Through June 24, 2018
J. Paul Getty Museum

From The Getty Museum:

One of the most intriguing series in Rembrandt’s oeuvre comprises his drawings made in the style of artists serving the Mughal court in India. Juxtaposing Rembrandt’s depictions of Mughal rulers and courtiers with Indian paintings and drawings of similar compositions, this exhibition reveals how contact with Mughal art inspired Rembrandt to draw in an entirely different, refined style prompted by his curiosity for a foreign culture.

Among the most surprising aspects of Rembrandt’s prodigious output are 23 surviving drawings closely based on portraits made by artists working in Mughal India. These drawings mark a striking diversion for this quintessentially Dutch “Golden Age” artist, the only time he made a careful and extensive study of art from a dramatically different culture. Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India explores for the first time the artist’s Mughal drawings, exhibiting them alongside the Mughal paintings that inspired them to assess the impact of Indian art and culture on Rembrandt’s artistic interests and working process as a draftsman.

“Rembrandt may be one of the most famous painters in European art history, but there are still remarkable discoveries to be made about his work,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “This exhibition is a case in point, demonstrating how Rembrandt turned to the art of India to produce some of his most intriguing images. This vivid example of cultural exchange reminds us how artists on different continents take inspiration from one another, a reality that of course continues to this very day.”

The exhibition pairs 20 of Rembrandt’s surviving drawings depicting Mughal emperors, princes, and courtiers with Indian paintings and drawings of similar compositions, which had been brought to Amsterdam from the Dutch trading post in Surat. Rembrandt’s portraits reveal how his contact with Mughal art inspired him to draw in a newly refined and precise style.

Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India also examines how global trade and cultural exchange impacted artists working for Mughal emperors in India, who were in turn inspired by Dutch and Flemish printed images of European rulers and scenes of daily life. Among the treasures found in a Dutch East India ship, which sank en route to China, was a package that contained four hundred prints by and after Dutch and Flemish artists. This astounding quantity suggests that Dutch merchants thought that art would help them gain access to the Asian market in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

These prints were particularly interesting to Mughal court artists, who were already accustomed to working with single-tone drawings and calligraphy. Rather than copy the European compositions exactly, Mughal artists adapted them to their own artistic purposes, as seen in Keshav Das’s “Roman Hero” (about 1590-95), based on prints by the Dutch artist Hendrick Goltzius. The use of these prints illuminates the range of images that found a positive reception in India long before Rembrandt made his creative copies.

The Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1627-1658) was well known for his patronage of the arts — most notably the building of the Taj Mahal. Shah Jahan’s rule of Mughal India spanned the years that Rembrandt worked in Leiden and Amsterdam. In his eight drawings of Shah Jahan — more than he made of any other Mughal ruler — Rembrandt carefully studied the trappings of imperial magnificence, as seen in “On Horseback (Shah Jahan)” (about 1656-61). The poetic claim that Shah Jahan was “Royal Rider of the Piebald Steed of the World” was not lost on Rembrandt.

Rembrandt’s drawings after Mughal compositions constitute the largest group, by far, of his copies after other works of art. Moreover, they are his only surviving drawings on expensive Asian paper, which suggests the high value the artist himself placed on them. “Shikoh” (about 1656-60) is quite different from the typically known “late Rembrandt” style of drawing. His careful attention to details of clothing, jewelry, turbans, and footwear pays tribute to Mughal artists’ exceptional artifice.

On almost every level, Rembrandt and the Indian court painters operated in completely different worlds. Yet such differences did not prevent these innovative artists from appropriating foreign imagery to reflect upon and enrich their own more familiar artistic practice and culture.

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March 16 through April 22, 2018
Rancho Palos Verdes, California

From the Palos Verdes Art Center:

Many artists today continue the long tradition of sketching outdoors, en plein air, as a necessary step that leads to an easel painting. Exemplars of this tradition, the Portuguese Bend Art Colony have captured the Palos Verdes coastline with their oil, watercolor, and pencil sketches at all times of day through the seasons. For the first time, these artists — Stephen Mirich, Daniel W. Pinkham, Vicki Pinkham, Amy Sidrane, Kevin Prince, Thomas Redfield, and Richard Humphrey — have generously agreed to show their oil paintings, each of which is paired with its preparatory sketch.

Capturing a Vision: The Portuguese Bend Tradition will give a glimpse of the creative process; starting with a first plein air sketch, to the creation of the final vision — an oil painting, finished in the studio.

Rick Humphrey’s pieces focus on pencil drawing as an aid to teaching studio painting, demonstrated in his sketch of Abalone Cove, which poetically captures the detail of the cliff rock formations.

Daniel W. Pinkham’s sketch of the Villa Narcissa Gate House Courtyard dwells on the chiaroscuro created by oblique light. You can see the same play expressed in color in his oil painting “Old Coast Road, Palos Verdes Drive South.”

Sketches are also an indispensable part of the creative process for artists working in three dimensions. Included in the exhibition are also the tiny detailed sketches by Portuguese Bend resident Marianne Hunter, used to create her enamel jewelry. There will also be costume designs for the UCLA opera department, mural sketches by Steve Shriver (also of Portuguese Bend), and hidden away for almost a hundred years, the beautiful sketchbooks of Clover Cox, sister of Narcissa Cox Vanderlip, for whom Villa Narcissa was named. Tom Redfield will lend some of his great-great grandfather’s sketches, by the famous nineteenth-century American artist Edward Willis Redfield.

On loan by The Explorer’s Club (founded 1904 in New York City) is a rare find — the sketchbook of Albert Operti, made when the artist accompanied arctic explorer Robert E. Peary to document the first expeditions to the North Pole. Also on view will be Operti’s very large sketches, recently re-discovered in the Explorer’s Club archives. In spite of the hardships he and other members of Peary’s expedition endured, Operti still managed to record magical moments, like his sketch of the Arctic Sunset (shown at top).

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