LACMA

Ahmanson, Level 3: Artworks on view

Especially renowned for its representation of Italian baroque painting and Dutch painting from the Golden Age, our European painting collection comprises works ranging from the twelfth to the early twentieth century and surveying all major styles, from medieval Gothic to impressionism. Among the many masterpieces are Georges de La Tour’s Magdalen with the Smoking Flame (c.1638–40), Rembrandt van Rijn’s Raising of Lazarus (c.1630), Edgar Degas’s The Bellelli Sisters (1862–64), and Paul Cézanne’s Sous-Bois (1894).

Georges de la Tour

Separated by 1,500 Years, Now Two Feet Apart

April 27, 2010

At the east end of the gallery, I love the juxtaposition of Michael Sweerts’s Plague in the Ancient City, from 1652, and a Roman sarcophagus from around 230 A.D., which sits right in front of the painting. These two works of art are separated by nearly 1,500 years, and yet the style and arrangement of figures is so similar, as if Sweerts copied his figures from something like the sarcophagus.

A Peek into a Dutch Master’s Technique

February 23, 2009

One of the more interesting artists, in terms of both personal vision and technical ability, is Jan van der Heyden, who was an inventor as well as an artist. His detailed scenes along Amsterdam’s canals, such as his View of the Herengracht from 1670, are almost photographic in their realism. Recent studies by the Rijksmuseum have shown that van der Heyden used a type of “printing” process to create the regular, precise patterns of the brick walls of his buildings and canal banks.

Small Wonders

February 23, 2009

Big art has it easy. Of course you look at it—it’s enormous. But small art has its power too. It’s intimate, it draws you in. In fact, sometimes to simply find out what it represents, you have to get so close that it ends up being all you can see. That was my experience the other day when I happened on the 7.5 by 5 inch Copenhagen: Roofs Under the Snow by Peter-Severin Krøyer.