WINTER PARK, FLA.- The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art is exhibiting new watercolor and porcelain acquisitions for the first time. These acquisitions expand upon the late 19th- and early 20th-century American visual environment generally and the inner workings of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s artistic enterprises specifically.
Watercolors from Louis Comfort Tiffany’s “Little Arcadia” exhibits around a dozen watercolor designs by Tiffany artisans in his enamel department. The Museum’s new vignette, Chinese Blue and White Porcelain, features examples of in-demand Chinese ceramics ranging from around 1740 to 1890 that adorned the homes and interiors of artists, like Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933), as well as Western admirers of the Asian aesthetic.
Tiffany employed many designers, but only a handful of these individuals were selected to work in the enamel department, often somewhat enviously referred to as “little Arcadia.” Alice Carmen Gouvy (1863–1924) and Lillian A. Palmié (1873–1944) were two of those designers chosen to work in this artistic haven. At this idyllic workshop, Gouvy, Palmié, and others were free from the stresses of Tiffany’s more commercially driven shops and produced detailed watercolor studies of nature that served as guides and inspirations for many Tiffany enamels and ceramics.
Included among the watercolors is a colorful and sensitive study of a skunk cabbage executed and signed by Gouvy and recently acquired by the Morse. The watercolor depicts two distinct views of the cabbage, giving the viewer a completely whole, three-dimensional sense of the plant. The Morse acquired the watercolors with funds donated by Lillian Nassau LLC, world-renowned art gallery and Tiffany specialists operating out of New York City.
Featured in the Morse’s vignette display, Chinese blue and white porcelain was among many Asian sources of inspiration for European and American artists and designers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, these precious Asian ceramic pieces are still avidly collected and enjoy a large popular audience. In the 18th century, two regional variations of porcelain—Canton and Nanking (both produced in the port city of Guangzhou)—emerged. The industry served Westerners eager to add an exotic element to their dining rooms. Complete sets of Canton porcelain, fashioned to accommodate European eating traditions, were embellished with broad brushstrokes of toned blues depicting flowers, village scenes, and interweaving patterning. Nanking wares were a higher quality of export porcelain. They featured evenly executed cobalt scenes in more refined detail, often embellished with gold accents. Artists like Louis Comfort Tiffany and James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) cherished Chinese ceramics and, in many cases, centered some of their most famous interiors around them.
The works in the vignette were collected over the course of 40 years by life-long Orlando residents Dr. Benjamin L. Abberger and Nancy Hardy Abberger and recently donated to the Morse Museum by the Abberger family.
The Morse Museum is home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of works by American designer and artist Louis Comfort Tiffany, including the chapel interior he designed for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and art and architectural objects from Tiffany’s celebrated Long Island home, Laurelton Hall. The Museum's holdings also include American art pottery, late 19th- and early 20th-century American paintings, graphics, and decorative art.
