A quiet, patient kind of rebellion
‘Renaissance, Romanticism and Rebellion’ runs through Feb. 22 at the Mint Museum Uptown, 500 S. Tryon St.
This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on January 13, 2026. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.
Review: The Mint’s ‘Renaissance, Romanticism and Rebellion’ rewards patience, but its modest works invite constant comparison to greater masters
by Lawrence Toppman
To appreciate “Renaissance, Romanticism and Rebellion,” you’ll need to recalibrate your understanding of the Renaissance, Romanticism and rebellion.
No objects in the exhibit at the Mint Museum Uptown actually come from the period that gave us Michelangelo and Cellini, though some artists here pay homage to their work. “Romanticism” refers more to an era — roughly the early to mid-19th century — than to the unbridled passions expressed by composers and writers of that time. And though some of these artists rebelled against strict conventions established by royal academies, their revolt seems tame to us at a distance of 150 years.
The pleasures are subtle, not dramatic or immediate, in “Renaissance, Romanticism, and Rebellion: European Art from the Smith-Naifeh Collection,” to use the full title of the show running through Feb. 22. You’ll have to look patiently at about 70 paintings, sculptures and drawings collected by South Carolina-based authors and spouses Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh. (Smith died in 2014.)
Though they co-wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “Jackson Pollock: An American Saga,” which served as the basis for the 2000 film “Pollock” with Ed Harris, they may be best known for the biography “Van Gogh: A Life.”
That Dutch master remains the loose connection between many of the artists in this show. He went to school with one, admired the use of light in the work of another, shared a fondness for Japanese woodblocks with a third, took an interest in the subjects painted by a fourth. Theo Van Gogh, his art dealer brother, showed works by a few. But if Smith and Naifeh bought anything by Van Gogh, it’s not here, and constant references to him make us wish to see work on his level.
The exhibit starts with a winner: A bronze copy of Antonin Mercié’s 1872 “David with the Head of Goliath,” where the hero nonchalantly steps on the dead giant’s face while sheathing his sword. The sculpture looks as if it could have been made 300 years earlier, though David’s loincloth is a touch of prudery. (The original figure at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris is nude.)
I walked briskly through the first gallery, full of juiceless portraits of mostly highborn people with pearl-pink skin, unlined faces and bored or indifferent gazes. But I stopped at the last painting, Louis Anquetin’s 1890 “Self-Portrait as a Satyr.” There’s rebellion for you, a man who turned a common mythological subject (so beloved by painters of his day) into a naughty picture of himself, a bearded man with hair curling into horns and a depraved smile on his face.
Wall texts sometimes strain too hard to make connections. One points out that Thomas Couture painted “Two Sisters” around 1848, the year Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto” made artists more aware of common people’s problems. But the girls in that painting, presumably laborers, still have clean fingernails, immaculate hair and perfect complexions, highlighted with lipstick and blush.
On the other hand, the text for Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s “Why Born a Slave?,” my favorite sculpture here, thoughtfully asks us to look beyond the obvious. The rope-bound African woman, her torn dress revealing one breast and her expression mingling suffering and defiance, reminds us of her humanity and the brutality of slavery. But France exploited colonies in Africa until the second half of the 20th century, and this may well represent (as the text claims) “the transformation of human carnage into erotically charged drama.”
The Romantic era’s frequent musings on death play out in different ways. Jules Dupré’s lovely, twilit “Last Mooring” gives us a stranded ship, exhausted and seemingly as mortal as a beached whale. Constantin Meunier’s “The Suicide” takes away the poetic element of drowning, a trope since Ophelia’s death in “Hamlet,” by depicting a woman with gray lips, twisted limbs and clenched fingers. Looking at either work, we inevitably contemplate our own ends.
The idea of “rebellion” expressing itself through more fluid brushwork, thicker impasto or other technical changes seems a stretch after all this time. But the work in the last room did hint at major shifts, even if the artists seemed like understudies for their betters. I could find Monet in the haystacks and sea cliffs of Armand Guillaumin, Cezanne in the glowing apples and grapes of Émile Bernard, Degas in the behind-the-scenes-at-the-theater intimacy of Laura Knight.
Paul Sérusier’s “Bouquet of Tulips, or Synchromie in Red” offers Matisse-like swathes of red set against flowers splashed with unhealthy yellows and sickly greens. Here at last, we see a painting about to bust wide open, heading toward abstraction. Sérusier is indeed a rebel in this context, and with a cause.
If You’re Going
“Renaissance, Romanticism, and Rebellion: European Art from the Smith-Naifeh Collection” runs through Feb. 22 at the Mint Museum Uptown, 500 S. Tryon St.
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Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.
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