Picturing Paradise: From John James Audubon to the Florida Highwaymen

The Florida landscape has provided aesthetic inspiration to artists for centuries. Titian Ramsay Peale and John James Audubon came in search of native flora and fauna, followed by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Martin Johnson Heade, George Inness, Winslow Homer, and Henry Ossawa Tanner, who were lured by its natural beauty and warm climate. This presentation offers a succinct and engaging history of Florida’s landscape painters.

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Keri Watson is Assistant Director of the School of Visual Arts and Design and Professor of Art History at the University of Central Florida. She is the author of Florida's New Deal Parks and Post Office Murals (2024), Visual and Performing Arts Collaborations In Higher Education: Transdisciplinary Practices (2023), and This is America: Re-Viewing the Art of the United States (2023). Dr. Watson's work has been recognized and supported by a Fulbright Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art. She teaches 19th-Century Art, American Art, the Art of Walt Disney, and Southern Folk Arts.

"Funding for this Florida Talks program was provided by Florida Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities."

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Host or Publisher Leesburg Public Library