An Art Rich Fall in New York

Dancing Ganesh, Pala Period, 9th - 10th century, Nepal,
blackstone, height: 18.75 in. (47.6 cm),
Doris Wiener Gallery

New York in the fall becomes a cornucopia of tempting artistic works. Fashion Week started on September 9th; the New York City Ballet begins on the 14th; the New York Philharmonic on the 22nd; the Metropolitan Opera on September 27th; Carnegie Hall opens on the 29th.

The city’s major museums have their fall exhibition line up. Hundreds of art galleries present new shows. The Asian Art Dealers New York (AADNY) organized a small September version of the big spring Asia Week New York currently on view. Auction houses get into gear with their Asian sales: Sotheby’s and Christie’s September 14th through 16th; Doyle’s on the 13th. Check out their state-of-the-art e-catalogues.

Chelsea Gallery Fashion Show,
February 2010,
Sally Wu, Designer,
Courtesy of Art For Progress

There are also presentations sponsored by alternative organizations such as Art for Progress. This six-year-old non-profit dedicated to emerging artists often stages events in non-traditional settings featuring not only the visual arts but also fashion and music. Catch their “Fashion Interaction” on September 21st which will showcase young designers such as Sally Wu.

At the Asian exhibitions about town, you will see many depictions of the elephant headed Hindu god Ganesh. This popular deity is a god of good things: success, knowledge, wisdom, and wealth. He’s a perfect god for New York’s fall art season. Go enjoy.

MoMA NOW

Pablo Picasso, The Bull, state VII (Le Taureau),
December 26, 1945, lithograph,

composition 12 x 17 1/2 in. (30.5 x 44.4 cm),
sheet 12 15/16 x 17 1/ in. (32 x 44.4 cm),
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Visit the Museum of Modern Art now. There are crowds but it is worth the hassle. The Museum is chock full of exciting shows several of which are closing shortly. High on the “must see” list is the Picasso print exhibit, Themes and Variations (till August 30). Drawn from the MoMA’s own holdings, over hundred works of the highest quality illuminate the artist’s unequaled talent in this medium. You will not be bored.

Mark Rothko, Archaic Idol, 1945,
ink and gouache on paper,
21 7/8 x 30 in. (55.6 x 76.2 cm),
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Also nearing closure is The Modern Myth: Drawing Mythologies in Modern Times (till August 30). These works on paper, also from the Museum’s own collection, explore the idea and visual imagery of myths and mythmaking. The all star cast of artists include Paul Cezanne, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol. It's an intriguing and thought provoking show.

Bruce Nauman’s site specific piece Days (till August 23), a recent MoMA acquisition, seems to make sound physical. Experiencing this work becomes a contemplation of time. Nauman created Days for the 2009 Venice Biennale when he represented the United States. Presently set up in the Museum’s special exhibition gallery, it won’t be there for long. When it will be seen again is unknown. So go.

The Young Architects Program 2010 (till August 23) presents the project designs of the five finalists for the MoMA PS 1 temporary summer courtyard installation. The innovative plans of these young teams evoke joyful excitement. Judging from their work, architecture has a bright future.

Henri Matisse, Bathers by a River, March 1909-10,
May-November 1913,and summer 1916-17,
oil on canvas, 102 1/2 x 154 3/16 in. (260 x 392 cm),
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

There is more going on at MoMA. Although the Matisse exhibit, Radical Invention, 1913 -1917 (till October 11) doesn’t end in August, seeing this master’s inventiveness and Picasso’s makes for a stimulating comparison. Who wins? You decide.

Viewing hints: MoMA is open late on Thursdays in August until 8:45 p.m. and may be less crowded as well on Friday afternoons before free MoMA Fridays begin at 4:00 p.m.

TheMuseum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street, Manhattan
Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, 10:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Thursday, 10:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

(open until 8:45 p.m. every Thrusday in August and on September 2 and October 7)
Friday, 10:30 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Closed Tuesday

Meanings Beyond Image and Text: Treasures from the Braginsky Collection

Marriage Contract, Lugo, Italy,
29 September 1841; Border ca. 1775,
parchment, 33.1 x 23.3 in. (84.1 x 59.1 cm),
Braginsky Collection Ketubbah 105

Over 100 rare and unique items are on view in the exhibit, “A Journey through Jewish Worlds: Highlights from the Braginsky Collection of Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books” at the Yeshiva University Museum.

