Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano

(Hardback)

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How Venetian glass influenced American artists and patrons during the late nineteenth century

Sargent, Whistler, & Venetian Glass presents a broad exploration of American engagement with Venices art world in the late nineteenth century. During this time, Americans in Venice not only encountered a floating city of palaces, museums, and churches, but also countless shop windows filled with dazzling specimens of brightly colored glass. Though the Venetian island of Murano had been a leading center of glass production since the Middle Ages, productivity bloomed between 1860 and 1915. This revival coincided with Venices popularity as a destination on the Grand Tour, and resulted in depictions of Italian glassmakers and glass objects by leading American artists. In turn, their patrons visited glass furnaces and collected museum-quality, hand-blown goblets decorated with designs of flowers, dragons, and sea creatures, as well as mosaics, lace, and other examples of Venetian skill and creativity.

This lavishly illustrated book examines exquisitely crafted glass pieces alongside paintings, watercolors, and prints of the same era by American artists who found inspiration in Venice, including Thomas Moran, Maria Oakey Dewing, Robert Frederick Blum, Charles Caryl Coleman, Maurice Prendergast, and Maxfield Parrish, in addition to John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler. Italian glass had a profound influence on American art, literature, and design theory, as well as the periods ideas about gender, labor, and class relations. For artists such as Sargent and Whistler, and their patrons, glass objects were aesthetic emblems of history, beauty, and craftsmanship.

From the furnaces of Murano to American parlors and museums, Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass brings to life the imaginative energy and unique creations that beckoned tourists and artists alike.

Published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Exhibition Schedule
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
October 8, 2021May 8, 2022

Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
June 25September 11, 2022

Ca Pesaro Galleria Internazionale dArte Moderna, Venice, Italy
October 15, 2022January 8, 2023

Reviews

"The gorgeously illustrated catalog provides the first survey of the American grand tour to Venice combining fine and decorative arts." * Artfix Daily *
"[A] lavishly illustrated, fascinating book."---Lauren Moya Ford, Hyperallergic
"[A] beautifully illustrated catalog."---William Newton, The Federalist
"The lush yet sensitive design of the more than 300-page volume echoes the sumptuousness of the art enshrined in it. Scholarly essays cover the marketing of artistic Venice, the process of regenerating Venetian crafts, and American participation in the story. Glass and lace terminology is clarified through glossaries containing such exquisite words as fragole, fenicio and reticella. Engaging biographies of key artists, critics and collectors appear as an appendix."---Kate Eagen Johnson, Antiques & The Arts

Author Bio

Crawford Alexander Mann III is curator of prints and drawings at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Sheldon Barr is an independent scholar of Venetian revival glass. Melody Barnett Deusner is associate professor of art history at Indiana University Bloomington. Diana Jocelyn Greenwold is curator of American art at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine. Stephanie Mayer Heydt is the Margaret and Terry Stent Curator of American Art at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. Brittany Emens Strupp is a doctoral candidate in art history at Temple University.