Displaying items by tag: Thomas Cole

Another $150,000 in federal funding has been procured for a New York historic site where previously unknown wall paintings by a famous 19th-century artist have been uncovered.

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer announced this week that the Institute of Museum and Library Services has approved the additional grant for the home of Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole.

With the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill and Frederic Church’s home Olana, a New York state Parks Historic Site, in Greenport, it’s fair to say that Greene and Columbia counties form the heartland of the Hudson River School of Painting.

As such, movement in the art world that pertains to their works is always of interest to many in the area, and there has, in fact, been movement.

For its 2015 exhibition season, Boscobel House and Gardens will host Every Kind of a Painter: Thomas Prichard Rossiter (1818-1871) -- the first retrospective of the work of an important American artist long overdue for reappraisal.

Rossiter was a peer and friend to many better-known Hudson River School contemporaries such as John Frederick Kensett, Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand. Rather than limit himself to landscapes, Rossiter painted a diverse range of subjects. Approximately 25 paintings and works on paper from public and private collections will demonstrate the deftness with which he approached portraits, still lifes, landscapes, genre scenes and history paintings.

Late last year, Matthew J. Mosca, a specialist in historic paint finishes, gazed up at what looked like a scrap of wallpaper. It was jutting up from an old coat of red paint covering the walls of a pantry inside the yellow-brick farmhouse where the 19th-century artist Thomas Cole displayed paintings that revolutionized American ideas about art and wilderness.

But when Mr. Mosca climbed a ladder, he found it was not wallpaper, but a bold black decorative pattern known as a Greek key that had been hand-painted onto the plaster itself. Excited, he took this discovery to Jean Dunbar, a consultant in historic interiors who was working with him on the refurbishment of the Thomas Cole homestead.

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts presents "Telling Tales: Stories and Legends in 19th-Century American Art" through June 7, 2015, in the Center’s Upper-Level Galleries. The exhibition features paintings and sculptures that recount stories relating to American cultural aspirations and everyday life throughout the 19th century. Narrative landscapes by Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand of the Hudson River School, genre scenes by William Sidney Mount and Francis W. Edmonds and sculptures by John Rogers are among the highlights of the exhibition.

Assembled from the collection of the New-York Historical Society, Telling Tales integrates genre, historical, literary and religious subjects—through styles ranging from Neoclassicism to Realism—to paint a vivid portrait of American art and life during the country’s most formative century. The exhibition is organized into six sections: “American History Painting,” “English Literature and History,” “Importing the Grand Manner,” “Genre Paintings,” “Economic, Social, and Religious Division” and “Picturing the Outsider.”

The work of 30 prominent contemporary artists is going on display at Hudson Valley sites linked to two of the most influential figures in American art.

The Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill and the Olana State Historic Site across the river in Hudson have announced that they'll co-host an exhibit of contemporary art to highlight the role the two properties played in shaping American art in the 19th century.

Thomas Cole’s sublime “The Course of Empire,” 1833–36, a cycle of five large-scale paintings depicting the rise and fall of a civilization, headlines “Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School,” an exhibition of 45 landscapes that opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on December 7.

High atop a hill, about two hours north of Manhattan, stands one of the most celebrated landmarks of the Hudson Valley region: Olana, the opulent Orientalist palazzo of Hudson River School landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900). Church chose the spot for his home because of its commanding views of the beautiful river and its Catskill Mountain surroundings, views that he painted in all seasons. Moreover, a much smaller house directly across the majestic waterway was especially close to his heart: Cedar Grove, the home of Church's teacher Thomas Cole (1801-48). Cole is acknowledged as the founder of the Hudson River School, his Romantic compositions inaugurating the first body of distinctively American landscape paintings.

Now Cedar Grove, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, is showing "Master, Mentor, Master: Thomas Cole & Frederic Church," an exhibition central to the story of Church's artistic development.

The collection of American art at the Shelburne Museum tells the story of a new country finding its way through the 1700s and the 1880s. The 540 paintings help illustrate the history of a nation growing through westward expansion. The artwork, with its images of country stores and horse-drawn carriages, also begins to explain the Shelburne Museum itself, which was founded by Electra Havemeyer Webb in 1947.

"(The paintings) were kind of animating the museum for visitors," according to the museum's director, Tom Denenberg. "Without a doubt, the museum is already fixed in her head when she's buying these (paintings) in the late 1950s."

Winslow Homers in the shadow of a defunct Beech-Nut baby food plant. A Rembrandt, Picasso, Rubens and Renoir up the hill from a paper mill. The founder of the Hudson River School vying for attention amid baseball memorabilia and old farm machinery.

There are plenty of treasures to be found among the collections of lesser-known, off-the-beaten-path art museums dotting upstate New York. But they're well worth the trek for anyone looking for great art in unexpected places, whether it's the rolling, bucolic countryside typical of many areas or the industrial grittiness of riverside mill towns.