
Amon Carter Museum Acquires Rediscovered Painting from Indian Series by George de Forest Brush
George de Forest Brush (1854 or 1855-1941)
The Potter, 1889
Oil on panel, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 2009.8
The Amon Carter Museum has acquired a rediscovered painting by
American artist George de Forest Brush. The Potter, painted in 1889, had been
in private hands since 1946, when it was sold from the collection of the
Galveston financier William L. Moody III.
“The acquisition of one of Brush’s ‘lost’ Indian pictures is a
major addition to our collection of material relating to the American West,”
says Dr. Ron Tyler, director of the Amon Carter Museum. “Now, our visitors will
have the opportunity to view Brush’s exacting but highly nuanced depiction of
an Indian within the context of other representations of indigenous people,
such as those presented by painters George Catlin and Frederic Remington and
photographer Edward S. Curtis, whose entire multivolume portfolio, The North
American Indian, was also recently acquired by the museum.”
The Carter’s newly acquired painting is among the final works
in Brush’s Indian series and exemplifies the artist’s rigorous academic training.
Exceedingly spare, the painting depicts a single, isolated figure within an
indeterminate darkened interior. Unlike earlier works in the series, which
center on themes of conflict, native customs or engagement with the natural
world, The Potter portrays the seated figure of a native artisan intently
focused on the task of glazing a hand-crafted vessel. The meticulous precision
with which Brush drew and painted the human body is matched by his pictorial
mastery of color and texture in the few carefully placed decorative elements
within the composition.
“Brush’s academic training was grounded in the French tradition,
which focused on the idealized human body and prized paintings with allusions
to classical art,” says Dr. Rick Stewart, the Carter’s senior curator of western
painting and sculpture. “By using the Indian theme, Brush could apply his
technical expertise and extensive knowledge of ancient art and Old Master
painting to a thoroughly American subject with its own tradition of pictorial
representation.”
Brush began the series of paintings of Indian subjects in 1882,
while living first in Wyoming at Fort Washakie and later in Montana at the Crow
Agency, sketching members of the Arapahoe, Shoshone and Crow peoples. He
continued to work on the series throughout the 1880s, traveling widely to
study native cultures in eastern Canada and Mexico and along coastal northeastern
Florida. Along the way he assembled a collection of indigenous artifacts for
use as studio props. The Indian paintings, though initially based on the
artist’s firsthand experiences among native people, have little basis in the
reality of contemporary American Indian life.
“One of the more intriguing aspects of the Indian paintings is
that, despite the high degree of realism Brush brought to these pictures, he
was not concerned with a cogent narrative or with historical or ethnographic
accuracy,” says Stewart. “Regardless, and interestingly also because of this,
the paintings brought the artist both critical and commercial success.”
The Indian pictures evolved from compositions with multi-figured
narratives set within the landscape to compositions that feature a solitary
individual engaged in the manual creation of art, as seen in The Potter. The
paintings present a carefully calibrated, fictitious, pre-industrial world where
idealized Indians lived in a timeless environment undisturbed by the advent
of modernism. For Brush, the Indian became a metaphor, a way to express personal
concerns, including his skepticism over industrialization and the mechanization
of labor. Ultimately, Brush conceived the Indian series as a progressive
meditation on the theme of human creativity.
“It’s always thrilling when notable works of art resurface in
pristine condition and are able to be shared with the public,” says Tyler, who
also notes that The Potter was exhibited in 1889 at the National Academy of
Design, along with Frederic Remington’s Dash for the Timber, one of Amon G.
Carter’s most important acquisitions.
The Potter is on view in the museum’s upstairs painting and
sculpture galleries beginning January 29, 2010.
About George de Forest Brush
Born in Shelbyville, Tenn., in 1854 or 1855, George de Forest Brush was raised
in Danbury, Conn. After studying art in New York City at the National Academy
of Design from 1870 to 1873, Brush continued his education in Paris, enrolling
in classes at the highly competitive École des Beaux-Arts. There, his skills
in depicting the human figure were measured against an international cadre of
young art students. He also gained admittance, as Thomas Eakins had before him,
into the atelier of Jean-Léon Gérôme, one of the school’s foremost teachers.
Brush taught at The Cooper Union and at The Art Students League, and he
exhibited and was a member of the National Academy of Design. After completing
his series of paintings of Indians, Brush turned to the theme of the “mother
and child” for which he is best known. He was elected to the Society of
American Artists, National Academy of Design, and the American Academy of Arts
and Letters. Brush died in Hanover, N.H. in 1941.
For further information contact:
Tracy Greene
(817) 989-5067
tracy.greene@cartermuseum.org
or:
Anna Caplan
(817) 989-5065
anna.caplan@cartermuseum.org

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Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973)
The Team, 1903
Bronze, Purchased with funds from the Ruth Carter Stevenson Acquisitions Endowment
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Jean Xceron (1890–1967)
White and Gray, no. 256, 1941
Purchased with funds provided by the Council of the Amon Carter Museum
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Amon Carter Museum Acquires:
Anna Hyatt Huntington’s 'The Team'
Jean Xceron’s 'White and Gray, no. 256'
Amon Carter Museum Director Ron Tyler announced today the
acquisition of two 20th century American works: a bronze sculpture entitled
The Team by Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973) and a painting
entitled White and Gray, no. 256 by Jean Xceron (1890–1967). Both works can
be seen in the museum’s painting and sculpture galleries.
