GLENS FALLS, NY — After a landmark year that expanded the Museum’s focus to include Modern and Contemporary art, The Hyde Collection is proud to announce its 2018 exhibition schedule. The lineup offers exciting contrasts to historic Hyde House and the selection of Modern art exhibited in Feibes & Schmitt Gallery, including the sinuous lines of Art Nouveau, graphic prints from an Adirondack artist, the works of female Impressionists, the annual High School Juried Show, and a much-anticipated showing of the Nuremberg Chronicle from the permanent collection.

Alphonse Mucha: Master of Art Nouveau

Wood and Whitney-Renz galleries
January 14 to March 18, 2018 The exhibition examines the pivotal role of Alphonse Mucha (1860 – 1939) in shaping the aesthetics of French Art Nouveau at the turn of the twentieth century. The artist’s posters and graphic style popularized this international movement. Later in his career, the Czech nationalist depicted the history of the Czech lands and people. Master of Art Nouveauspans his career, including a panel from his Slav Epic series, and bank notes from his homeland.

Alphonse Mucha claimed to have been catapulted to fame by fate. In 1894, the young commercial artist was in a print shop when iconic French actress Sarah Bernhardt called needing a poster for one of her upcoming shows. She was so delighted by his work, in which he presented her as a statuesque beauty with a golden aura akin to a mosaic of a Byzantine empress, that she immediately signed him on for a six-year contract. His advertisements captivated art lovers, who searched them out, removed them, and brought them home to hang on their parlor walls.

Mucha’s exploitation of the new medium of the advertising poster helped shape the aesthetics of French art at the turn of the twentieth century and formed the cornerstone of the international Art Nouveau movement.

Rockwell Kent (American, 1882 – 1971), Home Port, 1931, wood engraving on maple, 6 1/2 x 7 5/16 in., Courtesy Ralf C. Nemec Collection, Organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA.

The Prints of Rockwell Kent: Selections from the Ralf C. Nemec Collection A Life and Art of His Own: The Paintings of Rockwell Kent from North Country Collections

Wood, Whitney-Renz, and Hoopes galleries
April 8 to July 22, 2018Complementary exhibitions celebrate Rockwell Kent (1882 – 1971), the American painter, printer, and illustrator, who settled in the Adirondacks in 1928. The print exhibition, organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, California, includes illustrations; images related to his love of wildernesses, including the Adirondacks; and works demonstrating his social activism, all drawn from the collection of Ralf C. Nemec, who has the world’s most extensive collection of Kent’s prints. In addition, there will be a selection of ceramics also from Nemec’s collection, decorated with designs by Kent. The artist painted many of his works in his Adirondack studio based on drawings, sketches, and notes taken during extensive travels to Greenland, Tierra del Fuego, and other extreme locations. In a complementary exhibition, Guest Curator Caroline Welsh has drawn together paintings from North Country collections, some seldom seen publicly.

Rockwell Kent was an architect, author, illustrator, painter, printmaker, and ceramicist. He studied architecture at Columbia University, painted under William Merritt Chase at Shinnecock Hills School, and studied painting with Robert Henri at the New York School of Art, with classmates George Bellows and Edward Hopper (both of whom are represented in The Hyde’s permanent collection).His paintings, woodcuts, and prints showcase the natural wilderness, fascinating those who saw his works and were transported on his many adventures. As author and illustrator of popular accounts of his travels, he met with considerable commercial success. Later, he illustrated books, including such classic literature as Moby Dick and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

The High School Juried Show

Feibes & Schmitt and Rotunda galleriesMay 12 to June 10
For the twenty-seventh year, some of the brightest talent in area high schools will be on display in the annual High School Juried Show, which runs May 12 to June 10 in the Feibes & Schmitt Gallery. Students from schools in Warren, Washington, Saratoga, Hamilton, and Essex counties are invited to submit works, from which a jury of local art professionals will select 100 to be displayed.

Jane Peterson (American, 1876–1965), Palm Beach, by 1965, oil on canvas, 18 ¼ x 24 ¼ in., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, The Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest, 1981, 86.3596

Jane Peterson: At Home and Abroad

August 5 to October 12

In this exhibition organized by the Mattatuck Museum, the career of American female Impressionist Jane Peterson (1876 – 1965) is examined. With a look at her introduction to Impressionism and her development under the influence of Fauvism, the exhibition includes works derived from her travels in Europe, North Africa, and America. The artist was extremely popular among major art collectors of her time, especially John D. Rockefeller.

Jane Peterson was a graduate of the Pratt Institute. She used swaths of color, creating depths of light to create movement in works depicting places on three continents. Her works are included in museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Philadelphia Museum of Arts.

Women Impressionists from the Thomas Clark Collection

Whitney-Renz Gallery
August 5 to October 12

This exhibition looks at the work of at least fifteen American female Impressionist painters drawn from the collection of Thomas Clark, which focuses on American Impressionist landscapes. The exhibition includes works from artists trained in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Europe. In the nineteenth century, one of the few paths for independence for a middle-class woman was to study art either at a school or under the tutelage of a master such as William Merritt Chase. While able to travel abroad, the women represented in the exhibition spent their careers on the East Coast, in the Midwest, and in California. Few earned the longstanding recognition their artistry deserved.

Michael Wolgemut (German, 1434/37 – 1519) and Wilhelm Pleydemwurff (German, ca. 1460 – ca. 1494),Ptolomey’s Map of the World, Woodcut, hand colored, 18 3/8 x 12 1/4 in., in Dr. Hartmann Schedel (German, 1440 – 1514), The Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493 (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493). The Hyde Collection, Glens Falls, New York, 1971.110.

Nuremberg and Augsburg Chronicles

Hoopes Gallery
Opens November 2

The Hyde will showcase two treasures from its collection. The Nuremberg Chronicle was the first major printed and illustrated work in Europe, telling the history of the world based upon the Bible and augmented with more recent histories from medieval sources. Illustrated with hand-painted woodcut illustrations, it launched an informational and technological revolution that overturned the medieval world. The Augsburg Chronicle is perhaps the first example of copyright infringement in print. Published in a neighboring and competing German city, it was a smaller and cheaper “knock-off” of the Nuremberg Chronicle. The Hyde’s copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle is recognized as one of the finest in the country.

Posted in 2017