Georgia Museum of Art
University of Georgia
Athens, GA
706.542.GMOA
Prints of the Midwest by Jackson Lee Nesbitt
on View at the Georgia Museum of Art
The Georgia Museum of Art will host
the exhibition Jackson Lee Nesbitt: Prints from the Collection of S.
William and Leona Pelletier from March 30 through June 13, 1999, in
the Knox Gallery of Prints and Drawings. A student of Midwestern Regionalist
Thomas Hart Benton, Jackson Lee Nesbitt (b. 1913) has created a body of
prints recalling rural life in the Midwest during the Great Depression.
The exhibition contains 27 prints and two drawings from the collection of
S. William and Leona Pelletier of Athens and is accompanied by gallery notes
written by Patricia Phagan, curator of prints and drawings and organizer
of the exhibition.
Born in McAlester, Oklahoma, Nesbitt studied at the Kansas
City Art Institute in the 1930s and early 1940s, where he worked with Benton
and Regionalist painter John de Martelly. As a student and a young artist,
he created numerous paintings and prints largely in the American Scene tradition
of familiar, everyday subject matter.
In the
etching November Evening, for example, a farmer rides on his horse
through the center of a countryside.Phagan describes the work as "drawn
in great, loving detail, the split-rail fence, grasses and fields, and finger-like
clouds of dusk framing the composition. Nesbitt executed the scene with
fine networks of infinitesimal lines, flecks and crosshatchings, which were
drawn on a wax-covered plate and etched in stages, the resulting crevices
filled with ink, and. lastly, the plate printed." Left: November
Evening, 1946, etching printed in black ink on cream wove paper, 8 7/8
x 11 15/16 inches
According to Nesbitt, "Tom Benton and I were on a
trip together and were making a drawing of this muddy road when the old
guy on the horse rode by. Thinking we were surveyors, he allowed the road
could stand some 'fixin' up."
In the 1950s, as interest in Regionalism waned, Nesbitt
turned to commercial art. Much later, in the 1980s, in the midst of a nationwide
renewed appreciation of art from the Depression years, he returned to printmaking
and created a number of lithographs with imagery inspired by previous works
and by his life in the Midwest.
The exhibition is generously sponsored by Director's Circle
member Martin E. Segal.
For further biographical information on selected artists
cited above please see America's Distinguished
Artists, a national registry of historic artists.
rev. 9/20/10
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In the
etching November Evening, for example, a farmer rides on his horse
through the center of a countryside.Phagan describes the work as "drawn
in great, loving detail, the split-rail fence, grasses and fields, and finger-like
clouds of dusk framing the composition. Nesbitt executed the scene with
fine networks of infinitesimal lines, flecks and crosshatchings, which were
drawn on a wax-covered plate and etched in stages, the resulting crevices
filled with ink, and. lastly, the plate printed." Left: November
Evening, 1946, etching printed in black ink on cream wove paper, 8 7/8
x 11 15/16 inches