The Laufer Gallery features historical European art from the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia’s Permanent Collection. While Gustave Doré’s large luminous painting, Landscape with the Pyrenees, immediately captures the eye, it is just one of several gems to explore.
One of the oldest artworks in the AGNS collection is displayed here. It also happens to be one of the rarest items in a Canadian collection: a Prima Porta type marble head of the Roman Emperor Augustus (c. 27 B.C.E – 14 C.E.).
Image: Unknown, Head of Emperor Augustus, Marble, c 27 B.C.E.-14 C.E., 29.0 x 22.5 x 24cm, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. S. T. Laufer, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1992
Aside from those two outliers, 17th and 19th-century Italian and Dutch artworks are the primary focus of the current exhibition. Italian and Dutch Italianate landscape paintings by Salvator Rosa and Wilhelm von Bemmel offer stunning scenery of 17th century Italy, while a collection of Dutch genre paintings highlight works that were enormously popular during that same century.
The intent behind these paintings was to illustrate Dutch proverbs and sayings, to employ visual puns, and to convey moral messages. Visual puns based on Dutch sexual slang words can completely change the interpretation of a scene from staid to steamy through the use of birds, shoes, lutes, jugs, flagons, and stockings.
Featured image: Gustave Dore, Landscape with the Pyrenees, oil on canvas, c 1860, 95.3 x 179.5cm, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. S. T. Laufer, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1991
