Monday, January 27, 2020

Drawing on a Legacy: Highlights from the John Driscoll American Drawings Collection

Palmer Museum of Art
January 21st - June 7th 2020

 

John William Hill, Under the Falls, Niagara, c. 1870
John William Hill, Under the Falls, Niagara, c. 1870, watercolor on paper, 29 x 21½ inches. John Driscoll American Drawings Collection.

 

John William Hill, Under the Falls, Niagara, c. 1870
John William Hill, Under the Falls, Niagara, c. 1870, watercolor on paper, 29 x 21½ inches. John Driscoll American Drawings Collection.
The gift of 140 works on paper from Penn State alumnus Dr. John P. Driscoll in 2018 dramatically reshaped the Palmer Museum of Art’s holdings of American art. Drawing on a Legacy is the first exhibition to showcase selections from this significant collection of watercolors and drawings and will feature some thirty works by a diverse group of nineteenth-century American artists.

 
John Vanderlyn (1776-1852), Study After Poussin (The Baptism of Christ), c. 1798, charcoal on paper, 11 x 17 inches. Palmer Museum of Art, John Driscoll American Drawings Collection.

Early landscape views and botanical sketches, animal scenes and still lifes, and portraits and preparatory figure studies are among the subjects highlighted in the exhibition. Artists represented include many well-known luminaries of the period—John Vanderlyn, William Trost Richards, and Edwin Howland Blashfield—along with lesser-known figures whose work deserves further study. Drawing on a Legacy surveys an array of techniques and media, including graphite, charcoal, ink, and watercolor, and explores the changing cultural importance of drawing during the so-called “long” nineteenth century.