The Dance

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Inspired by Henri Matisse - The Dance

The Dance was commissioned by a Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin, with whom Matisse had a long association. This painting hung together with Matisse’ Music on the staircase of Shchukin's Moscow mansion. A year after the Russian Revolution his house and collection was confiscated via a decree signed by Lenin. His home then became the State Museum of New Western Art. In 1948, Stalin signed the decree which closed it down because of its “bourgeois artwork”. The contents were then split between the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the Hermitage Museum.

A second Dance was commissioned by a businessman and art collector Albert Barnes with whom Matisse also had a long association. It hung above the windows in the main gallery of his home (which housed 24 other Matisse paintings). After a lengthy lawsuit following his death, the Barnes Foundation collection was appropriated by the city of Philadelphia, and relocated to the Parkway near the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

A third version (which was a study for the first) was acquired by Nelson Rockefeller, a businessman and art collector, and donated to the MOMA. I guess businessmen just “Wanna Dance”.

To see original: https://bit.ly/4tG2yp8

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema A Reading from Homer

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Inspired by - Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema - A Reading from Homer

Lawrence Alma-Tadema was one of the principal classical-subject painters of the nineteenth century. He became famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Greek and Roman Empire, with languorous figures set in fabulous marbled interiors. He was born in the Netherlands as Laurens Tadema, but he emigrated to England in 1870. When he tried to make his niche in the art world, he changed the spelling of his first name to the more English “Lawrence”. He included his middle name “Alma” as part of his surname, so he would be listed amongst the “A’s” in exhibi-tion catalogues.

His meticulous archaeological research into Roman architecture, led to his paintings being used as source material by Hollywood directors in such films as: “Ben Hur”, “Cleopatra” and “Gladiator”. For “The Ten Commandments” Cecil B. DeMille would customarily spread out prints of Alma-Tadema paintings to indicate to his set designers the look he wanted to achieve.

He became one of the wealthiest painters of the 19th century. He was even knighted in 1899. But like so many great painters his work was mostly ignored after his death. His painterly prowess was not reestablished until fifty years later. One of his most celebrated paintings “the Finding of Moses” was sold in 1960 for $400, the same painting sold for $36,000,000 at Sotheby’s in 2010. If you bought $400 of Apple stock in 1980 it would only be worth $280,000 today.

To see original: https://bit.ly/43oEUiH