Ongoing at SDMA
In response to the trauma of the Civil War and rapid industrialization, Tonalist artists like George Inness created atmospheric paintings with muted colors and shadowy compositions, often depicting solitary figures or rural scenes at dawn or dusk. These works, with their emphasis on mood and introspection, were often compared to musical experiences.
Dutch Painting – Special Loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Through March 2027
A special group of loans from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, will afford visitors to The San Diego Museum of Art an extraordinary view of Dutch society and artistic traditions in the 17th century. By 1600, the Dutch Republic had begun to emerge as an international economic powerhouse. A seafaring nation, albeit a geographically tiny one, the Netherlands was a self-governing republic consisting of the seven northern provinces that had joined in successful revolt against Spanish rule. While not entirely democratic in modern terms, the new Dutch system featured a far greater degree of local autonomy than the established European model of absolute monarchy. The Dutch economy was plugged into the major trade routes connecting Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa, through its Dutch East India Corporation (founded 1602). While fostering a liberal economy and social tolerance at home, the Republic also participated in colonial expansion and the transatlantic trade of enslaved peoples.
With neither a royal court nor a state church in need of images (Catholicism had been banned in the Netherlands in 1581 in favor of the Protestant Reformed Church), patronage of the arts shifted to the merchant class, whose new wealth was poured into imported luxury goods and secular paintings.
Such highly detailed pictures (still life, interiors, landscapes, and portraits) were small enough to illuminate the lived interiors of Dutch townhouses, filling domestic life with order, beauty, color, and signs of prosperity. The exquisite paintings from the world-renowned Dutch holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, were aspirational “mirrors of nature,” reflecting ideal values of everyday life in the Netherlands, and its place in a rapidly globalizing world.
Icons of Imperial Russia
Through August 15, 2027
Icons are religious images in the Greek or Russian tradition. They differ from devotional pictures in Western Christianity in several important ways. Icon painters worked in two dimensions, focusing on symbolic representations, rather than illusions of space and volume. Icon scenes are situated beyond earthly time and space, with gold representing both light and landscape. Icons’ physical characteristics are often designed for portability, reflecting the needs of everyday religious practices.
The first Russian icons were painted in the 1100s by monks in Kyiv, the capital of the vast realm of Kievan Rus. These works were based on earlier examples from Byzantium, Kyiv’s main economic partner. Constantinople (modern Istanbul), center of the Byzantine Empire, exerted cultural and linguistic dominance throughout the Mediterranean and across the Caspian Sea.
Artistic practices in Kyiv were strictly regulated until the 1650s. Some later icons show traces of Western Christian styles such as shading and modeling of faces. Traditional features such as the oklad, or sculpted metal facing, often coexisted with such techniques. Most icons were not signed by individual artists, as is the case with all the works on display here.
The exhibited works come from southwestern territories of the Russian Empire (about 1721–1917), mainly Ukraine, and played an integral role in daily life. Here these icons offer an immersive and contemplative experience for all visitors.
For more information on The San Diego Museum of Art or to purchase tickets or membership, visit SDMArt.org.
