April 14, 1986: BROOKLYN, N.Y.--Contemplating the American Watercolor: Selections from the Transco Energy Company Collection, an exhibition including more than 50 works, will open at The Brooklyn Museum on April 13 and be on view through May 26, 1986. The show offers a concise but comprehensive survey demonstrating the popularity and versatility of the medium in America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This exhibition draws from a traveling exhibition of the collection of Transco Energy Company organized by David Park Curry of The Denver Art Museum. For the Brooklyn venue the Transco collection will be complemented by examples from The Brooklyn Museum’s rich holdings in this area.
Among the earliest works on view will be Thomas Sully’s Mother and Children, 1831, which exemplifies the American artists’ reliance on the English watercolor tradition during the first decades of the nineteenth century. Particular attention is given to the rise in the importance of the watercolor medium within the American fine arts, a trend that began in the 1860s. At this point the medium attracted not only artists like John William Hill, whose career was based on watercolor as a speciality, but also artists like Winslow Homer, who was involved primarily with oil painting but whose achievements in watercolor have seldom been equaled. The show will also demonstrate that watercolor has retained its appeal for twentieth century artists as diverse as Charles Burchfield, Mark Tobey, and Milton Avery.
A publication containing full-color illustrations of a number of works in the exhibition is available in the Museum Shop.
In conjunction with the exhibition, artist-instructor Fred Gutzeit will conduct a daylong workshop entitled “Working with Watercolor” Saturday, May 17, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For registration information, call (718) 638-5000, ext. 232.
This exhibition and its related public programs are made possible in part through the generous support of the Transco Energy Company and Brooklyn Union Gas Company.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1971 - 1988. 1986, 022.
