Howard Chandler Christy Works from the Permanent Collection
Now on view, Works on Paper Gallery, 2nd Floor
This intimate exhibition of seventeen works on paper is drawn from the Zanesville Museum of Art’s Tami Longaberger Howard Chandler Christy Collection. It explores the artist’s prolific career as an illustrator and how he shaped popular opinion at the turn of the twentieth century creating idealized and romanticized versions of the modern man and woman.
Howard Chandler Christy (1872–1952) was born just south of Zanesville in Morgan County, Ohio. An accomplished painter and illustrator, Christy is perhaps best known for creating the “Christy Girl”, which captured the American imagination at the turn of the twentieth century. She was depicted as an elegant, athletic, beautiful, adventurous, and confident modern American woman. This young beauty was featured in influential and popular magazines including “Motor”, the “Ladies’ Home Journal”, and the Boston “Post, Sunday Magazine”. She led an active life, playing tennis, picnicking, motoring, sailing, and serving refreshments at the Metropolitan Opera House. For Christy, the wholesome, modern woman had a more public role in society and participated in life outside of the home.
Her “joie de vivre”, or carefree lifestyle, contrasts with several of Christy illustrations from the museum’s permanent collection that depict the modern man as a grave, purposeful, patriotic soldier and public servant. Christy’s illustrations for “Leslie’s Weekly,” an American periodical with a large circulation, which captured the public’s imagination with its timely stories of breaking news and events, portrays the devoted soldiers and suitors protecting the nation’s interests. “The Invasion of Cuba” and “Advancing on the Filipinos” for example, characterize Christy’s reportage-style with their dense narrative compositions of men at war.
Image Above: Howard Chandler Christy, Entrance Fountain, Circa 1930, Oil on canvas. On loan from Dr. and Mrs. Carl Minning, IR05/16/2024.002
