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Cosimo Rosselli (Italian, 1439–1507)
Madonna Enthroned Nursing the Christ Child, c. 1470
Tempera, oil, gilding on panel, 40 x 22 in.
Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation
1937.01.P
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This altarpiece shows the Virgin Mary enthroned in a heavenly rose garden while nursing the Christ Child. It may have been used in a private chapel or a church side-chapel. Cosimo Rosselli was the master of Piero di Cosimo, Mariotto Albertinelli, and Fra Bartolommeo—all of whom were leaders of the High Renaissance. In 1482, Pope Sixtus IV called Rosselli to Rome to paint the walls of his new Sistine Chapel, along with Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, and Perugino (the teacher of Raphael). The influence of Botticelli, whose works Rosselli knew well, is seen in the Cornell Christ Child.
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Attributed to Marcellus Coffermans (Netherlandish, active 1549-died after 1575)
The Crucifixion with Saint John, the Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalene, c. 1550
Oil on canvas mounted on panel, 16 1/2 x 12 1/4 in.
Gift of Marjorie Myers Ginn, Francis B. Myers II, John C. Myers, Jr., R'42, and Everett M. Myers in memory of John C. Myers, Sr.
1957.014.P
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One of the early owners of this painting, Alberto J. Pani (a former Secretary of Finance for Mexico), believed it to be by the great Flemish painter Rogier van der Weyden, who was working primarily in Brussels in the mid-1400s. This work is definitely not by Van der Weyden; it is later. However, this scene of the Crucifixion is certainly influenced by Van der Weyden's emotive style. It has been suggested that the image may have been painted by Marcellus Coffermans, who was working in Antwerp a century later. Coffermans is known to have copied many of Van der Wyden's works, and this seems to be a case in point. The figures in this scene, especially that of St. John (on the left), bear similarities to the Crucifixion by Van der Weyden now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Below the crucified Christ, Mary Magdalene clings to the Cross in agony. To the left, the Virgin Mary swoons in her grief and is supported by St. John who looks to Christ with an elegiac gaze. This is a scene of refined grief used for personal meditation on the sacrifice of Christ. In the background is an obviously European city. Whether this is meant to stand for Jerusalem or the original location of this painting is debatable. Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the use of generic cityscapes to delineate specific locations was commonplace. One of the best-known examples of this is the Nuremberg Chronicle--the masterpiece of fifteenth century printing--an edition of which is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This cityscape certainly benefits from a history of printed and painted images of early urbanization. |
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Lavinia Fontana (Italian, 1552–1614)
The Dead Christ with Symbols of the Passion, 1581
Oil, tempera on panel, 14 1/4 x 10 5/8 in.
Gift of the late General and Mrs. John J. Carty, in memory of her brother, Thomas Russell
1936.30.P
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This small painting would have been used for private meditation on the Passion of Christ. The symbols of Christ's suffering are all included: the Cross, the column on which he was whipped, three nails (held by the angel at the right), the wounds in Christ's body, the whip, and the Crown of Thorns. What is most interesting about The Dead Christ with Symbols of the Passion, however, is not the iconography but rather the artist. Lavinia Fontana was the first successful female painter in the Renaissance. She, like the later and better-known Artemisia Gentileschi, was born to an artist father from whom she learned her trade. Lavinia married a minor nobleman, Gian Paolo Zappi, who had also studied painting under the elder Fontana. Zappi, realizing he was only a mediocre artist, seems to have been happy supporting his wife's talent, acting as her manager. He also ran their household and supervised the education of their eleven children. With her husband's contacts, Lavinia was able to gain access to many noble families, which assured her numerous lucrative commissions. Lavinia, like her father Prospero (1512-1597), was influenced by mannerism, a style found in the later Renaissance that is a formulized and exaggerated continuation of the technique of Michelangelo. In its most pronounced form, mannerism is a rejection of the classicizing themes of balance and harmony so associated with Renaissance art. In this painting, the slightly elongated body of Christ, the twisting, contorted bodies of the angels (especially the angel in the foreground who is supporting the Cross), as well as the disproportion between the size of the heads and the bodies, illustrate mannerist tendencies. Following the sixeteenth-century artist and critic Giorgio Vasari, himself a mannerist, artists painting in this style believed that refinement, invention, and virtuosic technique were all hallmarks of artistic greatness. Rather than being concerned with mimesis, mannerist artists prized conception and elaboration in their works. |
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Workshop of Gerolamo Bassano (Italian, 1566–1621)
Noah Leading Animals into the Ark, c. 1595
Oil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 36 in.
Gift of Marjorie Myers Ginn, Francis B. Myers II, John C. Myers, Jr., R'42, and Everett M. Myers in memory of John C. Myers, Sr.
1957.004.P
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The Bassanos were a family of painters in Renaissance Venice: father Jacopo Basano (1510–1592) and his sons worked together, often on the same canvas, and acquired a sizable clientele for their paintings that depicted religious and genre scenes in everyday landscapes and interiors. Jacopo created a series of four paintings of the biblical flood; they were replicated numerous times by his sons and assistants. Gerolamo was the fifth and youngest son of Jacopo and worked very closely with his father, repeating his tried and true compositions without developing much of his own distinctive style.
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Alessandro Turchi (Itallian, 1578–1649)j
The Virgin and Child with the Young John the Baptist, c. 1625
Oil on slate, 18 1/2 x 13 3/4 in.
Gift of Marjorie Myers Ginn, Francis B. Myers II, John C. Myers, Jr., R'42, and Everett M. Myers in memory of John C. Myers, Sr.
1957.007.P
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Alessandro Turchi painted this moving work in oil on slate, rather than canvas; the varnished slate increases the chiaroscuro (light and dark) effect, giving the figures a greater sculptural sense. Mary, Jesus, John, and Francis are composed within an isosceles triangle, a composition that harks back to the Renaissance. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) has had a vision of the Virgin Mary, and we are here witnesses to it. Turchi was influenced by Caravaggio, Guido Reni, and Annibale Caracci, to whom our painting was once ascribed. |
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Follower of Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640)
The Virgin and Child Adored by Saints, c. 1630
Oil on canvas, 31 1/2 x 25 in.
Gift of Marjorie Myers Ginn, Francis B. Myers II, John C. Myers, Jr., R'42, and Everett M. Myers in memory of John C. Myers, Sr.
1957.011.P
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This oil painting depicts the Madonna and Christ child enthroned in heaven while being worshipped by twelve saints. It is a smaller version of Peter Paul Rubens' large altarpiece of the same subject that was in the Church of the Augustinian Fathers in Antwerp, completed in 1628. The artist of our work has grasped Rubens' original grandiose baroque composition well. The Cornell painting oscillates with the high drama, flickering light, and swirling movements typical of the baroque--and of Rubens' finest works. The original work was commissioned by the Augustinian Fathers of Antwerp to be placed on the high altar of their church. It seems possible that Rubens, the greatest exponent of the Flemish baroque, may have painted a small portion of our canvas. Several conservators who have worked on Rubens' other paintings have agreed that our image bears striking similarities to Rubens' brushwork. The colors and other elements point clearly to a seventeenth-century artist for our painting. Our painting differs in several important respects from the altarpiece in Antwerp: our Sebastian grasps his bow with his hand straight out, while in the Antwerp painting he wraps his arm around the bow; William's accoutrements are missing in ours, but much more of the pavement is visible; the bent right arm of George is pointed back in ours, etc. These variations indicate a bright, independent artist copying Rubens, possibly one who knew of Rubens' studies for the altarpiece. |
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School of Philips Wouwerman (Dutch, 1619–1668)
Halt of Travelers, c. 1660
Oil on canvas, 10 x 11 1/4 in.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Albert C. Balink
1967.10.P
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This small painting, originally believed to be by the Dutch painter Philips Wouwerman, is now thought to be a copy of a Wouwerman executed by a follower, perhaps much later. The theme, that of travelers resting on a long journey, is characteristic of Wouwerman's landscapes. However, the lack of fine detail leads us to think this is not, in fact, by the renowned artist's hand. Philips Wouwerman was the son of the painter Paulus Joostens Wouwerman (d. 1642), and had two brothers, Pieter and Jan, who were also painters. Little is known of Wouwerman's early life and education; on 4 September 1640 he joined the Guild of St. Luke in Haarlem. Philips Wouwerman is considered the most accomplished seventeenth-century Dutch equine painter and, as in Halt of the Travelers, horses frequently appear in his landscapes. Though he lived only forty-eight years, there are more than 1000 paintings which bear his name; however, it is felt that some of these should be attributed to his brothers, Pieter and Jan. |
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Franz de Paula Ferg (Austrian, 1689–1740)
The Building of Noah's Ark, c. 1730
Oil on panel, 9 x 12 1/2 in.
Gift of Marjorie Myers Ginn, Francis B. Myers II, John C. Myers, Jr., R'42, and Everett M. Myers in memory of John C. Myers, Sr.
1957.010.P
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Franz de Paula Ferg, the son of the painter Adam Pankraz Ferg (1651-1729), was born in Vienna. He first studied with his father, but he was influenced early on by the etchings of Jacques Callot (1592-1635) and his imitator Sébastien Le Clerc the Elder (1637-1714). Though he was working in the eighteenth century, Ferg's penchant for minute, perfectly rendered detail is more in keeping with late-seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting. Ferg has populated this landscape with hundreds of people and animals all taking part in some way in the building of the Ark. This ability with fine detail suited Ferg for his work as a draftsman in the famed Meissen porcelain factory. The charm of this painting is found in the innumerable moments of surprise one has when studying it closely. Whether it is the discovery of the peacock balanced gracefully on the edge of the roof in the left foreground, or the boats, diminutive in relation to the Ark, which glide gently past on the lake, the small campfires in the distance, or the children playing in the foreground, this painting rewards each viewing with a new discovery. |
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Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (Italian, 1727–1804)
St. John Gualbert (Contemplating the Crucifix), c. 1753
Oil on canvas, 24 1/2 x 17 3/4 in.
