Artists, critics, art collectors and curators for whom the delights of French painting remain a standard of modern pictorial achievement are often troubled-if not, indeed, repelled-by the very different character of modern German art. Instead of the subtleties and graces to be found in French painting, German art, more often than not, confronts the viewer Read More
About the English landscape painter John Constable (1776-1837), whose work is currently to be seen in a thrilling exhibition at the Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, it has sometimes been said that he was less an interpreter of nature than a part of it. So profound was his attachment to the Suffolk countryside-he came from a family of Read More
Given his provincial origins, the untamed manners he sometimes affected, his appetite for political combat and the sheer impudence of his personality, the French painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was an improbable candidate for artistic stardom in a period in which official opinion still expected artists to observe certain standards of decorum. And yet, so compelling Read More
Among the Old Masters of European painting whose works are deeply revered today, none has commanded a more enthusiastic response from the artists, critics and public than the 16th-centurypainterDomenikos Theotokopolus (1541-1614), a native of Crete now universally known as El Greco. None has caused more controversy, either. For though El Greco’s mesmerizing oeuvre stands at Read More
It has long been recognized that 17th-century Spanish painting exerted a powerful, transforming influence on 19th-century French painting, and thus on the mainstream evolution of modern European art. Writing in the first decade of the 20th century, the great German critic Julius Meier-Graefe gave us a trenchant account of this crucial connection in the chapter Read More
Hard as it may now be to comprehend, the art of the Spanish
master who came to be known as El Greco (1541-1614) is a relatively recent
discovery-a 20th-century discovery. Domenikos Theotocopoulos (as he was
christened) was born in Candia, the capital of Crete, which was then a
possession of the Venetian Republic, and there Read More
It has long been one of the paradoxes of cultural life in the English-speaking world that while 19th-century German music, the music of Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Schubert, Mendelsohn et al., has dominated the repertory of our concert halls and the recording of classical music, German painting of the same period has remained–until recently, anyway–an isolated Read More
Has there ever before been an exhibition devoted to the paintings of the Norwegian master Edvard Munch (1863-1944) in a New York gallery? Munch’s prints are well known, of course, and justly admired. Yet it is only isolated examples of his paintings that we get to see, even in our museums. I cannot recall ever Read More
