A Remarkable Art Museum…in Laurel Mississippi

Laurel Mississippi is not a big city.  The estimated current population is somewhere in the vicinity of 18,500 although Jones County has a population close to 70,000 residents.  In any case, cities or counties of this size are rarely homes to significant art museums.  Laurel is an exception to this rule!

The Lauren Rogers Museum of Art is located on Fifth Avenue, surrounded by early 20^th Century homes, and only a block from the center of town.  The museum opened in 1923.  It is a memorial to Lauren Eastman Rogers, the only grandson of two of Laurel’s founding families.  Lauren died from complications of appendicitis at the age of 23. 

His father, Wallace Brown Rogers and his maternal grandfather, Lauren Chase Eastman, created the Eastman Memorial Foundation.  Its intent was to “promote the public welfare by founding, endowing and maintaining a public library, museum, art gallery and educational institution.  The museum and library was erected in 1923, on the foundations of Lauren Roger’s house, which had not been completed at the time of his death.

This beautiful Georgian Revival structure, now almost 100 years old, has been enlarged over the years.  The original building not only served as art museum, but it also served as Laurel’s town library.  A new wing, with 5 new display galleries, was added in 1924.  Another addition was completed in 1983.

This beautiful lobby was originally part of the library.  With its quarter-sawn golden oak paneling and cork floors, it is a stunning space.  Craftsmen created detailed naturalistic motifs, including constellations, the earth, moon and sun in plaster on the ceiling.  Hand wrought iron gates, railings and hardware throughout the original building were created by a master blacksmith in Pennsylvania.

No longer the town’s general library, the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art Library is now a reference library containing more than 10,000 books specializing in art history and art reference with special emphasis on the Museum’s collections.  Library materials may only be used in the library.

I took this photo of Laurie, her sister Bonnie and Bonnie’s husband Bill, as they perused some of the materials on display in Museum’s Reading Room.  The original art gallery was housed in this room which is adjacent to the main lobby.  The room is filled with family memorabilia and portraits as well as furnishings from the home of Lauren’s mother, Nina Eastman Rogers.

When we entered the library we were greeted by volunteers and docents, one of which met with us in the Reading Room.  She did a nice job of providing us with the background and history of the founding family and of the museum.  FYI, the museum is free but of course, donations are welcome. 

Following our orientation, we began our tour of the various galleries.  I took a representative group of photos as we went along. 

The painting at the top of the photo is entitled “Autumn in New Hampshire”.  This oil on canvas painting was completed in 1857 by Albert Bierstadt (1830 – 1902) He began painting scenes in New England and upstate New York and he was part of a group of artists known as the Hudson River School.  Bierstadt is best known for his painting of the western United States.

The lower painting is named “Harvest Moon” and it was painted by Ralph Albert Blakelock. (1847 – 1919.  The date of the painting is unknown.  Blakelock was a romanticist American painter known for his landscape paintings related to the ‘Tonalism’ movement.  Basically, tonalism refers to the painting of landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist.

The museum also owns works by Winslow Homer, George Inness, John Kensett, John H. Twachtman and John Singer Sargent.  It is one of the finest collections of 19^th and 20^th century paintings that can be found in the southern United States.

This painting is entitled “A Glimpse of Long Island Sound from Montauk” and it was finished in 1907.  The artist was Thomas Moran. (1837 – 1926) Like Bierstadt, Moran was a member of the Hudson River School who moved on to become even more famous for his paintings of the American west.

The circular shape of this painting is called a ‘tondo’ and it was invented by ancient Greek artists.  This oil on canvas painting is titled “Voice of the Sea”.  It was finished in 1908 by Stephen A. Douglas Volk. (1856 - 1935) Volk was an American portrait and figure painter as well as a muralist and educator.  He taught at the Art Students League of New York and he was one of the founders of the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts. 

