The Irvine Museum
Irvine, CA
949-476-2565
All Things Bright and Beautiful
All Things Bright and Beautiful is a traveling exhibition comprised of fifty-eight important California Impressionist paintings from the collections of the Irvine Museum. The exhibition, All Things Bright and Beautiful: California Impressionist Paintings from the Irvine Museum opened in New York, at the National Academy Museum, an institution founded over a hundred and fifty years ago. Next, All Things Bright & Beautiful traveled to Chicago, at the prestigious Terra Museum of American Art. These two venues marked the first time an exhibition of California Impressionists paintings were shown in New York and Chicago. Thereafter, the show went to Memphis, at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, and then to Oakland, at the Oakland Museum of California . Now, after nearly a year and a half, it comes home to Irvine.
(left to right: Benjamin C. Brown (1865-1942), The Joyous Garden, c. 1910, oil on canvas, 30 1/2 x 40 1/2 inches, F0930; William Wendt (1865-1946), Ranch in the Valley, c. 1928, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches, F1306; E. Charlton Fortune (1885-1969), Study of Monterey Bay, c. 1918, oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches, M0001.
Artists represented include Franz A. Bischoff, George Brandriff, Maurice Braun, Benjamin C. Brown, Alson Skinner Clark, Colin Campbell Cooper, Meta Cressey, Frank Cuprien, Euphemia Charlton Fortune, John Frost, Armin Carl Hansen , Sam Hyde Harris, Anna Althea Hills, Joseph Kleitsch, Jean Mannheim, Edgar A. Payne, Hanson Duvall Puthuff, Arthur Rider, Guy Rose, Jack Wilkinson Smith, Elmer Wachtel, Marion Kavanagh Wachtel, William Wendt and several other noted painters of the period.
(left to right: Paul Lauritz (1889-1975), Poinsettias, c. 1925, oil on canvas, 32 x 36 inches, M0068; Granville Redmond (1871-1935), California Landscape with Flowers, oil on canvas, 32 x 60 inches, M0063; Colin Campbell Cooper (1856-1937), Pergola at Samarkand Hotel, c. 1921, oil on canvas, 29 x 36 inches.
All Things Bright & Beautiful is accompanied by a full-color book, with texts by William H. Gerdts, Professor of Art History and foremost authority on American Impressionism, Harvey L. Jones, Senior Curator of Art at the Oakland Museum, and Jean Stern, Director of the Irvine Museum.
Resource Library editor's note:
Click on images bordered in red to enlarge them.
This article was originally published in 1999.
Read more about the Irvine Museum in Resource Library.
For further biographical information on selected artists cited in this article please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.
rev. 10/26/10
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