PAFA Announces The Distinguished Lecturer Series with Dr. William H. Gerdts

Dr. Gerdts is a leading authority on American art. He has played a role in landmark exhibitions on major American art movements, published numerous books and exhibition catalogues, taught a generation of graduate students who are now leaders in the field, and been an advisor to many art museums and collectors.

 

All lectures begin at 6:30 p.m. and take place in PAFA’s Historic Landmark Building (118 N. Broad St.). Admission costs are $10 for members, $15 for non-members, and $7 for students with i.d. To register, call 215-972-0522.

 

As part of PAFA’s dedication to serving teachers and schools in our community with innovative programming, all of lectures in this series will be eligible for Act 48 credits. Teachers are invited to garner their continuing education under the tutelage of one of American art's most esteemed scholars.

 

The schedule of lectures is as follows:

 

American sculpture developed on a professional level beginning in the second quarter of the nineteenth century by artists who settled in Italy, where they were inspired by the works of classic and contemporary European artists, as well as the workmen who assisted them, and the marble which constituted their preferred medium. A unique phenomenon occurred, beginning in the 1850s, when a substantial group of American women, led by Harriet Hosmer, settled in Rome and also undertook to become professional sculptors, identified by Henry James as "The White Marmorean Flock." PAFA’s galleries have many splendid examples of their work on view.

 

Though American artists flocked to Florence, and especially Rome, in the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century, Venice was the great attraction in the last decades of the century, where painters such as John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler created some of their finest work. They enjoyed the company of an international coterie of artists from all over Europe, and enjoyed the support and patronage of a group of wealthy Anglo-American expatriates who bought up some of the great palazzos along the canals, and made Venice one of the most prominent destinations for artists and writers, leading to the establishment of the great exhibitions of the Venice Biennale, still held today.

 

This is the first of a subset of four lectures on the subject of American Impressionism. This lecture will present an overview of Impressionism in America, beginning with the reception of French Impressionism in this country, and following the careers of American artists who went abroad for their cosmopolitan training but fell under the influence of the then-radical French artists of the Impressionist movement, resulting in the adoption of similar strategies and goals.

 

Claude Monet, the great French Impressionist, settled in Giverny, France, in 1883. Four years later, a group of seven American and Canadian artists visited there and began the most important and longest-lasting art colony devoted to Impressionism. The colony went through two, or arguably even three, generations of artists, primarily though by no means solely Americans, developing new and more progressive strategies as well as adopting different themes over the thirty-year period of the colony's existence.
 

By 1903, the small Connecticut village of Old Lyme became known as the Giverny of America, though it had already served as an art colony for French-inspired American artists. Other artists' colonies developed in the Northeastern United States, populated by artists creating paintings that characterized the Impressionist aesthetics. While some artists participated in more than one of these colonies, each had its own distinctive characteristic, and many were dominated by one or another of the leading American Impressionist painters.

 

By the turn of the 19th-to-20th century, Impressionism had become the dominant and popular approach to painting in the United States, both figural work and especially landscape. There were colonies of Impressionism across the nation, but it was in Southern California that Impressionism took the greatest hold beyond the Northeast. Impressionism dominated the art produced by painters living in the Arroyo Secco section of Pasadena, and along the coast at Laguna Beach, artists whose work today is sought after by literally hundreds of collectors, and purveyed by an equal number of commercial galleries.

 

The work of the urban Realists of what has become identified as "The Ashcan School" has assumed new interest and popularity among collectors, scholars, and museums in recent years. Earlier art historians allied the work of these painters—Robert Henri, John Sloan, and others— with a previous generation of Americans who studied in Munich, Germany, such as Frank Duveneck and William Merritt Chase. The nature and degree of this connection will be explored in this lecture.

 

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Founded in 1805, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is America's oldest continually operating school of fine arts and museum.  A recipient of the 2005 National Medal of Arts presented by the President of the United States of America, the Academy is a recognized leader in fine arts education.  Nearly every major American artist has taught, studied, or exhibited at the Academy. The institution's world-class collection of American art continues to grow and provides what only a few other art institutions in the world offer: the rare combination of an outstanding museum and an extraordinary faculty known for its commitment to students and for the stature and quality of its artistic work.

 

Museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Academy is located at 118-128 N. Broad Street in Philadelphia. Admission to Permanent Collection is Adults $10, Seniors & Students with I.D. $8, Youth ages 5-18, $6. Admission to Special Exhibitions (includes Permanent Collection) is Adults $15, Seniors & Students with I.D. $12, Youth Ages 5-18, $8. Admission is free for members and children under age of 5. Admission to Morris Gallery exhibitions is free.