FAIRFIELD — The Fairfield University Art Museum is presenting "Dawn & Dusk: Tonalism in Connecticut," a major exhibition of Tonalist art on view through April 12.
This selection of almost 60 paintings, ranging in creation date from 1878 to 1917 by 24 different artists, explores the evolution of the Tonalist movement in landscape paintings, according to a press release.
People can check out the artwork in the Bellarmine Hall Galleries at 200 Barlow Road.
The term Tonalism is associated primarily with a type of landscape and seascape produced by artists working in and around New York and Boston during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the news release said.
Their predecessors were the landscape painters of the early to mid-19th-century "who comprised what came to be called the Hudson River School — painting canvases that explored the beauty of the Americas —proclaimed the idea of Manifest Destiny, and served the heady optimism of the young United States."
Tonalist painters "embraced" the ideas of a new era as the "psychological wreckage" of the Civil War, and increased industrialization challenged the narrative of "God-ordained grandeur, classically composed vistas, and luminous, crystalline views," the statement said.
This show is titled "Dawn & Dusk" to "reflect the preferred subject matter of these painters — who chose to reproduce the subtle effects dawn, twilight, autumn, and winter have on the landscape," according to the statement.
"Vacant of human activity, these works usually focus on more spiritual or symbolic meaning, and provide a bridge to the more expressive, psychological, and modernist works of the 20th century," it said.
Guest curated by Mary Ann Hollihan, the show includes paintings from three major private collections.
These include a piece by George Inness, who worked around the city of Middletown, according to Charles McMahon, assistant director of the Center for Arts & Minds.
It is sourced from the Bridgeport Public Library's Milton Klein Collection. The artwork has not been publicly exhibited in over 70 years, the museum said.
Charles Harold Davis, who lived in Mystic, and Robert Bruce Crane, a member of the Lyme Art Colony, are also exhibiting.
Both painted along the Connecticut shoreline, McMahon added.
The exhibit also comprises two works by James McNeill Whistler lent by the New York Public Library, two paintings lent by the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, and works by three women artists lent by Hawthorne Fine Art and Old Lyme's Cooley Gallery.
All programs are free and open to the public. For more information, visit fairfield.edu/museum.