Portrait of a Place: Stuart Davis in Gloucester spotlights the esteemed artist’s enduring tie to Cape Ann
When:
Saturday, Jul 22, 2023 10:00a -
Monday, Oct 16, 2023 5:00a
Saturday, Jul 22, 2023 10:00a -
Monday, Oct 16, 2023 5:00a
Where:
The Cape Ann Museum
27 Pleasant Street
Gloucester, MA 01930
Admission:
$15
Hosted by:
Categories:
Art
Event website:
https://www.capeannmuseum.org/exhibitions/portrait-place-stuart-davis-gloucester/
The Cape Ann Museum is pleased to announce the opening of Portrait of a Place: Stuart Davis in Gloucester, an intimate exhibition of paintings and photographs that illustrate the city’s significant artistic influence on Davis. The exhibition, which will be displayed in the center of the Fitz Henry Lane gallery, is being presented thanks to generous individual and institutional lenders, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford. The exhibit will be on view from July 22 to Oct. 16, 2023.
Davis first visited Gloucester in the summer of 1915 at the invitation of fellow painter John Sloan. He wrote that the city “…was the place I had been looking for. It had the brilliant light of Provincetown, but with the important addition of topographical severity and the architectural beauties of the Gloucester schooner.” Sloan moved on to other locations to paint after 1918 while Davis continued to return to Gloucester for many years.
Portrait of a Place: Stuart Davis in Gloucester is the third exhibition to be shown within the galley and in juxtaposition with the suite of spaces that the Museum has dedicated to Fitz Henry Lane’s work. Lane, a Gloucester native son, also noted the city’s “topographical severity” in the landscape, working as a printmaker in Boston for several years before then returning to the city in the late 1840s. Lane preceded Davis by over 50 years, and interestingly both artists explored the area with paper and pencil before returning to their studios to paint, based on their drawings.
Portrait of a Place: Stuart Davis in Gloucester and an accompanying lecture, Stuart Davis's Gloucester: The Pungent Aroma of Oil Paint, Fish Cakes, and Glue presented by John X. Christ, Plymouth State University on Saturday, September 16, 2023, at 2:00 pm are part of the Cape Ann Museum’s contribution to Gloucester’s 400+ Anniversary, marking four hundred years since English colonizers first attempted to settle here. Over the course of this year, the Museum is presenting a wide variety of exhibitions and events that both celebrate the best of Cape Ann and acknowledge the important and complex history of this place stretching back more than 10,000 years.
Portrait of a Place: Stuart Davis in Gloucester runs concurrently to Edward Hopper & Cape Ann Illuminating an American Landscape, the first-ever major exhibition devoted to Hopper's Gloucester years, which opens on July 22, 2023, and runs through October 16, 2023.
