An American Art Colony

From the 1930s to the early 1940s, Ste. Genevieve, Missouri was host to one of the most significant art colonies of its time. An American Art Colony is a historical and pictorial journey through the works of these magnificent painters. Their chosen subjects are not of the traditional bucolic landscape; instead they portray the human condition in terms both of political upheaval and of Depression era events. Collectively, the authors present, through a series of biographical essays, an analysis of these painters' lives, their art, and the world in which they lived. The artists are: Thomas Hart Benton, Sister Cassiana Marie, Fred E. Conway, Joseph James Jones, Miriam McKinnie, Joseph John Paul Meert, Bernard Peters, Jesse Beard Rickly, Aimee Goldstone Schweig, Martyl Schweig, E. Oscar Thalinger, Joseph Paul Vorst, and Matthew E. Ziegler.

An American Art Colony studies three generations of a New Jersey art colony, setting a new model for the analysis of artistic biography and broadening the social context of artistic production. Its contribution rests on the historical value of colony changes over time from informal gatherings to self-conscious purposeful assemblages.

Item gives introductions to the colonies and then short biographies of the artists associated with them.

The early twentieth century brought renewed focus upon the image of the coast and witnessed the formation of art colonies in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and Ogunquit and Monhegan, Maine. These creative communities became an inspiration for artists and art students, among them Edward Hopper, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Rockwell Kent, and George Bellows. Visually stunning, Call of the Coast: Art Colonies of New England explores the importance of place for artists in these colonies, and the development of impressionist Connecticut and modernist Maine within the visual traditions of the coast of New England. Featuring approximately 80 works, Call of the Coast illustrates each major painting with extensive interpretative text and includes documentary photography to provide historical context for the artworks. Distributed for the Portland Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule: Portland Museum of Art, Maine (June 25 - October 12, 2009) Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT (10/24/2009 - 1/31/2010)

This book is first to historicise and theorise the significance of the early twentieth-century little art colony as a uniquely modern social formation within a global network of modernist activity and production.

July 1924. Sarah Cunningham, a young Modernist painter, arrives in Carmel-by-the-Sea from Paris to bury her older sister, Ada Belle. En route, she is shocked to learn that Ada Belle’s suspicious death is a suicide. But why kill herself? Her plein air paintings were famous and her upcoming exhibition of portraitures would bring her even wider recognition. Sarah puts her own artistic career on hold and, trailed by Ada Belle’s devoted dog, Albert, becomes a secret sleuth, a task made harder by the misogyny and racism she discovers in this seemingly idyllic locale. Part mystery, part historical fiction, this engrossing novel celebrates the artistic talents of early women painters, the deep bonds of sisterhood, the muse that is beautiful scenery, and the determination of one young woman to discover the truth, to protect an artistic legacy, and to give her sister the farewell she deserves.

What Argenteuil in the 1870s was to French Impressionists, Cos Cob between 1890 and 1920 was to American Impressionists Childe Hassam, Theodore Robinson, John Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, and their followers. These artists and writers came together to work in the modest Cos Cob section of Greenwich, Connecticut, testing new styles and new themes in the stimulating company of colleagues. This beautiful book is the first to examine the art colony at Cos Cob and the role it played in the development of American Impressionist art. During the art-colony period, says Susan Larkin, Greenwich was changing from a farming and fishing community to a prosperous suburb of New York. The artists who gathered in Cos Cob produced work that reflects the resulting tensions between tradition and modernity, nature and technology, and country and city. The artists' preferred subjects -- colonial architecture, quiet landscapes, contemplative women -- held a complex significance for them, which Larkin explores. Drawing on maritime history, garden design, women's studies, and more, she places the art colony in its cultural and historical context and reveals unexpected depth in paintings of enormous popular appeal.

It is often assumed that the verbal and visual languages of indigenous people had little influence upon the classification of scientific, legal, and artistic objects in the metropolises and museums of nineteenth-century colonial powers. However, as this book demonstrates, it is a fallacy that colonized locals merely collected material for interested colonizers. Through an analysis of particular language notations and drawings hidden in colonial documents and a reexamination of cross-cultural communication, the book writes biographies for five objects that exemplify the tensions of nineteenth century history.