VMFA Acquires "Spectacular" Picture Scroll from India and an Oil Portrait by Cecilia Beaux

Written by rubin Sunday, 05 April 2009 09:38

RICHMOND, VA - The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) has acquired an 18th- or early-19th-century legend scroll from the Andhra Pradesh region of India, one of the few of its kind to survive today. The museum’s board of trustees also approved the acquisition of an 1888 oil on canvas portrait by American artist Cecilia Beaux, who was hailed at the turn of the 20th century as the “best woman painter in history”. The Indian scroll, which measures 26 inches by about 48-1/2 feet, is executed in opaque watercolor and gold on cotton. Legend scrolls were used by Hindu bards in shows presented to members of the social caste that patronized their creation to tell their story and to eulogize their heroes.

The scrolls were unrolled section by section so that the images corresponded to the performance narrative. The subject of VMFA’s scroll is a caste known as the Gaudas, who make and sell an alcoholic toddy made from the sap of palmyra trees. Dr. Joseph M. Dye III, VMFA’s curatorial chair and E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art, says only about 20 Andhra legend scrolls have survived – because of India’s extreme climate and the wearing effects of time – and that the museum’s new addition is “by far the very best.”

He says it is a “rare and unrivaled painting” that is “dramatically” longer than other known examples and is clearly the work of a master atelier. “I can say with complete confidence that this is the greatest South Indian painting that I have seen in my 42-year professional career.” The scroll was purchased through the museum’s Robert A. and Ruth W. Fisher Fund and VMFA’s Kathleen Boone Samuel’s Memorial Fund.

The painting by Beaux (1855-1942) is a portrait of her fellow Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni Alexander Harrison and measures 26 by 19-3/4 inches. An important transitional work, the portrait dates from Beaux’s formative period of study in Concarneau, an artist’s colony in Brittany, where she first began to lighten her palette and to paint outdoors.

According to Dr. Sylvia Yount, VMFA’s Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art and an expert on Beaux’s work, the Philadelphia native was an internationally acclaimed figure painter and portraitist “who also happened to be the most successful woman artist working in turn-of-the-century America.”

The Beaux painting and the Davis table were both acquired through the museum’s J. Harwood and Louise B. Cochrane Fund for American Art and a gift from Juliana Terian Gilbert of New York in memory of Peter G. Terian, the former owner.

The Low andirons – exceedingly rare and possibly unique, according to Yount – were also acquired through the Cochrane Fund. “They embody the stated goal of the late 19th-century Aesthetic movement – to improve daily life by wedding the beautiful to the useful – and will add considerable texture to the museum’s choice Aesthetic holdings,” she says.

Visit The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts at : http://www.vmfa.state.va.us/

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~