New Portico Gallery Opens
December 13, 2011, through January 6, 2013
| |
 |
|
|
| |
Jean-Antoine Houdon, The Dead Thrush (La grive morte), marble relief, signed and dated 1782, on loan from The Horvitz Collection, Boston, photo: Richard di Liberto |
|
|
The porcelain in the Portico Gallery is presented with two eighteenth-century sculptures by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828): The Dead Thrush (La grive morte) a long-term loan from the Horvitz Collection, Boston, is shown along with The Frick Collection's Diana the Huntress.
In 2005 Director Anne L. Poulet announced the loan to The Frick Collection of a stunning work by sculptor Houdon. The exquisite marble relief has recently been placed on display in the Portico Gallery.
In the context of our own holdings by the artist, which fall within his more
typical genres of portraiture and mythological sculpture, it offers visitors a superb opportunity to consider his skill and oeuvre more completely. Indeed, a subject such as The Dead Thrush represented a rare departure for Houdon, who is best known for his portraits of major figures of the period.
When he took up this animal subject, it was to prove his
skill as a master carver of trompe l'oeil — a genre literally intended to "deceive the eye" — into mistaking art for reality. In this marble, Houdon emulated a composition popularized by trompe l'oeil paintings to prove that sculpture could surpass its sister art in its truth to nature. Aware that marble's uniform color made naturalistic illusion of a polychrome species difficult for the sculptor to achieve, Houdon probably chose the song thrush — a drab, solid brown plumaged bird — as his subject. Houdon magically transformed illusion into salient reality by depicting the thrush exactly life-size and added interest by extending one of its wings over the marble's frame. |
