By FREDERICK A. SWEET; from The Magazine ANTIQUES, March 1945. Toward the end of the nineteenth century America’s art collectors were captivated by French taste and filled their gilt drawing rooms with salon figure pieces and bucolic scenes by members of the Barbizon school. Our own painters such as George Inness and Homer Martin, had to follow French trends, in order to …
The coming storm: American landscape painting and the Civil War
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, November/December 2012 | The role of the Civil War in redefining America is well known. What is less well understood is the profound way in which the conflict changed American Art. Between 1859, when war was imminent, and the war’s end in 1865 writers and artists created their works surrounded by, and sometimes suffocated by, the impact of …
In the American Grain: Art and Capital at Crystal Bridges
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, November/December 2011 | The small town of Bentonville, Arkansas, home to some 35,301 souls in the most recent census, is about to be transformed beyond recognition. Already it enjoys some modicum of renown as the ancestral abode of the Walton family: its late patriarch, Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, opened his first five and dime here …
The comeback: The National Academy reopens with six new exhibitions
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, September/October 2011 | The National Academy reopens with six exhibitions designed to reclaim its pivotal role in American art and architecture. Many who stroll along New York’s Museum Mile surely break their stride at the handsome Beaux Arts facade at 1083 Fifth Avenue, just to the north of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. They slow down …