Gift of the Myers Family, and Mr. and Mrs. John C. Myers, Jr., R'24, and June Reinhold Myers, R'41
1961.04.P
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Saint John Gualbert (or Giovanni Gualberto) was born in Florence during the eleventh century. He had a younger brother who had been murdered; Gualbert pursued the murderer and was about to slay him, when the assassin extended his arms in the shape of a cross and asked for mercy in the name of Jesus Christ. Instead of exacting revenge, Gualbert embraced his brother’s killer. Afterward Gualbert entered a nearby church to give thanks for having resisted the impulse to commit murder. As he prayed, the image of Christ on the crucifix appeared to incline his head toward him. Gualbert was moved to forsake the world and enter a Benedictine monastery, and later founded the Vallombrosan monastic order. This painting celebrates the miracle of Gualbert's spiritual awakening. The greatest Italian artist of the eighteenth century, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) worked with his son, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, at the Archbishop's Residenz Palace in Würzburg, Germany, between 1750 and 1753, when Giovanni Domenico painted this work. Giovanni Domenico is known to have favored genre scenes, and paintings on a smaller, more realistic scale.
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Anonymous (Netherlandish, mid-seventeeth century
Harbor Scene, mid-seventeenth century
Oil on canvas, 8 1/2 x 12 1/2 in.
Gift of the Myers Family, Mr. and Mrs. John C. Myers, Jr., R'42, and June Reinhold Myers, R'41
1961.05.P
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This small Harbor Scene derives its charm from the meticulous detail and range of activity found within it. In style and subject matter, it owes a great deal to sixteenth-century Dutch painting. As such, it was probably painted by a minor, provincial artist in the Low Countries. The scene is reminiscent of a well-known work, River Landscape, painted by the Flemish master Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) which now hangs in the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Just as in the Brueghel, the boatman in this painting hands a lady a baby wrapped in blankets (lower right corner). While Harbor Scene bears definite similarities to the earlier masterpiece, the orientation of the picture is reversed. This leads one to believe that the later artist may have based his work on an engraving of Brueghel's composition as images are often reversed through the printing process. |
European Portraits
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Clouet Pourbus Slingeland van Loo Donat Lawrence Lavery
the Younger
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Circle of Franςois Clouet (French, c. 1516–1572)
Portrait of King Charles IX of France, c. 1561
Oil on panel, 8 x 5 7/8 in.
Gift of the Myers Family, Mr. and Mrs. John C. Myers, Jr., R'42, and June Reinhold Myers, R'41
1976.01.P
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François Clouet was the son and pupil of the artist Jean Clouet (c. 1485-1540 or 1541). Like his father, the younger Clouet was responsible for numerous portrait drawings of members of the Valois court in France. His portrait drawings were especially sought after by Catherine de' Medici, the wife of Henry II of France and mother of Francis II and Charles IX. Such was his popularity that François Clouet ran a large studio whose members closely followed his technique and style. Owing to this, there are numerous copies and works executed "in the style of," or, "by the circle of" François Clouet. In the Portrait of King Charles IX of France, c. 1561, the young ruler casts a sideward gaze out of the canvas refusing to meet the eyes of the viewer who, by necessity, is of a lower status. The king is dressed in the finest of fashions; his face expresses a stoic resolve as he purses his lips tightly in determination. The high status of the king is unquestioned. The attributes, or signs, of his station are clearly presented in this copy of the famous portrait by François Clouet: the soft velvet cap with exotic feather, the fur-lined jacket, and the gold chain of his royal medallion are intended to be 'read' by us as symbols of his royal identity. The Cornell Fine Arts Museum’s painting is a contemporary replica of the famous portrait now housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The ornate frame of the Cornell's version is thought to be original. |
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After Frans Pourbus the Younger (Flemish, 1569–1622)
Portrait of Marguerite de Valois, c. 1610
Oil on panel, 13 3/4 x 11 in.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Everett M. Myers in memory of John C. Myers, Sr.
1962.04.P
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Marguerite de Valois, better known as Queen Margot, was the queen of France and Navarre. She was the daughter of King Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici and as such was a Catholic. When she wed Henry, Protestant King of Navarre (and later Henry IV of France) in 1572, the marriage was intended as a symbol of peace between French Catholics and Protestants. Instead, it was in fact a prelude to the slaughter of Protestants on 24 August, St. Bartholomew's Day, six days after the nuptials. Frans Pourbus the Younger was a member of a family of Flemish artists. His early training probably was undertaken in his grandfather Pieter's studio. Like his father and grandfather, he seems to have specialized in portraits, group portraits, and the occasional religious subject. In 1609 he was invited to France by Elenora Gonzaga, the sister of Catherine de' Medici. He remained in France, painting many members of the royal court. While this painting is not believed to be by Pourbus himself, it is certainly in his style, with its slightly more relaxed feel. The iconography of this portrait is clear: the delicate lacework of the sitter’s bodice and collar as well as her pearl necklace leave little doubt that the portrait subject is an aristocrat. Marguerite de Valois is depicted from the chest up, and though not in strict profile, her torso and head are at an angle to the picture plane. This pose, common in portraiture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, can be viewed as a variation on a much older form. Roman emperors after Julius Caesar were often depicted in profile in coinage. Thus, the pose of this queen links her visually with the great rulers of the ancient past. |
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Pieter Cornelisz. van Slingeland (Dutch, 1640–1691)
A Lady with Her Dog, 1691
Oil on panel, 6 1/2 x 5 3/8 in.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Everett M. Myers in memory of John C. Myers, Sr.
1962.03.P
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The woman in this painting, dressed in the finest of seventeenth-century fashions, is not a portrayal of an actual personage. She is, rather, an embodiment of Vanitas, or "Vanity." She and her King Charles spaniel gaze adoringly at their reflections in a mirror resting on the table before them. As an allegory of vanity, notions of the transience of beauty and wealth are meant to be recalled. This genre of painting has a long lineage. Pictures of the goddess Venus at her toilette, usually attended by Cupid and sometimes a small dog, are predecessors of this work. In terms of iconography, a dog may sometimes function as a symbol of fidelity (hence the clichéd name "Fido" which has its roots in the same word), but here the well-bred canine is simply another ornamentation, along with the lady's fine pearls and expensive silks. Van Slingeland was born in Leyden in 1640. He studied with Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), who had been a pupil of Rembrandt. The attention to fine detail and balanced, forceful composition may be traced, through Dou, back to Rembrandt. Slingeland was held in high regard in Leyden; he was a member of the painters' guild and became its dean in the year of his death, 1691. |
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Louis Michel van Loo (French, 1707–1771)
La Comtesse de Beaufort, c. 1760
Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 in.
Gift of the Honorable Marilyn Logsdon Mennello, and Michael Mennello, in honor of Rollins College President Rita Bornstein
1995.01.P
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The woman in this painting, dressed in the finest of seventeenth-century fashions, is not a portrayal of an actual personage. She is, rather, an embodiment of Vanitas, or "Vanity." She and her King Charles spaniel gaze adoringly at their reflections in a mirror resting on the table before them. As an allegory of vanity, notions of the transience of beauty and wealth are meant to be recalled. This genre of painting has a long lineage. Pictures of the goddess Venus at her toilette, usually attended by Cupid and sometimes a small dog, are predecessors of this work. In terms of iconography, a dog may sometimes function as a symbol of fidelity (hence the clichéd name "Fido" which has its roots in the same word), but here the well-bred canine is simply another ornamentation, along with the lady's fine pearls and expensive silks. Van Slingeland was born in Leyden in 1640. He studied with Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), who had been a pupil of Rembrandt. The attention to fine detail and balanced, forceful composition may be traced, through Dou, back to Rembrandt. Slingeland was held in high regard in Leyden; he was a member of the painters' guild and became its dean in the year of his death, 1691.
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Johann Daniel Donat (Austrian, 1744–1830)
Portrait of a Gentleman, c. 1815
Pastel on paper, 15 1/4 x 12 in.
Gift of George Terry, Sr.
1974.47.P
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Executed exquisitely in pastels on paper so as to give the appearance of an oil painting, this lovely portrait of an unknown gentleman dates from the early nineteenth century. The plain dress and black cravat suggest that the sitter may have been an academic, an attorney, a Protestant minister, or another similar professional. Born in Kloster Neuzelle (in Neuzelle-Lausitz), Austria, Donat studied at the Akademie in Vienna around 1762 with the portraitist (and director of the Akademie) Martin Meytens I (1695–1770), as well as with Franz Weirotter (1730–1771) and Jakob Mathias Schmutzer (1733–1811). Donat became a very successful conservative portraitist in Vienna. He must have known well the neoclassical work of Johann Baptist von Lampi I (1751–1830), professor at the Akademie in 1786 and the best known official portrait painter in Vienna. Although he painted a series of altarpieces for Hungarian churches, Donat gained a greater reputation for his highly effective portraits of contemporary writers, such as Ferenc Kazincky, and political figures, such as Count Esterhazy and Nikolaus Revai. Although Austrian, he became so popular in his adopted country that contemporary Hungarians considered him to be a painter of “the whole spirit of Hungary.” His self-portrait and many of his major portraits are today in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
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Attributed to Thomas Lawrence (English, 1769–1830)
Portrait of Harriet Gordon, c. 1820
Oil on canvas, 35 1/2 x 27 1/2 in.
Gift of the Myers Family, Mr. and Mrs. John C. Myers, Jr., R'42, and June Reinhold Myers, R'41, in memory of John C. Myers, Sr.
