{"id":125207,"date":"2019-06-03T10:27:47","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T14:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=125207"},"modified":"2023-01-24T13:58:11","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T18:58:11","slug":"summer-at-the-bates-museum-watercolor-master-hardy-seldom-seen-art-from-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/06\/03\/summer-at-the-bates-museum-watercolor-master-hardy-seldom-seen-art-from-collection\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ museum: Watercolor master Hardy, seldom-seen art from collection"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

In DeWitt Hardy: Master of Watercolor<\/em>, five decades\u2019 worth of paintings by one of Maine\u2019s foremost watercolorists are on display in a major exhibition at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art this summer.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cWe’re so pleased that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is presenting this retrospective of Hardy’s work, and to have the distinguished Robert Flynn Johnson serving as guest curator,\u201d says Dan Mills, director of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ museum. \u201cHardy was truly a virtuoso of this most challenging medium.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Hardy, a resident of South Berwick who died in 2017, was \u201ca superb watercolorist, one of the few serious contemporary artists to make watercolor his primary medium,\u201d Maine art critic Edgar Allen Beem wrote in the Falmouth Forecaster<\/em> newspaper shortly after Hardy\u2019s death.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\""Reclining<\/a>

“Reclining Figure on Victorian Couch” is a watercolor painting on paper, c. 1966, by DeWitt Hardy. (Ogunquit Museum of Art)<\/p><\/div>\r\n

Hardy was also celebrated for his dedication to portraying Maine scenes and people. He reveals Maine through the eyes of a year-round resident, depicting the coast, snowy inland fields and woods, everyday views of houses and factories, and local people. He captures the Maine that tourists rarely see.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cIn complex and original compositions, Hardy shunned the predictable picturesque in favor of harsh but often beautiful realities,\u201d guest curator Johnson writes in the exhibition catalog. \u201cThese challenging compositions make us see his landscapes, buildings, still lives, portraits, figures and nudes in a whole new light.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This is his first curatorial project at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ for Johnson, who was a longtime curator of prints at the Achenbach Foundation, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Johnson and Hardy met as teenagers and the pair remained friends for life.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Johnson is a son of Dr. Robert A. Johnson ’36 and Minna Flynn Johnson, who established an art acquisition fund for the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ museum. (Robert Flynn Johnson\u2019s brother Richard \u201978, curator of Boston\u2019s Sports Museum, lent work to the exhibition.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cSeveral years ago, Robert Flynn Johnson approached me about guest-curating an exhibition of the work of DeWitt Hardy,\u201d Mills writes in the catalog. \u201cThe idea of collaborating on this project with Hardy and Johnson was intriguing.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Mills continues, \u201cHardy was an accomplished artist whose exhibition history included numerous solo exhibitions in New York, and whose work was in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the British Museum,\u201d and others, \u201cbut had been the focus of few museum exhibitions in Maine in recent years.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Opening June 7<\/a>, Master of Watercolor<\/em> is the first major posthumous exhibition of Hardy\u2019s work. The pieces on display come from more than 60 museums and private collections, including the art museums at Bowdoin and Colby colleges and the Ogunquit Museum of American Art; and collectors Lincoln Perry and Anne Beattie, and Stephen and Tabitha King.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Opening at the same time is Uncovered: Selected Works from the Collection<\/em>, showcasing contemporary art from the museum\u2019s permanent collection and featuring such artists as Donald Camp, Judy Chicago, and Fransje Killars.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"\r\n
\u201cThe School of Grosse Hamburgerstrasse,\u201d comprising photogravure etchings from 1939 and 1998 by French artist Christian Boltanski, is on display through Oct. 5, 2019, in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art exhibition Uncovered<\/em>. (Museum purchase)<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u201cUncovered<\/em> is one in a series of periodic exhibitions at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art highlighting national and international works from the collection,\u201d says William Low, the museum\u2019s curator. \u201cThe focus on contemporary art and recent acquisitions illustrates our efforts to build diverse collections that support curricular and educational programs.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Uncovered<\/em> focuses on work that\u2019s either making its public debut at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ or that has rarely been shown. Emphasizing larger artworks, the show represents artists as diverse as Sigmund Abeles, Joel Babb, Charlie Hewitt, Robert Indiana, Jang Jian, Bernard Langlais, Michele Lauriat, Martin Puryear, Claire Van Vliet and Xiaoze Xie.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Both shows run through Oct. 5.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"\"\r\n
\u201cDream Life\u201d is a watercolor painting on paper, c. 1989, by DeWitt Hardy.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In \u2018DeWitt Hardy: Master of Watercolor,\u2019 five decades\u2019 worth of paintings by one of Maine\u2019s foremost watercolorists are on display at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ art museum this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":125210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"bates_author_byline_override":"ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ News","_estimated-read-time":"4 minutes","_post-template":"\/usr\/local\/webserver\/webpve\/htdocs\/new-www.bates.edu\/wp-content\/themes\/b\/news\/single-big-header-image.php","_header-color":"#768fa9","_photo-credit":"DEWITT HARDY","_header-effect":"parallax","override_related_with_tag":"","_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,11010,130,11009],"tags":[1363],"class_list":["post-125207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-arts","category-collaboration","category-the-college","tag-bates-college-museum-of-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125207"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126665,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125207\/revisions\/126665"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}