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What often gets called cobblestones on old Philadelphia streets are actually Belgian blocks. But no, the neat rectangles cut so they can fit tightly together did not come from Belgium. They came from nearby quarries, often from the New Hope area. <\/p>\n
Apart from the city\u2019s architecture, Bucks County<\/a>\u2019s stones have also shaped the Pennsylvania Impressionism movement that flourished in the first half of the 20th century. New Hope, with its location on the Pennsylvania-New Jersey border, right by the Delaware River, was home to several artists who could afford to buy homes in the area, commute easily to Philadelphia to teach in art schools like the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and easily get to New York for shows and other networking opportunities. <\/p>\n \u201cThe land was pretty cheap at the time, and artists could move into an old industrial mill or buy a property for not a lot of money. They could also escape urban life and get out into the country. It was just a really beautiful landscape, so people wanted to live in that area,\u201d said Laura Igoe, chief curator at Doylestown\u2019s Michener Museum and curator of the museum\u2019s ongoing \u201cAbstractions of Nature: Quarries and Industry in Pennsylvania Impressionism\u201d show.<\/p>\n The artists Edward Redfield and William Lathrop, Igoe said, were the first artists to settle in the area around 1900. Their works are a part of the show. Daniel Garber, who studied and taught at PAFA, soon followed them into the area and became one of the foremost artists living in New Hope. Then his students started moving to the area. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was kind of like this self-perpetuating colony in a way,\u201d said Igoe, \u201cThere was a very active artistic community there at the time, and also a lot of quarries.\u201d<\/p>\n Pennsylvania Impressionism by way of Europe<\/p>\n At the time, there was a new interest in abstraction and Postimpressionism coming from Europe. Cezanne, particularly, was a big influence on some of the New Hope artists who often traveled to Europe and painted in the style of Impressionists like Monet. The Philadelphia art collector Albert Barnes even collected Cezanne paintings where the artist paints abandoned quarries, including Bib\u00e9mus Quarry (Carri\u00e8re de Bib\u00e9mus) (1895). <\/p>\n Like most Impressionists, the New Hope artists painted landscapes en plein air \u2014 outdoors, amid nature, directly drawing from subject matter. Naturally, the quarries that were a part of the landscape made it into the paintings and now form the focus of the exhibition.<\/p>\n \u201cBut while in Europe Impressionism was a much more avant-garde style, it became kind of the style of the academies in the United States,\u201d said Igoe, \u201cso this was what was taught at places like PAFA.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThey emphasized capturing effects of light and atmosphere,\u201d said Igoe, \u201creally quick brushwork, quick application of paint.\u201d Many of the artists, she said, were painting landscapes early in the morning or in the evening, painting sunrises and sunsets. \u201cThere\u2019s frequently this shimmering sense of light in a lot of these Pennsylvania Impressionist paintings,\u201d she said, \u201cIt is this really beautiful reflection of light off the stone that they\u2019re trying to capture.\u201d<\/p>\n Igoe considers 1900 to the 1930s as the peak of Pennsylvania Impressionism, with the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco being a highlight. Many of the New Hope Impressionists exhibited their work in the show. <\/p>\n Redfield, notably, had a full room dedicated to his art; \u201cwhich was an honor that was bestowed upon the likes of John Singer Sargent and Childe Hassam,\u201d said Igoe. Many of the artists won medals at the show \u201cand it led to them being proclaimed by some critics as the most American school of painting at the time,\u201d said Igoe. <\/p>\n \u201cThey painted the landscape of the New Hope area, and they painted in this, what was considered at the time, bold \u2026 in this very masculine style. We might not think of Impressionism that way today, but it was considered a very national style for the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n The artists continued to exhibit under the name of the New Hope Group, and their work was collected by museums across the country. Several women artists were members of the group. Together, they founded the Phillips Mill Community Association in 1929, which remains active as an exhibition venue.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Michener Art Museum was really founded to preserve the legacy of those artists. Especially in Bucks County, those artists have always been well known. But Michener was founded so more people could learn about these artists and preserve their legacy and collect their work,\u201d Igoe said. <\/p>\n Why paint quarries?<\/p>\n The artists, Igoe said, weren\u2019t always painting exact reproductions of the nature around them, so they had the option of omitting the quarries from their art. \u201cBut they frequently chose to include these quarries,\u201d she said, \u201cand that led me to this exhibition where I wanted to look a little more closely at these paintings and think about why artists were so drawn to this subject.\u201d <\/p>\n Firstly, she thinks, the quarries added a drama to the landscape of New Hope that was attractive to the artists. Comparing quarries to the Grand Canyon, Garber said in an interview that they were \u201con a scale commensurate with the canvas,\u201d said Igoe.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you can include these dramatic rock faces, but it doesn\u2019t overpower the canvas in the way the Grand Canyon can. You can\u2019t get the Grand Canyon on a canvas, but you can get a quarry,\u201d said Igoe.<\/p>\n The way the light at different times of the day and year reflected off the stones also inspired the artists, as did the geometric forms of the rock face that often inspired the artists to play with abstraction. <\/p>\n \u201cThey were also interested in this human impact on the natural world, the way humans could excavate these rocks, from the landscape, I think was appealing to them,\u201d said Igoe.<\/p>\n Show highlights<\/p>\n