Davis Museum Rory McEwen Exhibit

Join us for a curated tour of the Rory McEwen traveling exhibit at Wellesley College's Davis Museum on Friday, December 13 at 11 am.  We will be guided by Dr. Amanda “Semente” Caroline de Oliveira Pereira, the Curator of Museum Education and Public Programs. This extraordinary exhibition, A New Perspective on Nature, showcases 85 watercolors that depict McEwen's plant portaits.  

Our group will meet at the museum at 11, where Dr. Semente will take us through the McEwen exhibition and also guide us through the highlights of the Museum's collection.  Lunch follows at the Lulu in the Campus Center.  Parking is available at the Davis Visitor's Parking Lot.  There is no charge for the museum or parking.

Please send your RSVP to Mark Seliber at mseliber1@gmail.com

More on our artist

Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature presents the vibrant career of the renowned Scottish artist, Rory McEwen (1932-1982). Focusing on his remarkable paintings of plants, the exhibition reveals McEwen’s lifelong enquiry into light and color in portraying his unique concept of the natural object. Over the course of his career, with his all-embracing perspective of modern art, McEwen developed a distinctive style, painting on vellum and using large empty backgrounds on which his plant portraits seem to float. In his paintings he forged his own personal interpretation of 20th century modernism, portraying individual flowers, leaves and vegetables as subject matter, “as a way of getting as close as possible to what I perceive as the truth, my truth of the time in which I live.”

Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature presents 85 watercolors on vellum and paper, representing a wide range of the artist’s work, along with many of the well-known 17th and 18th century masters who influenced him—including Robert, Redouté, Ehret, Aubriet as well as early illuminated manuscripts and folio volumes. McEwen’s work is also presented alongside the works of numerous contemporary artists who in turn continue McEwen’s artistic legacy. It includes works on loan from the Collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Mellon’s Oak Spring Garden Foundation Collection, the Shirley Sherwood Collection and the McEwen Family Estate Collection, as well as works from numerous private collections, most of which have never before been seen by the American public. McEwen’s work is found in private and public collections across the globe, including the British Museum; Victoria and Albert Museum; Tate; National Gallery of Modern Art, Scotland; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Hunt Institute, Pittsburgh; and Museum of Modern Art, New York.