Now on view
In Conversation
American Sublime
Awestruck by the power and beauty of nature, generations of American painters mine the power of memory as they harness our imagination. Consider the ambitions of three remarkable artists. Each flirts with triggering a combination of fear and ecstasy we feel when in the presence of the vast and perilous edges of the known world. Albert Bierstadt turns his field notes from visiting the seal and sea lion colony on the Farallon Rocks (some 25 miles offshore San Francisco) into a salon-scale portrait of the Pacific Ocean’s fury. Tula Telfair recalls an ebbing tide of an estuary in East Africa, limiting herself to a moody combination of black and white. Similarly, Thomas Moran echoes his experiences in Yellowstone and the Colorado River basin – experienced firsthand two decades earlier – in a free composition, set beneath a moonlit sky. Paintings like these invite us to connect on an emotional level to the wonder of our world.
