1 cut requested 8-30

LM with secy for image 9-6

Never sent photo, run without!

FOR 9/14

CHARLES LEWIS FUSSELL WORKS AT SCHWARZ GALLERY SEPT 21 w/1 cut

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PHILADELPHIA, PENN. — The Schwarz Gallery has organized an exhibition and sale of a large selection of oil paintings, watercolors and drawings by Charles Lewis Fussell (1840–1909) that will open Friday, September 21.

Although Fussell was an active presence in Philadelphia and New York art circles from 1863 until his death, his historical importance has only recently begun to emerge. This exhibition, the most comprehensive showing of the artist’s work ever held, is accompanied by a scholarly catalog with color illustrations.

Fussell was born in West Vincent, Chester County, Penn., to a prominent Quaker family that eventually settled in Philadelphia. After graduating from Central High School, where he befriended fellow student Thomas Eakins, Fussell studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1859 and began to exhibit there in 1863.

He also took private art lessons from Peter Frederick Rothermel. Fussell resumed his studies at the academy after serving on home guard duty during the Civil War, and became interested in landscape during an extended visit to Colorado in the spring of 1870.

The artist, who never married, spent the next seven years wandering through New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania in search of inspiring scenery and returned to Philadelphia in 1878. During the summer of 1882, Fussell spent two weeks at the artists’ colony in East Hampton, N.Y., and he traveled to Ohio the following spring.

Nothing more is known about his activities until he settled in Brooklyn in 1889, where over the next eight years he painted numerous views of the borough’s rapidly vanishing landscape. The exhibition comprises a number of plein air oil sketches from this period of Canarsie, Coney Island, Crow’s Hill (present-day Crown Heights), Flatbush, Fort Hamilton and Sheepshead Bay, as well as North Beach and Rockaway in Queens.

Around 1897 Fussell went to live with his aunt, noted Quaker social reformer and educator Graceanna Lewis, in Media, Delaware County. There he lived a withdrawn existence, painting the local landscape and giving art lessons. Many of his views of Media and Ridley Creek are included in this exhibition.

Fussell became interested in watercolor at this time and became proficient with the medium, and at this late phase of his career achieved a measure of critical acclaim that had eluded him in the past.

The Schwarz Gallery is at 1806 Chestnut Street. For information, 215-563-4887 or www.schwarzgallery.com.