On view at the Parrish from September 27 through November 29, 2009
The Parrish collection has long been known for its impressive array of landscape paintings and this exhibition marks an important opportunity to bring together these treasured works in a display that traces the progression of American landscape painting, from the Hudson River School to the American Impressionists, from the early Modernists to contemporary painters, all of whom contributed to the creation of a vision which we have come to think of as distinctly American. From majestic views to intimate glimpses, these paintings abound in images that frame the way we look at nature and we are drawn to these works for the descriptive way in which they evoke the natural world.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, artists of the Hudson River School were among the first to record the “New Eden” that was the North American continent. Their framing of the view into the distance, often foregrounded by a solitary figure, literally invented a new way of seeing. By the middle of the century, the border of the wilderness had been pushed farther west. Industrialization had begun to transform the topography of the eastern United States, and a painting like Samuel Colman’s Farmyard, East Hampton (ca. 1880) evokes a nostalgia for the vanishing rural scene.
For many young Americans studying art in the decades following the Civil War, making a trip to Europe was an imperative and their choice of landscape subject matter reflected and increased awareness of European painting techniques, both the naturalism of the French Barbizon painters and the optical effects of the French Impressionists. Among them were William Lamb Picknell, William Stanley Haseltine, and William Merrritt Chase.
American Landscapes is one of three exhibitions drawn from the Parrish’s collection that will be organized for circulation to other museums. American Views: Three Exhibitions from the Collection of the Parrish Art Museum will also include Fairfield Porter Raw: The Creative Process of an American Master and First Impressions: Nineteenth-Century American Master Prints.
www.parrishart.org
Image: Frederick Childe Hassam (American, 1859–1935), Church at Old Lyme, 1906. Oil on canvas, 30 ⅛ x 25 ¼. Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY. Littlejohn Collection, 1961.3.131