1963.001.P
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Thomas Lawrence became the most successful portrait painter in England during the Romantic period. His rapid success came very young, even though he was almost entirely self-taught. Commissioned in 1789, when he was nineteen, to paint Queen Charlotte, Lawrence by 1792 had succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) as painter to the king. His portraits reveal a directness of vision and a vivacity of handling that extended Reynolds' style. Fluid and brilliant brushwork typify Lawrence's best portraits, qualities we can observe in the head, neck, and left hand of the Cornell image. Our painting also exemplifies the artist’s darker and simpler late style of the 1820s. Lawrence had huge numbers of assistants and pupils, many of whom completed his numerous commissions. His best was a woman named Margaret Sarah Carpenter (1793-1872), the most successful and original of his followers. It is very possible that Carpenter painted the background, right shoulder, arm and hand of Harriet Gordon.
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John Lavery (Irish, 1856–1941)
Anna Pavlova as a Bacchante, 1910
Oil on canvas, 77 x 55 1/4 in.
Bequest from the estate of Louise Ashforth, R'31
1985.68.P
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Anna Pavlova, born in St. Petersburg, Russia, 1881, rose from her impoverished beginnings as the daughter of a laundress and a peasant to become the greatest ballerina of the first third of the twentieth century. Despite frail health, she was accepted into the Imperial School of Ballet in 1891 and quickly distinguished herself both artistically and academically. While still a student, she appeared on stage at the Maryinsky Theatre and was accepted into this company upon her graduation in 1899. She remained with the Maryinsky for ten years. In 1907, Pavlova was granted the first of several leaves of absence to appear throughout Europe. In April of 1910, Anna Pavlova made her London debut at the Palace Theatre dancing the role of a Bacchante in the ballet Bacchanale. This painting, probably painted in the same year, recalls this triumphant debut. Sir John Lavery was one of the preeminent portrait painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He studied in Paris with Bouguereau, and like John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), who was also working in London, he tended toward a more informal, less posed type of portraiture. Anna Pavlova favored traditionalism in all aspects of ballet. Her importance is not found in the revolutionary reappraisal of the art form taking place during her life. Though she was considered by her contemporaries the greatest ballerina of her generation, her true legacy is that she traveled throughout the world, bringing the art of ballet to many who had never experienced it. It is estimated she traveled some 500,000 miles and gave thousands of performances, revealing her art to millions.
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American Portraits
18th- and 19th-Centuries
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Stuart Alexander Sully Healy Elliot Elliot Alexander
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Gilbert Stuart (American, 1755–1828)
Portrait of Sir William Conyngham, c. 1795
Oil on canvas, 36 x 28 in.
Gift of Mary Manning Cleveland and Robert Gran Cleveland, R'32
2004.06.P
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Though the subject of this likeness is Irish, not American, the artist responsible for this work, Gilbert Stuart, is among the best of American portraitists and is known especially for his depictions of George Washington. Born in Rhode Islandhe traveled to London in 1775 to study with Benjamin West (1738-1820). While there, Stuart was also influenced by the great English painters Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds. In 1789 after establishing his reputation in London, he moved to Ireland where this portrait was completed. Conyngham was a noted Irish parliamentarian, Teller of the Exchequer, and an antiquarian. After the death of his uncle, the first Earl Conyngham, the Earl's estate was divided equally among his nephews Francis (who became the new Earl Conyngham) and William. Having a keen interest in architecture, William employed the architect James Wyatt for a new addition to the family seat, Slane Castle. Wyatt was to become a pioneer in the "Gothic Revival" style. Wyatt began an extensive rebuilding of the castle in 1785 following the suggestions of James Gandon, another architect of renown. The Cornell's portrait is one of four copies--or replicas--of Stuart's work. Subjects would often ask for replicas of a portrait, if they found it favorable, so that it might be sent to relatives or placed in multiple residences. Behind Conyngham are two books. The first is a copy of Grose's Antiquities of Ireland; this is fitting as Conyngham himself was a noted antiquarian and had lectured before the Royal Irish Academy on the theatre at Saguntum (near Valencia). Conyngham is mentioned in the preface to the first volume. This text did not appear until 1795, the year before Conyngham's death, dating this portrait to 1795-1796. The second volume found in this portrait is a copy of Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations written by David Hartley and published in 1749. Hartley's text combines themes of philosophy, physiology, and religion. Joseph Priestly, the discoverer of oxygen, felt Hartley's work ushered in a new era of science. The inclusion of these volumes in Stuart's painting attest to the varied interests of the learned William Burton Conyngham.
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Francis Alexander (American, 1899–1880)
Portrait of Mary Ann Duff, 1825
Oil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 24 in.
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. DeWitt Allen Green
1993.02.P
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Francis Alexander was only twenty-five when he painted Mary Ann Duff. At the peak of her career, Duff was considered as fine a tragic actress as the earlier renowned English actress Sarah Siddons (immortalized as the "Tragic Muse" by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1783). Though born in England and first appearing on stage as a dancer in Ireland, Duff was thirty and living in New York when this painting was completed. Largely forgotten now, it has been argued that Duff should rightly be considered the first First Lady of the American Stage, having received her theatrical training solely in America. This painting predates Alexander's travels in Europe, where he would study the great monuments of art and refine his technique. Though produced early in his career in an almost naïf style, Alexander’s likeness captures the vivacious nature of the actress as she looks out of the canvas with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks. Great care has been taken in rendering the texture and patterning of the drapery that covers her chair and falls over and around her arm. Mary Ann Duff would have been conscious of her rising status on the American stage. A portrait such as this might have been commissioned in a self-conscious attempt at mimicking the habits of respectable American society. Remembering that actors in the nineteenth century were not accorded the high social status in America that they enjoy today, Miss Duff would have been eager to present herself as a reputable lady of society. Her apparel raises more questions than it answers. She appears to be wearing a scholar's cap, and the high, starched, lace collar is not in keeping with contemporaneous fashions. It is possible that she has chosen to be portrayed in the costume of a favorite character. Unfortunately, there is little in the way of records for this important personage of American theatrical history.
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Thomas Sully (American, 1783–1872)
Portrait of Lieutenant William Henry Korn, 1841
Oil on canvas, 29 x 45 1/2 in.
Gift of Dr. William Henry Fox
1951.23.P
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William Henry Korn was born into a prominent Philadelphia merchant family in 1814. He was a graduate of West Point and fought in the Seminole War in Florida, 1839-1840. He resigned from the military in March of 1840 after a brief career and returned to Philadelphia to work in the family business. This portrait was painted by the pre-eminent Philadelphia portraitist Thomas Sully, a close friend of Korn's father. Sully was born in England but had come to Charleston, South Carolina, at an early age with his parents. He first studied art with his older brother, Lawrence, who was a miniaturist. Sully then benefited from the instruction of several superb painters. In 1807 he briefly studied with Gilbert Stuart in Boston; then in 1809 he traveled to London to study with Benjamin West and Sir Thomas Lawrence. From Lawrence he learned to paint in the "grand style" of Sir Joshua Reynolds. When he returned to America in 1810, Sully was proclaimed the "American Lawrence." This portrait, painted in 1841, was completed during the height of Sully's powers. Lt. Korn looks intently past the viewer off into the distance. He has just resigned from the military and is symbolically and literally looking toward a prosperous career in business. Sully is able to capture the forcefulness of the young man's personality while retaining the casual elegance of youth. The gentle sweep of the hair is echoed in the loose treatment of his cravat. The skin has the blush of vigor. Yet, it is sadly ironic that this portrait illustrating the promise of a long and successful life is completed only a year before Korn's premature death at the age of twenty-eight.
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Attributed to George Peter Alexander Healy (American, 1813–1894)
Portrait of the Reverend Wyllys Warner, 1842–1844
Oil on panel, 31 x 24 3/4 in.
Gift of James Gamble Rogers II
1982.17.01.P
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Originally this portrait was thought to have been painted by the American painter George Peter Alexander Healy (1813-1894). This belief was based on the family tradition of the original owners. However, this attribution has been questioned by some scholars who feel that Healy would have been too young at the time to have painted such a fine portrait. Experts from the Vose Gallery in Boston and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington have suggested that the painting may have been done by the portraitists Chester Harding (1792-1866) or Samuel Waldo (1783-1861). The date of the painting is also difficult to determine with certainty. If the painting was completed as a companion to the portrait of the Reverend Warner's second wife, Elizabeth Warner, née Hart (also in the Cornell's collection), the date of c. 1840s would be appropriate. However, the Reverend Warner was first married to Elizabeth Hazard (d.1831) in 1829. It has been suggested that the Reverend Warner's attire is more in keeping with the fashions of the 1820s or 1830s, and it would have been common to have a portrait commissioned to celebrate a marriage. While it may seem odd that the Reverend Warner is depicted holding a bookkeeping ledger rather than a Bible, this attribute is in keeping with his position. A graduate of Yale Theological Seminary, Warner was made Treasurer of the college in 1832. The donor of this painting (and its companion piece), James Gamble Rogers II, was the great-grandson of the Reverend and Mrs. Warner. James Gamble Rogers II, a Winter Park architect, designed many of the buildings on the Rollins College campus including the Thomas Phillips Johnson Student Resource Center, Olin Library, McKean Hall, and Elizabeth Hall.
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Charles Loring Elliott (American, 1812–1868)
Portrait of Melinda Wilkins Furman, c. 1845
Oil on canvas, 34 1/4 x 27 1/4 in.
