American Art Project

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American Art Project American Art 1800s What shaped art in the new nation? The revolution was over; the Constitution was ratified New settlers had confidence in their own free will Common sense was needed and know-how to improvise Pioneers had to be practical There was the ever-protective presence of a forbearing God. Art reflected this trend toward realism. Many artists were self-taught; they could not afford the costly travel to Europe to study with the masters Nature in the new world was rich, pure and imposing The wilderness had majestic grandeur, enormous forests, high mountain ranges, and immense plains The light was clear and dazzling There were vivid colors and sharp contrasts Romanticism evolves Seeing nature as a reflection of all things divine Landscapes become a manifestation of God’s greatness Also Still Life portrays simplicity and serenity Trompe l’oeil Portraiture - pays There was much patriotism and nationalism in the new country John Singleton Copley Boy with a Squirrel Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mifflin Watson and the Shark 1778 Charles Wilson Peale Staircase Group 1795 The Artist in his Museum The Peale family Gilbert Stuart George Washington Dollar bill John TrumBull The Declaration of Independence Thomas Sully The Torn Hat Human figures become small compared to the grandness of the surrounding landscape. Moonlight or sunlight could add a touch of mystery and fantasy Hudson River Valley Paintings Thomas Cole Scene from the Last of the Mohicans The Falls of Katerskill 1826 Asher Brown DuranD Luminism light subtle tones The Beeches Kindred Spirits 1849 Frederick Church Heart of the Andes Thomas Moran Grand Canyon of the Colorado River 1892 and 1902 Fitz Hugh Lane Martin Johnson HeaDe Jasper Cropsey Albert Bierstadt The Lander’s Peak Oregon Trail Donner Lake John VanDerlyn Washington Allston Landscape with a Lake Edward Hicks Noah’s Ark 1846 John James AuDuBon documentary realism Farmyard Fowl Bald Eagle As the west is conquered, tree felling and large-scale mining exploitation damage the landscape Many became rich so they could purchase paintings of the landscapes they had destroyed. Such as, the old rural way of life for a trapper, cowboys, explorers, and the west… Ecological problems recognized? Trend towards more natural landscapes George Inness Passing Clouds William Trost RicharDs Lake Squam from Red Hill Indian Summer Scenes of every day life were used to glorify the nation a reflection of the new democracy Sydney Mount George Caleb Bingham Landscape with Waterwheel and a Boy Fishing The Jolly Flatboatman in Port Eastman Johnson Thomas Waterman Wood Images of Native Americans and African Americans Charles Bird King Notchimine George Caitlin Buffalo Bulls Fighting in Running Season Seth Eastman Indian Sugar Camp Before and after the Civil War, there was a change to more powerful realism Winslow Homer (French Manet and Monet influence) The Sharpshooter on Pickett Duty A Huntsman and Dogs 1891 The Blue Boat Thomas EaKins more scientific naturalist, a perfect mirror of reality The Concert Singer 1890-92 The Biglin Brothers Racing The Surgical Clinic of Professor Gross 1875 Trompe d’oeil William Michele Harnett After the Hunt 1885 John FreDericK Peto Reminiscenses of 1865 Sailing 1875 William Rush carving his Allegorical figure of the Schuylkill 1876-77 Henry Ossawa Tanner Portrait of the Artist’s Mother 1897 Impressionism William Merritt Chase Mary Cassatt The Child’s Bat Children Playing on the Beach 1884 A Woman and a Girl Driving 1881 Frontier Art Frederick Remington The fall of the Cowboy 1895 The Stampede Charles Russell The Gilded Golden Age before the turn of the century Industrial machinery, large fortunes growing James McNeil Whistler Aesthetic Movement At the Piano Purple and Rose:1864 John Singer Sargent Portrait of Madame X 1882 – 84 George Inness The Lackawanna Valley 1855 Choose 3 paintings from the list: a portrait, a landscape (Hudson River), and a more natural landscape or impressionist painting. In your Sketchbook, sketch 3 paintings and annotate with a brief description of the author’s style and influence. Reflect on what you see in the painting as well? What do you see and think about? .
