Art gallery

Georges SEURAT

2009-12-07T23:39:00.000-08:00

This sketch is one of twelve small studies in oil panel (Seurat called them croquetons - little sketches) painted at Grandcamp on the Normandy coast in the summer of 1885. They are Seurat's first marine landscapes. Of this group of sketches, two served as a basis for large canvases. The National Gallery of Australia's sketch provided the basis for Le Bec du Hoc, Grandcamp 1885, now in the Tate Gallery, London.

The composition of the croqueton, painted on the spot, differs in some respects from the finished painting, which was almost certainly worked up in the studio after Seurat's return to Paris. The study shows the rocky shoreline at the base of the cliff, whereas in the final painting this is excluded (as if the tide had come in), allowing the direct juxtaposition of the promontory, a swooping arc against the unrelieved horizontal of a calm sea. The expressive qualities of the composition are drawn out in the final painting: a flock of birds appears above the point of the promontory, a lone white sail can be seen on the horizon. 'From the precipitous coast of Grandcamp', wrote the critic Félix Fénéon (1861-1944) of the painting in 1888, 'the little promontory of Bec du Hoc soars over the quiet, melancholy sea'.

The idea of painting the promontory from above may have been suggested to Seurat by the vertiginous cliff paintings that Claude Monet executed on the Normandy coast a few years earlier (at Fécamp in 1881 and at Varengeville, Pourville and Dieppe in 1882) and which were exhibited in Paris in 1882 and 1883. It has also been suggested that the simplified silhouette of Le Bec du Hoc may have been inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, specifically the towering wave in Katsushika Hokusai's The great wave of Kanagawa from Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji of about 1825.

adapted from Michael Lloyd and Michael Desmond, European and American Paintings and Sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery, 1992, pp.64-67 by Christine Dixon

1. 'De l'abrupt littoral de Grandcamp … le petit promontoire du Bec du Hoc se hausse hargneusement sur la mer calme et triste' (Félix Fénéon: 'A La Revue Indépendante: La Revue Indépendante March 1888', in Félix Fénéon, Oeuvres plus que complètes, 2 vols, Geneva, 1970, vol. 1, p.98).
2. Henri Dorra and Sheila C. Astin, 'Seurat's Japonisme', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, vol.73 no.1201, February 1969, pp.81-94, cf. p.85. This argument is developed further by Françoise Cachin, 'Les Neo-Impressionistes et le Japonisme, 1885-1893', in Japonisme in Art: An International Symposium, ed. Society for the Study of Japonisme, Tokyo: Kodansha International 1980, pp.225-238.

Dunedin Public - Art Gallery

2009-11-30T01:03:00.000-08:00

The Dunedin Public Art Gallery holds the main public art collection of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. Located in The Octagon in the heart of the city, it is close to the city's public library, municipal chambers, and other facilities such as the Regent Theatre.

The gallery was founded by W.M. Hodgkins in 1884 and was the first public art gallery in New Zealand. It originally occupied what is now the maritime gallery in the Otago Museum, was located in the Municipal Chambers in the Octagon from 1888-1890, and then in an annexe to the Otago Museum now the site of the Fels Wing. It moved to a new purpose-designed building in Queen's Gardens in 1907, to which a structure housing the Otago Settlers Museum was added the following year, the whole designed by John Burnside. In 1927 it was moved to a building constructed for the 1925-6 New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition in Logan Park, Dunedin North designed by Edmund Anscombe. The building was bought and donated to the city by Sir Percy and Lady Sargood, as a memorial to their son who was killed at Gallipoli.[1] The gallery was relocated to its present site, the refitted D.I.C. building, in 1996.

In its long existence it has played host to numerous overseas shows, including Masterpieces of the Guggenheim a 1990s exhibition of modern art, and the touring Tate Gallery exhibition The Pre-Raphaelite Dream, more recently.

Gallery
The gallery has a strong collection of old, modern and contemporary works, by New Zealand and overseas artists. It has one of the most numerous collections of works by Frances Hodgkins, who was born in the city. It has the most extensive collection of old master paintings in New Zealand and the most significant holdings of paintings by post 1800 overseas artists too. The holdings include works by Jacopo del Casentino (also known as Landini), Zanobi Machiavelli, Benvenuto Tisi (called Garofalo), Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, Carlo Maratta, Luca Giordano, Salvator Rosa, Claude Lorraine, Hans Rottenhammer, Pieter de Grebber, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger etc.

The gallery's holdings of British watercolours, the gift of F.H.D. Smythe, contains over 1300 works and is outstanding in New Zealand. It has significant holdings of overseas old master and modern prints and drawings, including a notable group of Japanese woodblock prints. Its New Zealand holdings are distinguished by such works as George O'Brien's 'Lawyer's Head from Forbury Head, Sunrise', Petrus Van der Velden's 'A Waterfall in the Otira Gorge', G.P. Nerli's 'Portrait of a Girl', C.F. Goldie's 'All 'e Same t'e Pakeha', Alfred Henry O'Keeffe's 'The Defense Minister's Telegram' Rita Angus's 1937 'Self Portrait', Colin McCahon's 'The 5 Wounds of Christ' and Ralph Hotere's 'Rosemary'.

Unlike New Zealand's other major public galleries the Dunedin Public Art Gallery branched out into the decorative arts in the 1920s, developing on the model of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, or the American 'Art Museums'. It thus has extensive and, in New Zealand, unparalleled, holdings of ceramics, glassware, metalwork, furniture and textiles, mostly of overseas origin

John Ernest Aitken

2009-11-26T23:39:00.000-08:00

Biography

John Ernest Aitken was the son of James Aitken, a Scottish-born maritime artist. He studied at the Manchester, Liverpool and Wallasey Schools of Art and was also taught by his father with whom he shared a studio in Liverpool. Aitken and his father permanently moved to the Isle of Man in 1911, although they had visited the Island from 1894. A few months after moving to Port St Mary, Aitken built an artist’s studio at the rear of Lime Street.

He was a prolific and commercially successful artist with some of his paintings being reproduced as calendars and prints. The most popular of these was The Herring Boats, Port St Mary, produced by Bregazzi’s, the Douglas firm of picture framers. In his obituary Aitken was described as:

A man of the highest integrity of a retiring and kindly disposition, Mr Aitken’s whole life was dedicated to his art.

Art

Like his father Aitken specialised in maritime art from seascapes and coastal views to working harbour scenes. His first exhibited work, The Grey North Sea was shown in 1907 at the Walker Art Gallery. Throughout his fifty year artistic career he continued to paint Manx, Dutch and Scottish fishing ports and harbours.

The extent of his commercial success can be measured by the existence of three sketchbooks dating from 1908 to 1957, which contain the details and thumbnail sketches of almost 2,400 paintings. These acted as stock books for Aitken, allowing him to keep track of his paintings whilst they were being framed, exhibited and hopefully sold. They also enabled him to gauge how commercially successful a particular view or scene was by how quickly it sold. As a result certain scenes may appear only once or twice whilst others, such as Manx coastal scenes and Dutch towns, might be frequently repeated.

Master Painter in the age of Rembrandt

2009-11-16T02:58:00.000-08:00

34 paintings by 17th-century Dutch artist Gerrit Dou, Rembrandt's first pupil, were brought together for the exhibition. Paintings from all periods of the artist's career were presented, including scenes of daily life, portraits, still lifes, and religious images. The show was the first international exhibition dedicated to Dou's work.

The exhibition was organized by the National Gallery of Art and the Dulwich Picture Gallery, in association with the Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis, The Hague. Ronni Baer, the Mrs. Russell W. Baker Curator of European Painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., curator of northern baroque paintings at the National Gallery of Art, were the curators. The exhibition was made possible by Shell Oil Company Foundation on behalf of the employees of Shell Oil Company. The exhibition was supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Maryport Maritime Museum

2009-11-10T01:28:00.000-08:00

The Museum houses a wealth of objects, pictures, models and paintings that illustrate Maryport's proud maritime and painting tradition. The collection at the Museum was initially based on the donations of items by local resident Miss Annie Robinson, and consisted almost entirely of artefacts from or linked to the Town of Maryport. Miss Robinson was instrumental in setting up the Museum in 1974. The collection has grown in all areas since then. During the refurbishment of the Museum in the 1990's several items were obtained on long-term loan to be used in the displays.

Occupying three floors, the museum houses a diverse and fascinating collection of artefacts. The majority of exhibits hold a unique association with Maryport's maritime, industrial, social and political history, having been donated by townspeople and those connected with the port. Two of the most interesting artefacts in the museum are this painting by William Mitchell and the scrimshaw whales tooth.

"A Breezy Day' by William Mitchell, 1863. A ship rounding the outer wooden pier at South Harbour, Maryport"

"Sperm whale tooth etched with a picture of the whaler 'Eagle'. Carving of bone and ivory, known as "scrimshaw" work, was an art mainly from the Anglo-American whaling ships in the first half of the nineteenth century."

There are also displays about Fletcher Christian of the mutiny on the Bounty and Thomas Ismay, owner of the Titanic.

Maryport Festivals Ltd

The Maritime Museum is home of the Maryport Festivals Ltd (MFL) office, a local non-profit making organisation dedicated to the organisation and promotion of festivals in Maryport for the economic, social and cultural benefit of the town. MFL deliver an annual festival programme including Maryport Bitter and Blues, Sea Maryport and Maryport Christmas Festivals.

Ellis Luciano Silas

2009-11-03T22:17:00.000-08:00

Ellis Luciano Silas, artist, was born in London on 13 July 1885. His father was an artist and designer and his mother an opera singer. He was educated by private tutors before working in his father’s studio, where he studied under the well-known artist Walter Sickert. Marine art became his main interest and he painted in English coastal towns. In 1907, he sailed to Australia where he spent time painting in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide before he settled in Perth.

On 16 October 1914, Silas that joined the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) as a signaller with the 16th Battalion. He had served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) for three years and had a strong sense of patriotism, but was doubtful about his ability to be a successful soldier and would have preferred a position as a medical orderly. On 18 November, he embarked with the battalion on the Dimboola, for Melbourne. The ship stopped at Adelaide and the men were given four hours leave. It gave Silas just enough time to:

Dash off to the Art Gallery to see one of my favourite paintings, “Circe invidiosa” by Waterhouse - colour glorious and general treatment most decorative.

The Dimboola went on to Melbourne, where the men disembarked and started training at Broadmeadows camp.

On 22 December 1914, Silas sailed with his battalion on the Ceramic for Egypt, where he trained at Heliopolis, near Cairo. He found army life distasteful, but persevered with signalling, and when possible, continued his sketching and painting.

At about 6 pm on 25 April 1915, Silas went ashore at Gallipoli with the 16th Battalion. The battalion was sent immediately to Pope’s Hill at the head of Monash Valley, where they spent the night digging in under intense rifle fire. Silas later recorded his first experiences in his painting, The End of the Great Day: The 16th Battalion, AIF digging the original trenches on Pope’s Hill on the evening of the landing at Anzac, 25 April 1915 - By an eyewitness (Signaller Ellis Silas, 16th Battalion AIF).

For the next five days, the 16th held Pope’s Hill against the Turks. As Silas recorded in his drawings of that period:

The repetition of shrapnel in each sketch is not a fad of mine, but just the natural order of things: they became as much part of the landscape as the clouds.

Constant exposure to heavy fire during his time at Gallipoli caused Silas to suffer from neurasthenia, otherwise known as shell-shock. On 17 May, he was put aboard the hospital ship Galeka and eventually admitted to No 1 AGH (Australian General Hospital) in Egypt with neurasthenia and enteric fever. Silas was sent to convalesce in England and was discharged from the AIF as medically unfit on 17 August 1916. Silas’ experience of Gallipoli, recorded in his diary and sketchbook, were published in 1916 as Crusading at Anzac, AD 1915. In his foreword, he wrote:

In this work I have not touched upon the big historical facts, but have endeavoured to portray War as the soldier sees it, shorn of all its pomp and circumstance; the War that means cold and hunger, heat and thirst, the ravages of fever; the War that brings a hail of lead that tears the flesh and rends the limb, and makes of men, heroes.

While waiting in London for a passage back to Australia, Silas painted works depicting war at Gallipoli. Three of these were bought for the Australian War Memorial collection, including his piece Roll Call. Silas was one of very few artists who recorded in sketches and paintings his own first-hand experiences of the Australian participation at Gallipoli.

In 1921, Silas returned to Australia and lived in Sydney where he worked as a commercial artist and contributed cartoons and articles to the Bulletin. In 1922, he went to the Trobriand Islands, New Guinea, to paint, and in 1925 returned to England to work as a marine artist. His painting ‘The Price of Glory’, begun in Perth and depicting the First Dutch War, caused a minor sensation at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1934. It now hangs in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich in England. He also designed posters, illustrated books and painted commissioned works to hang on ocean liners.

Silas married Ethel Florence Detheridge in London in 1927, and she survived him when he died in London on 2 May 1972.

Eduards Kalnins

2009-10-26T21:21:00.000-07:00

The contemporaries of Eduards Kalnins (1904 -1988) gave his art the stamp of "classic" while he was still alive. The "Kalnins legend" is a combination of many notions – talented landscapist, pupil of Vilhelms Purvītis, the first winner of the Latvian Academy of Art Rome Prize, grand master of marine painting, consistent advocate of the principles of plein air and tonal painting, long standing teacher at the Academy of Art, a professional who demanded much of himself and others, influential figure in art circles, a sovreign, lively and wise personality. The hazy grey Baltic Sea marine paintings and the celebrated figural works "Raftsmen", "The New Sails" and "Latvian Fishermen in the Atlantic" have become the centenarian’s unmistakable signs of recognition.

The literary portrait of the artist by Jānis Melbarzdis in his book "Ciesi pie veja"1 (Close to the Wind) brings alive the legend of the old master, just like the racily related episodes of "individual mythology" – the bohemian escapades and the exciting sporting and travel stories. Despite the large amount of 20th century publications on the artist, there has yet to be a serious work of research on the phenomenon of Kalnins’s art and his generation’s relationship with the complicated times.

Behind the openly visible facade of official publicity and the well-known frame of biographical facts, the artist had his personal "territory" dominated by two passions – painting and the sea. With the former he carried on a constant dialogue throughout his long creative career circling around the changes in his individual style, setting himself difficult professional tasks, observing the set rituals of his craft, enjoying and living the painting process itself as well as the concentration required for plein air studies or the long hours of loneliness in the studio. In an interview Kalnins once concluded: "And what is painting itself? It’s probably a kind of meditation when a person frees himself from all that is superfluous and remains alone with his thoughts and feelings."2 His other fateful passion, the sea, gradually became the basic subject matter of the artist’s work.

Certain character traits have united at the core of Kalnins’s artistic individuality: the features of a realist and a romantic, emotional and rational origins, respect for the traditions of the national school and openness to innovation, the ability and will to change flexibly in following the demands dictated by his inner self or by the age. His views on painting honed by long experience and observations of nature help us to understand his feeling for art and his working methods. The dream of his youth, to become a virtuoso painter, was, over time, substituted by a consciously formulated desire to free himself from his acquired dexterity in the frozen-in-time manner.

In his work Kalnins progressed from the intuitive capture of the visible world to self-defined more complicated professional aims. He strove to achieve absolute spatial illusion in the plane of the canvas and to depict the visually imperceptible – the impression of silence and the presence of the infinite in the everyday. His most outstanding successes combine a trained eye and a deft hand – an amazingly precise tonal and sophisticated perception of colour; his perfected brushwork recreates an observation of nature that can be felt in the mood and he fascinates with his ability to transform thematic realities into the appearance of a painting.

