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American Artists in Holland 1880-1914 showcases the work of forty-three American painters drawn to Holland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The tour is narrated by the Curator for the Telfair Museum of Art and set to music recorded at the Telfair Academy during the Savannah Music Festival.

The Dutch Utopia Audio Tour Overview

Audio: Approx. 30 minutes
# of tracks and images: 15

Dutch Utopia includes works by artists who remain celebrated today, such as Robert Henri, William Merritt Chase, John Twachtman, and John Singer Sargent, along with painters admired in their own time but less well-known now, including accomplished women like Elizabeth Nourse and Anna Stanley, as well as George Hitchcock, Gari Melchers, and Walter MacEwen, who built international reputations with salon pictures of Dutch landscapes and costumed figures. These artists were among hundreds of Americans who traveled to the Netherlands between 1880 and 1914 to paint and to study. Some lived in Holland for decades, while others stayed only a week or two; but most passed quickly through the major cities to small rural communities, where they created picturesque idylls on canvas.Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880-1914 is organized by the Telfair Museum of Art in association with the Singer Laren Museum. Accompanied by a major scholarly catalogue, the show will travel to the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, and the Singer Laren Museum in the Netherlands after its debut in Savannah.

Encompassing over seventy works drawn from public and private collections throughout the United States and Europe, Dutch Utopia: American Artists in Holland, 1880-1914 examines the work of forty-three American painters drawn to Holland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These artists, responding to the negative aspects of rapid urbanization, established colonies in six communities in the Netherlands: Dordrecht, Egmond, Katwijk, Laren, Rijsoord, and Volendam. With the exception of Dordrecht, all were small, pre-industrial villages. Inspired by their pastoral surroundings as well as the great tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch art and the work of the contemporary Hague School, these American artists created visions of Dutch society underpinned by a nostalgic yearning for a pre-modern way of life. Some of these paintings even alluded to America’s own colonial Dutch heritage, exploring shared histories and cultural connections between the two countries.

List of tracks and images:
(01) Introduction – The Sisters, Gari Melchers (2:39)
(02) The Ghost Story, Walter MacEwen (2:25)
(03) Dutch Girl Laughing, Robert Henri (2:04)
(04) Heathland near the Tafelberg, Blaricum, William Henry Singer Jr. (2:19)
(05) Returning from Work, Walter MacEwen (1:44)
(06) Windmills, John Henry Twachtman (1:34)
(07) Mother and Daughter: the Whole of Life, Marcia Oakes Woodbury (1:35)
(08) In Holland, Gari Melchers (2:25)
(09) The Sermon, Gari Melchers (2:23)
(10) On the Dyke at Volendam, Elizabeth Nourse (2:03)
(11) The Family, Gari Melchers (2:02)
(12) Portrait of Ralph Curtis on the Beach at Scheveningen, John Singer Sargent (1:37)
(13) On the Dunes (Lady Shannon and Kitty), James Jebusa Shannon (2:07)
(14) Weeding the Pavement, George Henry Boughton (2:02)
(15) Early Spring in Holland, George Hitchcock (2:32)