THE Miss Cahill ETROPOLITAN NEWS FOR ON OR AFTER MUSEU M OF ART Monday, October 13, 1958 FIFTH AYE.at82 STREET • NEW YORK RELEASE TR 9-5500 Press View: Thursday, October 9, 2-4:30 p.m.
14 AMERICAN MASTERS, PAINTINGS EXHIBITION SPANNING TWO CENTURIES , LOOKS BACKWARD TO REVEAL THE STRONG PERSONALITY OF AMERICAN ART
14 American Masters--Paintings from Colonial Times to Today will open the Metro
politan Museum's fall season in the Harry Payne Bingham Special Exhibition Galleries,
on Thursday, October 16. It will remain on view through January 4, 1959.
The exhibition reflects two centuries of American painting. 14 American Masters
is remarkable in demonstrating that such an important display of this country's art
can be taken from the collection of a single museum.
The fourteen painters selected are, each in his own way, classic names in Amer
ican art. (winslow Homer has not been included because of a special exhibition de
voted to his work which will go on view at the Museum in January 1959.) The works
shown are from the Metropolitan Museum's collection or on long term loan, with the
exception of several portraits of the artists, borrowed especially for this showing.
The artists are John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, George Inness, Eastman
Johnson, Thomas Eakins, James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt,
Childe Hassam, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Walt Kuhn, John Steuart Curry, and
Edward Hopper.
A central gallery is arranged as a capsule history of American painting, repre
senting many of the major artists of the past, and containing, as well, portrait
busts of such painters as Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, and John La Farge.
To complement the exhibition, a variety of Currier and Ives prints of yachts
and landscapes has been installed in the smoking lounge.
Chronologically, the first gallery is given over to paintings of John Singleton
Copley, the foremost portraitist of the Colonies. The masterpieces from the Museum's
fine collection of his work reveal this painter's ability to penetrate the deeper
recesses of character with the extraordinary grace and economy of means, as in the
portrait of Mrs. Sylvanus Bourne, which made him the greatest portrait painter our
country has produced. Watson and the Shark (a study for the larger version in Lon
don) is especially interesting as the first example of romantic topical painting.
Gilbert Stuart began painting portraits in Newport in the 1770's, but on the
eve of the Revolution sailed for England, where he came under the influence of Rey nolds, Romney and Gainsborough. After an immense success in London, he returned to
America where he executed over a thousand portraits before his death. Our visual
conception of George Washington is largely derived from Stuart's work; one of the most famous is the Gibbs-Channing-Avery portrait of Washington. (more) Metropolitan Museum: 14 American Masters - 2
George Inness was largely self-taught. His early work followed the realistic
vein of the Hudson River School, as in Delaware Water Gap and Peace and Plenty, the
latter painted in 1865 to commemorate the end of the Civil War. Later trips to Eur
ope exposed Inness to the Barbizon School and his resulting work showed a lyrical
impressionism which was immensely popular at the time.
Eastman Johnson, first trained as a lithographer and later a student of Dutch
seventeenth-century painting, traveled widely in the United States seeking subjects
for his anecdotal pictures, infused with warm humor and sentiment. In his later
paintings Johnson moved into a thoughtful objective reality, and in his portrait,
Two Men, there is a psychological penetration that is very close to that of Eakins,
After studying in Paris under Gerome and others, Thomas Eakins returned to Phila
delphia to paint exactly what he saw about him, seriously and directly. He was by
nature a scientist and his realism was uncompromising. A selection of his photo graphs also exhibited is interesting in this respect. The poet Walt Whitman wrote,
"I never knew of but one artist and that's Tom Eakins, who could resist the tempta
tion to see what they thought ought to be rather than what is."
James McNeill Whistler, a brilliant, witty and irascible man, spent the greater part of his life in London. Unlike his contemporaries, the light-loving Impression ists, Whistler preferred the shades of twilight and night. His pictures are strong though delicate, full of cool color harmonies and perfectly controlled spatial ar rangements, as in his portraits of his mother, on loan from the Musee du Louvre, and of Theodore Duret. On exhibition in an adjacent gallery are some of Whistler's etchings of Venice and the Thames, unsurpassed for freshness and originality.
Born and trained in Europe, where he developed much cf his extraordinary dexter ity, John Singer Sargent became the most sought-after portrait painter of his day on both sides of the Atlantic. At times his work captures brilliantly the essence of personality, as in the portrait of Henry Marquand. The painting of Mr. and Mrs.
I.N. Fhelp-s Stokes perfectly characterizes Sargent's grace and vitality of style.
Sargent was one of the greatest water-colorists of his period, and a number cf these works are included in the exhibition.
From the age of twenty-one, Mary Cassatt's life was spent in Europe. Her paint ing style was influenced by Degas and Manet and by Japanese prints,- which were in vogue in Paris at the time. Though she never married, her favorite subject was that of mother and child; the best of these are most precise in draftsmanship, faultless in composition, full of taste, and touched with warm sympathy. A selection of her superb color prints is also on display. Mary Cassatt is considered by many to be the greatest woman artist our country has produced.
Childe Hassam studied in Paris and fell strongly under the influence of the
Impressionist group and, more than any other artist, brought the (more ) Metropolitan Museum: 14 American Masters - 3
spirit of Impressionism back to America. One of his most charming pictures, The
Church at Gloucester, brings a new atmosphere of sunlight to the traditionally
sombre New England scene.
On his return to America after a five-year stay in Europe, John Marin met Al
fred Stieglitz and through him was introduced to the avant-garde movements of the
time. From then on Marin's major medium was water-color. One of our most inventive
artists, he developed a unique combination of depth and flatness and introduced the
so-called "enclosure" device. His great quality is a certain "shorthand" lyric ex
pressionism, very much his own. A selection cf some 30 works ranging from the early
cltyscapes of New York to tho later pictures of Maine has been made from the Museum's
superb collection of 67 water-colors. John Marin died in 1953.
Georgia O'Keeffe has been said to be our greatest living woman painter. Over
the years she developed her characteristic style of disciplined line and clean pro
portions, as in the well-known Pelvis II and the Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue.
There is no doubt that the purity of her style has had a considerable influence on applied design and even the architecture of our day.
A native New Yorker, Walt Kuhn studied in Paris and Munich, and was active in
the organization of the Armory Show which in 1913 introduced modern art to America.
Kuhn Is at his finest in his series of circus performers, three of which are includ ed in the exhibition. He presents them at rest, though they possess implicitly their characteristic energy. Each is strongly revealed as a personality, but each carries the message of pathos and human dignity. Walt Kuhn died in 1949.
John Steuart Curry helped to create a school of painting known as The American
Scene, which concentrated on the regional aspects of the United States and was a re volt against the European influence that had so engulfed American art, Curry painted scenes of Kansas and Wisconsin, the country he loved, with dramatic strength and great sincerity. The famous portrait of John Brown is a study for a mural for the
State Capitol in Topeka. John Steuart Curry died in 1946.
The painting of Edward Hopper, "dean" of living American artists, evidently re flects the need that Eakins felt, to set down with complete honesty the American world about him. Hopper paints subjects that we are aware of only fleetingly, yet they are very much a part of our essential environment. We see such works as Office in a Small City and the restaurant scene, Tables for Ladies, with a shock of recogni tion. They are presented in their beauty or ugliness in a cold and nostalgic light.
The exhibition 14 American Masters was arranged under the supervision of Robert
Beverly Hale, Curator of the Department of American Paintings and Sculpture.
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