Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Past Exhibitions
The American Scene: Part I
- Oct 14, 2007 – Jan 13, 2008
- Boyd Gallery
Click image to enlarge…
The American Scene: Part I reintroduces the distinguished and remarkably rich selection of early American work in the permanent collection. Drawing upon the nationally significant Federal and Colonial portraits and early nineteenth-century landscapes, this exhibition focuses on the quintessential American identity, how it emerged in early portraiture, and how it was reinforced through landscape study. Bowdoin's American collection includes culturally significant works such as Joshua Johnson's Portrait of a Man. Johnson was the only "free man of color" working as an artist in America during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His Portrait of a Man is highly significant as the first in American art history to depict an African-American subject by an African-American artist. Alongside these are portraits of Bowdoin alumni, professors and presidents, literary and landscape scenes, through which works are shown the many ways in which American artists grappled with the inheritance of European modes and styles, and endeavored to adapt them – with greater and lesser modification – to the idiosyncrasies of American national life. This exhibition will include work by Gilbert Stuart, John Smibert, Robert Feke, John Quidor and Winslow Homer.
