Rhode Island School of Design Museum
Encyclopedia
Rhode Island School of Design Museum is a prominent art museum in Providence, Rhode Island
affiliated with the well-known Rhode Island School of Design
. The museum was founded in 1877 and is the 20th largest art museum in the United States.
and nineteenth century Rhode Island painters, such as Anglo-American impressionist John Noble Barlow and portraitist Gilbert Stuart
. The museum also features prominent international and American artists such as Picasso, Monet, Manet
, Paul Revere
, and Andy Warhol
. The RISD Museum houses over 86,000 works of art.
), stone sculpture, Greek vases, paintings, and mosaics, a fine collection of Roman jewelry and glass, and teaching examples of terracottas. A number of objects represent the most outstanding examples in their categories. Among these virtually unique works of art are an Etruscan bronze situla (pail), a fifth-century B.C. Greek female head in marble, and a rare Hellenistic bronze Aphrodite. Among the Greek vases are works by some of the major Attic painters, including Nikosthenes
and the Providence, Brygos, Pan, Lewis, and Reed Painters. The cornerstone of the Museum's Egyptian collection is the Ptolemaic period coffin and mummy of the priest Nesmin. Among other highlights of the Egyptian collection are a rare New Kingdom ceramic paint box, a relief fragment from the Temple at Karnak, and a first-class collection of faience.
. The collection of over 100 surimono
(privately published woodblock prints) are considered the finest assemblage outside Japan. The Japanese prints are shown, in rotation, in galleries dedicated to their exhibition. A major attraction is the important 12th-century wooden Buddha Dainich Nyorai, the largest (over nine feet tall) historic Japanese wooden sculpture in the United States. The Buddha is on permanent exhibition in its own gallery.
The Japanese textiles are the core and glory of the Asian textile collection. The kesa
, or Buddhist priests’ robes, are the most numerous, with 104 examples. The 47 Japanese Noh
robes, meticulously documented, form a comprehensive collection of nearly every type of costume in use in the Noh drama of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japan. Their spectacular colors and patterns, embellished with gold and silver, express perfectly the splendor of the traditional and highly stylized Noh theater. The Museum's collection of Indian saris and Chinese ceremonial robes is superb. Examples from these collections are shown in rotation with the Japanese textiles in the Lucy Truman Aldrich Gallery, which is devoted to the display of Asian textiles. The Islamic and Indian collections include works of art in all media that celebrate the artistic heritage of the Arab, Indian, Persian, and Turkish cultures.
, Sam Francis
, David Hockney
, Ellsworth Kelly
, Franz Kline
, Ronnie Landfield
, Roy Lichtenstein
, Robert Mangold
, Agnes Martin
, Joan Mitchell
, Cy Twombly
, Wayne Thiebaud
, Larry Rivers
, and Andy Warhol
, among others. The collection also includes important sculptural work by Richard Artschwager
, Louise Bourgeois
, Louise Nevelson, Tom Otterness
, Lucas Samaras
, and Robert Wilson
. The museum's video collection features experimental works by such pioneers in the field as Vito Acconci
, Lynda Benglis
, Bruce Nauman
, Martha Rosler
, Richard Serra
, and William Wegman
.
The Nancy Sayles Day Collection of Latin American Art includes contemporary paintings by such important artists as Luís Cruz Azaceta, Fernando Botero
, José Bedia, Claudio Bravo
, Wifredo Lam
, Jesús Rafael Soto
, Joaquín Torres Garcia
, and Roberto Matta Echuarren.
The department has a natural and strong connection with Providenceís contemporary art community, and numerous RISD faculty and alumni and local artists are represented in the collection. Among them are Howard Ben Tré
, Jonathan Bonner, Richard Fleischner
, Ruth Dealy, Richard Merkin and[Bunny Harvey.
The Asian textiles are particularly rich. Those given by Lucy Truman Aldrich in the 1930s are among the best in this country. The Japanese Noh
robes are generally considered the finest assemblage in the world. In addition, the collection of 19th-century Chinese robes displays the splendor of decoration, as well as the importance of social rank and status, in costume of the period. One of the earliest European textiles in the collection is an extremely rare medieval German embroidery fragment. Exquisite Italian and Spanish silks and velvets represent the height of luxury textiles in the 14th and 15th centuries. The department also cares for a large collection of European tapestries, the earliest of which dates from around 1520. Highlights of the European collection include an exquisite example of Elizabethan embroidery in the form of a man's nightcap, fine examples of 18th-century French and English costume, and an opulent train worn in the court of Napoleon. Examples from Charles Frederick Worth
, Fortuny
, Paul Poiret
, and Liberty & Co.. represent European fashion design achievements of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Included in the department are significant examples of early American needlework: quilts, coverlets, samplers, and embroideries. The collection also presents a remarkable survey of the development of printed textiles, an integral part of Rhode Island history. The Museum has a collection of New England needlework of great rarity, and a collection beyond compare of schoolgirl samplers made at the Balch School in Providence. Experimental work in textile design in the collection includes work by Diane Itter
, Cynthia Schira, Jack Lenor Larson, and Junichi Arai. Among the important 20th-century designers represented in the collection are Charles James
, Claire McCardell
, Bonnie Cashin
, Chanel
, Halston
and Geoffrey Beene
. The department also houses more than three hundred early twentieth-century textiles and garments and eighteen cubic feet of records from Providence's Tirocchi Dressmakers’ Shop (fl.
1915–1947). Such complete documentation of an historical dressmaking business exists nowhere else in the United States. Thus, in addition to the splendor of the objects themselves, the Tirocchi collection is an unparalleled resource for understanding many wide-ranging historical issues, including Italian immigration, women as workers and consumers, and the transition from hand production of garments to ready-to-wear clothing.
circle of Newport cabinetmakers, including two of the renowned block-front, carved-shell desks-and-bookcases. Also on view in Pendleton House's period rooms are fine examples of English pottery, Chinese export porcelain
, and a comprehensive survey of Rhode Island silver.
