Tag: Dawson Carr

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Painting by Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens now on view

New in the galleries! Peter Paul RubensFlemish, 1577–1640The Virgin and Christ Child with Saints Elizabethand John the Baptist, 1611–14Oil on woodPrivate Collection, L2020.36.1 On view through mid-September 2021 In this beautifully rendered scene by the Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), on loan to the Portland Art Museum from a private collection, the beloved devotional…  Read more

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Dawson W. Carr, Ph.D., Retires as the Portland Art Museum’s Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European Art

Curator Dawson Carr discussing Volcano! Mount St. Helens in Art at an event of the Museum's European and American Art Council in February 2020. Photo courtesy of the Council.

The Portland Art Museum and its community are expressing their deep gratitude to Dawson W. Carr, Ph.D., as he retires this month as The Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European Art. Dr. Carr’s final day at the Museum is April 30. Dr. Carr joined the Museum in 2013 as the Museum’s first full-time curator…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Gabriel Revel

Portrait of a Sculptor, Gabriel Revel, 26 ¼ x 22 ¼, oil on canvas. A vertical rectangular portrait of a man in 17th century dress posing with sculpture. The man is depicted in three quarter view from the waist up with his shoulder turned towards the viewer. His arm crosses in front of him and his hand rests on a sculpture. His body is turned towards the left and he gazes off to the right. The man is light-skinned with large brown eyes, full lips and long, full, curly brown hair that falls well past his shoulders. He wears a brownish-black coat that is open at the throat over a white shirt with lace at the collar and cuffs. Round brass buttons line the front and cuff of the coat. Draped over his shoulder is a length of red shiny fabric. His hand rests on a bust of a bearded man while another statuette stands in the dark background. The four corners of the painting are clipped to create an elongated octagon shaped canvas.

Occasionally we get a nice surprise when paintings created long ago are cleaned and restored. This happened in 2016–17, when Gabriel Revel’s Portrait of a Sculptor, ca. 1680, underwent conservation treatment by Nina Olsson here in Portland. Cleaning revealed a new compositional element: a statuette behind the sculpted head in the foreground, as seen in…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Honorable George Rossman

Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Carnation, Adrien Ysenbrandt, 18 7/8 x 12 1/8 inches, oil on panel. A vertical, rectangular portrait of a young, white man shown in three quarter view from the waist up, holding a red carnation in his hand at left and a pair of tan gloves in his hand at right. He wears a dark hat with a wide upturned brim, shoulder length brown hair, a coat with a leopard fur trimmed collar and two gold rings with dark center stones on the pinky of his hand at right. He looks off to the left with a solemn expression. His pale face and hands almost seem illuminated against the dark clothing and almost black background.

“Ysenbrandt’s painting is one of the finest portraits in the collection and I would like to pay tribute to the distinguished Oregonian who gave it to the Museum. The Honorable George Rossman (1885–1967) was the longest-serving justice on the Oregon Supreme Court (1927 to 1965). Justice Rossman was born in Chicago but grew up in…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Buzzy Sullivan

North Fork Toutle River through smoke from the Diamond Creek wildfire, approximately six miles northwest of Mount St. Helens, Buzzy Sullivan, 25 ½ x 31 ½ inches, archival pigment print. A photograph taken at great height looking down on a landscape that is brown and dry with pockets of green vegetation and hazy with smoke. A dry, horizontal riverbed is seen beginning at the middle of the photo traveling left to the edge of the print. It cuts down and back towards the center and ends at bottom center divided into a fork. The riverbed reveals layers of eroded earth giving a terraced and jagged appearance. The surrounding landscape is mostly cocoa browns, with lighter shades of tan and rusty reddish tones. There are clusters of dark brownish-green trees and shrubs near the river’s banks. Lone trees and brush dot the scene as well. In the upper third of the print, sloping cliff faces and low lying mounded hills stretch to the top of the print. These appear hazier further in the distance. The upper right corner suggests the heaviest area of smoke with the distant mountains appearing through a thick haze of beige smoke. The foreground, at the bottom of the print, shows the depth of the forked riverbed in deep shadow with no discernible water flowing. A large, dark fissure juts off to the lower right.