The Team
Anna Hyatt Huntington was one of the most prominent early 2oth century
animaliers, artists who specialize in the realistic portrayal of animals.
The Team, a bronze of two draft horses working in tandem, is one of
Huntington’s early works.
the purchase of The Team, we have significantly added to our collection
of notable animal sculptures, which includes works by a number of Huntington’s
contemporaries—Gutzon Borglum, William Stanley Haseltine, Alexander Proctor,
Frederic Remington and Charles Russell,” Tyler says.
Huntington produced The Team in 1903 at the Roman Bronze Works foundry, one
year after her formal training with George Grey Barnard and Hermon Atkins MacNeil
at the Art Students League in New York. Depicting the harsh conditions of
work horses, the piece’s subjects move precariously down an incline. Harnessed
together, one horse is resolute, the other is struggling.
“The Team is a testament to Huntington’s natural artistic gifts, keen powers
of observation, and challenging compositions, all hallmarks of a masterwork,”
says Rebecca Lawton, curator of paintings and sculpture. “She so perfectly
captures the essence of these horses and their fiery spirits. We are privileged
to have it in our collection and share it with others.”
White and Gray, no. 256
White and Gray, no. 256, painted in 1941, is among Greek-born American painter
Jean Xceron’s most refined and rigorously constructed abstractions. Influenced
by the movements of Cubism, Neoplasticism, Suprematism and Constructivism, the
oil on canvas joins a variety of abstract works by Alexander Calder,
Stuart Davis and John Ferren in the museum’s permanent collection.
“White and Gray, no. 256 supplements a growing and impressive
collection of abstract art in the Carter’s collection,” Tyler says. “The
work provides an important bridge between the first and second generation of
American abstract artists.”
In the painting, Xceron employs a series of rectilinear
elements of various sizes and grid lines of diverse thickness, positioning
them vertically and horizontally against a subtly modulated background.
Moreover, the use of subdued tones for some of the shapes and lines allows
them to appear to hover above the background, which shimmers, creating a
radiant backdrop. The solid black rectangle at center left presents a darkened
void, which is countered by the luminous and larger white rectangle at right.
Xceron’s precise orchestration of elements is beautifully balanced, achieving
an overall formal unity that suggests weightless and suspended energy.
White and Gray, no. 256, Xceron achieves great compositional
harmony and a purer, more elegant formalism than is seen in his earlier work,”
Lawton says. “The painting epitomizes his mature style, reflecting both the
range of styles he had absorbed in Paris, as well as his own interpretation of
them. Abstract art enthusiasts will certainly delight in this piece.”
About Anna Hyatt Huntington (1876–1973)
Anna Hyatt Huntington was raised in Cambridge, Mass., where her family
fostered her love of animals and encouraged her to develop her artistic
talents. She studied with Henry Hudson Kitson in Boston, with Hermon Atkins
MacNeil and George Grey Barnard at the Art Students League in New York, as
well as with Gutzon Borglum. Huntington worked with her sister Harriet Hyatt
Mayor early in her career and later collaborated with Abastenia St. Leger
Eberle on many large works.
In the early 1900’s Huntington sold her work through the
Boston emporium Shreve, Crump and Low. At a show at the Boston Art Club, her
first major patron, the legendary Boston financier Thomas W. Lawson, likely
encountered her work. He considered her “the coming Rosa Bonheur” and
eventually owned a sizable number of her bronzes.
After working several years in Boston and New York, Huntington
went abroad to work in Italy and France, where she created the life-sized,
bronze sculpture Joan of Arc. After returning to New York City, she produced
many pieces from 1911 to 1917, receiving much acclaim. In 1912 she was listed
as one of 12 U.S. women earning $50,000 annually.
Huntington married philanthropist and scholar Archer Milton
Huntington in 1923. They purchased Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina as a
place of respite after Anna contracted tuberculosis in 1927. The gardens
became a public showcase for more than 300 sculptures—a mix of Huntington’s
work as well as her collected pieces. After she recovered, Anna and her
husband moved to Connecticut in 1939, where she continued working until a
few years before her death at age 97.
About Jean Xceron (1890–1967)
Jean Xceron’s formal training occurred while attending the Corcoran School of
Art in Washington, D.C., from 1910 to 1917. He moved to New York City in 1920,
where he met Joaquin Torres-García, who became an early mentor. By 1927 Xceron
had moved to Paris, earning a living as an art critic for the Chicago Tribune
and the Boston Evening Transcript. But more importantly, Xceron immersed
himself in abstract art through direct contact with a number of Europe’s
major abstractionists including Jean Arp, Albert Gleizes, Jean Hélion,
Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg,
among others. With an exhibition of his work in 1931 at the prestigious
Galerie de France, Xceron made a name for himself among Parisian art
circles, which served him well upon his return to the United States in
late 1937.
Xceron’s move back to New York coincided with the development
of the “second wave” of abstract art in America. The American Abstract Artists
(AAA) was formed in 1936, and the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, containing
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection, opened in 1939. Xceron was eagerly
embraced by the artists within AAA for his firsthand knowledge of European
abstraction. Hilla Rebay, Solomon Guggenheim’s art adviser and the founding
director of his museum, quickly purchased several Xceron paintings for
Guggenheim’s collection and hired the artist to work as an artist/curator
at the museum, a position he held until his death in 1967.
For further information contact:
Tracy Greene
(817) 989-5067
tracy.greene@cartermuseum.org
or:
Anna Caplan
(817) 989-5065
anna.caplan@cartermuseum.org

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