| Term | Description |
Railway Painters-Canada | A group of Canadian artists who, beginning in the late 19th Century, "traveled through western Canada on a commission from the Canadian Pacific Railway." Among the artists were Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith, Thomas Mower Martin, Lucius O'Brien and Marmaduke Matthews. Source: M.D. Silverbrooke, Art Historian and Collector, West Vancouver, British Columbia. |
Raku | A ceramic-making method, it is an ancient Japanese technique defined by the process of rapid heating and cooling. It dates from the 15th century when tile makers discovered they could be more productive if they removed hot objects, made from clay, with tongs and cooled externally rather than letting them cool slowly in the kiln. The method evolved to be used for the production of everyday objects as well as fine art expression. |
Ray Vogue Art School/Ray College of Design | Founded in Chicago in 1916 as The Commercial Art School, it was one of the first applied art and design schools in America. In the 1930s, it was named the Ray-Vogue Art School and had professional programs in fashion, art and design with a campus on the Wabash Avenue on the Near North Side. In 1981, the school was acquired by the Education Management Corporation, which, in 1983 established a second campus in suburban Schaumburg. In 1995, EMC brought both campuses under the auspices of Illinois Art Institutes, the statewide system of colleges offering courses in creative industries. The campus of the former Ray-Vogue School/Ray College of Design was renamed The Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago. The suburban campus was renamed The Illinois Institute of Art-Schaumburg. Teachers include Wade Ray, son of the founders, who became President of the Ray College of Design in 1969; and Judy Morris Petacque. Sources: wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Institute_of_Art_-_Chicago; www.edmc.edu/About/History.aspx (LPD)
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Realism* | Any art in which the goal is to portray forms in the natural world in a highly representational manner. Specifically, an art style of the mid 19th century, which fostered the ides that everyday people and events are worthy subjects for important art. |
Recisionism | (See also PRECISIONISM) |
Recto | A printing and publishing company term referring to the page or folded sheet of a book or pamphlet that is on the right side. Source: Wikipedia |
Red Rose Girls | A name given by illustrator Howard Pyle to three of his female illustration students: Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley. In 1900, they decided they could be most productive in their careers if they distanced themselves from distractions, so they established their home in Philadelphia in a rambling country estate home called the Red Rose Inn. Reinforcing each other and hiring a domestic helper, Henrietta Cozens, each woman had a tremendous career boost during the next eight years that they were together. Willcox became a highly successful illustrator and children's portrait painter; Oakley received numerous public mural commissions, especially for Pennsylvania state capital buildings; and Green became well established as an illustrator, including numerous assignments from "Harper's Magazine". Of this alliance, a reviewer of the book about them wrote that: "For eight years the four led an almost idyllic existence of genteel lifestyle and artistic productivity, but eventually the group disintegrated, with Green's marriage causing an especially painful break." The definitive book about the three women's 'retreat' is "The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love" by Alice A. Carter. Source: www.amazon.com-review of the book. |
Refraction | A scientific concept referencing what happens with the turning or bending of light when it passes betweem mediums of varying density. The over-riding value is light, and in painting, Refraction refers to the effect that one mass of color has on an adjoining mass according to the human eye. Artist Birge Harrison wrote of this phenomenon in his book "Landscape Painting", 1911 and described the "lost-edge appearance and a general diffusion of tone, thus giving paintings their atmospheric quality." Source: Richard McKinley, 'Overcoming Obstacles', "The Pastel Journal", October 2005. |
Refus Global | "Refus Global" was an artistic, political, religious and social manifesto, the principal essay of which was written by Paul-Émile Borduas and signed by 15 members of Les Automatistes group. It included texts by Bruno Cormier, Claude Gauvreau, Fernand Leduc and Françoise Sullivan and illustrations of works by members of the group. It was launched at the Librairie Tranquille in Montréal on August 9, 1948 in a first edition of 400 copies at $1.00 each (in 2009 first editions sell at auction for $5,000.00). Refus Global not only challenged the traditional values of Québec but, also fostered an opening-up of Québec society to international thought and artistic freedom. It is considered by many to be the most important and controversial artistic document in Canada. The signatories were artists and intellectuals, in addition to Borduas, they were Jean-Paul Riopelle, Fernand Leduc, Françoise Sullivan, Marcel Barbeau, Pierre Gauvreau, Marcelle Ferron, Jean-Paul Mousseau (see all previous in AskART), Madeleine Arbour, Bruno Cormier, Claude Gauvreau, Muriel Guilbault, Thérèse Leduc, Maurice Perron, Louise Renaud and Françoise Riopelle. Sources: Francois-Marc Gagnon in “The Canadian Encyclopedia” (1985), Hurtig Publishers Ltd.; “A Concise History of Canadian Painting” (1973), by Dennis Reid; and "Documents in Canadian Art" (1987), edited by Douglas Fetherling (see AskArt book references). Submitted by M.D. Silverbrooke, Art Historian and Collector, West Vancouver, Canada |
