Morris Museum of Art
Augusta, Georgia
706-724-7501
http://www.themorris.org/
Subdued Hues: Mood and
Scene in Southern Landscape Painting, 1865-1925
An exhibition entitled Subdued Hues: Mood
and Scene in Southern Landscape Painting, 1865-1925, will be featured
at the Morris Museum of Art from November 18, 1999 through January 16, 2000.
Estill Curtis Pennington, Morris Curator of Southern Painting, has selected
landscapes from the Morris Museum's collection and from ten other museums
and four private collections to address the question of how landscape painting
in the South differed from works created in the same time period by American
artists in other areas of the country.
In the foreword to the exhibition catalog, William S. Morris
III, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Morris Museum of Art, explains:
- "There is something about the Southern landscape
that fascinates us. Whether it is the bayous of Louisiana, the hills of
Tennessee or the red clay and tall pines of Georgia, the land is important
in the culture and history of the South. Artists have long been attracted
to the Southern landscape, as evident in the wide range of landscape paintings
in the Morris Museum's permanent collection of Southern art.
-
- In this exhibition and catalogue, Estill Curtis Pennington,
Morris Curator of Southern Painting, brings together landscapes created
between 1865 and 1925, from the Morris Museum's collection and from other
museums and private collections. As a native of the bluegrass region of
Kentucky who now spends much of his time in Amsterdam, he brings both homegrown
appreciation and the perspective of distance to his topic, exploring the
image of the Southern landscape as an exotic other, a moss-hung and moon-lit
world that time forgot."
Opening
events will be held on Thursday, November 18, beginning with a private preview
for museum members from 5:00 to 6:00 P.M. The general reception, open to
non-members for a $5 fee, will be held from 6:00 to 8:00 P.M. Mr. Pennington
will present a slide lecture at 6:15 P.M.
In the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue, Mr. Pennington
explores the concept of landscape art as a reflection of the national mood.
In a time when most American landscape painters came from a reverential
tradition that found nature to be holy, images of the "exotic"
South provided an escape for the popular imagination. Painters spurred on
by popular culture and emerging tourism created landscape views of swamps,
bayous, grasslands and mountain valleys, an "imaginary, moss-hung and
moon-lit" world of image and legend.
Lenders
to the exhibition include the Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York;
the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Cheekwood Tennessee Botanical Gardens and
Museum
of Art, Nashville; Isabel McHenry Clay; The Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia;
Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, South Carolina; Mrs. Merrill
Gross; Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Florida; Hunter Museum
of Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina;
Montgomery Museum of Art, Montgomery, Alabama; New Orleans Museum of Art;
The Ogden Collection, New Orleans; The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky;
and the Sam and Robbie Vickers Florida Collection.
Images from top to bottom: Elliott Daingerfield, Carolina Sunlight,
c. 1915, oil on canvas, 24 x 28 1/4 inches, Morris Museum of Art, 1989.01.045;
Harvey Joiner, Wooded Landscape, c. 1900, oil on canvas, 28 x 40
inches, Morris Museum of Art, 1989.08.287; Richard Clague, The
Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, Mandeville, c. 1865, oil on canvas, 12
x 18 inches, Morris Museum of Art, 1995.008; Elliott Daingerfield, Sunset
Glory, c. 1915, oil on canvas, 27 1/2 x 33 3/4 inches, Morris Museum
of Art, 1990.014
The
hard-cover exhibition catalogue, titled "Subdued Hues: Mood and Scene
in Southern Landscape Painting, 1865-1925," contains 60 pages, many
with color illustrations. Published in 1999 by Morris Museum of Art and
authored by Estill Curtis Pennington, Morris Curator of Southern Painting,
the catalogue is available through the Morris Museum of Art. Mr. Pennington
is the author of numerous exhibition catalogs, books and articles in the
field of Southern art. He received a B.A. degree in American History and
Literature from the University of Kentucky and did further study in English
literature at the University of Georgia. He also studied American Culture
and Art History in the Smithsonian Institution Ph.D. program at George Washington
University. Prior to becoming associated with the Morris Museum of Art in
I989, Mr. Pennington served on the staffs of the National Portrait Gallery
and the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian. He also has served
as the Director of the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel, Mississippi,
Curator of the Ogden Collection in New Orleans, and Curator of Painting
at the New Orleans Museum of Art. The ISBN number for the book is 1-890021-09-1.
(left above: front cover of exhibition catalogue, containing detail of Wooded
Landscape, c. 1900, by Harvey Joiner (1852-1932), oil on canvas, 28
x 40 inches, Morris Museum of Art, 1989.08.287)
rev. 12/3/99
Read more in Resource
Library Magazine about the Morris
Museum of Art.
For further biographical information on selected artists
cited above please see America's Distinguished
Artists, a national registry of historic artists.
rev. 11/22/10
Search Resource
Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.
Copyright 2010 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights
reserved.
An exhibition entitled Subdued Hues: Mood
and Scene in Southern Landscape Painting, 1865-1925, will be featured
at the Morris Museum of Art from November 18, 1999 through January 16, 2000.
Estill Curtis Pennington, Morris Curator of Southern Painting, has selected
landscapes from the Morris Museum's collection and from ten other museums
and four private collections to address the question of how landscape painting
in the South differed from works created in the same time period by American
artists in other areas of the country.
