Artist Joseph Stella Painted Nature in Vibrant Color

He famously captured industrial America—the Brooklyn Bridge, Pittsburgh’s steel mills—with his monumental canvases. But the painter Joseph Stella (1877-1946) looked to nature for respite, escaping his Manhattan studio to visit the New York Botanical Garden and to paint in southern Italy, where he grew up. “My devout wish,” the artist wrote, “[is] that my every working day might begin and end—as a good omen—with the light, gay painting of a flower.”

The joy Stella found in flowers is apparent throughout a new show that opens this month at Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Museum of Art, which co-organized it with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. It’s the first major exhibition to focus on Stella’s nature paintings—and the artist’s first big show in nearly 30 years. The Brandywine’s Audrey Lewis hopes the botanical subjects prove as restorative for viewers as they were for their creator. “There’s still beauty in the world, and Stella really managed to capture that.”

Amy Crawford | | READ MORE

Amy Crawford is a Michigan-based freelance journalist writing about cities, science, the environment, art and education. A longtime Smithsonian contributor, her work also appears in CityLab and the Boston Globe.