Yale Bulletin and Calendar

December 6, 2002|Volume 31, Number 13

Maurice Prendergast's "Rising Tide, St. Malo" is among the works on view in the Yale University Art Gallery's exhibition "Masters of American Watercolor: From Homer to Hopper."

Master watercolor artists are featured in exhibition

Victorian art critic John Ruskin wrote in 1886: "There is nothing that obeys the artist's hand so exquisitely, nothing that records the subtlest pleasures of sight so perfectly as watercolor."

The versatility of the medium is showcased in the exhibit "Masters of American Watercolor: Homer to Hopper," on view through June 8 at the Yale University Art Gallery.

The show features 26 works from the gallery's wide-ranging collection of American watercolors and is on display in the Matrix Gallery on the third floor. The works -- which were selected by Helen A. Cooper, the Holcombe T. Green Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture (see related story) -- range from the swiftly noted sketch to the color-saturated sheet, from mystical images of nature to realistic transcriptions of place.

"Just as different musical instruments suggest distinct moods and different sounds," says Cooper, "so the handling of liquid color can evoke in the artist a poetic vision that might otherwise find no place in his or her work.

"The same motif rendered in oil can appear robust and solid, whereas painting in transparent pigment is often nearer to spontaneity and emotional expression," she adds.

By the early 19th century in England the medium of watercolor had developed from a practical means for travelers to record topography to a position almost equal to that of oil painting, says Cooper.

The influence of such artists as John Constable and J.M.W. Turner was soon felt in America, she notes, and with the founding of the American Society for Painting in Watercolors in 1866, the standing of watercolor painting was greatly elevated and its popularity increased. Indeed, says Cooper, since the early 20th century, many critics have called watercolor "the American medium" because it has been used by some of the country's most renowned artists.

Some of the artists represented in this exhibition -- such as Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent -- are known equally for their oil and watercolor paintings, while others -- such as Maurice Prendergast, Charles Demuth, Charles Burchfield and John Marin -- are known primarily as watercolorists.

Visitors will have a rare opportunity to compare Thomas Eakins' watercolor "John Biglin in a Single Scull" in the Matrix gallery exhibition with his oil painting of the same subject in the adjacent American paintings gallery.

The show also includes works by Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Walt Kuhn, Thomas Moran, Lionel Feininger, John Haberle and Robert Frederic Blum.

The exhibition is made possible by funding from the Friends of American Art at Yale and the Jan and Warren Adelson Fund in Honor of Eugénie Prendergast.

The Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (until 8 p.m. on Thursdays), and Sunday, 1-6 p.m. Admission is free. There is an entrance for people using wheelchairs at 201 York St., with an unmetered parking space nearby. For information on access, call (203) 432-0606. For general information, call (203) 432-0600 or visit the gallery's website at www.yale.edu/artgallery.

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