Art Talk: Saint Louis Art Museum

During 2023 the Art Talk theme each month is Museums. This is the eighth museum I have highlighted this year, for a full list see end of this post.

In June I traveled to St. Louis, Missouri to see Chihuly at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. While in St. Louis I also visited the Saint Louis Art Museum.

Look at this ceiling! Gorgeous.

I often focus on the art work, which is great. Before I show you some of the stand out pieces for me at this museum I wanted to show you the great architecture!

Let's start in the room that is shown above.

Anders Zorn

Anders Zorn is a Swedish artist that lived 1860-1920. He visited St. Louis in the mid 1890s and painted several prominent citizens of the time. I am a fan of Zorn from his portraiture of Isabella Stewart Gardener. Next month I will be highlighting the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum and a couple of Zorn's paintings including a stunning portrait of her.

Anders Zorn
Lucy Turner Joy, 1897

Also in this room

Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, Degas, 1880		The Reader, Manet, 1861

La Farge

I have hear much about Tiffany as a glass artists. Just recently I started hearing about La Farge.
This piece is called Flowering Cheery Tree and Peony and is a window from the Fredrick Lothrop Ames House in Boston, Mass. 1882.

Kehinde Wiley,

A contemporary artist that I have seen on tours of all the art museums I have visited in the last few months. Kehinde was born in 1977. During his stay in St. Louis he went to the neighborhoods of North St. Louis and Ferguson and ask people on the street if he could paint them. The girl shown here is Ashley Cooper. She is in the same pose as Charles I which is picture right next to her.

My tour guide was here in 2018 and remembers being at the showing of this piece and Ashley, who was pregnant in the portrait had a little baby in her arms.

El Anatsui

Fading Cloth, 2005. You might remember I highlighted El Anatsui in my post about the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The "cloth" is used by stitching discarded liquor bottle tops together.

The plaque states:

Europeans traded textiles and liquor in exchange for gold and slaves in West Africa.

Suerat	van Gogh	Pissaro

Albert Bierstadt

Whenever I am in a museum I always look for the Bierstadt in the American section. He was my mom's favorite and it makes me feel close to her. This piece is called Surveyor's Wagon in the Rockies and was painted 1859. Bierstadt was part of the Hudson River Group, painters that painted the American landscape in the 1800s.

Albert Bierstadt
Surveyor's Wagon in the Rockies, 1859

Richards		Heade

Benton		Homer

Thomas Eakins

This is oil on canvas! I had never seen oil painted as a black and white picture. Fascinating. It was painted in 1899 and is called **The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand (A May Moring in the Park) **

Thomas Eakins
The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand (A May Moring in the Park), 1899

Johann Georg Plazer

Another fascinating painting technique is this picture of Bacchus and Ariadne from 1735 which is oil on copper.

Pablo Picasso

According the plaque:

A pitcher, a philodendron plant, and a basket of fruit rests on a mantle piece and are bound together by sweeping black lines. Pablo Picasso often invested his still lifes with secret meaning and this work is a disguised portrait of his lover, Marie-Therese Walter. The pitcher is painted in the brilliant yellow often used to represent Marie-Therese's hair while the green apple suggests the form of her breast and the curling black lines refer to the contours of her body.

Even with this description above I don't see a person. It is an interesting abstract painting.

Pablo Picasso
Pitcher and a Bowl of Bruit, 1931

Auguste Rodin

Don't we all as some time fell like this sculpture? Rodin is one of my favorite artists and so it wasn't much of a surprise that I was drawn to this piece. It is called Despair and was made in 1890.

Auguste Rodin
Despair, 1890

German artists

There was a large collection of German artists.

Kiefer	Beckman	Richter

Ok time to end this museum post with a couple of selfies and a picture of the yummy Poke Toast I had at the restaurant in the museum called Panorama.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Saint Louis Art Museum and would suggest it to anyone going to St. Louis. Another great thing is that is always free.

Sources:
Plaques in the museum and info from the tour.

Art Talk Series Highlights

2023

Theme: Museums
Art Talk: Rijksmusuem
Art Talk: Armstrong Browning Library and Museum
Art Talk: Musical Instrument Museum
Art Talk: Norsk Folkemuseum
Art Talk: Phoenix Art Museum
Art Talk: National Gallery of Art, DC
Art Talk: High Museum of Art in Atlanta

Art Talk: 2022 Posts
Art Talk: 2021 Posts
Art Talk: 2020 Posts
Art Talk: 2019 Posts
Art Talk: 2018 Postss