The illuminated manuscripts, printed books, marriage contracts, decorated scrolls, liturgical texts and other writings on a variety of subjects come from the Braginsky Collection, one of the most important private collections of this kind in the world. Although René Braginsky has been collecting for the past few decades, this is the first public exhibition devoted exclusively to his collection.

The show is accompanied by an excellent catalogue and Web site, http://www.braginskycollection.com/. The Web site allows viewers to zoom in and out of digital images and texts as well as flip through pages of manuscripts and books or unfurl scrolls. If the object I mention is available online, for easy linkage I have indicated its Web site section and catalogue number.

The works on display cover over six hundred years but the collection is strongest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries especially the poster-size illustrated Jewish marriage contracts called ketubbot, (ketubbah in the singular). These elaborate contracts which specified dowries along with the names of the bride and groom reflected the wealth and social standing of the families involved. They also protected women in cases of divorce – what the bride came with was documented and was her due should the marriage cease.

These embellished documents incorporated local artistic styles with results that at times mixed Hebrew, pagan, and Christian motifs. For example, an Ottoman crescent moon and star are prominently depicted in a Samaritan Betrothal Contract of 1905 (Braginsky Collection Web site, Marriage Contracts, Catalogue 79); In a ketubbah from Padua, a pagan cupid unites family emblems while two putti make music and two others hold up a crown (Braginsky Collection Web site, Marriage Contracts Catalogue 70); and, a classical personification of charity shows up on seventeenth-century contract from Amsterdam (Braginsky Collection Web site, Marriage Contracts, Catalogue 72).

Of note are the ketubbot that were recycled, a practice apparently limited to Italy. Beautifully decorated contracts were reused by either erasing the earlier inscription and rewriting as in the Paduan Ketubbah (Braginsky Collection Web site, Marriage Contracts, Catalogue 70) or entirely replacing the script area as was done for the marriage contract of 1841 from Lugo, Italy which saved a ca. 1775 Watteau-like border (Braginsky Collection Web site, Marriage Contracts, Catalogue 71). Perhaps the rabbinic sumptuary laws that tried to put a lid on the amount spent on weddings encouraged the purchase of earlier contracts which were probably less expensive than commissioning new ones. Whatever, they are not only aesthetically appealing but also import much history.

Some of the more emotionally moving items include a fifteenth-century handwritten Hebrew Bible (Braginsky Collection Web site, Manuscripts and Printed Books, Catalogue 18) that was begun in Spain in 1491 and completed in Portugal in 1494. The scribe, being forced out of Spain after the Jewish expulsion of 1492, finished his work in a country that also drove the Jews out some three years later. This valued bible was taken to Italy and ultimately to Britain where it was purchased by Braginsky. Next to it, is a fifteenth-century Book of Job with Commentary (Braginsky Collection Web site, Manuscripts and Printed Books, Catalogue 17). It was the third Hebrew book published in Naples and attests to the fairly friendly environment Jews experienced in this city at that time. Moreover, on every page there are sixteenth- or seventeenth-century annotations written in Hebrew and Judeo-Persian. These are fascinating notes on the biblical part of the text.

Miscellany for Life Cycle Events, Italy (possibly Ferrara),
Copied by Leon ben Joshua de Rossi of Cesena,
last third of the 15th century, parchment, 60 leaves,
5.3 x 3.9 in. (13.5 x 10 cm), later quarter-linen binding,
Braginsky Collection 259

Every work in this exhibition significant. There are illustrated Passover haggadot, (haggadah in the singular), which is the text used during the holiday service celebrating the Jews exodus from Egypt. There are miscellaneous books such as an Italian late sixteenth-century Miscellany for Life Cycle Events (Braginsky Collection Web site, Manuscripts and Printed Books, Catalogue 11) which looks at first glance like a medieval book of hours. There are law, prayer and scientific books as well as noteworthy documents like the ones related to the condemnation and burning of Jewish books in sixteenth-century Italy (Braginsky Collection Web site, Manuscripts and Printed Books, Catalogue 1, 16, 3, 23). One glass showcase across an entire gallery wall contains over 2o Esther scrolls along with some of their elaborate cases made of gold, silver, wood and ivory (Braginsky Collection Web site, Esther Scrolls, Catalogue 98, 99, 103, 104). These scrolls were read during the Purim holiday service and since there were no religious prohibitions against decorating Esther scrolls, they were creatively illustrated.

Esther Scroll, India, ca. 1900, parchment, 15 membranes,
2 black columns + 18 text columns, 8 x 276.4 in. (20.2 x 702 cm),
Braginsky Collection Megillah 58

One remarkable Esther scroll from India, c. 1900 (Braginsky Collection Web site, Esther Scrolls, Catalogue 97) shows figures dressed in contemporary and non-western clothes. Men wear fezes, hats associated with the Ottomans, and many females have a bindi, a forehead decoration typically used by Indian women. It is a delightful mix of Indian ornaments and Jewish lore.

The Indian Esther scroll and three other pieces were obtained by Braginsky in the last six months and have never before been available for general viewing. In fact, the recent purchases seen here in New York were not shown in Amsterdam where the exhibit originated. Included in this new group is the earliest known dated decorated Esther Scroll of 1564 from Venice which was written by a woman; a 1668 Circumcision Manual also from Italy which includes the only known representation in Jewish art of Abraham circumcising himself and his son Ishmael; and, a 1755 Diploma for a Jewish Graduate of the University of Padua Medical School. The University of Padua was one of the few European universities that admitted Jews. The Medical School had special diplomas for the Jewish graduates which substituted the phrase, “In the name of God eternal” for the usual “In the name of Christ eternal.”

The Braginsky Collection may not have the breadth and depth of the acclaimed Valmadonna Trust Library of Hebrew books and manuscripts, which was on exhibit at Sotheby’s New York galleries in 2009, but the collection’s quality and merit make it nonpareil.

A Journey through Jewish Worlds:
Highlights from the Braginsky Collection
of Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books
Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, Manhattan
Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday 11 AM - 5 PM
Monday 3:30 - 8 PM
Wednesday 11 AM - 8 PM
Friday 11 AM - 2:30 PM
Through August 1, 2010

In Praise of Small Museums

Child Feeding Donkey, Mosaic,
Great Palace Mosaic Museum (Büyük Saray Mozaikleri Müzesi),
Istanbul, Turkey

I like to write about the methodology of looking. I may be analyzing a particular work of art or a gallery exhibit no matter; my intention is always to enhance the experience of seeing. Today I praise one small museum but think about how museums of this size can focus one’s view and open up new vistas.

On a recent trip to Istanbul I was struck by the impact of a relatively overlooked museum in the shadow of the great Sultan Ahmet Mosque (the Blue Mosque).

The Mosaic Museum known as the Great Palace Mosaic Museum (Büyük Saray Mozaikleri Müzesi) is just a short walk from the hubbub of Sultanahmet Square and the surrounding preeminent attractions. Its rewards exceed its size. Here are the remains of the largest and finest mosaics to come down to us from late antiquity: the floor of the courtyard and peristyle (open courtyard with surrounding porticos) of Constantine the Great’s palace. The building is basically a cover for the mosaic floor. Constantine the Great (r. 306 - 337 AD) had the palace constructed to rival anything built in Rome. It stretched from the Hippodrome to the Sea of Marmara.

In the mid-1930s and again in the early 50s, excavations of the Arasta Bazaar, a small market close to the Sultan Ahmet Mosque, revealed the mosaics. Some 16 retailers lost their shops but a museum was born.

Interior of Great Palace Mosaic Museum
(Büyük Saray Mozaikleri Müzesi),
Istanbul, Turkey

The floor’s decoration, which probably dates from the Byzantine Emperor Justinian (r. 527-585), is approximately 19.7 feet in width by 29.5 feet in depth. Thousands of colored cubes, each just a bit over 2 inches, make up the compositions. Although only one seventieth of the original surface survives, there remain about 150 human and animal depictions. You see scenes of peasants and herdsmen, wild beasts, children playing, animals grazing, creatures from other countries, hunts and mythological beings. Be warned that what you see is not only enchanting but also at times gruesome.

