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FAMILIAR STRANGERS: Be a Voyeur, Detective, Surrealist, Humanist!

May 3, 2014May 24, 2023 Matthews Gallery2 Comments

Untitled, Unknown

“A photograph is usually looked at—seldom looked into,” said Ansel Adams. When it comes to the pictures in our upcoming show, there’s no other option but to dig a little deeper.

FAMILIAR STRANGERS: Vernacular Photography, opening Friday, May 16, is not your typical Matthews Gallery show. The artists who created our collection of found photographs never got the recognition that Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec or Renoir did, but there’s no denying their aesthetic sensibilities.

That’s what has kept us digging through estate sales, thrift shops, antique stores and attics for years. We’ve amassed quite the collection of vernacular photographs, also known as “found” or “orphan” photos, and we’re not alone in our scavenging habits. Our friends on social media understand the great allure of the hunt.

“Looking at so many old and found photographs I often think that, ‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe,'” writes Paul Jackson, who maintains the Flickr group Found Photographs. “The person behind the camera has seen these things, lived that life..you know, we can sometimes almost taste it.” We asked several other photo finders what they love about the pursuit, and they all had equally passionate answers.

Vernacular photography presents unique challenges to the viewer, asking us to shift between different roles to grasp what we’re seeing. Our first impulse is often voyeuristic. We can’t resist a peek at someone’s intimate moment, and we swiftly draw conclusions about what’s going on. In the image above a baton girl gawks open-mouthed at a band boy, but he looks resolutely away. Is this a tale of unrequited love?

Society often slaps us on the wrist for our voyeuristic tendencies. In his brilliant essay on found photography Dr. Barry Mauer of the University of Central Florida says this instinct is something we should indulge.

“At first sight, most of these pictures are hilarious or tragic or both,” writes Mauer. “Voyeurism allows me to experience these reactions from a comfortable distance.” However, Mauer cautions against stopping there. Voyeurism often comes hand-in-hand with judgment and categorization. Stereotyping these mysterious individuals cuts us off from a rich world of visual mysteries. Time to pull out the magnifying glass.

Untitled, Unknown

If we act as detectives, this simple portrait holds a lot of hints about the bicyclist and her photographer. Did you notice the bandages on her knee and arm? If those are recent wounds, perhaps she’s just learning how to ride. It’s difficult to tie a forearm bandage on your own. Maybe the person behind the camera is her teacher and medic? On the other hand, the bags on the handlebars hint at a different adventure. One of them looks like a canteen. Could the other hold snacks for a picnic?

Teasing out these details is invigorating. To take it one step further, note the composition of the photograph. The front wheel is cut off and part of the path is visible behind the girl. This perspective, when combined with the subject’s bent posture and excited face, lends the photo a sense of forward movement. Our mysterious photographer has imbued a picture of a static bike with surprising dynamism. Was that his or her intention?

Untitled, Unknown

Of course, in the end we’ll probably never know if our inferences are correct. Who better to help us surmount our fear of the unknown than the surrealists? André Breton and his friends were inspired rather than daunted by impenetrable mysteries. They sought out fragments of culture, watching films from between their fingers to try to catch discreet details and writing stories based on dreams they had about real experiences.

Both techniques allowed them to focus on details they otherwise would’ve ignored. In the photo above, our interest in the group in the foreground distracts from the odd figure standing in the far background. Cropping the photo brings up a whole array of new questions.

Detail of previous photo

In a broader context the entire photo is a fragment. The man in the foreground’s stern expression stands alone, isolated from what happened before or after. Perhaps he cracked a smile a moment later, but this short glimpse of his day at the pool has a foreboding air to it.

“The surrealists used fragmentation as a means to knowledge, discovering significance in the fragment that had been concealed in the contextualized whole,” Mauer writes. It’s not hard to trace the progression of this thinking to Marcel Duchamp’s use of found objects, or to the Dada artists’ repurposing of vernacular photos in collages (more on all of that in an upcoming blog post).

In the end analyzing and relating to the “characters” in these photographs helps develop our skills in another field: humanism. It’s amazing how connected we can feel to a person we’ll never meet, and how powerful our feelings of empathy and sympathy can be when we exercise them. Look long enough, and you’ll start to imagine that these familiar strangers are looking right back.

