American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915

American Stories closed Sunday, January 24, 2010, but the exhibition’s conclusion provides an opportunity to consider how storytelling continued to evolve in American visual media after 1915. Narratives about everyday life appeared in paintings by artists such as Edward Hopper, and, most notably, in the work of Regionalist painters such as Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood. However, with the spread of European modernism, particularly after the seminal 1913 Armory show in New York, many painters began turning from representational to abstract styles. As the emphasis on narrative decreased in painting, film emerged as an important medium for storytelling in America. Motion pictures and painting are closely linked, and in American Stories, we find several late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century works that offer a glimpse at the connections between the two media. Read more »

With Thanksgiving approaching, I want to dedicate this week’s post to paintings in the exhibition that feature or reference food and drink. In some examples, food appears as a symbolic element, such as in the portrait of Benjamin and Eleanor Ridgely Laming—discussed in “Old Friends in a New Light”—where the peaches resting on Mrs. Laming’s lap suggest fecundity and fertility. The portrait of Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley also falls into this category, as the teapot alludes to contemporary political anxieties over the Townshend Acts and the tax on tea. Read more »