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.

An American Art Colony demonstrates the social dimension of American art in the twentieth century, paying special attention to the role of fellow artists, nonartists and the historical context of art production. This book treats the art colony not as a static addendum to an artist’s profile but rather as an essential ingredient in artistic life. The art colony here becomes a historical entity that changes over time and influences the kind of art that ensues. It is a special methodology of the study that collective features of three generation of artists help clarify how artists engage their audiences. Since many of these artists worked within the cultural confines of metropolitan New York and its magazine industry, they cultivated subjects that were recognizable by ordinary citizens. Early on, they drew from the emergent suburban life of their neighbors for their artistic themes. Gradually these contexts become more formally institutionalized and their subjects gravitated away from themes of ordinary life to themes more exotic, expressionistic and fanciful. A key methodology for this study consisted of an analysis of collective biographies of 170 participating artists. The theme of modern art explains here how abstraction was suborned to public images, widening the very meaning of the term modern.

Water and light have seduced artists through the years and the quality of these elements at the New Jersey Shore continues to attract artists to this day. Between the late 1800s and 1940, an inspired group of painters were drawn to the New Jersey coastline, forming communities of artists. Jersey Shore Impressionists breaks new ground in the history of American art by recognizing the distinct influence of New Jersey and its Shore on impressionist era American painters. This book establishes ¿ for the first time ¿ a category of impressionist American painters who focused on, or were profoundly influenced by, the landscapes and seascapes of this Shore ¿ from Sandy Hook and Highlands to the Barnegat Bay region to Cape May. ¿Not since 1964, nearly 50 years ago, and only once before that in 1938 has there been published a book on painters in New Jersey,¿ says the book¿s author, Roy Pedersen. ¿Never until now has there appeared a survey of the regional impressionist painters of New Jersey.¿ Jersey Shore Impressionists is produced in conjunction with an exhibition at the Morven Museum & Garden in Princeton, NJ., which seeks to examine how the New Jersey shore was home to artist colonies whose output rivaled that of the better-known colonies of Old Lyme and Cos Cob, Connecticut, and Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In a Foreword, Richard J. Boyle, former director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, describes the foundation of art colonies, and how they traveled from origins in mid-nineteenth century France to the plein-air attraction of the Jersey Shore's ¿special light.¿ The first art colony ¿ at Manasquan ¿ forms around 1880 as young artists fresh from European training in Germany, France and Italy begin to arrive, and the book includes work from these artists ¿ Will Hicok Low, Theodore Robinson, Albert Grantley Reinhart, Charles Freeman and Caroline Coventry Haynes. The next generation ¿ Edward Boulton, Ida Wells Stroud, Julius Golz ¿ trained in America, join and form new colonies to paint the unique light as well as the activities of the Shore. The passionate work created by these artists stands as an important, but unsung, chapter of American Impressionism and is celebrated in this book, establishing the important contribution to American art in general, and New Jersey¿s cultural heritage in particular.

An engaging guide to over 150 art museums and more throughout New England

When Coastal Living Magazine listed Rockport, Texas, among its "Top 10 Artists' Colonies"--grouping the Texas community with such destinations as Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, and Monhegan Island, Maine--eyebrows lifted in many parts of the country. But for those in the know, Rockport's inclusion represented the logical result of the area's unique land- and seascapes, its welcoming climate, and its tradition of providing a haven for creativity and individuality. The story begins with well-known portrait photographer Louis de Planque, who lived in Rockport in the late nineteenth century, and includes Annie Fulton Holden, who painted a portrait of the first governor of Texas that hung in the state Capitol until fire destroyed it in 1881. In the many decades since, a host of artists, art educators, and art historians have called the Rockport-Fulton area home, including contemporary and influential artists, instructors, and gallerists such as Herb Booth, Meredith Long, and Simon Michael, teacher of Dalhart Windberg. In The Story of the Rockport-Fulton Art Colony: How a Coastal Texas Town Became an Art Enclave, Kay Kronke Betz and Vickie Moon Merchant chronicle how this small Texas town, whose economy was based on fishing, shrimping, and tourism, became a major regional center for the visual arts. Generously illustrated throughout with full-color images of boats, bays, birds, and other hallmarks of this artistically rich community, this book is a visual and narrative treat for art lovers, conservationists, and historians alike.

Surveys the history of the magnificent marble lions flanking the entrance to The New York Public Library and the extraordinary affection with which the public has responed to them.

"Published on the occasion of the exhibition 'America's impressionism: echoes of a revolution' [held at] Brandywine River Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, October 17, 2020-January 10, 2021; Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, January 23-April 11, 2021; San Antonio Museum of Art, June 11-September 5, 2021"--Colophon. According to the Brandywine River Museum of Art website (viewed 10/21/2020), their portion of the exhibition appears to have been rescheduled for October 9, 2021-January 9, 2022.

John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902) reached artistic maturity while living in Greenwich, Connecticut. There he created the paintings of his home and property that would earn him the reputation as the most original of the leading American Impressionists. This volume, accompanying an exhibition held at the Greenwich Historical Society, presents a new approach to Twachtman's Greenwich oeuvre, treating it as a unified project encompassing both the modifications the artist made to his home and the land surrounding it, and the images he derived from this subject matter.Incorporating insights gleaned from architectural study of Twachtman's house -- still extant -- Life and Art establishes a new detailed chronology of Twachtman's Greenwich paintings, revealing a progression in the artist's relationship to his subject. Following early attempts to harmonize his home with the surrounding landscape through painting, gradually Twachtman wielded control over the land and architecture itself. In this self-created world, the artist blended his painting life and home life into a beautiful whole. Illustrated with artworks from the exhibition and other examples from Twachtman's Greenwich years, Life and Art sets forth a new paradigm for considering the artist's relationship to home and work.

This is the first book to consider the life and work of the American artist Matilda Browne (1869-1947). Browne specialized in paintings of animals, gardens, and floral still lifes, winning professional approbation in an era when women artists faced limited prospects. Browne was a member of the Lyme Art Colony in Connecticut, as well as one of the founders of the Greenwich Society of Artists. Catalogue accompanies the exhibition "Matilda Browne: Idylls of Farm and Garden" at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut, February 10-May 28, 2017