The Harold Brown Collection of French Empire furniture and objects with Napoleonic associations is another highlight of the department's holdings, as is the Lucy Truman Aldrich collection of rare 18th-century European porcelain figures. 360 examples of 18th- and early 19th-century French wallpaper from the M. and Mme. Charles Huard collection constitute the backbone of the Museum's wallpaper collection, which is among the finest in the world.
An extraordinary collection of silver (approximately 2,000 pieces) produced by Providence's Gorham Manufacturing Company
from the mid 19th through the mid 20th century is the cornerstone of a fine collection of American silver that also includes work by colonial silversmiths such as John Coney
, Paul Revere
, and Samuel Casey.
The Museum's collection is particularly strong in the area of 19th-century decorative arts. Important highlights include furniture by the American companies of Vose and Coates, Herter Brothers
, and Alexander Roux; the Englishman Edward William Godwin
(E.W. Godwin); and the French makers Guillaume Beneman and Hugnet Frères. Other highlights of the 19th century are works of art in glass by Lalique, Louis Comfort Tiffany
, and Hector Guimard
; ceramics by Wedgwood
, Sèvres
, and Royal Doulton
, and silver by Christopher Dresser
, Charles Robert Ashbee
and the Gorham Manufacturing Company
.
20th-century design in the collection includes furniture by Alvar Aalto
, Verner Panton
, Josef Hofmann, and Charles and Ray Eames
; metalwork by Erik Magnussen; ceramics by Auguste Delaherche, glass by Frederick Carder
, and wallpaper designs by Nancy McClelland, Alexander Calder
, and Roy Lichtenstein
. The mid 20th-century's revived interest in "craft" is represented by the work of Tage Frid
, Wharton Esherick
, John Prip
and Peter Voulkos
. The RISD Museum is a leading collector of American contemporary craft and studio furniture and many of the artists represented in the collection have ties (either as alumni, faculty or both) to the School. Among the many contemporary craftspeople whose work is in the collection are: Dale Chihuly
, Michael Glancy
, Akio Takamori
, Kurt Weiser, Judy Kensley McKie, Jere Osgood, Rosanne Somerson and Alphonse Mattia.
The Painting and Sculpture collection contains more than 2,500 works of European and American art from the medieval period to 1960. The Italian Renaissance
and Baroque
periods are represented by the work of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
, Lippo Memmi
, Jacopo Sansovino
, Alessandro Magnasco
, and others. The collection also includes major work by such northern European masters as Tilman Riemenschneider
, Hendrick Goltzius, Joachim Wtewael
, Salomon van Ruysdael, and Georg Vischer.
17th- and 18th-century masterpieces include paintings by Francisco Collantes
, Sébastien Bourdon
, Gabriel-Jacques de Saint-Aubin, Nicolas Poussin
, Angelica Kauffmann
, and Joshua Reynolds
. Early 19th-century European art is represented by Thomas Lawrence
, Hubert Robert
, Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont, Joseph Chinard
, Théodore Géricault
and others. The department has excellent examples of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism
schools by such artists as Édouard Manet
, Claude Monet
, Edgar Degas
, Paul Cézanne
, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir
. There is important work by 19th-century French sculptors Auguste Rodin
, Charles Henri Joseph Cordier
, Jules Dalou
, and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
. Among the 20th-century European painters in the collection are Pablo Picasso
, Georges Braque
, Henri Matisse
, and Raymond Duchamp-Villon
, Fernand Léger
, and Oskar Kokoschka
.
The 18th- and 19th-century American collection is particularly strong, with important examples by such artists as John Singleton Copley
, Gilbert Stuart
, Thomas Cole
, Winslow Homer
, William Merritt Chase
, Martin Johnson Heade
, Mary Cassatt
, John Singer Sargent
, and Edward Mitchell Bannister
, an African-American landscapist who spent his career as a painter in Rhode Island.
Significant works by George Wesley Bellows, Robert Henri
, Charles Sheeler
, Maxfield Parrish
, Georgia O'Keeffe
, John Twachtman, Hans Hoffman, Paul Manship
, and Nancy Elizabeth Prophet
, among others, represent American artistic achievements of the early 20th-century.
drawings and prints, among them works by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
, Albrecht Dürer
, Rembrandt and Goya.
The department has one of the largest collections (over 800) of British watercolors in the country. Included among them are fine examples by J.M.W. Turner, George Chinnery
, John Sell Cotman
, William Blake
and Thomas Rowlandson
.
The collection of French prints and drawings includes work by Nicolas Poussin
, Hubert Robert
, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Édouard Manet
, Claude Monet
, Honoré Daumier
, Vincent van Gogh
, Paul Cézanne
, Edgar Degas
, Pablo Picasso
and others. Notable in the collection of American watercolors and drawings is work by Benjamin West
, Mary Cassatt
, Thomas Eakins
, Eastman Johnson
, Winslow Homer
, Maurice Prendergast
and Maxfield Parrish
.
Among the important 20th-century artists represented in the collection are Franz Kline
, James Rosenquist
, Helen Frankenthaler
, Robert Motherwell
, Jennifer Bartlett
, Eric Fischl
, Wayne Thiebaud
, Kara Walker
and Francesco Clemente
.
The history of the art of the book is represented, in one of its earliest forms, by the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
(1499), a masterpiece of Renaissance illumination. In later centuries, work by masters of printing and illustration provides a link between the earliest books and twentieth-century "artists’ books" that push limits and challenge traditional interpretations of the form.
A summary of the history of photography is provided by 5,000 photographs, among them significant works by Gustave Le Gray
, Julia Margaret Cameron
, Nadar, Frederick Sommer
, Carrie May Weems, and former RISD professors Aaron Siskind
and Harry Callahan. The department also oversees the Aaron Siskind Center for the Study of Photography, which is open to photography students and Museum visitors alike.
