Orlando Museum of Art

Artists help shape our concept of what we see as beautiful and inspiring about nature. This exhibition will feature 25 paintings, sculptures, ceramics and other decorative arts of the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. The selections will offer a historical overview of the engagement of leading American artists with the landscape and show some of the ways in which evolving ideas about nature are expressed in art.

Nature and Spirit presents paintings, photographs and decorative arts that reflect the importance of nature as a source of inspiration in American art. Landscape painters were among the first to develop a visual language to express the inspirational feelings and ideas evoked by nature. Paintings in this exhibition demonstrate this visual language with stirring effects such as sweeping panoramic vistas, snow-peaked mountains and skies filled with rolling clouds and rainbows. Other paintings present calm twilight skies or figures in peaceful bucolic settings that suggest the quieter inspirational moods of reflection and reverie.

Today many people seek to spend time in places of natural beauty and find such experiences nourishing to the soul. Some people understand this experience in terms of traditional religious beliefs and others in an entirely individual way. This intimate connection between nature and spirituality, which many would now consider commonplace, has its origin in the cultural life of the 19th century. It is a heritage passed down by many generations of philosophers, theologians, writers, poets and artists and has shaped the value we now hold for nature and its preservation.
 

Images:

• Charles E. Burchfield, July Evening, 1917, watercolor, gouache and pencil on paper, 18 1/8 in. x 22 1/8 in., Private Collection.
• Thomas Ridgeway Gould, The West Wind, 1874, marble, 48 in. x 22 in. x 17 in., Museum Purchase 1997, funded by Martha Ellen Brumback and Frances Marie Brumback.
• Georgia O'Keeffe, Datura and Pedernal, 1940, oil on board, 11 in. x 16 1/8 in., Gift of the Dorothy Meigs Eidlitz Foundation.
   

Event Pricing

• Admission: $8.00

Intended For

• Youth and Family
• Teachers
• Adults