This is “Portrait of Nicholas Brewer II”, ca. 1800.  It was painted by James Peale (1749 – 1831), brother of prolific portraitist Charles Wilson Peale.  Charles famously painted several portraits of George Washington.  Although James is better known for his miniatures and his still life paintings, he too painted portraits, at least one of which was also of Washington.  

This work is entitled “The Mystery of a Southern Night”.  It was painted in 1941 by William Hollingsworth. (1910 – 1944) Hollingsworth was from Jackson Mississippi but he studied art at the Chicago Art Institute.  

When Hollingsworth returned to the south, he became particularly interested in the African American residents of the city who were kept separate from the white society.  Hollingsworth produced a plethora of paintings in his short life.  He committed suicide when he was only 34.  His better works can be purchased from various auction houses for between $4,000 and $8,000, but “The Mystery of a Southern Night” is considered one of his very finest.

This painting of a cadet is entitled “Portrait of Harmon Smith”.  It was completed in 1937 by Howard Chandler Christy (1873 – 1952) Christy was an American artist and illustrator.  He created the “Christy Girl”, a colorful successor to the “Gibson Girl”.  Christy is also known for his World War I military recruiting and Liberty loan posters.  His 1940 masterpiece, entitled “Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States” is on display along the east stairwell of the US Capitol. 

To view this patriotic painting at the Capitol you can go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scene_at_the_Signing_of_the_Constitution_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Scene_at_the_Signing_of_the_Constitution_of_the_United_States.jpg.

This oil paints on Masonite painting by Reginald Marsh (1898 – 1954) is titled “East River” and it was completed in 1952.  Early in his career, Marsh was a newspaper illustrator.  An American painter, Marsh was born in Paris but he is most noted for his depictions of life in New York City during the 1920’s and 1930s.  His murals that were created in 1937 line the arched ceiling of the Alexander Hamilton US Custom House. 

In addition, two of his murals that were created as part of the Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts Depression era programs, are on display at the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building.  This one is entitled “Sorting the Mail” and since I have a ‘thing’ for depression era murals, I ‘had to’ include it. 

Back to the exhibits at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel Mississippi… Around 1900, Catherine Gardiner read an article about Native American baskets and with the encouragement of her husband, she started building her collection.  Catherine was Lauren Rogers’s great-aunt and in 1923 she donated almost 500 rare North American Indian baskets and related artifacts to the new museum.  Currently the museum’s collection includes 796 objects… This is a small sampling of the items on display.  There are a number of impossibly tiny baskets on display as well.

I believe that this colorful woven bag is called a corn husk bag…although it’s so colorful, it would seem counterintuitive to burden it with a load of corn.  Laurie and I love Native American baskets and weavings of all types.  For the most part, older items like this are both utilitarian and artistically pleasing…amazing creations.   

This unusually shaped basket is a ‘Jump Dance Basket”.  The Jump Dance is conducted every 2 years by Native Americans from the Hoopa Tribe from Northern California.  This dance is one of a 3-part ceremony that is designed to bring balance back into the world.  

With each stitch of the basket the weaver breathes life into its creation and makes way for the basket to take its place as a living part of the community.  As an active participant in the ceremony, the basket is responsible for the critical task of removing evil from the world and for putting good back into it…

The museum’s art collection includes 5 different segments or groups.  The smallest of these groupings is its 65 piece collection of European paintings, engravings and sketches on paper.  The European collection dates from the 17^th Century and into the 20^th Century.  Twenty-four of these works were donated by the Eastman and Rogers families during the museum’s early years.

This painting from 1907 by Dutch artist Bernard de Hoog (1866 – 1943) is titled “Woman and Baby”.  The artist specialized in small paintings focused on life of country people in the Netherlands.  His success was made easier by him being granted a subsidy from the Dutch Queen.  He also worked for some time under one of the greatest Dutch animal painters, Jan van Essen.

I never did learn the title or name of the artist of that large portrait behind this spectacular display of silver.  Harriet Stark Gibbons was a former museum trustee and her husband owned the local newspaper, the “Laurel Leader-Call”.  They had spent years collecting silver objects and in 1972 and1973, they donated their extensive collection to the Lauren Rogers Museum.  

