In 1969, the New York couple Philip and Lynn Straus celebrated their twentieth wedding ceremony anniversary by buying Salome, a lithograph by Edvard Munch. The 1903 work, printed in black ink on yellowish Japanese paper, exhibits a pair merging right into a single being, and it set the Strauses on a decades-long path. They went on to assemble certainly one of America’s premier collections of the Norwegian artist, together with a variety of works on paper and a number of other key work. Philip, an funding banker, died in 2004, and Lynn, a former trainer, died in 2023. This week, the Harvard Artwork Museums are saying a present of 64 Munch works owned by the couple.
Together with the Salome print, standout works embrace six iterations of Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones)—an oil-on-canvas portray from 1906-08 and 5 works on paper of the identical motif, all displaying a person and a girl, separate from one another and staring out to sea. The prints cowl a broad vary in methodology and tone, from a mid-Nineties etching to a mid-1910s heavily-coloured woodcut. Every of those 5 prints, although “formally related”, is “a definite murals”, says Elizabeth Rudy, curator of prints on the Harvard Artwork Museums. Along with the oil model of the scene, she provides, the museums can now present “a really deep dive” into how Munch explored certainly one of his extra notable motifs.
Edvard Munch, Prepare Smoke, 1910. Oil on canvas. Harvard Artwork Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, The Philip and Lynn Straus Assortment Picture: © President and Fellows of Harvard School; courtesy of the Harvard Artwork Museums
Philip Straus, a Harvard School alumnus, and his spouse had a longstanding relationship with the museums. This newest bequest follows on earlier donations, together with a $7.5m present to Harvard’s high quality arts coaching and analysis facility, the Straus Middle for Conservation and Technical Research. The 1906-08 portray, together with Prepare Smoke, a 1910 Munch portray that can be a part of the brand new bequest, have simply accomplished their very own Straus Middle conservation remedies. Till Lynn’s current demise, says her son Philip Straus, Jr, the 2 work have been in the lounge of the household residence in Mamaroneck, New York.
Not solely did the couple select to reside with these work, provides Straus, a 73-year-old photographer who lives in Philadelphia, their Munch prints “have been totally on the partitions.
Philip and Lynn Straus with their first Edvard Munch print, Salome (1903), round 1969 Picture: Courtesy Philip A. Straus, Jr
Examination of the 2 oil work within the bequest have yielded shocking info, says Lynette Roth, curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum. (The Busch-Reisinger is among the Harvard Artwork Museums’ three constituent establishments, that are all housed in the identical Renzo Piano advanced, opened in 2014.) Roth says the technical examination revealed that an space within the foreground of Prepare Smoke, now light to virtually white, was initially “a hotter crimson”.
The newest bequest additionally features a Jasper Johns 1982 lithograph and monotype, displaying his so-called Savarin motif, depicting a espresso can with paint brushes, with an arm on the backside that refers back to the skeletal arm in Munch’s personal 1895 self-portrait. The brand new bequest has a later Munch self-portrait, from 1911-12—a extreme, vertical-lined woodcut on Japan paper.
Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait, 1911–12. Woodcut with gouges on Japan paper. Harvard Artwork Museums/Fogg Museum, The Philip and Lynn Straus Assortment Picture: © President and Fellows of Harvard School; courtesy of the Harvard Artwork Museums
Although the couple made the preliminary gathering foray collectively, “the primary Munch fan was Lynn”, says Marjorie B. Cohn, former curator of prints on the Harvard Artwork Museums, who first obtained to know the couple within the Nineteen Eighties. “Phil ultimately caught the Munch bug,” Cohn says, and “seeing that the prints have been extraordinarily different, was decided to search out one of the best ones and ignore the remainder.”
The Strauses went past merely donating; over time, additionally they suggested Harvard on which Munchs to buy. The museums now have a complete of 142 Munch works, 117 of which have been both donated or assisted in buy by the Strauses, in line with a museums spokesperson.
Edvard Munch, Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones), 1899. Woodcut printed in orange, yellow, black and darkish greenish blue on tan wove paper. Harvard Artwork Museums/Fogg Museum, The Philip and Lynn Straus Assortment Picture: © President and Fellows of Harvard School; courtesy of the Harvard Artwork Museums
Different notable works within the new bequest embrace 4 impressions of Madonna, Munch’s erotic model of a devotional picture that seems elsewhere throughout a number of media; and a late lithograph, Self-Portrait with a Bottle of Wine (1930), printed in black ink.
Each work and 33 prints from the brand new bequest will go on public show in a Harvard present opening 7 March. Edvard Munch: Technically Talking options loans from Oslo’s Munchmuseet, the principle repository of the artist’s work and legacy, together with an oil model of Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones) from round 1935, wherein the daytime palette of the Straus model has shifted to phantasmagoric, and the order of the 2 figures is reversed.
