What a far-reaching issue we have for you this month! If you include the fine objects and furniture in our Collector’s Focus dedicated to decorative art and antiques, the art in this issue spans 18th-century Colonial America to the 1950s (and maybe a few examples from even later). Our museum previews say it all. We’ve got a fascinating feature about artistic polymath Wharton Esherick; another about trailblazing modernist printmaker Blanche Lazzell; and a survey of artwork created from the onset of the Great Depression to the end of World War II. 

We have two exhibitions that focus on the great artists of the Golden Age of Illustration: Illustrators of Light: Rockwell, Wyeth and Parrish at the Norman Rockwell Museum, and The Ethereal Worlds of Maxfield Parrish at Florida’s Flagler Museum. Both had an impact on me. The former exhibit highlights the paintings these artists made for an advertising campaign promoting General Electric’s Edison Mazda Lamps, during a time when electric light was still something of a marvel. The scenes are sweet: two sweethearts cozied up on the sofa, grandpa entertaining his young grandchildren, an old man peacefully engaged in a game of solitaire—all emphasizing the warm, inviting glow of lamplight. The Parrish solo exhibition features works from the same era, and an idyllic mood pervades these paintings as well. They tugged at my heart strings, and I felt that longing for simpler times, to step into the worlds of those canvases.

As Flagler Museum curator Campbell Mobley explained, the pieces created during this time period “reflected key ideals of the Gilded Age…the optimism, escapism, and idealism that characterized much of American life during the early-20th century. …They offered a reprieve from the complexities of modern life, emphasizing beauty, harmony and transcendence. [Parrish’s] work taps into the American desire for an imagined, utopian world, where the impossible could be made real through art.” Now I understood the appeal. I had felt it too.

It is our hope that all of the art within these pages offers you something of a reprieve from the stressors of daily life, and that you too experience, and appreciate, art’s ability to transport us to another time, and another world. 

Enjoy the March/April issue!

Sarah Gianelli
Managing Editor
sgianelli@americanartcollector.com

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