Gratz Gallery in Doylestown opens a summer exhibition, “My Hometown: Celebrating in Bucks County,” May 6, with a selection of regional landscapes and town scenes by the one Pennsylvania Impressionist who called Bucks County his home and birthplace, Walter Emerson Baum.
Baum, known and beloved for his seasonal landscapes and town scenes, was the only native Bucks County member of the Pennsylvania Impressionist, New Hope School circle of painters. He was born in Sellersville in 1884. Baum spent his entire life in Sellersville, drawing inspiration from the surrounding, regional landscape, bucolic and ever-changing in its beauty in all four seasons.
Widely celebrated for his Impressionist snow scenes in the tradition of Edward Redfield and Walter Schofield, his style was bold and painterly. Baum captured the now largely developed Pennsylvania countryside and farmland. He also depicted the charm of Main Street America as it once was. He was an extremely prolific painter and today his works are among the most sought-after paintings in the New Hope Impressionist School.
Baum attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and as a teacher and a founder of the Allentown Art Museum and the Baum School of Art, Baum was a major force in the Lehigh Valley art world. Today his paintings hang in many major museums, including the Michener Art Museum, PAFA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Allentown Art Museum and Woodmere Art Museum. Walter Emerson Baum died, where he was born, in 1956.
“My Hometown” is a small exhibition of large works, painted in all seasons, that combines a selection of country landscapes and city scenes.
Gratz Gallery & Conservation Studio, located at 5230 Silo Hill Road, specializes in 19th and 20th century American paintings, with a focus on artists from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the New Hope School of Impressionism. The gallery offers a wide selection of fine art from Impressionism to modern art.
The gallery is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. Sundays, and by appointment. For information, visit online.
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