How's your weekend going? Mine's going great...am out of town, out of state actually (clue: a four letter state with three of the letters being vowels...nope, not IOWA like you are all thinking, but instead the other four letter state with three vowels, OHIO, as the IOWA version will be next weekend when I am headed out there to see my sister and her new post-flood house). This weekend is a chicks weekend in Cincinnati, just rejuvenating a bit and having a great time doing chick things and visiting the museums.
Photo is from the top of the hill at the Cincinnati Art Museum, where we were today enjoying the gorgeous weather, the lovely sight of changing leaves, views of the city, and where I also fell in love. Yep, you heard me: Fell in love. I am having an affair with Edward Henry Potthast (don't gasp, he's long gone and the love affair is merely with the art he left behind).
I traipsed through the museum seeing all the usuals found in nicely appointed museums...Renoir, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Manet, Monet, Courbet, Pissaro, Sisley, Hogarth, Reynolds, Cassatt, Wood, Wyeth, Hopper, Remington, Russell, Sargent, Rosseau, Bierstadt, etc. and the urge came upon me to spend a fair amount of time in the Cincinnati rooms, i.e. those rooms designated for representing local artists, art, etc.
When I was studying US Far West history in college, I spent a fair amount of time learning about Thomas Moran, so when I stumbled upon Potthast here today in the Cincinnati rooms, I remembered that he had gone with Moran, at the bequest of the Santa Fe Railway who commissioned five artists to head out west, specifically to the Grand Canyon, to paint in the very early years of the 1900's. The railroad would then use these paintings as travel enticers, encouraging people to travel west and see these wonderful visages for themselves, hopefully traveling by railroad and enriching the pockets of the men who voted to commission the artists to create such paintings.
Well, and indeed, Potthast did a nice stint with Moran, et al., but he also had some very fine Impressionist work, which followed his Far West gig, that caught my eye today. I tend to like the Impressionists' art very much, and while Potthast is sometimes called an Impressionist and sometimes called a Realist, whatever they want to call him, he has some very nice contributions as an American Impressionist in that era.
The French Impressionists all have these elegant tiny little whisps and dabs of brushstrokes in their paintings, which are easy to get lost in when you are viewing up close, stepping back, yet further back, etc., and while EHP's pieces have that near/far bit going on, his brushstrokes are broader and deeper, brighter, more intense in coloring, and I really like the idea of that coupled with the thoughts of America at the time being this broad, deep, huge country with wide open spaces, big skies, and vast plains, full of light and space, etc. full of exploration, industrialization, a sense of movement, etc. It's a wonderful marriage.
The museum has more than several really nice Potthast paintings, so be sure to check them out when you go next...or look for some EHP where you are as he was very prolific! And then just try to tell me that you did not absolutely fall in love with his seashore beach scenes, and that you were not absolutely enchanted with each and every painting in his collection...you can try, but I'll bet you won't succeed, that you, too, will fall in love with Potthast's collection. While Jan van Os, discovered at the Speed in Louisville, was this summer's affair...Edward Henry Potthast, discovered at the Cincinnati Art Museum, is this autumn's affair...be still my heart!
Oh, yeah, I'm having a great time seeing art in Cincinnati this weekend...but then you knew I would, right?