Nestled in the middle of the berkshires in Massachusetts is the Clark Art Institute. Our little tour group made a stop at this gorgeous museum after a long day of road tripping. I was surprised to find such a fabulous museum, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The setting and grounds of this art institute are peaceful and tranquil, it was a lovely stop after such a long day on the bus.
The collection of the Clark features European and American paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, photographs, and decorative arts from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century. The collection is especially rich in French Impressionist and Academic paintings, British oil sketches, drawings, and silver, and the work of American artists Winslow Homer, George Inness, and John Singer Sargent.
The Clark’s mission is to advance and extend the public understanding of art, making this a very special place for adults, children, educators, and scholars. The goal of all of our programs is to help people realize that engaging with art can enhance their lives.
Dancers in the Classroom
Edgar Degas
1880
n the late 1870s and early 1880s, Degas painted a series of wide horizontal canvases showing ballerinas stretching and resting in a practice room. These works capture the dancers’ grace, concentration, and physical exhaustion. The artist constructed the composition of this painting with great care—the position of the outstretched leg of the girl adjusting her stocking, for example, was changed at least nine times.
Dancers
Edgar Degas
1919
Double Portrait of Aline Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
1883
Aline was Gauguin's daughter, who sadly passed away at the young age of 19 pneumonia.
Little Dancer Aged Fourteen
Edgar Degas
1919
When Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen was first exhibited at the 1881 Impressionist exhibition—modeled in wax, with a real tutu and real hair—reaction was mixed. The figure’s awkward limbs and inscrutable expression seemed at odds with the traditional image of the elegant ballerina. Some critics called the sculpture “hideously ugly,” while others applauded its realism. This bronze was cast from the wax original after Degas’s death.
Degas’ heirs contracted with the French foundry Hébrard to cast the repaired sculptures in bronze even while preserving the original wax figures (which for many years were thought to have been lost or destroyed). Beginning in 1919, Hébrard set out to make 22 casts of each sculpture; some series were not finished, but the foundry cast at least 25 copies of the Little Dancer. This is why bronze versions of Little Dancer and other Degas sculptures are now found in many collections internationally.
Self Portrait
Edgar Degas
1857
Degas made nearly forty self-portraits between 1854 and 1864. During this period, he traveled extensively in Italy, studying Old Master paintings and developing his own style. The artist approached self-portraits as a platform for experimentation and most remained in his studio until his death. In this image, Degas presents himself in a striking hat, white painting smock, and orange cravat. The delicate modeling of the face, much of which is in shadow, contrasts with the unpainted area in the bottom left corner.
Autumn
Francisco de Goya
1786
In 1786, Goya was commissioned to design tapestries to decorate the dining room in Madrid’s El Pardo palace. The king specifically requested “pleasant, light-hearted subjects,” and this painting, a sketch for one of the tapestries, was presented for his approval. A child reaches for a bunch of grapes that a young man in a stylish yellow suit offers to a lady dressed in black. Behind them, a servant balances a basket of grapes on her head—she personifies Autumn, the season of plentiful harvests.
Goya is so often associated with dark paintings with gruesome or troubling subject matters, but throughout his successful painting career, he painted all sorts of subject matters and in several different styles. Autumn is one such example and is gorgeous to see in person.
The Clark's architecture beautiful in and itself. Each gallery has different colored walls which adds a richness to the experience as you stroll from one room to the next.
Peonies
Pierre- Auguste Renior
1880
Renoir once told a friend “painting flowers rests my brain. . . . I place my colors and experiment with values boldly, without worrying about spoiling a canvas.” In this still life, vibrant reds and pinks stand out against the dark background and cast blue shadows across the white tablecloth. Using thin washes and strokes of thicker paint, the artist has captured the peonies’ sumptuous colors and the delicate textures of their petals and leaves.
Portrait of Madame Monet
(Madam Claude Monet Reading)
Pierre-Auguste Renior
1874
During the early 1870s, Renoir and Monet often painted side by side, producing images of the same subject and sometimes using each other—and other family members—as models. In Renoir’s informal portrait of Camille Monet, the painter’s wife sits on a comfortable sofa reading a paperback book. Small touches of color cover the canvas like stitches in a tapestry.
Woman Crocheting
Pierre-Auguste Renior
1875
A young woman sits in a middle-class interior, absorbed in an everyday task. Her informal pose and comfortable clothing suggest that this is an image of contemporary domestic life rather than a portrait. Sunlight shines on the model’s hair and softens the contours of her body, highlighting her bare shoulder and forearm. This is the very first of more than thirty paintings by Renoir that Sterling Clark acquired for his collection.
Tama, The Japanese Dog
Pierre-Auguste Renior
1876
Renoir painted this image of a Japanese spaniel for his friend Henri Cernuschi, a banker and collector of Asian art. The breed, a favorite of the Japanese imperial family, was considered fashionably exotic when Cernuschi brought the dog to France in 1873. The pet’s black-and-white fur stands out against the colored brushstrokes of the background, which partly obscure an inscription of its name, Tama, faintly visible in the painting’s top left corner.