Art and Science join to make Awareness of Louisiana's Coastal Wetlands

2009-10-19T23:46:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)'s National Wetlands Research Center (NWRC) in Lafayette, Louisiana, is always looking for new ways to expand its education and outreach efforts in the community. So, when art-gallery director Roger Laurent called USGS outreach contractor Susan Horton (IAP World Services, Inc.) to ask NWRC to be part of an exhibit of paintings and photographs of Louisiana's barrier islands and coastal wetlands, the answer was "yes." Connecting the science and mapping to the art was easy.

The exhibit, shown at Gallery 912 from late July through August, was titled "Hell and High Water" and featured 45 pieces of artwork from Southeastern Louisiana University's chairman of visual arts, Dennis Sipiorski, and professor of graphic design Karin Eberhardt. A Wisconsin native, Sipiorski showed acrylic paintings inspired by his trips to the barrier islands in the 27 years that he's lived in Louisiana. Since 2004, Eberhardt has been visiting and photographing the barrier islands and using a computer to digitally manipulate her images and present them as collages.

While the artists were documenting and recording their impressions of these fragile habitats along the Gulf Coast, USGS scientists and geographers were interpreting and mapping changes in Louisiana wetland habitats—including barrier islands, such as the Chandeleur Islands, Isles Dernieres, and Timbalier Islands—using aerial photography and satellite imagery.

USGS maps displayed at Gallery 912 to complement the art exhibit included a map of Raccoon Island (in the Isles Dernieres chain) and another map showing 50 years of changes in Louisiana's coastal zone, including changes in the land/water ratio caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Even more striking changes were visible on a historical map of the Louisiana coast, surveyed by George Gauld in 1778. This map, "A Plan of the Coast of Part of West Florida & Louisiana," which was found on the Web site of the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress (URL http://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/), was contributed by NWRC photo interpreter Jason Dugas (IAP World Services contractor).

The exhibit opened July 27 with an artists' reception attended by Horton and Joy Merino, a coastal ecologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service, who shared information about efforts to restore some of the barrier islands through the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA; URL http://www.lacoast.gov/cwppra/).

Several hundred visitors to the "Hell and High Water" exhibit now have a new perspective on the importance of Louisiana's coastal wetlands and what's happening to them as seen through the eyes of an artist, a photographer, and those scientists and geographers at NWRC who study and map these disappearing habitats.

Fine Art compilations

2009-10-12T03:51:00.000-07:00

'Lifeboat going to a vessel in distress' by William Joy (1803-1859)

The Waterfall by John Sell Cotman

Saxthorpe Church by Rev James Bulwer

Norwich River: Afternoon by John Crome

The earliest collection of paintings to be acquired by the Norwich Museum was in 1841 when Captain William Manby, the inventor of early effective life saving equipment at sea, presented a unique collection of seventeen seascapes in oil and watercolour, originally commissioned by him to illustrate and promote his invention. Manby, who lived at Great Yarmouth, was the patron of William and John Cantiloe Joy and set them upon their careers as successful marine artists. The gift includes works by other notable marine painters of the day, including two by F. L. T. Francia, the only oil paintings known by this internationally recognised watercolourist.

Wheelock’s best

2009-10-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

Hendrick Ter Brugghen, Bagpipe player in Profile, 1624

Ludolf Backhuysen, Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast, 1667

Willem Claesz Heda, Banquet Piece with Mince Pie, 1635

Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck, Andries Stilte as a Standard Bearer, 1640

Fauve Painting in the Permanent Collection

2009-09-29T23:29:00.000-07:00

The National Gallery of Art will bring together its collection of fauve paintings in an exhibition to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the naming of this movement in French art. In the fall of 1905, critic Louis Vauxcelles first coined the epithet fauve, or "wild beast," to characterize what appeared to be an explosion of color in the work of a loosely knit group of young painters exhibiting at the Salon d'automne in Paris. Between roughly 1904 and 1907, Henri Matisse, André Derain, Georges Braque, Maurice de Vlaminck, and others brought a newly liberated colorism into cityscape and landscape paintings. Working with an intense, unmodulated application of pure color and the bold strokes of a loaded brush, these artists adapted the advances of postimpressionism, creating a presumably more impetuous or "anarchic" manner.

The National Gallery of Art possesses a splendid collection of fauve paintings. Highlights include Braque's The Port of La Ciotat (1907); Vlaminck's Tugboat on the Seine, Chatou (1906); and Derain's Charing Cross Bridge, London (1906). The crown jewel of the exhibition is Matisse's small but riveting Open Window, Collioure (1905), a bequest of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney. It is the central icon of the fauve movement and one of Matisse's acknowledged early masterpieces.

Two-year renovation of Museum Facility

2009-09-29T05:59:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Department of the Interior Museum will be closing Friday, October 30th for a two-year modernization project. Throughout the project, the Museum will continue to offer public programs at other locations in the Main Interior Building on the first Wednesday of every month and the Murals Tour by appointment. For more information or to schedule a Murals Tour call Diana Ziegler (202) 208-4743.

Hull Maritime Museum

2009-09-21T02:57:00.000-07:00

Founded in 1912 the Maritime Museum moved to the old Dock Offices in 1974. The Dock Offices were formerly the home of the Hull Dock Company until 1893, when North Eastern Railway took over the running of the docks.

The shareholders' Court Room, now used for temporary exhibitions, is a highly decorated piece of Victorian architecture. The room has a frieze of cherubs displaying the coats of arms of the European cities that Hull traded with.

Hull dominated the Arctic whaling trade in the early nineteenth century and there is an outstanding collection of whaling artefacts. This includes skeletons of the whales themselves, the tools and weapons, as well as personalia, journals and logbooks. There are fine contemporary paintings of the ships and the largest collection of scrimshaw (the folk art of the whaler) on this side of the Atlantic.

The museum also tells the story of the city's involvement in fishing, initially in the North Sea and then out to Norway, Iceland and Greenland, with models ranging from small cobles and smacks to the huge modern stern trawlers.From the Middle Ages the core of Hull's trade was with the Baltic and Scandinavia. The Wilson Line, founded in 1831, began trading by importing iron ore from Sweden but by 1903 was the biggest privately-owned shipping company in the world.

The transition from sail to steam is exemplified by models and decorative arts (glass, pottery and silver). Throughout there are examples of the paintings by outstanding local marine artists such as John Ward and Henry Redmore.

Small French Paintings

2009-09-14T23:53:00.000-07:00

In 1969 Ailsa Mellon Bruce bequeathed to the National Gallery of Art her extensive collection of French impressionist and postimpressionist paintings. She considered their small size suitable for modestly scaled modern interiors, such as her apartment in Manhattan. When the East Building opened in 1978, a series of small galleries was devoted to exhibitions from her collection. Her brother, Paul Mellon (1907–1999), one of the Gallery's most generous benefactors, admired these "small galleries that enhance the paintings' intimacy and their human appeal" (Reflections in a Silver Spoon: A Memoir, by Paul Mellon, John Baskett (Contributor), 1992). Since the original Bruce gift, Mr. and Mrs. Mellon and other donors have added many French paintings of modest scale but high quality, a selection of which is normally on view at the Gallery.

Virtue and Beauty

2009-09-07T06:51:00.000-07:00

In a visual culture such as ours, it is hard to imagine a world nearly devoid of images of living people. But that was the case in Europe before the fifteenth century when artists devoted themselves almost exclusively to representing saints, biblical figures, and religious scenes. Secular portraiture was limited mainly to likenesses of rulers or images of donors tucked into the corners of altarpieces and other paintings of sacred themes.

In fifteenth-century Florence, portraiture expanded to encompass members of the merchant class, who appear in scores of panel paintings, on medals, and as marble busts. Almost from the outset, this development included women as well as men. Virtue and Beauty focuses on the flowering of female portraiture in Florence from c. 1440 to c. 1540; it also presents several male portraits, Northern European or courtly analogues, and works that relate specifically to Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci, one of only three female portraits painted by the master. The works of art on view illustrate the broad shift that occurred in this period from the profile portrait to the three-quarter or frontal view of the sitter. Over time the portraits of women also became larger in scale, more elaborate, and more communicative with the viewer.

The Paintings of HMS Tribune - 1797

2009-08-31T00:16:00.000-07:00

Tribune Head, Herring Cove

This Engraving shows the frigate La Tribune being captured by the British frigate Unicorn in a celebrated battle in1796. A year later the British would lose their newly captured frigate in a horrific shipwreck off Halifax.

Geoff Hunt Paintings

2009-08-23T23:29:00.000-07:00

Fine Marine Paintings

Charles Reiffel

2009-08-17T03:29:00.000-07:00

Charles Reiffel had some notoriety painting seascapes like this one in his early years, as a lithographer for a concern in Buffalo, New York whilst living in the artist colony of Silvermine, Connecticut. In 1921, he abandoned lithography for easel painting; but the effect of the Eastern marine painters, notably Winslow Homer, seemed to influence Reiffel throughout his life.

Ferens Art Gallery

2009-08-10T02:05:00.000-07:00

Opened in 1927, the award winning Ferens Art Gallery combines internationally renowned permanent collections with a thriving programme of temporary exhibitions. They also run a children's gallery as part of a lively education and events programme that includes tours, talks and art workshops.

The gallery's first-class permanent collection of paintings and sculpture spans the medieval period to the present day. These include European Old Masters, particularly Dutch and Flemish, portraiture, marine paintings, modern and contemporary British art, including video. Highlights include masterpieces by Frans Hals, Antonio Canaletto, Stanley Spencer, David Hockney, Helen Chadwick and Gillian Wearing.

Johannes Vermeer 1632-1675

2009-08-04T05:19:00.000-07:00

Johannes Vermeer is among the most prominent painters of the Delft school in the second half of the seventeenth century. Only thirty-six paintings are today accepted as his work, mainly interior scenes like this one. This painting is known as The love letter, which immediately indicates that there is more to be seen here than one might think at first glance. The key to the interpretation lies in the combination of two motifs: a woman with a letter in her hand and a painting depicting a ship at sea. In Vermeer's paintings, there is often a suggestion the viewer interrupts the main characters during some activity or other, in this case the handing over of a letter. The scene is a kind of snapshot in time – the lady is looking at her servant girl expectantly, perhaps wondering what is in the letter. Possibly the answer lies in the marine painting in the background, for in the seventeenth-century language of imagery the sea often stood for love, and ships for lovers, who come and go. The calm waters we see in this painting, and the maid's gentle smile, seem designed to reassure the viewer that the course of this lady's love will be smooth.

Portsdown Hill, 1778 by Dominic Serres

2009-07-27T00:40:00.000-07:00

This spectacular scene captures the incredible views from nearby Portsdown Hill. Dominic Serres (also known as 'Dominic Serres the Elder'), was a French born painter, born between 1719 and 1722. He was strongly associated with the 'English School of Painting' and particular maritime styles. He was one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Serres was born in Auch, Gascony. He became a ships captain, and around the 1740s, whilst sailing to Cuba he was taken prisoner by the British Navy. He settled in London in 1758 where he may have trained as an artist under fellow maritime painter Charles Brooking. He died in 1793.

Nicosia - 1894

2009-07-20T03:04:00.000-07:00

Sable Island

This painting shows a portrait of the barque Nicosia. The artist chose an imaginary dramatic storm setting for his painting made in 1881 long before the vessel actually met her fate on the sands of Sable Island.

United States Maritime Expansion across the Pacific during the 19th Century

2009-07-15T22:01:00.000-07:00

The westward expansion of the United States during the 19th century was not limited to North America, but rather included an ongoing push to establish a stronger U.S. presence in and across the Pacific Ocean. This maritime expansion, driven mostly by commerce, had important implications for U.S. foreign policy.

The Clipper Ship "Flying Cloud" off the English coast. Painting by James E. Buttersworth. (1859-60)

The appeal of profits to be earned from the China trade served as the initial impetus to motivate U.S. citizens and officials to enter into the Pacific region. China was the source of some of the world’s most sought after commodities—tea, porcelain, and silk—and Western merchants had sought access to this highly lucrative trade since at least the 17th century. Following U.S. independence, U.S.-based merchants continued to seek opportunity in China. In February 1784 the Empress of China became the first ship to sail from the United States to China, and in its wake came a steady flow of merchants in search of wealth. During the first decades of the 19th century, U.S. merchants amassed sizable fortunes that they subsequently invested in the development of their homeland. As this trade grew, U.S. traders built a small outpost in China and their interactions with Chinese subjects became more complex and occasionally contentious. The U.S. Government realized that it had to establish formal diplomatic ties in order to protect the interests of its citizens. In the wake of war between Britain and China, and the subsequent opening of diplomatic relations between those two countries, the United States moved to negotiate its own treaty with the Chinese Government. The resulting agreement, the Treaty of Wangxia, was ratified in 1844, and soon thereafter U.S. ministers and consuls took up residence in China’s capital and port cities.

Guildhall Art Gallery - current exhibitions

2009-07-07T05:38:00.000-07:00

Paintings by Trevor Chamberlain(11 May – 26 July 2009)

Guildhall Art Gallery is pleased to be showing new and recent work by Trevor Chamberlain, who first exhibited here in 1970 in the annual Lord Mayor’s Art Award (in which he was a prize winner in 1976). Concentrating mostly on marine subjects, town scenes and landscapes painted en plain air , in both his oils and his watercolours Trevor Chamberlain seeks ‘to create an impression of nature and the spirit and atmosphere of a particular place, rather than a precise representation’. This exhibition of more than a hundred evocative and light-filled oil paintings and watercolours includes London subjects alongside views from as far afield as Armenia, India and Iran. Some works are available for purchase.

Born in Hertford in 1933, Trevor Chamberlain began painting at the age of 7. At 12 he enrolled in painting classes under Alfred Wright at the Ware Institute, but apart from this he had no formal art training. He worked as an architectural draughtsman until 1964, since when he has worked full time as a professional artist. He made his first painting trip abroad to Venice in 1970 and has since painted in every continent except Australia. Chamberlain has exhibited widely in London (including at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions and the Royal Watercolour Society) as well as elsewhere in the UK and overseas, and his works are held by numerous public and private collections. He is a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the Royal Society of Marine Artists and the Wapping Group of Artists, of which he has been President, and he is also a Past President of the Chelsea Art Society. He has also published two books on oil painting – Oil Painting Pure and Simple (1987) and Oils (1993) – and one on watercolour – Trevor Chamberlain A Personal View (1999), while sixty years of painting were celebrated in 2006 with the publication of England and Beyond.

'A Breezy Corner' - 1911

2009-06-29T23:20:00.000-07:00

The late 18th and 19th centuries saw the development of British marine painting. J.M.W. Turner’s seascapes and experiments with watercolour techniques did much to raise the status of the genre and medium, once considered a poor relation to oils. Indeed, watercolour has an important place in the history of maritime art.

Frederic James Aldridge was one of the best English maritime painters working in watercolour and carried the 19th century tradition into the 20th century. He was based in the village of Findon, near Worthing in Sussex.

Aldridge generally painted Channel scenes and Venetian seascapes to the standard format of calm or storm. This atmospheric picture is typical of his mature work, with its rather loose drawing and predominately brown colouring. Aldridge was also an art dealer and attended Cowes Regatta for 50 consecutive years.

David Crick

2009-06-22T01:47:00.000-07:00

David Crick is a self taught artist living in Compton, near Guildford.

He exhibits marine and landscape paintings at Guildford and Molesey Art Societies, being Vice President of the latter, and also in various galleries in England and overseas.

