Payne Gallery's Permanent Collection

The collection holds a large body of work by important 19th- and 20th-century landscape painters, among the earliest is artist and teacher Gustav Grunewald. Born into a Moravian congregation in Germany, Grunewald was trained at the Dresden Art Academy by acclaimed German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. Grunewald immigrated to the United States and settled in Bethlehem, where he taught drawing and painting at The Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies.

Best known for paintings of the Moravian Settlement locale, Grunewald's View of Bethlehem, from Monocacy Bridge, c.1860, shows the cupola atop Central Moravian Church in the 1860s.

Born in Paris, Marsh is best known for depicting street life in New York City in the 1930s. This painting of Moravian College President Raymond S. Haupert, 1954, is unique—for both the artist and the sitter. It is the only known portrait by the Social Realist artist, who died later that same year.

As its graduation gift, the Moravian class of ’54 decided on a portrait of President Haupert—to be painted by a famous artist. They chose American Academy Gold Medal recipient Reginald Marsh. A makeshift studio was set up on campus, in Comenius Hall, and opened to students who would drop in to watch the painting's progress.
  

Born in Philadelphia, Schofield studied at PAFA. He spent half the year in Pennsylvania and half in England, where he explored the picturesque harbor villages and seacoast of Cornwall—which he interpreted in the style of the New Hope School.

In January 1916, a friend of O'Keeffe brought a group of her abstract drawings to photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Later that year, without O'Keeffe’s knowledge, he exhibited her drawings at his New York gallery. When she found out, she demanded they be taken down. Stieglitz refused. The exhibition launched her career.

Inaugurated with a Susan MacDowell Eakins, Payne Gallery continues to collect women artists: the modernist Georgia O'Keeffe and her contemporary, the photographer (& Moravian alumna) Gertrude Käsebier; as well as the celebrated Elizabeth Catlett, Cecilia Beaux, Malvina Hoffman, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, among others.

Born in Philadelphia, Beaux is among America's foremost portraitists. Overcoming many barriers towards women's achievements in the arts, she rose to the top of her profession.

When Portrait of Robert Arthur, 1885, was painted, Beaux was "receiving commissions from notable Philadelphians and earning $500 per portrait, comparable to what Eakins commanded" according to her biographer Alice A. Carter.

Payne Gallery holds a distinguished collection of small and large sculptures, which can be seen throughout the campus.

The bronze plaque Arcadia, 1888, by painter Thomas Eakins is 12" x 24". Modeled after his painting of the same title (Metropolitan Museum of Art), it depicts a frieze of figures dressed in classical garb attending to a nude piper (thought to be Eakins).

In 2010 Joann M. Trotsky (Moravian Class of 1964) established the Trotsky Family Collection in memory of her parents, Alexander and Elizabeth Trotsky. Thanks to her continued support, the Trotsky Family Collection now holds over forty works of art.

Moravian Roots traces its inspiration to events on 9/11, when an uprooted old Sycamore protected St. Paul's Chapel from harm during the attacks on the World Trade Center. 

"Roots," even when transplanted to a different setting—one twenty-four years older than St. Paul's Chapel—retains the relevance of its metaphor for history, protection, and growth.