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Nature in America: Taming
the Landscape
June 29 - August 26, 2012
The Frances Lehman
Loeb Art Center presents an opportunity to view changing depictions of the
American landscape as rendered by artists of the Hudson River School through
modernists of the 20th century. Of the many rarely or never shown paintings,
drawings, photographs, and prints in Nature in America: Taming the Landscape,
42 of the 44 works are drawn from the Art Center's permanent collection.
Patricia Phagan, the Art Center's Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints
and Drawings, curates the exhibition, which will be on view from June 29
through August 26, 2012.
Nature in America includes
works by Thomas Cole, George Inness, Arthur Dove, John Marin, Andrew Dasburg,
and Ernest Fiene, as well as painters Aaron Draper Shattuck, Milton Avery,
and Oscar Bluemner, photographers Frank Jay Haynes, Edward Steichen, and
Ansel Adams, and many others. The exhibition will explore three major phases
in thought toward and representation of landscape through the two world
wars.
Gallery One: The Young Nation:
Domesticating the Wild
- The first gallery of the exhibition will offer an opportunity
to see how some of the artists of the Hudson River School as well as early
Western photographers viewed America, which was at that time largely wilderness.
Phagan noted that "young landscape artists tended to see a wild land
with sublime vistas, immense topographical features, and intense expressions
of moods."
-
- Painter Thomas Cole in his "Essay on American Scenery"
in 1835 noted that the most prominent feature of the country's Eden-like
land was this predominant wildness, almost primeval in relation to Europe's
centuries-old cultivated landscape, but disappearing fast to the ax. He
pointed out those parts of nature that especially fascinated-such as the
mountains, lakes, and waterfalls-and did so with emotional, spiritual words
that connect with his fervent oils.
-
- Phagan noted that, for Cole, "art could improve
upon the fascinating wildness of America by giving it more picturesque
variety and contrast, and making it even more theatrical. In doing so,
he and his followers in the Hudson River School often made composite views
of scenery in their more finished works, with brooding mountains and cliffs,
gentle rivers, stormy skies and fiery sunsets, and rocky, weather-battered
islands and coasts."
-
- Like the artists of the English landscape tradition who
came before them, these American painters were swept up in the search not
only for the picturesque but for the dramatic, awe-inspiring sublime in
nature, aesthetic theories formed in England decades before and popularized
through newspapers, books, and trips abroad. American photographers applied
the search for the sublime as well. In the frontier West, they echoed this
aesthetic when they documented magnificent mountain chains stitched with
new railroad tracks or recorded the astonishing terrain of Yellowstone
National Park.
-
- In addition to Cole, the artists represented in this
section will include Thomas Doughty, William Hart, Frank Jay Haynes, William
Henry Jackson, Jervis McEntee, Charles Herbert Moore, Alexander Robertson,
Andrew Joseph Russell, Aaron Draper Shattuck, James Smillie, William T.
Russell Smith, Seneca Ray Stoddard, and Carleton E. Watkins.
Gallery Two: After the Civil
War: Softening the Face of Nature
- In the second gallery, Phagan highlights landscape artists
who began to look at nature differently, with the "lofty poetry that
characterized so many paintings of the Hudson River School gradually softening
and becoming more personal."
-
- Around the time of the Civil War and for decades afterwards,
many painters, printmakers, and photographers in the United States preferred
creating up-close, private moments in a civilized nature that they made
atmospheric and intimate, with growing emphasis on strong passages and
veils of color. For instance, Phagan noted that when George Inness came
back from Europe in the 1850s, he began to favor the calm, informal landscape
style of Théodore Rousseau and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, artists
of the Barbizon School whose pigment-laden canvases appeared airy and brilliant
with light. His quiet landscapes in turn influenced several American artists,
and paved the way for the Tonalist movement of poetic landscape oils, watercolors,
prints, and photographs.
-
- At the same time, American artists working abroad in
Munich, Brittany, and elsewhere embraced the immediacy of painting outdoor
scenes (en plein air) and brought this way of working back to America.
All of this experimentation led many American painters in the 1880s and
afterwards to embrace the luminous, open-air, and color-saturated approaches
of the French Impressionists.
