Museum accessions

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2004 by Eleanor H. Gustafson

The objects illustrated here attest to the extraordinary quality of additions made to the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in the past year. The paintings are from a gift of eleven seventeenth-century Dutch examples presented by Hannah L. Carter, a LACMA trustee since 1989, and her late husband, Edward W. Carter, the museum's founding president and first chairman of the board. The Japanese lacquer chest and Mexican ceramic drinking vessel represent acquisitions made thanks to the generosity of the museum's 2003 Collectors Committee.

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Edward Carter purchased his first Dutch paintings in the mid-1950s, but he and his wife began collecting them in earnest in the late 1960s, resolving to acquire "the most representative collection of the finest quality seventeenth-century Dutch landscapes, seascapes, architectural interiors, town views, and still lifes in this country," with the long-term intention of bequeathing their holdings to LACMA.

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Simon de Vlieger's View of a Beach (illustrated at bottom left) epitomizes many of the seascapes and landscapes executed during the golden age of Dutch painting. Dominated by a magnificent sky and capturing the fine pervasive light, it depicts the sort of genre scene that appealed to the successful merchants who were the beneficiaries of Dutch economic expansion around the globe in the seventeenth century. Since they were pragmatic businessmen whose prosperity rested on shipping and fishing, they wanted works that reflected these realities in a detailed and straightforward manner. Here, fishermen go about their work on the shore, while stylishly dressed figures wait for passengers to come ashore from the ships at anchor.

Foreign trade not only brought exotic objects to the Netherlands but plants as well, most famously the tulip, from Turkey. Still-life flower painting flourished, its acme represented here by Jan van Huysum's Bouquet of Flowers in an Urn, illustrated at top left. The canvas is an astonishing composition in which realism is combined with moralizing overtones in the inclusion of blooms that are past their prime.

Centuries before the Dutch enjoyed their golden age, the peoples of Oaxaca in what is today southern Mexico had their own heyday. The region was dominated by confederacies of Mixtec and Zapotec royal families, who constantly expanded their control through marriage alliances. Commercial trade routes brought influences from Peru, Chile, Colombia, and as far away as the Orient, but the economy thrived on farming, fishing, hunting, and mining. Gold and silver were made into exquisite adornments, and beautiful objects were created from indigenous turquoise, marble, and other stones. A variety of native clays resulted in a plethora of utilitarian and decorative vessels and figures, among them the rare polychrome ceramic drinking vessel with hummingbird illustrated above right, which would have been used to serve intoxicating beverages derived from the maguey plant at royal banquets. Hummingbirds favored the maguey cactus, and people who extracted the plant's sap were also known as hummingbirds.

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The chest illustrated at right is a tour de force of Japanese lacquer-work, exhibiting virtually every technique used in maki-e (literally "sprinkled picture") decoration--gold and silver leaf, flakes, and powder. The decoration is composed of "The Eight Views of Lake Biwa," depicting famous sites in and around Japan's largest lake. Seals and inscriptions on the accompanying original wood storage box indicate that the chest was originally in the collection of the lord of Hikone Castle, on the shores of Lake Biwa, and that it was made for his personal use.

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