MEMBER BULLETIN Fall 2018
ROBERT AND LEONA FELLERS GALLERY
Student Exhibitions The ZMA eagerly partners with area schools and organizations to feature the creativity of student artists in the Robert and Leona Fellers Gallery, located on the museum’s third floor. The Fellers were pillars of the Zanesville community, supporting the arts and encouraging art education at the museum. As an artist herself, Leona Fellers exhibited work in the Ohio Annual exhibition, and she would be proud that this gallery celebrates this region‘s aspiring student artists.
October
| John Glenn High School
Admission is always free for exhibition openings. Please join us, and enjoy great art and complimentary beverages and light bites.
Exhibition opening, Saturday, October 13, 2–3 pm. November | Julie’s ARTery Exhibition opening, Saturday, November 17, 2–3 pm. December
| West Muskingum High School
Exhibition opening, Saturday, December 15, 2–3 pm.
NE W HORIZONS
| Contemporar y Watercolors by Christiane Curr y
On view through February 9, 2019 New work by Columbus-based water media artist Christiane Curry opened September 2018 at the museum. A native of France, Curry’s work is influenced by memories of her native landscape, which she frequently visited, and Ohio’s scenic beauty, where she currently lives and works. These luminous, intimate, and expressive works on paper, which emerged from a recent tragic loss and a debilitating illness demonstrate Curry’s belief in art’s transformative quality. “I hope that…my New Horizons,” stated Curry, “can inspire viewers…to experience the simple beauty, tranquility, joy, and peace of the healing power of art and nature.” Curry’s masterful small-scale, semi-abstract, and atmospheric landscape paintings, reveal the artist’s unique power to capture the mutability of nature.
| Watercolor Paintings from the Cleveland S chool 4 On view through March 9, 2019 AN URBAN LIFE
This fall, the works on paper gallery features another beautiful selection of watercolors by artists from The Cleveland School. Selected from one regional collection, these vibrant and brilliantly executed works explore the stylistic diversity of this intergenerational group of artists who lived and worked in Northeast Ohio between 1890 and 1960. Watercolor, considered subordinate to oil painting by 19th- and early 20th-century critics and connoisseurs, earned a newfound appreciation as a technically challenging and uniquely delicate media due in part to Cleveland School artists.
Right: Detail, August Biehle, Boat Coming to Dock, circa 1910, watercolor on paper. On loan from Mr. Carl E. Eriksson.
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our holiday craft
THE COLLEC TION The ZMA has an extensive collection of works on paper, which include three fine prints by renowned 17th-century Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) that will be on view for a limited time from October 2018 through January 2019. While the artist is currently regarded as the pre-eminent painter of the Dutch Golden Age, during his lifetime, Rembrandt was celebrated as a pioneering and prolific printmaker, creating nearly three-hundred original etchings between 1625 and 1665. Widely sought after by contemporaries, his etchings were prized by artists, collectors, and connoisseurs for their straightforward and expressive characterization of the human condition. In one of only five remaining statements by the artist, Rembrandt wrote to a patron about his desire to create art with “die meeste ende die natureelste beweechlickheyt”—the greatest and most natural movement. Rembrandt’s storytelling ability and his extraordinary empathy for the human condition are fully realized in The Circumcision in the Stable, from 1654. In a departure from traditional depictions of this biblical scene, Rembrandt places naturalistic looking figures in front of a stable rather than within the Temple. The Holy Family is not idealized, but depicted as humble, modest, and devoted commoners. The intimacy of the scene is enhanced by Rembrandt’s preferred printmaking technique—etching, which allowed him to energetically sketch the figures and the scene directly on the printing plate rather than to hire a professional engraver to translate his design to plate. The same vitality is conveyed in The Golf-Player, also from 1654. The work is divided into three distinct scenes, which appear more like impromptu sketches rather than a fully realized work of art. The reclining figure in the foreground, for example, is rendered in greater detail than the other figures and is cast in partial shadow by crosshatching—a technique used to create depth and drama within a composition. What unifies this work, is Rembrandt’s characteristically expressive line and his carefully observed forms. Rembrandt embraced a broad range of subject matter throughout his career. In The Little Jewish Bride (Saskia As Saint Catherine), from 1638, the artist demonstrates his exceptional sensitivity as a portraitist. Saskia van Uylenburgh, the artist’s young wife, is depicted as a demure Christian Martyr and interpreted as a Jewish bride with her long wiry hair falling around her shoulders. It is a sensitive portrayal, and one of many representations of Saskia as a biblical character. These intimate and thoughtful prints reveal Rembrandt’s improvisational approach to printmaking, which was unique among Dutch artists. They convey a great deal about 17th-century Dutch society, its values, and culture. Clockwise from top: Details, The Little Jewish Bride (Saskia As Saint Catherine),1638, etching and drypoint on paper, only state, inscribed in plate on upper right: “Rembrandt f. 1638” (reversed). Purchase, Friends of Art, 10754; The Circumcision in the Stable, 1654, etching, second of two states, inscribed in plate on upper left: “Rembrandt f. 1654,” and inscribed in plate middle left: “Rembrandt f. 1654.” Purchase, Friends of Art, 10080; The Golf Player, 1654, etching, second of two states, inscribed in plate on lower left: "Rembrandt f. 1654." Purchase, Friends of Art, 10013.
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620 Military Road | Zanesville, Ohio | 43701 (740) 452-0741 | www.zanesvilleart.org
Dr. Robert and Mrs. Susan Thompson Taylor-McHenry Memorial Fund
CLOSER LOOK This small, delicately rendered etching created by Rembrandt van Rijn in 1638 is one of three works by the Dutch master from the museum’s permanent collection that will be on view in the upcoming exhibition Rembrandt | The Consummate Etcher and Other 17th-Century Printmakers. Purchased sixty years ago and donated to the ZMA by the Friends of Art, the meaning behind this deceptively simple yet skillfully rendered image is more complex. The delicate features of this modestly dressed figure, whose luxurious hair falls freely over her shoulders but whose hands are tucked discreetly within the abundant folds of her gown, resembles other portraits of Saskia van Uylenburch (1612–1642), Rembrandt’s wife of eight years (1634–1642). Depicted here before her untimely death at age thirty from tuberculosis and during a period of tremendous loss when three of her four children died after birth, Rembrandt alludes to Saskia’s suffering. Notice the toothed wheel located behind her left arm. This instrument of torture is associated with the Christian Martyr Saint Catherine, believed to have eased the suffering of her followers. While the accepted title for this etching is now Saskia as Saint Catherine, in the 18th century the print was called Het Klijne Jooden Bruitje, or The Little Jewish Bride. This print resembles Rembrandt’s 1635 etching—The Great Jewish Bride. The model for this work is the daughter of Jewish man of letters and physician, Ephraïm Bueno. In this work, as in Saskia as Saint Catherine, Rembrandt depicts the sitter’s free-flowing hair drapped over her shoulders, which was customary among artists depicitng Jewish brides. Clockwise from top, all by Rembrandt: Details, The Little Jewish Bride (Saskia As Saint Catherine),1638, etching and drypoint on paper, only state, inscribed in plate on upper right: “Rembrandt f. 1638” (reversed). Purchase, Friends of Art, 10754. Not on view in the exhibition, The Great Jewish Bride, 1635, etching on paper, second state of five, Metropolitan Museum of Art, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929, 29.107.32.