Welcome to the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts!
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An American View Revisited: The Hosek Collection of American Art
Our Gallery Guide starts to the LEFT of the Main Gallery doors (number 1)
An American View Revisited: The Hosek Collection of American Art
Our Gallery Guide starts to the LEFT of the Main Gallery doors (number 1)
MAIN GALLERY -
Left Side
Left Side
Ludwig Bemelmans
Meran, Austria-Hungary, 1898 — 1962, New York City, NY
Notre Dame at Night
Oil on canvas, c.1950
“In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines,
Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines.
They left the house at half-past nine,
The smallest one was Madeline.”
So begins Austro-Hungarian-born American writer and illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans’s beloved children’s book Madeline. First published in 1939, Madeline and all five of its sequels have become children’s literary classics.
Ludwig Bemelmans was a man of many talents—a novelist, muralist, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, and oil painter. He always considered himself more of an artist-illustrator, becoming a serious painter later in life. His work is on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris.
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Irving Ramsey Wiles
Utica, NY, 1861 — 1948, Long Island, NY
Afternoon Shadows
Oil on canvas, 1920
Afternoon sunlight streaming through the parlor windows reflects off the smooth surface of the wood floor, while partially-drawn drapes installed in the doorway produce long shadows drawing the viewer into the room. American artist Irving Ramsey Wiles creates this warm, hospitable environment with the use of sunlight and shadow. Known as a master of both portraiture and landscape painting, Wiles used an expressive palette and brushwork in the Impressionist tradition.
Irving Ramsey Wiles was born in 1861 in Utica, New York to landscape painter Lemuel Maynard Wiles. Wiles studied at the Art Students League of New York under William Merritt Chase. He was also an illustrator for the popular magazine The Century, which led to jobs with Harper’s and Scribner’s.
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Henry Hubbell
Paola, KS, 1870 — 1949, Miami, FL
Five O’Clock Tea
Oil on canvas, 1909
In the Victorian era, the afternoon tea was mostly a pastime of the idle rich. It was normally served in gardens, dining rooms or parlors. The household’s finest china, sterling silver teapots, and linens were utilized, while the menu included tea sandwiches, scones, cookies and Devonshire cream. The afternoon tea fulfilled the purpose of socializing, event planning, introductions, informal business meetings, as well as a perfect platform for gossip which was a major pastime of the day. In Five O’Clock Tea, artist Henry Salem Hubbell captures the essence of the Victorian tea time ritual. A young elegant woman, clothed in richly-colored and textured fabrics, busily prepares her table for the upcoming event.
Henry Salem Hubbell was born in Paolo, Kansas in 1870. He completed his basic art education at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1898, he moved to Paris and enrolled in Academie Carmen, where he was instructed by artist James Whistler. During one critique Whistler complimented Hubbell’s progress, predicting that “one day you will be called a great colorist.”
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Edward Emerson Simmons
Concord, MA, 1852 — 1931
Maiden and Kitten
Oil on canvas, 1905
Edward Simmons was an American Impressionist painter who excelled in plein-air figure and landscape painting.
In Maiden and Kitten, instead of a sunny, spontaneous canvas characteristic of Impressionism, Simmons chose the dark tonalities of an Old Master painting, closer to the works of ex-patriot American painter Robert Wylie. A young peasant girl dressed in drab clothing sits against a dark background holding a black kitten. Her brilliant white cap draws the viewer’s eye to the angelic face of the sitter, who is concentrating on comforting the kitten.
Simmons’s career progressed through Impressionism, but retrospectively his primary distinction is for his mural work, especially the murals he produced for the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition.
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Francis Coates Jones
Baltimore, MD, 1857 — 1932, New York City, NY
The Pearl Necklace
Oil on canvas, 1900
Who is this elegant lady—surely a wealthy woman? The ornate broach securing her turquoise brocade cloak and her gold jewelry box filled with elegant strands of pearls easily establishes her as an aristocrat. Set against turquoise drapery, she seems to step into the viewer’s presence, engaging the viewer with her direct gaze and air of aristocratic beauty. Francis Coates Jones conveys the form and demeanor of this noble lady with flattering delicacy, captivating charm, and sensitivity.
Francis Coates Jones was an American painter from a wealthy Baltimore family who studied in Europe under painters such as William Adolphe Bouguereau. He is known for his paintings of women at ease in richly decorated interiors or in flower-filled gardens, along with his interest in costumes and decorations. His technique was precise, academic, and detailed
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Edward Cucuel
San Francisco, CA, 1875 — 1954, Pasadena, CA
The Parasol
Oil on canvas, 1915
In The Parasol, Edward Alfred Cucuel avoids an aesthetic, classical pose, preferring to show his subject carrying out the mundane task of removing her stockings. Cucuel paints her dress, bright and luminous in color, dissolving its form into a flurry of feathery brushstrokes. He often painted family members rather than professional models.
Born in San Francisco, Cucuel was an Impressionist painter who specialized in using a vibrant palette to depict women in sun-dappled landscape settings, enjoying boating, napping, reading, or picnicking. Although the heyday of Impressionism had already passed in Europe, Cucuel developed his own vibrant Impressionist style.
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William Worcester Churchill
Jamaica Plains, MA, 1858 — 1926, Washington, D.C.
Sisters
Oil on canvas, 1905
In Sisters, William Churchill depicts two fashionably-dressed young women, each shown in profile, against the backdrop of a bright pink drapery. Casually posed in an atmosphere of calm and consummate luxury, the girl dressed in the white dress is busily tending to her needlework, repairing an ornate tapestry, while her companion seated behind her is conveying information learned from reading the publication on her lap. An ornate Chinese garden stool in the left corner of the canvas completes this intimate domestic genre scene.
A painter of figure studies, portraits, female nudes, and sea-landscapes in both oil and pastels, Churchill was born in Massachusetts in 1858, and entered the Boston Museum School in 1877. He showed at the Pan-American Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
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James Thom
New York City, NY, 1835 — 1898, Old Bridge, NJ
Feeding The Pigeons
Oil on canvas, 1877
The red scarf of a peasant woman draws the viewer’s eye to the central part of this painting of a drab, snowy winter’s day. The woman, carrying a basket of grain, goes about her chore of feeding her rooster and chickens, along with the hungry birds who have joined the group in search of food. Hudson River School style landscapist and genre painter James C. Thom is well known for his genre paintings of peasants, as well as children playing outdoors.
Born in New York City in 1835, Thom studied at the National Academy of Design as an eighteen-year-old before going to Paris where he studied with Camille Corot, Thomas Couture, and Henri Picou. From 1884 to his death, Thom lived in Old Bridge, New Jersey.
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Victor Anderson
White Plains, NY, 1882 — 1937, White Plains, NY
The Performers
Oil on canvas, 1920
Victor Anderson’s focus on the contrast between light and shadow captures the viewer’s attention in The Performers. Members of a circus troop move from the lantern-lit darkness into the white light of the tent’s entrance. This movement is defined by the line of white horses walking into the light.
The brilliant light illuminates the faces of the performers and causes the bodies moving into the light to cast elongated, parallel shadows. These shadows echo the overhead parallel rope lines anchoring the tent. Between these upper and lower parallel lines, the action of the painting takes place.
Anderson was an American painter and illustrator, primarily known for his rural life scenes and landscapes. His work was featured in Life and other magazines of the early 20th century.
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Jean McLane
Chicago, IL, 1878 — 1964, Stamford, CT
The Flower Garden
Oil on canvas, 1919
Brilliantly-colored flowers engulf a small girl, whose eyes are protected from the intense sunlight by a large-brimmed hat. This scene is typical of the work of Chicago-born artist Jean McLane, who is most noted for her portraits of women and children.
While a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she met John Christen Johansen and later became his wife. Johansen and McLane helped to form the National Foundation of Portrait Painters in 1912. She and her husband were among artists commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery committee to create portraits of World War I soldiers and statesmen. Jean McLane painted the only female subject, Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians. This portrait is in the esteemed collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D. C
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Julian Weir
West Point, NY, 1852 – 1919, Branchville, CT
The Letter
Oil on canvas, 1880
In The Letter (left), a Victorian housemaid, dressed in a crisp white apron and lace cap, is shown in profile holding a letter in her left hand, completely absorbed in her reading. Being included in this domestic genre scene, the viewer has the illusion of being privy to an intimate moment in the maid’s daily life as she appears to briefly stop her household chores to read this important message.
In Harmony in Yellow and Pink (right), Weir casually posed a young woman in an atmosphere of consummate luxury, as evidenced by her fashionable dress and string of luminous pearls. His deft, delicate touch applied to her female form resulted in a painting of quiet majesty. The sitter leaning slightly to the right, draping her right arm across her lap, stares vacantly at the opposite side of the painting.
Julian Alden Weir was the youngest of 16 children of artist and art instructor Robert W. Weir. Julian's initial art instruction was provided by his father in the traditional basic styles and methods. Although initially criticizing Impressionism, he soon embraced the new movement, as seen in Harmony in Yellow and Pink, while still producing more realistic and conservative works, as seen in The Letter.
He is associated with the first generation of American Impressionists, including Childe Hassam and John Twachtman. Weir was a founding member of the American Painters and Sculptors (AAPS). Weir and the remaining founding members of AAPS helped organize the 1913 Armory Show in New York which introduced avante-garde European art to the American public.
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Julian Weir
West Point, NY, 1852 – 1919, Branchville, CT
Harmony in Yellow and Pink
Oil on canvas, 1898
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John George (J.G.) Brown
Durham, England, 1831 — 1913, New York City, NY
Reading the News
Oil on canvas, 1906
During a lull in customer activity, this group of shoeshine boys listens intently as a young lad reads aloud the daily news. J.G. Brown is beloved for works like this, capturing the spirit of street children in New York City whose attitudes prevailed despite the harsh circumstances of their daily lives. Brown used actual urban children for his models, cleaning them up in his finished canvases, making them picturesque rather than squalid. He thus avoided offending his audience, who wanted sentiment rather than documentary accuracy.
A nineteenth century figure and genre painter, John George Brown first studied art at Newcastle-on-Tyne and at the Edinburgh Academy. Shortly after 1850 he moved to the United States and finished his education at the National Academy of Design Schools, New York, in 1853. George Brown was elected an Associate of the prestigious National Academy in 1862 and a full Academician in 1863.
REBECCA COLE GALLERY
Please continue your tour by entering the Rebecca Cole Gallery and turning left to the paintings hung on the short wall.
Frederick John Mulhaupt
Rock Port, MO, 1871 — 1938, Gloucester, MA
Gloucester Harbor
Oil on canvas, 1915
The oldest fishing port in America, Gloucester, Massachusetts, maintains a proud heritage and union with the sea. Gloucester’s deep water harbor attracted mariners and settlers as early as 1623. In this seascape, a peaceful time is implied through the soft pastel and grayed colors to depict calmed waters and sails at rest.
Frederick John Mulhaupt was born (1871) and raised in Rock Port, Missouri, by prosperous German parents. He later studied and taught in Chicago, New York, and Paris. Beginning in 1907, he spent his summers in Gloucester; in 1922 Mulhaupt became a year-round resident.
He is known for his skillful depictions of the landscapes and seascapes of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Mulhaupt remained a vital part of the New York art world even when he lived elsewhere. During the Depression, Mulhaupt was one of several local artists to participate in WPA art projects. Examples of murals he painted during this time still hang in Gloucester City Hall and the former high school on Dale Avenue. Frederick Mulhaupt died in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1938.
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Frederick Mulhaupt
Rock Port, MO, 1871 — 1938, Gloucester, MA
Autumn Landscape
Oil on board, 1910
The autumn warmth of this oil on board landscape scene is achieved by Mulhaupt through his selection and blend of colors. Movement of the rushing stream is created by use of layered paints and deep, dimensional strokes. The stunning tree, precariously positioned by the stream, depicts the feeling of autumn as a time to lay down dressy leaves and make ready for the ensuing winter.
Affectionately known as the “Dean of the Cape Ann School,” Fredrick Mulhaupt, a native of Missouri, first came to Cape Ann in 1907. He joined generations of landscape and marine artists who found inspiration there from the beaches along the rock bound coast, the busy working waterfront, and the rugged uplands.
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Charles H. Davis
Amesbury, MA, 1856 — 1933, Mystic, CT
After Glow
Oil on canvas, 1905
This oil on canvas work is an example of Tonalism, an American artistic movement that was started in the late 1800s. The movement is used to describe the dark landscapes that were said to have been influenced by the French Barbizon artists. The color in a tonalist painting has a predominantly even darker color that can be associated more with moonlight than sunlight.
