Linda J. Docherty

Associate Professor of Art History

Fall 2009

  • THE ART OF WINSLOW HOMER (ARTH 010)
  • NINETEENTH-CENTURY EUROPEAN ART (ARTH 242)
  • ADVANCED INDEPENDENT STUDY (ARTH 401)
Phone (207) 725-3698
Title Associate Professor
Department Art
Work Location 102 Riley House
E-Mail ldochert@bowdoin.edu
linda docherty

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, Gilbert Stuart, William Merritt Chase, Edmund C. Tarbell, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, James McNeill Whistler, and Isabella Stewart Gardner. She is currently writing a book titled "Spiritual Gifts: The Art of Isabella Stewart Gardner."

Original Copies: Gilbert Stuart's Companion Portraits of Thomas Jefferson and James MadisonProfessor 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: Americans Abroad, The Art of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Art and Religion in American Culture, Impressionism, 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

Original Copies: Gilbert Stuart's Companion Portraits of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison"Original Copies: Gilbert Stuart's Companion Portraits of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison." American Art 22/2 (Summer 2008), 85-97.

"Creative Connections: James MacNeill Whistler and Isabella Stewart Gardner." In James McNeill Whistler in Context, Freer Gallery of Art Occasional Papers, n.s. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2008), 183-203.

"Invitation to Wonder," in Threatened and Endangered: goodaleArtist'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), 45-58Also published in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 111, part 1 (2001), 45-58.

tarbell"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 "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

"The Art of Isabella Stewart Gardner." James M. Carpenter Lecture. Colby College, October 24, 2006.

"Location, Location, Location: A Medievalist's View of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum." College Art Association meeting. Boston, February 23, 2006.

"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.

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.

Exhibitions Curated at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art

"Representing America: Ties that Bind and Lines that Divide," Fall 2007. Curated by the students of Art History 260: Art and Life.

"Winslow Homer in Black and White," Spring 2003

Representing America Winslow Homer Our National Winter Exercise - Skating

"Focus on Nature: American Photographic Views ," Fall 2002

"Art, Religion, and American Culture, " Fall 2000.

Recent Independent Study Projects

Mallory Banks '08, "A Corner of the Campus: Residential Architecture at Bowdoin College in Stylistic and Social Context," independent study, fall 2007 and spring 2008

Lauren Johnson '07, "Delacroix's Women of Algiers and French Orientalism," independent study, spring 2007

Christopher Sullivan '07, "Thomas Cole's Course of Empire," independent study, spring 2007

Sophia Cikovsky '06, "Edouard Manet's Paintings of Rue Mosnier," honors project, fall 2005 and spring 2006

Alex Glauber '06, "Robert Henri's Portraits of Artists, " independent study, spring 2006

Jacqueline Stahl '06, "Tall Case Clocks at Bowdoin College," independent study, spring 2006

Jacklyn Burgo '05, "Contemporary Cape Verdean Art, " independent study, spring 2005 (Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow)

Tara Kohn '05, "Georgia O'Keeffe and Asian Art," independent study, spring 2005

Ruo Ruo Zhao '05, "Kandinsky and Schoenberg," independent study, spring 2005