Our thoughts are with the one-tenth of Oregon’s population displaced and affected by wildfires. “The smoke and strange light currently blanketing the landscape brought to mind this photograph on view in our exhibition Volcano! Mount St. Helens in Art. It shows nature rebounding in the Toutle River Valley thirty-seven years after the area was scoured…  Read more

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Art & Conversation: Volcano!

Emmet Gowin (American, born 1941), Debris Flow at the Northern Base of Mount St. Helens, Looking South, 1983, gelatin silver print, © Emmet Gowin, Courtesy of Pace/MacGill, New York.

Tuesday, September 15 at 10 a.m. with Dawson Carr, Ph.D., The Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European Artvia live Zoom Webinar and Facebook Livestream Live captioning will be available for this program by visiting pam.to/captions in a separate window or on your mobile device. September’s talk spotlights our current exhibition Volcano! Mount St. Helens in Art, which commemorates the fortieth anniversary…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Auguste Rodin

A photograph of a bronze sculpture showing two figures: the feminine presenting Spirit of Liberty and a masculine presenting combatant. The Liberty figure is positioned over the combatant. She is bare breasted with muscular arms raised in a V and fists tightly clenched. Her mouth is open wide as if shouting. She has a large pair of wings that rise behind her echoing the V of the arms. One wing is visibly broken and bent back on itself. The combatant is posed just beneath Liberty, and he looks up to her as if responding to her call. His nude body is set at a diagonal to Liberty’s with his head thrown back to the right, and his torso, hips and legs crossing diagonally to the left of Liberty. The leg at right is bent at the knee creating another angle. The arm at left lies across his body with his hand resting at right. His other arm is extended downward and he holds a sword that is inserted in the rocky base. He uses the sword to support his weak body as he tries to rise up toward Liberty. The sculpture is highly varied in its textured, displaying muscles, feathers, smooth skin and rock. The bronze is dark, almost black in some places with brownish highlights.

“In honor of #BastilleDay, I offer you one of the greatest French objects in the Museum’s collection. Rodin conceived and modelled it in 1879 for a public monument to commemorate the defense of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). It depicts the battered Spirit of Liberty shrieking a call to arms above the body of…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Guercino

A horizontal rectangular drawing showing a seated male figure positioned slightly to the left of center. He sits turned to the left with arms outstretched to two ravens which are dropping food into his hands from above. The figure has a long curly beard and longer hair which appears sparse at the crown. His eyes are depicted as two blacked-out voids. He wears flowing robes that expose his knees and calves. His feet are crossed at the ankle and he wears simple sandals. Behind him and to the right is a large squared-off structure suggesting a building or ruin. The figure and his surroundings are rendered in a loose, flowing style that has the appearance of being created quickly. Ink washes provide shadow and contour.

“Drawings give us an intimate look at artists at work. Among the finest drawings in the Museum collection is this sheet by Guercino, one of the greatest draftsmen in the history of art. He drew habitually and was a natural virtuoso in a broad range of media, but favored working with a goose-feather pen dipped…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Barbara Noah

Square painting of the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens. A vivid thick red paint covers the background with thin vertical lines of brown, gray, and blue paint over the red. The black and white image of the volcano is overlaid onto the red background. Sharp lines outline the edges, rim, and crevices of the volcano. A layer of white ash lines the rim and some of the slopes. As the large plume of ash billows out from the center and reaches to the top of the frame, some areas are blurred from the movement of the eruption. In the center, two orange circles form eyes on top of a distorted facial image formed by the ash. The bottom of the frame has a gray dot in each corner, and in the middle a gray stick figure appears to be running towards the right corner.

“For the 40th anniversary of the great eruption of Mount St. Helens, here is a wonderful work by Seattle artist Barbara Noah. It is based on a United States Geological Survey photograph of the eruption plume. Barbara describes its creation: ‘When Mount St. Helens first erupted with small emissions, I visited frequently, driving up logging…  Read more

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Online Exhibition: Volcano! Mount St. Helens in Art

On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, we are thrilled to share a new online exhibition experience for Volcano! Mount St. Helens in Art. We are also pleased to announce that the exhibition will be extended to January 2021 so that when it is safe for us to…  Read more