A lay member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists, he has exhibited in the Annual Exhibition in the past and teaches and demonstrates traditional watercolour techniques to art groups.

123 - 'Boats off the Coast, Yarmouth'

2009-06-17T00:27:00.000-07:00

He was the oldest son of John Sell Cotman, a painter of the Norwich school who was famous for his watercolours and his architectural engravings. Miles Edmund Cotman was primarily a marine painter with a style which can be described weaker of that of his father but skilful, pleasing and impressive. In 1834 he started teaching painting in Norwich and frequently changed places with his brother John Joseph who was also a painter.

His work, when it represents purely his own thought and execution, though good in drawing and design, does luck freedom and is too prim and precise. In Boats Off the Coast, Yarmouth, one can not help being impressed by the great force that the two boats convey, while above them a sensational light blue sky in contrast with the misty sea, creates an atmospheric result.

John Sell Cotman

2009-06-10T23:39:00.000-07:00

The collection of watercolours by John Sell Cotman is outstanding. Cotman’s oeuvre divides into distinguishable periods, all of which are well represented in the collection. These comprise his early Norwich and Greta period work (several with related sketches), which are regarded as some of the finest in the history of watercolour painting (these include the famous Greta Bridge with which he is usually identified); a series of magical brown wash watercolours from his Normandy visits; numerous of his late so-called ‘paste’ medium watercolours in his blue and yellow phase, and a series of velvet brown monochrome watercolours painted on a final visit to Norfolk just before his death. He painted relatively few oils, which are rarely seen outside Norwich. Those in the museum show the complete range, from early family portraits to his final, unfinished painting. The provenances of the majority can be traced back to the artist’s sale or his family. These collections, together with sketches, drawing copies, etchings, personalia, etc, provide a complete picture of the artist and his working and teaching methods.

‘Sea Piece’ by Jan Porcellis

2009-05-28T04:26:00.000-07:00

‘Sea Piece’ byJan Porcellis (1584-1632)

Oil on panel

Jan Porcellis specialised in marine paintings. He worked in the cities of Rotterdam, Middelbourg and London. This painting had originally been attributed to the artist Jan Claes Rietschoof, hence the text on the painting’s frame. Presented by Miss Micklethwaite in 1932

Shipwreck Galleries

2009-05-22T05:14:00.000-07:00

The Maritime Museum in Cliff Street, Fremantle, has been renamed the Western Australian Maritime Museum Shipwreck Galleries.

The Shipwreck Galleries are recognised as the foremost maritime archaeology museum in the southern hemisphere.

The displays in the restored convict-built Commissariat building feature early exploration and shipwrecks along the treacherous coastline as early as the 17th Century, including original timbers from the Dutch VOC ship the Batavia, wrecked in 1629.

The Shipwreck Galleries will continue to play an important role in researching and conserving Western Australia’s maritime heritage as well as being part of the complex of attractions for visitors to the Fremantle waterfront precinct.

Biscayne National Park Gallery Features the Art of Carey Chen

2009-05-13T00:18:00.000-07:00

Renowned marine artist Carey Chen will be the next featured artist at Biscayne National Park’s Dante Fascell Visitor Center Gallery.Chen’s near-photographic paintings portray a realism few artists can match. Chen, though, is quick to point out that a painting can capture much more than a photo ever could. The signature piece for the Biscayne National Park show is a perfect example. The bottom half of the painting is a diverse scene featuring animals and plants from three of the park’s ecosystems: the mangrove shoreline, Biscayne Bay and the coral reefs. Above the waterline, a great white heron flies past the Boca Chita lighthouse, tying in the remaining significant parts of the park. Paradise for Marine Life will feature this original painting, and over 20 additional original paintings and prints.

A native of Los Angeles, Chen was raised in Jamaica where he took an early interest in fishing, boating and marine life. When his family moved to Miami in the mid 1970s, he pursued varied interests like motorcycle and auto racing while running the family business, a chain of Miami video stores. Throughout these successful ventures, he knew his heart remained with the ocean, and he returned to fishing and boating, etching into his memory many spectacular encounters with billfish and other marine life. Eventually he decided to try and capture some of his memories by sketching and later painting them. After years of honing his skills as an artist, he has now been the featured artist for over 200 of the world’s most prestigious fishing tournaments. He is always quick to share his success by working with various conservation groups and other charities.

Public Art in Maine

2009-05-04T23:38:00.000-07:00

Maine’s Public Art program shall promote civic stewardship, cultural vibrancy, creativity, aesthetic excellence, and appreciation-of-place through the enhancement of public spaces using the arts. The program will champion federal, state, and private support, and encourage relationships that advance the quality of physical environments in Maine.

Public art refers to artwork that has been planned and executed with the specific intention of being exhibited in the public environment. The implication of this is that it will accessible to all members of society. Public artwork possesses characteristics that make it distinct from other artistic disciplines. Public art has particular relevance related to site specificity, physical and historic context, community involvement, and civic collaboration.

The term public art can also include private art which is exhibited in a public space or publicly accessible buildings. Civic statuary such as monuments and memorials are perhaps the most recognized forms of public art. Music in the park, parades, street theatre, public poetry, and other cultural events in shared spaces also can qualify as Public Art. The broad understanding for Public Art is that it is openly accessible and impacts public space.

Maine’s Percent for Art program sponsors public art for state buildings. The artwork commissioned through this program has taken many forms. Traditional representative sculpture, abstract wall-mounted works, projects that integrate artwork throughout the building in a holistic manner, mobiles, earthwork and electronic art are just a few of the categories that have been commissioned. An archive of the collection can be viewed through the Percent for Art Directory, current calls to artists can be accessed through the Opportunities Directory. The Maine Arts Commission also manages the Arts in the Capitol program, which brings exhibits from some of Maine’s finest galleries to the State Capitol. The Maine Arts Commission is dedicated to providing leadership, being an information resource, and developing process models to successfully place art in the public sphere.

'HMS Sirius' Print

2009-04-29T23:53:00.000-07:00

John Allcot was one of Australia's leading Maritime artists. His paintings of tall ships have won him worldwide acclaim.

SIRIUS: The guard ship to the first fleet. Regarded as second only to Cook's Endeavour, in the historical records of the Australian Nation. In this painting, Allcot depicts her with an increased sail area in readiness for the long arduous voyage around the globe.

Dangers of the Whale Fishery

2009-04-21T22:52:00.001-07:00

"Dangers of the Whale Fishery". An early representation of a whale boat being upended by the prey. This theme would be common in much 19th Century marine art . In: "An account of the Arctic regions with a history and description of the northern whale-fishery", by W. Scoresby. 1820. P. 588, Vol. II.

Maritime Paintings Of Early Australia 1788-1900

2009-04-16T05:49:00.001-07:00

Australia presented its early artists with problems and challenges that called for a different approach. As this book reveals, some of the finest works by Australian impressionist painters took as their subjects ships and the sea.

Keeping an Eye on the Monitor

2009-04-07T01:53:00.000-07:00

A summer expedition to the USS Monitor gave the public an up-close and personal with researchers studying the historic shipwreck, 240 feet below the surface. NOAA’s staff produced a 16-minute video program that describes the Monitor, sanctuary, and the technology that was used on the expedition. More than 7,000 viewers tuned in to the Intranet and local PBS stations. Archived video from the expedition serves as an excellent educational tool for those who want to peak into a part of our maritime history. Scientists also produced photomosaics of the site that will serve as a tool to track the wreck’s deterioration over time. The mission was coordinated through the National Marine Sanctuary Program, University of Rhode Island and Institute for Exploration.

Of Land and Sea: Painting the Bold Coast exhibit at Bayview Gallery, Camden

2009-03-31T04:47:00.000-07:00

Bayview Gallery presents Of Land and Sea: Painting the Bold Coast - an exhibit of marine paintings in our Camden gallery, featuring the works of William R. Beebe, Vern Broe, Robert Spring and other gallery artists.

Marine artist William Beebe has been painting the coast for over 16 years, and he now dedicates himself to rendering the historical wooden schooners of the 19th and 20th centuries. An admirer of Impressionist Claude Monet and Frank W. Benson for their brushwork, palette and interplay of light, Beebe creatively uses layers of various colors to achieve depth in his images. A black hull may have Naples Yellow, Cobalt Blue, or Umber added to create light and dark or warm and cold areas. His crisp lines and detailed renderings bring vitality to his maritime work along with a traditional realism honoring the excitement and joy of the nautical journey. His oils capture movement and place, celebrating the timeless grandeur of these majestic sailing vessels.

Vern Broe has painted the coast from several New England locations - Gloucester, Marblehead, and of course Maine. Versatile marine painter and former draftsman, Broe explores the contrasting qualities of light and dark and their various tones in his paintings. Water takes on an illusionary sense due to his skillful, delicate use of multiple washes of acrylic paint. Well-studied, keen lines define his vessels, giving them a subdued character against a receding, dream-like backdrop. He pays homage to the sailing and working crafts that grace the coastline.

Maine resident Robert Spring is well versed in portraying images in both oil and watercolors. Influenced by J.M.W. Turner, his oils are luminous and impressive, exhibiting an inventive palette that plays up the frequently subtle nature of his subject matter. Texture and color create a rhythmic energy, bringing new life to his seascapes. A sculptor as well, Robert's use of thick impasto suggests a tangible quality with his oils, texture and movement working in unison. His watercolors evoke a feeling of mystery, leaving the viewer to draw his own conclusions as to the outcome of the painting. A heightened sense of drama with no resolution contrasts with a momentary stillness and peace.

Maritime Museum of Tasmania Launches New Layout and Exhibitions

2009-03-23T02:36:00.000-07:00

Maritime Museum of Tasmania Launches Exciting New Layout and Exhibitions

The Maritime Museum of Tasmania launched its new exhibits and layout, that not only allow visitors to explore more of the collection but enables the Museum to host travelling exhibitions.

It is the first time in nearly ten years that the Museum has undergone major display changes and the result is an all round enhanced visitor experience.

President of the Maritime Museum of Tasmania, Colin Denny, said it's tremendous to see more of the collection on display.

"The new layout and renovations maximises the display space for our own collection while maintaining the integrity of the Museum," Mr Denny said.

"However, in the process we also wanted to create a separate gallery to bring national travelling exhibitions to the State for the first time," he said.

The changed layout features some significant new displays that Curator, Rona Hollingsworth, said trace the State's maritime history.

"This exhibition has a number of important new acquisitions, including the three metre long Tasmanian Aboriginal bark canoe built by members of the local aboriginal community," Ms Hollingsworth said.

"The canoe is the first exhibit visitors see when they enter the museum. It sets the scene for an interpretation of the State's maritime history," she said.

Other features of the new exhibition include a shipwreck display based around the wreckage of the 1847 barque Petrel which was uncovered on Hope Beach, South Arm, in 2006.

Also, the wheelhouse from the 1889 trans-Derwent ferry steamer Silver Crown has been restored by volunteers and installed to provide a unique interactive opportunity for visitors.

The Wooden Boat Photographic Exhibition in the new temporary gallery highlights Tasmania's wooden boat heritage and was drawn from the Museum's own extensive photographic collection.

The Director of the Australian National Maritime Museum Mary-Louise Williams launched the new layout.

DUTCH AND FLEMISH PAINTING OF THE 16TH-17TH CENTURIES

2009-03-17T02:33:00.000-07:00

Religious and political turmoil in the 1500s split the Low Countries into two nations with differing social values and artistic tastes. Flanders remained Catholic and royalist; Flemish artists such as Rubens and Van Dyck glorified the Church and monarchy with grandiose themes, lively compositions, and vivid colors. The United Netherlands, however, became a republic populated mainly by Calvinists. Dutch Protestants like Rembrandt conveyed morals and religious messages through concealed symbolism in landscapes, still lifes, and scenes of daily life.

In 1568, the northernmost provinces of the Low Countries broke away from Spanish control, eventually to become the Dutch Republic, a center of Protestantism. In the southern provinces, which remained under the rule of Spanish regents, the Catholic church and the court continued to be the most important patrons of the arts. Perhaps most characteristic of late sixteenth-century Flemish court art is the dignified, formal portraiture of Antonis Mor.

Mor's reputation was eclipsed in the seventeenth century by that of Anthony van Dyck, who eventually became court painter to Charles I of England. The most sought-after Flemish painter of the seventeenth century was Van Dyck's teacher, the scholar, linguist, and diplomat Peter Paul Rubens, who was besieged with commissions from the nobility and religious orders of Europe for portraits, altarpieces, mythological scenes, and allegories. His stirring works were admired for qualities ranging from theatricality to emotional tenderness.

The emergence of the Dutch school of painting in the early seventeenth century is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the visual arts. The Dutch Republic, a small country that had only become a political entity in 1579 and was still suffering from the effects of a long and arduous war with Spain, would hardly seem to have had the resources to nourish and sustain its artistic traditions. Nonetheless, in every respect, the Dutch seem to have drawn strength from adversity; they profited in terms of trade, political awareness, religious tolerance, wealth, and above all, self-esteem. They were proud of their achievements and were determined to provide for themselves a broad and lasting foundation that would define their unique social and cultural heritage.

The political and religious attitudes of the period are not readily apparent in the work of Dutch artists. The still lifes, portraits, landscapes, seascapes, and genre scenes that characterize this school of painting are surprisingly lacking in information on the major events of the day. Nevertheless, the philosophical bases from which artists worked are clearly the same as those governing decisions in contemporary political, military, and religious activities. This ideology was essentially threefold: that God's work is evident in the world itself; that, although things in this world are mortal and transitory, no facet of God's creation is too insubstantial to be noticed, valued, or represented; and that the Dutch, like the ancient Israelites, were a chosen people, favored and blessed by God's protection.

Underlying the essential realism of Dutch art, thus, is an allegorical view of nature that provided a means for conveying various messages to contemporary viewers. The Dutch, with their ingrained Calvinist beliefs, were a moralizing people. While they thoroughly enjoyed the sensual pleasures of life, they were aware of the consequences of wrong behavior. Paintings, even those representing everyday objects and events, often provide reminders about the brevity of life and the need for moderation and temperance in one's conduct. Subjects drawn from the Bible, mythology, and ancient history, likewise, were often chosen for their moralizing messages or for establishing parallels between the Dutch experience and great historical, literary, and political events of the past.

AMERICAN PAINTING

2009-03-11T00:09:00.000-07:00

Much art of the American colonial period consisted of portraits, as settlers sought to establish their identities in a new world. After the new nation achieved its independence, landscapes and scenes of native flora, fauna, and folk customs began to express its unique qualities and illustrate its untapped resources.

Portraiture formed the mainstay of subject matter in colonial and federal American art, as immigrants to the New World attempted to bring a semblance of Old World civilization to their wild or, at best, provincial surroundings. When Benjamin West arrived in Rome in 1760, he was the first American artist to study in Europe. Upon seeing the Vatican's famous classical statue, the Apollo Belvedere, West exclaimed, "My God! How like it is to a young Mohawk warrior!" His astute comparison between a "noble savage" and the "glory that was Greece" won hearty applause from the connoisseurs. West soon emerged as Europe's foremost history painter, dropping the allegorical trappings from classical antiquity that had been the norm and basing his work on historical research.

John Singleton Copley followed West's example in depicting past and present occurrences with believable accessories and settings. Gilbert Stuart, who studied with West in London, revitalized the concept of "Grand Manner" portraiture; his Skater is invigorated with a sense of immediacy and activity.

When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, artists sought to create a distinctive environment for the ideals of liberty. The eighteenth century's classicizing concepts evolved seamlessly into the nineteenth century's neoclassical style of idealized anatomy, symmetrical composition, and pure colors. The large Peale family, several members of which were artists, bridges this transition toward a more scientific naturalism.

