Landscape Paintings by Paul Sargent and Robert Root at the Tarble Arts Center

Tarble Arts Center

Eastern Illinois University

Charleston, Illinois

217-581-ARTS (-2787)

http://www.eiu.edu/~tarble/

Landscape Paintings by Paul Sargent and Robert Root at the Tarble Arts Center

This summer the Tarble Arts Center, Eastern Illinois University, is exhibiting some of the most popular art from its permanent collection -- landscape paintings by Paul T. Sargent and Robert M. Root. Sargent and Root are two of the area's noted early 20th century artists. The paintings are currently on view and will remain on exhibition through August 13, 2000. Admission is free.

Landscape painter Paul Turner Sargent (1880 - 1946) was the grandson of Stephen Sargent, an early and prominent settler whose home is now a part of Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site south of Charleston. Paul Sargent attended Eastern Illinois State Normal School (now Eastern Illinois University) starting the second year of the institution's existence. After graduating from Eastern Sargent also attended and graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. About 1915 Sargent returned to the family farm in Hutton township and in 1920 joined the Brown County (Indiana) Art Association.

Sargent became one of the region's most noted landscape painters. For over 20 years his works were exhibited regularly in the Hoosier Salon, held at Marshall Field's in Chicago and later in Indianapolis. He also participated in the annual Chicago Artists Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago for about ten years. In addition to landscapes there are two portraits by Sargent in the exhibition.

Shelbyville artist Robert Root (1863-1937) is best known for his 1918 painting of the Lincoln-Douglas debate held in Charleston in 1858. (This painting is in the Governor's Office in Springfield. A large-scale color reproduction will be exhibited at the new Lincoln-Douglas Debate Museum in Charleston. The museum opens July 22, 2000 on the Coles County Fairgrounds.) Root studied at the Cooper Union Art School, New York City, Washington University School of Fine Arts in St. Louis, and the Academé Julien in Paris, France. In the early 1890s he returned to live in Shelbyville.

Root made his living primarily from portraits, like that of Eastern's first president, Livingston C. Lord, on view in Eastern's Old Main. Two portraits are included in the Tarble exhibition. But he was also a landscape painter, as this exhibition shows. In the 1920's Root joined Sargent as the two non-Indiana members of the Brown County Artists Association.

For further biographical information please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.

This page was originally published in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information. rev. 3/2/11

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