This winter the Cooley Gallery is presenting a gallery-wide exhibition of its new acquisitions, an expansive show which includes fine art from the 19th century to the present, with important examples of Luminism, American Impressionism, and Abstraction. Gallery visitors will be treated to a broad spectrum of American art beginning in the 19th century and through to present day.  

The show opens in the front gallery, as soon as you walk through the double doors. It features figure, floral, and landscape paintings from the early 20th century, and showcases works by major Connecticut impressionists Robert William Vonnoh, Emil Carlsen, Leonard Ochtman, and Wilton Lockwood, and Ashcan School painter Everett Shinn.  

A painting of peonies by Wilton Robert Lockwood (1861-1914) is characterized by restraint, its peach, pink and white tones emerging gently from the middle tone of a raw canvas ground. Lockwood was born in Wilton, Connecticut, and studied with the important American painter and stained glass designer John La Farge. Successful as a painter of portraits, Lockwood is now best known for his florals. The painting on display in the front gallery is an exquisite example of his expertise in the genre, for Lockwood was particularly fond of the evanescence of peonies. Brushstrokes denoting the flowers’ petals are applied with a light, crisp touch, beautiful in themselves yet never disturbing the picture’s overall harmony.   
 
No less harmonious in effect are two small oils on panel by Emil Carlsen (1853-1932). Carlsen was born in Copenhagen and eventually settled in Connecticut, where he was associated with the Old Lyme Art Colony. Equally adept at still life and landscape subjects, Carlsen’s paintings display an exquisite sensitivity to tone and fine draftsmanship. As in Lockwood’s floral, such demonstrations of facility were never permitted to upstage the paintings’ elegant Tonalism.

Over the mantle in this gallery hangs Mianus River, Cos Cob, CT. It is one of Leonard Ochtman’s finest works. Ochtman (1854-1934) was born in Holland and in 1891 moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, where he became a prominent member of the artistic community. Mianus River was painted in 1897, and reveals the influences of both Dutch Tonalism and American Impressionism as practiced by the Cos Cob Art Colony. The painting documents a commingling of rural and suburban landscape features, with buildings and backyards unified in an overcast autumn sunlight. A similar painting by the artist is owned by the Bruce Museum, of which Ochtman was the first curator.

This large exhibition continues in the upstairs gallery with noteworthy works by 19th century painters, including small gems by Hudson River School artists Jasper Francis Cropsey and Aaron Draper Shattuck, as well as landscape painters James Fairman and William Bliss Baker, and still-life artist Paul LaCroix.  Jeff Cooley refers to the LaCroix as “a perfect still life.” A French émigré, LaCroix (1827-1869) was living in New York City by the mid-1850s. In Still Life with Fruit LaCroix references the Dutch still life tradition, wherein damaged fruit and broken stems are symbols of mortality. Centered on a wooden tabletop, the fruits glisten with moisture from having been recently washed.

James Fairman (1826-1904) spent his life traveling as an artist, naturalist, teacher, and musician. Given Fairman’s peripatetic history, it’s appropriate that the exact site of The Widow Maker remains uncertain. The subject is a storm tossed shoreline, its foreground rocks cast in deep shadow, with an intriguing monolith of sea-sharpened stone dramatically lit at the composition’s center. Through heavy atmosphere and sea spray a lighthouse can be seen atop a distant cliff. Here is a thoughtfully orchestrated studio piece, painted with flair and precision, that marvelously conveys the ocean’s grandeur and danger.

Back down a few steps from the front gallery you’ll enter the center gallery, which is currently showcasing works of abstraction.  Of particular note are seven gouaches and a print by Sol Lewitt (1928-2007), whom The New York Times referred to as “a lodestar of modern American art.” A major proponent of Conceptualism and Minimalism, Lewitt was recognized for his humility and sense of humor, even while fame brought honors that included a retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2000 and a twenty-five year installation at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Lewitt eventually made his home in nearby Chester. Playful and optically exciting, the gallery’s gouaches feature strips of rhythmic swirls and ribbons of color painted on paper.

Also featured is a large and dynamic oil on canvas by Judy Friday, a local artist whose stunning output alternates between representational and conceptual modes, and a jazz- inspired collage by Ellen Priest, in which strips of brightly painted paper strips are floated atop one another in luminous layers.

The gallery-wide exhibition culminates with a delightful acknowledgment of the season. The back gallery is devoted to works that celebrate winter in Connecticut, with snow scenes painted by Winfield Scott Clime, Wilson Irvine, William Baxter Closson, Edward Volkert, and Carl Wuermer.

Trail of the Snowshoes, a major canvas by William Baxter Closson (1848-1926), evokes the end of a winter day. Three quarters of the painting is filled with a snow covered foreground, the topography of its hollow and rise indicated by lengthening afternoon shadows. Tracks in the snow lead to a group of receding figures, then to a line of trees and distant mountains that delineate the picture’s high horizon. Originally from Vermont, Closson worked as an illustrator and engraver before turning to fine art. He lived throughout the northeast, and was eventually a resident of Hartford. Closson married Grace Worden Gallaudet, daughter of Dr. Edward Miner Gallaudet, president of Gallaudet College.

Winfield Scott Clime (1881-1958) is also represented by one of his most ambitious works. After establishing his career as an artist in Washington D.C., Scott moved to Connecticut and became a member of the Old Lyme Art Colony. Pleasant Valley was painted from atop a hill overlooking the Eight Mile River valley, north of Hamburg Cove. Rolling, snow-covered hills are glimpsed through a foreground screen of trees. The composition is anchored by a complex grid of vertical and horizontal forms, enlivened by the diagonal of the river slicing through the middle distance. Although much of the vista is swathed in shadow, there is everywhere a sense of fresh and buoyant sunlight.

Visitors are welcome and encouraged Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. or online anytime at www.cooleygallery.com. The show runs until March 31st.