A Nineteenth Century painting by an African American landscapist, a pair of Twentieth Century Japanese screens, a miniature painting from India’s Punjab Hills, a photograph by Virginia artist Sally Mann and a full-length portrait by one of the rising stars of Contemporary art have been added to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts collection by its Board of Trustees. The Council, a volunteer support group that is celebrating its 50th anniversary, presented the VMFA with the Nineteenth Century American painting “The Quarry,” an oil on canvas by African American artist Robert Scott Duncanson (1821-1872). Dr Elizabeth O’Leary, VMFA’s associate curator of American arts, says Duncanson is consistently cited today as one of the five most outstanding black artists who practiced in America during the 1800s. “The Quarry” depicts a formidable rock formation that “seems to defy assaults from nature and man,” O’Leary says. The painting measures 14 1/2 by 22 5/8 inches and is dated about 1855-63. The pair of Japanese screens was made around 1916 by Yamamoto Shunkyo (1871-1933), who worked in the Nihonga tradition (literally “Japanese painting”) that developed in the century after Japan opened to American Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853. Perry’s visited presaged a period of rapid development following centuries of isolation in Japan. Nihonga artists attempted to transform Japanese painting into an internationally valid style, according to Dr Shawn Eichman, VMFA’s E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Curator of East Asian Art. “Not surprisingly, the remarkable combination of realism, lyricism and personal spiritual significance evident in works such as this pair of screens made Shunkyo a public favorite” in Japan, Eichman says. Titled “Winter Mountains,” the 66-by-147-inch screens depict a snow-covered landscape dotted with evergreens. Eichman says, “This is a dramatic work by one of Japan’s most recognized landscape artists that already has been recognized by scholars in Japan for its importance.” “Krishna and the Gopis,” circa 1790, is an Indian miniature in opaque watercolor on paper from the Kangra School in India’s Punjab Hills. It measures 113/4 by 8 inches and depicts the Hindu god Krishna surrounded by cow-maids (or gopis), his female admirers. “Jessie #34,” 2004, a gelatin silver print measuring 50 by 40 inches, is from Virginia artist Sally Mann’s latest body of work in which she uses an obsolete Nineteenth Century process and outdated cameras to make “some of the most compelling work today,” says John Ravenal, VMFA’s Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. VMFA already owns five works by Mann. Her photographs are in major collections across the country, including those of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Kehinde Wiley is an African American who is emerging in the forefront of today’s American artists. His “Willem van Heythusen (after Frans Hals)” was executed in oil and enamel on canvas this year. The painting, measuring 8 by 6 feet, was also purchased by VMFA through the Glasgow Fund. Wiley (b 1977) paints “lush, over-life-sized images of African American men posed in the trappings of Old Master portraits,” Ravenal says. “His blend of hip-hop and grand-style European culture has sparked strong interest.” The figure in VMFA’s portrait is dressed in designer street wear and Timberland boots and stands “proudly with hand on sword,” Ravenal says. The work is a rare full-length image; Wiley’s portraits are more often three-quarter length. Behind the figure is a highly decorative red and gold background that helps to flatten the imagery and “emphasizes the work’s artificiality and underscores the artist’s fabrication of a fiction that combines wildly diverse elements.” The museum’s trustees also accepted the 2006 purchase installment of the Robert and Nancy Nooter Collection. During the past 40 years, the Nooters, from Washington, D.C., have assembled one of the most distinguished private collections of African art in the United States. The 12 works from the Nooter collection include ten from Congo, Angola and Gabon that “strengthen our holdings of art from central Africa” and two works from Tanzania “that augment VMFA’s holdings in eastern African works,” says Richard Woodward, the museum’s senior associate director for architecture and design and curator of African art. The trustees also accepted gifts of two paintings from Anna L. and Fleetwood Garner of Richmond and a sculpture from Mr And Mrs Charles G. Thalhimer, also of Richmond. The first of the Garner gifts is Claude Monet’s “The Highway bridge at Argenteuil (Le Pont d’Argenteuil),” an 1873 oil on canvas measuring approximately 18 by 28 inches. It is the fifth painting by the leading master of French Impressionism to enter the VMFA collection. The second Garner gift is Raoul Dufy’s “Golfe Juan,” a circa 1927 oil on canvas measuring 15 1/8 by 18 1/4 inches. The landscape dates from the period when Dufy (1877-1953), a native of Le Havre in the north of France, spent extended time on the French Riviera. Golfe Juan is a small seaside town near Nice. The Thalhimer gift, Anna Hyatt Huntington’s “Fawns Playing,” 1936, is made of cast aluminum and stands 41 3/4 inches tall. Huntington (1876-1973) was the leading American sculptor of animals in the early Twentieth Century. Her works are today found in most major museums with American collections. The trustees also approved two discretionary purchases made by Tom Allen, VMFA’s trustee executive for administration. They were a circa 1833 window pane of clear pressed glass measuring 5 1/16 by 7 inches made in Wheeling, Va. (now West Virginia), and a Nineteenth or Twentieth Century rare portrait head from the Kongo Culture of what is now Congo. The funerary sculpture stands 105/8 inches tall and is made of wood with kaolin (fine white clay) and decorated with paint and traces of fiber. Both discretionary purchases were made through the Glasgow Fund. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is on the Boulevard at Grove Avenue. For information, www.vmfa.state.va.us or 804-340-1400. 
01 Aug 2006 / 0 Comment
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