Oregon Art

PERMANENT EXHIBIT
Exhibit Hours


The Northwest Art Gallery is a permanent rotating exhibit. The current collection gives a broad overview of this history of major Oregon artists.

Early depictions of Oregon were done Joseph Drayton, who joined the Wilkes expedition in 1841 to document the Columbia River and the inland landscape of present-day Oregon.

By the time of statehood in 1859, the documentary role of the explorer-artist had given way to the artistic vision of the Romantic painter, whose works would help inspire continued westward expansion along the Oregon Trail. Views of Mt. Hood by Eliza Barchus, Three Sisters by William Parrott, Portland harbor by Cleveland Rockwell and an Indian encampment along the Columbia River by J. E. Stuart are some of the paintings from this period.

At the turn of the 20th century Portlanders were exposed to more modern art at the Lewis and Clark Exposition. Some 600 paintings were exhibited in a show curated by New York painter Frank Vincent DuMond. Among the Oregon artists who took up the "modern" style as Oregon Impressionists were C.C. McKim, Clyde Leon Keller, Melville T. Wire, C.E.S. Wood, Rockwell Carey, and Clara Jane Stephens.

Important early abstract painters of the 1940s such as C.S. Price and Howard Sewall helped set the stage for even more modern artists to paint in the second half of the 20th century.

Paintings in the Northwest Art Gallery's first exhibit are drawn from the collections of the Oregon Historical Society and private lenders. The exhibit is curated by Robert Joki, owner of the Sovereign Gallery, Portland.