Born in 1856 in Massachusetts, his school master father sent him to study at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Davis later studied in Paris before settling in Mystic, Connecticut. His landscapes emphasized the somber and quiet stillness in nature. Animals, figures, and buildings rarely occupy an important place in Davis’s paintings.
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Jervis McEntee
Rondout, NY, 1828 — 1891, Kingston, NY
A Gloomy Day
Oil on canvas, 1870
This work with bare trees and autumnal sky suggests loneliness, moodiness, and introspection. The color of the boaters is in contrast to the stark surroundings.
Born in New York in 1828, McEntee had no formal art training. Rather, he chose to study under Hudson River school pioneer Fredrick Edwin Church. His preferred medium was oil on canvas, with occasional watercolors, capturing American landscapes primarily in the Catskill Mountains. He often attached poems to his works to further the mood he was trying to convey.
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John Francis Murphy
Oswego, NY, 1853 — 1921, New York City, NY
Where Sunlight Lingers
Oil on canvas, 1913
John Francis Murphy was a prominent Tonalist artist, using neutral colors to depict landscapes with a certain tone or atmosphere to convey mood. Where Sunlight Lingers is a stark depiction of a sunset, but without the brilliant colors that most artists use to reflect that scene. Far in the background we see a rise of gray smoke where the sunlight is lingering. The tall, bare trees in the foreground add dimension to the scene.
Murphy was born in Oswego, New York, in 1853. With his family, he moved to Chicago in 1868. He began working as a scene painter in a local theatre. He was largely self-taught, with his only training consisting of a few classes at the Chicago Academy of Design.
In 1873, through sales of his work, Murphy was able to finance a three-month sketching trip to the Adirondack Mountains, where he met Winslow Homer and was initially drawn to the descriptive naturalism of the Hudson River school artists. Later he moved to New York and then on to Denmark, New Jersey. He boarded with a family in exchange for helping on their farm. The following year he was back to New York, where he supported himself primarily through illustration work.
In 1883 Murphy married a fellow artist, Adah Clifford Smith. Two years later he began receiving prestigious awards and commercial success. The awards continued until his death in 1921. According to a loan exhibition description in 1921, he was said to be “one of the loveliest, most inspired and absolutely the most original painter of landscapes this country has produced.”
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George Inness
Newburgh, NY, 1825 — 1894, Bridge of Allan, Scotland
The Five O’Clock Train
Oil on canvas, 1862
Born in Newburg, New York in 1825, George Inness began his career as a map maker and engraver. He soon began drawing scenes from nature. Like many of his contemporaries, he studied in Italy and France. Inness was a prominent American landscape artist, drawing inspiration from the Old Masters, the Hudson River school, and the Barbizon school.
The Five O’Clock Train shows his careful sense of design. He divides his landscape into foreground and background with the former divided into halves. In the far distance, a puff of smoke interrupts this idyllic scene—perhaps suggesting the coming of the Industrial Age, which will have a profound effect on this bucolic setting.
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Samuel Lancaster Gerry
Boston, MA, 1813 — 1891, Boston, MA
The Water Hole
Oil on canvas, 1870
Gerry was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1813. Like many artists of his day, he was self taught. He worked as a sign painter and decorative painter. He spent three years abroad studying the paintings of the masters before returning to Boston where he spent most of his professional life.
Gerry was associated with the White Mountain School of Painters, who focused on the grandeur of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. In addition to landscapes he also painted portraits and animals
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Dale Nichols
David City, NE, 1904 — 1995, Sedona, AZ
After the Hunt
Oil on canvas, 1970
Artist, printmaker, illustrator, watercolorist, designer, writer, and lecturer, Dale Nichols created paintings that reflected the rural background of his native Nebraska. Nichols’s signature trees are depicted in this painting.
Nichols, a commercial artist, was an advocate of upgrading the quality of art in illustration and advertising. He was art editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1942-48 and served as Carnegie visiting professor to the University of Illinois. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and with Joseph Binder in Vienna. He won the Harvest Award at a 1930s exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. During his career he had eighteen solo exhibitions and exhibited more than eighty regional and national exhibitions.
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Above:
Kenneth Nunamaker
Akron, OH, 1890 — 1957, Trenton, NJ
Woodlands Brook
Oil on canvas, 1933
Kenneth Nunamaker’s Woodlands Brook reflects his chief artistic characteristics of refinement and charm, poetic sentiment, and beauty of surface. The composition is simple and his rendering of soil unique.
He preferred the quiet and subdued aspects of nature, and is recognized for his painted atmospheric impressionist landscapes. Nunamaker’s technique employed a thickly-layered impasto with a soft but rich well-blended palette. His later work used much lighter application of paint and more attention to detail.
Kenneth Nunamaker, born in Akron, Ohio in 1890, traveled west at the age of seventeen, herding cattle for a living. He painted in his spare time, translating the landscape around him into shapes on his canvas. Nunamaker received his official training in the art department of the Akron Engraving Company. He chiefly learned his craft through experimentation and the observation of nature in order to translate the landscape around him onto his canvases.
In 1923, Nunamaker moved with his family to Pennsylvania where he developed a close association with members of the New Hope Art Colony. From 1945-1957, he operated his own commercial art studio in Philadelphia with his son, Alfred Nunamaker.
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Below:
George Durrie
Hartford, CT, 1820 — 1863, New Haven, CT
Winter in the Country, A Cold Morning
Oil on canvas, 1861
This winter scene of a man walking up a snow-covered path toward an idealized home, followed by an oxen-drawn sled of firewood, is typical of the rural winter landscapes populated by small figures that artist George Henry Durrie introduced into 19th century American painting.
Durrie captures this nostalgic scene under a winter sky as the man makes his way to the comforting shelter of the country home. Tree branches and roof tops are coated with a blanket of fresh snow, while nearby a farmhand busily goes about his chores.
Many of George Henry Durrie’s winter scenes were reproduced in lithograph form by the renowned firm of Currier & Ives. The images were popular with the American public who decorated their homes with these seasonal scenes.
Because his paintings combined extensive genre elements with landscape, they had a story-telling content that made them pleasant, accessible images to the average viewer. These images also achieved widespread popularity at a time when the United States was torn by strife during the Civil War and struggling to meet the challenges of a rapidly industrializing urban economy.
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John Ford Clymer
Ellensburg, WA, 1907 — 1989
Mr. Pharmer’s Multiplying House
Oil on board, 1956
John Ford Clymer always tried to take the viewer of his art “to an actual place and make him feel that he was really there.”
In Mr. Pharmer’s Multiplying House, Clymer succeeded in accomplishing that task. Set against the backdrop of tree-covered hills and an idyllic lake, the Pharmers’ house eludes an ideal American family abode. From the painting’s title, it appears that Mr. Pharmer has added an addition to the house, possible for his growing family. While his wife is tending to her flowers, Mr. Pharmer is white-washing the home’s new addition, being somewhat assisted by his son, who is enjoying painting graffiti on the unpainted siding.
John Ford Clymer is an American painter and illustrator known for his work that captured nature and the American west. Born in Ellensburg, Washington, Clymer moved to Canada after high school where he spent eight years illustrating for Canadian magazines. In 1932, he married his wife Doris and moved to Westport, Connecticut, where he established a career as an illustrator for American magazines, most notably The Saturday Evening Post, Woman’s Day, and Field and Stream. He is sometimes confused with John Clymer, an impressionist painter of landscapes and nautical scenes.
Clymer painted 80 covers for the The Saturday Evening Post. This painting was the cover for the June 23, 1956 edition, featured in the display case in the middle of this gallery.
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Anna Mary Robertson Moses (Grandma Moses)
Greenwich, NY, 1860 — 1961, Hoosick Falls, NY
A Winter Day
Oil on board, 1953
In her late seventies, Grandma Moses began painting the naive scenes that she recalled from her youth. She was discovered by a collector who saw three of her paintings hanging in a drugstore window in 1938. By the end of her career, she had painted an estimated 1500 paintings and had become a national institution.
In A Winter Day, we see Moses growing more confident with her new medium, depicting rolling hills and many figures engaged in a variety of winter activities like sledding, sleigh riding, and ice skating.
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Pauline Palmer
McHenry, IL, 1867 — 1938, Trondheim, Norway
Provincetown
Oil on board, 1918
Pauline Palmer’s painting illustrates the productive and protective nature of the time (1918). The couple depicted seem to be taking stock of their flourishing garden while admiring the robust summer flowers. To the right, a female worker assists in trimming and gathering the bundles of blossoms. The residents have acquired a large and pleasantly sturdy home—one built to protect them from the winds and weather which will come later in the year to Provincetown. Their grey, wooden fences further appear to protect the property from the dusty, rocky road in the foreground. This portrayal of ordinary work activity is typical of Pauline Palmer’s artistic endeavors.
In 1867, Pauline Lennards was born in McHenry, Illinois, the daughter of Nicholas Lennards, a merchant, and Frances Spanganacher Lennards. Her parents were both immigrants from Prussia. She grew up speaking German as her first language.
Pauline studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago and pursued further training in Paris. In 1919 Palmer became the first woman to be elected president of the Chicago Society of Artists. In 1938, she was traveling with her sister in Norway when both women fell ill, and Pauline Palmer died from pneumonia at age 71. Her life and artistic efforts were at the time greatly honored in America.
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Mary Bradish Titcomb
Windham, NH, 1856 — 1927
Shopping Marble Head
Oil on canvas, 1912
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Sydney Laurence
Brooklyn, NY, 1865 — 1940, Anchorage, AK
Left; Mt. McKinley, Oil on canvas, 1920
Center: Northern Lights, Oil on canvas, 1920
Right: Cache, Oil on canvas, 1922
Sydney M. Laurence (1865-1940) was known for his dramatic landscape paintings of Alaska and was one of the first professionally trained artists in the Alaskan territory. Laurence came to Alaska around 1904, after studying art in New York and Europe and pursuing a career as a foreign correspondent in Africa. Initially living the hard life of an Alaskan prospector in search of gold, Laurence ultimately exchanged his gold pan for his artist’s palette when gold mining proved unsuccessful.
Laurence painted a variety of Alaskan scenes in the twenty-five years he lived in the territory. He was fascinated by the vast scale of the Alaska landscape, and was particularly drawn to the mystique of Mount McKinley (Mount Denali), as well as caches and cabins under northern lights, as seen in the three Laurence paintings in the Hosek Collection. A cache is a structure designed to store food outdoors and prevent bears and other animals from accessing it.
Laurence forged a uniquely personal style by applying the “tonalist techniques” he learned in New York and Europe to the wilderness of the North. Tonalism was a more personal, more intimate style of landscape painting which included these features:
• Prevalence of a single color to which all others were subordinate
• Landscape through a visible atmosphere or mist
• Lively brushwork and glazing to reach the final, desired “tone”
Sydney died in Anchorage on December 10, 1940. He, more than any other artist, best defined the image of Alaska as “The Last Frontier.”
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James Henry Beard
Buffalo, NY, 1811 — 1893, New York City, NY
The Conflict
Oil on canvas, 1859
James Beard was a self-taught artist known for children’s portraits, as depicted in this painting with domestic pets. His satirical anthropomorphic animal subjects and other humorous topics were much in contrast to prevalent sentimentality.
He was an itinerant portrait painter, traveling to Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, and Louisville. Beard lived in Cincinnati from 1834-1870 but spent his winters in New Orleans. He lived in New York from 1846-47, and from 1870 lived there the remainder of his life.
Beard was an honorary member of the National Academy of Design from 1848-1860, and a full member until his death in 1893.
Four of his children followed in his artistic legacy: Daniel Carter Beard, James Carter Beard, Henry Beard, and Frank Beard.
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Irving Ramsey Wiles
Utica, NY, 1861 — 1948, Long Island, NY
Basket with Clams
Oil on canvas, 1926
Irving Ramsey Wiles’ consummate technique allowed him to portray a great variety of textures in a convincing manner. In this still life, the copper vessel and glass fishing buoy glisten when set against the muted warm brown tones of a dilapidated basket. Spilling out of the basket, white clam shells are highlighted by their placement against lush green leaves. His mastery at portraying texture through skillful manipulation of the fluid properties of oil paint is evident, as are his marvelous effects of color, light, and texture.
Born in Utica, New York in 1861, Irving Ramsey Wiles studied at the Art Students League under William Merritt Chase, and in his early years, worked as an illustrator for American magazines. Later he devoted his career to portraiture.
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Charles Alfred Meurer
Horb, Germany, 1865 — 1955, Cincinnati, OH
A Royal Flush
Oil on board, 1898
Born in Germany in 1865 to American parents, Meurer was raised in Tennessee before settling in Ohio. Prior to his move to Ohio, he studied in Paris and Lyon, France.
