Catalog 2015
WELCOME
San Diego’s Jewel Box of Fine Art The Timken Museum of Art in San Diego’s historic Balboa Park is home to the Putnam Foundation’s significant collection of European old masters, 19th century American art and Russian icons. The collection also includes the only Rembrandt painting on public display in San Diego. Considered one of the finest small museums in the world, the Timken Museum of Art, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2015, provides visitors with an accessible and enriching cultural experience featuring a beautiful collection, intimate surroundings and perennially free admission. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest at Timken Museum of Art, and on Twitter at @TimkenMuseum. For more information please visit us at timkenmuseum.org or call (619) 239-5548.
The museum is open 10–4:30 p.m. Tuesday–Saturday and 12–4:30 p.m. on Sundays. It is closed on Mondays and all major holidays.
HISTORY
50 Years of Extraordinary Artwork The Timken Museum of Art owes its existence to the combined efforts and generosity of two families: the prominent Timken family from Canton, Ohio, and Anne and Amy Putnam who arrived in San Diego in the early 1900s from Vermont, accompanied by their elderly parents and preceded by their uncle, Henry Putnam, who retired in San Diego in 1898. The Putnam sisters spent decades acquiring European old master paintings. Initial paintings from the sisters’ collection were donated to San Diego’s Fine Arts Gallery (now the San Diego Museum of Art). Their later acquisitions were loaned to prestigious museums around the country until the Timken opened in 1965.
“Each collection boasts unique and priceless representations of the specific genre...”
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In 1951, with the assistance of longtime friend and advisor Walter Ames, the Putnam sisters established the nonprofit Putnam Foundation, under which their artworks became designated as the Putnam Foundation Collection. In accordance with the sisters’ wishes, the Putnam Foundation continued to purchase paintings of high quality. The paintings that were acquired from 19511956 form the core of the European collection, as it is known today. In an effort to secure the Putnam Foundation Collection for San Diego, Ames secured financial support from the Ohio-based Timken family of the Timken roller bearing fame to help build a new gallery for San Diego. The institution first opened its doors to the
public in October 1965. The institution was named the Timken Art Gallery (now the Timken Museum of Art) because of the very generous contributions the Timken family had made to the cultural life of San Diego. In the years between the Foundation’s establishment and the opening of the museum, the Putnam Foundation Collection paintings remained on loan to institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the National Gallery in Washington, DC, and Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum. In 1965, the paintings were reunited, and hung in their new permanent quarters at the Timken. Located on the Prado in San Diego’s beautiful Balboa Park, the museum displays more than 60 extraordinary artworks, predominantly paintings augmented by a small holding of sculpture and decorative art objects. The works in the Putnam Foundation Collection are primarily in three distinct areas: European old master paintings, 18th and 19th-century American art, and Russian icons. Each collection boasts unique and priceless representations of the specific genre. Notable works in the collection include Rembrandt’s Saint Bartholomew (the only painting by the Dutch artist on public display in San Diego); Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Parable of the Sower; John Singleton Copley’s Portrait of Mrs. Thomas Gage; Eastman Johnson’s classic The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket; and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s View of Volterra.
