Word: courbets
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Color most small museums green with envy when it comes to purchasing costly masterpieces. With gaping holes in their collections, they are long on aspirations, short on funds. Such was the case when the Milwaukee Art Center's director, Tracy Atkinson, found a fine Gustave Courbet portrait. Milwaukee had nothing by the early 19th century French realist, but the not unreasonable price tag in New York's Knoedler Gallery read...
...goodbye to a good buy until an enterprising Milwaukee attorney, Roger Boerner, 37, formed a corporation called Art Appreciation, Inc., with 14 other enthusiasts. Pooling their shares, the corporation bought the Courbet to hold it until the museum can pay for it. Should the painting increase in its market value in the interim, the difference can also be deducted from income tax as a charitable contribution. Meanwhile, the painting will hang in the museum. Except, of course, for the times that shareholders in Art Appreciation, Inc., see fit to borrow it in turn in order to appreciate their masterpiece...
...Some were not even painted during the lifetimes of the artists to whom they are attributed," wrote Wildenstein. Among others, he named two so-called Claude Lorrains, a Boucher, a Watteau (which he described as "flea market quality") and a Courbet. As for the portrait of Ingres by David, "It is not by David and does not represent Ingres"; in fact, in 1796, it was exhibited as a work by Constance Mayer. Says Wildenstein, who consulted his reference library of 300,000 books before speaking out: "The Russians are simply making fun of us with this exhibit...
...Fauves, and even the cubists, only to abandon each. He rejected the romantic concept of the artist in smudgy smock and flowing cravat, abhorred the veneration of art given to official "masterpieces," decided that "oil painting is old hat and should be discarded forever." As the naturalists of Courbet's day had proved that anything could be a subject for art, Duchamp set out to prove that art could be made of anything. By taking all kinds of man-and machine-made objects, from bottle dryers to plumbing fixtures, removing them from their context, and exhibiting them...
Sisley gradually moved away from this Courbet-like realism, and the work he did in the 1870s has usually been considered his best. In the Aqueduct at Marly his palette was open, his brush light and sure. Sisley never played rough with nature, nor did he like to intrude too far upon its secrets. While Monet atomized the sun, Sisley let it wash gently over his scenes, neither searing nor dazzling...