The Gilcrease

I have often visited the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa since the 90s. It rarely disappoints. Honestly, Tulsa has some great art. I saw the Moran retrospective there in 1998, which was amazing - tons of watercolors on view - made my head spin. Like I said before the Gilcrease is the best place to study Moran's work with over two-thousand of the artists' works in the collection all purchased from Moran's daughter Ruth's estate in 1948.

Below, me in front of Shoshone Falls on the Snake River, Idaho, 1900, one of Moran's last great pictures.















below, another great picture from 1891, Spectres from the North, Moran's recollection and homage to Frederic Church's 1862, Icebergs, now in the Dallas Museum of Art. I stuck myself in for scale. It is a bit smaller than the Shoshone Falls, which is roughly 6x11', Spectres is only 6x9' very similar in scale to Church's Icebergs which is about 5x9.5'
















Gilcrease made his money in oil and began collecting in 1922. The musuem holds Native American artifacts, western and American history paintings, and American historical objects and documents they tout the only certified hand written copy of the Declaration of Independance. Alexandre Hogue, a Texas painter, who decamped to Oklahoma to teach in Tulsa in 1945, evidently designed the first Gilcrease museum. There are great examples of his work both at the Philbrook and Gilcrease.

They also own this great painting by Hogue, Crucified Land, which speaks to the great Drought Stricken Area, painting here in Dallas.















The Whistler I mentioned from the Gilcrease.

Nocturne, The Solent, 1866, Gilcrease purchased it in 1948. The only great Whistler anywhere near here.












There are also works by Eakins, Sargent, Homer, Bierstadt, Taos school painters, and many more. Unfortunately on this trip they only had a western themed installation so many of the general American Favs were not on view. Tulsa is also known for great architecture, particularly art deco. I will post on that next.