Realist Art Exhibit: Eugene Speicher At NYS Museum

The New York State Museum has opened a new exhibition featuring the work of New York artist Eugene Speicher. Along His Own Lines: A Retrospective of New York Realist Eugene Speicher explores Speicher’s diverse art career ranging from portraits to still life to landscape.

On display in West Gallery through March 22, 2015, the exhibition features more than 70 artworks by Speicher, who was born in Buffalo, NY. Speicher first garnered national recognition in the 1910s for his portraits of actors, artists, and friends. His portraits were highly sought after by collectors and prominent museums and he developed a national reputation for portraiture. At the height of his success in the mid-1920s, Speicher largely abandoned commissioned portraiture and instead chose to paint more personal subjects, mainly flower still lifes, landscapes, and figurative compositions.

From 1912 and through the 1940s, Speicher received many significant awards and his work was acquired by major art museums for their permanent collections. Today, Eugene Speicher is best remembered as a New York realist associated with Robert Henri, George Bellows, and Leon Kroll, all of whom were involved with the Woodstock art colony.

The exhibit was organized by the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at State University of New York at New Paltz. Major lenders for this exhibition include the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; American Academy of Arts and Letters; National Academy Museum; Woodstock Artists Association and Museum; and Arthur A. Anderson.

Photos from the exhibition are available at: http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/PRkit/2014/speicher/.

The New York State Museum is located on Madison Avenue in Albany, the Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9:30 am to 5 pm. It is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. Admission is free. Further information about programs and events can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the Museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov. You can also follow the State Museum on Twitter at @nysmuseum.

Illustrations: Above, Kingston, New York, 1935 by Eugene Speicher (collection of Neil Scherer); and below, Speicher’s Girl in a Coral Necklace (Joyce), 1935 (collection of Arthur A. Anderson, Photo by Bob Wagner).