An echo in Philadelphia

Across the street from the Philly Museum's main building is the Gluckman-renovated Perelman Building. It's mostly offices, but it does have a couple galleries. So far the museum has mostly used them for toss-off shows from the permanent collection.

One of those exhibits is a pleasant little collection airing of early-modern works made on the French Riviera. There's nothing revelatory here -- the Bonnards here are usually on view across the street, the Soutines are delectable, a Derain portrait of Matisse is too weird to be true, and a Jean Metzinger makes its own case for being on view more often -- but the show provides the PMA with an opportunity to air out some of the depth in its early-modern collection.

One painting caught my eye, a Georges Braque painting of a seated bather from 1925. As you can see, it is not a great Braque. It's leaden. Even by Braque-in-the-'20s standards the colors are a little muted, as if Georges had picked up a dusty old palette of Vuillards and started painting. But... after having seen Titian's portrait, I thought about that strange shadow that Braque inserts down the middle-right of the painting. It's weird, it's not particularly elegant, and it doesn't 'save' a clunky painting. But it got me thinking about the Titian again, and that was enough.