George Inness (American,
1824-1894) George Inness
attempted to reconcile the poetry of nature with what he actually
saw. He strongly believed that art must not imitate objective appearances.
His early landscapes were inspired by the Hudson River School and
the seventeenth-century classic landscapes of Claude Lorrain. And
his later landscapes are hazy evocations of nature, suggestive
of his spiritual approach. Between 1891 and
1894, Inness and his wife Elizabeth spent winters in Tarpon Springs,
Florida. Shortly before his death, he produced a number of important
works, among them Early Moonrise, Florida. The Museum's painting
was created on his third visit to the state. It depicts the passage
of the season and the movement of time through moisture-laden mists
and vapors. The evening sky is filled with clouds of pink, blue,
and mauve, which cluster low on the horizon and reflect the last
pastel hues of the setting sun. A luminous moon shines from a bare
patch of sky framed by tall, thin trees. Inness's works in general
are the fullest expression of his devotion to the religious teachings
of Emanuel Swedenborg, who believed that the earthly realm is a conduit
for the heavenly one. In his late paintings, nature is suffused with
spirituality. Robert Henri (American,
1865-1929) iAfter
returning from Paris where he studied from 1881 to 1891, Henri
led his students and colleagues in pursuit of a new American art.
His chief, early followers were newspaper and magazine illustrators
whom he encouraged to become painters: John Sloan, William J. Glackens,
George Luks, and Everett Shinn. These artists became known for
their bravura brushwork and their depiction of gritty urban scenes,
as well as for their portraits of street people and vaudeville
performers. They were later dubbed the Ashcan School. To protest
the exhibition policies of the National Academy of Design, Henri
resigned in 1907 and the following year organized an exhibition
at the Macbeth Galleries in New York. He, along with Luks, Shinn,
Glackens, Sloan, Ernest Lawson, Arthur B. Davies, and Maurice Prendergast,
participated in the show. They were referred to as the Eight. (Only
Glackens and Lawson are not represented in the Museum's collection.)
Indeed, a Shinn watercolor of the Nativity was a gift of
the first docent class in 1964, one year before the Museum opened
to the public. After 1909,
Henri started to experiment with the elaborate color theories of
Hardesty Maratta. This led to brighter tonalities and vibrant intensity
of hues in his palette, exemplified in Village Girl--Lily Cow.
Although dozens of portraits of children exist in Henri's body
of work, few match the sweet exuberance and vibrancy of this one. Georgia O'Keeffe
(American, 1887-1986) Poppy is
one of a major, early series of flower paintings. The flower fills
the canvas, and its petals open to reveal its dark velvet inner core.
Brilliant, expansive reds create strong, warm shapes from which small
details emerge in powerful three-dimensionality. The light background
of this solitary image can be read as an undulating mountain range
or alternately, as a cavelike enclosure. O'Keeffe's Poppy is
one of the Museum's most widely published works and has been reproduced
in a number of leading studies on the artist. In Becoming O'Keeffe: The
Early Years (Abbeville Press, 1991), Sarah Whittaker Peters breaks
the measured tone of her book by calling this Poppy "breathtakingly
beautiful."
Early Moonrise, Florida, 1893
Oil on canvas, 42 1/4 x 32 inches
Gift of Costas Lemonopoulos 83.6
Village Girl--Lily Cow, 1915
Oil on canvas, 24 1/8 x 20 1/8 inches
Gift of the Stuart Society in honor of the Twenty-fifth anniversary of the
Museum of Fine Arts 90.20
Robert Henri is one of the most influential twentieth-century
American realists. Not only is he known for his paintings but also
for the legacy of his teaching and writing. His book The Art
Spirit (1923) is still widely read by artists and scholars.
Poppy, 1927
Oil on canvas, 30 x 36 inches
Gift of Charles C. and Margaret Stevenson Henderson in memory of Jeanne Crawford
Henderson 71.32
When she died in 1986 at the age of ninety-eight,
Georgia O'Keeffe left behind approximately nine hundred paintings,
rooted in a uniquely American vision. As early as 1897 flowers
had interested O'Keeffe, but it was not until 1924 that she began
to investigate the potential for abstraction in a single flower
filling an entire canvas. The blossoms themselves fascinated her,
not foliage or plants in their natural setting.