<< BACK

SEARCH

DONATE

Military Standards, Edo period, 17th century, Six-panel folding screen: colors on paper, 117.8 x 288.5 cm, Osaka Castle Museum.

Tsuchiya Yasuchika (1670-1744), Tsuba (sword guard) with the Zen monk Bukan, obverse & reverse, Edo period, 17th century, Brass, 7.8 x 7.2 cm, Kurokawa Institute for Ancient Cultures, Hyogo Prefecture, Important Cultural Property.

Eboshi-shaped kabuto (helmet) with maedate (crest) in form of a mantis, Edo period, 17th century, Iron, lacquer, cord, silk, wood, gold, and papier-maché, H. of bowl, 20.3 cm.

Kabuto (helmet) in the shape of a turban shell, with gold leaf, Momoyama period, 17th century, Iron, gold, lacquer, and silk, H. of bowl, 19.3 cm, Tokyo National Museum.

Momonari-kabuto (peach-shaped helmet) with butterfly crest, Edo period, 18th century, Iron, wood, gold, leather, lacquer, and silk, H. of bowl, 26.5 cm, National Museum of Japanese History, Chiba Prefecture.

Black-lacquered kabuto (helmet) with the arm of a guardian deity, wielding a Vajra, Edo period, 17th century, Iron, lacquer, wood, and papier-maché, H. of outer bowl, 43.5 cm, Yasukuni-jinja Shrine, Tokyo.

Honda Tadakatsu, Edo period, 17th century, Hanging scroll; ink and colors on silk, 124 x 64 cm, Private collection, Important Cultural Property.

The Construction of a Castle, Momoyama period, 17th century, Six-panel folding screen: ink, color, and gold on paper, 55.8 x 210.2 cm, Nagoya City Museum, Aichi Prefecture.

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
at 82nd Street
212-535-7710
New York
The Tisch Galleries, second floor
Art of the Samurai:
Japanese Arms and Armor,
1156-1868
October 21, 2009-January 10, 2010

"What Japan was, she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of the nation but its root as well."

— Bushido: The Soul of Japan
by Inazo Nitobe (1907)

Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156-1868 brings together 214 masterpieces, including 34 National Treasures, 64 Important Cultural Properties, and six Important Art objects, a number of which have never traveled outside Japan. Featuring the finest examples of armor, swords, sword fittings and mountings, archery and equestrian equipment, banners, surcoats, and related accessories of rank, as well as painted screens and scrolls depicting samurai warriors, the exhibition will explore the greatest achievements of this unique facet of Japanese art. Masterpieces on view will include an exceptional 12th-century blade called Ôkanehira that is known as the greatest of all Japanese swords, and a striking armor with helmet—adorned by a crescent more than 30 inches long — worn by Date Masamune, one of Japan's legendary warriors. Drawn exclusively from more than 60 public and private collections in Japan, this is the most comprehensive exhibition of Japanese arms and armor ever to take place in the world. Approximately 60 objects will be rotated into the exhibition during the first week of December.

The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Government of Japan, and the Tokyo National Museum.

Morihiro Ogawa, the exhibition's curator, and Special Consultant for Japanese Arms and Armor in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Arms and Armor, stated: "Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156-1868 has been more than 10 years in the making. Extended negotiations have resulted in an assemblage that would be difficult to experience even in Japan. The exhibition will include many works that are seen rarely and others that have never been shown beyond the Shinto shrines and a temple. We are particularly honored by the exceptional support offered by those responsible for the administration of cultural properties for lending us 34 National Treasures, more than triple the number ever before allowed to leave Japan for a single loan exhibition. I sincerely hope that this exhibition will bring to the public a new awareness of the samurai culture that is often misunderstood as a mere martial art."

Historical Background of Samurai
Between the 12th and 19th centuries, the military elite dominated Japanese politics, economics, and social policies. Known as bushi or samurai, these warriors, who first appear in historical records of the 10th century, rose to power initially through their martial prowess — in particular, they were expert in archery, swordsmanship, and horseback riding. The demands of the battlefield inspired these men to value the virtues of bravery and loyalty and to be keenly aware of the fragility of life. Yet, mastery of the arts of war was by no means sufficient. To achieve and maintain their wealth and position, the samurai also needed political, financial, and cultural acumen. In contrast to the brutality of their profession, many leaders of the military government became highly cultivated individuals. Some were devoted patrons of Buddhism, especially of the Zen and Jodo schools; several were known as accomplished poets, and others as talented calligraphers.

