Displaying items by tag: reading public museum

The Reading Public Museum announced that now through the end of August 2014, it will display N. C. Wyeth’s Pyle’s Barn, an exceptional oil on canvas from 1917 by the renowned Brandywine Valley artist and illustrator. The painting is on loan from the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania as part of an exchange with the institution. The Reading Public Museum’s own N. C. Wyeth, Buttonwood Farm, 1920, will be on view at the Brandywine River Museum of Art through August 10, featured in a temporary exhibition titled Lure of the Brandywine: A Story of Land Conservation and Artistic Inspiration.

The inspiration for this painting came about when N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945) and his wife, Carolyn, rented property in Chadds Ford that included Pyle’s Barn. The structure, located on the south side of the main road through Chadds Ford (now U.S. Route 1) just east of the village, became one of Wyeth's favorite motifs, even after the family moved to another property in 1911. He painted the barn at least six times, in daylight and moonlight, using a variety of impressionistic styles. In the painting, he laid down small strokes of unmixed color, taking advantage of the eye's tendency to blend colors. The technique was derived from Wyeth’s study of the work of the Swiss-Italian artist Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899), whose paintings he admired greatly.

The antiques dealer and collector Joseph Kindig Jr. never fired a shot with any of his hundreds of American rifles made around 1800. He was not a hunter; he was a vegetarian who did not like to kill anything. At his store in York, Pa., he would refuse to sell his gun inventory to buyers who seemed snobbish or ignorant. He believed that the firearms represented the first major American artistic innovation.

His guns came mainly from Pennsylvania workshops, where a single artisan made and assembled each one: the maple stocks, iron mechanisms and brass floral ornaments. Each workman’s product “contained something of his spirit and soul,” Mr. Kindig told an interviewer in the 1950s.

In 1911, Pennsylvania businessman George D. Horst began acquiring early-to-mid 20th century American and European works of art from th the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts’ annual exhibitions as well as from other fine art institutions, galleries, and auctions. Horst was the primary donor of the fledgling Reading Public Museum, which he helped establish. In 1924, after considerable growth, the Reading Museum began construction on a new location on the edge of town, which angered Horst as he felt it made his collection inaccessible to the public. Ultimately, Horst asked for the return of his paintings from the museum, as well as his financial donations.

On March 30, Freeman’s in Philadelphia will offer 64 paintings from Horst’s collection. The works, most of which remain in their original frames, have hung in Horst’s custom-built gallery since 1929. Since Horst’s death in 1934, the works have been loaned on occasion for exhibitions, but have mainly been hidden from public view. The collection is being offered by Horst’s grandchildren.

Horst’s collection includes works by American Impressionists such as Childe Hassam, Daniel Garber, Edward Willis Redfield, and Frank W. Benson as well as Barbizon works by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Eugène Boudin, and Charles-François Daubigny. Estimates range from a few thousand dollars up to $300,000.