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European Paintings Selected from the Museum Collection

DATES November 09, 1944 through January 01, 1945
ORGANIZING DEPARTMENT European Painting and Sculpture
COLLECTIONS European Art
  • September 18, 1944 The Brooklyn Museum opened the fall exhibition season on September 7 with a large exhibition entitled POSADA: PRINTMAKER TO THE MEXICAN PEOPLE. Some six hundred prints, blocks and photostat enlargements are assembled in four galleries on the second floor and will remain current through October 15.

    Five painting exhibitions are scheduled: OIL IN WATER COLOR, September 29-November 12, will give a picture of the oil industry at war by four well known painters. Recently Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) asked Reginald Marsh and Adolf Dehn to visit some of their operations and to tell in terms of the brush what they saw. Two other painters - David Fredenthal and Millard Sheets - were asked to paint the drama of moving oil to the fronts. The show will comprise 36 such water colors by the four artists.

    EUROPEAN PAINTINGS FROM THE MUSEUM COLLECTION will go on view November 8 and remain current through January 1. These paintings, among the finest in the Museum collection, were returned from storage last December.

    PAINTINGS BY CHILDREN will be on view from December 7 through January 14, showing the remarkable work being done in the Museum’s Painting Class for Talented Children.

    From January 11 through February 25 an exhibition of paintings and drawings by the distinguished Mexican artist JOSE MARIA VELASCO, lent by the Direccion General de Educacion Estetica, will be presented in the Special Exhibitions Gallery.

    The 13TH BIENNIAL INTERNATIONAL WATER COLOR show will open on March 14 and continue through May 13.

    The large 1944 EXHIBITION OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA will open on October 27 and remain current through November 19. In connection with this exhibition, the Museum has scheduled two smaller photographic shows MODERN DUTCH ARCHITECTURE, November 3 - December 10, and RECENT PHOTOGRAPHIC ACCESSIONS, October 20 - December 3.

    MODERN DUTCH PRINTS will be shown in the small print gallery on the second floor from October 20 - December 3.

    A loan collection of CHINESE CERAMICS, never placed on exhibition before, will be on view from December 14 through February 4.

    In addition to these exhibitions, plans are being made for a number of smaller shows which will be announced later.

    Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1942 - 1946. 07-09/1944, 092.
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  • November 9, 1944 Beginning November 9th the Brooklyn Museum will display in the Special Exhibition Gallery on the first floor a group of about eighty paintings of the European schools from the Museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition will present selected examples of the Renaissance in Italy, France and the Netherlands of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, Spanish and Italian Baroque, English 18th century and French 19th and 20th century. This is the first time most of these paintings have been on exhibition at the Museum for several years.

    Fully in keeping with the character of the early Italian Renaissance, the paintings to be included from this period are largely of religious subjects. Representative works of this type from the Florentine, Sienese and Venetian schools will be shown, with a few examples of slightly later art of a more secular nature, such as portraits and scones from classical mythology.

    The group of Netherlands paintings dates chiefly from the 17th century, although one earlier panel, a Madonna Nursing the Child by the 15th century Master of the Magdalene Legend, will serve to illustrate that phase of painting in the Low Countries which developed under the leadership of the Van Eycks and Rogier van der Weyden.

    Approximately of the same period as the latter painting are a Martyrdom of Five Saints by the French Maitre de Moulins and a group of twelve small portrait panels, ten of which were painted by the famous 16th Century French master, Corneille de Lyon. Pictures by Pannini, Tiepolo, Canaletto and Longhi, all Italians; Ribera and Goya, Spanish; and Joraens, Vernet and Roos of the North, represent the era during which the Mannerist, Baroque and Rococco styles prevailed throughout Europe. Particularly interesting in this group is the St. Joseph by Ribera, which was formerly called Aaron because the flowering rod by which St. Joseph is identified was once completely obscured by repaint. Now cleaned, this painting is a magnificent example of the vivid realism of this Spanish master. With these pictures the Museum will put on exhibition for the first time a small Spanish Bullfight with Dogs just presented to the Museum by Sam A. Lewisohn. While the painter of the picture is unknown, the informality of the scene, as indicated by the presence of dogs in the arena, would seem to date the painting before the middle of the 19th century.

    Latest in point of time, the large group of French paintings includes some of the finest pictures in the Museum collections. Almost every current in the artistic development of France in the 19th century will be represented; Romanticism by a vivid Gericault, Realism by several land and seascapes by Courbet, the lyrical classicism of Corot (in two superb paintings recently presented to the Museum by Mrs. Horace Havemeyer) works by Monet, Pissarro, Sisley and Raffaelli. Toulouse-Lautrec and Cezanne will be included, with two paintings by each, and the Mlle. Fiocre in the Ballet La Source and the Femme au Tub, both by Degas, will exemplify that master’s brilliant handling of theatre and figure subjects. The present generation of French painters will be represented by Bonnard whose The Breakfast Room, was acquired last year. Vlaminck, Utrillo, and Derain.

    The exhibition will remain current through January 1, 1945.

    PRESS PREVIEW: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 10 A.M. - 4:30 P.M.

    Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1942 - 1946. 10-12/1944, 108-9.
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