Cheekwood
Tennessee Botanical Garden and Museum of Art
Nashville, TN
615-356-8000
http://www.cheekwood.org
Pride in Place: Landscapes by The Eight
in Southern Collections
September 2 - October 15, 2000
This exhibition, the first to focus
on landscapes by the group of painters known as The Eight, is comprised
of 40 landscapes drawn from 17 Southern museum collections. An essay by
Dr. William Gerdts, noted American art scholar, is included in the accompanying
full-color catalogue. The exhibition and catalogue were organized by the
Albany Museum of Art in Georgia.
Because
of their subject matter, The Eight represented the first modern American
revolution in painting. The painters were reacting to the sterile tradition
of bland generalizations fostered by the National Academy of Design. In
February of 1908, at the Macbeth Gallery in New York City, Arthur
Bowen Davies, Maurice
Brazil Prendergast, Ernest
Lawson, William
Glackens, Everett
Shinn, Robert
Henri, John
Sloan, and George
Luks mounted an independent show of their paintings. This exhibition
was a milestone in the history of modern American painting because it established
for the first time the artist's privileges and freedom of choice in subject
matter. (left: Everett Shinn, Fire on 24th Street, Collection
from Cheekwood Museum of Art)
The young painters from Philadelphia -- Sloan, Glackens,
Shinn, and Luks -- who gathered around Henri were newspaper and magazine
illustrators who provided on-the-spot reportorial sketches, a form not yet
replaced by the new art of photography. Because of their vocations, their
art emphasized drawing rather than color, and their subject matter portrayed
the urban realities of life in America. Yet, some of the artists were drawn
to pure nature, while all of them absorbed the relatively new categories
of the urban and recreational landscape into their art.
The
forty works in Pride in Place feature mountain and coastal scenes,
landscapes from around the world, rural and suburban scenes, recreational
and urban landscapes. According to Cheekwood curator Rusty Freeman, "Anyone
whose idea of the work of The Eight is limited to gritty urban scenes will
be surprised and impressed with the romantic subject matter of American
landscapes and the exciting, modern use of color." (left: Ernest
Lawson (American, 1873-1939), Washington Square, c. 1910, oil on
canvas, Museum Purchase through the bequest of Anita Bevill McMichael Stallworth)
Please see our earlier article on this traveling exhibition:
Pride in Place: Landscapes by The Eight in
Southern Collections (1/16/00)
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Because
of their subject matter, The Eight represented the first modern American
revolution in painting. The painters were reacting to the sterile tradition
of bland generalizations fostered by the National Academy of Design. In
February of 1908, at the Macbeth Gallery in New York City, Arthur
Bowen Davies, Maurice
Brazil Prendergast, Ernest
Lawson, William
Glackens, Everett
Shinn, Robert
Henri, John
Sloan, and George
Luks mounted an independent show of their paintings. This exhibition
was a milestone in the history of modern American painting because it established
for the first time the artist's privileges and freedom of choice in subject
matter. (left: Everett Shinn, Fire on 24th Street, Collection
from Cheekwood Museum of Art)