The Bruce Museum features "American Impressionist Landscapes"

Written by David Rowlands Sunday, 01 January 2012 00:52

Greenwich, Connecticut.- The Bruce Museum is proud to present the new exhibition "Divided Light and Color: American Impressionist Landscapes" on view through January 29th 2012. Still among the best loved of all artistic movements, Impressionism records the world with a memorable alacrity, capturing scenes with a spontaneous shorthand of divided light and color. Impressionist landscapes were first codified outside Paris by Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir in 1869, but soon spread abroad, where, by the late 1880s, they found an enthusiastic and highly individualized group of practitioners in America. Many of these early American Impressionists would make the pilgrimage to France, some working with Monet. One of the greatest strengths of the Bruce Museum’s permanent collection and local private collectors’ interests is American Impressionist landscape. The exhibition "Divided Light and Color: American Impressionist Landscapes" will bring together two dozen fine examples of this art in a show with imagery that continues to enchant and endure.

In part through recent acquisitions, the Bruce is now proud to own examples of the some of the pioneers of American Impressionism, including the distinguished painters, Theodore Robinson (1852-1896), John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902), and Childe Hassam (1859-1935). The last mentioned is particularly well represented locally, with outstanding masterpieces not only recording his time in France (especially "Rooftops, Pont Aven, Brittany") and summer art excursions in New England ("Spanish Ledges", 1912), but also his record of the local Greenwich scene, including the Holley House, site of the famous Cos Cob Art Colony, and the Mill Pond and railway bridge in Cos Cob. The exhibition attests to the importance of the local Cos Cob Art Colony and its founders and instructors, such as Leonard Ochtman (1854-1934), whose house overlooked the Mianus River and whose work is extensively represented at the Bruce Museum, and the long-lived and versatile George Wharton Edwards (1869-1950), also well represented in the Bruce. Here, too, are examples by the second generation of American Impressionists, such as Elmer Livingston MacRae (1875-1953), who adopted a more painterly approach and not only was a Founder of the America Pastel Society and the Greenwich Society of Artists, but also an organizer of the famous Amory Show of 1913, which introduced modern art to America, ultimately supplanting Impressionism.


The exhibition also presents Matilda Browne (1869-1947), another local resident, one of the few women artists among the early American Impressionists. The exponents of American Impressionist landscape painting also recorded American scenery as far afield as in New Hope, Pennsylvania (see Robert Spencer’s "Five O’Clock, June") and Carmel, California. Uniting these diverse works is a response to changes in light, a strong palette, and the carefully observed atmospheric effects so characteristic of American Impressionism.

The Bruce Museum was originally built as a private home in 1853 for lawyer, clergyman and historian Francis Lister Hawks. Robert Moffat Bruce (1822-1908), a wealthy textile merchant and member of the New York Cotton Exchange, bought the house and property in 1858. In 1908, Robert Moffat Bruce deeded his property to the Town of Greenwich, stipulating that it be used as “a natural history, historical, and art museum for the use and benefit of the public." The first exhibition ever at the Bruce Museum took place in 1912 and featured works by local artists known as the Greenwich Society of Artists, several of whom were members of the Cos Cob Art Colony. The Museum served as home base for the Greenwich Society of Artists hosting its Annual Exhibition from 1912 through 1926. The Cos Cob School is now well established as an important part of the history of American painting, and it forms the nucleus of the Museum's holdings of painting, watercolors, sketchbooks, and notebooks by such artists as Leonard and Mina Ochtman, George Wharton Edwards, and Hobart Jacobs. Over the years, the community, through its generosity, has built the Museum collection to nearly 15,000 objects representing the arts and sciences. Paralleling an interest in Connecticut painters and their paintings, early directors of the Bruce Museum, such as Ray Owens, Paul Howes, and Jack Clark, pursued the development of the natural sciences, building particular strengths in the mineral and avian collections. In 1992, the Bruce Museum undertook a complete renovation of its 139-year-old building. Reopened in September 1993, the redesigned Bruce is an architectural model of museum quality. In 1998 the Bruce Museum received accreditation from the American Association of Museums, an honor granted to fewer than 5% of all museums. Sitting high on a hill overlooking Greenwich Harbor, the Bruce Museum offers a changing array of exhibitions and educational programs that promote the understanding and appreciation of art and science. Visit the museum's website at ... http://brucemuseum.org

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