Arnot Art Museum, opened 1913, is a municipal art museum located at 235 Lake Street in
Elmira, New York
Elmira () is a city and the county seat of Chemung County, New York, United States. It is the principal city of the Elmira, New York, metropolitan statistical area, which encompasses Chemung County. The population was 26,523 at the 2020 cens ...
. Its permanent collection includes 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century European paintings; and 19th- and 20th-century American art. Its 21st-century collection focuses on contemporary representational art. The building is a contributing property in the
Elmira Civic Historic District
The Elmira Civic Historic District is the area of downtown Elmira, New York where the governmental center developed in the town's early history. It includes the Chemung County Courthouse Complex, John Hazlett Office Building and the Arnot Art M ...
.
Building
The museum was founded by banker Matthias Hallenback Arnot (1833 - 1910), who bequeathed to the City of Elmira his art collection and the building that housed it. The original Greek-Revival mansion was built in 1833 by his father, John Arnot, Sr. Matthias built the picture gallery addition in the 1890s, which featured extensive gas lighting and a large skylight. It is a rare example of a 19th-century private picture gallery that retains its original art collection.
A new wing was added to the museum in 1982.
Collection
The European Art collection includes works by painters
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female ...
,
Jules Breton
Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton (1 May 1827 – 5 July 1906) was a 19th-century French naturalist painter. His paintings are heavily influenced by the French countryside and his absorption of traditional methods of painting helped make Jules ...
,
Jan Brueghel the Elder
Jan Brueghel (also Bruegel or Breughel) the Elder (, ; ; 1568 – 13 January 1625) was a Flemish painter and draughtsman. He was the son of the eminent Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. A close friend and frequent collabora ...
,
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( , , ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and t ...
,
Charles-François Daubigny
Charles-François Daubigny ( , , ; 15 February 181719 February 1878) was a French painter, one of the members of the Barbizon school, and is considered an important precursor of impressionism.
He was also a prolific printmaker, mostly in etchin ...
Jean-Léon Gérôme
Jean-Léon Gérôme (11 May 1824 – 10 January 1904) was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. His paintings were so widely reproduced that he was "arguably the world's most famous living artist by 1880." The ran ...
,
Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain (; born Claude Gellée , called ''le Lorrain'' in French; traditionally just Claude in English; c. 1600 – 23 November 1682) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher of the Baroque era. He spent most of his life in It ...
, and
Jean-François Millet
Jean-François Millet (; 4 October 1814 – 20 January 1875) was a French artist and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his paintings of peasant farmers and can be categorized as part of the Realism ...
.
The American Art collection includes works by painters
James Carroll Beckwith
James Carroll Beckwith (September 23, 1852 – October 24, 1917) was an American landscape, portrait and genre painter whose Naturalist style led to his recognition in the late nineteenth and very early twentieth century as a respected figure i ...
Albert Bierstadt
Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was no ...
,
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for his romantic landscape and history paintin ...
,
Kenyon Cox
Kenyon Cox (October 27, 1856 – March 17, 1919) was an American Painting, painter, illustrator, muralist, writer, and teacher. Cox was an influential and important early instructor at the Art Students League of New York. He was the designer of t ...
,
Jasper Francis Cropsey
Jasper Francis Cropsey (February 18, 1823 – June 22, 1900) was an important American landscape artist of the Hudson River School.
Early years
Cropsey was born on his father Jacob Rezeau Cropsey's farm in Rossville on Staten Island, New Yor ...
,
Arthur B. Davies
Arthur Bowen Davies (September 26, 1862 – October 24, 1928) was an avant-garde American artist and influential advocate of modern art in the United States c. 1910–1928.
Biography
Davies was born in Utica, New York, the son of David and Phoeb ...
T. Alexander Harrison
Thomas Alexander Harrison (January 17, 1853 in Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaOctober 13, 1930 in Paris, France), was an American marine painter who spent most of his career in France.
Career
He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Ph ...
,
William Stanley Haseltine
William Stanley Haseltine (June 11, 1835 – February 3, 1900) was an American painter and draftsman who was associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting, the Hudson River School and Luminism.
Early life and education
Born in Philadelph ...
,
Robert Henri
Robert Henri (; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher.
As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against A ...
,
George Inness
George Inness (May 1, 1825 – August 3, 1894) was a prominent United States, American landscape painting, landscape painter.
Now recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the nineteenth century, Inness was influenced b ...
Robert Street
Robert Street AO FAA (16 December 1920 – 4 July 2013) was a British academic and academic administrator.
Born in Wakefield, Yorkshire and educated at Hanley High School, he was offered a scholarship to New College, Oxford in 1939, but ...
,
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Charles Stuart ( Stewart; December 3, 1755 – July 9, 1828) was an American painter from Rhode Island Colony who is widely considered one of America's foremost portraitists. His best-known work is an unfinished portrait of George Washi ...
,
Thomas Sully
Thomas Sully (June 19, 1783November 5, 1872) was a portrait painter in the United States. Born in Great Britain, he lived most of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He painted in the style of Thomas Lawrence. His subjects included nationa ...
,
Susan Waters
Susan Catherine Moore Waters (May 18, 1823 – July 7, 1900) was an American painter. Her early career in New York state and Pennsylvania focused on portraits. After moving to Bordentown, New Jersey, she specialized in paintings of animals as ...
, and minor
Hudson River School
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, ...
artists. Sculptors represented include
Anna Hyatt Huntington
Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (March 10, 1876 – October 4, 1973) was an American sculptor who was among New York City's most prominent sculptors in the early 20th century. At a time when very few women were successful artists, she had a thrivi ...
Frederick MacMonnies
Frederick William MacMonnies (September 28, 1863 – March 22, 1937) was the best known expatriate American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts school, as successful and lauded in France as he was in the United States. He was also a highly accomplishe ...
John H. Rogers
John H. Rogers is a Democratic Party (United States), Democratic member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, representing the 12th Norfolk District since 1992, which includes all of Norwood, Massachusetts, Norwood and parts of Walpole, ...
.
The collection also includes works by a number of
Surrealist
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
painters, including
Jean Pierre Serrier
Jean Pierre Serrier (18 October 1934 – 30 March 1989) was a French painter known for surrealism and absurdist art.
Early life and education
He was born in the Montparnasse district of Paris, the son of Louis and Solange Serrier. His father f ...
.
File:Lart et la litterature.jpg, ''L'Art et la Littérature'' by
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female ...
(1867).
File:Thomas Cole Autumn in the Catskills.jpg, ''Autumn in the Catskills'' by
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for his romantic landscape and history paintin ...
(1827).
References
* Rachael Sadinsky, ''A Collector's Vision: The 1910 Bequest of Matthias H. Arnot'' (Arnot Art Museum, 1989) .
* Rachel Dworkin "Elmira's First Museum" (Chemung County Historical Society, 2013).