Italian-born Joseph Stella became known in the early 1900s for the masterful draftsmanship in his illustrations for social-reform periodicals.   In 1907, Stella traveled with writer Paul Kellogg to Monongah, West Virginia to document a mine explosion for the journal Charities and the Commons. The explosion killed 348 miners, the highest death toll in American mining at the time.  Four of Stella’s drawings, including the Museum’s new acquisition, illustrated Kellogg’s text, published in the journal in January 1908.

Many of the miners were Italian immigrants, and Stella felt a particular sympathy for them.  In other drawings of the disaster, Stella focuses on the men whose life was impacted.  In Morning Mist at the Mine Mouth, however, Stella captures the scene itself.  Using charcoal to render the mists of a gray morning, Stella cloaks the miners in moisture as they cross the bridge on the right of the composition and stand outside the building on the left. As art historian Barbara Haskell has commented, “… Stella displaced the horror of the scene by veiling it behind a moody atmosphere.”

Morning Mist at the Mine Mouth [Monongah, West Virginia]
1908, charcoal on paper, Joseph Stella, born Muro Lucano, Italy 1877
died Astoria, N.Y. 1946, Museum purchase made possible by the
Daniel Amos Purchase Fund, the Art Opportunity Fund, the Edward
Swift Shorter Bequest Fund and by exchange    

Child's First Ramble, 1864, oil on board, William Sidney Mount, born Setauket, N.Y. 1807, died Setauket, N.Y. 1868, Museum purchase made possible by Daniel P. and Kathelen V. Amos Fund at the Community Foundation of the Chattahoochee Valley     2010.4.2

Genre-painter William Sidney Mount was one of the most important American artists of the 19th century.  His everyday subject matter and meticulously realistic style was popular with the American public during the era of Jacksonian democracy.  This beautiful sketch of a little girl playing in the grass was painted in 1864.  It was one of two small works that Mount produced for the Brooklyn and Island Fair, one of the U.S. Sanitary Commission’s civilian fundraisers held throughout the country for the medical treatment of Union soldiers wounded during the Civil War.  In this sketch, the thinly painted background is made up of dark tones, which contrast with the bright clothing, blue eyes and red cheeks of the child and the green foliage.

The Mourner, 1952, charcoal and pastel on sepia paper, Jack Levine, born Boston, Mass. 1915, Museum purchase made possible by a Friend of the Museum in Memory of Donald F. Broda, Jr. and in Honor of Dr. Philip L. Brewer     2010.4

Jack Levine is a leader of the Figurative Expressionist movement. Artists in this movement use free brushwork and lavish amounts of paint for a less-precise rendering of subject matter.  His subject matter, however, is pure Social Realism.  For most of his career, Levine has focused on political and social themes, depicting criminals, crooked politicians and other shady characters woven in society’s fabric.  This drawing is a character study for his seminal painting, Gangster Funeral(1952-53, Whitney Museum of American Art). That comedic work represents a funeral visited by various characters, including a police chief and the man who ordered the deceased’s demise.  In the Columbus Museum’s drawing, the sincerity of the sad eyes in the jowly face of the mournerseems suspect.  Levine highlighted the flowers on his lapel and in his bouquet with bright blue pastel.

Philip Moulthrop learned the art of wood-turning from his father Edward, whose work is also in the Museum’s collection. Like his father, he uses the wood of native Southern trees, but he has developed a very different technique in his mosaic series. He attaches thin branches on a turned bowl, filling in the spaces between the branches with a dark black resin.  He then returns the bowl to the lathe, sands it down, and polishes it.  His mosaic works, in which Moulthrop celebrates the colors and patterns that are inherent in the wood, are considered to be his most prominent contribution to the wood-turning field.

Bundled Mosaic Vessel, 2002, cherry, mimosa, cedar, Philip Moulthrop, born Atlanta, Ga. 1947, Gift of Mrs. Richard Jennings, by exchange      2010.2

Thomas McKenney, the first superintendent of the U. S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and an early advocate for Native Americans, commissioned portraits of many Native American leaders during their visits to the nation’s capital in the 1820s and 1830s. These portraits were later copied and prints of each made to illustrate the landmark book The History of the Indian Tribes of North America.

This octavo-sized print of Creek chief Selocta comes from the 1855-58 reprinting of that book. Selocta fought alongside American forces during the Creek War of 1813-14, serving at times as a guide for the army and later as a translator for General Andrew Jackson during the negotiation of the treaty ending the war. Though a close associate of Jackson and a valuable ally to the Americans, Selocta was ultimately forced to relocate with his people west of the Mississippi River.

This program, distributed at the first inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, contains a schedule of events for the ceremony held in Washington, D.C. on March 4, 1933. Roosevelt would go on to serve four terms as the nation’s chief executive. He had a close association with the Columbus area before and during his presidency, as he visited the city often during trips to nearby Warm Springs, Georgia to receive treatment for polio.

Program from the inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933, Museum purchase made possible by the Evelyn S. and H. Wayne Patterson Fund     2009.50

Nicolas Sanson, one of the foremost mapmakers of the 17th century, originally published this map depicting the Southeast in 1657. It became recognized as one of the most authoritative maps of the region during the era, and underwent several reprintings. In it, Sanson claims a large portion of the Southeast for France by virtue of that country’s attempts at colonization in the region.

The name “Florida” was commonly applied to the entire Southeast in maps throughout the 1500s and 1600s. It has its origins in the early 1500s explorations of Ponce de Leon, who after landing in present-day Florida near Easter, named the area “Pascua de Florida,” roughly translated as “Easter Flower.” 

Map of the Southeast, by Nicolas Sanson, 1682, Museum purchase made possible by the Evelyn S. and H. Wayne Patterson Fund     2009.49