Day 30: The Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal

Last night Dan and I promised each other we would have a better day today, and we did; in fact, you could say that aujourd'hui was just about parfait.

The Collection
The  Musée des Beaux-Arts is so close to our hotel that we were able to walk there through a very interesting area that got ritzier every block.

The Musée des Beaux-Arts is a really good art museum, the best we have seen in Canada. As the oldest art museum in Canada, they have been collecting the longest, and they have a pretty coherent survey of the history of art. They don't always have the most significant artists of the period, but what they offer is high quality.

It's rare to see works from the middle 1400s on this side of the Atlantic. Artists were just moving from the flat style of the religious icon, to a more rounded, realistic style and more individuated features.

Master of the Castello Nativity, active 1445-1470
Virgin and Child, c. 1460

In the late 1500s, the Italians pushed religious art to a more sublime and touching place.

Veronese, 1528-1588
Christ Crowned with Thorns, c. 1585

Meanwhile, in Northern Europe artists were getting down to the business of everyday life. Notice what a high level of skill in rounding, perspective, and realism they had developed by the mid-1500s.

Lucas van Valckenborch, 1535-1597
A Meat and Fish Market (Winter), c. 1595

The 1600s was a Golden Age for the Dutch, in art as well as in economic growth. Purely decorative works came into their own.

Christian Luycks, 1623-1670
Pronk Still Life with Silver and Gilt Vessels, a Nautilus Shell,
Porcelain, Food and Other Items on a Draped Table, c. 1650

In the 1700s, the French became a dominant force in art. Sentimental portraits of beautiful women, real or imaginary, were in vogue.

Jean-Baptiste Greuze, 1725-1805
Portrait of Madame Mercier, 1780

In the 1800s, the man to beat in French art was William Bougereau, who carried sublime realism to perfection. After this, painters must have felt forced to find a fresh direction.

William Bouguereau, 1825-1905
Crown of Flowers, 1884

The man who beat him was Claude Monet, when he and his colleagues invented Impressionism. By breaking up the brushstroke and concerning themselves with the nature of perception, the Impressionists paved the way for all the modern trends in art.

Claude Monet, 1840-1926
The Main Path at Giverny, 1900

The museum cannot claim any great works by van Gogh or Cézanne to represent post-Impressionism, but here's a lovely example of Pointillism, which is a development of Impressionism.

Paul Signac, 1863-1935
Fort du Roule, Cherbourg, 1932

In the 1900s, trends, fads, and movements followed in dizzying succession in the international art scene, with experimentation becoming a value in itself and artists changing styles frequently. In the early part of the century, Matisse was a dominant figure. Pretty women, whether real or imagined, were still an important subject.

Henri Matisse, 1869-1954
Portrait of Lorette in a Turban, 1917

Salvador Dalí is usually associated with Surrealism. The value of his painting in this collection is that it comes from early in his career, before he became committed to that style. It is interesting to compare the portraits by Dalí and Matisse.

Salvador Dalí, 1904-1989
Portrait of Maria Carbona, 1925

Throughout most of the twentieth century the man to beat was Picasso. Whatever new style an artist developed, Picasso had already done that, or would soon do it better than the originator, except total abstraction; Picasso never abandoned the figure. By the time he painted this shocking picture, Picasso was an old man. The genius of this painting is that you can tell by his brushstroke that he is angry, frustrated and determined. The work is so graphic because he wanted to make gestural symbols, instead of evocative representations.

Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973
Embrace, 1971

The two most prominent German artists of the last half of the twentieth century were Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter. The museum has good examples of both. Richter's style is unpredictable from one decade to the next, swinging from blurry realism to vivid abstraction.

Gerhard Richter, b. 1932
AB Mediation, 1986

The German sculptor Stephan Balkenhol continues his national tradition of carving in wood, but in a rough-hewn style, and on a large scale that makes a statement about the value of the individual.

Stephen Balkenhol, b. 1957
Large Pair: Head of a Man and a Woman, 1990

After the extravagance of abstract expressionism, some painters made a rush for figurative realism. Mark Tansey always uses his skill at realistic representation to make a humorous point.

Mark Tansey, b. 1949
Action Painting II, 1984

The Canadian collection was a real joy. The museum has good depth in some of the painters we've learned, and works by some new artists that I liked. Their late 19th century work was hung salon-style, making it difficult to photograph. Some artists were working in the mode of European neo-Classicism.

