The exhibition will be open from 10 to 5 pm Monday through Friday, and will remain on view until August 30.

An illustrated catalog with an essay and notes on the exhibited works by Marc Chabot, the curator for Flanders, is in the works.

Why a show of Natalie Van Vleck’s nudes? Artists have drawn, painted, and sculpted the naked human form for thousands of years. Everybody has a body; it is the common vehicle binding all of humanity, past, present and future. The endless cycle of life and death binds us forever to nature and the other living things of our world. As such, the nude embodies both the universal artistic ideals of beauty, and the record of our common source and destiny.

Nudes comprise a significant proportion of Ms Van Vleck’s production, but also record the beginnings and evolution of her style from academic to cubist-expressionist, and finally the precisionist-regionalism of her mature late style. Natalie Van Vleck’s nudes offer an intimate glimpse into her character as an unconventional women and an artist of striking and uncompromising abilities.

This exhibition is only the second in recent memory that features works by Ms Van Vleck. Last year Flanders Nature Center participated in a region-wide series of eight major exhibitions that celebrated paintings of northwest Connecticut that had been created by American artists between 1790 and 1940.

Flanders Nature Center & Land Trust was founded in 1963 by Natalie Van Vleck, an artist, sculptor and farmer who raised sheep and turkeys on the 200 acres along Flanders Road in Woodbury that are now the heart of Flanders.

In 1926, Ms Van Vleck and her parents, who were socially prominent New Yorkers, bought a ten-acre farm in Woodbury. Two years later Natalie converted a barn into her studio, where she made paintings of nature studies.

The Visitor’s Center of Flanders Nature Center & Land Trust – which is the former studio of Ms Van Vleck – is at the corner of Church Hill and Flanders roads in Woodbury. For more information call 203-263-3711.