Zhang Daqian

Lotus in the Wind and Rain

1940
Ink and color on paper

Innovative and prolific, Zhang Daqian (1899–1983) is the most respected and best known of 20th-century Chinese artists. Skilled in imitating techniques of ancient artists, Zhang delighted in passing off his forgeries to museums and collectors around the world, and was also a principal innovator in Chinese ink painting. Zhang’s brushwork became more expressive and flamboyant throughout his career, as can be seen in the dramatic lotus leaves in this painting. When he was shown this work years after its creation, Zhang was so pleased with it that he asked the collector to return it to him. The collector refused, retaining the painting until 2014 when he generously donated the work to the MFA.

Gift of Mark S. Pratt

Frida Kahlo

Dos Mujeres (Salvadora y Herminia)
[Two Women (Salvadora and Herminia)]

1928
Oil on canvas

Kahlo’s double portrait of Salvadora, left, and Herminia—maids in her parents’ household, the Casa Azul (Blue House)—is both personal and political. Kahlo knew both women from her childhood and her portrayal pays tribute to them as individuals and subjects worthy of the first painting she ever sold. In keeping with the ideals of the Mexican Revolution, Kahlo’s depiction of working women of Mexican heritage celebrates the diversity of the country’s population. Ever attentive to the natural world, the artist includes two fruits, which have been identified as Mexican limas, and butterflies on either side of the women, set against dense tropical foliage. Held privately since 1929, this painting is the first by Kahlo to enter a New England museum and one of only 13 in public collections across the United States.

Charles H. Bayley Picture and Paintings Fund, William Francis Warden Fund, Sophie M. Friedman Fund, Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow Fund, Tompkins Collection—Arthur Gordon Tompkins Fund, Gift of Jessie H. Wilkinson—Jessie H. Wilkinson Fund, and Robert M. Rosenberg Fund
© 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

St. Michael Slaying the Devil (S. Michael Archangelus)

Mexico
Late 16th century
Featherwork image with cut feathers and colored and gilt paper, on paper and copper; original ebony frame

This rare Mexican featherwork painting (a picture made of cut feathers) has a royal provenance. It is believed to have been owned by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (1552–1612) and is listed among nine feather paintings in the 1607 inventory of his famous Kunstkammer (art cabinet) in Prague. Mexican amantecas, or indigenous feather artists, created remarkable artworks, often based on European prints, by layering tiny pieces of iridescent tropical bird feathers to create exquisite colorful and shimmering images. These pieces were exported to Europe, China, and Japan; a spectacular example of the blending of Spanish and indigenous culture in Latin America, they are very rare in American museum collections.

Charles H. Bayley Picture and Painting Fund, Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow Fund, Gift of Jessie H. Wilkinson—Jessie H. Wilkinson Fund, and Edwin E. Jack Fund

The Art of the Americas collection has been augmented by important acquisitions of the Spanish Colonial period that demonstrate the fusion of indigenous artistic traditions with global influences and contribute to our understanding of viceregal New Spain.

Alice Neel

Two Girls, Spanish Harlem

1959
Oil on canvas

The recent gift of two early paintings by Neel makes the MFA the only New England museum to represent the full six-decade span of this pioneering American artist’s career. In Two Girls, Spanish Harlem, Neel painted her sad-eyed neighbors Antonia and Carmen Encarnacion in 1959, at a time when she planned to depart Spanish Harlem, the neighborhood of her home and studio of 20 years, for the tonier Upper West Side. Relocated to upper Broadway, Neel would gain fame painting figures from New York’s art and literary worlds. Both paintings were given to the Museum by longstanding Contemporary Visiting Committee Member Barbara Lee.

Gift of Barbara Lee
© The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London

Progress Vase

Reed and Barton
Designed by William Beattie
Taunton, Massachusetts
About 1875
Silver, silver-plate, and gilding

Standing nearly five feet tall, the Progress Vase is a virtuoso centerpiece made by the Reed and Barton Company for the 1876 Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia. The monumental work won the grand prize for silver-plated wares for its impressive craftsmanship and design. Described by the company as “A Symbolic Representation of the Progress of America, from Savage to Civilized Life,” the piece reflects 19th-century attitudes regarding westward expansion and Manifest Destiny.

