March 28 - August 13, 2000
North Mezzanine Gallery, Lila Acheson Wallace Wing
A series of 14 recent etchings by London painter Leon Kossoff (b. 1926) will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning March 28. Based on paintings by the 17th-century French artist Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), the etchings are the result of a period of intense, first-hand study of the Baroque master's canvases during the 1995 Poussin exhibition at London's Royal Academy. After Nicolas Poussin: New Etchings by Leon Kossoff, which will be installed in the North Mezzanine Gallery of the Museum's Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, runs through August 13.
The Kossoff etchings were acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1999, through the generosity of Reba and Dave Williams.
Kossoff, the subject of a retrospective at London's Tate Gallery in 1996, is best known for his thickly impastoed oils on board drawn from an established repertoire of familiar subjects — the populated spaces of his native London, female nudes, and portraits of family and friends. The Museum's 1987 oil-on-Masonite portrait of his brother, Chaim I, is included in the exhibition at the Metropolitan.
"It may seem paradoxical that Kossoff, an artist of turbulent, expressionistic paintings of daily life, took inspiration from the restrained, learned classicism of Poussin's mythological and religious scenes," commented Nan Rosenthal, Consultant in the Metropolitan's Department of Modern Art and curator of the exhibition. "Yet Kossoff
was clearly intrigued by Poussin's genius for composition and enjoyed pursuing a visual dialogue with the Baroque master."
According to the artist, his fascination with Poussin began, unexpectedly, some forty years ago, during one of his regular visits to London's National Gallery. Although he had long been aware of the museum's important canvases by Poussin, he had always "looked at and passed them by." On this occasion, however, he was inexplicably struck by the sight of Poussin's Cephalus and Aurora (1629-30). "It seemed as though, " he later recalled, "I was experiencing the work for the first time. Paintings of this quality can, in an unexpected moment, surprise the viewer, revealing unexplored areas of self."
Kossoff's interest in Poussin was re-ignited in 1995, when the Royal Academy presented Nicolas Poussin, 1594-1665, an international loan exhibition of some ninety works by the artist. During the eight-week run of the show, Kossoff gained permission to enter the galleries early in the morning, before public hours, and draw in front of the paintings — using pencil on paper as well as an etching needle on copper and zinc plates prepared with hard or soft wax-based grounds.
The etching plates were prepared by Ann Dowker, a London painter who later collaborated with Kossoff on biting the plates with acid, wiping them before printing, and making trial proofs. In some cases, areas of the etchings were washed with aquatint; in others, lines were emphasized by drypoint. The etchings were printed in editions by Mark Balakjian at Studio Prints, London.
The etchings explore a wide range of Poussin's subjects — in all some eight paintings are represented in the series — including Cephalus and Aurora, which initially sparked Kossoff's enthusiasm for Poussin some forty years ago, Bacchanal Before a Herm (ca. 1634), and Triumph of Pan (1635-36, both National Gallery, London), which show drunken carousers, their limbs entwined in complex friezelike compositions. Kossoff's two etchings after Poussin's famous Rape of the Sabines (ca. 1637, Musée du Louvre, Paris) vary considerably. The first carefully studies Poussin's deployment of figures; the second, with many areas of aquatint, stresses the violence of the scene, in which Roman soldiers carry off the women of the neighboring Sabines. (An earlier version of this subject by Poussin is on view in the Metropolitan Museum's European Paintings galleries.) Very different in mood is his etching after The Testament of Eudamidas (ca. 1645-50, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen), a poignant deathbed scene in which a humble citizen of Corinth, surrounded by grieving relatives, dictates his dying wishes to a scribe.
Kossoff also adopted several of Poussin's religious subjects. His etchings after The Judgment of Solomon (1649, Musée du Louvre, Paris) follow the stark pyramidal composition of the painting, as does the etching after Poussin's serene Holy Family on the Steps (1648, Cleveland Museum of Art). In an etching after The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (ca. 1656-58, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin), a late work by Poussin, Kossoff captures the austere solemnity of the scene, with its central figure of the Virgin, who holds her garment in a gesture of mourning.
The installation also includes four examples from the Metropolitan's collection of works by 17th- and 18th-century printmakers who were earlier transmitters of Poussin's ideas and images.
The Web site for the Metropolitan Museum (www.metmuseum.org) will feature the exhibition.
The exhibition is organized by Nan Rosenthal, Consultant in the Metropolitan's Department of Modern Art.
A recent book by Richard Kendall, Drawn to Painting: Leon Kossoff Drawings and Prints after Nicolas Poussin (Merrell Publishers Limited, London; distributed in the United States and Canada by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., through St. Martin's Press) is available in a hardcover edition for $35 in the Metropolitan Museum Bookshop and at the Modern Art Sales Desk.
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March 30, 2000
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