Recommended publications
  • The Hudson River School at the New-York Historical Society: Nature and the American Vision
    The Hudson River School at the New-York Historical Society: Nature and the American Vision Marie-François-Régis Gignoux (1814–1882) Mammoth Cave, Kentucky , ca. 1843 Oil on canvas Gift of an Anonymous Donor, X.21 After training at the French École des Beaux-Arts , Gignoux immigrated to the United States, where he soon established himself as a landscape specialist. He was drawn to a vast underground system of corridors and chambers in Kentucky known as Mammoth Cave. The site portrayed has been identified as the Rotunda—so named because its grand, uninterrupted interior space recalls that of the Pantheon in Rome. Gignoux created a romantic image rooted in fact and emotion. In contrast to the bright daylight glimpsed through the cavern mouth, the blazing fire impresses a hellish vision that contemporaneous viewers may have associated with the manufacture of gunpowder made from the bat guano harvested and rendered in vats in that very space since the War of 1812. William Trost Richards (1833–1905) June Woods (Germantown) , 1864 Oil on linen The Robert L. Stuart Collection, S–127 Richards followed the stylistic trajectory of the Hudson River School early in his career, except for a brief time in the early 1860s, when he altered his technique and compositional approach in response to the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics of the English critic John Ruskin. Ruskin’s call for absolute fidelity to nature manifested itself in the United States in a radical 1 group of artists who formed the membership of the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art, to which Richards was elected in 1863.
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  • Bringing to Light
    Bringing to Light A Century of American Painting Brooklyn-born Guy Carleton Wiggins’ career flourished early, and at age 20 he became the youngest American to have a work accepted into the permanent col- lection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He painted numerous views of the city in winter from the windows of offic- es in Manhattan, and this blustery de- piction of a snow-covered Wall Street is typical of Wiggins’ oeuvre. The bright- ly-colored flags and bustling crowds lend the scene energy in the midst of a chilly day. (left) Guy Carleton Wiggins (1883-1962) Wall Street Winter 1 Oil on canvas on board, 12 x 9 ⁄8 inches Signed lower left:Guy Wiggins (front cover, detail) Newell Convers Wyeth (1882-1945), The Artist’s Studio, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, pg. 7 Bringing to Light: A Century of American Painting November 23rd, 2019 - January 25th, 2020 V OSE G ALLER IES The Isles of Shoals have inspired artists for generations. Warren Sheppard was also enamored with the area—this example, depicting White Island Light on the south- Warren W. Sheppard (1858-1937) A Schooner off White Island Light, Isles of Shoals, NH ernmost atoll, serves as one of his more tranquil renditions as he depicts a moored 1 1 vessel delivering supplies to the outpost. His dual background as mariner and artist Oil on canvas, 20 ⁄8 x 26 ⁄8 inches comes into full view through his careful delineation of the rigging and sails. Signed lower left:WARREN SHEPPARD 2 V OSE G ALLERIES B RIN G IN G TO L I G HT : Alvan Fisher was one of the earliest American pioneers of painting.
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  • Kindred Spirits
    Asher B. Durand • Kindred Spirits NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON On February , 848, ten days after his forty-seventh birthday, Thomas Cole— America’s first important landscape painter — died of pneumonia. At the time of his death, he was at the peak of his powers and the acknowledged leader of the loosely knit group of American landscape painters that would become known as the Hudson River School. Cole’s unexpected death was a shock to America’s artistic community. In New York he was honored with a memorial exhibition of his works and a commemorative service highlighted by a eulogy delivered by William Cullen Bryant, a successful American nature poet and one of Cole’s closest friends. Among the tributes Bryant offered, one was especially prescient: “I say within myself, this man will be reverenced in future years as a great master in art.” In appreciation of Bryant’s role in celebrating Cole’s memory and in recogni- tion of the friendship between the poet and the painter, the New York collector Jonathan Sturges commissioned Asher B. Durand to paint a work that would depict Cole and Bryant as “kindred spirits.” Durand, several years older than Cole and a successful engraver, had been inspired by Cole in the 830s to take up landscape painting and was soon a leading practitioner in his own right. Sturges’ request that the two men be shown as kindred spirits was inspired by the words of English poet John Keats, whose “Sonnet to Solitude” celebrates the ameliora- tive aspects of nature and concludes: Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d, Is my soul’s pleasure; and sure it must be Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.
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  • HOMAGE to the SEA Cover: JAMES E
    HOMAGE TO THE SEA Cover: JAMES E. BUTTERSWORTH (1817-1894) The Schooner “Triton” and The Sloop “Christine” Racing In Newport Harbor circa 1884 Oil on canvas 12 x 18 inches Signed, lower right HOMAGE TO THE SEA AN EXHIBITION AND SALE OF 18TH, 19TH & 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN MARINE ART TO BENEFIT INTERNATIONAL YACHT RESTORATION SCHOOL (IYRS) & MUSEUM OF YACHTING JULY 11 - SEPTEMBER 14, 2008 WILLIAM VAREIKA FINE ARTS LTD THE NEWPORT GALLERY OF AMERICAN ART 212 BELLEVUE AVENUE • NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND 02840 WWW.VAREIKAFINEARTS.COM 401-849-6149 There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. whence we came. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures. John F. Kennedy William Shakespeare Remarks at the America’s Cup Dinner, Brutus, Julius Caesar Newport, RI, September 14, 1962 As we enter our twenty-first summer of operation in our Bellevue Avenue gallery, Alison and I are pleased to offer “Homage to the Sea,” a major exhibition and sale of marine artworks by important 18th, 19th and early 20th century American artists. Continuing our gallery’s two-fold mission to present museum-quality art to the public and to raise funds and consciousness about important non-profit causes, we are pleased to donate a percentage of sales from this endeavor to two deserving Newport institutions in the marine field: the Museum of Yachting and the International Yacht Restoration School (IYRS).
