Highlights from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston pt 2

Portrait of a Young Woman, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1633; a larger portrait of this unknown young woman, also painted in 1633, is in NY's Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Square of St. Mark's, Venice, Canaletto, 1740s; for Canaletto, the Piazza San Marco was the quintessential view of the city, and he painted the square dozens of times from a variety of vantage points

Don Vicente Isabel Osorio de Moscoso y Alvarez de Toledo, Conde de Trastamara, Francisco de Goya, 1787-88; I loved the cute dog trying to get the attention of this young boy with a very long name

Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, Jan van Huysum, ca. 1715; the most successful flower painter in history, no other painter could match van Huysum's technical virtuosity or his ability to create luxuriant arrangements of fruit and flowers

Louis Comfort Tiffany, Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, 1911; Tiffany commissioned Sorolla to paint him and his dog, Funny, while at Tiffany's Long Island estate; it is unusual to see Tiffany on this side of the canvas

Garden in Taarbaek, Edvard Munch, 1905; this seaside resort (this view is probably from his hotel room) on the outskirts of Copenhagen is presented in one of Munch's most serene compositions

SunForceOceanLife, Ernesto Neto, 2021; this temporary exhibit ran through September 2021 and allowed visitors to explore a complex labyrinth of interactive pathways, all while suspended in mid-air

Jeanne Pissarro, Theo van Rysselberghe, 1895; much more than the other Pointillists, this artist was devoted to portraiture; he also owned Signac's The Bonaventure Pine which is now part of the Museum's collection

The Harvesters, Charles Angrand, 1892; the LAVA Awards are held annually to honor excellence in books relating to the principles of liberty, with the Charles Angrand Award being the grand prize award for artwork

Rue Ravignan, Paris, Maximilien Luce, 1893; using a high concentration of small dots, Luce transforms this Montmartre street into an eerie scene tinged with a melancholy atmosphere of emptiness and isolation

Young Woman Powdering Herself, Georges Seurat, 1889; the artist is best known for devising the technique known as pointillism; his large-scale work A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is one of the icons of late 19th-century painting

The Road, Achille Lauge, 1893; the Pointillists believed that juxtaposed dots of pure, complementary colors - ie blue and orange - meticulously applied to the canvas produced a more shimmering, vibrant effect on the eyes than colors mixed on a palette

Brumas (Mists), Olga de Amaral, 2013; Amarai's radical experimentation with color, form, material, composition, and space transforms weaving from a flat design element into an architectural component

Sunset on the Lagoon, Venice, Henri-Edmond Cross, ca. 1903-04; I've always been attracted to works by the Pointillists for their ability to colorfully portray scenes just by using perfectly placed dots of paint

Girl Reading, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, ca. 1890; the innocence of childhood fascinated Renoir who was famous for his radiant paintings of children; the tenderness and warmth seen here are characteristic of Renoir's best work

SunForceOceanLife, Ernesto Neto, 2021; this crocheted work filled with plastic balls was like an adult version of a McDonald's playland; it illustrates that art isn't always static and can come in many forms

SunForceOceanLife, Ernesto Neto, 2021; one of the artist’s largest crochet works to date, this piece takes inspiration from his long-term commitment to the art, culture, and traditions of various cultures that form Brazil