September 2, 2015

Modern Masterpieces on View At Princeton Art Museum

Art Modigliani

“JEAN COCTEAU”: Modigliani’s well-known 1916 image of the French writer is among the works in the exhibit, “Cézanne and the Modern” at the Princeton University Art Museum from September 19 through January 3, 2016.

“Cézanne and the Modern,” a new exhibit at the Princeton Art Museum running from September 19 through January 3, 2016, includes works by Paul Cézanne — and a great deal more. Drawn from the Pearlman Collection, it will feature the artists PaulGauguin, Oskar Kokoschka, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Jacques Lipchitz, Édouard Manet, Amedeo Modigliani, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Chaïm Soutine, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Vincent van Gogh.

An American businessman and self-described “worshipper of Cézanne,” Henry Pearlman (1895-1974) built an enviable collection of modern European masterworks from the ground up, through ingenuity, tenacity, and luck.

The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation was established in 1955 to serve as custodian of the great works of art the couple collected and to make them accessible to a wide audience. In 1976 the private foundation entered into a long-term loan agreement with the Princeton University Art Museum, where highlights from the collection are regularly on display and the works serve as a key resource for teaching and learning.

“We are proud to have been the custodians of this superb collection since 1976, and now to have shared the collection with venues in four countries,” said James Steward, Nancy A. Nasher–David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, director. “Its return to Princeton is an auspicious moment, marking the first time in decades that our visitors will have the opportunity to appreciate this little-known collection by the artists who shaped the course of modern art, and thus to appreciate the Pearlmans’ passion for some of the 19th and 20th centuries’ most important artists.”

Among the paintings by Cézanne that will be shown are Mont Sainte-Victoire (ca. 1904-6), which Pearlman deemed the single most significant work in the collection; Provencal Manor (ca. 1885),and Portrait of Paul, the Artist’s Son (ca. 1880).

Other highlights in the exhibition include Van Gogh’s Tarascon Stagecoach (1888); Modigliani’s celebrated portrait of Jean Cocteau (1916); and a fleeting French riverscape by Sisley (1889). Gauguin is represented in the exhibition by two very different sculptural works: Woman of Martinique (1889), and Te Fare Amu (The House for Eating) (1895 or 1897), a roughly hewn wooden frieze of figures that combine European and Polynesian characteristics.

An illustrated 304-page catalogue, published by the Princeton University Art Museum and distributed by Yale University Press, accompanies the exhibition.

For further information visit http://artmuseum.princeton.edu and www.pearlmancollection.org.

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