Canvas and Cast: Highlights from the Bruce Museum’s Art Collection

William Merritt Chase (American, 1849-1917)
Young Girl, c. 1900
Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 in.
Bruce Museum Collection 2002.31

February 11, 2017 – June 18, 2017

Presented with support from The Charles M. and Deborah G. Royce Exhibition Fund and the Connecticut Office of the Arts.
In October 1912, the Bruce Museum hosted its first exhibition of art. At the time, the Greenwich Press noted that it was a welcome change to see “a long gallery hung with paintings from the best works of local artists.”
Since then, the Bruce Museum has not only exhibited many paintings and sculptures by local artists who were influential in establishing the American Impressionist movement, such as Theodore Robinson, John Henry Twachtman, Leonard Ochtman, and Frederick Childe Hassam, but has also acquired works that represent significant moments from the history of art.
Featuring 35 paintings and 7 sculptures from the Bruce’s growing collection, Canvas and Cast celebrates long-time favorites and many recent acquisitions representing significant moments in the history of art from the 16th through the 20th centuries. This exhibition, organized by Peter C. Sutton, The Susan E. Lynch Executive  Director, and curated by Courtney Skipton Long, Zvi Grunberg Postdoctoral Fellow 2016/17 at the Bruce Museum, examines art historical themes including sculpted and painted portraits, narrative scenes and statues, landscapes, still lifes, and genre scenes.
Canvas and Cast explores artists’ handling of different media – bronze, marble, oil, pastel, acrylic and collage – through examples of 16th-century Dutch portraiture, 19th-century American figural sculpture, academic style painting, and French and American landscapes from the turn of the 20th century.

Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917)
The Kiss (Le Baiser), 1886
Bronze, 23 ½ x 16 x 20 in.
Bruce Museum Collection 94.24
 
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