Exhibit | Keny Galleries

Sampling includes some greats

Sunday,  March 15, 2009 7:36 AM
By Christopher A. Yates
For The Columbus Dispatch

A strong exhibit of more than 30 works at Keny Galleries samples a broad swath of style and vision.

Included in "American Master Works on Paper (1882-1982)" are several pieces produced by iconic figures of American art history.

Mostly representational, the show offers diverse examples of watercolor, printmaking and drawing.

Andrew Wyeth's watercolor The Green Dory is striking for its simplicity and harmonious hues. Shades of blue and green become the water, sky and atmosphere.

The painting depicts a man preparing to launch his boat. Wyeth focuses on the ordinary to reveal the essential character of place. In the process, he documents a timeless moment. Every brushstroke is measured and precise; nothing is labored or overworked. The result is mesmerizing.

With energetic reserve, Elizabeth Nourse produced the impressionist pastel The New Shoe, featuring a tender moment as a mother wrestles a shoe onto an infant's foot. Drawn in mostly neutral brown on a gray background, the focus is the child's blue dress. Slight accents of blue in the background help lead the eye through the elegant composition.

Winslow Homer's small charcoal sketch Scarborough Beach is a surprise. Drawn with subtle value shifts, a group of fishermen stand together awash in light and atmosphere. Although the narrative is unclear, they look toward the sea expectantly.

Several landscape images steal the show. Alice Schille's watercolors Colorful Trees and Mediterranean Vista With Boat are among the best. Both pieces rely on expressive color pushed to an almost-fauvist level.

Colors are made all the more intense because of placement: Warm sets off cool, and cool sets off warm. With an energetic brushstroke, the scenes seem windblown and saturated in light.

With great sensitivity to line and form, James A.M. Whistler's etching-drypoint Rotherhithe is exquisite.

Capturing the energy of the city, Jacob Lawrence's lithograph On the Way features an urban street. Graphic and stylized, his work is a record of the black experience in America.

Other strong pieces include Gustave Baumann's woodcut Summer Clouds, Edna Boies Hopkins' woodcut Cineraria (Purple Zinnias), Jane Peterson's gouache painting Boat Landing, Edgartown and Agnes Weinrich's woodcut In the Garden.

Each work has a distinctive story. Like taking a stroll with old friends, the exhibit transports and enriches our experience of artists we know and some we should know.