Ask our online reference librarian, Joan of Art !
She can help answer your most pressing American art questions. Here is a recent inquiry.
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Got a Question?
Ask our online reference librarian, Joan of Art !
She can help answer your most pressing American art questions. Here is a recent inquiry.
Dear Joan of Art,
From when does the "Washington Landscape School "date, and can you provide the names of artists that were part of that group?
Joan's Reply:
The "Washington Landscape School" dates from the 1880's and the following artists are generally acknowledged to have been participants: Max Weyl (1837–1914), Richard Norris Brooke (1847–1920), William Henry Holmes (1846–1933), Reuben Le Grande Johnston (1850–1919), Edmund Clarence Messer (1842–1919), James Henry Moser (1854–1913), and Henry Livingston Hillyer, all of whom worked in and around Washington, D.C. at that time.
This informal "school" is described in The Capital Image: Painters in Washington, 1800–1915 by Andrew J. Cosentino and Henry H. Glassie ( Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983): "After 1881, Brooke [Richard Norris] devoted himself almost entirely to landscape painting, forming, with Holmes, Messer, Moser, Weyl, and others, what may rightly be called the 'Washington Landscape School."... [T}he group's paintings [were] obviously indebted to the Barbizon school as well as to the modern Dutch masters."
Many of these artists were drawn to the spectacular, local scenery in Rock Creek Park and along the Potomac. In Art Across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting (New York : Abbeville Press, 1990), author William H. Gerdts states that many of these artists worked toward the preservation of Rock Creek Park as a public park. That goal was achieved in 1889.
The collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum include Autumn Tangle (1920) by William Henry Holmes and Landscape (1905) by Max Weyl To learn more about the artists, stop at your local library and borrow the books cited above.
Sincerely,
Joan of Art
Pictured: William Henry Holmes, 1846–1933, Autumn Tangle, 1920, watercolor, 15 1/4 x 20 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Florence Deakins.