(instrumental music) - Somehow in the 20th century when the history of American landscape painting was being written and celebrated, they left out the women.

(instrumental music continues) - Today we're at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, New York.

And we're here for the exhibition Susie Barstow and Her Circle, which is part of the larger exhibition project here called Women Reframe American Landscape.

And behind me is this wonderful image of Susie Barstow.

So you can see for yourself who the artist is and what she looked like and what she wore as she was tramping about the catskills in the mid 19th century.

The room is filled with beautiful examples of her artistry as well as the works of artists with whom she sketched and hiked and exhibited.

Other women such as Laura Woodward, Mary Josephine Walters, Julie Hart Beers, Eliza Granerex, and Charlotte Buel Coleman.

By the time of Susie's death in 1923, her reputation was well established as was the reputation of many other women artists with whom she painted and exhibited.

And there seems to be this moment of art historical amnesia by mid-century that's written these women out of the history books and out of exhibitions and monographs and articles.

But now is the time that we bring them back into the fold.

(instrumental music) This beautiful landscape by Susie Barstow with its framing bows really invites the viewer along this stream in the foreground back into wooded seclusion.

This was painted in 1865 and for many artists of the Hudson River School, the Civil War as devastating as it was in America, created a moment for artists to paint scenes that offered maybe a bit of repose, silent spaces, hopeful landscapes, that maybe the United States would become reunited through the landscape itself.

Suzy Barstow was certainly part of this tradition.

Her style is often liken to artists such as Asher Duran, a name that the public today might be more familiar with.

Now, I think it's time for Suzy Barstow to be the name that people associate with these types of beautiful intimate landscapes.

(instrumental music) When I was a graduate student, I was writing my dissertation about Thomas Cole and the Course of Empire and I was able to mine these incredible archival documents and all these letters by Thomas Cole.

In and amongst these letters are his correspondence with his sister, Sarah Cole.

And I'd never learned about Sarah in any art history class and I was fascinated who she was.

And the more work and the more research I had done into Sarah, it became apparent that she was a professional artist.

She was right there with Thomas, and in fact there were times in which she provided the encouragement that he needed when he felt that his talent was fading.

(instrumental music continues) - Sarah Cole was about four years Thomas Cole's Junior.

Both moved from England in 1817.

So at that time, Sarah was 13 years old and Thomas Cole pretty quickly upon immigrating to the United States he started pursuing a career in the arts, in the fine arts.

This would've been something Sarah and her two sisters would've been aware of.

And there's actually a report of the sisters doing classes at a seminary with Thomas and Thomas was teaching art classes there.

So it's possible that they were taking some lessons from Thomas or learning alongside him.

And we know that Sarah started painting as early as the 1830s.

She was part of this artistic network and she was creating paintings as well as etchings, which was not a very common technique at the time.

And there'd be an etching revival actually in the 1880s after she died.

And she was someone to really help spearhead that, unlike Thomas Cole who focused more on oil painting during his career.

(instrumental music continues) - In the 19th century, there were discussions about whether or not you could find a female line.

Did women hold paintbrush differently than men?

And it became important to discern this difference between men and women.

And what we find today, the reason why this exhibition is so important is because regardless of gender, these are works that celebrate the beauty and awe that these artists found in the American landscape.

The historical women that we're showcasing are working in concert with the contemporary women artist to show you that there is this continuum, this ongoing appreciation for this curiosity about the American landscape.

Many of these conversations are meant to spark questions even contend with our own uneasy history, but ultimately come back to celebrate what is unique and beautiful about the American landscape.

- By studying these women it's a way of redressing these figures who were just as central to the movement as people like Thomas Cole or Frederick Church, but who we've forgotten about.

And I think for me at least, it was, I think my understanding of women at the time was that they were just at home and they were very confined to these gender roles.

But it's so remarkable to see how many women were able to be so mobile like hiking throughout the country and painting to such a great scale and with such originality.

So I think it's really empowering for women today to read about these women.

And it also, I think, is empowering to remember these women and remember their stories and how they've shaped American art today.

(instrumental music) - Sponsored in part by Albany Medical Health Systems and by Robert and Doris Fisher Malesarti.

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