Leopards Attacking Deer, Mosaic,
Great Palace Mosaic Museum (Büyük Saray Mozaikleri Müzesi),
Istanbul, Turkey

In the museum’s quiet space, you can easily imagine the great court and what this floor would have looked like before the centuries of wear from the countless feet that walked across it and, as an exposed open court, prior to the weathering caused by natural elements. What is extant is remarkable.

The explanatory wall panels, in Turkish and English, are clear and illuminating. You can, however, thoroughly enjoy the compositions without reading anything. While viewing, I heard echoes of the distant court – the chattering of history murmured in my ears as I reflected on the inventiveness and craftsmanship of the imperial artisans.

What a respite from the huge edifices that surround and that can overwhelm. The praiseworthy Mosaic Museum delights and should be visited. It reminds that when in a foreign place, tourists usually concentrate on the so-called required sites such the Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace Museum, Yerebatan Cistern, and Hippodrome in Istanbul. Vision and crowd weary, the traveler may find refreshment in a small place of merit – a second tier attraction may offer a first rate experience. Seek these places.

Please note: for information on the sites mentioned above, go to Istanbul city guide/istanbul.com.

Great Palace Mosaic Museum (Büyük Saray Mozaikleri Müzesi)
Istanbul, Turkey
Address: Büyük Saray Mozaikleri Müzesi Torun Sokak Arasta Carşisi Sultanahmet
Entrance through Arasta Bazaar
Phone: 0212/518-1205
Hours: Tuesday – Sunday 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM (Closed Mondays)
Admission: 5 Turkish Lira (Approximately $3.00 at 1 TK = $.63)

Monet at Gagosian - An Alert

Claude Monet, Nymphéas, 1906,
oil on canvas, 31 7/8 x 36 5/8 in. (81 x 92 cm)
Private Collection

Once again, the Gagosian Gallery has mounted a museum quality exhibition, Claude Monet: Late Work. Set against the gallery’s pearly grey walls, Monet’s late paintings resonate with light and color. The setting and space encourages contemplation. This viewer can think of only one other installation that is more illuminating: the Nymphéas (Water Lilies) of the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, which was chosen and arranged by the painter himself.

Here twenty-seven paintings in four gallery rooms are hung in approximately chronological order. All are oil on canvas. Ten are from private collections and the rest from Paris, Japan, Basel, Honolulu and Chicago. None are for sale and no wall labels distract from Monet’s vision. Just two works are under glass which further enhances the joy of looking.

In the first gallery, easel-size paintings shimmer with images of Monet’s famed water lily pond. The effect is often dizzying as reflections of trees and sky mingle with floating flowers and leaves. Yet the palette of pinks, blues, violets and pale greens evokes calm and quiet. One painting, the 1907 Nymphéas from the Musée Marmattan Monet, Paris, is different. Its vertical sun burst of color practically negates any sense of the pond, leaves realism behind and previews what is to come.

Bolder, larger canvases dominate the next room. Here is movement. Touches of vermilions, oranges as well as calligraphic brush strokes excite and activate the works.

The paintings in the third gallery are also big but verge more closely to pure abstraction. From Basel, the Foundation Beyeler’s Nymphéas of 1916-1919, has almost no attachment to nature. We get lost in a swirl of light, color, space and are taken into a sublime state.

Lastly, we enter a space hosting primarily smaller paintings. Concerned with series, The Pont Japonais (The Japanese Bridge) and L’Allée de Rosiers (The Path Under the Rose Arches) are each seen in three versions. Monet takes to masterly impasto technique. Layers of pigment are laid as if he wanted to prolong the experience of painting and capture all of nature’s changeability. Think of Leonard Bernstein’s late penetrating recordings of Mahler’s symphonies - long and thoughtful as though the conductor did not want the music to end.

These paintings testify to Monet’s late in life bold creativity. You want to remain before them, prolong your view, as time reveals the natural world’s fluctuations.

This is a marvelous exhibition. Gagosian is to be congratulated and praised. In 2009, the gallery gave the pubic two matchless shows: Piero Manzoni Retrospection and Pablo Picasso Mosqueteros. The later was curated by the renowned Picasso biographer John Richardson. Now, we have the Monet. In so doing, the Gagosian becomes synonymous with value, distinction and excellence. It is a win-win situation for the gallery and the public.

