NEW LONDON, CONN.- Emil Carlsen (1848-1932) is counted among an important group of American painters who flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Carlsen’s lush and painterly approach took French Impressionism and later Tonalists’ work a step further in the direction of serenity and quiet sensory beauty. His work reflects the American tendency to appreciate concrete form and clear meaning in subject matter. Carlsen, a master colorist, possessed a sophisticated sense of design and an ability to find subtle beauty in the everyday subject.

The exhibition was organized by the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, Montana, and has also traveled to the Huntington Museum of Art in Huntington, West Virginia. Emil Carlsen’s Quiet Harmonies will be on view at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum from December 1, 2018 through March 24, 2019.

As a young man, Carlsen emigrated from Denmark, and he brought European academic training to his new life in the U.S. He taught for decades in Chicago and on both coasts, and he experienced the common plight of artists who struggled to sell their work in an American market that valued European work more highly than homegrown. Carlsen’s livelihood depended much on teaching, with benefits to American art history that he may never have set out to attain. This exhibition will emphasize the critical importance of artists such as Carlsen, who influenced generations of artists not only through their own work, but through their effective teaching philosophies and methods.

Carlsen is known within the history of American art for his masterful still-life paintings, but this exhibition will be the first since the 1970s to focus on Carlsen’s equally compelling landscapes and seascapes. The exhibition’s curator Robyn G. Peterson notes, “All of these exquisite works reveal a technical facility and assured composition that deeply impress the viewer. Carlsen is remembered for his still-lifes, yet the landscapes and seascapes—a majority of them executed during the prime of his artistic life— are a true joy to experience.”

Emil Carlsen’s Quiet Harmonies is accompanied by a catalog with essays by noted art historian William Gerdts and Emil Carlsen specialist William Indursky, as well as an introduction by former Yellowstone Art Museum Executive Director Robyn G. Peterson. The exhibition includes 40 paintings and works on paper from 21 museums private collectors in the U.S. and Canada.