norton simon museum, pasdena, los angeles

Norton Simon Museum : 

Norton Simon Museum Pasadena, Los Angeles, California, USA First created. 10 December 2010. Version 1.0. London. Jerry Tse All rights reserved. Available free for non-commercial and non-profit use only

Auguste Rodin : 

Auguste Rodin On arrival visitors are greeted by to well-known sculptures by Auguste Rodin. On the left is The Burghers of Calais (1897), it is a sculpture of 6 Calais townspeople who offered their lives to save their fellow citizens. On the right is the French novelist literate giant, Balzac who wrote about complex, morally ambiguous and fully human characters.

The Sculpture Garden : 

The Sculpture Garden

The Sculpture Garden : 

The Sculpture Garden

The Painting Galleries : 

The Painting Galleries

Medieval : 

Medieval Madonna and Child. c1340. Tempera on panel. Paolo Veneziano. Italian. He has been called “the most important Venetian painter of the 14th century”. Note that baby Jesus looks more a small man than a baby.

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Medieval

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High Renaissance This Botticelli’s painting needs restoration, with its primer showing through giving the painting a greenish appearance. On the right show what the painting maybe like.

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High Renaissance St Benedict and Apollonia. c1483. Oil on panel. Filippino Lippi. Italian.

High Renaissance : 

High Renaissance St Paul and Frediano. c1483. Oil on panel. Filippino Lippi. Italian. Filippino Lippi is the illegitimate son of the painter Fra Filippo Lippi, who may have trained Sandro Botticelli .

High Renaissance : 

High Renaissance Madonna and Child with Book. 1502-03. Oil on panel. Sanzio Raffaello (Raphael). Italian. Raffaello was well-known for painting Madonna and Child. In his earlier years, he painted a stream of Madonna and Child. His Madonna and Child paintings were well loved, as he painted the affection between Madonna and the baby Jesus.

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German Renaissance Adam and Eve. c1530. Oil on panel. Lucas Cranach the Elder German. Lucas Cranach the Elder was a German Renaissance painter and a friend of Martin Luther.

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German Renaissance This German Mona Lisa was painted at least 25 years after Leonardo’s Mona Lisa.

Baroque : 

Baroque Baroque

Baroque : 

Baroque Rubens was a wealthy Flemish diplomat, popular with nobility and art collectors. He was well-known for his mythological and allegorical subjects.

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Dutch Golden Age

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Dutch Golden Age Rembrandt was an icon of 17C, Dutch Golden Age.

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Dutch Portraitist Frans Hals was, one of the best portrait painters of the 17C.

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Dutch Golden Age

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Dutch Golden Age

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Dutch Golden Age A masterpiece by Jan Steen

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Dutch Golden Age

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Dutch Golden Age

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Dutch Golden Age

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Spanish Painting Quite unusual to find an early 17C still-life by a well-known Spanish master.

Spanish Romaticism : 

Spanish Romaticism Goya was a painter of the Enlightenment era. He was known for his paintings on the horror of the French conquest of Spain.

Italian Veduta : 

Italian Veduta Luca Carlevarijs was the first to popularize the Italian Veduta paintings (views of Venice). This movement is well represented in the gallery by the additional paintings by Canaletto and Guardi.

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Italian Veduta

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Italian Veduta

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Italian Rococo

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French Landscape

French Landscape : 

French Landscape An unusual painting by Corot, who normally painted just landscape.

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French Realism Also an unusual painting by Courbet, who led the 19C Realist movement in France.

Impressionist : 

Impressionist Monet, the founder of French Impressionism.

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Impressionist A very large and impressive painting by Edouard Manet. “The Ragpicker” is a group of 7 monumental paintings of a single figures. This painting was inspired by Velazquez‘s “Philosophers”. Ragpicker. C1865-70. Oil on canvas. 195x131 cm. Edouard Manet. French. The painting was based on the idea that poverty and wisdom are linked. Beggars, ragpickers, drunks and peasants were often featured as characters in both literature and paintings.

Impressionist : 

Impressionist A different style of painting normally associated with Renoir.

Impressionist : 

Impressionist Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. 1878-81. Bronze. Edgar Degas. French.

Impressionist : 

Impressionist Works of Degas are well represented in the museum.

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Impressionist

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Post Impressionist Only three years separates between the two portraits.

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Modern Woman in a Moorish Costume (Detail). 1869. Oil on canvas. Frederic Bazille. Spanish.

Modern : 

Modern

Modern : 

Modern Bust of a Woman. 1923. Oil with black chalk on canvas. Pablo Picasso. Spanish.

Modern : 

Modern

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The Asian Art Galleries

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Buddha Shakyamuni. c1100. Granite. Tamil Nadu, India.

Asian Art : 

Asian Art

Asian Art : 

Asian Art Buddhist Goddess Tara. c1300. Gilted copper inlaid with semiprecious stones and pigments. Nepal or Tibet

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All rights reserved. Available free for non-commercial and non-profit use only Music – Sacrifice, written by Elton John. The End ‘Esc’ to end. History of the museum, the collection and the founder to follow.

The history of the museum. : 

The history of the museum. Norton Simon started collecting seriously in 1964, when he purchased the entire European collection of the Duveen Brothers. Today, his collection on European paintings is broadly based and methodological. The collection covers the whole span of European painting developments from the early Renaissance to modern days. All the mainstream movements are represented by works from the masters. However, one noticeable absence are paintings from America. In 1970s the collection started to include Asian Arts. Today, there are some 4,000 works in the collection. On European paintings the collection must rival in its importance to that of the more well-known Paul Getty Museum. It must rank as one of the best if not the best on the west coast of America. The European Painting collection In 1974 Norton Simon agreed to take over the Pasadena Art Museum, giving his collection a permanent home. In 1995, the museum began a major renovation and design. It also included a new theatre.

Norton Simon, the founder and collector : 

Norton Simon, the founder and collector A daring shrewd art collector Norton Simon is known as a successful businessman. At the age of 24, he made his first major business venture by investing in a bankrupt orange juice bottling plant, on which he built his business empire. From there he was involved in a string of businesses including, Hunts Food, Canadian Dry, Max Factor Cosmetics and Avis Car Rental. Norton Simon was passionate for the visual arts and embarked a journey to collect the finest works of art. It is amazing that any individual, can collect so much and so comprehensively, so recently and in such a short time. Norton Simon was born in 1907, Portland, Oregon. He died in 1993 in Beverly Hills, aged 86. “ I followed the road with unknown end. I go where the going looks best.” [1953]