Current Upcoming Past |
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Bessie Potter Vonnoh:
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Julie Aronson, Ph.D., the recognized authority on the artist and the Curator of American Painting and Sculpture at the Cincinnati Art Museum, organized the exhibition, which will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue published by Ohio University Press. | |
| 96 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, CT 06371 | 860-434-5542 phone | Open Tuesday - Saturday 10 - 5; Sunday 1 - 5 | ||
This elegant and engaging exhibition is the first dedicated to the work of the sculptor Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872–1955) since the artist’s lifetime. Vonnoh elevated the quality of and enhanced appreciation for small bronze sculpture, a significant contribution to American art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the age of grand, public Beaux-Arts monuments, Vonnoh instead defined her own path by producing works for the artistic embellishment of the home and garden. Her success and the accolades she earned as “the originator of an American genre” garnered her prestigious commissions for public statuary, including the Frances Hodgson Burnett Memorial in New York’s Central Park. 
Like the American Impressionists, Vonnoh embraced subjects drawn from daily life, which she articulated in sensitively modeled statuettes. She became the only sculptor of her generation to focus exclusively on the theme of women and children. By carving out a distinctive niche for herself as the sculptor of contemporary American womanhood, Vonnoh acted as a role model for women striving for acceptance as professional artists. 
Bessie Potter Vonnoh and her husband, the painter Robert Vonnoh, were involved prominently in the Lyme Art Colony, making the Florence Griswold Museum the perfect debut venue for this exhibition. Archival photographs, letters, and a portrait of the artist from the Museum’s collection will provide rare insight into Vonnoh’s public and private personae. Bessie Potter Vonnoh: Sculptor of Women features approximately 35 works in bronze, plaster, terra cotta, and marble carefully selected from public and private collections across the country.