Romanticism, partly engendered by reactions to the American and French revolutions, sought to release the emotions in dynamic design, dramatic spotlighting, and virtuoso displays of palpable paint textures. Such emotional elements mark the later paintings of Benjamin West. Two of West's later pupils, Thomas Sully and John Trumbull, helped to introduce romanticism to the United States.

When the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 instantly doubled the nation's area, artists such as John James Audubon and George Catlin began to investigate the native people, flora, and fauna. These academically educated artists were outnumbered by unschooled artist-craftsmen, such as Edward Hicks, who painted for their own pleasure or on commission from rural patrons. After the War of 1812, landscape painting came to prominence, symbolizing America's unique natural resources and vast territory. And, with the introduction of photography to the United States in 1839, the cameraman soon usurped much of the clientele of the portrait painter.

As nineteenth-century Americans sought an appropriate vehicle to express their national zeal, artists turned to images of the land. Thomas Cole, the leader of the Hudson River School, portrayed a once-pristine environment threatened by the onslaught of civilization. Spurred on by his romantic idealism, some of Cole's followers created pastoral, idyllic views, while others carefully painted what they saw. During the 1850s, an intimate approach to landscape evolved in New England. The twilight marine paintings of Fitz Hugh Lane are paradigms of this elegiac style, which some scholars have termed "luminism." Artists seeking nature's more awesome aspects often traveled far afield: Frederic Church journeyed from the Arctic to below the equator, while other peripatetic painters explored the far western United States, giving tangible expression to America's dream of Manifest Destiny.

Lighthearted genre paintings depicting everyday life also gained popularity around mid-century. However, the mood of the nation quickly darkened following the Civil War. Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer expressed a starkly realistic world view. Their mature art demonstrates an uncompromising commitment to truth.

As Americans traveled abroad in increasing numbers toward the century's end, a newfound cosmopolitanism emerged. Avant-garde movements such as impressionism were embraced by American painters who found the style's look, if not its underlying theory, consistent with their artistic aims. Familiarity with traditional European art also may have inspired a renewed interest in still-life painting and aristocratic portraiture; the popularity of such paeans to wealth and acquisition reflects the prevailing spirit of materialism.

Optimistic immigrants flocked to America, only to confront the sobering reality of urban blight and poverty. Robert Henri, an influential artist and teacher, urged his followers to address these pressing issues. Their ostensibly crude subject matter offended critics, who dubbed the New York group the Ash Can School.

As violence, anxiety, and alienation became dominant themes in the twentieth century, artists expressed dissatisfaction with the dehumanizing aspects of modern life. Whether phrased in the representational idiom of George Bellows and Edward Hopper, or in the language of pure abstraction, these disturbing works seem a far cry from the idyllic aspirations of early nineteenth-century Americans, who—for a brief time—truly believed their country held the promise of paradise.

Preserving the Maritime Past

2009-03-04T20:53:00.000-08:00

One of the Evergreen Maritime Museum's goals is to teach visitors about the importance of Taiwan's nautical history and how it relates to that of mainland China and the rest of the world.

In some of the most moving scenes of Cape No.7, the domestically made movie that dominated local box offices in 2008, a Japanese man departs aboard an ocean liner, never to see his Taiwanese girlfriend again. Set at the end of World War II, the scenes offer a reminder of an era when ships provided Taiwan's main connection to the rest of the world. The lyrics of many of the popular songs of the time also reflect the emotion of this scene from the movie, expressing the sentiments of women lingering at piers, longing to see husbands or boyfriends who have yet to return from a voyage at sea.

Visitors to the Evergreen Maritime Museum (EMM) in Taipei are able to recapture some of this rich nautical history as they learn about Taiwan's--and the world's--long, intimate connection with the sea. Through its displays and exhibitions, the museum illustrates how Taiwan's history is intertwined with the ocean and educates visitors about the important role that today's shipping industry plays in Taiwan's export-oriented economy.

Located in downtown Taipei, the museum is housed in the building that served as the former headquarters of the Kuomintang--the present ruling party. The building was purchased by the Evergreen Maritime Museum Cultural and Educational Foundation in 2006. Surrounded as it is by important offices of the central government and located in Taiwan's administrative center, the museum offers visitors a respite from the area's prevailing ambience of political solemnity.

The exterior of the museum is unremarkable and as there is no clear sign indicating its presence, some visitors are even forced to ask traffic police for directions. However, once they venture inside, visitors are enveloped in an atmosphere more of the sea than of the land, as the museum's interior is decorated with many of the features found on ships. There are round portholes for windows, three levels of white painted "decks," buoys and masts festooned with the flags of seafaring nations from around the world.

With a floor area of 9,000 square meters, the EMM is the largest maritime museum in Taiwan. Its primary holdings consist of marine artifacts, models and maps, most of which were collected by Chang Yung-fa, the chairman and founder of the Evergreen Group, Taiwan's largest transportation conglomerate. Chang worked his way up through the ranks of local shipping companies to become a captain before going on to found Evergreen in 1968. In order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Evergreen Group, the museum opened its doors in 2008, with Chang donating more than 4,000 items to its collections.

Maritime History

2009-02-23T03:16:00.000-08:00

The maritime history of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine encompasses much of New England's history. As the Ice Age glaciers began retreating from eastern Massachusetts around 16,000 year ago, portions of Stellwagen Bank and Jeffreys Ledge were dry and home to grasses, forests, and Pleistocene animals. It is likely that between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago, Paleoindians inhabited these areas and exploited the rich marine resources found along the shore. Rising sea levels slowly inundated Massachusett's Bay, pushing the native populations to settlements along the current shoreline. For thousands of years Native Americans utilized the vast fish and shellfish resources of Massachusetts Bay developing rich cultures that were in harmony with the marine environment.

During the thousands of years of human occupation of the Massachusetts' coastline, waterborne transportation was an essential part of the region's communication network. Vessels of many shapes and sizes have carried a variety of cargos and multitudes of persons to and from Massachusetts ports. Beginning with the native cultures and continued by the earliest colonists who cut settlements from the thick forests and fished along the shore, New Englanders have derived tremendous economic benefit from their close association with the sea. New Englanders have traveled the breadth of the globe in sailing ships, trading with far flung cultures or harvesting the bounty of the sea. At the beginning and end of each voyage, many of these intrepid mariners crossed through the waters that are now recognized as the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

Modern and Contemporary art

2009-02-16T21:10:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles real estate developer Edward R. Broida gave the Gallery 62 modern and contemporary paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by 23 important artists with in-depth groups by Vija Celmins (b. 1938), including Eraser (1967), an early trompe l’oeil sculpture, and the Gallery’s first paintings by her—Tulip Car #1 (1966), Rhinoceros (1965), and untitled (Comet) (1988), as well as major drawings from 1967 and 1975; and by Philip Guston (1913-1980), including the paintings Rug (1976), a powerful and haunting image that is executed in his late realist style, and Midnight Pass Road (1975), and an extraordinary group of eight drawings from Guston’s crucial decades 1952-1975.

Broida’s gift also includes 64 Steel Square (1967) by Carl Andre (b. 1935), the Gallery’s first significant floor piece from the artist’s classic early period; Standing Mitt with Ball, Half-Scale, 6 Feet (1974) by Claes Oldenburg (b.1929), a sculpture last seen at the Gallery in the artist’s 1995 retrospective; Boober (1965) by Mark di Suvero (b.1933), an early piece in welded steel; Untitled (Quarter-Round Mesh) (1966), an important minimalist work by Robert Morris (b.1931); Head within Head (1978) by Susan Rothenberg (b. 1945), which postdates the Gallery’s Butterfly, a more familiar painting from this artist’s series of horse images; Them and Us (1969), a large early painting by Neil Jenney (b.1945); and the Gallery’s first works by Wolfgang Laib (b.1950); as well as important abstract expressionist drawings by Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) and Franz Kline (1910-1962).

Other artists represented in the Broida gift include Pierre Alechinsky (b.1927), Richard Artschwager (b.1923), Jake Berthot (b.1939), Jonathan Borofsky (b.1942), Dorothy Dehner (1901-1994), Jacob El Hanani (b.1947), Klaus Fussmann (b.1938), Franz Kline (1910-1962), David Nash (b.1945), Joel Shapiro (b.1941), and Christopher Mallory Wilmarth (1943-1987).

The National Gallery of Art will present a special exhibition of works from the Broida collection, dates to be announced.

The spectacular Color Panels for a Large Wall (1978), which went on view in the National Gallery of Art’s East Building in 2003 as a loan from the artist Ellsworth Kelly (b.1923) was purchased by the Gallery with funds from The Glenstone Foundation, founded by Mitchell P. Rales, a Washington-based financier. The painting consists of 18 rectangular monochrome canvases—each measuring 48 x 68 ½ inches (191.9 x 174 cm)—with two to three variations on each of the six primary and secondary hues, and two panels in black.

A Recent History of Art in Western Massachusetts: Flooded River for Lane Faison (Mass MoCA #12) (2005) by Stephen Hannock (b.1951), one America’s foremost contemporary landscape painters, was made possible with funds from Louis M. Bacon. The large mixed media collage depicts a view westward into the setting sun of the Hoosic River Valley between North Adams and Williamstown. Passages of text visible throughout the scene document the cultural life of northwestern Massachusetts and the artists, art historians, and other art world figures who have lived and worked there over the years, including the artist himself.

New Maritime Museum

2009-02-09T03:59:00.000-08:00

The new Western Australian Maritime Museum on Victoria Quay, Fremantle was opened to the public on Sunday, December 1 by the Premier of Western Australia, Hon Dr Geoff Gallop. The development of the new Western Australian Maritime Museum is a Western Australian State Government initiative.

The building looks out towards the western horizon, another symbol of the Museum’s intention to look outwards to Western Australia’s contemporary role in the Indian Ocean region. The Museum was chosen because of its great historical and cultural significance and its position in the working port, making it the ideal place to tell the stories of Western Australia’s early explorers, trade routes, naval defence, migration and the cultural richness that has resulted.

Cash bid to build on marine heritage

2009-02-02T22:25:00.000-08:00

Inverclyde Council is seeking a £60,000 cash injection that would be invested into developing Inverclyde’s marine heritage.

Should the Heritage Lottery Fund bid be successful, the Council’s Regeneration Committee has agreed to top up the funding with a £6,600 boost.

Greenock’s McLean Museum is already home to an excellent maritime collection but the culture team wants to purchase more marine art works that are relevant to Inverclyde and the lower Clyde.

The £66,600 funding would also allow comprehensive staff training, research and public activities to be taken forward on the area’s maritime legacy.

The museum’s current collection includes over 70 model boats, ships and other craft including several full models built by Inverclyde shipbuilders. There are also items such as nautical tools and marine engine models.

It also has works from maritime artists including Robert Salmon, William Clark, John Fleming, Patrick Downie in addition to a collection of over 5,000 maritime photographs.

Councillor Jim Clocherty, Regeneration Convener, said: “While we progress the regeneration of Inverclyde, it is essential that we continue to celebrate the area’s maritime legacy. The McLean Museum is Inverclyde’s heritage focal point and already boasts a fantastic collection of marine works, but we want to build on this.

“The funding we are seeking would also allow us to take forward a range of public events and even web-based activities to take Inverclyde’s maritime heritage to a wider audience.”

The Council expects to know the outcome of the bid in May

Sam Davidson author of ‘Marine Art and the Clyde’ has written to the Council to express his support for the funding bid to expand on the current collection which he describes as “excellent”.

Welcome to the Historic City of Marine on St. Croix!

2009-01-27T02:17:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the official website for the City of Marine on St. Croix. Our city is located along the scenic St. Croix River, 12 miles north of Stillwater and 15 miles south of Taylors Falls.

The Village Hall, the community library, the Lutheran Church on the hill, the Stone House Museum, the Mill Site, the Fire Hall (built entirely by volunteer labor) are all sources of pride to the 700 or so residents of Marine.

Marine on St. Croix, founded as Marine Mills in 1839, was the site of the first commercial saw mill along the St. Croix River. The Mill Site is located behind and to the south of the Village Hall and has been declared a national historical site.

The ferry between Marine and the Wisconsin shore began operating in 1856 and continued until 1954. In 1870, the present General Store was built and has served the community ever since.

Crafts and articles from the daily life of early settlers are on display at the Stone House Museum which is staffed by members of the Marine Civic Club. The Stone House was built in 1872 and is an example of the stone architecture used by the early Swedish pioneers and was originally the town meeting house.

In 1888, the Village Hall was built. It continues to serve as the seat for community government and is the oldest village hall in the state still being used for governmental purposes. It is currently used for City Council and Planning Commission meetings, and houses the community library, which is also a branch of the Washington County Library system.

Once a busy river town with a population of 650 during the 1880's, Marine is now a community whose residents treasure the atmosphere of a friendly small town and county life with the advantages of being near a metropolitan area. In 1964, a group of residents established the Restoration Society to preserve the unique quality of this historical riverside town as it enjoys new growth and the advantages of both city and country living.

Catie Bursch – Marine Educator and Illustrator

2009-01-19T01:17:00.000-08:00

An Artist in the Service of Science
By Riley Woodford

Catie Bursch belongs to a guild of artists who bring extinct animals to life, make the unseen visible, and put the enormity of the universe on paper.

Bursch is a scientific illustrator and a marine educator with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, working at the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve in Homer. She’s drawn her share of fish, plankton, plants and animals, but she said scientific illustration goes way beyond drawing critters for guide books.

“There are no photos of dinosaurs, but by studying and synthesizing all the information available, illustrators can reflect the findings of science,” she said. “It goes from drawing a virus, which no one can see, to drawing the solar system. You have to create a vision, using scientific facts.”

While art reflects culture, scientific illustration reflects the findings of science, she said. “Scientific papers are one form of communication; this is another form of communication, visual communication.”

“You’re an artist in the service of science, and you have a directive,” she added. “You’re trying to get something across scientifically. If someone is trying to key a fish out, you’re going to draw it differently than if you are showing how beautifully it moves through the water.”

Sometimes that means drawing a completely realistic rendition of a specimen, and sometimes it means taking liberties.

“Right now I’m working on illustrations of salmon, some of these might end up in the reg books, helping anglers to quickly ID between steelhead, coho, and king salmon,” she said. There’s no color, and the emphasis is on other details - the outline, where the spots are, the color of the inside of the mouth. “You take artistic license to communicate more effectively.”

Other times it means following accepted scientific illustrator’s protocol. A fish always faces left and every single fish scale is drawn. The artist shows the rays of the fins, and counts the rays so it’s the correct number.

Photographs are hard to work from, Bursch said, as it’s easy to distort or skew the proportions. “By far it’s best to work from a real specimen. Generally it’s preserved, and often I’ll have it pinned out – I carve the Styrofoam (base) so it lies correctly, then I pin it so the fins spread out. I need the measurements and proportions accurate. It can be time consuming.” That also involves periodic breaks to re-wet the specimen with alcohol or other preservatives.

Bursch began working for the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve in the spring of 2004. While drawing is often a solitary pastime, the bulk of her work at KBRR is in education, helping the public and school groups expand their knowledge of Kachemak Bay and its workings. She teaches classes and organizes Discovery Labs at the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center, where KBRR is housed, and goes into schools and biology classes, and takes students outside as well.

“I use illustration a lot with outreach, and incorporate drawing with many of our classes,” she said. “You can look at something forever, but if you have to draw it, you really get to know it. Asking kids to draw really slows them down, gets them to focus on observational skills.”

