Gilbert Stuart Self-Portrait at 24, c. 1778. Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828). Oil on Canvas. Bequest of Louisa Lee Waterhouse. Gilbert Stuart was America’s great early portrait painter. He was born over a snuff mill in North Kingston, Rhode Island, and arrived to Newport virtually a penniless begger. He picked up artistic training from a traveling Scottish painter, […]
Charles Bird King Self-Portrait at 30, c. 1815. Charles Bird King (1785-1862). Oil on Canvas. Bequest of Charles Bird King. Charles Bird King was born in Newport, made his living in Washington, DC as a painter of political figures and other celebrities of the day. Over the years, King contributed handsomely to the Library, giving […]
George Washington, c. 1858. Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860)(after Charles Willson Peale 1741-1827). Oil on Canvas. Bequest of Roderick Terry, Jr. This painting is the earliest known depiction of George Washington, painted when he was only forty years old. Rembrandt Peale, son of Charles Willson Peale, was born in Pennsylvania. He received instruction in art from his father […]
Decemeber 2016 – March 2017 From the birth of graphic art, in the drawings of Paleolithic cave artists, line was the basic means through which to define form or suggest volumes. Likewise relied upon to communicate subtle differentiations of surface, texture, or color, a line is an abstraction, yet one whose foundational, delineative properties […]
This exhibition tour and lecture addressed Barclay’s three bodies of artwork being shown at the Redwood in the context of the Ford Foundation funded initiative, Material Politics. How do Barclay’s Oil House (2019); his glass house Untitled (2018), and his quartet of monumental photographs use materials to enact a politics of the everyday? Generously sponsored […]
In a curator talk, Leora Maltz Leca discussed the Tayou’s site-specific memorial for the Redwood, contextualizing his monument to global slavery in light of the larger memorial turn in contemporary art. What does this installation propose? How does it picture history? And what does it ask of us?
Why have some of the most interesting contemporary artists working today abandoned the traditional materials of art to work with rubber, sugar, gold and oil, chalk, soap and shoelaces? Leora Maltz-Leca, Redwood’s Curator of Contemporary Projects explored how contemporary artists like Kader Attia and Pascale Marthine Tayou, Kara Walker and Berni Searle activate the social […]
This past Wednesday, February 7th, we held our first Redwood Treasures event of the year. Out on display were books, objects, and manuscripts from all periods, generously given to the library throughout our history. They included examples of the 18th century history of Newport, printing history from the age of incunabulum through the 19th century, […]
One of the portraits we have in our collection by the well-known painter Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) is of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse (1754-1846). According to reports, the young Waterhouse, who was born in Newport, spent some time reading medical books at the Redwood Library. The original collection contained a fair amount of medical volumes, which were […]
The Redwood’s Contemporary Curator, Leora Maltz-Leca, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History at RISD, presented an in-depth analysis into the history of global contemporary art. When does contemporary art begin? What is its relationship to modern art? And to the post-modern? And the anti-modern…? How do we chart a history of the art of […]
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