price list for exhibition

Thomas Cole (1801-1848)
Tree by a Pond ca.1840

Landscapes play a significant role in American art. The earliest American landscape paintings were topographic illustrations of farms, cities, and landmarks that were generally painted for local residents or for Europeans interested in the New World. In some cases it is not known if the artists had even visited the Americas . It is thought that the artist Victor DeGrailly and works such as his View of Niagara Falls were based on prints there were published in England in 1840.

Landscape painting came to dominate American art in the 1830's, when artists began to equate the country's unspoiled wilderness with the new nation's seemingly limitless potential. Foremost among those increasingly interested in the expressive power of landscape was the young artist Thomas Cole. Cole is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River school, a loosely knit group of American artists who actively painted landscapes between 1825 and 1875. Giving stylistic direction to a distinctly American understanding of nature, Hudson River school artists invested the land with a sense of national identity, the promise of prosperity, and the presence of God.

The first generation of Hudson River school artists, represented by Thomas Cole believed that studying the land led to enlightenment and a connection with divine harmony. Every detail absorbed their attention, from moss-covered rocks in clear streams to snowcapped mountains. Along the Shore by Alfred Bricher displays this attention to detail and was part of a movement that was also known as Luminism. The Luminist school of artists were interested in the atmospheric qualities that could be applied to canvas. Light played a major factor in these works. For other artists, exact documentation was less important than illustrating religious and moral sentiments. A perfect example of this is Elihu Vedder's Twilight New England. The work displays a autumnal sky which can also be interpreted as a post Civil War commentary and the healing that was needed for the young country.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the American public became increasingly interested in the far reaches of the continent. Adventurous artists made names for themselves by bringing images of the Rockies, the Sierra Nevadas, and South America back to East Coast audiences. Albert Bierstadt was best known for his western landscapes that were meant to approximate the live viewing experience.

As industrial development pushed westward, landscape artists were documenting the American wilderness just as it was disappearing. George Inness' Tropical Landscape is such an example . Ambiguous in tone, the landscape can be read as a reminder of the price of progress.

Gradually this genre or type of landscape gave way to more intimate, interpretive views. For the new generation, landscape was less a stage for theatrical effects but rather a sounding board for the artists' personal emotional response. American impressionists such as Childe Hassam and Ernest Lawson experimented with rendering the evocative effects of light and atmosphere in landscape. The new aesthetic was characterized by loose brushwork, subtle tonalities, and an interest in conveying mood.

Soon after the turn of the century, a group of artists rejected these picturesque pastoral subjects. Abstract artists of the twentieth century approached landscape with a variety of strategies. The Armory Show of 1913, organized by Arthur B. Davies and others, brought the work of European modernists to the attention of American artists, many for the first time. Succeeding developments fostered a uniquely American abstraction, based on precedents of cubism and expressionism. John Marin's Winter Number 7 and Stuart Davis' Gas Tanks contain elements of both these movements, synthesized into a dynamic landscape. Morton Schamberg's unique form of organic abstraction involved distilling the natural world to its fundamental elements, creating works of dramatic simplicity. Mercedes Matter and Maurice Sievan used the painting techniques of early abstract expressionism to convey their conception of the world around them. Sometimes recognizable places, sometimes only colors and textures reminiscent of landscape motifs, these works show that even in a modern, industrialized society, the American landscape still has the power to elicit artistic expression.

And in a final twist in the latter half of the 20th century painters such as Andrew Wyeth and Aiden Lassell Ripley reverted to an earlier style of realism tinged with an almost surrealist quality, memories of things past and a more peaceful time.

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