December 21st, 2007 
Geo 
If you’ve been to the Carnegie Museum of Art recently, you may have noticed some new items in the galleries. Among these is a painting by Asher B. Durand. This kind of landscape painting may be out of fashion, but the thing about Hudson River Paintings, you know a good one as soon as you [...]
Posted in Uncategorized 
Tags: Asher B. Durand, Carnegie Museum of Art, Hudson River School 
No Comments » December 21st, 2007 Hui 
Coast of Capri, the only painting by Johan Christian Dahl exhibited by Carnegie Museum of Art seems out of place among paintings advocating grandeur and sublimity. The painting purveys mystic and meditative, as if there is an unknown force behind the scene that even its thoroughness goes beyond grand and sublime. There is no wonder [...]
December 16th, 2007 Geo 
More than one house tour has left somewhat of an empty impression. So many of today’s old homes, restored to a new-like state on the outside are left without much of a trace of the old inside. Occasionally the staircase, or at least the newel post and railing is there, or a brick wall that [...]
December 14th, 2007 Geo 
Have you ever imagined what it would be like to travel with a piano across the Alleghenies before the days of trucks, railroads or even canals? Yet an ad appearing in the Post-Gazette of July 20, 1813 suggests someone did just that. The advertisement of 1813, published some sixteen years before the completion of the [...]
December 11th, 2007 Geo 
Getting to the Toldeo Museum of Art always had been put on the backburner, I had known there were great works there, but there never seemed to be time for it on trips along Interstate 80. An extra long trip (to Iowa) this past weekend had to be broken into two legs and finally stopping [...]
Posted in Museum Tags: Duncan Phyfe, Hercules and Antaeus, Thomas Cole, Toledo Museum of Art No Comments » November 9th, 2007 Geo 
A Philadelphia auction is offering several original photographs by William Rau. Its not hard to find examples of Rau’s work on stereoview cards or in books. Rau may be best known however as a photographer for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Rau captured the industrial encroachment of the natural landscape as well as the Scalp Level painters [...]
November 9th, 2007 Geo 
The earliest homes in Pittsburgh that still stand date to around 1830. Since demolished from this period was “Picnic House” built around 1835 by William Croghan and Mary Croghan Schenley, the granddaughter of James O’Hara. The ballroom from Picnic House is now in the Cathederal of Learning. Several pieces of furniture exist from the house [...]
Posted in Antiques, Museum Tags: Carnegie Museum of Art, heinz History Center, Picnic House, Schenley No Comments » November 6th, 2007 Geo 
The Carnegie currently has a show “Popular Salon of the People: Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Annuals at Carnegie Museum of Art, 1910–2006″ which contains several works by Pittsburgh artist Johanna K. Hailman. Known for painting flowers, Hailman also apparently tried her hand at painting steel mills. Her work along these lines hangs in the show [...]
October 30th, 2007 Geo 
Fall is a good time to go out and look for “Cropsey Red.” Not just any red leaves, but the red that clings to the trunk resulting from vines that turn red and result in red structural center in a fall tree. Fall was also a good time for a drive to the National Gallery [...]
October 2nd, 2007 Geo 
Looking through old Pittsburgh newspapers on microfilm I came across an ad for a portrait painter named James Lambdin. I had never heard of Lambdin, but the mention of his being a pupil of Thomas Sully in the ad caught my attention. I should have just Googled images, but not ever hearing of Lambdin I [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Tags: Carnegie Museum of Art, James Lambdin, Philadelphia, Thomas Sully, William Russell Smith 1 Comment »
