Until recently, there has been little attention paid to the highly talented female contemporaries of Asher Durand, Frederic Church and Thomas Cole. Jennifer Krieger will identify these determined American women artists-- their training, their work, and their social circle. She will tell the story of the obstacles they faced as daughters, sisters, nieces or lovers of well-known American artists, and how they overcame the prejudices of their time in order to paint the American landscape.

Ms. Krieger served as recent co-curator of the groundbreaking exhibition, Remember the Ladies: Women Artists of the Hudson River School, mounted at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in 2010. The show featured approximately 30 works including paintings, drawings, embroidered landscapes, photography, and drawing manuals by artists such as Julia Hart Beers (sister to William and James Hart), Evelina Mount (niece to William Sidney Mount), Susie Barstow, Edith Wilkinson Cook, Eliza Greatorex, Harriet Cany Peale (wife of Rembrandt Peale), and Josephine Walters among others.  The paintings of Thomas Cole’s sister Sarah Cole and her daughter Emily Cole were also on view.

Ms. Krieger comments, “This remarkable group of female artists was able to transcend the complex challenges they faced as a result of gender constraints. Their physical and lifestyle accomplishments in pioneering an exploration of the outdoors and acquiring their subject matter directly from the landscape were just as remarkable as their aesthetic and artistic achievements.”

Ms. Krieger is especially delighted to speak about this topic at the Dahesh Museum of Art where she had previously assisted in the curatorial department with research for the 1999-2000 exhibition, Overcoming all Obstacles: The Women of the Academie Julian. This exhibition organized by and exhibited at the Dahesh Museum of Art also traveled to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA and to the Dixon Museum and Gardens in Memphis, TN. It explored the practices of Paris’s most important training ground for late 19th and early 20th century female artists and celebrated the talents of both well-known and lesser known women painters and sculptors of the era. The subject matter of Overcoming all Obstacles exhibition served as the preliminary inspiration to motivate Ms. Krieger’s study of 19th century female artists. With her talk, Ms. Krieger hopes to connect the experiences of women painters of the late 19th and early 20th century with that of their predecessors, the female Hudson River School artists.

LOCATION AND DETAILS:

The Dahesh Museum of Art Salon

145 Sixth Avenue, corner of Dominick Street

 New York, New York 10013

Tel: 212-759-0606

Admission Free. Seating May Be Limited

(Wheel Chair Accessible).

Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 6:30pm