John Charles Pinhey, 1860-1912
The Sister Arts: Music, Poetry and Painting, 1892

In the early twentieth century, Canadian artists developed a style that was both nationalistic and modern. Tom Thomson was one of the first to work this way.

Tom Thomson, 1877-1917

We were happy to see several pieces by Lawren S. Harris, one of the leaders of this approach to landscape, who caught our attention at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.

Lawren S. Harris, 1885-1970
Mount Temple, c. 1925

The museum had a small exhibit of works by Canadian artist Marc-Aurele Fortin, who painted tamed and peopled landscapes and neighborhoods.

Marc-Aurele Fortin, 1888-1970
Saint-Siméon, before 1950

Some Canadian artists appear to be very much influenced by contemporary American trends. This painting looks like it could have been painted by John Sloan.

Adrien Hébert, 1890-1967
Corner Peel and Sainte-Catherine, c. 1948

Some 20th century Canadian work appears to derive from European models.

Marian Scott, 1906-1993
Stairway, c. 1940

Op Art was an international movement. This Canadian artists did some interesting variations.

Jacques Hurtubise, b. 1939
Clémence, 1967

The Architecture

In addition to having a fine collection of art, the Museum of Fine Arts succeeds architecturally. Their first big building, dating from 1912, was built in the Beaux Arts style.

The original 1912 building

In 1991 Moshe Safdie, who had already completed the National Gallery in Ottawa, was hired to design an expansion. One of Safdie's signature characteristics is that he makes his new building fit in with existing buildings nearby. In this photo you can see that he used a similar color of stone, symmetrical windows flanking the entrance porch, and a horizontal rank near the roof-life.

Moshe Safdie's new wing of the Museum

He also retained the four columns of the earlier building, but he shortened them considerably. This enabled the one radical design element: The façade is hollowed out—turning it into a triumphal arch—and replaced with a sloping glass roof that floods the entrance with daylight. I grabbed a shot from the internet that illustrates this better.

Internet grab

Safdie made the two buildings function as a whole by designing an underground passageway. In most museums this would have resulted in a long boring tunnel, and Safdie has designed plenty of long boring passageways in his museums, but in this case underground passage is through a lower level that is wide enough to serve as gallery space. With the help of friendly guards at every turning point, the museum is navigable and fun.

The Special Exhibit

The museum is free, but there was a $20 Can charge for the Dale Chihuly exhibit. We felt we had to attend it, but the truth is we had seen this very exhibit and others much like it. There were certain variations that were better, certain that were worse, and Chihuly's generous imagination is always a great joy, but we breezed through that show pretty fast.

Dale Chihuly

Personal Experience

The cafeteria looked pretty nice, but they didn't have any salads that appealed to me, so we ate in the fancy restaurant, a very pleasant place with suave service. I had a great salad and Dan had octopus. Octopus? I didn't even look at it, but he liked it.

That afternoon, we kept taking pictures until the very last moment when the guards very gently and regretfully kicked us out. On the street, kids were playing in the museum's small sculpture garden. We took a few photos.

Then I was parched. Where could we get a cold drink? After some dithering about, I headed for the nearest large hotel, with Dan trailing. The hotel turned out to be the Ritz-Carleton; it had a soothingly upscale lounge where we each gratefully doffed a bottle of Molsen Export Light Ale, the most drinkable beer I've had in a long time.

Lounge at the Ritz-Carlton

Dan L. Smith, art photographer at ease

When we got back to the hotel, we found that both of our online Credit Union Accounts were non-functional. On the telephone Dan learned that new federal regulation required upgraded security. With a lot of folderol we finally got both accounts up and running.

We never eat pizza. With the exception of home-made pizza at a wedding reception, we haven't eaten pizza since we were in Italy in 1996. But walking around our neighborhood, I observed an outdoor restaurant where the pizza crust looked very thin and crispy, and the toppings looked interesting, so we decided to give it a try. We had a Greek salad, again with a French touch, and a pizza topped with roast vegetables; no peppers, they don't use peppers up here, hurrah! Anyway Dan was grumpy like an old fart when we went in, and by the time we left, he felt fine.