CLEVELAND, Ohio — Three years before he died in the disastrous Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, the young French Impressionist Frédéric Bazille painted a remarkably fresh and lifelike portrait of his friend and colleague, the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
The portrait of Renoir, which sparkles with crisp, distinct brushstrokes, is among the latest round of acquisitions announced today by the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Others works entering the permanent collection include an impressive pair of 18th-century Japanese screen paintings by the artist Watanabe Shiko; a trio of pre-Columbian objects that originated among peoples living centuries ago in present-day Peru; a portrait drawing from the 1630s by French artist Simon Vouet; and five photographs depicting Black life in America from the 1950s to the 1970s by Shawn Walker and Chester A. Higgins Jr.
The Bazille painting carries an especially poignant emotional charge because of its quality and because of Bazille’s tragic death during the Franco-Prussian war, in which a coalition of German states crushed the French army of 1870 at age 28.
Born into an upper middle-class family in southern France, Bazille moved to Paris in 1862 to study medicine, but soon enrolled in art classes and became friends with Impressionists including Renoir, Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley.
Inspired by their example, he developed an ability to portray large groups of his contemporaries outdoors in natural light, a key objective of the Impressionist movement. Yet his promising career was cut short by the war, which France lost to superior and better-organized forces from a newly unified Germany.
Bazille’s work was the subject of a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 2017.
Significant paintings by Bazille rarely appear on the market due to the artist’s untimely death and small body of work, the museum said in a news release.
“The ‘Portrait of Renoir’ offers a rare glimpse into Bazille’s close friendship with Renoir at a time when they were just beginning to develop an Impressionist style,’’ the museum said. “The entire surface is animated by lively brushwork, giving the composition a sense of informality that is not found in commissioned portraits of the period.”
The museum said the Bazille “represents a significant addition to the CMA’s collection and is particularly important as Bazille was the only major Impressionist not represented in the museum’s collection.’’ The news release did not include a provenance, or ownership history, of the painting.
Watanabe Shiko’s “Flowers and Trees of the Four Seasons’' is a pair of six-panel folding screens featuring plants of spring and summer on the right screen and of autumn and winter on the left.
Measuring approximately five feet high and 12 feet wide, they add depth to the museum’s holdings of works by the artist and deepen its ability to convey his evolving style.
The newly acquired pre-Columbian objects, in ceramic and carved stone, range in age from roughly 900 BC to the 1530s. They add depth to the museum’s collection of works from the peoples of Peru.
One, the “Reclining Dog Vessel,’’ which represents a Peruvian hairless dog that has recently given birth, is considered a major addition to the museum’s collection of Chimú and Chimú-Inka arts. It will be included in an upcoming CMA exhibition that traces the Chimú Empire from its founding in the year 1000 through the arrival of the Inka to the Spanish conquest in 1532, the museum said.
The Vouet “Portrait of a man in profile, turned to the left,’’ is the first drawing by the artist to enter the museum’s collection. It complements a 1630 painting of Saint Mary Magdalen by the artist, acquired by the museum in 1988.
The museum described the photographs by Walker and Higgins as part of its ongoing effort to expand its holdings in works by African-American artists.
The works include “Invisible Man: Untitled,’’ which the museum described as a self-portrait that presents Walker’s beret-topped silhouette reflected in a murky window.
“The elusive nature of this portrait makes sense in the context of the series to which it belongs, Invisible Man, a reference to Ralph Ellison’s important 1952 novel of the same title about Black people’s invisibility in society,’’ the museum said.
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September 30, 2021 at 05:31PM
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Cleveland Museum of Art acquires portrait of Renoir by French Impressionist colleague Frederic Bazille - cleveland.com
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