Exhibitions: Luce Visible Storage/Study Center: Crayon Painting: American Pastels, 1890-1935

August 2005: “Crayon Painting”: American Pastels, 1890–1935, an installation of rarely seen, extremely fragile works on paper from the Brooklyn Museum collection will be on view in the Luce Visible Storage/Study Center from September 21 through December 2005. It is the latest presentation in a planned series of four yearly small exhibitions of selected works on paper from the permanent collection in the recently opened center.

“Crayon Paintings” has been organized by Teresa A. Carbone, the newly appointed Andrew W. Mellon Curator and Chair of American Art.

In the late nineteenth century, the medium of pastel, virtually unused in this country since colonial and antebellum times, was revived by a new generation of American artists, who found “crayon painting” well suited to direct sketching, brilliant color effects, and the Impressionist technique with which many of them had begun to experiment. In 1882 a group under the leadership of Robert Blum founded The Society of American Painters of Pastel, a group of artists who viewed pastel as a medium for finished works as well as experimentation. In the early twentieth century the pastel medium continued to be employed by many young American Realists as well as by a nascent generation of modernists.

Among the works in “Crayon Painting” are Robert Blum’s Woman in Japanese Costume, (circa 1890–92) depicting a model wrapped in a voluminous kimono; William Merritt Chase’s At the Window, (circa 1889) an evocatively backlit image of his young wife at a window; and Winter on 21st Street, New York, (1899), by Everett Shinn, who had been trained as a newspaper quick-sketch artist. Also included are City Scene, (1910), by William Glackens, Two Dancers, (circa 1935-40), by Raphael Soyer, and Study of Two Dancers, (1915-20) by Arthur B. Davies.

The Luce Visible Storage/Study Center includes more than 1,500 objects displayed in a far more compact fashion than in traditional gallery presentations, with the exception of exhibition areas where rotating selections of works on paper, decorative arts, paintings, and sculpture are presented.

Established by a $10 million grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Luce Center for American Art, comprising 17,000 square feet, encompasses the Visible Storage±Study Center and the adjacent installation American Identities: A New Look.

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