Exhibition Overview
and Highlights
Known as omote dogu, or 'exterior equipment,' military equipment — particularly swords and armor—was prized above all else and used for splendid display as well as the dress in which they would die if defeated in battle. To that end, samurai spent untold sums, and went to almost any extreme, in pursuit of excellence and splendor in the making of these great works of art. This exhibition is a unique opportunity to witness for the first time the emergence and development of this 'exterior equipment' together with paintings and other related materials.

Gallery I:
Archaeology
and Heian Period (794-1185)
The exhibition is organized in chronological order, and the first gallery will be devoted to works created before 1185, where one of the highlights is an extremely rare 12th-century armor with red-leather lacing, the only known example of this type (National Treasure). Due to its fragile condition, this object is permitted to be on display for only two weeks at a time (on view through November 1); it will be replaced in the exhibition by a magnificent 14th-century armor (National Treasure) beginning December 1.

Gallery II:
Kamakura period (1185-1333)
The Japanese sword is often called the "spirit of the samurai," and this exhibition will feature the best examples of swords, dating from the fifth century to the 19th century. Among the many masterpieces showcased in the gallery devoted to the Kamakura period, which began with the establishment of Japan's first military government, is a 13th-century blade known as Dai Hannya Nagamitsu (National Treasure), a superb example of tachi (slung sword) that was valued at 600 kan — equal to about 2,250 kilograms of silver — in the Muromachi period (1392-1573). Of exceptional quality, this sword was in the possession of many renowned warriors, originally of the shogun clan. Later it came into the possession of Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), one of the most powerful warlords of the feudal era, who in turn gave it to Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), the founder of the Edo period (1615-1868), in honor of his military success at the Battle of Anegawa (1570). Another masterpiece sword, known as Hocho Masamune (National Treasure) and attributed to Masamune, one of the most renowned of all Japanese swordsmiths, will also be on view, as will an extraordinary saddle of the 13th century known as a kagami kura (National Treasure), whose inner surfaces have circular pieces of mother-of-pearl inlay pierced with a snake's-eye design.

Gallery III:
Nambokucho (1336-1392)
and Muromachi Periods
Japan experienced almost incessant warfare from the beginning of the Kamakura to the end of Nambokuchô period. Despite the social and political upheaval, the Muromachi period was economically and artistically innovative. Objects in this gallery will include extremely rare outer garments: a jacket with matching trousers called Crimson hitatare and hakama with scattered paulownia (Important Cultural Property). Records kept by the Môri family indicate that these were given to Môri Motonari (1497-1571), another powerful warlord contemporary of Nobunaga, by an Ashikaga shogun. Fine silks and gold brocades were used for such garments because they were intended to be worn beneath armor by warriors facing death on the battlefield.

Gallery IV:
Momoyama Period (1573-1615)
The Momoyama culture was rich and dynamic, fueled by a healthy economy and the energy of a people liberated from the violence of war. On view will be an impressive 16th-century armor with a deerhorn helmet called Dô-maru gusoku (Important Cultural Property) that was originally owned by the famous warrior Honda Tadakatsu. It will be exhibited with a life-like portrait of Tadakatsu, who is depicted wearing the armor (Important Cultural Property); the painting is said to be an accurate representation of Tadakatsu as a powerful, seasoned warrior, who is prepared to join the front line of battle. A set of splendid 16th-century saddle and stirrups (Important Cultural Property) owned by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598), one of the most famous samurai in history, exemplifies the superb maki-e style of the period. A richly decorated 16th-century surcoat (jimbaori), said to have been given by Oda Nobunaga to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, will also be on view, as well as portraits of Asai Nagamasa, a high-rank samurai whose tragic story has been handed down through the generations, and of Oichi no Kata, Wife of Asai Nagamasa, a legendary Japanese beauty.

Gallery V:
Edo Period
During the Edo period (1615-1868), the cult of the warrior, bushido, became formalized and an idealized code of behavior developed, focusing on fidelity to one's lord and honor. The samurai of this period inherited the traditional aesthetics and practices of their predecessors and therefore continued the seemingly paradoxical cultivation of both bu and bun — the arts of war and culture — that characterized Japan's great warriors. A number of masterpieces from the period will be on display in this gallery.

