CULTURE | SPONSORED BY THE MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM
"AMERICANS IN SPAIN: PAINTING AND TRAVEL 1820-1920." AT THE MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM THROUGH OCTOBER 3, 2021 BY SHANE MCADAMS
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espite the Iberian Peninsula reaching further west than any other part of Europe, Spain’s relationship to Eastern thought and culture through its connections to North Africa have peppered it with distinct non-Western flavors. Additional royalist, Roman Catholic and revolutionary traditions have folded its past into a history unparalleled in Europe. These characteristics made it an irresistible destination for artists with an appetite for exotic, diverse, and still reachable touchstones for modern art. The American take on this fascinating story of migration and inspiration is on gorgeous display at the Milwaukee Art Museum, in a broad and comprehensive exhibition, “Americans in Spain: Painting and Travel 1820–1920,” through October 3. Co-organized by the Chrysler Museum of Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum, the exhibit features over 100 individual works– paintings, photographs and prints–drawn from institutions as renowned as the Prado and the Musée d’Orsay, as well as Top: Robert Henri, El Matador, 1906. Oil on canvas, 78 × 38 in. (198.1 × 96.5 cm). Milwaukee Art Museum, Purchase, the Mr. and Mrs. Donald B. Abert and Barbara Abert Tooman Fund with funds in memory of Betty Croasdaile and John E. Julien, M2019.1. Photo, John R. Glembin. Bottom: Robert Henri, Betalo Rubino, Dramatic Dancer, 1916. Oil on canvas, 77 1⁄4 × 37 1⁄4 in. (196.2 × 94.6 cm). Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase, 841:1920.
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dozens of other lenders from around the world. There’s even a recently discovered portrait by Mary Cassatt from a private collection in Spain. Co-curators Brandon Ruud and Corey Piper avoid an airtight categorical articulation of this sprawling subject, choosing to break up the story into a number of sub-sections that highlight its most compelling and colorful individual chapters.
PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN The exhibition begins with a peek behind the curtain of the royal court in Madrid and copies of famous works by masters such as Édouard Manet, James McNeill Whistler and Robert Henri from the Prado museum. Established after the Napoleonic wars to showcase Spain’s cultural treasures, the Prado quickly became an artistic pilgrimage spot for Americans, offering the best examples of Spanish masters to be copied. The official copy register of the Prado as a result is a who’s-who of the modern canon. One of the copies on display is a full-scale replica of Diego Velasquez’s Queen Consort Mariana by Henri. Its loose treatment predicts the American Ashcan painter’s later loose brushwork and validates the value of what might seem a less-than-
Background photo by littleclie/Getty Images.
