The Chrysler Museum of Art’s Collection of American Painting & Sculpture
Ranging from the colonial portraiture of John Singleton Copley to the Hudson River
School canvases of Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt, spanning the genre paintings of
Winslow Homer to the extraordinary Impressionist work of Frederick Childe Hassam,
the Chrysler’s collection of American painting and sculpture is one of its greatest assets.
The collection began to take shape in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s with a small but choice
group of purchases made by the Chrysler’s forerunner, the Norfolk Museum of Arts and
Sciences. One of the Museum’s first acquisitions remains one of the most impressive
today: Helen M. Turner’s luminous Lillies, Lanterns and Sunshine.
The collection grew significantly with three major gifts made in the 1970s and 1980s.
The most important of these, from Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., began with his arrival in
Norfolk in 1971 and ultimately brought hundreds of iconic American images into the
collection. Between 1974 and 1982, Mr. Chrysler’s older sister Bernice and her husband
Colonel Edgar William Garbisch further expanded the Museum’s holdings by donating
their nationally acclaimed collection of 19th-century American folk art. In 1983 the
Museum secured 70 marble sculptures from the James H. Ricau collection, the last
significant group of 19th-century American sculpture then in private hands.
The entire history of American art is well represented, from Benjamin West’s 1775
Neoclassical portrait Mary, Wife of Henry Thompson of Kirby Hall, as Rachel at the
Well, to 19th century masterpieces by Asher Durand. There’s work from the early 20th
Century painters who were known as The Eight, including William Glackens and George
Bellows, and later works by such acclaimed masters as Edward Hopper, Thomas Hart
Benton and Reginald Marsh.
American artists are well-represented in our Modern Art and Contemporary Art
collections, which include works by artists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Roy
Lichenstein and James Rosenquist.
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