A couple of hints:

• Bags must be checked so leave briefcases/computer cases at home. Ladies just take small purses.

• An exhibition checklist may be obtained at the entrance reception desk.

• Visit on the early days of the week especially Monday when there are fewer crowds. (Yes, the gallery is open on Monday.)
  

CLAUDE MONET: Late Work
Gagosian Gallery
522 West 21st Street, Manhattan
Monday - Saturday 10 AM - 6 PM
Through June 26, 2010

An Abundance of Creativity - Picasso's Prints at the Marlborough Gallery

Pablo Picasso, Visage [Visage de Marie-Thérèse], 1928,
lithograph image: 8 x 5 5/8 in. (20.32 x 14.29 cm),
an impression on large format Japan paper,
aside from the total edition of 225,
Ref: Bloch 95; Geiser/Baer 243; Morluot XXII
© 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Picasso’s genius is abundantly evident at the Marlborough Gallery, Celebrating the Muse: Women in Picasso’s Prints from 1905-1968. A display of over 200 prints – etchings, drypoints, lithograghs, linocuts – organized around the women in the artist’s life, demonstrates once again Picasso’s creative potency. Celebrated works such as La Minotauromachie, 1935, (whose fame and complex narrative brings to mind Rembrandt’s Hundred Guilder Print), Les Saltimbanques, 1905 and Weeping Woman, 1937 as well as those less well known, testify to the artist’s protean talent . Themes appear, disappear then reappear in different guises. His remarkable power for artistic exploration and originality never wanes. Look at the 60 impressions on view from a set of 347 prints, called the Suite 347, that he produced from March 16 thorugh October 5, 1968 at the age of 86!

Another Picasso print exhibition, Picasso: Themes and Variations, at the Museum of Modern Art, is more far ranging in scope but smaller. Although informative with superb examples of printmaking, it is the Marlborough show that impresses more. You leave humbled.

Celebrating the Muse: Women in Picasso’s Prints from 1905-1968 remains through Saturday, May 8, 2010. It can then be seen at the Marlborough Gallery London from June 9 through July 2, 2010.

Pablo Picasso, Femme assise dans un fauteuil
[Portrait de Jacqueline au fauteuil] , 1966,
aquatint, etching, grattoir, and drypoint,
Plate: 18 3/4 x 12 3/4 in. (47.63 x 32.39 cm),
Sheet: 24 3/4 x 17 7/8 in. (62.87 x 45.40 cm),
Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 50,
Ref: Bloch 1394; Geiser/Baer 1416
© 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York


Celebrating the Muse:

Women in Picasso’s Prints from 1905-1968
Marborough Gallery
40 West 57th Street, Manhattan
Monday - Saturday 10 AM to 5:30 PM
Through May 8, 2010

Masterpiece Paintings Visit The Frick Collection

Rembrandt van Rijn, A Girl at a Window, 1645, oil on canvas,
32.1 x 26 in. (81.6 x 66.0 cm), Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
Bourgeois Bequest, 1811
© The Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery

Masterpieces of European Painting from Dulwich Picture Gallery, the exhibition at the Frick Collection,is a gift to all those who respond to picture making at its highest level. Nine important seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings from the Dulwich’s renowned European painting collection are displayed in the Frick’s Oval Room and Garden Court. The Dulwich Picture Gallery, located in London, was the first public art gallery in England. Since its holdings do not often travel, this show is a special treat introducing audiences to works of art that may not be familiar. It joins a group of remarkable small exhibits the Frick has mounted from collections relatively unknown here.

The visiting paintings have received well-deserved praise in such informative reviews as “Dreamy Fantasies of Femininity and Nature” by Ken Johnson, The New York Times, and “Fresh Faces in the Family” by Lance Esplund, The Wall Street Journal. Much can be said about each paintings but I comment only on a few of the aspects that partiuclarly attracted me.

The star of the show is Rembrandt’s “Girl at a Window”, placed immediately at the entrance of the Oval Room as you approach it from the Court Garden. She brings to mind other seductive visiting beauties who in past shows occupied this central position – Parmigianino’s “Antea” from the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, in 2008 and in 2005, Rapahel’s “Fornarina” from National Gallery of Art at the Palazzo Barberini, Rome.

