Bisa Butler

To God and Truth

2019
Printed cotton; pieced, appliquéd, and quilted

Bisa Butler sees her work as bringing the enduring tradition of African American quilting into the future. Titled after the motto of Morris Brown College, this quilt is based on a photograph exhibited by W. E. B. Du Bois at the 1900 Paris Exposition, where it was among 300 images intended to show African American progress after Emancipation. Butler renders nine scholar-athletes in thousands of pieces of brightly colored cotton textiles including Nigerian hand-dyed batiks, African wax-resist cottons, South African shweshwe cloth, and Ghanaian kente cloth, bringing them alive in vibrant color, pattern, and texture.

John H. and Ernestine A. Payne Fund, The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection, and Arthur Mason Knapp Fund.
© Bisa Butler and Claire Oliver Gallery.

Parcel-gilt silver bowl

Unknown artist
Chinese, Tang dynasty (618–907)
Parcel-gilt silver

During the Tang dynasty, Chinese silver and gold artisans reached a new apex of workmanship, creating exquisite utensils primarily for the imperial household and Buddhist rituals. The sides of this extraordinarily large bowl were shaped using repoussé to resemble three rows of overlapping lotus petals, the lotus being a Buddhist symbol of the purity of an enlightened mind. The artisans chased images of birds in flight and leafy foliage onto each petal. This bowl is a highlight from the renowned collection of Chinese silver assembled by Dr. Johan Carl Kempe (1884–1967) in the first half of the 20th century.

Museum purchase with funds donated anonymously, Asiatic Deaccession Fund, and Charles Bain Hoyt Fund.

Ralph Turnbull

Center table

about 1846–51
Rosewood, ebony, birdseye maple, sabicu, satinwood, padouk, lacewood, palm wood, amboyna, mahogany, oak

Every surface of this tilt-top table is covered with geometric and pictorial inlays. Whereas tables in this style were the height of fashion in 19th-century England, this table’s ambitious design is uniquely Caribbean. The table is labeled by Ralph Turnbull, a Scottish immigrant craftsman who operated one of the largest workshops in Kingston, Jamaica, in the mid-19th century. After the emancipation of Jamaica’s enslaved population in 1838, Turnbull requested government funds to sponsor 60 apprentices in his workshop. As the product of a Scotsman working in Jamaica with formerly enslaved African apprentices, this table embodies the complexity of colonial culture in the Caribbean.

Henry H. and Zoe Oliver Sherman Fund.

Joshua Johnson

Mrs. Andrew Aitkin (Elizabeth Aiken) and her Daughter Eliza

about 1805
Oil on canvas

This charming likeness of an affectionately entwined mother and child is a rare work by the first free African American painter to earn a professional reputation. Johnson, describing himself as a “self-taught genius,” worked almost exclusively as a portraitist. He depicted Baltimore’s affluent, mostly white merchants, officials, military officers, and several of his neighbors, among them Elizabeth Aitkin and her eight-year-old daughter. Like many of Johnson’s patrons, Elizabeth and her husband, Andrew, were active supporters of the abolition of slavery.

Charles H. Bayley Picture and Painting Fund, A. Shuman Collection—Abraham Shuman Fund, M. Theresa B. Hopkins Fund, Seth K. Sweetser Fund, Emily L. Ainsley Fund, Harry Wallace Anderson Fund, Robert Jordan Fund, Gift of Jessie H. Wilkinson— Jessie H. Wilkinson Fund, Lucy Dalbiac Luard Fund, The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection, and Gallery Instructor 50th Anniversary Fund to support The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection.
Photograph courtesy Hirschl & Adler Galleries, NY.