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
affiliated with the well-known Rhode Island School of Design
Rhode Island School of Design
Rhode Island School of Design is a fine arts and design college located in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1877. Located at the base of College Hill, the RISD campus is contiguous with the Brown University campus. The two institutions share social, academic, and community resources and...
. The museum was founded in 1877 and is the 20th largest art museum in the United States.
Collections
The Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (The RISD Museum) contains a broad range of works from around the world, including Egypt, Asia, Africa, ancient Greece and Rome, Europe, and the Americas. It also features many notable works by a range Rhode Island artists such as 17th century Newport furniture makers Goddard and TownsendGoddard and Townsend
The Goddard and Townsend families of Newport lend their name to an extensive body of New England furniture associated with Newport, Rhode Island in the second half of the 18th century.-Family of Artisans:...
and nineteenth century Rhode Island painters, such as Anglo-American impressionist John Noble Barlow and portraitist Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...
. The museum also features prominent international and American artists such as Picasso, Monet, Manet
Manet
-MANET as an abbreviation:*MANET is a mobile ad hoc network, a self-configuring mobile wireless network.*MANET database or Molecular Ancestry Network, bioinformatics database-People with the surname Manet:*Édouard Manet, a 19th-century French painter....
, Paul Revere
Paul Revere
Paul Revere was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution. He is most famous for alerting Colonial militia of approaching British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Paul Revere's Ride...
, and Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
. The RISD Museum houses over 86,000 works of art.
Ancient Art
The department of Ancient Art includes bronze figural sculpture and vessels, an exceptional collection of Greek coins (that grew out of the collection donated by Henry A. GreeneHenry A. Greene
Henry Augustus Greene was a collector of ancient Greek coins and citizen of Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He had ties with the Rhode Island School of Design Museum to whom he donated a variety of objects, and where his coin collection now resides.-Biography:Henry A...
), stone sculpture, Greek vases, paintings, and mosaics, a fine collection of Roman jewelry and glass, and teaching examples of terracottas. A number of objects represent the most outstanding examples in their categories. Among these virtually unique works of art are an Etruscan bronze situla (pail), a fifth-century B.C. Greek female head in marble, and a rare Hellenistic bronze Aphrodite. Among the Greek vases are works by some of the major Attic painters, including Nikosthenes
Nikosthenes
Nikosthenes was a potter of Greek black- and red-figure pottery in the time window 545-510 B.C. He is thought to have been associated with the work of the painters Oltos, Lydos, Epiktetos and the Nikosthenes-Painter....
and the Providence, Brygos, Pan, Lewis, and Reed Painters. The cornerstone of the Museum's Egyptian collection is the Ptolemaic period coffin and mummy of the priest Nesmin. Among other highlights of the Egyptian collection are a rare New Kingdom ceramic paint box, a relief fragment from the Temple at Karnak, and a first-class collection of faience.
Asian Art
The department of Asian Art contains ceramics, costume, prints, painting, sculpture, and textiles. One of the highlights of the collection is the peerless group of over six hundred nineteenth-century Japanese bird-and-flower prints that were collected by Abby Aldrich RockefellerAbby Aldrich Rockefeller
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, , was a prominent socialite and philanthropist and the second-generation matriarch of the renowned Rockefeller family...
. The collection of over 100 surimono
Surimono
are a genre of Japanese woodblock print. They were privately commissioned for special occasions such as the New Year. Surimono literally means "printed thing". Being produced in small numbers for a mostly educated audience of literati, surimono were often more experimental in subject matter and...
(privately published woodblock prints) are considered the finest assemblage outside Japan. The Japanese prints are shown, in rotation, in galleries dedicated to their exhibition. A major attraction is the important 12th-century wooden Buddha Dainich Nyorai, the largest (over nine feet tall) historic Japanese wooden sculpture in the United States. The Buddha is on permanent exhibition in its own gallery.
The Japanese textiles are the core and glory of the Asian textile collection. The kesa
KESA
Kesa Electricals plc is a major British-based French multinational consumer electronics and household appliance retailing group. It is the third largest electrical group in Europe. It is dual-listed on the London Stock Exchange and Euronext and is a member of the FTSE 250 index.-History:The...
, or Buddhist priests’ robes, are the most numerous, with 104 examples. The 47 Japanese Noh
Noh
, or - derived from the Sino-Japanese word for "skill" or "talent" - is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. Traditionally, a Noh "performance day" lasts all day and...
robes, meticulously documented, form a comprehensive collection of nearly every type of costume in use in the Noh drama of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japan. Their spectacular colors and patterns, embellished with gold and silver, express perfectly the splendor of the traditional and highly stylized Noh theater. The Museum's collection of Indian saris and Chinese ceremonial robes is superb. Examples from these collections are shown in rotation with the Japanese textiles in the Lucy Truman Aldrich Gallery, which is devoted to the display of Asian textiles. The Islamic and Indian collections include works of art in all media that celebrate the artistic heritage of the Arab, Indian, Persian, and Turkish cultures.
Contemporary Art
Created in 2000, the department of Contemporary Art oversees an eclectic collection of painting, sculpture, video, mixed media, and interdisciplinary work, dating from 1960 to the present. In addition, the department regularly organizes exhibitions that highlight important issues, trends and individual explorations in recent art. Represented in the collection are significant paintings by Richard AnuszkiewiczRichard Anuszkiewicz
Richard Anuszkiewicz is an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor.-Life and work:Richard Anuszkiewicz trained at the Cleveland Institute of Art in Cleveland, Ohio , and then with Josef Albers at the Yale University School of Art and Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut where he earned his...
, Sam Francis
Sam Francis
Samuel Lewis Francis was an American painter and printmaker.-Early life:...
, David Hockney
David Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
, Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly is an American painter and sculptor associated with Hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and the Minimalist school. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing the simplicity of form found similar to the work of John McLaughlin. Kelly often employs bright colors to...
, Franz Kline
Franz Kline
Franz Jozef Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended Girard College, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys...
