Springfield Museums Opens Two-Century American Landscape Painting Exhibition
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — October 10, 2026 —
The Springfield Museums presents In Nature’s Studio: Two Centuries of American Landscape Painting, on view October 10, 2026 through January 24, 2027, at the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts. Organized by the Reading Public Museum of Reading, Pennsylvania, the exhibition traces the evolution of American landscape painting from the early nineteenth century through the late twentieth century, encompassing works that range from intimate forest interiors and sweeping panoramic vistas to European, Near Eastern, and South American scenes.
The exhibition opens with the Hudson River School of the 1830s and 1840s, widely regarded as America’s first homegrown artistic movement. Works by Thomas Birch, Frederic Church, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Worthington Whittredge, William Trost Richards, Hermann Herzog, and Aaron Draper Shattuck reflect the era’s fascination with the grandeur of the natural world and the optimism of a young nation. The show then traces a transition into the Impressionist and Tonalist movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with paintings by George Inness, Childe Hassam, N. C. Wyeth, Edward Willis Redfield, John Fulton Folinsbee, John Mulhaupt, and Robert Spencer, many of whom worked en plein air to capture fleeting effects of light, color, and atmosphere.
The exhibition continues into the twentieth century with modernist interpretations of the landscape by George Bellows, Arthur Bowen Davies, Benton Spruance, and Andrew Wyeth, among others, whose experimental approaches helped bridge the gap between representational painting and abstract expression. Across all three periods, In Nature’s Studio reveals how shifting artistic sensibilities mirrored broader changes in American culture and society. The Springfield Museums are located at 21 Edwards Street in downtown Springfield and are open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Advance tickets are strongly encouraged and available at SpringfieldMuseums.org. MassMutual is the season sponsor of the Springfield Museums.
Sponsored
