“Catching Light: European and American Watercolors from the Permanent Collection” will be on view at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center from May 8 to July 26. Curated by Patricia Phagan, the Philip and Lynn Straus curator of prints and drawings at the art center, the exhibition celebrates the medium and history of watercolor with 47 works from the Eighteenth through the Twentieth Centuries.
With the exception of one work on loan from an alumnus, all the watercolors are drawn from the permanent collection of the art center. Many pieces, according to Phagan, have not been on view for several years because of the medium’s sensitivity to light, while others have no modern exhibition record or are recent acquisitions.
“Catching Light” highlights some of the most popular subjects chosen by watercolor artists over the past three centuries.
Subjects include: architecture, with Oscar Bluemner’s “Barns,” 1924, John Ruskin’s sensitive, dramatic “Church of the Annunciation at Vico Equense on the Bay of Naples,” 1841, and J.M.W. Turner’s intimate, jewel-like “Bacharach on the Rhine,” 1832″4; landscape, with William Trost Richards’ lovingly rendered, atmospheric scene “Legendary England: Tintagal,” 1882, John Marin’s dramatic, energetic “Woods,” 1921, and Andrew Wyeth’s light-struck “Camden Hills”; still life, with Charles Demuth’s elegant “Apple and Acorn Squash,” 1929, and Jim Dine’s “Tomatoes,” 1974.
Figuration includes Gustave Doré’s delicately tinted “Scene from Gargantua,” 1875, Max Beckmann’s humorous, voyeuristic “Nachtmusik,” 1947, and Hilda Belcher’s “The Checkered Dress (portrait of O’Keeffe)”; and abstraction, with Konrad Cramer’s lyrical “Synchromist Composition,” 1916.
Some of the light-filled watercolors from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries that will be featured in the exhibition include works by Turner, Ruskin, John Sell Cotman, John Webber, Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding, Joseph Gandy and Augustin Pugin.
During the latter Nineteenth Century, artists ushered in a new stage in the development of watercolor, moving away from its association with printmaking, to finished independent works.
“Catching Light” will also celebrate Modernists, including John Marin, Oscar Bluemner and Stuart Davis, many of whom were championed by Alfred Stieglitz at his New York City Gallery 291 in the early years of the Twentieth Century.
Admission to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is free. The Lehman Loeb Art Center is at 124 Raymond Avenue. For more information, http://fllac.vassar.edu or 845-437-5632.
