Downriver: Currents of Style in Louisiana Painting 1800-1950

The artistic history of Louisiana, from the French and Spanish Baroque painters of colonial Louisiana to the postpainterly abstraction of the New Orleans modernists, can be studied through the diverse canon of styles that are seen in the works of artists who painted in Louisiana in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. A state rich in cultural heritage, Louisiana fostered a unique body of artists who produced an impressive array of painting reflecting the disparate backgrounds that comprised the fabric of Louisiana society.

This exquisite volume, replete with full-color reproductions of some of the most important and beautiful works by Louisiana artists, explores the history of painting in Louisiana through its absorption of national and international themes and trends. Represented are the basic categories of portraiture, landscape, genre painting, and nonrepresentationalism.

Chapter topics cover a wide range of themes and issues, such as light in Louisiana landscape art, the Mississippi River, and the black image in Louisiana painting. Artists discussed include Jose de Salazar, William Edward West, John James Audubon, Robert Brammer, William and Ellsworth Woodward, Paul Ninas, Elizabeth Laughlin, Helen Turner, and more.

For students of art or simply lovers of art, this beautiful book is an exploration into the unique past of an extraordinary state.