Art: 30 Shows

Enough canvas to spread a new top over John Ringling’s three-ring circus was on view in Manhattan’s art galleries last week. In the busiest week the U. S. art world has seen in many years, 30 separate exhibitions opened. Many of them were worth the attention of any U. S. citizen. Among the best:

Picasso. While the appearance of a full-size study for Henri Matisse’s greatest mural made headlines last week (see above), his greatest rival in the field of modern art, Pablo Picasso, was honored by three shows at once. When both of them were young rebels in Paris, it was Painter Matisse who coined the name “Cubist” for the angular painting of his rival. At the Museum of Living Art, pretentious name for the important collection of modern painting that public-spirited Albert Eugene Gallatin has presented to New York University, there appeared The Three Musicians,* a semi-abstract painting of three masked figures, two in motley, one in a monk’s cowl, seated on a bench playing a violin, clarinet and accordion. Formerly in the Reber Collection in Switzerland, it is the most important Picasso decoration to reach the U. S. in many years.

At the Valentine and again at the Seligmann Galleries, were fairly exhaustive showings of the amazingly different types of painting that contemplative, experimental Pablo Picasso Ruiz has switched through in the past 30 years, from the ”blue period” of emaciated clowns and absinthe drinkers in the 1900’s, through the cubist experiments, the heavy-hipped “classical” goddesses, the pure abstractions, and the portraits, flavored strongly by Ingres, through surrealism until 1934 when, sued by his wife for divorce, he temporarily gave up painting. A morose, silent Spaniard more interested in the technique of painting than the problems of humanity, Artist Picasso avoids appointments whenever possible, lurks in Paris carrying three watches to be sure to be on time for those he must keep.

Historical Portraits. For almost a year the distinguished Knoedler Galleries has owned the famed Clarke Collection of U.S. historical portraits (TIME, Feb. 10), tried to sell them intact for something near their appraised valuation of $1,000,000 without breaking the collection. As a tactful cough to remind the U.S. public that the Clarke Collection is still in their vaults and still for sale, Knoedler’s last week borrowed from such assorted owners as J.P. Morgan, William Randolph Hearst, Yale University and the Museum of the City of New York another group of 29 historical portraits of first importance. Present were a good Gilbert Stuart Washington of the Vaughan type (red nose and right side of the face), Greuze’s famed portrait of Benjamin Franklin, now the property of Mrs. Arthur Lehman, and Benjamin West’s unfinished group of the signing of the Treaty of Peace with England in 1783 from the Morgan LIbrary. Interesting because the subject is so seldom seen was a portrait of Grecian-nosed Theodosia Burr by John Vanderlyn. Beloved only child of Aaron Burr, she was her father’s companion and housekeeper for years, married Governor Alston of South Carolina, and in 1812 disappeared mysteriously at sea on her way from Charleston to New York. For years, embittered Aaron Burr used to haunt Manhattan’s Battery for news of her ship. Also on view was a portrait of an even prettier woman, widowed by Aaron Burr: Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, painted by Ralph Earl while he was in prison for debt. Though the Burr-Hamilton duel occurred in 1804, handsome Mrs. Hamilton lived half a century after it, died in New York at the age of 97.

Cézanne. Many a loan exhibition of the works of this founder of modern painting has the U.S. seen in recent years, but this at the Bignou Gallery had the distinction of having, in the flesh and walking about the rooms, the white-bearded old gentleman who discovered Cézanne as an artist: Dealer-Collector Ambroise (“Fifi”) Vollard (TIME, Nov. 13, 1933). Dealer Vollard, who has trapdoors cut in the doors of his Paris house for his favorite cats, but seldom bothers to give them names, admitted that he had posed 115 times for the Cézanne portrait of him in last week’s exhibition. He found nothing in New York so exciting as the huge grey squirrels of Central Park.

Et Al. Also worthy of any gallery-goer’s attention was a Derain show at the Brummer Gallery, a Reginald Marsh exhibition at the Rehn Galleries. Bushy-lipped walter Pach laid himself open to the annual attack of fellow art critics by showing his most recent water colors at the Kleemann Galleries. Durand-Ruel went down to their cellars and produced about a half million dollars worth of Renoirs, and at the Gallery of American Indian Art, a show of water colors went on view by the darling of Santa Fe’s art colony, the plump and talented Pueblo squaw from Cochiti, Tonita Pena.

* In 1921 Picasso made two versions of this picture of which this is the latter. The earlier version belongs to Paul Rosenberg.