11/22

SPANIERMAN GALLERY/SPIRIT OF AMERICA

WD/JAR SET 11/14

NEW YORK CITY — Spanierman Gallery recently opened “The Spirit of America: American Art from 1829 to 1970,” an exhibition and sale, comprising 90 works.

Among the artists included are George Bellows, Frank W. Benson, Albert Bierstadt, Emil Carlsen, William Merritt Chase, Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Cropsey, Arthur B. Davies, Willem de Kooning, Thomas W. Dewing, Arthur Wesley Dow, Sanford Robinson Gifford, Philip Leslie Hale, Childe Hassam, Martin Johnson Heade, George Inness, John F. Kensett, Rockwell Kent, John LaFarge, Willard L. Metcalf, Thomas Moran, James Peale, William T. Ranney, Theodore Robinson, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Dwight William Tryon and John Henry Twachtman.

The exhibition embodies the vitality of a time when American art was the standard bearer for the spirit of the nation. Challenged by the dramatic changes in their homeland, artists led the country’s cultural tide and expressed its changing ideals and intellectual currents. Their work reveals the variety of artistic tradition from the Jacksonian years through the last century’s modern era.

The earliest work in the show is James Peale’s “Still Life with Fruit” (1829), which is a picturesque arrangement of slightly overripe fruit. As midcentury arrived, artists turned their attention to capturing the optimistic and celebratory mood of America during its early nationhood. Among them, William Tylee Ranney created images chronicling the drama of the frontier as well as “historical genre scenes.” After 1849, he devoted attention to sporting themes such as “The Wounded Hound,” 1850. Here depicting two hunters caring for a wounded dog in the wilderness, Ranney illuminated the character of American outdoor life while creating a visualization of the period’s emphasis on sports etiquette.

It was the artists of the Hudson River School who were the most dedicated to conveying the unique character of the country, as expressed in its seemingly boundless wilderness. In “Moses Viewing the Promised Land,” 1846, Frederic Edwin Church created an allegory that expresses the grandeur and drama of the American land as depicted in a scene at sunset in which a tiny figure stands atop a rocky precipice overlooking a lush and fertile valley.

After the Civil War, as new stark realities of American life became apparent, earlier modes of representation began to seem provincial and artists traveled abroad in droves, where they absorbed the methods of European contemporary and old master artists. The rural landscapes of the French Barbizon painters set an example for George Inness, who turned from his descriptive mode at midcentury to a more suggestive style, as demonstrated in his evocative “Hudson Valley,” 1875, and “An Old Roadway” or “Monclair Landscape,” circa 1880, both of which were painted with rich blends of golds and greens.

On their return to the United States, American artists applied Impressionist strategies of light and color to the depiction of native scenery, capturing the “spirit of place,” especially in relation to their favorite summer haunts. William Merritt Chase frequented Shinnecock, Long Island, where, in addition to conducting open air painting classes, he applied his deft brush to depictions of his immediate environment, as revealed in “Sunset at Shinnecock Hills,” circa 1895, in which his daughter Dorothy stands in the shadow of the roof of his house with the expansive brush covered dunes that he loved to paint spreading beyond under a blue sky in which wispy cumuli float freely.

American painting took on new directions during the early Twentieth Century, especially in the wake of the Armory Show of 1913, which introduced native audiences to vanguard European art. The influence of modernism is apparent in Joseph Raphael’s “By the Stream (Papekasteel Uccle),” circa 1915, in which the artist used a light palette and broad, divisionist strokes to create an abstract scheme, portraying a bountiful garden in Laren, Holland, where he settled in 1912.

The realist tradition in American art was paralleled in the Twentieth Century by a gradual and continuing abstract current, which exploded on the international scene in the 1950s in the art of the Abstract Expressionists. One of the most important and influential members of this movement, Willem de Kooning focuses on two themes –– the human figure, especially women, and landscape –– producing powerful, inventive and sometimes controversial images. His distinctive gestural manner resulted in dazzling, vigorously painted images such as “Xmas to Frances” (circa late 1960s-early 1970s).

The Spanierman Gallery is at 45 East 58th Street. For information, 212-83200208 or www.spanierman.com.