Faces in Art ~ Iconic Portraiture -- An Exhibition at Christie's Christie’s New York will show Faces in Art ~ Iconic Portraiture, a select exhibition of paintings from the fall sales of Impressionist and Modern, Post-War and Contemporary and Latin American Art.
News-Antique.com - Oct 24,2007 - New York – Christie’s New York will show Faces in Art ~ Iconic Portraiture, a select exhibition of
paintings from the fall sales of Impressionist and Modern, Post-War and Contemporary and Latin
American Art as well as Old Master Paintings that will run from October 29 through 31. Captured
in time between Rubens’ intimate Two studies of a young man, head and Andy Warhol’s sexy Liz, Iconic
Portraiture will pay homage to the power of and in the face. As ‘looking at’ invariably evokes a sense
of ‘being looked at,’ Faces in Art will provide gentle confrontation and genuine engagement with the
floating and the fixed, the questions and the answers, and the same eternal mysteries reflected in
every portrayed pair of eyes throughout time.
Guy Bennett, Head of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s New York: “We are absolutely
thrilled to open our galleries to the public with this outstanding group of portraits. While
masterpieces in their own right, presented as an ensemble they also highlight the crucial position
each of these artists occupy in the great pantheon of art. For three days only, this viewing at
Rockefeller Center will depict the influences and dialogue between these great masters over the last
four hundred years.”
Sir Peter Paul Rubens’s masterly Two studies of a young man, head, was painted between 1615 and 1617
and was a preparatory study for Melchior who would later appear in the artist’s The Adoration of the
Magi, currently in the Musee des Beaux Arts in Lyon. The work shows a Levantine head, pictured en
face and en profil, and wearing a plain shirt and leather hat. The painting was rediscovered in 1934, as
part of the contents of a box acquired at an auction in England and became part of the collection of
the Dutch businessman Anton Philips. It was displayed on few occasions but did make appearances
at the Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts in Brussels and during the seminal exhibitions devoted to
Rubens oil sketches at The Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 1953. The work will
be flanked by a Jan Lievens’s Vanitas and Quinten Metsys’s Portrait of a gentleman.
The sensuous, colorful contours of the Odalisque have mesmerized artists for centuries with even
the great masters such as Picasso and Matisse succumbing to her seductive charms. Matisse’s
L’Odalisque, harmonie bleue portrays his typical femme-fleur, languishing and lost in the exotic and
luxuriant decor of a secluded environment which is so attractive to the voyeuristic gaze. Picasso’s
Femme accroupie au costume turc (Jacqueline), painted on 26 November 1955, is the crowning painting in a
group of ten portraits of his companion Jacqueline Roque and based on Delacroix’s Les Femmes
d’Alger. It shows the sensual and very Delacroix-exotic looking Jacqueline in a colorful and strikingly
patterned Matisse-inspired interior.
An intensely subtle and delicate work is Cezanne’s rendition of Vallier, the gardener who tended the
property surrounding Cezanne’s studio at Chemin des Lauves. Executed in pale blues and greens,
Portrait de Vallier
