Index of American Watercolor Exhibitions, 1900-1945

Index of Watercolor Exhibitions, 1900-1945 is a valuable and timely addition to the growing lists of title on the watercolor medium. Overlooked and occasionally scorned in the past, American watercolor painting and its history is beginning to win some of the recognition it so richly deserves. The first part of the Index catalogues year-by-year the exhibits and exhibitors at the annual salons of the most important American watercolor societies and museums sponsoring watercolor exhibitions. The second part is an alphabetical directory of artist-exhibitors. Filling a large and important gap in studies of American watercolor history, the Index will be of greatest value to museum professionals, scholars, librarians, art collectors, and dealers and those in related fields. These exhibition lists reflect a golden age when very juried (or invitational) exhibitions of watercolor paintings, often of hundreds of works, enjoyed a popularity across America. Among the regular exhibitors at such salons were Winslow Homer, John Marin, Edward Hopper, and Charles Burchfield. Such mega-exhibitions are, of course, no longer held and in fact began a rapid decline following the end of the Second World War. By then there were just too many artists submitting too many works to overwhelmed and overworked juries and hanging committees. These exhibitions moreover, reveal a pre-media day and age when exclusive professional societies and their annual salons often determined the course of an artist's career. Until very recently this flowering of watercolor paintings has remained virtually forgotten. This Index, therefore, takes a significant step toward the documentation and reevaluation of this age.