GALLERY 66: Edward Hicks, The Cornell Farm, dated 1848
After an 1848 Pennsylvania agricultural fair, James Cornell commissioned this record of his prize-winning livestock and acreage. In addition to carefully detailing each cow, horse, pig, sheep, and building, the artist Edward Hicks has also emphasized the decorative patterning of the group. This so-called naïve piece does not present a sophisticated rendering of anatomy or landscape, but it does present a study in contrast between the rhythmic row of animals and the geometric background. Lacking formal artistic schooling, Hicks was a sign and coach painter, who did pictures as a sideline or as favors for friends.
GALLERY 67: James McNeill Whistler, The White Girl (Symphony in White, No. 1), dated 1862
Painted in Paris, this canvas caused a scandal at an 1863 exhibition. The lack of personality in the face infuriated critics; they failed to realize that this was not intended as a portrait. Whistler, an American expatriate, was exercising his artistic theories by exploring a single tone—white. The starched cuffs, striped sleeves, cambric skirt, brocade curtain, and fur rug create a “Symphony in White,” as Whistler once titled this work. The fullness of the girl’s lips, the thick richness of her chestnut hair, and her wide blue eyes, however, mark a subtle but uneasy contrast to the purity of the white color. This tension is carried further by the presence of the bearskin and the garish flowers wilting on the floor, symbolic, perhaps, of a bestiality of nature and an innocence lost. To emphasize the color relationships around this woman, his mistress Joanna Hiffernan, Whistler flattened the space and avoided strong lights and shadows.
GALLERY 68: George Bellows, Both Members of This Club, painted in 1909
When public boxing was illegal in New York, fights were held in private clubs with fighters elected as members for only the night of the match. The black boxer may be Joe Gans, lightweight champion from 1901 to 1908; his opponent has not been identified. Once a professional athlete himself, George Bellows understood the violence of the sport. Brutality is conveyed by the angular lines of the fighters’ bodies, the boldly slashing brushwork, and the lurid glare of spotlights within the gloomy arena.
French Art of the 19th Century
(Galleries 72, 77, and 83-93)
French art during the second half of the 1800s is noted for its innovation and its diversity. Yet, although the paintings produced during this period differ in their visual effects, the artists of these works were all largely concerned with the same problem: how to treat nature and how to define reality. Thus, in reaction to the neoclassicists, who stressed line and color, and the romantics, who favored lush hues, exotic or unusual subject matter, and emotionalism, the realists sought to paint only what was before them, free from embellishment. Other artists such as Monet and Renoir concentrated upon recording the fleeting and subtle color impressions created by changes in sunlight. Because their technique was rapid and sketchy, these latter artists gave less attention to studiously modeled form, and their paintings, although “realistic” in their rendition of light and space, do not have the solid, tangible qualities so evident in Academic painting. (The Gallery’s collections are particularly comprehensive in the works of Manet, Renoir, and Degas. Included also is Mary Cassatt, the only American who exhibited with the impressionists.) Still other artists rejected impressionism’s concern with transitory moments in order to express either their intuitive reactions to the natural world or their personalized interpretation of the physical laws that order appearances. Reality was redefined by these artists, such as Gauguin, van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Cézanne, who were known as post-impressionists. It was their work which prepared the way for twentieth-century expressionism and abstraction.