BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Richmond -- Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC) -- Exhibit: What Remains and Love of Beauty

VA -- Richmond -- Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC) -- Exhibit: What Remains and Love of Beauty:

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Description of Pictures: What Remains of Edward Beyer's Blue Ridge: Landscapes of Salem and Liberty
October 15, 2012-December 30, 2013
In the 1850s, German artist Edward Beyer traveled throughout western Virginia and painted landscapes of many of the small towns in the Blue Ridge Mountains. These paintings are remarkable not only for their beauty but also their attention to detail. This exhibition uses Beyer’s landscapes as documents to compare the bustling communities of the middle nineteenth century with the Blue Ridge towns today.

For the Love of Beauty: The Collections of Lora and Claiborne Robins
March 12, 2012–February 11, 2013
This exhibition presents nineteenth-century landscape paintings, decorative arts, and colonial furniture collected by philanthropists Lora Robins (1912–2010) and her husband, E. Claiborne Robins (1910–1995). Structural and decorative elements—such as volute, splat, finial, scrolled acanthus leaves, and gadrooning—are explored and compared. All items in the exhibition were displayed in their home, Clear View, located in Richmond, Virginia. The Robins bequeathed the house and its contents to the VHS. This is the first time that this personal collection has been on public view.

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[1] VHSREM_130209_001.JPG	[2] VHSREM_130209_014.JPG	[3] VHSREM_130209_019.JPG	[4] VHSREM_130209_027.JPG
[5] VHSREM_130209_032.JPG	[6] VHSREM_130209_039.JPG	[7] VHSREM_130209_051.JPG	[8] VHSREM_130209_062.JPG
[9] VHSREM_130209_064.JPG	[10] VHSREM_130209_070.JPG	[11] VHSREM_130209_077.JPG	[12] VHSREM_130209_084.JPG
[13] VHSREM_130209_090.JPG	[14] VHSREM_130209_100.JPG	[15] VHSREM_130209_105.JPG	[16] VHSREM_130209_112.JPG
[17] VHSREM_130209_117.JPG	[18] VHSREM_130209_124.JPG	[19] VHSREM_130209_129.JPG	[20] VHSREM_130209_136.JPG
[21] VHSREM_130209_141.JPG	[22] VHSREM_130209_147.JPG	[23] VHSREM_130209_152.JPG	[24] VHSREM_130209_158.JPG
[25] VHSREM_130209_163.JPG	[26] VHSREM_130209_168.JPG	[27] VHSREM_130209_174.JPG	[28] VHSREM_130209_181.JPG
[29] VHSREM_130209_186.JPG	[30] VHSREM_130209_193.JPG	[31] VHSREM_130209_200.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. VHSREM_130209_001.JPG: The Peaks of Otter and the Town of Liberty: The town of Liberty (now Bedford) was established in 1782. Though it had been the county seat for more than seventy years, Liberty was just beginning to grow into a commercial center when Beyer arrived in 1855. The introduction of modern transportation in the 1850s, represented by the passenger and freight trains in the painting, led not only to the expansion of agricultural production in the county but also the growth of small industry. As a painter, Beyer was inspired by the surroundings as well as the town of Liberty, and he noted in the Description of the Album of Virginia that the "outlook from the Peaks of Otter surpasses anything I have seen before."
2. VHSREM_130209_027.JPG: What Remains of Edward Beyer's Blue Ridge: In 1848, the painter Edward Beyer and his wife left their native Germany, which was on the verge of political upheaval, and sailed for America. They traveled extensively from New York to Ohio. Along the way, he exhibited his work and continued to paint. Beyer visited Virginia based on the recommendation that its climate and natural springs might benefit his ailing wife. The mountain towns of Virginia would prove to be Beyer's greatest inspiration. Beyer's landscapes offer a vivid and accurate image of life in the rural communities of Virginia. His paintings capture individual structures with such accuracy that one can identify those that still survive. Some of these are immediately recognizable, but others are hidden under later additions. Although these mountain towns have undergone considerable change since he painted them more than 150 years ago, much remains of Edward Beyer's Blue Ridge -- if you look for it.
3. VHSREM_130209_032.JPG: Churches, Blacksmith Shop and College View of Salem Virginia in 1855: When Edward Beyer came to Salem, he found a flourishing little valley town. A half century of hosting travelers along the Great Wagon Road, the main route along the American backcountry from Pennsylvania to Georgia, had boosted Salem's stature and increased its wealth, and its citizens were eager to display the town's new prominence. A new college had recently been chartered, and the railroad now ran through town. Signs of growing wealth, such as new churches and stately homes, were a point of pride for the local gentry. Twenty of these men, including Col. HH Chapman, commissioned Beyer to paint a landscape of their town, which was hung prominently in the lobby of a local hotel as a reflection of that pride.
4. VHSREM_130209_090.JPG: The Old Mill Albert Bierstadt, 1858 Later renowned for large canvases that record spectacular scenery of the American West, Bierstadt first studied painting in Germany and Rome, which he toured in 1856 with fellow painters Worthington Whittredge and Sanford Gifford. In New Bedford, Massachusetts, Bierstadt worked drawings he had made in Europe into finished oil paintings. He had sketched The Old Mill in Westphalia (Germany).
5. VHSREM_130209_112.JPG: For the Love of Beauty: The Collections of Lora and Claiborne Robins: Lora and Claiborne Robins loved American art. They collected paintings by "Hudson River School" artists and colonial American furniture, as well as decorative objects of a wide variety. The art, furniture, and objects presented here were displayed in their Richmond home, Clear View. The house and its extensive collection were generously bequeathed to the Virginia Historical Society in 2010. "I just love beautiful things," Lora Robins would often say. Like so many of their contemporaries in the state, the Robinses developed a home in emulation of Virginia's great architectural heritage from the colonial era. Few did the job so well. Richmonders know that Lora Robins's love of beauty extended as well to flowers and to the natural world in general. She committed great interest and energy to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, gave her name to the Lora Robins Gallery of Design from the Nature at the University of Richmond, and helped establish the sculpture garden at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
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