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  • Seeing the Landscape in Landscape Art
    Seeing the Landscape in Landscape Art Edward K. Faison n 1825, a young British immigrant, cap- made famous by George Inness in the 1880s and tivated by the wild scenery of the Hud- 1890s. In an ironic twist, a painting fraternity Ison River and nearby Catskill mountains, (the HRS) founded to celebrate America’s wil- endeavored to promote America’s natural won- derness became synchronous with a brief period ders as a distinctive national identity. That year in the northeastern United States in which the Thomas Cole began painting the undeveloped landscape was altered to a greater extent than landscapes of the Northeast with romantic gran- at any time since the last ice age. Because pho- deur and literal exactitude, inspiring a cadre of tography was in its infancy during this period followers that produced America’s first painting and because intensive observation and faithful movement. The Hudson River School (HRS), depiction of nature as well as the study of natu- as the movement was later named, thrived for ral science were integral to the HRS’s ethos, the next half century before being replaced by nineteenth century American landscape paint- the misty, ethereal landscapes of the tonalists ing affords a window into the dramatic ecologi- COURTESY OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART OF THE METROPOLITAN COURTESY Thomas Cole’s 1836 painting, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm— The Oxbow. Cole included a portrait of himself working at his easel, dwarfed by the surrounding forest, in the lower center of the painting. Landscape Art 3 COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, D.C.
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  • For Immediate Release
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Nina Sangimino Telephone: (212) 744-3586 Email: [email protected] New York (February 6, 2020) – Questroyal Fine Art, LLC is proud to present the most dynamic exhibition and sale of Hudson River School paintings in modern times: TEN GREAT AMERICAN PAINTERS and Their Brilliant Rivals. Opening March 6, 2020, at 903 Park Avenue, over 130 paintings will be on display, including works by the most acclaimed leaders of the movement: Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Asher B. Durand, Sanford Robinson Gifford, John Frederick Kensett, Thomas Moran, William Trost Richards, and Worthington Whittredge. Alongside these masters are works by their brilliant rivals, such as John William Casilear, Samuel Colman, William Hart, Hermann Herzog, David Johnson, Jervis McEntee, and Alexander Helwig Wyant. Demonstrating the impressive scope of America’s first and most important artistic movement, this exhibition will ensure that acquisitions are available for collectors of all levels and budgets. Our nation’s great artists conceived and refined a unique artistic means to reveal all of nature’s countenances while restraining artistic interpretation, resulting in work that exalts the wonder of our landscape and incites an urgent interest in conservation. Their approach was distinct from that of their European counterparts, resulting in an art that America can proudly claim as its own. Cole, the unofficial founder of the first American-bred school of art, eschewed European tastes to draw inspiration from the untainted beauty of a young America: “Must I tell you that neither the Alps nor the Apennines, no, nor even Ætna itself, have dimmed, in my eyes, the beauty of our own Catskills? It seems to me that I look on American scenery, if it were possible, with increased pleasure.” With exhibitions that continue to open around the globe, the Hudson River School is celebrated for the timelessness of its message and the innovation conceived in its paintings.
