Eyeing Our Surroundings

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Cliffs of Green River 1874 by Thomas Moran. Born Bolton, United Kingdom, 1837; died Santa Barbara, California, United States, 1926.
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
Cataras del Iguazú (Iguazú Falls), 1916 by Pedro Blanes Viale. Uruguay, 1879-1926.
Martin Castillo-Galeria Sur, Montevideo, Uruguay
Cotopaxi, 1855 by Frederic Edwin Church. United States, 1826-1900.
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
La cueva del Guácharo, 1874 by Ferdinand Bellerman. Born 1814, Erfurt, Germany; died 1889, Berlin, Germany.
Private collection, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, USA.
Colts on the pampa, c. 1930 by Pedro Figari, Uruguay,1861-1938.
Collection of Museo de Arte Latinoamericanos de Buenos Aires, Costantini Foundation, Buenos Aires
Grounded Icebergs (Disco Bay), c.1931 by Lawren Harris. Born 1885 in Brantford, Ontario, Canada; died 1970 in Vancouver, British, Columbia, Canada.
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada, Gift from the Estate of R. Fraser Elliott, 2005,
Cañada de Metlac, 1893 by José María Velasco. Mexico, 1840—1912.
Museo Nacional de Arte / Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, 2014
La sombra del Popo, 1942 by Gerardo Murillo “Dr. Atl”, Mexico, 1875-1964.
Museo Nacional de Arte / Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, 2014
Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico/Out Back of Marie’s II, 1930 by Georgia O’Keefe, United States, 1887—1986.
Malcom Varon, 2001. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe/Art Resources, NY
Classic Landscape, 1931 by Charles Sheeler. Born 1883 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States; died 1965 in Dobbs Ferry, New York, United States.
National Gallery of Art, Landover United States, Collection of Barney A. Ebsworth
Two Hummingbirds with an Orchid, 1875 by Martin Johnson Heade. Born 1819 in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, United States; died 1904 in St. Augustine, Florida, United States.
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, United States

What can historic landscape paintings tell us about the peoples who inhabited these spaces? An international exhibit — that featured twenty artists from Canada, including Emily Carr — raised questions about how geography has influenced art, and vice versa, in the Americas.

Picturing the Americas: Landscape Painting from Tierra Del Fuego to the Arctic, featured 118 works from eighty-five artists. In addition to Carr, the exhibit included Canadians such as Mary Hiester Reid and Anne Savage. The oldest painting exhibited was “Landscape with Figures: A Scene from The Last of the Mohicans,” painted in 1826 by American artist Thomas Cole. The most recent work — Troje, by Mexican artist Maria Izquierdo, was created in 1943.

The exhibit debuted at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto in June and continued to Arkansas and on to Brazil, where it opened just prior to the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

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