As the old saying goes, “Ya gotta start somewhere.” In 1904, John W. Beatty, who served as Carnegie Museum of Art’s first director from 1896-1922, began to assemble the first of what was to become the museum’s Works on Paper collection. His first purchase was “Figures on the Coast” (1883) by Winslow Homer (1836-1910). A charcoal drawing about half the size of a piece of typing paper, it was the perfect complement to “The Wreck,” Homer’s famous painting from 1896 that won the Chronological Medal and a purchase prize of $5,000 in the first ever Carnegie International (1866), thus becoming the first piece in the museum’s permanent collection. In the nearly two decades that followed, Beatty was the driving force behind the acquisition of about 200 drawings and watercolors by an array of prominent American artists of the period, many of whom, like Homer, where close personal friends. Seventy-five drawings by Homer and his contemporaries are on display in “Masters of American Drawings and Watercolors, Foundations of the Collection, 1904-1922” in the museum’s Works on Paper Gallery. “The artists in the show represent people who were friends with Beatty, people who were heavy players in the contemporary art world of that time, and quite a few of which were represented a lot in the early internationals, either as jurors, advisers or participating artists,” says Amanda Zehnder, Carnegie Museum of Art assistant curator of fine arts and curator of the exhibition. “By and large, these are virtuoso works,” Zehnder says. “Some of them are really amazing. The hand of the artist — his or her thought processes — really come through.” Part of the reason, Zehnder says, is that Beatty was an artist. He understood the importance of drawing, not only as the foundation of visual art, but that it allowed direct and immediate access to the mind of the artist. “Beatty was a painter and printmaker mostly and he had a real strong interest in the concept of drawing as a way to access an artist’s thought process,” Zehnder says. Beatty wrote several pamphlets and books on the subject. Some are included in the exhibition, along with a museum guestbook that dates from 1903-1938. The guestbook is on display, open to the Friday, April 10, 1914 — bearing the signatures of several visiting artists, the most prominent of whom was Robert Henri. Although the show does not contain anything by Henri, it does contain several more works by Homer. Among them two significant watercolors, “A Wreck Near Gloucester” (1880) and “Watching from the Cliffs” (1892), which are both subtle, controlled coastal scenes painted during times spent in a New England fishing village. “He was somebody who Beatty clearly respected a lot,” Zehnder says of Homer. Another artist that Beatty had a tremendous amount of respect for was Childe Hassam (1859-1935). In 1907 Beatty purchased 30 drawings, watercolors, and pastels directly from the artist for the permanent collection, a selection of which are on view here. Many are on boldly colored or black paper, most of which were considered “scrap paper” by the artist. Some scraps were chosen for the impact of their color on the mood of a drawing, such as “East Gloucester Street, Summer Morning” (no date), which is a light-hearted drawing done in crayon, watercolor, and gouache on thin onion-skin paper that was obviously torn from a book. “He used a lot of different colored papers,” Zehnder says about Hassam. “And the fun thing about his small drawings here is that they are on distinctive colors because they are the backs of pamphlets, brochures and invitations. So, that’s why in some of them you will see a seam in the middle.” Another artist who liked to use colored papers was James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). An important pastel and chalk drawing by Whistler titled “Mrs. Leyland Seated” was a study for a dress that he designed. The dress was then worn by Frances Leyland and is featured in one of Whistler’s greatest portraits, “Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs. Frances Leyland” (1871-1874), which is now housed in the Frick Collection, New York. Though Beatty was a key figure in the development of the collection, he did not act alone. As early as spring of 1906, he asked Sadakichi Hartmann (1867-1944), the outspoken art critic and outrageous bohemian, to give him a hand in tracking down drawings for the collection. It was Hartmann who figured out that many of the popular magazines of the day, such as Collier’s, Scribner’s, Harper’s Weekly and The Century, held onto the illustrations of the country’s best artists long after they were published. That’s why among the drawings on display, visitors will find several works by some of the best illustrators of the time period, including Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944), Frederic Dorr Steele (1873-1944), Jessie Wilcox Smith (1838-1945), and Howard Pyle (1853-1911). Also on display are several preparatory sketches by muralists John La Farge (1835-1910) and Kenyon Cox (1856-1919), who often competed against one another for commissions. With the end of Beatty’s tenure as director in 1922, the museum’s collecting focus shifted and the acquisitions of drawings and watercolors ceased for more than 30 years. It was not picked up again until Gordon Bailey Washburn became director and resumed the active purchase of American drawings and watercolors. Which is why, Zehnder says, “This (exhibition) is like a little time capsule of the time period before 1922 when Beatty retired. It’s the taste of the time, and it reflects the interest and the focus that Beatty had.” Additional Information:

‘Masters of American Drawings and Watercolors, Foundations of the Collection, 1904-1922’

What: An exhibition of the museum’s seminal Works on Paper collection: 75 drawings and watercolors that were assembled by John W. Beatty, who served as Carnegie Museum of Art’s first director from 1896-1922 When: Through Oct. 7. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, noon-5 p.m. Sundays Admission: $10; $7 for senior citizens; $6 for children and students; free to museum members and Pitt and CMU students with ID Where: Carnegie Museum of Art, 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland Details: 412-622-3131 or online

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