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Carnegie Museum of Art offers a survey exhibition of important British art and artists
Great British Art: 200 Years of Watercolors, Drawings, and Prints
from The Bank of New York Mellon Collection
December 19, 2007
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania…A broad spectrum of artworks by significant artists active in the British art world from the mid-1700s through the 1950s will be on view in the Works on Paper gallery of Carnegie Museum of Art from January 26–May 18, 2008. Great British Art: 200 Years of Watercolors, Drawings, and Prints from The Bank of New York Mellon Collection features 86 works on paper by 51 different artists and offers a nearly comprehensive survey of major trends and genres of the period. Works by a wide range of artists, such as David Bomberg, John Constable, Richard Dadd, Thomas Gainsborough, Gwen John, Thomas Rowlandson, J. M. W. Turner, and Sir David Wilkie are included in the exhibition. Interconnections, rivalries, and exchanges among many of the artists will be seen in the content, appearance, and production of their works, as well as in their personal biographies and social milieu.
“This is a unique opportunity to view such a large and diverse collection, featuring some of the most important artists, movements, techniques, and genres in British art history for the two centuries covered by the exhibition,” says Amanda Zehnder, Carnegie Museum of Art assistant curator of fine arts and organizer of the exhibition.
A section on 18th- and 19th-century works will highlight watercolor, a technique closely associated with British art. Genres such as the picturesque landscape and travel views within the British Isles, the European continent, and more distant locales will be presented as depicted by Thomas Shotter Boys, William Callow, John Robert Cozens, Francis Danby, Thomas Girtin, David Roberts, John Ruskin, as well as works by the most renowned artists producing watercolors and drawings in the history of British art.
Other sections in the exhibition will reveal the aesthetic and conceptual breaks with tradition that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the onset of Modernism. Works by artists associated with several groups that shaped the British art world after 1900, such as the Bloomsbury Group (Vanessa Bell), the Camden Town Group (Robert Bevan, Charles Isaac Ginner, and Walter Sickert), and the Vorticists (Percy Wyndham Lewis, Edward Wadsworth, and William Roberts), are included. The exhibition concludes with a focused look at colorful and dynamic linocuts by printmakers associated with London’s Grosvenor School, such as Sybil Andrews, Claude Flight, Cyril Power, and Lill Tschudi.
The Bank of New York Mellon collection, begun in 1980, reflects the influence of renowned British art collector Paul Mellon and the legacy of the Mellon family as significant art collectors.
Programs
For information or to register, call 412.622.3288.
Lunch and Learn: Prints by British Artists: Bank of New York Mellon Collection
Thurs., April 17, 10:30 a.m.–2:00 p.m.
$35 members/$44 nonmembers
Brian Lang, assistant vice president and curator of the corporate art collection, The Bank of New York Mellon, and Amanda Zehnder, CMA assistant curator of fine arts, will discuss the watercolors, drawings, and prints by British artists in Great British Art. After lunch in the Carnegie Café, Robert Bowden, renowned watercolorist and museum studio instructor, will demonstrate watercolor techniques, and participants will also have the opportunity to take brush in hand and experience the feel of painting in watercolor.
Just for Members: Tour of Great British Art from The Bank of New York Mellon Collection
Sun., March 9, 2:00–3:00 p.m.
Support
General support for the museum’s exhibition program is provided by The Heinz Endowment, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Allegheny Regional Asset District.
Photos for this exhibition are available on Carnegie Museum of Art’s media photo website. Contact the communications office at 412.688.8690 or email stitelert@carnegiemuseums.org for the access code.
Carnegie Museum of Art
Located at 4400 Forbes Ave. in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh and founded by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1895, Carnegie Museum of Art, one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, is nationally and internationally recognized for its distinguished collection of American and European works of art from the 16th century to the present. The Heinz Architectural Center, part of Carnegie Museum of Art, is dedicated to the collection, study, and exhibition of architectural drawings and models. For more information about Carnegie Museum of Art, call 412.622.3131 or visit our web site at www.cmoa.org.
Contact:
Tey Stiteler
412.688.8690
stitelert@carnegiemuseums.org
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