Description:
line of white birches stretching across a clearing marked by a stone wall and studded with boulders and huckleberry bushes; landscape; vegetation; spring
Label Text:
While walking near his seaside home in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts in early spring, Dwight Tryon was captivated by a line of slender birch trees at the edge of a field. That image became The First Leaves. Tryon composed the landscape in horizontal bands and enveloped the scene in a palpable sense of atmosphere.
Tryon’s landscapes were painted in the tonalist style, a poetic approach characterized by muted colors and subdued light. They were very popular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The artist’s longtime friend, collector Charles Lang Freer, was his principal patron. While Tryon advised Smith’s first President L. Clark Seelye in acquiring American art for the collection, he also worked with Freer to introduce the study of Asian art to the College.
Tryon played an important role at Smith College as an art instructor, advisor, and benefactor from 1886 until he retired in 1924. His bequest funded the construction of the Tryon Gallery of Art, which was razed in the late 1960s to build the current Museum.
Tags:
landscapes; vegetation Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1889.6.1 |
