St. Louis and the Art of the Frontier - Exhibition Guide

• Painters such as Chester Harding, George Caleb Bingham, Karl Bodmer, George Catlin, Sarah Peale, Carl Wimar, John Casper Wild, Henry Lewis, Peter Rindishbacher, Charles Deas, Alfred Jacob Miller, and William Hincey are evoked as influencing and being influenced by the artistic milieu of early St. Louis in this exhibition. (Mercantile Library Main Picture Gallery, Level 1)

• Printmakers, who engraved, lithographed and disseminated the designs of Rindisbacher, Bodmer, Catlin, James Otto Lewis, and Miller among many others helped give this St. Louis school a wider audience internationally. (Bates Gallery, Wings one and two, and Main Picture Gallery, Level 1)

• The early twentieth century carried on the tradition of this western 'school' in the art of Frederick Oakes Sylvester, Charles M. Russell, Oscar Berninghaus, Joe Jones and many others down to the present day, where the spell of the West has never left the city, as evidenced in such modern monuments as the Jefferson Memorial. (Main Picture Gallery, Level 1)

• The exhibition juxtaposes scores of paintings and prints from across the city's and the nation's cultural institutions with sculpture, such as the earliest bust or allegorical statues presented west of the Mississippi, as that of Harriet Hosmer, as well as with the photography of Alexander Gardner and Emil Boehl, and with great books and manuscripts housed in the collections of the Mercantile Library, a collecting resource in its earliest and present days for artists and art - the works of Remington, Audubon, Russell, Catlin and Prince Maximilian of Weid most notable. (Mercantile Library Atrium and Sculpture Gallery, Level 2)

• The exhibition also presents two remarkable holdings of St. Louis art for the first time in such a setting, that of the Campbell House Museum - the portraits of the family of the great St. Louis fur trader and Rocky Mountain man, Robert Campbell, as well as the paintings of the Woodcock Museum, at the Mercantile Library, a distinguished collection formed by Lyle and Aileen Woodcock along similar themes for presenting St. Louis as a major catalyst to the creation of Western American art. (Mercantile Library south Picture Gallery, Level 1, and Main Picture Gallery Level 1)

St. Louis Mercantile Library
At the University of Missouri-St. Louis
Thomas Jefferson Library Building
One University Boulevard
St. Louis, Missouri 63121-4499
(314) 516-7240

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