CINCINNATI.- In the turmoil and uncertainty of the antebellum and Civil War years, artists and patrons alike looked to the American landscape for relief and inspiration. The finest examples of these works will be on view at the Taft Museum of Art during Luminist Horizons: The Art and Collection of James A. Suydam, which runs from January 26 through April 29.

Luminism refers to a group of scenic American 19th-century landscape paintings with profoundly quiet moods and almost magical effects of light. Their saturation of light and atmosphere has been much admired and often connected to American intellectual trends of the time.

Approximately 55 works selected from the National Academy Museum in New York City highlight the finest examples of James Augustus Suydam’s masterful art and superlative collection. Included are major paintings by John F. Kensett, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, and Sanford Gifford, all drawn from this rare intact 19th-century artist’s collection.

Suydam was one of the Luminist landscapists who painted in the Hudson River valley, along the Rhode Island coast, and in other locations. A man of independent means, he not only painted but also assembled a fine collection of works by his American and European colleagues. In 1865 he left this collection to the National Academy of Design.

Luminist Horizons contributes new, thoughtful perspectives on the development of luminism in Civil War America. Often characterized by art historians as an aesthetic of solitary isolation, luminism was, instead, a gregarious experience for Suydam and his peers. His first acquisition was a landscape (1850) by Asher B. Durand depicting two artists conversing while admiring the landscape. Accompanied by close friends such as Kensett, Gifford, and Worthington Whittredge, Suydam visited popular sites during the 1850s and 1860s, particularly in the Hudson River Valley, the Mount Washington region, and along the Rhode Island coast. He made these iconic sites his own by interpreting their well-known vistas with his unique colorism, crisp geometry, and fresh compositional arrangements.

Luminist Horizons is co-curated by Mark D. Mitchell, associate curator of 19th-century art at the National Academy Museum, and Katherine E.

Manthorne, professor of American art at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A full-color catalogue by the curators with an introduction by Annette Blaugrund, Ph.D., and published by George Braziller Publishers accompanies the exhibition.