Israel Museum, Jerusalem_Paintings Collection, The Masterpieces (1)

Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Paintings Collection, The Masterpieces
(1)

REMBRANDT Harmenszoon van
Rijn
Apostle Peter in Prison
1631
Oil on panel, 58 x 48 cm

REMBRANDT Harmenszoon van
Rijn
Apostle Peter in Prison (detail)
1631
Oil on panel, 58 x 48 cm

POUSSIN, Nicolas
The Destruction and Sack of the
Temple of Jerusalem
1625 - 1626
Oil on canvas, 145.8 x 194 cm
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

POUSSIN, Nicolas
The Destruction and Sack of the
Temple of Jerusalem (detail)
1625 - 1626
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

RUBENS, Peter Paul
The Death of Adonis (with Venus,
Cupid, and the Three Graces)
ca. 1614
Oil on canvas, 212 x 325 cm

RUBENS, Peter Paul
The Death of Adonis (with Venus,
Cupid, and the Three Graces)
(detail)
ca. 1614

CUYP, Jacob Gerrritsz
Portrait of a Family in a Landscape
1641

(detail)
1641

RENOIR, Pierre Auguste
Woman in a Flowered Hat
1889
Oil on canvas, 54.9 x 46.04 cm

Woman in a Flowered Hat (detail)
1889

RENOIR, Pierre-Auguste
Portrait of Mme. Paulin
1885-1890

Portrait of Mme. Paulin (detail)
1885-1890

GAUGUIN, Paul
Landscape with Dog
1903

GAUGUIN, Paul
Landscape with Dog (detail)
1903

GOGH, Vincent Van
Harvest in Provence
June 1888
Oil on canvas, 51x 60 cm

GOGH, Vincent Van
Harvest in Provence (detail)
June 1888
Oil on canvas, 51x 60 cm

GAUGUIN, Paul
Village in Martinique (Femmes et
Chevre dans le village)
1887

GAUGUIN, Paul
Village in Martinique (Femmes et
Chevre dans le village) (detail)
1887

GAUGUIN, Paul
Upa Upa (The Fire Dance)
1891

GAUGUIN, Paul
Upa Upa (The Fire Dance) (detail)
1891

Paintings Collection, The Masterpieces (1)
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GAUGUIN, Paul
Upa Upa (The Fire Dance)
Upa Upa is Gauguin's first attempt literally "to recover a trace of this so distant, so mysterious past; to rediscover the ancient hearth, to revive the fire amidst all these ashes." Painted in
Papeete or soon after he moved to Mataiea, it documents a native dance that the French had banned because of its erotic movements—opening and closing the thighs while the knees
are bent, as demonstrated by the dancers on the left.
Gauguin could have seen such dance movements in Mataiea, where there were fewer restrictions, or at outdoor public dances in Papeete, where, when the music commenced, "natives
begin to leap about clumsily in front of the pavilion. Their twists and turns are greeted with taunts and laughter." Defying this colonial attitude, Gauguin chose the title Upa Upa to stress
his appreciation of native culture, and reused these motions in his paintings of idol worship. Since Tahitians and Europeans picked partners for the night at such dances, Gauguin
portrayed two pairs of lovers on the right.
Gauguin based the diagonal tree and foreground spectators on Vision after the Sermon of 1888, his first treatment of Breton religious beliefs. Yet the atmosphere is entirely different: the
purples, greens, and deep colors of night set off the column of leaping flames that illuminate the dancers, and the latter are much more important than the spectators. The dancers on the
left stand out against the area lit by the bonfire. They perform the upaupa against a background of trees, watched by the spectators.
The situation on the right is different: the flames leap to unreal, monumental proportions. To the right, three ghostly dancers perform a less erotic "barbaric" dance, framed on the right
by an undelineated statue whose base is highlighted, and on the left by an awe-inspiring form, as large as the flames that illuminate it, evoking a monster with bulging eyes, chest, and
stomach.

