"The Nantucket Art Colony, 1920 - 1945"
Exhibit Opens
Old Mill, 1940 by Anne Ramsdell Congdon, oil on canvas |
The Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) is pleased to announce its major annual exhibition:The Nantucket Art Colony, 1920–1945 will open to the public on Saturday, May 26, in the Peter Foulger Gallery, Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street.
The show will feature the work of the group of painters and teachers who came to Nantucket and formed the “paradise and dream come true” for artists that became the Nantucket Art Colony. They worked from artists’ studios and gallery spaces created from the relics of Nantucket’s long-vanished whaling past – the cluster of shacks, shanties, boathouses, and old buildings that lay soaking in the sea air along Nantucket’s waterfront.
Beginning in 1924, the legendary Easy Street Gallery (an old cooper’s shop) opened its doors with exhibitions that boasted many of the most accomplished island artists: Frank Swift Chase, Emily Hoffmeier, Ruth Haviland Sutton, Anne Ramsdell Congdon, Isabelle Tuttle, Tony Sarg, Austin Strong, Edgar Jenney, and Elizabeth Saltonstall.
The Rainbow Fleet circa 1930 by Frank Swift Chase, oil on canvas-board
The traditions of the Easy Street Gallery continued after the period of the exhibition with the formation of the Kenneth Taylor Gallery and the Artists Association of Nantucket. It is the goal of this exhibition, in collaboration with the Artists Association of Nantucket (AAN), to present a retrospective of major artists from the Art Colony, with selections from the permanent collections of the NHA and the AAN and loaned works from private collections.
The exhibition opens on May 26 and will remain on display through November 12, in the Peter Foulger Gallery, Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street. A Preview Party for NHA Members will be held on Friday, May 25, 5:30 – 7:30 P.M.
