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• 20th Century American Drawing

• Harrisville, NH , 1947
• watercolor
• 17 in. x 25 in. (43.18 cm x 63.5 cm)

• Gouri Pavlovich Ivanov-Rinov  (Russia, 1903 - 1966)
• American

• Gift of Muriel Ivanov-Rinov, 1995.9

• Not on View

Interpretive text from Exploring American Art: An Online Resource for the American Collections

An artist whose abilities ranged from traditional Russian icon painting to stage design, Gouri Pavlovich Ivanov-Rinov is perhaps best known for his landscape and genre subjects.  Born in Turkestan, Russia, in 1903, Ivanov-Rinov fought in the Russian Revolution and Civil War before immigrating to the United States in 1922.  Sometime after his arrival in Portland, Oregon, he made his way eastward, enrolling in art courses at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Fine Arts and Crafts School, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  During the 1930s he served as a scenery designer for the University Players of Falmouth, Massachusetts, and in 1941 he held his first one-person shows in Boston and Chicago.

Ivanov-Rinov settled in Dublin, New Hampshire, in 1933.  In 1937 he commenced work on his home and studio, constructing the major part in the traditional rammed-earth technique of his native Turkestan.  Despite extended sojourns in St. Louis, Washington, DC and elsewhere, Ivanov-Rinov became firmly identified with the New England art scene.  He participated regularly in regional exhibitions, and in 1945 he opened a summer art school in Dublin.  Following his death in 1966, a memorial exhibition was held for the artist at the Thorne Art Gallery in nearby Keene.  

The Currier's Harrisville, NH reveals Ivanov-Rinov's thorough assimilation of the American Scene aesthetic.  American Scene, or Regionalist, painting came to the fore during the 1920s and 1930s, a period coinciding with the artist's own growth and maturity as a painter.  Exemplified by the work of such artists as Thomas Hart Benton (q.v.) and Grant Wood (1892-1942), it focused on rural landscape and genre images.  Celebratory and chauvinistic in tone, American Scene painting fell from favor as Abstract Expressionism gained ground after the mid-1940s.  Although there were many painters (including Ivanov-Rinov) who continued to work in this mode, few managed to avoid the cliché and trite sentiment that so often crept into their folksy subject matter.

The Currier's watercolor, Harrisville, NH, demonstrates Ivanov-Rinov's talent for dodging the pitfalls of American Scene painting while retaining its charm.  Blending old landscape tropes, personal vision, and authentic observation, he created surprisingly fresh images of the New England countryside.  Depicting a small New Hampshire community in winter, the composition includes such familiar nostalgia elements as skaters on an ice-covered pond and a village church in the distance.  To this Currier and Ives picture, the artist adds his subjective vision, rendering the scene with the decorative quality and sugary color of a Russian lacquer painter.  Yet particularized details of the landscape, especially the row of modest homes in the foreground, ultimately persuade the viewer that Ivanov-Rinov's subject is a real place.  Charming and familiar, but with just enough idiosyncrasy to avoid the appearance of cliché, Harrisville, NH testifies to the continuing vitality of Regionalist painting in the years following World War II.

Harrisville is located in Cheshire County, not far from Dublin.  Settled in the late eighteenth century, the village grew after the establishment of woolen mills during the War of 1812.  One of the later mill owners, Milan Harris, gave his name to the village when it was formally incorporated in 1870.  Harrisville retained its picturesque character and was preserved as a historic district after the demise of the mills in the 1960s and 1970s.  Today the village hosts a vital community of just over a thousand year-round residents.

Harrisville, NH was presented to the Currier Museum of Art in 1995 by Muriel Ivanov-Rinov, the widow of the artist.  In addition to the watercolor, Mrs. Ivanov-Rinov gave several other works by her husband among which are watercolors, gouaches, and oils.  The Currier collection also includes a 1943 self-portrait by the artist.

VSD

REFERENCES

"Death Takes Area Artist."  Clipping from the Weekly Monadnock Ledger,  July 28, 1966, p. 2.  Contained in artist file, Currier Museum of Art.

Typescript biographical notes.  N.d.  Contained in object file, Currier Museum of Art.