The Mitchell Art Gallery at St. John's
College
Annapolis, MD
410-626-2556
http://www.sjca.edu
The Phelan Collection of Western Art
January 11 - February 18, 2000
The Mitchell Gallery at St. John's
College is presenting an exhibition of 50 paintings, prints, drawings, and
photographs from the 19th century that vividly represent the American west.
Executed for the most part on site rather than in the studio, many of these
images of the frontier's spectacular scenery and colorful inhabitants were
more lifelike and vital than the official art of the period.
The
collection provides views of the virgin wilderness, towns and settlements,
and the people who shaped the frontier. A land of unimaginable distances,
the west began with 1,000 miles of great plains and continued beyond the
snow-capped Sierras, and was full of natural wonders captured in paintings
such as "Yosemite Falls" and "Canyon of the Rio Las Animas."
Towns sprung up in the most unlikely places around missions, gold strikes,
or clean water, and their images were captured in "Russian Village,
Kansas," "The Store Where I am Employed, Pinkney City, Colville,
Washington" and "New Town on the Pacific Coast." Portraits
of the explorers, missionaries, fur traders, cowboys, and settlers who inhabited
the western territories appeared under titles like "Hopi Maiden"
or "Ranch Hand." (left: Edmund T. Coleman, New Town
on Pacific Coast, 1860-70)
Frederic Remington was the prototypical imagemaker for
much of the mythology about the West. His 1891 watercolor "I Settle
My Own Scores" is one of his earliest depictions of a sheriff, and
captures the essence of 
this frontier civic figure in a familiar pose that
has since occurred a thousand times in the movies. The hard-faced sheriff
wears a white hat and slouches in his boots, one gun in hand, one protruding
from his hostler. This image of the cool lawman after an act of justice
was an illustration for a story serialized in Harper's Weekly; the
title of the picture is what the lawman said after he shot the bad guy.
(right: Walter Shirlaw, Buffalo Hunt, 1890-1893)
This exhibition has been organized and curated by Mr. A.
J. Phelan and Mr. Thomas Dawson. Funding for this exhibition has been provided
in part by Anne Arundel County, the City of Annapolis, the Cultural Arts
Foundation of Anne Arundel County, the Maryland State Arts Council, Members
of the Mitchell Art Gallery, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Clare
Eddy and Eugene V. Thaw Fine Arts Fund, and Carleton Mitchell.
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The
collection provides views of the virgin wilderness, towns and settlements,
and the people who shaped the frontier. A land of unimaginable distances,
the west began with 1,000 miles of great plains and continued beyond the
snow-capped Sierras, and was full of natural wonders captured in paintings
such as "Yosemite Falls" and "Canyon of the Rio Las Animas."
Towns sprung up in the most unlikely places around missions, gold strikes,
or clean water, and their images were captured in "Russian Village,
Kansas," "The Store Where I am Employed, Pinkney City, Colville,
Washington" and "New Town on the Pacific Coast." Portraits
of the explorers, missionaries, fur traders, cowboys, and settlers who inhabited
the western territories appeared under titles like "Hopi Maiden"
or "Ranch Hand." (left: Edmund T. Coleman, New Town
on Pacific Coast, 1860-70)