A section of this gallery will feature 15 unique helmets in two rotations (the second of which will begin December 8), including a peach-shaped helmet with butterfly crest, a helmet with a forecrest in the form of a mantis, a black-lacquered helmet with the arm of a guardian deity wielding a vajra, a helmet in the shape of a crab, and a helmet in the form of a five-storied pagoda. Also on view will be an extremely rare 18th-century armor for a woman; it is an outstanding example of armor of the highest quality from the Edo period that incorporates superb metalworking, lacquering, and leather-making techniques. The martial skills and daily life of the samurai and their governing lords also will be evoked through painted screens depicting battles, military sports, castles, and famous samurai warriors. This gallery will include the 17th-century folding screen of The Battle of Nagashino and a 19th-century handscroll painting by Odagiri Shûko, Daimyo Processing to Edo. A simple but elegant sword guard with a "sea cucumber" motif created by Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645), one of the most admired of all samurai, will also be on view.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue edited by Morihiro Ogawa, with essays by Kazutoshi Harada, Special Research Chair of the Tokyo National Museum; and Hiroshi Ikeda, Chief Researcher of the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese Government, the world's leading experts on Japanese sword mountings and fittings, sword blades, and armor. By combining their paramount knowledge, connoisseurship, and decades of experience, the catalogue of the exhibition will present the most detailed and definitive treatment of this relatively inaccessible and esoteric subject ever published in English. Published by the Metropolitan Museum, Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156-1868 will be available in the Museum's bookshop (hardcover, $65, paperback, $45).

The catalogue is made possible by the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, Inc. Additional support is provided by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger and Allison S. Cowles, the Grancsay Fund, and the Doris Duke Fund for Publications.

The exhibition is organized by Morihiro Ogawa, Special Consultant for Japanese Arms and Armor in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Arms and Armor; the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese Government, and the Tokyo National Museum, in the collaboration with Donald La Rocca, Curator in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Arms and Armor. Exhibition design is by Daniel Kershaw, Exhibition Design Manager; graphics are by Sophia Geronimous, Graphic Design Manager; and lighting is by Clint Ross Coller and Richard Lichte, Lighting Design Managers, all of the Metropolitan Museum's Design Department.

Leather-clad nimai-do gusoku armor with light blue lacing, Edo period, 17th century, Iron, leather, lacquer, and silk, H. of helmet bowl 18.5 cm, H. of cuirass, 42.5 cm, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of History.

Kabuto (helmet) in the form of a five-storied pagoda, Edo period, 18th century, Wood, lacquer, leather, silk, and iron, H. overall, 86.3 cm, Kyoto National Museum.

Jerome B. Thompson (American, 1814-1886), The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain, 1858, Oil on canvas; 38 x 63-1/8", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1969 (69.182), Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Winslow Homer (American, 1836-1910), The Veteran in a New Field, 1865, Oil on canvas; 24-1/8 x 38-1/8", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 1967 (67.187.131), Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

William Merritt Chase (American, 1849-1916), The Open Air Breakfast, ca. 1887, Oil on canvas; 37-1/2 x 56-3/4", Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott (1953.136), Photograph © Toledo Museum of Art, 2008.

Thomas Wilmer Dewing (American, 1851-1938), A Reading, 1897, Oil on canvas; 20-1/4 x 30-1/4", Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Henry Ward Ranger through the National Academy of Design (1948.10.5).

Mary Cassatt (American, 1844-1926), A Woman and a Girl Driving, 1881, Oil on canvas; 35-1/4 x 51-3/8", Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1921 (W1921-1-1), Photograph: Graydon Wood.

Samuel F. B. Morse (American, 1791-1872), Gallery of the Louvre, 1831-33, Oil on canvas; 73-3/4 in. x 9 ft., Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Daniel J. Terra Collection (1992.51), Photograph: Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago / Art Resource, NY.

Thomas Anshutz (American, 1851-1912), The Ironworkers' Noontime, 1880, Oil on canvas; 17 x 23-7/8", Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd (1979.7.4)

Seymour Joseph Guy (American, 1824-1910), Making a Train, 1867, Oil on canvas; 18-1/8 x 24-1/8", Philadelphia Museum of Art, The George W. Elkins Collection, 1924 (E1924-4-14), Photograph: Graydon Wood.

Eastman Johnson (American, 1824-1906), Negro Life at the South, 1859, Oil on canvas; 36 x 45-1/4", Collection of The New York Historical Society, The Robert L. Stuart Collection, on permanent loan from The New York Public Library (S-225).

