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Art History Museum of Fine Arts Houston
American Art • A particular strength of American art at the MFAH is 19th-century landscape painting, with fine examples by Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and others reflecting the allure of the American wilderness. The post-Civil War period is well represented at the museum, with works by John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, and Childe Hassam. The holdings in early-20th-century American art include wonderful Ashcan School paintings and important early abstract works. Paintings by Georgia O´Keeffe and other Taos artists are another highlight. The American galleries in the Beck Building surround a sculpture court that features works by Frederick William MacMonnies and Paul Manship.
John Singer Sargent • This portrait represents John Singer Sargent´s lifelong friend Sarah Sears, a photographer and patron of the arts in Boston. Her alert pose, intense gaze, and upper-body posture contrast with the seemingly relaxed position of her lower body, demonstrating how Sargent seemed to capture, as one critic wrote, "the nervous tension of the age." Sargent´s stunning surface displays of paint connoted elegance and dash, and helped make him the portraitist of choice for the aristocracy of England and America at the turn of the century.
Thomas Cole • In Indian Pass, Thomas Cole created a primeval American past. Deeply concerned about the political and economic turbulence of his time, Cole filled his landscapes with symbols and moral warnings. The blasted trees suggest the inevitable passage of time. The Native American figure is a nostalgic element; by 1847 he would no longer have inhabited the scenic wilderness that Cole depicts. Thus, with this dramatic and lush setting, Cole offered 19th-century viewers a marker by which to measure the nation´s present and future.
John George Brown • Among the most popular and prolific artists working in the United States in the late nineteenth-century, Brown specialized in genre scenes of urban and rural children. While Curling;—a Scottish Game, at Central Park is a genre painting—well-dressed figures engage in urban leisure—it is also a group portrait, commissioned by Robert Gordon, a Scottish businessman and member of the St. Andrews Curling Club in New York, in whose family the painting descended. The creation of Central Park gave rise to new forms of leisure, including the imported game of curling, which gained in popularity in the mid-nineteenth century. Known as a master of figural groupings and facial expressions, Brown invites the viewer into the scene through the eyes of the young girl seated in the sleigh at far left. Brown captures with brilliant effect the hazy light of winter, the reflective surface of the smooth ice, the costumes and expressions of the players and observers, the glistening surface of the painted stones, and conveys the sheer pleasure of this winter outdoor sport.
Mary Cassatt • Strongly encouraged by her dear friend Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt was one of only two women and the only American to join the Impressionists. She focused on the domestic world of women and children, rendering them in a straightforward manner free from sentimentality. Here, the radical composition and the variety of brush strokes—from smooth and exacting to sketchy and dynamic—enhance both the intimacy and the drama of an everyday scene. Susan Comforting the Baby • An American-born artist who spent most of her life in France, Cassatt (1844—1926) is well known for her images of women and children in domestic settings. She revisits that familiar theme in Children in the Garden, which she exhibited in the eighth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1886. Enclosed in a private garden, a nursemaid sits on a bench knitting, while one of her charges sleeps in a nearby carriage and the other plays at her feet.
Thomas C. Eakins • Thomas C. Eakins´s late portraits, which include this powerful likeness of a Philadelphia banker, are among the artist´s most poignant works. Here, the artist focuses upon the two elements of portraiture traditionally deemed most important: heads and hands. The penetrating gaze and the taut, sinewy hands of the aging sitter carry the emotional weight of the painting and testify to Eakins´s life-long commitment to portraying the human condition in all its heroism and frailty. Portrait of John B. Gest
George Bellows • This portrait depicts Florence ("Flossie") Pierce, the daughter of a lighthouse keeper who lived on an island off the coast of Maine, where George Bellows spent several summers. Bellows was associated with the Ashcan School, a group of painters in New York City who advocated a vigorous painting style that suggested the modern pace of city life. Here, the artist experiments with bold color arranged in large blocks. At the same time, he suggests a complex psychological presence conveyed by the brightly lit gaze of the sitter.
Frederic Edwin Church • In this painting, Frederic Edwin Church depicts Cotopaxi, an active volcano in the Andes mountains of Ecuador. The tiny foreground figures suggest the insignificance of humankind in comparison with the natural wonders that surround them: the volcano, the waterfall, and the lush tropical foliage.
