Celebrating 125 Years of the Salmagundi Club (original) (raw)

Woodmere Art Museum

Philadelphia, PA

215-247-0476

A Fertile Fellowship: Celebrating 125 Years of the Salmagundi Club

Paul Cornoyer, Street Scene, c. 1900, oil on canvas, 18 1/8 x 24 1/8 inches

Woodmere Art Museum exhibits "A Fertile Fellowship: Celebrating 125 Years of the Salmagundi Club" from July 11 to September 12, 1999.

Providing a retrospective look at one of the grandest artist societies of the United States, this traveling exhibition features 40 landscapes, still lifes and figurative work. included are the tonalist works of John Francis Murphy and Leonard Ochtman ; an urban landscape by Paul Cornoyer; figurative work by Charles Webster Hawthorne and Frank Desch; and a portrait by Alhert Rosenthal, the painter of Waodmere's benefactor, Charles Knox Smith.

Woodmere plans to supplement the exhibition with numerous works by Philadelphia area Salmagundi Club members who are represented in Woodmere's permanent collection including Earl Horter, James Kelly, John Maxwell, Edward Redfield and Joseph Pennell.

The Salmagundi Club was founded by students from the National Academy of Design and functioned in its early years as a kind of men's club (women were admitted only in 1973). The members would meet for an evening of sketching on a theme such as solitude, then critique each other's work, dine and partake of billiards or boxing. (left: Frank Desch, Reflections, oil, 32 x 26 inches; right: Henry Roseland, The Preacher, oil, 22 x 15 inches, photos courtesy of The Salmagundi Club)

Over the past 125 years, anyone of importance working within the tradition of representation - Ralph Albert Blakelock, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, George Inness, Thomas Moran, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Ehilu Vedder - has been part of the Salmagundi Club.

Read more about the Woodmere Art Museum in Resource Library

For further biographical information on selected artists cited in this article please see America's Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.

rev. 10/18/10

Search Resource Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.