A Retrospective: An Exhibition by
Philadelphia Artist James Hanes is on View at the
La Salle University Art Museum

A retrospective exhibition featuring the work of Philadelphia artist James Hanes is now on view at the La Salle University Art Museum until February 18, 2009.  

Hanes’ exhibition features a broad and representative view of the artist’s career, which has spanned more than 40 years. His exhibition is a return home of sorts for the artist. In 1965, Hanes founded the Fine Arts Department at La Salle, where he taught for more than 30 years before retiring in 1992.

The selection of works in the exhibition focuses on the main genres in which he worked—landscape, portraiture, still-life, and the human figure. One of the 18 pieces is a portrait of Brother Daniel Burke, F.S.C., former President of La Salle University and the founder of La Salle’s Art Museum.

A long-time resident of the Germantown section of Philadelphia, Hanes received his formal training with Roy Nuse at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1950, he won a Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, and the following year, he was awarded the Prix de Rome Scholarship to the American Academy in Rome. "I had never been to Italy, which was for me, almost the birth of civilization," said Hanes. "It was the major event of my life. I was able to show work done in Rome, Tuscany, and other areas in Italy."

While studying in Europe, Hanes absorbed the lessons of Renaissance artists, whom he looked at for their great expressiveness, and Roman sculptors, whom he believes are completely unsentimental—and true. "I saw and learned from the works or Corot, Rubens, and all the great Italians. I admired French nineteenth-century landscape paintings, where the landscape itself was more important than the subject or people in it," said Hanes.

Hanes has shown his works at many prestigious national and international venues, including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Palazzo dei Papi in Orvieto, Italy, and the National Academy of Design in New York.

"We are delighted to show the work of a distinguished artist who taught many years at the University, said Madeleine Viljoen, Ph.D., Director and Chief Curator of La Salle University’s Art Museum. "The works on view reflect the artist's profound engagement with the past and his close observation of the details of everyday life."

For more information about the La Salle University Art Museum, visit www.lasalle.edu/museum

About the La Salle University Art Museum:

The La Salle University Art Museum began in 1965 as a study collection for the University’s art history majors; it opened in its current location, on the lower level of Olney Hall, in 1976.  The collection has grown as a result of acquisitions and donations from friends and collectors. The Museum houses more than 4,000 objects and is currently the only university in the Philadelphia area to own a permanent display of paintings, drawings, and sculptures from the Renaissance to the present.