-
- In addition to Inness, artists represented in this gallery
include Milton Avery, Ralph A. Blakelock, Henry Farrer, Daniel Garber,
William Morris Hunt, John Francis Murphy, Harry Coswell Rubincam, James
David Smillie, Edward Steichen, Abbott H. Thayer, Dwight William Tryon,
John Henry Twachtman, and Henry Wolf.
Gallery Three: The Progressive
Era through the World Wars: Breaking Nature Apart
- The final shift represented in this exhibition occurred
in early-20th-century America during a period of reformist politics and
new ideas in the arts. American artists were inspired by the art of Matisse,
Picasso, and other European modernists, and began to fragment nature, singling
out its curves, planes, masses of colors, rhythmic lines, and fecund energy.
For instance, Phagan noted that painters such as Arthur Dove and John Marin,
in the circle around gallerist and photographer Alfred Stieglitz, made
vital modern landscapes inspired by the local scene.
-
- The Woodstock Art Colony-its artists ferrying back and
forth from New York-rendered the valleys and lanes around this upstate
New York area with lilting shapes and patterns as seen in the work of Andrew
Dasburg and Ernest Fiene. Broadly speaking, during the first half of the
20th century, American artists of all allegiances began making stronger
use of patterns, planes, colors, and rhythmic lines in their views of the
land.
- In addition to Dasburg, Dove, Fiene, and Marin, artists
included in this section include Ansel Adams, Oscar Bluemner, Andreas Feininger,
Rosella Hartman, Fairfield Porter, Grant Wood, and William Zorach.
About the Curator
Patricia Phagan is the Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of
Prints and Drawings at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College.
She is in charge of more than 10,000 works in the permanent collection,
including the Magoon Collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English
watercolors, drawings, and prints. As a curator of prints and drawings for
over twenty years, she has organized a number of exhibitions, including
Thomas Rowlandson: Pleasures and Pursuits in Georgian England; British
Watercolors from the West Foundation Collection; The Transmission
of Fame: Italian Renaissance Prints; and REMBRANDT: Treasures
from the Rembrandt House, Amsterdam. In addition to the catalogue that
accompanied the Rowlandson exhibition, Phagan has edited numerous catalogues
on European and American prints and drawings and written widely, including
the article, "Drawings at Vassar to 'Illustrate the Loftiest Principles
and Refine the Most Delighted Hearts,'" published in Master Drawings
(Summer 2004). She earned her Ph.D. in Art History from the City University
of New York Graduate Center in 2000 with a dissertation on American political
cartoons of the 1920s and 1930s.
Wall panels for the exhibition
Wall Panels ©Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar
College
- Introduction
-
- This exhibition highlights the evolution of the depiction
of the American landscape, from Hudson River School painters through World
War II artists. Of the many rarely or never shown paintings, drawings,
photographs, and prints on view, forty-two of the forty-four works are
drawn from the Art Center's permanent collection.
-
- From the late eighteenth century to the middle decades
of the twentieth, artists in America looked out at nature and transformed
what they saw, sometimes romanticizing it, or making it appear more intimate,
and in the first half of the twentieth century, breaking it up into constituent
parts. Gallery by gallery, this exhibition explores these three major phases
of the American landscape, before abstract expressionism changed the artistic
dynamic.
-
- The exhibition is sponsored by the Evelyn Metzger Exhibition
Fund.
-
-
- The Young Nation: Domesticating the Wild
-
- This first gallery offers an opportunity to see how some
of the artists of the Hudson River School and photographers of the frontier
West viewed America, which was largely wilderness in the early to mid-nineteenth
century. For Hudson River School painters, art could improve upon America's
wildness by giving nature more picturesque variety and contrast, and making
it even more dramatic with sublime vistas, immense topographical features,
and intense expressions of moods.
-
- These American painters were swept up in the search for
the picturesque and the awe-inspiring sublime in nature, aesthetic theories
formed in England decades before and popularized through newspapers, books,
and trips abroad. American photographers applied the search for the sublime,
too. In the undeveloped West, they echoed this aesthetic when they documented
mountain chains stitched with new railroad tracks or recorded the grand
terrain of Yellowstone National Park.