REMBRANDT Harmenszoon van Rijn
Apostle Peter in Prison
About that time Herod the king laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John . . . and . . . he proceeded to arrest Peter also. . . . And
when he had seized him, he put him in prison.
(The Acts of the Apostles 12:1–4)
Rembrandt’s painting shows the apostle Peter in his prison cell in Jerusalem following his arrest. A shaft of soft, golden light falls on him from an unseen source, leaving large parts
of the painting in total obscurity. The saint’s attribute is clearly visible, however: two large metal keys signifying the keys to the kingdom of Heaven bestowed on him by Jesus, which
in this situation suggest the irony of his jailed state.
St. Peter kneels, his gnarled hands (the hands of the fisherman he once was) clasped in prayer but also in despair, his lined face expressing an old man’s desolation. He cannot know
that the Angel of God – perhaps foreshadowed in the mysterious source of light – will soon appear to bring about his miraculous escape.
The simple humanity of Peter is emphasized, and yet the radiance that encircles his face like a kind of halo conveys his sanctity. This different interpretation of a familiar subject
exemplifies Rembrandt’s genius at portraying states of mind and spiritual qualities through the language of light and shadow.

POUSSIN, Nicolas
The Destruction and Sack of the Temple of Jerusalem
"…Caesar [Titus] shouted and waved to the combatants to put out the fire; but his shouts were unheard as their ears were deafened by a greater din, and his gesticulations went
unheeded amidst the distractions of battle and bloodshed. As the legions charged in, neither persuasion nor threat could check their impetuosity: passion alone was in command..."
(Josephus Flavius, The Jewish War, VI.5–6) This work from Poussin's early Italian period was commissioned by his patron Cardinal Francesco Barberini and offered as a gift to Cardinal
Richelieu, the French head of state. At the time, Barberini was head of a papal legation that attempted in vain to negotiate an end to the bloody war between France and Spain. Poussin
draws a parallel between his patron, the would-be peacemaker, and the enlightened pagan emperor Titus, who – according to the account of Josephus Flavius – tried unsuccessfully to
prevent the ruin of Jerusalem and its Temple.
Classical Roman architecture and sculpture provided Poussin with visual inspiration: the facade of the Pantheon; the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the Capitoline; and the
famous depiction of the menorah on the Arch of Titus. The composition is divided between the Temple in the background and the chaotic struggle, dominated by the striking figure of
Titus on his white mount, in the foreground.
After Richelieu's death, this painting changed hands many times and eventually reached England. Its whereabouts were unknown from the late 1700s until 1995, when it was
rediscovered, restored, and gifted to the Israel Museum in 1998.

RUBENS, Peter Paul
The Death of Adonis (with Venus, Cupid, and the Three Graces)
The Antwerp-based master Sir Peter Paul Rubens, considered to be the preeminent Flemish Baroque artist, was a diplomat as well as a painter, draftsman, and gentleman. His
extensive travels in the service of princes and kings to the courts of Italy and Spain exposed him to the best of Renaissance painting, sculpture, and literature and acquainted him
with two of the most illustrious painters of his time: Caravaggio and Velazquez.
This large composition, which combines a powerful tragic story with a daring composition, is typical of Rubens's voluptuous style, developed after his return from his Italian
sojourn during the first decade of the seventeenth century. It is a superb example of the work of this artist and homo universalis.
The painting's famous mythological subject is based on the account of Adonis's death in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Rubens chose to depict the tragic moment when Venus discovers
the body of her young, handsome lover after his fatal encounter with the wild boar that left him bleeding to death.
Combining Classical as well as Flemish stylistic motifs, the painting is full of pathos and passion. Rubens enhances the tragic scene with the presence of the three weeping Graces
and the sobbing Cupid who, with the grieving Venus, replicate a Pieta scene. Only the unruffled dogs, standing to the right of the emotionally charged scene, hint that nature in its
lush beauty continues along its normal course, oblivious to the grief of the loveliest among the goddesses.

A collaborative work of father and son, Jacob Gerritsz. and Aelbert Cuyp of Dordrecht, this painting is both a landscape and a family portrait that captures the moment of the
return from the hunt. Hunting, a privilege granted to the upper classes, had just become fashionable when the painting was commissioned.
The figures, by Jacob, are rather rigid and stiff. Their faces reveal a family resemblance, and their ages are inscribed on the ground beneath them. The maid on the extreme
right holds a set of bellows and carries a basket with a chicken that she has prepared for the family outing. The son, accompanied by a servant, at left, is handing his trophy-a
dead game bird-to his youngest sister, thus enlivening the composition. The young girl second from right holds a bunch of grapes, which is a symbol of nature's bounty, as are
the hunted game and the cow being milked in the background.
The vast landscape, bathed in golden hues and reminiscent of the style of Jan van Goyen, was painted by Aelbert, then a youth of twenty-one. Cows graze and are milked;
people work in the field. Everything that the viewer beholds belongs to this affluent family and serves as evidence that they have been blessed by God.

