February 20 - April 24, 2025
Installation Views | Essay | For availability and pricing, please contact the gallery at 212-581-1657
Installation Views
Essay by Deedee Wigmore
As a dealer in historic American art, it is a pleasure to review different parts of our country whose spirit and beauty has been captured by artists. From February 20th to April 25th, D. Wigmore Fine Art dedicates an exhibition to the Adirondacks, a range of mountains in northeastern New York with 3,000 lakes, as well as impetuous rivers and streams, that has been legislated as “Forever Wild.” The Adirondacks’ high-peaked mountains inspired artists, photographers, and geologists to survey and document it. The story of art in the Adirondacks began in 1837 with the painting The Great Adirondack Pass executed on the spot by the artist Charles C. Ingham (1796-1863). Ingham came to the region accompanying Ebenezer Emmons’ survey party. The Adirondack Pass painting was purchased by New York State Senator Archibald McIntyre, who owned mines in the area. Senator McIntyre’s descendants, Mr. and Mrs. Harold Grout, gave The Great Adirondack Pass painting to the Adirondack Experience museum.
The title Timeless Adirondacks was chosen because our exhibition includes works by artists from the 19th century to the present. In the 19th century artists traveled to the Adirondacks for its unspoiled scenery and their admired paintings reinforced the location as a touring destination. View of Schroon Lake, 1846 by Asher B. Durand (1796-1886) resulted from an earlier sketching trip with Thomas Cole in 1837. Alexander Wyant (1836-1892) visited the Adirondacks and built his home on a mountainside in Keene Valley. Two paintings by Wyant - The Ausable River in Flood and Morning, Keene Valley resulted from Wyant’s daily observations. Drama is recorded by James M. Hart (1828-1901) in his painting Approaching Storm, Adirondacks, 1866 which captures a sudden change in weather that could mean danger. Hart’s deer stand on alert ready to flee as they sense a coming storm. View of the Upper Ausable Lake by John Bunyan Bristol (1826-1909) provides a contrasting calm with a figure seated on a boulder sketching the mountains and lake. Keene Valley was such a popular destination for artists that at times it seemed to be a virtual artist colony. Essex County’s lake and mountain views also attracted artists. William Richardson Tyler (1825-1896), who lived in Troy, New York and Daniel Folger Bigelow (1823-1910) found inspiration there. Popular monthly magazines provided commissions for artists to travel to the Adirondacks to illustrate articles on the amenities which included accommodations, sporting opportunities, and healthful locations. The 19th century paintings in our exhibition were executed before the Adirondack Park was established in 1892.
Jonas Lie (1880-1940) represents the next generation of artists. His style of naturalism is combined with the coloristic innovation of Impressionism. Lie came to the Adirondacks in 1921 as his wife Inga Sontum, a Norwegian ballet dancer, received treatment for tuberculosis at the Trudeau Sanatorium. Lie purchased Howland Cottage nearby in Saranac Lake and resided there as a painter and teacher until 1926 when Inga died. Our exhibition offers a rare painting titled Frosty Morning, 1923, which includes snowy hillside houses around the town of Saranac Lake. Lie became famous for painting snow-covered terrain, frigid waters, and sun-dappled birch trees. He returned to the Adirondacks in 1928 to execute a commission of ten painting depicting the summer residence Kamp Kill Kare on Lake Kora for the Francis Garvan family.
Modernist Adirondack landscapes by Harold Weston (1894-1972) executed from 1938 to 1959 are offered in our exhibition. Weston’s father built on land purchased beside Icy Brook in Keene Vally in 1883. As a child, Weston spent summers at Icy Brook Camp and in 1920 built a studio there for painting. Weston’s first solo exhibition of Adirondack paintings was in 1922 at the Montross Gallery in New York City.
The artist Allen Blagden (b. 1938) and the photographer Nathan Farb (b. 1941) both grew up in the Adirondacks. Blagden spent summers on Upper Lake Saranac and Farb full-time in the Lake Placid area. Having a home in the Adirondacks enabled both artists to experience and present all four seasons. Our exhibition pairs Nathan Farb’s photographs with Allen Blagden’s watercolors. Blagden pays close attention to birds and wildlife in his Adirondack paintings, capturing quiet moments of the animals in their habitats. Farb achieved his amazing Adirondack views by carrying his large-format camera to the top of mountains, into the forests, and via canoe to lakes and ponds then using his long exposure technique. Farb’s photography of nature makes one pause to think about how natural change is to living things. Westport weaver Cynthia Schira (b. 1934) touches on seasonal change with a tapestry titled August which presents the shimmer of Lake Champlain almost submerged by late summer’s soft orange color. Another Schira weaving titled Daybreak presents a scene of changing light looking past wild grasses on a sandy shore as dawn arrives over the lake. Harold Weston’s painting Grasses joins in this conversation.
Don Wynn, an artist who lived in the Blue Mountain Lake area of the Adirondacks, recorded the pleasures of summer in his painting On Vacation, 1975. Wynn, a photorealist in the 1970s, sculpts human form with light. Opening Day, 1973 portrays the eager fisherman’s preparation as he sets out his poles in a simple Adirondack cottage. The natural beauty of the Adirondack region continues to capture artists today. Andrew Thompson, who has a house on the north end of Lake George, enjoys fishing as much as Don Wynn. Andrew’s painting Smelt Dreams, 2022 and sculpture Brook Trout and Green Drakes, 2024 reflect this interest.
The wild beauty of the Adirondacks speaks to us in images of its distinctive forests, rivers, gorges, wildlife, birds, and fish captured in paintings, photography, and weavings that present the light, line, and color of the area. It gives me pleasure to share with you generations of artists who touch us with their responses to the Adirondacks.
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Modernism 1913-1950 | Realism of the 1930s and 1940s | Abstraction of the 1930s and 1940s | Post-War | Selected Biographies