The beginnings of painting in New England
The American intellectual climate was long unfavorable to painting. Until the end of the 18th century, it was limited to portraits, and it was not until the first half of the 19th century that landscapes appeared, in the form of romantic scenes or vast panoramas.
The great painters of the period were John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), one of the American masters of portraiture; James Whistler (1834-1903), influenced by the French Impressionists - both were among the first American artists of international renown; and Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), also a champion of Impressionism, Winslow Homer (1836-1909), a realist painter famous for his seascapes, Robert Reid (1862-1929) and John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), a European who came to Boston to paint several commissioned portraits, including that of the important patron Isabella Stewart Gardner (1888), on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
In 1870, Boston opened the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), which quickly became a national reference. In 1899, Charles Hawthorne (1872-1920) also founded an artists' colony in Provincetown, the Cape Cod School of Art, inviting other artists to join him.
By 1916, six art schools had opened, attracting painters from all over the country. Hawthorne was also the founder of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, still in operation today. Some time earlier, in 1903, Isabella Stewart Gardner opened an eclectic museum in Boston, welcoming works by local artists and helping to promote their recognition and dissemination. These included works by John Noble (1974-1934) and Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) - who today has a dedicated museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the Norman Rockwell Museum. The Cape Cod school thus took center stage for several decades.
At the same time, when American painting was dominated by realist tendencies and social concerns, a new national realist school with a more documentary dimension was created, the Ash Can School. The best-known painter to belong to this movement was George Bellows (1882-1925). He delivered a captivating vision of American society at a pivotal time, in full transition to modernity.
In 1948, the descendants of wealthy patron William Farnsworth opened the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. The museum brings together works by painters who represented Maine and New England in general. On display are paintings by Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) and Winslow Homer (1836-1910), as well as Edward Hopper (1882-1967) and Bellows. Winslow Homer is also honored in Maine, at Prout's Neck, near Portland: his former studio, the Winslow Homer Studio, has been open to the public since 2013.
Still in Maine, you can also visit theOgunquit Museum of American Art to discover the works of the Ogunquit artists' colony that settled in this coastal village from the 1890s onwards.
Towards an American modernism
In the 1920s, a school called American Scene brought together a number of artists, including Grant Wood (1891-1942) and Edward Hopper, whose common desire was to rediscover a familiar, provincial reality specific to their country, in reaction to Expressionist currents conveyed by artists from Central Europe.
Precisionism emerged in the early 1920s. This movement had certain characteristics of Cubism and Futurism, and generally focused on the urbanization and industrialization of the American landscape. It was championed by artists such as Charles Demuth (1883-1935), with his fascination for grain silos, Elsie Driggs (1898-1992), whose painting of Pittsburgh with its menacing steel mill comes to mind, and Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), who portrayed Ford factories in Criss-Crossed Conveyors, Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), a modernist then regionalist when he returned to his region to become the "painter of Maine", and Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), with her unforgettable interpretations of Manhattan skyscrapers. In 1929, the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester was founded, with an entire gallery devoted to New Hampshire painters. In 1936, the Boston Museum of Modern Art - a sister institution to New York's MoMA - opened its doors. A veritable hotbed of innovation, the museum built a reputation for spotting the emerging artists of the day, and became independent in 1948, when it was renamed the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA).
During the Second World War, America welcomed many foreign artists driven out by Nazism (including Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, André Masson, Fernand Léger, Salvador Dalí and Marc Chagall), making the country an international hotbed of the arts. The Western avant-garde was very well received, Surrealism enjoyed a new lease of life and there were many followers of the European trend. Nevertheless, tired of the weight and scope of European influence, some American painters were quick to react. An artistic revival began around abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Willem De Kooning (1904-1997), Mark Tobey (1890-1976) and Franz Kline (1910-1962), who founded the New York School, giving the city a central role in art. Massachusetts-born Frank Stella (1936-2024) and the Minimalists followed in their footsteps. He is one of the precursors of Minimalism and a leading exponent of Op Art.
From Pop Art to Contemporary Art, a teeming period
In the 1960s, the New York School of Art revived Dada: the neo-dada movement gave rise to a socially conscious style of painting, inspired by the materials of everyday life, with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), Jasper Johns (1930) and Louise Nevelson (1899-1988).
Building on the foundations of neo-Dada, pop art developed in the United States in the late 1950s, seizing on the codes of contemporary popular culture, from advertising to comic books. Within this movement, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) stood out. They brought American art to the forefront of international attention, and contributed to the development of the local contemporary scene. New, subversive forms such as installation, performance, happening and video art were soon born, with Claes Oldenburg (1929) and Allan Kaprow (1927-2006) as leading figures.
Since then, this creative energy has continued to energize New York and the New England scene, where the Massachusetts MoCA was founded in 1985 to exhibit artworks in unusual formats that would not otherwise be shown in conventional art institutions. With its diverse programming, this art center remains today, along with Boston's ICA, an ideal place to discover artists from the local and national scene.
The photographic adventure in New England
Photography took root in New England as soon as the technique was first developed. The daguerreotype, invented in 1839 by the Frenchman Louis Daguerre, spread rapidly in the United States, and it was in the spring of 1840, at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, that one of the first American demonstrations was carried out. In the 1950s, dozens of studios sprang up in the city, led by Albert Sands Southworth (1811-1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808-1901). The first images produced were mainly utilitarian and dedicated to the elite, among whom portraiture was very much in vogue. It was only later that artistic photography developed, with pioneers such as the pictorialist F. Holland Day (1864-1933).
To discover images of the region, visit the various house museums of Historic New England, an association dedicated to the preservation of local historical heritage. Their photographic collections are vast, with over 500,000 images dating from the 19th century to the present day. They represent countless facets of life in the region: urban scenes, rural landscapes, life at sea or family reunions. For more contemporary photography, there are a number of specialized galleries in Boston, including the Panopticon Gallery and the Galerie Robert Klein.
From sculpture to street art: enjoying art in the open air
In addition to its greenery, mountains and rivers, the New England landscape is also home to many works of art to be discovered outdoors. In fact, there are many parks with public collections to enjoy while strolling, when the works aren't painted directly on the facades of buildings!
One of the leading institutions in this field is Lincoln's DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, which houses some sixty modern and contemporary works on a 35-hectare site. In a more classical vein, the Chesterwood Museum in Stockbridge houses works by Daniel Chester French (1850-1931), a famous American sculptor from New Hampshire. It also features the work of emerging artists in temporary exhibitions. In Ridgefield, Connecticut, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art also features a garden dedicated to current sculpture, with works mostly created specifically for the site. Last but not least, for gardening enthusiasts or for a family outing, don't miss Portsmouth's Green Animals Topiary Gardens, a garden of plant sculptures each more incredible than the last, easily rivaling those inEdward Scissorhands!
In terms of street art, Boston's streets are home to many nuggets. Don't miss Graffiti Alley in the heart of Central Square, a favorite haunt of local graffiti artists. If you're lucky, you might even get to see them at work!