Child With a Bird
(Mademoiselle Fleury in Algerian Costume)
Pierre-Auguste Renior
1882
Renoir painted this young girl during a visit to Algeria, then a French colony. The sitter, Mademoiselle Fleury, was probably French, but she is shown wearing what the artist described as an “Algerian costume.” While her dress and the setting are meant to evoke North Africa, the theme of young women holding birds was popular in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European paintings. Renoir exhibited this work as Child with a Bird, suggesting the image functioned both as a portrait and a genre scene.
Self Portrait
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
1899
Renoir presents himself in this self-portrait as a mature and confident man. He was in his late fifties and well-established as an artist; the flowered wallpaper and his bourgeois clothes allude to a comfortable living. His health, on other hand, was poor, and the intensity of his gaze suggests an incisive investigation of the features of his face in a mirror. Renoir never exhibited this painting, and it remained in his studio until his death twenty years later.
The Cliffs at Etretat
Claude Monet
1885
Between October and December 1885, Monet made nearly fifty paintings of the Normandy coast. This work shows the Porte d’Aval, a naturally formed arch, and a freestanding needle-like rock that attracted tourists and artists alike to the town of Étretat. Monet painted this view of the cliffs from an unusual location, accessible only by boat or via a precipitous path. The writer Guy de Maupassant described how the artist “watched the sun and the shadows, capturing in a few brushstrokes a falling ray of light or a passing cloud.”
Snake Charmer
Jean-Leon Gerome
1879
This was my favorite piece we saw in this museum. I remember studying this remarkable masterpiece in college while earning my art history degree. The details in this painting are so realistic and so incredibly painted, I remember being blown away by it while studying about Eastern influences on Western art. It was so amazing to see it in person.
A naked boy, accompanied by an elderly musician playing the flute, “charms” a snake. Although Gérôme could have witnessed such a performance during his travels in Egypt, this detailed—almost photographic—image is an invention. A room in Istanbul’s Topkapı Palace inspired the tiled wall, inscribed with Koranic verses, while the stone floor resembles one in a Cairo mosque. The spectators represent a range of ethnicities, wearing a mishmash of clothing and weapons. Paintings of non-Western subjects, often with exotic or erotic undertones, were popular in nineteenth-century Europe and ensured Gérôme’s success.
Model D Pianoforte and Stools
Designed by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
1884
When the elaborate case of this Steinway piano was displayed in London in 1885, the press called it “splendid,” “remarkable,” and “superb.” Alma-Tadema designed it as the centerpiece of a “Greco-Roman” music room in the Manhattan mansion of financier Henry Marquand. With its lavish materials and decorative flourishes—including the names of Apollo and the Muses inlaid on the lid—it remains one of the grandest grand pianos ever made.
Fumee d'Ambre Gris
(Smoke of Ambergris)
John Singer Sargent
1880
A woman holds part of her elaborate garment over a silver censer to capture the perfumed smoke of smoldering ambergris. A waxy substance extracted from whales, ambergris was used in some religious rituals and was also said to have aphrodisiac qualities. Sargent began this painting in Tangier, with a model posed on the patio of a rented house, but he completed it in his Paris studio. The finished painting presents a fantasy for Western eyes, combining details of costume and setting adapted from different regions across North Africa.
The masterfully seductive use of color in Smoke of Ambergris probably attracted the greatest praise. In an article on Sargent in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, October 1887, Henry James wrote, “I know not who this stately Mohammedan may be, nor in what mysterious domestic or religious rite she may be engaged; but in her plastered arcade, which shines in the Eastern light, she is beautiful and memorable. The picture is exquisite, a radiant effect of white upon white, of similar but discriminated tones.” On June 9, 1880, an unidentified critic in the Interchange referred to Sargent’s Smoke of Ambergris as, quite simply, “a perfect piece of painting.”
I LOVED these three pieces by Giovanni Boldini, these are the types of paintings I would love to display in my home.
Guitar Player
Giovanni Boldini
1872
Young Woman Crocheting
Giovanni Boldini
1875
Crossing the Street
Giovanni Boldini
1873
Boldini’s view of a busy street captures the rapid pace of city life in Paris. As figures hurry along in different directions, an elegantly dressed—and unaccompanied—woman crosses the cobbled street, attracting the attention of a man in a carriage. In her haste, she has raised her skirt and exposed her petticoat, adding to her allure. The painting is dated twice, perhaps indicating that the artist finished or reworked it two years after he began.
Young Woman Reading
Lucius (Lucio) Rossi
1875
Rossi's small panel is filled with details. Within this extravagantly decorated interior—which includes a painted ceiling and Asian-inspired upholstery, fire screen, and fan—a lavishly dressed woman reclines on a sofa. Her pose, costume, and luxurious surroundings suggest an expensive courtesan rather than a bourgeois wife. Perhaps the letter she reads comes not from a husband but from a lover or a client.
The Clark Art Institute was such a lovely, and unexpected surprise. I didn't have high hopes for it since, as previously mentioned, it seems to be located in the middle of nowhere. But it's art collection is one of a kind and holds several beautiful treasures. I highly suggest this museum if you ever find yourself in Williamstown, MA.
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