From Cassatt to Wyeth: American Masterworks from the Cedarhurst Center for the Arts

“This is a must-see show… With few exceptions, each work is representative of its creator’s general body of work, making the collection a capsule course in American art history.”

— Richard L. Brown, Rutland Daily Herald

“One of the most significant collections of late 19th and early 20th century American paintings found anywhere.”

— Philip E. Bishop, Orlando Sentinel

The extraordinary permanent collection of American paintings, works on paper, and sculpture owned by the Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts has made Mt. Vernon, Illinois, one of the most remarkable small towns in the United States. The collection was formed in the 1940s and 1950s by John R. and Eleanor R. Mitchell, a prosperous Mt. Vernon couple, who were able to acquire major works by Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent, George Bellows, Robert Henri, William Glackens, and others at a time when American art was underappreciated and much undervalued. Those artists have since proved to be some of the most crucial in the development of American painting.

The Mitchells inspired other downstate Illinois residents to collect American art as well. By the 1950s, a handful of families in this farming and coalmining region owned works of American art that museums and art galleries were increasingly eager to acquire. As interest in American art deepened in the 1960s, the Mitchells founded the John R. and Eleanor R. Mitchell Foundation for the purpose of building a museum on their 80-acre estate in Mt. Vernon. Eleanor Mitchell passed away in 1968, and John Mitchell died in 1971, but by then their dream of enriching the cultural life of southern Illinois was well underway. In 1973, the Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts was opened to the public, with the Mitchells’ collection of American paintings and drawings as the centerpiece of a vital new institution.

This body of work has virtually never been seen outside the Cedarhurst gates. Organized by Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, and toured by International Arts & Artists, From Cassatt to Wyeth offered a rare opportunity for those outside Mt. Vernon, Illinois, to view these American treasures.

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