6 November 2024
Art

Detroit Institute of Arts

The Detroit Institute of Arts is a pretty impressive art museum in a city that often gets a bum rap. It’s located in midtown Detroit, Michigan, and has one of the largest art collections in the United States.

The 658,000-square-foot museum has more than 100 galleries. It was one of those miserable layouts where you enter one room and have multiple exit options , making it near impossible to keep track of what you’d seen and not miss anything. I resorted to tracing my route on a map, and am sure I still missed some stuff.

That being said, the collection is considered one of the best in the United States. It dates back to 1883 when it received it first painting, and today has more than 65,000 works.

The cover photo features four Jean-Honore Fragonard paintings circa 1754-55, Scenes of Country Life: The Shepherdess, The Gardener, The Grape Gatherer, The Reaper. The Large Writing Table underneath is circa 1780 by Jean-Henri Riesener. The piece atop the top is Maternity by Joseph-Charles Marin, circa 1793.

It’s a painted Ostrich egg! From about 1775, it was painted by Clement-Louis-Marie-Anne Le Bel, with the mounts attributed to Pierre Gouthiere. This artform took two master craftsmen to pull off!
Lady Anne Hamilton, 1777-80, Thomas Gainsborough.
Detail on Lady Anne Hamilton, 1777-80, Thomas Gainsborough.
The Little Gardner, 1700s, John Hoppner.
How lovely is this Claude Monet painting?!  Rounded Flower Bed, 1876.
The Four-Leaf Clover, 1873, Winslow Homer.
Woman in an Armchair, 1874, Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Portrait of Manuel Pallares, 1929, Pablo Picasso.
Madame Paul Poirson, 1885, John Singer Sargent.
Portrait of Postman Roulin, 1888, Vincent van Gogh.
Bank of the Oise at Auvers, 1890, Vincent van Gogh. “Behind a series of brightly colored rowboats, this tangle of vegetation almost crackles with movement.”
Detail on van Gogh’s Bank of the Oise at Auvers. “Here his short brushstrokes and thickly applied paint energize the entire surface of the painting.”
Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, 1888, 1888, Childe Hassam.
Part of the Detroit Industry Murals by Diego Rivera, which were commissioned murals for DIA in 1932. The full set is twenty-seven panels, depicting industry at the Ford Motor Company and in Detroit.
Poppies, circa 1914, Henri Matisse.
Drummer Boy, 1857, Thomas Couture.
The Beach Hat, 1914, Robert Cozad Henri. The woman is Henri’s wife Marjorie.

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