New Acquisitions: "The Kitten" by Thomas Waterman Wood

Thomas Waterman Wood, The Kitten, also known as Pompey and the Kitten, 1873

Genre painting in America from the 19th century can appear deceptively ordinary. One such example is the Georgia Museum of Art's recent acquisition, “The Kitten,” by Thomas Waterman Wood, which we mentioned in our last post on new acquisitions. Our curator of American art, Sarah Kate Gillespie, explains why there is more than meets the eye:

While on its surface it seems to smack of overt sentimentality, one can infer deeper political messages based on Wood’s other works. His most well-known series of paintings, “A Bit of War History” (1865–66), features an African American man as contraband, soldier and veteran and was apparently inspired by the sight of a Kentucky veteran on homemade wooden crutches. 

Many of Wood’s subsequent paintings treat politicized subjects, both white and African Americans. When examined in light of Wood’s larger oeuvre and his obvious interest in the politics and shifting social norms of a post–Civil War era, his seemingly innocuous images of African Americans can be read as deliberately reassuring depictions of a newly emancipated population for a white, northern audience. The black man is shown as docile, humane, kind to animals and children—in short, not a threat. When paired with existing works in our collection from the same era that also treat African American subjects (such as George Henry Hall’s “Boys Pilfering Molasses” and Winslow Homer’s “Taking Sunflower to Teacher”), this image helps us begin to tell a more complete story about visualizations of race in the Civil War period.

Check back in the upcoming weeks to learn more about George Henry Hall’s “Boys Pilfering Molasses” and Winslow Homer’s “Taking Sunflower to Teacher.”

New Acquisitions: "Winter Morning" by George Washington Nicholson

George Washington Nicholson, Winter Morning, ca. 1880

Happy new year! On this cold winter morning, it seems only right to share this painting recently purchased by the Georgia Museum of Art. This genre scene, "Winter Morning" by George Washington Nicholson, was acquired using funds donated in memory of Board of Advisors member Harry Gilham. 

Born in New Jersey, Nicholson trained in Philadelphia, where he learned academic realism at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1866, he traveled to England and France for further training. Nicholson settled in Philadelphia upon his return to the United States, and his reputation was at its height from the mid-1880s through the 1890s. He painted a mural titled “The Old Homestead” that was on display at Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia and another, “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” for the Pennsylvania State House in Harrisburg (most likely lost when the building burned in 1897).

Nicholson produced works commissioned by patrons who preferred seascapes, exoticized landscapes of Europe and Northern Africa and scenes of daily life in the American countryside. This snowy country scene is an example of the latter. He painted several variations on the scene, usually featuring a house and human figures in bright clothing to draw the eye, but most of them are smaller than this one. Along with the recent purchase of Thomas Waterman Wood’s “The Kitten,” this painting helps us better tell the story of 19th-century American art by enriching our small collection of genre painting from the era.

Artist Spotlight: Elaine de Kooning

Elaine de Kooning in her studio at the University of Georgia, ca. 1977-78.

The multi-faceted life and work of Elaine de Kooning, an equally accomplished artist, writer and teacher, makes her a captivating topic of study. Her contributions to the art world and the arts communities of the early 20th century at the height of the Abstract Expressionist movement mean that she has remained a consistent source of public and art historical fascination, ensuring her position as an arts, and feminist, icon. We’ve explored this, and de Kooning’s striking work in the Georgia Museum of Art’s collection before here on Holbrook’s Trunk, but now, de Kooning is back in the spotlight with an excellent exhibition of her work currently on show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, and the conversion of her former East Hamptons residence into an inspiring artist colony. Although no survey of this prolific artist can ignore her unsettled marriage to Dutch émigré Willem de Kooning, who would go on to become one of the most revered and renowned artists of their generation, Elaine de Kooning’s accomplishments are decidedly her own, and her position in the history of American art is distinct and continuing.

De Kooning, a native New Yorker, had been creating works for much of her life but did not have her first solo exhibition until the early 1950s, at the city’s Stable Gallery, when she was in her mid-30s. Instead, she had focused on criticism, and became an esteemed writer and editor — she was one of the first critics to take note of the likes of Mark Rothko and became an associate editor at Art News in the late 1940s.

This exhibition at Stable Gallery became the first of many, and as her practice grew more distinctive, so did its public appreciation. While many of her post-war New York contemporaries, the renowned action painters that included her husband Willem, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, were making physical, powerful, Abstract Expressionist works, de Kooning took this gestural style and worked it into more figurative series, often veering into portraiture. This combination of the traditional form of posed portraits with the abstraction that was so attached to the zeitgeist is a fascinating blend that gives a great insight to the cultural landscape of the post-war United States. Elaine’s often faceless representations of the male form, which ranged from anonymous basketball players to her famed commissioned images of John F. Kennedy, pervert or subvert the traditional artist-sitter relationship, and make her sitter subject to a female gaze. The basketball players in particular almost appear as a 20th-century retroversion of Edgar Degas’ amorous, voyeuristic images of young female ballet dancers — nameless, faceless, elegant female forms drawn and painted tirelessly by a 19th-century male at the forefront of Impressionism, 100 years earlier, seeming antiquated alongside de Kooning’s expression of female power.

Elaine de Kooning, "Bacchus #81" (1983)

This progressiveness in de Kooning’s work is what is still recognized and appreciated today — the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington exclusively highlights her portrait work and has been years in the making, and examples of de Kooning's work are featured in collections across the world, from the Guggenheim to the Georgia Museum of Art. “Bacchus #81,” in the collection and on display at the museum, is a mesmerizing example of many of these features, and its position at the museum is a particularly appropriate choice — de Kooning held a long and interesting history with the University of Georgia. She taught at a variety of esteemed institutions from Yale University to the Parsons New School for Design, before settling for some time as a Dodd Visiting Professor here at UGA. She held a studio on campus during this time in the late 1970s, where her artistic output was particularly fruitful. In fact, de Kooning actually began her Bacchus series in this studio at the university, as seen in production in the picture at the top of this post, following an affecting experience with Jules Dalou’s “Le Triomphe de Silene,” a violent sculpture featuring Bacchus and figures in similar forms to those in the painting, in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris.

“Bacchus #81” is one work in the museum’s collection of nearly 10,000 that is particularly at home. A stone’s throw away from where Elaine de Kooning began its series, it acts as a great representation of the museum’s — and de Kooning’s — contributions to the history of American art.