The Paintings of Herbert B. Tschudy from the Permanent Collection

View now through Saturday, March 30, 2024
2nd Floor, White-Gorsuch Wing Works on Paper Gallery
Learn more and view the Tschudy collection online.

This intimate exhibition features fourteen works of art including oil paintings, watercolors, lithographs, and pochades or small oil studies painted by Herbert Bolivar Tschudy. Born in Plattsburg, Ohio in 1874, Tschudy’s landscapes demonstrate a deep appreciation for the vast open skies, the high mountains, and rugged nature of the American west.

 Although little known today, at the turn of the nineteenth century, Tschudy was a prolific artist, writer, and world traveler. He graduated with a degree in architectural engineering from the University of Illinois in 1895 and then pursued art at the Art Students League of New York between 1898 and 1899. By 1900, Tschudy began a long and productive career with the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York as a staff artist, accompanying curator's on collecting expeditions. A passport application from March 19, 1922 details a “three-month business trip for the Brooklyn Museum to Italy, the British Isles, France, Monaco, Belgium, and Switzerland”. Several years later, in 1925, he was promoted to Curator of Contemporary Art and wrote extensively about art and artists for the museum’s journal. Tschudy never lost his wanderlust and traveled until he retired from the Brooklyn museum in 1937. The American southwest was a favorite destination. He made Albuquerque, New Mexico his residence in 1928, before moving back to Brooklyn in 1930.

The Zanesville Museum of Art’s collection of Herbert B. Tschudy’s paintings and works on paper were acquired in 1984. They were donated by Dr. and Mrs. Donald P. Cottrell and given as a bequest from their son Dr. Alan P. Cottrell. The Cottrells were friends of Tschudy and Dr. Donald Cottrell was the executor of the Tschudy estate, when the artist died in New York in 1946.

Banner Image Above: Herbert B. Tschudy (1874–1946), “Grand Canyon, Storm at Sunset”, 1919, watercolor on paper, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Donlad P. Cotrell. 1984.16168.