FROM BERMUDA PALMS TO
NORTHERN PINES on view at the
University of Toronto Art Centre (15 King’s
College Circle) to August 3.
416-946-7089. Rating: NNN
Rating: NNN
when prominent artists like Winslow Homer or Georgia O’Keeffe vacation in Bermuda, what do they make? That’s the premise of Bermuda’s Masterworks Foundation. Director Tom Butterfield has literally been running marathons to raise cash for a purchase fund, as well as lining up loans and donations.
The resulting collection, which has been in the making since 1987, contains a prominent if eclectic group of artists — French Cubist Albert Gleizes, Americans Marsden Hartley, Andrew Wyeth and Jennifer Bartlett as well as Homer and O’Keeffe, and a surprising number of Canadians, including Jack Bush, Paterson Ewen, Andr Biler, Prudence Heward and Painters Eleven co-founder Isabel McLaughlin. Yet it comprises a remarkably unified body of work.
After all, these works were all made by artists on vacation. It’s hardly surprising that they project a sense of relaxation, contentment and sunshine.
O’Keeffe’s dozen charcoal sketches of Bermuda foliage, made during two trips to the island in 1933 and 1934, mark an early step in her path to her famous flower paintings. Her fans should not miss the chance to see the one here.
