The Philadelphia Sketch Club
Where Artists Grow
150TH ANNIVERSARY COLLABORATIVE EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS
PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS
Ye Great Mogul of the Sketch Club: The Philadelphia Sketch Club and the art of William Cresson
Fall 2010 (Mid-October to November 30, 2010)
This exhibition of William Cresson’s sketchbooks and paintings highlights the PAFA student and Sketch Club member whose tragic death thwarted his artistic promise as both a painter of literary scenes and humorous caricatures.
William Elem Cresson’s short life has left him little known in the main stream of American art history, and yet his surviving work exhibits a high degree of accomplishment and suggests that he would have grown into a major talent in the Philadelphia artistic community. Cresson died at the age of 25 before he was able to have a successful career as an artist and illustrator. As a result of an endowment by his parents of the Cresson Traveling Scholarships in 1902, Cresson’s name has become an indelible part of PAFA’s history. This exhibition of Cresson’s sketchbooks and paintings highlights his artistic promise as both a painter of literary scenes and as a humorous caricature artist. Also included in the exhibition are two suites of drawings acquired by PAFA in 2002 - “Studio Life,” from 1864-65, and “An Idea Striketh Ye Great Mogul of the Sketch Club,” - from 1865. The exhibition is developed in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the Philadelphia Sketch Club to bring attention to this underexposed artist member and his activities with the club in the 1860s.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
118 North Broad Street
Philadelphia, PA 19102
William Emlen Cresson
Falstaff, 1866
Oil on canvas, 14 1/8 x 12 ¼ in. ( 35.9 x 31.1 cm)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
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