John Kensett • Artists of the Hudson River School often made pencil or oil sketches out-of-doors and later used them in the studio as a guide to create finished works. Here, John Kensett depicted an artist painting a view popular with tourists and artists: Mount Mansfield in the Green Mountains of Vermont and its pastoral, sun-filled valley below. With the invention of the steamboat, the expansion of the railway, and improved roads, artists and other nature tourists had easier access to glorious sites like this one. • A View of Mansfield Mountain
Thomas Doughty • This painting depicts the Fairmount Waterworks, the pumping station for the water supply of 19th century Philadelphia. One of the great technological achievements of its day, the Fairmount Waterworks represented a successful marriage of scientific innovation with the arts and nature. Dams, reservoirs, and water wheels were all disguised behind a series of classically inspired buildings set within public gardens. Here, Thomas Doughty transforms this industrial scene into an idyllic landscape bathed in golden light in which people are enjoying outdoor leisure activities. • View of the Fairmount Waterworks, Philadelphia, from the Opposite Side of the Schuylkill River
Robert S. Duncanson • A landscape painter in the so-called Hudson River School tradition, Robert Scott Duncanson was the first African-American artist to gain international recognition. His extraordinary achievement is all the more remarkable given his success during the height of slavery in antebellum America. Like the work of his model, artist Thomas Cole, the painting contains deeper meanings. The blasted trees, references to the passage of time and America´s primordial past, combined with the scene of a clear-cut valley, offer a poignant warning sign of man´s encroachment on nature. Beautifully composed and painted, A View of Asheville hints at the promise of this developing city, juxtaposed with the still-unspoiled mountains that hover in the background. This painting is an excellent example of one of the most important 19th century American landscape artists. • A View of Asheville, North Carolina
Willard Leroy Metcalf • America´s first major exhibition of French Impressionist paintings was held in New York in 1886 and included works by Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Auguste Renoir. Impressionism had been steadily ridiculed in France since its emergence in the 1860s, but the exhibition in America met with critical and popular acclaim. In fact, some American artists had already begun to experiment with the revolutionary style. William Metcalf was one of several Americans who, beginning in the mid-1880s, made pilgrimages to Monet´s home in Giverny, France. Leaning from the master, Metcalf abandoned preparatory sketches and began painting spontaneously from nature. This small study of brilliant light and deep shadow was painted in Giverny. • Sunlight and Shadow
William Merritt Chase • This luminous landscape was inspired by the rather flat and ordinary countryside of Shinnecock, Long Island, where William Merritt Chase taught outdoor painting. Sandwiched in between the scraggly clumps of grass and sky is a sliver of sea dotted with white boats, and pink dunes highlighted by a streak of red. Chase’s seemingly simple composition testifies to his ability to make the ordinary seem extraordinary. • Sunlight and Shadow, Shinnecock Hills
Thomas Hart Benton • In this scene of farmers at work, the rhythmic swirls of paint and lyrical movement of the workers make farm life appear pastoral. Referred to as a Regionalist, Thomas Hart Benton believed that the subjects of American artists should come from the nation´s heartland. The theme here—man working in harmony with nature, and the landscape as a source of bounty and sustenance—presents an ideal view of the actual hardships that farmers endured during the Great Depression of the 1930s. • Haystack
William Merritt Chase • In this portrait, William Merritt Chase presents his daughter, who holds a coral whistle and looks over the shoulder of her mother, dressed in a Japanese-inspired costume. The relationship between the black tones of the kimono and the background attests to Chase’s experiments with delicate tonal harmonies. One critic, praising Chase’s painterly effects, described “ . . . the tingling pleasure that one receives from the one note of vivid scarlet that cuts through this quiet harmony like a knife . . .”. • Mother and Child (The First Portrait)
William Merritt Chase • Chase´s fame as a painter of still lifes rests on his images of fish. A master of bravura technique, Chase elevated this plain subject into high art. He once explained: "I enjoy painting fishes; in the infinite variety of these creatures, the subtle and exquisitely colored tones of the flesh fresh from the water, the way their surfaces reflect the light, I take the greatest pleasure. In painting a good composition of fish I am painting for myself." • Still Life
