Editor's note: The Columbus Museum provided source material to Resource Library Magazine for the following article. If you have questions or comments regarding the source material, please contact the Columbus Museum directly through either this phone number or web address:

• 706-649-0713
• http://www.columbusmuseum.com

Tales from the Easel: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Narrative Paintings from Southeastern Museums, circa 1800-1950

In collaboration with the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky the Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia premieres the traveling exhibition, Tales from the Easel: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Narrative Paintings from Southeastern Museums, circa 1800-1950. Featuring 70 masterpieces by many of this country's most beloved artists - Winslow Homer, Thomas Hart Benton, Childe Hassam, Jacob Lawrence, Andrew Wyeth - Tales from the Easel presents a revelation in art collecting in the south and the emergence of major southern museums. Drawn from the permanent collections of 28 prominent museums in the Southeastern United States, Tales from the Easel explores issues of personal and national identity. (right: Elihu Vedder, Memory (Girl with Poppies), 1877, oil on canvas, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, Gift of Julie and Arthur Montgomery)

Tales from the Easel offers selections by such notable American painters as Ehilu Vedder, one of the most imaginative American artists of the late nineteenth century; Winslow Homer, whose Rab and the Girls (1875)[ see Dr. Sarah Burns' essay on this painting reprinted in RLM] displays his keen skills as an illustrator; Thomas Hart Benton who strove to create purely American art and became one of this country's most popular muralists; Childe Hassam, whose Avenue of the Allies (1917) [see text and an image of another Avenue of the Allies (1918) painting in the Los Angeles Museum of Art website] is drawn from his series of flag paintings; Jacob Lawrence, one of the premiere African-American artists of the twenty-first century, whose African-American Plowman (1942) is not a part of one of his series; and Andrew Wyeth, the popular American Realist, whose Winter 1946 (1946) [See the North Carolina Museum of Art's website for more information on this painting] captures a solitary figure within a sparse, rural landscape.

Tales from the Easel presents such diverse American stories as Junius Brutus Stearns's Washington as a Farmer, at Mount Vernon (1851); Kentucky-born artist Thomas Noble, who left his art studies in Paris to serve as an officer in the Confederate Army; Thomas Waterman Wood, whose His First Vote (1868) depicts a black man about to experience a great American right; Reginald Marsh's Life Guards (1933), which describes America's obsession with sun and surf; and William Glackens, a member of the Ashcan school whose painting The Shoppers (1908) depicts the life of the American privileged. (right: Andrew Wyeth, Winter 1946, 1946, tempera on composition board, 31 3/8 x 48 inches (79.7 x 121.9 cm.), purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina. Reproduced with special permission from Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, 2003, and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh)

The exhibition will open at the Columbus Museum on February 8, 2004 and run through April 11. Additional venues include the Tampa Art Museum (April 25-July 11, 2004), The Speed Art Museum (September 14-December 12, 2004) and the El Paso Art Museum (January 16-April 10, 2005). A fully illustrated catalogue published by The University of Georgia Press with essays by Dr. Charles Eldredge and Dr. William Eiland is available.

Tales from the Easel: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Narrative Paintings from Southeastern Museums, circa 1800-1950 is organized by The Speed Art Museum and The Columbus Museum. The exhibition is made possible by The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc.

Please Note: RLM does not endorse sites behind external links. We offer them for your additional research; external links were chosen on the basis of being the most informative online source at the time of our search.

Read more articles and essays concerning this institutional source by visiting the sub-index page for the Columbus Museum in Resource Library Magazine

Be sure to visit more of Resource Library Magazine with articles and essays on American art, calendars, and much more. Here are links to selected sections of the magazine:

• Magazine table of contents
• Articles and essays indexed by date of publication, from 1997 to the present
• Articles and essays concerning art museums, indexed by institution name in alphabetical order
• Articles and essays concerning non-profit art organizations other than museums, indexed by name of organization in alphabetical order
• Articles and essays indexed by subject and media - over fifty mini-publications
• Sources of articles and essays indexed by state within the United States
• Appraisal, authentication, conservation and other information concerning original art and reproductions
• Sponsorships
• Books, magazines, videos and more
• Calendar of art museum exhibitions, current and future years
• Cameos of historic American art collections
• Distinguished artists, a dictionary covering over 2,500 deceased American representational artists
• Milestones, including appointments, new buildings, etc.
• User agreement
• Editorial policies
• Sponsorship options

Copyright 2003 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights reserved.