Francis William Edmonds (American, 1806-1863), The City and Country Beaux, ca. 1838-40, Oil on canvas; 20-1/8 x 24-1/4", Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (1955.915), © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Gilbert Stuart (American, (1755-1828)), Anna Dorothea Foster and Charlotte Anna Dick, 1790-91, Oil on canvas; 36 x 37", Philip and Charlotte Hanes.

Frank Waller (American, 1842-1923), Interior View of The Metropolitan Museum of Art when in Fourteenth Street, 1881, Oil on canvas; 24 x 20", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, 1895 (95.29), Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
at 82nd Street
212-535-7710
New York
Special Exhibition Galleries, second floor
American Stories:
Paintings of Everyday Life,
1765-1915
October 12, 2009-January 24, 2010

From the decade before the Revolution to the eve of World War I, many of America's most acclaimed painters captured in their finest works the temperament of their respective eras. They recorded and defined the emerging character of Americans as individuals, citizens, and members of ever-widening communities. American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915 brings together for the first time more than 100 of these iconic pictures that tell compelling stories of life's tasks and pleasures. The first overview of the subject in more than 35 years, the exhibition includes loans from leading museums and private lenders—and many paintings from the Metropolitan's own distinguished collection. American Stories features masterpieces by John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, William Sidney Mount, George Caleb Bingham, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, John Sloan, and George Bellows, and notable works by some of their key colleagues.

The exhibition examines stories based on familiar experience and the means by which painters told their stories through their choices of settings, players, action, and various narrative devices. The artists' responses to foreign prototypes, travel and training, changing exhibition venues, and audience expectations are examined, as are their evolving styles and standards of storytelling in relation to the themes of childhood, marriage, the family, and the community; production and reinforcement of citizenship; attitudes towards race; the frontier as reality and myth; and process and meaning of art making.

The exhibition is arranged in four chronological sections. The first — Inventing American Stories, 1765–1830— begins with artists who told stories through portraits. Serving their sitters' self-conscious interest in how they appeared in the eyes of others, American portraitists often emulated British compositions. Although these artists focused on individuals and particular locales and relationships, the cleverest of them responded to broader narrative agendas and to the natural impulse to tell stories. In his portrait of his colleague Paul Revere (1768, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), John Singleton Copley embedded subtle narrative into a traditional single-figure format, with the silversmith's gestures and gaze conveying volumes about the time in which he lived. As their patrons learned to read portraits for more than likeness and to appreciate artistic license, portraitists began to gratify their sitters by telling subtle personal stories in increasingly elaborate compositions. In his ingenious double-likeness of Benjamin and Eleanor Ridgely Laming (1788, National Gallery of Art, Washington), for instance, Charles Willson Peale implied the sexual bond that defined the Lamings' marriage. Later in this period, some painters told grand stories in pictures produced for public exhibition, rather than purely for private enjoyment. In Gallery of the Louvre (1831–33, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago), Samuel F. B. Morse proposed that his compatriots must achieve cultural independence from Europe even while they learned from the Old World's greatest artistic achievements.

In the second section of the exhibition — Stories for the Public, 1830–1860— American artists responded to an expanding and increasingly diverse audience for public exhibitions; new mechanisms for selling and reproducing art; and middle-class patrons' growing cultural literacy and wealth. They almost invariably looked to precedents in European genre painting to help them tell their stories, drawing inspiration from Old Master Dutch or more recent French and English examples, known through popular prints. Genre painters preferred domestic scenes, lighthearted narratives, clear settings, stereotyped characters, and obvious gestures and details so that viewers could read their pictorial dramas easily and recognize themselves in relation to them. Many American genre painters favored rural locales, which were associated with fundamental national values. In The City and Country Beaux (ca. 1838-40, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown), Francis William Edmonds suggested the virtues and vices of each locale as a young woman chooses between a slick Yankee and a self-satisfied country bumpkin. Painters in this era gently confronted the deepening rifts between the races, immigrants and native workers, and geographical divisions between north and south, east and west. For example, William Sidney Mount commented on race in a rural context in The Power of Music (1847, Cleveland Museum of Art), which shows a black man set apart from white listeners and yet enjoying the sound of the fiddle played by a young white man. In a similarly euphemistic vein, Missouri-born George Caleb Bingham tamed for eastern viewers the perceived perils of foreign types and the frontier in Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845, The Metropolitan Museum of Art).

