Matisse

An Henri Matisse painting that a struggling Scranton museum hoped might bring in $4 million was withdrawn from a public auction at Sotheby's in New York on Tuesday night when the highest bidder offered only $1.6 million for it. The painting, which Sotheby's last year had told the museum was worth between $4 million and $4.25 million, was withdrawn after the bidding failed to even approach the $2.3 million that had been its minimum. The withdrawal was a major setback for the Everhart Museum, which was banking on the proceeds to help it survive.

The pink shrimp curl seductively on a speckled gray dish. There is a white- handled utensil, a lemon half and some white table linen. In the lower left of the painting, appears the magical, hyphenated signature: Henri-Matisse. Barbara Rothermel already knew that hot summer morning 14 months ago that the still life painted by the famous French artist in 1920 and then framed in gold in the gallery upstairs was worth plenty. It had been pegged at $300,000 six years earlier, before art prices soared.

Tickets to the coming exhibition "From Cezanne to Matisse: Great French Paintings From the Barnes Foundation" went on sale yesterday at the Art Museum. The exhibition will feature 81 paintings. The paintings will be on display at the museum from Jan. 31 through April 9.

It has been said in various bits of commentary and reportage surrounding this month's opening of the new Barnes Foundation building that Albert Barnes wanted his collection to be shared with the general public.   Not so. Albert C. Barnes didn't want hoi polloi cluttering up his galleries because he believed that wandering into any art museum unprepared by the kind of instruction his school offered was nonsensical and a waste of time. Obviously, if he had wanted an open-door policy, he would have initiated one. He had 26 years to do so before he died.

Russian artists may have trailed their European counterparts into the modernist arena, but in terms of collecting avant-garde art, two extraordinary Russians were so far ahead of the crowd that their achievement still seems remarkable. Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin (1854-1936) and Ivan Abramovich Morozov (1871-1921) assembled collections of impressionist, postimpressionist and early modern art that were the most adventurous of their time. Since 1918, when both collections were nationalized, this art has, at least in theory, belonged to the Soviet people.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a January visit to a barely-there Baltimore, and asked readers to let me know what I had missed in Charm City. Let me know, they did. A few made untoward comments about my dear Eagles. But most just expressed genuine pride in their town, made constructive suggestions on what I should see next time, and invited me back. "Baltimore is neighborhoods within the city. Federal Hill, Fells Point, Canton, Little Italy. I'm sure I haven't even touched on all of them," wrote Lee Gerdelmann, whose sister lives there.

Barton Church, 86, of Narberth, an artist who taught in the Barnes Foundation's signature art appreciation program for more than 60 years, died Thursday, Feb. 21, at Lankenau Medical Center of pneumonia. Widely admired for his modesty and generosity, Mr. Church retired from the foundation in 2011 after decades of teaching the foundation's Traditions course. "Barton Church was immensely knowledgeable and was respected as a teacher by all who knew him and studied with him," said Barnes executive director and president Derek Gillman.

Grace Hartigan hung out with the big boys of abstract expressionism: Pollock, de Kooning, Kline. But she never toed the party line of ?ber-critic Clement Greenberg; even back in the '50s, Hartigan let her juicy color and looping, muscular lines encompass - horrors! - recognizable, even familiar everyday objects. A small but flavorful slice of her work from recent years is now at the Seraphin Gallery. Called "Aspects of the East," the eight paintings show an artist loosely riffing on various "orientalist" inspirations with knowing, lightly worn art-historical echoes from the odalisques of Matisse to the harems of Ingres.

The first in a series of three guest-artist exhibitions at Vox Populi Gallery has no title, but all four of its artists share a subversive sense of humor. Michael May tells the story of a mental-patient character he has invented, through a group of oil paintings depicting the character's misbegotten cures and inventions. As in mid-20th-century instructional posters, each of May's paintings is divided into several parts demonstrating the steps involved. In Extracting Spirits from Photos of Native Americans , for example, three measuring cups and bottles of denatured alcohol and mineral spirits sit on a counter; on the adjacent stove is a glass baking dish containing portraits of American Indians, with a vacuum-cleaner hose attached to its base.

It's not a pairing that automatically comes to mind - the prints of Picasso and the furniture of Wendell Castle - but the cofounder of cubism and the art-furniture patriarch look as if they were made for each other in Wexler Gallery's current exhibition, "The Abstract Forms of Pablo Picasso and Wendell Castle. " Picasso's curved and voluptuous lines on paper echo in Castle's three-dimensional forms, and vice versa. That the 13 Picasso works are predominantly black- or brown-on-white and the six Castles are monochromatic emphasizes the relationships between forms.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a January visit to a barely-there Baltimore, and asked readers to let me know what I had missed in Charm City. Let me know, they did. A few made untoward comments about my dear Eagles. But most just expressed genuine pride in their town, made constructive suggestions on what I should see next time, and invited me back. "Baltimore is neighborhoods within the city. Federal Hill, Fells Point, Canton, Little Italy. I'm sure I haven't even touched on all of them," wrote Lee Gerdelmann, whose sister lives there.

