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For art history graduate student Billie Jo Daniels-Breault, selecting a thesis topic was as simple as looking in SMU's own backyard -- the Meadows Museum. She was attracted over and over again to a painting in the Meadows collection -- Diego Velázquez's "Sibyl with Tabula Rasa" (1648). To Daniels-Breault, the portrait of the young woman pointing to her tablet conveyed such restrained elegance and delicate, translucent brushwork, she felt compelled to investigate when Velázquez painted it, possibly even redating it.
Scholars have written little about the "Sibyl," painted at the height of the Spanish artist's career. Upon first glance, an observer may not realize her creator labored mainly in the tony realm of Spanish kings. Diego Velázquez is considered one of the greatest painters of the 17th century. One of his portraits (1623-24) of young King Philip IV, who ruled Spain from 1621 to 1665, can be found in the Meadows Museum, as well as his "Portrait of Queen Mariana" (1656), the king's young second wife.
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The Velázquez paintings are included in one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain. Other major artists in the Meadows collection include Ribera, El Greco, Murillo, Goya, Picasso, and Miró. The collection, originally donated by the late oilman Algur H. Meadows beginning in 1965, now includes 670 paintings, sculpture, and works on paper. They represent the art of Spain from the 10th to the 20th centuries, with particular emphasis on paintings from the country's Renaissance and Baroque periods (1500 to 1800).
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Since it opened, the Meadows Museum collection has inspired and enlightened members of the SMU community and thousands of visitors from throughout the world. It also has served as a vast resource for students, not only in art and art history but also in history, psychology, English, and religion, among others. And for scholars of Spanish art, the specialized nature of the collection, appropriate for a southwestern population immersed in Spanish culture and history, has been its greatest attraction and strength.
"Researchers can do great work with reproductions (from slides)," says John Lunsford, director of the Meadows Museum, "but a serious scholar wants to view the original work of art. And they have to come to SMU if they are interested in a certain kind of work," particularly in devotional or religious art, he adds.
One such work is "Acacius and the 10,000 Martyrs on Mount Ararat" (1490), a wood panel from an altarpiece typically produced in central and western Spain at the end of the 15th century, attributed to Francisco or Fernando Gallego. The painting recently traveled with 26 other works on a good will mission to Spain to hang in museums in Madrid and Barcelona. Although the Barcelona museum also owns a similar Gallego, that museum's staff declared the Meadows' work to be the superior piece, Lunsford says.
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Another rare piece in the Meadows' collection is a 14th-century Catalan Eucharist cabinet, used in connection with the sacrament of communion. It served as the basis for a scholarly article by Pamela Patton, assistant professor of art history and former Meadows Museum curator, who uses the collection to teach undergraduates as well as to support thesis development for graduate students. The Catalan cabinet, like many of the works in the Meadows collection, reflects intense religious feelings and the influence of a heavily dominant Catholic Church in Spain. Numerous works are rich in symbolism that tells the story of the church, because few among the general population could then read. The cabinet's function is clear from its lively figural paintings -- to link the theology surrounding the Eucharist with the events of Christian history, such as the Annunciation and the Crucifixion. "It's a very rare object," Patton says. "This is the only one in the country, probably in the Western Hemisphere."
A 1995 addition to the collection, Luis de Morales' "Pietà," provided a thesis topic for art history graduate student Kelly Chamblee ('96). Morales, also known as "el Divino" ("The Divine One"), was known for his devotional panels. Chamblee found that the lack of documentation on these panels, however, had resulted in confusion over attribution and chronology. She used this version of the "Pietà" (ca. 1560) to explore the relationship of the Meadows panel to the 42 other known versions, mostly scattered throughout Spain and Madrid. This oil on panel features the half-length figure of the Virgin Mary, who tenderly embraces the dead body of her son; the proximity of their faces intensifies the sorrow of the moment. What made the panel especially noteworthy is the elaborate preliminary drawing found beneath the layers of paint. The drawing was revealed under infrared reflectography in the conservation studio of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. The underdrawing suggests that the artist may have first worked out this version of his "Pietà" composition on this panel. "It is to be hoped that the arguments presented in this study of the Meadows 'Pietà' will stimulate further research and technical study of this artist and his paintings, bringing them the scholarly attention that they so justly deserve," Chamblee wrote.
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Another graduate student, Cidnee Patrick ('00), who received her M.A. in art history in December, used the collection's "Portrait of the Dwarf Michol" by Juan Carreño de Miranda to focus on the relationship between dwarves and the Habsburg kings in 17th-century Spanish paintings. Although the tradition of dwarf painting had existed for some time at the Spanish court, Velázquez revolutionized dwarf portraiture in the court of Philip IV. Patrick found that Carreño, who served as the court painter to Charles II, Philip's son, continued that tradition in a similar sympathetic cast.
