Vagabond Artist: "Pop" Hart in Tahiti, Mexico, and the Caribbean

Throughout his career, George Overbury “Pop” Hart (1868-1933) made travel experiences the primary source for his art. While most American artists went to Europe to perfect their skills or to pursue new styles, Hart preferred extended trips abroad to more exotic (and affordable) destinations. Between his first expedition to Egypt in 1900 and his last trips to North Africa in 1929 and Cuba in 1930-31, Hart journeyed extensively. The everyday life of local residents fascinated Hart and he was prolific at sketching what he observed. Executing only a few dozen oil paintings during his career, Hart is noted primarily for his idiosyncratic style of realism executed in watercolor and drawing on paper, in addition to his adventurous handling of printmaking techniques.  

Starting in 1907, Hart made his home for part of the year in New Jersey, which enabled him to develop his career in New York. During the 1920s, when he became an avid printmaker, his watercolors and prints were exhibited in museums and galleries across the United States. Increasingly, his art received favorable attention from art critics, curators, and collectors, as well as admiration from his peers. Although attention to Hart’s art was eclipsed by the rise of abstract painting, recent scholarship helped to secure his place in American realist art of the early twentieth century.

This exhibition features over forty of Hart’s watercolors, drawings, and prints of daily life and rural landscapes he depicted of Tahiti and Samoa; Trinidad, Dominica, and Santo Domingo; and Mexico. These vibrant images are selected from the Zimmerli’s extensive collection of almost 5,000 works by Hart, a 1983 bequest from the artist’s niece.  

Organized by Marilyn Symmes, Curator of Prints and Drawings and Director of the Morse Research Center for Graphic Arts