Commemorating its 75th anniversary, the Michele & Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts has organized a multigallery exhibition that tells the history of the museum through its artwork. “A Tradition of Excellence: The D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts Celebrates 75 Years” will be on view through February 21. The impressive display underscores the museum’s significant and continuing contributions to the cultural life of the region.
The museum originated with Thompsonville, Conn., merchant James Philip Gray (1834‱904) and his wife, Julia Emma Gray (1846‱930). They did not collect art themselves, but left their entire estate for the “selection, purchase, preservation and exhibition of the most valuable, meritorious, artistic and high-class oil paintings obtainable” and for a building to house them.
With the assistance of gifts, bequests and purchases, the museum, formerly the Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, today has more than 6,000 objects that include a sizable and well-balanced collection of American art and objects, along with a trove that covers European art from the Middle Ages to today. Housed in a handsome Art Deco building, in 2008 the museum was renamed in honor of major donors Michele and Donald D’Amour.
The D’Amour owns the largest collection of works by a fascinating itinerant painter in Connecticut and Massachusetts, Erastus Salisbury Field (1805‱900), including numerous simple flat portraits. A high point for many visitors is Field’s intriguing stab at history painting, “Historical Monument of the American Republic,” 1867‱888, a 9-by-13-foot oil that seeks to immortalize the saga of the nation’s early history through painted stone reliefs carved into soaring, fantastic towers. Its sheer ambition and allegorical overreach make this an image hard to forget.
Winslow Homer is well represented by “The New Novel,” 1877, and “Promenade on the Beach,” 1880, as is George Inness with several landscapes. Memorable portraits include those by John Singleton Copley, Ralph Earl, Rembrandt Peale, and Gilbert Stuart. Some 750 Currier & Ives images recall bygone America.
George Bellows’s powerful painting “Edith Cavell,” 1918, shows the World War I British nurse who helped Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium on her way to her execution. There are landscapes ranging from Albert Bierstadt to Georgia O’Keeffe, along with works by Frederic Church, Jasper Cropsey, Sanford Gifford, Willard Metcalf, Frederic Remington, John Singer Sargent (a scene in the Swiss Alps), John Marin, Maurice Prendergast, Arthur Dove, Rockwell Kent, Thomas Hart Benton, Paul Sample and Charles Sheeler.
The most notable WPA artwork on view is a mural by Sante Graziani saluting the museum for its role in fostering the arts. Of more recent vintage are works by Will Barnet, Dale Chihuly, Robert Cottingham, Mary Frank, Helen Frankenthaler, Philip Pearlstein and Frank Stella.
Artists from Springfield and the Pioneer Valley include Leonard Baskin, Douglas Brega and Wolf Kahn. Randall Deihl’s “Self Portrait in a Pool Hall,” 1988, reflects the museum’s support of contemporary regional artists.
The European collection is strong in Dutch, French and Italian art. The French collection, highlighted by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin’s “Refreshments,” 1764, and Claude Monet’s “Grainstack,” 1893, includes such other Impressionists as Caillebotte, Degas, Pissarro and Renoir. Other stars: Daumier, Millet, Corot, Boudin, Courbet, Gerome, Bouguereau, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rouault, Vlaminck, and Derain. There are several Picassos.
There are outstanding bronze and marble sculpture in the Italian section, along with works by Canaletto, Guardi, Panini, and Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo.
Among the standout Dutch works are a William van de Velde The Younger seascape, and landscapes by Jan Van Goyen and Jacob Ruisdael.
To place the works in context, samples from the museum’s decorative arts collection are arrayed among paintings and sculpture. Especially notable among American pieces: Benjamin Burt’s teapot and cann, circa 1770, an early American sideboard and several Federal inlaid card tables, a lamp and vase from Louis Comfort Tiffany Studios and a Paul Frankl Art Deco writing desk, 1935.
In 75 relatively short years, the D’Amour Museum has come a long way.
The three remaining institutions that make up the network of Springfield Museums †the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum and the Springfield Science Museum †retain their names. A fifth building, the Museum of Springfield History, will open in October.
The D’Amour Museum is located on the Quadrangle, 21 Edwards Street. For information, 413-263-6800 or www.springfieldmuseums.org .
