Fenimore Art Museum - Fine Art

Fine Art

The American paintings in the Fenimore Art Museum’s collection were largely assembled by Stephen Carlton Clark between 1938 and 1960. Clark purchased 18th- and 19th-century landscapes, genre paintings, and portraits that represented the history of New York State, but because of the artists’ stature, reflect early American culture in general. Artists represented in the Fenimore Art Museum's Fine Art collection include William Sidney Mount, Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Benjamin West, Gilbert Stuart, and Eastman Johnson.

The museum also features a collection of "life masks" by John Henri Isaac Browere that were cast from the faces of famous Americans. The masks include Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, DeWitt Clinton, and Dolley Madison.

The photography collection includes over 120,000 examples with holdings of both professional and amateur photographers from the 19th century.

The museum is currently exhibiting John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Praise of Women through December 31, 2010. This exhibit features about 25 paintings of American women, including two preparatory sketches for Sargent's infamous Portrait of Madame X. The exhibit is divided into three thematic sections - Women of Fashion, Women of Mystery and Women of Substance.