Pride in Place: Landscapes by the Eight in Southern Collections

Lauren Rogers Museum of Art

Laurel, MS

601-649-6374

Pride in Place: Landscapes by the Eight in Southern Collections

Lauren Rogers Museum of Art is one of 17 Southern museums to contribute works to the exhibition "Pride in Place: Landscapes by the Eight in Southern Collections," which will be on view in the Lower Level Galleries through Aug. 6, 2000. John Sloan's Dolly by the Kitchen Door and Ernest Lawson's Spring Landscape, Harlem River and Houses are from the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art permanent collection. (left: Maurice Prendergast, Mountain Landscape, c. 1910-13, watercolor and chalk, 10 x 13 7/8 inches, Collection of Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, Tennessee)

Kristen Miller Zohn, Curator of Art at the Albany Museum of Art in Albany, GA, curated the exhibition. Zohn earned a master's degree in art history from Florida State University and is the author of African Art and the Sculpture of William Edmondson and Southern Exposure: Sporting Art by Aiden Lassell Ripley. (right: John Sloan, Road in the Arroyo, c. 19114-24, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches, The Harry and Mary Dalton Collection, Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina)

The Eight were "very concerned with the hustle and bustle of city life and the changing lifestyle of the early twentieth century," Zohn said. In landscapes, however, "the artists could focus on locations where they were able to slow down and appreciate the rich tradition and relationship that exists between artists and the landscape."

The Eight were a group of American artists in New York City who held a well-publicized exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery in New York in February 1908. The group of artists included Arthur Bowen Davies, Ernest Lawson, William Glackens, Everett Shinn, Robert Henri, Maurice Brazil Prendergast, John Sloan, and George Luks. Men of widely different tendencies, they were bound by common opposition to academicism. According to Dr. William Gerdts, a noted American art scholar who wrote the exhibition catalogue's text, a core group within The Eight - Henri, Sloan, Shinn, Glackens and Luks - had earlier been active in Philadelphia, primarily as newspaper illustrators, before migrating to New York. It was in New York that the artists began to tackle sometimes tough and brutal urban Realist themes associated with the Ashcan School. Some of the artists, however, were drawn to pure nature, and "Pride in Place" focuses on their works in this respect. (left: Ernest Lawson, Segovia, 1916, oil on panel, 12 x 16 1/8 inches, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, Eva Underhill Holbrook Memorial Collection of American Art, Gift of Alfred H. Holbrook, GMOA 45.59)

"This particular group of painters rebelled against the style of American Impressionism and wanted to portray their surroundings in more a naturalistic rather than illusory way," said Tommie Rodgers, Lauren Rogers Museum of Art Registrar and Curator of Exhibitions. "The influence of The Eight was the catalyst for American Modernism in that it freed artists to capture their subject matter in painterly and abstract ways," Rodgers added. (left:: William Glackens, Green Boathouse, c. 1922, oil, 24 x 32 inches, Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, West Virginia)

The exhibition came to Lauren Rogers Museum of Art from the Montgomery Museum of Art in Montgomery, AL. Previously shown at the Albany Museum of Art, it will travel to Cheekwood Museum in Nashville, TN., before closing in October 2000.

"Pride in Place: Landscapes by The Eight in Southern Collections" is sponsored at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art by Trustmark National Bank, Laurel, MS, Howse Implement Company, Jefferson Medical, and Jitney Jungle Charitable Foundation.

Learn more in Resource Library about the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art.

TFAO also suggests these DVD or VHS videos:

Eight: The American Independence Movement, The. A 5 minute 1991 survey of paintings by The Eight, a group of artists .attemptlng to break out of the art establishment that dominated the early part of the 20th Century. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.

TFAO does not maintain a lending library of videos or sell videos. Click here for information on how to borrow or purchase copies of VHS videos and DVDs listed in TFAO's Videos -DVD/VHS, an authoritative guide to videos in VHS and DVD format.

Please click on thumbnail images bordered by a red line to see enlargements.

For further biographical information on selected artists cited above please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.

Links to sources of information outside of our web site are provided only as referrals for your further consideration. Please use due diligence in judging the quality of information contained in these and all other web sites. Information from linked sources may be inaccurate or out of date. TFAO neither recommends or endorses these referenced organizations. Although TFAO includes links to other web sites, it takes no responsibility for the content or information contained on those other sites, nor exerts any editorial or other control over them. For more information on evaluating web pages see TFAO's General Resources section in Online Resources for Collectors and Students of Art History.

This page was originally published in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information. rev. 3/2/11

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