Come See Famous Victorian Artists before They Leave Greenville
August 3, 2014
GREENVILLE, SC – Since opening August 2013, M&G’s Charles Dickens: The Continuing Victorian Narrative exhibition has thrilled thousands with its colorful characters, interactive vignettes, and beautiful displays of period-antiques and works of art. However, two of the most acclaimed works within the exhibition, Elizabeth Gardner’s La Confidance and Edwin Landseer’s The Falconer, will be returning soon to their respective museums in Athens, Georgia and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Plan to visit M&G at Heritage Green by August 10th to see these masterful works right here in Greenville, before they return home for good!
Painted in 1880, Elizabeth Gardner’s La Confidance is featured in the Withdrawing Room vignette, a display highlighting the Victorian woman’s domestic and social roles within nineteenth-century England. After leaving her native New Hampshire in 1864, Gardner’s abilities blossomed in Paris, France, and she became the first American female painter to display work at the Paris Salon exhibition. Viewers will quickly see why La Confidance is a Victorian favorite, with its charmingly intimate scene of two female friends sweetly sharing secrets, all set against a backdrop of idyllic security and innocent friendship—reminiscent of Jane Austen’s country settings in Pride and Prejudice.
If Gardner’s La Confidance represents the ideal of Victorian femininity, Edwin Landseer’s The Falconer portrays the quintessential nineteenth-century male. As art critic Christopher Wood notes of the Victorian gentleman, he was “a keen hunting man … professional, disciplined, and autocratic.” Located within theAthenaeum vignette, Landseer’s Falconer allows the viewer to understand a cultured and restricted Victorian world open only to those men of the highest birth and best breeding.
M&G is delighted to host this truly unique and accessible exhibition to the guests and residents of Greenville and the Upstate at M&G at Heritage Green. Make your plans to see this fascinating examination of the life, times, and influence of the one-and-only Charles Dickens. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors, and $3 for students. Children 12 and under attend free and can enjoy an exhibition scavenger hunt and children’s learning center. For more information about this exhibition and the paintings and events to come, please contact the Museum & Gallery, at (864) 770-1331 or visit M&G’s website at www.bjumg.org
