Local Workshops, Lectures, Conferences, and Courses
Announcements of DC-area courses, workshops, and lectures can be sent to wcg@washingtonconservationguild.org for posting on this page. Please include “Website item” in the subject line.
March 29, 7pm: Lecture on “Experimentation and Innovation in American Painting Techniques”
“Experimentation and Innovation in American Painting Techniques”
Lance Mayer and Gay Myers
Authors of American Painters on Technique. The Colonial Period to 1860
Thursday, March 29, 7 p.m.
McEvoy Auditorium
Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery
8th and G Streets NW, Washington, D.C.
Sponsored by the Lunder Conservation Center
The materials and techniques used by American painters are an important but largely unknown part of the history of American art. During the course of writing the first book to take an overview of this topic, the speakers have compiled and analyzed many first- person descriptions of American painters at work. Among the most important themes to emerge from this history are experimentation and innovation. Beginning in the 1760s, Benjamin West enthusiastically sought the “secrets” of the old masters and thereby inspired experimentation with a surprising variety of materials by artists on both sides of the Atlantic. Some of these techniques can have a great effect on both what paintings looked like when they were new, and how their appearance may have changed over time. During the second quarter of the nineteenth century, one can see the evolving self-confidence of a younger generation of American artists, including Thomas Sully, Rembrandt Peale, and John Neagle, who carried out experiments that have a different, more scientific character. At a time when many art historians are discovering new approaches to the history of art, the story of how paintings were made (in the most literal sense) could be seen as a parallel history to the better-known histories about how styles changed and how paintings were commissioned, exhibited, and sold.
