This exhibition will display approximately 90 masterworks from the Kelly Collection, an exceptionally important private holding of original oil paintings, watercolors, and pencil drawings made in the "golden age" of American illustration (c. 1880 -- 1930).

During this period, illustrations of exceptional quality were produced by American artists familiar with the European academic tradition and are both technically and stylistically part of that inheritance. Prior to 1880, books and magazines were illustrated primarily with line engravings that conveyed little of the nuance and quality of the original paintings and drawings, but new advances in printing technology led to reproductions that were near-direct copies. The exhibition will explore all aspects of this publishing phenomenon, including covers, advertisements, and the technical aspects of the production process. The emphasis will fall, however, on the vivid illustrations that accompanied the narratives, made by such stars as Howard Pyle, Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, Dean Cornwell, and J.C. Leyendecker. Their compelling works became hugely popular - an aesthetic mass media much like the early cinema. By the 1910s and 1920s the two media were linked in a symbiotic relationship that flourished into the 1930s, when photography overran the print media. The Dahesh’s oil painting by Maurice Leloir, Manon Lescaut (1892), will serve to elaborate on this little-investigated point.

Discussion