Art Renewal Center

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Art Renewal Center
Founded1999 [1]
FounderFred Ross
MethodARC Salon Competition, ARC International Scholarship
Key people
Fred Ross, Brian Yoder
Website artrenewal.org

The Art Renewal Center (ARC) is a non-profit, educational organization, which hosts an online museum dedicated to realist art. [2] [3] The ARC was founded by New Jersey businessman, author, [4] [5] and art collector Fred Ross. [6]

Contents

Classical Beauty, by John William Godward, (collection of Sherry and Fred Ross) Godward-Classical Beauty.jpg
Classical Beauty, by John William Godward, (collection of Sherry and Fred Ross)

Particular emphasis is given to nineteenth-century Salon painting. [3] William-Adolphe Bouguereau is represented by more than 226 images on the site; Ross says that Bouguereau's work is accessed twice as often as any other artist on the site. [7]

Purpose

The Art Renewal Center is devoted to the rehabilitation of late nineteenth-century academic painting. [8] The Art Renewal Centre offers a scholarship program, as well as an annual salon competition in order to promote classical realism. [9] Ross places an emphasis on William Bouguereau, and has written books about him, such as "William Bouguereau: His Life and Works". Ross feels that there has been a "concerted and relentless effort to disparage, denigrate and obliterate the reputations, names and brilliance of the academic artistic masters of the late 19th century." The Art Renewal Center is intended as a platform for Ross and his supporters to "extol the virtues of academic artists and castigate nearly everything associated with modern art." [7] The ARC describes itself as offering "responsible views opposing that of the current art establishment". [3]

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Nymphs and Satyr, 1873, Clark Art Institute Bouguereau Nymphs and Satyr MMA cr.jpg
William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Nymphs and Satyr, 1873, Clark Art Institute

Ross is a strong admirer of Adolphe Bouguereau's work. In 2002 he spoke to the New York Society of Portrait Artists and described the impression made on him in the Clark Art Institute by Bouguereau's 8.5-foot-tall (2.6 m) painting, Nymphs and Satyr:

Frozen in place, gawking with my mouth agape, cold chills careening up and down my spine, I was virtually gripped as if by a spell that had been cast. Years of undergraduate courses and another 60 credits post-graduate in art, and I had never heard [Bouguereau's] name. Who was he? Was he important? Anyone who could have done this must surely be deserving of the highest accolades in the art world. [7]

Online art museum

The Art Renewal Center has an online digital art gallery that includes an extensive catalogue of high resolution images of drawings, sculptures, and paintings. This database of images have been provided for use in art history books, magazines, and newspapers. [10] [11] [12]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Academic art</span> Style of painting and sculpture

Academic art, or academicism or academism, is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art, usually used of work produced in the 19th century, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. In this period the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts were very influential, combining elements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, with Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres a key figure in the formation of the style in painting. Later painters who tried to continue the synthesis included William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Thomas Couture, and Hans Makart among many others. In this context it is often called "academism", "academicism", "art pompier" (pejoratively), and "eclecticism", and sometimes linked with "historicism" and "syncretism." Academic art is closely related to Beaux-Arts architecture, which developed in the same place and holds to a similar classicizing ideal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexandre Cabanel</span> French painter (1823–1889)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">William-Adolphe Bouguereau</span> French academic painter (1825–1905)

William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body. During his life, he enjoyed significant popularity in France and the United States, was given numerous official honors, and received top prices for his work. As the quintessential salon painter of his generation, he was reviled by the Impressionist avant-garde. By the early twentieth century, Bouguereau and his art fell out of favor with the public, due in part to changing tastes. In the 1980s, a revival of interest in figure painting led to a rediscovery of Bouguereau and his work. He finished 822 known paintings, but the whereabouts of many are still unknown.

<i>Nymphs and Satyr</i> Painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Nymphs and Satyr is an oil on canvas painting created by the French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau in 1873.

