LOUISIANA STATE MUSEUM VISUAL ARTS COLLECTION
SUMMARY OF COLLECTIONS
The Visual Arts Collection of the Louisiana
State Museum is divided into three categories:
- paintings
(2000+ paintings and miniatures) Online
Guide to the Painting Collection
- works
of art on paper
(14,000 works consisting of both commercial prints and works
of fine art, including newspaper illustrations, original
sketches, silhouettes, watercolors and pastels, postcards
and posters.)
- photography
(43,000 items encompassing daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, vintage
albumen prints, salt paper print, hand colored or enhanced
photographs, tintypes, glass plate negatives, 16mm films
and twentieth century photography.
Portraits- The strength of the painting
collection is early Louisiana portraiture dating from the 1780s
until the 1890s. Portraiture dominated painting in Louisiana
since the Spanish Colonial Period with the documented arrival of
the painter Jose Salazar in 1782 from Mexico.
The museum’s major holdings of Salazar include the paintings
Portrait of Ignacios de Balderes, Seņora Ignacio
de Balderes and Child, and Bishop Luis
Ignacio Maria de Penalver y Cardenas.
The collection directly reflects the influx of
artists from the Northern states and Europe traveling to New
Orleans and southern Louisiana in search of portrait commissions
during the early nineteenth century. The museum has significant
holdings of portraits by:
- Matthew Harris Jouett
- Edmund Brewster
- Louis Antoine Collas
- Francois Fleischbein
- Henry Byrd
- L. Sotta
- William Rumpler
- Charles Colson
The museum has two of the four signed paintings
by the free man of color, Julian Hudson,
including his well-known self portrait. The Louisiana State
Museum is the largest repository of paintings by the premier
French portraitists working in Louisiana during the 1830s and
1840s, Jean Joseph Vaudechamp and Jacques
Amans.
The museum’s collection remains strong in
portraiture even after the Civil War and up to the twentieth
century, with paintings by:
- John Genin
- Paul Poincy
- Alexandre Alaux
- Andres Molinary
- George David Coulon
The Louisiana State Museum has the largest
collection of nineteenth century Louisiana portraiture.
Landscape and Genre- The museum has a
relatively small collection of landscape and genre paintings from
the turn of the century. Landscape and genre paintings in the
collection are represented by:
- William Buck
- Harold Rudolph
- Theodore Sidney Moise
- Victor Pierson
Marine- The museum has a splendid
selection of nineteenth century marine paintings by Louisiana
artists. The collection includes the important painting Tugboat
"Panther" Towing the Cotton Ships "Sea King,"
"Themis" and "Columbia" Up the River to New
Orleans, the product of a collaboration between the
artists James Evans and Edward Arnold.
Also the museum has significant holdings of sailing ships from
the 1850s by Edward Arnold, steamboats by August Norieri
and harbor scenes by Captain William Challoner.
The museum also has numerous paintings of ocean going vessels by Antoine
Jacobsen, who never visited Louisiana but painted many
of the ships which frequented the port of New Orleans.
Early and Mid Twentieth Century-In terms
of the early and mid-twentieth century, the collection has a
quality selection by Louisiana artists. Important works by Paul
Ninas, William Woodward, Clarence Millet, John McCrady, Caroline
Durieux and Wayman Adams have been
acquired by the museum.
Contemporary- The museum has recently
acquired paintings by contemporary Louisiana artists such as Christopher
Guarisco and Harvey Harris. This area
of collecting needs to be further developed.
Folk Art-The collection incorporates a
good selection of paintings by the nationally renowned
contemporary folk artists Sister Gertrude Morgan
and Clementine Hunter.
Miniatures- There are one hundred pieces
that make up the miniature collection. The collection consists of
representations of prominent early Louisianans by miniature
painters working in Louisiana, the South and Europe.
Online
Guide to the Painting Collection
Fine Art Prints and Watercolors- The
museum has good representation of fine art prints that relate to
Louisiana from the late nineteenth century to the mid twentieth
century. Among the highlights of the collection are the
lithographs by the free man of color Jules Lion
in the 1840s, and the etchings by Bror A. Wikstrom,
Morris Henry Hobbs and Knute Heldner.
