American Impressionism

California Impressionism: Paintings from Irvine Collection at U. New Hampshire Museum

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, California’s spectacular landscape was the catalyst for a profusion of light-filled paintings. Artists determined to capture its vivid colors painted the landscapes in a distinctive style that has come to be called California Impressionism or California plein air painting.

Left: Joseph Morris Raphael (1869-1950), Market of St. Catherine, Bruxelles (c. 1911), oil on panel, 7” x 7”. All images courtesy of The Irvine Museum, California.

The free exhibition of “Paintings from the Irvine Museum” is hosted by University of New Hampshire’s Museum of Art (Durham, NH) and includes 35 paintings by 29 artists. An advocate of traveling exhibitions, the Irvine Museum was a museum without walls for quite some time. According to James Irvine Swinden, President of the Irvine Museum, the museum did everything backwards. He explains how the museum was formed before a building was built. Founded only 20 years ago, it has over that time presented 60 traveling shows and produced 17 books. A major premise of the museum (and consequently, its works) is the preservation and the fostering of respect for our earth and its fragile ecosystem. artes fine arts magazineMore

Smithsonian Explores Modern Painter, Wm. H. Johnson with New Book, Exhibition

Born in Florence, South Carolina, at the beginning of the modern century, William H. Johnson (1901-1970), was a virtuoso skilled in various media and techniques. With work that spanned decades, continents, and genres, he is a seminal figure in modern American art.

Historically, Johnson’s work has been under-examined in the modern art literature, but awareness and interest in this artist has been on the rise in recent years. President Obama created a buzz when he selected four of Johnson’s works from the Smithsonian’s collections—the most by any one artist—to decorate the White House. Now, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) has joined with Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, to bring Johnson’s work to communities across the nation. This fall marks the opening and release of William H. Johnson: An American Modern, a traveling exhibition and scholarly book of the same name.

(Above) William H. Johnson, Self Portrait (c. 1923-1926). Collection Smithsonian American Art Museum. All other images courtesy Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD.artes fine arts magazine More

19th Century American Artists and the Grand Tour

American Impressionism — Charles Harold Davis, Landscape in France (n/d), pencil on paper. American practitioner in Barbizon style. Collection of Lyman Allyn Museum

Italy had long been the most popular destination for Americans prior to the Civil War, but by the 1870’s, France had become the country of choice. For it then seemed that every young American artist yearned to embark on a Grand Tour of Europe and study in Paris. In fact, approximately twenty-two hundred were documented there during the post-Civil War period. Many were drawn to the city of light by the prestigious government-sponsored Ecole des Beaux Arts, or by the more accessible private academies, including the acclaimed Academie Julian. American artists also discovered, Grez-sur-Loing, Barbizon, and the adjacent Forest of Fontainebleau, where they worked alongside French painters. Their interest in Barbizon was partially in response to the radically modern changes effected by the Second Empire’s urban planner and architect, Baron Hausmann. Many Parisian neighborhoods were razed to allow for the erection of the larger buildings and wider boulevards needed to accommodate the rapidly growing population. The rural life at Barbizon exemplified the antithesis of the industrialization of Paris.More

19th Century American Artists and the Grand Tour

Charles Ebert, Church in Venice, circ. 1913, oil/canvas

Eighteenth-century American artists relied on European art long before they set sail for the Continent. Mezzotints after French and English portraits were imported by the hundreds during the eighteenth century and supplied the colonists with what was often their only contact with fine art. John Singleton Copley wrote to Benjamin West on November 12, 1766:

“It would give me inexpressible pleasure to make a trip to Europe where I should see those fair examples of art that have stood so long the admiration of all the world. … I think myself peculiarly unlucky in Living in a place into which there has not been one portrait brought that is worthy to be called a Picture within my memory, which leaves me at a great loss to guess the stile that You, Mr. Reynolds, and the other Artists practice.”

Yet Copley was more fortunate than most Colonial artists. He had access to the first art gallery to open in America. English-trained artist John Smibert (1688-1751) brought an art collection to Boston consisting of prints, copies of Old Master paintings, and casts after antique sculpture. Beginning in the 1730s, Bostonians could view oil on canvas copies of some of the best-known European paintings in his gallery-cum-studio. With few exceptions, colonists living outside Boston had to content themselves solely with mezzotints—mainly Baroque-style portraits of aristocracy—to learn about European art.More

New England Impressionist Artists Paint the Coastal Landscape

coast hopper monhe — Edward Hopper, Monhegan Houses, Maine, 1916 (Portland Museum of Art)*

June 25- October 12, 2009

Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT

October 24- January 31, 2010

The Portland Museum of Art chronicles the development of impressionist Connecticut and early modernist Maine with 73 features works drawn from the collections of the Portland Museum of Art and the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut. The Call of the Coast: Art Colonies of New England, is on exhibit through October 12, 2009 and subsequently can be seen at the Florence Griswold Art Museum, in Old Lyme, CT, from October 24-January 31, 2010.

For the new-comer, it is clear that Portland, Maine is a city by the sea. Dozens of squalling seagulls perform acrobatics overhead, announcing the arrival of tourists by the droves. Busy Commercial Street divides the harbor from the retail district– restaurants and souvenir shops by the dozens—which weave their way up the narrow, cobbled streets through the historic neighborhoods on the city’s ocean-facing hillside. A warm sea breeze, redolent with the aroma of the fish processing plants on nearby Casco Bay, hangs on every street corner, reminding the visitor of the region’s sea-borne legacy and the city’s time-honored maritime traditions. This city-by-the-sea seems a fitting location for an exhibition of works by some of New England’s greatest painters of the early 20^th century, assembled, for a show celebrating their contribution to the region’s legendary scenery and people.

coast.lawson.cos cob — Ernest Lawson, Connecticut Landscape, 1902, o/c, Portland Mueaum of Art, H.E. Field Art Found. Collection, gift of Barn Gallery Assoc., Ogunquit, ME, 1979.13.31

The art colonies of New England played a key role in the creation of an American national identity in the early 20th century. Art colonies in Old Lyme and Cos Cob, Connecticut and Ogunquit and Monhegan, Maine were inspiration for nationally recognized artists including Edward Hopper, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, and George Bellows, among others.More