World Views

A major Retrospective Exhibition of Tony Foster's wilderness paintings entitled "World Views" was shown in the prestigious Frye Art Museum in Seattle in 2000 and moved to New York and San Francisco in 2001.

This exhibition brought together nearly a hundred of Tony's most important paintings from collectors in Britain and America.

All his major themes from the last twenty years were represented - Thoreau's Country (Journey's in New England), John Muir's High Sierra (from the Sierra Nevada in California), Exploring the Grand Canyon, Rainforest Diaries, Arid Lands (Journeys through Deserts), The Idaho Rockies, and his recent exhibition about volcanoes, "Ice and Fire".

Hanging alongside paintings of some of the world's great wildernesses were two borrowed from Cornwall in the United Kingdom of Tywardreath Marsh, just half a mile away from Tony's home in the village of that name. Tony explained that, although in Britain the wilderness was cultivated thousands of years ago, there are still tiny pockets of uncultivated wild places which are worth celebrating and protecting.

Not only was "World Views - The Watercolor Diaries of Tony Foster an exceptional exhibition, but the eighty-eight page catalogue is a highly desirable item own its own right. In it Richard V. West writes an engaging foreword.

In the section entitled "World View" Tony Foster modestly and impressively discusses his motivation and approach.

In the third and longest chapter Duncan Robinson, the Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and former Director of the Yale Center for British Art points up the stature of Tony Foster both as environmentalist and artist and whose watercolour diaries have captured the imagination of so many of us.

76 plates of Tony Foster's watercolours are grouped under the following headings:

John Muir's High Sierra Exploring the Grand Canyon Rainforest Diaries Wilderness Journeys in the Idaho Rockies Arid Lands Ice and Fire

There follows a selected biography, a checklist of works, Bibliography and acknowledgements.

A few plates scanned from the catalogue are shown below. Scanning from prints in this way tends to produce moire patterns and the quality of the resultant digital images has been further sacrificed to enable them to download in an acceptable time. Moreover some of Tony's paintings are VERY large and these small representations of them do the works scant justice. Nevertheless I hope that something of the flavour of the catalogue and of the exhibition will still be evident.

24 November 2000

The catalogue is published by

Frye Art Museum
704 Terry Avenue
Seattle
Washington 98104
202-622-9250
www.fryeart.org