The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) presents forty-five magnificent landscape paintings featuring rugged mountains, verdant forests and luminous sunsets, on display from July 30 through Nov. 6, 2011 in Painting the American Vision, an exhibition of works by Hudson River School painters from the collection of the New-York Historical Society.
In the first half of the 19th century, a loosely affiliated group of painters, poets and writers sought to create a distinctly American aesthetic, liberated from European history and artistic conventions. What they had in common was a belief in the transformative power of nature, its ability to change and be changed, and its potency as a source for individual spiritual renewal.
The works they created also demonstrated an early awareness of the importance of preserving natural sites for future generations. Thomas Cole’s iconic series of monumental canvases, “The Course of Empire” as well as works by Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Francis Cropsey, and Asher B. Durand and others present scenery real and imagined of locations from New England to the Yosemite Valley, from Niagara Falls to South America.
“These works were intended to make the viewer care about nature by conveying the sense that you are present at the edge of a pristinely beautiful scene,” said Sam Scott, PEM’s associate curator of maritime art and history and coordinating curator for the exhibition, “The artists used composition and relative scale to inspire awe in the grandeur of the outdoors, and show man’s place in the immensity of it.”
Painting the American Vision was originally organized by the New-York Historical Society as The Hudson River School: Painting the American Vision, and all works are from that institution’s collection. Exhibition made possible in part by a generous grant from the AMG Foundation. Additional support provided by the East India Marine Associates (EIMA) of the Peabody Essex Museum. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Image: Asher Brown Durand, Shandaken Range, Kingston, New York, 1854. Oil on canvas, 21 1/2 x 17 in. (54.6 x 43.2 cm) Courtesy of The New‐York Historical Society
INFO: Call 866-745-1876 or visit www.pem.org