National Museum of American Illustration

Last updated
National Museum of
American Illustration
Vernon Court, West Facade, Newport RI.jpg
National Museum of American Illustration
Established1998;26 years ago (1998)
Location Newport, Rhode Island, US
Coordinates 41°28′11″N71°18′25″W / 41.4696°N 71.3069°W / 41.4696; -71.3069
TypeVisual art
DirectorLaurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler
Website http://www.americanillustration.org/

The National Museum of American Illustration (NMAI), founded in 1998, is the first national museum to be devoted exclusively to American illustration artwork. The NMAI is located in the Vernon Court mansion on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. The museum's collection contains over 2,000 original works by noted American illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, J. C. Leyendecker, N.C. Wyeth, and others. [1] [2]

Contents

History and location

The NMAI was founded in 1998 by Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler in their Vernon Court home. [3] Prior to that, Goffman Cutler had worked as an art dealer and owned the American Illustrators Gallery but subsequently transferred her personal collection to the museum after selling items to George Lucas. [4] [5] The museum opened by appointment and then regularly to the public in October 2000 following a two-year challenge to gain approval. [6] It is known for its Norman Rockwell collection. [7] [8]

In addition to Vernon Court, the adjacent property on Bellevue Avenue, Stoneacre, is owned by the museum. [9] The property is named for the demolished mansion and the grounds for the site were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, and following the purchase of the site, it has been restored as an arboretum in Olmsted’s honor. [7] The mansion was designed by architect William A. Potter for John W. Ellis. Stoneacre was Olmsted's first commission after establishing his office in Brookline.[ citation needed ] In 2016 the grounds, which include several Rhode Island State Champion trees, were recognized as a level 1 arboretum by ArbNet. [10]

Collection

The NMAI’s American Imagist Collection focuses on artwork from the 'Golden Age of American Illustration', a period whose heyday dates from 1865 to 1945, with the end of the original Saturday Evening Post marking its ultimate demise. [11] [12]

The NMAI features original art created by illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, J. C. Leyendecker, and Jessie Willcox Smith. The illustrators created images integral to American culture, ranging from the New Year’s Baby to Uncle Sam. [13] For these reasons, the NMAI’s collection has been named the American Imagist Collection. [14]

Notable works by Norman Rockwell in the collection include Russian Schoolroom and The Runaway . The museum’s collection also includes many pieces of art memorabilia and artifacts such as Norman Rockwell's first paint box, Maxfield Parrish’s stippling paint brushes and a plethora of photographic materials. [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norman Rockwell</span> American painter and illustrator (1894–1978)

Norman Percevel Rockwell was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of the country's culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, The Problem We All Live With, Saying Grace, and the Four Freedoms series. He is also noted for his 64-year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), during which he produced covers for their publication Boys' Life, calendars, and other illustrations. These works include popular images that reflect the Scout Oath and Scout Law such as The Scoutmaster, A Scout Is Reverent and A Guiding Hand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Illustration</span> Depiction made by an artist

An illustration is a decoration, interpretation, or visual explanation of a text, concept, or process, designed for integration in print and digitally published media, such as posters, flyers, magazines, books, teaching materials, animations, video games and films. An illustration is typically created by an illustrator. Digital illustrations are often used to make websites and apps more user-friendly, such as the use of emojis to accompany digital type. Illustration also means providing an example; either in writing or in picture form.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maxfield Parrish</span> American painter and illustrator (1870–1966)

Maxfield Parrish was an American painter and illustrator active in the first half of the 20th century. He is known for his distinctive saturated hues and idealized neo-classical imagery. His career spanned fifty years and was wildly successful: the National Museum of American Illustration deemed his painting Daybreak (1922) to be the most successful art print of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coles Phillips</span> American artist

Clarence Coles Phillips was an American artist and illustrator who signed his early works C. Coles Phillips, but after 1911 worked under the abbreviated name, Coles Phillips. He is known for his stylish images of women and a signature use of negative space in the paintings he created for advertisements and the covers of popular magazines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Schoonover</span> American illustrator

Frank Earle Schoonover was an American illustrator who worked in Wilmington, Delaware. A member of the Brandywine School, he was a contributing illustrator to magazines and did more than 5,000 paintings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. C. Leyendecker</span> German-American illustrator

Joseph Christian Leyendecker was one of the most prominent and financially successful freelance commercial artists in the U.S. He was active between 1895 and 1951 producing drawings and paintings for hundreds of posters, books, advertisements, and magazine covers and stories. He is best known for his 80 covers for Collier's Weekly, 322 covers for The Saturday Evening Post, and advertising illustrations for B. Kuppenheimer men's clothing and Arrow brand shirts and detachable collars. He was one of the few known gay artists working in the early-twentieth century U.S.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jessie Willcox Smith</span> American illustrator

Jessie Willcox Smith was an American illustrator during the Golden Age of American illustration. She was considered "one of the greatest pure illustrators". A contributor to books and magazines during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Smith illustrated stories and articles for clients such as Century, Collier's, Leslie's Weekly, Harper's, McClure's, Scribners, and the Ladies' Home Journal. She had an ongoing relationship with Good Housekeeping, which included a long-running Mother Goose series of illustrations and also the creation of all of the Good Housekeeping covers from December 1917 to 1933. Among the more than 60 books that Smith illustrated were Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline, and Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Society of Illustrators</span> American professional society

The Society of Illustrators (SoI) is a professional society based in New York City. It was founded in 1901 to promote the art of illustration and, since 1959, has held an annual exhibition.