, Ronnie Landfield
Ronnie Landfield
Ronnie Landfield is an American abstract painter. During his early career from the mid-1960s through the 1970s his paintings were associated with Lyrical Abstraction, , and he was represented by the David Whitney Gallery and the André Emmerich Gallery.Landfield is...
, Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
, Robert Mangold
Robert Mangold
Robert Mangold is an American minimalist artist.- Works :“Robert Mangold’s paintings,” wrote Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times in 1997, “are more complicated to describe than they seem, which is partly what’s good about them: the way they invite intense scrutiny, which, in the nature of good...
, Agnes Martin
Agnes Martin
Agnes Bernice Martin was an American abstract painter, often referred to as a minimalist; Martin considered herself an abstract expressionist.She won a National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1998....
, Joan Mitchell
Joan Mitchell
Joan Mitchell was a "second generation" abstract expressionist painter. She was an essential member of the American Abstract expressionist movement, even though much of her career took place in France. Along with Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, and Helen Frankenthaler she was one of her era's few...
, Cy Twombly
Cy Twombly
Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly, Jr. was an American artist well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings, on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors...
, Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud is an American painter whose most famous works are of cakes, pastries, boots, toilets, toys and lipsticks. He is associated with the Pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, although his works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate...
, Larry Rivers
Larry Rivers
Larry Rivers was an American artist, musician, filmmaker and occasional actor. Rivers resided and maintained studios in New York City, Southampton, New York and Zihuatanejo, Mexico.-Biography:...
, and Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, among others. The collection also includes important sculptural work by Richard Artschwager
Richard Artschwager
Richard Artschwager is an American painter, illustrator and sculptor, born in 1923 in Washington, D.C.. Artschwager is best known for his stylistic independence; although he has associations with the Pop Art movement, Conceptual art and Minimalism....
, Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Joséphine Bourgeois , was a renowned French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman...
, Louise Nevelson, Tom Otterness
Tom Otterness
Tom Otterness is an American sculptor whose works adorn parks, plazas, subway stations, libraries, courthouses and museums in New York---most notably in Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City and in the 14th Street/8th Avenue subway station---and other cities around the world...
, Lucas Samaras
Lucas Samaras
Lucas Samaras , is an artist, born in Kastoria, Greece. He studied at Rutgers University on a scholarship, where he met Allan Kaprow and George Segal. While at Rutgers, he joined Gamma Sigma . He participated in Kaprow's "Happenings," and posed for Segal's plaster sculptures...
, and Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson (director)
Robert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
. The museum's video collection features experimental works by such pioneers in the field as Vito Acconci
Vito Acconci
Vito Hannibal Acconci is a Bronx, New York-born, Brooklyn-based designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist.-Education:...
, Lynda Benglis
Lynda Benglis
Lynda Benglis is an American sculptor known for her wax paintings and poured latex sculptures. After earning a BFA from Newcomb College in 1964, Benglis moved to New York, where she lives and works today...
, Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....
, Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler
Martha Rosler is an American artist. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, where she now lives. She graduated from Brooklyn College and the University of California, San Diego . Rosler works in video, photo-text, installation, and performance, as well as writing about art and culture...
, Richard Serra
Richard Serra
Richard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
, and William Wegman
William Wegman (photographer)
William Wegman is an artist best known for creating series of compositions involving dogs, primarily his own Weimaraners in various costumes and poses.-Life and career:...
.
The Nancy Sayles Day Collection of Latin American Art includes contemporary paintings by such important artists as Luís Cruz Azaceta, Fernando Botero
Fernando Botero
Fernando Botero Angulo is a Colombian figurative artist. His works feature a figurative style, called by some "Boterismo", which gives them an unmistakable identity...
, José Bedia, Claudio Bravo
Claudio Bravo
Claudio Andrés Bravo Muñoz is a Chilean footballer who plays for Real Sociedad in Spain, as a goalkeeper. He is also a Chilean international.-Colo-Colo:...
, Wifredo Lam
Wifredo Lam
Wifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla , better known as Wifredo Lam, was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cuban spirit and culture...
, Jesús Rafael Soto
Jesús Rafael Soto
Jesús Rafael Soto was a Venezuelan op and kinetic artist, a sculptor and a painter.He was born in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela. He began his artistic career as a boy painting cinema posters in his native city...
, Joaquín Torres Garcia
Joaquín Torres García
Joaquín Torres García , was a Uruguayan plastic artist and art theorist, also known as the founder of Constructive Universalism...
, and Roberto Matta Echuarren.
The department has a natural and strong connection with Providenceís contemporary art community, and numerous RISD faculty and alumni and local artists are represented in the collection. Among them are Howard Ben Tré
Howard Ben Tré
Howard Ben Tré is an American glass artist. He works with poured glass, creating small sculptures and large scale public artworks. Glass magazine has called Ben Tré a pioneer in the technique of using hot glass casting in fine art....
, Jonathan Bonner, Richard Fleischner
Richard Fleischner
Richard Fleischner is a Providence, RI based environmental artist. Born in New York in 1944, he received a BFA and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and began working in the 1960s.-Installations:-Awards:*Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts...
, Ruth Dealy, Richard Merkin and[Bunny Harvey.
Costume and Textiles
The Museum has been actively exhibiting textiles for one hundred years and today the department of Costume and Textiles consists of over 15,000 objects, dating from antiquity to the present. The collection is divided roughly into eleven thousand flat textiles and four thousand costume and accessories that trace the history of fabric and dress. A collection of national significance, it contains outstanding examples of European and American costume and textiles from the 17th through 20th centuries, and is very strong in the areas of Peruvian, Coptic, African, Native American, Oceanic, and Asian textiles.The Asian textiles are particularly rich. Those given by Lucy Truman Aldrich in the 1930s are among the best in this country. The Japanese Noh
Noh
, or - derived from the Sino-Japanese word for "skill" or "talent" - is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. Traditionally, a Noh "performance day" lasts all day and...
robes are generally considered the finest assemblage in the world. In addition, the collection of 19th-century Chinese robes displays the splendor of decoration, as well as the importance of social rank and status, in costume of the period. One of the earliest European textiles in the collection is an extremely rare medieval German embroidery fragment. Exquisite Italian and Spanish silks and velvets represent the height of luxury textiles in the 14th and 15th centuries. The department also cares for a large collection of European tapestries, the earliest of which dates from around 1520. Highlights of the European collection include an exquisite example of Elizabethan embroidery in the form of a man's nightcap, fine examples of 18th-century French and English costume, and an opulent train worn in the court of Napoleon. Examples from Charles Frederick Worth
Charles Frederick Worth
Charles Frederick Worth , widely considered the Father of Haute couture, was an English fashion designer of the 19th century, whose works were produced in Paris.-Career:...
