A keystone collection: Albuquerque Museum to host iconic works from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

May 19—From Gilbert Stuart's iconic painting of George Washington to Winslow Homer's dark image of a hunting fox being hunted, paintings from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts tell stories of America.

Open at the Albuquerque Museum, the more than 100 works of art feature some of the rock stars of American art, including Winslow Homer, Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper and Thomas Moran, as well as Mary Cassatt and Georgia O'Keeffe. The museum showcases traditionally underrepresented artists as well.

"So many of these historic objects do tell very, very rich stories," said museum director Andrew Connors. "They tell stories rooted in the founding of our nation."

Stuart's famous life-sized portrait of Washington was commissioned by the British ambassador to the U.S. as a gift to Lord Lansdowne in 1796.

"He was a great admirer of George Washington even though he led the revolt against his country," Connors said. "It was in England for almost two centuries. Then it came back to the U.S. to a collector who donated it to the Pennsylvania Academy."

The portrait shows the figure with one hand opened, while the other holds his sword.

"It's really saying, 'I'm open in my conversation, but I also keep a hand on my sword,' " Connors said.

"He didn't want to be a military leader," Connors continued. "He really wanted to be a farmer."

But Stuart makes his subject almost regal as he poses in a velvet-cloaked temple.

The canvas shows Washington dressed in a black velvet suit with a white lace jabot at his neck, and his powdered hair pulled back into a queue ornamented by a sawtoothed ribbon rosette. His lips appear swollen and his mouth uncomfortable, owing to a new set of ill-fitting dentures.

It also worked as propaganda. Stuart made more than 100 copies for American and European patrons eager to own an image of the illustrious sitter.

Charles Willson Peale's 1822 self-portrait of the opening of his museum reveals more than a touch of grandiosity in the Philadelphia painter/soldier/scientist.

"He also was fascinated with natural history, so he opened a museum," Connors said. "He's lifting up the curtain to show his museum. There's a woman wearing a bonnet, signaling that she was a Quaker. A father and his young son are reading a guidebook. It's education for everyone."

A rib cage lurks behind the velvet curtain. It's a mastodon skeleton Peale paid to excavate, revealing a new discovery in the New World.

The exhibition also heralds the unknown. May Howard Jackson was the first African American woman allowed into the academy in 1844. Active in the New Negro Movement and prominent in Washington, D.C.'s, African American intellectual circle in the period 1910 — 30, she was known as "one of the first black sculptors to ... deliberately use America's racial problems" as the theme of her art.

O'Keeffe painted "Red Canna" (1923) before she came to New Mexico, most likely in New York.

"The canna is kind of contorted and it's hard to read it because it's very abstract," Connors said. "It takes her into modernism."

Cassatt's "Baby in Mother's Arms" (c. 1891) shows the feathered, delicate brushstrokes of Impressionism. Cassatt was a groundbreaking feminist artist best known for her impressionistic style and her innovative approach to depicting the experience of women throughout the world. During her lifetime, Cassatt was known as a "New Woman" who developed her own styles of art and was an advocate for women's rights.

Homer's 6-feet-wide 1893 "Fox Hunt" plays a trick on the viewer. At first seemingly a bucolic image of the animal in the snow, a closer view reveals a group of black crows hunting the hunter.

"Winslow Homer is such a rock star of a painter," Connors said. "He was famous for his New England hunting paintings. This is probably based on a Maine scene."

The fox is likely looking for a mouse, while seemingly unaware of the dangers above and behind him.

"So there's all this drama of the natural world," Connors said.

Hopper's 1923 "Apartment Houses" blocks view after view with columns, producing his signature feelings of loneliness and isolation.

"That's a killer painting," Connors said. "Somebody is making a bed — presumably a maid — in an apartment. It imagines these very close New York City apartments. Most of the painting is blocking what you might want to see. He's bringing the punchline, so you wonder what it's about."

The Albuquerque Museum brought the exhibit to show viewers images beyond the Southwest.

"There are so many people in our community who can't afford to travel," Connors said. "We want to bring as much of the quality of the world to New Mexico. These artists created a visual vocabulary for this country."