Elsie Driggs • In 1928, American artist Elsie Driggs (1898—1992) traveled to Detroit to make studies of the Ford Motor Company´s River Rouge Plant. She was fascinated by the aircraft that took her there, a 1926 Ford Tri-Motor plane that became the prototype for future airplanes. Here, Driggs depicts this new form of transportation as a symbol of modernity and the future. Like other Precisionist paintings, Aeroplane is a synthesis of realism and abstraction. The tightly painted canvas is delineated with diagonal lines, creating an abstract, gridlike effect. • Aero plane
Frederick Frieseke • Japanese woodcuts flooded the European market in the late 19th century, finding an especially appreciative audience among French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters. Many artists became collectors, and some even included Japanese art in the backgrounds of their own paintings, as Frederick Frieseke did here. This American Impressionist painter probably first fell under the spell of Japanese design while he was studying in Paris. The compressed perspective, flattened color, and linear embellishment seen in this painting are borrowed from Japanese aesthetics. • Girl Reading
Robert Henri • Believing that the artist must also be a force for social reform, Robert Henri developed a technically adventurous style that was nonetheless grounded in realism. With bold brushwork and pure color, he painted dramatic but unidealized portraits of ordinary people. Henri made several trips to Spain and became fascinated with bullfighting. This dashing portrait depicts the picador Antonio Baños. While the matador personifies the glamour and heroism of the bullfighting ritual, the picador plays only a supporting role: his job is to goad the bull. In choosing this subsidiary character as his subject, Henri rejected the more elitist traditions of portraiture. • Antonio Baños
Childe Hassam • Here, Childe Hassam offers a dazzling and mysterious view of an ordinary slice of life—New York City at night in the rain. Hassam had admired the work of the French Impressionists during his studies in Paris in the 1880s. He adopted the Impressionists’ flickering brushwork, sparkling light effects, and subjects taken from daily life. Upon returning to the United States, he settled in New York, where he found the bustling streets and grand buildings rich subjects to paint. • Evening in New York
Marsden Hartley • When Marsden Hartley traveled in 1912 to Paris and to Munich, he met some of the champions of European Modernism. Before long, he had developed his own nonrepresentational style that was indebted to Robert Delaunay´s circles of pure color and Vassily Kandinsky´s theories of Expressionism. Hartley returned to America in 1913 and exhibited his geometric abstractions at the Armory Show. With its emblematic arrangement of circles and bands and its emphasis on pure color relationships, Abstraction is typical of Hartley´s work at this time. In 1917 he abandoned abstract art to concentrate on landscapes and seascapes. • Abstraction
Henry Ossawa Tanner • An accomplished painter, illustrator, and photographer, Henry Ossawa Tanner struggled for acceptance as a black artist in America. He left for Europe in 1891, when he was 31, and he soon found success in Paris. A bishop´s son, Tanner often painted religious scenes that transcend their biblical sources. With its themes of persecution, escape, and new beginnings, the New Testament story of Mary and Joseph´s Flight into Egypt resonated with the plight of African-Americans. Tanner painted the episode about 15 times, infusing each work with mystery and passion. • Flight into Egypt
John Marin • The Maine coast was a favorite subject for John Marin, one of the great masters of American watercolor painting. Marin modified the Cubist technique invented in 1907 by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso to give structural form to his reverence for the natural world. In this vibrant watercolor, he distills the elements of nature into geometric shapes and bold lines. Although Marin presents a multifaceted view of objects and forms, the overall effect is one of harmony and not fragmentation. The white paper becomes an important component of the composition, contributing to the freshness of the image. • The Little Sailboat
E. Martin Hennings • Passing By shows people of the Taos Pueblo moving through a glade of cottonwood trees in the brilliant autumn sun. The figures and landscape are as tightly and harmoniously interwoven as a fine tapestry. E. Martin Hennings was a prominent member of the Taos Society of Artists, which embraced the peaceful Pueblo culture and the dramatic colors and topography of the desert Southwest. • Passing By
