160 years of art at the St. Louis Mercantile Library

Description

The St. Louis Mercantile Library Association has, from the time of its founding in 1846, exhibited and collected fine art, amassing a collection that compliments its research holdings while also reflecting the tastes, interests and cultural aspirations of its constituency. As such, the collection is particularly strong in artists who lived and worked in the city of St. Louis and the state of Missouri who created works inspired by literary, political and historical subjects. Numerous donations of sculpture have helped form a nucleus of works that bring to life the Association's literary collections, while the predominance of landscape paintings is a natural outgrowth of St. Louis's nineteenth century landscape movement that was tied to national and international art styles. Appropriately, the collection also features portraits of political, literary and social leaders created in various media by some of the leading artists of the day. This fully illustrated handbook presents highlights of the paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, and folk and decorative arts that make up the Mercantile Library Association's permanent collection and that reflect the institution's past 160 years of cultural activity as well as its ongoing role as a museum for art of the American Midwest.