American Paintings: Highlights from the Permanent Collection of the Shelburne Museum

Shelburne Museum

from left to right: entrance to Shelburne Museum; the Webb Gallery, containing American art; photos by John Hazeltine

Shelburne, VT

802-985-3346

http://www.shelburnemuseum.org/

American Paintings: Highlights from the Permanent Collection of the Shelburne Museum

While well known for its collections of folk art, 19th-century architecture, and Americana, Shelburne Museum is also host to a strong and diverse collection of American paintings. Museum founder Electra Havemeyer Webb complemented her unique tastes for vernacular and decorative forms with many of the finest examples of 19th century landscapes, genre paintings, and portraits. Shelburne Museum presents a new show that features an exciting cross section of highlights from the collection, open through December 7, 2001

The 55-painting show is grouped in to categories. Genre paintings depicting scenes of people at work or play are hung together and stand across an installation of folk art paintings. One of the goals of the show is to reveal the common ground shared by both the academically trained painters of the day and those who lacked formal training. Landscape paintings represent another grouping, with fine examples of luminist styles exemplified by Fitz Hugh Lane's "Yacht 'Northern Light' in Boston Harbor" (1845), and Hudson River School works such as Jasper Francis Cropsey's "Country Lane to Greenwood Lake"(1846). A third theme of the show is the powerful influence of Europe on American painting. Paintings by Americans traveling and working in Europe hang along side those of Europeans traveling and working in the United States.

Artists featured in the show include Albert Bierstadt, Andrew Wyeth, George Loring Brown John Quidor, and Thomas Cole, among many others. The show is one of three special paintings shows to be exhibited in the museum's Webb Gallery in 2001. The other two are a Martin Johnson Heade show, Landscape and Light, which debuted in 2000 and has been kept for a second season; and a significant new Grandma Moses paintings show titled Great Grandma Moses!, opening September 8, 2001

American Paintings: Highlights from the Permanent Collection is curated by Shelburne Museum Art Curator Henry Joyce.

Read more in Resource Library Magazine about the Shelburne Museum

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.

This page was originally published in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information. rev. 5/28/11

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