Pennsylvania's art has always reflected the history of the Commonwealth and the nation. Celebrating the state's religious and political ideals, beauty, economic wealth, and progress, Pennsylvania artists have also protested injustice, criticized intolerance, called attention to personal costs of industrial growth, and in other ways reflected American values and visions.
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1735 |
Gustavus Hesselius paints Native Americans Lapowinsa and Tishcohan. |
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1755 - 1760 |
John Valentine Haidt - "The First Fruits," painted in Bethlehem showing Moravian converts throughout the world. |
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1771 |
Benjamin West paints "William Penn's Treaty with the Indians." |
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1786 |
Charles Willson Peale founds his Museum in Independence Hall. The year before he painted the last portrait of Benjamin Franklin, the first where he wore glasses. |
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1805 |
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, oldest art school and continuously functioning museum in America, founded. |
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1810 - 1840 |
John James Audubon paints sketches of birds. |
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1820 - 1849 |
Edward Hicks paints some sixty "Peaceable Kingdoms." |
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1830 - 1839 |
George Catlin executes his famous drawings of Native Americans on the Great Plains. |
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1839 |
Robert Cornelius earliest known photographer in the western hemisphere (maker of daguerreotypes) |
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1851 |
Emmanuel Leutze paints "George Washington Crossing the Delaware." Heroic and historical paintings, along with landscapes, the most popular art |
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1855 |
George Inness paints "The Lackawanna Valley", the classic Pennsylvania landscape. |
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1860 - 1922 |
Mary Cassatt lives in Paris, and is regarded by the leading French Impressionists as an equal. Black artist Henry Ossawa Tanner joins her in 1891. |
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1867 - 1870 |
Peter Frederick Rothermel paints "Battle of Gettysburg." |
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1875 |
Thomas Eakins paints "The Gross Clinic." |
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1876 |
Centennial Exhibition in Fairmount Park. Current building used for Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts opened. Philadelphia Museum of Art begun in Centennial Hall, Fairmount Park. |
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1886 |
Eakins fired as drawing instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts |
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1890 - 1919 |
Arts and Crafts Movement. Henry Chapman Mercer revives Moravian pottery art, collects early Pennsylvania folk art. |
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1890 - 1895 |
William Rau completes stunning photographs of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. |
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1895 |
Opening of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. |
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1900 |
Early 1900s - Ashcan School, five of eight of whom are Pennsylvania artists, begins painting realistic scenes of working class and industrial life. |
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1906 |
Pennsylvania State Capitol dedicated. Houses murals by Violet Oakley, Willian Van Inghen, Edwin Austin Abbey, and tiles by Hugh Chapman Mercer. |
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1909 - 1928 |
Benjamin Franklin Parkway under construction. Rodin Museum completed 1926, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928. |
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1910 |
Formation of Associated Artists in Pittsburgh. |
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1910 - 1939 |
Aaron Siskind and Charles Sheeler participate in New Hope artists' colony; their work based on early Pennsylvania houses becomes source of modern abstract art. |
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1913 |
Armory Show in New York - introduces modern art (cubism, abstract, surrealist) to America. |
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1918 - 1946 |
Black artist Horace Pippin of West Chester recognized as one of America's leading painters. |
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1921 |
Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts exhibits major modern American Artists. |
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1925 |
Barnes Foundation founded, opened to select viewers in Upper Merion. |
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1930 - 1939 |
Depression-era murals executed throughout the state by artists funded by government programs. |
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1937 |
Pittsburgh industrialist and art collector Andrew Mellon donates several hundred old masters and American works of art to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. |
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1945 - 1960 |
Abstract Expressionism, with Pennsylvania represented by Franz Kline, flourishes in New York. |
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1960 - 1979 |
Pop art flourishes, best represented by Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol. |
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1984 |
Launching of the Philadelphia Mural Project which produces more than 2,300 murals executed by artists and community groups throughout the city by 2010. Other cities in Pennsylvania soon follow suit. |
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1994 |
Opening of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. |
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