Mellon Collection - French
An Album of a Century: Photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue New
Jeffrey Allison, Paul Mellon Collection Educator and Statewide Programs Coordinator, VMFA
"I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I make them for myself first and foremost - that is important.” – Jacques-Henri Lartigue
French photographer and painter Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1986), is most famous for his stunning photos of automobile races, planes and fashionable Parisian women from the turn of the century. This lecture explores Lartigue’s photographs from his first sincere, often playful presentation of friends, family and French society made as early as age 6 to his later day fashion layouts and portraits.
Berthe Morisot and the Impressionist Image of Women
Jeffrey Allison, Paul Mellon Collection Educator and Statewide Programs Coordinator, VMFA
"It is important to express oneself…provided the feelings are real and are taken from your own experience." – Berthe Morisot
Berthe Morisot was a woman of extraordinary talents who carved a career for herself out of the male-dominated art world of nineteenth century Paris. She was one of only a few women who exhibited with both the Paris Salon and the highly influential and innovative Impressionists. Morisot’s art depicts the world of the bourgeoisie: their clothes, their lifestyle, their surroundings, and her relationships. Through her unusual talent, the modern viewer can see the essence of quotidian life for the rising middle class of nineteenth century Paris.
Big Top Art
Margaret Hancock, Art and Design Educator
The circus is coming to town! Toulouse-Lautrec’s XX, part of the Paul Mellon Collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, ignites this visual presentation of art inspired by a trip to the circus. From masterpieces by Pablo Picasso and Georges Seurat to vintage circus posters, no clowning around for this exploration of portraiture, graphic design, and more.
Mystery of The Night Café: Hidden Key to the Spirituality of Vincent van Gogh
Dr. Cliff Edwards, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Virginia Commonwealth University
Cliff Edwards explores the spirituality of one of the world's most beloved artists, Vincent Van Gogh, through one of Western art's most mysterious paintings, The Night Café. Enter the imagination of Van Gogh through the books he read, the art he admired, and the people with whom he identified, and arrive at startling conclusions that include a new and deeply spiritual understanding of a café after midnight and the "night prowlers" who inhabit it.
Politics and Painting: French Art Movements of the 19th Century
Dr. Donald Schrader, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Mary Washington University
France was the most advanced and most prosperous country in the world during the 19th century. It was also dynamic and politically unstable, undergoing four changes of constitution before 1900. The visual arts, and in particular painting, played an important role in the social turmoil of the French republic. Controversies about social class, gender, and economic equity played out in art as much as in the press. This lecture explores many of these topics and the painters who alternately championed or turned their backs on the great causes of their time - including David, Delacroix, Courbet and Manet.
The Real World: Courbet, Whistler, and Manet New
Jeffrey Allison, Paul Mellon Collection Educator and Statewide Programs Coordinator, VMFA
Gustav Courbet led the Realist Movement in 19th Century France, focusing on the everyday and the ordinary as he developed a unique painting style that influenced his student James McNeil Whistler and the proto-Impressionist, Eduard Manet. This lecture will explore the complex relationship between these three men as they challenged the status quo in art, politics, and love.