GAUGUIN, Paul
Landscape with Dog
This painting is one of six Gauguin created on Hiva Oa in the Marquesas in early 1903, the year he died. He naturalistically depicted the view inland toward the mountains from his
house to which his worsening health often confined him. Behind the rock wall that separates his property from the road stands Ben Varney's store in its distinctive turquoise color, and
beyond that the Catholic mission's compound.
In the center of his property a black dog with white paws confronts a diminutive hen who ruffles her feathers to expand her size. Although Gauguin may actually have witnessed such a
confrontation, these animals have symbolic meaning.
Gauguin's dog, named Pego (slang for penis) after the artist's shortened signature "PGo," is one of the "savage" alter-egos he created after 1896. In January–February 1903, while
working on this painting, he set a stylized version of this dog as an alter-ego beside the inscription "Bonjour M. Gauguin."
The hen may symbolize those Gauguin was attacking in his vituperative writings: in 1902 he inveighed against the Catholic church in L'Esprit Moderne et le Catholicisme and against
art critics in Racontars du Rapin, and in 1903, he attacked social norms in Avant et Après and the authorities on Hiva Oa in a series of letters. Starting in February–March, the
repercussions from these letters would hound him into his grave.

Woman in a Flowered Hat
In the 1890s Renoir frequently painted the subject of a young woman in a hat. The artist had been partial to this theme in the past. The fancy ladies' hats of the end of the century
further enlivened Renoir's interest. He liked them so much that sometimes he ordered especially unusual hats for his models.
This chapeaux fantaisistes turned out to suit Renoir's women. The woman is painted not as a thinker or doer, or a housewife or worker, but as a creation of nature, and its
ornament. Therefore, the liveliest colours of nature, luxuriant garden flowers, are quite appropriate here.
Credit: Bequest of Ignace Hellenberg, Paris, to the State of Israel, In memory of his parents Sigmund and Betty Hellenberg, On permanent loan to The Israel Museum, Jerusalem,
from the Administrator General of the State of Israel

Portrait of Mme. Paulin
Mme. Paulin was not one of Renoir’s high-society commissions but rather a portrait of the wife of a friend. Paul Paulin was a dentist, sculptor, and collector, who sometimes acted as
an intermediary to help the Impressionists sell their works.
Painted following a period of artistic soul-searching, our Mme. Paulin exhibits the thick, hatched strokes, strong colors, and porcelainlike skin tones usually associated with Renoir’s
portraits of the late 1880s.
Set against a vague and ambiguous background, Mme. Paulin may be either seated or standing, though the curved brushwork at the bottom right suggests a chair. The multicolored,
warm red-oranges and gold that predominate in the background serve as a foil to the black-clad figure. These colors are applied in long, parallel strokes. Shorter strokes in the sitter’s
clothes follow the flow of her body, while her face is worked in much thinner, less obtrusive touches.
Mme. Paulin is wearing a modest, high-necked, long-sleeved dress, but the tight waist nevertheless shows off her fine figure. Her frock appears to be of sheer black fabric over a
smooth, yellow-gold material that flickers in the light, and her hands are encased in fashionable, black leather gloves. The gold in her bracelets, pin, earrings, and dress is echoed in
the background, linking her to it despite the strong red-black color contrast.
As in many of Renoir’s paintings, the sitter’s eyes seem unaware of either artist or viewer. She has the dreamy, meditating countenance that the Impressionists favored as a way of
mitigating the posed quality of traditional portraits.

GOGH, Vincent Van
Harvest in Provence
Van Gogh moved to Arles in February 1888, after spending two years in Paris. Amidst the Provençal corn and wheat fields van Gogh’s pictorial style underwent several
transformations induced partly by inspiration he drew from Japanese prints and the works of his contemporaries, partly on account of his own temperament and aspiration to
capture in paint the colors, tempo and emotive flavor of his new home.
Harvest in Provence, most likely painted on the spot shortly before June 20, 1888, depicts a fragment of rural life as van Gogh experienced it on a given summer day in his thirty-
fifth year.
The painting evokes a state of flux: the brushstrokes in the sky are blown about by a nervous summer wind; the line of the horizon undulates under solar heat; the full-bodied farm
buildings in the distance crave to be filled with nature’s produce; and in the foreground the bundles of corn dance in the breeze as a final goodbye to their earthy abode.
Humanity’s presence in the picture is limited to a lonely farm-worker indicated with a few strokes of paint. As a whole, however, Harvest in Provence is a eulogy to human life—a
life van Gogh embraced so compassionately that ultimately he let is slip through his fingers.