In A Royal Flush, Meurer uses trompe l’oeil—an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions. Meurer achieved this realistic look by using very fine brushes and precise strokes. He began using this technique after studying the works of Michael Harnett at the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition.
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Norman Rockwell
New York City, NY, 1894 — 1978, Stockbridge, MA
The Family Doctor
Pencil on paper, 1947
Norman Rockwell was an American illustrator, painter, and author. Rockwell was a prolific artist, producing more than 4,000 original works in his lifetime. His works were widely popular in the United States for their sentimental portrayal of American life. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine, creating 323 original covers over 47 years. In 1943, inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt’s address to Congress, Rockwell painted the Four Freedom paintings: Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. Rockwell considered The Post to be the “greatest show window in America.”
In 1963, Rockwell ended his relationship with The Post and began a 10-year association with Look magazine, where his works depicted his interests in civil rights, poverty, and space exploration. Rockwell is also noted for his 64-year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America, during which he produced covers for their publication Boys Life.
In The Family Doctor, Rockwell revisits the theme of doctors and children, a subject matter he focused on several times over his career. Medical bag at his feet, this gentle, reassuring doctor, comforts his young patient, holding her hand as he completes his examination. Rockwell’s illustration was featured in the April 12, 1947 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, which can be viewed in the display case in the middle of this gallery.
In No Swimming (right), two older men carrying their striped swimsuits, along with their beagle, are surprised after finding brightly colored female clothing and a floral hat draped over the “No Swimming” sign. The humor in the illustration is straightforward: their anticipated, leisurely swim has suddenly taken an unexpected turn.
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Norman Rockwell
New York City, NY, 1894 — 1978, Stockbridge, MA
No Swimming
Oil on board, 1953
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Percival Leonard Rosseau
Pointe Coupee, LA, 1859 — 1937, Fayetteville, NC
Queen and Solo - Perfect Work
Oil on canvas, 1912
Rosseau was born in 1859 at Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana and raised in Kentucky. Famous for his portrayal of field and hunting dogs, Rosseau was an adventurer, who at times worked as a cowboy, cattle driver, and commodities broker. He studied art in Paris at the prestigious Académie Julian, and became commercially successful in 1904 after he shifted the focus of his work to animals.
In Queen and Solo - Perfect Work and English Setters (right), Rosseau depicts pairs of well-trained setters on the hunt. The artist’s soft brushwork and lush textures are evidence of the French Barbizon school influence on his work.
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Percival Leonard Rosseau
Pointe Coupee, LA, 1859 — 1937, Fayetteville, NC
English Setters
Oil on canvas, 1908
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Edmund Henry Osthaus
Hildesheim, Germany, 1858 — 1928, Marianna, FL
Under the Bush
Oil on canvas, 1905
Edmund Henry Osthaus was a painter and avid sportsman who owned champion, prizewinning field dogs. He is remembered for his sporting scenes and landscapes which typically featured pedigreed dogs on the hunt. An Ohio newspaper once said of his works, “The Osthaus dogs are not ‘studio’ dogs. They live on the canvas as they live in the field, transferred by some magic of brain and hand from trail to canvas.”
While Osthaus is most known for his sporting dog paintings, he also completed fine landscapes of cowboys on horseback, horses, cows, and traditional portraits which included his favorite dogs. He worked in oils, watercolor, pen and ink, and pencil.
Edmund Henry Osthaus was born in Hildesheim, Germany in 1858. He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Dusseldorf. He traveled with his father to Mexico with the Archduke Ferdinand Maximillian who was invited to become the Emperor of Mexico in 1864 during a period of great strife within that country. When Maximillian was executed, the
Osthauses fled to the United States before making their way back home to Germany.
Later his parents immigrated to the United States, and Osthaus followed them in 1883 with his sister. He was invited to become principal at the new Toledo Academy of Fine Arts. In 1892 he married Charlotte Becker, with whom he had several children. Osthaus left the Academy in 1893 to spend more time working with his field dogs (primarily settlers and pointers), shooting, and painting. Osthaus died at his quail-hunting lodge in Marianna, Florida, in 1928.
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Henry Watson
Bordentown, NJ, 1868 — 1933
Field and Stream Cover
Oil on canvas, 1922
Watson grew up in Bordentown, New Jersey. He was a noted American illustrator and painted pictures of wild life, fishing and hunting, and the great outdoors. He usually worked in oils and signed his work “Hy S. Watson” in the right corner.
He studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and under prominent American artist Thomas Eakins, a teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Watson served as Editor in Chief of Field and Stream magazine. He painted covers for Field and Stream, along with other publications such as Scribners Magazine.
For more than a half of century, Field and Stream had a group of artists who created beautiful works for the covers of their magazines. Cameras were still new and not always available in the wild outdoor areas that the magazine wished to highlight on their covers, so they relied on artists to illustrate scenes of the outdoors. Magazine cover art was a field unto itself. Nearly every cover was a commissioned painting. The covers usually told a story—sometimes dramatic, sometimes humorous, but always appealing to its readers.
Rock Port, MO, 1871 — 1938, Gloucester, MA
Gloucester Harbor
Oil on canvas, 1915
The oldest fishing port in America, Gloucester, Massachusetts, maintains a proud heritage and union with the sea. Gloucester’s deep water harbor attracted mariners and settlers as early as 1623. In this seascape, a peaceful time is implied through the soft pastel and grayed colors to depict calmed waters and sails at rest.
Frederick John Mulhaupt was born (1871) and raised in Rock Port, Missouri, by prosperous German parents. He later studied and taught in Chicago, New York, and Paris. Beginning in 1907, he spent his summers in Gloucester; in 1922 Mulhaupt became a year-round resident.
He is known for his skillful depictions of the landscapes and seascapes of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Mulhaupt remained a vital part of the New York art world even when he lived elsewhere. During the Depression, Mulhaupt was one of several local artists to participate in WPA art projects. Examples of murals he painted during this time still hang in Gloucester City Hall and the former high school on Dale Avenue. Frederick Mulhaupt died in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1938.
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Frederick Mulhaupt
Rock Port, MO, 1871 — 1938, Gloucester, MA
Autumn Landscape
Oil on board, 1910
The autumn warmth of this oil on board landscape scene is achieved by Mulhaupt through his selection and blend of colors. Movement of the rushing stream is created by use of layered paints and deep, dimensional strokes. The stunning tree, precariously positioned by the stream, depicts the feeling of autumn as a time to lay down dressy leaves and make ready for the ensuing winter.
Affectionately known as the “Dean of the Cape Ann School,” Fredrick Mulhaupt, a native of Missouri, first came to Cape Ann in 1907. He joined generations of landscape and marine artists who found inspiration there from the beaches along the rock bound coast, the busy working waterfront, and the rugged uplands.
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Charles H. Davis
Amesbury, MA, 1856 — 1933, Mystic, CT
After Glow
Oil on canvas, 1905
This oil on canvas work is an example of Tonalism, an American artistic movement that was started in the late 1800s. The movement is used to describe the dark landscapes that were said to have been influenced by the French Barbizon artists. The color in a tonalist painting has a predominantly even darker color that can be associated more with moonlight than sunlight.
Born in 1856 in Massachusetts, his school master father sent him to study at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Davis later studied in Paris before settling in Mystic, Connecticut. His landscapes emphasized the somber and quiet stillness in nature. Animals, figures, and buildings rarely occupy an important place in Davis’s paintings.
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Jervis McEntee
Rondout, NY, 1828 — 1891, Kingston, NY
A Gloomy Day
Oil on canvas, 1870
This work with bare trees and autumnal sky suggests loneliness, moodiness, and introspection. The color of the boaters is in contrast to the stark surroundings.
Born in New York in 1828, McEntee had no formal art training. Rather, he chose to study under Hudson River school pioneer Fredrick Edwin Church. His preferred medium was oil on canvas, with occasional watercolors, capturing American landscapes primarily in the Catskill Mountains. He often attached poems to his works to further the mood he was trying to convey.
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John Francis Murphy
Oswego, NY, 1853 — 1921, New York City, NY
Where Sunlight Lingers
Oil on canvas, 1913
John Francis Murphy was a prominent Tonalist artist, using neutral colors to depict landscapes with a certain tone or atmosphere to convey mood. Where Sunlight Lingers is a stark depiction of a sunset, but without the brilliant colors that most artists use to reflect that scene. Far in the background we see a rise of gray smoke where the sunlight is lingering. The tall, bare trees in the foreground add dimension to the scene.
Murphy was born in Oswego, New York, in 1853. With his family, he moved to Chicago in 1868. He began working as a scene painter in a local theatre. He was largely self-taught, with his only training consisting of a few classes at the Chicago Academy of Design.
In 1873, through sales of his work, Murphy was able to finance a three-month sketching trip to the Adirondack Mountains, where he met Winslow Homer and was initially drawn to the descriptive naturalism of the Hudson River school artists. Later he moved to New York and then on to Denmark, New Jersey. He boarded with a family in exchange for helping on their farm. The following year he was back to New York, where he supported himself primarily through illustration work.
In 1883 Murphy married a fellow artist, Adah Clifford Smith. Two years later he began receiving prestigious awards and commercial success. The awards continued until his death in 1921. According to a loan exhibition description in 1921, he was said to be “one of the loveliest, most inspired and absolutely the most original painter of landscapes this country has produced.”
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George Inness
Newburgh, NY, 1825 — 1894, Bridge of Allan, Scotland
The Five O’Clock Train
Oil on canvas, 1862
Born in Newburg, New York in 1825, George Inness began his career as a map maker and engraver. He soon began drawing scenes from nature. Like many of his contemporaries, he studied in Italy and France. Inness was a prominent American landscape artist, drawing inspiration from the Old Masters, the Hudson River school, and the Barbizon school.
The Five O’Clock Train shows his careful sense of design. He divides his landscape into foreground and background with the former divided into halves. In the far distance, a puff of smoke interrupts this idyllic scene—perhaps suggesting the coming of the Industrial Age, which will have a profound effect on this bucolic setting.
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Samuel Lancaster Gerry
Boston, MA, 1813 — 1891, Boston, MA
The Water Hole
Oil on canvas, 1870
Gerry was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1813. Like many artists of his day, he was self taught. He worked as a sign painter and decorative painter. He spent three years abroad studying the paintings of the masters before returning to Boston where he spent most of his professional life.
Gerry was associated with the White Mountain School of Painters, who focused on the grandeur of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. In addition to landscapes he also painted portraits and animals
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Dale Nichols
David City, NE, 1904 — 1995, Sedona, AZ
After the Hunt
Oil on canvas, 1970
Artist, printmaker, illustrator, watercolorist, designer, writer, and lecturer, Dale Nichols created paintings that reflected the rural background of his native Nebraska. Nichols’s signature trees are depicted in this painting.
Nichols, a commercial artist, was an advocate of upgrading the quality of art in illustration and advertising. He was art editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1942-48 and served as Carnegie visiting professor to the University of Illinois. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and with Joseph Binder in Vienna. He won the Harvest Award at a 1930s exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. During his career he had eighteen solo exhibitions and exhibited more than eighty regional and national exhibitions.
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Above:
Kenneth Nunamaker
Akron, OH, 1890 — 1957, Trenton, NJ
Woodlands Brook
Oil on canvas, 1933
Kenneth Nunamaker’s Woodlands Brook reflects his chief artistic characteristics of refinement and charm, poetic sentiment, and beauty of surface. The composition is simple and his rendering of soil unique.
He preferred the quiet and subdued aspects of nature, and is recognized for his painted atmospheric impressionist landscapes. Nunamaker’s technique employed a thickly-layered impasto with a soft but rich well-blended palette. His later work used much lighter application of paint and more attention to detail.
Kenneth Nunamaker, born in Akron, Ohio in 1890, traveled west at the age of seventeen, herding cattle for a living. He painted in his spare time, translating the landscape around him into shapes on his canvas. Nunamaker received his official training in the art department of the Akron Engraving Company. He chiefly learned his craft through experimentation and the observation of nature in order to translate the landscape around him onto his canvases.
In 1923, Nunamaker moved with his family to Pennsylvania where he developed a close association with members of the New Hope Art Colony. From 1945-1957, he operated his own commercial art studio in Philadelphia with his son, Alfred Nunamaker.
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Below:
George Durrie
Hartford, CT, 1820 — 1863, New Haven, CT
Winter in the Country, A Cold Morning
Oil on canvas, 1861
This winter scene of a man walking up a snow-covered path toward an idealized home, followed by an oxen-drawn sled of firewood, is typical of the rural winter landscapes populated by small figures that artist George Henry Durrie introduced into 19th century American painting.
