#nowonview

Now On View in our European Art gallery: Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun

This recently acquired portrait by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun—a celebrated and successful woman in the male-dominated late eighteenth-century art world—is now on view at the Brooklyn Museum. After the Revolution in 1789 Vigée Le Brun left France for twelve years, supporting herself through commissions like this vivid portrait of Countess Maria Theresia Czernin that she painted while living in Vienna. The Countess, who may have wanted to emphasize her interest in classical scholarship, is shown holding open a well-known book about ancient Greece. ⁠⁠

Now on View: Brooklyn artists Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw have transformed ordinary things, a bathroom sink and an ice cream sundae, into spectacularly oversized sculptures. The monumental scale of these works suggests a celebration of our consumer culture—one that includes access to running water and indulgent treats—and at the same time, a more dystopic version of the American Dream. 

NOW ON VIEW on our fourth floor: Mickalene Thomas

Mickalene Thomas’s large-scale work Monet’s Salle à Manger Jaune (2012)  was inspired by the artist’s 2011 residency at the house and gardens of the French Impressionist painter Claude Monet in Giverny, France. Thomas responded strongly to the colors Monet selected for the rooms of his house, the collection of art that hung on the walls, and the views of the garden that were deliberately framed by the windows. The Giverny residency coincided with her adoption of interiors and landscape as motifs in her own work. 

NOW ON VIEW in our Lobby: Kehinde Wiley

After touring six cities for more than two years, Kehinde Wiley’s monumental, nine-foot portrait is back in Brooklyn! Now on view in our Rubin Lobby, Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps (2005) transforms the traditional equestrian portrait by substituting an anonymous young Black man dressed in contemporary clothing for the figure of Napoleon, to present a new kind of portraiture that redefines and affirms Black identity and simultaneously questions the history of Western painting. Wiley has stated that “Painting is about the world we live in. Black men live in the world. My choice is to include them. This is my way of saying yes to us.”

NOW ON VIEW in our Luce Visible Storage: William Trost Richards

William Trost Richards: Experiments in Watercolor features approximately twenty innovative works by the American landscape painter. Richards began working in watercolor in the late 1850s, producing outdoor studies of landscapes and still lifes, as well as marine and coastal scenes grounded in careful observation of nature. The exhibition focuses on the artist’s working methods, revealing the ways in which he relied on both traditional and unconventional materials and techniques. 

NOW ON VIEW in the American Art Galleries: Lydia Field Emmet

Back on view in the American galleries is William Merritt Chase’s striking full-length portrait of Lydia Field Emmet, another successful portrait painter of the era. Emmet’s direct gaze and bold pose, with her elbow assertively aimed at the viewer, speak to her spirit of independence. She began her artistic training in the early 1880s in Paris at the Academie Julien, and when she returned to her native state of New York after in 1885, she worked as an illustrator for Harpers & Brothers, as well as a decorative designer, where she designed stained glass windows for the Tiffany Glass Company.

Emmet studied under Chase at the Art Students League from 1889 to 1895 and served as an instructor at his painting summer school in Shinnecock, New York. This portrait was painted at the time she was preparing a mural titled Art, Science, and Literature for the Women’s Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Emmet’s income was largely derived from painting portraits—particularly those of children— and she was in great demand after 1900, making her a rare example of a professional woman artist of her generation.