Step into the shoes of a voyeur, detective, surrealist and humanist at FAMILIAR STRANGERS: Vernacular Photography, opening Friday, May 16. Also, make sure to check out our fascinating interview with four found photography collectors and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr for more gallery news!

THE LUMPKINS LEGACY: Bill’s Last Request

April 24, 2014April 24, 2014 Matthews GalleryLeave a comment

William Lumpkins Jr. next to his father’s serigraph “Abstract Landscape #3“

At last Friday’s opening of NEW MEXICO MODERNS: The Lumpkins Files, William Lumpkins Jr. was a quiet presence. He stood to the side surveying his father’s work or chatted softly with visitors, many of whom were family friends. One woman had known his dad, who died in 2000, through an art discussion group that met at local coffeehouses. “Whenever Bill spoke, we all had to lean in. He was such a lovely, gentle man,” she said.

Will’s father may have passed down his mild temperament, but both men are also legendary for their fierce artistic passion. Will has carefully preserved the artwork in The Lumpkins Files show for years, and meanwhile has developed his own artistic style. The jacket he wore to the show was emblazoned with intricate celtic knots and a dragonfly.

When we asked about his dad, the more colorful side of Will’s personality emerged. Here’s William Lumpkins’ son on his father’s never-before-seen artwork, and why he decided to release it more than 15 years after Lumpkins’ death.

What’s it like to see your dad’s work hanging in the gallery?

Well, his work was all around us growing up, so it’s not that strange. The gallery did an excellent job though.

When did you first bring the work to Matthews Gallery?

About a year and a half ago. I had shopped around and didn’t relate to anybody until I met Larry.

Where did you keep it for all these years?

I had it in a case between sheets of acid-free paper. When I was teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University, I was in charge of museology. It was a whole print and painting conservation training program. So my dad knew that I could take care of them. Watercolors in particular are a sensitive thing for archiving.

Why didn’t he want you to release them until now?

It didn’t have to do with the work. He said to me, ‘Okay, you wait until after you’re 70 because by then your personal artistic statement will be you. You won’t have to mimic me.’ So at 70, my artwork was me and I brought these out again.

Were you ever tempted to release them before that?

No, it just didn’t seem right until I started looking around recently. I trusted you guys.

One of the biggest surprises in this body of work was the watercolor from 1937. That’s one of the earliest Lumpkins pieces we’ve ever seen. Did you know it was in there?

I knew that the work spanned a lot of time. When Dad was closing down the studio, he picked these out because these were the ones that he really liked from different points in his career. He felt that they were significant, and that they weren’t typical. His typical work is pretty well-known, but these he wanted to hold out so that they’d be totally new.

What was your vision for this show?

I gave the work to Larry and said, ‘Do you what you think is best.’ I just want them to be out in the open where they can be seen. If people want them enough, if people like them a lot, that’s good.

Hear more from Will Lumpkins in this week’s Pasatiempo, and visit the show at Matthews Gallery through Friday, April 25. For more images from the opening, check out our photos page and connect with us on Facebook and Instagram.

BURST OF BRILLIANCE: Adolph Gottlieb’s Southwestern Epiphany

March 29, 2014July 7, 2014 Matthews GalleryLeave a comment

“It was like being at sea,” said Adolph Gottlieb. The artist had just spent a year in the Desert Southwest- from 1937 to 1938- and returned to his hometown of New York City with a radically altered style. “There’s… a tremendous clarity of light and at night the clouds seem very close,” he continued. This was a very different type of “sea” than the one that carried Gottlieb on his inaugural artistic journey. When he was 17 he dropped out of high school and caught a merchant ship to Europe. He spent two years there, including six months in Paris where he audited art classes and visited the Louvre every day. Back in New York, he studied at The Art Students League and befriended Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Milton Avery. Together they founded the abstract expressionism movement, working to develop color field painting and other innovations. They remained close until Gottlieb decided to strike out on his own to Tucson, Arizona. It was an endeavor that would markedly separate him from his contemporaries, even after his return to the East. Gottlieb’s New York friends called the style he had developed in Arizona simplistic, but the artist refused to look back. He distanced himself from his colleagues and focused on developing a Surrealist style. Experiments with automatism and surrealist biomorphism helped him create an abstract symbol system for his gridded Pictographs series. Finally, in the 1950’s, he started work on two series that would become his most well-known work. Both series are represented in our collection, and their very existence seems linked to the bare, elegant vistas of the Desert Southwest.

