Phila. museum showcasing iconic folk art

Posted by Press Release on February 1, 2015

A watercolor of Adam and Eve, dating to 1834-35, is attributed to Samuel Gottschall, a Mennonite schoolmaster from Montgomery County. Photo courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is presenting “Drawn with Spirit: Pennsylvania German Fraktur from the Joan and Victor Johnson Collection,” an exhibition featuring bold, bright, and captivating drawings and manuscripts that celebrated important life events among the first European immigrants to settle in Southeastern Pennsylvania in the 18th century.

Fraktur is often marked by bold colors and vivid detail. Photo courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art — Fraktur is often marked by bold colors and vivid detail. *Photo courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art*

The exhibition, which opens Sunday, Feb. 1, and runs through April 26, represents the most comprehensive study of the last 50 years to be devoted to fraktur, an iconic form of American folk art. It celebrates the promised gift to the museum of more than 230 works. The Johnson collection of rare and exquisite works on paper will more than double the museum’s distinguished holdings of fraktur, making it among the finest collections of its kind in the country.

Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener director and CEO, said, “The Johnson collection has been assembled with great care and is widely admired by those who appreciate the rich artistic legacy of the Pennsylvania Germans. We are deeply grateful for this promised gift and are delighted to be able to share it for the first time with our visitors. It brilliantly complements the museum’s rich collection of Pennsylvania decorative arts, and we are thankful to Joan and Victor Johnson for their exceptional generosity.”

fracturPM — Fraktur was often used in manuscripts and to chronicle important life events with painstaking detail. *Photo courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.*

The exhibition encompasses the period from 1750 to around 1850 and includes works by many of the finest and best known fraktur artists: Johann Adam Eyer, Samuel Gottschall, Andreas Kolb, Friedrich Krebs, Henrich Otto, Durs Rudy, Johannes Ernst Spangenberg, and the anonymous scribe nicknamed the Sussel-Washington Artist.

“Drawn with Spirit” will explore the inspiration folk artists took from each other and how designs were transferred to new locations. In addition to its focus upon Pennsylvania, the Johnson Collection includes works made in New Jersey, New York, and Ohio, as well as Ontario, Canada.

Among the earliest works in the exhibition is a hand-drawn sheet of music from a manuscript hymnal made in Lancaster County at the Ephrata Cloister, a Pietist community founded in the 1730s that produced some of the first printed fraktur in America. It will be shown near works from the 1780s that were made at the cloister and then decorated and completed by artists such as Henrich Otto and Friederich Speyer. Another exceptional piece is a watercolor of Adam and Eve, dating to 1834-35, attributed to Samuel Gottschall, a Mennonite schoolmaster from Montgomery County, whose works are often characterized by brilliantly colored images.

The Johnsons started collecting fraktur over 60 years ago, attending small country auctions and shops across Pennsylvania where they acquired exquisite pieces that had just come out of family ownership. “The Philadelphia Museum of Art had a group of fraktur long before anybody else did, and one of the reasons we decided to give our ‘treasures’ to the museum is its superb collection of Pennsylvania German art,” said Joan Johnson. “It’s an illuminating combination, and I think the public will see what a creative group of people the Pennsylvania Germans were.”

The Johnson Collection complements the museum’s renowned collection of Pennsylvania German redware pottery, textiles, ironwork, and paint-decorated furniture. “The same decorative motifs that you find on fraktur are also seen on the [museum’s] redware and furniture, so these pieces mesh beautifully,” Joan Johnson added.

The fraktur phenomenon will continue March 1 when Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library opens “A Colorful Folk: Pennsylvania Germans and the Art of Everyday Life,” another exploration of Pennsylvania German fraktur and folk art.