iPennsylvania Academy of the Fine ArtsCenter City
To Be Continued...
Unfinished paintings, sketches and studies from PAFA's permanent collection, treating incompletion not as failure but as evidence of experiment and material process.
More in Philadelphia
In Mary Cassatt's Baby on Mother's Arm, from around 1891, the two faces are nearly finished and everything else is a quick, energetic outline. She signed it anyway, at lower left, with a dedication to the Philadelphia painter Adolphe Borie.
The show is a small selection from PAFA's own collection in the Frances M. Maguire Gallery of the Hamilton Building: unfinished canvases, studies and oil sketches by Cassatt, Eastman Johnson, Violet Oakley, William Merritt Chase, Arthur B. Carles and Alex Katz. You walk from a canvas that is mostly outline to studies made for something bigger, like Oakley's oil-and-gold sketch for a church altarpiece. The curators treat the gaps as a record of experiment and revision. Edwin Dickinson saved them some work by putting "Unfinished" in his title.
It is a companion to One After Another: Series and Studies, so see the two together. Entry comes with PAFA admission: $25, or $15 on Fridays from 5 to 8pm.
Look for
Mary Cassatt, Baby on Mother's Arm
Look at how far Cassatt got: the mother's and baby's faces are close to complete, while the rest is a fast, loose outline.
Alex Katz, Art School
An early oil study, painted from a photograph, of Katz at right among his friends at the Skowhegan art school in Maine.
Violet Oakley, Study for the Ascension altarpiece
A 1901 sketch for the altarpiece of All Angels Church, worked in oil with gold paint on a tall canvas.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want finished pictures: every work here is a study, sketch or abandoned canvas.
With kids
Children 12 and under get in free, and ages 13 to 17 pay $5.
Free in the same building
Plan a visit to Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine ArtsAlso at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
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Image credits
9
- To Be Continued...Courtesy of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
- You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary TapestryPhoto credit: Constance Mensh.
- Botany of NationsCourtesy of Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
- Native Plants on the Parkway: A Botany of Nations GardenCourtesy of Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
- Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine ArtsDifference engine, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- The Fabric Workshop and MuseumJohn Phelan, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel Universityajay_suresh, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Vox PopuliVox Populi
- The Franklin Instituteajay_suresh via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0