Following the Family Trade

Gallery-Going

By MAUREEN MULLARKEY
May 8, 2008

For Marc de Montebello, art is the family business. His father, Philippe, has been the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for three decades (he recently announced his retirement). In 1991, the younger Mr. de Montebello opened his own gallery, which specialized in 19th- and early-20th-century works, on East 84th Street, down the block from his father's office. He closed the gallery in 2000 to concentrate on his own painting.

Mr. de Montebello's grandfather, a scientist and painter, introduced him to painting early. The introduction stuck — and to good effect. His first solo show at W.M. Brady & Co., just three years ago, sold out. The 44-year-old is an engaging painter with a cultivated eye and a palette to support it.

The artist's second show, "Small Pictures," also at W.M. Brady, is full of unassuming delights. The show comprises approximately 40 plein air landscape paintings, most of them nearly diminutive in size. Subjects include New York, Maine, California, Canada, and India, as well as views of the interior of the artist's New York studio.

Capping the ensemble are two surprising, large-scale landscapes. One is a lyrical, semiabstract panorama of the north shore of Lake Ontario; the other, a rigorously designed view of Jodhpur, India's cliffside Mehrengarth Fort, seen from modern dwellings below. The poise of both paintings derives from Mr. de Montebello's agility in combining expressive color with crisp contours that emphasize the particularity of place.

He once described his own work as "sort of a cross between Corot and Fairfield Porter." It is a serviceable assertion that names his closest influences, but it does not do justice to the distinction of his own sensibilities. These are fully on view in the two large canvases here — not because of size itself but because the larger format allows a developed analysis of his motif and gives free rein to his hand. And Mr. de Montebello has a very good hand.

He holds Corot's affection for the pochade — that quick, freely handled sketch on a small panel that fits within a portable easel. But more significantly, Mr. de Montebello, like Porter, is concerned with things, not ideas. What matters is what is in front of him. The immediate experience of seeing a particular place or thing in a certain light and from a particular vantage point is the painter's sole concern. An appealing modesty attaches to these understated miniatures.

Some of the smallest oils are also the loveliest. "Barge, Hudson River"(2005), divides the 4-inch-high composition into a series of horizontal bands in a subdued key. A slender line of clear red, marking a barge interior, breaks the calm of the foreground. Tints of the same hue, bleached and grayed, dot the dock containers aligned across the middle ground. "Landscape, Rajasthan" (2006) bears the tonal persuasion that comes from study of Corot's plein air greens and sandy neutrals.

Two paintings of buoys in Bombay Harbor dissolve into mist. Here, atmospheric obscurity transforms a commonplace object into an enigmatic emblem of quietude. A gem of felt observation, "Hudson River, Late Afternoon" (2006) captures the cool tones of dying light. Each image of Hancock, Maine, carries the same conviction. The motifs speak for themselves, without style-consciousness imposed on visual reality.

Mr. de Montebello's smaller works are intimate in the best sense. They convey an impression of having been made for the artist himself, in solitude. The two large oils here — "Frenchman's Bay, Looking South" and "View of Jodhpur" — are more ambitious in conception and execution. Drawn with great discernment, each belies Porter's insistence that contour is secondary to light and color. Both paintings are impressive and seductive.

Until May 21 (22 E. 80th St., between Fifth and Madison avenues, 212-249-7212).