Telfair Museum of Art
Savannah, GA
912-232-1177
William DeLeftwich Dodge: Impressions at Home and Abroad
September 15 - November 1
Sally Among the Irises, c. 1906, oil on canvas, 32
x 20 inches
The Telfair Museum of Art welcomes home an adopted son with an exhibition of the works of William DeLeftwich Dodge (1867- 1935), who visited and painted Savannah several times in the early 20fh century.
Although Dodge was known during his lifetime primarily as a muralist, this exhibition focuses on his plein-air Impressionist paintings. Dodge's interest in art came early. His mother was an artist who moved her three children to Munich and then Paris to further her career. In 1882 Dodge began his first formal training, drawing from plaster casts at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris; and in 1883, he also joined the atelier of renowned French academician, Jean-Leon Gerome in 1883. Dodge passed the Ecole's rigorous matriculation exam in 1885.
While Dodge did not completely abandon the Academic style he learned in Paris, he began to experiment with the effects of sunlight. The Impressionist paintings manifest this more private aspect of Dodge's oeuvre.
Like many artists, Dodge traveled to Savannah (in 1905-07 and again in 1928), seeking inspiration from the area's natural beauty. This exhibition assimilates views of Savannah and other Southern scenes with views of his Long Island estate, Villa Francesca. Dodge rendered the estate's gardens at different times of the day and during different seasons, working out-of-doors as the French Impressionists did.
While Dodge's mural commissions for the Library of Congress and New York City' s Empire Theatre brought him public recognition, this body of work, of a more personal nature, has only recently been displayed.
This exhibition, organized by New York gallery Beacon Hill Fine Art, will be on view at only one other site: the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York.
Read more about the Telfair Museum of Art in Resource Library Magazine
rev. 11/26/10
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