Bequest of the estate of John Martin
1956.19.02.P
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This likeness of Melinda Wilkins Furman is an excellent example of mid-nineteenth-century American portraiture. The austerity of the setting befits the wife of a Protestant minister. The focus of the portrait is the sitter’s finely painted face. She looks out with kind, meek eyes. Faint lines of experience are seen on her forehead and around her mouth. Her dress is of very good quality without being ostentatious. Her husband, the Reverend Robert Furman, was associated with the abolitionist movement. The Furmans resided in Syracuse, New York, and this fine portrait has been attributed to Charles Loring Elliott, who was also from Syracuse. Elliot left Syracuse to live in New York City in order to become a respected artist around 1830, only to return to Syracuse six months later. Undeterred, he continued working as a portraitist and by 1845 had been declared the best American portraitist since Gilbert Stuart. It was estimated in 1867 that he had painted over seven hundred portraits. This picture came to Rollins College from the estate of Dr. John Martin, whose wife, Prestonia Mann Martin, was the granddaughter of the Furmans. Mrs. Martin carried on her family's forward-thinking ways. She was involved in the American Fabian Society, a socialist group modeled on the British Fabian Society, which argued that socialism should be advanced through gradual reformist measures rather than by revolutionary means. For a time, she was involved in the founding of a utopian community near North Elba, New York. She also authored a book, Prohibiting Poverty (1933), in which she argued that the necessary toils of life should be turned over to a conscript army made up of 18-26 year olds. After their own period of service, the people of this society were free to live secure in the knowledge that their needs would be met by the conscripts.
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Charles Loring Elliot (American, 1812–1868)
Portrait of the Reverend Robert Furman,
c. 1850–1870
Oil on canvas, 34 1/8 x 27 1/8 in.
Bequest of the estate of John Martin
1956.19.01.P
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The Reverend Robert Furman was a Protestant minister and was associated with the abolitionist movement. He resided in Syracuse, New York, and this fine portrait has been attributed to Charles Loring Elliott, who was also from Syracuse. Elliot left Syracuse to live in New York City in order to become a respected artist around 1830, only to return to Syracuse six months later. Undeterred, he continued working as a portraitist and by 1845 had been declared the best American portraitist since Gilbert Stuart. It was estimated in 1867 that he had painted over seven hundred portraits. This picture came to Rollins College from the estate of Dr. John Martin, whose wife, Prestonia Mann Martin, was the granddaughter of the Furmans. Mrs. Martin carried on her family's forward-thinking ways. She was involved in the American Fabian Society, a socialist group modeled on the British Fabian Society, which argued that socialism should be advanced through gradual reformist measures rather than by revolutionary means. For a time, she was involved in the founding of a utopian community near North Elba, New York. She also authored a book, Prohibiting Poverty (1933), in which she argued that the necessary toils of life should be turned over to a conscript army made up of 18-26 year olds. After their own period of service, the people of this society were free to live secure in the knowledge that their needs would be met by the conscripts.
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John White Alexander,(American, 1856–1915)
Portrait of Annie Russell, c. 1900
Oil on canvas, 72 x 44 1/2 in.
Gift of John Russell Carty (1892–1949), nephew of Annie Russell
1938.143.P
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Anyone familiar with Rollins College will know that Annie Russell is honored with a theatre bearing her name. Miss Russell retired to Winter Park in 1930 after a long and distinguished career on the stage. In 1932 the Annie Russell Theatre was given to Rollins College by Mary Louise Bok in honor of her close friend. Annie Russell directed many plays on campus and passed her wisdom on to numerous students until her death in 1936. The portraitist responsible for Portrait of Annie Russell, John White Alexander, was a well-known American artist. In 1877, at the age of twenty, Alexander traveled to Europe and studied with Frank Duveneck (1848-1919) in Munich. John White Alexander agreed with those artists of the late nineteenth century who advocated, "art for art's sake." When he returned to America in 1881, he settled in New York where he found support for his style. He painted a number of famous people; his portrait of Walt Whitman now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Alexander preferred to use a coarsely woven canvas that created a matte effect giving tonal unity to the composition. This type of canvas is now known as toile Alexander. Annie Russell is portrayed here as Lady Vavir, a character in the "fairy play" Broken Hearts, written by Sir Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert & Sullivan renown. Miss Russell became famous for her portrayal of ingénue roles. She played so many ingénues she came to call them "Annie-genues." Broken Hearts premiered in New York in 1885 when Annie Russell would have been 21. Perhaps her greatest theatrical achievement was originating the title role of Barbara Undershaft in the London production of George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara. Though she was not the playwright's first choice, Shaw remarked that Russell played the role, "excellently in a really touching intimate way with sincere feeling and sympathy."
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American Landscapes
19th-Century
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WM Hart JM Hart Kensett Bierstadt Sonntag McEntee Ryder Enneking
 
Herzog Richards Moran
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William M. Hart (American, 1823–1894)
Landscape, c. 1850
Oil on composition board, 8 1/4 x 10 1/4 in.
Gift of Samuel B. and Marion W. Lawrence
1991.11.P
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At the age of six, William M. Hart immigrated to America with his family from Paisley, Scotland, near Glasgow, a town famed for the paisley shawl and other textiles. The family settled in Albany, New York, and Hart began his career as an ornamental painter of carriages. He left Albany in 1849 and traveled throughout the United States, painting portraits and landscapes in New York, Virginia, and Michigan, where he spent three years. William Hart worked in the style of Asher B. Durand, although his work lacked Durand's monumentality. According to the style of the day, Hart blended the real and the ideal to give an atmosphere of peace and serenity, and his contemporaries spoke of his ability to be "faithful to nature" and yet convey "a poetic sentiment." Hart's paintings were popularized as engravings in nineteenth-century gift books and art journals. The artist moved to New York City in 1852 and eventually gained studio space in the famed Tenth Street Studio Building where Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Worthington Whittredge, and Winslow Homer also painted. Hart was a member of the National Academy of Design, the first President of the Brooklyn Academy of Design, and a founder of the American Watercolor Society. William M. Hart's landscapes are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others. |
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James McDougal Hart (American, 1828–1901)
Summer Landscape, 1857
Oil on canvas, 12 1/4 x 8 1/4 in.
Purchased with the Roux Acquisitions Fund
2007.07.P
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"I strive to reproduce the feelings produced by the original scenes themselves...," so wrote James McDougal Hart, whose work typically portrays idyllic scenes of New England through precise features of flora, fauna, and atmosphere. Shaped by the aesthetic ideology of British art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), an emphasis to represent "truth in nature" was paramount in mid-nineteenth century American scene painting. As such, James Hart's work pays homage to the idealism of Thomas Cole and the realism of Asher B. Durand. The Cornell's Summer Landscape is a charming, meticulously detailed scene that quietly captures the feeling of a mid-summer's day. The sound from a lone, passing duck at the pond's edge and smell of exposed earth and tangle of plant life are evoked in this intimate snapshot of unnamed America. Hart's keen juxtaposition of light and dark vividly contrasts both the heat of the day and the cool relief of this shady, verdant lair. The artist clearly designed Summer Landscape to correspond to the unusual shape of the ornate gilded frame where the branches of the tree fill the arch opening of the frame and repeat its general shape. This format is reminiscent of Renaissance altarpieces, which in some way may have been intended by Hart to invoke a reverent meditation upon the beauty of nature. James McDougal Hart was distinguished as an elected Academician of the National Academy of Design, and his work is represented in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among other public and private collections. |
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John Frederick Kensett (American, 1816–1872)
The Langdale Pike, 1858
Oil on canvas, 22 1/4 x 36 in.
Gift of Madame Charlotte Gero
1963.011.P
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John Frederick Kensett, who was a founding member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is considered one of the masters of nineteenth-century American landscape painting. He was born in Cheshire, Connecticut, and received his early artistic training as a fine art engraver, working in print shops in New York City, New Haven, and Albany. By 1840, at the age of 24, Kensett had grown restless with the engraver's trade. Influenced by the then current master of American landscape painting, Asher B. Durand, and another engraver-turned-artist, John Casilear, Kensett turned to oil painting. The same year, he embarked for Europe with Durand and Casilear, and traveled widely for the next seven years. While living in Europe, Kensett studied the landscape paintings of John Constable and J.M.W. Turner at the National Gallery, London, Claude Lorrain at the Musée du Louvre, and routinely sketched en plein air at Windsor Castle, Hampton Court, and England's Lake Region, where the Cornell's The Langdale Pikes was composed. This painting presages some of Kensett's major landscapes of the 1860s, including his acknowledged masterpiece Lake George, 1869 (Metropolitan Museum of Art), in which the composition has been virtually reversed. Upon his return to the United States in 1847, and perhaps due to the fact that he had sent several paintings back to New York City during his seven year sojourn abroad, Kensett met with almost instant success. John Frederick Kensett's contribution to the American landscape genre consists of capturing a "sweet calm" in asymmetrical, reductive compositions created from a subdued or near monochromatic palette. He reinvented the artist's 'touch' of light upon a spare--what one would now call 'minimal'--setting. This approach comprised the artist's 1872 series of close to forty paintings known as the 'Last Summer's Work.' Kensett's final round of paintings importantly prefigures the atmospheric abstractions of Mark Rothko, Milton Avery, and Barnett Newman in the 1950s and 1960s. |
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Albert Bierstadt (American, 1830–1902)
Shoshone Indians—Rocky Mountains, 1859
Oil and gouache on paper mounted on board, 5 x 7 5/16 in.
