Acquisitions of the month: July 2017

A round-up of the best works of art to enter public collections recently

J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Sixteen master drawings and a painting by Jean Antoine Watteau

Acquired from a British private collection, this selection of exceptional drawings includes work by Michelangelo, Andrea del Sarto, Parmigianino, Barocci, Rubens, Goya, and Degas, among others. The museum has also received La Surprise, a painting by the renowned 18th-century French artist Jean Antoine Watteau, from the same collection. Once thought to be lost, the painting – a remarkable example of the fête galante genre – was rediscovered in a private collection in 2007.

Study for the Head of St. Joseph (c. 1586), Federico Barocci. Courtesy of J. Paul Getty Trust

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Archival materials relating to the artist Edward Hopper

This major gift, presented by the Arthayer R. Sanborn Hopper Collection Trust, consists of around 4,000 items including personal letters and notes, as well as photographs, dealer records, and notebooks belonging to Hopper and his wife, Josephine Nivison. The museum already holds the most extensive collection of Hopper’s work in the world. The gift will form the foundation of the Sanborn Hopper Archive.

Portrait of Edward Hopper in the sand dunes of Cape Cod, (c. 1930–40). The Sanborn Hopper Archive at the Whitney Museum of American Art

National Museum Wales, Cardiff
Portrait of a Lady (Miss Mary Jenkins?) (c. 1750), Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson is today considered the ‘father of British landscape painting’, but he started out as a society portrait painter. This rare and fine example of the artist’s early work is thought to be of Miss Mary Jenkins, whose family owned Priston Manor in Somerset. The museum is already home to the largest collection of works by Wilson in the UK.

Portrait of a Lady (Miss Mary Jenkins?) (c. 1750), Richard Wilson. © National Museum of Wales

Dallas Museum of Art
All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins (2016), Yayoi Kusama

This is the only work by Yayoi Kusama in a US collection that combines her signature pumpkins and Infinity Mirror Rooms series – and the first such piece the Japanese artist has created since 1991. It joins a major group of conceptual, pop and surrealist art in the DMA collection, and will go on display at the museum from October until February 2018.

All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins (2016), Yayoi Kusama. Courtesy YAYOI KUSAMA Inc., Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo / Singapore and Victoria Miro, London (photography Thierry Bal) © Yayoi Kusama

The Ringling, Sarasota
Portrait of Fra’ Bonaventura Bisi, called ‘Il Pittorino’ (1658–59), Giovanna Francesco Barbieri, better known as Guercino

Acquired at auction from Christie’s, this expressive portrait of Guercino’s fellow artist and friend Bisi, a Franciscan friar, holding up a drawing of his patron, the Duke of Modena, will make a significant addition to the Ringling’s European Old Masters collection. It joins another significant Guercino work in the collection, The Annunciation, which was purchased by the museum founder John Ringling.

Fra Bonaventura Bisi (1658–59), Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri). Courtesy of The Ringling

Dia Art Foundation, New York
Works by Lee Ufan and Kishio Suga

The acquisition of three works by Lee Ufan and five by Kishio Suga – both key members of the Japanese Mono-ha movement that emerged in the 1960s – will add a significant new dimension to the foundation’s collection of modern and contemporary art. Among the works by Ufan is one of his earliest sculptures, Relatum (formerly System; 1969), comprised of six steel plates. The works by Kishio Suga span 20 years of his career, from his early Mono-ha works to more complex, later pieces.

Installation view of Placement of Condition (1973/2016), Kishio Suga. © Kishio Suga. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York. Courtesy Dia Art Foundation, New York

San Antonio Museum of Art
Thirty-one photographic portraits of famous Latino Americans by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

Greenfield-Sanders, known for his large-format portrait photographs including his Black List series of distinguished African-Americans, more recently turned his lens to famous Latino Americans working in culture, business and politics. Among the 31 individuals depicted in this group are singer-songwriter Gloria Estefan, actress Eva Longoria, and golfer Chi Chi Rodríguez. The acquisition is a promised gift from Houston-based art dealer and collector Hiram Butler and his partner Andrew Spindler-Roesle.

Gloria Estefan (2010), Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. Courtesy of the San Antonio Museum of Art