The third section of the exhibition is Stories of War and Reconciliation, 1860–1877. Fought mainly by non-professional soldiers, the Civil War was essentially democratic, as Winslow Homer implied in his paintings of daily life at the front, including Pitching Quoits (1865, Harvard University Art Museums). To assuage the sorrow provoked by the war and to heal the nation's fractured spirit, painters in this period turned away from political content toward domestic and leisure-time subjects. As women gained prominence after the loss of so many men in the war, artists portrayed them in new roles. Homer's Croquet Scene (1866, The Art Institute of Chicago), for example, shows women competing with men on a literally level playing field and celebrates the nation's return to peaceful pursuits. Expressing nostalgia for pre-war innocence, many artists portrayed children, including Seymour Joseph Guy, whose Making a Train (1867, Philadelphia Museum of Art) epitomizes the impulse. And, as the agrarian basis of American life gave way to urbanization and industrialization, artists who were themselves working in thriving cities manifested the longing for earlier, simpler times in their nostalgic depictions of rural activities. In The New Bonnet (1876, The Metropolitan Museum of Art), painted in the year of the Centennial, Eastman Johnson evokes a quiet moment as two women scrutinize a hat while their father warms his hands by the fire in an old-fashioned Nantucket interior.

By the mid-1870s, the nation's visual culture burgeoned and the taste of American viewers and patrons matured in response to expanded opportunities for travel; access to more and better graphic reproductions of paintings; and exposure to art in newly founded museums. American painters yielded to an unprecedented internationalism, embracing new stories and new means by which to tell them. In Cosmopolitan and Candid Stories, 1877-1915, the exhibition's fourth and final section, American artists redefined national identity in an international context. They were as likely to paint people in Paris or the French countryside as in New York or New England. They revealed in their works an appreciation of the journalistic, fragmented narrative that inflected foreign examples, and they evaded even more than their predecessors the harsh realities of modern existence. American painters also operated in a newly complex art world, which broadened their opportunities for displaying and marketing art on both sides of the Atlantic and altered their professional standards. Paris resident Mary Cassatt told of the daily routine of sophisticated urban women and indicated her own appreciation of female empowerment in Woman and a Girl Driving (1881, Philadelphia Museum of Art). John Singer Sargent, also an expatriate, frankly recorded an encounter with ordinary Venetians in A Street in Venice (ca. 1880-82) and a visit to a well-to-do American family in An Interior in Venice (1899, Royal Academy of Arts, London). William Merritt Chase escaped from the city to a tranquil suburban retreat in Idle Hours (ca. 1894, Amon Carter Museum), depicting fashionable figures relaxing on a placid greensward along a beach in Southampton, Long Island, and in Ring Toss (1896, Marie and Hugh Halff) showed three of his daughters at play in his nearby summer studio. Some painters examined men at work and leisure and celebrated new heroes such as cowboys, who became emblems of American masculinity and the receding frontier. Thomas Anshutz's Ironworkers' Noontime (1880, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), Thomas Eakins's Swimming (1885, Amon Carter Museum), and Frederic Remington's Fight for the Water Hole (1903, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) are key examples. The Ashcan artists, who challenged American Impressionist decorum after 1900, were committed to recording the modern world frankly and to grappling with gritty urban realities. Yet, John Sloan typically retained the Impressionists' cheerful outlook in The Picnic Grounds (1906-7, Whitney Museum of American Art), even though he depicted indecorous working-class girls in a park in Bayonne, New Jersey. Sloan's Ashcan associates invited viewers to experience other distinctive, even sordid urban venues. In Club Night (1907, National Gallery of Art, Washington), George Bellows provided ringside seats at a brutal boxing match, which women, who could have seen the painting, could not actually have attended.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. It was edited by H. Barbara Weinberg (Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture) and Carrie Rebora Barratt (Associate Director for Collections and Administration), both of the Metropolitan Museum. It includes essays by Weinberg and Barratt, as well as by Bruce Robertson (Professor of Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Consulting Curator, Department of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and Margaret C. Conrads (Samuel Sosland Curator of American Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City). Published by the Metropolitan Museum and distributed by Yale University Press, the book is suitable for non-specialists as well as scholars, and are available in the Museum's bookshops ($60 hardcover, $40 paperback).

The catalogue is made possible by The William Cullen Bryant Fellows of the American Wing.