Robert Spencer • Robert Spencer was a member of the colony of American Impressionists in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Here, Spencer departs from the rural landscapes of his New Hope contemporaries by painting a bleak scene of urban decay. In The Exodus, Spencer suggests the plight of refugees by presenting them in a contemporary version of the biblical story of Exodus. • The Exodus
Stuart Davis • Stuart Davis fragments the elements that make up this harbor scene in Massachusetts—sea, boats, piers, buoys, tackle, and flag—and represents them with patterns of bright color arranged to convey a lively rhythm. Davis, in fact, conceived of compositions such as this one in terms of the staccato pulse of American jazz. • Gloucester Harbor
Georgia O´Keeffe • By magnifying a nautilus shell and juxtaposing it dramatically against a distant landscape, Georgia O´Keeffe transforms the ordinary into something abstract and mysterious. O´Keeffe´s experience living in the desert Southwest, first in Texas and then in New Mexico, informed her paintings with bold colors and stark forms. Her elegant still lifes of simple objects were inspired by the objects she collected on her walks—clam shells, turkey feathers, bones, rocks, fossils, and flowers. • Red Hills with White Shell
Severin Roesen • The tradition of painting fruit and flowers dates back to 16th- and 17th-century Dutch and German artists. By the 18th century, still-life painting had fallen from fashion, only to be revived in Germany during the 1830s. Severin Roesen was among the many German artists who studied the genre before immigrating to America. Following James and Raphaelle Peale, these artists contributed to the growing popularity of still-life paintings in mid-19th-century America. Here, the lush profusion of natural bounty seems to suggest the richness of an American Eden and its promise of prosperity. With a meticulous attention to detail and skillful replication of texture, this painting forms a convincing illusion — never mind that the flowers shown blooming together here do not do so in nature. • Victorian Bouquet
Martin Johnson Heade • Heade (1819—1904) preferred to work on small canvases. In his tightly controlled paintings, the artist displays an intensity that makes his canvases seem much larger, if not monumental. Having essentially discovered the artistic possibilities of the humble salt marsh in rural New England, Heade painted them for more than 45 years. As he did with magnolias, he depicted salt marshes repeatedly. Conceived in series form, Heade´s magnolias and, in particular, his salt marshes, are endlessly varied and show evidence of the careful changes he made while painting. The subtle shifts within his work as a whole account in part for Heade´s appeal to modern eyes. His paintings received only limited artistic acclaim during his lifetime, but with the general revival of interest in American art in the 1940s, attention returned to him once again and his reputation was re-established.
Martin Johnson Heade • In this acutely observed still life, Martin Johnson Heade depicts five magnolias in various stages of blossom. Heade had moved in 1883 to Florida, where flourishing tropical flowers like magnolias both encouraged his interest in natural history and appealed to him artistically. The golden glow of the background and of the plush velvet sets off the various qualities of the flower: the delicate, smooth petals in creamy white; the rough stems; and the waxy finish of the leaves, one of which has been affected by a fungus. • Magnolias on Gold Velvet Cloth
Masterworks of European Art • Early Christian art at the MFAH includes an important ivory figure of God the Father and a Late Gothic Virgin and Child by the workshop of Niclaus Weckman the Elder.Thanks largely to the vision and generosity of two great art collectors from the first half of the 20th century—Percy S. Straus and Samuel H. Kress—the museum´s collection is strong in Renaissance and Baroque art. Among the Renaissance highlights are Italian examples by Fra Angelico, Giovanni di Paolo, Sebastiano del Piombo, Antico, and Scarsellino, as well as Flemish masterpieces by Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling. Baroque strengths include notable works by Orazio Gentileschi, Guido Reni, Philippe de Champaigne, Luca Giordano, Frans Hals, and Jan van Huysum.The 18th- and 19th-century galleries feature important works by Jean-Siméon Chardin, Anton Raphael Mengs, and Canaletto, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Francisco de Goya, William Adolphe Bouguereau, Camille Corot, and Théodore Rousseau.
