19th Century Louisiana Painters and Paintings

". . . From this time on, the influence of the photograph on painting becomes a factor, particularly in some portraiture . . . Toward the end of the 19th century, photography, painting, and printmaking formed a more or less sanctimonious alliance, from which art has never quite escaped."
-Martin Wiesendanger, from the Foreword

Nineteenth century Louisiana paintings can be described as story-telling documentaries. Literal subjectivism was popular after the steam age and its cancellation of the Diderot school of thought. The 1830s produced an industrialized reality mixed with exuberant romanticism and layered with the nuances of the Gothic novel. The romantic landscapes from George D. Coulon, naval depictions from Antonio Jacobson, and lively sketches from Robert Bledsoe Mayfield testify to the contrasting beauty of nineteenth century Louisiana.

This catalogue features a selection from the fifteen hundred paintings, prints, watercolors, daguerreotypes, and miniatures extracted from the W. E. Groves Collection and the I. M. Cline Library, including 155 portraits and 217 landscapes pertaining to Louisiana. The foreword from Martin Wiesendanger, acknowledgments from Martin and Margaret Wiesendanger, and notes on collecting from W. E. Groves himself salute Groves's dedication and drive to preserve a piece of Louisiana history. After Groves's death, the bulk of the collection was distributed between the Louisiana State Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and other local art collections.