Durrie captures this nostalgic scene under a winter sky as the man makes his way to the comforting shelter of the country home. Tree branches and roof tops are coated with a blanket of fresh snow, while nearby a farmhand busily goes about his chores.
Many of George Henry Durrie’s winter scenes were reproduced in lithograph form by the renowned firm of Currier & Ives. The images were popular with the American public who decorated their homes with these seasonal scenes.
Because his paintings combined extensive genre elements with landscape, they had a story-telling content that made them pleasant, accessible images to the average viewer. These images also achieved widespread popularity at a time when the United States was torn by strife during the Civil War and struggling to meet the challenges of a rapidly industrializing urban economy.
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John Ford Clymer
Ellensburg, WA, 1907 — 1989
Mr. Pharmer’s Multiplying House
Oil on board, 1956
John Ford Clymer always tried to take the viewer of his art “to an actual place and make him feel that he was really there.”
In Mr. Pharmer’s Multiplying House, Clymer succeeded in accomplishing that task. Set against the backdrop of tree-covered hills and an idyllic lake, the Pharmers’ house eludes an ideal American family abode. From the painting’s title, it appears that Mr. Pharmer has added an addition to the house, possible for his growing family. While his wife is tending to her flowers, Mr. Pharmer is white-washing the home’s new addition, being somewhat assisted by his son, who is enjoying painting graffiti on the unpainted siding.
John Ford Clymer is an American painter and illustrator known for his work that captured nature and the American west. Born in Ellensburg, Washington, Clymer moved to Canada after high school where he spent eight years illustrating for Canadian magazines. In 1932, he married his wife Doris and moved to Westport, Connecticut, where he established a career as an illustrator for American magazines, most notably The Saturday Evening Post, Woman’s Day, and Field and Stream. He is sometimes confused with John Clymer, an impressionist painter of landscapes and nautical scenes.
Clymer painted 80 covers for the The Saturday Evening Post. This painting was the cover for the June 23, 1956 edition, featured in the display case in the middle of this gallery.
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Anna Mary Robertson Moses (Grandma Moses)
Greenwich, NY, 1860 — 1961, Hoosick Falls, NY
A Winter Day
Oil on board, 1953
In her late seventies, Grandma Moses began painting the naive scenes that she recalled from her youth. She was discovered by a collector who saw three of her paintings hanging in a drugstore window in 1938. By the end of her career, she had painted an estimated 1500 paintings and had become a national institution.
In A Winter Day, we see Moses growing more confident with her new medium, depicting rolling hills and many figures engaged in a variety of winter activities like sledding, sleigh riding, and ice skating.
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Pauline Palmer
McHenry, IL, 1867 — 1938, Trondheim, Norway
Provincetown
Oil on board, 1918
Pauline Palmer’s painting illustrates the productive and protective nature of the time (1918). The couple depicted seem to be taking stock of their flourishing garden while admiring the robust summer flowers. To the right, a female worker assists in trimming and gathering the bundles of blossoms. The residents have acquired a large and pleasantly sturdy home—one built to protect them from the winds and weather which will come later in the year to Provincetown. Their grey, wooden fences further appear to protect the property from the dusty, rocky road in the foreground. This portrayal of ordinary work activity is typical of Pauline Palmer’s artistic endeavors.
In 1867, Pauline Lennards was born in McHenry, Illinois, the daughter of Nicholas Lennards, a merchant, and Frances Spanganacher Lennards. Her parents were both immigrants from Prussia. She grew up speaking German as her first language.
Pauline studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago and pursued further training in Paris. In 1919 Palmer became the first woman to be elected president of the Chicago Society of Artists. In 1938, she was traveling with her sister in Norway when both women fell ill, and Pauline Palmer died from pneumonia at age 71. Her life and artistic efforts were at the time greatly honored in America.
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Mary Bradish Titcomb
Windham, NH, 1856 — 1927
Shopping Marble Head
Oil on canvas, 1912
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Sydney Laurence
Brooklyn, NY, 1865 — 1940, Anchorage, AK
Left; Mt. McKinley, Oil on canvas, 1920
Center: Northern Lights, Oil on canvas, 1920
Right: Cache, Oil on canvas, 1922
Sydney M. Laurence (1865-1940) was known for his dramatic landscape paintings of Alaska and was one of the first professionally trained artists in the Alaskan territory. Laurence came to Alaska around 1904, after studying art in New York and Europe and pursuing a career as a foreign correspondent in Africa. Initially living the hard life of an Alaskan prospector in search of gold, Laurence ultimately exchanged his gold pan for his artist’s palette when gold mining proved unsuccessful.
Laurence painted a variety of Alaskan scenes in the twenty-five years he lived in the territory. He was fascinated by the vast scale of the Alaska landscape, and was particularly drawn to the mystique of Mount McKinley (Mount Denali), as well as caches and cabins under northern lights, as seen in the three Laurence paintings in the Hosek Collection. A cache is a structure designed to store food outdoors and prevent bears and other animals from accessing it.
Laurence forged a uniquely personal style by applying the “tonalist techniques” he learned in New York and Europe to the wilderness of the North. Tonalism was a more personal, more intimate style of landscape painting which included these features:
• Prevalence of a single color to which all others were subordinate
• Landscape through a visible atmosphere or mist
• Lively brushwork and glazing to reach the final, desired “tone”
Sydney died in Anchorage on December 10, 1940. He, more than any other artist, best defined the image of Alaska as “The Last Frontier.”
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James Henry Beard
Buffalo, NY, 1811 — 1893, New York City, NY
The Conflict
Oil on canvas, 1859
James Beard was a self-taught artist known for children’s portraits, as depicted in this painting with domestic pets. His satirical anthropomorphic animal subjects and other humorous topics were much in contrast to prevalent sentimentality.
He was an itinerant portrait painter, traveling to Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, and Louisville. Beard lived in Cincinnati from 1834-1870 but spent his winters in New Orleans. He lived in New York from 1846-47, and from 1870 lived there the remainder of his life.
Beard was an honorary member of the National Academy of Design from 1848-1860, and a full member until his death in 1893.
Four of his children followed in his artistic legacy: Daniel Carter Beard, James Carter Beard, Henry Beard, and Frank Beard.
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Irving Ramsey Wiles
Utica, NY, 1861 — 1948, Long Island, NY
Basket with Clams
Oil on canvas, 1926
Irving Ramsey Wiles’ consummate technique allowed him to portray a great variety of textures in a convincing manner. In this still life, the copper vessel and glass fishing buoy glisten when set against the muted warm brown tones of a dilapidated basket. Spilling out of the basket, white clam shells are highlighted by their placement against lush green leaves. His mastery at portraying texture through skillful manipulation of the fluid properties of oil paint is evident, as are his marvelous effects of color, light, and texture.
Born in Utica, New York in 1861, Irving Ramsey Wiles studied at the Art Students League under William Merritt Chase, and in his early years, worked as an illustrator for American magazines. Later he devoted his career to portraiture.
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Charles Alfred Meurer
Horb, Germany, 1865 — 1955, Cincinnati, OH
A Royal Flush
Oil on board, 1898
Born in Germany in 1865 to American parents, Meurer was raised in Tennessee before settling in Ohio. Prior to his move to Ohio, he studied in Paris and Lyon, France.
In A Royal Flush, Meurer uses trompe l’oeil—an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions. Meurer achieved this realistic look by using very fine brushes and precise strokes. He began using this technique after studying the works of Michael Harnett at the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition.
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Norman Rockwell
New York City, NY, 1894 — 1978, Stockbridge, MA
The Family Doctor
Pencil on paper, 1947
Norman Rockwell was an American illustrator, painter, and author. Rockwell was a prolific artist, producing more than 4,000 original works in his lifetime. His works were widely popular in the United States for their sentimental portrayal of American life. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine, creating 323 original covers over 47 years. In 1943, inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt’s address to Congress, Rockwell painted the Four Freedom paintings: Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. Rockwell considered The Post to be the “greatest show window in America.”
In 1963, Rockwell ended his relationship with The Post and began a 10-year association with Look magazine, where his works depicted his interests in civil rights, poverty, and space exploration. Rockwell is also noted for his 64-year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America, during which he produced covers for their publication Boys Life.
In The Family Doctor, Rockwell revisits the theme of doctors and children, a subject matter he focused on several times over his career. Medical bag at his feet, this gentle, reassuring doctor, comforts his young patient, holding her hand as he completes his examination. Rockwell’s illustration was featured in the April 12, 1947 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, which can be viewed in the display case in the middle of this gallery.
In No Swimming (right), two older men carrying their striped swimsuits, along with their beagle, are surprised after finding brightly colored female clothing and a floral hat draped over the “No Swimming” sign. The humor in the illustration is straightforward: their anticipated, leisurely swim has suddenly taken an unexpected turn.
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Norman Rockwell
New York City, NY, 1894 — 1978, Stockbridge, MA
No Swimming
Oil on board, 1953
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Percival Leonard Rosseau
Pointe Coupee, LA, 1859 — 1937, Fayetteville, NC
Queen and Solo - Perfect Work
Oil on canvas, 1912
Rosseau was born in 1859 at Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana and raised in Kentucky. Famous for his portrayal of field and hunting dogs, Rosseau was an adventurer, who at times worked as a cowboy, cattle driver, and commodities broker. He studied art in Paris at the prestigious Académie Julian, and became commercially successful in 1904 after he shifted the focus of his work to animals.
In Queen and Solo - Perfect Work and English Setters (right), Rosseau depicts pairs of well-trained setters on the hunt. The artist’s soft brushwork and lush textures are evidence of the French Barbizon school influence on his work.
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Percival Leonard Rosseau
Pointe Coupee, LA, 1859 — 1937, Fayetteville, NC
English Setters
Oil on canvas, 1908
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Edmund Henry Osthaus
Hildesheim, Germany, 1858 — 1928, Marianna, FL
Under the Bush
Oil on canvas, 1905
Edmund Henry Osthaus was a painter and avid sportsman who owned champion, prizewinning field dogs. He is remembered for his sporting scenes and landscapes which typically featured pedigreed dogs on the hunt. An Ohio newspaper once said of his works, “The Osthaus dogs are not ‘studio’ dogs. They live on the canvas as they live in the field, transferred by some magic of brain and hand from trail to canvas.”
While Osthaus is most known for his sporting dog paintings, he also completed fine landscapes of cowboys on horseback, horses, cows, and traditional portraits which included his favorite dogs. He worked in oils, watercolor, pen and ink, and pencil.
Edmund Henry Osthaus was born in Hildesheim, Germany in 1858. He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Dusseldorf. He traveled with his father to Mexico with the Archduke Ferdinand Maximillian who was invited to become the Emperor of Mexico in 1864 during a period of great strife within that country. When Maximillian was executed, the
Osthauses fled to the United States before making their way back home to Germany.
Later his parents immigrated to the United States, and Osthaus followed them in 1883 with his sister. He was invited to become principal at the new Toledo Academy of Fine Arts. In 1892 he married Charlotte Becker, with whom he had several children. Osthaus left the Academy in 1893 to spend more time working with his field dogs (primarily settlers and pointers), shooting, and painting. Osthaus died at his quail-hunting lodge in Marianna, Florida, in 1928.
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Henry Watson
Bordentown, NJ, 1868 — 1933
Field and Stream Cover
Oil on canvas, 1922
Watson grew up in Bordentown, New Jersey. He was a noted American illustrator and painted pictures of wild life, fishing and hunting, and the great outdoors. He usually worked in oils and signed his work “Hy S. Watson” in the right corner.
He studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and under prominent American artist Thomas Eakins, a teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Watson served as Editor in Chief of Field and Stream magazine. He painted covers for Field and Stream, along with other publications such as Scribners Magazine.
For more than a half of century, Field and Stream had a group of artists who created beautiful works for the covers of their magazines. Cameras were still new and not always available in the wild outdoor areas that the magazine wished to highlight on their covers, so they relied on artists to illustrate scenes of the outdoors. Magazine cover art was a field unto itself. Nearly every cover was a commissioned painting. The covers usually told a story—sometimes dramatic, sometimes humorous, but always appealing to its readers.
COMMUNITY GALLERY
Please cross the Rebecca Cole Gallery to the entrance/exit at the back of the space. Please turn right to enter our Marilyn Morgan Hillery Community Gallery.
Current Exhibition:
Recent Gifts to the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts
Recent Gifts to the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts
MAIN GALLERY -
Title Wall
Title Wall
Upon re-entering the Main Gallery, please turn to your RIGHT to view the works on the Title Wall.
