HEADLINE:
STORY:
What's new at the J. Paul Getty Museum? A batch of artworks acquired by curatorial sleuthing, big-budget shopping and adroit deal-making -- in one case involving the restitution of Nazi loot.
The additions, to be announced today, encompass a French classical landscape painting by 17th century master Claude Lorrain, a rare double-sided drawing of a Tahitian "Eve" by Postimpressionist Paul Gauguin, a trove of 834 photographs by pioneer photojournalist Felice Beato and a large photo collage of an octopus by Los Angeles artist Tim Hawkinson. Although none of the works is currently on view, they will go up at the museum in the next few months.
The landscape, "Coast View With the Abduction of Europa," is a signature painting by a French artist -- widely known as Claude -- whose artistic prowess and fascination with the Roman countryside have been widely emulated. With its dazzling atmospheric effects, exquisite detail and solid compositional structure, his work is thought to epitomize the "ideal" landscape, a representation of natural beauty that seems to surpass the real thing.......
...The heir, Marei von Saher of Greenwich, Conn., eventually received 202 paintings, including the Claude. She consigned many of the works to auction at Christie's. The Getty purchased the Claude -- which had been displayed at the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam -- for an undisclosed sum in a private transaction brokered by the auction house. ...
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Source: LA Times
Publication Date: September 23, 2007
Reporter: Suzanne Muchnic suzanne.muchnic@latimes.com
