The work of one of the most important American artists of the 19th century, William Trost Richards (1833-1905), is the subject of a major exhibition and sale at William Vareika Fine Arts in Newport, Rhode Island.
Born in Philadelphia, William Trost Richards was one of the many 19th century American artists who found special inspiration in the sublime natural environment of Newport and the Narragansett Bay region. Although he is probably best known for the work he created while visiting and living in Rhode Island, Richards also painted throughout many other parts of New England and in his native Pennsylvania, as well as Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and the State of Washington. Other travels took him abroad to England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Scotland, Switzerland, and Wales.
The exhibition "At Home and Abroad: Landscapes and Seascapes By William Trost Richards" is comprised of nearly one hundred oil paintings, watercolors and drawings that depict many of these American and foreign settings and span the full one-half century of his memorable career. Most of these artworks have descended in the family of the artist and many have never before been exhibited or offered for sale.
The art of William Trost Richards has been the subject of a number of important museum exhibitions: St. Louis Museum of Fine Arts (1907); Art Association of Newport (1954, 1976); Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1956, 1973); Brooklyn Museum (1973); The New Britain Museum of American Art(1973); Metropolitan Museum of Art (1982-83, 2001); Hudson River Museum (1986), Brandywine River Museum, 2001. The Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, New York will feature a Richards exhibition from May 25 until October 14, 2002. Also, The Guernsey Museum in England will mount an exhibition of the Moulin Huet Bay, Guernsey subject paintings of Richards and Renoir in 2003.
William Vareika Fine Arts opened on Bellevue Avenue in Newport in the Spring of 1987 with a successful exhibition of William Trost Richards artworks. Since that time, the Vareika gallery has concentrated on the purchase and sale of the work of the major American artists who painted in the Newport region. The gallery has earned a national reputation as leading specialists in the artworks of William Trost Richards.
William Vareika Fine Arts is one of the largest galleries in New England and is located in historic Newport on famous Bellevue Avenue just a few doors from the International Tennis Museum and Hall of Fame and several blocks from the Newport Art Museum and the Redwood Library and Atheneum. It was rated “Best of RI” by Rhode Island Monthly Magazine. Yankee Magazine's Travel Guide described the Vareika Gallery as "more like a miniature museum that a gallery…one of the outstanding reasons to visit New England."