On view now in the Orme Lewis Gallery at the Phoenix Art Museum is Fremont Ellis’ painting Old House at Cienega. The work was part of 170 recent acquisitions by the Arizona museum. The acquisitions come from many different places, including small, private collections and large collections from important art enthusiasts.
“Old House at Cienegaby Fremont F. Ellis, gifted by JPMorgan Chase, is one of Ellis’ outstanding landscape works,” the museum notes. “Settling in Santa Fe, [New Mexico,] in 1919, the primarily self-taught painter captured his environment and founded one of Santa Fe’s earliest art groups, Los Cinco Pintores. This work was formerly in the collection of Walter Reed Bimson (1892-1980), a pioneering Arizona art collector who headed Valley National Bank.”
Fremont Ellis (1897-1985), Old House at Cienega, oil on board. Collection of Phoenix Art Museum, Gift of JPMorgan Chase. Courtesy of Phoenix Art Museum, Photo: Mike Lundgren.
Another important acquisition made by the museum is Jacob van Ruisdael’s painting A River Landscape with a Waterfall, created around 1660. Although he never painted the American West, van Ruisdael would certainly influence many European landscape painters, including Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt and others. “In the 1930s, the painting was housed in the home-gallery of Jewish Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker. The saga of his family is a tragedy of the Second World War,” the museum notes. “As the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, the Goudstikker family fled. Hermann Göring, Nazi Reichsmarschall, looted this painting, along with many others, from the Goudstikker Gallery in Amsterdam. During World War II, the paintings were hidden by the Nazis. In 1945, as the war ended, this work, and others by Old Masters, were recovered by the Allies and the Dutch government. It took nearly 60 years for the Goudstikker family to obtain possession of the paintings once again. This painting was bought at auction in London in 2007. Affixed to the back of the painting are Goudstikker Gallery labels indicating this work’s possession by the Nazis during World War II.” —
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Calling all Western Art museums! Have a recently acquired painting or sculpture? Email the details to mclawson@westernartcollector.com.
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