ROANOKE, Va. –  Norman Rockwell’s Framed,  Eduard Steichen’s Cooper’s Bluff – Midnight Strollers, and George Inness’ Midsummer are among the works on view in Gifts, an exhibition presenting important new gifts to the Art Museum of Western Virginia’s permanent collection.  Gifts will remain on view at the Art Museum through July 29.  

“Gifts represents another wonderful milestone for the Art Museum,” said C. Nelson Harris, mayor of the city of Roanoke.  “The growth of the collection is inspiring and a testament to the promise of the new Art Museum facility and the bold new future it will bring to Roanoke and the region.”

Few individuals have had as much impact on how we see the world as Norman Rockwell, and Framed is an especially appropriate image for the Art Museum’s collection.  Framed, painted for the March 2, 1946 cover of the Saturday Evening Post, is one of three Rockwell Post covers that depicts art reacting to life.  

Eduard Steichen is best known as a photographer, although early in his career he was a successful painter.  Cooper’s Bluff – Midnight Strollers, which depicts people walking along Cooper’s Bluff on Long Island Sound, is one of the best of his contemplative nocturnes, suffused with green light and showing the influence of James McNeill Whistler in its thin washes and Japonesque compositional elements.  The painting was shown at his first American one-man exhibition in February 2005 which almost sold out.  The patron who bought this work also bought four other pieces by Steichen at the same exhibition.

Over a career that spanned fifty years, George Inness developed his painting from the Hudson River School influences of his youth through a softer approach that looked toward the French Barbizon School and then to a moodier, atmospheric, and more modern style, imbued with a deep sense of the connections between nature and the spiritual.  He preferred to depict domesticated landscapes rather than the unbridled wilderness, as reflected in Midsummer.  An enormous beech tree dominates the composition, while the edge of a farmhouse to the right of the canvas almost dissolves in the rich green light suffusing the entire landscape.  The painting is an excellent example of Inness’ transition from the Barbizon to an unrivaled individual style in which he combines carefully chosen symbolic colors which he described as “the soul of a painting” with effects of light and atmosphere that evoke a poetic and dreamy state.

The Rockwell, Steichen and Inness works were acquired with funds provided by the Horace G. Fralin Charitable Trust.  Since 1999, the trust has enabled the Art Museum to develop a core collection of nineteenth and twentieth century American art, including works by Winslow Homer, John H. Twachtman, Childe Hassam, Edward H. Potthast, Maria Oakey Dewing, Robert Riggs, Maurice Prendergast, Frederick Frieseke, Alonzo Chappel, John Singer Sargent, Robert Henri, William Bradford, and Theodore Robinson.

Photography is a growing area of the Art Museum’s collection, and the Art Museum has added the work of internationally acclaimed artists Mark Osterman and France Scully Osterman.  The Ostermans are known for their use of historic photographic processes including wet-plate collodion.  The two photographs taken in Japan, Shadow Sapling by France Scully Osterman and Temple Niche by Mark Osterman were given by Houston collector Mark Fehrs Haukohl in honor of American Ambassador to Romania Nicholas F. and Mrs. Jenny Taubman and to encourage other gifts to the collection.

Gifts is made possible by the generous support of SunTrust Bank, presenting sponsor, and Woods Rogers PLC, major sponsor.  Additional support is provided by Curtis Publishing.

About the Art Museum of Western Virginia

The Art Museum, located in Center in the Square on historic Market Square in downtown Roanoke, features nineteenth and twentieth century American art, decorative arts, modern and contemporary art, and works on paper, and presents exhibitions of both regional and national significance. The Art Museum is accredited by the American Association of Museums (AAM). For more information about the Art Museum, visit www.artmuseumroanoke.org