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Out of Palaces and Country Houses: British and American Portraits 11/16/1996 - 1/12/1997 As a counterpart to the exhibition of British Delft from Colonial Williamsburg, the Norton Museum welcomes a rare opportunity to exhibit British and American portraiture from its collection. Out of Palaces and Country Houses: British and American Portraits will be on display at the Norton Museum of Art from November 16, 1996 through January 12, 1997. Ranging from the 17th through the 19th centuries, this exhibition includes some of the great names in British portraiture, including Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641), Joseph Highmore (1692-1780), Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), Henry Raeburn (1756-1823), Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), William Etty (1787-1849) and George Romney (1734-1802). From this side of the Atlantic come artists such as Ralph Earl (1751-1801), Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), Benjamin West (1738-1820), and John Singleton Copley (1737-1815). Most of these artists reacted to a prototype created by the Tudor and Stuart painters of England, Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619), Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680), and Sir Anthony Van Dyck , whose Philip, Lord Wharton, 1639, sets the tone for this exhibition. Such portraits were made to hang in the picture galleries, or 'long galleries, of English palaces and country houses. Portraits were painted as visible reminders to a family of their ancestors, as well as to indicate to house visitors the importance and wealth of the family. The long gallery of a house would often exhibit several generations of the family dressed in finery, or outfitted for war or hunting, their faces redolent of bravery, grace, and elegance. In the days before photography, such rooms were a three-dimensional family album. They were also one of the direct precursors of art museums. Van Dyck, as typified by his portrait of Lord Wharton, startled the king and courtiers with his penetrating and sympathetic analyses of character. Though also a master of the portrayal of pomp and finery, it was his mastery of character which many artists who came after him strove to imitate. Even during his lifetime, painters who had worked in the Anglo-Netherlandish manner of Hans Holbein (1497/8-1543) were overwhelmingly influenced by the brilliant sophistication of Van Dyck's mature style. Between 1680 and 1780, portraiture held a near-monopoly on the art market in England. Many portraitists were highly skilled at catching an expression, and, through the use of props, at suggesting the sitter's pastimes or preoccupations. Eighteenth and nineteenth century painters such as Thomas Gainsborough and Thomas Lawrence, the latter of whom painted Lady Doyle, ca. 1804, were the inheritors of Van Dyck's painterly, expressive tradition. Other major portraitists of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, concentrated predominantly on the noble and grand (in the case of Reynolds), or on psychological insight (in the case of Romney and Etty). Reynolds was famous as the first President of the Royal Academy, founded in 1768, and he has often been seen as the academic counterpart to the more impressionistic school represented by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). Portraiture was one of the first forms of American art. Well-to-do colonists, like their English equivalents, valued portraits as symbols of success, as well as records of their family. Many early colonial portraits were made by itinerant artists, a breed common also in England. Such itinerant painters, in both countries, while aiming for the English 'grand manner', often produced works which in their naivete are enduring examples of folk art. Ralph Earl (1751-1801), who spent eight years of his early career active throughout England, spent the major part of his mature period traveling through New York and New England, presumably setting up his easel whenever a commission arose. His work is represented in the Norton's collection by Portrait of Two Girls, ca. 1790s. The first well-known American painters, such as John Singleton Copley and Gilbert Stuart, also worked extensively in England, where in fact Copley remained for the rest of his life. Stuart is represented here by his William Burton Conyngham, ca. 1890, very reminiscent of his much repeated portrait of George Washington. Both Ralph Earl and Gilbert Stuart, despite the difference in their style, share a directness which seems illustrative of the developing American character. Stuart, perhaps the most famous of American portraitists, is known for his portrayals which concentrate their force on the character of the face, a distinctly American approach to the genre. As well as demonstrating different styles of portraiture, the exhibition shows the ways in which an essentially English tradition became a part of the American experience. A number of education programs for children and families will relate the exhibition A Parcel of Old Delph: British Delft from Colonial Williamsburg to this exhibition, Out of Palaces and Country Houses: British and American Portraits. 
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The Norton Museum
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