 | Edward Lamson Henry depicts one of the earliest U.S. passenger trains in his painting "The First Railroad Train on the Mohawk and Hudson Road." |
An artist whose images of bygone days helped create a unified national identity after the Civil War is the focus of the exhibition "Historical Fictions: Edward Lamson Henry's Paintings of Past and Present," on view through Dec. 30 at the Yale University Art Gallery.
Edward Lamson Henry (1841-1919) was one of the most popular artists of late 19th-century America. The Yale show explores his fascination with "historical fictions," romanticized visions of the past that addressed viewers' anxieties about their changing world, which was being profoundly affected by mounting industrialization, urbanization and immigration.
"Henry was widely appreciated in his own time as an artful storyteller," says the exhibit's organizer, Amy Kurtz Lansing, a Yale doctoral student in the history of art and the Marcia Brady Tucker Curatorial Research Assistant in American Paintings and Sculpture.
"His paintings resonated with a large public concerned with defining the country and themselves through and understanding of the past, which Henry mined to create a legible, stable storyline for the present," she notes. "He helped to give his audience a unified sense of who they were, a crucial endeavor in the discordant decades following the Civil War."
Born in South Carolina but raised in New York City, Henry studied art first in Philadelphia and later in Paris. He eventually became a fixture in the New York City artistic community, where his friends and contemporaries included some of the best-known landscape painters of the 19th century. He spent his later years in Cragsmoor, an artists' colony he helped found in upstate New York.
The show brings together for the first time 20 paintings and drawings by Henry, borrowed from public and private collections. It is organized in five sections: "History Lessons: The Civil War," which explores Henry's documentation of the ravages of the conflict; "Uncertainty in the Age of Rail," which highlights the way in which Henry attempted to construct a historical past for the transformations of the time, specifically technological advances; "Historical Documentation, Preservation and Re-creation," which features works illuminating Americans' search for stability after the Civil War; "History and Social Definition," which considers the extent to which Americans turned to the past to define themselves in the present; and "Nostalgia and Obsolesence," investigates Americans' growing desire to take refuge in personal reflection.
One recurring theme in Henry's works is "the 19th-century enthusiasm for envisioning history in vivid detail through the medium of notable events and the fixation upon old things," says Lansing. She notes that Henry was himself an avid collector and considered an authority on American antiques and colonial life, and many of the furnishings and decorative objects in his paintings were drawn from his personal collection.
The show also includes a section of documentary photographs, drawings and preparatory studies, illuminating the artist's creative process.
"Historical Fictions: Henry Lamson Henry's Paintings of Past and Present" is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue written by Lansing and printed by the Yale University Art Gallery.
Programs planned in conjunction with the exhibition include a summer gallery talk at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 30, and a symposium on Saturday, Oct. 29, titled "Historical Fictions: Constructing the Past in Gilded-Age America." Both events are free and open to the public; registration information for the symposium will be available in August at http://artgallery.yale.edu.
The show is supported by the Friends of American Arts at Yale, the Eugénie Prendergast Fund for American Art given by Jan and Warren Adelson, and an endowment made possible by a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The catalogue was supported by a grant from Furthermore, a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, and by the Virginia and Leonard Marx Fund.
The Yale University Art Gallery is currently undergoing a comprehensive reconstruction of its landmark main building, designed by Louis I. Kahn. In the meantime, the gallery is presenting its exhibitions and programs in the Egerton Swartout building, located on Chapel at High Street. The gallery is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday (until 8 p.m. on Thursday September-June), and 1-6 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free for individuals; groups should call (203) 432-8459. For information on access, call (203) 432-0606. For general information, call (203) 432-0600 or visit the gallery's website at http://artgallery.yale.edu.
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