The Westmoreland Museum of American Art continues its “Year of the American Landscape” theme with the exhibition Shaping the American Landscape. It will continue at the Greensburg, Pennsylvania, museum through January 18, 2027.
The exhibition draws from the collections of the National Academy of Design, the Westmoreland’s collection and the American Art Collection of J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox.
Childe Hassam (1859-1935), The Outer Harbor, 1909. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art. Mary Marchand Woods Memorial Fund.
The catalogue to the Fox collection, “A Collector’s Journey,” concentrates on the provenance and exhibition history of the works in the collection. It’s always interesting to see the ownership history of a work of art. A previous owner of Anchors, 1930, by Stuart Davis (1892-1964) was William Steig (1907-2003), creator of the picture book Shrek.
Steig told Roger Angell of The New Yorker, “I’m a Stuart Davis lover. Did you know that he was one of the painters converted by the 1913 Armory Show?” Davis exhibited five realist watercolors in the 1913 Armory Show, a show that introduced works by Matisse, Picasso and other European painters to America. Their work had a big influence on Davis. He said, “I paint what I see in America, in other words, I paint the American scene. I don’t want people to copy Matisse or Picasso, although it is entirely proper to admit their influence. I don’t make paintings like theirs. I make paintings like mine.”
Stuart Davis (1892-1964), Anchors, 1930. Oil on canvas. J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Art Foundation for American Art. Collection of J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox. © 2026 Estate of Stuart Davis / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.
Anchors is composed of stylized motifs he drew in ink in his sketchbook as he wandered around the harbor in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Forty years earlier, George Inness (1825-1894) painted the tonalist Moonrise, Alexandria Bay, 1891. His early work was in the detailed style of the Hudson River School. Later, influenced by style of contemporary painters in Italy and France he began to paint with a limited palette in the looser and atmospheric style of tonalism. Innis wrote, “The purpose of the painter is simply to reproduce in other minds the impression which a scene has made upon him. A work of art does not appeal to the intellect. It does not appeal to the moral sense. Its aim is to instruct, not to edify, but to awaken an emotion.”
George Inness (1825-1894), Moonrise, Alexandria Bay, 1891. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art. Bequest of Richard M. Scaife.
The poet Celia Thaxter (1835-1894) grew up on the Isles of Shoals off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire where her father had built a hotel on Appledore Island. The hotel became a gathering place for New England’s creative greats such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau and the painter Childe Hassam (1859-1935).
Hassam’s paintings of Thaxter’s garden are among the masterpieces of American impressionism. The garden can still be visited today. Lying about six miles off the coast, they are very much a part of the sea. After Thaxter’s death, Hassam began to paint more images of the sea. The Outer Harbour, 1909, depicts the rocky shore of Appledore with sailboats passing in the distance.
John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872), The Bash-Bish, 1855. Oil on canvas. National Academy of Design, New York, NY. Generously lent to The Westmoreland Museum of American Art by National Academy of Design as part of Art Bridges’ Partner Loan Network.
The Westmoreland’s “Year of the American Landscape” was curated to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States with a “dynamic roster of exhibitions and events that explore the beauty of American landscapes and their power to connect people.” —
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