Press Kit - Taxing Visions: Financial Episodes in Late 19th-Century American Art

Jan. 29–May 30, 2011
Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing

Taxes, rent, economic depression, and financial inequity are the subject matter in the visually provocative paintings and works on paper explored in “Taxing Visions: Financial Episodes in Late 19th-Century American Art.” Although the late 19th century is identified artistically with leisure-laden landscapes, abundant still lifes, and class-conscious official portraits, American artists working in a variety of stylistic idioms reckoned with the financial panics and occupational turmoil that marked the Reconstruction, Gilded Age, and early Progressive eras. The approximately 30 paintings, drawings, and prints in this focused exhibition are drawn from museums across the country and demonstrate with sometimes startling clarity the experience of economic downturn, ultimately picking up where facts, figures, and the printed word leave off. The work of more than a dozen artists is represented, including that of David Gilmour Blythe, John George Brown, James Henry Cafferty, William Michael Harnett, George Inness, William Sidney Mount, and Thomas Waterman Wood. The exhibition is organized jointly by The Huntington and the Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, where it will be on view Sept. 28—Dec. 19, 2010. An illustrated catalog will accompany the exhibition.  More about the exhibition >

 
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David Gilmour Blythe (1815–1865), Art versus Law, 1859–60, oil on canvas, 24 × 35 13⁄16 in. Brooklyn Museum. Dick Ramsay Fund.		James Henry Cafferty (1819–1869) and Charles G. Rosenberg (1818–1879), Wall Street, Half Past Two O’Clock, October 13, 1857, 1858, oil on canvas, 50 × 40 in. Museum of the City of New York. Gift of the Honorable Irwin Untermeyer.
James Henry Cafferty (1819–1869), The Weary Newsboy, 1861, oil on canvas, 12 3⁄8 × 9 7⁄8 in. Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University. Purchased with funds from the Terra Art Enrichment Fund.		Victor Dubreuil (active 1886–ca. 1900), The Cross of Gold, ca. 1896, oil on canvas, 14 × 12 in. Private collection. Courtesy of Berry-Hill Galleries, New York.
William M. Harnett (1848–1892), Job Lot Cheap, 1878, oil on canvas, 18 × 36 in. Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Original purchase fund from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, ARCA Foundation, and Anne Cannon Forsyth.
Alfred Kappes (1850–1894), Tattered and Torn, 1886, oil on canvas, 40 × 32 in. Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Mass. Purchased with the Beatrice Oenslager Chace, Class of 1928, Fund; the Rita Rich Fraad, Class of 1937, Fund for American Art; the Kathleen Compton Sherrerd, Class of 1954, Fund for American Art; and with restricted acquisition funds.		Charles Knoll (19th century), Panic of 1869, 1869, oil on canvas, 34 1/2 ×27 1/4 in. Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ellerton M. Jetté.
Gustave Kruell (1843–1907), after Alfred Kappes (1850–1894), Rent Day, 1887, engraving, 15 1⁄2 × 12 1⁄4 in. From William MacKay Laffan, Engravings on Wood, by Members of the Society of American Engravers (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1887). The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.		William Sidney Mount (1807–1868), Fair Exchange, No Robbery, 1865, oil on panel, 26 × 33 1⁄2 inches. The Long Island Museum of American Art, History & Carriages, Stony Brook, N.Y. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ward Melville.
Thomas Waterman Wood (1823–1903), Crossing the Ferry, 1878, watercolor, 18 3⁄4 × 26 1⁄4 in. T. W. Wood Gallery and Arts Center, Montpelier, Vt.