Florida Art History

with an emphasis on representational art

 

Books, listed by year of publication, with most recently published book listed first; articles and DVDs

 

 

Patchwork: Seminole And Miccosukee Art And Activities, by Dorothy Downs. 55 pages. Pineapple Pr (September 15, 2005). ISBN-10: 1561643327. ISBN-13: 978-1561643325. Product Description: "A hands-on way to learn about Florida's Seminoles and Miccosukees, who have been making and wearing patchwork clothing since the early 1900s. Learn how to make patchwork designs and a doll using colored paper and glue instead of fabric and a sewing machine." text courtesy of Amazon.com

Art in Florida: 1564-1945, By Maybelle Mann. Published by Pineapple Press, 1999. Original from the University of Michigan. Digitized Nov 8, 2007. ISBN 1561641715, 9781561641710. 191 pages. floridaplants.com says: "This authoritative and wide-ranging book presents for the first time the history of art in Florida from the first European artist, Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, who arrived in 1564, until the end of the Second World War, when art in Florida exploded into the modern forms and styles. The early chapters document the artistic offerings of early explorers and naturalists like Mark Catesby and John James Audubon, as well as the Seminole Indians and those who painted them, including George Catlin and Charles Bird King. St. Augustine, the first permanent settlement, also came to be the first center of art in Florida. After the Civil War, when Northerners began to flock to Florida for health and pleasure, art found a place in the thriving business of travel literature. This drew artists like brothers Edward and Thomas Moran, who began to paint the beauty of Florida. In the 1880s, St. Augustine, through the efforts of Henry Morrison Flagler, again became the center of artistic endeavor, attracting artists like Martin Johnson Heade. At the end of the century many prominent American artists arrived and painted the Florida they found. This included Frederic Remington, George Inness, Hermann Herzog, and Winslow Homer. In the first half of the twentieth century, Florida paintings were created by such notables as John Singer Sargent, Jane Peterson, Martha Walter, Milton Avery, William Glackens, Ernest Lawson, Harold Betts, Frank Weston Benson, Ralston Crawford, Andrew Wyeth, and Milton Avery. The final chapter covers government-sponsored art in the 1930s, including murals in public buildings and the Index of American Design."

Celebrating Florida: Works of Art from the Vickers Collection (Florida Sesquicentennial), by GARY R. LIBBY. 144 pages. Publisher: University Press of Florida; 1st edition (October 11, 1996). ISBN-10: 0813014778. ISBN-13: 978-0813014777. Product Description: "Celebrating Florida presents for the first time a full-color collection of 66 important paintings, drawings, and prints of Florida-based art. Featuring such artists as Winslow Homer, Louis Comfort Tiffany, George Inness, William Glackens, Martin Johnson Heade, Frank Shapleigh, and Herman Herzog, the book highlights some of the world's most significant artists, who came to Florida from 1823 to 1950 to capture the Sunshine State. Essays by noted historians Wendell Garrett and Erik Robinson discuss the settlement of Florida and its birth as a state in 1845. Additional essays present an aesthetic, historical, social, and cultural overview of the significance of the art as well as biographical information about each artist. Celebrating Florida is a Sesquicentennial publication, part of the celebration of 150 years of Florida statehood." (Image and text courtesy of Amazon.com)

Views of Florida by American Masters: Exhibition Catalogue Palm Beach: March 8 - April 13, 1975; St. Petersburg: May 6 - June 2, L975, By Society of the Four Arts, Gorham Bert Munson, John Gordon, Museum of Fine Arts (Saint Petersburg, Fla.). Published by The Society [and] The Museum of Fine Arts of St. Petersburg, Florida, 1975. 18 pages

ARTISTS OF THE FLORIDA TROPICS., By Cummer Gallery of Art, Fla Museum of Fine Arts (St. Petersburg, University Gallery, University of Florida. Published by Florida. University. University Gallery, 1965. 56 pages; Google Books says: "Catalog of an exhibition held at the University Gallery at University of Florida from March 1st-March 31st, 1965 ; Cummer Gallery of Art, Arpil, 1965 ; Museum of Fine Arts (St. Petersburg, Fla.), May, 1965."

 

(above, Fort Marion Monument St Augustine Florida, poster, Work Projects Administration)

 

(above: Thomas Moran, Old Watchtower at St. Augustine, 1881, oil on canvas, 25.5 x 30.25 inches, Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)

 

Articles:

Maybelle Mann: "Art in Florida: 1564 - 1945" American Art Review January-February 2000 (Volume XII, Number 1)

 

DVDs:

Highwaymen: Florida's Outsider Artists, The is a 58 minute story of a group of young, untrained African-American landscape painters that emerged from the small central Florida town of Fort Pierce in the late 50s and early 60s. Segregation and racist attitudes of the time prevented them from working with traditional art galleries. Instead, they traveled throughout the state selling their paintings out of the trunks of their cars. The Highwaymen had no pretensions about their art. They saw themselves as craftsmen, painting pictures strictly to earn a living. They mainly painted Florida back-country scenes -- coastal savannahs, hardwood hammocks, lonely tannin-stained rivers... expansive skies, capacious clouds, using bold strokes of dramatic colors. Theirs is an inspirational story of ingenuity and entrepreneurship, and ultimately, of perseverance in the face of societal limitations.

Click here for information on how to borrow or purchase copies of VHS videos and DVDs listed in this catalogue. TFAO does not maintain a lending library of videos or sell videos.

 

 

(above: Sunset on the Intercostal, 2011. Photo by John Hazeltine)

 

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