Regionalism | A term used generally to describe an artist's depiction of a certain geographical area but in American art history pertains specifically to a movement founded by Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, with fellow mid-westerners Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry in the 1930’s. Charles Burchfield is sometimes categorized with them as well. As painters they extolled the virtues of living in small town or rural America, and they sought metaphors for prime human experiences in the ordinary people and simple ways of that rural culture. For some, it was a patriotic reaction against the avant-garde experimentations of contemporary European artists, especially Parisians such as Picasso and Braque with Cubism and Max Ernst and Andre Breton with Surrealism. It was also a rebellion against industrialism. Of this movement Benton wrote: "The name Regionalism was taken, I believe, from a group of southern writers, poets and essayists, who in the late twenties called themselves 'agrarians.' These, turning from the over-mechanized, over-commercialized, over-cultivated life of our metropolitan centers, were seeking the sense of American life in its sectional or regional centers. But this Regionalism was not a clear term. Neither Wood, Curry, nor I ever held ourselves, either in space or time, to any American region... (We) thought of ourselves simply as American or Americanist painters, sectional at one moment, national and historical at others. If we dealt largely with 'agrarian' subjects, it was because these were significant parts of our total American experience." Regionalism abated with the attitudes of international outreach that developed among the citizenry after World War II. Sources:
Reece Summers, Curator, Great Plains Art Collection, Lincoln, Nebraska; "Phaidon's Dictionary of Twentieth Century Art". |
Rehoboth Beach Colony | On the coast of Delaware, Rehoboth Beach attracted painters, many of them from the Wilmington area and nearby Philadelphia. Ethel Pennewill Brown Leach established a summer studio at the resort in 1922 and began the annual summer exhibitions. Leach was also a key person in establishing the Rehoboth Art League.
The degree of art activity became so intense that Art League members established a permanent home for exhibitions in 1938. Leach was named Honorary Life President. |
Reid-Stone Art School | Founded by Albert T. Reid and George M. Stone in Topeka, Kansas in the 1890s, it, along The Topeka Art School became the basis of the art curriculum for Washburn University. Source: www.tscpl.org/gallery/comments/new_art_exhibit_kansas_impressions/ |
Relative Apparent Size* | Objects appear smaller as their distance from the viewer increases. |
Relief | 1. Sculpture in which figures or other images are attached to a flat background but project out from it to some degree (bas-relief, haut-relief). 2. A printmaking technique in which portions of a block meant to be printed are raised above the surface. |
Relief Print | An image created by an artist who cuts away parts of a matrix such as a cork, wood or linoleum block leaving a raised area, which is then inked and transferred to a paper. The resulting image is the Relief Print. Some relief prints are made by printing presses and others by hand. Relief printing has become an experimental process for artists such as Boris Margo and Arthur Deshaies who create prints with lucite, cardboard or celluloid dissolved in acetone. Other American artists doing Relief Prints include Milton Avery, Leonard Baskin, Misch Kohn, Will Barnet, Karl Schrag, Adja Yunkers and Naum Gabo. Until the 1930s, most American artists were indifferent to innovative relief printing, but Barnet as well as Werner Drewes and Louis Schanker “discovered that printmaking served their expressive needs and individual styles.” Schanker did “energized” abstractions, many of them circular designs, and Drewes also created abstractions linked to Native-American hieroglyphics. Some exquisitely crafted relief prints were used for book illustrations. Source: “Antiques and the Arts Weekly”, Bee Publishing, November 25, 2005, p. 11. |
