Romantic Spirits: Nineteenth Century Paintings of the South from the Johnson Collection

Image Credit: Henry Mosler, The Lost Cause, 1868. Oil on canvas. Courtesy the Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina.

August 8 - November 2, 2015

Romantic Spirits: Nineteenth Century Paintings of the South from the Johnson Collection will be on view from August 8 through November 2 and features 38 paintings created from 1810 - 1896, chronicling the cultural evolution and concepts of the romantic movement as it unfolded in fine art of the American South. Having had its genesis in European literature and art, romanticism founds its way into the cultural output of the young republic, both North and South. The same ideals that imbued the canvases of the Hudson River School also colored the art of painters who found their inspiration and audience below the Mason-Dixon Line. Romantic Spirits features 32 artists prominent artists in this era, including William Dickinson Washington, William Thompson Russell Smith, Gustave Henry Mosler, Thomas Addison Richards, Joseph Rusling Meeker, Robert Walter Weir, and Thomas Sully, among others. The exhibition and its corresponding catalogue, written by art historical Estill Curtis

Pennington, delineates the historical, social, and cultural forces that profoundly influenced these artists aesthetic sensibilities.