Landscapes of Retrospection: The Magoon Collection of British Drawings and Prints, 1739-1854

January 25 – March 25, 2001

The works in the Magoon Collection—part of the permanent holdings of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College—illustrate the tremendous social and economic transformation of Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The collection consists of prints, drawings, and watercolors by leading artists and architects, and includes landscapes, architectural and garden studies, images of historic buildings, and scenes of everyday life in London and the countryside. Landscapes of Retrospection invited us to reflect on the role of landscape representation, antiquarianism, and topographical description as Britain envisioned itself simultaneously as a country with a rich history and as a modern, imperial nation-state.

Curator: Organized by Vassar College's Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Smart Museum presentation was coordinated by Kimerly Rorschach, Smart Museum Dana Feitler Director.

Program support was provided by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Nuveen Instruments, the Humanities Visiting Committee Fund of the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Regents Park/University of Chicago Fine Arts Partnership, and the University of Chicago's Departments of English Language and Literature and Art History.

Presented in the Richard and Mary L. Gray Special Exhibition Gallery.

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