On the Left side of the Title Wall:
Will Barnet
Beverly, MA, 1911 — 2012, New York City, NY
Woman, Cat and a String
Oil on canvas, 1962
Will Barnet was a 20th century American artist known for his paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints. In Barnet’s work, the universals are often women—women waiting or at rest, women playing with cats, or women with children in casual scenes of daily life. Referencing his own personal history, these subjects were often images of his wife, his daughter, and their family pets. His signature style of clean lines and carefully placed volumes of solid color in a kind of minimalist representational approach reflect his earlier exploration with abstraction. His figures are foreshortened, distinctively flat, and simply elegant.
Living to the age of 101, Barnet produced an artistic output that spanned eighty years. A prolific graphic artist, Barnet changed his style significantly at different points in his career: his earliest works were influenced by expressionism, works in the 1950s and 1960s were abstract, and his later work evolved into more representational minimalism of silhouetted forms set against geometrically designed backgrounds. Barnet integrated Asian (ukiyo-e), Native American, and classical art into his rich body of work.
On the Right of the Title Wall:
Peter Tunney
b. 1961, New York City, NY
Thank You
Oil on canvas, 2013
New York artist Peter Tunney developed a Neo-Pop style of painting which includes a mix of collages with acrylic painting over it, skillfully removing portions of the acrylic paint to produce word art. Widely known for his use of positive text as the central graphic element in his art, Tunney offers strong and positive messages through his work.
Most of his works contain block-letter aphorisms, or sayings. In Thank You, a painting created for the Metropolitan Opera, the canvas is covered in layer upon layer of actual playbills. The horizontal letters on the left side of the painting, T – N – Y, stand for “typical New Yorker.”
From Wall Street executive and financier to artist and social activist, Tunney creates his large scale paintings from imagery and phrases from popular media sources, packing material, and newspapers. Tunney refers to his work as “up-cycling.” His oeuvre includes works in photography, painting, installation, and performance.
Please continue your tour in the Main Gallery (number 5) directly to your RIGHT at the display case.
In the Case:
N.C. Wyeth
Needham, MA, 1882 – 1945, Chadds Ford, PA
The Young Charles Lindbergh
Oil on canvas reproduction, 1931
Featured in July 1931 issue of McCall’s Magazine
N.C. Wyeth
Needham, MA, 1882 – 1945, Chadds Ford, PA
The Young Charles Lindbergh
Oil on canvas, 1931
Andrew Wyeth
Chadds Ford, PA, 1917 — 2009, Chadds Ford, PA
The Gunsight
Watercolor on canvas, 1974
James Browning Wyeth
b. 1946, Wilmington, DE
The Monhagen Post Office
Watercolor on canvas, 1979
Henriette Wyeth Hurd
Wilmington, Delaware, 1907 — 1997, Roswell, NM
Dainty Bess and Delphinium
Oil on canvas, n.d.
Fairfield Porter
Winnetka, IL, 1907 — 1975, Southampton, NY
The Couch
Oil on canvas, 1968
This scene of poet David Shapiro reading a manuscript seated on a couch next to a young woman, hands folded in her lap staring directly at the viewer, is characteristic of artist Fairfield Porter’s oeuvre. Its interior setting, its golden light, and its intimate glimpse of family or friends in a moment of tranquility all show Porter’s love of depicting his immediate environment.
The large mirror directly behind the couch, framing both of the sitters, shows the reflection of a folding table and a typewriter on a stand, adding depth to the work. A large canvas, turned to expose its stretched frame, is leaned against the back wall. Easily apparent in The Couch, Porter gently portrays his love of humble life lived in the moment.
Fairfield Porter, whose father was an architect, grew up with an appreciation for art. He studied art history and fine arts at Harvard University and attended the Art Students League in New York City, working under artist Thomas Hart Benton. Porter painted in a representational style at the height of Abstract Expressionism dominance. His paintings were mostly created at the family home in Southampton, New York or at his vacation home at Great Spruce Head Island, Maine.
Marvin Cone
Cedar Rapids, IA, 1891 — 1965, Cedar Rapids, IA
Rubber Plant
Oil on canvas, 1938-39
Still life, which includes all types of man-made or natural objects, cut flowers, fruit, vegetables, fish and game, emerged as a genre of painting in 17th century Europe. Still life paintings were highly symbolic, realistic, and reflected the values of the society and artist that created them.
Artist Marvin Cone sought to evoke the inner vision of nature in his still life paintings rather than create a realistic one. Two essential elements found in all of Cone’s still life paintings are easily perceived: their careful arrangement and equally careful draftsmanship.
Marvin Cone was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where in 1906 he began a lifelong friendship with Grant Woods. Cone and Woods traveled abroad together in the summer of 1920, hoping to improve their technical skills by studying art in France.
Upon returning to Cedar Rapids, Cone married his wife Winnifred, raised a family, and for more than four decades taught art at Coe College. Known as a Regionalist painter, Cone explored various subjects during his prolific career.
Severin Roesen
Boppard, Germany, 1815 — 1872
Floral Still Life
Oil on canvas, 1855
An abundance of flowers, a basket of raspberries, as well as a bird nest full of eggs, crowd the composition of this still life by Severin Roesen, one of the major American still life painters of the mid-nineteenth century. Roesen’s hyper-real still lifes were modeled after seventeenth century Dutch painting, bringing meticulous attention to every detail.
Born in Germany in 1815, Roesen emigrated to the United States during the upheaval of German unification in the late 1840s. After first working in Philadelphia, Roesen settled in Williamsport, Pennsylvania where wealthy timber barons prized his highly decorative scenes of fruit and flowers. His paintings adorned the walls of affluent homes, taverns, restaurants, and hotels.
Karl Buehr
Feuerbach, Germany, 1866 — 1952, Chicago, IL
Reflections
Oil on canvas, 1910-1914
Sunlight streaming through draped windowpanes, reflecting off the polished tabletop containing a large vase of springtime flowers, sets the scene for the contemplative mood in Karl Buehr’s Reflections. A young woman, beautifully dressed in cobalt blue, has pulled a single pink flower from the arrangement, holding it in both hands. She appears to be deep in thought as she reflects on a private moment in her life.
Karl Buehr’s contribution to American Impressionism has long been recognized through his colorful landscapes and vibrant figurative paintings completed in the first decade of the twentieth century. When Impressionism began to wane, Buehr remained an expressive colorist, but broadened his brushwork somewhat in later works, as seen in this exhibited painting.
James Caroll Beckwith
Hannibal, MO, 1852 — 1917, New York City, NY
Portrait of a Young Girl
Oil on canvas, 1900
Beckwith was born in Hannibal, Missouri in 1852. He spent most of his childhood in Chicago and studied at the Chicago Academy of Design until it was destroyed by fire. He then moved to New York and studied at the National Academy of Design. Like many of his contemporaries, Beckwith also traveled and studied in Paris. Upon his return to New York, he taught at the Art Students League of New York.
As an artist, Beckwith concentrated mostly on portraits, figure studies, and detailed renderings of historical monuments. This charming painting of a young girl draws the viewer in with her wistful look and porcelain complexion, which offsets her rosy cheeks and red lips.
To the Left:
Charles Webster Hawthorne
Lodi, IL, 1872 — 1930, Baltimore, MD
Joan Becker
Oil on board, 1920
The 1920s was a decade defined by social and cultural rebellion, easily exemplified by the change in female hairstyles. Ladies and girls were saying goodbye to their long Victorian locks and welcoming much sassier shorter coiffures. The most popular hairstyle for girls was the bob, as shown in Charles Webster Hawthorne’s Joan Becker (left). Sporting the bob hairstyle and wearing a vivid marigold dress, Joan appears to be a confident young girl, whose glance is slightly diverted from the viewer. Her self-assured attitude is evident by her left hand firmly propped against her hip, her flat-brimmed hat swinging from her arm by a chip strap.
Typical of the subject in Woman and a White Hat (right), Hawthorne’s sitters are often shown frontally and make direct eye contact with the viewer, emanating a gaze that captures your attention. His portraits convey a sympathetic insight into the character of the sitter, revealing their inner spiritual essence.
Charles Webster Hawthorne was one of America’s most dynamic portrait painters. Born on January 8, 1872 in Lodi, Illinois, he was raised in Maine before moving to New York at the age of 18. Hawthorne studied drawing and painting at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. His most influential teacher, William Merritt Chase, taught the young artist the importance of starting a painting with large tonal values.
In 1899, Hawthorne founded the Cape Cod School of Art, the first outdoor summer school for figure painting. Under his thirty years of guidance, the school grew into one of the nation’s leading art schools, attracting some of the most talented art instructors and students in the country. Many believe that Hawthorne’s largest contribution to art in America was through the medium of teaching.
To the Right:
Charles Webster Hawthorne
Lodi, IL, 1872 — 1930, Baltimore, MD
Woman And a White Hat
Oil on canvas, 1913
Above:
Fredrick Bridgman
Tuskegec, AL, 1847 — 1928, Rouen, France
Portrait of a Young Woman
Oil on board, 1882
Frederick Bridgeman’s warm colors and sensitive brushstrokes capture the innocence of this young Victorian woman, dressed in her nightgown. Her right cheek partially illuminated by the soft light of a bedroom candle fills the center portion of the canvas. Her long hair, loosely tied back and flowing down her neck, is evidence of a private setting as Victorian women only wore their hair down in very intimate settings: their bedroom or dressing room, for example.
Bridgeman was born in Tuskegee, Alabama but began his career in New York as a draftsman when he was seventeen years old. He moved to Paris in 1866 and studied under painter Jean-Leon Gerome, where he was influenced by Gerome’s interest in Middle-Eastern themes. He traveled to North Africa between 1872 and 1874, where he executed approximately three hundred sketches.
Below:
Mary Bradish Titcomb
Windham, NH, 1856 — 1927
Two Girls, Old Lyme, CT
Oil on canvas, 1905
A young girl, engrossed in reading her book, is protected from the intense sunlight by her large-brimmed hat and bright red parasol, while her companion leans on the chair, peering over her shoulder. By all appearances, it is a leisurely afternoon in Old Lyme, Connecticut, a center for American Impressionists at the turn of the twentieth century. Short brushstrokes and separation of colors, painted quickly and freely, show why Mary Bradish Titcomb is often grouped with the American Impressionists.
Mary Bradish Titcomb came to painting after teaching drawing in the Brockton, Massachusetts public schools for seventeen years. At the age of forty-four, she made a decisive move to become a professional artist and move to Boston. Titcomb was involved in a community of hard-working, serious-minded women artists that flourished in Boston in the first few decades of the twentieth century. In 1905, she began signing her name as “M. Bradish Titcomb” to avoid prejudice against her gender.
Mary Belle Williams
Massilon, OH, 1873 — 1943, Los Angeles, CA
Tending Her Garden
Oil on canvas, 1922
The bright noontime sun glares down upon a garden of flowers exploding with color, carefully tended by the hands of a devoted gardener. Encompassing nearly half of the canvas, the diagonal patch of flowers—painted quickly by strokes of pure white paint— draws the viewer’s eye to the central figure, whose face is shaded from the sun overhead by her brimmed hat. Artist Mary Belle Williams’s oeuvre includes garden scenes such as Tending Her Garden, as well as floral still lifes, miniatures, and portraits.
Born in Massilon, Ohio in 1873, Mary Belle Williams became a San Diego, California artist, moving there at age 33 to join her brother who owned a gold mine in nearby Julian.
Jessie Wilcox Smith
Philadelphia, PA, 1863 — 1935, Philadelphia, PA
A Long Day
Watercolor on canvas, 1922
Golden rays of the evening sun, shining through an arched window, cast a halo around the figure of a woman ascending a staircase, carrying the limp body of a sleeping young girl. The title of the painting gives the viewer a hint that the day has been long and tiring, as does the child who has apparently fallen asleep still clothed in her dress, shoes, and socks. In the background, the face of a grandfather clock alerts the viewer that the time is approaching seven o’clock—time to prepare the child for bed at the end of a long day.
Jessie Wilcox Smith is considered by many to be one of the greatest children’s book illustrators, despite many challenges she faced as a woman artist. Smith, along with her friends and colleagues Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley, became known as “The Red Rose Girls,” named after an inn where the collective lived and shared a studio. Drawing at this time was an uncommon profession for women, and was considered unladylike.
Unwavering, “The Red Rose Girls” used their raw talent, wit, and independent, courageous spirit to become successful by targeting a more accepted artistic pursuit: children’s books and family-oriented illustrations. The works they created can be likened to the work of Mary Cassatt, noted American Impressionist, for their intimate and expressive depictions of children. Although Smith never married and had no children of her own, she possessed the artistic ability to capture children as extraordinary.
