Linda J. Docherty

Affiliation: Art History

Associate Professor of Art History, Emerita

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."

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 World of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Americans Abroad, 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.

"Learning to Paint: American Artists and European Art, 1876-1893." In Methods for Modernism: American Art, 1876-1925. Brunswick: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 2010, 10-29.

"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: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." In 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

"Winslow Homer's American Identity." "Winslow Homer and the Poetics of Place: A Closer Look." Portland Museum of Art symposium. July 31, 2010.

"Going Public: Sculpture in the Art of Isabella Stewart Gardner." College Art Association meeting. Chicago, February 11, 2010.

"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.

Recent Exhibitions Curated for the Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Insight Out: Exploring Gifts of Art from Private Collectors. Jan 24, 2012 - Apr 15, 2012

"Learning to Paint: American Artists and European Art, 1876-1893." Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 2010.

"Winslow Homer in Black and White." Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Spring 2003.

Winslow Homer's Our National Winter Exercise Skating painting

"Focus on Nature: American Photographic Views." Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Fall 2002.

"Art, Religion, and American Culture." Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Fall 2000.

Recent Honors Projects

Caitlin Meehye Beach '11, " Envisioning an American Ideal: Masculinity and Traditional Work Ethic in George Bellows' Paintings, " 2010.

Sophia Greenough Cikovsky '06, "The Rue Mosnier: Manet's Political and Personal View of the Parisian Street," 2006.

Recent Independent Study Projects

Mallory Banks '08, "A Corner of the Campus: Residential Architecture at Bowdoin College in Stylistic and Social Context," Fall 2007 and Spring 2008.

Lauren Johnson '07, "Delacroix's Women of Algiers and French Orientalism," Spring 2007.

Christopher Sullivan '07, "Thomas Cole's Course of Empire," Spring 2007.

Alex Glauber '06, "Robert Henri's Portraits of Artists, " Spring 2006.

Jacqueline Stahl '06, "Tall Case Clocks at Bowdoin College," Spring 2006

Jacklyn Burgo '05, "Contemporary Cape Verdean Art, " Spring 2005 (Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow).

Tara Kohn '05, "Georgia O'Keeffe and Asian Art," Spring 2005.

Ruo Ruo Zhao '05, "Kandinsky and Schoenberg," Spring 2005.

Collaborative Book and Exhibition Projects with Bowdoin Students

What Passing Voices Echo: Sites of History and Memory at Bowdoin College. blurb.com, 2010.

"Representing America: Ties that Bind and Lines that Divide." Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Fall 2007.

"Face It! A New Approach to Portraiture." Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Spring 1998.

"Context Considered: Perspectives on American Art." Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Spring 1996.

"Other Places; Other Times: The Photographer's View." Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Fall 1993.

Education

PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1986
MA, University of Chicago, 1978
BA, Cornell University, 1969

Art History