FAIRFIELD, CONN.- Fairfield University Art Museum is presenting Dawn & Dusk: Tonalism in Connecticut, a major exhibition of tonalist paintings on view from January 17 through April 12, 2025, in the Museum’s Bellarmine Hall Galleries.
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This selection of 70 works, ranging from 1878 to 1917, by twenty-two different artists, explores the evolution of the Tonalist movement in landscape paintings. 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 nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their predecessors were the landscape painters of the early to mid-nineteenth-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. The 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.
This exhibition is entitled 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. 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 twentieth century.
Guest-curated by Mary Ann Hollihan, this exhibition includes paintings from three major private collections; an important painting by George Inness from the Milton Klein Collection at the Bridgeport Public Library that has not been publicly exhibited in over 70 years; two works by James McNeill Whistler lent by the New York Public Library; two paintings lent by the Florence Griswold Museum; and works by three women artists lent by Hawthorne Fine Art and the Cooley Gallery.
The idea for this exhibition was sparked by Dr. Robert Schnurr ’74 and Mrs. Rosellen (Walsh) Schnurr ’74, and was made possible thanks to their generous support. Additional supporters of this exhibition include M & T Bank/Wilmington Trust, the Traditional Fine Arts Organization, and The John and Barbara Hazeltine Trust.
A wonderful selection of programming has been created to complement the exhibition, including an opening night talk with the guest curator, a lecture on George Inness to mark the 100th year of his birth, a family day event focused on landscape, and a landscape in watercolor workshop presented by artist Suzanne Chamlin. All of the programs are free and open to the public.
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