Renaissance/High Renaissance/Northern Renaissance | A term meaning “rebirth” and referring to the period in Europe from the 14th to the 16th century, characterized by a renewed interest in Classical art, architecture, literature and philosophy. The Renaissance began in Italy and gradually spread to the rest of Europe. Its mature period is the, the High Renaissance, is the "climax of Renaissance art from 1500-1525." It also led to the prevalence of Italian Humanism. In art, it is most closely associated with Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and Raphael. The Northern Renaissance, meaning north of Italy, has variety within it but a shared characteristic is a "fondness for meticulous rendering of details" and "generally less of the classical ideal" of the Renaissance. Source: ArtinthePICTURE.com (LPD) |
Rendering | An interpretation of another artist’s work. |
Replica | A work of art that might be considered a reproduction, counterfeit, or fake, as it relates to it ‘original’ form. |
Representational* | Works of art that closely resemble forms in the natural world. Synonymous with NATURALISTIC. |
Reserve Price | The minimum price confidentially agreed upon between the seller and consignor. It is usually about 80 percent of the low estimate. If not achieved, the lot shall not be sold, and should not exceed the low estimate. On behalf of the consignor, auctioneers may bid against the audience up to the reserve. Source includes: www.sothebys.com |
Retinal Art | Art whose appeal is to the eye rather than the mind. A form originated by French-American Marcel Duchamp. |
Retrospective | A living artist’s showing of his/her numerous works, usually depicted chronologically, but can also be shown by theme. |
Reynolda House | A museum of American art incorporated in 1964 and opened in 1967 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The original building was a 1917 bungalow belonging to tobacco family members Katharine and R.J. Reynolds. In 2005, a 30,000 square foot expansion, the Mary and Charlie Babcock Wing, was completed. The collection focus is on both exhibition of the collection of American art, including Southern regionalism, and the innovative multi-disciplinary study of American Art in the contexts of literature, music and history. A major purpose is rediscovering American artists who once were well known but whose reputations were submerged with the advent of abstraction---artists "long out of the public eye." A core value was art reflecting every-day genre and the importance of life in daily living. Among the artists whose work is represented are William Harnett, Charles Willson Peale, Martin Johnson Heade, Joseph Blackburn, William Sydney Mount and Frederic Edwin Church. Today Reynolda House is credited with helping to "lead the national conversation on the rediscovery and rehabilitation of American art through prescient acquisitions. Source: Thomas Andrew Denenberg, 'American Art at Reynolda House', American Art Review, June 2005. |
Richmond School | A group of landscape painters from Richmond, Indiana composed The Richmond School of painters. Richmond was a small town that had tremendous artistic vitality in the latter decades of the 19th and early decades of the 20th century. John Elwood Bundy was a key figure and one of the founders in 1898 of the Art Association of Richmond, whose collection from the series of exhibits remains prestigious today.
Credit: "American Art Review", 8/2002 |
Robert Lougheed Memorial Award | A $1000 cash prize given at the Prix de West, the annual exhibition of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, to an artist with the "best display of three or more works". It was established in 1988 and named for Robert Lougheed (1910-1982), a leading western artist who served as friend and mentor to many of the exhibiting artists. The award is sponsored by the Robert S. and Grayce B. Kerr Foundation, Inc. Winners include Dan Gerhartz, John Moyers, Clyde Afsary, Richard Loffler, and Loren Entz. Source: http://www.tfaoi.com/newsmu/mile2.htm; AskART database (LPD) |
Rochefort-en-Terre Artist Colony | Located in the French medieval Brittany village of Rochefort-en-Terre, the colony was established around 1905 by Alfred Partridge Klots, Baltimore portrait painter, and his wife, Agnes. They built a chateau on the site of an earlier one that had been destroyed during the French Revolution, and this building became their home and his studio and the center of activity for resident artists. Trafford Klots, their son and an artist, spent much of his career there, and he and his wife, Isabel, activated the colony after World War II. After her husband's death in 1976, Isabel established the Alfred & Trafford Klots Artist Residency Program in memory of her husband and father-in-law, and in the late 1980s that program was taken over by the Maryland Institute College of Art. Source: Maryland Historical Society, www.mdhs.org/library/mss/ms002404.html; AskART biograhies. (LPD) |
Rocker | A crescent-shaped tool with sharp points used in printmaking, especially mezzotints. The artist uses the rocker in a rocking motion to make marks all over the copper plate. The finished product usually has some of these marks polished or burnished so that they do not retain ink, and a positive/negative effect is achieved when ink is applied.
Source:
"Joel Oppenheimer" 35th Anniversary Catalogue, 2004, of the Natural Art Gallery |
Rockport Art Association | An association officially dating to 1921 that includes some of America's best-known painters who found inspiration in Rockport, Massachusetts.
