Modern Art History
© Meg Nola
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Meg Nola
Meg Nola
Just last week a story about a late French Impressionist painting found at Goodwill made international news.
The painting of a Parisian street scene left…along with the daily donations of pots, pans, old clock radios and other items turned out to be a work by Edouard-Leon Cortes.
The painting was sold recently for $40,600 at an auction.
(Click here for the full article.) And then there was Elizabeth Gibson, who spotted Rufino Tamayo’s Tres Personajes out by a Manhattan trash dumpster. She’d seen it and thought the colors were striking and it would look nice on her apartment wall, where she hung it for a few years until a friend noted that the work might be genuinely valuable. It was indeed genuine and valuable, having been stolen from a collector, and it sold for $1,049,000 last November at Sotheby’s.
I like looking at thrift store art, especially the oils and watercolors that somebody maybe did in a class years ago. There are lots of basic floral still-lifes and bowls of fruit and green meadows -- and in certain cases you can see why the pursuit of painting was quickly abandoned -- but sometimes the works are quite interesting and have a unique style. And there’s always that gambler’s chance that the painting of a great artist actually made it to your local thrift store, or that it’s the work of some genius who lived in obscurity and had to sell his art just to buy coffee and cigarettes, but now he/she is suddenly big news at auctions. So take a chance on that unusually interesting painting propped up next to the used tea kettles and badminton sets, because you just never know….
The painting was sold recently for $40,600 at an auction.
(Click here for the full article.) And then there was Elizabeth Gibson, who spotted Rufino Tamayo’s Tres Personajes out by a Manhattan trash dumpster. She’d seen it and thought the colors were striking and it would look nice on her apartment wall, where she hung it for a few years until a friend noted that the work might be genuinely valuable. It was indeed genuine and valuable, having been stolen from a collector, and it sold for $1,049,000 last November at Sotheby’s.
I like looking at thrift store art, especially the oils and watercolors that somebody maybe did in a class years ago. There are lots of basic floral still-lifes and bowls of fruit and green meadows -- and in certain cases you can see why the pursuit of painting was quickly abandoned -- but sometimes the works are quite interesting and have a unique style. And there’s always that gambler’s chance that the painting of a great artist actually made it to your local thrift store, or that it’s the work of some genius who lived in obscurity and had to sell his art just to buy coffee and cigarettes, but now he/she is suddenly big news at auctions. So take a chance on that unusually interesting painting propped up next to the used tea kettles and badminton sets, because you just never know….
Posted by
Meg Nola
Meg Nola
Although the world has come to love the dreamy hues and scenes of the French Impressionists, public opinion wasn’t always so kind.
The French Impressionists initially had to organize their own exhibits because the official Paris Salon wouldn’t consistently accept their works. When those indie shows were reviewed by certain art critics of the day, the feedback could be downright nasty. While some admired their new perspective, others sniped how:
“Here five or six lunatics deranged by ambition -- one of them a woman -- have put together an exhibition…They take canvas, paint and brushes, splash on a few daubs of color here and there at random, then sign the result. The inmates of the Ville-Evrard Asylum behave in much the same way…Try telling M Pissarro that trees are not purple, or the sky the colour of butter…Try to explain to M Renoir that a woman’s torso is not a rotting mass of flesh, with violet-toned green spots all over it...There is also, as in all famous gangs, a woman. Her name is Berthe Morisot, and she is a curiosity. She manages to convey a certain degree of feminine grace in spite of her outbursts of delirium.”
That was critic Albert Wolff behind that 1876 rampage, and as a result of it, Berthe Morisot‘s husband Eugene (also painter Edouard Manet‘s brother) challenged Wolff to a duel, though I don’t think any swords were ever drawn or pistols fired. Clearly, Mr. Wolff would be horrified by the crowds who still flock to museums to view French Impressionist paintings, and by all the Monet tote bags and Degas and Renoir calendars for sale in the gift shops.
I found Wolff’s tirade in Sue Roe’s very interesting and smoothly flowing The Private Lives of The Impressionists (HarperCollins). The book gives basic factual and biographical information, but heightens the personalities and friendships of the artists so that it reads more like a novel. Definitely worth checking out.
“Here five or six lunatics deranged by ambition -- one of them a woman -- have put together an exhibition…They take canvas, paint and brushes, splash on a few daubs of color here and there at random, then sign the result. The inmates of the Ville-Evrard Asylum behave in much the same way…Try telling M Pissarro that trees are not purple, or the sky the colour of butter…Try to explain to M Renoir that a woman’s torso is not a rotting mass of flesh, with violet-toned green spots all over it...There is also, as in all famous gangs, a woman. Her name is Berthe Morisot, and she is a curiosity. She manages to convey a certain degree of feminine grace in spite of her outbursts of delirium.”
That was critic Albert Wolff behind that 1876 rampage, and as a result of it, Berthe Morisot‘s husband Eugene (also painter Edouard Manet‘s brother) challenged Wolff to a duel, though I don’t think any swords were ever drawn or pistols fired. Clearly, Mr. Wolff would be horrified by the crowds who still flock to museums to view French Impressionist paintings, and by all the Monet tote bags and Degas and Renoir calendars for sale in the gift shops.
I found Wolff’s tirade in Sue Roe’s very interesting and smoothly flowing The Private Lives of The Impressionists (HarperCollins). The book gives basic factual and biographical information, but heightens the personalities and friendships of the artists so that it reads more like a novel. Definitely worth checking out.