Gift of Samuel B. and Marion W. Lawrence
1991.09.P
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In 1859, at the age of 29, Albert Bierstadt traveled with Colonel Frederick W. Lander's wagon train through the Rocky Mountains in search of a pass for the Pacific Railroad. This arduous journey was made possible by the unparalleled efforts of Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who half a century earlier had forged their way across the western territories. With the aid of the Shoshone woman, Sacagawea, and her French husband, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau--who were in effect an "interpreter team"--the Shoshone tribe became amenable to white men. Traveling as far as the Continental Divide, Bierstadt made many quick studies over the ensuing five months of his first western expedition. His facile brushwork, seen in the Cornell Shoshone Indians--Rocky Mountains, masterfully communicates the nuances of the setting: a distant rain storm, a breeze in the treetops, the ripple of water, and a Shoshone encampment. The artist created probing studies of individual Indians during the 1859 trek, but in the landscape scenes he tended to greatly simplify outward appearances and activities. A generalized presence of the Indians, rather than focused and particular physiognomic and cultural details, echoed the style of his earlier European subjects. This vagueness ensured a mystery, if not romanticization, of these peoples, especially to the Bostonians and New Yorkers, who would be the first viewers of Bierstadt's western pictures. The artist returned from the west to his home in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on September 18, 1859. By November he had moved his studio to New York City. And, by May, with successes mounting, and admiration from his fellow artists firmly in place, Albert Bierstadt was elected a full Academician of the National Academy of Design. |
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William Louis Sonntag (American 1822–1900)
Dream of Italy, c. 1860
Oil on canvas, 26 1/4 x 41 1/8 in.
Gift of George H. Sullivan
1950.26.P
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A native of East Liberty, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, William Louis Sonntag belongs to the Hudson River School of landscape painting. The Italian landscape, which was always on the traditional grand tour of Europe, engaged a number of nineteenth-century American artists. Like John Frederick Kensett, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, and Worthington Whittredge, William Louis Sonntag was influenced by the great American artist, Thomas Cole, whose historicist perspective paid homage to the seventeenth-century landscapes of Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa. Emblematic of the idealized, classical landscapes of Hudson River School artists is the Cornell's Dream of Italy. The painting dramatizes the ruins of a Roman temple and neighboring Romanesque church and aqueduct against a honeyed, paradisiacal backdrop of land and sky. Italian life, as experienced by nineteenth-century Americans, was tantamount to a release from the pressure of life. In a milieu of golden reverie, the 'spirit' could move freely, mortality could be indulged and relieved by sentiment, and burning socio-political matters (such as the North/South conflict over slavery) could be put on hold in what seemed like an environment of cultural perfection and timelessness. Not surprisingly, American nationalism, or patriotism, ultimately triumphed with the expatriate landscapists. The American countryside--from the Adirondacks, White Mountains, Long Island, Rhode Island, Yosemite, the Sierra Nevadas, and Rocky Mountains--symbolized America's sacred destiny for these artists. Even Thomas Cole, perhaps more than any other American torn between natural antiquity and cultivated antiquity, had found it necessary to restate his allegiance to the sublime beauty of the Catskills Mountains. Sonntag's Dream of Italy was painted after the artist's return from Florence in 1856. It was exhibited at the Dusseldorf Galleries in New York in 1859, and translated into an engraving which was popularized during the period. The painting was reviewed in the New York Times, November 24, 1859, and is among the artist's most important Italianate pictures, the others being at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. |
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Jervis McEntee (American 1828–1891)
Landscape, 1861
Oil on canvas, 9 5/8 x 7 5/8 in.
Purchased by Rollins College
1952.025.P
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Jervis McEntee is a somewhat lesser-known figure of the nineteenth-century American art world, but his particular type of landscape painting is distinguished. McEntee was born in Rondout, New York in 1828, and by age 22, he had exhibited his first painting at the National Academy of Design in New York City. The following year, 1851, he apprenticed with Frederic Edwin Church, who was then regarded as a rising star in the American art world. The landscapes of Jervis McEntee are known for their melancholic and poetic sentiment. Skies are often cloudy, and the season that is most often depicted is autumn. While Jasper Cropsey and other artists typically painted bright fall scenes, McEntee portrayed the season near its end. "Some people call my landscapes gloomy and disagreeable," he wrote in his journal. "They say I paint the sorrowful side of nature...but this is a mistake.... Nature is not sad to me but quiet, pensive, restful." Aside from his paintings, McEntee's enduring legacy is an extraordinary, five volume, personal diary (1872-1890) that includes nearly 4,500 entries. The diary contains a rich and detailed account of his friends Edwin Booth (actor), William Cullen Bryant (poet and editor), Frederick Edwin Church (his teacher), Sanford Gifford, Worthington Whittredge, Eastman Johnson, John F. Kensett (Hudson River School artists), and Frederick Law Olmstead (landscape architect), the art market, the famous Tenth Street Studio Building, and the impact of European painting on American art. Jervis McEntee's journal is housed in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution and is available online. |
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Albert Pinkham Ryder (American, 1857–1917)
Landscape with Sheep, c. 1870
Oil on panel, 7 3/4 x 9 7/8 in.
Gift of Alastair Bradley Martin
1948.03.P
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Albert Pinkham Ryder was a most eccentric artist both in personality and technique. Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1847, he moved with his family to New York City when he was twenty-three. He would spend most of his years living a relatively secluded, bohemian existence in the artistic enclave of Greenwich Village. Toward the end of his life he worked, ate, and slept in his studio. His friends remarked that he rarely threw anything away and that his studio was filled with every kind of flotsam and jetsam imaginable. To the consternation of his collectors, he often worked on paintings for years scraping and repainting canvases numerous times striving for an elusive vision. Ryder was known to incorporate non-traditional media into his paintings, such as boot black, candle wax, coal dust, etc., attempting to create luminous, multi-dimensional surfaces. These ingredients, coupled with the fact that he often would not let one layer of paint dry before applying the next layer, contribute to the overwhelmingly sad condition the majority of Ryder's paintings exist in today. This intimate landscape is reminiscent of the style of the French Barbizon School which was active c. 1830-1870. The muted hues and simple composition tie it to that aesthetic. Yet, because of his muted tonal palette, general lack of fine detail, and excessive layering of paint, his works were easily and voluminously forged. In the last years of his life, Ryder, who had been largely obscure, became increasingly popular. |
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John Joseph Enneking (American, 1841–1916)
Eventide, 1877
Oil on canvas, 12 x 18 in.
Gift of Romano and Mariolina Salvatori
2005.02.P
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At Mount St. Mary's College in Cincinnati, John Joseph Enneking took his first art lessons, which were interrupted due to his enlistment in the Union Army during the Civil War. Enneking was severely wounded in battle, was discharged from service, and eventually made his way to Boston to continue his studies. After years of repeated struggle, his painting finally met with success, so that when he sailed for Europe in 1872, his career as an artist had been assured. Once installed in Paris, he studied with the figure painter Léon Bonnat, and alongside the impressionists Renoir, Monet, and Pissarro. John Enneking's closest allies in Europe were the Barbizon painters Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, and Claude Daubigny, with whom he studied from 1873-1876. Enneking returned to Boston for America's first centennial and thereafter exhibited paintings at the 1893 Columbia World's Fair, the 1900 Paris Exposition, the 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, and the 1915 World's Fairs in St. Louis and San Francisco. John Joseph Enneking's work from the late 1870's, as seen in the Cornell's Eventide, is a precursor of a phenomenon in nineteenth-century American painting known as Tonalism. This "style" was chiefly manifested in landscapes, which were painted in near monochromatic colors with a hazy application that served to obscure the reality of the subject. Tonalism was influenced by two major branches of European art: the French Barbizon school, and Aestheticism, exemplified in the works of James McNeill Whistler. The understated color, or virtual absence of color in tonalist painting, appealed to turn-of-the-century photographers seeking to assert the legitimacy of that medium. The soft-focused photographs of Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, and Clarence White, liberally incorporated Tonalist aesthetics.
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Hermann Herzog (German, active in the United States, 1831–1932)
Sunset with Elk, c. 1880
Oil on canvas, 11 5/8 x 17 1/2 in.
Gift of Samuel B. and Marion W. Lawrence, in honor of Prsident Thaddeus Seymour
1990.05.P
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The centenarian Hermann Herzog came to the United States from the German free state of Bremen in 1869. During the late 1850s and early 1860s, Herzog's fame as an accomplished landscape painter spread throughout Europe. While exhibiting in the Paris Salons of 1863 and 1864, it is believed that Herzog came into contact with the popular Barbizon School, whose adherents romanticized the grandeur and beauty of nature through precise attention to detail, atmospheric mood, and dramatic color. This sentiment is evident in the Cornell's Sunset with Elk. Herzog's works of art were collected for their dynamic realism, and among his patrons were several of Europe's royal families, including Queen Victoria of England and Tsar Alexander II of Russia. It is not known exactly when Herzog decided to come to America, but at some point in the late 1860s he left Europe and settled in Philadelphia. Besides wanting to develop a market for his work, Herzog left Bremen due to rising political agitation by Prussia, which had just absorbed Bremen, the smallest state of Germany, into its domain. In America, Herzog continued to paint romantic landscapes during painting excursions in Pennsylvania, and up the Hudson River (1871). In 1873 he traveled west to Yosemite, Wyoming, Oregon, and along the west coast of California to Coronado Island, near what is now San Diego. Hermann Herzog became well-known for his depictions of Yosemite, receiving great acclaim for his version of El Capitan, Yosemite, famously depicted by Albert Bierstadt and others. Herzog's last trip west was in 1905 at the age of 74. As Herzog grew older, he continued to paint actively even into his one hundredth year.
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William Trost Richards (American 1833–1905)
New Jersey Seascape—Atlantic City, c. 1880–1890
Oil on canvas mounted on board, 9 1/4 x 16 1/2 in.
