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Pennsylvania Impressionism was anAmerican Impressionist movement of the first half of the 20th century that was centered in and aroundBucks County,Pennsylvania, particularly the town ofNew Hope. The movement is sometimes referred to as the "New Hope School" or the "Pennsylvania School" of landscape painting.
Landscape painterWilliam Langson Lathrop (1859–1938) moved to New Hope in 1898, where he founded a summer art school. The mill town was located along theDelaware River, about forty miles fromPhiladelphia and seventy miles fromManhattan. The area's rolling hills were spectacular, and the river, its tributaries, and theDelaware Canal were picturesque. The natural beauty attracted the artistEdward Redfield (1869–1965), who settled north of the town. Redfield painted nature in bold and vibrant colors, and was a pioneer of the realistic painting of winter in America.
Lathrop's thick layering distinguished him from his contemporaries, and he amassed more honors and awards than any other artist in theNew Hope colony. His style is distinguished by its color, light, and usual time of day when painting. The third major artist to settle in the area wasDaniel Garber (1880–1958), who came to New Hope in 1907. Garber hated painting winter scenes and applied his paint lightly. He was an instructor at thePennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and popularized rain paintings.
As more artists came to the colony, the artists formed art groups with different ideas. The two main groups were theImpressionists and theModernists. The Pennsylvania Impressionists, a key movement in American Impressionism, influenced major artists such as Walter Schofield (1867–1944),George Sotter (1879–1953) and Henry Snell (1858–1943).William Langson Lathrop purchased thePhillips Mill property to use as a venue to hold galleries and exhibitions. ModernistLloyd R. Ney submitted a painting of the New Hope canal. Lathrop threatened to reject the painting because the colors were too disturbing. Charles Ramsey, Lloyd Ney's good friend, was disturbed by this comment and formed the “New Group.” This group rebelled against the traditional impressionists, hosting its inaugural show the day before the Phillips Mill Exhibition on May 16, 1930.
Many years later, a flood of artists came to Pennsylvania because of Garber's influence. This group included artists such as Robert A. Darrah Miller (1905–1966), Peter Keenan (1896–1952), Charles Evans (1907–1992), Henry Baker (1900–1957), Richard Wedderspoon (1889–1976), Carl Lindborg (1903–1994),Frederick Harer (1879–1947), Faye Swengel Badura (1904–1991), Louis Stone (1902–1984), and Charles Ward (1900–1962). Other important modernist painters to later settle in the area after the initial arrivals were Josef Zenk (1904–2000),Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt (1878–1955), Swiss–born Joseph Meierhans (1890–1980), Clarence Carter (1904–2000), and Richard Peter Hoffman (1911–1997).
Finally, there were the “Last Ten." These ten women artists consisted ofFern Coppedge (1883–1951) andMary Elizabeth Price (1877–1965) from New Hope, as well asNancy Maybin Ferguson (1869–1967),Emma Fordyce MacRae (1887–1974),Eleanor Abrams (1885–1967),Constance Cochrane (1888–1962), andTheresa Bernstein (1890–2002). These women influenced many other women to join the Pennsylvania Impressionism movement.
Similar to the Frenchimpressionist movement, Pennsylvania Impressionist art was characterized by an interest in the quality of color, light, and the time of day. This group of artists usually painteden plein air (outdoors) to capture the moment. According to theJames A. Michener Art Museum’s senior curator Brian Peterson, “what most characterized Pennsylvania impressionism was not a single, unified style but rather the emergence of many mature, distinctive voices: Daniel Garber's luminous, poetic renditions of the Delaware River; Fern Coppedge's colorful village scenes;Robert Spencer's lyrical views of mills and tenements; John Folinsbee's moody, expressionistic snowscapes; and William L. Lathrop's deeply felt, evocative Bucks County vistas."
Art historian Thomas C. Folk defines the movement as theLate Pennsylvania School, those artists that "came to prominence in Bucks County after 1915 or after theArmory Show and thePanama–Pacific International Exposition." According to Folk, the three most notable artists in this group wereJohn Fulton Folinsbee,Walter Emerson Baum andGeorge Sotter.
One of the artists, Walter Emerson Baum, worked as a teacher and educator and through his founding of theBaum School of Art and theAllentown Art Museum, would serve to expand the influence of the movement out of Bucks County and intoLehigh County, specificallyAllentown and theLehigh Valley, where the movement continued to flourish into the 1940s and 1950s. Today, this group of artists is collectively known as theBaum Circle.
Pennsylvania Impressionist painters include:
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