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November 21-25, 2023: Thanksgiving in San Antonio |
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October 22 - November 2, 2023: Our Fall Trip to Florida- Part 2 |
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November 4, 2023
The Sorolla Exhibit at the Meadows Museum
Dinner with Prudence in Fort Worth
One reason we returned from Ecuador when we did was to be able to meet Prudence, Nancy, and their husbands for a tour of the Sorolla Exhibit at the Meadows Museum over at SMU. Then they were going over to stay in Fort Worth, and we planned on joining them there for dinner.
The Meadows Museum
The Meadows Museum, a division of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University (SMU), advances knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the arts and culture of Spain through the collection and interpretation of works of the greatest aesthetic and historical importance.
The Meadows Museum is over on the SMU Campus, a little over two miles from me. We have biked by their frequently, but I don't actually recall the last time I was inside the museum.
To get there, it's just down Inwood to Mockingbird, across to SMU, and then a block north on the drive into the campus. The museum and its parking garage are on our right.
During business trips to Spain in the 1950s, Texas philanthropist and oil financier Algur H. Meadows spent many hours at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid. The Prado’s spectacular collection of Spanish masterpieces inspired Meadows to begin his own collection of Spanish art.
In 1962, through The Meadows Foundation, he gave Southern Methodist University funds for the construction and endowment of a museum to house his Spanish collection. The Meadows Museum opened in 1965 as part of the new Owen Arts Center at SMU. In the years that followed, Algur Meadows provided the impetus and funds for an aggressive, but highly selective, acquisitions program through which an extraordinary collection was developed in a remarkably short period of time.
Since his death in 1978, The Meadows Foundation and numerous donors have provided ongoing support for continued development of the museum’s permanent collection, nearly doubling its collection of paintings. The Foundation gave a gift of $18.5 million in 1998 for construction of a new museum building on campus to showcase the collection and provide more space for special exhibitions and educational programs; the new building opened in March 2001.
In 2006, the Foundation gave $33 million to the Meadows School of the Arts, the largest grant ever made by the Foundation and the largest ever received by SMU at the time, which included $25 million for the museum for acquisitions, exhibitions, an educational curator position, an expanded educational program, and special initiatives of the museum director. The Museum celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2015, during which The Meadows Foundation made yet another historic gift to SMU of $45 million, $25 million of which was designated to support goals and programs at the Museum.
The San Antonio crowd (not Karl this time, as he had an Alamo event to attend) drove up to Dallas on the morning of November 4, and so they didn't arrive at the museum until a little after lunchtime. We met them in the lobby, and bought our tickets for the exhibition. Then it was up the stairs to the galleries on the second floor.
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A Display About the Exhibit in the Lobby |
The Sorollo Exhibit
This exhibition at the Meadows is actually an exhibit that is making the rounds of museums worldwide; it is curated from combining the works of the artist, many from the Meadows itself, into a single, comprehensive, traveling exhibit. I won't try to describe the exhibit or the artworks myself, but will rather show you the actual descriptions posted throughout the exhibit.
So now what I plan on doing is taking our (well, mostly mine, as I am the photographic "documenter") pictures of the artworks in the exhibit and present them to you pretty much in the order they appeared to us in the exhibit galleries. For each artwork, I'll put a small picture on this page that you can click to enlarge, and I will add such information as was available on the description cards on the wall beside each one. So, here are the artworks from the Sorolla exhibit.
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Portrait of Esperanza Conill de Zanetti |
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King Alfonso XIII, Study for the Painting "The Regency" |
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Elenita Dressed as a Menina |
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Portrait of the Daughters of Rafael Errazuriz |
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Garden of the Adarves, Alhambra, Granada |
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The Cypress of the Sultana, Generalife, Granada |
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View of Las Pedrizas from El Pardo |
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Detail of the Garden of the Sorolla House |
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Shadow of the Alcantara Bridge, Toledo |
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Children on the Beach: Study for "Summer" |
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Children Bathing among the Rocks, Javea |
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Children in the Sea, Valencia Beach |
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Beach of Valencia (Boats) |
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Return of the Boats, Valencia |
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Malaga Castle and Fishing Port |
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Scene of the Port of Valencia |
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Those were the artworks in this exhibit of Sorolla's works. I hope you were able to feel as if you'd attended the exhibit (which left the Meadows in January, 2024).
Prudence and Nancy
were certainly engrossed in the artwork.
Other Galleries at the Meadows Museum
Once I'd "documented" the Sorollo exhibit, I wandered through some of the other galleries here at the Meadows Museum, and I photographed many of the artworks that I saw. So let me show you some of those other artworks. As above, you can click on any artwork to see an enlarged image.