The exhibition is organized by H. Barbara Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, and Carrie Rebora Barratt, Associate Director for Collections and Administration, both of the Metropolitan Museum, in association with Bruce Robertson, Professor of Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Consulting Curator, Department of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Margaret C. Conrads, Samuel Sosland Curator of American Art at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, also contributed to the planning of the exhibition. Exhibition design is by Michael Batista, Exhibition Design Manager; graphics are by Constance Norkin, Senior Graphic Designer; and lighting is by Clint Ross Coller and Richard Lichte, Lighting Design Managers, all of the Metropolitan Museum's Design Department.

Charles Cromwell Ingham (American, 1796-1863), The Flower Girl, 1846, Oil on canvas; 36 x 28 7/8", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of William Church Osborn, 1902 (02.7.1), Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Henry Bacon (American, 1839-1912), First Sight of Land, 1877, Oil on canvas; 28-3/4 x 19-7/8", In the collection of Art and Elaine Baur.

Winslow Homer (American, 1836-1910), The Gulf Stream, 1899, Oil on canvas; 28-1/8 x 49-1/8", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1906 (06.1234), Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Jean-Antoine Watteau (French, 1684-1721), The Foursome (La Partie quarrée), ca. 1714, Oil on canvas; 19-1/2 x 24-3/4", Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum Purchase, Mildred Anna Williams Fund (1977.8).

Musette de Cour, ca. 1700, France, Leather, ivory, silk, wood, silver, iron, length of chanter with tenon: 10-1/8'; length of bourdon: 5-11/16"; length of bellows: 8-1/4, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Clara Mertens Bequest, in memory of André Mertens, 2003 (2003.63a-d).

Jean-Antoine Watteau (French, 1684-1721), Love in the Italian Theater (L'Amour au théâtre italien), Oil on canvas; 14-5/8 x 18-7/8, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin (470).

Jean-Antoine Watteau (French, 1684-1721), The Surprise (La Surprise), Oil on wood; 14 x 13-1/2", Private collection, courtesy of Jean-Luc Baroni Ltd.

Jean-Antoine Watteau (French, 1684-1721), Mezzetin (Mezetin), Oil on canvas; 21 3/4 x 17", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Munsey Fund, 1934 (34.138).

Metropolitan
Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
at 82nd Street
212-535-7710
New York
European Paintings, Gallery 2,
2nd floor
Watteau, Music, and Theater
September 22-
November 29, 2009

Watteau, Music, and Theater, the first exhibition of Jean-Antoine Watteau's paintings in the United States in 25 years, is presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 22 through November 29. The exhibition demonstrates the place of music and theater in Watteau's art, exploring the tension between an imagery of power, associated with the court of Louis XIV, and a more optimistic and mildly subversive imagery of pleasure that was developed in opera-ballet and theater early in the 18th century. It demonstrates that the painter's vision was influenced directly by musical works devoted to the island of Cythera, the home of Venus, and to the Venetian carnival, and sheds new light on a number of Watteau's pictures.

The exhibition is made possible by The Florence Gould Foundation.

Watteau, Music, and Theater features more than 60 works of art, consisting of major loans of paintings and drawings by Watteau and his contemporaries from collections in the United States and Europe. The balance of the paintings are drawn from the Metropolitan Museum's collections, together with most of the works on paper, and all of the musical instruments, gold boxes, and ceramics.

Born in 1684 in Valenciennes in the Hainault (French, but formerly part of the Spanish Netherlands), Jean-Antoine Watteau is widely considered the most important artist in early 18th-century France. A solitary, ill-educated, self-taught, largely itinerant figure, he was a supremely gifted painter and draftsman whose surviving works of art are his testament. Most of them are so-called fêtes galantes, idyllic scenes that have no specifically identifiable subject. Only one of Watteau's paintings, The Embarkation for Cythera (1717), was publicly exhibited in his lifetime. Watteau died in 1720 at the age of 36 after a long illness.

While relatively little is known about Watteau, an expanding body of literature relating to Paris opera-ballet, plays, and the less formal and more traditional seasonal théâtres de la foire relates to specific works in the exhibition, and these can now be mined more deeply to examine the artist's life and work.

Among the many highlights of Watteau, Music, and Theater are the Metropolitan Museum's Watteau paintings Mezzetin and French Comedians; the Städel Museum'sThe Island of Cythera; Pleasures of the Dance from the Dulwich Picture Gallery; Love in the French Theater and Love in the Italian Theater, both from the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin; and The Alliance of Music and Comedy (private collection), which has not been on view in any museum in decades.

The exhibition marks the first time the painting La Surprise (private collection) can be seen in a museum. Lost for almost 200 years and presumed to have been destroyed, La Surprise was rediscovered last year in a British country house and later sold at auction.

