PRESS RELEASE
Summer Gardens
Jun 3 – Jul 23, 2016
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Publicity Contact: Susan Cornell
Phone: 860.663.3095
Email: scornell3095@comcast.net
High-resolution images available at www.cooleygallery.com/exhibits_press.htm
The Cooley Gallery is proud to announce:
Summer Gardens
An exhibition and sale of historic paintings through July 23rd, 2016
OLD LYME, CT – The Cooley Gallery has built a reputation of representing paintings by artists who came to Old Lyme over a hundred years ago to paint the surrounding landscape. They were enamored with the geographical variety the area offered and driven by a desire to capture a Nature they felt was quickly disappearing. The Cooley Gallery is proud to announce Summer Gardens an exhibition and sale of historic art celebrating another kind of American landscape, the garden.
An in-depth look at the history of leisure gardening and its broad and significant influence on our culture just so happens to be opened down Lyme Street from The Cooley Gallery at the Florence Griswold Museum in the new exhibition, The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920. Organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Artist’s Garden tells the story of American Impressionists and the growing popularity of gardening as a leisure pursuit at the turn of the 20th century. Drawing on new scholarship, The Artist’s Garden considers the role of artists and designers in defining a cultivated landscape in an era of new attitudes toward leisure, labor, and a burgeoning environmentalism. This exhibition illuminates the social and historic role of gardens and gives a new appreciation for
The Cooley Gallery has two of the four galleries at 25 Lyme Street is also currently exhibiting historic paintings relating to the garden. Works by Irving Wiles (1861-1948), Anna Mary Richards Brewster (1870-1952), Roger Dennis (1902-1996), Barbara Goodwin (1921-2013), Fannie Burr, Fidelia Bridges (1834-1923), Matilda Browne (1869-1947), Frederick Lester Sexton (1889-1975), portray colorful sunlit paths and those moments of summertime perfection.
For a gardener the ground is the palette and plants are the pigment. Those who brave the medium act as interpreter in the language between Nature and humanity. Artists painting the landscape is a way to record this brief and seemingly perfect moment of communication. Anna Richards Brewster summed it up back in 1894: “Art is simply bringing into the relief the thought of nature; a simplification of the lines, a falling into place of groups otherwise invisible.”
This exhibition runs through July 23rd at 25 Lyme Street Tuesday through Saturday 10 – 5. The public, gardeners and non-gardeners alike, is always welcome.
Founded in 1981 and located in the heart of historic Old Lyme, the Cooley Gallery specializes in fine American paintings from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, including the Hudson River School, American Impressionism, and select contemporary artists. Regular gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 10am to 5pm. Please call (860) 434-8807 or visit www.cooleygallery.com for additional information. The Cooley Gallery is located at 25 Lyme Street, Old Lyme, CT 06371.