Bursch has also worked with Outward Bound Schools and the National Park Service. A few years ago she produced a series of botanical illustrations for Wrangell-St. Elias Park, a series on “What’s blooming this week.” In recent years she’s created a set of colored pencil drawings of marine invertebrates for display on the Alaska Marine Highway ferries. The illustrations have been reproduced and laminated as table-top displays. She also contributed a number of illustrations to a plankton guide that the Kachemak Bay Research Reserve uses in their lab classroom.

Bursch has also commercial fished for almost 25 years. “I went to college for one year in environmental education, and then I moved to Alaska in 1981 and started commercial fishing. I did a lot of different things, and then about five years ago, when my kids didn’t need me at home so much, I decided to finish my degree, and I studied both art and science.”

She took classes at Kenai Peninsula College in Homer, and then finished off in Anchorage at Alaska Pacific University. She earned a self-designed degree, liberal studies with emphasis in scientific illustrations. She’s still commercial fishing, and her family set nets for salmon in Bristol Bay.

An important part of her education came from outside academia, in the company of other artists. “I always drew my whole life, and I was mostly self-taught,” she said. “About eight years ago I heard about this organization, the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators. They have a national annual conference. I’ve been attending those conferences and learning from the people in that group. They’ve also published a big book that’s like my bible for scientific illustration, ‘The Guild Handbook of Scientific Illustration.’”

She’s been drawing a lot of fish lately, focusing on under-rated forage fish, as part of a larger project. “There’s been a lot done on sport fish, but we need to understand the fish these guys eat, one level deeper, the fish the sport fish eat, and that seabirds depend on.”

Bursch said she loves spending time outdoors poking around and then drawing what she finds. She and her husband and two daughters often spend their free time fishing, hiking, or skiing in Homer, Bristol Bay and the Wrangell Mountains.

More on Spending Uncle Sam's Money

2009-01-16T23:37:00.000-08:00

This view of the Senate Chamber was painted by T. Dart Walker in the late 1890s after observing a busy congressional work day. The scene was then engraved for the front cover of the December 23, 1899, issue of Leslie’s Weekly and titled Spending Uncle Sam’s Money: Senators Introducing the Customary Batch of Miscellaneous Bills at the Opening of the Session of Congress. Walker was born in Indiana, studied in Paris, and was known as an illustrator and marine artist. His work appeared in popular magazines of the period, such as Harper’s Weekly, the Graphic, and the Illustrated London News, and included scenes of political life, national events, and everyday activities.

This scene, painted in the late 1890s, depicts the U.S. Senate Chamber as it appeared at the opening of a session of Congress. Senators have just introduced the various bills to be considered during the session, and the large number of papers indicates that a heavy workload lies before them. New York illustrator T. Dart Walker captured the scene from the press gallery located on the north side of the Chamber. Below this gallery, but not illustrated, is the rostrum where the presiding officer of the Senate sits. Until recent years the vice president of the United States, as president of the Senate, presided regularly over Senate debates from this vantage point.

In the center of the painting three Senate staff members sit in front of the presiding officer's desk. Most likely these men are, from left to right, the secretary of the Senate, the legislative clerk, and the reading clerk. Immediately in front, at two smaller tables below the rostrum, sit official reporters and press reporters. Meanwhile, in the background, senators talk with one another in the "well" of the Chamber or at their desks, which are arranged in a semi-circle with Republicans on the left and Democrats on the right.

Two Senate pages appear in the scene: One is seated below the clerks' desk, and another crosses the Senate floor. The position of Senate page was first created in 1829. By the turn of the century the Senate employed at least 17 young boys as pages. Dressed in blue knickers and jackets, the pages spent their days running errands for the senators, announcing impending votes, placing papers and pens on the senators' desks, and delivering messages throughout the city.

The New Maritime Museum

2009-01-07T00:49:00.000-08:00

The building looks out towards the western horizon, another symbol of the Museum’s intention to look outwards to Western Australia’s contemporary role in the Indian Ocean region. The site for the Museum was chosen because of its great historical and cultural significance and its position in the working port, making it the ideal place to tell the stories of Western Australia’s early explorers, trade routes, naval defence, migration and the cultural richness that has resulted.

The New Galleries

As the first Museum of the Indian Ocean, the new Western Australian Maritime Museum looks at the past and our future as a community on the edge of the Indian Ocean. With significant historic objects and boats that highlight Western Australias sporting and adventure heritage, the exhibitions tell the stories of human endeavour that bring to life our maritime past.The exhibitions have been developed by the Western Australian Museum in conjunction with Melbourne design company Cunningham Martyn Design.

The new Museum has six themed galleries:

The Indian Ocean-
Tin Canoe to Australia II
Fremantle and the Swan River
Hooked on Fishing- Cargoes
Naval Defence

Maritime History and Archaeology

2008-12-30T04:30:00.000-08:00

The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory's Maritime Gallery houses the largest museum collection of Southeast Asian historic boats and ethnographic watercraft in Australia and possibly in the world. The Gallery has a permanent display of 21 boats and canoes.Darwin is often regarded as being part of the Southeast Asian region because of its closer proximity to Asian cities such as Singapore and Jakarta, rather than Australian cities such as Sydney, or Melbourne.

The Maritime Gallery clearly reflects this regional bias, indeed the collection policy that has driven the acquisition of this unique collection over the last 25 years, has demanded it. The region, defined as "North Australia (the area to the north of Broome on the west coast and Townsville on the east coast), Southeast Asia (including southern China) and the westernPacific (as far east as the islands of Fiji) has the greatest diversity of boat types from which to choose anywhere in the world.

Individual craft displayed in the Gallery include, an Australian pearling lugger (actually gaff, rather than lug rigged), a Vietnamese refugee boat, a Chinese refugee boat, Indonesian perahu lambo (gunter rigged sloops) and a perahu lete lete (lateen rigged). In addition, there are several smaller planked craft and double outrigger canoes including a fine Balinese jukung.

One of the most outstanding Indonesian boats on display was specifically commissioned by the MAGNT and built in a traditional manner by a boat building community in south-east Sulawesi. Known as a perahu padawakang, this type of historic boat was the kind of vessel that the Makassans sailed the Timor and Arafura seas during the nineteenth century to reach northern Australia in search of trepang, turtle shell and other marine products.

Several examples of watercraft from the western Pacific are also on display. These include a very rare balangut, an inter-island trading canoe from Riwo near Madang in Papua New Guinea, a war canoe from the Solomon Islands and beautiful single outrigger canoe from Fiji. There are also a number of single outrigger canoes.Recognised by many scholars as a vital source for future studies in maritime technology and cultural studies, the maritime historian, archaeologist, anthropologist, school group or enthusiast will not be disappointed. The Maritime History andArchaeology section also undertakes maritime heritage surveys and administers the Historic Shipwrecks Program in the NT for the Australian Government.

Maritime Gallery

2008-12-22T03:49:00.000-08:00

The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory's (MAGNT) Maritime Gallery houses the largest museum collection of Southeast Asian historic boats and ethnographic watercraft in Australia. The Gallery has a permanent display of 21 boats and canoes. Darwin is often regarded as being part of the Southeast Asian region because of its closer proximity to Asian cities such as Singapore and Jakarta, rather than Australian cities such as Sydney, or Melbourne.

The Maritime Gallery clearly reflects this regional bias: indeed the collection policy that has driven the acquisition of this unique collection over the last 25 years, has demanded it. The region, defined as ‘North Australia’ (the area to the north of Broome on the west coast and Townsville on the east coast), Southeast Asia (including southern China) and the western Pacific (as far east as the islands of Fiji) has the greatest diversity of boat types anywhere in the world.

Individual craft displayed in the Gallery include an Australian pearling lugger (actually gaff, rather than lug rigged), a Vietnamese refugee boat, a Chinese refugee boat, Indonesian perahu lambo (gunter rigged sloop) and a perahu lete lete (lateen rigged). In addition, there are several smaller planked craft and double outrigger canoes, including a fine Balinese jukung. One of the most outstanding Indonesian boats on display was specifically commissioned by the MAGNT and built in a traditional manner by a boat building community in south-east Sulawesi. Known as a perahu padewakang, this type of historic boat was the kind of vessel that the monsoon traders (known as the Macassans) sailed the Timor and Arafura seas during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to reach northern Australia in search of trepang, turtle shell and other marine products.

Several examples of watercraft from the western Pacific are also on display. These include a very rare balangut, an inter-island trading canoe from Riwo near Madang in Papua New Guinea, a war canoe from the Solomon Islands, and beautiful single outrigger canoe from Fiji. There are also a number of single outrigger canoes.

Marine Painting

2008-11-28T01:15:00.000-08:00

As early as colonial times, Atlantic ports such as Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Charleston were established hubs of American commerce. It was common for wealthy ship owners, mariners, and merchants to commission pictures of the boats and activities by which they made their living. Following British and Dutch models, many artists specialized in marine paintings.

The first American marine paintings centered on the ports themselves, which were often viewed across the water as if from the deck of a ship. These harbor scenes frequently included ship traffic and illustrated mercantile activities along the wharves, suggesting the prosperity of America's flourishing maritime industry. In ship paintings, a harbor view might indicate the vessel's home port, as in Thomas Chambers' New York Harbor with Pilot Boat "George Washington".

Throughout the nineteenth century, proud ship owners commissioned individual portraits of their commercial vessels and racing yachts. Marine painters became skilled not only at precisely delineating the rigging of sailing ships but also at capturing effects of water and sky. The standard format showed the boat broadside, under full sail or steam, generally with other craft in the distance and perhaps a glimpse of the far shore.

In the mid-nineteenth century, marine painting shifted emphasis from man to nature. No longer interested in illustrations of commerce, artists like John Frederick Kensett and Fitz Henry Lane strove to capture the spiritual qualities of sea and sky. These scenes may include ships and human figures, but the true subject is the mood evoked by the crystalline atmosphere and pervading sense of serenity. Now called luminist works, these paintings indicate a change in the prevailing attitude toward the natural world.

Martin Johnson Heade and Thomas Moran were interested in more naturalistic representations. The unearthly calm of luminist works was replaced by realistic seascapes in which the viewer can almost hear the crashing surf. Winslow Homer added figures to this natural realism and reintroduced the human element to marine painting. His works focus on man's relationship with nature, and he uses the sea to embody nature's power. It is a constant and varied element, depicted both as provider of subsistence and a life-threatening force.

The impressionists favored another aspect of marine painting--that of leisure. Their interest in the sea had more to do with light and color than using a body of water as a dramatic device. Their stylistic methods provided artists with new ways to present intimate aspects of the sea, such as the picturesque coves and seasides dotted with revelers represented by Maurice Prendergast.

Twentieth-century artists experimented with a variety of styles and techniques in their interpretations of the sea. Modernist John Marin captured the ocean's energy with exuberant brushwork and abstract geometric shapes. Mark Rothko used surrealist-inspired biomorphic forms to suggest sea creatures in a primordial marine world. Albert Christ-Janer's lithograph combines the brilliant color of sun, sea, and sky with the rhythmic patterns of foaming waves. Vija Celmins approaches total abstraction in her quiet, meditative ocean views.

Maritime Art Beside the Canal

2008-11-10T20:52:00.000-08:00

Plans are in the pipeline to install artwork with a maritime theme to enhance the entrance to the Canal Basin.

The artwork will take the form of a marine buoy, currently located at Piazza Terracina, mounted on a granite plinth. The buoy, which is a similar design to the one that marks safe water at the entrance to the estuary, is to be moved and restored with a flashing light in the centre. It will stand on the plinth, which is to be engraved with a wave design, and will incorporate a section of the poem, "The Seafarer", translated from the Exeter Book, and interpretative information. The work will be located on the area known as Kings Arms Isthmus between Canal Basin and the entrance to Riverside Valley Park.

The plans, which have been submitted for Council planning approval, show the park entrance improved with more trees, new seats and lighting.

Proposals are also being developed for removing inappropriate fencing, and widening the cyclepath, as part of the wider Riverside Valley Park improvements which were developed from the public consultation held in 2003-4.

The cost of the cycleway and lighting are to be funded by Sustrans and Devon County Council. Exeter City Council has approved a budget of £130,000 for the rest of the improvements.

Maritime Art Beside The Canal

2008-10-14T01:18:00.000-07:00

Plans are in the pipeline to install artwork with a maritime theme to enhance the entrance to the Canal Basin.

The artwork will take the form of a marine buoy, currently located at Piazza Terracina, mounted on a granite plinth. The buoy, which is a similar design to the one that marks safe water at the entrance to the estuary, is to be moved and restored with a flashing light in the centre. It will stand on the plinth, which is to be engraved with a wave design, and will incorporate a section of the poem, "The Seafarer", translated from the Exeter Book, and interpretative information. The work will be located on the area known as Kings Arms Isthmus between Canal Basin and the entrance to Riverside Valley Park.

The plans, which have been submitted for Council planning approval, show the park entrance improved with more trees, new seats and lighting.

Proposals are also being developed for removing inappropriate fencing, and widening the cyclepath, as part of the wider Riverside Valley Park improvements which were developed from the public consultation held in 2003-4.

The cost of the cycleway and lighting are to be funded by Sustrans and Devon County Council. Exeter City Council has approved a budget of £130,000 for the rest of the improvements.

Our Maritime Heritage

2008-10-10T02:11:00.000-07:00

The Northern Territory’s maritime heritage extends to all human activities connected to the sea and in some cases to inland waters and river systems. It includes places, buildings (such as custom houses), structures (such as lighthouses, jetties and wharfs) as well as shipwrecks, aircraft wrecks (in the sea), sites of maritime industry, objects, stories, archival records (about maritime matters) beliefs, meanings, artworks (maritime rock art) and numerous uses of the sea.

The Northern Territory has a rich, diverse and interesting maritime history which began with the arrival of Indigenous Australians some 60,000 years ago. It includes Australia’s first maritime industry, the ‘trepang trade’, introduced by the ‘ Macassans’ (the 18th and 19th century monsoon traders of Indonesia), who first visited our shores (c.1700-1907) before European occupation (1788) to collect marine products which were traded as far as China.

Maritime heritage is an important part of our identity. Other activities associated with the sea, other than trade include fishing, pearling, shipping, underwater communication cables, military campaigns (WWII), immigration, refugees (the American war in Vietnam) and tourism. All of these have helped shape our identity and locate us firmly in our region.

Ancient heritage, modern society

2008-09-26T00:06:00.000-07:00

Before the arrival of European settlers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples inhabited most areas of the Australian continent. They spoke one or more of hundreds of separate languages and dialects, and their lifestyles and cultural traditions differed from region to region. Their complex social systems and highly developed traditions reflect a deep connection with the land.

Asian and Oceanic mariners and traders were in contact with Indigenous Australians for many centuries before the era of European expansion. Some formed substantial relationships with communities in northern Australia.

Seat Belt Use at Record Level in 2008

2008-09-22T00:06:00.000-07:00

More Americans are buckling up than ever before, Secretary of Transportation Mary E. Peters said Sept. 17. In 2008, 83 percent of all vehicle occupants are using seat belts during daylight hours — up from 82 percent in 2007, according to NHTSA. “We have seen seat belt use rising steadily every year and that means more and more lives are being saved and countless serious injuries prevented,” said Peters. NHTSA estimates approximately 270 lives are saved for every one percent increase in belt use.

Industrial, Aerospace, and Marine Painting

2008-09-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

The GSA Schedule 03 FAC offers a wide range of services for surface preparation and application of chemical compounds. The applications may be used on federal equipment, machinery, ships, aircraft, and vehicles. Please note that this does not include passenger cars, trucks, or buses.

