New Englanders tend to think of this landscape as old. The sturdy stone and wooden buildings feel as though they have been here forever. But this place we call New England did not always look like this.
Shared by the Redwood Library
Coaching Club of America photos from HARPER’s WEEKLY
In advance of the summer coaching exhibition guest curated by Paul Miller (Rhode Island Coaches/ In the Eye of Thomas Eakins & Contemporaries, opening May 16) select period images from HARPER’S WEEKLY and elsewhere have been purchased for the Library’s image collections, with some, like the two above, to be used as part of the […]
Albumen print coaching photographs c. 1895
In advance of the summer coaching exhibition guest curated by Paul Miller (Rhode Island Coaches/In the Eye of Thomas Eakins & Contemporaries, opening May 16) select period images have been purchased for the Library’s image collections, with some, like the two above, to be used as part of the gallery presentation. The 1875 founding of […]
Classical Pianist, I Heung Lee
Classical Pianist, I Heung LeeSunday, March 93:00 pmHarrison Room To Register, Click Here Register for Events
Historical Note on the Art of Engraving
Given the importance of the engraved image in the 18c—in illustrated books, suites of prints, pamphlets, broadsides etc., it behooves that the Library, rich in all of the above, should possess some of the key period texts that treat this pivotal medium. In fact, very few sources give a sustained, critical assessment of engraving’s broader […]
Self-published catalogue (1895), featuring 23 halftone images of Gilded Age residences in upstate New York
Before the web and glossy architectural periodicals that showcase completed projects, architects had few avenues to advertise their work. Enter the self-published trade catalog, as shown above, a book ‘type’ adjacent to pattern books showing individual motifs. The Redwood already holds a world class collection of the latter, and both types offer the most direct […]
Almanach des Dames | Almanac c. 1820-22
In the early modern era the term almanac initially denoted small, yearly calendrical pamphlets containing a range of practical tabular information: tides, astronomical indications, weather and seasonal forecasts etc. Before their eclipse in the mid-19c., every American town with a printer produced an almanac. In Newport, it was Benjamin Franklin’s brother James who printed the […]
General Idea of a Complete Collection of Prints (1771)
Beatrice Greenough, of the prominent Newport family, worked at the Redwood as a librarian, and in 1962 donated her family collection of largely French and Italian seventeenth and eighteenth illustrated books first amassed by her grandfather, the francophile Beaux-Arts architect Whitney Warren. Comprising over 200 titles of the rarest illustrated festival books, custom limited editions, […]
The Architectural Sketch Book (Boston: Osgood & Co., 1873-1875)
Purchases often satisfy more than one of our collecting areas: here early American architecture and the history of Newport & Rhode Island. The book is a bound compilation of the first two volumes (26 issues) of the periodical The Architectural Sketch Book (Boston: Osgood & Co., 1873-1875). As per its title, the magazine was designed […]
Bicknell’s stables, out buildings and fences (1875)
The Redwood’s aim to be a comprehensive resource for researchers in architectural history, colonial to Gilded Age, involves systematic acquisition of period materials that can inform both scholars and craftsmen, and help us–like they did for their original 19th-c. audiences–better appreciate Newport’s many remarkable historic structures. Some early American architectural books as this new purchase […]
Rare Carpenter’s ‘Rules of Work’ Booklet
With early modern architecture one of the Library’s five key Special Collections areas, the Redwood aims to be an indispensable resource for researchers, historians and restoration architects. This two-leaf pamphlet in its original blue wrappers gives the wholesale pricing in dollars & cents of lumber in Boston for the year 1805, extremely valuable historical information […]
Library of Amorphous Matter and Octadic Beacon: A Discussion with the Artist & Curator July 14, 2021
In Library of Amorphous Matter, Curator, Leora Malt-Leca described how Jocelyne Prince considers the material properties of glass, an amorphous or noncrystalline solid that is the central protagonist of a fantastical library of cracks, drips and scars. Slide Library (2002-present), exhibited in the Redwood’s Rovensky Delivery Room on custom “atheneum-like” bookcases. She examined the features of hundreds of […]
The American School Boy
The American School Boy, c. 1857. Joseph Mozier (1812-1870). Marble. Gift of Edward King. Joseph Mozier was born in Vermont and opened a studio in Rome in 1845 where he remained until his death. Most of Mozier’s themes had a strong literary, historical, or anecdotal appeal. His most famous work, The Prodigal Son, won the Grand […]
Captain Charles Hunter
Captain Charles Hunter, c. 1875. Richard Saltonstall Greenough (1819-1904). Marble. Gift of Henry D. Phelps. Charles Hunter (1774-1849), son of Senator William Hunter (President of Redwood 1846-49) and Mary Robinson, was born in Newport 19 June 1813. He entered the Navy in 1831, was promoted to Lieutenant in 1841 and retired from service in 1855 due to ill […]
Transition
Transition, c. 1870. William Greene Turner (1833-1917). Marble. Gift of William Greene Turner. Artist’s interpretation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s line, “there is no Death! What seems so is transition…” from “Resignation,” written in the autumn of 1848 following the death of his daughter Fanny and first published in his collection The Seaside and the Fireside in […]
Silver Teapot
Silver Teapot, c.1745-1750. Samuel Casey (c.1723-c.1773). South Kingstown & Newport, RI. This teapot has particulary fine engraving at the shoulder. The earliest monogram on this teapot is that of Sarah Pope (1742-1819), who was married to William Redwood (son of our founder Abraham Redwood) in 1757.
