FORA.tv

Soon after Watteau's premature death in 1721, nearly three hundred of his paintings were engraved and published. Until recently, only about eighty of these paintings were generally thought to have survived. In just the last decade, however, a remarkable number of lost or previously unknown works have been identified, including the masterpiece La Surprise of 1718-19, now on long-term loan to The Frick Collection.

Judy Sund of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York presents: Van Gogh's Peasants: The Essence of Earthiness. Van Gogh's portraits of Patience Escalier, one of which will be on loan to the Frick this fall, were part of his long-term project to capture the essence of the peasant. Inspired by literary descriptions as well as by the art of the past, he was intent on giving definitive form to a well-established type.

"Up and Down the Garden Path: Secrets of La Promenade Revealed," by Colin B. Bailey, The Frick Collection, and Charlotte Hale, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Saturday, May 5, 2012.  The Frick's Promenade is the most important Impressionist painting acquired by Henry Clay Frick. In researching this well-known work for the exhibition Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting, many technical and documentary discoveries were made.

Alex Gordon Lecture in the History of Art: "Renoir and the Democracy of Fashion," by Aileen Ribeiro, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, March 28, 2012.  The period after the fall of the Second Empire in France saw huge developments in the fashion industry, not just in haute couture, but also in the greater availability of ready-to-wear clothes and in the emergence of Paris's shopping culture. More people than ever before expressed an interest in fashion trends, a phenomenon that was reflected in contemporary art and literature.