Chinese prints from the collection of Christer von der Burg
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Cleveland Museum of Art
Woodblock printing with colour was pioneered in China and reached its zenith in 18th-century Suzhou. An exceptional selection of Suzhou prints, assembled by the specialist bookseller and collector Christer von der Burg, has now been purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art. The museums each acquired more than 100 prints, many of them large-scale and polychrome, which range across subjects and genres such as cityscapes, elite women, birds and flowers. The works reflect a cosmopolitan blend of Chinese painting traditions with linear perspective and other European conventions. While few Suzhou prints survived the Cultural Revolution in China, others were preserved thanks to their global circulation in European and Japanese collections.
Sculpture with Colour (Oval Form) Pale Blue and Red (1943) by Barbara Hepworth
Hepworth Wakefield
The Hepworth Wakefield acquired this rare stringed wood carving by Barbara Hepworth after a £3.8m public fundraising appeal that secured more than 2,800 donations. The sculpture dates from the pivotal period after the British artist moved her family to St Ives on the Cornish coast, escaping the threat of war in London in August 1939. Its plaster model was the only sculpture she brought with her, and it took several more years before Hepworth had the studio space to carve in wood again. Sculpture with Colouris now on view in her namesake museum, where it is the first example of Hepworth’s 1940s sculpture to join the collection.
Courtesy Kimbell Art Museum
Still Life with Melon, Watermelon, and Other Fruits (around 1610-20) by Pensionante del Saraceni
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
The unidentified Caravaggesque artist known as Pensionante del Saraceni has puzzled art historians since Roberto Longhi first coined the nickname in 1943. Believed to have lodged with the Venetian artist Carlo Saraceni in early 17th-century Rome, the artist is associated with a small number of paintings influenced by Caravaggio’s revolutionary realism in the decade after his death. This softly illuminated still-life of ripe late summer fruits, painted at close to life size, closely resembles the artist’s sumptuous Still Life with Fruit and Carafe (around 1610-20) in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
The Kimbell Art Museum acquired this painting from the New York–based Old Master dealer Nicholas Hall.