IMAGINARY LANDSCAPES

Around 1950-51… I was finally getting away from the pictographs and looking for something… So it was necessary to find other forms, a different changed concept. So finally after a certain period of transition I hit on dividing the canvas into two parts, which then became like an imaginary landscape… What I was really trying to do when I got away from the pictographs was to make this notion of the kind of polarity clearer and more extreme. So the most extreme thing that I could think of doing at the time was dividing the canvas in half, make two big divisions and put something in the upper division and something in the lower section.

The color and texture of the land mass in “Green Foreground” recalls Gottlieb’s sea simile. In this period the artist was consolidating surrealist and abstract expressionist theories by approaching the two movements as different sides of the same coin (hence a “polarity”). Our lithograph implies a fantastical landscape, but works just as well as a flat, wholly abstract composition. If we imagine ourselves exploring this terrain, it would look much like Gottlieb’s surroundings in the Southwest, albeit with a greener tint.

BURSTS

After doing the imaginary landscapes until say 1956, in ’57 I came out with the first Burst painting… There was a different type of space than I had ever used and it was a further clarification of what I was trying to do. The thing that was interesting that it was a return to a focal point, but it was a focal point with the kind of space that existed in traditional painting. Because this was like a solitary image or two images that were just floating in the canvas space. They had to hold the space and they also had to create all the movement – that took place within the rectangle.

Gottlieb’s Bursts are Imaginary Landscapes that have further dissolved into abstraction, though their compositions still root them somewhat in reality. In “Crimson Ground” two discs rise (or set) like a sun and moon from a monochrome tangle with the most ephemeral of horizon lines.

When I started doing the Bursts I began to do part of the painting horizontally. It was necessary to do that because I was working with a type of paint which had a particular viscosity, which flowed, and if it were on a vertical surface it would just run. If it were on a horizontal surface, I could control it… I was using a combination of brushes and knives, palette knives… and spatulas… I’ve tried everything, rollers, rags, I’ve put paint on with everything.

“Crimson Ground” isn’t a painting, but it still has a painterly quality to it. The edges of the discs are uneven and textured, and the forms below are as splattered as a Pollock drip painting. This further highlights the polarity between the surreal landscape and an abstract expressionist painting. One is focused on depth, the other focuses solely on the surface. Learn more about Adolph Gottlieb on our website, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for to-the-minute gallery updates!

MEMORY IN BLUE: Jan van Leeuwen

February 26, 2014February 26, 2014 Matthews GalleryLeave a comment

Jan van Leeuwen, Barbed Wire No. 1 (Cyanotype), Matthews Gallery

What color is memory? Is the human soul tinted by life’s great joys and sorrows?

Jan van Leeuwen‘s darkest recollections are a deep blue tide. His self-portraits take shape much like memories do. It’s a long process with details fading in and out of focus, projecting visions of the self that never feel quite complete. It took a lifetime for the photographer to discover his medium, but when he did the images came spilling out.

Leeuwen was born in Amsterdam in 1932. In 1940, when the artist was 8 years old, the Dutch surrendered to the Nazis and Leeuwen watched as his community fell apart. Jewish neighbors and schoolmates fled or were taken. Over the course of the four-year occupation, the young boy’s confusion turned to anger, frustration and guilt.

Leeuwen’s first career was as a kitchen wares distributor, and he learned how to work a camera by photographing the products. He took his first serious stab at the medium in 1986 when he was in his 50’s, mostly so he’d have something to do when he retired.

Drawing inspiration from the innovative spirit of the Dutch Renaissance masters, Leeuwen developed his own method of producing photographs. He uses a 100-year-old wood camera to capture an image on resin-coated paper, creates a negative and then makes a contact print using a UV-B lightbox.

The process of capturing and transferring the images echoes the artist’s struggles with the trauma he experienced in his youth and the impact it has had on his identity. For the cyanotype in our collection, the artist used a long exposure to fracture himself into eight meshed figures. The only thing starker than their furrowed brows is the strand of barbed wire that stands in their way.

