Floral still lifes became immensely popular with realist and Impressionist painters of the 19th century because they presented the opportunity to experiment with color, light and form as well as theme. Monticelli, a native of Marseille, took a lively interest in developing the subject, employing a free technique, a rich palette and heavy textures. Many of his contemporaries admired his “ability to transform raw pigment into ‘jewels’ or ‘gems’”; their praise was so effusive as to suggest he possessed alchemical powers. Less sympathetic critics, however, decried Monticelli’s work as crude and rough, compared his impastoed surfaces to relief models and mockingly accused the artist of using a trowel to lay down his paint. In clinging to a standard that privileged a smooth, highly finished facture, his detractors closed their eyes to the buttery, tactile effects of Monticelli’s surfaces and to the world of suggestion rather than description that his abstracted application presented. This master’s work was a great source of inspiration to the next generation of artists, including Cézanne and van Gogh.
Details
- Artist Name: Adolphe-Joseph-Thomas Monticelli (French, 1824-1886)
- Title: Flowers
- Date: 1870-80
- Medium: Oil on panel
- Dimensions: 24-1/2 x 19 in. (62.2 x 48.3 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation
- Accession Number: M.1968.45.P
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Art Foundation
Object Information
?Lutz.
[Derrick Morley, London, sold 11 May 1967, 1/2 share, to];
[Reid & Lefevre Gallery, London, stock no. 54/67, offered 5 June 1968 and subsequently sold 20 November 1968 to];
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
XIX and XX Century French Paintings
- London, Reid & Lefevre Gallery, 1967-11-16 to 1967-12-22
[on loan]
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1969-08-29 to
Recent Acquisitions by the Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art
- Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1969-01-24 to 1969-08-08
Vincent van Gogh: Painter, Printmaker, Collector
- Norton Simon Museum, 1990-04-19 to 1992-01-12
Three Centuries of French Art: Selections from The Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art and the Norton Simon Foundation_2
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Significant Objects: The Spell of Still Life
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Reinstallation of South Wing
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Selections from the Norton Simon, Inc. Museum of Art
- Princeton University Art Museum, 1972-12-03 to 1974-07-17
- Sheon, Aaron, Apollo, no. 15, fig. 3 pp. 444-449
- Steadman, David W., Art Journal, p. 37
- Vincent, M., La pienture des XIXe et XXe siècles, 1956, p. 200
- Brettell, Richard R. and Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum, volume 1, 2006,
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 555 p. 312
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