The New York State Museum will open a new exhibition featuring the work of New York artist Eugene Speicher on October 18, 2014. Along His Own Lines: A Retrospective of New York Realist Eugene Speicher explores Speicher’s diverse art career ranging from portraits to still life to landscape.

On display in West Gallery through March 22, 2015, the exhibition features more than 70 artworks by Speicher, demonstrating his lengthy and successful art career. The exhibition is organized by the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at State University of New York at New Paltz.

“The Board of Regents and the State Museum are committed to partnering with institutions across New York to bring great collections to Albany,” said State Museum Director Mark Schaming. “We are pleased to be a venue for the work of Eugene Speicher, an important American artist who, through his life’s work in New York State, has left an enduring impact on the art world of the twentieth century.”

Born in Buffalo, NY, Speicher first garnered national recognition in the 1910s for his incisive portraits of actors, artists, and friends. Speicher’s portraits were highly sought after by collectors and prominent museums and he developed a national reputation for portraiture. At the height of his success in the mid-1920s, Speicher largely abandoned commissioned portraiture and instead chose to paint more personal subjects, mainly flower still lifes, landscapes, and figurative compositions.

From 1912 and through the 1940s, Speicher received many significant awards and his work was acquired by major art museums for their permanent collections. Today, Eugene Speicher is best remembered as a New York realist associated with Robert Henri, George Bellows, and Leon Kroll, all of whom were involved with the Woodstock art colony.

The New York State Museum will host a public opening reception for the exhibition on Saturday, October 18, 2014. Light refreshments will be served at 1:00 pm, followed by a tour of the exhibition by curator Valerie Ann Leeds at 2:00 pm. The reception is open to the public; no RSVP required.

Major lenders for this exhibition include the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art; American Academy of Arts and Letters; National Academy Museum; Woodstock Artists Association and Museum; and Arthur A. Anderson.