Industrial Landscape (The Suburbs; Modern Industry)

Inscriptions

Signed and inscribed, in graphite, on stretcher: Preston Dickinson/ Price 200--/ The Suburbs. Dated? in graphite, on stretcher: 19/9/19. Label on stretcher (removed, now in file), from a New York gallery: (in artist's hand?): Preston Dickinson / Industrial Landscape.

Label

As he often did with his paintings, Preston Dickinson has compressed a disparate group of industrial elements into a single “landscape.” This marks a significant appropriation of an earlier artistic convention in which architectural monuments are depicted in impossible combinations. Painters of Roman vistas, for example, were apt to create landscapes featuring everything from the Column of Trajan to the Colosseum as though they existed side by side in real space. The goal was not topographical accuracy, but rather extolling Classical values through the images of ancient architecture.

Dickinson updates this approach, replacing antiquity with the promise of industrial modernity, and Rome with the United States. We can see water tanks, factory buildings, smokestacks, and vents—all created by the artist to celebrate industry as a reason for optimism in a future where plenty would replace privation. In paintings such as Industrial Landscape, Dickinson combined his technological enthusiasm with progressive ideas about art—modernism with modernity.

From the 2019 exhibition Cubism and Its Aftershocks, curated by John R. Stomberg Ph.D, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director

Course History

SART 25, SART 31, SART 72, Painting I, II, III, Thomas Ferrara, Winter 2012

ARTH 16.2, Picasso: The Vollard Suite, Michael R. Taylor, Fall 2013

THEA 90, Contemporary Practices in U.S. Theater, Laurie Cherba Kohn, Fall 2013

WRIT 5, The Waste Land, Before and After, Melissa Zeiger, Fall 2013

ARTH 71, The "American Century": Modern Art in the United States, Mary Coffey, Winter 2015

ARTH 71, The "American Century": Modern Art in the United States. Mary Coffey, Winter 2015

Studio Art 31.01/72.01, Painting II/III, Jen Caine, Winter 2023

Exhibition History

American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 9-December 9, 2007.

American Paintings from the Dartmouth Collection, 1910-1960, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 17-April 12, 1998.

Architechture on Paper, Jaffe-Friede Gallery, Hopkins Center Art Galleies, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 10-January 29, 1984.

Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 28, 2002-July 20, 2003.

Cubism and Its Aftershocks, Citrin Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26, 2019-February 16, 2020.

Cubism and Its Legacy, Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 17-December 20, 2013.

Cubism: From Advanced Art History Seminar to Museum Installation, Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 28, 2004-February 20, 2005.

Curator's Choice: Dartmouth College Permanent Collection, Jaffe-Friede, Strauss and Barrows Galleries, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 29, 1976-January 16, 1977.

Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire, March 17, 2016-June 30, 2018.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 7, 2010-October 20, 2012.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 12, 2015.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 2, 2009-November 2, 2009.

Israel Sack Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 26, 1996-May 11, 1997.

Picturing New York: Images of the City, 1890-1955, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 31-June 21, 1992.

Preston Dickinson (1891-1930), Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska, September 4-October 7,1979; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, December 18-February 17, 1980; University Art Museum, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 15-April 13, 1980; Colorodo Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorodo Springs, Colorado, May 13-June 10, 1980; Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, July 13-August 10, 1980.

The Dartmouth Collection: 19th & 20th Century Paintings, Jaffe-Friede Gallery, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 17-November 6, 1982.

The Machine In the Garden: Cubist Art From the Hood Collection, Alumni College 1986, Harrington Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 26-August 24, 1986.

Visions of Tomorrow: New York and American Industrialization in the 1920's-1930's, Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo, Japan, April 21-May 9, 1988; Daimaru Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan, May 19-June 6, 1988; Fukuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Fukuoka, Japan, July 15-August 14, 1988; Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Utsunomiya, Japan, August 28-October 2, 1988.

Publication History

Barbara MacAdam, "Picturing New York: Images of the City,1890-1955", Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1992, no.18.

Visions of Tomorrow: New York and American Industrialization in the 1920s-1930s, No. 36, p. 65 and p. 180.

Barbara J. MacAdam, American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Muesum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2007, p. 87, no. 63.

John R. Stomberg, The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2019, p. 143, ill. plate no. 74.

Provenance

Charles D. Childs (art dealer), Boston; sold to present collection, 1950.

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