The "Girl at the Window" probably depicts a type or figure study rather than a specific individual. Nevertheless, she comes across as real – someone who may speak at any moment. Rembrandt’s masterly painting technique brings her life exquisitely rendering her florid cheeks, the slight tan of her left hand and lower arm and the tiny bug bites on both arms. Marvelous is the way paint describes her gold necklace, the shadowed fingers playing with this ornament and the rope-like decoration on her white blouse. She is at once absorbed in the painting and projected out of it.

In the Garden courtyard, on either side of the Oval Room entranceway, are two delightful eighteenth-century paintings: Canaletto’s “Old Walton Bridge”, and Watteau’s “Les Plaisirs du bal (Pleasures of the Dance)”. Of comparative easel size, these works invite comparison. Numerous characters narrate and animate the scenes. Especially delightful are the images of dogs: the foreground dog in the Canaletto and the four canines in the Watteau.

Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Samson and Delilah, c. 1618-20,
oil on canvas,59.6 x 90.7 in. (151.4 x 230.4 cm),
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
Bourgeois Bequest, 1811
© The Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery

Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s “Samson and Delilah” and Sir Peter Lely’s “Nymphs by a Fountain”, two of my favorite works, are displayed across from each other in the Oval Room.

Peter Paul Rubens, Samson and Delilah, c. 1609-1610,
oil on wood,72.8 x 80.7 in. (185 x 205 cm),
The National Gallery, London

Van Dyck’s Samson is an early work by the artist inspired by Sir Peter Paul Rubens’s painting of the same subject. The artist had worked with Rubens and most likely knew the Rubens's Samson painting as well as an engraving of it by Jacob Matham.

Jacob Matham, Samson and Delilah, c. 1613, copper engraving,
14 x 17 in. (380 x 440 mm), Rockox House, Antwerp

Such reproductive engraving as Matham’s made works of art available to a wider public. Matham excelled in this medium. His detailed engraving of the Rubens’s Samson was completed just a few years after the painting was finished. Van Dyck most likely worked from the Matham print since the Van Dyck reverses Rubens’s composition as seen in the print. (Using the engraving technique, paper is pressed into the inked incised lines of the engraver’s plate reproducing the recorded image in reverse.)

“Hermaphrodite endormi”,

2nd c. AD (Roman copy of Greek statue 2nd c. BC),
marble, 169 in. (169 cm), Musée du Louvre, Paris

The Samsons of Rubens and Van Dyck derive from a classical sculpture of the sleeping Hermaphroditus, a mythological being which combines a female head, breasts, and body with the sexual part of a man. Roman copies of the original Greek Hellenistic statue survive. Rubens could have seen one in Italy before painting his Samson. The Rubens and Van Dyck Samsons are manly and muscular but curiously allude to a figure of ambivalent sex.

Sir Peter Lely, Nymphs by a Fountain, c. 1650, oil on canvas,
50.7 x 57 in. (128.9 x 144.8 cm), Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
Fairfax Murray Gift, 1911
© The Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery

Sir Peter Lely’s “Nymphs by a Fountain”, displayed across from Van Dyck’s Samson, portrays the near recumbent nymph in a similar hermaphroditic pose. Lely’s nymph is also based on the same ancient source. I spent time in front of this work looking at this nude’s back. At first glance I thought it was male but discerned a slight swelling under the left arm indicating a mammary gland. I posed the question to several viewers, is the figure a male or female? The initial reaction of all in my small sample was a male. Whatever your thoughts, it is a tantalizing work.

By the way, take note of the prominent chafed soles of both the Lely nymph and the Van Dyck Samson. This is superb painting. Such quality painting you will find in all the works of this visually and intellectually splendid exhibition.

One further point: the fully illustrated catalogue by Xavier F. Salomon, Arturo and Holly Melosi Chief Curator of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, is excellent. Pithy explanatory notes illuminate and enhance enjoyment.

Masterpieces of Euopean Painting from Dulwich Picture Gallery
The Frick Collection
1 East 70th Street
Monday - Saturday 10 am to 6 pm
Sundays 11 am to 5 pm
Through May 20, 2010.