Among the first members were Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, Edward Hopper, John Sloan, Maurice Prendergast, and John Twachtman.
No one seems certain of the identity of the first painter, but by 1900, many artists were working in summer studios on Bearskin Neck. Most of them were communal, and on July 22, 1921, a group of them officially created the Rockport Art Association. In 1929, the Old Tavern on Main Street became their permanent gallery where paintings, graphic art, sculpture, and photography continue to be sold year round. |
Rocky Mountain School of Painting | Essentially the Hudson River School of painting in the West. Exponents, many of them Hudson River School painters from the East, depicted panoramic views and naturalist subject matter, using luminous, tonalist and tonalist-impressionist styles. (It is interesting that leading painters of the Rocky Mountain School, Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran were foreign born, and leaders of the Hudson River School were American born. (Flexner 242) The focus of the Rocky Mountain painters was on the grandeur of the natural environment, often dramatic mountain vistas seen from afar. The time period was the turn of the 19th into several decades of the 20th Century. However, in the mind of some art historians, the School is not considered as successful in terms of long-range scholarly interest because the Rocky Mountain group tried to copy the Hudson River School approach of depicting realistic details in an environment that was rugged and not conducive to detailed, 'accurate' depiction. Bierstadt was the pioneer among these painters, and in 1859, he first went West with the Lander Expedition, headed by Frederic Lander, bron 1822. He was engineering an emigrant trail through the Wind River range in Nebraska and Oregon Territory. It is thought this expedition, which left from St. Louis, Missiouri, was the "Premier visual outing of the pre-Civil War trans-Mississppi West. Also included were painters Francis Seth Smith and Henry Hitchings. Other names associated with the Rocky Mountain School are Moran, Sanford Gifford, Thomas Hill, John Kensett, George Ottinger, Danquart Weggeland, Alfred Lambourne, George Beard, Worthington Whittredge, and Henry Culmer. Sources: Vern Swanson, "Utah Art"; Andrew Wilton & Tim Barringer, "American Sublime"; James Flexner, "History of American Painting", Vol. III; Look Smart Internet. (LPD) |
Rococo | A style of art popular in Europe in the first three quarters of the 18th century, Rococo architecture and furnishings emphasized ornate but small-scale decoration, curvilinear forms, and pastel colors. Rococo painting has a playful, light-hearted romantic quality and often pictures the aristocracy at leisure. |
Romanesque | A style of architecture and art dominant in Europe form the 9th to the 12th century. Romanesque architecture, based on ancient Roman precedents, emphasizes the round arch and barrel vault. |
Romanticism | A movement in Western art of the 19th century generally assumed to be in opposition to Neoclassicism and much associated in America with Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School of painting between 1820 and 1880. Romantic painters treat the landscape as though it has symbolic meaning far beyond its obvious geographical features. Cole and his followers believed that natural features were created by God, and that a quiet, reverent artist could find God in nature, especially in wilderness areas, and then transfer symbolically resulting inspirations to canvas. Romantic works are marked by intense colors, turbulent emotions, complex composition, soft outlines and sometimes-heroic subject matter. Source; Andrew Wilton and Tim Barringer, "American Sublime: Landscape painting in the United States, 1820-1880" (LPD) |
Rookwood Pottery | A pottery company that gained international recognition in the early 20th century, it was first located in a converted garage in Cincinnati, Ohio, and opened in 1889. The founder was Maria Longworth Nichols Storer, a wealthy woman, who, like so many privileged ladies of that era, did china painting as a hobby. However, unlike many of her peers, she became business minded. She began by experimenting with glazes, but was frustrated with the lack of temperature control of the local kilns. So she built her own kiln, which was the launching of Rookwood Pottery. The first full-time decorator she hired was in 1881 and was artist Henry Farny (1847-1916). He only worked one year, as he discovered the West and devoted himself to painting western subjects. However, during his year at Rockwood, he used special techniques to create portrait plaques of Indians. These pieces were predecessors to 161 Rookwood pottery Indian images between 1881 and 1904 by 23 decorators including Matthew Daly (1860-1937). Among the many employees Nichols hired were chemists, artists, and designers. The earliest Rookwood pottery was usually decorated in relief on natural colored clays, such as sage green or pink. These "pieces could be gilt, have a simple stamped design or be carved in high relief. These early pieces could