"Collecting Matisse and Modern Mastets' Showing at the Vancouver Art Gallery until September 20th.
Claribel and Ettta Cone were two never-married Baltimore-born women who met the famous French painter Henri Matisse about 110 years ago. They bought close to 500 of his works as well as pieces by Picasso, Van Gogh and other famous artists. They gave most of this work to the Baltimore Museum of Art.
"Matisse radiated a serenity that I found very moving," Pablo Picasso's partner Francoise Gilot said about Matisse when she knew him in the l940's and 1950's.
Some of this serenity shows up in Matisse's work that's now on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Nearly all the works here are borrowed from the Cone Collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Matisse's paintings like 'Striped Robe, Fruit and Anemones' and 'Reclining Nude' are powerful lovely works.
Yet this show only has about 50 paintings including 1 or 2 by Van Gogh and Picasso. This is a tiny part of the entire Cone Collection back in Baltimore.
And the show stopper for me wasn't anything by Matisse. Courbet, the great 19th century realist only has one small landscape in the show. Yet his 'The Shaded Stream at Le Puit Noirs' has a mystery and magic to it that no other painting in this show, including those by Matisse, could match.
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