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A Touch of Light: American Tonalist Masters
- The Seymour R. Thaler and Mildred Thaler Cohen Collection
March 18 - July 31, 2000
The Thaler Cohen Collection of paintings is a group of 48 works
of art from the 19th and early 20th century given to the Mattatuck Museum
by Mildred Thaler Cohen of New York City. She and her first husband began
the collection in the late '50s, at a time when American paintings were
not recognized as important works of art. The paintings were collected with
a passion and hung in the family's home. After her first husband's death,
Mrs. Cohen moved into the city and opened an art gallery specializing in
19th century American painting (the Marbella Gallery), but the collection
remained a private collection, domestic in scale. Hung in her home, it was
a personal reflection of a passionate collector. (left: Guy Wiggens
(1883-1962),The Blizzard at the Library, 1920, oil on board, 8 x
10 inches)
The
Collection includes works by painters now recognized as major American masters,
including John Singer Sargent, Ralph Albert Blakelock, George Inness, Albert
Bierstadt, Thomas Worthington Whittredge, J. Alden Weir, Ehilu Vedder, Everett
Shinn, Alfred Thompson Bricher, Samuel Colman, Jasper F. Cropsey, Ernest
Lawson, William Morris Hunt, Eugene Higgins, Thomas Hill, Edward Gay, J.
Francis Murphy, Thomas Nast, Robert Salmon, Alexander Wyant, Bruce Crane
and Edward Henry Potthast. (left: Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), Western
Lake, n.d., oil on board, 10 x 14 inches)
The
collection contributes to the Mattatuck Museum collections by strengthening
its holdings in landscape painting (with acknowledge leaders in landscape:
Bierstadt, Inness, Whittredge, Hunt and Weir); and adds to the collections
in subjects and styles not previously well represented in the collections:
still life (Emil Carlsen), allegorical figure paintings (Ehilu Vedder, Arthur
Bowen Davies), and scenes of urban life (Guy Carlton Wiggins, Everett Shinn
and Edward Henry Potthast). The collection also includes influential painters,
some forgotten to modern 
collectors, including Thomas Couture (who taught many
American painters in their student days in Paris in the 19th century), Henri
Fantin-Latour (the French artist who defined 19th century still life), David
Burliuk (an early modernist, and advocate of Russian theories of art) and
Josephine Paddock (who exhibited in the pioneering Armory Show in New York
in 1913, which introduced American artists and audiences to modern, abstract
art). (left Samuel Colman (1832-1920), Sunset after Rain - a sketch
from nature, n.d., oil on paper, 6 x 10 inches; right: Everett Shinn
(1876-1953), Singer, n.d., pastel on paper, 17 x 12 inches)
The Mattatuck will exhibit the entire collection in a special
exhibit on view through July, 2000 and 
will hang the paintings by Connecticut-based artists
in its permanent galleries later in 2000. Other works in the collection
will be hung in the Seymour R. Thaler and Mildred Thaler Cohen Study Center,
a resource center on American painting that the museum will create over
the next several years to provide students and visitors with access to information
about American art and the role of Connecticut-based artists in the evolution
of a national style. The 
collection will be known as the Seymour R. Thaler
and Mildred Thaler Cohen Collection. (left: John Singer Sargent (1856-1925),
Courtyard, n.d., oil on board, 13 x 8 1/2 inches; right: Edward Potthast
(1852-1927), Bathers on a Beach, c. 1910, oil on board, 12 x 16 inches)
Mrs. Cohen was introduced to the Mattatuck Museum through
the museum's recent exhibits exploring neglected 19th century landscape
painters, including the Alexander Theobald Van Laer exhibit and publication
that the museum organized last year. The donor was a lender to the exhibit
of an accomplished, but forgotten, American tonalist, who had a summer home
and studio in Litchfield at the turn of the century. Mrs. Cohen's son, Fred
Thaler, is a painting dealer who lives in Kent, Connecticut.
All paintings illustrated in this article are from The
Seymour R. Thaler and Mildred Thaler Cohen Collection, Mattatuck Museum,
Waterbury, CT.
Read more articles and essays concerning this institutional
source by visiting the sub-index page for the Mattatuck
Museum in Resource Library Magazine
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. 3/2/11
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Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.
Copyright 2011 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights
reserved.
The Thaler Cohen Collection of paintings is a group of 48 works
of art from the 19th and early 20th century given to the Mattatuck Museum
by Mildred Thaler Cohen of New York City. She and her first husband began
the collection in the late '50s, at a time when American paintings were
not recognized as important works of art. The paintings were collected with
a passion and hung in the family's home. After her first husband's death,
Mrs. Cohen moved into the city and opened an art gallery specializing in
19th century American painting (the Marbella Gallery), but the collection
remained a private collection, domestic in scale. Hung in her home, it was
a personal reflection of a passionate collector. (left: Guy Wiggens
(1883-1962),The Blizzard at the Library, 1920, oil on board, 8 x
10 inches)