also be painted by someone who bought the greenware, an unfinished piece, and then decorated it at home. These personally decorated pieces are not considered to be Rookwood". With the leadership of Maria Nichols Storer, her employees developed many new glazes and decorative methods. The most common glaze that became a signature part of Rookwood Pottery was "deep yellow, orange and red over dark brown with a high gloss, usually in a flower or leaf motif." Subjects in addition to Indians were floral designs, portraits and fish. Rookwood artists credited with particular skill in addition to Farny and Matthew Daly are Carl Schmidt, A.R. Valentien and William McDonald. "Each had a signature mark which can be found on the base of the pieces they decorated." Rookwood was sold in stores including "Tiffany, Ovington and other large department stores in major cities across the country. The company developed an architectural department where large parts to decorate entrances and buildings were made. . . .Financial problems in 1907, the Great Depression, and two World Wars led to a slow decline in quality, and, finally, bankruptcy in 1941. Rookwood was purchased by Walter Schot but closed for good in 1967." Sources: Sources: Magan Holloway Fort, ‘Current and Coming’, “The Magazine Antiques”, November 2007, p. 22; www.aarf.com/ferook97.htm (LPD)
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Rosenwald Fund Grant | Derived from the financial success of Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932), chairman of Sears and Roebuck and Co., the grant activity reflected his commitment to social change and justice. From 1911 to 1928, it focused primarily on black education in the American South by giving start-up money to over 5000 schools. In 1928, Rosenwald’s fortune was redirected to a program of individual scholarships with ‘no strings attached’ in amounts, normally, between $1,500. to $2,000. Recipients were usually young, and judged to have exceptional promise towards a meritorious scholarly and/or creative pursuit. Most Rosenwald Fellows, but not all, were African-American. Fund directives by Rosenwald were unique because, unlike the majority of philanthropic funding sources, all the seed money was spent until it was gone, and that occurred in 1948. In the previous decade, 34 artists received grants including Jacob Lawrence, Robert Gwathmey, Aaron Douglas, Rose Piper, and Eldzier Cortier. Julius Rosenwald had died in 1932, and his son, Lessing Julius Rosenwald (1891-1979) took over the Fund administration. Some of the grants carry his name. Sources: Daniel Schulman, ‘African American Art & the Julius Rosenwald Fund’, “American Art Review”, February 2009; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lessing_J._Rosenwald#Biography (LPD) |
Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) | Founded in 1880 with the purpose of promoting the arts in what was then a young country, it is the oldest national organization of Canadian artists. Organizers were twenty-six of the country's outstanding architects, painters and sculptors along with the Marquess of Lorne, the Governor General of Canada. Elected artist members became known as Academicians, and these persons founded and established the core collection of the National Gallery in Ottawa. Artist member names include Bertram Binning, Dora De Pedery-Hunt, Yvonne Housser, William Brymner, Maurice Cullen and John Ford Clymer. By the 21st Century, there were 500 Academicians. Source: Canadian Association of New York; AskART database. (LPD) |
Roycroft Shops | An arts and crafts oriented community founded by Elbert Hubbard, showman, entrepreneur, writer and promoter of the arts and crafts movement who settled in Aurora, New York in 1895. He began his business by writing and publishing pamphlets about historical figures. Shortly after, he established shops for the production of furniture, pottery, ironwork, leather goods and printed materials. Visitors flocked to the area to purchase many of the items, which reflect items characteristic of the arts and crafts aesthetic of being visually attractive, utilitarian, simple designs, and visible workmanship such as pegged joints. A community formed, and by 1910, over 500 persons were employed at the Shops. Hubbard hired talented, skilled overseers: Dard Hunter, printed books; Karl Kipp, copper goods; Frederic Kranz, leather; Louis Kinder, books; and James Cadzow and Albert Danner, furniture making. Hubbard and his wife died in 1915 in the sinking of the "Lusitania". The son, Elbert Hubbard II, continued the endeavor, which closed in 1938 because of lack of interest in arts and crafts items. In 1986, the community of Roycroft, with fourteen buildings and surrounding property, was designated a National Historic Landmark. The Burchfield-Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College in New York houses the major Roycroft collection, which provided the exhibition items for a spring, 2006 traveling exhibition. Source: Allison Eckardt Ledes, 'Roycroft', "The Magazine Antiques", February 2006, p. 18. (LPD) |
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