Neighboring Visions: Westchester Artists Then and Now

A region can inspire an endless constellation of artistic visions and interpretations. In Neighboring Visions: Westchester Artists Then and Now, the Hudson River Museum pairs historical landscape and figurative paintings on loan from the Bronxville Historical Conservancy with contemporary works created by Westchester-based artists. Gathered together, these works testify to the power of place, revealing how artists from across time have translated the rich textures of their locales into vividly rendered paintings, photographs, films, and textiles.

With its proximity to both bucolic countryside and New York City, Westchester has long enabled its residents to make art and access a flourishing art market. During the late nineteenth century, entrepreneur William Van Duzer Lawrence recognized the aesthetic and commercial appeal of the area and began developing a notable artists colony in his neighborhood of Lawrence Park, Bronxville. Lawrence Park was particularly attractive to landscape artists, who could document the natural world as it metamorphosed across the four seasons. Often painting outdoors (en plein air), artists including George Henry Smillie and Walter Clark detailed meadows flush with the first blooms of spring, while paintings by Ann and Bruce Crane depicted homes blanketed in luminous snow. Carefully collected by the Bronxville Historical Conservancy, these works demonstrate Westchester’s long-lasting contributions to the American art scene at large.

Neighboring Visions juxtaposes these historical paintings with contemporary works likewise inspired by the region’s verdant forests, crystalline waterways, and pastoral idylls. From Moshgan Rezania’s and Julianne Farella’s abstracted meditations on the solitude of a winter’s day to Susan P. Cooper’s cinematic exploration of a time traveler wandering through the woods, these contemporary works continue the tradition of exploring the relationship between Westchester County’s inhabitants and the natural world.

The exhibition also considers how artists have traveled abroad and returned to Westchester equipped with new aesthetic strategies and techniques. French Impressionism looms large, as artists from Lawrence Park’s Will Hicok Low to current New Rochelle artist Alvin Clayton translate the genre’s emphasis on visible brushwork and bright colors into luscious garden scenes. Placed beside historical artist Charles Louis Hinton’s allegorical tableau and Amber Mustafic’s recent portrait inspired by Albanian folklore, these works cohere around the invocation of myth in order to tell otherworldly stories inspired by nature.

Spanning a century yet grounded by the coordinates of Westchester County, Neighboring Visions confirms art’s ever-evolving capacity to provide new ways of looking at and telling stories about the landscapes that surround us.

This exhibition is supported by the Bronxville Historical Conservancy.

Additional support has been provided by Sarah Lawrence College and the Mellon Foundation.

Exhibitions are made possible by assistance provided by the County of Westchester.

Neighboring Visions: Westchester Artists Then and Now is curated by Karintha Lowe, HRM’s Mellon Public Humanities Fellow, with curatorial assistance provided by Sarah Lawrence College student-interns Tatiana Mezitis, Rachel Pearson, Frank Spillane, and Natalie Taylor.

With special thanks to Jayne Warman, Bronxville Historical Conservancy Director; Marilynn Wood Hill and Robert Riggs, Conservancy Lifetime Co-Chairs; and Lorraine Shanley, Hudson River Museum Trustee.

Featured Artists

Walter Clark • Alvin Clayton • Susan P. Cooper • Ann Brainerd Crane • Bruce Crane • Francine Hsu Davis • Julianne Farella • Shelley Haven • Alan Haywood • Will Hicok Low • Charles Louis Hinton • Jamie Kay MacKenzie • Amber Mustafic • Milne Ramsey • Moshgan Rezania • Susan Richman • William Thomas Smedley • George Henry Smillie