Andy Warhol
Pittsburgh, PA, 1928 — 1987, New York City, NY
Jane Fonda
Silkscreen, 1982
Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. Fonda rose to fame in the 1960s for her roles in Cat Ballou (1965) and Barbarella (1968). Warhol used an image from the Barbarella film to create this 1982 portrait of the actress.
Warhol was the leading figure in the visual art movement known as Pop Art. He creating paintings and prints of iconic American objects such as Campbell’s soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles, and of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.
Warhol’s fascination with stardom shines through with this portrait of Fonda. The deep royal blue background frames Fonda’s face and voluminous hair, emphasizing her vibrant red lips. The red and blue accenting lines convey an almost comic book-like quality, a technique used by many pop artists.
Peter Max
b.1937, Berlin, Germany
Cosmic Dancer
Acrylic on canvas, 1972
Thank You for visiting this exhibition.
Will Barnet
Beverly, MA, 1911 — 2012, New York City, NY
Woman, Cat and a String
Oil on canvas, 1962
Will Barnet was a 20th century American artist known for his paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints. In Barnet’s work, the universals are often women—women waiting or at rest, women playing with cats, or women with children in casual scenes of daily life. Referencing his own personal history, these subjects were often images of his wife, his daughter, and their family pets. His signature style of clean lines and carefully placed volumes of solid color in a kind of minimalist representational approach reflect his earlier exploration with abstraction. His figures are foreshortened, distinctively flat, and simply elegant.
Living to the age of 101, Barnet produced an artistic output that spanned eighty years. A prolific graphic artist, Barnet changed his style significantly at different points in his career: his earliest works were influenced by expressionism, works in the 1950s and 1960s were abstract, and his later work evolved into more representational minimalism of silhouetted forms set against geometrically designed backgrounds. Barnet integrated Asian (ukiyo-e), Native American, and classical art into his rich body of work.
On the Right of the Title Wall:
Peter Tunney
b. 1961, New York City, NY
Thank You
Oil on canvas, 2013
New York artist Peter Tunney developed a Neo-Pop style of painting which includes a mix of collages with acrylic painting over it, skillfully removing portions of the acrylic paint to produce word art. Widely known for his use of positive text as the central graphic element in his art, Tunney offers strong and positive messages through his work.
Most of his works contain block-letter aphorisms, or sayings. In Thank You, a painting created for the Metropolitan Opera, the canvas is covered in layer upon layer of actual playbills. The horizontal letters on the left side of the painting, T – N – Y, stand for “typical New Yorker.”
From Wall Street executive and financier to artist and social activist, Tunney creates his large scale paintings from imagery and phrases from popular media sources, packing material, and newspapers. Tunney refers to his work as “up-cycling.” His oeuvre includes works in photography, painting, installation, and performance.
Please continue your tour in the Main Gallery (number 5) directly to your RIGHT at the display case.
In the Case:
N.C. Wyeth
Needham, MA, 1882 – 1945, Chadds Ford, PA
The Young Charles Lindbergh
Oil on canvas reproduction, 1931
Featured in July 1931 issue of McCall’s Magazine
N.C. Wyeth
Needham, MA, 1882 – 1945, Chadds Ford, PA
The Young Charles Lindbergh
Oil on canvas, 1931
Andrew Wyeth
Chadds Ford, PA, 1917 — 2009, Chadds Ford, PA
The Gunsight
Watercolor on canvas, 1974
James Browning Wyeth
b. 1946, Wilmington, DE
The Monhagen Post Office
Watercolor on canvas, 1979
Henriette Wyeth Hurd
Wilmington, Delaware, 1907 — 1997, Roswell, NM
Dainty Bess and Delphinium
Oil on canvas, n.d.
Fairfield Porter
Winnetka, IL, 1907 — 1975, Southampton, NY
The Couch
Oil on canvas, 1968
This scene of poet David Shapiro reading a manuscript seated on a couch next to a young woman, hands folded in her lap staring directly at the viewer, is characteristic of artist Fairfield Porter’s oeuvre. Its interior setting, its golden light, and its intimate glimpse of family or friends in a moment of tranquility all show Porter’s love of depicting his immediate environment.
The large mirror directly behind the couch, framing both of the sitters, shows the reflection of a folding table and a typewriter on a stand, adding depth to the work. A large canvas, turned to expose its stretched frame, is leaned against the back wall. Easily apparent in The Couch, Porter gently portrays his love of humble life lived in the moment.
Fairfield Porter, whose father was an architect, grew up with an appreciation for art. He studied art history and fine arts at Harvard University and attended the Art Students League in New York City, working under artist Thomas Hart Benton. Porter painted in a representational style at the height of Abstract Expressionism dominance. His paintings were mostly created at the family home in Southampton, New York or at his vacation home at Great Spruce Head Island, Maine.
Marvin Cone
Cedar Rapids, IA, 1891 — 1965, Cedar Rapids, IA
Rubber Plant
Oil on canvas, 1938-39
Still life, which includes all types of man-made or natural objects, cut flowers, fruit, vegetables, fish and game, emerged as a genre of painting in 17th century Europe. Still life paintings were highly symbolic, realistic, and reflected the values of the society and artist that created them.
Artist Marvin Cone sought to evoke the inner vision of nature in his still life paintings rather than create a realistic one. Two essential elements found in all of Cone’s still life paintings are easily perceived: their careful arrangement and equally careful draftsmanship.
Marvin Cone was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where in 1906 he began a lifelong friendship with Grant Woods. Cone and Woods traveled abroad together in the summer of 1920, hoping to improve their technical skills by studying art in France.
Upon returning to Cedar Rapids, Cone married his wife Winnifred, raised a family, and for more than four decades taught art at Coe College. Known as a Regionalist painter, Cone explored various subjects during his prolific career.
Severin Roesen
Boppard, Germany, 1815 — 1872
Floral Still Life
Oil on canvas, 1855
An abundance of flowers, a basket of raspberries, as well as a bird nest full of eggs, crowd the composition of this still life by Severin Roesen, one of the major American still life painters of the mid-nineteenth century. Roesen’s hyper-real still lifes were modeled after seventeenth century Dutch painting, bringing meticulous attention to every detail.
Born in Germany in 1815, Roesen emigrated to the United States during the upheaval of German unification in the late 1840s. After first working in Philadelphia, Roesen settled in Williamsport, Pennsylvania where wealthy timber barons prized his highly decorative scenes of fruit and flowers. His paintings adorned the walls of affluent homes, taverns, restaurants, and hotels.
Karl Buehr
Feuerbach, Germany, 1866 — 1952, Chicago, IL
Reflections
Oil on canvas, 1910-1914
Sunlight streaming through draped windowpanes, reflecting off the polished tabletop containing a large vase of springtime flowers, sets the scene for the contemplative mood in Karl Buehr’s Reflections. A young woman, beautifully dressed in cobalt blue, has pulled a single pink flower from the arrangement, holding it in both hands. She appears to be deep in thought as she reflects on a private moment in her life.
Karl Buehr’s contribution to American Impressionism has long been recognized through his colorful landscapes and vibrant figurative paintings completed in the first decade of the twentieth century. When Impressionism began to wane, Buehr remained an expressive colorist, but broadened his brushwork somewhat in later works, as seen in this exhibited painting.
James Caroll Beckwith
Hannibal, MO, 1852 — 1917, New York City, NY
Portrait of a Young Girl
Oil on canvas, 1900
Beckwith was born in Hannibal, Missouri in 1852. He spent most of his childhood in Chicago and studied at the Chicago Academy of Design until it was destroyed by fire. He then moved to New York and studied at the National Academy of Design. Like many of his contemporaries, Beckwith also traveled and studied in Paris. Upon his return to New York, he taught at the Art Students League of New York.
As an artist, Beckwith concentrated mostly on portraits, figure studies, and detailed renderings of historical monuments. This charming painting of a young girl draws the viewer in with her wistful look and porcelain complexion, which offsets her rosy cheeks and red lips.
To the Left:
Charles Webster Hawthorne
Lodi, IL, 1872 — 1930, Baltimore, MD
Joan Becker
Oil on board, 1920
The 1920s was a decade defined by social and cultural rebellion, easily exemplified by the change in female hairstyles. Ladies and girls were saying goodbye to their long Victorian locks and welcoming much sassier shorter coiffures. The most popular hairstyle for girls was the bob, as shown in Charles Webster Hawthorne’s Joan Becker (left). Sporting the bob hairstyle and wearing a vivid marigold dress, Joan appears to be a confident young girl, whose glance is slightly diverted from the viewer. Her self-assured attitude is evident by her left hand firmly propped against her hip, her flat-brimmed hat swinging from her arm by a chip strap.
Typical of the subject in Woman and a White Hat (right), Hawthorne’s sitters are often shown frontally and make direct eye contact with the viewer, emanating a gaze that captures your attention. His portraits convey a sympathetic insight into the character of the sitter, revealing their inner spiritual essence.
Charles Webster Hawthorne was one of America’s most dynamic portrait painters. Born on January 8, 1872 in Lodi, Illinois, he was raised in Maine before moving to New York at the age of 18. Hawthorne studied drawing and painting at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. His most influential teacher, William Merritt Chase, taught the young artist the importance of starting a painting with large tonal values.
In 1899, Hawthorne founded the Cape Cod School of Art, the first outdoor summer school for figure painting. Under his thirty years of guidance, the school grew into one of the nation’s leading art schools, attracting some of the most talented art instructors and students in the country. Many believe that Hawthorne’s largest contribution to art in America was through the medium of teaching.
To the Right:
Charles Webster Hawthorne
Lodi, IL, 1872 — 1930, Baltimore, MD
Woman And a White Hat
Oil on canvas, 1913
Above:
Fredrick Bridgman
Tuskegec, AL, 1847 — 1928, Rouen, France
Portrait of a Young Woman
Oil on board, 1882
Frederick Bridgeman’s warm colors and sensitive brushstrokes capture the innocence of this young Victorian woman, dressed in her nightgown. Her right cheek partially illuminated by the soft light of a bedroom candle fills the center portion of the canvas. Her long hair, loosely tied back and flowing down her neck, is evidence of a private setting as Victorian women only wore their hair down in very intimate settings: their bedroom or dressing room, for example.
Bridgeman was born in Tuskegee, Alabama but began his career in New York as a draftsman when he was seventeen years old. He moved to Paris in 1866 and studied under painter Jean-Leon Gerome, where he was influenced by Gerome’s interest in Middle-Eastern themes. He traveled to North Africa between 1872 and 1874, where he executed approximately three hundred sketches.
Below:
Mary Bradish Titcomb
Windham, NH, 1856 — 1927
Two Girls, Old Lyme, CT
Oil on canvas, 1905
A young girl, engrossed in reading her book, is protected from the intense sunlight by her large-brimmed hat and bright red parasol, while her companion leans on the chair, peering over her shoulder. By all appearances, it is a leisurely afternoon in Old Lyme, Connecticut, a center for American Impressionists at the turn of the twentieth century. Short brushstrokes and separation of colors, painted quickly and freely, show why Mary Bradish Titcomb is often grouped with the American Impressionists.
Mary Bradish Titcomb came to painting after teaching drawing in the Brockton, Massachusetts public schools for seventeen years. At the age of forty-four, she made a decisive move to become a professional artist and move to Boston. Titcomb was involved in a community of hard-working, serious-minded women artists that flourished in Boston in the first few decades of the twentieth century. In 1905, she began signing her name as “M. Bradish Titcomb” to avoid prejudice against her gender.
Mary Belle Williams
Massilon, OH, 1873 — 1943, Los Angeles, CA
Tending Her Garden
Oil on canvas, 1922
The bright noontime sun glares down upon a garden of flowers exploding with color, carefully tended by the hands of a devoted gardener. Encompassing nearly half of the canvas, the diagonal patch of flowers—painted quickly by strokes of pure white paint— draws the viewer’s eye to the central figure, whose face is shaded from the sun overhead by her brimmed hat. Artist Mary Belle Williams’s oeuvre includes garden scenes such as Tending Her Garden, as well as floral still lifes, miniatures, and portraits.
Born in Massilon, Ohio in 1873, Mary Belle Williams became a San Diego, California artist, moving there at age 33 to join her brother who owned a gold mine in nearby Julian.
Jessie Wilcox Smith
Philadelphia, PA, 1863 — 1935, Philadelphia, PA
A Long Day
Watercolor on canvas, 1922
Golden rays of the evening sun, shining through an arched window, cast a halo around the figure of a woman ascending a staircase, carrying the limp body of a sleeping young girl. The title of the painting gives the viewer a hint that the day has been long and tiring, as does the child who has apparently fallen asleep still clothed in her dress, shoes, and socks. In the background, the face of a grandfather clock alerts the viewer that the time is approaching seven o’clock—time to prepare the child for bed at the end of a long day.
