Vase of Flowers
Framed: 25 x 20 3/4 x 1 1/2 inches (63.5 x 52.71 x 3.81 cm)
Centennial Loan Exhibition: Drawings and Watercolors from Alumnae and Their Families, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, May 19-June 1, 1961; Wildenstein and Company, New York, June 14-September 9, 1961, no. 55, as Flower Piece.
Kansas City Collects: A Selection of Works of Art Privately Owned in the Greater Kansas City Area, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 22-February 28, 1965, no. 69, as Flower Piece.
Drawings Collection of Milton McGreevy, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, March 7-April 4, 1965, no. 70, as Flower Piece.
Master Drawings from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis, MO, September 22-December 9, 1989, unnumbered, as Flower Piece.
Master Drawings from Polish Collections, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, April 17-June 6, 1993. NAMA addition.
Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, June 23-August 18, 1996; The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL, September 20-November, 1996; The Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, December 21, 1996-March 2, 1997, no. 39, as Vase of Flowers.
Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, July 12-September 6, 1998, no cat., as Vase of Flowers.
Decorative Designs, Decorative Landscapes and Still Life, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 15-July 26, 2017, no cat., as Vase of Flowers.
Jan van Huysum was greatly admired during his lifetime for his paintings of elaborate floral arrangements. Here, a brightly illuminated cluster of roses anchors the composition’s sweeping curves. Presented at the height of their beauty, these roses are juxtaposed with flowers past their prime, such as the carnation with the broken stem. Van Huysum appears to be alluding to the cycle of life and the fleeting nature of existence. The drawing’s careful execution suggests that it was intended as a finished work of art rather than a preliminary study.
Philip Hofer (1898-1984), Cambridge, MA, by 1941;
Purchased from Philip Hofer by Durlacher Brothers, New York, stock no. 97D, April 11, 1941-November 26, 1945 [1];
Purchased from Durlacher Brothers by Milton McGreevy (1903-1980), Shawnee Mission, KS, November 26, 1945-1980;
Bequeathed by Milton McGreevy to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1981.
NOTES:
[1] Getty Research Library, Los Angeles, Durlacher Brothers Records, Box 14, Ledger 1937-1966, copy in Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.
Bryan Holme, ed., Master Drawings (New York: Studio Publications, 1943), 13, (repro.), as Flowers.
Centennial Loan Exhibition: Drawings and Watercolors from Alumnae and Their Families, exh. cat. (Poughkeepsie, NY: Vassar College, 1961), unpaginated, (repro.), as Flower Piece.
Ira Moskowitz, ed., Great Drawings of All Time, vol. 2, German, Flemish, and Dutch: Thirteenth through Nineteenth Century (New York: Shorewood, 1962), unpaginated, (repro.), as Flower Piece.
Colin T. Eisler, Drawings of the Masters: Flemish and Dutch Drawings from the 15th to the 18th Century (New York: Shorewood, 1963), 30, 128-29, (repro.), as Flower Piece.
Ralph T. Coe, Kansas City Collects: A Selection of Works of Art Privately Owned in the Greater Kansas City Area, exh. cat. (Kansas City: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1965), unpaginated, as Flower Piece.
“Drawings Collection of Milton McGreevy,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 4, no. 6 (March 7-April 4, 1965): 2, (repro.), as Flower Piece.
Roger Ward, ed., A Bountiful Decade: Selected Acquisitions, 1977-1987, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1987), 216-17, (repro.), as Flower Piece.
Roger Ward and Mark S. Weil, Master Drawings from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, exh. cat. (St. Louis, MO: Washington University Gallery of Art, 1989), 8, 33, (repro.), as Flower Piece.
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 181, (repro.), as Vase of Flowers.
Roger Ward, Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 12, 133-34, (repro.), as Vase of Flowers.
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 90, (repro.), as Vase of Flowers.