ARCHITECTURE Contemporary Design Inside and Out
The mid-century modern Timken Museum of Art today stands on a prime location in Balboa Park’s Plaza de Panama, the site of an important, but temporary, edifice for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. That structure, the Home Economy Building designed by architect Carleton Winslow, was demolished in 1963. The Timken is arguably the second most important mid-century building in San Diego, after Louis Kahn’s iconic Salk Institute. The Timken is all the more significant for being designed by a local architect. The groundwork for the museum began in 1951. With the help of longtime friend and lawyer Walter Ames, the sisters Amy and Anne Putnam established the nonprofit Putnam Foundation, under which any art acquired became part of the Putnam Foundation Collection. After Ames secured financial support from the Timken family and its foundation, the firm of Frank L. Hope and Associates, the largest of its kind in the region, was hired to design and build a museum to display the collection in San Diego in perpetuity. While the Hope firm established a working team for the project, John Mock, Hope’s architect in charge of contemporary design, was responsible for the conception of the building. Mock attended several meetings with
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Walter Ames and Frank Hope Sr. and Jr. to discuss the main design feature – the ability to embrace Balboa Park from within the building. In contrast to other Balboa Park structures that focused internally on their own exhibits, the light and airy “see-through museum” took shape. The symmetry, balance and palette of materials (travertine, bronze and glass) set the stage for an experience unlike any other structure in Balboa Park. Standing next to a 19th century cast of Giambologna’s Mercury in the foyer (consciously echoing a similar cast in the west building of Washington’s National Gallery of Art), visitors can enjoy the lily pond to the east and the Plaza de Panama to the west as the sun rises and sets. Garden courts dissect the structure’s middle and blur lines between interior and exterior spaces and engage San Diego’s moderate climate and abundant sunshine. The firm hired internationallyacclaimed lighting designer Richard Kelly to design the museum’s interior and exterior lighting scheme. Kelly, who was favored by architects such as Kahn, Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, provided a unique skylight program for filtered sunlight to bathe the masterpieces in a way that was both considerate to the health of the art and consistent during the sun’s
“The Timken is arguably the second most important mid-century building in San Diego...”
daily journey across the sky. During mid-summer there is often no need for artificial lights in the galleries.
would have disappeared and one’s eye only attracted to the rich colors of the paintings and the gold frames.
Hope’s design leader Howard Shaw provided the designs for the grill work and bronze fascia scheme on the exterior. He also embellished the entry in floral-themed bronze plates and continued the abstraction to the bronze railings, gates and grill-work that punctuates the light, airy feeling of the Timken’s glazed openings.
Two other points should be remembered when considering the Timken building in the context of Balboa Park. The first is that it continues a trend of building structures of contemporary design in the park. The dominant architectural style in 1915 was revival: on the East Coast Colonial Revival architecture reflected the nation’s 18th century origins; in the Midwest one sees Romanesque Revival; in San Diego it is natural to find Spanish Revival. Twenty years later there was a trend toward modernist designs and the buildings created for the 1935 Exposition, such as the Ford Building (now the San Diego Air and Space Museum) are art deco in form. So the creation of a mid-century modern, International Style, museum in 1965, especially in Southern California, should come as a logical progression.
According to experts, the Timken represents some of the best evidence of 1960s modernity by some of the best talent San Diego had to offer. It is a major example of a post-World War II trend to build contemporary museum buildings to display the art of the past, projects that include Kahn’s museums at Yale University (1953 and 1976) and the Kimbell in Fort Worth (1972), William Pereira’s 1966 Ahmanson Building at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Philip Johnson’s museums in Utica, New York (1960), Fort Worth (1961) and Lincoln, Neb. (1963). Today’s rose-colored wall upholstery is not original, installed in the early 1990s to enhance the colors of the paintings. When the Timken opened the walls were a color complimenting the travertine floors, with the intention that the neutral tonality of the interior
The second point is that the Timken was the most expensive building erected in San Diego up to that time. The benefactors were proud that not only was no expense spared, but that on completion it was given to the city for the benefit, pleasure and inspiration of the citizens of San Diego and visitors to the city. The building and its contents are available free to everyone.
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OUR COLLECTION European and American Masterpieces
The world-class Putnam Foundation collection of European and American masterpieces is on permanent display at the Timken Museum of Art. The Timken’s collection spans nearly six hundred years of art from early Italian Renaissance devotional paintings to late nineteenth century paintings from the United States and includes important examples of French, Dutch and Flemish paintings in addition to Italian and American. A special feature of the museum is the significant collection of Russian icons, many from the Moscow and Novgorad Schools, ranging from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century.
“The Timken’s collection spans nearly six hundred years of art...”
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Don’t miss San Diego’s only painting by Rembrandt, Saint Bartholomew; Jacques-Louis David’s revolutionary portrait of the Irishman Cooper Penrose; and a masterpiece by Eastman Johnson, The Cranberry Harvest. The foyer is adorned with Parisian seventeenth century tapestries illustrating the Stories of Queen Artemisia.
