2023 Road Trip: Norton Simon Museum (5/19/2023)

Friday, May 19, 2023 (continued)
The Norton Simon Museum was once the Pasadena Art Museum (est 1954, building 1969, by Thornton Ladd and John Kelsey, 1995 renovation by Frank Gehry). Norton Simon, an art collector, was looking for a place to house his collection, and worked out an agreement with the Pasadena Art Museum, even though the museum had only contemporary art. Simon paid off the museum's debts and financed renovations, resulting in the museum taking his name.

The Burghers of Calais (1884-1895, by Auguste Rodin)

19th Century Galleries:

Patience Escalier: Portrait of a Peasant
(1888, by Vincent van Gogh)

Portrait of the Artist's Mother
(1888, by Vincent van Gogh) (KSS)

Head of a Peasant Woman in a White Bonnet
(1885, by Vincent van Gogh) (KSS)

Picking Apples (c 1881, by Edgar Degas, cast 1919-1921)

The Norton Simon Museum has one of the world's foremost collection of works by Edgar Degas, with

drawings, paintings, and sculptures.

Grande arabesque, first time (1885-1890,
by Edgar Degas, cast 1919-1921)

Dressed dancer at rest, hands behind her back, right leg
forward (1895-1905) and Dancer at rest, hands behind
her back, right leg forward (1885-1890, by Edgar Degas,
both cast 1919-1921)

Waiting (c 1879-1882, by Edgar Degas)

The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil
(1881, by Claude Monet)

La Cigale/The Grasshopper (1865-1875,
by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot)

Le chiffonnier/The Ragpicker
(c 1865-1870, by Édouard Manet)

20th Century Galleries:

Femme avec une guitare/Woman with a Guitar
(1913, by Pablo Picasso) is considered
Synthetic Cubism due to the realistic
faux marble panel fragment

Portrait of the Artist's Wife: Jeanne Hébuterne
(1918, by Amedeo Modigliani)

Near the Palace (1914-1915,
by Lyonel Feininger) pictures a street in
Weimar that reflects the artist's feelings
of alienation during World War I
as an American in Germany (KSS)

The Black Shawl (1917, by Henri Matisse)

Gosh, an even better Flower Vendor (Girl with Lilies)
(1941, by Diego Rivera)

Femme au livre/Woman with a Book
(1932, by Pablo Picasso)

Basel Mural I, Basel Mural III (two fragments)
(1956-1958, by Sam Francis) were commissioned for
the Basel Kunsthalle and displayed until 1964
(Basel Mural II is in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam)

Sculpture Garden:

More garden than sculpture!

The curved wall covered with earthen
double-glazed tiles by Edith Heath

Strelitzia reginae/Bird of Paradise

Mountain allegory (1937, by Aristide Maillol)

Relief No 1 (1959, by Henry Moore)

King and Queen (1952-1953, by Henry Moore)

14th-16th Centuries Galleries:

Saint Sebastian (2nd half or 15C,
by Circle of Matteo Civitali)

Photograph of Saint Sebastian installed
at Wildenstein and Company before 1973

Madonna and Child with Book (c 1502-1503,
by Raffaello Sanzio aka Raphael)

Venus and Cupid in a Landscape
 (c 1515, by Jacopo Palma)

17th-18th Centuries Galleries:

Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose 
(1633, by Francisco de Zurbarán)

Saint Joseph Embracing the Infant Christ
(c 1670-1675, by Giovanni Battista Gaulli)

We need more pictures of Joseph!

Self Portrait (c 1636-1638,
by Rembrandt van Rijn)

Lady Hamilton as Medea
(c 1786, by George Romney) (KSS)

A Soldier on the Field of Battle (1818, by Horace Vernet)
depicts a wounded grenadier of Napoleon's Imperial Guard
who has just buried his fallen comrades (KSS)

South and Southeast Asian Galleries:

Chess Set (c 1850, India)

Shiva as Nataraja, Lord of the Dance
(c 1000, India)

Apparently Norton Simon purchased items (one similar to the Shiva above) that were later found to have been stolen and smuggled into the United States. However, there are reports that they were returned to India and Cambodia.

Next: Route 66 in California continued.