Kentucky Artists

• Collections Spotlight: Sunday Night at Chickamauga

  By Julie Payne

  Sunday Night at Chickamauga, attributed to Samuel Woodson Price, oil on canvas, ca. 1870, Liberty Hall Historic Site Collections.

  When my husband, Warren, and I were asked to join the Liberty Hall Historic Site’s Collections Committee, we never dreamed it would result in finding a treasure.  Our first assignment, to evaluate a standing plate warmer, was interesting, but not exactly in our area of expertise. Since our area of expertise is Kentucky antique art, we asked, might there be a print we could evaluate?  The answer was yes.

• Frankfort Friends: Paul Sawyier and the Browns

  By Kate Hesseldenz, Curator

  Another View of Frankfort, Paul Sawyier, watercolor on paper, ca. 1895, Liberty Hall Historic Site Collections

  Liberty Hall Historic Site owns eight Paul Sawyier paintings.  Six of these were likely collected by Brown family members.  Though not born in Frankfort, Paul Sawyier (1865-1917) and his family moved to the capital city in 1870.  While living in Frankfort, Sawyier created watercolor landscape paintings of his central Kentucky surroundings. He also painted portraits and worked in oils. Sawyier was influenced by American Impressionism and studied with Impressionist artist, William Merritt Chase, in New York City in 1889.  

• Paul Sawyier Paintings

  By Kate Hesseldenz, Curator

  

  Liberty Hall Historic Site owns eight Paul Sawyier paintings.  Six of these were likely collected by Brown family members.  Though not born in Frankfort, Paul Sawyier (1865-1917) and his family moved to the capital city in 1870.  While living in Frankfort, Sawyier created watercolor landscape paintings of his central Kentucky surroundings.

• Robert Burns Wilson: Frankfort's Resident Artist

  By Beth Caffery Carter

  
  Robert Burns Wilson from The Magazine of Poetry A Quarterly Review, vol. 2, no. 4 (1890) and Blossoming Trees by Robert Burns Wilson, 1880-1890, Liberty Hall Historic Collections.

  If you’ve visited Liberty Hall and the Orlando Brown House, you may recall the paintings that hang on their walls of these two houses. The Kentucky artists exhibited at Liberty Hall Historic Site include Oliver Frazer, Matthew Harris Jouett, and Paul Sawyier. However, one Kentucky artist represented in the collection stands out with because of his friendship with the Brown Family: Robert Burns Wilson.