Guido Reni • Guido Reni was one of the most influential of the 17th century Italian painters, enjoying the highest reputation during his lifetime and remaining one of the great painters of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. In his religious paintings he was concerned with the expression of intense emotion; his subjects often had upraised eyes conveying a state of ecstasy or divine inspiration. James the Greater, one of the twelve Apostles and brother of John the Evangelist, was among the circle of men closest to Christ. Here, the saint is shown as Christ´s Apostle: bearded, with his dark hair parted and falling on either side in the manner of Christ. Resting in the crook of his arm is the pilgrim´s staff, one of his attributes.
Pier Jacopo Alari-Bonacolsi • In the late 15th century, Isabella d´Este and her husband, Gianfrancesco Ganzaga, gathered poets, painters, and sculptors at their sophisticated court in Mantua to assist with their studies of ancient art. One such sculptor was Pier Jacopo Alari-Bonacolsi, who earned his nickname, Antico, for the remarkable small bronzes he made in the antique style. This example, one of the few in the United States, shows Hercules as an idealized male nude, just after slaying the Nemean lion, the first of his 12 labors. • Hercules Resting after Slaying the Nemean Lion
Carlo Dolci • Carlo Dolci was deeply devout even as a child, and intense religious feeling was the guiding force behind his art. Many of his paintings were inscribed with prayers and intended to inspire spiritual fervor in those who beheld them. His great piety is illustrated by the fact that during Easter Week, Dolci would paint only scenes relating to Christ´s Passion. His painstaking technique and the meticulous care with which he rendered every detail of his compositions brought him great patronage. Some of his works attained the status of venerated images and remain among the most popular devotional pictures within Catholicism. • Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist
Frans Hals • One of the great 17th-century Dutch artists was Frans Hals, who achieved some renown early in his career but died an impoverished man. Not until the 19th century, when artists began to appreciate his unprecedented manner of applying thick paint with spontaneous, free brush strokes, was his reputation secured. A wonderful painter of portraits and scenes of everyday life, Hals is best remembered for his bravura studies of the Dutch bourgeoisie, including a series of nine group portraits of Haarlem civic guards. In the 1630´, Hals´s printings became more somber as in this penetrating portrait, one half of a husband-and-wife pair. • Portrait of an Elderly Woman
Canaletto • Painted views of towns and landscapes were enormously popular in the 18th century. Travelers to Italy eagerly sought accurate and detailed records of their visits to Rome, Florence, Venice, and Naples. Canaletto was the most famous painter of vedute (Italian for "views") at the time. His ability to capture the light, the life, the buildings, and the expanse of Venice established his reputation as one of the greatest topographical painters of all time. • The Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice
Pompeo Batoni • Pompeo Batoni´s paintings were especially popular among English visitors to Italy in the 18th century: Lady Anna Riggs Miller´s declaration that he was "esteemed the best portrait painter in the world" is typical of contemporary estimations of his talent. This portrait of William Fermor in a red velvet coat lined with lynx (a type worn in Italy in the winter by the British) demonstrates Batoni´s ability to create a striking and memorable likeness. • William Fermor
Mattia Preti • Mattia Preti is one of the founders of the Neopolitan Baroque style. Born in Calabria in southern Italy, he worked in Rome and then moved to Naples in about 1656, at a cosmopolitan period in that City´s artistic history. One of a set of three paintings commissioned by a Flemish merchant living in Naples, this work demonstrates Preti´s powerful style. He depicts the beheading of Saint Paul at its most tense moment: the saint bows his head just as the executioner begins to unsheathe the sword. The close placement of twisted figures in the foreground heightened by sharp contrasts of light and shadow, created the scene´s dramatic immediacy. • The Martyrdom of Saint Paul
Ferdinand Bol • The most likely interpretation of this painting is that the handsome woman admiring herself represents a personification of the vice of Vanity, or Vanitas. The term vanitas (Latin for "emptiness") derives from the admonition in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity." The vanitas theme was a well-known subject in 17th-century Dutch art and was intended to symbolize the transitory nature of earthly life and the inevitability of death. • Woman at Her Dressing Table
The Blaffer Foundation Collection • The collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation was originally established by Houston art patron Sarah Campbell Blaffer (1885—1975). In 1993, the foundation agreed to place some of its finest works on long-term exhibition at the MFAH. Five galleries in the Beck Building are devoted to presenting this outstanding collection of European art. The highlights include works by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Longhi, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and Jean-Baptiste Oudry.
