American Watercolors from the Permanent Collection

May 14–August 7, 2011

American Watercolors from the Permanent Collection of the Georgia Museum of Art

This exhibition, organized by Paul A. Manoguerra, chief curator and curator of American art at the Georgia Museum of Art, features American watercolors from the mid-19th century to the 1970s from the permanent collection of the Georgia Museum of Art. Paintings by Jasper Francis Cropsey, William Stanley Haseltine and Frederic Remington demonstrate the importance of the medium in American 19th-century art while American moderns Charles Burchfield, John Marin and Andrew Wyeth represent true masters of watercolor. Some American painters used the medium to create drawings or compositional studies, including Elaine de Kooning in her sketch of a sculpture in Paris. Others used it to make a final, finished product, emphasizing technique and enjoying its immediacy and spontaneity. Robert Bechtle’s “Palm Springs Chairs” (1975) is a highly detailed and meticulously painted watercolor that has the feel of a vacation snapshot of a motel pool.

While some of these images were exhibited occasionally before the expansion of the museum, this display features two brand-new acquisitions. Acquired in 2010, Howard Thomas’ “Third Ward” (1943) and Raymond Peers Freemantle’s untitled watercolor (“Horse and Cart in Town Scene,” ca. 1930s or 1940s) have never been Visit www.georgiamuseum.org displayed in the museum.

Three of the watercolors to download a complete (Frederic Remington’s “Ashchecklist of the exhibition. trakhan Cossacks,” ca. 1894; John Marin’s “Mountain and Meadow, Hoosic Mountains, Massachusetts,” 1918; and William Zorach’s “Maine Lake at Dawn,” 1926) were part of the original collection of 100 works donated

by Alfred Heber Holbrook in 1945 to establish the museum.

Holbrook was the founder and first director of the museum and a driving force behind its success.

“American Watercolors from the Permanent Collection of the Georgia Museum of Art” is generously sponsored by Kathy Prescott and Grady Thrasher, YellowBook USA, the W. Newton Morris Charitable Foundation and the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art. Front, top: John Marin, Mountain and Meadow, Hoosic Mountains, Massachusetts (detail), 1918. GMOA 1945.64 Front, bottom: Jasper Francis Cropsey, The Palisades, Hudson River (detail), 1891. GMOA 2003.15 Back: Elaine de Kooning, Untitled study for the Bacchus series, 1977. GMOA 1988.10