- Art History, Landscape, American art/ Art of the United States, Landscape History, British art, 19th C. Landscape Painting, and 29 moreCountry House History, History of British landscape, American Country Houses, Thomas Cole, John Constable, Musicology, Architectural History, History of Museums, Garden History, Heraldry, Finland, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean Sibelius, Music, Iconography (Music), Material Culture, Atlantic World, Canadian Studies, Nineteenth-century Art, Canadian art, Canada, English Canada, Nineteenth Century Studies, Cultural Landscapes, Landscape Architecture, Transatlantic studies, Artists Houses, Artists Studios, and Hudson River Schooledit
- Wyeth Foundation Curator and Director, Andrew & Betsy Wyeth Study Center, Brandywine Museum of Art + Farnsworth Art Museum
www.williamlcoleman.comedit
Research Interests:
An initial consideration of Andrew Wyeth's legacy through the lens of ecocriticism and the changes in the twin ecosystems to which his uniquely place-based practice was devoted. Accompanies an exhibition at the Farnsworth and Brandywine... more
An initial consideration of Andrew Wyeth's legacy through the lens of ecocriticism and the changes in the twin ecosystems to which his uniquely place-based practice was devoted. Accompanies an exhibition at the Farnsworth and Brandywine museums in 2023-4
Research Interests:
An overview of archival evidence of Andrew Wyeth's complex relationship with abstraction in the visual arts, including his relationship with Edward Hopper, Ken Noland, and Franz Kline. Accompanies the exhibition of the same name at the... more
An overview of archival evidence of Andrew Wyeth's complex relationship with abstraction in the visual arts, including his relationship with Edward Hopper, Ken Noland, and Franz Kline. Accompanies the exhibition of the same name at the Brandywine and Farnsworth museums in 2023-4.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Accompanies exhibition of the same name at the New Bedford Whaling Museum
Research Interests:
Accompanying the exhibition of the same name at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site
Research Interests:
Precedes new edition of the 1861 book by Louis Legrand Noble, in conjunction with the 22-3 exhibition "Chasing Icebergs: Art and a Disappearing Landscape" at Olana State Historic Site.
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Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Critics and commentators from the period to the present day have proclaimed the landscape paintings of the Hudson River School America’s major contribution to global nineteenth-century art and named Thomas Cole the “father” of that group... more
Critics and commentators from the period to the present day have proclaimed the landscape paintings of the Hudson River School America’s major contribution to global nineteenth-century art and named Thomas Cole the “father” of that group for his intellectually ambitious canvases. However, the Hudson River School’s preoccupation with the domestic landscape has been overlooked. This chapter offers an alternate history of American landscape painting by placing Thomas Cole’s multifaceted engagement with country houses in the context of a national concern with domesticity in these years and in relation to the work of the “painter-architects” who followed Cole.
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Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Awarded the 2018 Landscape History Essay Prize, Society of Architectural Historians "Thomas Cole's paintings of the country house of the antebellum agriculturalist and geologist George William Featherstonhaugh have fallen into undeserved... more
Awarded the 2018 Landscape History Essay Prize, Society of Architectural Historians
"Thomas Cole's paintings of the country house of the antebellum agriculturalist and geologist George William Featherstonhaugh have fallen into undeserved obscurity. The mere fact that Cole made "house portraits" goes against received wisdom about his rejection of topographic view painting in favor of a rigorously intellectual and poetic art of landscape. Moreover, the reception history of the three surviving canvases in this series has been clouded by the political disputes period commentators had with the patron. Reexamining existing sources alongside new archival discoveries, William L. Coleman interprets the Featherston Park paintings as early evidence of Cole's abiding concern with the inhabited landscape across media."
"Thomas Cole's paintings of the country house of the antebellum agriculturalist and geologist George William Featherstonhaugh have fallen into undeserved obscurity. The mere fact that Cole made "house portraits" goes against received wisdom about his rejection of topographic view painting in favor of a rigorously intellectual and poetic art of landscape. Moreover, the reception history of the three surviving canvases in this series has been clouded by the political disputes period commentators had with the patron. Reexamining existing sources alongside new archival discoveries, William L. Coleman interprets the Featherston Park paintings as early evidence of Cole's abiding concern with the inhabited landscape across media."
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela and composer Jean Sibelius enjoyed a complex friendship across media in the final decade of the nineteenth century as members of a group of young artist-intellectuals that called itself “The Symposium.”... more
The painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela and composer Jean Sibelius enjoyed a complex friendship across media in the final decade of the nineteenth century as members of a group of young artist-intellectuals that called itself “The Symposium.” This article studies Gallen-Kallela’s images of Sibelius and of his work, centering on the idea of “natural music,” with which the composer was especially closely associated.