VISIT | EXHIBITION

Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection

Featuring more than 40 paintings from the extensive holdings of the Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina, this exhibition examines the history of the Impressionist movement and its influence on art created in and about the American South. Artists represented in the exhibition include Kate Freeman Clark, Elliott Daingerfield, Gilbert Gaul, Alfred Hutty, Rudolph Ingerle, Willie Betty Newman, Alice Huger Smith, William Posey Silva, and Catherine Wiley—several of whom were active in East Tennessee. Organized by the Johnson Collection.

Exhibition NOTES

Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection

Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection

 

 

Featuring more than 40 paintings from the extensive holdings of the Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina, Scenic Impressions examines the history of the Impressionist movement and its influence on art created in and about the American South. Artists represented in the exhibition include Kate Freeman Clark, Elliott Daingerfield, Gilbert Gaul, Alfred Hutty, Rudolph Ingerle, Willie Betty Newman, Alice Huger Smith, William Posey Silva, and Catherine Wiley—several of whom were active in East Tennessee.

 

The radical changes wrought by the rise of the salon system in nineteenth century Europe provoked an interesting response from painters in the American South. Painterly trends emanating from Barbizon and Giverny emphasized the subtle textures of nature through warm color and broken brush stroke. Artists’ subject matter tended to represent a prosperous middle class at play, with the subtle suggestion that painting was indeed art for art’s sake and not an evocation of the heroic manner. Many painters in the South took up the stylistics of Tonalism, Impressionism, and naturalism to create works of a very evocative nature, works that celebrated the Southern scene as an exotic other, a locale offering refuge from an increasingly mechanized urban environment.

 

Scenic Impressions offers an insight into a particular period of American art history as borne out in seminal paintings from the Johnson Collection’s holdings. It also enables KMA viewers to appreciate the accomplishments of East Tennessee Impressionists such as Catherine Wiley within the larger context of her peers from around the Southeast.

 

The Johnson Collection is one of the premier collections of Southern paintings in the country. By consolidating academic information on a disparate group of objects under a common theme and important global artistic umbrella, Scenic Impressions underscores the Johnsons’ commitment to illuminating the rich cultural history of the American South and advancing scholarship in the field.

 

Scenic Impressions is organized by the Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina.

 

Presenting sponsor: The Frank and Virginia Rogers Foundation in honor of the life of Ginny Rogers