Spectacles
Spectacles, ca. 18th century. These spectacles once belonged to Abraham Redwood, founder of the Redwood Library. Circular lens holders are filled with clear glass lenses within tortoise-shell frames and earpieces are adjustable in length by folding. The artist is unknown
Washington, c. 1858. Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860)(after Charles Willson Peale 1741-1827)
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 […]
Charles Bird King Self-Portrait at 30
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 […]
Gilbert Stuart Self-Portrait at 24
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, […]
Mary Winthrop Wanton
Mary Winthrop Wanton, c. 1740. Robert Feke (1707-1752). Oil on Canvas. Gift of Angelica Gilbert Gardiner. Mary Winthrop Wanton was the wife of Joseph Wanton, Rhode Island’s last colonial governor. The fashionable decolletage of her gown is cut so low that the scandalized Redwood directors a century later asked artist Jane Stuart (Gilbert Stuart’s daughter) […]
Henry Collins
Henry Collins, c. 1736. John Smibert (1688-1751). Oil on Canvas. The Gladys Moore Vanderbilt Széchényi Memorial Collection. Henry Collins (1699-1764) was a Newport merchant, philanthropist, and patron of the arts. He was nicknamed, “Newport’s Lorenzo de Medici” for his generous and enthusiastic patronage of the emerging cultural life of colonial Newport. He donated the land on […]
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart, c. 1825. John Henri Isaac Browere (1792-1834). Marble. Gift of Reverend Dr. Roderick Terry. Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828) lived and studied art in Newport. Considered outstanding in his field, he spent his adult career in Newport, Scotland, London, Phildelphia, Boston, and Washington D.C., where he painted many familiar portraits, inculding the most famous […]
Pheidippides, Soldier of Marathon
Pheidippides, Soldier of Marathon, c. 1917. Bronze. Gift of Mrs. George S. Scott. This bronze statue is a mechanical copy of the original marble in the Louvre by Jean Pierre Cortot (1787-1843), French School, and is known as The soldier of Marathon Announcing the Victory. Pheidippides is a character in a play by Aristophanes, he is said to have […]
The Variable Line: Master Drawings from Renaissance to Contemporary
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 are […]
Painting with Oil, Sculpting with Water: Per Barclay’s Material Politics July 10, 2019
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 […]
Contemporary Art & the Weight of Memory: Pascale Marthine Tayou’s “Remember Bimbia” September 11, 2018
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?
Material Politics, or the Unruly Substances of Contemporary Art June 27, 2018
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 […]
Redwood Treasures: A Review
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, […]
Redwood History: Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse
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 […]
What is Global Contemporary Art? Summer 2017
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 […]
Redwood Contemporary Arts Initiative, Curator: Leora Maltz-Leca
Leora Maltz-Leca is Professor of Contemporary Art, and Head of Theory and History of Art and Design at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI. She is the author of William Kentridge: Process as Metaphor and Other Doubtful Enterprises (Univ. of California, 2018) and has written for Artforum, Frieze, African Arts, Art South Africa, ArteEast as well as Art Bulletin, where […]
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