Art in Florida
Maybelle Mann

Hardback $35.00
ISBN: 1-56164-171-5
Size: 8.5 x 11 191 Pages
60 b&w photos 100 color photos


This authoritative and wide-ranging book presents for the first time the history of art in Florida from the first European artist, Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, who arrived in 1564, until the end of the Second World War, when art in Florida exploded into the modern forms and styles. The early chapters document the artistic offerings of early explorers and naturalists like Mark Catesby and John James Audubon, as well as the Seminole Indians and those who painted them, including George Catlin and Charles Bird King. St. Augustine, the first permanent settlement, also came to be the first center of art in Florida. After the Civil War, when Northerners began to flock to Florida for health and pleasure, art found a place in the thriving business of travel literature. This drew artists like brothers Edward and Thomas Moran, who began to paint the beauty of Florida. In the 1880s, St. Augustine, through the efforts of Henry Morrison Flagler, again became the center of artistic endeavor, attracting artists like Martin Johnson Heade. At the end of the century many prominent American artists arrived and painted the Florida they found. This included Frederic Remington, George Inness, Hermann Herzog, and Winslow Homer. In the first half of the twentieth century, Florida paintings were created by such notables as John Singer Sargent, Jane Peterson, Martha Walter, Milton Avery, William Glackens, Ernest Lawson, Harold Betts, Frank Weston Benson, Ralston Crawford, Andrew Wyeth, and Milton Avery. The final chapter covers government-sponsored art in the 1930s, including murals in public buildings and the Index of American Design.

Collected here are 160 illustrations of Florida art, 100 in color. The illustrated paintings were gathered from public and private collections all over the country, many reproduced here for the first time.

"Rather than wonder why it was not until the last year of the passing century before a professional book-length treatment of Florida art and artists appeared in print, I simply rejoice now at its epiphany. Maybelle Mann and Pineapple Press are to be congratulated on their splendid millennium present to the state and nation." Dr. Michael Gannon, Professor of History, University of Florida

"Art in Florida is a history not only of Florida’s arts but also of its people. From the work of some of the earliest Florida artists to the New Deal inspired public sponsorship of artwork to the very edge of the expansion of art into today’s new and exciting forms, Dr. Mann charts the progress of our state and thus of our nation. The spirit captured in this volume remains vibrantly alive in Florida today, to be discovered and enjoyed by residents and visitors alike." —Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris

Maybelle Mann has written books, catalogs, and articles on many topics in American art history, including Francis William Edmonds, The American Art-Union, Walter Launt Palmer, and American landscape prints. She has served as guest curator for a number of traveling exhibitions and has been an art critic and teacher at newspapers and colleges in New York and Florida. She holds a Ph.D. in American Civilization with a specialization in Art History from New York University.

Hardback $35.00 ISBN: 1-56164-171-5 Size: 8.5 x 11 191 Pages 60 b&w photos 100 color photos

Florida Gardening Books p.1 | p.2