Search results for ""author elliot bostwick davis""

On the night of 25 December 1776, George Washington led his ragged Continental Army through a snowstorm across the Delaware River, on the way to a surprise attack that would turn the tide of the American Revolution. More than forty years later, the ambitious young painter Thomas Sully chose this dramatic moment as the subject of a portrait of the founding father. He combined careful research into contemporary sources, compositional models drawn from European and American history paintings, and his own flair for theatricality to create a monumental panorama. In it, a dramatically lighted Washington urges on the troops from the back of a magnificent white steed, while his troops contend with the wintry river crossing below. The Passage of the Delaware, the first large-scale painting of this iconic moment, was created in the early years of the burgeoning cult of George Washington, when American artists, writers, and politicians evoked the heroic deeds of the founding fathers to foster a sense of national purpose and unity. This compact introduction to the painting reveals how Sully’s imagination, technique, and ambition came together to embody the drama of the Revolution and the character of its leaders.

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Hopper & Cape Ann tells the little known, largely ignored, and profoundly significant origin story of Edward Hopper s years in and around Gloucester, Massachusetts a period and place that imbued Hopper s painting with a clarity and purpose that eluded his earlier work and set the stage for his monumental career. Expanding on a major retrospective exhibit at the Cape Ann Museum ( July 22 October 16, 2023) to include an unprecedented loan of 25 works from the Whitney Museum of American Art, the book focuses on the summer of 1923 when Hopper first embraced watercolour during outdoor painting excursions on Cape Ann and discovered one of his favourite subjects, houses and vernacular architecture. The success of Hopper s Gloucester watercolours transformed his work in all media. What is significant and revealed in this volume is the lesser known story about how a young painter, Josephine Nivison, who became the most trusted force underlying Hopper s artistic confidence as well as his wife. Here she is recast as principal producer of Hopper s distinctive style and most trusted brand visionary from the time of their courtship until his death in 1967.

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