I found it fascinating that Bogdanovich only shot one side of the street - then (and now), there was/is a beautiful town hall with a lovely green lawn - not quite the tumbleweed-rolling-through-town image of the movie:
guess who's driving in Texas!
My first museum stop was the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. On top of a wonderful collection of Remington sculptures and paintings (I think he was a very good painter, but he was an excellent sculptor), there is an excellent collection of American Artists, with an emphasis on Art-of-the-West
George Caleb Bingham (a landscape of Pike's Peak [no boat-on-the-river stuff])
Frederic Edwin Church
Thomas Cole (2)
Jasper Cropsey
Sanford Robinson Gifford (2)
Childe Hassam
Martin Johnson Heade (2)
Winslow Homer
George Inness (1875 - early in his career)
David Johnson
Robert S. Duncanson
Fitz Henry Lane (Boston Harbor, 1856)
Alfred Jacob Miller
Thomas Moran
William Trost Richards
Worthington Whittredge
and a sculpture by Daniel Chester French - "Benediction", 1922
The Heade masterpiece is "Thunder Storm on Narragansett Bay", 1868
but the painting that always takes my breath away is Moran's "Cliffs of Green River", 1874
Wait - what do you mean "always takes your breath away" - you've never been to Fort Worth before!
It turns out that luckily/blessedly Thomas Moran painted a number of versions of the Cliffs of Green River. Other versions I have seen are:
from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. - "Green River Cliffs, Wyoming", 1881
from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR - "Green River, Wyoming", 1878
from the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO - "Sunset, Green River Butte", 1916
also from the Denver Art Museum - "Sunset Cloud, Green River, Wyoming", 1917
and, not to spoil the surprise/future, from the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX - "An Indian Paradise (Green River, Wyoming)", 1911
from the Stark Museum of American Art, Orange, TX - "The Mirage", 1879
versions I have not seen include:
"Cliffs of the Upper Colorado River, Wyoming Territory" - 1882 (Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC)
"Castle Rock, Green River, Wyoming" - 1915 (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO)
"Cliffs of Green River, Wyoming" - 1909-1910 (The White House, Washington, DC)
"The Cliffs of Green River" - 1887 (The Anschutz Collection, Denver, CO)
details of his Amon Carter painting:
Wow - just wait until I group together his Venice pictures!
next door (in Fort Worth) is the Kimball Art Museum - their 2 Monets are fine, but their JMW Turner ("Glaucus and Scylia", 1841) was not on display. Oh well, off to Dallas!
At the Dallas Museum of Art I was able to meet with their Director, Maxwell L. Anderson, and show him my "Where's the Art?" app!! (he liked it). As for their collection - it is wonderful!
It, of course, has Frederic Edwin Church's "The Icebergs", 1861
I highly recommend the 2002 book The Voyage of the Icebergs: Frederic Church's Arctic Masterpiece, available on Amazon and in libraries everywhere:
two other beauties in Dallas include "Time and Tide", c. 1873 by Alfred Thompson Bricher
and "Water Lilies", 1908 by Claude Monet
and I can't leave Dallas without sharing just a detail of The Icebergs:
then down the (long) road to Austin - they are doing construction on 35, so it is slow-going, even at 2 PM in the afternoon. The Blanton Museum of Art (at the University of Texas [Hook 'em, Horns!] has a nice modest collect, although they certainly have the space to display more ["everything is bigger in Texas"]. They have works by Thomas Hill, Worthington Whittredge, and one by Albert Bierstadt:
"Sioux Village near Fort Laramie", 1859
and a fun way to end the day!
Music today:
of course I have to start the day with the Pat Metheny Group - As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls
then
O Positive - Only Breathing/Cloud Factory
O Positive - ToyBoatToyBoatToyBoat
and then I forget ...
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