, Fortuny
Fortuny
Fortuny is a surname of Catalan origin. It may refer to:* Enzo Fortuny, Mexican voice actor* Jason Fortuny, creator of an internet hoax* Mariano Fortuny , Spanish painter...
, Paul Poiret
Paul Poiret
Paul Poiret was a French fashion designer. His contributions to twentieth-century fashion have been likened to Picasso's contributions to twentieth-century art.-Early life and career:...
, and Liberty & Co.. represent European fashion design achievements of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Included in the department are significant examples of early American needlework: quilts, coverlets, samplers, and embroideries. The collection also presents a remarkable survey of the development of printed textiles, an integral part of Rhode Island history. The Museum has a collection of New England needlework of great rarity, and a collection beyond compare of schoolgirl samplers made at the Balch School in Providence. Experimental work in textile design in the collection includes work by Diane Itter
Diane Itter
Diane Itter was an American fiber artist. Her work emerged from the 1960s renaissance of interest in fiber art. While studying at the University of Pittsburgh, she met her future husband, artist William Itter, who encouraged her to experiment with hand-tied knots...
, Cynthia Schira, Jack Lenor Larson, and Junichi Arai. Among the important 20th-century designers represented in the collection are Charles James
Charles James
Charles James may refer to:* Charles James , football player* Charles James , former U.S. assistant attorney general* Charles James * Charles Pinckney James , U.S. federal judge...
, Claire McCardell
Claire McCardell
Claire McCardell was an American fashion designer in the arena of ready-to-wear clothing in the 20th century. From the 1930s to the 1950s, she was known for designing functional, affordable, and stylish women’s sportswear within the constraints of mass-production, and is today acknowledged as the...
, Bonnie Cashin
Bonnie Cashin
Bonnie Cashin is considered one of the most significant pioneers of designer ready-to-wear, more commonly called sportswear, in America. Among the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful designers of the 20th century, Cashin was revered for her intellectual, artistic, and...
, Chanel
Chanel
Chanel S.A. is a French fashion house founded by the couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, well established in haute couture, specializing in luxury goods . She gained the name "Coco" while maintaining a career as a singer at a café in France...
, Halston
Halston
Roy Halston Frowick, also known as Halston was a clothing designer of the 1970s. His long dresses or copies of his style were popular fashion wear in mid-1970s discotheques.-Early life and career:...
and Geoffrey Beene
Geoffrey Beene
Geoffrey Beene was an American fashion designer.Beene was born in Haynesville, Louisiana. He studied medicine at Tulane University, but dropped out in 1946, after three years. He moved to New York in 1947 to attend the Traphagen School of Fashion...
. The department also houses more than three hundred early twentieth-century textiles and garments and eighteen cubic feet of records from Providence's Tirocchi Dressmakers’ Shop (fl.
Floruit
Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...
1915–1947). Such complete documentation of an historical dressmaking business exists nowhere else in the United States. Thus, in addition to the splendor of the objects themselves, the Tirocchi collection is an unparalleled resource for understanding many wide-ranging historical issues, including Italian immigration, women as workers and consumers, and the transition from hand production of garments to ready-to-wear clothing.
Decorative Arts
The Decorative Arts collection encompasses European and American decorative arts (furniture, silver and other metalwork, wallpaper, ceramics, and glass) from the Medieval period to the present. A major highlight of the department is the Charles L. Pendleton Collection of furniture made by 18th-century Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Newport cabinetmakers. Pendleton House, the "wing" of the Museum devoted to the exhibition of decorative arts, exhibits at least six pieces of furniture from the Goddard and TownsendGoddard and Townsend
The Goddard and Townsend families of Newport lend their name to an extensive body of New England furniture associated with Newport, Rhode Island in the second half of the 18th century.-Family of Artisans:...
circle of Newport cabinetmakers, including two of the renowned block-front, carved-shell desks-and-bookcases. Also on view in Pendleton House's period rooms are fine examples of English pottery, Chinese export porcelain
Chinese export porcelain
Chinese export porcelain concerns a wide range of porcelain that was made and decorated in China exclusively for export to Europe and later to North America between the 16th and the 20th century.-Early China porcelain trade:...
, and a comprehensive survey of Rhode Island silver.
The Harold Brown Collection of French Empire furniture and objects with Napoleonic associations is another highlight of the department's holdings, as is the Lucy Truman Aldrich collection of rare 18th-century European porcelain figures. 360 examples of 18th- and early 19th-century French wallpaper from the M. and Mme. Charles Huard collection constitute the backbone of the Museum's wallpaper collection, which is among the finest in the world.
An extraordinary collection of silver (approximately 2,000 pieces) produced by Providence's Gorham Manufacturing Company
Gorham Manufacturing Company
The Gorham Manufacturing Company is an American manufacturer of sterling and silverplate.-History:Gorham Silver was founded in Providence, Rhode Island 1831 by Jabez Gorham, a master craftsman, in partnership with Henry L. Webster. The firm's chief product was spoons of coin silver. The company...
from the mid 19th through the mid 20th century is the cornerstone of a fine collection of American silver that also includes work by colonial silversmiths such as John Coney
John Coney (silversmith)
John Coney was an early American silversmith and goldsmith from Boston, Massachusetts. He specialised in engraving. From the 1690s on, Coney was considered the most important Bostonian silversmith of his day...