Exquisite drawings by Watteau, including works from the Art Institute of Chicago, The Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, Massachusetts, and The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, are also be featured.

Other lenders to the exhibition are Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Brodick Castle, Isle of Arran (National Trust for Scotland); Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Schloss Sansoucci, Potsdam (Stiftung Preussische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg); Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Pictures by Lancret come from Michael L. Rosenberg Foundation, Dallas; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

The exhibition also includes works by contemporaries of Watteau, including Nicolas Lancret and Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Pater, who were influenced by him; fine drawings and engravings by other 18th-century European artists; Meissen porcelain figures depicting theatrical characters; and musical instruments of the era, including a rare Musette de Cour, or early bagpipe, from the Metropolitan Museum's collection.

The exhibition is organized by Katharine Baetjer, Curator in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of European Paintings, with Georgia J. Cowart, Professor in the Department of Music at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with an introduction by Pierre Rosenberg, de l'Académie française, Honorary President-Director of the Musée du Louvre, and an essay by Georgia J. Cowart. Other contributors to the catalogue are Katharine Baetjer, Jayson Kerr Dobney, Jeffrey Munger, and Perrin Stein, all of the Metropolitan Museum; Christoph Martin Vogtherr, curator at The Wallace Collection, London; Kim de Beaumont, Esther Bell, Mary Tavener Holmes, and Anna Piotrowska. The catalogue is made possible by the Drue E. Heinz Fund.

Franz Anton Bustelli (German, d. 1763), Nymphenburg Porcelain Factory, Germany, Harlequine, ca. 1760, Hard-paste porcelain; H. 8 5/8", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of R. Thornton Wilson, in memory of Florence Ellsworth Wilson, 1950 (50.211.251).

Jean-Antoine Watteau (French, 1684-1721), Love in the French Theatre, detail, 1714, Oil on canvas, 37 x 48 cm.

Robert Frank, Charleston, South Carolina, 1955; gelatin silver print; 16-1/4 x 23-1/4 in.; Collection of Susan and Peter MacGill; © Robert Frank

Robert Frank, Elevator – Miami Beach, 1955; gelatin silver print; 12-3/8 x 18-13/16 in.; Collection Philadelphia Museum of Art, purchased with funds contributed by Dorothy Norman, 1969; © Robert Frank.

Robert Frank, Funeral – St. Helena, South Carolina, 1955; gelatin silver print; 15-5/8 x 22-7/8 in.; © Robert Frank.

Robert Frank, City Fathers – Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955; gelatin silver print; 16-1/2 x 22-3/4 in.; Collection Susan and Peter MacGill; © Robert Frank.

Robert Frank, Guggenheim 340/Americans 18 and 19 – New Orleans, November 1955, 1955; contact sheet; 10 x 8-1/16 in.; National Gallery of Art, Washington, Robert Frank Collection, gift of Robert Frank; © Robert Frank.

Robert Frank, San Francisco, 1956; gelatin silver print; 13-3/4 x 10-1/16 in.; Private collection, San Francisco; © Robert Frank.

Robert Frank, U.S. 90, en route to Del Rio, Texas, 1955; gelatin silver print; image and board 18-3/4 x 12-1/4 in.; Private collection, courtesy Hamiltons Gallery, London; © Robert Frank.

Metropolitan
Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
at 82nd Street
212-535-7710
New York
Galleries for Drawings, Prints
and Photographs
and The Howard Gilman Gallery,
second floor
Looking In:
Robert Frank's The Americans
September 22, 2009-
January 3, 2010

The 50th anniversary of the publication of The Americans, Robert Frank's groundbreaking book of black-and-white photographs, is celebrated with the major exhibition Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans, on view at the Metropolitan Museum. Robert Frank is one of the great living masters of photography, and his seminal book The Americans captured a culture on the brink of social upheaval. The exhibition traces the artist's process of creating this once-controversial suite of photographs, which grew out of his beat-inflected road trips in 1955 and 1956. Born in Switzerland in 1924, Frank was an outsider encountering much of America for the first time; he discovered its power, its vastness, and — at times — its troubling emptiness. Although Frank's depiction of American life was criticized when the book was released in the U.S. in 1959, The Americans soon became recognized as a masterpiece of 20th-century art. Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans features all 83 photographs from his original book. Remarkably, the Metropolitan's exhibition is the first time that this body of work is presented in its entirety to a New York audience.