Jessie Wilcox Smith is considered by many to be one of the greatest children’s book illustrators, despite many challenges she faced as a woman artist. Smith, along with her friends and colleagues Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley, became known as “The Red Rose Girls,” named after an inn where the collective lived and shared a studio. Drawing at this time was an uncommon profession for women, and was considered unladylike.
Unwavering, “The Red Rose Girls” used their raw talent, wit, and independent, courageous spirit to become successful by targeting a more accepted artistic pursuit: children’s books and family-oriented illustrations. The works they created can be likened to the work of Mary Cassatt, noted American Impressionist, for their intimate and expressive depictions of children. Although Smith never married and had no children of her own, she possessed the artistic ability to capture children as extraordinary.
Andy Warhol
Pittsburgh, PA, 1928 — 1987, New York City, NY
Jane Fonda
Silkscreen, 1982
Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. Fonda rose to fame in the 1960s for her roles in Cat Ballou (1965) and Barbarella (1968). Warhol used an image from the Barbarella film to create this 1982 portrait of the actress.
Warhol was the leading figure in the visual art movement known as Pop Art. He creating paintings and prints of iconic American objects such as Campbell’s soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles, and of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.
Warhol’s fascination with stardom shines through with this portrait of Fonda. The deep royal blue background frames Fonda’s face and voluminous hair, emphasizing her vibrant red lips. The red and blue accenting lines convey an almost comic book-like quality, a technique used by many pop artists.
Peter Max
b.1937, Berlin, Germany
Cosmic Dancer
Acrylic on canvas, 1972
Thank You for visiting this exhibition.
MAIN GALLERY -
Right Side
Right Side
Please continue your tour in the Main Gallery (number 5) directly to your RIGHT at the display case.
In the Display Case:
N.C. Wyeth
Needham, MA, 1882 – 1945, Chadds Ford, PA
The Young Charles Lindbergh
Oil on canvas reproduction, 1931
Featured in July 1931 issue of McCall’s Magazine
__________________________________
N.C. Wyeth
Needham, MA, 1882 – 1945, Chadds Ford, PA
The Young Charles Lindbergh
Oil on canvas, 1931
__________________________________
Andrew Wyeth
Chadds Ford, PA, 1917 — 2009, Chadds Ford, PA
The Gunsight
Watercolor on canvas, 1974
__________________________________
James Browning Wyeth
b. 1946, Wilmington, DE
The Monhagen Post Office
Watercolor on canvas, 1979
__________________________________
Henriette Wyeth Hurd
Wilmington, Delaware, 1907 — 1997, Roswell, NM
Dainty Bess and Delphinium
Oil on canvas, n.d.
__________________________________
Fairfield Porter
Winnetka, IL, 1907 — 1975, Southampton, NY
The Couch
Oil on canvas, 1968
This scene of poet David Shapiro reading a manuscript seated on a couch next to a young woman, hands folded in her lap staring directly at the viewer, is characteristic of artist Fairfield Porter’s oeuvre. Its interior setting, its golden light, and its intimate glimpse of family or friends in a moment of tranquility all show Porter’s love of depicting his immediate environment.
The large mirror directly behind the couch, framing both of the sitters, shows the reflection of a folding table and a typewriter on a stand, adding depth to the work. A large canvas, turned to expose its stretched frame, is leaned against the back wall. Easily apparent in The Couch, Porter gently portrays his love of humble life lived in the moment.
Fairfield Porter, whose father was an architect, grew up with an appreciation for art. He studied art history and fine arts at Harvard University and attended the Art Students League in New York City, working under artist Thomas Hart Benton. Porter painted in a representational style at the height of Abstract Expressionism dominance. His paintings were mostly created at the family home in Southampton, New York or at his vacation home at Great Spruce Head Island, Maine.
__________________________________
Marvin Cone
Cedar Rapids, IA, 1891 — 1965, Cedar Rapids, IA
Rubber Plant
Oil on canvas, 1938-39
Still life, which includes all types of man-made or natural objects, cut flowers, fruit, vegetables, fish and game, emerged as a genre of painting in 17th century Europe. Still life paintings were highly symbolic, realistic, and reflected the values of the society and artist that created them.
Artist Marvin Cone sought to evoke the inner vision of nature in his still life paintings rather than create a realistic one. Two essential elements found in all of Cone’s still life paintings are easily perceived: their careful arrangement and equally careful draftsmanship.
Marvin Cone was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where in 1906 he began a lifelong friendship with Grant Woods. Cone and Woods traveled abroad together in the summer of 1920, hoping to improve their technical skills by studying art in France.
Upon returning to Cedar Rapids, Cone married his wife Winnifred, raised a family, and for more than four decades taught art at Coe College. Known as a Regionalist painter, Cone explored various subjects during his prolific career.
__________________________________
Severin Roesen
Boppard, Germany, 1815 — 1872
Floral Still Life
Oil on canvas, 1855
An abundance of flowers, a basket of raspberries, as well as a bird nest full of eggs, crowd the composition of this still life by Severin Roesen, one of the major American still life painters of the mid-nineteenth century. Roesen’s hyper-real still lifes were modeled after seventeenth century Dutch painting, bringing meticulous attention to every detail.
Born in Germany in 1815, Roesen emigrated to the United States during the upheaval of German unification in the late 1840s. After first working in Philadelphia, Roesen settled in Williamsport, Pennsylvania where wealthy timber barons prized his highly decorative scenes of fruit and flowers. His paintings adorned the walls of affluent homes, taverns, restaurants, and hotels.
__________________________________
Karl Buehr
Feuerbach, Germany, 1866 — 1952, Chicago, IL
Reflections
Oil on canvas, 1910-1914
Sunlight streaming through draped windowpanes, reflecting off the polished tabletop containing a large vase of springtime flowers, sets the scene for the contemplative mood in Karl Buehr’s Reflections. A young woman, beautifully dressed in cobalt blue, has pulled a single pink flower from the arrangement, holding it in both hands. She appears to be deep in thought as she reflects on a private moment in her life.
Karl Buehr’s contribution to American Impressionism has long been recognized through his colorful landscapes and vibrant figurative paintings completed in the first decade of the twentieth century. When Impressionism began to wane, Buehr remained an expressive colorist, but broadened his brushwork somewhat in later works, as seen in this exhibited painting.
__________________________________
James Caroll Beckwith
Hannibal, MO, 1852 — 1917, New York City, NY
Portrait of a Young Girl
Oil on canvas, 1900
Beckwith was born in Hannibal, Missouri in 1852. He spent most of his childhood in Chicago and studied at the Chicago Academy of Design until it was destroyed by fire. He then moved to New York and studied at the National Academy of Design. Like many of his contemporaries, Beckwith also traveled and studied in Paris. Upon his return to New York, he taught at the Art Students League of New York.
As an artist, Beckwith concentrated mostly on portraits, figure studies, and detailed renderings of historical monuments. This charming painting of a young girl draws the viewer in with her wistful look and porcelain complexion, which offsets her rosy cheeks and red lips.
__________________________________
Charles Webster Hawthorne
Lodi, IL, 1872 — 1930, Baltimore, MD
Joan Becker
Oil on board, 1920
The 1920s was a decade defined by social and cultural rebellion, easily exemplified by the change in female hairstyles. Ladies and girls were saying goodbye to their long Victorian locks and welcoming much sassier shorter coiffures. The most popular hairstyle for girls was the bob, as shown in Charles Webster Hawthorne’s Joan Becker (left). Sporting the bob hairstyle and wearing a vivid marigold dress, Joan appears to be a confident young girl, whose glance is slightly diverted from the viewer. Her self-assured attitude is evident by her left hand firmly propped against her hip, her flat-brimmed hat swinging from her arm by a chip strap.
Typical of the subject in Woman and a White Hat (right), Hawthorne’s sitters are often shown frontally and make direct eye contact with the viewer, emanating a gaze that captures your attention. His portraits convey a sympathetic insight into the character of the sitter, revealing their inner spiritual essence.
Charles Webster Hawthorne was one of America’s most dynamic portrait painters. Born on January 8, 1872 in Lodi, Illinois, he was raised in Maine before moving to New York at the age of 18. Hawthorne studied drawing and painting at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. His most influential teacher, William Merritt Chase, taught the young artist the importance of starting a painting with large tonal values.
In 1899, Hawthorne founded the Cape Cod School of Art, the first outdoor summer school for figure painting. Under his thirty years of guidance, the school grew into one of the nation’s leading art schools, attracting some of the most talented art instructors and students in the country. Many believe that Hawthorne’s largest contribution to art in America was through the medium of teaching.
__________________________________
Charles Webster Hawthorne
Lodi, IL, 1872 — 1930, Baltimore, MD
Woman And a White Hat
Oil on canvas, 1913
__________________________________
Above:
Fredrick Bridgman
Tuskegec, AL, 1847 — 1928, Rouen, France
Portrait of a Young Woman
Oil on board, 1882
Frederick Bridgeman’s warm colors and sensitive brushstrokes capture the innocence of this young Victorian woman, dressed in her nightgown. Her right cheek partially illuminated by the soft light of a bedroom candle fills the center portion of the canvas. Her long hair, loosely tied back and flowing down her neck, is evidence of a private setting as Victorian women only wore their hair down in very intimate settings: their bedroom or dressing room, for example.
Bridgeman was born in Tuskegee, Alabama but began his career in New York as a draftsman when he was seventeen years old. He moved to Paris in 1866 and studied under painter Jean-Leon Gerome, where he was influenced by Gerome’s interest in Middle-Eastern themes. He traveled to North Africa between 1872 and 1874, where he executed approximately three hundred sketches.
__________________________________
Below:
Mary Bradish Titcomb
Windham, NH, 1856 — 1927
Two Girls, Old Lyme, CT
Oil on canvas, 1905
A young girl, engrossed in reading her book, is protected from the intense sunlight by her large-brimmed hat and bright red parasol, while her companion leans on the chair, peering over her shoulder. By all appearances, it is a leisurely afternoon in Old Lyme, Connecticut, a center for American Impressionists at the turn of the twentieth century. Short brushstrokes and separation of colors, painted quickly and freely, show why Mary Bradish Titcomb is often grouped with the American Impressionists.
Mary Bradish Titcomb came to painting after teaching drawing in the Brockton, Massachusetts public schools for seventeen years. At the age of forty-four, she made a decisive move to become a professional artist and move to Boston. Titcomb was involved in a community of hard-working, serious-minded women artists that flourished in Boston in the first few decades of the twentieth century. In 1905, she began signing her name as “M. Bradish Titcomb” to avoid prejudice against her gender.
__________________________________
Mary Belle Williams
Massilon, OH, 1873 — 1943, Los Angeles, CA
Tending Her Garden
Oil on canvas, 1922
The bright noontime sun glares down upon a garden of flowers exploding with color, carefully tended by the hands of a devoted gardener. Encompassing nearly half of the canvas, the diagonal patch of flowers—painted quickly by strokes of pure white paint— draws the viewer’s eye to the central figure, whose face is shaded from the sun overhead by her brimmed hat. Artist Mary Belle Williams’s oeuvre includes garden scenes such as Tending Her Garden, as well as floral still lifes, miniatures, and portraits.
Born in Massilon, Ohio in 1873, Mary Belle Williams became a San Diego, California artist, moving there at age 33 to join her brother who owned a gold mine in nearby Julian.
__________________________________
Jessie Wilcox Smith
Philadelphia, PA, 1863 — 1935, Philadelphia, PA
A Long Day
Watercolor on canvas, 1922
Golden rays of the evening sun, shining through an arched window, cast a halo around the figure of a woman ascending a staircase, carrying the limp body of a sleeping young girl. The title of the painting gives the viewer a hint that the day has been long and tiring, as does the child who has apparently fallen asleep still clothed in her dress, shoes, and socks. In the background, the face of a grandfather clock alerts the viewer that the time is approaching seven o’clock—time to prepare the child for bed at the end of a long day.
Jessie Wilcox Smith is considered by many to be one of the greatest children’s book illustrators, despite many challenges she faced as a woman artist. Smith, along with her friends and colleagues Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley, became known as “The Red Rose Girls,” named after an inn where the collective lived and shared a studio. Drawing at this time was an uncommon profession for women, and was considered unladylike.
