THE STIEGLITZ CIRCLE AT THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION: IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN
Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, John Marin, and Alfred Stieglitz

February 19–May 8, 2005

West Palm Beach, FL–The Stieglitz Circle at The Phillips Collection: In The American Grain is drawn from the Phillips Collection's permanent holdings, and includes more than forty paintings by American Modernists Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Georgia O'Keeffe, as well as photographs by Alfred Stieglitz. On view at the Norton Museum of Art from February 19 through May 8, 2005, this stunning exhibition explores not only the works of these innovative modern artists, but also their relationships with gallerist Alfred Stieglitz and collector Duncan Phillips. The members of "Stieglitz’s Circle" were frequently inspired by America's distinctive landscape, and depicted its endless variety in bold forms and vivid colors. Also on view during this exhibition will be complementary paintings from the Norton’s permanent collection, two each by Dove and O’Keeffe, and one each by Hartley and Marin. Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Senior Curator of Art, The Phillips Collection will give an exhibition lecture on February 20 at 3:00 p.m.

The Norton’s Curator of American Art, Jonathan Stuhlman, comments, "This is not only a wonderful opportunity to see important and beautiful paintings by some of America’s most innovative artists, but also a chance to learn about the fascinating and complex relationships that emerged between Duncan Phillips, an insightful collector, Alfred Stieglitz, a tireless advocate for modern American art, and Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Georgia O’Keeffe, four groundbreaking American artists."

Avant-garde gallerist and photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) originally made a name for himself by introducing the work of modern European artists such as Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, and Rodin to American audiences at his gallery 291. However, by the time he had opened his second gallery, An American Place, in December 1925, he was firmly devoted to exhibiting and promoting American art. At the heart of his circle were Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Washington, D.C.-based collector Duncan Phillips (1886–1966), like Stieglitz, showed an early interest in modern European art, forming a collection that by 1923 included Renoir’s masterpiece The Boating Party, for which he paid a then-record sum of $125,000.

At this point, however, Phillips was beginning to take a serious interest in American art as well. In fact, one year before he purchased the Renoir, he wrote that it was a "cardinal principle to make the gallery as American as possible, favoring native work whenever it is of really superior quality, as our painting unquestionably is." In 1926, Phillips defined his outlook by stating that, "The power to ‘see beautifully’ is almost all there is worth bothering about in art."

It was inevitable that Phillips and Stieglitz would meet. The event occurred shortly after the opening of Stieglitz’s Intimate Gallery in late 1925. Just a few months later, Phillips had purchased his first paintings from Stieglitz, including works by Dove, Marin, and O’Keeffe. Over the next two decades (until Stieglitz’s death in 1946), Phillips continued to acquire and exhibit work by the artists that Stieglitz supported, sharing his passion and steadfast belief that the work of American artists was equally as valid as that of their European counterparts. Phillips collected the artists in this exhibition in depth, grouping their work into “units” that represented each artist’s mature body of work. In keeping with Phillips’ tradition, this exhibition is laid out in "units," each of which functions as a miniature retrospective for Dove, Hartley, Marin, O’Keeffe, and even Stieglitz himself.

Admission to The Stieglitz Circle At The Phillips Collection: In The American Grain is $12 for adults, $5 ages 13–2, and free for children 12 and under, which includes admission to the Norton’s permanent collection.

Sunday Exhibition Lecture:
February 20, 3:00 p.m.
The Stieglitz Circle At The Phillips Collection: In The American Grain:

Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Senior Curator of Art, The Phillips Collection, explores the development of modern American art in the work of Dove, Hartley, Marin, O’Keeffe and Stieglitz in relation to their advocate and patron, Duncan Phillips. Admission is free with general museum admission.

Exhibition organizers and sponsors:
This exhibition has been organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Support of the local presentation is generously provided by William R. and Norma Kline Tiefel. Media support is provided by the Palm Beach Post, Palm Beach Daily News, WPTV NewsChannel 5, and WXEL 90.7 FM.

The Norton Museum of Art is open Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. (Closed Mondays from May through October and on major holidays.) General admission is $8 for adults, $3 for visitors ages 13-21, and free for Members and children under 13. West Palm Beach residents receive free admission to the permanent collection every Saturday, with proof of residency. Palm Beach County residents receive free admission to the permanent collection the first Saturday of each month, with proof of residency. An additional charge may apply for special exhibitions. For general information, please call (561) 832-5196 or visit www.norton.org.

