ARTES MAGAZINE

An exhibition titled California Scene Paintings has just opened at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. For those of you that have not visited this downtown museum, the structure was designed and built specifically to show art. It has a modern architectural design with clean lines, high ceilings and an excellent lighting system which shows [...]

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, California’s spectacular landscape was the catalyst for a profusion of light-filled paintings. Artists determined to capture its vivid colors painted the landscapes in a distinctive style that has come to be called California Impressionism or California plein air painting. Left: Joseph Morris Raphael (1869-1950), Market of St. Catherine, [...]

Born in Florence, South Carolina, at the beginning of the modern century, William H. Johnson (1901-1970), was a virtuoso skilled in various media and techniques. With work that spanned decades, continents, and genres, he is a seminal figure in modern American art.  Historically, Johnson’s work has been under-examined in the modern art literature, but awareness [...]

   Italy had long been the most popular destination for Americans prior to the Civil War, but by the 1870’s, France had become the country of choice. For it then seemed that every young American artist yearned to embark on a Grand Tour of Europe and study in Paris. In fact, approximately twenty-two hundred were [...]

Eighteenth-century American artists relied on European art long before they set sail for the Continent. Mezzotints after French and English portraits were imported by the hundreds during the eighteenth century and supplied the colonists with what was often their only contact with fine art. John Singleton Copley wrote to Benjamin West on November 12, 1766:       [...]

June 25- October 12, 2009 Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT October 24- January 31, 2010  The Portland Museum of Art chronicles the development of impressionist Connecticut and early modernist Maine with 73 features works drawn from the collections of the Portland Museum of Art and the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut. The Call [...]