Unwavering, “The Red Rose Girls” used their raw talent, wit, and independent, courageous spirit to become successful by targeting a more accepted artistic pursuit: children’s books and family-oriented illustrations. The works they created can be likened to the work of Mary Cassatt, noted American Impressionist, for their intimate and expressive depictions of children. Although Smith never married and had no children of her own, she possessed the artistic ability to capture children as extraordinary.
__________________________________
Andy Warhol
Pittsburgh, PA, 1928 — 1987, New York City, NY
Jane Fonda
Silkscreen, 1982
Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. Fonda rose to fame in the 1960s for her roles in Cat Ballou (1965) and Barbarella (1968). Warhol used an image from the Barbarella film to create this 1982 portrait of the actress.
Warhol was the leading figure in the visual art movement known as Pop Art. He creating paintings and prints of iconic American objects such as Campbell’s soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles, and of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.
Warhol’s fascination with stardom shines through with this portrait of Fonda. The deep royal blue background frames Fonda’s face and voluminous hair, emphasizing her vibrant red lips. The red and blue accenting lines convey an almost comic book-like quality, a technique used by many pop artists.
__________________________________
Peter Max
b.1937, Berlin, Germany
Cosmic Dancer
Acrylic on canvas, 1972
N.C. Wyeth
Needham, MA, 1882 – 1945, Chadds Ford, PA
The Young Charles Lindbergh
Oil on canvas reproduction, 1931
Featured in July 1931 issue of McCall’s Magazine
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N.C. Wyeth
Needham, MA, 1882 – 1945, Chadds Ford, PA
The Young Charles Lindbergh
Oil on canvas, 1931
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Andrew Wyeth
Chadds Ford, PA, 1917 — 2009, Chadds Ford, PA
The Gunsight
Watercolor on canvas, 1974
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James Browning Wyeth
b. 1946, Wilmington, DE
The Monhagen Post Office
Watercolor on canvas, 1979
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Henriette Wyeth Hurd
Wilmington, Delaware, 1907 — 1997, Roswell, NM
Dainty Bess and Delphinium
Oil on canvas, n.d.
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Fairfield Porter
Winnetka, IL, 1907 — 1975, Southampton, NY
The Couch
Oil on canvas, 1968
This scene of poet David Shapiro reading a manuscript seated on a couch next to a young woman, hands folded in her lap staring directly at the viewer, is characteristic of artist Fairfield Porter’s oeuvre. Its interior setting, its golden light, and its intimate glimpse of family or friends in a moment of tranquility all show Porter’s love of depicting his immediate environment.
The large mirror directly behind the couch, framing both of the sitters, shows the reflection of a folding table and a typewriter on a stand, adding depth to the work. A large canvas, turned to expose its stretched frame, is leaned against the back wall. Easily apparent in The Couch, Porter gently portrays his love of humble life lived in the moment.
Fairfield Porter, whose father was an architect, grew up with an appreciation for art. He studied art history and fine arts at Harvard University and attended the Art Students League in New York City, working under artist Thomas Hart Benton. Porter painted in a representational style at the height of Abstract Expressionism dominance. His paintings were mostly created at the family home in Southampton, New York or at his vacation home at Great Spruce Head Island, Maine.
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Marvin Cone
Cedar Rapids, IA, 1891 — 1965, Cedar Rapids, IA
Rubber Plant
Oil on canvas, 1938-39
Still life, which includes all types of man-made or natural objects, cut flowers, fruit, vegetables, fish and game, emerged as a genre of painting in 17th century Europe. Still life paintings were highly symbolic, realistic, and reflected the values of the society and artist that created them.
Artist Marvin Cone sought to evoke the inner vision of nature in his still life paintings rather than create a realistic one. Two essential elements found in all of Cone’s still life paintings are easily perceived: their careful arrangement and equally careful draftsmanship.
Marvin Cone was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where in 1906 he began a lifelong friendship with Grant Woods. Cone and Woods traveled abroad together in the summer of 1920, hoping to improve their technical skills by studying art in France.
Upon returning to Cedar Rapids, Cone married his wife Winnifred, raised a family, and for more than four decades taught art at Coe College. Known as a Regionalist painter, Cone explored various subjects during his prolific career.
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Severin Roesen
Boppard, Germany, 1815 — 1872
Floral Still Life
Oil on canvas, 1855
An abundance of flowers, a basket of raspberries, as well as a bird nest full of eggs, crowd the composition of this still life by Severin Roesen, one of the major American still life painters of the mid-nineteenth century. Roesen’s hyper-real still lifes were modeled after seventeenth century Dutch painting, bringing meticulous attention to every detail.
Born in Germany in 1815, Roesen emigrated to the United States during the upheaval of German unification in the late 1840s. After first working in Philadelphia, Roesen settled in Williamsport, Pennsylvania where wealthy timber barons prized his highly decorative scenes of fruit and flowers. His paintings adorned the walls of affluent homes, taverns, restaurants, and hotels.
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Karl Buehr
Feuerbach, Germany, 1866 — 1952, Chicago, IL
Reflections
Oil on canvas, 1910-1914
Sunlight streaming through draped windowpanes, reflecting off the polished tabletop containing a large vase of springtime flowers, sets the scene for the contemplative mood in Karl Buehr’s Reflections. A young woman, beautifully dressed in cobalt blue, has pulled a single pink flower from the arrangement, holding it in both hands. She appears to be deep in thought as she reflects on a private moment in her life.
Karl Buehr’s contribution to American Impressionism has long been recognized through his colorful landscapes and vibrant figurative paintings completed in the first decade of the twentieth century. When Impressionism began to wane, Buehr remained an expressive colorist, but broadened his brushwork somewhat in later works, as seen in this exhibited painting.
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James Caroll Beckwith
Hannibal, MO, 1852 — 1917, New York City, NY
Portrait of a Young Girl
Oil on canvas, 1900
Beckwith was born in Hannibal, Missouri in 1852. He spent most of his childhood in Chicago and studied at the Chicago Academy of Design until it was destroyed by fire. He then moved to New York and studied at the National Academy of Design. Like many of his contemporaries, Beckwith also traveled and studied in Paris. Upon his return to New York, he taught at the Art Students League of New York.
As an artist, Beckwith concentrated mostly on portraits, figure studies, and detailed renderings of historical monuments. This charming painting of a young girl draws the viewer in with her wistful look and porcelain complexion, which offsets her rosy cheeks and red lips.
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Charles Webster Hawthorne
Lodi, IL, 1872 — 1930, Baltimore, MD
Joan Becker
Oil on board, 1920
The 1920s was a decade defined by social and cultural rebellion, easily exemplified by the change in female hairstyles. Ladies and girls were saying goodbye to their long Victorian locks and welcoming much sassier shorter coiffures. The most popular hairstyle for girls was the bob, as shown in Charles Webster Hawthorne’s Joan Becker (left). Sporting the bob hairstyle and wearing a vivid marigold dress, Joan appears to be a confident young girl, whose glance is slightly diverted from the viewer. Her self-assured attitude is evident by her left hand firmly propped against her hip, her flat-brimmed hat swinging from her arm by a chip strap.
Typical of the subject in Woman and a White Hat (right), Hawthorne’s sitters are often shown frontally and make direct eye contact with the viewer, emanating a gaze that captures your attention. His portraits convey a sympathetic insight into the character of the sitter, revealing their inner spiritual essence.
Charles Webster Hawthorne was one of America’s most dynamic portrait painters. Born on January 8, 1872 in Lodi, Illinois, he was raised in Maine before moving to New York at the age of 18. Hawthorne studied drawing and painting at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. His most influential teacher, William Merritt Chase, taught the young artist the importance of starting a painting with large tonal values.
In 1899, Hawthorne founded the Cape Cod School of Art, the first outdoor summer school for figure painting. Under his thirty years of guidance, the school grew into one of the nation’s leading art schools, attracting some of the most talented art instructors and students in the country. Many believe that Hawthorne’s largest contribution to art in America was through the medium of teaching.
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Charles Webster Hawthorne
Lodi, IL, 1872 — 1930, Baltimore, MD
Woman And a White Hat
Oil on canvas, 1913
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Above:
Fredrick Bridgman
Tuskegec, AL, 1847 — 1928, Rouen, France
Portrait of a Young Woman
Oil on board, 1882
Frederick Bridgeman’s warm colors and sensitive brushstrokes capture the innocence of this young Victorian woman, dressed in her nightgown. Her right cheek partially illuminated by the soft light of a bedroom candle fills the center portion of the canvas. Her long hair, loosely tied back and flowing down her neck, is evidence of a private setting as Victorian women only wore their hair down in very intimate settings: their bedroom or dressing room, for example.
Bridgeman was born in Tuskegee, Alabama but began his career in New York as a draftsman when he was seventeen years old. He moved to Paris in 1866 and studied under painter Jean-Leon Gerome, where he was influenced by Gerome’s interest in Middle-Eastern themes. He traveled to North Africa between 1872 and 1874, where he executed approximately three hundred sketches.
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Below:
Mary Bradish Titcomb
Windham, NH, 1856 — 1927
Two Girls, Old Lyme, CT
Oil on canvas, 1905
A young girl, engrossed in reading her book, is protected from the intense sunlight by her large-brimmed hat and bright red parasol, while her companion leans on the chair, peering over her shoulder. By all appearances, it is a leisurely afternoon in Old Lyme, Connecticut, a center for American Impressionists at the turn of the twentieth century. Short brushstrokes and separation of colors, painted quickly and freely, show why Mary Bradish Titcomb is often grouped with the American Impressionists.
Mary Bradish Titcomb came to painting after teaching drawing in the Brockton, Massachusetts public schools for seventeen years. At the age of forty-four, she made a decisive move to become a professional artist and move to Boston. Titcomb was involved in a community of hard-working, serious-minded women artists that flourished in Boston in the first few decades of the twentieth century. In 1905, she began signing her name as “M. Bradish Titcomb” to avoid prejudice against her gender.
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Mary Belle Williams
Massilon, OH, 1873 — 1943, Los Angeles, CA
Tending Her Garden
Oil on canvas, 1922
The bright noontime sun glares down upon a garden of flowers exploding with color, carefully tended by the hands of a devoted gardener. Encompassing nearly half of the canvas, the diagonal patch of flowers—painted quickly by strokes of pure white paint— draws the viewer’s eye to the central figure, whose face is shaded from the sun overhead by her brimmed hat. Artist Mary Belle Williams’s oeuvre includes garden scenes such as Tending Her Garden, as well as floral still lifes, miniatures, and portraits.
Born in Massilon, Ohio in 1873, Mary Belle Williams became a San Diego, California artist, moving there at age 33 to join her brother who owned a gold mine in nearby Julian.
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Jessie Wilcox Smith
Philadelphia, PA, 1863 — 1935, Philadelphia, PA
A Long Day
Watercolor on canvas, 1922
Golden rays of the evening sun, shining through an arched window, cast a halo around the figure of a woman ascending a staircase, carrying the limp body of a sleeping young girl. The title of the painting gives the viewer a hint that the day has been long and tiring, as does the child who has apparently fallen asleep still clothed in her dress, shoes, and socks. In the background, the face of a grandfather clock alerts the viewer that the time is approaching seven o’clock—time to prepare the child for bed at the end of a long day.
Jessie Wilcox Smith is considered by many to be one of the greatest children’s book illustrators, despite many challenges she faced as a woman artist. Smith, along with her friends and colleagues Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley, became known as “The Red Rose Girls,” named after an inn where the collective lived and shared a studio. Drawing at this time was an uncommon profession for women, and was considered unladylike.
Unwavering, “The Red Rose Girls” used their raw talent, wit, and independent, courageous spirit to become successful by targeting a more accepted artistic pursuit: children’s books and family-oriented illustrations. The works they created can be likened to the work of Mary Cassatt, noted American Impressionist, for their intimate and expressive depictions of children. Although Smith never married and had no children of her own, she possessed the artistic ability to capture children as extraordinary.
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Andy Warhol
Pittsburgh, PA, 1928 — 1987, New York City, NY
Jane Fonda
Silkscreen, 1982
Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. Fonda rose to fame in the 1960s for her roles in Cat Ballou (1965) and Barbarella (1968). Warhol used an image from the Barbarella film to create this 1982 portrait of the actress.
Warhol was the leading figure in the visual art movement known as Pop Art. He creating paintings and prints of iconic American objects such as Campbell’s soup cans and Coca-Cola bottles, and of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor.
Warhol’s fascination with stardom shines through with this portrait of Fonda. The deep royal blue background frames Fonda’s face and voluminous hair, emphasizing her vibrant red lips. The red and blue accenting lines convey an almost comic book-like quality, a technique used by many pop artists.
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Peter Max
b.1937, Berlin, Germany
Cosmic Dancer
Acrylic on canvas, 1972
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