‘Edwin Austin Abbey: By the Dawn’s Early Light’
Major ceiling design coming to National Gallery, London
20 November 2025–15 February 2026
Room 1
Admission free
A spectacular design for the domed ceiling of the House of Representatives, Pennsylvania State Capitol, Harrisburg – a palace of arts and one of the grandest public buildings ever constructed in the USA – will go on display at the National Gallery in winter 2025.
The 12-feet-diameter half-scale design for The Hours depicts 24 female figures representing the 24 hours of the day. Newly conserved by Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven,CT, this monumental work will be displayed as part of the first UK exhibition – for over a century – dedicated to its creator, the Philadelphia-born artist Edwin Austin Abbey (1852–1911). The exhibition subtitle, which is the second line of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ emphasizes time and eternal vigilance in a legislator’s duties.
In 1908 Abbey, who lived and worked in the UK, borrowed an entire display hall at the University of London to show the first of his Harrisburg murals – guests included King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra – before shipping them to the US for installation. Preparatory studies for other allegorical decorations in the State Capitol also will be included.
Edwin Austin Abbey: By the Dawn’s Early Light will introduce British audiences to an artist well known when he lived in England between 1878 until 1911 and was a close friend to fellow expatriates like John Singer Sargent and Henry James –– but who is now largely forgotten.
Working in an era of sweeping change after the devastation of the American Civil War*, Abbey was from an ambitious generation of American artists focused on the human figure as the bearer of meaning in civic art. Part of the American Renaissance, a period in American public art and architecture that lasted from 1876 to 1917, Abbey painted at a time of new-found artistic ambition that was inspired by Italian Renaissance humanism.
The oil-on-canvas design for the ceiling, that will go on display in the exhibition, comes from the rich holdings of Yale University Art Gallery, the largest repository of Abbey’s works. Over 3,000 works in different media – pen and ink, pencil, watercolour, pastel, chalk, charcoal and oil showing the proficiency of Abbey – were bequeathed by his widow in 1937 and have been the subject of a dedicated conservation project at the Yale University Art Gallery in advance of the present display.
‘Edwin Austin Abbey: By the Dawn’s Early Light’ follows a series of National Gallery exhibitions introducing major 19th- and 20th-century American artists to UK and European audiences: George Bellows (1882–1925) and the Ashcan painters in 2011; Frederic Church (1826–1900) in 2013; Thomas Cole (1801–1848) in 2018; and Winslow Homer (1836–1910) in 2023; and exhibitions about contemporary American artists Ed Ruscha in 2018 and Kehinde Wiley in 2022.
‘Edwin Austin Abbey: By the Dawn’s Early Light’ is curated by Christopher Riopelle, Neil Westreich Curator of Post 1800 Paintings at the National Gallery with Mark D Mitchell, Holcombe T Green Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale University Art Gallery.
Christopher Riopelle, Neil Westreich Curator of Post-1800 Paintings at the National Gallery, says:
A sophisticated international-minded figure based in London, Abbey observed all the most exciting trends in European art circa 1900, not least Symbolism, and brilliantly translated them into an American ‘vernacular’ suitable for the vast public projects then rising on the other side of the Atlantic. It is thrilling to discover his distinctive, engaging and experimental vision.
Mark D.Mitchell, Holcombe T Green Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale University Art Gallery, says:
Edwin Austin Abbey’s contributions to the history of art are often most vividly apparent in his studies, which present his creative vision at its most dynamic and vital. In this exhibition, we look over his shoulder as he develops his ideas for the grand figurative conceptions with which he inspired his age.
More information at nationalgallery.org.uk
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The H J Hyams Exhibition Programme
Supported by The Capricorn Foundation