Opening at the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia in Athens on Saturday, March 28, 2020, “Rediscovering the Art of Victoria Hutson Huntley” highlights this well-known lithographer in the 1930s and 1940s, Victoria Hutson Huntley (1900-1971) who made works that were popular with museums and collectors.

 

Hutson-Huntley’s lithographs highlighted subjects including landscapes, human figures and the natural world. In the middle of her career, she spent several years in Florida and she often featured the Everglades and its flora and fauna in her work. The exhibition will include about 30 lithographs and two paintings, tracks these different phases of her career and her development as an artist. She was particularly fond of birds and many images show egrets, roseate spoonbills and the like.

As a meticulous creator, first painting an image, then making a drawing, a redrawing, a redesign to reduce the drawing in scale and finally a lithograph. Her work fell out of fashion in the 1950s with the rise of abstract expressionism, which sidelined realistic approaches to art.

In her second lithograph Huntley ever made, “Interior” (1930), received the first place prize in the International Graphic Art Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. But this recognition was only the start of Huntley’s career as an artist.

Over the course of her life, she produced more than 100 lithographs as well as intaglio prints, earning awards, grants and national recognition for her works. Lithography is a particularly demanding art form, given the strength required to move the heavy stones on which the artist draws, but Huntley loved it.

Huntley’s earlier works, made from 1930 to 1946, reflect her life in New York City, rural areas in Caldwell, New Jersey and two small towns in Connecticut that served as an influence on her subject matter. She made these prints during the years in which realism and the American Scene movement were emphasizing a naturalistic style of art.

In 1946, she moved near Orlando, Florida with her husband and received a Guggenheim grant to create works depicting the Everglades. Her health suffered, however they returned to the North in 1953.

On view through June 21, 2020, for more information of the events associated with this exhibition, see: www.georgiamuseum.org or call 706.542.4662.