Ellen Noël Art Museum hosts exhibit of war prints
From Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation
The Plains of Mars: European War Prints (1500-1825) from the Collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation opens at the Ellen Noël Art Museum Jan. 9. The exhibit will remain up through Feb. 28.
James Clifton, director of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, will speak at a free, opening reception at 7 p.m., Jan. 14. The Plains of Mars is comprised of approximately 100 engravings, woodcuts, etchings, lithographs and aquatints from about 1495 to 1825 by such renowned masters as Dürer, Goya, Callot and others, drawn entirely from the collection of the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation.
During the years covered by this exhibition, Europe remained in an almost perpetual state of war. Religion, politics, economics and dynastic ambition all played a role in the turmoil that spread across the continent. While such constant warfare is not historically unique, the proliferation of the printed image beginning in the late 15th century meant that various aspects and scenes of war could for the first time be experienced by the general public.
Le Soldat de Waterloo, Jean-Pierre-Marie Jazet, 1821, aquatint
The Plains of Mars is divided into four thematic categories: 1) soldiers, 2) soldiers and civilians, 3) battle and 4) peace. Widely ranging artistic techniques and perspectives are employed in these images, taking the viewer from the detached distance of a bird’s-eye view to the immediacy of the battlefield.
The Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation maintains a collection of Renaissance and Baroque art for the benefit of Texans. The goal of the foundation is to collect and preserve masterworks of art and to present this collection for educational purposes. The collection is the result of the generosity of Sarah Campbell Blaffer, an early Texan who became a connoisseur and avid collector. After her death in 1975, the trustees of the foundation she created assembled a collection of paintings for public exhibition that would illustrate the development of European art from the 15th to the 19th centuries. It includes works by such artists as Rubens, Van Dyck, Tintoretto, Veronese, Chardin and Gainsborough. The collection also includes extensive sets of prints by Hogarth and Goya, as well as a few early 20th-century paintings.
Since its opening in 1985, the Ellen Noël Art Museum has been very fortunate to have hosted more than 15 exhibitions from the Sara Campbell Blaffer Foundation’s collection. “The generosity of the foundation has reflected the original donor’s intent that historic paintings of the European masters could be made available to Texas communities that, otherwise, would not have access to such works of art,” said Executive Director Marilyn Bassinger.
The exhibit is sponsored by the Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation. Printing costs have been sponsored by Odessa Council for the Arts & Humanities, Texas Commission on the Arts and The Connoisseurs.
