The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Shows Clarice Smith's ~ "Nature Reined"

Written by Lester Swinburn Thursday, 12 April 2012 19:34

Richmond, Virginia.- The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) is pleased to present "Nature Reined: The Paintings of Clarice Smith", on view at the museum until December 11th. Clarice Smith is an established Virginia artist who has exhibited in America and Europe for three decades, most recently at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC.  This exhibition is selected to complement the works in the adjacent Mellon Collection and includes paintings of horses and horse-racing and still lifes, two of the most persistent themes in Smith’s work. In "Nature Reined", Clarice Smith explores two quintessential themes in the history of Virginia painting: flowers and horse racing. She approaches these diverse genres with the same painterly eye, using layers and subtle tonalities of paint to convey both the drama and movement of the thoroughbred horse and the stillness and grace of the floral arrangement.

At her home and garden in Upperville, she is surrounded by inspiration for both. When composing her floral still lifes, Smith intriguingly dispenses with preparatory drawings and begins the process immediately on the canvas. “It is stifling to paint from a sketch,” she has said. “Each work I do is a new creation that is built upon the knowledge and techniques and aesthetics I have gleaned from painting previous pictures.” To portray the horse, Smith employs a particularly bold perspective; the animals are seen in serried profile as if compressed by a telephoto lens, or in a frontal view that places the spectator at the heart of the thunderous hoofs and flying mud. Presenting Smith’s paintings in the Mellon special exhibition galleries at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts offers a fresh, nuanced interpretation of her work. Placed next to the exceptional sporting art collection of Paul Mellon, Smith’s images resonate with the work of artists such as George Stubbs, James Seymour, Edward Troye, and Sir Alfred Munnings. Likewise, the French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art in the collection, which includes floral masterpieces by Henri Fantin-Latour, Alfred Sisley, and Claude Monet, echoes in Smith’s still lifes. More importantly, this contextualization of Clarice Smith’s work within the rich genres of sporting art and Impressionist still life demonstrates the enduring power of these artistic traditions.


In the midst of the Great Depression, on January 16, 1936, Virginia's political and business leaders bravely demonstrated their faith in the future and their belief in the value of art by opening the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. The English Renaissance-style headquarters building was designed by Peebles and Ferguson Architects of Norfolk. The museum's first addition was built in 1954 by Merrill C. Lee, Architects, of Richmond. By the mid 1960s, additional gallery space was again desperately needed. The museum's second addition, the South Wing, was designed by Baskervill & Son Architects of Richmond. It featured four new permanent galleries and a large gallery for loan exhibitions, as well as a new library, photography lab, art storage rooms and staff offices. As more exhibition space and visitor services were needed, a third addition, the North Wing, designed by Hardwicke Associates, Inc., Architects, of Richmond, was completed in 1976. It added three more gallery areas (two for loan exhibitions and one for the Sydney and Frances Lewis Art Nouveau Collection) as well as a new sculpture garden with a cascading fountain. In December 1985, the museum opened its fourth addition, the West Wing. It now houses the Mellon collections, consisting of major examples of French Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and British Sporting art (which was permanently given to the museum in 1983); the Lewis Contemporary art collections; and the outstanding Lewis collections of Art Nouveau and Art Deco furniture, glass and other decorative arts. The West Wing was designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates of New York. The museum has assembled a wide-ranging collection of world art characterized by great breadth and exceptional aesthetic quality. It includes significant holdings of Classical and African art, paintings by European masters such as Nicolas Poussin, Francisco Goya, Michel Delacroix and Claude Monet, and American masters such as John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer, one of the world's leading collections of Indian and Himalayan art, an internationally important collection of fine English silver, unequaled holdings of Art Nouveau and Art Deco furniture, ceramics, glass and jewelry, a dynamic collection of Modern and Contemporary art, a popular collection of Fabergé imperial jeweled objects and noted holdings of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, including original waxes and bronzes by Edgar Degas. In 2003, a year after its selection of London-based architect Rick Mather, VMFA unveiled a master plan for a $100-million building expansion and transformation of its 13 1/2-acre campus. Mather's design will provide Virginians with a work of contemporary architecture that will display more fully the museum's extensive collection of world art. His virtuoso handling of transparency and natural light will function as both a tool and a metaphor to open the museum to its surroundings and create an inspiring atmosphere in which to view art. Visit the mueum's website at ... http://www.vmfa.state.va.us

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~