Dutch Utopia

Summary

Showcasing more than seventy paintings from public and private collections throughout the United States and Europe,Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880-1914explores the work of forty-three American artists drawn to Holland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Escaping from the rapid urbanization of their time, these artists established colonies in six communities in the NetherlandsDordrecht, Egmond, Katwijk, Laren, Rijsoord, and Volendamwith all but Dordrecht being small, preindustrial villages. Inspired by their pastoral surroundings as well as the great traditions of seventeenth-century Dutch art and the contemporary Hague school, these American artists created visions of Dutch society underpinned by a nostalgic yearning for a premodern way of life. Some even alluded to America's own colonial Dutch heritage, exploring shared histories and cultural connections between the two countries.Organized by the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia,Dutch Utopiaexamines the appeal of Holland for American artists during this period, through six pivotal themes: the influence of seventeenth-century Dutch painting; the impact of the contemporary Hague School; antimodernism and the American Progressive Movement; points of convergence in national identities; the proliferation of artist colonies in Holland; and the popular construction of "Dutchness" beyond the stereotypes of wooden shoes and windmills.Dutch Utopiaincludes works by artists who remain celebrated today, such as Robert Henri, William Merritt Chase, and John Singer Sargent, and by painters admired in their own time but less well-known now. These include accomplished women such as Elizabeth Nourse and Anna Stanley, as well as George Hitchcock, Gari Melchers, and Walter MacEwen, who built international reputations with Salon pictures of Dutch landscapes and costumed figures. These artists were among hundreds of Americans who traveled to the Netherlands between 1880 and 1914 to paint and to study. Some lived in Holland for decades, while others stayed only a week or two, but most passed quickly through the major cities to small rural communities, where they created picturesque idylls on canvas.

Author Biography

Annette Stott, chief curatorial advisor for the Dutch Utopia project, is a professor of art history and the director of the School of Art and Art History at the University of Denver, Colorado. She is the author of Pioneer Cemeteries: Sculpture Gardens of the Old West and Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture, on which the exhibition Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880-1914 is based. She has written extensively about the connections between Dutch and American art of the nineteenth century, and she coedited Going Dutch: The Dutch Presence in America, 1609-2009. Holly Koons McCullough, organizing curator of Dutch Utopia, is the chief curator of fine arts and exhibitions at the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia. She specializes in nineteenth- and early–twentieth-century American art. She spearheaded the publication of the Telfair’s first catalog of the collection and has published articles and exhibition catalogs on artists ranging from Frederick Carl Frieseke to Savannah’s Christopher A. D. Murphy.

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