29 June - 3 November 2013

Mint Museum Randolph

Over a remarkably short career due to his untimely death at age thirty, Richard Caton Woodville (1825-1855) created a small but important body of work that explored major issues dominating American society in the years leading up to the Civil War. Themes touched on by Woodville’s paintings include: the politics of manifest destiny as played out in the Mexican War; the transformative effects of new technologies, including the railroad and the telegraph; and the rise of an ambitious class of visionary citizens intent on putting the ideals of democracy into practice.

New Eyes on America features approximately four dozen paintings and works on paper by Woodville and his contemporaries, offering a fascinating window onto this dynamic, transformative moment in our country’s history as it sought to define itself on the world’s stage. Organized by the Walters Art Museum in Woodville’s hometown of Baltimore, this is the first exhibition of the artist’s work in forty-five years. Mint Museum Randolph will be the only other venue for this showcase. 

Online Resources on Woodville's Life and Work 

• Exhibition site from The Walters Art Museum 
• Research article on Woodville's work Old '76 and Young '48 from the University of Virginia
• Teacher's Guide to the exhibition 
• Book review of Wolff's Richard Caton Woodville: American Painter, Artful Dodger from Princeton University Press
• Lesson featuring Woodville in the context of the expansion of democracy during the Jacksonian era from the National Humanities Center's America in Class 
• 1867 New York Daily Tribune article on Woodville in the "Fine Arts" section from the Library of Congress (Increase size to 100% or more for easier reading after opening link)
• "Art, Cheap and Good," The Art Union in England and the United States, 1840-60  from the online journal 19th Century Art Worldwide
• Article on the Walters exhibition from The Washington Post 

Selected Print Resources Available in The Mint Museum Library 

• Johns, Elizabeth. American Genre Painting: the Politics of Everyday Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991.
• Mann, Maybelle. The American Art-Union. Jupiter, FL: ALM Associates, 1987. 
• New Eyes on America: the Genius of Richard Caton Woodville. Baltimore: Walters Art Museum, 2012. 
• Richard Caton Woodville: an early American genre painter. Washington: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1967. 

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Created by Nicole Jacobson, volunteer for The Mint Museum Library