The Old Summer House, Oil on canvas, 28.75" x 23.5" Guy Rose, (1867-1925).

California-born Impressionist Guy Rose's reputation suffered for decades from an unusual attitude: Geographical prejudice. New York art historians, believing America ended at the Hudson River, ignored painters without an East Coast pedigree. Rose was brought back to prominence in the 1990s with a major retrospective, but just how much is he now accepted and respected as a member of the Impressionist tribe? Another retrospective is looming for Guy Rose, making now an ideal time to ask if a Rose is a Rose is a Rose, or is he less authentic? Will South examines this question along with a special discussion of a Rose painting being loaned to California for the next Rose exhibition from--wait for it--the tiny hamlet of Blowing Rock, NC. 

About the Speaker

Will South is an artist and a historian of American art with over fifty publications in the field. He received his doctorate from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1994 where he was awarded the Henry R. Luce Fellowship to support his dissertation which was published in 2001 as Color, Myth & Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism. He is credited with writing several definitive studies in the field of American Impressionism, including California Impressionism for Abbeville Press, 1998; and Guy Rose: American Impressionist, 1995, for the Oakland Museum of California Art. His article, “The Unknown Henry Ossawa Tanner” for Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide was nominated for the American Art Museum Curators’ award for the outstanding scholarly article of the year.