Leeuwen created Barbed Wire No. 1 in 1993. A year later he quit his job to pursue photography full-time. Since then he’s had a stellar contemporary art career, with shows across the world and artwork in The Photo Review, Art in America and many other publications.

The artist’s success hasn’t dampened the intimacy of his self-portraits, or lightened the burden of his memories. However, Leeuwen reminds us that sadness is accompanied by beauty, and creation always surmounts the pain of destruction.

Learn more about Jan van Leeuwen’s art and life on the Matthews Gallery homepage, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for more gallery news.

ONE WORK OF ART: Jean-Pierre Jouffroy

January 8, 2014January 9, 2014 Matthews Gallery1 Comment

Two photographs.

One shows a young artist with a determined look in his eyes, and the other an older gentleman at the opening of an 80-year retrospective of his artwork. What happened in the span between the shots?

Sometimes art by Picasso or Gauguin finds its way to our gallery, but other times we get our hands on an exquisite work that bears a name we’ve never heard before. Such was the case with this lovely 1940’s painting by a man named Jean-Pierre Jouffroy, which reminded us of the artwork of James Brooks and other lyrical abstractionists.

Thank goodness for Google. An image search of the artist’s name brought up these two photos, and some French-to-English translating revealed the fascinating story behind them.

Jean-Pierre Jouffroy was born in Paris in 1933. When he was 11 years old, he saw the work of Wassily Kandinsky and Nicolas de Staël in a gallery and fell in love with modernism. “As a young boy, I dreamed of covering the surface of the earth in paint,” Jouffroy recalls.

Early in his career, the artist created purely abstract work that was heavily influenced by Staël. Then, in the late 1950’s, Jouffroy had an artistic epiphany.

“An abstract painting always shows something, like it or not,” he explains. “The painting is the image of an internal battle. This fight is itself a metaphor for our relationships in the social sphere.” Based on this realization, Jouffroy decided to incorporate the visual vocabulary of abstraction into representational work.

The shift sent the artist on a journey that traced the innovations of modernists like Picasso and Cezanne in reverse. Just like those artists, Jouffroy was experimenting with abstracted figures and landscapes, but he was coming from a wholly nonrepresentational world that his predecessors never explored. In tributes to Cezanne, Gauguin, Manet and Braque, he brought great artists of the past into harmony with a movement they all, in one way or another, helped to inspire.

Jouffroy’s new explorations caught the eye of the art world, and he exhibited at Paris’ Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and other renowned institutions. Though he was focused on figurative work, he was often associated with lyrical abstraction (as we suspected) because of his background, his loose brushwork and his inventive use of color.

Our Jouffroy painting represents an interesting phase in the artist’s evolution. Though it predates his representational work, it has undeniable elements of landscape. Perhaps it’s the first sign of the transformation that would send Jouffroy’s career in a spectacular new direction. You can see echoes of the work’s palette and brushwork throughout the artist’s retrospective at the Place du Colonel Fabien that opened in November.

Check out Jean-Pierre Jouffroy’s “Untitled (Modernist Landscape)” on our website, and connect with us on Facebook and Twitter for more gallery news.

SHOOTING SPARKS: Frank Morbillo’s Elemental Process

January 1, 2014January 7, 2014 Matthews Gallery1 Comment

Frank Morbillo sanding his sculpture Sprung

As we learned in his NEW HORIZONS show, sculptor Frank Morbillo is inspired by the way the elements carve the canyon lands of the American West. It’s fitting that his process is just as elemental. He bends and twists flat pieces of steel and bronze and then welds them into seamless three-dimensional forms, first creating smaller studies and working up to towering sculptures that possess the same gravitas as the rock formations he loves.

Witness the fiery birth of Frank’s sculpture Sprung and read quotes from the artist about his process and influences in this photo montage:

Fitting fabrication

“When you’re working with steel, you can work pretty inexpensively to generate an idea and get proportions down, and then make it a little bit bigger. Eventually this can go to the scale of the piece outside the Matthews Gallery.”

TIG welding

“My background was in ceramics when I first started. For two years of college I thought my major was going to be ceramics, but in my sophomore year I took a blacksmithing class on forging and fabricating metal. I was like, ‘You can heat the stuff up and move it like clay? Oh my God!’”

