Monday is “Grab Bag” day here at Entertainment Legends Revealed, with each Monday featuring a different area of the world of arts and entertainment (that is not featured on the other four days of the week, that is). They’ll eventually repeat, but for now, we’re still on the initial installments of each of the various “Grab Bag” legends!

This is the first in a series of examinations of legends related to paintings and painters and whether they are true or false.

Let’s begin!

PAINTING LEGEND: Henry Matisse’s Le Bateau was hung upside down at the Museum of Modern Art for 47 days.

STATUS: True

Henri Matisse was one of the most famous artists of the 20th Century.

One of the leading figures of the modern art movement, Matisse was primarily known for his expressive usage of color in his work.

His style changed dramatically over the years, and by the end of his life (he died in 1954), he was working primarily in “paper-cut” paintings, where he would cut out pieces of paper and he would arrange them along with paint into interesting configurations.

One of these works was called La Bateau, and it was finished in 1953, a year before his death.

It’s a beautiful piece of work.

In any event, in 1961, the piece was hung at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

There was just one problem.

It was HUNG UPSIDE DOWN!!

The painting hung upside down for a remarkable 47 days until a stockbroker named Genevieve Habert noticed the mistake. Habert wrote a letter to the New York Times about the situation. Through the Times, the Museum was notified and they quickly corrected their mistake.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, upside down the piece still looks good…

But that’s still a pretty hilarious mistake to make!

PAINTING LEGEND: Pablo Picasso discovered the work of Henri Rousseau by purchasing one of his works that was being sold for the canvas, not the painting itself.

STATUS: True

Henri Rousseau was a Post-Impressionist painter in France during the late 19th and early 20th Century who did not have very much success with his work most of his life.

His nickname was Le Douanier, which means “the customs officer,” which happened to be his main occupation.

A self-taught artist, Rousseau mostly drew scenes of the jungle.

His work had a unique, flat feel to it that was regarded at the time as being child-like.

Here’s a piece of his from 1905 (click to enlarge)…

During the early 20th Century, though, a new wave of artists were making the scene, people like the aforementioned Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

They viewed art quite a bit differently than most of the established art scene of the late 1890s/early 1900s, so in Rousseau, rather than seeing a childish painter, Picasso saw a non-conformist unsullied by academia, which was something that Picasso himself was rebelling from at the time (1908).

In addition, Picasso was interested in “primitive” artwork, art from Africa - Rousseau was also influenced by African art with his jungle work.

In any event, the tale of HOW Picasso came across Rousseau is quite amazing.

Rousseau had done two large paintings in 1895, one of his first wife and one of a Polish woman he knew, who APPEARS to be a bit of an unrequited love on Rousseau’s part…

Portrait of a Lady (his wife)

Portrait of a Woman (the Polish school teacher)

The paintings were on very large canvasses, over six feet tall!!

So when Picasso went shopping in the Père Soulier shop in 1908, he saw the head of the woman peeking out from a bunch of other canvasses. Picasso asked about the painting, and was told it cost five francs, not because of the painting itself, but because the canvas was so big the shopkeeper figured you just wash off the painting and then use the canvas!!!

Picasso, though, wanted the painting and actually through a banquet to celebrate the hanging of the painting.

The Banquet Douanier, as it became known, is an interesting affair, for a couple of reasons.

1. Because of all the amount of alcohol imbibed at the party, getting an accurate representation of what exactly went on that night has been difficult

and

2. Exactly how much of the celebration of Rousseau was tongue-in-cheek? By the time the celebration came around, Rousseau was in his 60s, and was making his living through various odd jobs, including playing the violin.

So he was definitely a bit of a sad sack, so a number of attendees of the famous Banquet Douanier claimed that the whole routine was just to mock Rousseau, you know, like a sort of ironic celebration.

However, quite a number of OTHER attendees disagreed about the motivations behind the party, and really, besides Picasso, who threw the party, does it really matter why the OTHER people attended?

And Picasso seemed to genuinely admire Rousseau.

Picasso moved frequently throughout his life, but all throughout it, until his death in 1973 at the age of 91, Picasso brought Rousseau’s Portrait of a Woman with him.

Here you can see it in the background of a photograph of Picasso taken in 1932…

And here you can see Picasso from thirty years later with two pieces of Rousseau’s that he had purchased.

That certainly appears to be the treatment one would afford a painter that one honestly admired, doesn’t it?

Rousseau would die a couple of years later, in 1910, but he at least lived long enough to see his work admired by a new generation of French artists.

Thanks to Roland Penrose’s Picasso: His Life and Work and Dan Franck’s Bohemian Paris: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, and the Birth of Modern Art for the information!

PAINTING LEGEND: Sandro Botticelli was accused of heresy for a painting he made of the Assumption of Mary.

STATUS: False

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli, was a famous painter during the Renaissance.

Here is an alleged self-portrait of himself…

Botticelli is most famous for his work, 1486’s The Birth of Venus, which is one of the most well-known paintings in the entire world…

The great biographer of artists of the era, Giorgio Vasari, told the tale of a painting by Botticelli about the Assumption of Mary, mother of Jesus (from 1475-77)…(click to enlarge)…

By the side door of San Piero Maggiore he did a panel for Matteo Palmieri, with a large number of figures representing the Assumption of Our Lady with zones of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, doctors, virgins, and the orders of angels, the whole from a design given to him by Matteo, who was a worthy and educated man. He executed this work with the greatest mastery and diligence, introducing the portraits of Matteo and his wife on their knees. But although the great beauty of this work could find no other fault with it, said that Matteo and Sandro were guilty of grave heresy. Whether this be true or not, I cannot say.

The heresy, by the way, is in placing people in certain “zones,” an idea that Palmieri had as a counterpart to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy’s circles of hell, and one that would reasonably cause some consternation over who is in what zone, etc.

In any event, while Vasari could not say if the story was true, we can now say for sure.

Not because we know whether Palmieri and the painter in question were accused of heresy or not, but because we know that Botticelli did not paint the work in question.

Vasari was one of the world’s great historians, but his research methods were a bit lacking in some instances.

To wit, he basically just went on his personal recollections for a lot of the dates used for when paintings were done. And he generally was, as you would expect, a lot more accurate for his contemporaries, like Boticelli, than he was for older artists.

However, he would occasionally just make flat out mistakes, and one of them was here, where he mistook the work of the artist Francesco di Giovanni Botticini for the work of Botticelli.

Botticelli, Botticini - they ARE pretty darn close.

Okay, that’s it for this week!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments, particularly other themes for future grab bag Mondays! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com