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| Wild Nature: Masterworks from the Adirondack Museum | Over the course of two centuries, the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York have attracted tourists, sportsmen, and artists alike from across the nation. Wild Nature features sixty-two stunning masterpieces dating from 1821 to 2001, including paintings and rarely-exhibited photographs and prints. Together these works reveal how images of the Adirondack landscape shaped American perceptions of the wilderness landscape, and how these expectations, in turn, created wilderness as a national icon. A selection of paintings by Hudson River School masters Thomas Cole, Sanford Robinson Gifford, John Frederick Kensett, Homer Dodge Martin, and Williams Trost Richards, as well as works by Levi Wells Prentice, Winslow Homer, and Frederic Remington will demonstrate the different ways artists approached the scenery of the Adirondacks. From the region’s sublime grandeur and picturesque beauty, to scenes of settlement and camp life, the Adirondacks represented the promise of health, spiritual renewal, and recreation for scores of painters who flocked to the region, in addition to vacationers and sportsmen. In the twentieth century,
artists working in the Adirondacks parted from the conventions of their
nineteenth-century predecessors, evident in featured works by Harold Weston,
John Marin, Rockwell Kent, Amy Jones, Jonas Lie, Dorothy Dehner, and David
Smith. The exhibition explores how themes of wilderness persist in the
work of these modern artists while their abstract or realist approach,
combined with their own personal expression, reflects changing attitudes
toward the natural environment.
 This exhibition also highlights a selection of large-format albumen prints by Seneca Ray Stoddard who, more than any other photographer, shaped the popular image of the Adirondacks, as well as prints by the famed publishers Currier and Ives, among others. The Adirondack Museum houses the most comprehensive collection of American art depicting the landscape of the Adirondacks. This exhibition, organized by the Adirondack Museum with The Hyde Collection, is curated by Erin B. Coe, former chief curator of The Hyde Collection with Laura Rice, chief curator of the Adirondack Museum and Caroline Welsh, senior art historian and director emeritus. Support for this exhibition is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Contributing Sponsor is Fenimore Asset Management. Additional support given by Warren County, New York/VisitLakeGeorge.com and by the members of The Hyde Collection. The Hyde Collection is an art museum complex and historic house consisting of a distinguished collection of works by American and European artists such as Botticelli, Rubens, Rembrandt, Picasso, Homer and Eakins, as well as important decorative arts and antique furnishings. The collection continues to grow through gift and purchase, and today it numbers around 3,300 works with an emphasis on the art of the twentieth century. The Museum provides changing exhibitions in two gallery spaces, lectures, concerts, family activities and school programming. For detailed information visit www.HydeCollection.org or call 518-792-1761. Media Contact:
Image Credit: Sanford Robinson
Gifford, American (1823-1880), A Twilight in the Adirondacks, 1864,
oil on canvas, 24 x 36 in., Adirondack Museum, 1963.124.2.
High resolution images are available upon request. |