, Paul Revere
Paul Revere
Paul Revere was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution. He is most famous for alerting Colonial militia of approaching British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Paul Revere's Ride...
, and Samuel Casey.
The Museum's collection is particularly strong in the area of 19th-century decorative arts. Important highlights include furniture by the American companies of Vose and Coates, Herter Brothers
Herter Brothers
The firm of Herter Brothers, New York, , founded by Gustave and Christian Herter , begun as an upholstery warehouse, became one of the first firms of furniture makers and interior decorators in the United States after the Civil War...
, and Alexander Roux; the Englishman Edward William Godwin
Edward William Godwin
Edward William Godwin was a progressive English architect-designer, who began his career working in the strongly polychromatic "Ruskinian Gothic" style of mid-Victorian Britain, inspired by The Stones of Venice, then moved on to provide designs in the "Anglo-Japanese taste" of the Aesthetic...
(E.W. Godwin); and the French makers Guillaume Beneman and Hugnet Frères. Other highlights of the 19th century are works of art in glass by Lalique, Louis Comfort Tiffany
Louis Comfort Tiffany
Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements...
, and Hector Guimard
Hector Guimard
Hector Guimard was an architect, who is now the best-known representative of the French Art Nouveau style of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries....
; ceramics by Wedgwood
Wedgwood
Wedgwood, strictly speaking Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, is a pottery firm owned by KPS Capital Partners, a private equity company based in New York City, USA. Wedgwood was founded on May 1, 1759 by Josiah Wedgwood and in 1987 merged with Waterford Crystal to create Waterford Wedgwood, an...
, Sèvres
Sèvres
Sèvres is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris.The town is known for its porcelain manufacture, the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres, making the famous Sèvres porcelain, as well as being the location of the International Bureau of Weights...
, and Royal Doulton
Royal Doulton
The Royal Doulton Company is an English company producing tableware and collectables, dating to 1815. Operating originally in London, its reputation grew in The Potteries, where it was a latecomer compared to Spode, Wedgwood and Minton...
, and silver by Christopher Dresser
Christopher Dresser
Christopher Dresser was an English designer and design theorist, now widely known as one of the first and most important, independent, designers and was a pivotal figure in the Aesthetic Movement, and a major contributor to the allied Anglo-Japanese branch of the Movement; both originated in...
, Charles Robert Ashbee
Charles Robert Ashbee
Charles Robert Ashbee was an English designer and entrepreneur who was a prime mover of the Arts and Crafts movement that took its craft ethic from the works of John Ruskin and its co-operative structure from the socialism of William Morris.-Early life:He was the son of businessman and erotic...
and the Gorham Manufacturing Company
Gorham Manufacturing Company
The Gorham Manufacturing Company is an American manufacturer of sterling and silverplate.-History:Gorham Silver was founded in Providence, Rhode Island 1831 by Jabez Gorham, a master craftsman, in partnership with Henry L. Webster. The firm's chief product was spoons of coin silver. The company...
.
20th-century design in the collection includes furniture by Alvar Aalto
Alvar Aalto
Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware...
, Verner Panton
Verner Panton
Verner Panton is considered one of Denmark's most influential 20th-century furniture and interior designers. During his career, he created innovative and futuristic designs in a variety of materials, especially plastics, and in vibrant and exotic colors...
, Josef Hofmann, and Charles and Ray Eames
Charles and Ray Eames
Charles Ormond Eames, Jr and Bernice Alexandra "Ray" Eames were American designers, who worked in and made major contributions to modern architecture and furniture. They also worked in the fields of industrial and graphic design, fine art and film.-Charles Eames:Charles Eames, Jr was born in...
; metalwork by Erik Magnussen; ceramics by Auguste Delaherche, glass by Frederick Carder
Frederick Carder
Frederick Carder was an American artist and glassmaker. He was born in Staffordshire, England and attended Stourbridge School of Art and the Dudley Mechanic Institute, he later worked in Wordsley. In 1960, Alfred University honored Carder with an honorary doctorate degree.Frederick Carder married...
, and wallpaper designs by Nancy McClelland, Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...
, and Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
. The mid 20th-century's revived interest in "craft" is represented by the work of Tage Frid
Tage Frid
-Further reading:* Hank Gilpin, "Professor Frid," Fine Woodworking magazine 146 , pp. 80-85.* John Kelsey, "Tage Frid: A Talk with the Old Master," Fine Woodworking magazine 52 , pp. 66-67....
, Wharton Esherick
Wharton Esherick
Wharton Esherick was a sculptor who worked primarily in wood. He reveled in applying the principles of sculpture to common utilitarian objects. Consequently he is best known for his sculptural furniture and furnishings...
, John Prip
John Prip
John Axel Prip , also known as Jack Prip, was a master metalsmith known for setting standards of excellence in American metalsmithing. His works and designs have become famous for bringing together the formal, technical tradition of Danish design into harmony with the American desire for innovation...
and Peter Voulkos
Peter Voulkos
Peter Voulkos popular name of Panagiotis Voulkos, was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his Abstract Expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic crafts and fine art....
. The RISD Museum is a leading collector of American contemporary craft and studio furniture and many of the artists represented in the collection have ties (either as alumni, faculty or both) to the School. Among the many contemporary craftspeople whose work is in the collection are: Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly is an American glass sculptor and entrepreneur.-Biography:Chihuly graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma, Washington. He enrolled at the College of the Puget Sound in 1959...
, Michael Glancy
Michael Glancy
Michael M. Glancy was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1950, and began working with glass in 1970. He received a BFA from the University of Denver in 1973 and a second BFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1977...
, Akio Takamori
Akio Takamori
Akio Takamori is a Japanese-American ceramic sculptor and is a faculty member at the University of Washington.-Biography:Takamori was born in Nobeoka, Miyazaki, Japan in 1950. The son of an obstetrician/gynecologist who ran a clinic, Takamori was exposed to a wide range of people from an early age...