Barton Church, 86, of Narberth, an artist who taught in the Barnes Foundation's signature art appreciation program for more than 60 years, died Thursday, Feb. 21, at Lankenau Medical Center of pneumonia. Widely admired for his modesty and generosity, Mr. Church retired from the foundation in 2011 after decades of teaching the foundation's Traditions course. "Barton Church was immensely knowledgeable and was respected as a teacher by all who knew him and studied with him," said Barnes executive director and president Derek Gillman.

The owner of the small, dark canvas with the swirling brushstrokes thinks it may be a rare find: a previously unknown painting from the hand of Vincent van Gogh. Jennifer Mass agrees that this is quite possible, but she is not contemplating the brushstrokes. She's looking at the mercuric sulfide and iron hexacyanoferrate. Those are two of the materials present in the paint, and Mass, a chemist by training, is among a small but growing group of scholars who apply the rigid principles of science to the world of art. She is head of the scientific research and analysis lab at Winterthur in Delaware, analyzing art in that museum's collection as well as for other museums and owners who come calling.

It has been said in various bits of commentary and reportage surrounding this month's opening of the new Barnes Foundation building that Albert Barnes wanted his collection to be shared with the general public.   Not so. Albert C. Barnes didn't want hoi polloi cluttering up his galleries because he believed that wandering into any art museum unprepared by the kind of instruction his school offered was nonsensical and a waste of time. Obviously, if he had wanted an open-door policy, he would have initiated one. He had 26 years to do so before he died.

It's not a pairing that automatically comes to mind - the prints of Picasso and the furniture of Wendell Castle - but the cofounder of cubism and the art-furniture patriarch look as if they were made for each other in Wexler Gallery's current exhibition, "The Abstract Forms of Pablo Picasso and Wendell Castle. " Picasso's curved and voluptuous lines on paper echo in Castle's three-dimensional forms, and vice versa. That the 13 Picasso works are predominantly black- or brown-on-white and the six Castles are monochromatic emphasizes the relationships between forms.

The first in a series of three guest-artist exhibitions at Vox Populi Gallery has no title, but all four of its artists share a subversive sense of humor. Michael May tells the story of a mental-patient character he has invented, through a group of oil paintings depicting the character's misbegotten cures and inventions. As in mid-20th-century instructional posters, each of May's paintings is divided into several parts demonstrating the steps involved. In Extracting Spirits from Photos of Native Americans , for example, three measuring cups and bottles of denatured alcohol and mineral spirits sit on a counter; on the adjacent stove is a glass baking dish containing portraits of American Indians, with a vacuum-cleaner hose attached to its base.

Patricia McCoy Burns, 78, of Gladwyne, an artist and videographer, died Monday, June 6, at Bryn Mawr Hospital. She had been hospitalized since the week before for shortness of breath, and autopsy results were pending. Mrs. Burns always found time for her art, painting portraits of her six children when they were young, son Robert said. Working in acrylics, she concentrated on abstract forms in the last few years. "Abstraction gives me room to dream. I paint purely from the passion of the paint, the moment, and my guts," Mrs. Burns wrote on her website.

GROWING UP in Bala Cynwyd, many of my journeys would cross paths with the Barnes Foundation. As those in the art world know, the Barnes is a unique endeavor that houses an art collection that rivals any in the world. And the purpose of this collection isn't just to house art for its own sake, but to be used as an educational tool. Albert Barnes, in creating its endowment, specifically didn't want his collection of works from Cezanne to Matisse to be just a museum. He had a purpose for his art - to teach - and the education would be conducted on an estate in Merion, where the art is. Despite Barnes' intentions, pressure to move the collection to another location began in earnest in the 1990s.

Golden-hued foliage has darkened to an earthy tan. A sunny yellow field has faded to off-white. In spots, the paint is powdery and has started to flake off. Vivid colors are deteriorating in Henri Matisse's iconic The Joy of Life , owned by the Barnes Foundation, and scientists are stepping in to help before the giant canvas is moved to its new home in Philadelphia. Conservators presented the results Tuesday from a sophisticated chemical analysis of the painting, which will guide the effort to retard further damage and perhaps, someday, to reverse it. The research, presented at a conference of the American Chemical Society in California, was led by Jennifer Mass, a senior scientist at the Winterthur museum in Delaware who was enlisted by the Barnes.

Golden-hued foliage has darkened to an earthy tan. A sunny yellow field has faded to off-white. In spots, the paint is powdery and has started to flake off. Vivid colors are deteriorating in Henri Matisse's iconic Joy of Life, owned by the Barnes Foundation, and scientists are stepping in to help before the giant canvas is moved to its new home in Philadelphia. Conservators presented the results Tuesday from a sophisticated chemical analysis of the painting, which will guide the effort to retard further damage and perhaps, someday, to reverse it. The research, presented at a conference of the American Chemical Society in California, was led by Jennifer Mass, a senior scientist at the Winterthur museum in Delaware who was enlisted by the Barnes.