Gift of Samuel B. and Marion W. Lawrence in honor of Joan Wavell, former director of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum
1988.02.P
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Born in Philadelphia, but educated in Florence, Rome, and Paris, William Trost Richards embraced John Ruskin's doctrine of absolute truth to nature. Noted as an accomplished landscape artist, especially with a series of brilliant Adirondack paintings, by 1867 he had turned his attention to the sea. Summertime excursions in the mid-1860s show a careful documentation of nature in his drawings of Nantucket, the Isles of Shoals in New Hampshire, and Mount Desert, Maine. Richards' coastal excursions seem to have stimulated the regular use of watercolor, and the extraordinary body of paintings that he produced in the 1870s demonstrated a confidence that was not only critical to his success, but which helped lift the watercolor medium to a higher prominence. Richards' luminous and highly realistic paintings of the American northeastern coastline, such as the Cornell's New Jersey Seascape--Atlantic City, became the primary focus of his output in the mid -1870s. Although most of his paintings are on the whole, intimate, they are "fearless in scale," exhibiting in a ten-inch panorama, for example, sweeping miles of rugged coastline. Following a lengthy trip to England in 1878--where Richards expanded his repertoire of sea paintings with excursions along the coasts of Cornwall, Devon, and Dorset--his latter career was firmly established as one of the leading coastal and marine painters in America.
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Thomas Moran (American, 1837-1926)
Moonlight Seascape, 1892
Oil on canvas, 18 in. x 23 1/4 in. (45.72 cm x 59.06 cm)
Gift of Samuel B. and Marion W. Lawrence in honor of Associate Vice President, M. Elizabeth Brothers, H'89
1993.08.P
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Thomas Moran was the son of a hand-loom weaver whose life had been irrevocably changed by the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Displaced by labor-saving machinery, Thomas Moran, Sr. immigrated to America in 1844 and settled his family in Kensington, Pennsylvania (near Philadelphia). During the 1860s Thomas and his brother Edward undertook numerous sketching trips in the forests surrounding Philadelphia. The studio paintings that resulted from these excursions reflect the influence of the American Pre-Raphaelites whose fascination with the natural world generated extraordinarily detailed landscape studies. Of even greater importance to the young Thomas Moran was the work of England's foremost landscape painter, J. M. W. Turner, whose art Moran had studied primarily through prints and engravings. Eager to see Turner's atmospheric landscapes with their own eyes, the Moran brothers traveled to England in 1862, and devotedly followed his sketching route along the English coast. Thomas Moran is best known for his extraordinary, panoramic depictions of America's west. He was a master of both oil and watercolor mediums, capturing some of the most memorable scenes of the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone to have ever been painted. While Moran enjoyed great critical and commercial success from his western landscapes, he also found inspiration in other subjects. In the 1880s his long-time enthusiasm for marine painting grew stronger and he moved to East Hampton, Long Island, so that he could study the light and feel the atmosphere of the sea, day and night. The Cornell's Moran depicts a full moon over the ocean, at near dusk, punctuated by the white of gull wings, sails and lighthouse beam.
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Winslow Homer
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Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)
Hon. Abraham Lincoln Born in Kentucky, November 10, 1860
Wood engraving, 10 7/8 x 9 1/4 in.
Purchased with the James and Suzanne Markel Fund
1989.01.070.P
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Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)
A Bivouac Fire on the Potamac, 1861
Wood engraving, 13 3/4 x 20 1/4 in.
Gift of James and Suzanne Market
1988.03.10.PR
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Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)
Homeward-Bound, 1867
Wood engraving, 13 7/8 x 20 3/8 in.
Purchased with the James and Suzanne Markel Fund
1989.01.131.PR
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Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)
On the Bluff at Long Branch, at the Bathing Hour, 1870
Wood engraving, 9 x 13 5/8 in.
Purchased with the James and Suzanne Markel Fund1989.01.165.PR
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Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)
Snap-the-Whip, 1873
Wood engraving, 13 1/4 x 20 1/2 in.
Purchased with the James and Suzanne Markel Fund
1989.01.177.PR
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Many of Homer's illustrations feature fashionably dressed young women in various states of activity or leisure in both town and country settings. However, after the end of the Civil War, Winslow Homer began constructing scenes which focused on children and in particular the state of a quintessentially American childhood. This is a logical choice as a war-torn America looked to its youth as symbols of a stable and prosperous tomorrow. Continuing the theme of American childhood, Homer meticulously rendered an illustration of what has become one of his best-loved paintings, Snap-the-Whip, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In constructing his illustrations, Winslow Homer often borrowed elements from his paintings and rearranged them into new compositions. Yet, in Snap-the-Whip he conscientiously preserves the composition of the earlier painting with as much detail as possible. It is as if Homer understood the iconic nature of this vision of carefree, barefooted youths running through the expansive American landscape. Though this is one of his most vigorous scenes, again there is a slight disconnect between the participants. Each looks forward, not at one another. Can this be read as the children of America looking and running toward their future free of the constraints of a divided country? |
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Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)
Dad's Coming!, 1873
Wood engraving, 9 1/4 x 13 5/8 in.
Purchased with the James and Suzanne Markel Fund
1989.01.180.PR
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Just as those living in New York City today, in the summers Winslow Homer would leave the oppressive heat and congestion of the metropolis for the cooler quiet of the New England countryside and beaches. A number of his illustrations for the pictorial weeklies record the life of the fashionable leisure class as they whiled away the hours of summer. Not all of Homer's seaside illustrations dealt exclusively with the leisure class; these illustrations also bring to mind the fact that the people of these seaside villages were dependent on the ocean for their livelihoods. Such is the case of Dad's Coming!. This image, based on an earlier oil of the same name, is a poignant reminder of the often tedious, sometimes tragic liminal space inhabited as a family waits for a beloved father's return. In the illustration, Homer has increased the space between the child, who is looking out to sea, and the woman (his mother?), who stands holding another child, thus increasing the tension. Again, the figures look into the distance, not at one another. The distance and lack of communication between the figures mirrors the distance and silence of the absent father. The title phrase, "Dad's Coming!", offers hope that the father will indeed return. Yet, in a watercolor variation of this work, Homer changed the title to Waiting for Dad; the verb "waiting" conjures a less certain outcome. That Homer would change the title of his watercolor version to one that is arguably more ambiguous may be tied to events of August 1873. That month, while he was vacationing in Gloucester, Massachusetts, over one hundred of the local fishermen were lost at sea during a storm. When Harper's Weekly ran this illustration three months after the tragedy, it included a short poem full of optimism as "little Johnny" shouted with glee at the sight of his father's ship on the horizon. No such joy can be found in Homer's taut composition. |
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Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910)
The Nooning, 1873
Wood engraving, 9 1/8 x 13 3/4 in.
Purchased with the James and Suzanne Markel Fund
1989.01.175.PR
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Many of Homer's illustrations feature fashionably dressed young women in various states of activity or leisure in both town and country settings. However, after the end of the Civil War, Winslow Homer began constructing scenes which focused on children and in particular the state of a quintessentially American childhood. This is a logical choice as a war-torn America looked to its youth as symbols of a stable and prosperous tomorrow. In The Nooning, Homer uses an oil painting of the same name, painted the previous year, as his foundation. The illustration in Harper's Weekly, however, maintains the dog that is painted over in the oil version; he has also added two boys, laundry on the clothesline, and a woman feeding chickens. In this quaint image of Americana one sees children at rest and the viewer is meant to recall his or her own childhood summer days in a nostalgic interlude. |
French Academic Painting
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Brion Daubigny Vollon Monticelli Bouguereau
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Gustave Brion (French, 1824–1877)
Wood Rafts on the Rhine, 1855
Oil on canvas, 54 x 85 in.
Gift of Allen C. and Joan E. Edgar, and David Dwight and Douglas Edgar
1996.19.P
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This is an excellent example of French nineteenth-century Realism, a movement that rebelled against the idealized content of mythical and historical painting and turned, instead, to contemporary subjects. In 1851, Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) became the leading French Realist, creating a coherent and revolutionary movement through his massive compositions with great social consciousness. Wood Rafts on the Rhine River also shows a debt to Romanticism (the movement preceding Realism), especially to an 1819 work by the great Romantic painter Théodore Géricault (1791-1824), The Raft of the Medusa. The grim sky, muted colors, muscular figures, and triangular composition (formed by the barge, workmen, and poles) all recall The Raft of the Medusa, but with an added grittiness and naturalism. The artist Gustave Brion lived most of his life in Strasbourg on the Rhine. His Realistic works, of which this painting is very typical, exhibit a great sympathy for the workmen and farmers of Alsace-Lorraine. Brion exhibited this award-winning work, which helped to establish his reputation, in the Salon of 1855. It was engraved in 1856 by Jean-Pierre-Marie Jazet (1788-1871). |
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Charles François Daubigny (French, 1817–1878)
River Landscape, c. 1860
Oil on canvas, 12 1/2 x 17 3/8 in.
Gift of Lillian Rawlings
1995.15.P
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Charles François Daubigny, who loved seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting, became one of the most important landscape painters in mid-nineteenth-century France. Associated with the Barbizon School, Daubigny was an influence on the later Impressionists. He was also a friend of Honoré Daumier, who felt a kinship with the "impressionistic" techniques of the Barbizon artists. Daubigny was interested in the transitory aspects of nature, which he painted with quick brushstrokes, an approach that upset many contemporary art critics. He developed a naturalistic type of landscape painting, connecting the Romanticists with the more objective work of the Impressionists. |
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This flower arrangement consists of large pink roses, white carnations, chrysanthemums, red poppies, and less easily identifiable red, purple, pink, and yellow flowers. Antoine Vollon, known as "the Chardin of his time," approached his many still-lifes straightforwardly, with a keen sensibility. The boldly executed composition reveals his trademark chiaroscuro. Vollon's color scale of muted reds and pure blacks and whites derives from his studies with Théodule Ribot (1823-1891), the noted French Realist who adopted a Spanish palette. Like Chardin (1699-1779), Vollon was best known during his lifetime for his virtuoso still-lifes. He was a friend of many of the Impressionists, particularly with Claude Monet.