The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans is the most comprehensive and in-depth exploration of Frank's original book ever undertaken and will feature more than 100 photographs, 17 books, and 15 manuscripts, as well as 28 contact sheets made from the artist's negatives. First published in France in 1958, The Americans remains the single most important book of photographs published since World War II. The exhibition begins with an examination of the roots of The Americans through a display of Frank's earlier books and other series of photographs made in Europe, Peru, and New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In this prefatory group of works, the artist had already established his style of street photography and his thoughtful approach to sequencing his photographs.

In 1955 and 1956, with funding from a Guggenheim Fellowship, the young photographer undertook a 10,000-mile journey across more than 30 states. While crisscrossing the U.S., Frank made more than 27,000 photographs. The exhibition follows the artist's process through his production of more than 1,000 work prints, and a year spent editing the images, selecting the photographs, and constructing the sequence. A large display comprised of rough work prints Frank made in 1956 and 1957 reveals the themes he wanted his book to explore: racism, politics, consumer culture, families, and the way Americans lived, worked, and played. Vintage contact sheets and letters to photographer Walker Evans and author Jack Kerouac also help trace Frank's preparations and planning for the book.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is the presentation of all 83 photographs from The Americans, often in rarely exhibited vintage prints, and in the sequence that Frank established. The first image in the book, Parade – Hoboken, New Jersey (1955) sets the tone for Frank's journey of discovery across the country: two women stand in their respective windows, one face in shadow, the other's view obstructed by a large and billowing American flag. Trolley – New Orleans (1955), a signature work by Frank in the Museum's collection, depicts street-car passengers of different ages, genders, and races that brings to the forefront racial politics in the segregated South and the hierarchies among men and women, the young and the old.

Frank often focused on introspective individuals. Rodeo – New York City (1954) is a study of a cowboy — not in the West, but on the streets of Manhattan, in town for the rodeo. •Elevator – Miami Beach• (1955) inspired Jack Kerouac to write in his introduction to the original book, "…that little ole lonely elevator girl looking up sighing in an elevator full of blurred demons, what's her name and address?"

Frank also found beauty in overlooked corners of the country and, in the process, helped redefine the icons of America. •U.S. 285, New Mexico• (1955) is a view of the open highway that reminds us of the raw poetry of the journey itself. In his photographs of diners, cars, and the road, Frank pioneered a seemingly intuitive, off-kilter style that was as innovative as his choice of subjects. Equally influential was the way he sequenced photographs in The Americans, linking them thematically, formally, and emotionally, and ultimately creating a haunting picture of mid-century America.

The conclusion of the exhibition addresses the impact of The Americans on Frank's subsequent career and includes still photographs and a short film made by the artist in 2008 especially for this exhibition.

The exhibition was organized by Sarah Greenough, senior curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art. It is organized at the Metropolitan Museum by Jeff L. Rosenheim, Curator in the Department of Photographs.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published in two different editions by the National Gallery of Art in association with Steidl. The 396-page softcover edition features 384 illustrations and essays by Sarah Greenough, Jeff L. Rosenheim, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Stuart Alexander, Martin Gasser, Michel Frizot, Luc Sante, and Philip Brookman. The hardcover edition was expanded to include reproductions of the artist's contact sheets; correspondence, and archival documents; a comparison of varying editions of The Americans; and a chronology and map. The hardcover edition is 528 pages with 486 illustrations. Both editions are in the Museum's bookshops ($75 hardcover, $45 softcover), as well as the facsimile of the original U.S. edition of The Americans (Steidl, $39.95).

The exhibition was previously on view at National Gallery of Art, Washington, traveling to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (May 16-August 23, 2009) before its presentation at Metropolitan Museum (September 22, 2009-January 3, 2010).

Robert Frank, Movie premiere, Hollywood, 1955; gelatin silver print; 10-1/16 x 6-3/4; Collection The Museum of Modern Art, New York, purchase, 2002; © Robert Frank.

Robert Frank U.S. 285, New Mexico, 1955, Gelatin silver print; 13-1/4 x 8-5/8 in. (33.7 x 21.9 cm)
Mark Kelman, Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans.

Robert Frank, Political Rally - Chicago, 1956; gelatin silver print; 23-1/4 x 14-3/8 in.; Collection Betsy Karel; © Robert Frank.

Robert Frank, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1955; gelatin silver print; 8-3/16 x 11-5/8 in.; Private collection; © Robert Frank