The McMaster Museum of Art proudly presents:

THE WORKING EYE: an arrangement from the collections of Roald Nasgaard/Lori Walters and Christopher Varley

Levy Gallery: 16 April ― 13 August 2016

Online Exhibition Brochure / Essays and List of Works

Following the summer 2015 exhibition Passions of the Eye, selections from Hamilton and region private collections, The Working Eye focuses on collectors with a professional history in the gallery and museum sector.

Although the current collecting focus for Roald Nasgaard and Lori Walters is contemporary Canadian art, the selection “reaches back” to formative acquisitions and Nasgaard’s research on the Danish artist Jens Ferdinand Willumsen (1863-1958). Nasgaard wrote, “this was never about ‘collecting,’ just to have some souvenirs of research projects.” The working eye, however, continued with European drawings and prints of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, including Félix Vallotton (Swiss-French, 1865-1925), Jan Verkade (Dutch, 1868-1946), František Kupka (Czech, 1871-1957), and French artists Émile Bernard (1868-1941), Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898) and Georges Lacombe (1868-1916).

Christopher Varley wrote that his collecting has reflected changing interests and the development of taste over forty years, and for a period of time a strong interest in nineteenth century drawings by French and English artists. Over the past decade, his primary interest has become vintage photography and a preference for images of “modern life.” The selected drawings include those by French artists Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (b. Switzerland 1859-1923), and English artists William Etty (1787-1849) and John Linnell (1792-1882). The photography selections include work by French photographers Eugène Atget (1857-1927), Maxime Du Camp (1822-1894), and Russian Alexis Mazourine (1846-1911).