Celebrating American Art

The work of Winslow Homer (1836-1910) figures prominently in the exhibit Celebrating American Art  the National Gallery of Art. The exhibit is part of the National Gallery’s salute to artists who have chronicled America’s history for the last 250 years.

Homer began his career as an illustrator. He worked for Harper’s Weekly and was sent to the front lines during the Civil War. His illustrations for Harper’s were not just of battle scenes; he also recorded the quiet moments that the Union soldiers were able to have between the conflicts.

Homer eventually moved to Prouts Neck, Maine, where he established a studio at his family’s estate, overlooking to the ocean. He spent the last years of his life painting the sea. HIs Prouts Neck studio is a National Landmark and Homer is a national treasure.

Celebrating American Art, which also includes Roy Lichtenstein’s 1975 Bicentennial Poster,  will be on view through March 2027.

Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) painted America…a midwestern America that included life in steel mills, logging camps, coal mines, and cotton fields.

“I have sort of an inner conviction,” he wrote, “that for all the possible limitations of my mind and the disturbing effects of my processes, for all the contradicting struggles and failures I have gone through, I have come to something that is in the image of America and the American people of my time.”

One of the ironies of Benton’s life was that he called himself “an enemy of modernism” and yet he taught, mentored and was a father figure to Jackson Pollock, who became America’s preeminent modernist painter.

For all of Benton’s reputation as a cantankerous and opinionated artist, he created some of the most beautiful and vibrant paintings and murals of life in America and surrounded himself with loving family and friends.

John Whalley (b.1954) finds awe and beauty in so many things…even the objects discarded by other people. On a visit to Surovek Gallery, from his home in Maine, we showed John an early 20th-century postcard. We thought it was interesting. and John turned it into an extraordinary work of art, using graphite on paper: The Gator Hunt, Palm Beach, circa 1903, 2010.

Like Whalley, Scott Kelley lives in Maine. He spends time in the Florida Everglades, recording the the sea, the sky, the birds, animals and plant life that many of us, in South Florida, take for granted. He is a preeminent watercolorist who helps us to get a closer view of the flora and fauna that surround us.

References:

Carolyn Susman. John Whalley uses historic photos, objects as inspiration for artworks. Palm Beach Daily News. April 1, 2012.