, Kurt Weiser, Judy Kensley McKie, Jere Osgood, Rosanne Somerson and Alphonse Mattia.
Painting and Sculpture
Italian Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...
and Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
periods are represented by the work of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo , also known as Gianbattista or Giambattista Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice...
, Lippo Memmi
Lippo Memmi
Lippo Memmi was an Italian painter from Siena. He was the foremost follower of Simone Martini, who was his brother-in-law....
, Jacopo Sansovino
Jacopo Sansovino
Jacopo d'Antonio Sansovino was an Italian sculptor and architect, known best for his works around the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Andrea Palladio, in the Preface to his Quattro Libri was of the opinion that Sansovino's Biblioteca Marciana was the best building erected since Antiquity...
, Alessandro Magnasco
Alessandro Magnasco
Alessandro Magnasco , also known as il Lissandrino, was an Italian late-Baroque painter active mostly in Milan and Genoa...
, and others. The collection also includes major work by such northern European masters as Tilman Riemenschneider
Tilman Riemenschneider
Tilman Riemenschneider was a German sculptor and woodcarver active in Würzburg from 1483. He was one of the most prolific and versatile sculptors of the transition period between late Gothic and Renaissance, a master in stone and limewood.- Biography :Tilman Riemenschneider was born between 1459...
, Hendrick Goltzius, Joachim Wtewael
Joachim Wtewael
Joachim Anthonisz Wtewael , was a notable Dutch painter and engraver.Wtewael was born and died in Utrecht, where he began his career engraving glass with his father...
, Salomon van Ruysdael, and Georg Vischer.
17th- and 18th-century masterpieces include paintings by Francisco Collantes
Francisco Collantes
Francisco Collantes was a Spanish Baroque era painter.Collantes was born in Madrid but sought influence from Jusepe de Ribera and the Neapolitan School. He was also influenced by 16th century Venetian painters and was renowned for his landscapes and biblical scenes.-External links:*-References:...
, Sébastien Bourdon
Sébastien Bourdon
Sébastien Bourdon was a French painter and engraver. His chef d'œuvre is The Crucifixion of St. Peter made for the cathedral of Notre Dame....
, Gabriel-Jacques de Saint-Aubin, Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...
, Angelica Kauffmann
Angelica Kauffmann
Maria Anna Angelika/Angelica Katharina Kauffman was a Swiss-Austrian Neoclassical painter. Kauffman is the preferred spelling of her name; it is the form she herself used most in signing her correspondence, documents and paintings.- Early years :She was born at Chur in Graubünden, Switzerland,...
, and Joshua Reynolds
Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...
. Early 19th-century European art is represented by Thomas Lawrence
Thomas Lawrence
Thomas Lawrence may refer to:*Sir Thomas Lawrence, British artist, President of Royal Academy*Thomas Lawrence , mayor of colonial Philadelphia*T. E. Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia"*Thomas Lawrence , U.S. politician...
, Hubert Robert
Hubert Robert
Hubert Robert , French artist, was born in Paris.His father, Nicolas Robert, was in the service of François-Joseph de Choiseul, marquis de Stainville a leading diplomat from Lorraine...
, Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont, Joseph Chinard
Joseph Chinard
Joseph Chinard was a French sculptor who worked in a Neoclassical style that was infused with naturalism and sentiment....
, Théodore Géricault
Théodore Géricault
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings...
and others. The department has excellent examples of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
schools by such artists as Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
, Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
, Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
, Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...
. There is important work by 19th-century French sculptors Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
, Charles Henri Joseph Cordier
Charles Henri Joseph Cordier
Charles Henri Joseph Cordier , was a French sculptor of Ethnographic subjects.- Career :In 1847, Charles Cordier's meeting with Seïd Enkess, a former black slave who had become a model, determined the course of his career.His first success was a bust in plaster of a Sudanese man "Saïd Abdullah of...
, Jules Dalou
Jules Dalou
Aimé-Jules Dalou was a French sculptor, recognized as one of the most brilliant virtuosos of nineteenth-century France, admired for his perceptiveness, execution, and unpretentious realism.-Life:...
, and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux was a French sculptor and painter.Born in Valenciennes, Nord, son of a mason, his early studies were under François Rude. Carpeaux entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1844 and won the Prix de Rome in 1854, and moving to Rome to find inspiration, he there studied the works of...
. Among the 20th-century European painters in the collection are Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Georges Braque
Georges Braque
Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...
, Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
, and Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Raymond Duchamp-Villon was a French sculptor.Duchamp-Villon was born Pierre-Maurice-Raymond Duchamp in Damville, Eure, in the Haute-Normandie region of France, the second son of Eugene and Lucie Duchamp. Of the six Duchamp children, four would become successful artists...
, Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
, and Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...
.
The 18th- and 19th-century American collection is particularly strong, with important examples by such artists as John Singleton Copley
John Singleton Copley
John Singleton Copley was an American painter, born presumably in Boston, Massachusetts, and a son of Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Irish. He is famous for his portrait paintings of important figures in colonial New England, depicting in particular middle-class subjects...
, Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...
, Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century...
, Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....
, William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.- Early life and training :He was born in Williamsburg , Indiana, to the family...
, Martin Johnson Heade
Martin Johnson Heade
Martin Johnson Heade was a prolific American painter known for his salt marsh landscapes, seascapes, portraits of tropical birds, and still lifes...
, Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...
, John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...
, and Edward Mitchell Bannister
Edward Mitchell Bannister
-Notes:...
, an African-American landscapist who spent his career as a painter in Rhode Island.
Significant works by George Wesley Bellows, Robert Henri
Robert Henri
Robert Henri was an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School in art.- Early life :...
, Charles Sheeler
Charles Sheeler
Charles Rettew Sheeler, Jr. was an American artist. He is recognized as one of the founders of American modernism and one of the master photographers of the 20th century.-Early life and career:...
