This summer, the Colby College Museum of Art will present an exhibition that celebrates a group of milestone artworks for the museum. Offering visitors the chance to explore how museum collections are formed over the years, Constellations: Forming the Collection, 1973-2023 is made up of three overlapping themes: art by self-taught practitioners, portraiture and art that bridges the natural and the spiritual worlds.
Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), Portrait of Rachel Bolitho Sutton, ca. 1783. Oil on canvas, 23 x 19 in. Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Ellerton M. Jetté, 1982.011.
Rebecca Salsbury James (1891-1968), New England Still Life, before 1940. Oil on glass, 10 x 8 in. Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; The Lunder Collection, 2019.001.
The upcoming exhibition truly spans the breadth of historic American art, showcasing works by everyone from Charles Willson Peale, William Matthew Prior and Thomas Wilmer Dewing, to Fairfield Porter, Agnes Pelton and Louise Nevelson.
“Constellations offers the opportunity to display a major new acquisition for the Colby Museum, Agnes Pelton’s Being,” says Sarah Humphreville, Lunder Curator of American Art at the Colby College Museum of Art. “Produced in 1925 to 1926, the work is her first abstraction, in which she sought to portray her wonder for the divine, the profundity of the passage of time and the mystery of creation. It establishes a number of the symbolic and formal conventions that she would employ for the remainder of her career as she continued to develop her paintings and become more deeply involved in the spiritual occult. The painting allows the museum to tell a fuller story about the development of abstraction that accounts for its spiritual origins and the role of women artists.”
John Marin (1870-1953), Fulton Chain, Adirondacks, 1912. Watercolor and charcoal on paper, 161/8 x 13¾ in. Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; Gift of John Marin, Jr. and Norma B. Marin, 1973.043.
Humphreville adds that they’re also excited to be celebrating the legacy of Norma B. Marin, daughter-in-law of American modernist John Marin, as well as the Marin family, through the display of Marin watercolors donated by Norma B. Marin and John Marin, Jr. A selection from the 184 photographs that Mrs. Marin left to the museum will be on view as well.
“The exhibition will [also] explore the relationship between early 20th-century American artists and the self-taught art that inspired them,” Humphreville continues. “By juxtaposing works like G. R. Hall’s Upper East Machias from the Academy Hill…with Rebecca Salsbury James’ New England Still Life, an artwork in the Lunder Collection, viewers will be able to see how American artists invented a national modern visual expression that was distinct from the European avant-garde, using the past to create something new.”
Agnes Pelton (1881-1961), Being, 1926. Oil on canvas, 26 x 217/8 in. Gift of Laurie M. Tisch, Museum purchase from the Jere Abbott Acquisition Fund, and gift of Peter and Paula Lunder, The Lunder Collection; S002.2023. Photograph courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York.
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