-
-
- After the Civil War: Softening the Face of Nature
-
- In this second gallery, one sees that landscape artists
began to look at nature differently, with the lofty poetry that characterized
so many paintings of the Hudson River School gradually softening and becoming
more personal. Around the time of the Civil War and for decades afterwards,
many painters, printmakers, and photographers in the United States preferred
creating up-close, private moments in a nature that they made atmospheric
and intimate, with growing emphasis on strong passages and veils of color.
-
- Both the calm, airy landscape style of French painters
Théodore Rousseau and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and the fog-shrouded,
tinted views of London by American expatriate James McNeill Whistler inspired
American artists to view landscape in a more intimate way. All of this
and other experimentation led many American painters in the 1880s and afterwards
to embrace the luminous and color-saturated approaches of the French Impressionists.
-
-
- The Progressive Era through the World Wars: Breaking
Nature Apart
-
- The final shift in landscape represented in this exhibition
occurred in early-twentieth-century America during a period of reformist
politics and new ideas in the arts. American artists were inspired by the
art of Matisse, Picasso, and other European modernists, and they began
to fragment nature, singling out its curves, planes, masses of colors,
rhythmic lines, and fecund energy.
-
- For instance, painters such as Arthur Dove and John Marin,
in the circle around gallerist and photographer Alfred Stieglitz, made
vital modern landscapes inspired by the local scene. The Woodstock Art
Colony -- its artists ferrying back and forth from New York -- rendered
the valleys and lanes around this upstate New York area with lilting shapes
and patterns. Broadly speaking, during the first half of the twentieth
century, American artists of all allegiances began making stronger use
of patterns, planes, colors, and rhythmic lines in their views of the land.
Exhibition Checklist
Unless otherwise noted, all works are from the permanent
collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. Dimensions are given with
height before width.
-
-
- GALLERY ONE:
- THE YOUNG NATION: DOMESTICATING THE WILD
-
- Thomas Cole (American, b. England 1801-1848)
- Landscape Sketch
- Graphite and watercolor on cream wove paper
- 6 7/16 x 9 in. (16.4 x 22.9 cm.)
- Purchase, Suzette Morton Davidson, class of 1934, Fund
- 1984.28
-
- Thomas Doughty (American 1792-1856)
- The Upper Hudson
- Oil on canvas
- 14 x 20 in. (35.6 x 50.8 cm.)
- Gift of Matthew Vassar
- 1864.1.24
-
- William Hart (American, b. Scotland 1823-1894)
- The Wild New England Shore,
1859
- Oil on canvas
- 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm.)
- Gift of Matthew Vassar
- 1864.1.44.r
-
- Frank Jay Haynes (American 1853-1921)
- Pulpit Terrace and Bunsen Peak,
1887
- Albumen print
- 17 x 21 _ in. (43.2 x 54.6 cm.) (image)
- 17 _ x 21 _ in. (43.8 x 55.2 cm.) (sheet)
- Purchase, Jim and Carol Kautz, class of 1955, in honor
of Richard and Ronay Menschel
- 2002.6.1
-
- William Henry Jackson (American 1843-1942)
- Curecanti Needle, Black Canyon
- Albumen print
- 4 1/8 x 6 _ in. (10.5 x 16.5 cm.) (image)
- Gift of Winston and Jeffrey Adler Collection of Nineteenth-Century
Photography
- 1984.52.52
-
- William Henry Jackson (American 1843-1942)
- Curecanti Needle, Canyon of the Gunnison
- Albumen print
- 6 _ x 4 _ in. (16.5 x 10.8 cm.) (image)
- Gift of Winston and Jeffrey Adler Collection of Nineteenth-Century
Photography
- 1984.52.55
-
- Jervis McEntee (American 1828-1890)
- Figures Under a Tree, 1857
- Graphite on dark cream wove paper
- 13 _ x 17 3/8 in. (33.7 x 44.1 cm.)
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stuart P. Feld
- 1982.42.2
-
- Jervis McEntee (American 1828-1891)
- Passing Storm, 1872
- Oil on canvas
- 14 7/8 x 26 _ in. (37.8 x 66.7 cm.)
