Dreaming of Arcadia in the Modern World
One of the first 'pastoral ' paintings(not in the exhibition) was The Pastoral Concert, 1509, by Titian and/or Giorgione, originator of the pastoral, where landscape is on par with figures. Shepherds and musicians are frequent in this theme. Good things always end, including summer and a chance to see how the greatest modern artists painted themes of leisure as Arcadian Visions: Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse , ends Labor Day. The exhibition highlights 3 large paintings: Gauguin's frieze-like Where do We Come From?..., 1898, Cézanne's Large Bathers , 1898-1905 and Matisse's Bathers by a River , 1907-17. Each painting was crucial to the goals of the artists, and crucial to the transitioning from the art and life of the past into the 20th century. These modernist visions actually are part of a much older theme descended from Greece and written about in Virgil's Eclogues. Nineteenth-century masters were very familiar with this tradition from...