The Advertising Archives is a picture library and museum with an archive of one million British and American press ads, TV stills, magazine covers, catalogues, greetings cards, posters, illustrations and cultural ephemera dating from 1850 to the present day. It is located in London and is the largest collection of its kind in Europe. The archives are not open to the public.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brandywine School</span>

The Brandywine School was a style of illustration—as well as an artists colony in Wilmington, Delaware and in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, near the Brandywine River—both founded by artist Howard Pyle (1853–1911) at the end of the 19th century. The works produced there were widely published in adventure novels, magazines, and romances in the early 20th century. Pyle’s teachings would influence such notable illustrators as N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, Harvey Dunn, and Norman Rockwell. Pyle himself would come to be known as the "Father of American Illustration." Many works related to the Brandywine School may be seen at the Brandywine River Museum of Art, in Chadds Ford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vernon Court</span> Building in Rhode Island, United States

Vernon Court is an American Renaissance mansion designed by architects Carrère and Hastings. It is located at 492 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, on the Atlantic coast of the United States. The design is loosely based on that of an 18th-century French mansion, Château d'Haroué.

<i>Russian Schoolroom</i> 1967 painting by Norman Rockwell

Russian Schoolroom (1967), also known as The Russian Classroom and Russian Schoolchildren, is an oil on canvas painting created by American illustrator Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) and commissioned by Look magazine. It depicts Soviet schoolchildren in a classroom with a bust of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.

Hugh Charles McBarron Jr. (1902–1992) was an American commercial artist. Known for his wide body of work featuring the United States Armed Forces, he is considered by many to have been the "dean of military illustrators."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bellevue Avenue Historic District</span> United States historic place in Newport, Rhode Island

The Bellevue Avenue Historic District is located along and around Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. Its property is almost exclusively residential, including many of the Gilded Age mansions built as summer retreats around the turn of the 20th century by the extremely wealthy, including the Vanderbilt and Astor families. Many of the homes represent pioneering work in the architectural styles of the time by major American architects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mead Schaeffer</span>

Mead Schaeffer was an American illustrator active from the early to middle twentieth century.

Scott Gustafson is an American illustrator based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. His career has spanned over twenty-five years, and during it, he has worked as a freelance cartoonist and contributed illustrations to various magazines and children's books. During the later years of his career, he wanted to write a story lengthier than a thirty-two page children's book. In August 2011, his only novel Eddie: The Lost Youth of Edgar Allan Poe was published.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orson Lowell</span> American artist and illustrator (1871–1956)

Orson Byron Lowell (1871–1956) was an American artist and illustrator of covers and interiors for magazines.

The New Rochelle artist colony was a community of artists, actors, musicians, playwrights and writers who settled in the city of New Rochelle, New York, during the early twentieth century. By the 1920s, New Rochelle had more artists per capita than almost any city in the United States, and newspaper headlines were referring to the community as "Greenwich Village without the Greenwich."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Hunt Everett</span> American illustrator

Walter Hunt Everett (1880–1946) was an American artist, associated with the Brandywine School of art and the Golden Age of Illustration. Everett was a cover-artist and illustrator for books and national magazines such as Pictorial Review, TheSaturday Evening Post, Colliers, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Scribner’s.

Judy Goffman Cutler is an art dealer, art collector, co-founder and Director of the National Museum of American Illustration, and founder and Executive Director of the American Illustrators Gallery, NYC, the premier gallery showcasing major original artworks from the 'Golden Age of American Illustration'. The collection includes works by Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, Elizabeth Shippen Green, NC Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Jessie Willcox Smith, Howard Chandler Christy, JC Leyendecker, Violet Oakley, James Montgomery Flagg, and many other illustrators. Judy is the co-founder of The Alliance for Art and Architecture LLC. She has authored and co-authored over fifty exhibition catalogues and art books published by Bison Books/Crescent Books, Harry N. Abrams, and Pomegranate Artbooks.

References

  1. "Founding". National Museum of American Illustration. Retrieved 2023-02-04.
  2. "Mission". National Museum of American Illustration. Retrieved 2023-02-04.
  3. Ryan, Suzanne (2001-06-02). "The Illustrated Mansion" (PDF). Boston Globe. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-03. Retrieved 2023-02-03.
  4. Flynn, Sean (2013-05-23). "Art of Illustration" (PDF). Newport Daily News. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-02. Retrieved 2023-02-04.
  5. Grant, Daniel (2016-07-22). "From Housewife to Prominent Collector, From Gallerist to One-Woman Museum". The Observer. Retrieved 2023-02-04.
  6. Weisman, Janine (2002-10-31). "Museum to open to Public" (PDF). Newport Daily News. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-03.
  7. 1 2 Laurence S Cutler; Judy Goffman Cutler; National Museum of American Illustration. Maxfield Parrish and the American Imagists. Edison, NJ: Wellfleet Press, 2004. pg. 329 - 331.
  8. Castro, Alexander (2019-05-21). "Sentimental giant". The Newport Daily News. Retrieved 2023-02-04.
  9. "MuseNews." NMAI: The National Museum of American Illustration. http://www.americanillustration.org/html/news1.html Archived 2015-12-22 at the Wayback Machine .
  10. "Arbnet | the Morton Register of Arboreta".
  11. "Artists in the American Imagist Collection." NMAI: The National Museum of American Illustration. http://www.americanillustration.org/html/artists_indexlite07.html. 27 Oct. 2009
  12. Porter Brown, Nell (2015-06-16). ""Our American History"". Harvard Magazine. Retrieved 2023-02-03.
  13. "The National Museum of American Illustration" (PDF). The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles. Vol. IV. 2003-09-01 (PDF).{{cite news}}: Check |archive-url= value (help)
  14. Jacobson, Aileen (2016-01-23). "The Art of Maxfield Parrish". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-02-04.
  15. Berman, Ann E.. "Newport News: An Illustration Museum Debuts in Rhode Island." Architectural Digest, Dec. 1999: 76+. Print.