All Photos By Gail
Over the course of their nearly twenty-year partnership, Anton Kimbel (1822–1895) and Joseph Cabus (1824–1898) developed one of New York City’s leading furniture and decorating firms. Sons of German and French cabinetmaking families, they defined a new take on Modern Gothic design, a style that originated in Britain and was embraced by a growing middle class in the post–Civil War United States.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Red Tufted Geometric Armchair By Kimbel and Cabus
All Photos By Gail
J. Pierpont Morgan amassed large holdings of medieval art and seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century French decorative art from the collection of interior decorator Georges Hoentschel. Grasping the collection’s importance to artists and designers, Morgan immediately donated many decorative works to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even the financier may not have fully realized what an impact his gift would have. It led to a new wing, which opened in 1910, and the creation of The Met’s Decorative Arts department, which was the first of its kind in an American museum. Continue reading Eye On Design: Neoclassical Armchair by Georges Jacob
All Photos By Gail
This Grecian Sofa (New York Circa 1820 – 25) exhibits a highly sophisticate blend of line, detailed carving and subtle color.
The carved vert antique legs in the shape of dolphins are found on others sofas of the period and relate to maritime talismans. Traditionally, in Greek myth, dolphins aided shipwrecked sailors.
Photographed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
Photo By Gail
In her paintings, Florine Stettheimer (1871 – 1944) often depicted herself, her mother and sisters, and the artists who frequented the vibrant gatherings in her family’s Manhattan apartment. Alongside likenesses of her sitters, she typically included emblems of the individual’s identity — clues to character that could only be deciphered by this privileged audience.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Florine Stettheimer, Sun
Photo By Gail
These superb Wrought Iron Gates (circa 1900) by Emile Robert (French 1860 -1924) are rendered by hand in the curvilinear Art Nouveau style, which originated in northern Europe in the late 1890s and flourished until World War I. The revival of interest in wrought iron work in this period was inspired by the beautiful, ornate, Rococo gates and fences around the main square and garden of the French city of Nancy, an early center of the Art Nouveau style. The butterfly motif in these gates is indicative of the main influences of Art Nouveau design: observation of the natural world and motifs popular in Japanese art.
Photographed in the Brooklyn Museum.