| OCR Text |
Show Union Art Gallery features American portrait paintings by well-known artists 'v. .., - - w ;; is :l , V . v " - . .. . - - I " ' " ' " ' '' - ' ' i. i ' ;:;s , S. ' - " I L . -i By William Lonon Smith An exhibition of 20 portraits by American artists dating from the late 18th Century to the mid-twentieth will be shown at the Union Art Gallery in the Union through April 25th. The paintings are on loan from the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Portraiture was the mainstay of American painting from before the middle of the 17th Century until the middle of the 19th, when the daguerreotype was brought across the Atlantic from France. Soon, photography largely supplanted painting as a means of producing pictures of people. Portraits, however, still created a beauty that could not be matched by the camera. The painter had the ability to heighten the attractiveness of the individual or increase his ugliness, depending on the artist's discretion and the amount of money he was paid. The show at the Union Gallery includes works by some of the best known portraitists of early America, among them John Singleton Copely, Benjamin West, Gilbert Stuart and Charles Willson Peale. Even though the names of the artists are well-known the works in themselves must be considered "minor" works and do not present the best ability of the artist at his highest creation. Among the leading painters of a later period represented in the collection are Thomas Eakins, James A. McNeill Whistler, George "The Sisters" by Frank Weston Benson is part of the curt I in the Union. I Bellows, George Luks, and Abbott Thayer. The contemporaries are Peter Hurd, Joseph Hirsch and Philip Guston. Peter Hurd recently did a portrait of former President Johnson to be put in the White House. The exhibition is one of eight touring art exhibitions and four touring science shows that IBM lends to various museums, colleges and other cultural institutions in more than 100 locations annually. The admission is free and the exhibit is open to the public. |
