Hannah

Artist George Fuller (American, 1822 - 1884)

Date1879

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 50 1/8 x 40 3/8 inches (127.32 x 102.55 cm)
Framed: 57 3/8 x 47 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches (145.73 x 120.65 x 8.89 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number33-15/1

SignedSigned lower left: G Fuller

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionThree-quarter-length portrait of a girl standing in a cornfield.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

[“Fall Exhibition”], American Art Gallery, New York, November 13–December 18, 1879, no. 51.

Museum of Fine Arts Memorial Exhibition of the Works of George Fuller, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, April 24–May 13, 1884, no. 137.

Exhibition of the Work of American Figure Painters, Lotos Club, New York, December 1897, no. 18.

Exhibition of Works by American Artists Selected by the Associated Dealers in American Paintings, Inc., Anderson Galleries, New York, February 21–March 10, 1928, no. 56.

American Painting and Sculpture, 1862–1932, Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 31, 1932–January 31, 1933, no. 38.

Exhibition of American Painting, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, June 7–July 7, 1935, no. 115 (as Portrait of Hannah).

Exhibition of American Painting from 1860 until Today, Cleveland Museum of Art, June 23–October 4, 1937, no. 64.

Winslow Homer and the Critics: Forging a National Art in the 1870s, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., February 18–May 6, 2001; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, June 10–September 9, 2001; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, October 6, 2001–January 6, 2002, hors cat. (Kansas City only).

Gallery Label

George Fuller's Hannah exemplifies the enigmatic art that brought the painter considerable fame in the late 19th century. The painting prominently features a country girl in the midst of a dreary, nearly empty field. Largely void of activity, the brown-grey composition resists conventional narrative. However, Fuller's inclusion of a faint, scythe-wielding harvester contributes an unsettling element, perhaps alluding to impending loss or even death.

Dislodged from specific time and place, Fuller's art, like the work of his contemporary George Inness, was embraced as an antidote to the rampant materialism of the late 19th century. The production and popularity of such poetic, rural images were also rooted in nostalgia for a perceived simpler, pre-industrial life.

Provenance

To (Cottier and Company, New York, 1879);

to Mr. Frank Hallet Lovell, Brooklyn, N.Y., December 1879;

to Louise M. Lovell (his wife), Brooklyn, N.Y., by gift, December 1879;

to (M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1927);

to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., 1933.

Published References

“Art Matters: The American Art Gallery,” New York Evening Express, November 6, 1879, 1.

“Fine Arts: American Art Gallery—Fall Exhibition—First Article,” New York Herald, November 6, 1879, 6.

“Fine Arts: Fall Exhibition at the American Art Gallery—Second Article,” New York Herald, November 10, 1879, 11.

“American Art News,” Art Interchange: A Household Journal 3 (November 12, 1879), 79.

“Fine Arts,” Independent 31 (November 13, 1879), 7.

“Studio and Gallery,” New York Herald, December 7, 1879, 1.

Catalogue of the Paintings, and Art Loan Collection, exh. cat. (New York: American Art Gallery, 1879), unpaginated.

Sidney Dickinson, “George Fuller,” Bay State Monthly (Boston) 1 (June 1884), 375.

Museum of Fine Arts Memorial Exhibition of the Works of George Fuller, exh. cat. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1884), 40.

Josiah B. Miller, ed., George Fuller: His Life and Works (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1886), 92.

“Art Exhibitions,” New-York Daily Tribune, December 18, 1897, 6.

“Art Notes,” New York Mail and Express, December 18, 1897, 13.

Elisabeth Luther Cary, “Four American Painters Represented in the Metropolitan Museum,” International Studio 35 (September 1908), xcii.

William Howe Downes, “George Fuller’s Pictures,” International Studio 75 (July 1922), 267.

“An All-American Exhibition of Art Shown at the Anderson Galleries by the Associated Dealers in American Paintings,” New York Times, February 19, 1928, 94.

Catalogue of an Exhibition of Works by American Artists Selected by the Associated Dealers in American Paintings, Inc., exh. cat. (New York: Anderson Galleries, 1928), unpaginated.

Holger Cahill, American Painting and Sculpture, 1862–1932, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1932), 30.

“A Fuller Canvas Here,” Kansas City Star, February 27, 1933, 7.

“Fuller Painting Bought,” New York Times, February 28, 1933, 17.

“The Latest Purchase for the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art,” Kansas City Star, March 5, 1933, insert sec., 4.

“Kansas City Acquires Fuller’s ‘Hannah,’” Art Digest 7 (March 15, 1933), 7.

“Like Helmeted Minerva, Springs Kansas City’s New Art Museum: American Painting,” Art Digest 8 (December 1,
1933), 17.

“The Acquisitions,” Art Digest 8 ( December 1, 1933), 21.

“The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art: Complete Catalogue of Paintings and Drawings,” Art News 32 (December 9, 1933), 28, 49 (as Portrait of Hannah).

Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1933), 122, 127, 137.

Exhibition of American Painting, exh. cat. (San Francisco: M. H. de Young Memorial Museum and California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1935), unpaginated (as Portrait of Hannah).

Catalogue of an Exhibition of American Painting from 1860 until Today at the Cleveland Museum of Art, exh. cat. (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1937), 22, pl. I.

The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 2^nd ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1941), 149, 156.

The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 3^rd. ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1949), 202.

Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 256.

William I. Homer and David M. Robb Jr., “Paintings by George Fuller in American Museums and Public Collections,” Art Quarterly 24 (Autumn 1961), 290, 293.

Lois Marie Fink, “The Role of France in American Art, 1850–1870,” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1970, vii, 285, 608–9.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 252.

J. Richard Gruber, “Thomas Hart Benton: Teaching and Art Theory,” Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1987, 353n22.

Henry Adams, Handbook of American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1991), 99–101.

Margaret C. Conrads, ed. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 (Kansas City, Mo.: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007), 1: 268-73 (repro.), 2: 117-18 (repro.).

Holly Pyne Connor, Angels and Tomboys: Girlhood in 19^th-Century American Art (Newark, NJ: Newark Museum of Art, in association with Pomegranate Communications, 2012), 125–126 (repro.).

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