NEW YORK, NY.- “I note the obvious differences between each sort and type, but (these) are more alike, my friends, than (they) are unalike.” -- Maya Angelou
Early nineteenth-century artists began a radical departure from traditional academic norms, shifting focus from realistic representation to subjective expression. The show starts with the work of Welsh born painter Thomas Jones, who was one of the first artists to make outdoor oil sketching a significant part of his practice after an 1765 trip to Italy. His View of the Temple of Diana at Nemi has the fresh spontaneity of an oil sketch, thus anticipating the work of later 19th century landscape painters. J.B.C. Corot’s large scale late charcoal drawing demonstrates how the artist replaced the thin silvery graphite lines of his early drawings with broadly applied charcoal forms to depict compositions derived from memory and imagination. A rare early watercolor by Paul Gauguin shows the influence of Impressionism and the artist’s personal friendship with Camille Pissarro in the late 1870s.
Vuillard’s pastel, c. 1907, shows how early 20th century artists began to allow abstract color to replace descriptive detail in a work of art. It was the first step in recognizing what Maurice Denis declared in 1890 that “a picture…, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order."
By the mid-twentieth century, Pablo Picasso’s view of representational art evolved from his precocious mastery of academic techniques to a conceptual deconstruction of reality that would define modern art. He believed his depictions were actually more emotionally realistic through abstraction, as seen here in his 1945 ink portrait of his soon to be ex-lover Dora Maar. Kiki Smith’s relationship to realism is defined by what critics call physiological or visceral realism. She remains a seminal figure for her ability to strip away form in favor of a raw, clinical honesty. Her very large drawing done in 2004 is done on Nepal paper and is one of a small series of drawings depicting two women together. The work has a mysterious emotional power that defies verbalization.
These works as well as others on view at:
Jill Newhouse Gallery
January 30 – February 7, 2026
