VMFA Acquires Modernist Painting By American Artist Max Weber

Written by Tony Martin Sunday, 16 January 2011 23:56

 

RICHMOND, VA - A 1922 American Modernist painting by Max Weber, a triple-overlay sandwich glass lamp from the late 19th century, 34 works of African art, and an 1850s North Carolina-made sofa and table have been acquired by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. VMFA’s trustees also approved the addition to the collection of eight lithographs by French artist Théodore Géricault, an early 20th-century Urban Realist scene by American Jerome Myers and a mid-20th-century polished blackware bowl by Maria Martinez of New Mexico.

“Max Weber was hailed at his death as the Dean of American Moderns,” says VMFA Director Alex Nyerges. “He is widely regarded today as an influential figure in America’s first-generation avant garde, and we are delighted to add this striking painting to our American collection.”

Weber was born in Russia in 1881 but was raised in New York City. He lived until 1961. Through much of his career he struggled to find a distinctive voice, but after experimenting with different Modernist styles he returned in the 1920s to the work of the artist Paul Cézanne, who “remained his touchstone,” says Dr. Sylvia Yount, VMFA’s Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art.

“Although deeply informed by the work of Cézanne as well as the work of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, whom Weber knew well in Paris, ‘Black Chair’ is far less derivative of the French masters than other contemporary American works,” Yount says. She calls the museum’s new painting “dynamic and commanding in scale and composition.” “Black Chair” is an oil on canvas measuring 47 by 31 inches and was purchased through VMFA’s Floyd D. and Anne C. Gottwald Fund.

“Imagination, skill and technology coalesced in the creation of the museum’s new monumental triple-overlay sandwich glass lamp,” according to Yount. It was produced about 1865-75 by the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company, the foremost manufacturer of domestic glass in 19th-century America. The lamp – which is made of blown, overlaid and wheel-cut glass with marble and brass; a frosted blown-glass shade; and a glass chimney – is one of fewer than a dozen surviving examples of this design, size, quality and elegance, Yount says. It stands 41-5/8 inches tall.

“In the late 1850s, the company adapted its line of lamps to accommodate kerosene and, at the same time, perfected a technique that allowed for new decorative possibilities. After fusing layers of colored blown-glass and shaping the glass by mold, artisans would then cut patterns through the opaque layers to reveal the clear layer below. The striking result is a lively, sparkling surface. The colors in the museum’s new lamp – deep pink cut to opaque white cut to clear – is unique,” she writes in a presentation made to the museum’s trustees.

Yount calls the lamp “an outstanding example of the aesthetic and technological achievements of 19th-century glass-making.”

The 34 20th-century African works added to the collection are of major significance because we know precisely where and when many of them were collected by the donor, Roger Provencher of Ladysmith, Va. Provencher served for many years in Africa as a U.S. State Department official. Among his assignments were Congo, Togo and Nigeria, where he acquired objects for his personal collection.

In 1958 he escorted the renowned photographer Arnold Newman, who was on assignment for Holiday magazine. They traveled to Mushenge, deep in the Belgian Congo, so that Newman could photograph the king of the Kuba people. It was there that Provencher acquired the many Kuba works he has now given to VMFA.

“Not only is it very rare to have an unbroken provenance and knowledge of the place where works were collected in Africa, but Provencher also took many photographs that provide a view of the Kuba people and the locale at the time the works were obtained,” says Richard Woodward, the museum’s curator of African art.

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