Author Bio

Trained as an art historian with publications in American nineteenth-century art, May Brawley Hill, as she puts it, "experienced a garden conversion twenty years ago and determined to learn all I could about such a neglected and compelling branch of the fine arts." Her most recent book is On Foreign Soil: Gardens of Americans Abroad.

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Main Description

At the end of the nineteenth century, American artists demonstrated a preference for gardens as artistic motifs as well as a growing appreciation of the art of gardening itself. The range of color and the variation in form and silhouette made the garden a compelling subject for a large number of painters inclined toward the Impressionist style. Early twentieth-century America witnessed a mania for the garden, and the interest in the art of gardening dominated many aspects of domestic life. Publications and articles offered gardening advice for Americans, while also asserting that the art of gardening paralleled the art of painting.
The exhibition catalog The American Impressionists in the Garden explores the theme of the garden in American art and society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. May Brawley Hill's essay discusses a range of themes, including the Impressionist fascination for gardens, the history of garden design, comparisons between European and American garden paintings, images of women, and the art colony movement, as well as providing detailed readings of the specific gardens painted and cultivated by these artists.
Besides the forty-four color plates depicting European and American gardens by American artists, the catalog includes some historic photographs of artists in garden settings. These allow the reader to examine the relationship between the garden as photographed and the garden as painted. The catalog looks at garden paintings from Holland, France, Italy, and England and from different regions in the United States, including the Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and West Coast. Garden sculpture was an essential element of garden design, and the catalog also features images of a number of small-scale bronzes and other statuary for garden environments.
This book has been developed to accompany a 2010 exhibition at Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art.

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Reviews

"What makes it armchair-worthy: This work of art and words takes us into the museum's gallery and offers a thoughtful stroll through that rich period in art history, when nudes apparently were lounging about the gardens at Monet's Giverny and American painters were flocking to the garden gates."
--Chicago Tribune

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Extras

exhibit information / cheekwood botanical garden

"The American Impressionists in the Garden"

March 13 – September 6, 2010
The American Impressionists in the Garden is a stunning exhibition exploring the tended and natural garden settings that inspired many artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  With forty paintings depicting European and American gardens and four bronze sculptures created by American artists for the garden, this exhibition also celebrates the botanical splendor at Cheekwood.  
 
Cheekwood is a 55-acre botanical garden and art museum located on the historic Cheek estate. Cheekwood exists to celebrate and preserve its landscape, buildings, and art and botanical collections, and, through these unique means provide an inspiring place for visitors to explore their connections with art, nature and the environment.  Cheekwood is located at 1200 Forrest Park Drive in Nashville, 8 miles southwest of downtown Nashville.  Open Tuesday – Saturday 9:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.   For further information call 615-356-8000 or visit www.cheekwood.org.

Artists whose works are included in the exhibit and catalog . . .

 John Leslie Breck
 Hugh Henry Breckenridge
 Daniel Putnam Brinley
 Matilda Browne 
 Gabrielle de Veaux Clements
 Henri Crenier 
 Charles Courtney Curran
 Maria Oakey Dewing
 William de Leftwich Dodge
 Gaines Ruger Donoho
 Frank Vincent DuMond
 Lydia Field Emmet
 Frederick Carl Frieseke
 Harriet Whitney Frishmuth
 Lillian Mathilde Genth
 Edmund Greacen 
 Lilian Westcott Hale
 Edward Wilbur Dean Hamilton
 Childe Hassam 
 George Hitchcock 
 Alfred Hutty 
 Ernest Lawson 
 Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low
 Will Hicock Low 
 Frederick W. MacMonnies
 Gari Melchers (Julius Garibaldi Melchers)
 Richard Emile Miller
 Edith Barretto Parsons
 Louis Ritman 
 Theodore Robinson
 John Singer Sargent
 William Posey Silva
 Otto Stark 
 Edmund Tarbell 
 Luther Emerson van Gorder
 Theodore  Van Soelen
 Robert Vonnoh 
 Catherine Wiley