Bert Gallery – The Dyers: A Father and Daughter Legacy
In Person Exhibition July 11 – July 27, 2024
24 Bridge Street, Corliss Landing
401-751-2628
www.bertgallerynow.com

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Bert Gallery celebrates the legacy of two Providence School artists, the father and daughter, H.A. Dyer (1873-1945) and Nancy Dyer (1903-1979). The two Dyers are highlighted within a larger exhibit, “The Warm Cloak of Culture: Providence School 1850-1950” that is currently up and runs to July 27.

Visitors can view “The Dyers: A Father and Daughter Legacy” in person Thursday–Saturday from 11 am to 4 pm or by appointment. Exhibits are free and open to the public.

Early women artists often learned their craft during the Renaissance from their fathers, such as Artemisia Gentileschi from Orazio Gentileschi or Rosa Bonheur from Raymond Bonheur. In the case of Providence School’s H.A. Dyer, he encouraged his daughter’s art career by financing her art education and traveling extensively to paint together. While they were kindred spirits in their use of the gouache medium, H.A. Dyer gravitated toward landscape whereas Nancy toward figurative illustration. H.A. Dyer would enjoy a more prestigious career than his daughter as often is the case of women artists of Nancy’s era despite her accomplished exhibition history and technical prowess.

This exhibit gathers a broad collection of watercolors by both artists. Few Rhode Island artists enjoyed the popularity and patronage that H. Anthony Dyer has in present day and during his lifetime. A descendent of the art-inclined Hoppin family, Dyer graduated from Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design. No one instructor dominated in H.A. Dyer’s tutelage, rather it was the school of the “Old-style English method of watercolor painting” that the artist adopted. He was very adept at using both gouache and transparent washes on gray/earth toned watercolor sheets. This technique the artist considered paramount to his successfully rendered watercolors.

The work of Providence artist Nancy Dyer is characterized by quiet humor and keen insight. She created dozens of small watercolor and pastel caricatures and sculptures of people in everyday situations, capturing their unstudied movements and poses with uncommon skill and humor. Born in Riverside, R.I., she studied at the Lincoln School, and later the Rhode Island School of Design. Nancy Dyer spent most of her life in Providence, but traveled regularly with her parents to Europe, where her father went to paint each summer. (In his history of the Art Club, Angell’s Lane: The History of a Little Street in Providence, George Miner writes: “Almost every year he [H.A. Dyer] drove his Cadillac aboard the Rex, the Comte Savoie, or some other transatlantic ship, with Mrs Dyer and Nancy and his color boxes. And five or six months later they would return to Providence (always on the Holland-America line) with portfolios of watercolors…”)

Bert Gallery is located along the Providence waterfront at Corliss Landing, 24 Bridge Street For more information www.bertgallery.com or 401-751-2628.