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  • The Last New World      March 9 – April 7, 2018
    Q UESTROYAL F INE A RT, LLC The Last New World March 9 – April 7, 2018 An Exhibition and Sale The Last New World Louis M. Salerno, Owner Brent L. Salerno, Co-Owner Chloe Heins, Director Nina Sangimino, Senior Manager, Research and Special Projects Ally Chapel, Senior Administrator Jenny Lyubomudrova, Manager, Research and Logistics Kelly Reilly, Collections Manager Eli Sterngass, Administrative Assistant Rita J. Walker, Controller Q UESTROYAL F INE A RT, LLC John Frederick Kensett (1816–1872) Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837–1908) Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–1880) 903 Park Avenue (at 79th Street), Third Floor, New York, NY 10075 Pro Patria (Sunset on the Coast), 1864 Off Grand Manan Sunset, 1865 :(212) 744-3586 :(212) 585-3828 Oil on canvas Oil on canvas Oil on canvas : Monday–Friday 10–6, Saturday 10–5 and by appointment 141/16 x 241/16 inches 181/16 x 30 inches 115/8 x 195/8 inches Monogrammed and dated lower right: JF.K. ’64 Monogrammed lower right: ATBRICHER Signed and dated lower right: SR Gifford 1865 : gallery@questroyalfineart.com www.questroyalfineart.com The Last New World Whenever liberty and equality, the defining principles of our strolls and fiery sunsets, this art perpetually renews a human nation, are challenged, Americans find that the work of the spirit that cannot thrive without cultivating a relationship with Hudson River School rekindles their resolve and optimism. The nature. Yet an art this vital is presently overlooked as society sense of awe we experience as we view the sublime and the assigns the highest monetary value to work that is most in beautiful rouses a dormant patriotism.
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  • Icon Grid 07
    F orging a N ational I dentity 19th Century American Paintings Featuring the collection of Matthew S. and Helen M. Mickiewicz Forging a NIational dentity 19th Century American Paintings Featuring the collection of Matthew S. and Helen M. Mickiewicz May 19 - June 30, 2012 Forging a National Identity: Artists in 19th Century America by Marcia L. Vose We are honored that the Mickiewicz Family has chosen Vose Galleries These tight strictures were soon to be challenged, however, when an to present twelve nineteenth-century American paintings from the prominent col - English immigrant named Thomas Cole became enthralled by the American out - lection of their late parents, Matthew S. and Helen M. Mickiewicz. Many of these doors and set out to follow a new path, one dedicated to painting the American works were purchased from Vose Galleries, including the cover, Jasper Cropsey’s landscape solely for its own beauty and connection to the divine. Beginning in Greenwood Lake, New Jersey . We remember with great fondness the senior Mick - the second decade of the 1800s, a loosely formed school of American landscape iewiczes when they spent the weekend in Boston celebrating the galleries’ 150th painting emerged—the Hudson River School—that would hold sway over land - anniversary in 1991. They participated in every event during the weekend: a gala scape painting for the next fifty years. Painters would be inspired by the great au - dinner and behind the scenes tour of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a walk - thors writing early in the century—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Henry ing tour of artist Frank Benson’s Salem, a lunch and tour of the Peabody Essex David Thoreau (1817-1862), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) and Henry Museum and a luncheon at the home of one of our dearest clients.
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  • Through Eagles' Eyes
    Q UESTROYAL F INE A RT, LLC Through Eagles’ Eyes March 14 – April 12, 2014 An Exhibition and Sale Through Eagles’ Eyes Louis M. Salerno, Owner Brent L. Salerno, Co-Owner Chloe Heins, Director Angela Scerbo, Administrator Nina LiGreci, Gallery Coordinator Nina Sangimino, Senior Researcher Chelsea DeLay, Researcher Shannon Cassell, Administrative Assistant Rita J. Walker, Controller Q UESTROYAL F INE A RT, LLC () 903 Park Avenue (at 79th Street), Suite 3A & B, New York, NY 10075 Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823–1900) Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) Samuel Colman (1832–1920) :(212) 744-3586 :(212) 585-3828 Autumn Lake, 1875 A Study of Bamboo In the Highlands : Monday–Friday 10–6, Saturday 10–5 and by appointment Oil on canvas Oil on paper laid down on masonite Oil on canvas 12 1/2 x 20 1/4 inches 11 7/8 x 18 1/16 inches 22 3/16 x 30 5/16 inches : gallery@questroyalfineart.com www.questroyalfineart.com Signed and dated lower right: J. F. Cropsey 1875 Signed lower left: S.COLMAN. Through Eagles’ Eyes A client told me he had heard that the Hudson River School was that no one is buying them to elevate their social stature or to unfashionable. He thought this was good news — why would he stimulate their ego. want to own art with a value subject to trends or fashion? What is This art has a profound purpose: it takes us back to a simpler time in vogue today may not be tomorrow. This work is timeless and and to a more perfect place.
