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Linda J. Docherty
Associate Professor of Art History
Spring 2008
- Nineteenth-Century European Art (ARTH 242)
- Picturing Nature (ARTH 365)
- Advanced Independent Study and Honors in Art History (ARTH 402)
| Phone | (207) 725-3698 |
| Title | Associate Professor |
| Department | ART |
| Work Location | 206 Visual Arts Center |
| ldochert@bowdoin.edu |
Education:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ph.D., 1986
University of Chicago, M.A., 1978
Cornell University, B.A., 1969
Teaching Appointments:
Bowdoin College, Associate Professor of Art History, 1992-present; Assistant Professor of Art History, 1986-1992.
University of Virginia, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History, 1985-1986.
Research and Teaching Interests:
Linda Docherty is a specialist in American art and criticism to 1945. Her research focuses broadly on questions of art and identity, art and spirituality, and the relationship between American and European artists. She has published articles and presented papers on Winslow Homer, William Merritt Chase, Edmund C. Tarbell, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, James McNeill Whistler, and Isabella Stewart Gardner.
Professor Docherty teaches intermediate survey courses on American art and nineteenth-century European art as well as a thematic course on American photography and American identity. Advanced seminar topics have included: The Art of Portraiture, Impressionism, The World of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Art and Religion in American Culture, and Picturing Nature. She also offers a first-year seminar on Winslow Homer.
Professor Docherty regularly brings students to the Bowdoin College Museum of Art to look at original paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, and sculptures. Her classes also study architecture on the Bowdoin College campus and in the town of Brunswick and rare books in Special Collections at Hawthorne-Longfellow Library.
Recent Publications:
"Invitation to Wonder," in Threatened and Endangered: Artist’s Books Created by Rebecca Goodale (Brunswick: Bowdoin College, 2004).
"Portraits as Documents: Historical and Humanistic Reflections." In Portraits in the Collection of the American Antiquarian Society, by Lauren B. Hewes (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 2004), 45-58 
Also published in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 111, part 1 (2001), 45-58.
"The Making of an Artist: Edmund C. Tarbell's Early Influences and Career." Impressionism Transformed: The Paintings of Edmund C. Tarbell, (Manchester: Currier Gallery of Art, 2001), 29-70.
"Collection as Creation: Isabella Stewart Gardner's Fenway Court." In Memory and Oblivion: Proceedings of the XXIXth International Congress of the History of Art. Eds. Wessel Reinink and Jeroen Stumpel. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999, 217-21.
"Why Not a National Art? Affirmative Responses in the 1890s." Paris 1900: The 'American School' at the Universal Exposition, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 95-117.
"Women as Readers: Visual Interpretations." Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 107/2 (1998), 335-388.
Recent Paper Presentations:
"Original Copies: Gilbert Stuart's Companion Portraits of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison," to be presented at Edgar P. Richardson Symposium, National Gallery of Art, April 16, 2005.
"Transatlantic Correspondence: James McNeill Whistler and Isabella Stewart Gardner." Whistler Centenary Conference, Glasgow, September 3-6, 2003.
"Transient Life/Timeless Art: Augustus Saint-Gauden's Reinterpretation of His Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson." XXXth International Congress of the History of Art. London, September 2000.
"Religion and/as Art: Isabella Stewart Gardner's Palace Chapels." College Art Association Meeting, New York, February 2000.
"Philadelphia to Paris: World's Fairs and the Evolution of an 'American School.'" The Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ, November 1999.
Fellowships Received:
American Philosophical Society Sabbatical Fellowship, 2001-2002.
American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 1990-1991.
Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman Fellowship, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, 1983-1985.
Recent Exhibitions Curated at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art:
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"Winslow Homer in Black and White," Spring 2003
"Focus on Nature: American Photographic Views," Fall 2002
"Art, Religion, and American Culture, " Fall 2000.
"Impressionists on Paper," Spring 1999.
Recent Independent Study Projects
Whistler in Venice
Frank Lloyd Wright's Use of Light
Contemporary American Landscape Painting
Monuments and Memorials on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Barbara Cooney's Miss Rumphius