Reynolda House Museum of American Art Announces 2015 Exhibitions: George Catlin, American Impressionism

The Artist's Garden: Philip Leslie Hale (1865-1931),

The Crimson Rambler, ca. 1908, Oil on canvas; 25 1/4 x 30 3/16 in.,

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Joseph E. Temple Fund,

1909.12 Photo: PAFA/Barbara Katus & Brian van Camerik

"Reynolda House Museum of American Art will host two major exhibitions in 2015, one featuring 40 paintings of the American West by the artist George Catlin and another that tells the story of American Impressionist artists and the growing popularity of gardening at the turn of the 20th century.

“George Catlin’s American Buffalo” will be on view at the museum Feb. 13-May 3, 2015. The exhibition explores Catlin’s representations of the indigenous people of the Great Plains in the early decades of the 19^th century and the centrality of buffalo to their cultures. Catlin was a Pennsylvania-born artist who was one of the first painters of European heritage to depict the Native American tribes of the Great Plains. In vivid canvases often marked by dramatic action, Catlin demonstrated the importance of the buffalo for sustenance, for housing and clothing, and in spiritual ceremonies in the lives of Plains Indian tribes.

Reynolda House will offer a variety of public programs that relate to the exhibition, including a free Community Day & Tribal Pow-Wow on April 11, 2015.

“George Catlin’s American Buffalo” is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in collaboration with the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Generous support for the exhibition has been provided by Mary Anne and Richard W. Cree, and Lynn and Foster Friess. Additional support for the exhibition and the publication was provided by William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment Fund and the Smithsonian Council for American Art. Support for Treasures to Go, the Museum’s traveling exhibition program, comes from The C.F. Foundation, Atlanta, Georgia. Reynolda House is grateful for the generous support of the exhibition from Major Sponsor First Tennessee Bank.

In October, the museum will be the third of only four venues nationwide to host “The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887-1920.” This visually stunning exhibition will tell the story of American Impressionist artists and the growing popularity of gardening as a leisure pursuit at the turn of the 20^th century. “The Artist’s Garden” will be on view Oct. 2, 2015-Jan. 3, 2016.

Among the artists whose work will be included in “The Artist’s Garden” are three of the most beloved artists in Reynolda House’s collection—William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, and George Inness—along with other major American artists not represented at Reynolda, including Cecilia Beaux, Maria Oakey Dewing, Frederick Carl Frieseke, John Twachtman, and J. Alden Weir.

Katharine Smith Reynolds’s creation of the Reynolda estate, with its formal gardens and carefully landscaped grounds, coincides with and reflects the American Garden Movement. A complementary exhibition on the gardens and landscape at Reynolda will be on view at the same time in the historic house. Programs planned during the exhibition season will focus on gardens and Impressionism.

“The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement 1887-1920” was organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, with leading support from the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc. Additional support from Mr. and Mrs. Washburn Oberwager. Local sponsorship opportunities are still available. For information, contact Stephan Dragisic at dragissm@reynoldahouseorg or 336.758.5595.

Reynolda House Museum of American Art is one of the nation’s premier American art museums, with masterpieces by Mary Cassatt, Frederic Church, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe and Gilbert Stuart among its collection.  Affiliated with Wake Forest University, Reynolda House features changing exhibitions, concerts, lectures, classes, film screenings and other events.  The museum is located at 2250 Reynolda Rd. in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the historic 1917 estate of Katharine Smith Reynolds and her husband, Richard Joshua Reynolds, founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Reynolda House and adjacent Reynolda Gardens and Reynolda Village feature a spectacular public garden, dining, shopping and walking trails. For more information, please visit reynoldahouse.org or call 336.758.5150. Connect at facebook.com/rhmaa and @CurateReynolda."

- A Press Release