- Gift of Mrs. Robert Wilkinson, in memory of Edith Wilkinson
- 1978.3.3
-
- Charles Herbert Moore (American 1840-1930)
- The Upper Palisades, 1860
- Oil on canvas
- 12 x 20 1/8 in. (30.5 x 51.1 cm.)
- Gift of Matthew Vassar
- 1864.1.61
-
- Alexander Robertson (American, b. Scotland 1772-1841)
- From near Poughkeepsie Landing,
1796
- (verso: graphite sketches of river landscapes)
- Pen and black ink on cream laid paper
- 8 _ x 11 _ in. (22.2 x 29.2 cm.)
- Gift of Ellen Gordon Milberg, class of 1960
- 1984.9.1
-
- Andrew Joseph Russell (American 1829/30-1902)
- Bitter Creek Valley, Near Green River, ca. 1868
- Published in Sun pictures of Rocky Mountain scenery,
with a description of the geographical and geological features, and some
account of the great West (New York: Julien Bien, 1870)
- Albumen print
- 6 x 7 15/16 in. (15.2 x 20.2 cm.) (image)
- 9 3/8 x 13 in. (23.8 x 33 cm.) (sheet)
- Gift of Winston and Jeffrey Adler Collection of Nineteenth-Century
Photography
- 1988.48.19
-
- Aaron Draper Shattuck (American 1832-1928)
- Porcupine I., Mt. Desert,
1858
- Graphite on cream wove paper lined with thick cream tissue
- 11 _ x 17 7/8 in. (28.6 x 45.4 cm.) (sheet)
- 11 5/8 x 18 _ in. (29.5 x 46.4 cm.) (tissue)
- On loan from Dia Art Foundation
- 80.339
-
- Aaron Draper Shattuck (American 1832-1928)
- Sunset at Lancaster, New Hampshire, 1859
- Oil on canvas
- 8 _ x 14 in. (21.6 x 35.6 cm.)
- Gift of Matthew Vassar
- 1864.1.66
-
- James Smillie (American b. Scotland 1807-1885) after
Thomas Cole (American, b. England 1801-1848)
- The Voyage of Life: Childhood,
1855
- Steel engraving (etching and engraving) with watercolor
and gouache on cream wove paper
- 15 3/8 x 22 13/16 in. (39.1 x 57.9 cm.) (image)
- 19 7/16 x 25 5/8 in. (49.4 x 65.1 cm.) (sheet)
- X.37
-
- William T. Russell Smith (American, b. Scotland 1812-1896)
- View Along the Wissahiccon River
- Oil on paper
- 11 _ x 8 1/8 in. (28.6 x 20.6 cm.)
- Gift of Fred (class of 1985) and Suzy Bancroft in honor
of the class of 1985
- 2009.29
-
- Seneca Ray Stoddard (American 1843-1917)
- Untitled
- Albumen print
- 6 _ x 8 _ in. (16.5 x 21.6 cm.) (sheet)
- Gift of Winston and Jeffrey Adler Collection of Nineteenth-Century
Photography
- 1988.48.15
-
-
- Unknown (after Thomas Cole, American, b. England 1801-1848)
- Dream of Arcadia
- 31 _ x 46 in. (79.4 x 116.8 cm.)
- Oil on canvas
- Gift of the Estate of Matthew Vassar
- X.154
-
- Carleton E. Watkins (American 1830-1912), printed by
- Isaiah W. Taber (American 1830-1912), Taber Photographic
Studio, San Francisco
- Bridal Veil Falls, 900 feet
- Albumen print
- 8 x 4 _ in. (20.3 x 12 cm.) (sheet)
- Gift of Winston and Jeffrey Adler Collection of Nineteenth-Century
Photography
- 1984.52.74
-
-
-
- GALLERY TWO:
- AFTER THE CIVIL WAR: SOFTENING THE FACE OF NATURE
-
- Milton Avery (American 1885-1965)
- Gloucester Dawn, ca. 1921
- Oil on artist's board
- 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm.)
- Gift of Susan and Steven Hirsch, class of 1971
- 2000.37.1
-
- Ralph A. Blakelock (American 1847-1919)
- Moonlit Landscape
- Oil on panel
- 4 9/16 x 5 9/16 in. (11.6 x 14.1 cm.)
