This book presents the full spectrum of the work of Frank W. Benson, the last American impressionist who brilliantly captured the effects of light on the physical world. The paintings featured are from America's leading museums & private collections, & many are published here for the first time.
Frank Benson's masterpiece paintings of turn-of-the-century American society, New England's ports and country, and wildlife and sporting subjects, are among the most popular American works of art. His sparkling plein air painting of young women in white dresses are widely reproduced and his etchings and sporting paintings are generally considered to be some of America's best. This first full-scale monograph on Benson's entire career, summarizes his progress from his early promise as a young art student at the Academie Julian in Paris to his leading role as a teacher, portraitist, and painter in Boston and New England. Benson is particularly acclaimed for his splendid outdoor, sun-dappled portraits of members of his family, often in settings on the Maine coastline, as well as for his later, archetypal works of wildfowl, fishing, and hunting.
Frank Benson, a pivotal artist of the American Impressionist movement had three great loves in his long and productive life: his family, his art, and the sporting life. As a boy, Benson dreamed of being an ornithological illustrator. In mid-life, after an extremely successful career as a portraitist, he returned to the wildfowl and sporting subjects that were his lifelong passion. Over the next forty years, in etching, lithography, watercolor, and oil and wash, he portrayed birds beloved since childhood, scenes of his hunting and fishing expeditions, and still lives of incomparable delicacy. Whether painting a hunter setting out decoys, a wash of geese by moonlight, a watercolor of a companion poised to gaff a salmon, or an etching of a group of ducks silently gliding in for a landing, Benson conveyed the joy and beauty of a sportsman's life.
Published to coincide with an exhibition of the nineteenth-century artist's fly-fishing paintings, an examination of the author's inspirations and works notes his use of watercolors and his insight into the sport that enabled him to convey its realities through his creations.
Italy and art are synonymous. When either is mentioned, images of Etruscan sculptures and Renaissance frescoes come to mind, along with extraordinary architectural treasures that bridge the centuries. Even today, these powerful reminders of a distant past continue to influence contemporary Italian art and design. With Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972, the Walker Art Center and the Tate Modern have undertaken an ambitious project - to represent an important yet seldom seen period in Italian modern art. As the U. S. tour sponsor of Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972, the Italian Trade Commission is proud to share the Walker Art Center's enthusiasm in illustrating the evolution of artistic expression in Italy as reflected in all aspects of Italian life. The Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972 tour sponsorship is part of a new campaign planned by the Italian Trade Commission and several manufacturers' associations, and created under the auspices of the Italian Ministry of Industry and Foreign Trade. This new campaign, "Life in 'I' Style," focuses on the successful combination of Italian creativity, traditional craftsmanship, and industrial production.
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.
In this impressive book, Barbara Keys offers the first major study of the political and cultural ramifications of international sports competitions in the decades before World War II. Focusing on the United States, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, she examines the transformation of events like the Olympic Games and the World Cup from relatively small-scale events to the expensive, political, globally popular extravaganzas familiar to us today.
This sampler was designed for art specialists and art museum educators with a basic understanding of teaching discipline-based art education content. The introduction offers a brief history of the Sampler and explains its intended purpose and use. Then 8 unit models with differing methodologies for relating art objectives to the four disciplines: aesthetics, art criticism, art history, and art production, are presented. The sampler consists of two elementary units, two units for middle school, two units intended for required high school art, one high school studio ceramic unit, and a brief unit for art teachers and art museum educators that focuses on visits to art museums. Learning activities, resource material, and learning strategies are given for the units along with a sequence of lessons organized on a theme.