Welding

“You knock a piece of clay off the table and it breaks on the floor. You knock a piece of metal off and it dents the floor.”

Fine sanding

“A lot of the pieces come from hiking canyons and experiencing the paths that you take in a canyon. If you look at a topo of a canyon, you can see its meandering course. When you’re down in a canyon and you see how it’s been eroded and shaped by water and wind, it takes on another shape.”

Patina

“When I was in the foundry business doing patina work for different artists, we always used to talk about the translucency of bronze. They always wanted that, to where if you put this really nice golden brown patina over metal, you could see the metal coming through.”

Almost there…

“One of the nice things about being out in nature is that all of the things we connect ourselves with are gone. Where does that take you? I think we need to do that still in our lives.”

See Frank’s finished sculpture here and learn more about the Tesuque sculptor on our Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest pages.

START YOUR BIDDING: Colorful lots from our fall online auction

November 13, 2013November 13, 2013 Matthews Gallery1 Comment

Our European, American and Southwestern Art Auction just started on Artfact.com, and it features a particularly vibrant line-up of lots. The charming image above is a color lithograph from turn of the century France by Camille Boutet. It shows three children peering longingly into a confectioner’s shop, and would make a lovely holiday gift. The best part? Bidding starts at $50. Read about more of our offerings below, and make sure to bid before the auction ends on November 17.

Lot 41: Frank Morbillo- Arched Axe
Starting bid: $350
Estimated value: $450-$900

“Arched Axe” is from Frank Morbillo’s sculpture series inspired by the simple, elegant lines of prehistoric hand tools. Several other glass and bronze works from the set appear in the sale, including “Ceremonial Serpent Axe“, which features an intricate floral motif, and the swanlike “Honing Axe“.

Lot 59: Bertram Hartman (1882-1996)- Still Life
Starting bid: $250
Estimated value: $350-$750

Bertram Hartman (1882-1960) was born in Kansas and received training at the Art Institute of Chicago. He continued his studies at the Royal Academy in Munich and Paris, drawing inspiration from Impressionism and other modernist movements. His European influences are clear in this impeccable impasto still life.

Lot 70: Jamie Chase- Bather by the Sea
Starting bid: $400
Estimated price: $600-$900

Jamie Chase’s well-known figurative work and his latest experiments with landscape painting combine in “Bather by the Sea“. An abstracted nude stands on the shore, and the surrounding landscape seems to radiate her serene mood. Jamie’s “Seen” and “Iconic II” are also up for sale in the auction.

Lot 86: Ernest Blumenschein (1874-1960)- Loading
Starting bid: $700
Estimated price: $2,000-$3,500

Ernest L. Blumenschein (1874-1960) was a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists, and is known for his stunning portrayals of the Southwestern landscape and people. In “Loading” the artist pays homage to his home state of Ohio. A lone figure smokes a cigarette and watches the activity at the Conneaut Mill across the tracks.

Lot 91: William Lumpkins (1909-2000)- The Red Sky
Starting bid: $400
Estimated price: $600-$1,000

Lot 97: William Lumpkins (1909-2000)- Pink Handle
Starting bid: $400
Estimated price: $600-$1,000

“The Red Sky” and “Pink Handle” are from a series of never-before-seen artworks by legendary Santa Fe modernist William Lumpkins (1909-2002). The work was recently released from the collection of a Lumpkins family member, and also features a series of serigraphs.

Lot 102: Eli Levin- Kachina (after Louie Ewing)
Starting bid: $175
Estimated value: $400-$600

Contemporary Southwestern painter and printmaker Eli Levin pays tribute to legendary Santa Fe printmaker Louie Ewing (1908-1983) in this silkscreen of a Pueblo kachina doll. In the 1930s, Ewing received a grant from the WPA’s Federal Art Project to pursue printmaking, and is largely responsible for the enduring popularity of printmaking among contemporary Southwestern artists.

Lot 106: Bettina Steinke (1913-1999)- Santa Clara Dancer
Starting bid: $50
Estimated value: $400-$500

Bettina Steinke (1913-1999) moved to Taos in the 1950s, where she opened a gallery with her husband and mentored young artists. She moved to Santa Fe in the 1970s. The artist was known for her vivid portraits of the Pueblo people, and was particularly interested in traditional Native dancers. Other historic New Mexico artists featured in the auction include Fremont Ellis, John McHugh and Hannah Holliday Stewart.

Check out the European, American and Southwestern Art Auction on Artfact to browse all 116 lots, and connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to see more highlights from the sale. The auction ends on November 17 at 7:00 pm.

10 Women Who Changed Art History Forever, Pt. 1

August 13, 2013September 5, 2013 Matthews Gallery3 Comments

Self portrait, Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, Matthews Gallery blog — Self portrait, Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun

Click here to read the second part of this blog post.

Let’s be honest, the art establishment has always been a boy’s club, and women are most often honored in art history for overcoming gender-related cultural and societal obstacles. It’s easy to look past the artistic innovations of female artists when we’re sorting their work into a different category from that of their male contemporaries, or focusing solely on the glass ceilings they broke.

Of course, ignoring the gargantuan efforts of female creatives to gain respect and recognition in a male dominated world is a mistake as well, as is looking at innovation as a competition between artists of different genders.

Art history is an elaborate web of influence, and analyzing any artist’s place in it is a balancing act. One thing’s for sure: many women have formed vital links in the chain. Here’s why 5 female artists deserve recognition.

Sphinx of Hatshepsut, Matthews Gallery blog — Sphinx of Hatshepsut

1. Queen Hatshepsut (1508-1458 BC)

The fifth pharaoh of Ancient Egypt’s 18th dynasty probably wasn’t an artist herself, but as one of the most successful Egyptian rulers ever, she had a huge influence on art history. In her 22-year reign Hatshepsut brought great wealth to the empire through new trade networks and expeditions, and she was very good at promoting her accomplishments through art. Her many building projects were the envy of her successors, and statuary from her reign abounds.

Statues representing Hatshepsut sometimes sport the ceremonial attire of a pharaoh (including a traditional false beard), but she’s most often depicted in the feminine clothing that she probably wore at court. As a skilled warrior, she took the lioness deity Sekhmet as a symbol of the throne.

After Hatshepsut’s death many statues of the ruler were defaced, and later pharaohs tried to take credit for her building projects, but her influence on subsequent Egyptian styles is undeniable. Work from her reign is in nearly every major museum collection, and has helped shape modern interpretations of Ancient Egyptian art.

Self portrait, Artemisia Gentileschi, Matthews Gallery blog — Self portrait, Artemisia Gentileschi

2. Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656)

For years Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi was mostly known for the events surrounding her rape as a teenager. She was assaulted by her private painting tutor Tassi, who said he would marry her but later reneged on the promise. Gentileschi’s father successfully sued Tassi for taking his daughter’s virginity in a publicly humiliating trial during which Gentileschi was tortured with thumbscrews and given a gynecological examination.

Soon after the court case Gentileschi married another painter and moved from Rome to Florence. It was the beginning of a stellar career, with coveted commissions from the Medici family and a spot as the first female in the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno.

Simplistic interpretations that relate Gentileschi’s work to her rape have dominated the attention of scholars, but the artist’s bold painting style and compositions make her one of the most innovative Baroque painters after Caravaggio. She took new angles on Bible stories to explore the complex emotional experiences of her subjects, and would often place a central figure in the extreme foreground to heighten the drama of her scenes and pull her viewers into the middle of the action.

Self portrait, Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, Matthews Gallery — Self portrait, Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun

3. Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (1755-1842)

The French Neoclassical and Rococo painter was born in Paris and opened her own portrait studio in her early teens, scoring commissions from high profile nobles and rubbing elbows with masters of the day. When she lost her studio for lack of a license, she tricked the Academie de Saint Luc into showing her work and eventually gained official membership.

Vigee Le Brun is best known for her work as the portraitist of Marie Antoinette, who commissioned more than two dozen works from the artist. Her vivid, rosy depictions of the doomed queen in the Rococo style made Louise the most famous female painter of the 18th century. She’d ceded the title of royal court painter by the time of the French Revolution, but she still fled France during the conflict and took portrait commissions from nobles across Europe. However, the canvas that landed her on this list is a painting of the artist herself.