- Anonymous Gift
- 1979.9.1
-
- Henry Farrer (American 1843-1903)
- Woods at Dusk, 1887
- Watercolor over graphite on cream wove paper laid down
on board
- 10 7/8 x 18 in. (27.6 x 45.7 cm.) (sheet)
- Purchase
- 1887.1
-
- Daniel Garber (American 1880-1958)
- Frame by Bernard Badura (American 1896-1986)
- The Bridge at New Hope, 1952
- Oil on canvas
- 23 _ x 19 _ in. (59.7 x 49.5 cm.) (canvas)
- 31 _ x 27 _ x 1 _ in. (80 x 69.9 x 3.8 cm.) (frame)
- Bequest of Elinore Ridge, class of 1926
- 1999.5
-
- William Morris Hunt (1824-1879)
- Night Scene: A River
- Charcoal on cream textured paper laid down on paperboard
- 6 7/8 x 9 7/8 in. (17.5 x 25.1 cm.)
- Purchase, Suzette Morton Davidson, class of 1934, Fund
and Chatterton Fund
- 1974.42
-
- George Inness (American 1825-1894)
- Edge of the Woods (also known
as The River Bank and Edge of the Forest), ca. 1860
- Oil on artist's board
- 11 _ x 15 _ in. (28.6 x 38.7 cm.)
- Anonymous gift
- 1970.16
-
- John Francis Murphy (American 1853-1921)
- Sunset Landscape, 1885
- Oil on canvas
- 8 _ x 10 15/16 in. (20.9 x 27.8 cm.)
- Anonymous Gift
- 1979.9.3
-
- Harry Cogswell Rubincam (American 1871-1940)
- Study of Trees, ca. 1905
- Platinum print mounted on a woodcut printed on thin cream
paper
- 8 x 6 _ in. (20.3 x 15.9 cm.) (platinum print)
- 14 7/8 x 11 _ in. (37.8 x 29.8 cm.) (mount)
- Purchase, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund
- 2002.24.4
-
- James David Smillie (American 1833-1909)
- Coastal View, 1881
- Charcoal and white chalk on thick, beige wove paper
- 17 _ x 18 3/16 in. (44.5 x 46.2 cm.) (sheet)
- On loan from Dia Art Foundation
- 81.005
-
- Edward Steichen (American, b. Luxembourg 1879-1973)
- Moonrise, Mamaroneck, New York,
1904
- From the portfolio The Early Years, 1900-1927
- Photogravure on paper (printed 1981)
- 12 _ x 10 in. (31.1 x 25.4 cm.) (image)
- 19 _ x 15 _ in. (50.2 x 40 cm.) (sheet)
- Purchase, E. Powis and Anne Keating Jones, class of 1943,
Fund
- 1981.68.4
-
- Abbott H. Thayer (American 1849-1921)
- Winter on the Hudson
- Oil on canvas
- 14 _ x 19 _ in. (37.5 x 49.5 cm.)
- Gift of Elizabeth Cabot Lyman, class of 1964, in memory
of Elizabeth Lewis Cabot, class of 1927
- 2002.13
-
- Dwight William Tryon (American 1849-1925)
- Moonlight
- Pastel on dark brown paper
- 7 _ x 11 _ in. (19 x 28.6 cm.) (sheet)
- Gift of Mrs. Deborah Elton Allen, class of 1930
- 1989.10.2
-
- John Henry Twachtman (American 1853-1902)
- Landscape with House
- Pastel on brown wove paper
- 9 _ x 13 _ in. (24.1 x 34.3 cm.)
- Gift of Jane C. (Jane L. Callomon, class of 1950) and
Leon A. Arkus
- 1984.50.1
-
- Henry Wolf (American, b. France 1852-1916), after Charles
Melville Dewey (American 1849-1937)
- Landscape
- Wood engraving in black ink on chine collé mounted
on cream paperboard
- 4 7/8 x 6 5/8 in. (12.4 x 16.8 cm.) (image)
- 10 _ x 11 _ in. (26 x 29.7 cm.) (mount)
- Bequest of Margaret S. Bedell, class of 1880
- 1932.4.6
-
-
-
- GALLERY THREE: