Amon Carter Museum of American Art

Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Established January 1961[1]
Location 3501 Camp Bowie Boulevard
Fort Worth, Texas 76107-2695 (United States)
Type Art[1]
Director Dr. Andrew Walker
Website Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Texas shell stone used for the museum's exterior

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art (ACMAA) is a nationally accredited museum located in Fort Worth, Texas, in the city's cultural district. The museum's permanent collection consists of paintings, sculpture, photography, and works on paper by leading figures working in the United States and its North American territories in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The greatest concentration of works falls into the period from the 1820s through the 1940s. Additionally, photographs, prints, and other works on paper produced up to the present day are prominent in the museum's holdings.

The collection is particularly focused on depictions of the Old American West by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, images related to nineteenth-century exploration and settlement of the North American continent, and works that are emblematic of major advances in American art history. The "full spectrum" of American photography is documented by 45,000 exhibition-quality prints, dating from the earliest years of the medium to the present.[2] A rotating selection of works from the permanent collection is on view year-round during regular museum hours and several thousand of these works can be studied online using the Collection tab on the ACMAA's official website.

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art opened in 1961 as the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art. Its core collection of 400 works by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell was assembled by Fort Worth newspaper publisher and philanthropist Amon G. Carter, Sr. (1879-1955). Carter spent the last ten years of his life laying the legal, philosophical, and financial groundwork for the museum's creation.[3]

Collection

Western art by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell

Smoke of a .45 by Charles Marion Russell, 1908

More than 550 oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and sculptures by Frederic Remington (1861-1909) and Charles M. Russell (1864-1926) make up the ACMAA's core holdings of art of the Old West. Most of these works were purchased by Amon G. Carter, Sr. over a twenty year span beginning in 1935. Carter credited humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935) for sparking his desire to collect art by Remington and Russell.[4] Following his instincts, Carter built a collection of remarkable quality in an era when it was still possible to do so despite fierce competition.[5]

Carter's first acquisitions were nine Russell watercolors and an oil painting by Remington, His First Lesson (1903).[6] Carter acquired Frederic Remington's most important early work, A Dash for the Timber (1889), at auction in 1945.[7] Carter dramatically bolstered his holdings of paintings by Charles M. Russell in 1952 by acquiring the Mint Saloon Collection, an 80 piece collection formerly owned by Russell's close friend and patron Sid A. Willis of Great Falls, Montana.[8] Additions to Amon Carter, Sr.'s original holdings by museum curators have resulted in a collection that contains multiple examples of Remington's and Russell's best work at every stage of their respective careers.

Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell were America's best known and most influential Western illustrators. Their colorful and masculine images of life in the Old West helped shape public perceptions of the American frontier experience for an eastern audience eager for information.[9] Though neither artist had lived on the frontier at the height of America’s westward expansion, their drawings, paintings, and sculptures were infused with the action and convincing realism of direct observation. Russell moved to Montana Territory in 1880, nine years before statehood, and had worked as a cowboy for more than a decade before beginning his career as a professional artist. Remington toured Montana in 1881, later owned a sheep ranch in New Mexico, and had traversed Arizona in 1886 as an illustrator for Harper's Weekly. These experiences enabled them to convincingly portray a vast variety of Old West subject matter drawing on real world experiences, historical evidence, and their artistic imagination.

Noteworthy artworks in the ACMAA collection by Remington and Russell include: 1) Frederic Remington, A Dash for the Timber (1889) -- a monumental work that established Remington as a serious painter and considered by many to be his masterpiece.[10] 2) Frederic Remington, The Broncho Buster (1895) -- Remington's first attempt to model in bronze and the work that started him on a long secondary career as a sculptor. 3) Frederic Remington, The Fall of the Cowboy (1895) -- a poignant evocation of the fading of the mythic cowboy of legend, anticipating Owen Wister's landmark novel, The Virginian (1902).[11] 4) Charles M. Russell, Medicine Man (1908) -- a work reflecting Russell's sympathy for Native American culture and a detailed portrait of a Blackfeet shaman.[12] 5) Charles M. Russell, Meat for Wild Men (1924) -- a bronze sculpture which evokes the "grand turmoil" resulting as a band of mounted hunters descends upon a herd of grazing buffalo.[13]

Expeditionary art and depictions of Native American life

The ACMAA houses a wide selection of maps and artworks by European and American documentary artists who, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, traveled the North American continent in search of new sights and discoveries. Some of these artists worked independently, focusing on subjects or areas of the country of their own choosing. Others served as documentarians on expeditions of continental discovery sent out by the U. S. government or by European sponsors. In these roles, artists were uniquely positioned to record the topography, animal and plant life, and diverse Indian culture of America and its frontiers. Finding and collecting oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and published lithographs by these European and American documentary artists was one of the Carter museum's earliest goals.[14] Documentary artists represented in the collection include John James Audubon (1785-1851), Karl Bodmer (1809-1893), George Catlin (1796-1872), Charles Deas (1818-1867), Seth Eastman (1808-1875), Edward Everett (1818-1903), Francis Blackwell Mayer (1827-1899), Alfred Jacob Miller (1810-1874), Peter Moran (1841-1914), Thomas Moran (1837-1926), Peter Rindisbacher (1806-1834), John Mix Stanley (1814-1872), William Guy Wall (1792-after 1864), Carl Wimar (1828-1862), and others.

Landscape paintings and coastal scenes

One of the critical movements in nineteenth-century American landscape painting, the Hudson River School, is an important focus of the ACMAA collection. Two major oils by Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and one by Cole’s protégé Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) anchor the museum’s holdings of signature Hudson River School paintings. The Narrows from Staten Island (1866–68), a panoramic depiction of Staten Island and New York Harbor by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900), is a notable example of the Hudson River School‘s preoccupation with New England locales.

Hudson River School paintings that reflect the influence of Luminism are also found in the ACMAA collection. These include works by Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880), Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904), John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872), and Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865). Given its “dark, brooding mystery,” the painting by Heade, Thunderstorm Over Narragansett Bay (1868), is an almost unique variant of Luminism and considered by many observers to be the artist’s masterpiece.[15] Other Hudson River School artists represented in the collection by major oil paintings are David Johnson (1827-1908) and Worthington Whittredge (1820-1910). William Stanley Haseltine (1835-1900) is represented by a preliminary study of rocky coastline along Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island.

The influence of the Hudson River School and Luminism was focused on a western United States location about 1870 when Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) produced Sunrise, Yosemite Valley. This grandiose example of the artist’s work was completed after Bierstadt’s third trip to the American west.[16] It was added to the ACMAA collection in 1966. Another Hudson River School painter who headed west was Thomas Moran (1837-1926). Moran, famous for his paintings of the Yellowstone region of Wyoming, is represented in the ACMAA collection by his 1874 oil, Cliffs of Green River.

Figure paintings, portraits, and images of everyday life

Nineteenth-century figure paintings, portraits, and genre pictures (portrayals of everyday life) represent an important chapter in the history of American art development. High quality examples of these types of paintings are found in the ACMAA collection. Swimming (1885) by Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) is one of the best-known realist figure paintings in the history of American art. A summation of Eakins’ painting technique and belief system, Swimming was acquired for the ACMAA collection in 1990.[17] Crossing the Pasture (1871–72) by Winslow Homer (acquired 1976) combines the artist’s skills as a figure painter with his gift for storytelling to create a charming image of rural New York life.

A Group of Sioux (1845) by Charles Deas (1818-1867), though small in size, also stands as one of the Carter collection’s finest figure-based oil paintings. Attention Company! (1878) by William M. Harnett (1848-1892) is the only known figural composition by this American master of trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”) painting.[18]

Two major historical genre paintings by William T. Ranney (1813-1857) are in the ACMAA collection. Ranney’s Marion Crossing the Pedee (1850) and Virginia Wedding (1854) each exhibit the artist’s extraordinary skill as a figure painter and use of that skill to entertain and educate his nineteenth-century audience. Notable genre paintings by Conrad Wise Chapman (1842-1910), Francis William Edmonds (1806-1863), Thomas Hovenden (1840-1895), and Eastman Johnson (1824-1906) are also housed in the ACMAA collection.

Portraitist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is represented in the museum’s collection by formal portraits of two American subjects, Alice Vanderbilt Shepard (1888), and Edwin Booth (1890).

Still life paintings and sculpture

Trompe l’oeil (“fool the eye”) paintings and classic still life paintings make up a prominent component of the ACMAA collection. Ease (1887) by William M. Harnett (1848-1892) is a large and spectacular example of the trompe l’oeil genre and one that amply demonstrates the allure of Harnett’s trompe l’oeil illusions for his nineteenth-century patrons. John Frederick Peto (1854-1907), a William Harnett contemporary who worked in relative obscurity, is represented in the collection by two highly accomplished trompe l’oeil compositions, Lamps of Other Days (1888) and A Closet Door (1904-06). Other trompe l’oeil paintings in the ACMAA collection were created by De Scott Evans (1847-1898) and John Haberle (1853-1933).

America’s first recognized still life painter, Raphaelle Peale (1774-1825), is represented in the ACMAA collection by an 1813 composition Peaches and Grapes in a Chinese Export Basket. Other classic American still lifes featuring fruit or flowers include Wrapped Oranges (1889) by William J. McCloskey (1859-1941) and Abundance (after 1848) by Severin Roesen (1815-after 1872).

The ACMAA sculpture collection provides historical context for the museum’s deep holdings of Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell bronzes, as well as acknowledging the importance of sculpture in the wider history of American art. As such, the collection contains works created over a substantial span of time. The Choosing of the Arrow (1849) by Henry Kirke Brown is one of the earliest bronzes cast in America. Slightly later bronze sculptures, The Indian Hunter (1857-59) and The Freedman (1863), both by John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910) are also in the collection. Bust of a Greek Slave (after 1846) by Hiram Powers (1805-1873) is an example of an American neoclassical work carved in marble.

Two American sculptors who enjoyed great success during their lifetimes, Frederick MacMonnies (1863-1937) and Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) are represented in the ACMAA collection by cast bronze works. Bronze sculptures by Solon Borglum (1868-1922), who, like Remington and Russell, specialized in depictions of Old West subjects and Paul Manship (1885-1966) are in the collection as well.

The experimentation of early twentieth-century artists with nature-based abstraction and direct carving techniques from natural materials is seen in works by John Flannagan (1895-1942), Robert Laurent (1890-1970), and Elie Nadelman (1882-1946). Signature works by Alexander Calder (1898-1976) and Louise Nevelson (1899-1988) are among the mid-twentieth century sculptural pieces in the collection. Nevelson’s Lunar Landscape, a large, painted wood construction, dates to 1960.

American Impressionist paintings and 20th-century modernist works

The horizons of American art in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century expanded rapidly, fueled by major artistic advances in Europe. Before 1920, French Impressionism was one of the most important influences at work in cutting-edge American art circles. With a growing awareness of Impressionism as a valid approach to depicting nature, many prominent artists in the eastern United States adopted its tenets, leading to a recognized school of American Impressionism. The ACMAA collection contains several examples of American Impressionism by some of the genre’s most accomplished painters.

Idle Hours (about 1894) by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) anchors the ACMAA holdings of American Impressionist paintings. Chase’s student and protégé Julian Onderdonk (1882-1922) is represented by a Texas scene, A Cloudy Day, Bluebonnets near San Antonio, Texas (1918). Flags on the Waldorf (1916) is a signature New York work by Childe Hassam (1859-1935). Other well-known American Impressionist painters who have pieces in the collection are Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Willard Metcalf (1858-1925), and Dennis Miller Bunker (1861-1890).

New York photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) befriended and championed several of the most visionary modern painters to emerge in early twentieth-century America. Five modern masters closely identified with Stieglitz’s circle are represented in the ACMAA collection. They are Charles Demuth (1883-1935), Arthur G. Dove (1880-1946), Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), John Marin (1870-1953), and Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986). The collection houses early works by Demuth, Dove, Hartley, and O’Keeffe, produced between 1908 and 1918, and a focused group of later paintings by Dove, Hartley, Marin, and O’Keeffe that capture their response to the light and color of the New Mexican landscape near Taos. Charles Demuth’s Chimney and Water Tower (1931), painted in the artist’s hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is one of the highlight images in the entire ACMAA collection.

Several important paintings by American modernist Stuart Davis (1892-1964) are housed in the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, including an early self-portrait painted in 1912 and a work from his Egg Beater series, Egg Beater No. 2 (1928). American modernists represented in the AMCAA collection also include Oscar Bluemner (1867-1938), Morton Schamberg (1881-1918), Ben Shahn (1898-1969), Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), Joseph Stella (1877-1946), and others.

Photography

The museum's collections hold some 300,000 photographic works. Included are works by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Brett Weston and the photographic archives of Laura Gilpin, Eliot Porter, Karl Struss, and others. Other representative items are Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War, Edward Curtis's The North American Indian and a complete run of Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Work.

Library and Archives

Amon Carter Museum of American Art Library Reading Room

The museum library, like its art collection, is built upon the foundations of Amon G. Carter's personal collection. His library numbered 2,500 volumes, principally narrative accounts of the American West and volumes relating to the land and industry of the region. The library now houses approximately 150,000 volumes of books and bound perioidcals, primarily 19th and 20th century, focusing on American art, history, and cultures. Included in the collection are such landmark works as

Alexander Wilson, Alexander Lawson, J.G. Warnicke, G. Murray and Benjamin Tanner, American Ornithology, or, the Natural History of the Birds of the United States (Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, 1808-1814). The first bird book published in the United States and the first outstanding American color plate book.

James Otto Lewis, The Aboriginal Port-folio (Philadelphia: J.O. Lewis, 1835-1836). The first color plate book published on the North American Indian, predating other famous works by Thomas L. McKenney, James Hall, and George Catlin.

United States Department of War, Reports of Explorations and Surveys to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean (Washington, D.C.: B. Tucker, Printer, 1855-1861). Published by the Federal Government to record the explorations to determine a railroad route to the Pacific, these volumes fully examine the geography, geology, and natural history of the American West.

Edward S. Curtis, The North American Indian (Seattle: E.S. Curtis, 1907-1930). Curtis's attempt a comprehensive encyclopedia of American Indian life. He compiled information on 80 nations ranging from the Inuit people of the far north to the Hopi people of the Southwest.

Walker Evans, American Photographs (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1938). A pioneering photographic essay on American culture and society.

The museum is the mid-country affiliate for the Archives of American Art, containing millions of microfilmed primary documents. It holds as well personal archives of individual artists and collections of a primarily historical interest, such as the foundry records of the Roman Bronze Works.

History

The museum was established by Amon G. Carter, and his daughter Ruth Carter Stevenson, who amassed a sizable fortune in publishing, radio, television, oil, and aviation. His friendship with Will Rogers spurred an interest in the art of the American West, and he began collecting works of Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell. In time he accumulated approximately 400 works. When he died in 1955, his will provided for a museum to house his collection and "be operated as a nonprofit artistic enterprise for the benefit of the public and to aid in the promotion of the cultural spirit in the city of Fort Worth and vicinity."[19]

Carter's daughter, Ruth Carter Stevenson, assembled a board of directors including Richard F. Brown, Director of the Los Angeles Museum of Art; Rene d'Harnoncourt, Director of the Museum of Modern Art; and John de Menil, a respected art patron. With the board's approval she commissioned architect Philip Johnson to design the initial building. Johnson's design provided for a shellstone-sheathed building with a fourth wall of glass looking out to a panoramic view of Fort Worth. It included two tiers of small galleries and a main, two-story gallery in front. Construction began in 1960, and the museum opened in January 1961. Response to Johnson's design was quick and favorable. In a March 1961 article, "Portico on a Plaza," the Architectural Forum called it "an exceedingly handsome building -- beautifully situated and beautifully illuminated," then went on, "In this elegant, little museum the West makes a new beginning." Russell Lynes, writing in the May 1961 Harper's, summed up his reaction by calling it "Mr. Johnson's jewel box." [20][21][22]

The museum's first director, Mitchell A. Wilder (1913-1979), shared with Stevenson the belief that the story of American art could be interpreted as the history of many artists working at different times on "successive frontiers"—a vision of the American experience of frontiers and expansion dubbed "westering." To advance this vision, Wilder began to expand the collection in many categories, from the first landscape painters of the 1830s to modern artists of the twentieth century.[23]

The museum opened with a collection of 544 works, principally by Remington and Russell. Among the earliest acquisitions, however, was a group of photographic studies of Russell by Dorothea Lange. This marked the beginning of a focus on photography that handily complements the museum's holding in pictorial art and sculpture. Originally designated the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, it became the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in 2011.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Amon Carter Museum: About, ARTINFO, 2008, retrieved 2008-07-28
  2. ↑ Roark, Carol; et al. (1993). Catalogue of the Amon Carter Museum Photography Collection. Fort Worth, Texas: Amon Carter Museum. pp. Introduction xi. ISBN 0-88360-063-3.
  3. ↑ Junker, Patricia; et al. (2001). An American Collection: Works from the Amon Carter Museum. New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Amon Carter Museum. pp. 12–14. ISBN 1-55595-198-8.
  4. ↑ Junker, Patricia; et al. (2001). An American Collection: Works from the Amon Carter Museum. New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Amon Carter Museum. p. 11. ISBN 1-55595-198-8.
  5. ↑ Dippie, Brian (1982). Remington and Russell: The Sid Richardson Collection. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press Austin. p. 7. ISBN 0-292-77027-8.
  6. ↑ Junker, Patricia; et al. (2001). An American Collection: Works from the Amon Carter Museum. New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Amon Carter Museum. p. 11. ISBN 1-55595-198-8.
  7. ↑ Ayres, Linda; et al. (1986). American Paintings: Selections from the Amon Carter Museum. Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House. pp. 64–66. ISBN 0-8487-0694-3.
  8. ↑ Stewart, Rick (1992). Charles M. Russell: Masterpieces from the Amon Carter Museum. Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum. pp. 7–8. ISBN 0-88360-071-4.
  9. ↑ Dippie, Brian (1982). Remington and Russell: The Sid Richardson Collection. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press Austin. p. 9. ISBN 0-292-77027-8.
  10. ↑ Stewart, Rick (2005). The Grand Frontier. Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum. pp. 8–9. ISBN 0-88360-098-6.
  11. ↑ Stewart, Rick (2005). The Grand Frontier. Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum. p. 19. ISBN 0-88360-098-6.
  12. ↑ Stewart, Rick (2005). The Grand Frontier. Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum. p. 42. ISBN 0-88360-098-6.
  13. ↑ Stewart, Rick (1994). "Charles M. Russell:Sculptor". Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum. pp. 286–290.
  14. ↑ Ayres, Linda; et al. (1986). American Paintings: Selections from the Amon Carter Museum. Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House. pp. vii–x. ISBN 0-8487-0694-3.
  15. ↑ Ayres, Linda; et al. (1986). American Paintings: Selections from the Amon Carter Museum. Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House. p. 10. ISBN 0-8487-0694-3.
  16. ↑ Ayres, Linda; et al. (1986). American Paintings: Selections from the Amon Carter Museum. Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House. p. 20. ISBN 0-8487-0694-3.
  17. ↑ Junker, Patricia; et al. (2001). An American Collection: Works from the Amon Carter Museum. New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Amon Carter Museum. pp. 112–113. ISBN 1-55595-198-8.
  18. ↑ Junker, Patricia; et al. (2001). An American Collection: Works from the Amon Carter Museum. New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Amon Carter Museum. pp. 96–97. ISBN 1-55595-198-8.
  19. ↑ Askew, Rual (25 January 1961). "Area Graced by Memorial". Dallas Morning News.
  20. ↑ Wright, George S. (1997). "An Interview with Philip Johnson". Monument for a City: Philip Johnson's Design for the Amon Carter Museum. Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum.
  21. ↑ "Portico on a Plaza". Architectural Forum. March 1961.
  22. ↑ "Everything's Up to Date in Texas...But Me". Harper's. May 1961.
  23. ↑ Junker, Patricia; et al. (2001). "An American Collection: Works from the Amon Carter Museum". New York: Hudson Hills Press in association with the Amon Carter Museum. pp. 14–15.

External links

Coordinates: 32°44′53″N 97°22′08″W / 32.748°N 97.369°W / 32.748; -97.369

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