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 comes as something of a surprise to learn that the exhibition devoted to the English painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass.- Turner: The Late Seascapes -is the first to be entirely focused on its subject. Late Turner is, after all, almost as highly esteemed in 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
When you enter the first room of the Chardin exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the large still-life painting on the opposite wall, called simply The Ray (1725-26), is likely to cause a shudder if you haven’t seen it before. Indeed, it is a painting that remains a little shocking no matter how many Read More
Going through the new exhibition at the Pierpont Morgan Library the other day-it is called To Observe and Imagine: British Drawings and Watercolors, 1600-1900 -I thought of Roger Fry. Fry, whose Reflections on British Painting was published in 1934, the year he died at the age of 68, was the greatest art critic in the Read More
There are artists about whom critical opinion seems destined to remain forever divided. The American expatriate painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), whose work is currently the subject of an exhibition at the Adelson Galleries, is certainly one of the classic examples. Few American painters of his generation enjoyed as much in the way of celebrity Read More
