"The Subtle Genius of Henry Cooke White" opens June 26 at Cooley Gallery

"The poetry, the spontaneity, the stillness, or the depth," a wide range of qualities attracted gallery owner Jeffrey Cooley to the work of American artist Henry Cooke White (1861-1952) as presented in last year's exhibition "Visions of Mood" at the Florence Griswold Museum.

Inspired by the museum's show, The Cooley Gallery, in Old Lyme, Conn., has organized an exhibition and sale of over 40 pastel paintings by H.C. White depicting Old Lyme, Long Island Sound, Manhattan, Hartford, and Venice, all newly-offered from the collections of the artist's descendants.

Born into an affluent family in Hartford, Conn., White befriended American Tonalist painter Dwight Tryon while a young man. Tryon encouraged White to hone his talents at New York's Art Students League where he studied with such luminaries of the day as Kenyon Cox, William Merritt Chase, and the influential pastelist John Henry Twachtman.

White moved his family in 1903 to be near the up-and-coming Old Lyme art colony, among the enclave of landscape artists who appreciated the picturesque area's varied topography. Four generations of White's family, artists and writers like their forebearer, have resided in the Waterford home he built by the sea.

The exhibition runs June 26 to August 7, 2010, at The Cooley Gallery, 25 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, Conn. On July 10, the artist's grandson, Nelson Holbrook White, who is also a painter, will give a talk at the gallery.