For her research on the "Sibyl," Daniels-Breault visted museums in Madrid and London's Tate Gallery, which owns Velázquez's "Venus and Cupid," painted between 1648 and 1651 during his second trip to Italy. The painterly techniques and brushstrokes are similar to those found in the Meadows' "Sibyl," she says. Daniels-Breault believes the artist also painted the "Sibyl" during that period, although the dress on the female figure is found in the classic sibyl types of the Italian High Renaissance, including those depicted by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel frescoes that Velázquez had seen during his first trip to Rome in 1629-30.
To support their research, the Art History Department awarded Haakon travel grants to enable Chamblee, Patrick, and Daniels-Breault to travel to Spain and London. "We are proud to be able to award these grants to so many of our graduate students; it is an honor for them," Patton says. The Meadows Museum has incorporated the students' research into a handbook of its paintings and sculptures published last year.
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The collection provides support to more than art historians, however; artists and art students use the paintings to study physical aspects such as textures, layers, shadings, and tones. "If they are interested in the hand of the artist," Lunsford says, "they need to see the original work."
Meadows Professor of Art Laurence Scholder uses the museum's series of Goya etchings to show his printmaking students how the artist developed his techniques in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Through his etchings Goya made social and political commentaries on the ills of society in "Los Caprichos" ("The Caprices"), on war in "Los Desastres de la Guerra" ("The Disasters of War"), on bullfighting in "La Tauromaquia," and on fear and superstition in "Los Disparates" ("The Follies"). Because the prints are sensitive to light, they are seldom displayed in the Meadows galleries. But each term, the museum takes the etchings out of storage and allows Scholder's students to view them up close.
"My classes learn technically how to do everything Goya did," Scholder says. "If his drawing ability rubs off on them, that's pretty good, too." Scholder also uses other artists' works to help students understand how they developed their approaches to painting. "I want the students to put themselves into Velázquez's shoes: To see that the middle tones were painted first, then the darks laid in transparently, and, finally, the lights applied opaquely," he says. "You don't get that from a reproduction."
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The strength of the Meadows' collection is not only its quality, Lunsford says, but also its ability to interact with other disciplines on campus. Ed Sylvest, associate professor in Perkins School of Theology, relies heavily on the collection when teaching the history of Christianity as it developed in 16th-century Spain, particularly for Protestant students unfamiliar with Hispanic Catholicism. Sylvest incorporates paintings by artists such as El Greco, Murillo, Palomino, Ribera, and Zubarán into discussions about devotion to the Virgin Mary and the saints in Spain. "I use the collection as a way of opening up students to the spirituality found in the art, what the theological message is," he says. "I conduct devotional exercises with students in the galleries, encouraging them to use the paintings as an occasion for meditation."
In teaching the history of Spanish biblical scholarship, Sylvest often refers to a tempera and oil on wood panel, "The Investiture of Saint Ildefonsus" (1508-14), by Juan de Borgoña, which also relates to a holding in Perkins School's Bridwell Library -- the Complutensian Polyglot Bible. The painting depicts a popular Spanish subject: Saint Ildefonsus, a seventh-century archbishop of Toledo, receiving a chasuble, or bishop's robe, from the Virgin Mary. The kneeling Ildefonsus bears a strong resemblance to the powerful Archbishop Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros, Borgoña's patron. Ximénez is credited with ordering the scholarly translation of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, to reconcile the Vulgate text attributed to Saint Jerome with its Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic sources. In 1999 Meadows Museum and Bridwell Library combined resources to present "Faith in Conflict: Devotional Images and Forbidden Books from Spain's Counter Reformation," featuring holdings from each collection to reveal the complex and powerful forces that helped shape Spanish culture at the dawn of the modern era.
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Since Algur Meadows donated the first Spanish paintings to SMU to create the Meadows Museum, the collection has grown in depth and size. The small exhibition and gallery space in its former location at Meadows School of the Arts limited the number of paintings that could be displayed at any one time.
A new Meadows Museum, which opened in March 2001 at Bishop Boulevard and Mockingbird Lane, increases the old museum's size from 11,000 square feet to 66,000 square feet. The expanded exhibition space and special galleries will enable the Meadows Museum to develop "focus exhibits" that will engage scholarly participation from guest curators, Lunsford says. They also will provide additional opportunities to feature more of the Meadows' print collection (in a climatically controlled gallery) and a greater context for works that are seldom displayed. In addition, labels for the works will be printed in English and Spanish to broaden the outreach to the Hispanic and international communities, he adds.
"The new Meadows Museum will allow us to become the university museum we've wanted to be all along," Lunsford says.
Meadows Museum hours
are:
Mon, Tue, Fri, Sat -- 10am-5pm
Thur -- 10am-8pm
Sun -- 1pm-5pm
Wed -- closed
For more information call: 214-768-2516.