Winter 2014 Preview

Winter 6 www.antiquesandfineart.com n officer in the Continental Army described George Washington as “pleasing and benevolent though [having a] commanding countenance.” It was Washington’s composed and resolute character that spoke to a vision of how the young nation saw itself. In her article American Encounters, Anglo-American Portraiture in an Era of Revolution (pages 116–119), Stephanie Heydt discusses three well-known portraits of the General by Gilbert Stuart and members of the Peale family of artists, and compares them to portraits of two British military officers from the same period, to reveal how, in that fluid transnational environment, Americans were beginning to define themselves and their new nation. More than two hundred years later, artists such as Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton––in the years during and after the Great Depression––were interested in capturing the essence of their very different times. Instead of aggrandizing leaders, however, they saluted and cherished ordinary Americans as heroes. Julie Aronson, in Conversations Around American Gothic (pages 128–133), poses Grant Wood’s iconic American Gothic and his Daughters of the Revolution as quintessential images representing American Regionalism and identity. In Benton Black and White: Lithographs by Thomas Hart Benton (pages 134–135), Stephanie Cox Knappe presents a selection of images celebrating the 125th anniversary of the artist’s death. Benton, like Wood, reported on the American people through his art, though with more of a social historian’s bent, and chronicled a national identity that he disseminated by making his work affordable through editions of published lithographs. Benton and the others mentioned above were storytellers, and it was the stories told in the folk art of the mid- to late-nineteenth century that intrigued and influenced many modern artists of the early twentieth century. In Folk Art & American Modernism (pages 136–141), Elizabeth Stillinger and Ruth Wolfe discuss the modern artists and early collectors who saw in the simplicity of folk art evidence of the American character. These artist-collectors believed that their own work was part of that tradition, and by collecting this material, Stillinger and Wolfe theorize, they intentionally situated themselves to become part of the national narrative that has its roots in those early portraits of George Washington. Enjoy, Johanna McBrien johanna@afapublishing.com Photography by Ellen McDermott FROM THE EDIT O R A 0ATRICK "ELL %DWIN (ILD 0/ "OX .EW (OPE 0! "Y !PPOINTMENT %MAIL INFO OLDEHOPE COM 6 ) 3 ) 4 5 3 / . , ) . % !4 / , $ % ( / 0 % # / - . /7 !6! ) , ! " , % "9 ! 0 0 / ) . 4- % . 4 ) . .9# !4 % ! 34 .$ 3 4 %XHIBITING 4HE ST !NNUAL $ELAWARE !NTIQUES 3HOW „ .OVEMBER ! GROUP OF EXCEPTIONAL WATERCOLOR DRAWINGS SIGNED BY ±%LIZABETH (OFF² AND DATED ± ² 9ORK #O 0! 7ATERCOLOR ON WOVE PAPER ²X ¹ ² ROOSTER ¹ ² X ¹ ² SQUIRREL %XCELLENT CONDITION