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Much of our appreciation of Van Gogh can be traced to Helene Müller, whose acquisitions are the foundation of the Kröller-Müller Museum. This German-born heiress was wise in recognizing Van Gogh's genius and became the first major collector of his work. She and her Dutch husband, Anton Kröller, built a sensational collection and began showing parts of it to the public as early as 1913.  They lost their fortune in the economic downturn after World War I, but formed the Kröller-Müller Foundation to protect the art.  In 1935, they donated a house, land and a collection of 12,000 pieces to the Netherlands on the condition the country will build a place to display it. There were 90 paintings, 185 drawings by Van Gogh. S till Life with Four Sunflowers, 1887, has contrasts of blue and orange, yellow and red, a reason I find this painting in the Kröller-Müller Museum more interesting than Van Gogh's more famous yellow paintings of sunflowers in a vase. In a recent trip to the Netherla...

Since 1993, Martin Schongauer's 10" x 13" drawing of Peonies has been in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Too fragile for permanent display, it may be in the Getty's exhibition of Renaissance Drawings from Germany and Switzerland, 1470-1600, March 27-June 17, 2012. A painting of peonies came up for auction in 1990 under the vague label of Northern Italian. However, a museum curator at the Albertina in Vienna recognized it as an important drawing from about 1472-73 by Martin Schongauer , an artist who lived in Alsace on the French-German border. The drawing, now in the Getty Museum, is a study for the flowers in Madonna of the Rosary , 1473, painted by Schongauer for a church in Colmar (now in France). Albrecht Durer traveled to Colmar to visit Schongauer in 1491, but the great Alsatian master had died by the time 21-year old Durer arrived. Martin's brothers met with him and gave him some of the master's drawings. This drawing may have been one of the drawings ow...

National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, is hosting a ground-breaking exhibition, From Royalists to Romantics : Woman artists from the Louvre, Versailles and other French National Collections . The exhibition celebrates the 25th anniversary of NMWA and will continue to be on view until July 29, 2012. It features 35 woman artists who worked between 1750 and 1850. The women who worked as artists in France at this time went through difficult times of the Revolution and its aftermath, the governments of Napoleon and Napoleon III and uncertainties in between. They reveal themselves as extraordinary talents, able to overcome so many odds. Many of those who painted and were the subject of portraits reveal themselves as the Renaissance woman of their days. The cover of the catalogue has an alluring portrait of Madame Juliette Récamier, by Eulalie Morin. Madame Récamier, by Eulalie Morin, late 18th century, is on the cover of the NM WA ground-breaking exhibition. Morin's Mm...

The Phillips Collection has an intimate Rothko Room which creates a meditative space to view his color field paintings. The museum's founder designed the room specifically for this purpose. Mark Rothko's last years are chronicled in a play currently showing at the Arena Stage in Washington,DC. Washington holds a special place for this artist, with the National Gallery holding the largest collection of his work in the world and the Phillips Collection having a special Rothko Room designed for his work by the museum's founder. "Red," an award-winning Broadway play by John Logan, will continue its run until March 9. The entire play takes place in Rothko's studio with a dialogue between Rothko and a young assistant named Ken. In 100 minutes without interruption, there are no lulls in this play. Of Rothko, Duncan Phillips described "mysterious layers of paint...suggest depth in spite of their flat mat quality. " Or ange and Red on Red, 1957, is part of t...

An exquisite of exhibition "mourning" statues at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, have a beauty and realism that give us something to cry about, a phrase Michelangelo used to describe Flemish painting. In the 15th century, Flanders was ruled by the Duke of Burgundy and similarities to the Flemish style of painting can be are apparent in the style of sculptors Jean de la Huerta and Antoine de la Moiturier. They learned their art from the great Claus Sluter, a Netherlandish sculptor who worked in Burgundy. The Dukes of Burgundy had one of Europe's richest courts, in rivalry with the King of France to the west and Holy Roman Empire to the east. The 40 statues line up as if in a funeral procession. At the exhibition, viewers have a chance to see the statues in more completeness and in a more realistic way than in the location they were originally placed, below the bodies of Duke John the Fearless (Jean sans Peur) and his wife, Marguerite. In the current display, th...

Saint Francis in Ecstasy, from the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT, is in the Kimbell Art Museum's exhibition, Caravaggio and His Followers until January 8 One painting in the Kimbell Art Museum's Caravaggio exhibition (today is the last day) reveals an unexpected side of Caravaggio's nature. St. Francis in Ecstasy , from the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, CT, is poetic. Parallel lines of light on water to the left lead to a very sweet angel holding St. Francis.  The saint  has swooned after receiving the stigmata , the wounds of Jesus. In dead center, St. Francis's foreshortened hand vaguely reveals this hole representing the nail that went into Christ's hand. Intentionally I have refrained from writing about the type of paintings for which Caravaggio is most famous. The Boy Bitten by a Lizard and The Sacrifice of Isaac (in the Kimbell exhibition ) cause discomfort and hit us in the gut. As Isaac is about to be killed by his father Abraham, he looks out of ...

Martha and Mary Magdalene, c. 1598, shows the saint at the moment of her conversion. It is from the Detroit Institute of Arts, but is currently on view in Caravaggio and His Followers, at the Kimbell Museum of Art In Caravaggio's remarkable version of the Mary Magdalen story, he painted the moment of her transition from sinner to saint. As much as Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code popularized the idea that the Church demonized Mary Magdalen, more commonly she was idealized in art as a saint who turned her life around. The painter Michelangelo Merisi, who is nicknamed Caravaggio, was demonized in his lifetime for his shockingly realistic paintings and his own "sinful" life. (He was charged with murder and often on the run.) The inclusion of Martha with Mary Magdalen and other objects requires the viewer to interpret the symbolism. Martha is seated with her back to the viewer, with only one shoulder and her hands hit by Caravaggio's dramatic lighting. On the ...