Topical Information: Historic American Art Colonies


Articles and essays from Resource Library in chronological order:

 

and also from the Web:

 

Google announced in 2004 a collaboration with institutional libraries to digitize large quantities of books: the Google Books Library Project. Public domain books are available on an open access basis. Copyrighted material is treated in one of three ways. Google negotiates with cooperating publishers through its Google Books Partner Program for "Limited Preview" of entire pages or sections within books by readers. For scanned books without copyright permissions, "snippets" are available. For remaining books basic information is provided without ability to search within the book. The snippets inform readers about the relevance of the book to their subject of inquiry.

A Google Book Search conducted April 26, 2008 located 13 books featuring either full view or limited view with the search phrase "American art colonies." An example is:

The Cos Cob Art Colony: Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore, By Susan G. Larkin, National Academy of Design (U.S.), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Denver Art Museum. Published 2001 by Yale University Press. 246 pages. ISBN:0300088523. Google Books says: "What Argenteuil in the 1870s was to French Impressionists, Cos Cob between 1890 and 1920 was to American Impressionists Childe Hassam, Theodore Robinson, John Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, and their followers. These artists and writers came together to work in the modest Cos Cob section of Greenwich, Connecticut, testing new styles and new themes in the stimulating company of colleagues. This beautiful book is the first to examine the art colony at Cos Cob and the role it played in the development of American Impressionist art.During the art-colony period, says Susan Larkin, Greenwich was changing from a farming and fishing community to a prosperous suburb of New York. The artists who gathered in Cos Cob produced work that reflects the resulting tensions between tradition and modernity, nature and technology, and country and city. The artists' preferred subjects -- colonial architecture, quiet landscapes, contemplative women -- held a complex significance for them, which Larkin explores. Drawing on maritime history, garden design, women's studies, and more, she places the art colony in its cultural and historical context and reveals unexpected depth in paintings of enormous popular appeal." Note: Google Books offers a Limited Preview of this book. For more information on this and other digitizing initiatives from publishers please click here and here. (left: front cover, The Cos Cob Art Colony: Impressionists on the Connecticut Shore, image courtesy Google Books)

 

See these online videos:

 

TFAO suggests these DVD or VHS videos:

A Certain Light is a 15 minute 1991 videotape of the story of the Lyme Art Colony and the Florence Griswold Museum. Engaging narrative with paintings, antique photos, and period music.
 
Art Colonies in America: The American Impressionist. Of this 46 minute 2004 DVD directed by Albert J. Kallis, National Film Network says: "This film studies four colonies: Cos Cob and Old Lyme, Connecticut, Shinnecock, Long Island, and Laguna Beach, California... Each colony had its own unique flavor. Each colony had a devoted core of resident artists. Each colony possessed a distinctive geographic location. The common thread connecting them was the rise and spread of impressionist practices in America. Painting en plein air, artists explored the landscape around them: domesticated in some areas, much more primitive in others, but yet all painted with the verve, color, and spontaneity that define American Impressionist painting... Art Colonies in America presents the backdrop from which Impressionism emerged in Europe and was adopted by American painters. Visually spectacular and painstakingly researched, the film offers viewers a comprehensive and fascinating account of this defining moment in the history of American painting."
 
Art in Its Soul: Perspectives of an Art Colony, . "This video traces the evolution of the quaint town of Provincetown, on Cape Cod, as a major art colony through oral history, archival footage and works of art. Artists recall the early 1900s when students from around the world came to study here with Charles Hawthorne." 28 minutes (text courtesy Georgia Museum of Art)
 
Dublin Art Colony Collection at the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery, The 30-minutes. This video, produced and narrated by Paul Tuller, former president of the Dublin Historical Society -- available to libraries throughout New Hampshire -- explains and illustrates in detail the artists and the history of the colony, which flourished around Mount Monadnock in the late 19th century and into the mid 20th century. The video shows many of the wonderful paintings created by this prolific group of 30 artists in the Dublin Colony.
 
Hudson River and its Painters, The is a 57 minute 1988 video from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Series released by Home Vision Entertainment. The mid-nineteenth century saw the growth of America's first native school of landscape painters, artists inspired by the compelling beauty of the Hudson River Valley, who portrayed this and other romantic wilderness areas with an almost mystical reverence. This 57 minute video explores the life and work of the major artists of what came to be known as the Hudson River School -- Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, John Kensett, Jasper Cropsey, Worthington Whittredge, Sanford Gifford, and George Inness. Although its members traveled widely, the growth and development of the school were centered around New York City, and its success reflected the ambitions of the youthful American nation. It presents more than 200 paintings, prints and photographs of the period and juxtaposes them with dramatic location photography of the Hudson River area. The Hudson Company in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hudson River and its Painters, The is available through the Sullivan Video Library at The Speed Art Museum which holds a sizable collection of art-related videos available to educators at no charge.
 
MacDowell Colony: An American Artist's Colony. 1 hour. Available through Currier Museum of Art.

TFAO does not maintain a lending library of videos or sell videos. Click here for information on how to borrow or purchase copies of VHS videos and DVDs listed in TFAO's Videos -DVD/VHS, an authoritative guide to videos in VHS and DVD format

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