Artists’ Biographies
Arthur Dove (1880–1946)

Arthur Dove appealed to both Phillips and Stieglitz as a rugged individualist; a daring artist whose paintings seemed utterly American, devoid of any European influence. Dove first met Stieglitz towards the end of 1909, just before he produced a breakthrough series of abstract compositions, but it was not until 1922 that Phillips first saw his work. Elizabeth Turner captures the essence of Dove’s art succinctly and eloquently, writing that he "focused on earthy substances: rushing water, pungent pastures, cows, old wood, rusting plows, and tree trunks. His colors ranged from gritty browns and greens to flashes of vibrant blue, copper, and silver. His forms collided like lightning bolts with the ground. They coiled like intestines or branched out like capillaries . . . America had never seen an artist like him." Because Dove’s work was not widely appreciated or collected during his lifetime, he depended heavily on Phillips’ and Stieglitz’s support. One of the greatest signs of Phillips’ devotion to Dove was his agreement to provide the impoverished artist—who lived on a houseboat for many years—with an annual stipend in exchange for first choice from his annual exhibition. This began in 1933 and lasted until the artist’s death in 1946. The Phillips Collection boasts 55 works by Dove, making it the world’s largest and most representative group of paintings by the artist. Although Phillips was not able to purchase any of Dove’s breakthrough early abstractions (many of which Stieglitz doggedly held on to), the collection is representative of his entire mature output, from 1925–1946.

John Marin (1870–1953)

Stieglitz first exhibited Marin’s work in 1909, and by 1911 had begun to give him an annual stipend. He also opened each season between 1925 and 1931 with a Marin exhibit. Phillips, who began collecting Marin’s work in 1926, gave the artist his first solo museum exhibition in 1929. Phillips collected both oil paintings and watercolors by Marin, and his collection includes examples of many of Marin’s favorite subjects, including New York City, the mountainous scenery of New England, and Maine’s rocky coast and rough seas. Marin divided his time between residences in New Jersey and in Maine. His paintings, whether in oil or in watercolor—and whether depicting the natural or man-made landscape—sought to express in the simplest, most direct terms possible, the energy and underlying structures of their subjects. In his 1926 book A Collection in the Making, Duncan Phillips described Marin as “An epigrammatic poet-painter who flashes images of swift suggestion with an inspirational ‘wash’ of colors on white paper," and an artist who “sings of vibrant skies and moving earth-forms and luminous, veiled, or sharply defined distances." Marin, he believed, was "experimenting on the frontiers of visual consciousness," and moreover, was "one of the most provoking, challenging innovators since Cézanne." He backed up this claim by boldly exhibiting Marin’s work alongside that of the European masters Cézanne and Picasso at his museum.


Marsden Hartley (1877–1943)

Marsden Hartley was a restless traveler, an expressionistic painter, and the artist in this exhibition who exhibited least frequently with Stieglitz. In fact, none of the Phillips Collection’s Hartley paintings were purchased through Stieglitz, despite the fact that Hartley had shown with him on at least seven occasions. Duncan Phillips never met Hartley. However, he considered the artist’s paintings to be "a personal and powerful contribution to the outstanding traditions of American art—romantic mysticism and robust realism," combining qualities traditionally associated with Albert Pinkham Ryder and Winslow Homer, both of whom he collected and admired. Despite restless travels in America and abroad, the place to which Hartley felt most connected was the state in which he was born and to which he returned at the end of his life: Maine. Phillips was uncertain about the quality of Hartley’s abstract and European work, and therefore his Hartley "unit" consists only of paintings executed before 1910 and after his return to Maine in the mid-1930s. Phillips greatly admired these paintings of Maine, for he felt that the subject "stirred [Hartley’s] emotions as his experiments with abstraction . . . failed to do." The Phillips Collection honored Hartley with a retrospective shortly after his death in 1943.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986)

The story of Alfred Stieglitz’s "discovery" of the young Georgia O’Keeffe, as well as his declaration: "at last, a woman on paper," have become integral parts of the history of American modernism. After his first encounter with O’Keeffe and her art, Stieglitz became both her husband and a tireless advocate of her talent. O’Keeffe is rare among artists of her generation in that she never traveled to Europe to study (although she had seen works by the European modernists at Stieglitz’s first gallery, 291, and was also well-versed in current art theory). This fact was certainly not lost on Stieglitz, who celebrated and promoted her as a native, homegrown talent—an artist who truly represented all things American.
Phillips kept his distance from O’Keeffe, despite the striking modernity and beauty of her paintings—two qualities that certainly appealed to him. It is possible that the main reason for his wariness was the artist’s intimate relationship with Stieglitz. Phillips had experienced how testy Stieglitz could be soon after they met, during a very public disagreement the two had over the price Phillips had paid for a watercolor by Marin. Although Phillips initially purchased one of O’Keeffe’s early flower paintings, for which she is best known today, he traded it back to Stieglitz four years later. Although he did eventually purchase two of her large-scale studies of leaves for his collection, Phillips preferred O’Keeffe’s landscapes, and especially her scenes of New Mexico—the place that he felt she captured most faithfully and most eloquently.