“Inside the MFAH” provides perspectives, conversations, and opinions from insiders at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Posts Tagged Painting
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09 AprTue / 2013
In several of the paintings in "Picasso Black and White," Pablo Picasso characteristically leaves visible traces of earlier sketches on his canvas. The visible underdrawing and erasures are known as "pentimenti."
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23 OctTue / 2012
If you went blind tomorrow, would you still visit the art museum? If you couldn’t see art, would you still be able to have a positive art experience? The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, develops programming for the visually impaired as a part of Art Beyond Sight, an initiative started by Art Education for the Blind.
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30 AugThu / 2012
![](/site_media/cache/05/e5/05e55deaffc6f2a2cb4207cced95967f.jpg "Joshua Reynolds, Kitty Fisher as "Cleopatra" Dissolving the Pearl, 1759, oil on canvas, Kenwood House, English Heritage; Iveagh Bequest, 1927. (Photo courtesy American Federation of Arts)")
Kitty Fisher may have been the most scrutinized beauty featured in the magnificent Kenwood House portraits. She maintained a regular spot in the social spotlight thanks to her well-known affairs with wealthy men. Artists were no exception, and Sir Joshua Reynolds was one of her greatest admirers. . . .
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03 AugFri / 2012
![](/site_media/cache/f9/54/f95404d2a2cb518878ca07b6ee4ece78.jpg "John Hoppner, Mrs. Jordan as "Viola," c. 1785–92, oil on canvas, Kenwood House, English Heritage; Iveagh Bequest, 1927 (88028789)")
Mrs. Jordan was the leading comic actress of Georgian England, and in this portrait by English artist John Hoppner, she is painted in her role as Viola from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. In the play, Viola disguises herself as a man so she can be a page for the Duke of Orsino.
Mrs. Jordan (1761–1816) led a remarkable life and has been the subject of many biographies. . .
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22 JunFri / 2012
Who’s that cover girl starring on the Kenwood House exhibition catalogue? None other than the indisputably beautiful Mary, Countess Howe. Putting her best (elegantly dressed) foot forward in her full-length portrait by Thomas Gainsborough, she stands proudly in a dress that would have been at the height of fashion in the mid-1700s. Her pale complexion and arsenal of expensive accessories also attest to her aristocratic status.
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15 FebWed / 2012
Color Field painter Jules Olitski didn’t stay in one place for very long, artistically speaking. Unlike his contemporaries, Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, and Morris Louis, Olitski changed his artistic techniques much more frequently. “Olitski is unique among the Color Field Painters in the rapidity of his evolution,” says Alison de Lima Greene, curator of contemporary art and special projects at the MFAH. Greene is one of three curators of the current exhibition, Revelation: Major...
