From the Guggenheim to Milan, an exhibition with van Gogh, Monet, Degas and Picasso from the Thannhauser collection at the Palazzo Reale

From October 17, 2019 to February 9, 2020, Palazzo Reale in Milan is hosting the exhibition Guggenheim. The Thannhauser Collection, featuring fifty masterpieces by Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early 20th-century avant-garde artists (among others, there will be paintings by Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and Pablo Picasso). The works come from the Guggenheim in New York and are part of the collection collected by Justin K. Thannhauser and later donated, in 1963, to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The one in Milan is the third stop on a tour that has brought some of the most important masterpieces of the Thannhauser collection to Europe for the first time: after the first stop at the Guggenheim in Bilbao and the second at theHotel de Caumont in Aix-en-Provence, the Palazzo Reale in Milan represents the final stage of the exhibition, after which the works will return to New York.

Among the works coming to Milan are those by Edouard Manet: Before the Mirror (1876) is one of the most important paintings in the collection where the painter portrays a well-known courtesan, the mistress of the heir to the Dutch throne, from behind with her corset half-open; it is a very intimate painting, with free and shaded brushstrokes that create the impression of a fleeting image. Next to it we find Woman in the Striped Dress (c. 1877-1880), at the time left unfinished by Manet and heavily altered: in Milan it is on display after a careful restoration completed in 2018 that revealed the artist’s rapid brushstrokes and a splendid blue-violet fabric. By Claude Monet is exhibited The Ducal Palace, seen from San Giorgio Maggiore (1908), donated to the Guggenheim by Hilde Thannhauser. Then there are two paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Woman with Parakeet (1871) and Still Life: Flowers (1885). Thannhauser had collected several works by Edgar Degas, of which three bronze sculptures made between the late 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century are on display in the exhibition: Dancer Advancing with Arms Raised, Spanish Dance, and Seated Woman Wiping Her Left Side.

As for Impressionist painting, one can start by recalling that in 1928 the Thannhauser Gallery in Berlin, founded by Heinrich Thannhauser, Justin’s father, had organized a major retrospective of Paul Gauguin: a Haere Mai landscape of his from 1891, painted in Tahiti, arrives in Milan, reflecting the Romantic idealization of a pure paradise that seduced many Europeans in the late nineteenth century. Vincent van Gogh’s three works are featured: Le viaduc (1887), deeply influenced by French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists and restored in 2018 by the Guggenheim; Snowy Landscape (1888); and Mountains at Saint-Rémy (1889). Six works by Paul Cézanne are on display, including four of the Thannhausers, namely the two landscapes Surrounding the Jas de Bouffan from 1885-1887 and the magnificent Bibémus from 1894-1895, places in the vicinity of Montagne Sainte-Victoire, where theartist had rented a hut to paint in solitude, using the colors of Provence, and the two still lifes, Flask, Glass and Pottery (c. 1877) and Peach Plate (1879-1880). These works are compared with another landscape and to the famous Man with Arms Crossed (c. 1899), Cézanne’s first work acquired by the Guggenheim in 1954, which caused quite a stir at the time because of the price paid of $97,000.

As for the early 20th century, four paintings by Georges Braque arrive in Milan, namely Landscape near Antwerp (1906), Guitar, Glass and Fruit Plate on a Buffet (1919), Teapot on a Yellow Background (1955) belonging to Thannhauser, compared with Still Life (1926-1927) owned by the Guggenheim. A separate chapter deserves the works of Pablo Picasso, a great friend of Justin Thannhauser: thirteen works are on view in the exhibition, including twelve by the Thannhausers and one, Landscape of Céret (1911), by the Guggenheim; they range from 1900 to 1965 with paintings such as Le Moulin de la Galette and The Bullfighter (1900), At the Café and The Fourteenth of July, (1901), works painted by the20-year-old artist during his first stay in Paris, Fauvist-inspired Fernanda in a Black Cloak (c. 1905), Woman in an Armchair (1922) inspired by ancient statuary, Woman with Yellow Hair (1931), a portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter, another highlight of the collection that shows a radical renewal in Picasso’s painting, and still Life: Fruit Bowl and Pitcher (1937), Still Life: Fruits and Vase (1939), Garden at Vallauris (1953), Two Pigeons with Spread Wings (1960), and The Lobster and the Cat(1965), which bears an affectionate dedication from the artist to his collector friend: the work was in fact Picasso’s wedding gift to Mr. and Mrs. Thannhauser.

Along with the magnificent works from the Thannhauser collection, the Guggenheim Foundation has chosen, in order to further enrich the exhibition and demonstrate the profound convergence between the two collections, to exhibit some other works by the same celebrated artists or other great masters. Thus, the following are presented in Milan: by Henri Rousseau The Artillerymen (c. 1893-1895) and The Football Players (1908), formerly owned by Justin Thannhauser in 1910 and later sold; by Georges Seurat three paintings with a rural theme made between 1882 and 1883: Peasant Women at Work, Peasant with a Spade and Peasant Woman Sitting in the Grass; by Robert Delaunay The City (1911), which was part of the first Blue Rider exhibition organized in Munich by Heinrich Thannhauser in 1911-12; André Derain’s Portrait of a Young Man (c. 1913-1914); Juan Gris’s The Cherries (1915); Vasily Kandinsky’s Blue Mountain (1908-1909), a key painting in the artist’s career, much loved by Solomon R. Guggenheim, who was a great collector of Kandinsky, whose more than 150 works are in the Museum’s possession; by Paul Klee (another exponent of the Blue Horseman, whose first exhibition in Germany Thannhauser had organized in Munich in 1911) Bed of Flowers (1913) where the naturalist subject is disguised by using fragmented forms with dissonant colors; by Franz Marc, another artist of the group, Yellow Cow (1911); by Henri Matisse Nude, Sunny Landscape (c. 1909-1912).

The exhibition opens daily: Mondays from 2:30 to 7:30 p.m. (9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. reserved for schools), Tuesdays through Sundays from 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., Thursdays and Saturdays extended openings until 10:30 p.m. Last admission one hour before closing. Tickets: full 14 euros, reduced 12 euros (visitors 18-26 years of age, over 65, disabled, groups of minimum 15 and maximum 25 people, conventioned), special reduced 6 euros (schools, groups organized by TCI and FAI, non-accredited journalists and other conventioned), free for children under 6, licensed tour guides with ID, accredited journalists and other conventioned categories. For all information you can visit the exhibition website.

Pictured: Vincent van Gogh, Montagne a Saint-Rémy (Provence, July 1889; oil on canvas, 72.8 × 92 cm; New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser 78.2514.24). © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (SRGF).

From the Guggenheim to Milan, an exhibition with van Gogh, Monet, Degas and Picasso from the Thannhauser collection at the Palazzo Reale

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