Elsa Dorfman

On My 51st Birthday

1988
Dye-diffusion photograph (Polaroid print)

The MFA is pleased to have received a gift of 101 photographs by the late Cambridge photographer Elsa Dorfman. The acquisition includes 19 large-scale self-portraits made with the 20 x 24 Polaroid camera, which form the core of the exhibition “Elsa Dorfman: Me and My Camera.” Charmed by her husband’s gift of black balloons on her 51st birthday, Dorfman commemorated the occasion with an image of herself and her son, Isaac. Dorfman is inextricably linked with the history of Polaroid, and with the story of photography in Boston.

Gift of Elsa Dorfman.
© Elsa Dorfman, 2013, all rights reserved.

Paul Revere Jr.

Coffee pot

1772
Silver, wood

Legendary patriot and silversmith Paul Revere made this extraordinary coffee pot in 1772 for the prominent Salem merchant Richard Derby. Notably, Derby commissioned a pot for coffee, not tea, at a time when he and his fellow colonists were boycotting tea drinking to protest British taxes. Similarly, the unusual three-legged form of the vessel followed French fashion rather than the customary pedestal base style of English models—perhaps making a more subtle rejection of British rule. This masterpiece descended directly in Derby’s family and has been on loan to the MFA since 1910.

Gift of Thomas H. Townsend.

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder

Still Life with Roses in a Glass Vase

about 1619
Oil on copper

Ambrosius Bosschaert pioneered the new genre of flower painting in 17th-century Holland. He lived in Middelburg, a port city that boasted a culture of trade and horticulture, where flower painting was especially popular. Bosschaert made use of individual flower studies to compose this colorful bouquet. Despite the close attention he paid to naturalistic detail (notice the dewdrops and insects), the roses are too heavy for the roemer (wineglass) that serves as their vase. No matter how lifelike, the composition is a construct of the artist’s skill and imagination.

Gift of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, in support of the Center for Netherlandish Art.

Robert Pruitt

Birth and Rebirth and Rebirth

2019
Conté, charcoal, pastel, and coffee wash on cotton paper

Birth and Rebirth and Rebirth is one of three diptychs Robert Pruitt made for the MFA’s inaugural “Banner Project.” In the oversized 7-by-5-foot drawings, a young woman wears a quilt with patches of starbursts and suns—motifs taken from a Harriet Powers pictorial quilt (1895–98), a masterpiece of evocative storytelling and an expression of faith in divine justice. In one drawing the figure pours water from a face jug and in the other she holds a gas can—symbols for creation and destruction.

Lizbeth and George Krupp Acquisition Fund for Contemporary Art, William E. Nickerson Fund, Linde Purchase Fund for Contemporary Art, Stephen D. and Susan W. Paine Acquisition Fund for 20th Century and Contemporary Art, and Mary L. Smith Fund.
© 2019 Robert Pruitt.

Unknown artist

Aureus with bust of Julian I of Pannonia

Roman, Imperial period, about 284 CE
Gold

When Julian I of Pannonia, then a governor of the Roman province of Venetia, usurped the throne in 284 CE, the Roman Empire was in crisis. He was neither the first nor the last to take control of the Empire by force, but the numismatic evidence of his brief reign (284–285 CE) stands out as a remarkable testament to the propagandistic value of coins in antiquity. Because Julian I of Pannonia ruled for a year at most, coins with his likeness are rare. This particular specimen is in excellent condition.

Anonymous Gift in honor of the 150th Anniversary of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Clementi & Co.

Lyre guitar (Apollo lyre)

about 1810
Maple, spruce, ebony, ivory

Emerging alongside currents of neoclassicism in 18th- and 19th-century France, the lyre guitar pays homage through its form to the ancient Greek lyre. In aristocratic and middle-class circles, the lyre guitar was an evocative object of decoration, often represented in portraiture and paintings, as well as a musical tool for simple pieces. While French examples are most typical, this so-called “Apollo lyre” is of an entirely different English type—defined by its closer relationship to English guitars and harp-lutes as well as its ornately gilded soundboard, S-shaped yoke, and striking sunburst headstock cover.

H. E. Bolles Fund.