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realism

Curator's Corner

October Is National Apple Month: Levi Wells Prentice

Monday, October 23, 2023 | Karl Cole

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate National Apple Month than with one of THE most incredible paintings I’ve ever seen on the subject. The first time I saw this painting by Levi Wel ...

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Curator's Corner

Thanksgiving Week 2022: John F. Francis Still Life

Monday, November 21, 2022 | Karl Cole

I don’t usually attend a large buffet-style Thanksgiving dinner, but I always observe the underlying reason for Thanksgiving: being grateful. Among the many things I am grateful for—a ...

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Curator's Corner

Romance Awareness Month 2022

Monday, August 22, 2022 | Karl Cole

I happen to be a romantic slob at heart, and when the subject of “romance” comes up, works of art that I think characterize the concept naturally spring to mind. The following works may no ...

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Curator's Corner

Pride Month 2022: Fairfield Porter

Monday, June 6, 2022 | Karl Cole

Let’s start June with a focus on the work of Fairfield Porter, an artist who matured during the period dominated by Abstract Expressionism in American art. It was also a period in which being ga ...

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Curator's Corner

National Arts in Education Week: Winslow Homer

Monday, September 13, 2021 | Karl Cole

How quickly we forget that, up until the late 1800s, going to the local museum to copy “masterpieces” of past art and training under a male relative who was a professional artist were ...

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Curator's Corner

Women's (Art) History Month: Isabel Bishop

Monday, March 15, 2021 | Karl Cole

If anyone documented the human (women’s) condition extensively, it was artist Isabel Bishop. Her sensitive paintings and prints of working women during the Great Depression (1929–1940) and ...

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Curator's Corner

Ancient Egypt Find

Monday, May 13, 2019 | Karl Cole

Because of the recent news about an exciting archeological find in Giza, I decided to show some stunning portraits from ancient Egypt. ...

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Curator's Corner

An April Birthday Boy: Antoine Vollon

Tuesday, April 23, 2019 | Karl Cole

Antoine Vollon, known primarily for his excellent still-life paintings, had a birthday on April 23rd. In the glory days of the annual academic Salon in Paris (1760s–1890s)—when the self-ap ...

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Curator's Corner

Deceiving the Eye: American Trompe-l'Oeil Realism

Wednesday, June 21, 2017 | Karl Cole

I’ve written before about the long-standing interest in extreme realism in American painting. Colonial American self-taught artists (“limners”) may not have been schooled in anatomy, ...

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Curator's Corner

Still Life and Our Culture of Abundance: John F. Francis

Monday, May 15, 2017 | Karl Cole

I got so excited the other night while watching Antiques Roadshow. A person brought two little still-life paintings from 1865, and I said to myself, “Oh, those look like John Francis’s wor ...

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Curator's Corner

Impressionist Armand Guillaumin

Tuesday, February 9, 2016 | Karl Cole

I very often come across an artist that I don’t know that much about and think “Wow! I really like this painter’s stuff!” Such was the case years ago when I first saw the gorge ...

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Curator's Corner

The Winter Sads Call for Art: Bartolomeo Cavarozzi

Thursday, February 4, 2016 | Karl Cole

Even though the weather hasn’t been that bad this winter in New England (yet), I still have a major case of the sads for warm weather. What we do to beat the sads is travel 40 minutes into Bosto ...

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Curator's Corner

African Realism: Yoruba

Monday, June 15, 2015 | Karl Cole

During the 1800s, when European invaders were exploiting the riches of the African continent, art historians were “astounded” at the richness and variety of African art. They had no knowle ...

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Curator's Corner

Survey No. 10: Ubiquitous Real

Monday, January 19, 2015 | Karl Cole

So far we have taken a look at Classicism and Romanticism around the world in the 1800s. Now let’s look at “realism,” which—like every other style—has been a trend somewh ...

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Curator's Corner

Americans Abroad: Charles Caryl Coleman

Monday, May 19, 2014 | Karl Cole

This offering is not so much about Americans abroad as it is for my admiration of any artist who can work in pastels. I’ve mentioned in a previous post how I always longed to become pr ...

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Curator's Corner

African American History Month 2014: Kermit Oliver

Monday, February 10, 2014 | Karl Cole

I’m always excited when I learn about a new artist! I’d never heard of Kermit Oliver, but discovered his story when we acquired an image of his work from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. ...

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