The self portrait, painted in 1787, was an image of Vigee Le Brun sporting a full, toothy grin. It was such a divergence from painting conventions thus far that it caused an uproar in the art world. “An affectation which artists, art-lovers and persons of taste have been united in condemning, and which finds no precedent among the Ancients, is that in smiling,” spewed one gossip columnist. “[Vigee Le Brun] shows her teeth.” The painting briefly made Louise’s smile as notorious as the Mona Lisa’s, and shattered a tradition that stretched back to the Greeks.

Self portrait, Mary Cassatt, Matthews Gallery blog — Self portrait, Mary Cassatt

4. Mary Cassatt (1844-1926)

Mary Cassatt was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania and attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where most of the female students saw art not as a profession but as a privilege of high society. She left the Academy for Paris in 1866, frustrated with her teachers’ attitudes toward female artists and determined to study the masters on her own.

In France, Cassatt enlisted various private tutors and copied works in the Louvre to develop her skill. Impressionism was just beginning to rock the foundations of the Parisian art world, but it didn’t catch Cassatt’s fancy until after an unsuccessful stint in Chicago and a return to Paris in 1871. That’s when she met Edgar Degas, who introduced her to Impressionists and offered to show her work in one of their exhibitions.

Cassatt would become a hugely influential figure in the fledgling movement, and would later be named one of “les trois grandes dames” of Impressionism by art critic Gustave Geffroy.

Portrait of Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso, Matthews Gallery blog — Portrait of Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

“I always wanted to be historical from almost a baby on, I felt that way about it,” Gertrude Stein once declared. If anyone called into doubt the American modernist writer’s genius, Stein was the first to speak up about it.

Stein’s influence on the history of visual art is partly tied to her radical writing style, which helped define modernism and was crafted in close dialogue with the visual arts. Her significance also rests in her expansive art collection, which populated the walls of her Parisian home where influential modernists like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald often congregated.

As the often stern den mother of the “Lost Generation” carefully curated her collection and cultivated close friendships with the artists she liked, she was shaping a radical revolution that would forever change the history of art.

Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter for more insight on the women who changed art history forever, and click here to read the second part of this blog post.

NEW TRADITIONS: Matthews Gallery Online Art Auction

July 27, 2013 Matthews GalleryLeave a comment

The world’s oldest auction house opened in Stockholm, Sweden in 1674. Art auctions in Great Britain gained popularity a few decades later when the Earl of Oxford’s collection appeared on the block in 1742. That particular sale featured the full range of odd and valuable items you might find in a dusty old castle, from a bust of an unknown bishop (five shillings) to a series of van Dyck paintings (165 guineas).

The beat of the auction mallet has marked the rhythm of the secondary market ever since. It’s a tradition that’s full of strange pageantry and heart pumping excitement. Auction kingpins Christie’s and Sotheby’s, which were both founded in mid-18th century England, often draw the ire of art world players for their tightly controlled sales. “They know exactly how many people will be bidding on a work and exactly who they are,” wrote art critic Jerry Saltz in 2012 after a version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream sold at Sotheby’s for $119.5 million. “In a gallery, works of art need only one person who wants to pay for them.”

Online auctions have meanwhile been swiftly democratizing the centuries-old process, and that’s where the Matthews Gallery decided to jump in. We launched the EUROPEAN MASTERS, AMERICAN AND SOUTHWESTERN ART AUCTION on July 25 and it runs through July 29. Come browse our virtual auktionsverk of art and, if you’re inspired, make a bid. You’ll find art by European modernists such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro, Southwestern legends including Emil Bisttram and Alfred Morang, and notable contemporary artists like Jamie Chase, Eric G. Thompson and Kate Rivers among the lots. Here are some notable pieces from the catalogue:

EUROPEAN MASTERS

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HISTORIC SOUTHWESTERN ART

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Click to see the works on our auction site:

Untitled (Landscape #1), Emil Bisttram
Untitled (Landscape #2), Emil Bisttram
Untitled (Landscape #3), Emil Bisttram
Untitled (Santa Fe Landscape), Alfred Morang
Riders at Sundown, Gene Kloss
Return of the Wood Gatherers, Gene Kloss

CONTEMPORARY ART

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