On September 11, 1777, British forces led by William Howe defeated the Continental Army led by George Washington at the Battle of Brandywine at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The retreat of American troops was led in part by the Marquis de Lafayette, a 20-year-old French nobleman who had come to America to serve in the Revolution. Lafayette was wounded in the battle and is said to have rested under a sycamore tree on the farm of Gideon Gilpin, a tree that may have been over 50 years old at the time.
Today, the “Lafayette Sycamore” stands proudly at 109 feet tall and 23 feet around next to the Gideon Gilpin House in Chadds Ford. British soldiers had plundered Gilpin’s property and he had to open a tavern there to support his family. The tree has attracted artists for generations.
When he was a boy, Tim Barr was captivated by N. C. Wyeth’s 1920 painting, Buttonwood Farm. (Fine-grained sycamore wood was often used to make buttons.) Later, his son Andrew Wyeth painted the same subject. When Barr eventually saw the tree, intrigued by its shape, he said, “I’ve got to do this tree.” And that he did. Many times—each time learning something more about the tree and each time perfecting his painting technique a little more. “I was always climbing huge trees as a kid,” Barr says. “The monumental size of the creature is jaw dropping and awe inspiring when you stand below its overstory. Paintings can only attempt at capturing that aspect of the tree. I’ll keep trying.”
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Guardians of the Temple – Simon Dinnerstein reflects on The Fulbright Triptych 50 years later.
The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University exhibits Simon Dinnerstein's The Fulbright Triptych haunts the visual lexicon of 20th century American representational art. Fifty years have passed since Dinnerstein completed the painting in 1974.
A City Perspective
Leslie Gaduzo has always been interIested in art. Since childhood, he has been drawing constantly, from single point perspective drawings at age 10 to complex architectural drawings.
Living Legacy
The Butler Institue hosts Allied Artists of America's 110th Annual Juried Exhibition.
Elegant yet Approachable
The second edition of the RTIA Show presents even more art to explore and expanded special programming.
Figuratively Speaking
New York has always been an epicenter of artists on the edge of excellence, pushing the envelope and finding their voices.
JAMES AYERS: The Importance of Play
Like many artists, James Ayers' work took a turn during the Covid-19 pandemic. Seeing the enjoyment his kids took from playing with paint in his studio and exploring their creativity inspired him.
GINA MINICHINO: Playing with Food
Gina Minichino started her journey in visual arts because of Charles Schulz. \"He was my earliest influence for drawing and the reason I wanted to be a cartoonist,\" she says.
Island Light
The Cuttyhunk Island Artists' Residency is held in a sprawling, 100-year-old house on an island off the southern coast of Massachusetts.
Solitary Forms
Hogan Brown has been working with Arcadia Contemporary for two and half years and is excited to be featured in his first solo show at the gallery. He doesn't take for granted the many talented figurative painters Arcadia represents and is thrilled to be among them.
Living the Dream
Counterintuitively, David Gluck was a painter before taking up tattooing little more than a decade ago. While skin is a completely different substrate and ink a far cry from oil paint, the skills must be transferrable to some degree because there is a wait-time of nine months to get an appointment with him.