'Exceptional Beauty & Outstanding Merit' at the Barber Institute

Written by Frida Leopold Friday, 18 November 2011 22:37

 

BIRMINGHAM, UK - The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, presents Exceptional Beauty and Outstanding Merit: Acquisitions at the Barber Institute, 1991–2007, on view through 20 January 2008. More than eighty masterpieces have been purchased for the Barber Institute’s collection by the Trustees during the last seventeen years, under the directorship of Richard Verdi.
 

Key paintings such as the Portrait of a Carmelite Prior by Rubens, Mother and Child by the Sea by Johan Christian Dahl, and the Portrait of Bartolomeo Savona by André Derain number among these. In addition, there are major drawings, watercolours, prints and sculpture, all of which have magnificently extended the Barber collections and their reputation in Britain and overseas. This exhibition, which takes its title from Lady Barber’s vision, enshrined in the founding Trust Deed of 1932, celebrates these outstanding acquisitions and features all the newly acquired paintings and sculpture. Alongside these will be a representative group of the works on paper by artists including Pietro da Cortona, Matisse and Egon Schiele. It is accompanied by an explanatory gallery leaflet and a series of lectures.
 
Boats on the Beach near Naples (1821) is one of eight paintings by Johann Christian Dahl to have been included in Moonrise Over Europe at the Barber Institute in Birmingham - a small but beautifully selected exhibition that gives the lie to Sir Kenneth Clark's ill-judged remark that 'night is not a suitable subject for painters'.

Dahl, an extremely gifted painter who specialised in 'moonlights', to use the terminology of the 19th-century art market, is not as well known as he deserves. The Barber's new show, inspired by the Institute's acquisition of his particularly fine Mother and Child by the Sea (1840), is to introduce him to a wider audience, while setting his work in historical context.

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts contains one of the finest small collections of European art in the UK. Featuring works from the 13th to the 20th century, it is a near-perfect gathering of some of the most influential artists of the previous millennium. Its particular strengths lie in its Old Master and Impressionist collections.

The collection is made up of paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture. Over recent years, the Institute has built up an excellent 20th-century collection of works on paper.

Amongs the artists represented are Bellini, Botticelli, Holbein, Veronese, Stom, Baschenis, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Poussin, Gainsborough, Turner, Delacroix, Ingres, Rossetti, Whistler, Manet, Degas, Monet, van Gogh, Rodin, Gauguin, Picasso, Matisse, Magritte, and Schiele.  Visit the Barber Institue of Fine Arts at : www.barber.org.uk/  

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