A Regionalist Painter

After settling in Ithaca, Alison Mason Kingsbury soon turned her artistic attention to her new surroundings, reflecting the movement of the national art scene towards regionalism with the Great Depression. As a movement, regionalism was defined by a stylized realism that depicted American rural landscapes and small townscapes, with the supposed intention of valorizing the American scene (which was arguably not always the artist's true intention). Economically, the movement lent itself to efforts forwarded by dealers, critics, and artists to promote buying American art as patriotic in the midst of the Great Depression. Within this context, A. M. K. produced a great series of oil paintings that fall under the regionalist mantle. It was with these works that she experienced her greatest exposure with a number of solo and group exhibitions that came with numerous critical reviews.

Her works from this period consist of grandiose landscapes painted in oil, which are characterized by dramatic compositions addressed in a vivid palette and economically applied paint. Her definition of objects through the gentle molding that she learned from Janniot gives her images a sculpted look, which she anchored with tight compositions without sacrificing drama. While other regionalist painters of the time, like Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, included human inhabitants in their fluid, rippling landscapes, A. M. K.'s pieces are stoic, unpopulated scenes, where evidence of human occupation is left to hints of intervention, such as lone homes, farming, roads, and domesticated livestock.

In one of the few known texts by A. M. K. reflecting upon this period of her work, she writes a third-person statement about the history of the Finger Lakes landscape and her approach to depicting it for her first Ferargil Gallery show in 1939:

The country delights the geologist, for the structure of the earth is laid bare; the retreating glacier has left its marks everywhere, its moraines, eskars, and drumlins in surprising shapes, its grooves on the rocks. It is a hard country to paint. When Alison Mason Kingsbury came to live there...she was told that its special character was the despair of painters, and even of photographers... She set herself the task of understanding this landscape, and recording it. She believed that with this imposing subject-matter and a style developed from the landscape itself, there can be a unity of expression which is more than mere representation.

	Louise Boyle. Alison Mason Kingsbury in her studio. [ca. 1940] [zoom] Local photographer and friend Louise Boyle took this portrait of A. M. K. in her Wyckoff Road studio surrounded by her paintings. Clockwise, left to right: Sky Horse, West Hill in Summer, Lay of the Land, and Water Level. Courtesy of The History Center in Tompkins County
	*Alison Mason Kingsbury. West Hill in Summer.* [1936]** [zoom] This lush view of Ithaca's West Hill and Cayuga Lake, as seen from the artist's Cayuga Heights studio, was exhibited widely with her regionalist works. From the collection of Alison and Richard Jolly
	*Alison Mason Kingsbury. West Hill in Winter.* [1938]** [zoom] The companion piece to West Hill in Summer, the artist considered this to be one of her best paintings. From the collection of Alison and Richard Jolly
	*Alison Mason Kingsbury. The Babcock House, Study No. 2.* [1938]** [zoom] It was common for the artist to sketch the subject for a potential painting on site, but execute the actual painting from her notes in her Wyckoff Road studio. This rare surviving sketch offers a window into A. M. K.'s process. From the collection of Alison Mason Kingsbury
	*Alison Mason Kingsbury. The Babcock House.* [1938]** [zoom] This regionalist portrait of a farm house located outside Ithaca went by a number of different names in its numerous showings, including The Babcock House, Sunnygables, The House of Eleven Gables, and Residence at Enfield. From a private collection.
	Ferargil Galleries. Alison Mason Kingsbury exhibition catalogue. [1939] [zoom] A. M. K.'s 1939 solo exhibition of regionalist oil paintings with the Ferargil Galleries was perhaps her most important showing, for which she recieved an onslaught of positive reviews. From the collection of Alison Mason Kingsbury

Previous Page | Next Page