Kimbell Art Museum

The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, hosts a permanent art collection as well as traveling art exhibitions. The European collection is the most extensive in the museum.

The Museum’s goal is absolute excellence, not the size of the collection. Following this goal, the museum’s collection today consists of about 350 quality works of art.

It includes Michelangelo’s first known painting, also works by Duccio, Fra Angelico, Mantegna, El Greco, Carracci, Caravaggio, Rubens, Guercino, La Tour, Poussin, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Boucher, Gainsborough, Vigée-Lebrun, Friedrich, Cézanne, Monet, Caillebotte, Matisse, Bonnard, Mondrian, Braque, Miró, and Picasso.

Works from the classical period include antiquities from Ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome.

The Asian collection comprises sculptures, paintings, bronzes, ceramics, and works of decorative art from China, Korea, Japan, India, Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia, and Thailand.

Precolumbian art is represented by Maya works in ceramic, stone, shell, and jade, Olmec, Zapotec, and Aztec sculpture, as well as pieces from the Conte and Huari cultures.

The African collection consists primarily of bronze, wood, and terracotta sculpture from West and Central Africa, including examples from Nigeria, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a Maori figure represents oceanic art.

Virtual Tour of the Kimbell Art Museum

• “Self-Portrait” by Paul Gauguin
• “Weeping Willow” by Claude Monet
• “Boating on the Yerres” by Gustave Caillebotte
• “The Cardsharps” by Caravaggio
• Portrait of Francisco de Pisa by El Greco

Highlights Tour of the Kimbell Art Museum

“Self-Portrait” by Paul Gauguin

Self Portrait – Gauguin in front of his Easel by Paul Gauguin was painted in Denmark just before Gauguin decided to return to Paris.

This painting is both somber and defiant in mood and is the first of his many self-portraits. Painted as he was deciding that rather than remaining jobless in Copenhagen, he would return to Paris to pursue his art career.

Examination of this painting with infrared light and radiographs has revealed that Gauguin made significant changes. Initially, he portrayed himself in profile and included reproductions of his paintings in the background.

In the final version, he is in full profile, but depicted as left-handed, like his image in a mirror. He showed himself cramped in a small attic space and cold, with the lapels of his jacket tightly closed. His eyes are looking towards another future.

“Weeping Willow” by Claude Monet

Weeping Willow by Claude Monet at the Kimbell Art Museum is one of a series of Monet paintings of this Weeping Willow.

The Weeping Willow paintings are characterized by shadowy and writhing forms, express his grieving mood.

These paintings were his mournful response to the tragedy of World War I.

During the war, Monet’s gardens at Giverny were emptied of the people he knew as his family and household staff, was called into service, or moved away from the advancing German army.

“Boating on the Yerres” by Gustave Caillebotte

“Boating on the Yerres” by Gustave Caillebotte is one of a series of seven boating scenes painted in 1877 and 1878 at Caillebotte’s family estate along the Yerres River.

This painting is one of the earliest and depicts three one-main boats gliding through the waters of the Yerres River. The canvas is dominated by the river, which is painted in a pattern of horizontal brushstrokes.

The trees and their reflections provide the horizontal aspects of the composition to create a composition of horizontals, verticals, and diagonals.

“The Cardsharps” by Caravaggio

“The Cardsharps” by Caravaggio depicts a well-dressed but naive boy playing cards; he is the dupe. The second boy is the cardsharp, he has extra cards tucked in his belt behind his back, out of sight, he also a dagger handy at his side.

The sinister older man is peering over the boy’s shoulder and signaling to his young accomplice with his fingers. “The Cardsharps” has a mixture of brutal real-world realism and the luminous Venetian delicacy.

 Caravaggio has not created a caricature of vice but a narrative, in which the interaction of gesture and glance evokes the drama of deception and lost innocence in human of terms.

This innovative approach made Caravaggio’s art remarkable and unique and spread his reputation.

The subject matter and composition proved to be in high demand as Caravaggio produced more than one version of this work. Also, over fifty copies and variants, made by other painters have survived.

Portrait of Francisco de Pisa by El Greco

Portrait of Francisco de Pisa by El Greco, which dates from the last period of El Greco’s career attests to the artist’s profound gifts as a portraitist, which were praised since his time in Italy and remained undiminished.

Dr. Francisco de Pisa (1534–1616), was an important Toledan cleric and historian of the city. The open book displayed on the table is identified by lettering on its pages as BOSIUS CANONICI, presumably an edition or commentary on the corpus of canon law. 

The subject bequeathed this portrait to the convent together with his endowment to the Convent of the Purísima Concepción de Nuestra Señora, also known as the Convent of the Benitas.