The photo above shows just a portion of the Gibbons Silver Collection which includes 65 major Georgian Silver pieces including tea caddies, tea and coffee pots, baskets for cakes and sweetmeats, and salvers.

FYI…The term “Georgian” simply refers to the period between 1714 and 1830 when four King Georges in a row ruled England.

In the 1920s, W.B. Rogers, Lauren Rogers’ father, donated 142 eighteenth and nineteenth century Japanese woodblock prints.

This 3-panel work is entitled “Returning from an Outing in the Hakone District”.  It was created in 1788 by Katsukawa Shuncho.  Shuncho was active from the 1770s through the 1790s.  These prints are referred to as ukiyo-e…which means “images of the floating world”.  It is a reference to the theater and entertainment districts of urban Japan, especially those in Kyoto and Edo…that latter now known as Tokyo.

While the 3 panel print shown above is very nice, I prefer the depictions of outdoor scenes.  This print is titled “Windy Day at Yokkaichi”.  It is one of 53 themed panels created by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 – 1858).  The entire set, which is entitled “The 53 Post Stations of the Tokaido” was completed over a four year period, from 1831 to 1834.

This painting is aptly named “The Ferry”.  This oil paint on canvas work was completed ca. 1850 by French painter Constant Troyon (1810 – 1865) He actually began his career as a painter of porcelain and that skill served as his income base as he refined his artistic talents. 

Troyon’s earlier works are considered to be of little note but from 1850 until 1864 his abilities and recognition blossomed.  Paintings featuring animals are among his best works.  He seemed to love cows... “Cattle Drinking” which is owned by the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore Maryland is special.  Troyon’s works are also featured in major art museums in Glasgow and London as well as at the Louvre in France and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  A pair of his paintings of dogs recently sold for over $136,000…

This realistic and detailed painting was completed very recently, in 2018.  Entitled “Homeless”, this oil on linen work was completed by Bo Bartlett (1955 - ).  His goal was to evoke the feeling of someone looking for a place where you can belong, feel welcome and safe.

Bartlett is an American realist painter and film maker.  In addition to the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, his works are owned by at least 10 other major museums in the USA, including the spectacular Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville Arkansas.

Sculptures are fairly difficult to photo graph, especially if they are made from dark materials.  This was the best of the group on display, at least ‘photographically’ in the museum.

“Mother and Child”, a bronze sculpture on a mahogany base was created in 1972 by Elizabeth Catlett (1915 – 2012) Catlett was an American and Mexican sculptor and graphic artist best known for her depictions of the Black-American experience in the 20^th century. 

She was the grandchild of former enslaved people.  While earning her Master of Fine Arts Degree at the University of Iowa, renowned artist Grant Wood, a professor at the university at the time, encouraged her to present images drawn from Black culture and experience.  She moved to Mexico and took citizenship there after being made the subject of an investigation by the McCarthy Committee.  She continued her work until she was into her 90s. 

I thought that I’d end this cross sample of the art works on display at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art with this work by Charly Palmer (1960 - ).  Entitled “Leadbelly”, it was completed in 2012.  It is a tribute piece to Huddle William Ledbetter (1888 – 1949).  Known as Lead Belly, Ledbetter was a famous American folk and blues musician.  His music covered everything from gospel to women, liquor, prison life, racism, cowboys, sailors and famous people…such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Jean Harlow and Howard Hughes.  He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

“Leadbelly” is part of a series of works utilizing a stained-glass theme.  To quote, “The thought of fragmented, or perhaps fractured, images goes beyond simply the people, but the idea of controlled information.”  Palmer attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received a degree from the American Academy of Art.  He created the 1996 Olympic Poster and the US Olympic Committee also selected him to paint the US Olympic Poster for the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for taking a tour of the Lauren Rogers Art Museum and Library with us.  To learn more about the library and museum, go to LRMA – Lauren Rogers Museum of Art | Laurel, MS.

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave