Encouraging American Genius: Master Paintings from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington,DC Recommendations - For all ages

BOOKS for ADULTS

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Aaron Douglas: Art, Race, & the Harlem Renaissance

by Amy Helene Kirschke
University Press of Mississippi, 1995

Aaron Douglas is the leading visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance, the first African-American to explore modernism and to reflect African art in his paintings, murals, and illustrations. His work is a vivid record both of his achievement and of the distinctive imprint of the Harlem Renaissance upon American culture. This exploration of Douglas's life and career is filled with reproductions of his art. From previously unavailable source materials,including letters to his wife, Amy Kirschke traces the struggle of this fascinating artist to advance the Harlem Renaissance and to establish its particular imprint.

Albert Bierstadt

by Matthew Baigell
Watson-Guptill, 1988

Albert Bierstadt is best remembered for accomplishing for the West what the Hudson River School painters had accomplished for the Catskills. Employing huge cancases befitting his subjects, Bierstadt was the first artist to capture the monumentality of the American wilderness, thereby satisfying the contemporary public's desire for depictions of the mostly unknown and uninhabited West. Although landscape painting brought him the fame and fortune he yearned for, a large part of Bierstadt's work (as the 32 full-color plates reveal) included historical and genre-like paintings of frontier life. Author Matthew Baigell suggests that there existed a separate persona within Bierstadt to accompany each painting style. In his groundbreaking observations, Baigell asserts that Bierstadt was a self-promoting artist whose motivations went a great deal beyond responding responding to the inspirations of America's landscape,motivations that also struck a sympathetic chord in America's unconcious. Art historians, artists, and those interested in American history will find this book and its unique information invaluable in understanding Bierstadt, his work, and American culture as reflected in his paintings.

America 1900: The Turning Point

by Judy Crichton
Henry Holt, 1998

"What a brilliant job Judy Crichton has done in re-creating the feel and texture of the fabulous year that heralded the twentieth century. With a novelist's instinct for character and story, an abundance of colorful anecdotes, and an eye for delicious detail, Crichton has produced an extaordinary chronicle of an extraordinary year." -Doris Kearns Goodwin

America: The New World in 19th-Century Painting

by Stephen Koja
Prestel,1999

A specifically American form of art emerged in the nineteenth century that was much more than just a reflection of European developments or stylistic trends. It was a period during which noteworthy local traditions were brought to light, and this is reflected in the selection of stunning landscapes, portraits, and genre paintings contained in this sumptuous volume, with a plate section including 146 works by 43 artists. The works provide a comprehensive survey of American painting spanning more than one hundred years, from the close of the eighteenth century until World War I. In the context of their genre, these works demonstrate both the continuity and the breaks in the development of nineteenth-century American art and question the established art-historical narrative of American painting.

Edward Hopper and the American Imagination

by Deborah Lyons
Norton, 1995

Hopper's themes of alienation and lonliness,empty cityscapes and countrysides, the stark light of Cape Cod, silent hills and houses-all have been indelibly imprinted on our collective sense of ourselves and our country. This work celebrates the impact Hopper's imagery continues to have on contemporary culture and is dedicated to a fuller understanding of Hopper's place in the American mind.

Frederic Edwin Church and the National Landscape

by Franklin Kelly
Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988

Franklin Kelly's study of Church's North American landscapes of 1845-60 traces the artist's development from pupil of Thomas Cole to master of his own unique statement and vision of a national landscape. Schooled by Cole to strive for a "higher style" in landscape painting, Church began his career developing themes suggested by his teacher, such as episodes from regional American history. Kelly examines Church's greatest paintings as his idealized, heroic visions of the American destiny. From the youthful WEST ROCK, NEW HAVEN (1849) to the mature masterpiece, TWILIGHT IN THE WILDERNESS (1860), Kelly provides close stylistic analysis and interprets the paintings against the background of contemporary cultural and political events.

Hudson River School: American Landscape Artists

by Bert Yaeger
Smithmark,1996

During a period of roughly 50 years (1825-1875) an artistic movement developed in America that was based in Romanticism and inspired by the wild areas in the vicinity of New York's Hudson River. The first native American school of landscape painting included among its leading artists Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, and Thomas Doughty as well as, later, looking Westward, Frederick Church, Thomas Moran, and Albert Bierstadt. While most of these artists did not think of themselves as belonging to a movement they did share, as "Romantic realists", a sense of wonder at the grandeur of the New World's remarkably scenic wilderness. With painstaking attention to detail and a panoramic vision, these painters captured the "new" and profound feeling associated with nature undefiled.

Intrepreting Sargent

by Elizabeth Prettejohn
Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1998

John Singer Sargent's portraits probed the relationship between surface appearance and psychological depth. They sought out the tensions between class identity and individual personality. Not only in his portraits, but also in his landscapes, figure subjects, and mural paintings, Sargent's "magical" style compels us to question our perceptions of surface and substance, illusion and reality. Sargent's celebrity as the favored painter of the upper classes has compromised his reputation in the twentieth century. His portraits are often accused of glossing over social realities, sacrificing psychological depth to superficial brilliance. In this concise, beautifully illustrated introduction to Sargent's work, spanning France, England, and America, Elizabeth Prettejohn reinterprets his career.

The Gilded Age: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

by Elizabeth Prelinger
Watson--Guptill,2000

This book features artists who brought a new sophistication and elegance into American art from the 1870s through the 1920s. Includes excellent color reproductions of the works of John Singer Sargent, Irving Wiles, Cecilia Beaux, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and many, many more.

The Poetry of Solitude: A Tribute to Edward Hopper

by Gail Levin
Universe Publishing, 1995

This unique volume, collected and introduced by Gail Levin, combines for the first time classic pictures by Edward Hopper and the poems they inspired. His much loved NIGHTHAWKS and HOUSE BY THE RAILROAD are gathered along with many other favorites that have captured poets'imagination. THE POETRY OF SOLITUDE celebrates the meeting of two distinct art forms-painting and poetry-and the brilliantly evocative artist to whom these contemporary poets pay homage.

WEBSITES

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African American World
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/arts/douglas.html

Your guide to African American history and culture. From Sojourner Truth to Jacob Lawrence, discover the courage and talent that shaped the African American experience.

IHAS Movements: The Hudson River School
www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/icon/hudson.html

A brief summary of the School's place in American philosophy by Thomas Hampson, narrator of the PBS series "I Hear America Singing.' HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL The first coherent school of American art, the Hudson River painters, helped to shape the mythos of the American landscape. Beginning with the works of Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and Asher B. Durand (1796-1886) and evolving into the Luminist and late Romantic schools, landscape painting was the prevalent genre of 19th century American art.

SAAM: An Edward Hopper Scrapbook
http://americanart.si.edu/hopper/index.html

This scrapbook, compiled by the staff of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, offers a glimpse into Hopper's life, his friends, and the paintings that have fascinated art lovers worldwide ever since Hopper first came to prominence during the mid 1920s.

John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery
www.jssgallery.org

American Painter (1856-1925) The definitive artist monograph with essays and links to over 1,000 paintings.

Corcoran Gallery
www.corcoran.org

The Corcoran Gallery of Art stands as a major center of American art, both historic and contemporary. Founded “for the purpose of encouraging American Genius,” the Corcoran’s extensive collection of 18th, 19th, and 20th century American art represents most significant American artists. The Corcoran possesses a fine collection of European art as well. While continuing its efforts to represent historic American works, the gallery also encourages modern European and American artists by showing and purchasing their work, paying particular attention to artists in the Washington area.