Oklahoma City Museum of Art Associate Curator, Jennifer Klos, and the Gallery’s Director, Ian Dejardin, continue their discussion about the recent display of Dulwich’s Dutch Italianate paintings which closed recently in Oklahoma.
The exhibition is closed and the paintings are now on their way back to Dulwich. As they return Ian Dejardin tells us more about the pictures’ significance and his favourite pieces in the show.
JK: How did the founders of Dulwich Picture Gallery, Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois and Noel Desenfans, acquire the Dutch Italianate paintings?
ID: The story of our foundation is a natural-born Hollywood film. Our founders were kind of larger-than-life people. They were very interesting. They were foreigners within London. Desenfans was French. Bourgeois was Swiss, although his mother was English. They were always trying to break into the art establishment and always being resisted.
Our gallery’s origins are twofold, one in Jacobian England and the other in Poland in 1790. The King of Poland [Stanislas II August] (left) gave the commission to our founders to put together a national museum for Warsaw to be a royal collection that was to educate the people of Poland but history intervened. Basically, Poland ceased to exist. Stanislas never paid up any money.
And consequently, his influence has never really been traced on our collection, but it’s there, and it’s very interesting. The King of Poland, in giving this commission to our founders, clearly corresponded at length with them and had strong opinions on art. And so I think the shape of our collection, as it was eventually given to Dulwich College in 1811, owes quite a lot to his vision of what a collection for Poland would be like–It was to tell the history of art.
JK: Have these paintings ever travelled outside your gallery before this tour?
ID: Never in a group. As individual paintings, or even one or two of them have travelled to the United States before, but we have never toured our entire selection like this. There are several paintings that are the best of their kind.
JK: Lastly, what is your favorite painting or artist in the Dutch Italianates exhibition?
ID: It’s really hard because I love them all. But, my favorite happens to be my namesake, Karel du Jardin. Everyone loves Smith Shoeing an Ox, and I do, too, but actually it’s Peasants and a White Horse (right).
The painting had never been on view, and now it’s always on display. I can’t tell you how beautiful it is. The sky is poetic. And I just love that horse. He makes me want to cry. He’s so rackety. He’s so old. He’s worked so hard. And he seems to be laughing. I just find it very touching. The main thing that you cannot possibly judge from this reproduction is the unbelievable beauty of the landscape. It’s a very particular time of day, with these long shadows. And the little house or villa in the background is sunk in shadow, and you have these beautiful lilac hills on the horizon. It is really an extraordinary painting, and I have a completely irrational love of it.
With thanks to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art for allowing DOV to reproduce excerpts from their interview.
If you want to know what all the fuss is about, why not take a look at some of the pictures that went on loan to Oklahoma in this online picture gallery.
Which is your favourite and why? Leave us a comment below and share your thoughts.
You can also read the full interview on OCMOA’s website.
Images: with thanks to Dulwich Picture Gallery.