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  • In Nature's Studio: Two Centuries Of
    In Nature’s Studio In Nature’s Studio: Two Centuries of American Landscape Painting This rich exhibition features the bounty and beauty More than sixty-five paintings will be featured in the exhibition of the American landscape from the early nineteenth including works by nineteenth-century landscape artists, such century through the late twentieth century. Drawn as Thomas Birch, Frederic Church, Jasper Francis Cropsey, from the permanent collection of the Reading Public Worthington Whittredge, William Trost Richards, Aaron Draper Museum, the selections explore the Hudson River Shattuck, William Louis Sonntag, Paul Weber, Edmund Darch School and the emergence of the first uniquely Lewis, and Hermann Herzog. The exhibition will also examine American artistic movement; Impressionism and works that represent the shift to Impressionism and Tonalism Tonalism at the turn of the century; and Modern at the turn of the century by painters, including George Inness, trends in interpreting the landscape. Majestic and Ralph Albert Blakelock, John Francis Murphy, Elliot Daingerfield, inspirational depictions of bucolic American vistas— N. C. Wyeth, Childe Hassam, William Langson Lathrop, Edward intimate forest interiors, sweeping panoramic views Willis Redfield, Frederick John Mulhaupt, and Robert Spencer. of natural wonders, and dramatic images of the Modernist landscapes by George Bellows, Arthur Bowen Davies, untamed land and sea—join dramatic scenes of Benton Spruance, John Fulton Folinsbee, and Andrew Wyeth, Europe, the Near East, and South America by artists among others, chart the path to abstract and expressionistic from the United States. compositions in the twentieth century. ABOVE: Newell Convers Wyeth, American, 1882-1945, Buttonwood Farm, 1920, oil on canvas, Gift, George D.
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  • Alexander S. Zita, 1874–82 George Copeland Ault Girl's Head, 1927
    ⌜ ⌝ ⌜ ⌝ Esther Frances (Francesca) Alexander George Copeland Ault United States, 1837–1917 United States, 1891–1948 S. Zita, 1874–82 Girl’s Head, 1927 Graphite on moderately thick, slightly textured Brown ink on cream, moderately thick, slightly wove paper textured wove paper Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Maurice Vanderwoude in Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 82.33.1 memory of Louise Ault, 81.250.1 In this exquisite drawing, a buttercup plant, rendered Like many modernist portraits, this drawing in fine, precise pen strokes applied in a stippled displays dynamic tensions between illusionistic pattern, is nestled between the lyrics of an Italian folk three-dimensionality and the flatness of the paper ballad about Saint Zita. Although the floral decoration support, between representation and abstraction, is not explicitly related to the song, the plant seems and between individualization and idealization. to interact with the verse, with a few bladelike leaves George Ault reduced the forms of the head into overlapping the text registers. An expatriate living in simplified shapes, creating passages of shading that Florence, Francesca Alexander gained international contrast starkly with the large areas of blank paper. attention through the advocacy of the famous English art critic John Ruskin, who admired her artistic natural- ism and religious piety. Ruskin helped her publish a ⌞ ⌟ compilation of embellished song sheets, including S. Zita, as Roadside Songs of Tuscany (1884–85). ⌞ ⌟ ⌜ ⌝ ⌜ ⌝ George Copeland Ault J. Carroll Beckwith United States, 1891–1948 United States, 1852–1917 Shipboard, 1924 Portrait of Minnie Clark, circa 1890s Graphite on medium weight, cream, slightly Charcoal and pastel on blue-fibered, medium-weight, textured, wove paper moderately textured laid paper Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Manhattan Art Investments, Brooklyn Museum, Gift of J.
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  • “The Most Perfect Manner”: Paul Weber and the Transnationalism of US Landscapes
    ISSN: 2471-6839 Cite this article: Thomas Busciglio-Ritter, “‘The Most Perfect Manner’: Paul Weber and the Transnationalism of US Landscapes,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 7, no. 1 (Spring 2021), doi.org/10.24926/24716839.11664. “The Most Perfect Manner”: Paul Weber and the Transnationalism of US Landscapes Thomas Busciglio-Ritter, PhD candidate, Department of Art History, University of Delaware I first laid eyes on Paul Weber’s large Landscape: Evening (1856) during an internship at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in the summer of 2019, as it was being cleaned to feature in the exhibition From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early American Republic, curated by Anna O. Marley (fig. 1). The picture presents an unlocated river scene bathed in the warm glow of what appears to be a summer twilight, framed by crisply painted trees, with mountains stretching into the background. Bearing the aesthetic hallmarks of what would come to be called the Hudson River School, the artist’s presentation of mountain peaks in layers of varying sharpness, as well as the carefully constructed shape of the range, suggest that he was using on-site sketches and observations to render these natural features in detail. His documented travels throughout the American northeast also indicate that he was familiar with US scenery, its features and aesthetic, by the mid-1850s.1 However, it is noteworthy that Weber did not choose to identify the site he figured here, sending it to the academy under the title of Landscape: Sunset (or Composition: Sunset), thus affirming its intentionally generic nature.2 The painting would continue to be referred to as such during the next few years, even after PAFA acquired it for its permanent collection.
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