VISUAL ART

Here’s Your Chance to See a Billionaire’s Private Art Collection Up Close

A selection of landscapes from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s private collection—we’re talking major American and European masterpieces—are finally available to the public, and heading for a national tour. First stop? PDX!

By Emma Mannheimer October 6, 2015

Gustav Klimt, Birch Forest, 1903, Oil on canvas, 42 1/4 x 42 1/4 inches, Paul G. Allen Family Collection

A favorite of Ferriso, Birch Forest is one of the little known landscape works completed by Klimt. “The piece is a tapestry of color and provides a chance to see landscape go from beautiful vista to abstract compilation of color and form,” says Ferriso. The work was stolen by the Nazi party during World War II and only after a lengthy legal battle returned to Klimt’s family by the Austrian government.

Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of Arizona at Sunset, 1909, Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches, Paul G. Allen Family Collection

Visualizations of the American West cannot be evoked without mention of Thomas Moran. His moving landscapes inspired the creation of legislation to protect natural areas such as Yosemite. In Moran’s stunning vista of the Grand Canyon, jagged rust-colored rocks rise skyward as chasms open from below. The ominous dark clouds moving inward suggest the untamed nature of the region.

Max Ernst, Paysage avec lac et chimères, c. 1940, Oil on canvas, 20 x 26 inches, Paul G. Allen Family Collection

The German-born Ernst made a name for himself in American circles through his short-lived marriage to heiress Peggy Guggenheim. His legacy however lies in his surrealist works, many of which reflect the artist’s emotional response to the outbreak and ensuing horror of World War II.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Black Iris VI, 1936, Oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches, Paul G. Allen Family Collection

Here O’Keeffe expertly captures the gentle three-dimensional folds of the iris. In its center a rich black draws the viewer in, like a hole you might tumble through upon leaning to close. The brilliant green of the stem moves the viewer’s attention vertically through the painting.

David Hockney, The Grand Canyon, 1998, Oil on canvas, 48 1/2 x 169 1/2 inches, Paul G. Allen Family Collection

The English born painter revels in the otherworldly colors of the Grand Canyon as electrifying shades of purple and orange shout through the depths of the canyon to the viewer. Made up of gridded smaller works that single out individual highlights of the landscape, this painting is one of many Hockney produced that were inspired by the iconic geographic feature.

Jan Brueghel the Younger, The Five Senses: Sight, c. 1625, Oil on panel, 27 5/8 x 44 5/8 inches, Paul G. Allen Family Collection

This series of five works (all on display) painted by the third generation Flemish artist are nearly identical copies of a set completed by his father Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens. Sight was a sense believed to have intellectual weight and here it is equated with the arts, as paintings fill the floor and busts occupy the shelves.

Claude Monet, En Paysage dans l’île Saint-Martin, 1881, Oil on canvas, 28 13/16 x 23 5/8 inches, Paul G. Allen Family Collection

A relatively small work for Monet, this idyllic painting takes the viewer through the French countryside alongside a green forest and to the hills beyond. The abundance of wild flowers is matched in spatial importance by the broad strokes that make up the sky.

Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto, The Grand Canal, Venice, Looking South-East from San Stae to the Fabbriche Nuove di Rialto, c. 1738, Oil on canvas, 18 1/2 x 30 5/8 inches, Paul G. Allen Family Collection

Venice proves itself an ever-popular subject of artistic fascination as interpretations by the likes of Manet, Thomas Moran and Joseph Mallord William Turner make appearances. Aptly named Venetian artist Canaletto, known for his meticulous compositions, presents a beautifully detailed vision of the famed waterways that gracefully leads the viewer’s eye through a wide passage littered with gondolas.

Life-long arts enthusiast and regional billionaire Paul Allen is offering a coveted slice of his private collection to the public, so save your art appetite Portland. Kicking off right here in Stumptown, Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection will be on show at the Portland Art Museum on October 10 before heading off on a national tour, making four other stops in the next two years.

The show was five years in the making and aims to give visitors an intimate gaze into the way some of the most prolific artists of the past centuries perceived the world around us. Given the value of this collection—one of the paintings, Klimt’s Birch Forest fetched over $40 million at auction in 2006—the museum teamed up with the Seattle Art Museum to apply for indemnity from the National Endowment for the Arts to allow them to house the works.

“The idea of the natural world is so prominent in our lives here, it envelops us every single day,” says Brian Ferriso, PAM Director and curator of Seeing Nature. “The exhibition will hopefully envelop its viewers and help us see our own world in new ways.”

From Monet’s iconic garden in Giverny to psychedelic visions of the Grand Canyon, onlookers will be exposed to 39 views that live not only in the physical realm but have been filtered through the minds of some of the world’s most revered painters.

Seeing Nature is at the Portland Art Museum from October 10–January 10.

Portland Art Museum

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Here’s Your Chance to See a Billionaire’s Private Art Collection Up Close

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