American Athletic Art, American Sporting Art and American Sporting Artists
(above: George Bellows, Dempsey and Firpo, 1924, oil on canvas, 51 x 63.2 inches, Whitney Museum of American Art. Purchase, with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
Introduction
This section of the Traditional Fine Arts Organization (TFAO) catalogue Topics in American Art is devoted to the topic "American Athletic Art, American Sporting Art and American Sporting Artists" Articles and essays specific to this topic published in TFAO's Resource Library are listed at the beginning of the section. Clicking on titles takes readers directly to these articles and essays. The date at the end of each title is the Resource Library publication date.
After articles and essays from Resource Library are links to valuable online resources found outside our website. Links may be to museums' articles about exhibits, plus much more topical information based on our online searches. Following online resources may be information about offline resources including museums, DVDs, and paper-printed books, journals and articles.
We recommend that readers search within the TFAO website to find detailed information for any topic. Please see our page How to research topics not listed for more information.
(above: Thomas Eakins, Between Rounds, c. 1898-99, oil on canvas, 50.1 x 39.8 inches, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)
From Resource Library in chronological order
Roy M. Mason: Sporting Artist; article by Victoria Sandwick Schmitt (2/26/09)
Ogden Pleissner: On the Water (8/15/07)
Frank W. Benson Sportsman/Etcher (9/20/05)
Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like? (7/23/04)
Art at Home Plate: Philadelphia Baseball Legends on Canvas (1/16/04)
Carl Rungius: Artist, Sportsman (5/31/03)
The Sporting View: American Sporting Art from the Collection of Robert B. Mayo (10/8/00)
The Sporting View: American Sporting Art from the Collection of Robert B. Mayo (10/8/00)
Capture the Wind: Racing Yachts & Westchester (8/14/00)
The Thrill of Excellence and Eleanor Iselin Wade: Artist and Horsewoman (8/14/00)
All-Stars: American Sporting Prints from the Collection of Reba and Dave Williams (9/6/99)
Photographs of America's Baseball Stadiums (7/13/99)
The Thoroughbred: Born to Run and Jump (5/12/99)
By Hook, Horse or Hound: Sporting Art at the Shelburne Museum (5/12/99)
An American Pulse: The Lithographs of George Wesley Bellows (1/99)
Spinning Spheres and Whirling Wheels: The Art of Play (9/22/98)
From other websites
Ace: Art on Sports, Promise, and Selfhood is a 2019 exhibit at the University Art Museum, University of Albany which says: "Moving freely across artistic disciplines, ACE will offer multiple points of entry for visitors to consider the parallels between the physicality of sports and the active process of creating art." Also see press release and brochure Accessed 11/19
American Sport Art Museum and Archive. Accessed August, 2015.
The Art and Soul of the Hunt is a 2018 exhibit at the TJC Gallery which says: "This exhibition features a large selection of work by noted wildfowl artist Richard Bishop, who was one of the Santee Club's few honorary members....Paintings by John Tracy, Aiden Ripley, Eugene Thomason, Edmund Ashe, Alice Smith, Thomas Addison Richards, and Anna Heyward Taylor complement the Santee story." Accessed 10/18
The Art of Baseball is a 2015 exhibit from the Concord Museum, which says: "The Art of Baseball explored many ways that artists responded to America's national pastime. The exhibition considered baseball locally through both the major league tradition of the Boston Red Sox and through recreational leagues in communities like concord, where semi-pro games at Emerson Field once drew thousands of spectators." Accessed 10/16
Baseball: The All-American Game is a 2012 exhibit at the Craft and Folk Art Museum which says: "This exhibition will explore baseball's impact on American folk art made between the late-1800s to present day. Approximately 75 works of baseball-inspired folk art and memorabilia will be shown from the private collection of Gary Cypres, owner of one of the largest sports memorabilia collections in the world." Accessed 2/17
Charles McGill: Front Line, Back Nine is a 2016 exhibit at the Boca Raton Museum of Art which says: "The first major museum exhibition of artist Charles McGill explores his fascination with the subject and objects of golf and provides a thought provoking means for us to examine race and social differences in our community." See artist's website and exhibit brochure. Accessed 2/17
Cycleback's Online Museum of Early Baseball Memorabilia. Accessed August, 2015.
Decoy Carving from Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center. Accessed August, 2015.
