Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College (Part II)

-

Marion Boyd Allen (1862-1941), Portrait of Anna Vaughn Hyatt, 1915


Continuing with a few short comments about paintings that especially struck me on my visit to Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA.

Sometimes you come across an artist whose work is so strong it makes you wonder why they're not better known. That's how it felt seeing Maier Museum of Art's large oil by Marion Boyd Allen,  Portrait of Anna Vaughn Hyatt.  The figure of Hyatt is powerful and looks assured as she sculpts a horse and rider. It seems so fitting that the Maier Museum acquired this painting at a time when Randolph College was an all women's school.


                     

Installation view of the museum gallery with the Allen painting in a commanding position.




    John Sloan, Sun and Wind on the Roof, oil on canvas, 1915

Ever since I studied painting in the same studio where John Sloan taught his class at the Art Students League of New York I've  had a spot in my heart for Sloan's art. (They even had a dusty framed photo on the wall of Sloan posing in the room with his students). 

A favorite subject for Sloan early in his career was women hanging laundry on their apartment roofs. In Maier's Sloan oil the artist sharply silhouettes the woman in her white dress with a long row of billowing white laundry. All the other tones in the painting, including the sky, are held to a much darker level so the sun on the woman and white garments is dazzling. It's a good thing as the laundry flapping in the wind has its own  personality we don't want to miss.
                         
                  


Ernest Martin Hennings (1886-1956), Through the Arroyo, no date

Instead of waving laundry, in this landscape by Hennings the New Mexico rocks basking under a brilliant sun are the real subject of the painting. Like the Sloan woman and laundry, Hennings has made the highlighted rocks the most animated part of his painting. They have an almost fantastic quality that reminds me of giant blocks of butter melting. 

The white shirt on the foreground rider provides a perfect contrast to the rich gold colors of the rocks. Also like in the Sloan, the artist heightens the intensity of the sunlight by pushing the tones of the far mountains down into a deep shadow.

From October 1, 2021 to April 1, 2022 Maier is presenting its 110th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Storytellers: Faith Ringgold + Aminah Robinson.



Faith Ringgold quilt

 

Popular posts from this blog

Edward Hopper- Looking Out

-
Image
Edward Hopper, Cape Cod Morning,   oil on canvas, 1950,  Smithsonian American Art Museum Above is a painting I've loved for some forty years. I'm fortunate to be able to see it often as it lives in the SAAM in Washington, D.C. . This painting contains a real clue to Hopper's art. I visit there often as it helps me learn how to see better. Often writers will talk about the loneliness of Hopper's paintings or how his figures feel isolated and rarely interact with one another. While there is some of that in Hopper's painting, it begs a question- why is Hopper's art so widely loved? I'd offer a couple of answers. First, he's one of the most talented painters and was able to invent visual equivalents for strong emotions we humans experience as we live our lives.  He saw color combining in unexpected ways and offered up generous servings of the most delicious color combinations. Yum. Usually, as in the SAAM's Cape Cod Morning above, when he paints
Read more

Ever Wonder What's in the Next Room in Hopper's Rooms by the Sea?

-
Image
Edward Hopper, Rooms by the Sea , oil on canvas, 1951, Yale University Art Gallery One of Edward Hopper's best known paintings is Rooms by the Sea that was based on his studio in Truro, MA. Its mysterious doorway leading to the ocean captivates our eye.  Did you ever wonder what the room through the painting's other doorway looked like? Last week a collector asked to see some of the drawings I made during my residencies in the historic studio so I photographed this drawing. Philip Koch,  Edward Hopper's Truro Bedroom: Afternoon  Sunlight , vine charcoal, 9 x 12 inches, 2012. To make the drawing I set up my French easel in the bedroom Hopper shared with his wife Jo for the three decades they lived in the studio. One of the room's two small closets centers the drawing. At the right is the doorway leading into Hopper's big painting room with his studio easel in the distance.  What inspired me to make the drawing were the intense patterns the afternoon sunlight made ove
Read more

Edward Hopper's Poetry of Empty Rooms

-
Image
I've just been invited by Rachael Solomon who is the Program Director of the  Edward Hopper House Art Center in Nyack, NY to have a mini solo show in one of their galleries.. We'll be showing some of my paintings of the interior of Edward Hopper's Cape Cod studio where I've had the great pleasure of enjoying 13 residencies since 1983. The Edward Hopper House Art Center is the boyhood home of the famous American realist artist. So much of what Hopper became stemmed from his early years there. So I'm excited to do the exhibit. It will be coming up in March through May of 2012.   Hopper didn't teach. Yet I learned more about how to become a good painter by studying his work than by any other single thing. Art after all is visual. Words, even beautifully and aptly spoken can get in the way. And Hopper was legendarily tactiturn. I suspect had someone asked Hopper how to paint an empty room, his terse reply would have been "Don't!".  Above is one of h
Read more