Lyman Allyn Art Museum will open a new exhibition, “Gilbert Munger: Quest for Distinction,” on Friday, September 24.
This traveling exhibition, organized by the Tweed Museum of Art in Duluth, Minn., showcases the work of lesser-known Hudson River School artist Gilbert Munger. Born in 1837 in Madison, Conn., Munger was an artist, as well as an explorer who met with success painting the dramatic landscapes of the American West and Europe. Munger was the ultimate self-made man, becoming quite skilled at self-promotion as he forged his own path into the “high society” of late Nineteenth Century artists, collectors, critics and scientists.
Between 1869 and 1877, Munger established a solid reputation in New York, St Paul and San Francisco as a skilled painter of landscapes that were both scientifically accurate and aesthetically pleasing. On the advice of English patrons, he relocated to London, where his fame grew.
Painting in France in the mid-1880s, Munger successfully negotiated a stylistic transformation, from the distant and detached views of the Hudson River School to the intimate, moody and emotional style advocated by artists of the Barbizon School. The paintings Munger created in the last decade of his life, after he returned to America, clearly demonstrated his success at absorbing, mastering and often surpassing the stylistic conventions of his day.
On September 24, at 6:30 pm, as a part of the opening reception, Michael D. Schroeder, co-author of the exhibition catalog and developer of the Gilbert Munger website, will present a lecture on the life of Munger. Schroeder is a computer scientist formerly on the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The opening reception from 5:30 to 7:30 pm is open to the public and free for members; for nonmembers, a $5 donation is requested.
The exhibition catalog by Schroeder and J. Gray Sweeney titled Gilbert Munger: Quest for Distinction will be on sale at the museum. The exhibition will be on view through December 5.
Lyman Allyn Art Museum is at 625 Williams Street. For information, 860-443-2545 or www.
