Denver Art Museum
The Denver Art Museum has announced an exquisite collection of works acquired in 2019 from several donors. Works include major pieces from Western masters Eanger Irving Couse, James Earle Fraser and Thomas Hill, as well as dozens of other works in other categories and departments. Other highlights from the list of acquisitions include works on paper, and works from women artists and artists of color, which will allow the museum to “enlarge the range of voices represented and expanding the scope of stories that can be told at the DAM’S collections.”
The list of acquisitions includes Fraser’s most famous bronze, a 1919 cast of The End of the Trail, which was a gift of Henry Roath. “After modeling the sculpture in plaster in 1894, Fraser presented it in monumental scale in 1915 at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, where it won a gold medal,” according to the museum. “Due to its popularity, Fraser began casting statuettes at Roman Bronze Works foundry in New York.”
Hill’s 1865 oil Yosemite, acquired with funds from Roath, shows the famous national park at a pivotal time in the park’s long history. “It was created in 1865, a year after President
Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant into law, which set aside Yosemite and Mariposa Grove to the state of California for public recreation and enjoyment,” explains the Denver Art Museum. The park later became a national park in 1890.
A gift from George and Hilda Nancarrow, Couse’s 1932 oil Husking Corn is a significant donation to the museum’s Petrie Institute of Western American Art because it shows one of Couse’s most iconic themes, a Native American figure in an interior setting. The work comes to the museum in the original artist-designed frame.
For information about the museum, including its upcoming exhibitions, visit www.denverartmuseum.org.