This exhibition held great interest for me because I had recently purchased to sell, a folk art painting that depicts an early mountain logging camp and freight train. The narrative elements of my folk art painting are winsome. I was excited to view the Shelburne exhibition to determine if other railroad paintings contained the same fascination. The exhibition is on display in a single room at the Pizzagalli Center for Arts and Education at the Shelburne Museum, in Vermont. The paintings were hung in chronological order and it was interesting to see the advancement of the railroad through time and artistic inspiration. Some paintings displayed rural scenes, others, city scapes and rail yards. Eastern railroads and Western railroads. Interior scenes and exterior. Naturalist paintings and modern geometric designs. It was a fine mix and I must say, I enjoyed every painting and the stories they conveyed. The exhibition will continue at Shelburne until October 20, when it will move to the Dixon Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee and from there, to the Jocelyn Gallery in Omaha, Nebraska. A beautiful hard cover catalog is available.
Church at the Crossroads, 1936 by Charles T. Bowling
Factory Yard, 1938 by Charles Goeller
From Brooklyn Heights, 1925 by George Ault
Lanterns, 1916 by William Charles Libby
Dixie Cups, 1936-37, by Henry Gottlich
Swamp Spur, 1944 by Carl Frederich Gaertner
New Mexico, 1926 by Thomas Hart Benton
Tenant’s House and Tracks, 1930’s by Harry Leith Ross
Steel Valley Pittsburgh, 1925 by Otto Kuhler
Work Train at Wagonmound,by Otto Kuhler