Museum purchase with funds donated by Deedee and Barrie A. Wigmore and funds by exchange from a Gift of Margueritte E. Kimball, Gift in memory of Hannah Levy, Gift of Donald O. Reichert, American Decorative Arts Curator's Fund, Gift of Suzanne and Frederic Weinstein, Gift of the Haim S. Eliachar Family Fund, Gift of R. Thornton Wilson in memory of Florence Ellsworth Wilson, Gift of Margret Craver Withers, Gift of Mrs. Yves Henry Buhler, Gift of the artist, Gift of Richard and Margaret Kavesh, Gift of Buford Colgate Joiner, Gift of the Howard Kottler Testamentary Trust, and Gift of Bloomingdale’s

In recognition of Clifford Ackley’s long service in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, friends and supporters gave gifts to the collection in his honor as well as created a fund to purchase significant works on paper, selected by Cliff, for the Museum.

The John Singer Sargent Archive and the MFA’s Sargent holdings benefited this year from an important gift of letters, photographs, documents, and other materials by, showing, or associated with John Singer Sargent, donated by Sargent scholar and great-nephew of the artist, Richard Ormond, and his wife Leonee.

Head of a queen in the guise of Isis

Egyptian, Ptolemaic Period
200–100 BC
Marble

The goddess Isis was beloved not only by native Egyptians but also by the Macedonian Greek Ptolemies who ruled Egypt following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. Eventually the Romans, having conquered Egypt, spread the cult of the goddess throughout their vast empire. The idealized features, corkscrew curls, and fillet, or headband, of this Ptolemaic queen identify her as a representation of Isis, rendered in Greek Classical style, with Egyptian royal attributes, speaking to the cosmopolitan nature of Egypt in the Ptolemaic and early Roman eras.

Florence E. and Horace L. Mayer Fund and Marilyn M. Simpson Fund

Shaka, the Historical Buddha, before his Enlightenment from the Illustrated Sutra of Cause and Effect, Past and Present (Kako genzai e inga-kyō)

Japanese
Late 13th century
Section of a handscroll mounted as a hanging scroll; ink and color on paper

This is a section from a set of celebrated handscrolls of the Illustrated Sutra of Cause and Effect that describe the exemplary life of the Historical Buddha. On the right, the Buddha strolls towards a group of trees while the earth trembles in anticipation of his enlightenment. To the left, a flock of blue swallows encircles his head, expressing their joy. In 2014, Sylvan Barnet and his late partner William Burto donated four sections of the handscrolls to the Museum. Before his own death this past year, Barnet was excited to acquire this additional section for the MFA.

Museum purchase with funds donated by Sylvan Barnet in memory of William C. Burto

Howardena Pindell

Memory: Future

1980–81
Mixed media on canvas

Memory: Future is a consummate example of Pindell’s distinctive and unconventional technique: her highly textured paintings, made with multiple collaged fragments, include hundreds of paper circles produced by a hole punch. Poetic and layered with memory and history, this work speaks to Pindell’s important rethinking of painting itself and her engagement with feminist art practice of the 1980s. The work’s acquisition, honoring the appointment of Ann and Graham Gund Director Matthew Teitelbaum, was made possible through the advocacy and generosity of longtime friends and Millennial Benefactors, Barbara and Ted Alfond.

Museum purchase with funds donated by Barbara L. and Theodore B. Alfond through the Acorn Foundation in honor of Ann and Graham Gund Director, Matthew D. Teitelbaum
Courtesy the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis Rosenberg
for Nervous System

Kinematics 8 dress

2016
Laser-sintered (3D-printed) nylon

In 2013, Somerville-based Nervous System—founded by a mathematician and an architect/biologist—became the first design house to create a flexible 3D-printed garment that comes off the printer ready to wear. Featured in the 2016 exhibition “#techstyle,” Kinematics 8 highlights the firm’s innovative design process. Generated from a body scan, the dress can be fully customized using a design app on the company’s website. The customer can change the garment’s silhouette and the direction of the petals and three panels are then snapped together after printing. The dress’s wearability illustrates the impact of 3D printing technology on the future of fashion design.

