
it to Henry Hope, a Rotterdam merchant of Scottish descent. The most
recent owner acquired it in southwest England in 1935, with the purchase
of Olantigh House in Kent. Experts from Christie’s in London discovered
the painting and alerted Mr. Christiansen.
When
“A Portrait of Everhard Jabach and Family” arrives at the Met, it will
go first to the museum’s conservation studio for cleaning and framing.
It will eventually hang in the 17th-century French galleries, along with
other French portraits: Jacques-Louis David’s neo-Classical painting of
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his wife and Renoir’s Impressionist
portrait of Mme. Georges Charpentier and her children.
MEDIAN COOL
There
have been playful animals, men on horseback and a host of monumental
abstract bronzes along the Broadway Malls, that landscaped median
stretching from Columbus Circle to Mitchel Square at 167th Street. Until
now, however, these temporary public art installations have been
one-person exhibitions.
But
starting in September and for about six months, Broadway Malls will be
home to its first group show, featuring artists who are represented by
different galleries. Max Levai and Pascal Spengemann from Marlborough
Chelsea have organized the project in collaboration with the New York
City Department of Parks and Recreation and the Broadway Mall
Association.
“It’s
stretching five miles, considerably larger than any other site we’ve
programmed,” said Jonathan Kuhn, director of art and antiquities for the
Parks Department. “It will traverse through many neighborhoods.”
Called
“Broadway Morey Boogie,” a play on the name of a 1943 Mondrian
painting, the show will include artists like Dan Colen, Paul Druecke,
Matt Johnson and Sarah Braman. “They are all American and between 35 and
50 years of age,” Mr. Levai said. “These artists are doing very well,
but most of them haven’t had a chance to be in the public realm.” Other
galleries lending to the exhibition include Gagosian, Mitchell-Innis
& Nash and Blum & Poe. In addition to the individual sculptures,
a pop-up space with exhibitions will be presented by the Green Gallery
from Milwaukee throughout the run, but the exact location has yet to be
determined.
A ‘MOBILE RETROSPECTIVE’
Art
Intelligence, a new company founded by Bridget Goodbody, an art
historian, is introducing a series of educational apps for iPads,
featuring art, architecture and design. It has already produced two
artist apps, devoted to Keith Haring and Patricia Piccinini. The third
will be all about Cindy Sherman.
“It
will be like a mobile retrospective,” Ms. Goodbody said. “And it will
hopefully be a fun way to explore art through an interactive,
storytelling experience.”
Included
will be Ms. Sherman’s photographs throughout her career, along with a
timeline that puts her work in context with media images of women since
1975.
It
will be available on the App Store beginning Thursday, for 99 cents,
like the other apps. “I like to think of Cindy as the Madonna of the art
world,” Ms. Goodbody said. “She has broken every glass ceiling that
there is and continues to produce amazing work.”
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