NEW YORK, NY.- Jill Newhouse and Mireille Mosler will present Dreaming of France and, Dreaming of Holland, two simultaneous exhibitions of 19th/20th works on paper and paintings at Jill Newhouse Gallery.
While travel restrictions this year have prevented the two dealers for the first time in their careers from visiting Europe, their countries of expertise have remained on their mind. The result is two simultaneous exhibitions highlighting each of the galleries’ area of specialization.
Artists flocked to the city of Paris in the late 19th century, eager to admire innovations in art and architecture, while others traveled to Holland for the fishing villages and countrysides, attracted to a world seemingly frozen in time. Each exhibition transports us so that we can see what these artists saw, in portraits, landscapes, and still lives.
On view in French art of the 19th century are works by Corot, Delacroix, Bresdin and lesser known masters Appian, Daubigny and Harpignies with early 20th century artists such as Bonnard, Vuillard and Balthus, as well as examples of the Pointillist School by Petitjean and Dubois-Pillet.
A large early drawing by Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), who would later move to Paris and New York, shows the figurative roots that ultimately led him to geometric abstraction. Not as well-known is Mondrian's contemporary and fellow De Stijl participant Chris Beekman (1887-1964), whose landscape painting from 1904 reveals the same trajectory.
A student of Whistler, the British Gwen John (1876-1939) is an example of a female artist working in France. As Rodin's model and muse, John moved to Meudon, where her almost sculptural gouache of houses was executed. Indonesian born Jan Toorop (1858-1928), under the influence of Ensor, who supported his acceptance in the Belgian Les XX in 1884, uses a palette knife to paint his houses in Machelen.
Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) and the Nabis artists had a close connection to Paris’ avant-garde theater. Capturing his model in dark ink, in the night from the back, reveals his particular genius. The obscure Belgian draughtsman George Le Brun's (1873-1914) depiction of a man turned away from the viewer is another example of the abundance of black drawing media exploding onto the market at the end of the nineteenth century.