, Maxfield Parrish
Maxfield Parrish
Maxfield Parrish was an American painter and illustrator active in the first half of the twentieth century. He is known for his distinctive saturated hues and idealized neo-classical imagery.-Life:...
, Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...
, John Twachtman, Hans Hoffman, Paul Manship
Paul Manship
Paul Howard Manship was an American sculptor.-Life:Manship began his art studies at the St. Paul School of Art in Minnesota. From there he moved to Philadelphia and continued his education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts...
, and Nancy Elizabeth Prophet
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, born March 19, 1890, to William H. Prophet and Rose Walker Prophet, in Warwick, Rhode Island, matured into a sculptural artist during the Harlem Renaissance....
, among others, represent American artistic achievements of the early 20th-century.
Prints, Drawings and Photographs
The department of Prints, Drawings + Photographs oversees approximately 18,000 European and American works on paper from the 15th century to the present. Included in the collection are important examples of Old MasterOld Master
"Old Master" is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period...
drawings and prints, among them works by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione was an Italian Baroque artist, painter, printmaker and draftsman, of the Genoese school. He is best known now for his elaborate engravings, and as the inventor of the printmaking technique of monotyping. He was known as Il Grechetto in Italy and in France as Le...
, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo , also known as Gianbattista or Giambattista Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice...
, Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
, Rembrandt and Goya.
The department has one of the largest collections (over 800) of British watercolors in the country. Included among them are fine examples by J.M.W. Turner, George Chinnery
George Chinnery
George Chinnery was an English painter who spent most of his life in Asia, especially India and southern China.- Early life :Chinnery was born in London, where he studied at the Royal Academy Schools...
, John Sell Cotman
John Sell Cotman
John Sell Cotman was an English marine and landscape painter, etcher, illustrator and author, one of the leading lights of the Norwich school of artists.-Early life and work:...
, William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
and Thomas Rowlandson
Thomas Rowlandson
Thomas Rowlandson was an English artist and caricaturist.- Biography :Rowlandson was born in Old Jewry, in the City of London. He was the son of a tradesman or city merchant. On leaving school he became a student at the Royal Academy...
.
The collection of French prints and drawings includes work by Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...
, Hubert Robert
Hubert Robert
Hubert Robert , French artist, was born in Paris.His father, Nicolas Robert, was in the service of François-Joseph de Choiseul, marquis de Stainville a leading diplomat from Lorraine...
, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
, Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
, Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....
, Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
, Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
, Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
and others. Notable in the collection of American watercolors and drawings is work by Benjamin West
Benjamin West
Benjamin West, RA was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence...
, Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...
, Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...
, Eastman Johnson
Eastman Johnson
Eastman Johnson was an American painter, and Co-Founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, with his name inscribed at its entrance...
, Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....
, Maurice Prendergast
Maurice Prendergast
Maurice Brazil Prendergast was an American Post-Impressionist artist who worked in oil, watercolor, and monotype...
and Maxfield Parrish
Maxfield Parrish
Maxfield Parrish was an American painter and illustrator active in the first half of the twentieth century. He is known for his distinctive saturated hues and idealized neo-classical imagery.-Life:...
.
Among the important 20th-century artists represented in the collection are Franz Kline
Franz Kline
Franz Jozef Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended Girard College, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys...
, James Rosenquist
James Rosenquist
James Rosenquist is an American artist and one of the protagonists in the pop-art movement.-Background and education:...
, Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler is an American abstract expressionist painter. She is a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work in six decades she has spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work...
, Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell American painter, printmaker and editor. He was one of the youngest of the New York School , which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston....
, Jennifer Bartlett
Jennifer Bartlett
Jennifer Losch Bartlett is an American artist. She is best-known for paintings combining abstract and representational styles.-Education:...
, Eric Fischl
Eric Fischl
Eric Fischl is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker.-Early life:Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on suburban Long Island; his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1967...
, Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud
Wayne Thiebaud is an American painter whose most famous works are of cakes, pastries, boots, toilets, toys and lipsticks. He is associated with the Pop art movement because of his interest in objects of mass culture, although his works, executed during the fifties and sixties, slightly predate...
, Kara Walker
Kara Walker
Kara Walker is a contemporary African American artist who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes, such as The Means to an End--A Shadow Drama in Five Acts.-Biography:Walker was born in...
and Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente is an Italian and American contemporary artist. Influenced by thinkers as diverse as Gregory Bateson, William Blake, Allen Ginsberg, and J Krishnamurti, the art of Francesco Clemente is inclusive and nomadic, crossing many borders, intellectual and geographical.Dividing his time...
.
The history of the art of the book is represented, in one of its earliest forms, by the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili , called in English Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream, is a romance said to be by Francesco Colonna and a famous example of early printing...
(1499), a masterpiece of Renaissance illumination. In later centuries, work by masters of printing and illustration provides a link between the earliest books and twentieth-century "artists’ books" that push limits and challenge traditional interpretations of the form.
A summary of the history of photography is provided by 5,000 photographs, among them significant works by Gustave Le Gray
Gustave Le Gray
Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gray has been called "the most important French photographer of the nineteenth century" because of his technical innovations in the still new medium of photography, his role as the teacher of other noted photographers, and the extraordinary imagination he brought to picture...
, Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer. She became known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for photographs with Arthurian and other legendary themes....
, Nadar, Frederick Sommer
Frederick Sommer
Frederick Sommer , was an artist born in Angri, Italy and raised in Brazil. He earned a M.A. degree in Landscape Architecture from Cornell University where he met Frances Elisabeth Watson whom he married in 1928; they had no children...
, Carrie May Weems, and former RISD professors Aaron Siskind
Aaron Siskind
Aaron Siskind was an American abstract expressionist photographer. In his biography he wrote that he began his foray into photography when he received a camera for a wedding gift and began taking pictures on his honeymoon. He quickly realized the artistic potential this offered...
and Harry Callahan. The department also oversees the Aaron Siskind Center for the Study of Photography, which is open to photography students and Museum visitors alike.