Surface Preparation:

Services related to the preparation for application of chemical compounds and support training/consultation services as they pertain to preparation for and could include, but are not limited to:

* Abrasive air, wet, micro or wheel blasting;
* Vibratory and mass finishing;
* Shot peening;
* Lapping and grinding;
* Drag or high energy barrel finishing;
* Mechanical scarification;
* Acid etching;
* Ultrasonic.

Application of Chemical Compounds:

These services include painting and sealant application on ships, aircraft, vehicles and other equipment or machinery surface that requires application of chemical compound, such as paint, sealant, coatings, or adhesives. These services could include, but are not limited to:

* Bridge painting;
* Electrostatic painting;
* Engineering structure (e.g., oil storage tank, water tower) painting;
* Aluminum coating;
* Bonderizing, chasing, enameling, enameling, etching, flocking, galvanizing;
* Glazing, hot dip galvanizing, japanning, lacquering, parkerizing;
* Powder coating, rust proofing, sherardizing, or varnishing.

Identifying Arts and Crafts Made by Alaska Natives

2008-09-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

Any item produced after 1935 that is marketed with terms like "Indian, "Native American," or "Alaska Native" must have been made by a member of a state or federally-recognized tribe or a certified non-member Indian artisan. That’s the law.
A certified Indian artisan is an individual certified by the governing body of the tribe of his or her descent as a non-member Indian artisan.

For example, it would violate the law to advertise products as "Inupiaq Carvings" if the products were produced by someone who isn’t a member of the Inupiaq tribe or certified in writing by the tribal governing body as a non-member Alaska Native artisan of the Inupiaq people.

Qualifiers like "ancestry," "descent," and "heritage" - used in connection with the terms "Indian," "Alaska Native," or the name of a particular Indian tribe - do not mean that the craftsperson is a member of an Indian tribe or certified by a tribe. For example, "Native American heritage" or "Yupik descent" would mean that the artist is of descent, heritage' or ancestry of the tribe. These terms may be used only if they are truthful.

Rococo Decorative Arts of the mid 1700s

2008-08-22T00:34:00.000-07:00

This lady's diminutive desk has bulging, bombe surfaces. Its slanted top folds out on hinged struts that support its writing surface. Below three drawers, a false bottom pushes back, revealing three more tiny drawers. The flowers and vines that ripple across the exterior are repeated on the interior. These patterns are made of dark woods that were end-cut to create a stippled effect and silhouetted against the diagonal grain of pale tulip-wood.

Such floral veneer, making the most of natural wood tones, characterizes the style of Bernard II van Risamburgh, who stenciled his initials, B.V.R.B., underneath this piece. He often used ink stencils on his smaller works, which were too delicate to withstand blows from metal stamp punches.

Specializing in small-scale luxury furniture, Bernard was exceptionally versatile in technique. He used wood marquetry and Oriental lacquer, and is likely to have been the first cabinetmaker to decorate his pieces with plaques of Sevres porcelain. The second of three generations of Parisian furniture makers of Dutch origin, Bernard II van Risamburgh was among the finest eighteenthcentury craftsmen. For More info:

http://www.nga.gov/collection/gallery/gg14c/gg14c-1579.html

French Maritime Artist

2008-07-28T06:09:00.001-07:00

These artists thought that if their work was exhibited fairly, it would gain acceptance. They sought favorable viewing conditions such as good lighting and ample space between paintings, and they also wanted to exhibit more works than the two allowed by Salon rules. In 1874, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, Morisot, and Sisley led a number of friends to form an association and publicly presented the first group exhibition independent of the official Salon. They called themselves "Artists, Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc., Inc." to avoid descriptive titles and pejorative epithets. Critics noted their unorthodox style and especially a work exhibited by Monet with the title Impression, Sunrise (Musée Marmottan, Paris) and sarcastically dubbed them "impressionists." The group, which presented eight exhibitions in all, survived until 1886. By then the core impressionists were beginning to attain a degree of popular success. The exhibition strategy that had been essential to their enterprise was no longer necessary, and the group disbanded.

The audacious impressionist venture had overturned contemporary artistic institutions and freed artists to explore new forms of expression. A variety of styles arose as the impressionist movement concluded. Postimpressionism, usually associated with Seurat, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh, was neither a style nor a movement; rather, postimpressionism was differentiated by the largely symbolic and imaginary sources of inspiration that supplanted the naturalist and realist impulses that had shaped impressionism.

Art Gallery of New South Wales - Australian collection

2008-07-25T23:27:00.000-07:00

The Art Gallery of New South Wales has three main curatorial departments: Australian Art (including Aboriginal art), Asian Art and Western (international) Art. This page breaks these departments into more specific collection areas. In Highlights, click on the arrows to move from one highlight to the next and get a quick impression of the scope of that collection area. Alternatively, click View Slide Show, and the highlights will be automatically displayed in sequence, with an 8 second interval. Click on Search to do a search relating to that particular collection area.

Australian collection

The Australian collection provides a comprehensive overview of Australian art in all media from early colonial times to the present. There is also a separate selection under Aboriginal Art. The old courts on the ground floor display a strong representation of some of the most loved Australian painters and sculptors of the 19th century, including national icons such as Roberts, McCubbin and Streeton, while on the other side of the entrance court in the Captain Cook wing, you can find an impressive collection of key works of Australian modernism. The Aboriginal collection can be found on the third level in the Yiribana gallery as well as having a presence in the twentieth century Australian wing. This display reflects the long history of traditional art across the continent, and contemporary practice and innovation in all media.

FRENCH PAINTING OF THE 19TH CENTURY

2008-07-23T22:40:00.000-07:00

As the century began, the academic style favored by the official Salon still dictated the success of artists and public taste. But soon that began to change. Realists turned convention on its head to give heroic character to everyday subjects. Manet scandalized the public with his images of modern life. Impressionists tried to capture fleeting effects of light and atmosphere.

Painting in the first half of the nineteenth century was dominated by Ingres and Delacroix, the first continuing in the neoclassical tradition in his emphasis on linear purity and the second championing the expressive, romantic use of color as opposed to line. Both significantly influenced a new generation of painters who sought to communicate their own personal responses to the political upheavals of their time.

For two hundred years, the Academy, the School of Fine Arts, and the Salon, the official exhibition, had fostered the French national artistic tradition. But by the middle of the nineteenth century the academic system had degenerated.

During the 1860s and 1870s, the artists who later became known as the impressionists concluded that the smoothly idealized presentation of academic art was formulaic and artificial. Their relatively loose, open brushwork underscored their freedom from the meticulously detailed academic manner. They were innovative in their subject matter, too, choosing motifs that did not teach or preach, such as landscape or ordinary activities of daily life, which were considered trivial or degenerate by the Academy. Often juries, dominated by academic attitudes, rejected the young artists' paintings altogether.

U.S. Commission of Fine Arts

2008-07-22T22:09:00.000-07:00

The Commission of Fine Arts, established in 1910 by Act of Congress, is charged with giving expert advice to the President, Congress and the heads of departments and agencies of the Federal and District of Columbia governments on matters of design and aesthetics, as they affect the Federal interest and preserve the dignity of the nation's capital. The Commission consists of seven "well qualified judges of the fine arts" who are appointed by the President and serve for a term of four years; they may also be reappointed. The Commission provides advice to the U. S. Mint on the design of coins and medals, and approves the site and design of national memorials, both in the United States and on foreign soil, in accordance with the Commemorative Works Act or the American Battle Monuments Act, whichever applies.

Within the District of Columbia community, the Commission advises on design matters affecting the Historic District of Georgetown, under the Old Georgetown Act, as well as other private sector areas adjacent to federal interests, under the Shipstead-Luce Act.

Indonesian Ceramic Pieces Arrive at MAGNT

2008-07-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

A total of 199 fragile ceramic pieces have just arrived at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) in preparation for the second triennial Arafura Craft Exchange Trajectory of Memories, Tradition and Modernity in Ceramics which opens in July. MAGNT Curator Australian Visual Arts and Crafts Allison Gray said the works, mainly from Yogyakarta, Indonesia arrived in a sea container safe and sound and staff have just completed the unpacking process. “This exhibition has been three years in the making, so it’s great to see all the hard work of the artists, Guest Indonesian Curator Sudjud Dartanto and museum staff come to fruition with the arrival of the pieces,” Ms Gray said. “Trajectory of Memories, Tradition and Modernity in Ceramics, is based on artists living in neighbouring countries occupying the same Asia-Pacific region, and their responses to living traditions, which are continually evolving as we move through modernity, but it’s also an opportunity to simply enjoy the artistic achievements of Indonesian and Australian ceramicists.”

Guest Curator, Sudjud Dartanto said there were three different statements visible in the pieces from the seven artists. “First is affirmation of tradition, which is articulated in decorative motifs seen in Sudiyati, Arisuta and Ottley’s pieces, inspired by customary symbols these works show that this expression takes different shapes as artists’ choices are affected by a variety of factors,” Mr Dartano said.

“The second statement is subversion – the positioning of one’s personal stories as the antithesis of grand narratives – as reflected in the works of Titarubi and Orchard’s works, and lastly the third theme is the tendency to flirt with signism, which can be seen in the works of Asmudjo and Doolan who display a playful approach to the various idioms of modernity.”

Ms Gray said the exhibition will feature works from four Indonesian artists and three Australian artists, including local Darwin ceramicist Harvey Ottley. “Harvey uses a really interesting technique of introducing horse hair at the point of hot temperature in the firing, which results in the line pattern of her ceramic works,” Ms Gray said.

Exploratorium

2008-07-20T21:42:00.001-07:00

Housed within the walls of the City of San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts, the Exploratorium is a park partner and a world-renowned museum and educational center with 650 science, art, and human perception exhibits. Founded in 1969 by Dr. Frank Oppenheimer, the Exploratorium's mission is "to create a culture of learning through innovative environments, programs, and tools that help people nurture their curiosity about the world around them." Visitors of all ages flock to the museum.

Copyist

2008-07-17T21:52:00.000-07:00

The National Gallery of Art copyist program has been in operation since the Gallery opened in 1941. A permit issued by the registrar's office is required for copying works of art in oil or any other liquid medium. The Gallery provides permit holders with an easel, stool, and drop cloth; private easels are not allowed. Visitors may sketch with pencils or other dry media in the galleries without a permit.

To participate in the copyist program, applicants must meet all requirements outlined in the National Gallery of Art "Rules Governing the Copying of Works of Art" and agree to an interview and a security background check; they must acknowledge in writing their acceptance of the rules. A packet of materials will be mailed to you within seven business days. The issue of a copyist permit does not in any way constitute the National Gallery of Art's endorsement of a copyist's work.

American Artist and Water Reclamation

2008-07-16T22:05:00.001-07:00

In the late 1960s, the Bureau of Reclamation embarked on a program to present its accomplishments to the public through the medium of art. Under the direction of John DeWitt of the Commissioner's Office in Washington D.C., and Dr. Lloyd Goodrich, advisory director of the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in New York City, 40 of America's most prominent artists were commissioned to visit Reclamation's water resource development sites throughout the Western United States and record their impressions on canvas. The artists were given a free hand to depict what ever they choose so long as the subject matter pertained to Reclamation's program - the development of the West's water resources for irrigation, hydro power generation, recreation, water conservation, and fish and wildlife enhancement. The artists were welcome to use whatever medium and style they wished, with spectacular results ranging from the abstract depiction of irrigated fields along the lower Colorado River as seen by Richard Diebenkorn, to Norman Rockwell's portrait of a Native American family overlooking Glen Canyon Dam, to Anton Refregier's scenes of construction activities at Grand Coulee Dam.

When the project was completed, more than 375 pieces of art had been created. In the early 1970s, many of the pieces were displayed to the public in a traveling exhibit circulated by the Smithsonian Institution entitled "The American Artist and Water Reclamation." Although many of the pieces were returned to the artists, Reclamation maintains a collection of about 200 pieces. Many of the pieces in Reclamation's collection can be viewed in a number of places including the Interior Building in Washington D.C., and the visitor centers at Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam.

The ART in Embassies Program

2008-07-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

promotes the cultural identity of America’s art and artists by borrowing original works of art by U.S. citizens for display in U.S. embassy residences worldwide. Each ART exhibition is developed collaboratively between a United States ambassador and one of our curators. We select both image-based and abstract work in all media.

What is the length of a loan?The length of a loan is approximately two and one-half to three years, which coincides with the average length of an ambassador’s tenure.

Who arranges and pays for shipping and insurance?ART in Embassies hires professional fine art handlers to assemble, pack, crate and safely ship works of art to and from each embassy. ART insures each work during its transit to and from the embassy and while it is on exhibit at the residence.

Are lenders compensated in any way?Lenders are not compensated financially. Their participation is documented in ART exhibition publications and/or on the ART web site. A wall label accompanies each work of art and identifies both the artist and lender.

The Artists Village Show

2008-07-14T21:39:00.000-07:00

15 August to 5 October 2008

The Artists Village: 20 years On addresses many issues concerning the history, or rather, memories of TAV. History encompasses verifiable events and accounts of those events. The reciprocal relationship between memory, forgetting, and history questions and reveals how remembering and forgetting alters our perception of historical experience and the production of discourses. The dynamics of individual and collective social memories of TAV artists during the Ulu Sembawang period and the Post-Ulu periods offer multiple entry points to our understanding of TAV. Other forms of memories such as memories that have been written and archived brings to the fore the role of infrastructural memory in the form of museums, archives, monuments and other sites of memories in the construction of historical narratives.

Bareki - Sydney Harbour tug boat

2008-07-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

Built to a WWII Australian tugboat design at Goat Island shipyard on Sydney Harbour for the Maritime Services Board 40 years ago, Bareki is now a museum workboat and assists with handling the vessels in the National Maritime collection. Particulars,

Builder MSB Goat Island Shipyard, Sydney

Launched - c 1966

Length Overall - 12.39 m

Beam - 4.36 m

Draft - 2.13 m

Propulsion - Detroit 12V71 diesel, (340 kW)

Construction - Carvel planked on sawn frames

Marine Painting

2008-07-10T21:44:00.001-07:00

The impressionists favored another aspect of marine painting--that of leisure. Their interest in the sea had more to do with light and color than using a body of water as a dramatic device. Their stylistic methods provided artists with new ways to present intimate aspects of the sea, such as the picturesque coves and seasides dotted with revelers represented by Maurice Prendergast.

Twentieth-century artists experimented with a variety of styles and techniques in their interpretations of the sea. Modernist John Marin captured the ocean's energy with exuberant brushwork and abstract geometric shapes. Mark Rothko used surrealist-inspired biomorphic forms to suggest sea creatures in a primordial marine world. Albert Christ-Janer's lithograph combines the brilliant color of sun, sea, and sky with the rhythmic patterns of foaming waves. Vija Celmins approaches total abstraction in her quiet, meditative ocean views.

Maritime archaeology program - collection

2008-07-09T22:07:00.000-07:00

As a result of its national profile the museum receives many enquiries from Australia and overseas about the acquisition or loan of archaeological material. Our Maritime Archaeology Program Policy (199 kb) includes guidelines about ethical practices and legislation. These have been adopted from recommendations by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the International Congress of Maritime Museums (ICMM) in an effort to curb the destruction of underwater cultural heritage sites, and the illegal or unethical trade in artefacts.

Acquiring archaeological material
Generally we do not acquire archaeological material except in certain special circumstances. As a rule, when material is offered to us, we investigate transferring it to the designated state authority or relevant museum responsible for archaeological material. We prefer that collections stay together except for the requirements of conservation, study or display.

