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The national garden movement and, in particular, artists’ interest in gardens, has deep roots in Philadelphia, beginning with William Penn’s founding of his green and pleasant town in the seventeenth century and John Bartram’s establishing his botanical garden in 1728. In the early nineteenth century, artist Charles Wilson Peale retired to the cultivation of his garden at Belfield, and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society was founded (in 1827), two years later hosting its first flower show. Interest gained momentum with the Colonial Revival movement, itself an outcome of Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition, and continued into the twentieth century.1 In her popular 1901 Colonial Revival-inspired publication Old Time Gardens, Alice Morse Earle wrote of Philadelphia: “There floriculture reached by the time of the Revolution a very high point, and many exquisite gardens bore ample testimony to the ‘pride of life,’ as well as to the good taste and love of flowers of Philadelphia Friends.” 2

Horticultural obsession also permeated the Philadelphia art scene. One of the most iconic conjunctions of art and the garden is the commissioning from Maxfield Parrish and Tiffany Studios of the fabulous Dream Garden (1913–1915, installed 1916) for the Curtis Building. The work was commissioned by Edward W. Bok (1863–1930), the head of Curtis Publishing, the influential publisher of Ladies Home Journal for the company’s new headquarters in Philadelphia.


Visit InCollect.com to read more about American Impressionism and the Garden Movement.

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The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts presents "The Artist's Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920." On view February 13 – May 24, 2015, the exhibition illuminates the intertwining stories of Impressionism, Philadelphia’s role in the national garden movement, and the growing popularity of gardening among middle-class Americans during the Progressive era.

Philadelphia boasts a distinguished gardening history dating back to William Penn’s 17th century vision of the city as a wholesome “green country town.” It is in the City of Brotherly Love that the Colonial Revival Garden movement originated with the Centennial Exhibition in 1876, and where, in 1913, the Garden Club of America was founded.

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