GAUGUIN, Paul
Village in Martinique (Femmes et Chevre dans le village)
In 1887, Gauguin and Charles Laval went to Panama, and then to Martinique, searching for a warm, healthy climate and a cheap place to live a natural, "savage" life. Residing
during the summer in a cabin like those depicted here, they created works that have sometimes been misattributed.
In Martinique, Gauguin became fascinated with the rural, slow-cadenced outdoor life of the "exotic" dark-skinned population, an attraction that would later draw him to Tahiti. In
this painting, the natives lethargically rest in the midday summer sun, barely able to move: one sleeps on her stomach while her companion meditates. A third woman has just
enough strength to raise her hand to converse with the woman sauntering toward them holding a basket of fruit on her head. Their motions are echoed in the tree trunks behind
them that seem to sag under the heavy folliage that provides little shade.
On the other side of the row of cabins, a goat suckles her kid, supplying it both with milk and with shade under her body. This heavy atmosphere is reinforced by the flat azure
sky: instead of injecting a breath of air, it combines with the orange roof to emphasize the heat.

The Israel Museum is the largest cultural institution in the State of Israel and is ranked among the world's leading art and archaeology
museums. Founded in 1965, the Museum houses encyclopedic collections, including works dating from prehistory to the present day, in
its Archaeology, Fine Arts, and Jewish Art and Life Wings, and features the most extensive holdings of biblical and Holy Land
archaeology in the world. In just forty-five years, thanks to a legacy of gifts and generous support from its circle of patrons worldwide,
the Museum has built a far-ranging collection of nearly 500,000 objects, representing the full scope of world material culture.
In the summer of 2010, the Israel Museum completed the most comprehensive upgrade of its 20-acre campus in its history, featuring
new galleries, entrance facilities, and public spaces. The three-year expansion and renewal project was designed to enhance visitor
experience of the Museum's collections, architecture, and surrounding landscape, complementing its original design by Alfred Mansfeld
and Dora Gad. Led by James Carpenter Design Associates of New York and Efrat-Kowalsky Architects of Tel Aviv, the project also
included the complete renewal and reconfiguration of the Museum's Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Archaeology Wing, Edmond and Lily
Safra Fine Arts Wing,and Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Wing for Jewish Art and Life.
Among the highlights of the Museum's original campus is the Shrine of the Book, designed by Armand Bartos and Frederick Kiesler,
which houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts in the world, as well as rare early medieval biblical manuscripts.
Adjacent to the Shrine is the Model of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period, which reconstructs the topography and architectural
character of the city as it was prior to its destruction by the Romans in 66 CE, and provides historical context to the Shrine's
presentation of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Museum's celebrated Billy Rose Art Garden, designed for the original campus by Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, is
counted among the finest outdoor sculpture settings of the 20th century. An Oriental landscape combined with an ancient Jerusalem
hillside, the garden serves as the backdrop for the Israel Museum's display of the evolution of the modern western sculptural tradition.
On view are works by modern masters including Jacques Lipchitz, Henry Moore, Claes Oldenburg, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, and
David Smith, together with more recent site-specific commissions by such artists as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Mark Dion, James Turrell,
and Micha Ullman.
The Ruth Youth Wing for Art Education, unique in its size and scope of activities, presents a wide range of programming to more than
100,000 schoolchildren each year, and features exhibition galleries, art studios, classrooms, a library of illustrated children's books, and
a recycling room. Special programs foster intercultural understanding between Arab and Jewish students and reach out to the wide
spectrum of Israel's communities.
In addition to the extensive programming offered on its main campus, the Israel Museum also operates two off-site locations: the
Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, an architectural gem built in 1938 for the display of archaeology from ancient Israel; and Ticho
House, which offers an ongoing program of exhibitions by younger Israeli artists in a historic house and garden setting.

Israel Museum, Jerusalem_Paintings Collection, The Masterpieces (1)

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