Loan of archaeological objects
When the museum borrows archaeological material for display, it must have been obtained in accordance with the 1990 ICMM recommendations. That is, the material must not have been excavated for profit, it must have been obtained legally and excavated correctly.

Under the 1972 Australian-Netherlands Committee on Old Dutch Shipwrecks (ANCODS) the ANMM is the legal Commonwealth repository of selected material from the four major Dutch shipwrecks off the Western Australian coast. Some of this material is displayed in the Navigators gallery

State Art Collection – Acquisition Policy 2007 - 2011

2008-07-08T21:49:00.000-07:00

The State Art Collection increases the knowledge and appreciation of the art of the world for the enjoyment and cultural enrichment of the people of Western Australia. The Collection aspires to be the best public art collection in the State and the pre-eminent collection of Western Australian art. The Collection provides primary access to art, heritage and ideas locally, regionally and internationally now and for future generations. The acquisition policy provides the direction for all purchases, gifts and loans to the Collection.

The priority is to expand the principal strength of the Collection – art with a central theme of human habitation in the environment. These Stories of Habitation encompass works of art across all areas of the Collection, and embrace the subject of human habitation, endeavour, beliefs and cultural critique. Through Stories of Habitation the Collection builds dialogues to support visitor engagment with the art of Western Australia and the art of the world.

International, Historical and Contemporary Art

2008-07-07T22:16:00.000-07:00

The Art Gallery of Western Australia acquires works of art that build upon the principal strength of the Collection Stories of Habitation.

Indigenous Art - The Gallery acquires Australian Indigenous art, with a particular focus on enriching the representation of Western Desert, Kimberley and South West artists and communities. Clusters of works of art may be identified and developed to reflect a breadth of artists, to reinforce the strength of the community context and present the diversity of Indigenous artistic practice.

Australian Art - The Gallery acquires works of art by Australian artists with national reputations, from the historical and contemporary periods. In so doing, it will further enhance this key Collection strength. Further, the Gallery seeks to introduce the work of emerging artists.

Western Australian Art - The Art Gallery of Western Australia represents Western Australian artists with exemplary work from the historical and contemporary period, to build areas of key strength, artistic movements and/or artists. The Gallery acquires the work of WA artists to ensure the pre-eminence of this most unique area of concentration in the State Art Collection.

State Art Collection

2008-07-06T22:45:00.000-07:00

The Gallery's purpose is to preserve, interpret, display and acquire the visual arts from the past and the present with an emphasis on the art of Western Australia and Indigenous art.

The State Art Collection comprises 16,500 works in a range of media including painting, sculpture, craft and design, watercolours, drawings, photography and prints. Indigenous art is a highlight, providing a comprehensive overview of traditional and contemporary art from Western Australia, the Central Desert and Arnhemland. The Collection also has pre-eminent holdings of Western Australian art, craft and design from 1829 to the present.

Art Theft Program

2008-07-03T21:48:00.001-07:00

Art and cultural property crime - which includes theft, fraud, looting, and trafficking across state and international lines -- is a looming criminal enterprise with estimated losses running as high as $6 billion annually.

To recover these precious pieces--and to bring these criminals to justice--the FBI uses a dedicated Art Crime Team of 13 Special Agents to investigate, supported by three Special Trial Attorneys for prosecutions...and it mans the National Stolen Art File, a computerized index of reported stolen art and cultural properties for the use of law enforcement agencies across the world.

Australian Prints, Drawings and Photographs

2008-07-02T21:12:00.000-07:00

The Gallery also has an extensive collection of Australian prints, drawings and photographs with special emphasis on South Australian works, including a collection of 2000 Hans Heysen drawings which were bequeathed to the Gallery by the artist. The Gallery’s Australian prints and drawings reflect the strength of the paintings collection with strong holdings of colonial and modernist works as well as some fine examples of contemporary printmaking. Also to be found among the Australian works on paper are over 200 of Lionel Lindsay’s prints and drawings and a similar number of prints by Adelaide artist Barbara Hanrahan.

Graduate Studies in Art History

2008-07-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

The MA program in Curatorial and Museum Studies is an innovative new course breaking new ground in Australia as the first course of its kind to utilise the expertise of practising gallery and museum professionals to teach around the theoretical and practical aspects of researching, designing and mounting exhibitions in museums and galleries. The program will be will be taught jointly by the Director and Curators of the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Art History staff of the University of Adelaide and ArtLab.

This course follows on from the successful postgraduate program in Art History which commenced at the Gallery in 2000. This course remains a leader in its field, offering students the chance to study art through the collections and special exhibitions of a major art museum, supported by University-based lectures and tutorials.

Students are expected to take 4 Graduate Diploma courses in Art History followed by 2 specialist MA courses in Curatorial and Museum Studies, which also includes a 20-day internship in a gallery or museum. Subjects offered in 2007 include Australian Art, European Art; Modern Art; Indigenous Art; and MA Program in Curatorial and Museum Studies.

Indigenous Art

2008-06-30T21:43:00.001-07:00

The Indigenous art of Australia is the part of oldest continuing living culture in the world and one of the two major art traditions operating within Australia today. The National Gallery of Australia collects art of the highest artistic merit and excellence created by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (hereafter referred to as Indigenous) to document and represent the ongoing and developing traditions of art which reflect the diversity of Indigenous experience over time and from every region of the continent.

The collection aims to document the history of Indigenous art from the earliest collectable works to the most recent. Given the dynamic and innovative nature of Indigenous artistic practice, the Gallery aims to keep abreast of contemporary developments across all art forms including all media used by contemporary Indigenous artists.

Key works from the National Gallery of Australia’s collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art are exhibited in the Loti & Victor Smorgon Gallery on entrance level and in the broader context of Australian and international art throughout the building.

Among key Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art works in the collection is The Aboriginal Memorial (1987–88), an installation of 200 painted hollow log coffins by the artists of Ramingining in Arnhem Land. The Memorial, a collaborative work involving 43 artists, is dedicated to all Indigenous Australians who have lost their lives defending their country since non-Indigenous settlement.

Rubbo, Antonio Salvatore Dattilo (1870 - 1955)

2008-06-20T06:05:00.000-07:00

RUBBO, ANTONIO SALVATORE DATTILO (1870-1955), artist, was born on 21 June 1870 at Naples, Italy, son of Luigi Raffaele Dattilo, grain merchant, and Raffaela Rubbo. Dattilo died during his son's infancy: until he was 8 Antonio was looked after by a great-aunt at Pontecorvo. At 14 he won a prize for drawing, which enabled him to study draughtsmanship in Rome where he gained a certificate in 1888. While serving as a conscript in the Italian army for the next four years, he managed to visit the major Italian galleries and paint portraits of his fellow-soldiers. From 1893 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Naples, he had a classical training based on drawing the antique, and also studied under Domenico Morelli and Filippo Palizzi, leaders of the liberal Neapolitan art movement. Morelli's eclecticism and method of sketching in the streets of Naples were an enduring influence on Rubbo's work. In 1896 he was awarded the academy's diploma of professor of drawing in public institutions.

Next year, after briefly trying to interest himself in the family business, Rubbo left for Sydney, and upon disembarking on 13 November was befriended by Eirene Mort. In return for accommodation and English lessons with the Mort family, Rubbo conducted an art class at their Strathfield home. In 1898 he began a studio class in Hunter Street, moving next year to Rowe Street, where he established his atelier. He offered life classes and his school became the main rival to Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School. From 1898 Rubbo taught at well-known Sydney schools—St Joseph's College, Kambala and Scots College and later at Kincoppal and Rose Bay Sacred Heart convents, Newington College and Homebush Grammar School. He was a council-member of the (Royal) Art Society of New South Wales from 1900 and from 1907 to 1934 taught at its school, where he became the longest-serving and most popular instructor. Throughout his long teaching career he vigorously campaigned for the inclusion of art (and a more professional approach to its teaching) in the school systems.

Eora First People

2008-06-19T06:16:00.001-07:00

This exhibition takes us on a journey from Tasmania to far Northern Queensland and the Torres Strait, exploring the way in which the sea and waterways are intrinsically linked to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture. The Eora Gallery has been redeveloped and reopened on Friday 9 March, with an exciting new collection of objects on display.Eora means 'first people' in the language of the Darug, the traditional inhabitants of the land on which the museum now stands.

There are over 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples or nations in Australia. One common thread they share is a strong connection to the land and to the sea. This exhibition takes us on a journey from Tasmania to far Northern Queensland and the Torres Strait, exploring the way in which the sea and waterways are intrinsically linked to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Culture.

Eora - First People features delicate shell work from Tasmania, elaborately carved and painted Pukumani burial poles of the Tiwi Islands, ceremonial sculptures and hand-woven works from Arnhem Land and Cape York and the spectacular headdresses, body ornaments and dance machines of the Torres Strait.

Also, featured are a selection of works from Saltwater - Yirrkala Bark Paintings of Sea Country, a series of paintings explaining the spiritual and legal basis of the Yolngu's claim on the Saltwater Country of northeast Arnhem land.

These stories were painted to educated the outside world, to teach the Balander (stranger or white people) about the lore and law of the Yolngu people. The result is a body of works that form a comprehensive map of the Saltwater Country; a record of sacred lore based on an accumulated wisdom that spans thousands of lifetimes.

Preston, Margaret (1875 - 1963)

2008-06-18T00:57:00.000-07:00

Margaret Rose McPherson born in 1875 in Adelaide, South Australia, died Sydney, 28 May 1963.

Margaret studied art in Sydney under W. Lister Lister, at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, and at the Adelaide School of Design. In 1904 she went to Munich to attend the Government Art School for Women, going to Paris where she studied at the Musee Guimet and exhibited still lifes. After a brief return to Adelaide in 1907 she left again for Europe, working with disabled soldiers in Devon. In 1919, after returning to Australia by way of North America, she married William George Preston, a businessman, and settled in Sydney. The couple travelled extensively throughout Australia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Pacific Islands.

Although well known for her decorative still lifes, she was also a skilful wood engraver and linocut printer. Her woodcut and linocut prints featuring Australian native plants have become very popular in recent years. A writer and lecturer of art, she was a champion of and influenced by Aboriginal bark paintings. She was a member of the Society of Artists, the Australian Art Association and the Contemporary Group, Sydney. At the Paris International Exhibition in 1937 she was awarded a silver medal.

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery

2008-06-16T21:56:00.000-07:00

Museum & Art Gallery

Opened in 1885, the collections cover fine art and applied arts, archaelogy and ethnography, natural history, social history. The Museum has the largest collection of Pre-Raphaelite works in the world, as well as Old Masters and Impressionists.Recently the modern and contemporary collections have had a new home created in the Waterhall Gallery of Modern Art, positioned just at the rear of the Museum.

The Museum and Art Gallery has an ever changing programme of temporary exhibitions in the main gallery and in the Gas Hall. For a full and up to date listing of events please visit the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery website.

Entrance to the Museum and Art Gallery is free,though some exhibitions in the Gas Hall may have an entrance charge. The Shop stocks a wide range of souvenirs and gifts and the Edwardian Tea Room provides refreshments in magnificent surroundings.

Chinese Fine Art collection

2008-06-14T00:44:00.000-07:00

The Chinese Fine Art collection houses the museum's collection of modern Chinese art and Guangdong paintings and calligraphy, the beginnings of which date back to 1964. The rich catalogue of works is the result of many purchases made by the museum itself, but its establishment has also depended on the invaluable support of several collectors, including Mr He Zizhong and Mr Wong Po-yeh (Guangdong paintings), Mr Lau Siu Lui (works from the Taiyilou collection of modern Chinese painting and calligraphy), Mr Wu Guanzhong (Wu Guanzhong's paintings) and Ms Linda Chang (the New Literati paintings). These generous donations have immeasurably enhanced the museum's collection, which now comprises over 4,000 works. The collection is mainly divided into four categories: (1) paintings from Guangdong, (2) calligraphy from Guangdong, (3) the Lingnan School of painting and (4) modern Chinese painting. Representative items from the collection are selected for exhibition to depict how the art of Chinese painting and calligraphy has evolved in Guangdong, with a special focus on developments, also in modern Chinese art, in the 20th century.

Many artists in Guangdong have had an almost innate inclination to modernize. This propensity for change is exemplified in works by artists such as Zhang Mu, Li Jian, Su Renshan and Su Liupeng, whose unique personal styles and alternative modes of expression have served to inspire subsequent generations of artists throughout the twentieth century. Guangdong has also seen the emergence of a succession of talented calligraphers like Chen Xianzhang, Kuang Lu, Song Xiang, Luo Shuzhong, He Shaoji and Jian Jinglun, etc. These artists sketch the development of Guangdong calligraphy from the middle of the Ming dynasty to the present day.

The Lingnan School has played an important role in the development of modern Chinese painting. The artistic origins of the School can be traced back to the Jiansu painters Song Guangbao and Meng Jinyi, who lived in Guangdong during the middle of the Qing dynasty, and their students Ju Chao and Ju Lian, also from Guangdong, in the late Qing. The founders of the Lingnan School, Gao Jianfu, Gao Qifeng and Chen Shuren, advocated a movement for "New Chinese Painting", and their theory and practice of blending Western techniques with Chinese art prompted an enthusiastic and stimulating response.

The impact of the Western tide of art that flooded into China in the 20th century triggered a transformation in modern Chinese art. Many artists tried to learn from Western styles and techniques, while others pursued studies in traditional painting, and these two currents gave birth to a new era in China. The works of Huang Binhong, Zhang Daqian, Lin Fengmian, Wu Guanzhong, Nie Ou and Zhang Yu are characterized by their unique styles that reveal the diverse developments in modern Chinese painting.

United States Senate Catalogue of Fine Art

2008-06-13T05:35:00.000-07:00

The United States Capitol is recognized around the world both as a symbol of our country and for the momentous events that have taken place there. However, the building’s interior is far less well known. Visitors are often surprised by the Capitol's stunning architectural details and the impressive art complementing the interior spaces. Now, those works of art–ranging from portraits of prominent senators to depictions of significant events in U.S. history–are accessible to everyone through the publication of the United States Senate Catalogue of Fine Art. Prepared by the Office of Senate Curator, the catalogue represents the first comprehensive effort to illustrate and interpret this rich collection of paintings and sculpture.

The United States Senate Catalogue of Fine Art highlights 160 works of art, including 82 sculptures, 75 paintings, 2 enameled mosaics, and 1 stained glass window. Each work is illustrated with a color photograph and accompanied by essays and secondary images that place the work in historical and aesthetic context. These secondary images include other works of art that inspired or served as a model for the work in the Senate collection, as well as photographs that display the art in its current location. There is also an introductory essay that analyzes the art in the Senate and its place in American art history.

The catalogue is a result of a lengthy tradition of art in the Senate, a tradition that primarily dates from the establishment of the Joint Committee on the Library in 1802. In addition to maintaining the Library of Congress, this committee was also responsible for supervising the acquisition of art for the Capitol, the White House, and the public squares of Washington, D.C. After the middle of the nineteenth century, the joint committee became especially active in the selection of sculpture and painting. When the Capitol was expanded by adding the new dome and two new chambers for the legislature, a campaign was undertaken to decorate the building to reflect the United States’s newfound importance in world affairs.

Over the years, the Senate’s art collection has taken shape through several means. Some pieces have been purchased and others specially commissioned. Donors have also offered important works of historical significance that have become welcomed additions to the collection.