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Mozos de Escuadra (Catalan Police Arresting a Romani Couple) |
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Allegory (Please Note: This image is already full size.) |
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The Bullfighter "El Segovianito" |
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Cluster of Cypresses, Arbor IV |
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Seated Woman (Femme assise) |
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Still Life in a Landscape |
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The Fish Man (L'homme poisson) |
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Seascape (Study for Beach at Portici) |
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Portrait of Vicenza Bertran de Lis Espinosa de los Monteros |
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Portrait of Mariano Goya, the Artist's Grandson |
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Portrait of Francisco Sabatini |
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Still Life with Woodcocks |
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Maria Teresa del Castillo |
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Students from the Pestalozzia Academy [fragment] |
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The Delivery of the Keys to Cevallos by the Governor of Sacramento
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Pedro de Cevallos Disembarks in the Port of Buenos Aires
(Please note: This image is already full-size.) |
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Allegory of the Spanish Monarchy |
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Jacob Laying Peeled Rods before the Flocks of Laban |
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Twenty-nine Miniatures of the Family and Court of Charles IV |
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Spain and the Four Parts of the World |
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Saint Vincent Martyr Before Dacius |
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The Vision of Saint Francis in La Porciuncula |
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Christ Child Appearing to Saint Anthony |
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Virgin and Child in Glory |
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Still Life with Game Fowl |
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Portrait of Michol (Miguel Pol?) |
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I might interrupt this sequence of other artworks in the Meadows to say that there was an entire small gallery given over to religious iconography, and I thought the pieces were pretty amazing. Here are four pictures we took in that gallery:
Now let's continue looking at the artworks in the other galleries here at the Meadows museum.
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Portrait of Queen Mariana |
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Female Figure (Sibyl with Tabula Rasa) |
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Portrait of King Philip IV |
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Christ Child (Ego dormio, et cor meum vigilat) |
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The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Sienna |
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Saint Francis Kneeling in Meditation |
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Portrait of the Archduke Albert
Portrait of the Archduchess Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia |
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Portrait of Alessandro Farnese |
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Portrait Miniature of a Lady of the Spanish Court |
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Adoration of the Shepherds |
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Portrait of Sir Arthur Hopton |
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Portrait of King Charles II |
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Portrait of a Knight of Santiago |
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The Flaying of Saint Bartholomew |
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If I can interrupt your tour of the galleries here at the Meadows Museum, I thought I might show you a couple of pictures of the galleries themselves, which are nicely done:
And here is a movie looking entirely around the gallery where the two still photos above were taken. We are approaching the end of our tour here at the Meadows.
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(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) |
So let's now complete our tour of the galleries inside the Meadows museum.
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The Immaculate Conception |
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Saint Catherine of Alexandria Dominating the Emperor Maxentius |
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Saint Joseph and the Christ Child |
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The Immaculate Conception |
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When we were finished in the upstairs galleries, we went down to the first floor. There, Prudence and Nancy spent some time in
the museum store.
They usually buy a book or something at each museum exhibition we visit, and over the years, both have accumulated quite the library! On the first floor, outside the museum store, there was a sculpture:
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Modern Man (Meditation with Arms, Eve in Despair) |
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I took a couple of other pictures here on the first floor, which seems to be given over to administration and cataloging:
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A Meeting Room |
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A Classroom |
Finally, Fred and I headed outside to see some of the outdoor sculptural works that the Meadows has on display.
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Three-Piece Reclining Figure, No. 1 |
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After the museum, the San Antonio crowd headed over to Fort Worth to stay at their favorite hotel, while Fred and I circled back by the house for a bit before we headed over to join them.
Dinner in Downtown Fort Worth
Prudence had asked Fred and I to join them for dinner at the Capital Grille- one of their favorite places there. We met them first on the 24th floor of the Kimpton Hotel where they like to stay. They serve wine at 6PM, so we had a glass and I took a few pictures from the windows:
The skylines of both Fort Worth and Dallas have changed a great deal in the last decade, and Fort Worth's has seen the most change, as the picture at left and the one below (both looking north) show.
Before dinner, we took Jax for a walk, and took a few pictures of some historical markers and the Kennedy Memorial.
And after dinner, we all took Jax for another walk, which also gave Ron the opportunity to enjoy his after-dinner cigar.
We always enjoy seeing our friends from San Antonio- Ron, Prudence, and Nancy- and we are always appreciative of their hospitality!
You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.
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November 21-25, 2023: Thanksgiving in San Antonio |
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October 22 - November 2, 2023: Our Fall Trip to Florida- Part 2 |
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Return to the Index for 2023 |