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Adolphe Monticelli (French, 1824–1886)
Femmes au Bois, c. 1878–1880
Oil on wood, 16 1/8 x 25 3/8 in.
Gift of the Myers family, Mr. and Mrs. John C. Myers, Jr., R'42 and June Reinhold Myers, R'41 in memory of Everett M. Myers
1988.23.P
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The artist executed this oil painting rapidly on an unsized walnut panel, the grain of which shows through in several spots, acting as a warm middle tone for the composition. Although the subject here seems to be that of a French fête galante (an elegant outdoor party), the painting suggest rather that it is a colorful dream depicted in the loosest, most sketchy manner. Adolphe Monticelli was born in Marseilles. Although his ancestors hailed from the Piedmont region of Italy, his artistic forebears included the great Venetian painters of the Renaissance. From 1846 to 1849, he studied in Paris with Paul Delaroche (1797–1856), the noted history and portrait painter. His real master, however, was the Louvre, where he encountered the paintings of Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Rembrandt, and Watteau, all of whom remained his lifelong “teachers.” However, his contemporaries Diaz de la Peña (1807–1876), Courbet (1819–1877), and Delacroix (1798–1863) also influenced his early work, the latter greatly admiring Monticelli’s output. To a large degree, Monticelli’s subjective art served as a link between the Romantics and the paintings of Van Gogh (1853–1890) and Gauguin (1848–1901), the Fauves, and the expressionists.
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William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1823–1905)
Tendres propos, 1901
Oil on canvas, 75 x 48 in.
Gift of the Myers family, Mr. and Mrs. John C. Myers, Jr., R'42 and June Reinhold Myers, R'41
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Bouguereau, perhaps better than any other artist, typifies the French Academic style of painting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His paintings are characterized by superb technique, harmonious composition, and elegance. His first lessons were with Louis Sage, a pupil of Jean-August-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867). Draughtsmanship and long, elegant lines are the qualities for which Ingres is renown, and these qualities are apparent in Bouguereau's work as well. Bouguereau was the recipient of an outstanding education, culminating at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was awarded the Grand Prix de Rome in 1850, and in 1888 he was appointed a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Yet, his reputation as an artist has waxed and waned several times from the late nineteenth century to the present. Bouguereau's work tends to be sentimental and quasi-mythological in a neo-classical manner. Because of this, his work was considered passé by the end of the nineteenth century when critics, following Charles Baudelaire's charge, called for works of art that reflected everyday life. In contrast to Bouguereau's neo-classical refinement, we may consider Pablo Picasso's blue period subjects (1901-1903) of beggars and absinthe drinkers. When it came into the Cornell's collection, Tendres propos was known as "Innocence." However, research undertaken in the late 1990s for the catalogue raisonnée of Bouguereau revealed that in a sale of 1901 this painting was known by its current, and less-generic, title. |
Early American Modernism
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Hassam Noyes Davies Henri Lie Lawson Chase
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Childe Hassam (American, 1859–1935)
Ironbound, 1896
Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in.
Gift of Laura and Sugurd Hersloff in memory of their father, Nils Hersloff
1957.003.P
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George Loftus Noyes was born in Ontario, Canada, to American parents. From 1890 to 1894 he lived in Europe, studying for three of those years at the Académie Colorossi in Paris. Upon returning to the United States, George L. Noyes set up a successful studio in Boston. In 1900 he taught his first art classes in Annisquam, Massachusetts; among his first students was the illustrator N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), father of the renowned American painter Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009). In 1915, Noyes received the silver medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, where he competed against other artists such as Childe Hassam (1859-1935) and Willard L Metcalf (1858-1925). George L. Noyes is best known for his landscapes; the overtly religious subject matter of this painting is uncharacteristic. It is a still life composed of a panel depicting the Madonna and Child and a rosary, among other religious accoutrements. The bright, vivid coloring and quick, short brushstrokes betray the heavy influence of French Impressionism on Noyes' technique. In the early 1930s, when Noyes was approaching his seventies, he resided in Winter Park and taught art at Rollins College for a short time. After leaving Florida, Noyes lived out the remaining years of his life in Vermont. |
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George L. Noyes (American, 1864–1951)
Santa Maria del Flore, c. 1925
Oil on canvas, 30 1/4 x 34 1/8 in.
Bequest of Nettie Olin Barbour
1958.090.P
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George Loftus Noyes was born in Ontario, Canada, to American parents. From 1890 to 1894 he lived in Europe, studying for three of those years at the Académie Colorossi in Paris. Upon returning to the United States, George L. Noyes set up a successful studio in Boston. In 1900 he taught his first art classes in Annisquam, Massachusetts; among his first students was the illustrator N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), father of the renowned American painter Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009). In 1915, Noyes received the silver medal at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, where he competed against other artists such as Childe Hassam (1859-1935) and Willard L Metcalf (1858-1925). George L. Noyes is best known for his landscapes; the overtly religious subject matter of this painting is uncharacteristic. It is a still life composed of a panel depicting the Madonna and Child and a rosary, among other religious accoutrements. The bright, vivid coloring and quick, short brushstrokes betray the heavy influence of French Impressionism on Noyes' technique. In the early 1930s, when Noyes was approaching his seventies, he resided in Winter Park and taught art at Rollins College for a short time. After leaving Florida, Noyes lived out the remaining years of his life in Vermont. |
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Arthur Bowen Davies (American, 1862–1928)
Dweller on the Threshold, c. 1915
Oil on canvas, 17 x 21 3/4 in.
Bequest of Virginia Keep Clark
1962.17.P
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Arthur Bowen Davies' most lasting contribution to American art is found not in the paintings he produced but rather in the paintings he brought over from Europe for the famed New York Armory Show in 1913. It was at the Armory Show that large numbers of Americans were introduced to the likes of Picasso, Kirchner, Van Gogh, Matisse, Brancusi, and Gauguin among many others. The importance of this exhibition in the formation of the American response to modernism cannot be overstated. Arthur B. Davies was also the personal art advisor to Mrs. Lily Bliss, one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Mrs. Bliss was a cousin to the donor of this painting, Mrs. Virginia Keep Clark. While Davies had an unerring eye when it came to selecting the most important and revolutionary European art to display in America, his own imagery was fairly tame. Davies was primarily influenced by the French artist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898) and the Symbolists, who aimed to create a visual language illuminating the soul. Davies' works are often populated by nudes and unicorns in a dream-like atmosphere. He studied the frescoes at Pompeii and often used long, horizontal canvases and a shallow field of depth. In Dweller on the Threshold, Arthur B. Davies presents a dream world filled with complex symbolism. A nude, auburn-haired woman stands with her back to the viewer. She is standing before a mirror as a diaphanous orange scarf encircles her head and trails off her extended arm. Who is she? What is taking place? As we realize the canvas is acting as a mirror it therefore becomes clear that the ambiguous landscape is not in front of us but rather behind us. We, the viewers, then become inhabitants of this constructed environment. |
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Robert Henri (American, 1865–1929)
Mountain Ash, Dark Woods, 1911
Oil on panel, 15 x 11 3/8 in.
Gift of Samuel B. and Marion W. Lawrence
1991.10.P
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Robert Henri (pronounced HEN-rye) was born in 1866 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Originally his surname was Cozad, but this was changed after a scandal in which his father was implicated in a murder. In 1886, Henri enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and in 1888 he traveled to Paris, studying at the Académie Julian. In 1901, after returning to the United States, Henri taught with William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) at the New York School of Art. Mountain Ash, Dark Woods was painted during a trip to Maine in the summer of 1911. In his record book, Henri noted this painting as, "dead trees against dark blue sky spot at top Mt. Ash." The thick layering of paint, deep, vibrant palette, and tight composition are all in keeping with his style. In certain places Henri has allowed the vertical grain of the panel to show through the paint adding a further layer of texture. Robert Henri, along with William Glackens and Arthur B. Davies, as well as five other artists, formed a group known as "The Eight" and exhibited in 1908 at the Macbeth Galleries in New York City. Henri, along with other members of The Eight, would go on to develop a loose confederation of likeminded artists known as the "Ashcan School." Members of both groups wanted to invigorate the style and subject matter of American painting. The Ashcan School painters would be particularly associated with scenes of urban realism. |
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Jonas Lie (American, 1880–1940)
Dusk on Lower Broadway, c. 1910
Oil on canvas, 37 1/2 x 31 1/2 in.
Gift of the family in memory of Dr. James B. Thomas, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, Winter Park, FL
1957.064.P
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Jonas Lie (pronounced 'lee') was born in Moss, Norway, to a Norwegian father and Connecticut-born mother. His father died when Jonas was eleven and the family relocated to Plainfield, New Jersey. As the eldest son, it was his responsibility to support the family, which he did for nine years by designing calico shirts in a cotton factory. Lie loved to travel and had probably been to Paris twice before he painted Dusk on Lower Broadway. In Paris, the artist encountered the works of the Impressionist Claude Monet, the Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin, and the Fauvist Henri Matisse; the styles of each of these painters would inform Lie's later work. Certainly in this picture one sees the quick, short brushwork and atmospheric rendering associated with Impressionism. The capturing of minute detail is not the aim of the painter here; rather, Lie has sought to capture the quality of light and the "feeling" of a winter's afternoon, as busy New Yorkers hurry along lower Broadway. Jonas Lie was quite successful in New York. He is best remembered today for a series of paintings detailing the work on the Panama Canal (now housed at the United States Military Academy at West Point). He was sufficiently respected by his fellow artists to help organize the now famous New York Armory Show of 1913, during which America was introduced to the avant-garde art of Europe. Lie, however, resigned from the show's planning committee in protest over the preference given to European over American artists. His work continued in a traditional vein when compared to the aesthetic experiments, such as Cubism, that other artists undertook in Europe and America. |
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Ernest Lawson (American, 1873–1939)
Bend in the River, c. 1906
Oil on panel, 16 x 20 in.
