The James A. Michener Art Museum in New Hope will celebrate the iconic influence of Bucks County’s waterways, the Delaware River and Delaware Canal, as a powerful pull on regional landscape artists in “New Hope: Art and the River,” on view June 13⁏ctober 5.
This exhibition of more than 50 works features historic and contemporary paintings, drawings and photographs. Artists included range from Pennsylvania Impressionist painters such as William L. Lathrop, Harry Leith-Ross, Daniel Garber, Edward Redfield and George Sotter through the New Hope Modernist era of the 1930s, including C.F. Ramsay, BJO Nordfeldt and RAD Miller, to the diverse group of artists who are continuing the visual tradition in Bucks County today, such as Randl Bye, Diane Burko and Paul Matthews.
Organized by the Michener Art Museum, “New Hope: Art and the River” features works from important institutional and private collections, from as far away as Houston, to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which loaned two works by renowned Pennsylvania Impressionist painter Daniel Garber. Garber’s paintings, “Quarry” and “Lowry’s Hill,” are works rarely seen in Bucks County, though they feature local subject matter.
“New Hope: Art and the River,” featuring the work of nearly 40 artists, showcases various artistic approaches and interpretations of waterways. Edward Redfield (1869‱965), for instance, whose “Early Spring,” 1920, is included in the exhibition, painted en plein air in an impressionist style.
Abstract artist Alan Goldstein (b 1938) chose to represent the Delaware River with organic shapes and an indistinguishable viewpoint. Examining the core of the river’s life form in “Upriver From Lumberville Walking Bridge II,” circa 1981, he conceptually rendered it in blocks of blues, shades of browns and rusts.
The museum will offer a lecture, “The Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor and State Heritage Area,” Thursday, July 10, at 2 pm, at Occasions, adjacent to the museum. The talk will be presented by Elissa G. Thorne, vice president of heritage programs with the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor. Free with museum admission; advance registration is required at 215-340-9800.
This exhibition is sponsored by Jim’s of Lambertville Fine Art Gallery. The James A. Michener Art Museum is at 500 Union Square Drive. For information, 215-862- 7633 or www.michenerartmuseum.org.
