Welcome to the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s research portal for the study of American watercolors. This site provides resources on watercolor societies from the 19th and 20th centuries in New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston. This portal was organized in conjunction with the exhibition American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent and its accompanying catalogue by Kathleen A. Foster (2017).
American Watercolor Society, 1866–present
New York Water Color Society, 1850–1855
New York Water Color Club, 1890–1941
Philadelphia Water Color Club, 1900–present
Pennsylvania Society of Miniature Painters, 1901–1951
Boston Water Color Society, 1885–present
Boston Water Color Club, 1887–1916
Individuals are encouraged to suggest additions to the Zotero library or make corrections by contacting amartinfo@philamuseum.org.
These resources were gathered by Kathleen A. Foster over the course of many years spent studying American watercolor painting. More recently she was assisted in building and organizing these research tools by many members of the department of American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, including Emily Leischner and Cynthia Veloric, and fellows at the Center for American Art, including the Barra Foundation Fellows Laura Fravel, Kelsey Gustin, Jennifer Stettler Parsons, Naomi Slipp, and Amy Torbert, and summer fellows James Denison, Abby Eron, Ramey Mize, Lauren Palmor, Corey Piper, Melanie Saeck, and Brittany Strupp. Museum volunteer Jim Hartman helped with scanning and indexing the catalogues of the Pennsylvania Miniature Society. We are also grateful to Hoang Tran, archivist at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, for his assistance with scanning catalogues. Sally Mills, research assistant at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, also helped to build the bibliography and contributed to the roster of the New York Water Color Society. We are grateful to many other staff members at the Philadelphia Museum of Art who helped to organize this site, including Christopher Atkins, Kathleen Krattenmaker, Kristen Regina, Sid Rodriguez, Ariel Schwarz, Richard Sieber, and Karina Wratschko.