Bonaventure de Bar • The figures are treated in a more robust and realistic manner than in the work of other followers of Watteau. Only the woman in the center, whose sumptuous silk dress is emphasized by a lighting that brings out all its brilliance, wears a costume unsuitable for this resolutely rustic site. But at the same time, de Bar manages to retain a poetry and a subtlety that bear comparison to Watteau´s work. As with Watteau, the represented action is not clearly indicated, and the spectator´s imagination is free to invent a story for the figures in the picture and to be filled with the painting´s sensitive, delicate atmosphere. • Fête Champêtre
Sir Anthony van Dyck • By the 17th century, portraits were in great demand among Europe´s merchant and militia classes as well as its nobility. Born in Flanders, Sir Anthony van Dyck was one of the leading portraitists of the time, famous for creating flattering but incisive character studies. Imbuing his subjects with dignity and refinement, van Dyck became particularly popular among aristocrats during his sojourns in England in the 1630s. His grand style influenced English portrait painting for two centuries. This sympathetic work depicts Antoine Triest, a bishop of Ghent who was also an art collector. The bold brushwork in indebted to Rubens, with whom van Dyck worked as a young man, while the pose and color derive from the Italian painter Titian.
Sandro Botticelli • Sandro Botticelli oversaw an active workshop, producing hundreds of paintings, especially devotional images of the Virgin and Child, over the course of his career. Very few of Botticelli´s paintings are signed or dated, and it is often difficult to determine his authorship. This painting belongs to his late period, which is particularly enigmatic. Some scholars attribute this work entirely to Botticelli, but it may also have been executed in part by his assistants. The round painting, or tondo, shows the Virgin Mary adoring the infant Jesus, while Saint Joseph sleeps. On the right are the devoted shepherds, and in the background, on the left, the Holy Family flees into Egypt. • Adoration of the Christ Child
Hieronymus Bosch • The patron saint of travelers, Christopher was one of the most popular figures in the late Middle Ages. According to legend, this giant figure, guided by a hermit (here visible on the bank, holding his lantern), served Christ by carrying travelers across a river. One night Christopher carried the Christ Child himself and struggled under the weight of the world. The artist has elaborated the story with nightmarish symbols of a sinful world. • Saint Christopher Carrying the Christ Child through a Sinful World
Melchior d´Hondecoeter • Melchior d´Hondecoeter specialized in paintings of animals and birds. It is unusual for animal paintings to have literary references, but this work illustrates an ancient Greek fable. Zeus planned to choose the most handsome bird to be king over the others. The crow, or jackdaw, realizing how plain he was, fastened feathers molted by other birds all over his body. Zeus was about to award him the throne because of his splendid appearance when the other birds, indignant at the deception, plucked all the borrowed plumes from the pretender, returning him to his natural, unimpressive state. • The Crow Exposed
Alessandro Magnasco • The works of Genoese artist Alessandro Magnasco are marked by a bravura painting technique scarcely matched in his time. Forms are suggested rather than defined, and drips and flicks of paint attest to the energy with which he created his paintings. Magnasco´s subject matter is also unusual: the paintings are peopled by elongated figures, often monks, pilgrims, and peasants, engaged in sometimes enigmatic activities. Here, peasants led by a monk or hermit kneel around a strange altar, upon which rest a skull, two candles, and a column topped by a cross. The group gathers at water´s edge in a wild and mountainous setting. • Worshippers at a Shrine in a Mountainous Landscape
Lucas Cranach • Lucas Cranach and his workshop painted dozens of versions of the story of Lucretia, the ancient Roman heroine who took her own life after being raped. This painting was probably one of the primary versions of the subject because inscribed on the ledge behind the figure of Lucretia is Cranach´s monogram, and, most unusual, the date of the painting´s execution. Cranach was an enormously successful artist who worked for the Saxon princes and courtiers in Wittenberg, Germany. His paintings of subjects from Roman mythology and classical history that featured nude women were particularly popular. • Suicide of Lucretia