Additionally the collection includes three antebellum estate
paintings by Adrien Persac from the 1850s,
nature morte watercolors by Achille Perelli
and George David Coulon, the watercolors and
prints of the 1940s artist Charles Reinike, and
the work of Newcomb College artist Sadie Irvine.
Newspaper Illustrations- The museum
continues to acquire illustrations that feature Louisiana topics
from nationally based newspapers such as Harper’s
Weekly and Frank Leslie’s.
These illustrations date from the 1850s to the early 1900s. The
illustrations frequently document a specific moment in the
history of Louisiana from a contemporary perspective. Also,
native customs and traditions including Mardi Gras are featured
in these illustrations.
Posters- The museum collects posters
from various festivals and events organized throughout Louisiana
largely from the twentieth century.
Postcards- The six thousand piece
postcard collection focuses on images of Louisiana and New
Orleans from the early to the late twentieth century. This
collection does have a large component relating to both World
Wars and Europe.
George Francois Mugnier- The mass
production and availability beginning in the 1880s of dry plate
glass negative allowed photographers the flexibility and
technology to leave the confines of the portrait studio. George
Francois Mugnier seized the opportunity and created a series of a
photographs of the people and sites of New Orleans and southern
Louisiana during the 1880s to 1920s. The museum has
Mugnier’s glass plate negatives and a selection of vintage
prints and stereograph cards.
Rowles Steoregraph Photographs- Grant
Rowles, an amateur photographer and collector, amassed an
impressive collection of 389 stereograph photographs acquired by
the museum. This collection of vintage albumen prints of
Louisiana date from mid nineteenth century to the early twentieth
century. Many of the well known photographers of the day
including Samuel T. Blessing, George
Francois Mugnier and Theodore Lillenthal
are well represented.
John N. Teunisson- As a commercial
photographer, John N. Teunisson documented New Orleans at the
turn of the century. Four hundred vintage gelatin silver prints
by this talented photographer comprise this collection.
Chamber of Commerce- Commissioned by the
Chamber of Commerce in 1917, the photographer Covert
created a pictorial record of many of the businesses in the
warehouse district of New Orleans. These two hundred workplace
photographs document the sales and office workers as well as the
culturally diverse laborers in the warehouses.
Louisiana Family Collections- The museum
has numerous collections of photographs that record several
generations of Louisiana families. The largest of these
collections are the Ogilvy, Levert,
Bush and Carroll families.
These collections consist of individual and group portrait
photographs in a variety of medias ranging from daguerreotypes,
ambrotypes, tintypes and albumen prints, many by Louisiana
photographers.
Robert Tebbs- The prominent New York
based architectural photographer, Robert Tebbs traveled to
Louisiana in 1926. In a series of two hundred prints, Tebbs
documented the existing and often decaying conditions of the
plantations homes in southern Louisiana. Many of the plantations
photographed such as Belle Grove, have not survived over time.
The museum has a selection of Tebbs’ vintage prints and
original negatives of Louisiana.
Frances Benjamin Johnston- A
collection of signed vintage prints of the famed female
photographer, this series represents her work in New Orleans and
south Louisiana during the 1930s and 1940s. The photographs are
of the French Quarter and Louisiana architecture.
Works Progress Administration- In 1939,
unidentified photographers working with the Works Progress
Administration (WPA) created a series of photographs of the
French Quarter for the Louisiana Division of the Historic
American Building Survey (HABS).
Theodore Fonville Winans- The Baton
Rouge photographer, Fonville Winans traveled the waterways and
documented the culture and people of Acadian Louisiana. The
Louisiana State Museum recently acquired from his estate a
significant collection of Fonville’s art, political and
portrait photographs, archival materials relating to his career
and his photographic equipment.
Joseph Woodson"Pops" Whitesell-
Born in Indiana, "Pops" Whitesell arrived in New
Orleans as a professional photographer shortly after the first
World War. Settling in the French Quarter, Whitesell photographed
the artists, writers and photographers who were attracted to the
historic area in the 1930s and 1940s..
Achille Simon- The commercial
photographer Achille Simon had a studio in New Orleans during the
early twentieth century. Largely a portrait photographer,
evidence suggests that Simon was hired by the New Orleans
Seaman’s Passport Bureau to take identification pictures of
seamen aboard the Muntropic and Munarden. The
museum has 23,000 of Simon’s glass plate negatives which
encompasses his entire career as a photographer as well as a
selection of vintage prints.
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