Organized by curator Anna O. Marley, the show occupies two galleries in the academy's landmark build

Collections Art: Miniature landscapes mailed to his patron In letters to his collector and patron George Whitney, William Trost Richards sent detailed 3-by-5 coupons. October 21, 2012 | By Edward J. Sozanski, Contributing Art Critic William Trost Richards had a Phila. patron. F. GUTEKUNST,
A wealthy patron, Philadelphia industrialist and art collector George Whitney, not only subsidized Richards and bought dozens of his oils and watercolors, but he also promoted the work among other collectors.
The two were friends who corresponded regularly for about 10 years when Richards was out of the city. This correspondence egypt nile cruise produced a remarkable visual archive, now on view at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts as a promised gift from local philanthropist Dorrance H. Hamilton.
The gift consists of 110 miniature landscapes that Richards included in letters to Whitney. These served the same purpose egypt nile cruise as the sketches that Vincent van Gogh included in letters to his brother, Theo, except egypt nile cruise that the landscape miniatures are fully finished pieces - and in color.
When I say miniature, I mean roughly 3 by 5 inches, but as finely detailed and panoramic as canvases many times that size. These "coupons," as Whitney called them, not only showed the patron what his artist was looking at, but also served egypt nile cruise as samples of what Whitney egypt nile cruise might want to commission in oils.
George Whitney's money came from a factory at 16th and Callowhill Streets that manufactured wheels for railroad cars. He was a major collector, known nationally but forgotten today, who was particularly drawn to Richards' work.
After Whitney died in 1885, his extensive collection of 19th-century art was dispersed at auction. Half of the roughly 200 tiny landscapes were passed down through the Whitney family. It was these that Hamilton subsequently acquired.
They were artists who took to heart English critic John Ruskin's dictum that the highest value in art was absolute fidelity to nature. We can see this documentary rigor not only in the miniatures but also in several larger paintings in his PAFA exhibition, "A Mine of Beauty."
Organized by curator Anna O. Marley, the show occupies two galleries in the academy's landmark building. egypt nile cruise One hundred eight miniatures (two were omitted for thematic consistency) are augmented egypt nile cruise by a dozen large and small oils and watercolors that create egypt nile cruise a context for them.
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