Eye on the Iconic: Honus Wagner and Sports Memorabilia is a 2018 exhibit at the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library which says: "Honus Wagner and Sports Memorabilia, the next rotation in a Winterthur exhibit series entitled Eye on the Iconic, will feature a famed 1909-11 Honus Wagner T206 baseball card - one of the rarest and most iconic of all sports-related objects. It is widely considered the "holy grail" of baseball cards; another 1909-11 T206 Honus Wagner card recently set a new world-record price for a baseball card, selling for $3.12 million in 2016." Also see 2/20/18 artilce in Daily Local News Accessed 5/18
George Sosnak's Striking Portraits from America's Pastime is a 2017 exhibit at the Chrysler Museum of Art which says: "Sosnak spent decades as a baseball umpire, and if you are living the baseball life, you have a lot of down time. While waiting to work a minor league game in Idaho in 1956, he was asked by a female fan if he could paint her favorite player on a baseball. The amateur painter said yes and the rest is history." Accessed 9/17
Joel Barber & the Modern Decoy is a 2019 exhibit at the Shelburne Museum which says: "This monographic exhibition is the first of its kind to focus on the life and artwork of architect, author, illustrator, and pioneering decoy collector Joel D. Barber (1876-1952)." Accessed 5/20
John Severson: Surf Fever is a 2022 exhibit at The Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University. Mary Platt, Director, says: "An enduring legend in the worlds of both surfing and California art, John Severson (1933-2017) was a writer, editor, publisher, photographer, filmmaker and artist. The Los Angeles native, who grew up in San Clemente, is perhaps best known as the founder and editor of Surfer magazine, the publication that helped set the tone for surfer culture and to codify its visual and written language." Accessed 8/23
Joe Zucker is a 2019 exhibit at the Parrish Art Museum which says: "The paintings on view here, Boxing Rounds #13, #14, and #15 (1981), delineate the finish of the prizefight: the last uppercut of the red boxing glove before the boxer drops to the "canvas;" the cotton strips suturing the bruise-blue and blood-red gashes; the bands that "frame" the painting like ropes around a boxing ring and here do double duty as they channel the flowing liquid poured directly from the can onto the flat canvas in shapes that, as the artist has noted, 'no human hand could make.'" Accessed 5/20
Max Mason: Painting the Game is a 2021 exhibit at the Butler Institute of American Art which says: "The paintings of Max Mason are impressive on a variety of levels. He is a masterful draughtsman who can lay down paint in the manner of the old masters. Staying with the magical theme of baseball he presents a virtual clinic on composition and color usage. In a museum filled with exquisite paintings, the works of Max Mason more than hold their own." Also see the website of the artist. Accessed 8/21
Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports, an exhibit held February 4-April 17, 2011 at the Middlebury College Museum of Art. Accessed February, 2015.
Muhammad Ali, LeRoy Neiman, and the Art of Boxing is a 2016-17 exhibit at the New-York Historical Society which says: "LeRoy Neiman saw Muhammad Ali through the stroke of his pencil and the swipe of his paint brush, while another artist and friend of Ali's, George Kalinsky, captured many of the same explosive moments in Ali's career through the crispness of photography." Accessed 1/17
The National Art Museum of Sport in Indianapolis, IN. Accessed August, 2015.
