PHILADELPHIA, PA.- The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has announced the addition of 111 historic, modern and contemporary works to its permanent collection of American art, including one of the earliest painted views of the Schuylkill River, which is part of a new PAFA exhibition that opened on June 28, 2019.
The newest acquisitions and gifts include Schuylkill Below the Falls, a painting of the Schuylkill River by London-born artist George Beck (1749 1812) -- one of the earliest professional landscape painters working in the U.S. -- completed during his time in Philadelphia. Dated circa 1798, the watercolor was painted around the same time Beck received his commission from George Washington to paint scenes of the Potomac for his home at Mount Vernon.
This is an incredibly rare watercolor by Beck, said Dr. Anna O. Marley, Curator of Historical American Art. Works by this artist rarely come onto the market. Its also the first painting by George Beck to enter our collection, even though he lived and exhibited here in the 1790s.
Schuylkill Below the Falls is an essential addition to Dr. Marleys latest exhibition, From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early American Republic, on view at PAFA through December 29, 2019.
Other highlights in the latest group of gifts and purchases include eighteen sculptures from the estate of John Rhoden (1916 2001). These sculptures join the seven that are currently on view in the Rhoden Arts Center auditorium, bringing the total number of Rhoden works in the permanent collection to 25, in addition to three prints by John and his wife, Richanda Phillips Rhoden, which were on display at PAFA in February to coincide with the public opening of the Rhoden Arts Center.
Im proud of the balance we struck with this overall body of work, said Dr. Brittany Webb, curator of the John Rhoden Collection at PAFA. We have some of his (Rhodens) most visually striking pieces. His work includes monuments, explorations of history and spirituality, animals, figuration and abstraction, and is influenced by his life in New York, and travels throughout Europe, Africa and Asia. All of that is represented in this suite of work for the permanent collection.
Other highlights among the acquisitions include:
A work by Philadelphia artist Kukili Velarde (b. 1962), Daddy Likee?, 2018, acrylic, ink and graphite on Amazonian Canvas, currently on view in the PAFA exhibition Eye Contact through September 15, 2019. In this self-portrait, Velarde uses Inca textile designs and western art historys archetype of the female nude a tradition that reduces women to objects of beauty for male heterosexual pleasure to present complex contradictions between race, gender, sexuality and power.
A donation of 17 artworks by artist Helen Frankenthaler (1928 2011) from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. The gifts spanning etching, lithography, monoprint, screen print, woodcut and other techniques reflect the variety of media that Frankenthaler used in her work and encompass five decades of her illustrious career.
Thirty-five prints produced by the Brandywine Workshop -- one of the leading printmaking workshops in Philadelphia -- established in 1972 by founder and director Allan Edmunds and gifted to PAFA by Winston and Carolyn Lowe.
Nine photographs by New York City-born photographer Aaron Siskind (1903 1991), donated by Joan and George Violin, and 13 photographs by Massachusetts-born artist James Van Der Zee (1886 1983), known for his portraits and for producing a visual record of the Harlem Renaissance.
A plaster relief sculpture of Walt Whitman, circa. 1887 by artist Charles Grafly (1862 1929). It was completed the year before he traveled to Paris, just after he left PAFA to follow Thomas Eakins upon Eakins dismissal from PAFA. PAFA currently owns 21 works by Grafly, most of which are bronzes. This will be the first relief sculpture by Grafly to enter the collection.
Our recent Collections Committee meeting was so exciting - not only did we add artworks into our permanent collection spanning three centuries but we also celebrated several partnerships -- with The Print Center and the Brandywine Workshop -- each intended to deepen our holdings of works on paper, said Brooke Davis Anderson, Edna S. Tuttleman Director of the Museum. Additionally, the generosity of our patrons strengthens our collection of works by Helen Frankenthaler and many twentieth-century African American artists who were in active collaboration with Allan Edmunds.