AMERICAN
Top Left: John F. Peto, 1854-1907 In the Library, 1894-1900 Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 101.6 cm
Top Right: Eastman Johnson, 1824-1906 The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket, 1880 Oil on canvas, 69.5 x 138.4 cm
Bottom Left: Martin Johnson Heade, 1819-1904 The Magnolia Blossom, 1888 Oil on canvas, 38.4 x 61.3 cm
Bottom Right: Fitz Henry Lane, 1804-1865 Castine Harbor and Town, 1851 Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 84.5 cm
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DUTCH AND FLEMISH
Top Left: Rembrandt van Rijn, 1606-1669 Saint Bartholomew, 1657 Oil on canvas, 122.7 x 99.7 cm
Top Right: Peter Paul Rubens, 1577-1640 Portrait of a Young Man in Armor, ca. 1620 Oil on canvas, 64.8 x 50.8 cm
Top Center: Anthony van Dyck, 1599-1641 Mary Villiers, Lady Herbert of Shurland, ca. 1636 Oil on canvas, 101 x 83.8 cm
Bottom: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, ca. 1525–1569 Parable of the Sower, 1557 Oil on panel, 73.7 x 102.9 cm
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FRENCH
Top Left: Nicolas de Largilliérre, 1656-1746 Portrait of Marguerite de Sève, Wife of Barthélemy-JeanClaude Pupil, 1729, Oil on canvas, 138.4 x 106.4 cm
Top Right: Philippe de Champaigne, 1602-1674 Christ Healing the Blind, ca. 1655-60 Oil on canvas, 102.2 x 141.9 cm
Bottom Left: Claude-Joseph Vernet, 1714-1789 A Seaport at Sunset, 1749 Oil on canvas, 114 x 164.1 cm
Bottom Right: Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1732 - 1806 Blindman’s Buff, ca. 1775 - 80 Oil on canvas, 62.5 x 45.1 cm
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ITALIAN
Top Left: The Magdalene Master and an Unknown Florentine Painter, 13th-14th century Madonna and Child and Two Angels, with Twelve Scenes from the Passion, ca. 1310 Tempera on panel, 67.3 x 179.4 cm Top Right: BartolomĂŠ Esteban Murillo, 1617-1682 Christ on the Cross, 1660-70 Oil on canvas, 208.9 x 113 cm
Bottom: Luca Carlevarijs, 1663-1730 The Piazzetta at Venice, ca. 1700-10 Oil on canvas, 96.5 x 195.3 cm
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RUSSIAN ICONS
Left: Moscow School St. Basil with Scenes from His Life, 16th century Tempera on wood panel, 108.3 x 82.6 cm
Top Right: Moscow School Our Lady of Jerusalem, 17th century Tempera on wood panel, 131.1 x 106.7 cm
Center Right: Novgorod School The Savwior Enthroned, 15th century Tempera on wood panel, 90.8 x 65.4 cm
Bottom Right: Moscow School The Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ, 16th century Tempera on wood panel, 42.9 x 35.2 cm
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FRENCH TAPESTRIES
All: Entrefenetre Tapestries from the series Stories of Queen Artemisia, made with dyed and undyed wool, silk threads and silver-glit metallic threads
Center: Antoine Caron, 1830-1902 The Queen Distributing the Body Tapestry, 464.8 x 236.2 cm
Left: Antoine Caron, 1830-1902 The Petitions Tapestry, 472.4 x 238.8 cm
Right: Antoine Caron, 1830-1902 A Group of Soldiers Tapestry, 472.4 x 238.8 cm
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CONTACT US We would love to hear from you
Timken Museum of Art 2250 Fifth Ave Suite 500 San Diego, California 92103 Phone: 619.239.5548 Fax: 619.531.9640 Reservations: 619.261.9236 Email: info@timkenmuseum.org Do you love the Collection? Help it thrive by becoming a member at timkenmuseum.org/join-give
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