William Sidney Mount Painter of American Life

Historical Society, William Sidney Mount: Painter of American Life is a major exhibition exploring the career of an artist who virtually invented American genre painting. The exhibition, organized by The Museums at Stony Brook and The American Federation of Arts, will later travel to the Frick Art Museum in Pittsburgh and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth. William Sidney Mount (1807-1868) was the first American-born painter to achieve widespread fame for his depictions of everyday life. This major loan exhibition, the first focused consideration of Mount's artistic achievement, will present his works in all media. The chronologically-organized exhibition juxtaposes finished paintings with preparatory sketches and prints in order to examine both Mount's working methods and the manner in which his paintings were disseminated through the print medium. The selection will reveal how thoroughly Mount's images penetrated 19th-century American culture and how his vision of culture in the formative decades of the country helped shape the way the nation sees itself today. The exhibition includes several William Sidney Mount paintings from the permanent collection of The New-York Historical Society: Coming to the Point, Dregs in the Cup and Bargaining for a Horse. ...