The Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, CA) has announced the premier of “Granville Redmond: The Eloquent Palette,” a traveling exhibition of some 85 early California landscapes that together comprise the largest survey of the Impressionist painter’s work ever assembled.
Widely considered the top early California artist, as well as one of the best landscape painters in the state’s history, Granville Redmond (1871–1935) produced a diverse body of work that captures California’s diverse topography, vegetation, and color. He is remembered today as a brilliant colorist and as the foremost painter of California poppies in their natural setting.
“The Eloquent Palette,” organized by the Crocker Art Museum, includes scenes representing coastal locations across the northern, central, and southern parts of the state. The paintings range in style from contemplative Tonalist works that evoke a quiet calm to bold and colorful Impressionist views. There is also a selection of Redmond’s dramatic nocturnes. This is the first time in 30 years that Redmond’s work has been featured in a major solo exhibition.
“As home to the world’s foremost display of California art, the Crocker is proud to organize this career-spanning exhibition of work by one of the state’s most prominent and beloved artists,” says the Museum’s executive director and CEO, Lial A. Jones. “We are delighted to provide the public with this opportunity to appreciate his legacy.”
The exhibition and its accompanying scholarly publication make a landmark contribution to the study and understanding of Redmond’s life and art. The publication, written by the late Mildred Albronda and the Crocker Art Museum’s associate director and chief curator, Scott A. Shields, is a greatly expanded version of an unpublished manuscript by Albronda, whose scholarship focused on California artists who were deaf. Shields’s expanded text explores the duality of the painter’s approach, which suggests two very different sides of the man himself and provides an unprecedented view into Redmond’s career. The volume also contains the most comprehensive chronology of Redmond’s life and art ever published.
“Most beloved in Redmond’s lifetime and today are his colorful and buoyant Impressionist views, which connote his charming personality and optimism,” says Shields. “The other side is revealed in his Tonalist scenes, which Redmond himself preferred. These were deeply meditative, and because they suggest his need for solitude and silence, they have often been interpreted as a reflection of the silent world in which he lived.”
Some of the paintings in the exhibition are owned by museums, including the Crocker, but most are drawn from private collections throughout California and other states.
Learn more about Granville Redmond and the exhibition at crockerart.org.
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