Gift of Samuel B. and Marion W. Lawrence
1996.01.P
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Ernest Lawson was born in Halifax, Canada, but first studied at the Art League School in Kansas City, Missouri in 1888. From there he went to the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in Mexico City. Following time spent in New York City studying at the Art Students League under John H. Twachtman (1853-1902) and Julian Alden Weir (1852-1919), two of the foremost American Impressionists, Lawson moved to Paris where he lived with the writer Somerset Maugham and briefly studied at the Académie Julian. Maugham based the character Frederick Lawson in his novel Of Human Bondage (1915) on Ernest Lawson. In Paris, Lawson was particularly influenced by the works of Cézanne and Sisley. When he returned to New York in 1898, his paintings were characterized by impasto (a thick buildup of paint), pronounced contour lines, and large areas of bold color--all of which may be seen in Bend in the River. Lawson’s works tend to be landscapes of semi-industrial Manhattan and the lower Hudson River. Robert Henri invited Lawson to exhibit with "The Eight," a group of eight painters who joined together to encourage stylistic variation in American art, at the Macbeth Galleries in New York in 1908. During the 1920s Lawson taught painting in Kansas City and Colorado Springs; he moved to Florida in 1936.
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William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916)
Young Woman with Red Flowers, 1904
Oil on canvas, 24 x 17 3/4 in.
Gift of Gertrude Lundberg Richards
1967.19.P
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William Merritt Chase studied at the National Academy of Design in New York from 1869 to 1871. He would become a famous teacher of art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts, and, later, at the Chase School in New York City, which would eventually become the Parsons School of Design. He became a member of the Art Students League, which encouraged American art, as opposed to art derived from Europe. His students were numerous, among them Georgia O'Keeffe, Joseph Stella, and Charles Sheeler. Young Woman with Red Flowers was a demonstration piece painted by Chase in class; it was given to his former student and donor of this portrait, Mrs. Gertrude Lundberg Richards, by the Director of the Chase School when she left. Mrs. Richards, who watched Chase paint this study, related that Chase did the painting in two hours, without correcting, drawing as he painted. Georgia O'Keeffe has noted that Chase required a painting a day from his students.
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Bloomsbury Group
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Duncan Fry Sickert Bell Fry
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Duncan Grant (English, 1885–1978)
Still Life with Salt-Glazed Pitcher, 1915
Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in.
Bequest of Kenneth Curry, Ph.D., R'32
2000.01.11.P
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Duncan Grant--best known as a member of the Bloomsbury Group, a loose confederation of artists, writers, and intellectuals centered in the Bloomsbury section of London--was a friend and associate of Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, Virginia Woolf, and John Maynard Keynes. He was a prolific artist who made use of a multiplicity of styles and techniques in his works. Still Life with Salt-Glazed Pitcher is related to a project begun in 1913 by the critic and artist Roger Fry. Wanting to educate and reform the British public's artistic tastes, Fry started the Omega Workshops in order to produce avant-garde decorative arts. A number of artists were involved with Omega over its lifetime, 1913-1919. Products were only signed with the Ω (omega) making it difficult to discern which artist was responsible for which work. Fry conceived of the Omega Workshops as a means of providing income to leading British artists; it was not as overtly social-minded as William Morris's earlier Arts and Crafts movement had been. Grant, like other artists of his generation, had been profoundly affected by Roger Fry's exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists, held at the Grafton Galleries, London, 1910-1911. The shocking palette of the Fauves is most evident here, as is an interest in the abstraction of form through hue. The use of color to define planar structure (most obvious in the salt-glazed pitcher) is a direct influence of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), whom Fry and the other Bloomsbury artists held in the highest esteem. The abstract, patterned background and the brightly colored glazes of the pottery on display are characteristic of the Omega Workshops' merchandise.
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Roger Fry (English, 1866–1934)
Winter Landscape, 1912–1914
Oil on canvas mounted on board, 20 x 20 in.
Bequest of Kenneth Curry, Ph.D., R'32
2000.01.10.P
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Roger Fry is best remembered today as an art critic. He was an early and tireless champion of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Edouard Manet (1832-1883), and various other artists who may be categorized as Post-Impressionists. In 1910, he mounted the influential exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists at the Grafton Galleries in London. In 1912 he followed up with another exhibition of avant-garde art. He almost single-handedly brought the most important and innovative artistic experimentation taking place on the Continent to the fairly parochial English audience. In Winter Landscape we see the dominant influence of the work of Paul Cézanne. Cézanne had brought a scientific discipline to his experimentation with form. He stressed that all of nature could be reduced to a pure vocabulary of cubes, spheres, and cones. In this picture, Fry has simplified each form to its discreet geometric components. The walls of a house become a rectangle, the roof a triangle, the chimney another rectangle, and so on. The resulting effect is the fracturing of forms and voids so associated with the mature work of Cézanne and exploited in the extreme by his disciples Picasso and Braque. This structural splitting also furthers a complex visual understanding of how objects relate to and interact with the space they inhabit. For Roger Fry and his friend and fellow Bloomsbury Group associate Clive Bell, art had to be approached from a purely formal standpoint. Fry's theories and tastes greatly influenced Bell when he came to write one of the founding documents of formalism, his book Art, 1914. For Fry and Bell, formal elements such as line, shape, color, and volume were the essential building blocks of great art.
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Walter Richard Sickert (English, 1860–1942)
The Flag at Rowlandson House, Flown at the Coronation of George V, 1911
Oil on canvas, 24 x 20 in.
Bequest of Kenneth Curry, Ph.D., R'32
2000.01.23.P
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It has been argued that Walter Richard Sickert was one of the most influential artists working in Britain in the twentieth century. He was primarily an influence on British figurative painters and is often referred to as a "painter's painter." Though born in Munich, he spent the majority of his life in Britain. The Flag at Rowlandson House depicts the location of Sickert's engraving and painting school in Camden Town, North London. Sickert opened his private school in 1910 and named the house in which it was located after the English draughtsman and caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson (1756 or 1757-1827), whom he greatly admired. George V was crowned on June 22, 1911, and the Union Jack would have been flown throughout the country as part of the festivities. Sickert spent much of his time in and around Camden Town, which was an economically deprived area of London. Early on he specialized in painting subjects that illustrated the gritty realities of this location. Some of his most famous paintings depict the interiors of the seedier music halls. Such subject matter, at the time, was considered unseemly, but now is seen to demonstrate the revolutionary nature of Sickert's artistic vision. In 1911, when this picture was painted, the artist was at the beginning of a reappraisal of his technique. Early in his career, Sickert had been an assistant to James MacNeill Whistler (1834-1903). From Whistler he had inherited a distaste for thickly layered paint, or impasto. Beginning around this time, Sickert experimented with ever thinner layers of paint. Here, there is only slight impasto evident in the upper left, giving texture to the foliage, and in the boards on the side of the house. In places, the paint is so thin that the weave of the canvas shows through. Eventually, Walter Richard Sickert would arrive at a technique in which he layered on dry paint, producing surfaces that are both thickly built up as well as smooth.
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Vanessa Bell (English, 1879–1961)
Portrait of Mary St. John Hutchinson, 1915
Oil on canvas, 31 x 21 3/4 in.
Gift of Kenneth Curry, Ph.D., R'32
1998.14.P
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Mary St. John Hutchinson (née Barnes) sat for both Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell at 46 Gordon Square, the home that Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf had shared with their brothers Thoby and Adrian Stephen. Bell produced two portraits of St. John Hutchinson from this sitting; the other is now part of the Tate Britain collection. In all three portraits, the abstract background is similar, suggesting that Mrs. St. John Hutchinson sat before an abstract painting or Omega Workshops screen in the studio. The striking colors and intense presence of the sitter conveyed in the portrait mark this as one of Bell's best early paintings. The flatness of the picture plane, harsh juxtaposition of colors, and liberation of the veristic use of color all betray a strong influence of French Post-Impressionist art. As a leading member of the Bloomsbury Group, Vanessa Bell, like the other Bloomsbury artists, was powerfully influenced by Roger Fry's two Post-Impressionist exhibitions (1910 and 1912) that had shaken the London art world to its foundation. Vanessa's husband, Clive Bell, published the important text Art in 1914, in which he argued for a purely formal approach to the understanding and appreciation of art. For Clive Bell, "significant form," defined as line, color, and form, combined in particular ways within a work of art to produce the "aesthetic emotion." In this portrait, Vanessa Bell seems to have line, color, and form in the forefront of her mind. Mary St. John Hutchinson was a very wealthy socialite who mixed with the highest society. However, she was herself quite brilliant and seemed to enjoy the intellectual engagement of the more bohemian Bloomsbury artists and intellectuals. She was an important patron of the Omega Workshops, and Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant were called on several times to decorate her successive residences. Bell has captured a certain cunning in this portrait that is not entirely flattering. This point-of-view may have come out of the fact that Mary St. John Hutchinson was the mistress of Vanessa's husband, Clive.
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Roger Fry (English, 1866–1934)
Saint Agnes, 1921
Woodcut, 5 x 3 1/2 in.
Purchased with the Kenneth Curry Acquisition Fund
1996.18.PR
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This woodcut appears as Plate V in Roger Fry’s Twelve Original Woodcuts, a book published by the Hogarth Press in 1921. Leonard and Virginia Woolf printed each of the volume’s illustrations by hand. The first edition of 150 copies sold very quickly and the press subsequently released two small editions soon thereafter. This image relates to Fry’s painting, Figure Resting under a Tree, St. Agnes (1915), created during a visit to southern France. Pippa Strachey, an acquaintance of the artist, served as the recumbent model.
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