From Paris to South Florida, the latest exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach features works that have traveled the world and are making their first visit to the Sunshine State.
The exhibition, aptly titled “Artists on the Move: Impressionist and Modern Masterpieces from the Pearlman Collection,” opened Saturday and will be on view through February 18, 2024.
It features nearly 40 works from the collection of Henry Pearlman, who loaned the entire collection to the Princeton University Art Museum. The collection continues to be managed by the Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation.
Among the exhibits are paintings, watercolors and sculptures by artists such as Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Édouard Manet, Amedeo Modigliani, Camille Pissarro, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Chaïm Soutine.
To the foundation’s knowledge, this is the first time works from the collection have been displayed in Florida, Daniel Pearlman, Henry Pearlman’s grandson, told a crowd of patrons at an event at the Norton Thursday evening.
The opening day coincided with the museum’s Nuesta Cultura Community Day, which offered free admission to all attendees, a celebration of Hispanic culture and Spanish-language tours in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month.
“We haven’t hosted a major exhibition of this kind of art in almost a decade, and we’re thrilled to offer one day of free admission and share this remarkable exhibition with our entire community” , declared Ghislain d’Humières, director of the Norton Museum. and general manager.
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Before entering the space where the collection is exhibited, a map presents visitors with the numerous geographical points from which the artists present in the exhibition converged on Paris.
“The center of the art world,” said Anke Van Wagenberg, Harold and Anne Berkley Smith senior curator of American and European art for the Norton. “That’s where they come from.” She pointed out points on the map that covers a wall at the entrance to the exhibition. Countries represented include Italy, Greece, Brazil, Chile, Poland, Belarus, Spain and the United States.
Almost all of the artists – mainly Impressionists and Post-Impressionists – knew each other, Van Wagenberg said.
A very large image of one of the paintings in the collection, “The Tarascon Stagecoach” by van Gogh, welcomes visitors. It depicts a stagecoach in the south of France, a testament to the nostalgia the artist felt for simpler times. Norton staff used a close-up of the wagon wheel for the sticker telling security guards that a visitor had paid $5 more to enter the “Artists in Motion” exhibit, Van Wagenberg said.
Van Gogh painted “The Stagecoach of Tarascon” in 1888 to impress Paul Gauguin, another artist in the collection, who was going to visit van Gogh, Van Wagenberg said.
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“We used it as our signature image for the show,” she said.
It serves as an apt representation of the themes of movement and migration, as the painting itself — while showing a stagecoach, a means of transportation — truly traveled the world, Van Wagenberg said.
“This painting has been lost for a long time,” she said. “It was rediscovered by Mr. Pearlman.”
The collector knew of the painting because van Gogh had drawn it at the bottom of a letter to his brother, Van Wagenberg said. Pearlman was able to track it down: the painting had first been sold to an art dealer in Italy after van Gogh’s death. She was then sold to a family in Uruguay. From there he traveled to Argentina.
From there, an art dealer who knew Pearlman was looking for a van Gogh made the final connection and the painting was sent to the United States.
“What a journey,” Van Wagenberg said.
Many of the works in the exhibition are by the post-impressionist Paul Cézanne, for whom Pearlman had a particular affection.
“I think he appreciated the artist as a key character in the story,” Van Wagenberg said. “Even (Pablo) Picasso said: ‘Cézanne was the father of us all.'”
In her paintings, there are small, block-like cubist shapes, she says. This is particularly visible in a selection of Cézanne’s watercolors on paper.
The watercolors are among six works on paper carefully displayed, given the paper’s sensitivity to exposure to light, Van Wagenberg said.
“I’m delighted to have them,” she said of the Cézanne papers. The exhibit traveled to the Norton from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the drawings will have to “rest” for six months to a year after “Artists in Motion,” meaning they will be removed from rotation for preserve the quality of the paper. , she says. “Paper works can only withstand a limited amount of light for a limited period of time,” Van Wagenberg said.
Pearlman was a very conscientious collector, she said. Although he was not extremely wealthy, on a Rockefeller scale, he was judicious with his money and careful about the pieces he chose for his collection, Van Wagenberg said.
This collection began on a snowy day on New York’s Park Avenue in 1945, when Pearlman saw Chaïm Soutine’s painting “View of Céret” in the window of an auction house.
“He made a bid and he won the bid,” Van Wagenberg said. “Then he became a collector.”
Pearlman set out to find out as much as possible about the artists. He preferred to interview them personally, but since some were already dead, he would interview their subjects instead, Van Wagenberg said.
Pearlman shares many characteristics with Ralph Norton, the museum’s founder, she said. “Artists in Motion” makes a great addition to some of the pieces in Norton’s permanent collection, she noted.
“They were collecting at the same time,” she said. “I like to imagine that they may have known each other and may have participated in the same auctions at some point.”
Both were keen to collect pieces they loved and both shared a passion for accessibility – making their collections available to the public, Van Wagenberg said.
“Mr. Pearlman was all about sharing his collection,” she said. “He frequently lent to museums, and that’s another strong parallel between him and Norton.”
The exhibition catalog is digital. There are two stations in the gallery where the catalog can be viewed. It is available in English and Spanish. Visitors can also scan a QR code to view the catalog on their phone.
If you are going to:
What: “Artists on the Move: Impressionist and Modern Masterpieces from the Pearlman Collection”
Or: Norton Art Museum, 1450 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach
When: Until February 18, during regular museum opening hours, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. p.m. on Sunday.
Cost: $5 in addition to museum admission, which is free for members, $18 for general admission, $15 for those 60 and over, $5 for students with valid ID and free for children 12 and under
Information: 561-832-5196, www.norton.org