Ogden Pleissner and the Art of Sport in the Lowcountry is an article by Daniel Vivian, guest blogger, author, and Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Historic Preservation, College of Design, University of Kentucky. The January, 2019 article is published on the Gibbes Museum of Art website. Also see Ogden Pleissner from Resource Library, and Lying in Wait: Sporting Art by Ogden M. Pleissner which is a 2019 exhibit at the Gibbes Museum of Art which says: "The forty-eight watercolors on view depict scenes from Wyoming to Maine to the South Carolina coast during his illustrious career that spanned from the late 1920s until his death in 1983." Accessed 3/19
Olympic Artists by Teta Collins, from AskArt.com. Accessed August, 2015
Playing to Win: Sports Art from The Hilbert Collection is a 2023 exhibit at The Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University. Clark Silva, Curator, says: "The diversity of subject matter, medium and background of art and artists in this exhibition reflects the unity and community that sporting brings to us. Whether cheering from the stands or playing on the field, we find friendly competition and camaraderie when we play." Accessed 8/23
The Rules of Basketball: Works by Paul Pfeiffer and James Naismith's "Original Rules of Basket Ball" is a 2012 exhibit at the Blanton Museum of Art which says: "Artist Paul Pfeiffer's body of work on basketball creates a unique counterpart to "The Rules" and provides visitors an opportunity to consider the sport in meaningful new ways." Accessed 12/18
Scrimmage: Football in American Art from the Civil War to the Present is a 2015 exhibit at the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art which says: "Through the enthusiastic response of institutions and private collectors throughout the country, the exhibition brings works from major museums and private collections by important artists from the 19th through the 21st century including Winslow Homer, Frederic Remington, George Bellows, John Steuart Curry, Thomas Hart Benton, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and a host of others." Also see coverage at Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. Accessed 12/18
Safe at Home - A Short Survey of Baseball Art is a 2016 exhibit at the Bedford Gallery which says: "Safe at Home celebrates America's beloved pastime by bringing the sights, sounds, and excitement of the stadium into the gallery." Accessed 8/18
Separate and Unequaled: 100th anniversary of the formation of the Negro National Baseball League is a 2020 exhibit at the Susquehanna Art Museum https://www.susquehannaartmuseum.org/ which says: "The 100th anniversary of the formation of the Negro National Baseball League is especially important to Harrisburg thanks to the proud history of the Harrisburg Giants. The Giants joined the Eastern Colored League in 1924 with Hall of Fame center fielder Oscar Charleston as playing manager. They played with the Eastern League through 1927." Accessed 12/20
Wild Spaces, Open Seasons: Hunting and Fishing in American Art is a 2017 exhibit at the Joslyn Art Museum which says: "Wild Spaces...encompasses a wide variety of portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and genre scenes, including iconic works by Thomas Cole, Thomas Eakins, Paul Manship, and John Singer Sargent, as well as pictures by artists who specialized "in the field," such as Charles Deas, Alfred Jacob Miller, William T. Ranney, and Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait. The exhibition also sheds new light on modernist studies of sporting subjects by Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and Max Weber. Together, the 64 works in the exhibition illuminate changing ideas about community, environment, national identity, landscape, and wildlife, offering compelling insights into one of our most familiar shared adventures." Accessed 2/17
Wild Spaces, Open Seasons: Hunting and Fishing in American Art is a 2017 exhibit at the Shelburne Museum which says: "The exhibition encompasses a wide variety of portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and genre scenes, including iconic works by Thomas Cole, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Alfred Jacob Miller, and Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait. These representations of hunting and fishing do more than merely illustrate subsistence or diverting pastimes, they connect a dynamic and developing American nation to its past and its future." Also see press release Accessed 8/17
Wild Spaces, Open Seasons: Hunting and Fishing in American Art is a 2017 exhibit at the Amon Carter Museum which says: "Wild Spaces, Open Seasons: Hunting and Fishing in American Art is the first major exhibition to explore the multifaceted meanings of such outdoor subjects in both painting and sculpture from the early nineteenth century to World War II. These aesthetically rich and culturally important works play an influential role in the history of American art." Accessed 12/17
Online videos
May, 2023 screenshots via Google video search:
Books
The Paintings of Eldridge Hardie - Art of a Life in Sport by Eldridge Hardie and Nick Lyons (Stackpole Books: 2002). Amazon Books says: "Eldridge Hardie's artwork has for many years graced the pages of sporting literature such as Gray's Sporting Journal and Bill Tarrant's Pick of the Litter. His work has also appeared in Sporting Classics, Fly Fishing in Saltwaters, Double Gun Journal and numerous other magazines and books. Hardie has been honored with the first one-man retrospective show at the National Bird Dog Museum and has exhibited at the National Museum of Wildlife Art and the American Museum of Fly Fishing. He was the first Artist of the Year for Trout Unlimited."
The Artist at Ringside: The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, March 29-May 10, 1992, The National Art Museum of Sport, Indianapolis, Indiana, June 1-August 2, 1992, by Steven L. Brezzo. The Institute, 1992 - 80 pages
Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports. Foreword by Judith O. Richards. Text by Christopher Bedford, Peggy Phelan, Julia Bryan-Wilson. Independent Curators International (2009)
Sportscape: The Evolution of Sports Photography, by Paul Wombell (2000)
Musical accompanyment
Baseball sheet Music, source: Library of Congress, Library of Congress Celebrates the Songs of America Collection
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