todwood-museummod5: Yale Center for British Art

The Yale Center for British Art was a great experience to see and share with the class the beautiful oil paintings that is on display.

Alfred J. Munnings, 1878-1959

Paul Mellon on Dublin

1933. oil on canvas

This painting to the right is by George Stubbs

Samuel Scott, CA 1702 - 1772

Action Off the Cape of Good Hope

Oil on Canvas, CA. 1757

These five paintings are by Philip Mercier, 1689-1760. The titles of these paintings are:

The Sense of Sight; The Sense of Smell; The Sense of Taste; The Sense of Sight; The Sense of Smell; and The Sense of Hearing. I will let you decide which title goes with which painting. All the paintings are oil on canvas.

I decided to write about Philip Merceir and you can read about him in my paper below.

My visit to Yale Center for British Art

Jeth and I visited the Yale Center for British Art on June 27, 2010. We arrived at the museum around 12:30 p.m. We found parking a block away from the museum, on the New Haven Green. The museum was quit and not too many visitors. The lady in the front desk was very friendly and she gave us pamphlets about the history of the museum and the on going exhibits. Admission is free and you can take pictures at the 4^th floor because that’s where the permanent collections are located. This museum is located in 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut right across the Yale University Art Gallery.

This museum was opened in 1977 and presented to the university by Paul Mellon, a Yale graduate of 1929. This museum is also a research institute for study of British art and culture. My wife and I really like the architecture and design of this building. The sky lit rooms and spacious space provide a nice environment while looking the paintings. What I liked most about the museum was that the floor plan was open and had a few rooms off the main gallery. This made it easy to navigate through the museum and see all the galleries and exhibits. This building is a masterpiece of modern architecture, was designed by American architect Louis I. Kahn. This is Kahn’s final work and was completed after his death in 1974 by the firm Pellechia and Meyers. Kahn was a gifted artist and his architecture was famous for its simple geometric forms with the use of natural lights and materials. In 2005, the Center received the Twenty-five Year Award from the American Institute of Architects. This award honors architectural landmarks that plays a significant role in American life and architecture and have stood over time.

The Yale Center for British Art had two exhibits going on at the time of our visit. The first one that we saw was the Art For All: British Posters For Transport which is running from May 27 – August 15, 2010. This museum serves for the opening venue for this exhibit. The exhibit has more than one hundred posters that were designed for the Underground and the British railways. These posters were nice to observe and take in about historic sight stops along the British railway system. The posters’ also depict the advertisements of the time and British propaganda. I always enjoyed viewing items that depict were happening in the past. The second exhibit was Seeing Double: Portraits, Copies, and Exhibitions in 1820s London. These paintings were done by John Scarlett Davis. In Davis’ art works he had copies of other persons art works inside his paintings, portraits and copies. One of his paintings is the Interior of the British Institution. The painting seems to provide a record of how the British Institution appeared in the 1820s. The painting itself is a pictorial of the gallery itself, showing replicas of the paintings that were on exhibit inside his own painting. There was a third exhibit going on also, this was Structured Elegance: Bookbinders and Jewelry by Romilly Saumarez Smith. The exhibit was being displayed from June 24 – September 19, 2010. This was a unique display, but it was not something that interested me or Jeth.

This Center houses the most comprehensive collection of British art outside United Kingdom. They have a large collection of oil paintings.

The museum had so many beautiful oil paintings, but the ones that caught my eye were the five paintings of the five senses by Philip Mercier and he is the artist that I am writing about. Each painting depicts one of the five senses; hearing, seeing, touch, smell and taste. Philip Mercier was born in Berlin in 1689 and died in London 1760. Philip trained under Antoine Pesne, a French born artist, from 1711. Philip traveled to Italy and France going over the works of Watteau. Philip settled in England in 1715. He started painting for courtiers at the Hanoverian Court. He later became Frederick, Prince of Wales principle painter from 1729 – 1736, where he produced conversation pieces and portraits. He left London in 1736, but returned a year later when he fell out of good graces. When he returned in 1737, his focused was story line paintings and he was influenced by Chardon. In 1739 he moved to York for 12 years, which proved to be his most productive years. He made visits to Ireland in 1747, Scotland in 1750 and Portugal in 1751-1752 receiving English merchants’ portrait commissions. He exhibited three works at the first summer exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1760. He passed away later on that year.