A review of the catalogue illustrates the broad sweep of U.S. history and the diversity of the Senate’s art collection. The 160 pieces in the catalogue represent the work of 111 artists, including such celebrated figures as Gilbert Stuart, Alexander Calder, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Thomas Sully, and Daniel Chester French. Many of the works feature prominent senators, including portraits of Everett McKinley Dirksen, Mike Mansfield, and Robert A. Taft, and small bronze sculptures of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. Many of the subjects are immediately recognizable; there are depictions of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Benjamin Franklin. Lesser-known figures include the Native American chief Be sheekee and Senate employee Isaac Bassett, who came to the Senate in 1831 as one of the first pages and stayed until 1895, when he was an elderly doorkeeper. Although portraits dominate the collection, the American landscape is represented by an oil painting of Niagara Falls in winter. Major events are also documented, such as the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln and the first manned moon landing. There are two special collections: a series of paintings of major U.S. army posts completed by Seth Eastman between 1870 and 1875, and a collection of vice presidential busts.

In the catalogue’s introductory essay, art historian William Kloss points to the Senate’s art collection as a “paradigm of public art in the United States,” saying that the collection “was intended to serve a grander purpose . . . to commit to posterity the persons and events of our national history, centered upon the institution of the Senate and on the founding of the Republic.” The United States Senate Catalogue of Fine Art offers readers an opportunity to see how this purpose was met.

The catalogue is available online through the Government Printing Office (GPO). It can be purchased from the Senate Gift Shop in the Dirksen Senate Office Building or the GPO bookstore. The catalogue may also be available at a federal depository library in your state.

Chariot of Fame wooden sea chest

2008-06-12T06:07:00.001-07:00

Wooden sea chest with iron handles and latch. Painted on the front is 'Mrs. J. Anderson/Per Chariot of Fame Mr. A. Mitchell/Uralla by Bendemere/New England/New South Wales Not Wanted on the Voyage.'

The Chariot of Fame was a three-masted, square-rigged 'medium clipper' ship, built at East Boston, Massachusetts, by Donald McKay, for Enoch Train & Co., Boston, for their White Diamond packet line between Boston and Liverpool, and launched in April 1853. For the first year the Chariot of Fame sailed out of American ports as a packet vessel. After this the vessel was chartered by the White Star Line of Australian packets and made a number of good passages to Australia from England in 1854 and 1855. In 1862 the vessel was sold in London and the vessel came out to Australia on several more voyages. The Chariot of Fame was reported abandoned at sea in 1876.

Russell Cotes Art Gallery & museum

2008-06-11T03:10:00.001-07:00

The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth, UK, is one of the most fascinating and unique museums in the world. It comprises art galleries and museum, a licensed café, a shop and a children’s area and is an ideal place for learning, exploring and socialising. It is situated on the dramatic cliff top over-looking seven miles of award-winning beaches and is housed in one of the last Victorian villas in Bournemouth, East Cliff Hall. The exhibitions and displays in the galleries, along with events and activities, offer something for everyone.a

Marine Art of Geoff Hunt

2008-06-04T06:03:00.000-07:00

Readers who have admired the covers of Patrick O'Brian's works (the recent editions) will appreciate Hunt's other realistic oil paintings depicting 18th-century ships at sea and sometimes in battle. Hunt, a member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists (and currently its president), also includes case studies which follow the progress of five paintings from start to finish; a section of paintings of scenes from the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812; book cover illustrations for authors such as Miles Smeeton and for reprints of Patrick O'Brian's works; and a few paintings of modern naval vessels, merchant ships, and yachts.

PRINTS AND DRAWINGS

2008-06-01T23:40:00.000-07:00

The National Gallery's collection of prints, drawings, and illustrated books consists of almost 100,000 Western European and American works on paper and vellum dating from the eleventh century to the present day. It began with just 400 prints donated in 1941 by five collectors: W. G. Russell Allen, Paul Sachs, Philip Hofer, Ellen Bullard, and Lessing J. Rosenwald. Their gifts of important works by Mantegna, Schongauer, Dürer, Canaletto, Blake, and a variety of other fine printmakers were intended to lay a strong foundation for a national collection that would enhance and complement the collections of painting and sculpture installed in the public galleries. The first sizable gifts of graphics, nearly 2,000 works, came the very next year with the donation of the entire collection of Joseph E. Widener, including an extraordinary array of French eighteenth-century prints, illustrated books, and related drawings.

Lessing Rosenwald ensured the future of the Gallery's graphics collection in 1943 by giving the museum his collection of some 8,000 old master and modern prints and drawings. In the ensuing thirty-six years he donated almost 14,000 more, supplemented by such fascinating technical materials as carved woodblocks and engraved copperplates. His collection brought to the Gallery the finest gathering in America of rare German woodcuts and engravings from the fifteenth century; comprehensive surveys of the prints and some select drawings by Dürer, Rembrandt, Nanteuil, Daumier, Whistler, and Cassatt; watercolors, drawings, prints, and engraved copperplates by Blake; and a collection of prints by early twentieth-century printmakers.

MARINE SANCTUARY SPONSORS ART CONTEST FOR STUDENTS IN GRADES

2008-05-30T21:33:00.001-07:00

The NOAA Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary today announced the 2005 Marine Art Contest for students in grades K-12. This year’s theme is “Stellwagen Bank – 150 Years of Discovery,” commemorating the work of Lt. Henry Stellwagen and the discovery of the bank at the mouth of Massachusetts Bay that now bears his name. The first official government chart showing “Stellwagen’s Bank” appeared in 1855. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Students are charged with exploring the fascinating world of New England’s only national marine sanctuary through their art in this open competition. The deadline is April 30, 2005. The contest is co-sponsored with the Massachusetts Marine Educators (MME) and the New England Aquarium.
The competition will be judged in five divisions – grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, high school and scientific illustration. Students may select any activity, species or habitat in the sanctuary as the subject of their artwork. Possible topics include endangered species, research in the sanctuary, natural and/or cultural resources and new technologies for marine exploration, such as remotely operated vehicles. Students may use any medium, including markers, paints, pastels, pencil, pen and ink, collage or computer graphics and are asked to keep artwork between 8½ inches by 11 inches and 18 inches by 24 inches.

Judges for the contest include renowned marine artist Robert Lyn Nelson; Massachusetts artist and illustrator Dave Blanchette; commercial artist and graphic designer Dennis Huston; chairman of the board of the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History Richard Wheeler; author and educator Nathalie Ward; and sanctuary education coordinator Anne Smrcina.

Winning artists will receive passes from the New England Aquarium, certificates and other prizes. All award-winning entries will be posted on the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary Web site and may be displayed at sanctuary exhibits throughout New England.

Congress designated the Gerry E. Studds Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary in 1992 as “an area of special national significance.” Virtually the size of the state of Rhode Island, the sanctuary stretches between Cape Ann and Cape Cod in federal waters off of Massachusetts. The sanctuary is renowned as a major feeding area for marine mammals, particularly humpback whales, and supports an ecosystem of diverse wildlife.

NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program seeks to increase the public awareness of America’s maritime heritage by conducting scientific research, monitoring, exploration and educational programs. Today, the sanctuary program manages 13 national marine sanctuaries and one coral reef ecosystem reserve that encompass more than 150,000 square miles of America’s ocean and Great Lakes natural and cultural resources.

The NOAA Oceans and Coasts Service manages the NMSP and is dedicated to exploring, understanding, conserving and restoring the nation’s coasts and oceans. The NOAA Oceans and Coasts Service balances environmental protection with economic prosperity in fulfilling its mission of promoting safe navigation, supporting coastal communities, sustaining coastal habitats and mitigating coastal hazards. NOAA is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of

John Glover - Marine painter

2008-05-29T05:59:00.001-07:00

Glover was one of the precursors of an Australian style of painting. He arrived in Tasmania from England in 1831. A talented landscape painter with a strong reputation in England (and France), Glover was never seen as an artist who 'pushed the boundaries'.

While he was initially criticised for not paying close enough attention to the 'local characteristics', he did find an individuality in his work through the new landscapes and atmosphere of Tasmania. His depiction of the Tasmanian light as bright and clear, was a departure from his European paintings and gave his paintings a true Australian quality.

His body of work made him a pioneer of landscape painting in Australia. In addition to employment growth, job openings are expected for carpet, floor, and tile installers and finishers because of the need to replace workers who leave the occupation. The strenuous nature of the work leads to high replacement needs because many of these workers do not stay in the occupation long.

Fantastic Fishes Art Contest

2008-05-27T02:47:00.000-07:00

Gray's Reef National Marine Sanctuary, designated in January 1981, is one of the largest near shore live-bottom reefs in the southeastern United States. The sanctuary is located 17.5 nautical miles off Sapelo Island, GA, and one of 14 marine protected areas that make up the National Marine Sanctuary System that encompass more than 150,000 square miles of marine and Great Lakes waters from Washington State to the Florida Keys, and from Lake Huroon to American Samoa; and one of three marine sanctuaries that make up the Southeast Region.

Within the 17-square-nautical-mile sanctuary, there are both rocky ledges and sandy flat places. The reefs' rock ledges, submerged beneath 60 to 70 feet of water, can be as tall as 6-8 feet and are highly complex-they have nooks and crannies and bumps and plenty of places for invertebrates to latch on to and for fish to hide. Together these animals form a dense carpet of living creatures that in places completely hides the rock. That gives the habitat of Gray's Reef its common name-a "live bottom".

USGS National Coastal Program Plan

2008-05-26T19:09:00.000-07:00

A Plan for a Comprehensive National Coastal Program" describes a comprehensive National Coastal Program that responds to critical regional needs while addressing national issues associated with coastal change, including nutrient enrichment, oxygen depletion, harmful algal blooms, chemical contamination, diseases in marine organisms, and fish kills; shoreline erosion, the increasing susceptibility of coastal communities to natural hazards and sea level rise, increasing demands on non-living resources (including groundwater, sand and gravel, and energy resources); and declines in living marine resources, habitat loss, loss of biodiversity, and invasions of non-indigenous species.

These issues reflect the growing impact of human activities on coastal systems and the increasing vulnerability of expanding populations to coastal change. The interdependencies of these issues in complex coastal systems requires multidisciplinary and integrated science to provide the information and tools essential to sustain the environmental health of coastal communities and resources; maintain and enhance the contribution of coastal systems to the Nation's economy and well-being; and ensure the safety of coastal populations threatened by natural hazards and human-driven change.

The overall goal of this Program is to provide the scientific information, knowledge, and tools required to ensure that decisions about land and resource use, management practices, and future development in the coastal zone and adjacent watersheds can be evaluated with a complete understanding of the probable effects on coastal ecosystems and communities, and a full assessment of their vulnerability to natural and human-driven changes.

Specialization of Fine artists

2008-05-22T22:33:00.001-07:00

Fine artists typically display their work in museums, commercial art galleries, corporate collections, and private homes. Some of their artwork may be commissioned (done on request from clients), but most is sold by the artist or through private art galleries or dealers. The gallery and the artist predetermine how much each will earn from the sale. Only the most successful fine artists are able to support themselves solely through the sale of their works. Most fine artists have at least one other job to support their art careers. Some work in museums or art galleries as fine-arts directors or as curators, planning and setting up art exhibits. A few artists work as art critics for newspapers or magazines or as consultants to foundations or institutional collectors. Other artists teach art classes or conduct workshops in schools or in their own studios. Some artists also hold full-time or part-time jobs unrelated to art and pursue fine art as a hobby or second career.

Usually, fine artists specialize in one or two art forms, such as painting, illustrating, sketching, sculpting, printmaking, and restoring. Painters, illustrators, cartoonists, and sketch artists work with two-dimensional art forms, using shading, perspective, and color to produce realistic scenes or abstractions.

The new landscape

2008-05-21T21:39:00.000-07:00

Artists like the convict John Eyre, who produced paintings and engravings in the first decade of the nineteenth century, and the landscape painter Conrad Martens - a close friend of Charles Darwin - produced important works during these early years of settlement.

John Glover
Glover was one of the precursors of an Australian style of painting. He arrived in Tasmania from England in 1831. A talented landscape painter with a strong reputation in England (and France), Glover was never seen as an artist who 'pushed the boundaries'. While he was initially criticised for not paying close enough attention to the 'local characteristics', he did find an individuality in his work through the new landscapes and atmosphere of Tasmania. His depiction of the Tasmanian light as bright and clear, was a departure from his European paintings and gave his paintings a true Australian quality. His body of work made him a pioneer of landscape painting in Australia.

Australian painters

2008-05-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

When the first artists arrived in colonial Australia from Europe in the late 18th century, they were confronted by images and scenery the likes of which they had never seen:

...the whole appearance of nature must be striking in the extreme to the adventurer, and at first this will seem to him to be a country of enchantments.Thomas Watling, Letters From An Exile in Botany Bay, To His Aunt in Dumfries, 1794

The traditions of European art and painting did not fit comfortably with this strange and bewildering new landscape. Early artists tended to paint what they saw and the better the representation; the better the work was regarded.

Government Art Collection on-line database

2008-05-16T22:42:00.000-07:00

The Government Art Collection includes works in a range of media - paintings, sculptures, drawings and watercolours, prints, photographs and textiles. The majority are by British artists and they cover a wide span, both historically and in terms of subject matter, ranging from 16th-century portraits to contemporary landscape photographs. Works have been acquired by purchase, commission, gift and bequest.

The on-line database currently contains information on over 7000 works - almost all the paintings, drawings, sculpture and textiles in the Collection, as well as a substantial number of prints and photographs. We are adding to these all the time.

The number of good quality images on the website is continually increasing. Whenever works of art displayed overseas return to London, we take the opportunity to have them photographed and reassess their documentation. As research unearths new attributions and other art historical information, our records are updated and the information reflected on the website.

The Famous Artist Motherwell Robert

2008-05-15T23:48:00.001-07:00

Over the years, Ken Tyler has worked with the divergent styles of many artists, adapting to the particular requirements of each one. Producing 'painterly prints' for the major Abstract Expressionist artist Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) was a considerable challenge. For Motherwell, who worked in an intuitive automatic manner, the technicalities of printmaking could be seen as a constraint. Yet, in his collaborative work with Tyler, his works maintained the freshness of their expression, despite the rigours of production.

One method favoured by Motherwell was collage, which he considered as an equivalent to a modern still life. 'Collage somehow became my joy, and has been ever since. Also, it has another function: Sometimes I get stuck in painting … and often, after shifting to collage for a time, I may resolve the painting problem when I return to it.' But collage had its difficulties too.

Motherwell's collage prints, such as the America-La France variations series of 1984, reveal the multiple changes made to each image over time. Motherwell proceeded back and forth with the collages, adding, subtracting, altering and sometimes almost beginning again. The process of collage making and proofing was exploratory, with the artist seeking the perfect resolution.
Another of Motherwell's methods of working was derived from the Surrealist theory of psychic automatism, or free association - but working on a large scale using dynamic forms.

From 1948, he began his Elegies to the Spanish Republic, first in painting and later in printmaking. The black images, evoking the tragic past, and the defeat of the democratically elected Republicans by the Monarchists in the 1930s civil war in his much-loved Spain, would stay with him for his lifetime, remaining an 'endless challenge' for the artist.

The final group of works Motherwell made with Tyler at the Mount Kisco workshop reflects his increasing interest in the use of colour, and the printer's keenness for this to happen.

Intro to Government Art Collection

2008-05-13T06:11:00.000-07:00

The Government Art Collection is a unique British cultural resource, which operates within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Works of art from the Collection are displayed in British Government buildings both in the United Kingdom and around the world, playing a significant role in promoting British art and culture across diverse and international environments. More than 9000 works – over two thirds of the Collection