Cincinnati Art Museum

The collection at the Cincinnati Art Museum didn’t align with our interests as much as some others, but it is home to a few paintings by some of our favorite artists, so it was well worth a stop.

The museum also had wonderful signs accompanying the paintings, highlighting details or explaining the situation in which the painting was created. Citations under our photos below are from these cards.

The museum was founded in 1881, making it one of the oldest in the United States. Today it has a collection of more than 67,000 items, making it the largest art museum in Ohio.

The cover photo is Trouville (1891) by Eugene Louis Boudin, who was, according to the sign, Claude Monet’s primary mentor!

*Pont Royal*, Paris, Childe Hassam, 1897. “Hassam painted this bird’s eye glimpse of the Seine from the window of his room…. Hassam adapted Impressionist techniques of using high-keyed color and quick strokes of paint to emphasize flickering light, the vibrancy of spring and the energy of the modern city.” This painting won first prize at the annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the museum acquired it soon thereafter.

Undergrowth with Two Figures, Vincent van Gogh, 1890. “A rhythmic pattern of thick brushstrokes animates the surface of this painting, making the couple seem strapped by the dense vegetation.”

Detail of *Undergrowth with Two Figures*.

*Fog on Guernsey*, Pierre Auguste Renoir, 1883. “It is a showpiece for Renoir’s mastery of the technical aspects of painting. He employed a variety of brushstrokes – from short distinct marks for the waves to long blended strokes in the hazy distance. By using an extraordinary range of colors, often in strong juxtaposition across the color wheel, Renoir gave the painting a vibrancy and sense of movement.”

*Moret at Sunset*, Alfred Sisley, 1888. “On a clear autumn evening, the artist had the opportunity to study the effects of the waning light reflected in the river, shadowing the buildings and coloring the sky, capturing the shimmering, fleeting nature of sunset.”

*Patience Serious*, Robert Henri, 1915. “Henri visited the coastal art colony of Ogunquit, Maine, with his colleague and protégé, George Bellows. Disinterested in painting well-to-do vacationers, Henri instead sought compelling subjects in working-class communities….Patience, a spirited Roma child, appears in several portraits Henri painted that summer.”

We happened to be visiting the museum during the exhibition *George Bellows: American Life in Print.* This lithograph is *Jean 1923*, and it features Bellows’ second daughter at age eight.

*Master Meyrick*, John Hoppner, circa 1793. “The young boy in this painting…is shown wearing the sort of ruffled infant’s dress all children – male and female – wore until about age three or four. A playful touch is introduced by the oversized adult hat he wears.” Along with Thomas Lawrence, Hoppner was a leading portrait painter in London in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries.

*Sun on Prospect Street (Gloucester, Massachusetts)*, Edward Hopper, 1934. “Although this streetscape is accurate, Edward Hopper’s depopulated image is quite different from the reality of Gloucester, Massachusetts.” In typical Hopper fashion, he has eliminated “human touches like window grilles and curtains.”

*Two Girls Fishing,* John Singer Sargent, 1912. “Sargent, exhausted from commissioned portraiture, increasingly turned to painting landscapes and family and friends at leisure. He made this painting of his nieces, Rose-Marie and Reine Ormond, during a holiday to the resort of Abries in the French Alps.” I think the girls are absolutely lovely.

In 2003 the Cincinnati Wing was added to the museum, which naturally features Cincinnati artists, but which also had a large exhibit on the Great Cincinnati Pottery Smackdown. “In the last quarter of the nineteenth century two of the most important figures in the history of American ceramics began competing in Cincinnati for acclaim.” We’ve got M. Louise McLaughlin in one corner, and Maria Longworth Nichols Storer in the other.

The two achieved equal success in china painting, but then in 1877 Louise wrote a self-help book on the subject, which was wildly successful. She then followed that up by perfecting a new technique for decorating pottery under the glaze (which was very difficult to do), to great fanfare. She even created the largest vessel ever made in that way, the “Ali Baba” vase.

Maria, “who took a back seat to no one,” then went on to create the “Aladdin” vase, which was acclaimed for being exceptionally large, even if it did so happen to use Louise’ technique. Maria also formed her own pottery company, Rookwood, which went on to win more international awards than any other pottery in the world. “Today its wares are coveted across the globe by museums and collectors alike.”