Displaying items by tag: revolution

The national garden movement and, in particular, artists’ interest in gardens, has deep roots in Philadelphia, beginning with William Penn’s founding of his green and pleasant town in the seventeenth century and John Bartram’s establishing his botanical garden in 1728. In the early nineteenth century, artist Charles Wilson Peale retired to the cultivation of his garden at Belfield, and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society was founded (in 1827), two years later hosting its first flower show. Interest gained momentum with the Colonial Revival movement, itself an outcome of Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition, and continued into the twentieth century.1 In her popular 1901 Colonial Revival-inspired publication Old Time Gardens, Alice Morse Earle wrote of Philadelphia: “There floriculture reached by the time of the Revolution a very high point, and many exquisite gardens bore ample testimony to the ‘pride of life,’ as well as to the good taste and love of flowers of Philadelphia Friends.” 2

Horticultural obsession also permeated the Philadelphia art scene. One of the most iconic conjunctions of art and the garden is the commissioning from Maxfield Parrish and Tiffany Studios of the fabulous Dream Garden (1913–1915, installed 1916) for the Curtis Building. The work was commissioned by Edward W. Bok (1863–1930), the head of Curtis Publishing, the influential publisher of Ladies Home Journal for the company’s new headquarters in Philadelphia.

Visit InCollect.com to read more about American Impressionism and the Garden Movement.

For the past hundred years the International Exhibition of Modern Art has been considered a signal event in the history of American art. Now known as the Armory Show, it was mounted by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors (A.A.P.S) in New York at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, between East Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Streets, from February 17 through March 15, 1913, and introduced avant-garde European art to an American audience. Some 1,400 works—paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, and decorative objects by European and American artists—drew approximately 87,000 visitors, and sparked an impassioned debate over the nature and future of modern art that played out in the press, as well as in meeting rooms, drawing rooms, and dining rooms across the country. Portions of the exhibition later traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Copley Society in Boston.

The international financial services group, Credit Suisse, has decided to donate a portrait of Alexander Hamilton by Revolution-era painter, John Trumbull (1756-1843), to not one, but two museums. The painting has been on loan to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas since it opened to the public in 2011.

Credit Suisse decided that giving the portrait to Crystal Bridges and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, two well-known institutions, would maximize the public’s enjoyment of the work by expanding its audience. The shared ownership will see that the portrait remains in Arkansas until the summer, when it will travel to the Met for a year. The painting will return to Crystal Bridges in 2014 for another year. Eventually the painting will be on view at each museum for two-year stretches.

Credit Suisse acquired the striking full-length portrait in 2000 when it absorbed the New York-based investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. Richard Jenrette, one of the bank’s founding partners, had assembled a remarkable art collection for the company that became part of Credit Suisse’s acquisition.  

The New York Chamber of Commerce commissioned Trumbull to paint the Hamilton portrait in 1791 while he was serving as President Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury.