Favorites from the San Diego Museum of Art, pt 1

The San Diego Museum of Art is housed in a gorgeous 1926 building in Balboa Park that blends with the other structures built for the Panama–California Exposition of 1915 (it celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal)

The White Flower, Georgia O'Keeffe, 1932; O'Keeffe studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and, after 1929, spent her summers in New Mexico before moving there permanently in 1946

Trompe l'Oeil Still Life, Samuel van Hoogstraten, ca. 1655; trained in the studio of Rembrandt, this artist worked in the royal court of Ferdinand III in Vienna with this work meant to inspire wonder at its illusionistic technique

Bouquet, Henri Matisse, 1916-17; Matisse came to painting later in life than his precocious rival Pablo Picasso and was introduced to Impressionism by Renoir, but Matisse always had his own style which led to the Fauvist movement

The Hands of Dr. Moore, Diego Rivera, 1940; I found this work strange and unsettling; the painting parallels that of Frida Kahlo who Diego Rivera married (twice); admission to the museum is $20

The Molo from the Bacino di San Marco, Venice, Bernardo Bellotto, ca. 1740; Bellotto was Canaletto's nephew and most talented pupil; it's just amazing how little Venice has changed in the centuries since this painting was completed

Still Life with Peaches, Raphaelle Peale, ca. 1816; this artist was the first American to make still life the focus of his work; the realism is incredible and I'd love to see how he painted with such minute detail

John Alfred Parsons Millet, John Singer Sargent, 1892; born in Florence, Sargent lived as an expat most of his life; this portrait was done as a gift for the wife of painter Frank Millet (this is their son)

Catching the Thanksgiving Turkey, Grandma Moses, ca. 1943; San Diego county has no mask mandate so the museum had a sign saying vaccinated visitors could forego a mask but no check of vaccine records was done making the policy useless

After Many Days, Thomas Hart Benton, 1940; this unusual work for Benton was painted at the end of the Great Depression; I hadn't realized that Benton was an art teacher (perhaps a bad one) for Jackson Pollack

The Shadows, Rene Magritte, 1966; decades after giving the teasing title The Use of Words to his most famous painting - a depiction of a pipe with the inscription This is Not a Pipe - Magritte here (in the last year of his life) revisits that iconography

Light Bulb, Jasper Johns, 1969; though the light bulb constitutes a recurring motif in Johns' limited sculptural work, this is the only design in which the light bulb is suspended and represented in relief

Still Life, Jose Agustin Arrieta, ca. 1870; this Mexican artist uses some local foods such as chiles, avocados and plantains in his extraordinary work looking at the emerging middle class in 19th century Mexico

The Wedding Procession, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, 1626; this artist and his workshop were prolific copyists of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's most famous compositions; the Elder died when the Younger was only 5 years old

Portrait of a Venetian, Tintoretto, ca. 1550; best known today for his dramatic narrative paintings, Tintoretto took a more subtle approach as a portraitist painting hundreds of works of the Venetian ruling class

The Penitent Saint Peter, El Greco, ca. 1590-95; one of El Greco's most enduring devotional images, the repentant saint is distraught for having denied that he knew Christ on the eve of the Crucifixion