The Lyman Allyn Art Museum Presents presents A Sense of Place: Painters of Matunuck, Rhode Island 1873-1941 an exhibition on view through February 20, 2011.
During the last decades of the nineteenth century, the picturesque hamlet of Matunuck, Rhode Island emerged as an art colony, rooted more in its location than in a unified style of painting. Artists ranging from the marine painter William Trost Richards to the impressionist Philip Leslie Hale were introduced to the hamlet of Matunuck by family members. There they were inspired by the unique beauty of their surroundings.
Landscape painters Philip, Ellen and Susan Hale, Caroline Atkinson, William Trost Richards, Anna Brewster, Eleanor Price and Frank Mathewson – whose work is on view in this exhibition – span generations, different artistic styles and schools of painting. What binds them together is the inspiration they found in Matunuck. Each of these painters interpreted the Matunuck landscape in a personal way, yet among them they encompass most of the major trends defining American painting of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — the Barbizon School, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Tonalism and plein-air painting — as well as the creation of the era’s predominant artistic institution: a summer school. A Sense of Place: Painters of Matunuck, Rhode Island 1873-1941 will present viewers with strong examples of these painting trends while also providing visually stunning land- and seascape views of their beloved Matunuck surroundings.
A Sense of Place: Painters of Matunuck, Rhode Island 1873-1941 has been organized by Guest Curator Lindsay Leard-Coolidge.
Image: Frank Convers Mathewson, Marsh September (Salt Pond) 1934 oil on canvas
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