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<i>The Shepherdess</i> Painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

The Shepherdess, also known as The Little Shepherdess, is a painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau completed in 1889. The title is taken from the Southern French dialect. The painting depicts an idyllic, pastoral scene of a lone young woman in peasant attire posed for the artist, balancing a stick across her shoulders, standing barefooted in the foreground. In the background are oxen grazing in a field.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Venus Anadyomene</span> One of the iconic representations of Aphrodite

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Jane Gardner</span> American painter

Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau was an American academic and salon painter, who was born in Exeter, New Hampshire. She was an American expatriate who died in Paris where she had lived most of her life. She studied in Paris under the figurative painter Hugues Merle (1823–1881), the well-known salon painter Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836–1911), and finally under William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905). After Bouguereau's wife died, Gardner became his paramour and after the death of his mother, who bitterly opposed the union, she married him in 1896. She adopted his subjects, compositions, and even his smooth facture, channeling his style so successfully that some of her work might be mistaken for his. In fact, she was quoted as saying, "I know I am censured for not more boldly asserting my individuality, but I would rather be known as the best imitator of Bouguereau than be nobody!"

Bryan Lamont Larsen Jr. is an American realist painter, born in Salt Lake City, Utah on February 12, 1975.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles-Amable Lenoir</span> French painter

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<i>The Elder Sister</i> 1869 painting by William Adolphe Bouguereau in Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, United States

The Elder Sister is an oil-on-canvas painting created in 1869 by the French academic artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau. It was acquired in 1992 by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as a gift. According to the museum website, the painting was the gift of an anonymous lady in memory of her father. Since then, The Elder Sister has been a part of the permanent collection of the museum and is placed in its "Arts of Europe" section. It has become one of the most notable highlights among the museum's collection of paintings.

<i>Première rêverie</i> 1889 painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Première rêverie, also known in English as Whisperings of Love, is a painting by nineteenth-century French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau. The work was completed in 1889 and is held at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

<i>Le Travail interrompu</i> 1891 painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Le Travail interrompu is a painting by nineteenth-century French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau in 1891. The painting is currently held in the Mead Art Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Émile Munier</span> French painter

Émile Munier was a French academic artist and student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

<i>La Vierge aux anges</i> Painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

The Virgin with Angels, also known as The Song of the Angels is an oil painting executed in 1881 by the French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Its dimensions are 213.4 × 152.4 cm. It is now in the Forest Lawn Museum in Glendale, California.

<i>Les Oréades</i> Painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

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References

  1. "International". Art Now Gallery Guide. 23: 9–10. May 2004.
  2. Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies. Vol. 12, 13. Arizona State University. 2003. p. 98.
  3. 1 2 3 Elkins, James (2013). Master Narratives and their Discontents. Routledge. p. 128. ISBN   9781135872571.
  4. "MAG Collection - 404 Page Not Found". magart.rochester.edu. Archived from the original on 1 December 2021. Retrieved 18 March 2020.{{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help)
  5. Allan, Scott C. (2011). "Review of William Bouguereau by Damien Bartoli, with Frederick C. Ross". Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. 10 (2).
  6. Birkenmeyer, Seth (2 January 2018). ""Living Artist": Williamsburg Art Gallery owner earns national recognition". The Virginia Gazette. Retrieved 21 November 2018.
  7. 1 2 3 Roth, Mark (20 August 2007). "Gifted artist? Bouguereau's work controversial more than a century after his death". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . Retrieved 21 November 2018.
  8. Kresser, Katie (2017). The Art and Thought of John La Farge: Picturing Authenticity in Gilded Age America. Routledge. p. 22. ISBN   9781351546461.
  9. "Education".
  10. "The ARC Live Salon". The Huffington Post. 4 January 2016.
  11. Grigorian, Natasha (19 May 2009). European Symbolism: In Search of Myth (1860-1910). Peter Lang. ISBN   9783039115310 via Google Books.
  12. "Napoleon and the Sphinx". 13 December 2008.

Further reading