January 23, 2002

DOYLESTOWN, PA -- Roy C. Nuse played an integral part in both the Bucks County and Philadelphia art scenes. A member of the Pennsylvania Impressionist art colony, his work reflected his traditional training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he also taught for 29 years. For the first time, an exhibition of his figurative and landscape paintings will be on view at the James A. Michener Art Museum, beginning February 9 and continuing through May 12, 2002.

Erika Smith, curator of the exhibition, remarked, "Nuse began his formal training at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, embarking on what would be a lengthy training in the academic tradition that spanned more than a decade of study at several art schools." Following his marriage to fellow academy student Ellen Guthrie, the couple moved to Bucks County so that Nuse could attend the renowned Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied with Daniel Garber. Nuse developed his talents and adopted the favorite method of the Impressionists -- painting outdoors directly from nature.

Nuse earned top honors at PAFA, winning the First Toppan Prize and two Cresson European Traveling Fellowships among others. However, the single most important element in Nuse's life continued to be a devotion to his family, and to the land around his adopted home of Bucks County, which became an ongoing source of inspiration through his career.

Nuse's known work numbers over 250 paintings and drawings covering some seven decades from 1905 through 1975. The works in this retrospective exhibition reveal the Nuse family lovingly rendered at various ages, and landscapes that are personal and familiar -- almost always his own gardens, streams, bridges, and quarry, which were his everyday views.

The portraits are mostly of family members, including each of his many grandchildren as they came along, and a few close neighbors. Starting at an early age and continuing late into his career, Nurse created an interesting group of self-portraits. A second group of figurative paintings included several series of figures in landscape settings, particularly "boys in the glen," which he considered among his most important work. The remainder of figures in the landscape included paintings of his wife and children in flower-filled gardens. One final group of figure paintings is a sequence of genre scenes portraying life on a typical farm in Bucks County.

His landscape paintings are among his most lyrical and many of the works employ the broken brush strokes of the Impressionist style, though he was equally proficient in painting in a smoothly finished way that showed little evidence of brushwork.

Nuse exhibited at many venues including the Corcoran Gallery, Washington DC; the Art Institute of Chicago; The Cincinnati Art Museum; The Pennsylvania Academy, and many others.

Nuse's love of family inspired his passion for painting. In the end he gave nearly all of his works to his children, which were then handed down through generations, and now are finally brought together for this exhibition in his honor.

Media Contact:

Linda Milanesi
215-340-9800 ext. 113
lmilanesi@michenerartmuseum.org

• Roy C. Nuse: Figures & Landscapes