Arthur Tracy Cabot Fund

Side drum

Boston
1824
Probably painted by Charles Hubbard
Maple, calfskin, rope

The military has long used drums to call troops to duty and accompany their drills. Militia units multiplied after the War of 1812, each requiring at least one side drum and a larger bass drum. That demand was readily met by American drum makers, who adorned the instruments with specific images and emblems. This drum was made for the Boston City Guards, using an insignia adapted from the seal of Massachusetts. Boston sign painter Charles Hubbard probably created its decoration, the finest and most colorful known example of such work.

William Francis Warden Fund

Louise Bourgeois

Pillar

1949–50 (cast 1990)
Hollow cast bronze, white and blue paint, stainless steel base

Pillar is first sculpture by Louise Bourgeois to enter the MFA’s collection. Part of The Personages, acknowledged as the artist’s “first mature personal work” and a crucial achievement in American postwar sculpture, this abstracted figure reflects her concerns with human relationships, identity, and a “tangible way of re-creating a missed past.” Guardian Benefactor and member of the Contemporary Art Visiting Committee Michael Zinner donated Pillar in loving memory of his late wife Ronny—a longtime Overseer and champion of contemporary art at the MFA.

Gift of Michael J. Zinner, M.D., in loving memory of Rhonda Zinner
© The Easton Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

Model of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Jerusalem

Bethlehem or Jerusalem
Late 17th century
Olive wood, mother-of-pearl, bone inlays

From the 17th century on, scale models of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem were produced by Middle Eastern craftsmen working in Franciscan monasteries in the Holy Land. The models were made as gifts for European rulers and diplomats and as souvenirs for wealthy pilgrims, who prized them as replicas of the holiest site in Christendom. The wooden models—about 30 are known today—were made in different sizes and with varying degrees of refinement and complexity. Large versions like this one can be taken apart to allow one to explore the interior spaces and towers.

Frank B. Bemis Fund

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Belcolore

1863
Oil on canvas

A founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, English painter Rossetti admired the naturalism of the early Italian Renaissance, giving his paintings titles from Italian poetry. Belcolore, “beautiful color,” showcases beauty without narrative pretext, a key aspect of Rossetti’s work in the 1860s. The acquisition of Belcolore reunites at the MFA two important examples of Rossetti’s work from this period. First owned by George Price Boyce, a close friend of Rossetti, Belcolore and Bocca Baciata (1980.261) were acquired in the early 20th century by Mrs. Edward D. Brandegee (née Mary Pratt, 1871–1956) of Brookline. The paintings, in their original frames, remained with her descendants until they were each donated to the MFA.

Gift of Dr. Nile Albright and Mrs. Lee Lawrence Albright

Renaissance Revival Neck Ornament

Designed by G. Paulding Farnham for Tiffany & Co.
1900–04
Platinum, gold, enamel, diamond, ruby, emerald, cat’s eye, chrysoberyl, sapphire, and pearl

This neck ornament is a centerpiece of the Museum’s jewelry collection and the first work by G. Paulding Farnham to enter the MFA collection. Farnham led Tiffany’s jewelry department from 1891 to 1907, and many of his revival-themed jewels were shown, to great acclaim, at the 1901 Buffalo Exposition. It was around that time that Farnham designed this neck ornament. With its scrolls, soft color palette, and incorporation of precious and semiprecious stones, it evokes the Renaissance passion for gem-set jewelry.

Gift of Susan B. Kaplan

For Clark, hairdressing is the “primordial fiber art.” For The Hair Craft Project, Clark visited 11 hairdressers, inviting them to demonstrate their skills in twisting, braiding, and beading on two supports: Clark’s own head, and silk strands on a canvas. Acquired with the support of the Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection, this multipart work by an important African American artist documents a vital creative form in contemporary African American culture. The Hair Craft Project was a featured and favorite work in the 2015 exhibition “Crafted: Objects in Flux.”

Kenneth Noland

Via Blues

1967
Acrylic on canvas

Two exemplary paintings by Kenneth Noland, one of the most significant American Color Field painters, entered the MFA’s collection this year. Via Blues, shown here, and Via Flow, the other painting in the gift, are part of a series that Noland produced in the late 1960s featuring horizontal bands in carefully considered color juxtapositions. Both Noland works came to the Museum through the generosity of longtime friends of the MFA, Millennial Benefactors, and Honorary Trustees, Ann and Graham Gund.

Gift of Ann and Graham Gund
Image courtesy Ann and Graham Gund. Photograph by Greg Heins.
© Estate of Kenneth Noland/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY