American Realism
Gerry Souter
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Text: Gerry Souter Layout: BASELINE CO LTD 33 Ter – 33 Bis Mac Dinh Chi St., Star Building; 6th floor District 1, Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam © Parkstone Press International, New York, USA © Confidential Concepts, Worldwide, USA Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY © Charles Burchfield © Everett Shinn © John Sloan Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY American Gothic, 1930 by Grant Wood All rights reserved by the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY © Andrew Wyeth ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No parts of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case, we would appreciate notification. ISBN: 978-1-78042-992-2
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Gerry Souter
AMERICAN Realism
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Contents Introduction
6-9
Eastman Johnson (1824-1906)
10-19
Winslow Homer (1836-1910)
20-33
Thomas Eakins (1844-1916)
34-49
William Michael Harnett (1848-1892)
50-65
Frederic Remington (1861-1909)
66-85
Robert Henri (1865-1929) and the “Ashcan Artists�
86-115
Edward Hopper (1882-1967)
116-141
Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975)
142-177
Grant Wood (1892-1942)
178-205
Charles Burchfield (1893-1967)
206-225
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)
226-249
Notes
250-251
Bibliography
252-253
Index
254-255
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Frederic Remington, Boat House at Ingleneuk, c. 1903-1907. Oil on academy board, 30.5 x 45.7 cm. Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York.
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INTRODUCTION
The concept of ‘Realism’ as applied to a style of art embraces too much
out in their impassioned minds. Masters of technique became
with too little. You might as well try to define ‘Dance’ without looking
elevated in society and gathered together to protect their franchise
at ballet, tap, jazz, clog or folk. It is true in art there is Cubism,
with orders, academies and societies where membership was seen as
Futurism, Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism and many more lesser
a goal, an achievement, a sacred trust. To display their work or
‘isms’ and each bears certain characteristics, or cleaves to certain
commission their skills bestowed a cachet, a symbol of piety, good
constraints or expansions that define the style. Each of these styles has
taste and social responsibility.
practitioners who themselves are defined by the results of their identification with the specific creative method. Each painter has also
Of course there were the malcontents: Dürer, Da Vinci, David,
brought an individual contribution to the interpretation of the style. The
Rembrandt, Goya, Delacroix, Caravaggio; artists whose passion
key differences between these ‘isms’ and ‘Realism’ is time, place and
flowed from their brushes and etching needles and crayons to show
state of mind.
there was more to realism than polished technique. When the American Colonies of the New World finally sought the trappings of
A ‘Realist’ painter is the beneficiary of a legacy stretching back to the
civilisation after their Revolution and Westward Expansion, the
earliest cave paintings that describe the activities of our most
Tripolitain War and the War of 1812 and the border wars with
primitive ancestors who ‘saw’ giant elk, mammoths, cave bears and
Mexico, both a native art and the arts of Europe began staking out
their own humanoid brothers. They ‘saw’ the spears flying through
new ground. All this civilisation arrived just in time for the birth of
the air, observed the graceful arch of the antelope’s neck and the
photography in the 1840s. The capturing of reflected light in an
hump of the buffalo’s back. They painted exactly what they saw,
infinite scale of values preserved in silver halide crystals and fixed with
subjects standing still or in motion, in coloured clays mixed with
hyposulphite forever democratised reality upside down and
animal fat and tallow. No one is sure if the result was pure journalism
backwards on glass and paper, and held a mirror up to nature with
of observation or using magical suggestion to assure a successful
the click of a mechanical shutter.
hunt. The sophistication of interpretation wound its way through the centuries from the stylised propaganda scribed into the walls of
And what did ‘true artists’ attempt to do with this brave new
tombs and temples to the sprawling epic of the Bayeux Tapestry
medium? Why, forced it to look like a painting, of course, and then
documenting the Norman-french depredations on the shores of
hurried off to form orders, academies and societies and create rules
England. Religious faith was reinforced by depictions of stories from
of recognition for a ‘truly artistic’ photograph. The science and
holy books such as the Bible, Qur’an, Bhagavad-Gita and the Analects
mechanics
of Confucius.
commercialisation, artistic pretension and ultimate creative
of
photography
originated
in
Europe,
but
its
potential were achieved in the United States, in the nation of Realism has always dealt with the baggage carried by the interpreter
immigrants who inherited the need to challenge the status quo.
of the scene. The practice of realistic painting produced an elitist class
They passed along that need in their genes. The European wave of
schooled in effects and techniques, and secret paint- and
academic realism subsided at the hands of the nineteenth-century
preservation-formulations, like alchemists granting eternal life to
French Impressionists and tumbled into the larger-than-life
reality seen through their eyes and granting reality to scenes played
theatricality and geographically diverse American scenes and
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lifestyles. Photography’s faithful translation of light and shadow
your work as Portrait Realist – or maybe a Portrait Regionalist Realist
into a reproducible image freed painters to pursue their
if you painted Native Americans in the West, or sea captains on the
imaginations. They could manipulate any of the elements: colour,
East Coast. There were Realists who brushed the style of French
line, perspective, placement, addition and subtraction, making the
Impressionism into every canvas and Academic Realists who dragged
scene their reality. Realism as a monolithic, lock-step, strictly
the dog-eared mechanics featured in Old World European salons into
governed method of painterly visualisation shattered into nuances
scenes of American life. Some Realists successfully stepped back and
of interpretation.
forth across the line between commercial illustration and fine art. Others took realistic subjects into the realms of surrealism or shaved
Where you painted could make you a Regional Realist. What you
the medium to such a fine point; the results of which challenged the
painted might label you a Genre Realist, or who you painted classified
photographic arts.
William Metcalf, Gloucester Harbour, 1895. Oil on canvas, 66.4 x 74.3 cm. Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, gift of George D. Pratt.
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— Introduction —
Of the variations cited, there are even further nuances that mock the
This book presents a cross-section of American Realist artists spanning
concept of ‘American Realism’ as an all-embracing style. What remains are
more than one hundred years of art. It begins as some artists struggle
American Realist artists, each facing subject matter that is part of the fabric
with the influences of Europe, and other home-grown painters bring
of the American scene. The result of their efforts is determined by the
their nineteenth-century American scenes to life, and ends as today’s
filtering of their perceptions through their individual intellects, skill sets,
generation of Realist painters co-exist with American Modernism and
training, regional influences, ethnic influences and basic nurturing. If there
absorb this new freedom into the latest incarnation of their art. The
is any binding together it is within the tradition of Realist Art in the United
range of talent is exceptional, touching on the broadest interpretation
States, which accepts such a range from Winslow Homer’s poetic
of the American Realist artist. In examining this cross-section, we can
watercolours of the 1860s to the haunting minutiae of Andrew Wyeth and
better understand and appreciate the amazing diversity and the
melancholy light of Edward Hopper in the 1950s and 1960s.
infinitely variable Realist styles.
John Sloan, Gloucester Harbour, 1916. Oil on canvas, 66 x 81.3 cm. Syracuse University Art Collection, Syracuse, New York.
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Eastman Johnson (1824-1906) By the 1840s, the United States was still a work in progress. Its population
President James Madison. Moving on to Boston the following year, his
had leaped 33 per cent from the previous decade to 17,063,353 with
subtle use of line and tone learned at the stone soon brought him portrait
four states exceeding one million residents: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio
commissions such as the likeness of a youthful Charles Sumner
and Virginia. Texas signed up for annexation in 1845 and the first
commissioned by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
immigrant wagon trains headed west over the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails. In December of that same year, President James K. Polk told
The famed poet gave Eastman’s career a considerable boost with requested
Congress it was the country’s “manifest destiny” to pursue expansion
drawings of Longfellow’s influential friends and family, including poet
west and vigorously uphold the Monroe Doctrine.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Anne Longfellow Pierce, Charles Longfellow, Ernest Longfellow, Mary Longfellow Greenleaf and Cornelius Conway Felton, soon
These great events were just beginning to be communicated across the
to be president of Harvard University. Johnson worked in Boston for three
country by Samuel F.B. Morse’s telegraph, proven on 24 May 1844 with a
years, but he felt he needed more training in the fine arts. It was not until
message sent from Washington D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland that read,
1848 that he created his first oil painting, a portrait of his grandmother.
“What God hath wrought”. A somewhat less momentous event was taking place in a Boston studio as a twenty-year-old Eastman Johnson struggled to
In 1849, Johnson travelled across the Atlantic to Germany and enrolled in the
learn the mechanics of crayon and gum arabic in the art of stone
Düsseldorf Academy, an influential realist school created in the early
lithography. This was journeyman work, a profession in the printing industry
nineteenth century. He was accepted into the studio of the American
and his father had apprenticed him to the studio by to learn a useful trade.
expatriate artist, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze. While the school was noted for its painters who turned out realist landscape allegories and historical subjects,
Young Johnson was born in 1824, in Lovell, a small town near Maine’s
just before Johnson arrived many of its students had been politically involved
western border, the last of eight children born to Mary Kimball Chandler to
in social protest, manning the barricades as part of the Burgwehr citizen army.
Phillip Carrigan Johnson. Following Eastman’s sisters, Harriet, Judith, Mary,
The revolution of 1848-49 forced Frederick William IV to grant a constitution
Sarah, Nell and his brother Reuben, he was also well down the line from first-
uniting the Prussian States into a single entity. Eastman joined a number of
born, Commodore Phillip Carrigan Johnson Jr. As the family moved from
American artists who passed through this school, which at the time was more
Lovell to Fryeburg, a former frontier outpost in 1762, and to Augusta,
influential than anything happening in Paris. George Caleb Bingham,
Maine’s capital city on the Kennebec River, the patriarch Johnson climbed the
Worthington Whittredge, Richard Caton Woodville, William S. Haseltine,
ladder of success. From being a successful businessman he ascended to the
James M. Hart, and William Morris Hunt all passed through Düsseldorf as well
post of Maine’s Secretary of State and eventually moved on up to influence
as the painter of luminescent western landscapes, Albert Bierstadt.
in Washington D.C. as Chief Clerk of the Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repair of the U.S. Navy. It wasn’t difficult to obtain an apprenticeship;
While the academy offered considerable technical training, Johnson felt
Eastman’s gift for drawing and observation made the job a good fit.
restricted by the pedagogy and in 1852 packed up his paints and brushes and toured Italy and France, finally ending up in The Hague in Holland. His goal
At the age of twenty-one Eastman moved to Washington D.C. in 1845
there was to study seventeenth-century Dutch artists, specifically Rembrandt
and established himself as a portraitist, eventually producing images of
and that artist’s brilliant use of light and composition. His work was so well
such notables as orator Daniel Webster and Dolly Madison, wife of
received that he was offered the post of court painter, which he refused.
Eastman Johnson, Woman in White Dress, c. 1875. Oil on paper board, 56.8 x 35.6 cm. Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, California, gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller III.
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Johnson had come to a decision that realist art was not tied to populist allegories, drenching sentimentality or forced reenactments of historical events. Painting could tell both simple and complex stories without bogus emotion or flights of fancy. Direct observation in the field, activities sketched from life, all these acquisitions could render the American lifestyle in the American landscape. Armed with Rembrandt’s methods of visualisation, the rigorous curricula of German technique and his own sensitivity to story telling, Eastman Johnson spent two months in academician Thomas Couture’s Paris studio, and in 1855 he departed for the United States. The American art scene that greeted his arrival was considerably different from when he had left just seven years previously. Daguerreotype salons had sprouted like mushrooms on a log – especially in Washington. The fashionable one-of-a-kind photographic portraits in their velvet and gutta-percha clamshell frames became the rage as carte de visite leave-behinds and commemorative gifts. Sadly, the faces that peered back were mostly severe in expression due to the often three-minute exposures, while the head was securely kept in place by a clamp. Even so, the market for crayon portraits had crashed. Still, his reputation and fine work kept him in portrait commissions in Cincinnati and Washington, and finally funded his studio when he settled in New York. Another major change was Americans’ attitudes to art and its place in their society. In the 1840s everything European was considered the definition of good taste and enlightened sensibilities. Now, in the 1850s, Americans began to turn inward and seek their own identities in art and letters. The nation’s vistas were expanding and in the East and Midwest those who bought paintings wanted scenes of the exotic Far West. People who lived in teeming cities longed for idealised views of bucolic farm life and recreation in the forests and along country roads, images of simple lives led in the Deep South and even among the Plains Indians.
Eastman Johnson, The Hatch Family, c. 1870-1871. Oil on canvas, 121.9 x 186.4 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, gift of Frederic H. Hatch.
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Eastman Johnson, Negro Life at the South, 1859. Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 114.9 cm. Robert L. Stuart Collection, New York Historical Society, New York, New York.
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Eastman Johnson, Corn Husking, 1860. Oil on canvas, 67.3 x 76.8 cm. Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, gift of Andrew D. White.
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Eastman Johnson, Cranberry Pickers, c. 1879. Oil on paper board, 57.1 x 67.9 cm. Private collection.
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It was Johnson’s good luck to have his sister, Sarah, marry William Henry
this five-year sojourn was his oil painting, The Wounded Drummer Boy.
Newton, who took his bride up to property investments he had made in
During the next twenty years, Eastman Johnson became a Regionalist
the upper Midwest. Johnson’s brother, Reuben, had also moved up north
Realist painter, keeping himself to the East Coast and creating his most
to Superior, Wisconsin and opened a sawmill. Having kin already
memorable works. He settled into a routine of venturing back to
established in that distant country motivated Johnson to journey into the
boyhood haunts in Fryeburg, Maine and made regular summer visits to
wilderness armed with cash from his portrait sittings and a loan from his
Nantucket. He married Elizabeth Buckley in 1869 and fathered a
father to invest in land. The summers of 1856 and 1857 were spent
daughter, Ethel Eastman Johnson in 1870. Many of his most charming
working with brush and crayon around western Lake Superior and in a
works are of his wife and child in and around their home.
cabin he built on Pokegema Bay. Johnson recognised something in the East that gave him comfort and He enlisted the services of a guide, Stephen Boonga, a mixed-blood
there is an undercurrent of contentment in all his genre paintings of this
African-American and Ojibwe Native-American man, to help him build a
period of his work. When not traipsing off after the Army of the Potomac
canoe and paddle to the Apostle Islands and the cities of Duluth and
throughout the 1860s, he travelled to New England. After seeing up
Superior. In Grand Portage, Johnson made contact with the Ojibwe tribes
close the destruction of war, the comfortable semi-antiquity of his
and made a number of sketches in charcoal and oil.
homeland must have come as a relief. Since so many young men were in
1
uniform during the war years and many didn’t come back from the In 1859, Johnson reached back into his Düsseldorf training and created
battles he was left with the elderly and women and young people who
his first American genre painting titled Life in the South (aka: The Deep
were not of conscription age as his subjects. Where no people were
South, Negro Life at the South & Old Kentucky Home). On close
present in his pictures, the tools they used and the interiors that sheltered
examination, he did not reach too far. The painting is largely a collection
them showed use and degrees of decay. They lacked a swab of
of portrait sittings grouped in story-suggesting clusters about a
whitewash or a few stones in the wall or the hearth blackened dark with
charmingly dilapidated barn and slave residence. Taken as a whole, it is
soot, or a cane chair seat needing a fresh weave.
quite sappy, but the portrayals of the courting couple, the slave children and their extended family members – even the white mistress watching
One of his most successful genre paintings was Corn Husking, exhibited
the scene from a hole in the fence (or is she watching the courtship of
in 1861 at the National Academy of Design in New York. The show
the mulatto couple?) – have a homey sincerity. Whatever the level of
opened just three weeks before the bombardment of Fort Sumter and
sugar coating, the painting managed to please both the Southerners,
the start of the Civil War. No less than the 200,000 New Yorkers crowded
who saw it as an idyllic representation, and the anti-slavery North, who
into Union Square to support the Union cause, and Johnson had made
read into it all the evils of that “peculiar institution”. If it was packed with
his own pro-Union statement in this painting. Written on the barn door
sentiment, it was American sentiment and was good enough to get him
are the words “Lincoln and Hamlin” referring to Lincoln’s successful run
elected to the National Design Academy of New York.
for the presidency and his running mate from Maine, Hannibal Hamlin. New England had come out in strength for the Republican ticket during
Johnson took his sketch pad with him to the Civil War, following the Union
the election so the painting was as much a subtle political broadside as it
Army not unlike a modern photojournalist. The most famous outcome of
was an example of fine art.
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He never felt the need to fall back upon the historical ‘Down Easters’, the
Royals. But his enactments of cowboy and Indian mock battles and the
Puritans in knee britches or the old coaches that plied the roads. Except
skills of his bronco busters, sharpshooters and ropers lost relevance as
for his Old Stage Coach painting he sketched in pieces and then
the real West began to disappear. The land was still there, but railways,
assembled in his studio. It depicts the ruin of stage coachwork without
the telegraph and hordes of settlers transformed the face of it. What
wheels or axles being reclaimed by the local vegetation and workings of
had been news stories of Custer’s Last Stand, the Battle of Wounded
the elements. But even this lamentable reminder of days past is
Knee, land and gold rushes became nostalgia and slipped from
rejuvenated by the shouts and whoops of children as they play around
newspaper headlines to memories swapped on shady porches in the
and upon the disintegrating shell. Boys whinny and gallop in place while
cool of the evening.
drivers snap whips made of air and imagination and the girls peer out of the windows at the passing scene. All this action by the side of the road
Genre paintings slipped from favour. Johnson fell back upon his portraits
takes place under late afternoon sun and is so unforced and natural that
for income but, like the old men seated around the stove in the general
it is impossible to imagine this captured moment was created in a studio
store, he reached back into his own memories. He had, for instance, a
from bits and pieces and assembled in Johnson’s mind.
great desire to produce a large canvas depicting the process of maple sugar boiling. Over the years he made a number of studies of this unique
All this rural hoopla fitted in with the trend that had citizens returning to
‘Down East’ scene, but never completed the finished canvas as interest in
their roots during and after the Civil War, paying homage to the old,
nostalgia waned. His fame as a portrait artist never vanished and he was
uncomplicated days so prominent in imprecise memory. Books, plays,
in constant demand. Even into his seventies, he remained active,
artwork all celebrated the ‘good old days’ unencumbered by the
documenting both his era and the images in his memory.
industrial revolution, crowded cities, smoke-belching steam locomotives, and the stink of a hundred backyard privies on a hot summer night. Coal
Of the series, Henry T. Tuckerman, Boston essayist and critic, explained
gas hissing into the lamps in overstuffed apartments. The reek of crowds
Johnson’s ability to capture “Maine, of old… rare materials… becoming
layered in Victorian fashion moving in clouds of scent to mask the odour
more rare and less picturesque as locomotive facilities reduce costume,
of their unwashed bodies. The paintings promised open vistas, big
dress, speech and even faces to a monotonous uniformity.”2
spaces, dense forests and winding brooks, the warm dry smell of hay in a feed barn and the splashing rumble of a mill wheel in the river race.
By 1880, Johnson focused more and more on his portrait work. Around him, the nation was changing rapidly as industry,
Making use of his years studying Rembrandt’s use of light in etchings and
transportation and communications evolved, making the crusty, dusty
oil paintings, Johnson infused his works with sophisticated views,
antiquity of Maine memories even less relevant. There were few artists
particularly with the interiors. He evoked mood and the rough-hewn lives
still around who had begun their careers before the Civil War, and of
of Americans of all walks of life. He bestowed grace and charm on the
that diminishing group, he remained in public favour. Right up until his
most mundane subjects.
death at the age of eighty-two on 5 April 1906, he was considered a popular pioneer for realism that reflected the American scene using
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Buffalo Bill brought his Wild West travelling show to cities and towns
Old World techniques, but filtered through the flint-sharp sensibilities
after touring the capitals of Europe and performing before the Imperial
of a true Yankee ‘Down Easter’.
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Eastman Johnson, A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves, c. 1862. Oil on paper board, 55.8 x 66.4 cm. The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, gift of Miss Gwendolyn O.L. Conkling.
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Winslow Homer, Prisoners from the Front, 1866. Oil on canvas, 61 x 96.5 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, gift of Mrs. Frank B. Porter.
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Winslow Homer (1836-1910) Almost a generation behind Eastman Johnson, Winslow Homer, also a
Art
largely self-taught artist, carried forward Johnson’s gift of portraying the
O Art, high gift of Heaven! How oft defamed
American scene and added a love of the sea to the rustic genre images. He
When seeming praised! To most a craft that fits,
was born on 24 February 1836 in Boston, Massachusetts to Henrietta
By dead, prescriptive Rule, the scattered bits
Benson and Charles Savage Homer. Henrietta grew up in Cambridge,
Of gathered knowledge; even so misnamed
Massachusetts where she learned the art of watercolour. She was an active
By some who would invoke thee; but not so
amateur painter and went on to exhibit with her son at the Boston Art
By him,—the noble Tuscan—who gave birth
Association in the 1870s. His mother became Winslow’s first teacher.
To forms unseen of man, unknown to Earth,
3
Now living habitants; he felt the glow An even greater influence on his early art training was the legendary
Of thy revealing touch, that brought to view
Boston romantic painter, Washington Allston (1779-1843). Though he
The invisible Idea; and he knew,
made two trips to Europe, studying various salon painters including the
E’en by his inward sense, its form was true:
British artist, Benjamin West, Allston became a leading figure in the early
‘T was life to life responding,—highest truth!
nineteenth-century Romantic Movement in America. His emphasis was
So, through Elisha’s faith, the Hebrew Youth
on landscape, but he concentrated more on mood and emotion than
Beheld the thin blue air to fiery chariots grow.
observation of an actual scene. His skills also extended to writing and he produced poetry, novels and treatises on art. Of these, his philosophy
Washington Allston, Lectures & Poems, 1850.
ordained that “primary subjects” seen in the painting were supported by underlying “secondary subjects” that enforced the mood and had
At the age of nineteen in 1855, Homer was apprenticed to the Boston
religious undertones inspired by the revelations of God.
lithography shop of John Henry Bufford who had studied under New York’s George Endicott and Nathaniel Currier (soon to be partnered with
Though Allston died when Homer was just seven years old, the presence
James Merritt Ives) to find practical applications for his art.
of the Great Man was everywhere in the Boston-Cambridge neighbourhoods where he had painted and written. Poetic tributes,
He remained at Bufford’s for two years and then embarked as a
exhibitions of his works and publications of his lectures, edited by Richard
freelance illustrator finding sketch work at Ballou’s Pictorial and
Henry Dana Jr. – author of Two Years Before the Mast – created a virtual
Harpers Weekly. He opened a studio at the Tenth Street Studio
Allston cult. Homer was surrounded by Allston’s acolytes and could not
Building in New York City. Located at 51 West Tenth Street between
have avoided the artist’s work and philosophies. Homer’s contemporaries
Fifth and Sixth Avenues, the Studio Building was a virtual rabbit warren
and close associates who knew of Allston’s impact claimed they
of artist studios that radiated out from a central domed gallery. Artists
recognised the ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ subjects in Homer’s paintings
from all over the country came to the location and took rooms nearby,
and understood the ‘secret’ to the success of the works. To appreciate
giving Greenwich Village its new and future reputation as a Bohemian
Allston’s romantic sensibilities, one of his poems follows.
arts centre.
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At Harpers, where he remained a frequent contributor for years, his
remained, following the troops and botched campaigns of Major
sketches made in the field were carved into wood blocks for multiple
General George B. McClellan. He drew their camps on picket duty,
printing. He also copied images imported from England so they could be
playing cards between battles, and worked alongside photographers
used to illustrate stories. And then the largest story he would ever cover
whose bulky glass plate cameras could not produce pictures of any
burst as artillery shells slammed into Fort Sumter and the American Civil
troops in action. Their photographic prints had to be turned into steel
War flashed to life.
engravings in order to be printed in newspapers or by Harpers. Most of his sketches differed greatly from the heroic work of Eastman Johnson
Homer was attending classes at the National Academy of Design,
who produced The Wounded Drummer Boy. Homer seemed more
studying under Frédéric Rondel, a landscape artist who had just joined
drawn to the homey non-action moments that happened between
the teaching staff. Harpers Weekly armed Homer with sketch pads
battles, as with Home Sweet Home showing two Union soldiers boiling
and sent him off to join the Union Army of the Potomac in 1861. He
water over a fire in an encampment. These intimate scenes became
Winslow Homer, Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), c. 1873-1876. Oil on canvas, 61.5 x 97 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., gift of the W. L. and May T. Mellon Foundation.
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popular with Harpers’ readers, showing how their boys lived when they
breech-loading rifle that, when combined with the telescopic sight,
weren’t fighting or marching. Because of the war’s huge casualty totals,
became a deadly and feared weapon. Any snipers captured by opposing
these images of men bonding on the battlefield were comforting.
troops were usually shot as being godless, cold-blooded murderers. This drawing and another one, Prisoners from the Front, were turned into
While many of his drawings copied the stiff compositions of the
paintings in Homer’s studio after the war, resulting in his being elected a
photographers, he managed to capture some unique, journalistic images
full academician.
such as Sharpshooter on Picket Duty. This drawing shows a Union sniper aiming a rifled musket using a long telescopic gun sight. The new
In 1867, he travelled to Paris where Prisoners from the Front was hung
technology allowed marksmen to use these sights to make long range
in the American section of the Paris World Exposition called the
shots and kill enemy officers, harass artillery units and sink the morale of
‘Universal Exhibition’. As with the British Great Exposition of 1851, art
enemy troops. The name ‘sharpshooter’ referred to a specific Sharps
was considered a secondary attraction when compared to steam
Winslow Homer, The Signal of Distress, 1890. Oil on canvas, 62 x 98 cm. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
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engines, railway trains and mass-produced manufactured products and
against the angled horizon and activity behind them, the Parisians
processes, plus exotic goods and cultures from distant lands. The
admired it for its closeness in style to the sugary allegorical
Americans shipped over a tribe of Indians and their tepees that
academician Jean-Léon Gérôme.
became a hit for the show. Excluded from the show were the ‘young naturalists’, Cézanne, Degas, Monet and Renoir, who set up their own
Homer stayed on in Paris for a year with his Boston chum, Albert Kelsey,
exhibitions outside the Exposition. The hall devoted to art was small,
sharing a flat. They were very close friends and had a photo taken that
requiring paintings be hung in rows up to the ceiling. Still, Homer
mocked the convention of wedding photography of the time with Kelsey
managed to see a broad cross-section of European art from
standing behind the seated Homer with his hand on Homer’s shoulder.
Impressionists to hoary academicians grinding out neo-classical
On the back of the photo, Kelsey wrote, Damion and Pythias, after the
allegories. The London Times wrote:
Greek lovers. This relationship and a subsequent sketch of Kelsey sitting
“In the exhibition palace, one wanted in particular, apart from
naked on the back of a giant turtle combined with Homer’s male-
landscape painting by Rousseau or Français, to see exotic art or
dominated lifestyle suggests either an asexual or homosexual bent to his
images of history in the academic, neo-classicist style. In the
social life. Many of his contemporaries offered that he was “painfully
event, the walls were mainly covered with works of the panel
shy” around women, which was not unusual considering his strong
members, who included: Gérôme, Dupré, Bouguereau, Millet,
Congregationalist church upbringing, with his dominant mother
Daubigny, Huet and Corot, who, other than was the case with
providing his art training.
Courbet, were each represented with between eight and fourteen paintings. Genre pictures were particularly popular and
On the other hand, Homer was considered a man’s man by his male
represented. Although only works were supposed to be
friends, hanging out, drinking and smoking in cafes until the wee
exhibited which had been completed after 1 January 1855, the
hours, even professing to enjoy love affairs. He demonstrated his love
exhibition proved in the final analysis to be a retrospective of
of nature and the men who sailed the sea, hunted and farmed the land,
recognised artists. Art was, in its undecorated, crowded and
his bonding with the soldiers he sketched during the war. And yet as he
uncomfortable presentation, one product among many, only an
matured, he sought his own space and little or nothing to do with
“agreeable accessoire”, as Charles Blanc, who was himself a
women except as candid subjects for his sketches and paintings. When
panel member, expressed it in 1867 in the Le Temps newspaper.
he did show women they were strong, independent and happy with
4
their own company as in Promenade on the Beach featuring two
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According to the New York Times previewing the show, “The best
women arm and arm at sunset. He also demonstrated how harm can
American works from the best private galleries and studios have
come to women in works such as To the Rescue; a brooding barren,
been cheerfully placed at their (the U.S. Government) disposition. A
colourless landscape that appears to show two women being pursued
collection of the highest character will in consequence be exhibited,
by a man with a rope noose. All the Gay and Golden Weather is an
instead of the crudities of unknown hands.” 5 While Homer’s
engraving produced in 1869 that shows distance and eroded
painting, Prisoners from the Front bears a striking resemblance to
communications between couples. Apparently Homer had little faith in
Courbet’s Bonjour Monsieur Courbet with a foreground group
the institution of marriage.
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Winslow Homer, Rocky Coast and Gulls, 1869. Oil on canvas, 41.3 x 71.4 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, bequest of Grenville H. Norcross.
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Winslow Homer, Summer Storm, 1904. Oil on canvas, 61.6 x 76.9 cm. The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
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Winslow Homer, Watching the Brakers, 1891. Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 101.6 cm. Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
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Winslow Homer, Moonlight, 1874. Watercolour and gouache on paper, 35.6 x 50.8 cm. The Arkell Museum, Canajoharie, New York.
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However, during the 1870s some of the homosexual suspicions were
swap ideas and plan outings to paint. Its membership included such
dispelled by an apparent romance that brewed up between Homer
notables as William Merritt Chase, Augustus Saint Gaudens and Arthur
and a young amateur artist, Helena de Kay. The relationship began
Quartley. Homer endured the nickname ‘The Obtuse Bard’.
shortly after he returned from his two-year sojourn in Paris. She was a student at the Women’s Art School at the Cooper Union in New
With a possible eye on the success of Eastman Johnson, during the
York. He likely made her acquaintance through her brother Charles,
1870s Winslow Homer plunged into a series of genre paintings,
who occupied Homer’s studio during the artist’s Paris trip. When they
choosing, like Johnson, to observe the ordinary lives of common
met is not clear, but he painted The Bridle Path in 1868 and the
people. He granted elegance to the most basic of pursuits.
resemblance between the rider and Helena is striking and was
Considering the level of his skills, this choice of less than uplifting
recognised by several friends.
subjects confounded both his champions and critics. In 1872, his painting Snap the Whip was displayed in the 1876 Centennial
Seven letters written by Homer to Helena exist and they indicate more
Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It shows a line of shabbily
than a passing interest or platonic friendship: “Miss Helena, if you would
dressed boys playing a game, running and tumbling at full speed in
like to see a large drawing on wood, and will come to my studio on
an open field. Behind them are an equally shabby barn and a
Monday or Tuesday, I shall have a chance to see you. Why can’t you
diagonal horizon of two intersecting hills that complements the
make some designs and let me send them to Harpers for you, they will
diminishing line of boys as they run across the width of the painting.
gladly take anything fresh. And I will see that you draw them on the
Author and social critic Henry James wrote of Homer: “We frankly
block all right.”
confess that we detest his subjects... he has chosen the least pictorial range of scenery and civilisation; he has resolutely treated
Sadly, the “Come up and see my block of wood” ploy failed to work and
them as if they were pictorial... and, to reward his audacity, he has
Miss Helena demurred. Winslow’s letters then took on a really needy
incontestably succeeded.”
tone, but all to no avail: “Dear Miss Helena, You know you were to let me know when it would be agreeable for me to call at your studio.
It was also in the 1870s that Homer took up watercolours seriously and
Having no word from you I suppose you have made other
for the rest of his days rarely went into the field without his water-based
arrangements.” Still later, his note became an entreaty, “My work this
paints and brushes. He explored the games and pensive moments of
winter will be good or very bad. The good work will depend on your
children and young women, perfecting his watercolour technique for
coming to see me once a month – at least – Is this asking too much? Truly
what would later become his signature works in the medium.
yours, Winslow Homer.”
6
Today, through the use of x-rays, the fluorescence spectrometer, infrared But the lady wanted nothing to do with him, so the door clanged shut
micro spectrophotometer and the Raman laser microscope, a team at the
on future amorous pursuits and he retreated to the disreputable
Chicago Art Institute has revealed the secrets of Homer’s seemingly
collection of the finest illustrators in New York, the Tile Club, and
casual approach to watercolour. The medium does not usually allow
wallowed in manly camaraderie. The club met frequently to debate art,
many changes once committed to the paper, but Homer planned his
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paintings very carefully, drawing every feature in pencil before adding
‘Carmine Red’. It is made of the dried crushed husks of the cochineal
colour. Even after the colour was on the page, he used sandpaper to
bug that lives in colonies on the pads of prickly pear cacti and is
create hazy skies and fog effects. A sharp knife blade scraped away
cultivated in Mexico and India. It must be mixed with tin oxide to
pigment to reduce intensity and a wet brush applied to already dried
become permanent in fibres. Another was ‘Indian Yellow’, actually
pigment created foam on waves and surf at the shore.
created from magnesium euxanthate – the magnesium salt of euxanthic acid, which is the chemical name for the urine of cows that
Watercolour is subject to fading over the years and some of his
have been fed mangoes.7
paintings have lost degrees of colour where the originals held tints of sunset orange that added to the overall atmosphere and fading blues
He did not baulk at making changes in compositions to enhance the
have been replaced by bald skies. Some of this fading is due to the use
story. In the painting After the Hurricane, which shows a man
of ‘fugitive’ pigments. Many artists have been guilty of seeing the
stretched out on the beach amid the wreckage of his small boat,
immediate effect of a colour without a thought about its longevity.
Homer’s original concept had the man’s outstretched arm in the air.
Homer employed some colours that, over time, have shifted drastically
X-rays show he overdrew that idea, laying the arm on the sand
from the original, or have disappeared altogether. Among these are a
and leaving it up to the viewer to decide whether the man was
colour discovered in antiquity by the ancient Romans and Aztecs called
dead or not.8
Winslow Homer, Two Figures by the Sea, 1882. Oil on canvas, 50.2 x 88.9 cm. Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado.
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Winslow Homer was a meticulous planner when executing his paintings,
Did his thwarted relationship with Helena de Kay drive a nail into his
but watercolours held another appeal to his creativity. He could work more
further dealings with women – except as observed for a sketch – as
quickly and increase his production, thereby adding to his income. He also
subjects? Is that the reason many of his later portraits of young women
keenly observed the work of other artists, especially after his trip to Paris
show pensive, unsure, sad faces? Most women are painted alone or with
and exposure to the upstart French Impressionists. His palette lightened
another woman – but almost never with a man. Does this alienation from
considerably and he became one of America’s first ‘modernist’ painters.
women – according to Allston’s teachings – represent a ‘secondary’ subject showing through the ‘primary’ image?
Another curious fact has arisen lately concerning this 1870s-80s period of his genre painting. The watercolour Reading, done in 1874 of a fair-
Homer decided to leave for the British Isles in 1881. He visited the British
haired girl in a dress stretched out the full length of the picture reading a
Museum and studied the Elgin Marbles stolen from the Greek
book is in fact a boy hired by Homer to play the part of a girl. This
Parthenon. He pondered the romanticism of Pre-Raphaelite painters
discovery led to similar instances where Winslow Homer substituted boy
such as Edward Burne-Jones and from these studies changed his style to
models for girls. Of course this returns to the matter of his sexual
more painterly, dramatic images. He had accumulated all the tools he
orientation, or did he just feel more comfortable negotiating rates with a
needed over the years and now shut off his previous society and
boy than a girl?
locked himself into his work. He settled in the coastal fishing village of
Winslow Homer, Rocky Coast, 1883-1900. Oil on canvas, 35.6 x 86.9 cm. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut.
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Cullercoats in Northumberland on the North Sea where the River Tyne
became the club house. He painted the men, the forest and the women
empties its currents.
who ran most of the local boarding houses and camps. He also travelled up into Canada for similar subject matter.
On these shores he documented the fishermen’s daily struggles with the sea and devoured the bleak vistas and salt-scoured rocky coves, the deep
The wilderness seemed to have a calming effect on Homer. His cronies in
rolling combers of the pitiless North Sea. His study of Japanese prints in
New York would not have recognised their hail-fellow-well-met carouser
the 1860s now offered up unusual compositions that placed man at the
with a short fuse. Among the woodsmen and Adirondack residents he
mercy of the elements. He sought out the families of the fishermen and
was quiet, shy, and capable in woodcraft. He painted images of them and
their hard life, waiting on the beach as their men searched for the great
listened to their stories.
living shoals of fish. He shared their adventures and eventually moved among them as an What he found at the edge of the North Sea he brought home with him
equal rather than a tourist. The bitter recluse, often reported by people
in 1882 when he moved to a house in Prout’s Neck, Maine, a tide-blasted
who visited his Prout’s Neck home and studio unannounced or seeking
promontory that thrusts out into the Atlantic. There, he continued to
interview, vanished in the great forest.9
explore with his watercolours, sketchbooks and oils. Finally, at the age of seventy-four he visited the North Woods Club in June Homer’s admiration for the men who went to sea is obvious in his
1910. Knowing he was mortally ill, he wanted to experience the serenity
watercolours of their harrowing occupation and the skills needed to
and power of the unspoiled wilderness one last time. He was attended by
survive out on the Grand Banks.
his friend and live-in servant, an African-American named Lewis Wright who had lived with Homer since 1895. They stayed for ten days and then
When winter arrived, Homer departed to Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas
returned to his old rambling house at Prout’s Neck in Scarborough, Maine.
to paint the native fishermen in their small boats. During these trips, he
His visits to the Adirondack woods had resulted in some well-designed
often was accompanied by his father. Besides the sea, the outdoors
magazine illustrations, fourteen oil paintings and roughly one hundred
attracted his attention. He loved roughing it in the woods and found
watercolours. He worked with his watercolours right up to the end
pleasure in the company of trappers and other woodsmen who spent
because he wanted no unfinished work left behind to be ‘completed’ by
their lives in direct contact with nature.
some hack with his, Homer’s, name on it. On 29 September, 1910, he died with one painting still on his easel. Shooting the Rapids, Saguenay River
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Often, he made summer trips up to Essex County, New York and what
remains unfinished. He was laid to rest at Mount Auburn Cemetery in
appeared to be a boarding house in a clearing deep in the woods. This
Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had achieved fame and success in his
was the North Woods Club of which he became a member in the 1880s.
lifetime by his own efforts. He was largely self-taught and spoke a
Many members built cottages on the property and the hearty life coupled
language with his oils and watercolours that still resonates with modern
with rough and sturdy men appealed to Homer. He spent much time
viewers. He was a complex and very private man who drained life to the
tramping about the Adirondacks, fishing, hunting, and relaxing in what
bottom of the cup – and up-ended the cup when he was finished.
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Winslow Homer, Coast in Winter, 1892. Oil on canvas, 72.4 x 122.6 cm. Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts.
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Thomas Eakins, The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull), 1871. Oil on canvas, 81.9 x 117.5 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, the Alfred N. Punnett Endowment Fund and George D. Pratt gift.
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thomas eakins (1844-1916) Thomas Eakins was a brilliant artist, but a failed human being. He
Though he started out following his father into calligraphy and becoming
brought the realism skills of the European salon painter to the
a ‘writing master’, his studies in anatomy had motivated him towards
American scene, but left behind the scattered detritus of a rather cruel
medicine and surgery. The quality of his drawing, however, earned him a
and sordid lifestyle. He had a gift for technique and capturing emotion
trip to Paris to join the classes of the classic salon academician and
on canvas, but some of the emotions he captured were the result of
‘Orientalist’ painter, Jean-Léon Gérôme.
his reclusive and demanding personality. On the one hand, his contemporary cronies and colleagues thought him a fine fellow, if a bit
A superb technician, Gérôme was one of three painters allowed by the
overbearing and driven. The personal side of his relationships with
Emperor Napoleon to open a Paris atelier with sixteen selected students
women and relatives and many of the people he painted was littered
under the reorganised École de Paris in 1864. At that time, in order to
with sorrow, suicides and madness. Despite the dualism of his nature,
exhibit at the salons where patrons made their purchases, membership of
he emerges as one of the most influential and important American
either the École or Salon de Paris was mandatory. Gérôme was an
Realist artists of his era.
‘historical genre’ painter given to the romance of historical anecdotal works and costumed models that were more mannequins for the
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (pronounced “Ache-ins”) was born on 25
costumes and props than character studies. The fold of a silk dressing
July 1844 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which eventually became his sole
gown on a bare-breasted young lady, or the realistic curl of smoke from
base of operations. He was a painter, photographer and sculptor. His
an exotic hookah pipe, were as prized for commercial success as the
parents were his Dutch-English mother, Caroline Cowperthwait and
emotional content of the picture’s theme. The training in these effects as
Benjamin Eakins of Scots-Irish ancestry. His father was the son of a
well as the chemical properties of the paints and endless drawing from
weaver and took up calligraphy and the art of fine copperplate writing.
plaster casts was rigorous.
He moved from Valley Forge to Philadelphia to pursue that trade. Thomas was their first child and by the age of twelve he admired the exactitude
Eakins eventually moved on to the atelier of Léon Bonnat, whose pupils also
and precision required to produce calligraphic script and printing. This
included Gustave Caillebotte, Georges Braque, Aloysius O’Kelly, and Henri de
early exposure to careful planning and diagramming images stayed with
Toulouse-Lautrec. Bonnat had a love for the anatomical precision of da Vinci
him and became an important part of his creative method.
and Ingres, which resulted in works of exceptional craft and technique, but lacking in imagination. Eakins made the most of his own anatomical studies in
His love of the physical sports he later painted, rowing, ice skating,
Bonnat’s classes. His Paris schooling also included classes at L’École des Beaux-
swimming, wrestling, sailing, and gymnastics also began in his youth.
Arts, which having had its ties to the French government cut in 1863 offered
His academic life started in Philadelphia’s Central High School, the
painting, sculpture and architecture to a broad, more diverse cross-section of
finest school in the area for applied sciences and both practical and fine
artists. Some of those who had classes there included Géricault, Degas,
art. Eakins maintained his consistency by settling into mechanical
Delacroix, Fragonard, Ingres, Monet, Moreau, Renoir, Seurat and Sisley.
drawing. In his late teens, he shifted to the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts to study drawing and anatomy and then expanded his
Eakins chose to ignore the radical Impressionists, but he also turned away
anatomical studies at the Jefferson Medical College from 1864-65.
from the ponderous French academicians such as Gérôme and Bonnat.
Thomas Eakins, Starting Out After Rail, 1874. Oil on canvas, 61.6 x 50.5 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, The Hayden Collection – Charles Henry Hayden Fund. Thomas Eakins, John Biglin in a Single Scull, c. 1873-1874. Oil on canvas, 61.9 x 40.6 cm. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.
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In a letter to his father in 1868 that predicted some of his future
has much improved, and to show, I’ll make a point never to look hereafter
difficulties, he wrote:
on American Art except with disdain.”11
“She [the female nude] is the most beautiful thing there is in the world except a naked man, but I never yet saw a study of one
Having already dismissed the Impressionists Monet, Degas, Seurat and
exhibited... It would be a godsend to see a fine man model painted
Renoir and the growing ‘modern’ movement, all that were left were the
in the studio with the bare walls, alongside of the smiling smirking
academicians: Gustave Doré, Ernest Messonier, Thomas Couture and his
goddesses of waxy complexion amidst the delicious arsenic green
teachers, Gérôme and Bonnat. From them he had amassed an impressive
trees and gentle wax flowers & purling streams running melodious
arsenal of flashy techniques and a definite aversion to their commercial
up and down the hills, especially up. I hate affectation.”
success with historic and romantic anecdotes. Style wise, he had gleaned
10
from Velázquez a love of the Baroque. Truth and beauty – in the form of the nude – became almost inseparable to him as he learned to render flesh and anatomy with great precision.
This seventeenth-century art form had dealt primarily with religious
This proclivity for wedding the two concepts raised its head a number of
works, but populist paintings using ordinary people – much like the
times in socially unacceptable (in nineteenth-century terms) events during
Russian icons showing plain villagers engaging in traditional religious
his career.
ceremonies – appeared from the likes of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and Diego Velázquez. Eakins might have seen Dinner at
From Paris, he travelled to Germany, Switzerland and Italy, ending up in
Emmaus at the Prado, which shows a serving girl gathering dishware that
Spain to study the realism of Velázquez and Jusepe de Ribera in the
would be used in Christ’s Last Supper. The artist’s choice of painting a
Prado. While there he tried his hand at a large canvas, A Street Scene
serving girl instead of the gathering disciples in the next room carries the
in Seville. The painting of three street performers displays at once
ring of truth and brings the ordinary person closer to the religious event.
Eakins’ independence of mind by depicting two of the performers
Velázquez’ use of chiaroscuro and the window light touching the girl’s
playing the horn and drum sitting in the shade of a scarred stucco wall
cap, pots and jugs strengthens the realism and reinforces the populist
while the young girl dancer stands forward in the sun on the brick
inclusion. This Baroque interpretation tapped into a trend showing up in
street. The sun strikes her white dress and barely glances off her
American art that Eakins discovered when he packed his bags and
accompanists. His use of light and shadow gives the picture a captured
returned in July 1870. But in Eakins’ hands, the Baroque of the
immediacy of a quick photographic visualisation – another prediction of
seventeenth century and fidelity to the observed or imagined scene
things to come.
created by Velázquez would take on a definite American character. “I shall seek to achieve my broad effect from the very beginning,”
His tour of Europe and subsequent studies seemed to fix his artist style in
he declared.12
amber as he tossed aside the works of the Old Masters in a letter to his
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sister Frances: “I went next to see the picture galleries. There must have
Eakins retuned to Philadelphia and opened a studio on Mount Vernon
been half a mile of them, and I walked all the way from one end to the
Street. The location was only a short distance from the three-storey brick
other, and I never in my life saw such funny old pictures. I’m sure my taste
home his father had built at 1729 Mount Vernon Street, a tall narrow, deep
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Thomas Eakins, The Swimming Hole, c. 1884-1885. Oil on canvas, 69.8 x 92.7 cm. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
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building that housed a warren of rooms and curiously-placed stairways that
Hemingway once said of his craft, “What you leave out is as important
became symbolic of the lives that were lived out beneath its roof. Allowing
as what goes on the page.”
for brief sojourns, the structure became his anchor, refuge and claustrophobic dominion for the rest of his life. The house had a constantly
A watercolour titled The Sculler became his first sale in 1874 and critics who
shifting population including friends, cousins, nieces and nephews, wives
saw his assembled rowers were unanimous in their praise. His friend and
and husbands, servants and babies. The world was kept out behind closed
fellow painter Earl Shinn introduced Eakins to the public in the magazine
shutters summer and winter. Heat came from fireplaces and there was no
Nation in 1874 when he wrote: “Some remarkably original and studious
plumbing, so water for all uses had to come from a hand pump in the back
boating scenes were shown by Thomas Eakins, a new exhibitor, of whom we
yard. Walls were painted in dark chocolate shades and decoration followed
learn that he is a realist, an anatomist and mathematician; that his perspectives,
the usual chaotic Victorian pattern of overstuffed pieces, drapes and
even of waves and ripples, are protracted according to strict science....”
brasses needing a good polish. The air was musty, warm and rank with the smells of bodies, bedclothes, cooking, gas from lighting fixtures, wood ash
That same year also heralded his engagement to Katherin Crowell, the
and the lingering piquant scent from under-bed porcelain ‘thunder-jugs’
sister of Will Crowell, who was married to Eakins’ sister, Frances. The
used in the night rather than make a trip over cold floors to the privy. Add
‘engagement’ lasted from 1874 to 1879 and Eakins felt no obligation to
to this a small zoo of animals: Bobby the monkey, dogs and at least one
consummate the relationship. It is suggested that the young woman was
cat, all scampering and thrashing up and down stairs, in and out of rooms
pressed upon him by his father, the family patriarch. In any case, she died
with their human internee counterparts.
of meningitis in 1879 leaving Eakins free to select and marry an up-and-
13
coming artist, Susan McDowell, in 1884.14 She eventually gave up her art Eakins began his assault on fame right away with his painting Max
career to clean house for Eakins and the live-in menagerie. His idea of
Schmitt on a Single Scull – a man bare to the waist sitting at the oars in
marriage, it turned out, was not a love match, but the need for a healthy
long narrow racing scull boat on a bend of the Schuylkill River. He looks
woman to breed and bear his children.
back at the viewer as though a photographer had just hollered across, “Smile!” He is down river from a Roman-style stone-arched lift-bridge.
The year following his engagement to Katherin Crowell, he painted the
Sports intrigued the artist and he went on to explore rowing with a series
work that is today considered the pinnacle of his career, The Gross Clinic.
of paintings on the subject. True to his academic roots, Eakins produced
It is a large oil showing the removal of a dead piece of bone from an
a number of perspective plans, studies and sketches prior to execution of
anaesthetised man by a number of doctors in dark suits with blood on
the oil. The final picture had the feeling of not being seen as a piece, but
their white shirt cuffs in the operating theatre presided over by Doctor
assembled from many different observations. This practice became an
Samuel Gross. In the background, the wife of the man under the knife
immutable standard. He went beyond the empty detail-saturated
cowers in horror with her face away from the action and her hands in
decorations of the academic realists to the application of their skills plus
claw-like reaction. By today’s standards it is a mild enough scene, but in
his own knowledge derived from meticulous observation. In exercising
Victorian Philadelphia, those red gobbets of blood on the surgeon’s
this conglomeration of observations and details, he did what good
fingers and the scalpel blade caused revulsion. Dr. Gross, a dignified
writers attempt – he edited out what was unimportant. As Ernest
gentleman, is spotlighted with a deeply shaded face, his glowing dome
Thomas Eakins, Between Rounds, c. 1898-1899. Oil on canvas, 127.3 x 101.3 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, gift of Mrs. Thomas Eakins and Miss Mary Adeline Williams.
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of a forehead surrounded by a frizz of unruly grey hair, his mouth an
Photographs allowed Eakins to continue his practice of assembling a painting
unfeeling slit dragged down at the corners. Today, the painting is riveting
from many different sketches and studies, but with greater precision due to
and dynamic as well as heaped with Freudian pronouncements
the photo’s detail. From his collection of more than 800 photos, many were
concerning Eakins and his relationship with his domineering father. In
used to add elements to paintings by tracing the captured action and
1875, nobody wanted the thing, but it finally sold for $200. Society
transferring the pencil tracing on see-through paper with a rubbing on the
retreated from the artist as a wave draws back into the sea.
paper’s opposite side. His photographing of nude figures in his classroom was usually done in the presence of a chaperone if young women were involved.
Following the cool reception of The Gross Clinic, Eakins entered the
He photographed his wife and his nieces who frequently scurried about the
Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts as a teacher. He rose to the position of
house naked and continually pestered female relatives to undress and pose.
salaried professor in 1878 and was named a director in 1882. To his students
No other artist of his time made such a broad use of photography in his work
he brought refreshing if controversial teaching methods. Harking back to his
and studies. Their constant display in his classroom probably had something
own rigorous academic studies, he banned sketching from dusty antique
to do with his later difficulties with the Philadelphia Academy.15
casts – the standard of the time – and following a brief introduction to charcoal sketching, his students plunged directly into painting in colour.
This broad-based acceptance extended to the students accepted for his
At this time, he introduced photography as an artist’s aid.
training. He did not distinguish between fine art and practical arts. He welcomed illustrators, lithographers, decorators and other applied
Photography had arrived from M. Daguerre in France about the same
artists as long as they took their work seriously. This ‘serious’ approach
time Eakins was born. By the 1880s, it had been refined from a slow
to art included joining in his appreciation of the nude figure. His classes
chemical-optical nightmare into a common hobby and documentation
included both male and female students and they viewed a constant
tool. Thanks to Richard Leach Maddox, photographs were made on a
parade of nude models in this era when a glimpse of a female ankle
dry glass plate coated with silver bromide suspended in gelatin –
was considered scandalous. Eakins also delighted in leading his male
negatives were no longer made on freshly coated wet plates that had
students out to remote locations where everyone disrobed – including
to be developed immediately after exposure. This development
Eakins – and cavorted in sports and games or simple contemplation
allowed for portable full (20.3 x 25.4 centimetres), half (12.7 x 17.8
while sketches or photographs were made for future reference.
centimetres) and quarter (10.2 x 12.7 centimetres) plate cameras to be used by anyone. Film was exposed in plate holders by the lens and
In one instance, he talked a sixteen-year-old boy into climbing up to the
shutter to be developed later in a darkroom lit by a dim ruby-red
Eakins’ house rooftop and posing nude, save for a loincloth, on a cross
lamp. Eakins obtained his first camera and took his first photograph
for the painting Crucifixion. In this work, Eakins managed to show the
in 1880. He also discovered the photographic motion studies of
event, a young man dying in the sun, minus any religious overtones. The
Edward Muybridge. Using multiple cameras firing in sequence, the
neighbours were sure the body was a corpse.16
flying legs of a galloping horse or the muscular arc of a pole-vaulting man were studied to see how the anatomy functioned. Eakins was
Eakins managed to accumulate a large collection of nude photographs
enthralled and began using photos in his work and his classes.
of men and women featuring full frontal nudity. In his portraits of his
Thomas Eakins, Taking the Count, 1898. Oil on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.
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Thomas Eakins, The Agnew Clinic, 1889. Oil on canvas. 214 x 300 cm. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Thomas Eakins, Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic), 1875. Oil on canvas, 243.8 x 198.1 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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female relatives he was almost always at them to pose naked or to shed
Ranch in Little Missouri Territory of the Badlands. In the wide-open
some of their layers of clothing. This nagging often went on during the
spaces, he thrived.
painting session and accounts for the wearisome expression on the faces of many of his female sitters. Sometimes the portraits were rejected or
Eakins scholar Elizabeth Johns, PhD writes of his stay: “So he was at a
taken home and put in a cupboard.
very low ebb when he came out here. And I think what this experience
17
gave him was a vital contrast to the constricting landscape of Never the prude and always willing to help, when a female student, Amelia
Philadelphia. This was a sanctuary that he would remember. A largeness
Van Buren, requested some instruction as of the movement of the pelvis,
of the physical universe. A hardiness of the characters that made their
Eakins promptly dropped his trousers to show her how his pelvis moved: “I
living on this soil that would inspire him the rest of his life.”19
gave her the explanation as I could not have done by words only.”18 His enthusiasm for the rugged life and its restorative powers come This parade of naked people through his life, work and teaching
through a letter to his wife, Susan: “Dear Sue, Only last fall a horse thief
culminated in his casual act of whipping away the loincloth from a male
was shot full of holes a few miles north of here and fall before last they
model in his class in front of attending female students. This rude
hung one... While I was holding down the ranch I had all the chores to
demonstration, plus a litany of accumulated complaints from students
do: milking the cows, cleaning the stables, watering and feeding stock,
and faculty, got him fired from the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts.
etc. On the second day the twin calves broke out of the stable. I tried to
He was devastated. Some of his loyal students quit the academy as well
shoo them in but they wouldn’t go. Then I ran into the stable and picked
and created the Art Students League of Philadelphia where he did some
up the first rope I saw and made a loop and tried to catch one. The rope
instructing, but a great depression swept over him. At home, a
was too short and mean and I couldn’t get them so then I went and got
collection of his relatives rose up against him as well. A student, Lillian
my good lariat... I chased them up and down throwing at them for about
Hammitt, who claimed she was his wife, was hauled away to a mental
an hour till I was so hot and mad I should have enjoyed branding those
institution in 1888. His mother had died in 1872 of a consuming mania
same calves... The boys had a good laugh when they heard how I had
and later, another young lady, Eakins’ repressed niece, Ella Crowell at
tried to rope the calves afoot. They got on their horses and caught them
the age of twenty-three blew her head off with a shotgun. Family
right away. I killed a big rattlesnake the other day and will bring home the
members all pointed at Eakins because of his surly attitude and often
rattle for Ella. My horse is the fastest of all those on the ranch... The time
eccentric habits. Because of a lack of primary resource material – Eakins
is more than half gone now. How happy I shall be to see you again.”
wrote very few letters in his lifetime and kept no diaries – all accusations are speculation or second-hand declarations. Eakins
His rehabilitation lasted from July to October 1887 when he returned to
refused to even display his growing number of unsold paintings,
Philadelphia. He and his wife had been staying in a small flat near the
keeping them stacked against the wall of his studio.
Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and now moved into his father’s house where he ultimately became the patriarch following Benjamin Eakins’
On the recommendation of Dr Horatio C. Wood, a professor of nervous
death. To accommodate his work, he added a fourth floor to the building
diseases, Thomas Eakins fled to North Dakota and lived on the B-T
in the form of a faux Mansard roof and there he remained for the rest of
Thomas Eakins, Self-Portrait, 1902. Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 63.5 cm. National Academy Museum, New York, New York.
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his life. On his return, he produced a portrait of Walt Whitman, which the
Institute. But during this time he was also fired from the Drexel Institute
elderly poet favoured above all the previous attempts. Eakins would make
for once again parading a nude male model in front of female students
many trips to Whitman’s home over the next years. Their friendship lasted
during a lecture. In 1896, he received his only one-man show at the
until Whitman’s death in 1892.
Philadelphia Museum of Art and in 1902 he was elected an Academician of the National Academy of Design.
His one sortie into sculpture came in 1891 when he collaborated with his sculptor friend William Rudolf O’Donovan in the creation of bronze
By 1910 both his eyesight and health were on the decline. In his final
equestrian reliefs of Ulysses S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln for the Soldiers’
years, he rarely left the house on Mount Vernon Street with its
and Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza. O’Donovan
wearying collection of family tenants, assorted animals and hangers-on.
sculpted the two human figures while Eakins created the horses.20
With his good friend Samuel Murray – and not his wife, Susan, from whom he had become estranged – holding his hand, he died on 25
His teaching continued at various venues including: the Art Students
June 1916 from, it is surmised, the gradual accumulation of
League in New York City, the National Academy of Design, the
formaldehyde in his system. This preservative was used in milk to avoid
Women’s Art School at New York’s Cooper Union, and the Art Students’
spoilage in those days of erratic refrigeration and Eakins drank a quart
Guild in Washington D.C. By 1898, he withdrew from teaching to
of milk every day at dinner.
concentrate on his portraiture. The love-hate relationship with the evolving art world continued after his As before, his portraiture, especially of women, while some writers call it
death. In 1917 both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the
“revealing”, is for the most part bleak and distracted. Even the men came
Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art hung his work in memorial
off as cold and distant. Their clothing always seemed to need a good
retrospectives. Still later a number of biographies surfaced that
ironing. In fact, he often asked his sitters to pose in old clothes rather
emphasised the quality of his work over his rather sordid lifestyle and its
than their finery. This is a contemporary view, but considering the portrait
obsessions and homoerotic fixations. The value of his work was
standard of the time where the client was considered a patron as well as
significantly elevated and his personal relationships idealised.
an object and treated with kindly flattery – whether deserved or not – Eakins’ images did not please many of his sitters.
In 1984, a large collection of Eakins’ papers came to light. They had been hidden by one of his pupils, Charles Bregler, after the artist’s
Though he carried a disreputable taint, honours came his way: The
death in 1916 and they re-emerged in the possession of his widow
Chicago Exposition of 1893 awarded him a gold medal. He received
Mary in 1958 following his death at the age of ninety-three. Since
other medals from the Universal Exposition in St Louis, a bronze medal
then, a more balanced look at Thomas Eakins’ life has been possible.21
from the Exposition Universal in Paris, the Proctor Prize from the National
No one can take away the value of his work in the tradition of
Academy of Design, the Temple Gold Medal awarded by the
American Realism. Understanding his numerous frailties, however,
Pennsylvania Academy, a gold medal from the American Art Society of
adds a dimension to appreciating what survives on canvas and in
Philadelphia and the Second Class Medal presented by the Carnegie
photographic prints.
Thomas Eakins, Singing a Pathetic Song, 1881. Oil on canvas, 114.3 x 82.5 cm. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund.
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William Michael harnett (1848-1892) In 1886, United States Treasury agents accompanied by New York City
artist lasted only sixteen years from 1876 to 1892. In that time, he
police bustled into one of the saloons owned by Theodore Stewart and
managed to produce about five hundred paintings, many of which have
demanded a painting be removed by order of the Federal Court. The
been lost; an even greater number have been forged and some
painting was titled Still-life – Five Dollar Bill and the officers peered
achieved major recognition in collections around the world. Over that
closely at it shaking their heads. They declared the confiscated work to
period of sixteen years he was either ignored, or excoriated by the art
be a counterfeit and removed it from the premises. Shortly thereafter,
critics and taste-makers. He won no medals and received no prize
Federal Secret Service agents rapped on the door of the artist, a wan,
awards from prestigious New York or Philadelphia academies. Only
thin, moustachioed man named William Michael Harnett and informed
after his untimely death at the age of forty-four were his paintings held
him he was under arrest for counterfeiting U.S. currency. The agents also
up as examples of excellence – and then only for a short time – until
confiscated other money paintings in the cluttered cell of a studio.
Impressionists from Europe waded ashore and he slipped from the
Eventually, Harnett faced a federal judge, who, after examining the
scene for almost fifty years of obscurity.
paintings closely through his pince-nez, told the artist: “The development and exercise of a talent so capable of mischief should not
Harnett was actually upholding a tradition in the United States begun in
be encouraged.”
the eighteenth century with miniature painters and ‘Illusionists’ by the likes of Raphaelle Peale, his brother Rembrandt and his father Charles
The young man was released with a warning and the paintings were
Wilson Peale. They called their work ‘deceptions’. One of their most
returned. Harnett never painted money again and died four years later,
famous collaborations is titled Catalogue for the Use of the Room, a
almost universally recognised as America’s finest still-life painter.
Deception (1817). This painting by Charles Wilson Peale shows full-length
22
portraits of Raphaelle and Titan Ramsey Peale mounting a flight of stairs This painting that created such a turmoil was a prime example of the
framed by a real doorway and step.
excruciating detail Harnett created when rendering ordinary objects to a degree of accuracy that people felt the need to reach out and touch
The Peales in their time were cast in the same mould as ‘mechanics’
the painting’s surface. Some viewers of Still-life – Five Dollar Bill tried to
who slavishly copied nature without bringing a moral uplift or
peel the bill off the wood tabletop with their fingernails until it was
dramatic statement to the subject. These ‘Illusionists’ with their
hung out of reach. The lines of the engraving tools are shown as are
‘deceptions’ fell into the pit of ‘marginalisation.’ Still-life painting was
the slightly rolled edges of the tears caused by wear. As the wrinkles in
considered the lowest rank in the classifications established by the
the paper’s surface rise and fall, so does the image giving the illusion
academies back in the eighteenth century. In his essay, “Sordid
that there is actually space between the bill and the grainy wood
Mechanics” and “Monkey Talents” – The Illusionistic Tradition, Nicolai
surface. The signatures, the tiny writing and age-worn seals; everything
Cikovsky Jr writes:
is there giving a power to that crumpled slip of paper money it never
“Marginality was arguably the most essential and distinctive
had in reality.
condition of the production of trompe-l’œil painting….what illusionistic painters had most in common was not only their
By 1886, William Harnett had built up a considerable reputation as a
language of style, but their marginal artistic existence: the
trompe-l’œil, or ‘fool the eye’, painter. Sadly, his active career as an
loneliness, alienation, and poverty that were the social, artistic
William Michael Harnett, The Artist’s Letter Rack, 1879. Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 63.5 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, Morris K. Jessup Fund.
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and economic costs of the undertaking of illusionistic still-life
in Victorian Ireland that the older brother followed father into the
painting. The recurrence of those conditions from Raphaelle Peale
business and the younger brother got the education. The daughters
to Harnett was, perhaps, the truest tradition of illusionism.”23
worked for their dowries so they would have some value when married off; but that was in the Old Country. In 1849, the Harnetts packed up and
Raphaelle Peale started out as a portrait artist, but achieved little
emigrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
patronage in Philadelphia. He tried cutting profiles with a patented ‘physiognotrace’ machine, but his reduction in circumstances sent him
A natural talent for drawing must have been revealed in his formative
into alcoholism, delirium tremens and crippling gout that put him on
years because in 1866 he entered the antique class at the Philadelphia
crutches. He eventually turned to still-lifes, which at that time were
Academy of Fine Arts. There, he laboured over drawing from casts,
considered fodder fit only for amateurs. Regardless, his work was
graduating from sketching bits of the human body up to the full body
displayed at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts from 1814 to 1818.
casts that were required before entering the still-life classes. In 1864 his
Peale’s bad habits plus arsenic and mercury poisoning from helping out
father had drowned in the Delaware River and Harnett had to work and
with taxidermy exhibits in his father’s museum added to a night of heavy
support his mother and siblings while going to school. Demonstrating
drinking, finally killed him on 25 March 1825.
his drawing skills, he was able to apprentice himself to the engraving trade, a practical application of his skills. As an apprentice, he began
The same prejudice against still-life painting in general and the rigours of
with wood, graduated to copper and steel, and was finally promoted to
illusionism in particular dogged William Harnett as well as causing
engraving silver flatware. At the age of twenty he moved to New York
myopia from that close work under flickering gaslight. He was crippled
in 1869 and worked for the firms Tiffany & Company and Wood &
from rheumatism while working over the cramped details in an often
Hughes scribing monograms. It was at the latter firm where he met his
chilly room when he could not afford to heat it. His clothes were clean
lifelong friend William Ignatius Blemly. During their acquaintance,
but ‘antique’ in cut.
Harnett presented a number of engraved gifts to Blemly that have survived to reveal his gift for skilfully incorporating the decorative motifs
Yet, he produced this incredible bounty of work and scholars have filled
of the time with his burin onto everyday objects such as matchboxes and
books with psychological interpretations and picked over into fragments
napkin rings.
what little documentation of his life exists. His genius is apparent once cut free from the Victorian imposition of romantic values and
Engraving is a nervous, highly controlled art form. A slip with the steel
motivations. Buried in those myriad of details and textures lies his own
tool on the mirror surface of sterling silver cannot be erased or painted
poetry. For eighteen years, it rang in his ears only.
over. Success demands an artisan-craftsman frame of mind to initiate the cut, vary the depth and conclude the line in a single modulated stroke. It
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William Michael Harnett was born on 10 August 1848 in Clonakilty,
is also a tedious art form if the design must be repetitiously applied, as it
County Cork, Ireland to William Harnett, a shoemaker, and Honora
was with silver eating utensils. Another factor was the design, which
(known as “Hannah”) Holland, a seamstress, He had an older brother,
might have come from a supplied template rather than his own
Patrick, who also became a shoemaker, and two younger sisters, Anne
imagination. To extend his creativity, Harnett began studying painting at
and Ella, who followed their mother into the seamstress trade. So it was
New York’s Cooper Union Institute and the New York Academy of Design
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William Michael Harnett, Job Lot Cheap, 1878. Oil on canvas, 45.7 x 91.4 cm. Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. William Michael Harnett, After the Hunt, 1885. Oil on canvas, 181.6 x 123.2 cm. Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, San Francisco, California, Mildred Anna Williams Collection. William Michael Harnett, After the Hunt, 1883. Oil on canvas, 133.3 x 91.4 cm. Colombus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio, bequest of Francis C. Sessions.
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at night. After a day at his engraver’s bench, the painting classes must have seemed relaxing. The class structure at the National Academy allowed Harnett to progress rapidly straight to sketching advanced sculptures. His chalk and charcoal drawing, Borghese Warrior, demonstrates a gift for observation and an appreciation of the mechanics of anatomy. His use of light shows modulation from upper left to lower right as the single high light source diminishes across the diagonal composition. Another motivation to shift over to paint and brush was the advance of technology in the engraving trade. Electroplating, invented in the 1840s, allowed an industrial approach to what had been a hand-executed artisan craft. The assembly line was replacing the artist’s bench. In 1874 Harnett painted his first oil painting – which he was able to sell – of a stilllife with a paint tube and grapes. The painting is hardly a world beater, but it tapped into a market that had greater promise than the diminishing demand for his engraving skills. The painting also marked an advance beyond the studies offered at the National Academy. It was the practice at that time to offer painting to only the most advanced students. Part-timers like Harnett had to find painting lessons in the atelier of a full time professional artist. He wrote of his frustrations with this arrangement: “I ventured to take a course of lessons from Thomas Jensen, who was at that time a famous painter of portraits. I paid him in advance and intended to finish the course, but I couldn’t do it. He didn’t exactly say I would never learn to paint, but he didn’t offer me any encouragement. After I had studied with him for ten days, I asked him how a certain fault of mine could be corrected. I shall never forget his answer. “‘Young man,’ he said, ‘the whole secret of painting is putting the right colour in the right place.’ “The next day I went back to my old way of study.”24
William Michael Harnett, For Sunday’s Dinner, 1888. Oil on canvas, 94.3 x 53.6 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
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Harnett packed up and moved back to Philadelphia in 1876, rejoining his mother and sisters and enrolling once again in the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts. By this time, one would imagine he could write his own ticket at the Academy. He was a professional artist, exhibiting and selling his paintings. However, he exhibited and sold mostly in public places: building lobbies, saloons, restaurants and billiard rooms. The critics wrote him off as having little talent other than patience. Trompe-l’œil art had the same reputation as humorous paintings with animals such as Dogs Playing Poker – non-aesthetic placebos for the masses. Although he enrolled in life drawing classes at the Academy, Harnett continued to pursue still-lifes as his bread and butter work, seeking out varieties of textures and surfaces that appeared to be totally random. Of his working methods, very little documentation was left behind. Only an observation by his friend Edward Taylor Snow has survived stating Harnett would “make a finished lead pencil drawing with minute details prior to executing a painting”.25 Until infrared reflectography began revealing carbon under painting details, little was known about the sequence of events with that drawing. Today, we can see the pencil lines directly on the canvas, and other mysteries have come to light. For one thing, the pencil drawing was not the necessarily the final disposition. In Still-Life with Violin and Music, for example, the violin’s scroll has been significantly thinned. In other works, whole background elements have been painted over to simplify the compositions. He sometimes altered the subjects, removed handles from jars, tassels from pipes and shifted bits of paper or creased their corners as he painted. While he used the pencil guides in his earlier paintings, the more he worked, the more often he applied his placement of objects directly on the background colour. Harnett used a pointed tool or the end of his brush to scribe a line in directly into the background and then painted
William Michael Harnett, Trophy of the Hunt, 1885. Oil on canvas, 107.8 x 55.4 cm. The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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into it. As he worked, he fattened jugs and shortened canes to maintain
method pipe smokers use to enjoy a hot short cigar or cigarillo – with
correct spatial relationships and scale to honour the composition. He
the burnt matches dropped casually on the table cloth. The viewer’s
continued to use some form of background drawing for object
eye is drawn to the upside-down New York Herald banner of the half-
placement and painted his subject matter elements in front of each other,
folded newspaper beneath the jug, and a mug of tea, claret or other
as they existed in reality.
drink sits behind the cigars. Two biscuits with crumbs complete the scene as if waiting for the smoker to return and finish his snack and
In his paintings of the late 1870s produced in Philadelphia, The
clean up the mess.
Banker’s Table, painted in 1877, shifts Harnett’s subject matter from trivial collections of fruit, dishes, flowers, vegetables and other
In 1880 Harnett sailed for Europe, the birthplace of trompe-l’œil
frivolous objects to hard currency and realities of commerce. His time
painting. The style dated back to 400 B.C. and can be found in the
in New York might have introduced him to these symbols of finance as
murals recovered from the ruins of volcano-devastated Pompeii. A
the new icons of American progress. The country had shifted into the
famous story from the historian Vasari tells of two competing
Industrial Revolution of factories and finance, mass production and
trompe-l’œil artists who arranged a contest to see who could paint
rapid communications following the Civil War. Ledger books, an
the most realistic scene. One artist painted a bowl of fruit with such
antique quill pen and a wad of bank notes held down with a coin
faithful detail that birds fluttered down to peck at the grapes. Certain
wrapper of silver dollars sit next to what appears to be a gold Double
he had won, he turned to his rival and crowed loudly, “Draw back the
Eagle. However, the activities, both social and industrial, of the Gilded
curtains and reveal your painting!” The rival then knew he had won
Age were built on a foundation of unease, a corrupted morality that
because the curtains were his painting. Another tale of the time told
Harnett seems to grasp. Ashes spill from overturned pipes, crumbs
of Rembrandt’s pupils in his studio taking time to paint coins on the
litter table tops, age and patina darken well-handled instruments,
floor and then laugh uproariously when the master bent down to pick
brass is left unpolished and reveals the subtle dents of hard use.
them up.
Nothing seems new. Murals painted in the Baroque and Renaissance by Andrea Mantegna, He became involved with gathering both the symbols of national
Paolo Uccello and Paolo Veronese utilised trompe-l’œil techniques in
commerce and personal items as well: letter racks, business cards,
churches and palaces to open what architect Leone Alberti referred to as
addressed envelopes, newspapers, elements of after-work relaxation
“windows into space”.
showing pipes, tobacco cans, musical instruments and recreation. His Cigar Box, Pitcher and “New York Herald” reproduces a variety of
Harnett had earned enough with his painting sales in Philadelphia to
textures in a strictly male context that seem to have followed an
support himself in Europe where he studied and exhibited his new
event. There is a story-telling quality to the collection of objects. The
works in London, and the Paris Salon, finally spending four years in
pitcher anchors the right side while the wood cigar box of cheap
Germany. His arrival in Munich at that time was fortunate as the
Colorado Gold cigars is the Cigar Box, Pitcher and "The New York
influence of seventeenth-century Dutch art with its still-life tradition
Herald" centrepiece. It is the details that tell the story. A Dutch
was just making itself felt in Munich in the last quarter of the
porcelain pipe sans shank has a cigar butt stuffed into its bowl – a
nineteenth century. His still life paintings had received their typical good
William Michael Harnett, Cigar Box, Pitcher, and “The New York Herald”, 1880. Oil on canvas, 20.1 x 19.7 cm. Courtesy of Berry-Hill Galleries, New York, New York.
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reactions among the people of London and Paris, but as usual the critics
Harnett produced four versions of After the Hunt and was sure this
ho-hummed his style as boring. Painting was undergoing a loosening of
virtuoso demonstration of his skills would create his reputation in the fine
styles, a freer use of brushes and palette knives, an explosion of colour
art world instead of decorating saloons and billiard halls. He was wrong.
and lighter schemes as the Impressionists began to make their presence
Critics still harrumphed and turned away from yet another dead animal
felt. But in Munich, in the academy and the galleries, still-life pictures
picture with no “soul”. In 1886 he returned to New York, set up a studio
of cluttered interiors and aftermaths of hunting were all the rage on the
and continued to paint what and how he knew best.
burghers’ walls. Guns of all vintages leaned against drapery or rough wood panelling as game hung head down from lashings and pipes
One of the most recognised paintings from this period is The Faithful
sprouted from tobacco canisters. Baskets, ceramics, brass and
Colt, finished in 1890. The subject is an old 1860 Colt Army Model
hammered tin flasks, pots, covered beer mugs and butchers’ cleavers
percussion revolver hanging from a nail through its trigger guard. Its
lay strewn about. Harnett plunged into this œuvre adding Prussian
treatment resembles the “dining room” pictures of dear game. The old
bloody-mindedness to his compositions.
pistol is nickel plated with worn ivory grips and shows wear from firing where gunpowder has pitted the plating where the cylinder meets the
Considered his masterpiece series, after studying in Munich for three
barrel’s breech. A general patina has flattened the shine and cracks
years, he began these paintings titled After the Hunt – a common
appear in the grips where they meet the butt strap. An officer or
German theme – substituting various objects within the same
cavalryman in the Civil War might have used this weapon, but at the time
concept. Dead game hangs in front of an old door surrounded by
of the painting, guns that used loose powder, ball and percussion caps
guns, hats, game sacks, pipes on tethers, dented hunting horns, old-
had been made obsolete by cartridges.
fashioned powder horns, knives and swords. These are large paintings, much larger than his previous works, but displaying the
This work is one of only ten paintings completed in Harnett’s last four
same level of excruciating detail and attention to lighting, texture and
years of life. It was exhibited – like so many of his works – not in a
spatial relationships.
gallery, but in the store window of Black, Starr & Frost, a New York jewellery store. Originally titled The Old-Fashioned Colt, this painting
He also created a series of ‘dining room’ pictures that featured single dead
carried a literary title like his other works, After the Hunt, For Sunday’s
animals: ducks, geese, or rabbits hanging in front of a plain background.
Dinner, The Old Cupboard and The Old Violin to reduce the “illusionist” stigma that drew yawns from critics as being little more than
While the German artists preferred more austere scenes of plucked
mechanically slavish copies of nature. In one of his few
game, and very realistic dead creatures often with wounds showing,
pronouncements about his work, Harnett further attempted to distance
Harnett’s Merganser, painted in 1883, portrays an almost balletic
himself from the “deception” artists: “In painting from still life, I do not
duck arrested in a dignified swoon. Nary is a feather ruffled. The
closely imitate nature. Many points I leave out and many I add. Some
layers of feathers beneath the wing are sculpted and its breast is
models are only suggestions.”26
plump and undamaged. One leg is trussed up by a tether to a nail in the wall, but the other hangs languidly apart from the body in a
In 1886, Harnett developed rheumatoid arthritis and had to be
gesture from Swan Lake.
hospitalised to bring down the inflammation. At the age of forty his
William Michael Harnett, The Old Cupboard Door, 1889. Oil on canvas, 156.5 x 104.1 cm. City Art Galleries, Sheffield, England. William Michael Harnett, Still-Life – Violin and Music (Music and Good Luck), 1888. Oil on canvas, 101.6 x 76.2 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, Wolfe Fund, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection.
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health declined further when he came down with kidney disease and
Cubists, Picasso, Braque, Rivera, Lipchitz and others who might well
admitted himself to Saint Francis Hospital in Manhattan. By 1889 his
have seen his work in Europe. Picasso’s Still-Life with Violin and Fruit is
sickness had intensified into acute diffuse glomerulonephritis or
a particularly startling comparison.
inflamed kidneys that can lead to kidney failure. This failure, or uraemia, shuts down the kidney’s ability to clean toxic material from the
Following his return from Arkansas, Harnett suffered a stroke on the
circulatory system causing nausea, vomiting, anaemia, hypertension,
pavement outside his Manhattan studio and collapsed into a coma. He
mental dysfunction and strokes.
was taken to a nearby hospital where he died on 29 October 1892. The doctor’s post-mortem examination revealed that Harnett was
In that same year his mother, Honora, died. Her pride in his
undernourished and anaemic. His estate amounted to $500 and a
accomplishments as a painter had never wavered and her death left
few paintings.
him depressed. Since his father’s death in 1864, Harnett had contributed to the support of his mother and sisters, which, though his
As is the case with so many artists underappreciated in their lifetime,
paintings had sold well, left him very little spare cash. That summer, he
his death brought about a re-evaluation of his work and he became –
journeyed to spas in Carlsbad and Wiesbaden in Germany to “take the
for a brief time – eulogised as one of America’s finest still-life painters.
waters” and relieve his crippling rheumatism. The application of hot
However, the Impressionists and anything French was beginning to
springs provided some relief, but after returning to New York, his health
devour Manhattan wall space in galleries and museums. Harnett’s
slipped further downhill. After another hospital stay, he travelled to Hot
quaint still-lifes slipped from favour as relics of the past and for forty
Springs, Arkansas. That year, he completed only one painting, The Old
years – until 1939 – remained curiosities bundled together with other
Cupboard Door.
illusionists and forgeries still relegated to saloons and billiard parlours in small towns.
This small painting includes a potpourri of his favourite subjects – but the choices are steeped in melancholy – from the torn binding of the
In 1939 William Michael Harnett’s work was rediscovered and
book dangling by a thread (the frailty of life) to the small Roman
championed by Downtown Gallery owner Edith Halpert in her
figurine of Bacchus, the god of wine and revelry. A violin bow
Greenwich Village establishment. Her interest had been piqued when
diagonally brings the composition back to centre where it pauses at
she saw The Faithful Colt and brokered the sale of the painting to the
the circular stained tambourine and then continues along the angled
Atheneum
pages pinned to the wood next to the violin. Above Harnett’s dying
Manufacturing Company had their headquarters in that city and
rose is sheet music for La Dernière Rose d’été, a popular tune of the
donated a wing to the Atheneum. Harnett’s painting was a welcome
period where Thomas Moore sees his life in comparison with the last
addition to the museum’s collection. Intrigued by Harnett’s work, Halpert
rose of the season. Accepting the metaphoric road signs to mortality,
began to acquire his paintings and in April 1939 staged a highly
it is at this point when the viewer takes in the overall view and
successful exhibition which attracted a cross-section of influential
becomes aware that William Harnett’s 1889 painting is virtually a
museums and collectors, adding their imprimatur to the resurrection of
Cubist abstraction. The sophistication of his elements, “… Many
Harnett’s reputation. Over the years, he has risen to the top tier of
points I leave out and many I add…” amounts to a road map for future
American Realist Painters.
Museum
in
Hartford,
Connecticut.
Colt
Firearms
27
William Michael Harnett, The Old Violin, 1886. Oil on canvas, 96.5 x 60 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., gift of Mr and Mrs Richard Mellon Scaife in honour of Paul Mellon. William Michael Harnett, The Faithful Colt, 1890. Oil on canvas, 57.1 x 47 cm. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut.
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frederic remington (1861-1909) “I paint for boys – boys from ten to seventy,” said Frederic Remington.
Remington’s West had a reality none of the stiff and stuffed photographs
No artist in the tradition of American Realism was more American or took
of the time conveyed. No one had to stand still for ten seconds while the
to life at such a fast gallop. Sketches, water colours, oils and bronze
photo process etched their shadow into the glass dry plate. They only had
sculptures seemed to rush from him over his all too brief career
to pass within his line of sight and he had them, first in pencil, then ink
documenting the Western United States. His last name alone conjures up
and finally oil back at his studio in New York. The American Wild West
images of long-barrelled rifles and holstered pistols looped over bullet
frozen in time, that was his legacy; and those were the tracks he left
studded belts, the chink of spurs, the snap of a whip and the whistling
across history.
arc of a braided lariat. His idea of his own epitaph was: “He knew the horse.” And that he did in hundreds of images: the American pony,
But a lot of people didn’t think Frederic Remington was an artist; some
mustang, thoroughbred and bronco emerged from his pen; accurate
still don’t think so. He was an illustrator, soiling their hands with that
from cannon bone to throat latch, withers to barrel, the conformation of
implied pejorative. During his twenty-five years as an active artist, he
his horses was always correct. Cowboys, dudes, Native Americans,
didn’t win critical praise until the West he had known as a young
wagon masters, mule skinners and homesteaders all paraded across his
eyewitness had faded into memory and imagination after the turn of the
sketchbooks faithful to a fault.
century. His journey was spurred on by historic events and kept alive by almost immediate sales of his work and admiration of his Western
Then there were the great skies, huge and cloud-washed, filled with
depictions by the general public, by presidents, by kings and emperors
heat or deep as the ocean above the blasted landscape of desert
and the publishing and printing industry that hungered for his images of
arroyos, wind-carved buttes and the scored trails of tumbleweed. His
cowboys, Native Americans and life in the Western wilderness.
houses were Mexican stucco, mud brick, and lumber brought down from the high timberlines and sandpapered by never-ending dust. They
He was born into the blood and iron of the Civil War on 1 October 1861
were Native American tepees and settlers’ ‘soddies’ that seemed to
in Canton, New York to Seth Pierrepont Remington and Clara Bascomb
grow from the earth with layers of grass-bound earth holding up lodge
Sackrider. The Remingtons and Sackriders were very prominent families
pole canvas roofs.
in northern New York State, but the war and patriotism for the Union overrode Seth Remington’s business values. Only two months after
Soldiers in faded blue and khaki wore slouch hats, bandannas and sat
Frederic’s birth, the fiery, quick-tempered newspaper owner of the St
astride conscripted horses, barely broken hammerheads wearing their
Lawrence Plaindealer saddled up and rode off to fight with a locally
first horseshoes. Springfield rifles were looped over pommels and Colt
raised regiment that became the famous Fighting Eleventh New York
revolvers were wedged deep in holsters to stay put when the riding got
Cavalry. Clara bundled Frederic off to live with her parents, who also
rough. Cowboys soaped up and tugged their good shirt from their
resided in Canton.
bedroll in the chuck wagon, heading into town for a double shot of busthead or who-hit-john – whiskey to the dudes – and maybe a roll in
He grew up in a countryside made for a boy’s adventurous demands. He
the arms of a ‘Soiled Dove’ – a well-worn prostitute – for a half-dollar
excelled at sports, swimming, climbing and loved everything in the
in the cribs down the street from the town’s spit-and-sawdust saloons.
outdoors, building a sturdy physique, endurance and a love of action.
Frederic Remington, Self-Portrait on a Horse, c. 1890. Oil on canvas, 74.1 x 49.2 cm. Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
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He hated the confinement of school classrooms and book studies.
through stodgy art history studies. Frederic faced his first assignment,
When his father returned with a distinguished record from four years at
a drawing of The Faun of Praxiteles. This insouciant naked lad with fig
war, Seth discovered his son needed strict discipline to keep him at
leaf slouching against a tree stump was hardly the subject matter
school. Frederic’s mother also found him to be a handful as he
young Frederic was looking for. In a letter to a fellow artist back at
constantly put himself in harm’s way swimming in fast icy rivers and
the military academy with whom he was swapping sketches,
climbing tall trees.
Remington had written: “Don’t send me any more women, or any more dudes. Send me Indians, cowboys, villains or toughs. These are
His great love was horses and at the age of ten, he became the
what I want.”
28
‘mascot’ of the Canton Fire Brigade, Engine No.1 in payment for his constant care of the fire horses that pulled the steam pumper. His
He did manage to achieve his first published work, contributing a series
father, being a cavalry officer in the war, encouraged his son’s equine
of cartoons titled Riff-Raff that first appeared in 1879 over the initials,
interests. Frederic began to fill sketchbooks, the margins of
‘F.R.’29 The Yale Courant that published Remington’s efforts was edited by
textbooks, and any clean paper surface, with drawings of horses.
Poultney Bigelow, son of the Minister to France and friend of Prince
Clara Remington had decided her son was to be a businessman and
William of Hohenzollern, later the Emperor William II of Germany.
both his parents agreed he needed greater discipline. He was sent off
Bigelow was the only other art student in that year’s Yale class besides
to the Highland Military Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts in the
Remington, and championed making the Courant the first illustrated
autumn of 1876. Though he would spend a great portion of his later
college weekly. If Remington was favourably impressed by seeing his early
life in company with the military, he hated the restrictions of the
artwork published, he was even more excited about being a member of
Academy. Though he was constantly in trouble at the school, his
the Yale Eleven football team and was celebrated by the university as an
unerring enthusiasm for sports, drill and the physical side of military
excellent athlete.
life won the admiration of both his fellow cadets and his instructors. Remington was also a good student despite being lazy. He wasn’t
But just as he was getting rolling in Yale’s “Good Old Boys Club”, in
stupid, but his formal classroom work was a necessary evil and didn’t
1879 his father was diagnosed with tuberculosis and Remington quit
interest him. After two years, his apparent, though grudging success
university to go home to Canton and care for Seth. His father died in
at the military academy rekindled his parents’ desires for a business
1880 and Frederic received an inheritance and a bureaucratic
education and his need to “settle down”. In the autumn of 1878, he
sinecure as a clerk on the staff of the New York governor. Paper
was packed off to Yale.
shuffling did not suit him and he quit. Being footloose during that summer of 1880 allowed him to meet a particularly vivacious young
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In keeping with Yale’s stuffy nineteenth-century curriculum for the
lady, Eva Adele Caten, with whom he was immediately smitten.
scions of wealthy families marking time until they received their
Society demanded he ask for her hand from her father. Eva’s dad
inheritances, the art classes were deeply rooted in European classics.
looked upon this sandy-haired, red-faced, big galoot who failed to
Students were escorted down into a dingy basement where they
graduate twice and couldn’t even hold down a job as a clerk and
confronted a collection of musty classical sculpture casts and walked
refused Remington’s request.
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Frederic Remington, Coming Through the Rye, 1902. Bronze, H.: 68.7 cm. Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York.
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Bitter and disappointed with the hand he had been dealt, the
Everywhere Remington travelled, he picked up cowboy skills with
nineteen-year-old dude turned west to finally go where he had
pistol and lariat. He was an expert horseman and never backed away
always dreamed of cowboys, Indians and adventure. He headed for
from a fight in some smoky saloon. Everywhere he went he sketched
Montana in 1881 looking for an investment that would finance the
with pencil, ink and crayon. He also collected western artefacts: boots,
lifestyle he had in mind. He discovered that both cattle and mining –
gloves, belts, Indian crafts, bits and pieces of a Western way of life that
the West’s main industries – were too expensive. He began
was fading as the railway pushed towards California, the Northern
wandering across the prairie coming across the huge buffalo herds
Plains and down through the Texas Panhandle. The telegraph linked
and places where hunters had decimated the beasts for their hides
towns together with cities in the East and land speculators carved up
and tongues leaving the rest to rot. He met up with the blue-shirt
the unfenced prairie for trains full of European immigrants arriving by
U.S. Army patrolling for roving bands of Sioux and Comanche Native
the boatload in Eastern and Western ports.
Americans who were off their reservations. The massacre of General Custer’s command on the Little Bighorn River had occurred in 1876
Harpers Weekly Magazine published his first commercial drawing on
and the tribes were still unsettled.
the cover of an 1883 edition, sharing the credit with another artist
Frederic Remington, Rounded-Up, 1901. Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 121.9 cm. Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
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who copied from his sketch.30 He tried his hand at sheep and cattle
In a short time, his lack of vigil over his investment made him vulnerable
ranching and raising mules, but the day-to-day management of
to a swindle and his saloon partnership was sold from under him. Furious,
livestock was as boring as the clerk’s job at the Statehouse. He also
he snatched up a revolver and went looking for the swindler. Friends
enjoyed a certain amount of luxury in his life that was unavailable on
dissuaded him from unloading his six-gun into the crook. Eventually,
the rugged plains. After selling his ranch in 1884, he went home and
Remington headed back east, reconciled with Eva Caten and married her.
borrowed some money from his mother. Remington set up a
His stories that sold her on the wonders of the Old West collided with
hardware store in Kansas City, but it failed so he invested what
reality when she moved into his tiny house and assayed his business
remained of his money into a silent half-partnership in a saloon. By
prospects. Frederic’s never-ending flow of sketches of the local denizens
this time, he had turned some of his drawings into paintings and
failed to excite her. Realising the problem, he sent her back East while he
managed to sell a few to storekeeper William W. Findlay, whose
continued undaunted. Later, he wrote of this time of learning and
emporium also acted as a gallery to sell pictures to the well-heeled
sketching: “Without knowing exactly how to do it, I began to try and
rancher gentry. Remington’s realistic paintings of familiar subjects
record some facts around me, and the more I looked, the more the
appealed to these self-made businessmen.
panorama unfolded. Youth is never appalled by the insistent demands of
Frederic Remington, Buffalo Runners – Big Horn Basin, 1909. Oil on canvas, 76.5 x 129.9 cm. Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
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Frederic Remington, Aiding a Comrade, c. 1890. Oil on canvas, 86.4 x 121.9 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, The Hogg Brothers Collection, gift of Miss Ima Hogg.
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— Frederic Remington —
a great profession, because it is mostly unconscious of their existence.
From San Carlos, Remington journeyed across Texas, crossed the Red
Time unfolds these abruptly enough. Art is the she-devil of a mistress,
River into Indian Territory and settled in at Fort Sill to learn about the
and, if at times in earlier days she would not even stoop to my way of
Comanches. During his time there and working through the army’s
thinking, I have persevered and will so continue.”
official interpreter, Horace P. Jones, who had lived among the Indians for
31
thirty-one years, Remington found himself admiring the Native Having exhausted his capacity for managing any kind of business,
Americans.33 He particularly took note of their ability to breed their
Remington loaded all his needs into his pockets and walked out into a
painted ponies for speed and endurance. One military commander said
Kansas City afternoon. He hailed a wagon driver acquaintance and asked
of the Comanche that they were “the finest light cavalry in the world”.
if he could buy the man’s horse. In the street, the deal was made for $50, the horse was removed from the wagon traces, saddled, and Frederic
At long last, Frederic Remington arrived back in Kansas City,
Remington swung aboard, waved goodbye and rode out of town,
disappointed in his failure to find riches on the Western frontier and
heading south-west.
burdened only with a wad of sketches crammed into a rough portfolio. He probably borrowed money from friends there to buy a
The Native American tribes of the South-west were particularly upset
train ticket to New York, but the story he told J. Henry Harper when
with the tide of white settlers and the U.S. Army. Apaches and
he arrived at his New York offices also had the ring of truth. In his
Comanches roamed the plains and deserts, living off the settlers they
book, The House of Harper, the story was recounted:
encountered, often taking all day to skin a captive alive and leave him
“When… Frederic Remington first appeared in our office, he
staked out under the sun. It was into the land of Apache Chief Geronimo
looked like a cowboy just off a ranch, which was, in fact, the case.
that Remington wandered, armed with sketch pads, pencils and ink
The sketches he brought with him were very crude but they had
bottles, and partnered up with some hopeful gold miners. When digging
all the ring of new and live material. In the course of conversation
for gold became hard on his hands, he sought out the army fort on the
with him he told me that his ranch life had proved an utter failure
San Carlos Indian Reservation. On the recommendation of a military
and that he had found himself stranded in a small western town
captain he kept a couple of off-duty troopers near him as he sketched the
with but a quarter of a dollar in his pocket.”
Apaches. He wrote of this adventure: “I remembered that years before a Blackfoot on the Bow River had shown a desire to tomahawk me because
The story went on to describe his desire to get to New York and how
I was endeavouring to immortalise him. After a long and tedious course
he entered a small cafe to get something to eat with his meagre
of diplomacy, it is at times possible to get one of these people to gaze in
funds. A poker game was in progress and it became obvious a pair
a defiant and fearful way into the eye of a camera; but to stand still until
of cardsharps was cheating a drummer (travelling salesman).
a man draws his picture on paper or canvas is a proposition which no
Remington intervened and when the sharpers became angry, he
Apache will entertain for a moment. With the help of two officers, who
drew his revolver and escorted the drummer upstairs to the man’s
stood up close to me, I was enabled to make rapid sketches of the scenes
room to spend the night there with his loaded pistol at the ready. By
and people, but my manner at last aroused suspicion and my game
the next morning the drummer was so relieved, he bought a ticket
would vanish like a covey of quail.”
for Remington on the same train.
32
Frederic Remington, Buffalo Hunter Spitting a Bullet into a Gun, 1892. Ink wash and brown watercolour on paper, 53.7 x 39.4 cm. Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York. Frederic Remington, The Cheyenne, 1901. Bronze, H.: 50.8 cm. Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York.
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Arriving in New York with only three dollars in his “poke”, Remington
furious rays of the Arizona sun. I had been there and my
sent for Eva and they moved in with friends in Brooklyn as he walked
innermost corpuscle vibrated at the truth. I looked at the
his portfolio around the Manhattan publishers over the winter of
signature …Remington.
1885-86. Mostly, they were unresponsive. They wanted pictures that
“‘That’s an odd coincidence; I had a classmate at Yale…’ I said to
boosted the industrial capacity of the United States showing smoke-
him, but before I could utter another word, out he roared, ‘Hell
belching industry, happy farmers, prosperous fields and heavy
Big, is that you?’ And so it was.”
livestock. Nobody wanted to see some poor fellow in buckskins running for his life chased by Apaches with skinning knives drawn, or
The editor was Poultney Bigelow, Remington’s art classmate and
bum-looking mule skinners in boots thick with mud, riding by a
publisher of his first Riff-Raff cartoons from Yale. After their tearful, back
tumbledown shack.
slapping reunion, Bigelow bought the entire portfolio and pulled out every manuscript he had that lent itself to Remington’s talent – enough
Remington, with a wife to support and no roof of his own overhead, tried
to keep the artist hard at work for the next two years. From there,
a clerk’s job and quit at the end of the day. An uncle, William Remington,
Frederic Remington never looked back.
lent him a few dollars so he could keep looking for illustration work. At last, Harpers Weekly bought two of his drawings for the issue of 9
Suddenly, his watercolours were accepted for the Annual Exhibition of
January 1886.
the American Water Color Society and his Return of a Blackfoot War Party won the Hallgarten and Clarke prizes at the 63rd Annual
The success of this sale began a long relationship between Harpers and
Exhibition of the National Academy. His name began appearing
the artist. This cover is made from a wood engraving transferred from
everywhere as he churned out fifty-four pictures for Harper’s Weekly
the original sketch and carved by an artisan. Compared to Remington’s
alone in 1888.
later work, especially where his hand alone is seen, these figures are stiff and lack the dynamic anatomy his later war and action studies
This war party return is a victorious one. Three mounted warriors
showed. His ability to show textures and the actual costumes of the
escort two prisoners who will be traded back to the raided tribe for
cowboys, vaqueros and Apaches opened new doors into illustrating
horses, killed or made slaves to serve this band of the Blackfoot tribe.
the West.
One of the warriors whips a bound prisoner wearing a scraped elk or buffalo hide coat. The horses are small Indian ponies, not the large
76
As his drawings began to find publishers, he wandered into the offices of
American saddle horses ridden by the U.S. Cavalry. Remington uses
Outing Magazine and the editor wrote later in his autobiography:
the red saddle blanket on the lead horse, balanced by the almost
“Here was the real thing, the unspoiled native genius dealing
white coat on the captive beneath a cold, roiled sky. The intricate
with Mexican ponies, cowboys, cactus, lariats and sombreros.
beadwork and fringe on the lead warrior’s jacket and breeches
No stage heroes these; no carefully pomaded hair and neatly
indicate at least a sub-chief, as does the ornate wampum belt at his
tied cravats; these were the men of the real rodeo, parched in
waist. He carries a short barrel single-shot trade rifle adorned with
alkali dust, blinking out from barely open eyes under the
brass tacks for decoration. The muskets only required powder and
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Frederic Remington, The Charge of the Rough Riders (Charge of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill), 1898. Oil on canvas, 88.9 x 152.4 cm. Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York.
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ball, not expensive cartridges. His hat is probably beaver or bearskin.
rather than wood block printing for the Illustrated Edition of the Song of
The warrior with the whip behind him, almost equally well turned
Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
out, may be his son. Remington collected Indian garments and decorations as well as cowboy clothes and accessories that included
In 1890 he followed General Nelson Miles and the U.S. Cavalry into the
weapons of all kinds as props.
Dakotas to put down what was interpreted as an insurrection by the Sioux Indians, who, by that time, were starving on mismanaged
Every summer, once his client list was full, he headed west to paint, hunt,
reservations. Remington saw this campaign as the last gasp of the Old
fish and visit friends he had made. That meant three months away from
West as the Indians faced extinction and assimilation. The pre-Custer
his work, which included 119 illustrations for Harpers Weekly alone in
cockiness had left the Army now and every confrontation with the
1890. Harper’s Monthly used thirty-six of his pictures and Century
Indians was entered into with great caution. The Sioux were particularly
Magazine put eighteen illustrations on their pages. His greatest
dangerous, having been part of the Custer massacre and the raids that
accomplishment was the set of drawings reproduced in photogravure
had swept through Minnesota.
Frederic Remington, Evening in the Desert. Navajos, c. 1905-1906. Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 66 cm. Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York.
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Travelling with Lieutenant E.W. Casey, considered the finest commander
well-received paintings. Money was no longer a problem and he was able
in the Indian Scout service, Remington rode into the heart of Sioux
to buy a large house in New Rochelle in Westchester County, just north
encampments and followed a fleeing band across the frozen Dakota
of New York City. Part of the estate included a Neo-Gothic style house, a
landscape. At one location, while riding with a wagon and some
sweeping greensward, and a stable for his prized horses. The upstairs
troopers, they came across a band of hostile Sioux who seemed to rise
comprised a large workroom where he stored all the paraphernalia he
from a series of coulees – rolling low hills forming gullies – and at that
had collected over the years. The painting studio was on the main floor,
moment five armed cowboys galloped into the scene, their revolvers
added to the original house. This dream studio was 6 by 12 metres with
blazing. The troopers, wagon driver and Remington all lit out for their
a 6-metre ceiling and a skylight taking up one pitch of the gabled roof.
camp sixteen miles distant.
34
Memorabilia of his trips into the West were everywhere. He relied on His presence during this last of the Indian wars translated into a number
these actual objects in his work rather than memory when assembling
of illustrated articles for Harper’s Weekly and the production of some very
one of his highly detailed scenes.
Frederic Remington, An Old-Time Plains Fight, c. 1904. Oil on canvas, 68.6 x 101.6 cm. Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York.
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The homeliness of life on the plains gives his pictures the ring of truth. In
This gift for detail served Remington well in his next creative adventure.
Prospectors Making Frying Pan Bread done in 1893, two prospectors sit by
He always had the ability to see a scene from all sides. In more than one
their campfire baking bread for their evening meal. The flour sack sits on a
case, he completely reversed the figures in a scene to better see the
rock above the can of baking powder. Their saddles are nearby and both
action or for compositional needs. A friend noticed this ability and
men have their weapons within reach if needed. The horses are probably
suggested: “You’re not a draughtsman, you’re a sculptor.” Remington
hobbled to keep them from straying too far. His composition constantly pulls
laughed at the suggestion, but later, after watching the creation in clay
attention back to the cooking fire on the bank of this dry creek bed.
of an equine sculpture in a tent near his home, he became intrigued with the idea of working in three dimensions.
Remington wanted no part of Europe, European art, art galleries or museums. He would rather listen to a Sioux Scalp Dance song wailed by
Naturally, Frederic Remington could not start out small and simple. His
Native American braves than the finest Grand Opera. When Poultney
first sculpture was The Bronco Buster, a rearing bronco on its hind legs
Bigelow suggested he accompany him to North Africa, the Sahara and
with a cowboy aboard. Technically, it was a difficult piece to balance and
into the Russian steppes where Remington could draw the grandsires of
support let alone get the details correct, but he stubbornly persevered
his blessed horses, the artist relented.
and eventually – after more than once throwing up his hands in defeat –
35
turned clay into bronze. Bronco Buster became a signature piece for the One of the curious highlights of this trip to exotic locales was landing in
artist and 250 copies of the sculpture were cast and sold for a total of
London at the same time Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was drawing
$62,500 before the mould was broken.
huge crowds during its world tour. He had to see it of course and was amazed to see the British populace and royalty enthusiastically
Of the work, Remington wrote, “I have always had a feeling for mud,
applauding the cowboys, Indians, sharpshooters, Russian Cossacks and
and I did that [the Bronco Buster] – a work long attended with great
scenes of stagecoach robberies and Custer’s Last Stand. Remington’s
difficulty on my part. I wanted to do something which a burglar wouldn’t
travels through Africa, Russia and Germany netted a collection of ninety-
have, moths eat, or time blacken. It [sculpture] is a great art and satisfying
six pictures which he produced on returning. However, his foreign
to me, for my whole feeling is for form.”36
subjects did not sell as well as his Western material. His love of sculpture never abated and he produced a total of twenty-five Even though the subjects were foreign, his attention to detail and riding style
bronzes, all of them exceptional, including the famous Coming Through
are true to the individuals. The Russian Cossack rides with a European tight rein
the Rye in 1902.
and heels-down in the stirrup as taught in military riding academies. Every element from bedroll to the braids securing his bearskin fur hat is authentic. In
Four horsemen gallop across the plains, firing their revolvers and whooping it
the drawing An Arab, he isolates the robed rider so nothing interferes with the
up for sheer joy. You can imagine they have been trailing a herd of cattle for
bravado tossing of the musket into the air and retains the homey fly whisk
months and are cutting loose to ‘hoorah’ a town for a few drinks of white
girdle that both decorates and protects the horse’s forequarters. He also
lightning, to ‘buck the tiger’ at a faro card table and find compliant women
catches the strong neck and small head of the true Arab stallion.
for the right price. This would become the most famous of his bronzes.
Frederic Remington, The Bronco Buster, 1895. Bronze, H.: 59.5 cm. Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York.
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Frederic Remington, Hauling the Gill Net, c. 1905-1906. Oil on canvas, 51.4 x 66 cm. Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York.
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With the sinking of the U.S. Navy battleship Maine in Havana Harbour on
Summer trips to the West of the early 1900s stopped. His West only
16 February 1898, a righteous America embarked on the Spanish-
existed in his dreams. He was still up at six o’clock AM every morning
American War against Spain and their occupied island of Cuba. To cover
to a blasting phonograph, a huge breakfast of half-a-dozen lamb
the war, William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Harper’s
chops, pigs’ knuckles, side dishes and at least three large cups of
Weekly Magazine paired Frederic Remington and journalist Richard
coffee and then to work. Besides his drawings, paintings and
Harding Davis. Their assignment was to “sneak” into Cuba before the
sculpture, he wrote books such as Stories of Peace and War and Men
troops and begin wiring news and sending pictures back to the U.S.
with the Bark On. He produced six books in less than five years. He
Remington was eager and ready to see action. One of his images had
took his writing as seriously as his daily canoe trips around the lake
already incited the populace against Spain. The sketch Spaniards Search
that fronted his home.37
Women on American Steamer is one of his rare pictures of a woman in all of Remington’s output – and a naked woman no less – being leered at
The subjects of all his artistic endeavours never varied; always the
and strip-searched by Spanish agents.
ordinary cowboy, the common soldier from the ranks, the simple Native American warrior. And yet he infused each character with dignity and
After harrowing storm-tossed attempts, both men finally reached Cuba
elegance coupled with acceptance of their calling. He continued working
with the troops. Bored with inaction, Remington had the legendary
on paintings into the summer of 1909. He wanted to see American
exchange of cables with Hearst. The artist sent off, “Everything is quiet.
buildings hanging the work of American painters.
There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return.” Hearst supposedly wired right back, “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and
In December, he mounted a show of twenty-three paintings at Knoedler’s
I’ll furnish the war.”
galleries in New York City to surprising critical praise. Most critics continued to write him off as an “illustrator”, but this time his work was
The war Remington eventually saw was one of death, disease and short
well received. One critic wrote:
vicious battles with modern rifles, the first use of machine guns (Gatlings)
“The presence, in Mr. Remington’s characteristic work, of a great
and terrible confusion. Of his pictures to come out of the brief conflict,
central motive… is an indication of power, and the ability to
the most famous was Charge of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill. It was
express the motive in a hundred vivid forms, is proof of genius.”38
a large painting that appeared in Scribners Magazine and helped Theodore Roosevelt become the Vice-President and eventually President
Three weeks into December, he suffered an attack of appendicitis and
of the United States. Remington did not see the actual charge, but pieced
when told of the impending operation, his last words were: “Cut her
it together from interviews and his imagination.
loose, doc.” The operation was a success, but peritonitis set in and he was too weak and hugely overweight to survive the poison. At the age
Middle age hit Frederic Remington hard as he reached his forties. His
of forty-eight, he died and was buried on 27 December 1909. He had
weight ballooned as he consumed prodigious meals and spent
achieved his ambition to be recognised as an artist and his passing was
considerable time at his easel or drawing board. He no longer rode his
mourned at many a camp site, ranch house, line shack, pueblo and army
horses, but still swam and tried to do some exercise every day.
outpost where the rugged men he had immortalised remembered him.
Frederic Remington, The Outlier (preliminary version), 1909. Oil on canvas, 76.8 x 68.6 cm. Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York.
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George Bellows, Cliff Dwellers, 1913. Oil on canvas, 102.1 x 106.8 cm. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles County Funds.
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robert henri (1865-1929) and the “ashcan artists” At the turn of the century and for the next twenty years, New York City
It first appeared in a book, Art in America – a Complete Survey by Alfred H.
represented the surging pulse of the United States and its Western
Barr Jr. and Holger Cahill, (Reynal & Hitchcock, New York, 1935) and loosely
Territories. It was the major clearing house for streams of immigrants from
applied to these American urban realist painters.
Old Europe. Financial empires spurred growth that radiated out into the hinterland on steel rails and copper telegraph and telephone lines. The city
Except for Bellows, this group came together for the first time in an
functioned like the hub of a revolving door. As new arrivals flocked in,
exhibition assembled by Henri in opposition to the restrictions of the
trainloads rushed out to join relatives who had come earlier in horse and
Academy’s rules and regulations concerning the organised display of art.
ox-drawn wagons and on foot to settle, scratch out a living and prosper.
Henri’s 1908 exhibition at the MacBeth Galleries, 450 Fifth Avenue in
But the door jammed in its revolutions in one teeming crush of architecture
New York, featured eight artists, many of them his pupils at the Art
that humanity referred to on maps as New York’s Lower East Side. Into that
Students League. In addition to the above mentioned were Arthur B.
chaos where Old Europe’s multi-ethnic class structure still flourished, where
Davies, Maurice B. Prendergast and Ernest Lawson. While these artists
grinding poverty existed amid the trappings of twentieth-century progress
were unique and produced excellent work, Davies was more of a poetic
and where money was to be made off the backs of a captive, semi-literate
Symbolist, Lawson specialised in Impressionist palette landscapes and
work force came the Ashcan artists between the 1900s and the late 1920s.
Prendergast followed the style of the Nabis movement – if not their almost religious zeal in believing in their name ‘Nabi’ that meant
Just as Frederic Remington painted the larger than life Wild West, Edward
“prophet” in Hebrew. Their subject matter was often vague and opened
Hopper made the architecture of the coastal towns of Maine and
doors to later abstract and non-objective expressionism.
Massachusetts his own and Winslow Homer is forever linked to sea, six painters owed their careers to New York City. Though Remington, Hopper
The bond shared by some of the Ashcan group was their grounding in
and Homer painted in other locales creating rich collections of Realist
newspaper illustration that offered them, if not a deep social conscience
works, there are signinficant portions of their outputs that remain affixed
then an ability to skilfully grasp and portray the images of real life. If their
to their names. This is the case with the Ashcan artists who came together
paintings did not always portray the grim realities of life as lived in New
not as a rigidly constituted “school” or “movement”, but as a loosely
York’s Lower East Side and other rough areas, their ability to grasp the
strung together assembly of painters who shared a focus on the ordinary
overall mood of the scenes could not be challenged.
person and the visual poetry to be found in his and her existence. Often compared to the work of Jacob Riis, the brilliant photographer who If a single common influence can be found in their number, it is Robert Henri,
lugged his large camera and flash powder gun into the worst sweatshops
(pronounced hen-rye) a painter of portraits, instructor at the New York School
and crowded hovels, the painters worked skilfully with what he could not
of Art and promoter of exhibitions that countered the stultifying oppression
– colour and the ability to add and subtract to create dynamic
of the entrenched Academy that dictated what was good and bad art. Henri
compositions. But Riis had a different agenda. His job was to portray the
had imagination, drive and a natural gift for teaching that overshadowed his
absolute worst in order to draw attention to the terrible conditions. He
gift for painting. The other members of the Ashcan cabal included William
manipulated his images, points of view and subjects as did the painters,
Glackens, George Luks, Everett Shinn, John Sloan and George Bellows. The
but to affect social change. The Ashcan artists had to accomplish the
painters never used the term ‘Ashcan School’ of artists during their association.
same revelation, but also had to sell their work to art patrons. Caught in
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this apparent contradiction, they let each scene play out without editorial
This was the era of the “Special Artist” assigned to breaking news.
commentary, but with objectivity and creative artistry.
Before newspapers developed the half-tone printing process allowing them to print directly from photographs, they required black and white
The metaphor that best suits their relationship is Henri as driver of a spirited
line drawings for their illustrated news events. An artist arrived on the
team of horses. He had the most formal art training of the lot, achieved a
scene, sometimes with a sketch-book, but often with just a note pad for
reputation in the art community and was an accomplished painting
special details pertinent to the later drawing. Of the group, Glackens
teacher. He offered a unique spin on art instruction, emphasising intellect
had the best memory for fixing the details of a scene without resorting
and inquiry as important facets of an artist’s training. His students were also
to notes or sketches. He could then reproduce what he had seen with
colleagues, frequently meeting at his studio for critiques, drinking, and long
startling accuracy.39 Once back at the newspaper each artist settled in at
discussions. While each artist was individual in his technique, except for
his drawing board and produced his finished drawing in time to catch
Bellows, the others took advantage of their newspaper art backgrounds.
the front page.
John Sloan, Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair, 1912. Oil on canvas, 66 x 81.3 cm. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. John Sloan, A Woman’s Work, 1912. Oil on canvas, 80.3 x 65.4 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, gift of Amelia Elizabeth White.
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Besides Henri and Bellows, the other member not part of the “breaking news” story artists was John Sloan. He did feature illustration, jokes, puzzles and assignments not requiring the rush to the press experienced by his colleagues. The others kidded Sloan that his name was the past participle of “slow”. But no one suggested his elegant use of light and details that gave each painting the ring of truth were any less brilliantly executed. In his painting Election Night, for example, Sloan offers the immediacy of a candid photograph and New York characters as if captured by Lautrec or Degas. The revellers cheering for their candidate beneath the sweeping tracks of the overhead electric railway and illuminated by street lamps are at once humorous and grotesque in their masks, raucously blowing their paper horns. Their abandon recalls the hyperbole of Goya’s depictions of the crowds during the Spanish Inquisition as heretics went up in flames in the town square. Curiously, for all their onslaught upon the Big Apple, none of the Ashcan artists were natives of New York. They were Philadelphia students except for George Bellows who came from Ohio. In many cases, it was their fresh examination of shop-worn scenes that brought the city to life.
Robert Henri His real name was Robert Henry Cozad, born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1865 to Theresa Gatewood and John Jackson Cozad. His father knew his way around a poker table and put together enough of a stake to found the town Cozaddale, Ohio in 1871. Two years later, in 1873, the family moved into Nebraska where John Jackson once again put down his stakes to form the street grid of Cozad. They lived on a ranch near town until a dispute arose with a neighbour named Alfred Pearson over pastureland for Cozad’s cattle. The dispute grew until October 1882 when Cozad emptied his revolver into the unfortunate Pearson. Though acquitted of all charges, John and his family left Nebraska to lose themselves in the more populous East. They paused long enough in
Robert Henri, Ruth St. Denis in the Peacock Dance, 1919. Oil on canvas, 215.9 x 124.5 cm. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, gift of the Sameric Corporation in memory of Eric Shapiro.
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Denver, Colorado to change their names and young Robert Cozad became “Robert Henri” (pronounced hen-rye) while his younger brother, Johnny became “Frank Southern” and they posed as adopted children of Theresa and Richard Henry Lee, his re-named parents. By 1883, the peripatetic family paused in New York City and then moved on to Atlantic City, New Jersey. There, young Robert began demonstrating his gift for painting. By 1886, he was enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, studying with academician painter, Thomas Anshutz, a pupil of Thomas Eakins, who specialised in pictures of coquettish women. Financed by his parents, Henri departed for Paris in 1888 to study at the Academie Julian, a private art school established in 1868 that accepted professional artists, serious amateurs and women. His instructor was the slick academician, William Adolphe Bouguereau, who embraced the romantic anecdotal works favoured by the ossified Paris Salon. The Academie was sanctioned by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and soon Henri was admitted to that noble sanctuary. He accepted the light-infused Impressionist palette and completed his Grand Tour of Europe, visiting Brittany and then Italy. By the time he returned to Philadelphia for studies with Robert Vonnoh, also an Impressionist, Henri’s palette had darkened considerably. He began teaching at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women in 1892. Eventually known as Moore College of Art and Design, it was the only institution of its kind in the U.S. It was while teaching at the School of Design that he attracted what became known as the ‘Philadelphia Four’: Luks, Glackens, Shinn and Sloan. Referred to as the ‘Charcoal Club’, they met to sketch and discuss the works of Henry David Thoreau, Emile Zola and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was during these heady salons, thick with tobacco smoke and awash in drink and ideas that Henri eventually inculcated the newspaper artists, who visualised wider horizons, into his own plot against what he perceived to be the moribund academy and its creativity by rote. Light, gay, aristocratic Impressionism was all the rage in New
Robert Henri, Salome, 1909. Oil on canvas, 196.2 x 97.8 cm. Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts.
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York and art circles exemplified by the work of medal winners, William
to create small pochades, or colour sketches of a scene. These rapid
Merritt Chase and Childe Hassam. What had freed artists from the rules
impressions would serve as guides to his own work in New York as he
of the French Academy by 1895, in Henri’s eyes had itself become the
contributed to the Ashcan style.
“new academicism”. Henri’s transcontinental lifestyle continued throughout 1898 when he As the nineteenth century wound down, Robert Henri commuted
married Linda Craige, an art student, and honeymooned in Paris. To add
between Philadelphia and Paris. In the City of Light, he met a Canadian
to his growing reputation, the French government purchased his
painter, James Wilson Morrice, an expatriate who championed
painting The Snow (La Neige), which hung in the Musée du
Impressionism and Post-Impressionism while renouncing the avant-
Luxembourg. Finally, in 1902, he settled down in New York to teach at
garde Cubists and Fauves. He showed Henri the French custom of
the New York School of Art at the invitation of William Merritt Chase.
carrying small boards in his jacket pockets and a minimum oil paint set
The school had originally been the fiefdom known as the Chase School
Robert Henri, Snow in New York, 1902. Oil on canvas, 81.3 x 65.5 cm. Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Everett Shinn, Mouquin’s, 1904. Pastel on cardboard. The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey.
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John Sloan, Election Night, 1907. Oil on canvas, 67 x 82 cm. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, Marion Stratton Gould Fund.
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John Sloan, Six O'Clock, Winter, 1912. Oil on canvas, 66 x 81.3 cm. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
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where the celebrated and socially connected artist held forth. At that
Robert Henri had risen to a status that would only grow and seep into all
time, Chase and Henri seemed compatible and admired the same master
corners of the New York art scene. He tested that status in 1908 with a
painters: Hals, Velázquez and Manet. They were both portrait artists and
non-juried show for his Philadelphia pals who had followed him to New
teachers with very personal styles.
York and been trod upon by the Academy of Design. The show was titled The Eight and included three other rebellious painters who would follow
Viewed more closely, however, Chase infused his work with a commercially
their own paths apart from the Ashcan artists: Maurice Prendergast,
successful joie de vivre and a pandering to the upper classes who could
Ernest Lawson and Arthur B. Davies. Glackens, Sloan, Luks, Shinn and
afford his work. Henri, on the other hand, was more the journalist, the
Henri completed The Eight at the MacBeth Gallery that opened to a long
realist who let his models be themselves. What began as a mild style
line of attendees and was a huge hit with ordinary people, but was a bust
divergence, widened into a chasm. In 1902 Henri wrote to his parents: “I
with critics. The critical press would be sorely tried during the first ten
really do believe that the big fight is on and I look for great change in the
years of the twentieth century as waves of gritty realism, then Cubists
attitude towards the kind of art I have been doing in the coming year.”40
and Expressionists and Dada tramped through galleries in a sordid display
He began to veer into more gritty subject matter revealing a darker side of
of original creativity that baffled the anointed gentlemen of the Fourth
the urban landscape – probably drawn from the work of his ‘Charcoal Club’
Estate. The gentility of slick classicism had succumbed to frothy
newspaper artist students back in Philadelphia. The lack of elegance in the
Impressionism handed to the U.S. by France even as the Post-
lives of ordinary street people offended Chase’s socially-tuned sensibilities.
Impressionists were being assaulted by the Fauves and the Cubists and
He
the odd raving Futurist. Kandinsky sent shudders down Continental backs
also
objected
to
Henri’s
de-emphasis
on
technique
and
draughtsmanship which were entrenched elements of Chase’s style and
together with Miro and that strange Spaniard, Pablo Picasso.
teaching curriculum. Gradually, discussions became shouting matches as Henri defied Chase’s quietly refined world. By 1907 the tension between
Suddenly these jumped-up newspaper illustrators were a sensation in New
them had become unbearable, and it was Chase who departed while Henri
York, and fashionable society adopted them as the new rage. The critics,
went on to help mould the work of future artists who changed art history:
who freely enjoyed the buffet at the prestigious Salgamundi (a stew of
Edward Hopper, Stuart Davis, Charles Sheeler, George Belows, Rockwell
many ingredients) Club – where Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase
Kent, Georgia O’Keeffe and many others.
and other New York Impressionists gathered – wrote scalding, dismissive
41
reviews of the “inappropriate” subject matter and “sloppy” brushwork of The next three years were a roller-coaster ride of emotional highs and
these deluded amateurs. They labelled the artists the “revolutionary black
lows. In 1905, Linda, his wife of only four years, died after a long battle
gang”, too much interested in the “uglier” aspects of city life.42
with poor health. The following year, Henri achieved peer recognition by being elected to the National Academy of Design. In 1907, however, he
The works shown argued against this sweeping condemnation and,
was shocked when his painter colleagues were rejected from the
fortunately, the people who bought art appreciated this breath of
Academy’s annual exhibition. Henri turned on his Academy colleagues
fresh air and sudden recognition of the lives playing out in their city. In
making angry accusations of bias, and stormed off the jury vowing to
Henri’s Cumulus Clouds, East River, his departure from portraiture
create a show independent of the Academy which had become, in his
displays the luminosity of Turner where the rain-wet street meets the
words, a “cemetery of art”.
hardly picturesque dockside looking out between buildings, shabby
William Glackens, At Mouquin’s, 1905. Oil on canvas, 122.4 x 92.1 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, Friends of American Art.
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storefronts and bare masts, past a father with his daughter wearing a
Once again, the media turned the event into a circus and curiosity
white dress at the East River anchorage. Everything is mood
seekers filled its galleries and halls. But as with The Eight, critical
and suggestion.
reviews were uneven and this time the number of artists participating watered down the overall quality of the presentation. The most
As he hung the paintings, Robert Henri also found his new wife, the twenty-
important function served by the Exhibition of Independent Artists in
two year old Irish-born Marjorie Organ. They were married in May 1908.
1910 was that it set the stage for the monumental exhibition that caused a re-examination of the American art scene, the Armory Show
The Eight opened on 3 February 1908 and toured Philadelphia, Chicago,
of 1913. Robert Henri had little to do with that exhibition, but five of
Toledo, Detroit, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Bridgeport and
his paintings were presented along with some of the finest work in
returned via Newark. Almost at once, Henri went on from The Eight to a
the world.
show titled The Exhibition of Independent Artists fashioned after the French Salon des Indépendants where there was no jury, the paintings were hung
Everett Shinn
alphabetically and no prizes were given. It opened on 1 April 1910 and ran until 17 April, hanging almost five hundred works in a building on West
Using charcoal and watercolour, Everett Shinn managed to portray a
Thirty-fifth Street in New York. More than one hundred artists participated
snow-covered side street streaked with wagon tracks, populated with
and their works were mobbed on opening day by more than 2,000 people.
bundled-up passers-by at the bottom of a canyon of antique buildings
Everett Shinn, Theatre Box, 1906. Oil on canvas, 41 x 51.2 cm. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, gift of T. Edward Hanley, 1937.
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and fire-escapes. This harsh, single point of perspective of Cross
In his spare time, he built a fifty-five seat theatre, wrote plays, designed sets
Streets of New York (1899) was a Shinn trademark, as was his rapid,
and costumes, painted backdrops and acted in his own productions. His play
sketchy brushwork slashing details into place.
More Sinned Against than Usual was performed around the world in seven languages for at least quarter of a century. He taught at the Art Students’
He was one of those artists who thundered through life, taking
League, designed sets for the Ziegfeld Follies and travelled in France. His
advantage of his gifts to become a painter, designer, illustrator, art
peripatetic lifestyle was hard on his love life and he was divorced four times.
director in films and playwright. Born in New Jersey in 1876 to a Quaker
His art also suffered and the critics deemed him the least talented of the
family, he was extremely precocious, and began studying industrial
shabby Ashcan painters. When they did acknowledge him, he was America’s
design at the age of twelve. By the age of fourteen he was designing
Degas for his theatrical subjects and curiously-angled points of view.
light fixtures and created his own steam engine. When he had reached sixteen years, Shinn transferred to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine
Everett Shinn worked well into his seventies, dabbing away at clowns and
Arts in 1893 studying mechanical drawing. He paid his way by
naked women primping in their boudoirs. He was the last of The Eight
becoming a seventeen-year-old sketch artist (“visual reporter”) on the
group when he died at the age of seventy-six in 1953.43
Philadelphia Press and fell in with Sloan, Luks and Glackens. Though at the age of twenty-one Shinn was part of the Ashcan School, his heart
Almost the exact opposite to Shinn were the plump ‘lumpen’ depicted by
was always with the theatre – his favourite subject matter.
the most vivid character of the ‘Charcoal Four’, George Luks.
Everett Shinn, Theatre Scene, c. 1906-1907. Oil on canvas, 73 x 91.4 cm. Manoogian Collection, Washington, D.C.
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George Luks, Roundhouse at High Bridge, c. 1909-1910. Oil on canvas, 77.2 x 92.1 cm. Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Museum of Art, Utica, New York.
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George Luks
In 1894, after creating some drawings for Truth and Puck magazines, he was accepted onto the staff of the Philadelphia Press. His quick drawing
While his painting Café Francis has the Impressionist touch of Renoir,
style and eye for revealing details made him ideal for late breaking news
whom Luks admired, it is pure Golden Age New York and mirrors the
illustrations. He quickly became part of the ‘Philadelphia Five’ that included
attitude of the artist who was often referred to as “Lusty Luks”.44 The
Henri, Shinn, Sloan and Glackens. Luks totally accepted Henri’s philosophy
gentleman with the cookie-duster moustache and tuxedo is bon vivant
of choosing the common city dweller for a subject and painting quickly in
James Brown. He is obviously taken with his trophy, the vivacious lady
one sitting to capture the essentials while they were fresh.
who reveals far more décolleté than was appropriate for 1906 society – and she knows it. Using a lighter palette than usual and stepping away
On following the crowd to New York, George Luks became a bit of one-
from the grime of alleys and rag pickers, Luks unveiled a couple who are
man street theatre. He wandered the Lower East Side streets with a
ready to party into the night.
sketch pad under his arm, peering out from under a swatch of grey hair and carrying his short pudgy figure in a suit of bold printed fabric and
Considering the rousing life he led, his background is surprising.
was often wrapped in a cape and sheltered from the effluvia floating
Born in 1866 to Eastern European immigrants in Williamsport, a
about by a wide brimmed fedora hat. He peered at people and scenes
Pennsylvania logging town, his father was a respectable doctor and
through a monocle attached to his waistcoat with a satin ribbon. He had
apothecary and his mother had formal art training in France and
no trouble getting people to pose for him because he looked like an
Switzerland. His mother was the driving force in his art education.
eccentric artist.
While other artists enrolled in the methodical art academies, Luks had little patience for sketching casts and formal rules. He had a gift
Luks hung his work in the 1913 Armory Show and won numerous
for the quick study and was taught by his parents, who worked
awards. With only about four weeks of formal art training behind him,
closely with the coal miner families, about the dignity of the common
he went on to become famous as an Ashcan artist and in his own right.
man. This teaching gave some humanism to his work throughout
Luks made several pilgrimages to Pennsylvania’s coal region in the early
his life.
1920s, an area where he had worked as a boy breaking large clumps of coal into smaller clumps. He documented this country of his youth in oils,
But “humanism” didn’t have to be dull. George spent his twenty-fifth
watercolours, and drawings. During this period, he taught at the Art
year touring the vaudeville circuit with his brother William in a
Students League until 1924 and then started the George Luks School of
blackface minstrel act called ‘Buzzey and Anstock’. Bored with the
Painting in New York.
lessons at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, he dropped out and travelled to Germany. There, he dropped out of the Kunstacademie in
Sadly, his huge personal image manifested itself in a drinking, brawling
Düsseldorf and instead went where the art was displayed to learn
lifestyle that found him dead at the age of sixty-seven on the pavement
directly from the great masters, travelling to the museums in Germany,
early one morning in the doorway of a saloon. But until that moment he
England and France. Of all the artists he studied, Frans Hals had the
had lived his life much like his favourite taunt:
greatest impact, and when he returned to the U.S. in 1890, Hals would
“I’m George Luks and I’m a rare bird! You people stick with me
be his lifelong inspiration.45
and you’ll have a good time.”46
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George Luks, Bleecker and Carmine Streets, c. 1915. Oil on canvas, 63.5 x 76.2 cm. Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, gift of Mr and Mrs Donald Abert and Mrs Barbara Abert Tooman.
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John Sloan, The Haymarket, Sixth Avenue, 1907. Oil on canvas, 66.3 x 88.5 cm. The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, gift of Mrs Harry Payne Whitney.
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William Glackens
Sloan and Henri headed for Paris in 1895 and Glackens came with them. After stopping off in Holland to look at the Dutch masters,
William Glackens chose to hang two pictures in the 1908 show, The
Glackens and Henri shared a rented studio for a year in Paris. During
Shoppers and Chez Mouquin. In a dimly-lit New York shop, he turned his
this first trip to Paris, Glackens chose not to attend any of the art
attention to the impatience of the upper classes while purchasing their
schools, but spent his time painting. He returned to the U.S. in 1896
finery. Dressed ostentatiously for the outing, three shoppers wait with
and settled in New York, but he would make many return trips to Paris
obvious displeasure as a bolt of cloth is presented for their selection. The
over the course of his career.
central matriarch, hung about with mink, leads the discussion while – probably her daughters – listen attentively. The coolness of the palette
Through George Luks, Glackens obtained a job at the New York World
suggests the blue of their blood and the atmosphere in the shop. The girl
newspaper as a sketch artist and then jumped over to the New York
on the right looks out at us, but hasn’t quite mastered the imperious gaze.
Herald. He also began freelance drawing for magazines such as McClures that sent him to Cuba in 1898 to cover the Spanish
In Chez Mouquin, the exact opposite of the George Luks’ Café Francis
American War. Instead of remaining well back from the fighting,
painting is shown. The cool palette tips off the uncomfortable scene, but
Glackens went forward with the troops and was felled by malaria,
the woman’s wedding ring appears to sort out the relationship. However,
which remained in his system for the rest of his life. When he returned
the gentleman is the wealthy playboy James Moore, the same rake who
to New York he had all the magazine illustration work he could handle.
is the escort in George Luks’ Café Francis. Instead of squiring one of his
His greatest gift was both capturing gestures and making his subjects
many ‘daughters’, he seems to have brought his wife out into public
seem to be individuals with complex personalities as well as using
view. Both are fashionably wealthy, drinking cocktails in a restaurant
artistic invention to add drama, humour and sadness to scenes without
where mirrors assure everyone will be seen. His or her evening opera cape
resorting to mawkish sentimentality. These skills directly transferred to
lies across the foreground chair and she is swathed in blue silk brocade
his painting.
with lace to the neck. He drinks whiskey and soda while she samples sweet vermouth with a cherry. She is bored and is well aware of his
His method of working was often a composite, using sketches made in
reputation. He is ruddy-faced and on his way to being sociably drunk. The
the streets and then testing compositional elements to create the final
line between illustration for the Saturday Evening Post and fine art is
drawing. Added to the sketch work was the use of photographs of
often blurred.
backgrounds: signs and buildings details discovered in the black and white photo prints that added common touches of reality. However,
William Glackens was born in Philadelphia on 13 March 1870 into a
Glackens abstained from the Ashcan mentality in that he depicted New
railway family. He began drawing while still in high school and after
York’s streets and Washington Park near his home not as dangerous or
graduation from Central High School in 1890 headed straight into the
ugly, but with humour and hope. Later in life, however, he came to loathe
Philadelphia Record newspaper as an artist-reporter. He left the Record in
the illustration work. His paintings came closer to the works of Monet
1892 for the Philadelphia Press and entered the Pennsylvania Academy of
and Renoir, using short, choppy brush strokes. This technique and
Fine Arts. He met John Sloan at the school who in turn introduced
frequent return trips to Europe eventually allowed him to support his
Glackens to Robert Henri.
family on painting sales alone.
John Sloan, Easter Eve, 1907. Oil on canvas, 81.3 x 66 cm. Collection of Deborah and Edward Shein.
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George Bellows, Outside the Big Tent, 1912. Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 97 cm. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, gift of anonymous donor.
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John Sloan, Travelling Carnival, Santa Fe, 1924. Oil on canvas, 76.5 x 91.8 cm. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., gift of Mrs Cyrus McCormick.
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His painting March Day in Washington Square (1912) exemplifies this
John Sloan
painting style, which suggests just the essentials. He worked in quick brush strokes and employed an Impressionist palette to the little parade
John Sloan was another Pennsylvania lad who was born in the town of Lock
of well-dressed walkers along the rainy pavement amid the bare trees
Haven in 1871 to James Dixon, a man of numerous ambitions who could
and distant brownstones. Regardless of the rain, it is a cheery painting
not hold a steady job, and his wife, Henriette, who taught school and came
with a clean washed atmosphere.
from money. Young John grew up in Philadelphia, graduating from Central High School where he met William Glackens. Sloane’s father suffered a
Glackens returned to France in 1925 and remained there until 1933,
breakdown in 1888 forcing John to leave school and seek jobs at the age of
winning numerous awards as his work even more closely resembled Renoir
sixteen to support his mother and sisters. While working as a cashier, he
except for a darker palette and less robust nudes. In 1933 he was elected to
studied art and made some etchings on his own before joining the firm of
the National Academy and five years later he passed away on 22 May 1938
A. Edward Newton as a designer of greeting cards and calendars. By 1892,
in Westport, Connecticut. With over five hundred paintings in collections
he had accepted a job with the Philadelphia Inquirer. Sloan started taking
around the world, he is still remembered most for being one of The Eight.
occasional classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and began to
John Sloan, South Beach Bathers, c. 1907-1908. Oil on canvas, 65.7 x 81 cm. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, gift of the T.B. Walker Foundation, Gilbert M. Walker Fund, 1948.
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be noticed by the faculty, specifically Robert Henri, whom he met at a
Sloan came upon the gardens when he first arrived in East Gloucester during
Christmas party. It wasn’t long before he was part of the ‘Philadelphia Four’,
that summer of 1914. He and Dolly rented what came to be known locally
gathering and endlessly talking at Henri’s studio. He shifted over to the
as The Red Cottage on East Main Street. During successive trips, the artists
Philadelphia Press doing more feature art and puzzles than breaking news
Charles Allan, Alice Winter and Stuart Davis shared the house with the
sketching, which left him more free time to explore painting.
Sloans. He created almost one hundred paintings during that first year, using his neighbours’ gardens and those on Rocky Neck and Mt Pleasant Avenue.47
Sloan was not comfortable in social situations so everyone was surprised when he met Anna Maria Wall, called Dolly by her chums and
His painting Gardens of Gloucester, made during that first summer,
clients. She was a boozy prostitute who worked as a shop assistant by
displays a bright Impressionist palette and short stabbing brush strokes
day and a hooker at night, where Sloan met her in a brothel. They fell
that are so unlike his New York work. The change of scenery and fresh sea
in love and were married on 5 August 1901. She remained his faithful,
air must have been refreshing and recharged his sensitivities. In 1919 he
supportive partner.
ventured even further afield into the high desert of Santa Fe, New Mexico at the urging of Robert Henri, who had visited there in 1916 and 1917.
In April 1904, having produced about sixty oil paintings, Sloan moved to
Again, his painting is relaxed and atmospheric as in his study of a New
New York and settled in to work. To earn a living, he worked for both
Mexico hacienda in the evening shadows; it is saturated with blue and the
Harpers and Scribners producing illustrations.
stucco walls are awash with mottled pinks and diluted alizarin crimson. He and Dolly embraced the easy-going lifestyle and he purchased a house in
Like the other Ashcan artists, Sloan had a gift for using light. In
Santa Fe returning every year except one for four months until 1950.
McSorley’s Bar, painted in New York in 1912, the bartender and waiter in their white shirts and white aprons are lit by the afternoon light filtering
In 1916 Sloan had his first one-man exhibition at Gertrude Vanderbilt
through the saloon’s unseen front window. McSorley’s is a typical
Whitney’s Studio in New York and began a life-long association with
neighbourhood bar with foot rail and beer taps and local pictures on the
Kraushaar Galleries. But it wasn’t until 1921 that he sold a painting to a
back bar. Even the beer is served in pewter mugs to minimise breakage
major museum, The Dust Storm, Fifth Avenue, purchased by the
and keep the brew cool. You can almost smell the cigar smoke and stale
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
whiskey. Even though the palette is dark with deep shadows, the scene is warm and friendly, the perfect place to hoist a pint after work.
The Flatiron building looms beneath the black storm clouds as women’s skirts are lifted and dust swirls ahead of the approaching storm on
John Sloan was prolific and participated in many exhibitions in New York
Twenty-third Street at Madison Square. Loitering men are moved along
including The Eight and later the 1913 Armory Show. He fell in with the
by police as they pause to catch a glimpse of ankle or calf. The term “23
Society of Independent Artists’ first exhibition in 1917. About the same time,
skidoo” might have originated here.
the war began in France and he quit the Socialist Party he had joined in 1910, producing illustrations for their posters and Masses Magazine. In
Sloan became president of the Society of Independent Artists in 1918 and
1914 he also began what was the first of five successive summer visits to
remained at that post until 1944. His long career was studded with
Gloucester, Massachusetts.
awards, shows and honours until his death in 1951 from a post-operative
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condition. Always considered a leader of the Ashcan artists, it has often
the young artist the name of a friend in New York who might take him on
been suggested that it was his gritty paintings with their dark palettes
as a student. Bellows packed up and in 1904 moved to New York City.
that were responsible for that name. Duncan Phillips was quoted in The Eye of Duncan Phillips – A Collection in the Making, stating that Sloan
A YMCA with a good gym was located around the corner from the New York
was a “sympathetic and understanding observer of class consciousness,
School of Art. Bellows dropped his bags in a room and set off to look up
crowd psychology and the bitter ironies of life.”
Professor Taylor’s friend at the school, Robert Henri. An almost immediate
48
father-son relationship grew between the European-trained instructor who
George Bellows
had also been born in Ohio and the home-grown young Midwesterner. Henri saw that Bellows’ gift was a natural ability to transfer a scene quickly to a
The fifth member of the Ashcan alliance was George Bellows, who arrived in
canvas and catch details that gave each image a touch of honest observation
New York from Ohio and Ohio State University. His path to the university was,
and the ring of truth. At the same time, Bellows discovered New York, the
as he commented, “surrounded by Methodists and Republicans”. Born into a
writhing life on her streets and in the places where people gathered.
prosperous Columbus, Ohio family on 12 August 1882 and remembered as a “solemn little boy who sat on our stone front steps drawing on yards of ribbon
In his classic painting Cliff Dwellers (1913) the street fairly seethes with
paper”, his introversion soon found an outlet in baseball and basketball.
activity with the city’s canyon walls where laundry wafts in the breeze
Through his educational and sporting experience, he discovered his gift for
between buildings and above the prow of an advancing trolley car.
caricaturist drawing. His drawing and sports abilities overcame his average
Children play on the pavement under the watchful eye of neighbours and
grades and carried him through Ohio State. He later wrote The Relation of
grandparents taking the morning sun on the front porch of their
Art to Every-day Things, in Art and Decoration Magazine in 1921.50
brownstone. The suffusion of sunlight penetrating the sheer walls
49
hemming in the action draws the viewer into the crowd. “You do not know what you are able to do until you try. In learning a topic, whether it be painting, or housekeeping, or building, or any other art,
As Bellows settled into Henri’s stimulating classes, the new gritty subject
consider every method that can be followed. Try it every possible way. Be
matter and his new artist friends – Glackens, Shinn, Gluks, and Sloan – he
deliberate. Be spontaneous. Be thoughtful and painstaking. Be abandoned
also began seeing Miss Emma Louise Story, who studied at the Art Students
and impulsive, intellectual and inspired, calm and temperamental. Learn
League. She had grown up in Montclair, New Jersey across the Hudson. They
your own possibilities. Have confidence in your self-reliance.”
quickly discovered a mutual attraction – despite her parents’ objections – and began meeting in Central Park for their lunch breaks. Since Henri’s
110
Though he was pursued by sports organisations to become a professional
classes were rigorous, these outings had to be brief. Even Sundays were
baseball player – specifically with the Cincinnati Reds – he saw his future in
taken up with “The Boss’s” critique of the week’s work, which all the
fine art. He conveniently missed his final exams and departed from Ohio
students eagerly anticipated. While William Merritt Chase, the original
State before graduation. His father, a normally tight-fisted Yankee, offered
painting instructor when this was the Chase School, had been ruthless and
him an allowance of $50 a month until he could get along on his own.
brow-beating with his criticism, Henri praised what worked in a painting and
Ohio State Associate Professor Joseph Taylor, who had encouraged George
justified criticism of what did not. He spoke of books and plays as well,
to continue his art studies regardless of family and social pressures, gave
leading conversations that took the critique well past its dismissal point.
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George Bellows, Forty-Two Kids, 1907. Oil on canvas, 107.6 x 153 cm. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Museum Purchase, William A. Clark Fund.
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George Bellows, Dempsey and Firpo (aka Brodie’s Revenge), 1924. Oil on canvas, 129.5 x 160.7 cm. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, Purchase, with funds from Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.
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George Bellows, Club Night, 1907. Oil on canvas, 109.2 x 135 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., John Hay Whitney Collection.
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By 1906, Bellows had moved out of the YMCA into rooms shared with
cavort naked as jaybirds in and out of the black water. While the evening
two other artists and also into a sky-lighted studio where they all could
sunset grants them the glow of good health, these skinny kids are city brats;
set up their easels. Henri’s class had discovered the streets of the Lower
naked because who could afford a bathing suit? Eakins even managed to
East Side, the elevated tracks, saloons, docks and other dingy locales
drop himself into his picture, swimming in the lower right corner and peering
where the city’s denizens plied their trades. Bellows did not exhibit with
up at his buff young men. Bellows is nowhere to be seen.
The Eight, but with his name and work linked to his fellow members of Henri’s class his paintings came to the attention of the public. His career
Between 1907 and 1915, Bellows produced a series of paintings
blossomed, outstripping even Henri’s reputation, but the two always
featuring a snow-covered New York, softening the city’s angular ugliness
remained friends, travelling and exhibiting together.
with a natural shroud of white, veined with blue shadows.
Bellows’ take on forty-two kids diving and swimming off a riverside dock in
In Snow on the Battery (1913), Bellows blankets Battery Park, looking out
New York is both homage to, and a tongue-in-cheek cartoon of, Thomas
on the river beneath a foot of snow, adding some strollers, steam coming
Eakins’ Swimming Hole painted in 1884-85. Whereas Eakins has assembled
from distant chimneys, and a few bare trees adding their vertical
his nude males from a collection of studio poses and endowed them with the
elements to the composition. As opposed to his usual chaos in the city,
nobility of classic Greek sculpture, Bellows’ kids are almost cartoons as they
this is a muffled scene, buried and frozen, the city in hibernation.
George Luks, The Wrestlers, 1905. Oil on canvas, 122.8 x 168.5 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, The Hayden Collection – Charles Henry Hayden Fund.
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His frequenting of boxing clubs, however, produced a series of brutal
aggressive as he matured and became a family man, building a house in
paintings that would become his signature works for all time. Club
Woodstock, New York.
matches were usually amateur events where up-and-coming boxers grew their list of victories on their way to the big-time professional fights. They
On 8 January 1925, George Bellows died in New York of peritonitis
were gruelling matches and his pictures convey the desperation of the
caused by an unattended burst appendix. He left behind his wife Emma
fighters to win and not just become another round-heeled bum with
and two daughters, Anne and Jean, and a well-lived life that flashed
cauliflower ears and mashed brains hanging around the fight gyms. They
briefly in the world of American art.
were also one of the few venues where a black boxer could get a fight for a cash purse – but could not advance into professional ranks without
“I do not see why a man should wait a minute to begin work after he has any
enduring ugly racial prejudice.
security in his technique; because the way to become a painter is to paint.”52
When he painted Both Members of this Club in 1909, besides capturing
Summary of the Ashcan Artists
the dingy claustrophobic crush of patrons around the ring and the harsh overhead lights barely illuminating the canvas and boxers, he made a
These six artists blazed across the American art scene from 1908 to the
point about the black boxer in the title. Both fighters were welcome to
1920s, each with his own distinctive style and yet all forever linked to the
battle each other in the club ring, but public prize fights at that time were
city of New York. They were totally different individuals, but the city
banned by state law. The idea of a black boxer beating a white boxer
seemed to stoke their fires, give courage to the timid and create a stage for
could cause riots in the streets at that time.
the showmen. Robert Henri’s influence is seen in all their paintings, in their use of light and shadow, in their choice of subject and in their story-telling
When Jack Dempsey fought Luis Ángel Firpo in 1923, Bellows was ready
capacity no less than the books they read and discussed in his classes. All
to depict the action. Firpo knocked Dempsey out of the ring and onto a
of them branched out, setting up easels on the Eastern seacoast, the high
sportswriter’s Corona portable typewriter. The ringside writers helped
desert of the Southwest, amid the props and costumes of the theatre,
Dempsey back into the ring to fight another round and eventually win the
along the banks of the Seine, and in the homes of the city’s High Society.
match. The typewriter manufacturer had a new advertising slogan: “Firpo could knock down Dempsey, but he couldn’t knock out Corona!”51
But their great contribution to the history of American art was their
Bellows’ painting became a sports icon.
refusal to bow to an ossified collection of rules laid down as the Victorian era came to an end. Where the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists
Realising the importance of prints, Bellows had a lithography press
had broken the grip of the French Salon on European art, The Eight, the
installed in the studio in 1916 where, between 1921 and 1924, he
Society of Independent Artists and the 1913 Armory Show thrust a new
worked with master printer Bolton Brown to generate over one hundred
vitality into the hand-me-down Impressionist hold on American painting.
images. During his later years, he also taught at the School of the
This vitality loosened up people’s appreciation of the power of art and
Chicago Art Institute and illustrated several books. To keep the financial
paved the way for the Cubists, Expressionists and other unique Realists to
pot boiling, Bellows accepted portrait commissions from New York’s
claim some of the creative high ground. Individually, they were flashes of
elite. His painting style became more formulaic and less fluid and
brilliance, together they created a force for change.
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Edward Hopper, Drugstore, 1927. Oil on canvas, 73.7 x 101.9 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, bequest of John T. Spaulding.
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edward hopper (1882-1967) Edward Hopper overcame the disadvantages of being a spoiled rural rich
to success. However, his breeding and channelled view of the world and
kid from a matriarchal family. He was too tall, too introverted, too
people around him also created some voids. The impish, obsessive and
insecure but became one of the iconic artists of the twentieth century.
violent sides of his nature became known later.
Born on 22 July 1882 in Nyack, New York, Hopper was a product of Victorian sensibilities in a turnaround of role models. His maternal
His drawing talent carried this over-bred package across the Hudson River
grandmother, Martha Griffiths Smith, was the daughter of a leading
by ferry to the train and 40 kilometres into New York City. Entering the
Baptist minister, the Reverend Joseph W. Griffiths, who started up the
career path of commercial illustrator, Hopper enrolled in the New York
Nyack Baptist Church in 1854. Elizabeth Smith inherited her grandfather’s
School of Illustrating at 114 West Thirty-fourth St. and he commuted
strong will, righteousness and prestige along with his accumulated
each day to and from Nyack. He sketched from models and casts in the
properties and fortune.
studio and then brought home ‘worksheets’ of objects to copy as dictated by his instructor, Charles Hope Provost. He stayed with this
Hopper’s father, Garrett Hopper, was a brocade and button seller who
rather boring routine until, in 1900, he persuaded his parents to provide
operated a local dry-goods store, and when he married Elizabeth they
the $15 per month fee and walked his portfolio over to the New York
moved into Grandmother Martha’s house. Young Edward lived with his
School of Art, where the acclaimed William Merritt Chase was the
parents and older sister Marion throughout his early school years, having
ultimate authority.
the run of Nyack and sketching the yacht sailing and building docks while becoming a local character. He loved the water and went sailing
Heralded in his youth as an artist to be watched, young Chase had
as often as he could, taking one summer to build a boat that proved
trained at the Royal Academy in Munich in 1872. When he returned to
somewhat unsuccessful. He was known for his height and called
the U.S., forged in the tradition of European realism, critics stifled
‘Grasshopper’ as well as playing his practical jokes with an edgy, slightly
contagious yawns and soon his great promise as a new ‘American’
cruel sense of humour.
painter faded away under layers of European impasto. While his flawless technique sustained him, and was a gift to his pupils, some of those
It was his ability to draw and paint that his mother Elizabeth seized upon
students – Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Demuth and
as his true vocation and encouraged his creativity. From his father, Edward
eventually, Edward Hopper – outstripped his notoriety and acclaim.
inherited a love of books – derived from the extensive library in his father’s den at home – an escape Edward learned from his father when
Kenneth Hayes Miller was also among the instructors at the New York
the pressures of existence became excessive. One specific literary gift was
School of Art. His superb drawing talent and lush canvasses delighted
fluency in the French language.
critics and inspired his pupils. Hopper always listed him as one of his great mentors. But if he had fine teachers, he also worked in an atmosphere
Edward was always the tall boy – 180 cm. by his twelfth birthday to
created by talented fellow students: George Bellows, Rockwell Kent, C.K.
which he added 15 cm. more as an adult – in the back row of any
“Chat” Chatterton, Guy Pene DuBois and Walter Tittle, all of whom
photograph. His first impression was all elbows and knees with large
would figure in Hopper’s gradual ascent. But it was Robert Henri who
hands and a pouty, mournful expression. This excess of pedigree provided
came to teach at the school in 1902 who would link together talent,
Edward Hopper with all the tools that would eventually carry him forward
method and intellect into an enduring creative package that Hopper
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942. Oil on canvas, 84.1 x 152.4 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
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carried with him for a lifetime. Henri also provided the setting where
the Ashcan crowd, he decided to launch his career as a fine artist with a
Hopper met his long-suffering, adoring, obsessive and annoying future
trip abroad to Paris, as Robert Henri had done. In October 1906 he took
wife, Josephine Nivison, an artist in one of Henri’s classes.
a steamship to France and then a train up to Paris. Through a stipend from his anxious parents and using his grandmother’s connection with
While Henri’s training was also classic European – even steeped in the
the Baptist Church, he obtained a room in a Baptist Mission, the Église
romantic allegories of William Adolphe Bouguereau, he had managed to
Évangélique Baptiste at 48 rue de Lille run by Mrs Louise Jammes. He had
shrug off the classic French realism of the salons and went in search of
barely arrived when he burst back out onto the street armed with
an ‘American’ realism. His dark palette, assured brushstroke and
sketchpad, lead-white sized panels, easel and his paint kit.
avoidance of cloying sentimentality gave his portraits and landscapes a rooting in a more straightforward reality. This approach and his less
Hopper in sports jacket, flat cap, bow tie and twenty-four years of
domineering teaching methods set him apart from the imperious Chase
conservative American breeding soaked up both the classic and raffish Paris
and attracted a more dedicated and accomplished coterie of followers.
like a sponge. He devoured the denizens of the demi-monde, the streets,
Their work, coupled with his training and need to break away from the
cafes, and patrolled the banks of the Seine, lashing away with brush and
New York academic rule-makers who dictated what constituted ‘good’
pencil – often elbow to elbow with the crowd of foreign artists who had also
art, produced a band of American realists eventually referred to as the
stormed this enormous visual feast. Some New York art students living in
Ashcan School of painting. George Bellows, William Glackens, Everett
Paris became his guides, leading him in and out of the fleshpots, zinc bars
Shinn and George Luks followed Henri into immortality documenting life
and can-can clubs where his fluent French, unusual height and American
on the streets of New York’s Lower East Side.
embarrassment caused amusement, opened doors and expanded his experience. He was hardly a bon vivant, but neither was he bound by the
Hopper was immediately impressed by Henri and accepted the dark
rigour of toeing the line in Nyack, New York. They also trooped him in and
palette and style of his mentor as well as acceptance in a corner of Henri’s
out of the many galleries crammed with Impressionists, Post-Impressionists
drinking, talking and gathering of selected students apart from the
and Cubists where he was dazzled by Cézanne and Monet.
school. His tall, silent – except for the occasional joke-cartoonpantomime produced at someone’s expense – and looming presence at
While he visited Germany, the Netherlands and England, he continually
the back of the room earned him membership in the circle, but his desire
returned to Paris as his inhibitions fell away and he felt more at home. He
to set his own path kept him away from really close camaraderie. By 1905
found love – a charming English girl – and lost it. In Paris, he found the
he had abandoned Chase’s bluster and showboating completely and
play of sunlight on French walls, buildings, rivers and vacant streets
became a star pupil in Henri’s classes.
produced virtually abstract shapes of colour that did not need to be defiled by suggestions of people.
Early on, Hopper began getting commercial illustration jobs from
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advertising agencies, but he hated dealing with the art directors who
The planes of Paris architecture, first in shadow, as he started with Henri’s
often took liberties with his finished jobs, adding or removing a
dark palette, and later in bright sunlight as the Impressionists surrounded
moustache, blotting out a background, painting in a bowler hat or some
him in every gallery, were rendered slab-sided with thrusting brush
other indignity. Though he distanced himself from the daily activities of
touches of merely suggested detail.
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Edward Hopper, New York Movie, 1939. Oil on canvas, 81.9 x 101.9 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, anonymous gift.
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People, vehicles and the myriad of windows that looked out
If people strayed into his compositions, they remained anonymous as in
everywhere over his scenes became paint daubs as counterpoints to
Le Bistro where two women share a bottle of wine. The exceptions to
the sweeping blocks of golden and blue-shadow buildings and
this anonymity were his sketches of Paris street people, whom he
bridges. This rendering style was at complete odds with the detail
lampooned mercilessly, and in one painting, a masterpiece that was only
work of his commercial illustrations and he revelled in it even as his
rediscovered rolled up in a cupboard after Hopper’s death, it
colours became lighter and more prismatic, applied in almost
foreshadowed his later work where people became important elements
pointillist fashion.
and yet remained in isolation from each other. This painting he titled Soir Bleu and created it from memory in 1914.
Between 1906 and 1910 Hopper made three trips to Europe building a stockpile of these images that were not unlike Van Gogh’s fields of
A mild Parisian evening lit by festive Japanese lanterns reveals a bizarre
wheat under the southern sun. In Hopper’s work, nature became an
collection of the demi-monde and slumming autocrats. A prostitute
appendage to urban and rural structures, a shimmering weather
haughtily surveys her prospects, a pickpocket, possibly her pimp, smokes
gauge or the surface of a mystery: forests, tree lines, rivers, the sea,
while an off-duty clown and two artist-types share a table. All are
the rolling hills.
together in this large canvas and yet all are separate, each frozen in a
Edward Hopper, Chop Suey, 1929. Oil on canvas, 81.3 x 96.5 cm. Collection of Barney A. Ebsworth.
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reverie. He would paint subjects in this mood again and again in different
Hopper’s one shining success during this dreary period of cranking out
settings over the next decades.
commercial illustrations to keep the wolf from the door while looking for walls to hang his Paris pictures was the Armory Show of 1913. The
When he returned to New York the final time in 1910, he had exhausted
international exhibition organised by independent artists scandalised the
his desires to ever travel overseas again. During his comings and goings,
New York art scene with Dada artist Marcel Duchamp’s Nude descending
the Bank Panic of 1907 had reduced everyone’s discretionary income –
a Staircase n°2 and work by Wassily Kandinsky, his first showing in the
especially money to buy paintings and sculpture. The market was
United States. This time, the American realists did their share of critical
depressed. Robert Henri’s February 1908 exhibition of independent artists,
huffing and puffing at this fresh wind from Europe, but the paintings
his The Eight show, had not been a critical success, but had been an
were hung and many eyes were opened to new possibilities.
historical landmark. Hopper’s return brought him hard up against galleries who were in no mood to waste time looking at paintings of French
As usual, Hopper had dragged his dog-eared portfolio of Paris pictures to
subjects when everyone was crying out for American works. He manfully
the hanging committee in this non-juried show, but at the cost of $10 a
trudged from dealer to dealer and from one exhibition opportunity to
painting (two for $18) he only hung one work, a little sailboat titled Sailing
another with his French pictures only to find rejection in various forms.
that he had painted in 1911 which sold to a cloth merchant for $250 – the
Edward Hopper, Automat, 1927. Oil on canvas, 71.1 x 91.4 cm. Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, James D. Edmundson Fund.
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Edward Hopper, Summer Evening, 1947. Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 106.7 cm. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert H. Kinney.
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equivalent of $5,000 in modern currency. He was so excited by the sale that
and his coterie of chums retreated each summer to get relief from the
he took the cheque home to Nyack to show his mother. He would be forty
heat in New York City. By living frugally, he saved up enough to journey
years old before he sold another piece of his non-commercial art.
to the seaport villages and usually found himself in the centre of a New York art colony.
The real tragedy of Hopper’s early days was his skill as a commercial artist. While he was not in the top rank of fashionable illustrators of the Charles
The pounding surf, rocky shoreline and salt-scoured homes of the
Dana Gibson stripe, his clean technique and compositional innovations
residents were a tonic to Hopper. He found rooms in local boarding
kept him constantly busy among the numerous industrial trade
houses that set family style tables and he spent the days marching to
magazines. By 1915, as the Great War propaganda from Britain gradually
each suggested scenic vista. Being who he was, more than likely he
seeped over into the United States, patriotic posters and printed
painted whatever was in the opposite direction to what was attracting
exaltations came his way along with the usual run of vapid romances and
the other painters like flies to honey.
tales of heroism in the trenches and later on the home front. The photomechanical process had overtaken stark black and white woodcuts
His work was not unlike his Paris paintings with their blocked-in
allowing artists greater freedom with colour and values.
compositions of buildings, lighthouses, rocks and occasional swipes of the brush that represented beached fishing boats. The salt air was
Of course, he was not oblivious to the lack of desire for his French paintings.
rejuvenating and recharged his energy when it came time to resume the
He reasoned those people were just wrong and would eventually come to
gruelling trudge back in New York.
their senses. In the meantime, he did paint a variety of subjects while he waited for his French pictures to catch on. His Summer Interior painted in
On returning from his seacoast adventures, he found the painting market
1909 offered a subject he returned to often, the nude at a bedside with light
unimproved and cast about for a way to make money without resorting
streaming in through a window playing on the walls or floor. Another
to more commercial illustrations. His friend at Henri’s classes, C.K. ‘Chat’
recurring New York subject was cigar-shaped Blackwell’s Island in the East
Chatterton, had accepted a position teaching art at a girls’ school.
River, home to a variety of prisons and correctional institutions. He and
Teaching seemed more honourable than selling his soul one drawing at a
Robert Henri both painted the island, and their individual observations and
time, so Hopper went home and turned the unused parlour in the family
renderings clearly demonstrate their differences.
homestead into a classroom. He advertised drawing lessons for serious students and soon had a class full of eager amateurs. Being used to a
Hopper’s Blackwell’s Island from 1911 shows an odd view looking down
certain discipline and a certain high level of expertise, Hopper discovered
including a portion of the Queensborough Bridge and the river at night
his students had many more thumbs than fingers.
with the moon’s reflection and speckles of window lights in the vaguely seen windows below. Henri’s 1900 Blackwell’s Island is a forbidding island
One day, in a fit of jaw-clenching despair, he penned a new advertisement
of snow surrounded by ice-choked water, a pitiless prison.
in French that read: E. Hopper Firm, Founded in 1882
Hopper also chose once again to follow in Henri’s footsteps and take the
Firm: E. Hopper
train to the Maine coast and to Gloucester, Massachusetts, where Henri
Objects of Art and Utility
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Oil paintings, engravings, etchings, courses in painting and
room to spread out and later in 1913 discovered a Greek Revival walk-up
literature, repair of electric lamps and windows, removal and
building at 3 Washington Square North, facing Washington Park. It was an
transportation of trunks, guide to the countryside, carpenter,
elderly pile built in the 1830s and had housed such creative luminaries as
laundryman, hair dresser, fireman, transportation of trees and
Thomas Eakins, Augustus St Gaudins and one of Henri’s acolytes, William
flowers, wedding and banquet halls, readings, encyclopaedia of
Glackens. Hopper took the fourth floor at the top of seventy-four steps with
art and science, mechanic, rapid cure for illnesses of the spirit
no private bathroom which was heated by an iron stove rooted in the main
such as flightiness, frivolity and pride. Reduced prices for
room. A skylight that dripped when rain fell provided considerable light
widows and orphans. Samples on request. Demand the
when kept free of soot and bird excrement.
registered trademark.
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While he had steered clear of the really boisterous Paris nightlife, the The painting he had sold at the Armory Show had been a symbol more than
Greenwich Village bohemianism caught him up having to only traipse
a breakthrough. He had to keep his sense of perspective, realising that each
up and down stairs to attend any number of parties. William Tittle, a
dreaded illustration bought time to paint. He also needed a larger studio,
friend from Chase’s classes, also lived there and helped Hopper find
Edward Hopper, Apartment Houses, 1923. Oil on canvas, 61 x 73.5 cm. Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, purchased through the John Lambert Fund.
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illustration jobs to keep the pot boiling. Hopper’s painting New York
The stack of unsold pictures against the wall continued to grow. Escaping
Corner was finished during this time.
to the Maine seacoast again, Hopper renewed an acquaintance with a short feisty redhead with an upturned Irish nose and an apparent non-
He had made a sketch from a train window of an American Village street
stop patter which jarred him when it came out in fluent French. He had
in 1912 as seen in the fading light of evening or before an approaching
met Josephine Nivison at the New York art school where Henri had
storm looking down from a bridge. The buildings, awnings, horse
painted her and as a fixture among the Village bohemians. She painted
wagons and dabs indicating people make it one of his more populous
in watercolour amid the swirling seagulls, blown sea mist, blustery winds
scenes. The New York Corner took the viewer down to street level to
and dancing sand clouds. Jo also had a yellow cat and Hopper always
face a red brick residence over a cigar store and newspaper stand where
asked about it, which struck her as sweet and caring. Their relationship
workers stopped on their way home from the misty buildings seen in the
picked up again after they returned to New York.
background. Again, the people are ciphers in dark clothes following their daily lives beneath a very ornate, gilded corner-sign display. Trolley
Following a suggestion from a magazine editor to try printmaking as a
tracks and a lamp post complete the very formal composition.
way to freshen up his style, Hopper bought an old banknote press and
Edward Hopper, Night Windows, 1928. Oil on canvas, 73.7 x 86.4 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, gift of John Hay Whitney.
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had it hauled up to his studio. Printmaking was becoming a new source
church where they could be married. They finally located the Reverend
of revenue for a number of American artists and there were many of his
Paul D. Elsessor of the French Huguenot Church and he married them in
artist acquaintances to show him the basics of the craft. He learned about
a French service which suited them perfectly.
buffing copper plates, spreading on the wax, sketching the image into the wax with the engraving tools, immersing the plates in acid and
The Hopper/Smith family in Nyack did not consider Josephine to be much
repeating the process until the finished etching was revealed in its final
of a catch and she referred to them her letters as “that loathsome
state. Edward Hopper blitzed through a number of plates, mastered both
breed”. As for Edward, now he had someone to take care of him, do the
etching and dry-point engraving and from 1915 to the 1920s began
laundry, help lug coal up from the basement to the fourth floor and
selling them to New York dealers. He even found his work purchased by
accompany him to restaurants for meals – neither of them could cook –
museums and hung in print exhibitions.
and keep the books covering sales of his pictures, the goofy charm evaporated somewhat. She came up against his often-stony silences.
Hopper’s etchings revealed an intimacy in his point of view and sharp
Worse, however, was his total disregard for her painting abilities or her
observation of details that gave the black and white images a gift of life and
women friends who had the temerity to consider themselves artists.
atmosphere. He also began to touch his surfaces with breezes and winds
While Edward used the studio for his work, Jo kept a folding easel in the
that ruffled life around his subjects as well as the light that illuminated them.
kitchen. Even her cat ran away.
By this time, Josephine had convinced him to work on his watercolours
Josephine’s early life had been difficult, frugal and rootless. She had tried
during their trips to the seacoast towns. Typical of these new, fresh
teaching, nursing, dramatics and finally discovered she had a gift for
images done in plein air style was The Mansard Roof, painted in 1923.
painting. Though her French was fluent and she loved to read, her
A remarkable watercolour, it brings the sea breeze in beneath billowing
sophistication was not deeply developed. Her art tended to be ‘nice’, but
yellow awnings and carves the seaside hotel architecture out of white
was nowhere near profound in concept or execution. On the other hand,
paper and lashings of blue shadows from the blowing leafy trees. His
Edward Hopper’s work had begun to be noticed and less of their income
small town and seacoast watercolours suddenly caught fire with the
depended on commercial illustration. She apparently made a conscious
galleries and museums together with his etchings. The Brooklyn
decision to take the risk and stay with him for the full ride. Even when
Museum, Worcester Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
that ride became a roller-coaster of screaming fights, biting and kicking
and the Cleveland Museum were all creating extensive watercolour
battles, she remained affixed to him like a limpet. As his stature grew
collections based on the works of Winslow Homer and John Singer
among his fellow artists and the awards and exhibitions came his way she
Sargent. Though they sold for less than the oils, their volume and the
remained at his side. After a while one was rarely seen without the other.
enthusiasm with which they were received more than compensated. As he had begun actual sales, Hopper wrote every one down in a book. Jo
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Back in New York, Josephine helped Hopper secure his first one-man show
took that idea and created a series of ledgers where every painting,
of the watercolours and talked his work up among her Greenwich friends.
watercolour, etching and oil was included. Edward added a thumbnail
On 9 July 1924, Hopper and Josephine dragged their friend, painter and
sketch of the work and she penned in all the details: medium, size, surface,
art magazine editor Guy Pene du Bois with them in search of a ‘Christian’
colours, details about the subject, purchaser and price less thirty-three
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Edward Hopper, House by the Railroad, 1925. Oil on canvas, 61 x 73.7 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, anonymous gift.
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Edward Hopper, People in the Sun, 1960. Oil on canvas, 102.6 x 153.4 cm. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.
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percent for Hopper’s agent. She was with him virtually every time he went
toothed window shades. A sense of profound decay radiates from the
out of the door and whenever a painting required a female figure, she
house as the railway tracks seemed to segregate it from growth,
posed either nude or costumed.
prosperity and a future. The old pile’s isolation seemed symbolic of Hopper’s own crisis when in 1927 he produced his last commercial
In the 1920s Hopper purchased an old Ford to drive up to the seacoasts
illustrations and bet his future on his art.
and extend his range, visiting far-flung lighthouses, seaside villages and little towns to paint. He always drove, considering Jo incapable of piloting
Soon, their lives settled into a routine wherein they divided their time
an automobile. Once, when she was at the wheel and scuffed a
between the Washington Square fourth-floor apartment and summers in
mudguard on the side of a wood pole, in a rage, he dragged her from
the north-east seacoast towns. In New York, Edward made the rounds of
behind the wheel by the hair, beat her at the kerb and stuffed her into
the city streets and neighbourhoods where he observed his subjects and
the passenger seat – all on the main street of a little country town.
brought them back to the studio in his head, or as brief sketches. From the windows and roof of the old building, he found compositions and
On other days, when they were living in South Truro on Cape Cod, he could
miniature mysteries most people would have overlooked.
be romantically charming, putting a waltz record on the turntable and dancing her away from the ironing board to sweep around the house. They
In the 1928 work Manhattan Bridge Loop Hopper explored the
also made up stories about the people he painted and read verse to each
composition in many sketches, adding, but mostly subtracting elements. At
other in French. Regardless of their vicious fights, they came to depend on
the last minute, he painted in the man wearing the overcoat and flat cap
each other being there. She knew how to drag him from his deep
at the far left, which completed the composition and provided both scale
depressions when no paintings would come. He detested her friends, but
and a lonely melancholy to the harshly-structured scene. His painting Early
relied on her being between him and nosy visitors when he was working.
Sunday Morning, done during the same period of urban exploration but two years later, boils down his observation to a half-block of shopfronts on
In 1927 Hopper once again followed Robert Henri’s lead and with their
a Sunday morning deserted street. This time, the barber’s pole was a final
used car stuffed with extra petrol cans, rope for towing, a shovel,
addition to what is an almost abstract composition, almost a page of music
suitcases and tinned food, he and Jo set out for Santa Fe, New Mexico.
notation. It ranges from the pizzicato of the brackets just below the roof
A bit jaded with Gloucester summers, they thought the change of
line through the punctuated row of upstairs windows to the beckoning,
scenery would freshen up his work. On arrival, he detested Santa Fe,
booming open spaces of the shopfront display widows all resting on the
which at that time was still a dusty collection of fortress-like adobes
flowing string line of street kerb that supports everything. The barber’s pole
roofed in orange tile and ringed with patches of cat’s paw cactus. He
rises from the pavement like an oboe solo in the early morning sunlight.
produced only thirteen paintings before they returned home to New York. He did manage one painting during the middle 1920s that became
Hopper’s personality – his true personality – began to emerge in his
a signature work. House by the Railway is a looming dormered white pile
paintings as if they were Raushak inkblot tests revealing in their shapes,
of Victorian bric-a-brac sharply truncated by the trackbed and rails of a
shadows and vacant spaces like the core of loneliness he carried with
railway track. It rises alone and naked beneath its extravagant cupola
him. His people stared into the distance waiting for something to come,
against a bald sky with its interior life sealed from prying eyes by gap-
to begin, to relieve an ache, to offer up an answer.
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As for Josephine, it appeared that he might as well have kept a cat – if the
modest talent and he was able to translate his bottomless introversion into
cat could speak French, do laundry and keep the books. But that would
a visual experience that had a huge impact on American art.
be a surface observation. She offered him a ready-made sounding board for what he could not make clear in his artwork. As his self-esteem soared,
During their summer excursions, they had always rented a cottage near a
hers dipped. He thrust and she parried. She whined and he struck out. Her
shore, often without running water except for a hand pump and no
non-stop clinging dripped like acid on the thin covering of his great drum,
telephone or even electricity. They both fell in easily with this frugal way of
but when the work would not come, she was able to pull him back from
life, dining mostly out of tin cans and rough washing their clothes, which
his deep depressions. Everyone knows someone like Edward Hopper,
were bought for use rather than fashion. However, in 1930, a death in
where the sun shines only from him or her and you enjoy the warmth, or
Josephine’s family left her with a small inheritance and they used it to buy a
get burned. Josephine achieved and relished an identity beyond her
patch of land on South Truro in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Edward designed
Edward Hopper, Office in a Small City, 1953. Oil on canvas, 71.1 x 101.6 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, George A. Hearn Fund.
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the house with a large main studio and a huge north-facing picture window.
make many trips to the same spot to catch the same light and sky. They
No studio space was planned for Jo’s work area, which she deeply resented.
were his bread and butter pictures that sold readily and showed off his flashy technique. Again, the isolation of the lighthouses, scoured by
Besides the usual seaside subject matter, coastguard stations, light-
ocean winds and salt surf, seemed to be metaphors for his own situation
houses, surf-blasted rocky points, the Hoppers drove inland to the small
in life. When he moved inland to paint the homes of ship captains or
towns in the area where Edward could translate what he saw into oil as
blocks of houses on a street, people were absent, but their artefacts,
well as watercolour.
however mundane, were treated with kindness.
His lighthouse pictures were almost all captured in watercolour and then
Beached bream trawlers also caught his eye with their rusted stacks and
oils were made later. He preferred bright sunny days and often had to
iron fittings, the sweep of their deep hulls and complex winching gear.
Edward Hopper, Four Lane Road, 1956. Oil on canvas, 68.6 x 104.1 cm. Private collection.
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He added their abandoned hulks to his collection of boats and offshore
I don’t believe such an aim can be achieved by a human being… We
packets that still plied the waters, skirted the points and broke the surface
would be leaving out a great deal that I consider worthwhile expressing
of the nearby sounds.
in painting, and it cannot be expressed in literature.”55
These paintings of ships and houses often brought together the works of
Curiously, the abstract painters embraced Hopper’s later paintings – and
Hopper and Charles Burchfield, a contemporary and friend of Hopper’s
even the very early French works that dogged his efforts – his rectilinear
who passed through an American Realist period between 1920 and the
compositions and patterns of shapes which verged on the abstract.
early 1940s. One critic even upset Hopper by suggesting that some of his ideas might have come from Burchfield’s paintings. Burchfield’s efforts
In his oil Approaching a City, painted in 1946, Hopper gives the viewer
sometimes brought comments such as another critic’s put-down, “merely
an engineer’s view of an upcoming dark tunnel that leads beneath rows
Hopper on a rainy day”.
of opaque buildings. A variety of interpretations are available, but the elements of the painting when taken separately create a de Chirico-like
The year 1927 marked another watershed in Hopper’s life if not his career.
dream world of intersecting planes and shadowed spaces as in his work
Robert Henri died in July. Suddenly the man whose trail Hopper had stalked
Montparnasse Station. Many of Hopper’s later paintings lead us into
like a frontier scout from the inspiring teacher’s classes to Paris and back to
strange worlds that are almost real, but are impossible. This scraping of
Greenwich Village had gone. The man he had tracked to the Atlantic
images together from internal resources almost makes a lie of Hopper’s
seacoast villages and the relationship with Josephine was out of the picture.
membership of the American Realist tradition.
Hopper masked the sudden hole in his life’s fabric with the tossed-off quote: “It took me ten years to get over Robert Henri. He wasn’t a very
Rothko, Pollock, Malevich, de Kooning and the pioneer Kandinsky passed
good painter. At least I don’t think so. He was a better teacher
through the world of Realism on the way to the total evaporation of
than a painter.”
recognisable subject matter. Monet’s later paintings at Giverny all but
54
washed away the boundaries of nature and yet he, like Hopper, dug in his The clash of Hopper’s maturing Realist work and the growing push from
heels and remained true to his subject’s original inspiration. In his amazing
Europe of the non-objective and abstract artists that manifested into
triptych at Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, Monet’s water lily garden sweeps
something called “New American Painting” enraged him. Kandinsky and
around the walls in the dedicated white gallery; the walls compel the
the Cubists had done nothing for him nor the works by Pollock, Rothko
viewer to turn in place, taking in Monet’s abstraction of shimmering colour
and de Kooning, who put their emotions directly on the canvas instead
and vaporous shapes before settling in on the individual panels.
of transferring emotions from the subject and its treatment to the viewer though recognition. At the great art museums in New York, painting
Hopper’s Sun in an Empty Room appears to strike immediately as
shows relegated the Realists to the upstairs galleries while the choice
something very familiar, an abandoned room stripped of identity, or – just
main floor rooms were home to Expressionist works. Hopper wrote that
as viable – a new room awaiting the touches that will bring it to life. But
“New American painting was an attempt to create ‘pure painting’, that
the echoing rectangular shapes broken only by the prying gaze of the
is, an art which will use colour and design for their own sake and
tree outside the window shift forwards and back towards and away from
independent of man’s experience of life and his association with nature.
the picture plane offering only the geometry of barren space.
Edward Hopper, Gas, 1940. Oil on canvas, 66.7 x 102.2 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, Mrs Simon Guggenheim Fund.
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Edward Hopper, Two Comedians, 1965. Oil on canvas, 73.7 x 101.6 cm. Collection of Mr and Mrs Frank Sinatra.
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By the 1930s, people began to be featured more prominently in
When they were not dealing with life in the fourth-floor walk-up
Hopper’s oils. While they had always been nearby as nudes in
studio, dining in neighbourhood restaurants or visiting galleries and
bedrooms, now they stepped into the sunlight and became mystical
the Whitney Museum that was collecting Hopper’s work, Jo and
participants in his visions. And they all looked alike. With few
Edward went to movies. The big Hollywood year was 1939 when Gone
exceptions, the men resembled Hopper and the women were
with the Wind, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights, The Roaring Twenties,
variations of Josephine. Nothing unusual there since she was the live-
Mr Smith goes to Washington and other big movies were launched.
in model, always available when Hopper needed her, altering her
Hopper made sketches in a Manhattan movie theatre and then had Jo
hair, adding a few pounds, making herself taller or changing her Irish
pose as an usherette in an alcove lost in a reverie. The painting New
features into more of a Nordic maiden, unkempt stripper or
York Movie became part of Hopper’s pantheon of people leading
bored secretary.
quiet, desperate lives, to each their own.
Edward Hopper, Summertime, 1943. Oil on canvas, 73.6 x 111.8 cm. Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware, gift of Dora Sexton Brown.
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It is hard to say if Hopper had contempt for people, but there was always a
planning stages to become the mouthpiece for those Realist and
self-loathing or denial that seemed to dog his characters. People became
objective painters who felt particularly threatened by the action painters’
props, trying to express the inexpressible. In Nighthawks, his most famous
encroachment on their traditional turf, the Whitney Museum of
painting, the prow of an all-night diner cuts through the dark, its bow a
American Art and the Museum of Modern Art. Galleries around town
brightly lit hard edge of fluorescent illuminated space both transporting and
were also hanging the works of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning,
protecting the passengers waiting for the counterman to reheat their coffee
Clyfford Still, Adolph Gottlieb, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Barnett
or serve up the last slice of ossified pie. The image is ripe for its many parodies.
Newman, Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko. These New York School artists raised Hopper’s hackles as well. When asked to attend editorial meetings
In New York, the war against the abstract expressionists had heated up.
and contribute to Reality, he willingly complied. While they planned the
A new magazine, Reality: A Journal of Artist’s Opinions, was in the
first issue to be published in 1953, he wrote:
Edward Hopper, New York Office, 1962. Oil on canvas, 101.6 x 139.7 cm. Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, The Blount Collection.
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Edward Hopper, New York Corner (Corner Saloon), 1913. Oil on canvas, 61 x 73.7 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund.
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“Great Art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist,
Hopper continued to attend meetings with the younger Realist artists and
and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. No
bathe in their deference. To them, his laconic silence was seen as quietly
amount of skilful invention can replace the essential element of
approving wisdom. This looming wisdom was no less a haunting
imagination. One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is
presence than that depicted in the painting People in the Sun from 1960.
the attempt to substitute the inventions of the intellect for a
Here, the crowd waits, as do most of Hopper’s people, but they look less
pristine imaginative conception.
like sun worshippers than commuters waiting for the train to the city.
“The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and
They are not real people, but painted people, just as the rolling hills on
does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of
the near horizon more closely resemble sets of combers in the ocean,
colour, form and design.
wave on wave, passing in review. Why does the bald man in the grey suit
“The term ‘life’ as used in art is something not to be held in
wear white socks? Though the people are the focus of the work, they are
contempt, for it implies all of existence, and the province of art is
prisoners of its geometry as though captives on a cruise ship sailing on a
to react to it and not to shun it.
mythical canal.
“Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature’s phenomena before it can again become great.”56
As his eighth decade rolled around, Edward was in and out of surgery for a number of ailments, mostly concentrated around the prostate, and his
Hopper’s championing of the Realist painters put him in touch with a
energy had been sapped.
younger crowd as his own contemporaries were dying off. Kenneth Hayes Miller, one of his earliest instructors, had recently died. John Sloan, another
Josephine had fallen, injuring her hip, and was gradually going blind from
contemporary and member of Henri’s original Eight, passed away in 1951.
a combination of cataracts and glaucoma. Still, they managed to navigate the seventy steps to the fourth floor when in New York. Jo did the
At home, Josephine’s inferiority complex was further fuelled by a lame
shopping and their presence was noted at museum shows when he
apology from Lloyd Goodrich, curator at the Whitney, for excluding her
received an award or was a featured exhibitor. In 1953 he produced only
from the last Annual Show where Edward had become a fixture. She
one oil painting and his output diminished as infirmity took its toll. One
retorted with a snide letter to Goodrich in which she stated:
of his final paintings was one of his most poignant.
“Over the years I’ve learned that my poor little bastards – are little bastards and their very existence unmentionable.”
Two Comedians, painted in 1965, shows a theatrical stage and in the footlights, two harlequins hold hands and take their final bows to the
However, her churning feelings of rejection were removed when the
audience. They are Edward and Josephine. After forty-three years of
Whitney’s 1953 Annual Show opened on 14 October. Hopper’s Hotel by
marriage, on 15 May 1967, he died sitting in his chair in the New York
a Railway had been hung and next to it was Josephine Hopper’s oil
studio. She followed him ten months later on 6 March 1968 just before
Convent across the Square through Fire Escape. The next day New Yorker
her eighty-fifth birthday. All of his remaining pieces were given to the
magazine’s Robert Coates singled out Edward Hopper, Jo Hopper and
Whitney Museum of American Art and Jo’s diaries and letters are also
Henry Varnum Poor as three realists he found acceptable. One of her little
archived there to guide future generations in grasping the strange and
bastards had found a home.
melancholic life of this American Realist.
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Thomas Hart Benton, The New Fence, 1945. Tempera on canvas laid down on plywood, 22 x 31.5 cm. Private collection. Art Š Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Thomas hart benton (1889-1975) Little Tom Benton was the miracle child, the firstborn of Maecenas Eason
numbing routine of living off the land. His father took it for granted that
Benton, strong-willed politician and lawyer from Neosho, Missouri and
Tom would read law as all the Bentons had through the history of the
his pretty, cultured Texan wife, Lizzy Wise. Her first act after their
family. The United States was mired in the post-Civil War transition from
marriage was to throw Benton’s three siblings, Fanny, Dolly and Sam out
an agrarian economy to the industrial revolution that spread after
of the house before she moved in. Following Tom’s arrival on 15 April
winning the war for the North. In many communities cash money was still
1889, he became the family’s shining star eclipsing the three children
overruled by the barter system and industries flourished along the inland
who followed him, Mamie, Nathaniel and Mildred. From then on, his life
waterways and growing rail network. Maecenas Benton was a populist
would always be at an epicentre.
and kept his farmer constituents close. As Tom grew up, he frequently accompanied his father on hunting and fishing trips to farms in the
During the first six years of his life, the messy years, Aunt Maria Watkins, a
district. At an early age he became acquainted with the precarious and
hired nurse who was the offspring of a white doctor and a black slave girl,
hard-working lives of rural Americans.
raised him. Among Aunt Maria’s other accomplishments, besides her statewide-recognised medical skills, was her adoption and raising of the
All the stumping and fence-building paid off for M.E. Benton when he
black scientist, George Washington Carver. Each spring, his mother packed
was elected to the House of Representatives and the family moved to
up him and his siblings and left Neosho for Waxahachie, Texas where her
Washington D.C. Lizzy Benton thrived in the Washington social life of
father Pappy Wise lived in retirement on his cotton farm. Lizzy’s parents
parties and teas and young Tom often accompanied her on trips to
made their money from the soil while the Bentons read law, but curiously,
cultural high points in the capital, especially the Library of Congress.
the cultural sensitivities surrounding young Tom were reversed.
There his literary needs were met by sneaking a copy of The Arabian Nights – for the racy stories of sexual encounters – and discovering the
Elizabeth was refined, played the piano, sang, dressed in gentile styles
large murals that decorated the walls.
and appreciated the finer things in life. Maecenas (“M.E.” to his friends) was a rough cob, short, thick, red-bearded and hot-tempered. He
During this time, Tom developed a desire to draw trains and Indians,
dominated the court, confidently led men in political decisions and
eventually becoming fascinated with drawing caricatures of senators and
supervising in the fields. His political cronies such as William Jennings
other politicians in his father’s acquaintance. His life as the family’s
Bryan and Champ Clark often visited the Benton house, puffing cheap
miracle child built into him an aggressive, self-centred attitude that his
cigars and downing glasses of bourbon after gut-busting meals.
opinion should always prevail despite – or maybe because of – his
However, M.E.’s living large ended at the parlour door. Elizabeth ruled the
diminutive one metre sixty height. He and his father were continually at
home and called his bluff, keeping Maecenas always off-balance and
loggerheads over young Tom’s future and though M.E. did love his son,
unsure of himself.
he did everything he could to dissuade the boy from a career as an artist.
Tom was small for his age, slight of build, and avoided the inevitable
This constant tug-of-war was played out between winter spent in
clashes between his parents by stealing off to be by himself to read books
Washington D.C. and summers in the rural backwater of Neosho,
or draw pictures. Elizabeth seized on his drawing skills as a way for the
Missouri. At no time, however, was there peace at home. Elizabeth
boy to escape the rough and tumble of farm country politics or the mind-
insisted on bringing her Washington elitism into the spit and sawdust
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small town, parading in her fashionable sun dresses and glowing at teas
Tom drew some audition cartoon drawings and was hired at $14 a week,
where her own sisters were not invited so she would be the dominant
which was considerably more than his pay as a surveyor, so he spent the
female among the male guests. Her refinements extended to Tom’s
summer in Joplin as a cartoonist, doing comic caricatures of local
wardrobe, which frequently consisted of a silk shirt, white flannel trousers,
worthies and politicians over his new professional signature, Thomas Hart
pearl buttons and colourful ties. The local farm lads felt the sissy needed
Benton. This adventure in Joplin had many facets for a young boy earning
a good pounding and frequently called him out. Tom did not disappoint
wages at liberty in a city with every sin available: drinking, gambling, sex
and showed up for the bouts despite being fined by the local constabulary.
and their consequences.
57
His schooling had offered classes in boxing and wrestling so he gave as good as he got, and soon the local boys grudgingly left him alone.
Feeling his life as an artist was moving in the right direction, Tom Benton requested additional schooling at the School of the Chicago Art Institute.
Fortunately, he was able to dodge the culture battle at home and the
As usual with his father, the request became a negotiation. He would first
fisticuffs in the street by taking a surveying job offered by a relative living
have to study for a year at the Western Military Academy and if he
in Joplin, Missouri. Though his parents wrung their hands over his leaving
graduated, he could begin studies at the Art Institute to become a
home, Tom was anxious to find his calling. After settling in Joplin, he
newspaper artist – a practical application of his abilities. Tom took up the
began exploring, wandered into one of the city’s landmarks, the House
challenge and in September 1906 marched off to the regimentation of
of Lords Saloon, and bellied up to the bar for a schooner of draught.
the military academy. Of course, he hated it.
Above the bar hung another landmark, a particularly risqué mural of a nude lady in a scene depicting murder and incest. He peered intently at
He flunked geometry because its principles contradicted the way he
the draughtsmanship with an artist’s eye. Some barflies nursing their
thought. He raged over the restrictions of his ‘freedom’. The only highlights
drinks noticed his intensity and began to kid him about his scrutiny of the
were starring at left end in the football team and illustrating the school
painting, asking “You an artist or something?” He wrote of his reply in
magazine, The Reveille. He also discovered a champion on the teaching
his book An Artist in America: “I don’t really remember the conversation
staff; his English teacher, Mrs Dodge, buoyed up his sense of worth as an
that followed, but those kidding roughnecks with their good-humoured,
artist and even wrote impassioned letters home to his family praising his
amused faces, lost as they are to me in the vague memory of the shining
artistic skills. Of course, young Benton was in full accord. He wrote: “I am
bar at the House of Lords, with its bright lights, glittering silver and
bound to be successful. I have the fullest confidence in myself. Ask anyone
glassware, determined, in a way, the life I would follow. Their bantering
capable of judging my work what he thinks of my genius. He will tell you
scepticism about my claims to artistry tied together the loose strings of all
that the greater artists’ work done in their boyhood does not equal mine.”58
the purposeless activities of my adolescence. They threw me back on the only abilities that distinguished me from the run of boys, those abilities
Benton served his time in the military school and took the train to
which I had abandoned for more active things. By a little quirk of fate,
Chicago, arriving in February 1907. On exiting the train station, he took
they made me a professional artist in a short half-hour.”
his first horseless carriage ride to the home of a business acquaintance of his father’s where he would board with the merchant and the man’s son.
144
One of the bar’s patrons mentioned a job opening for an artist at the
From there he took a trolley over the ten kilometres from the near South
Joplin American newspaper across the street. After meeting the editor,
Side to the Art Institute at Adams Street on Michigan Avenue. Once
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Thomas Hart Benton, Engineer’s Dream, 1931. Oil on panel, 73.7 x 106 cm. Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, Tennessee, Eugenia Buxton Whitnel Funds. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Thomas Hart Benton, The Wreck of the Ole ‘97, 1943. Egg tempera on gessoed masonite, 72.4 x 112.1 cm. Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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there, he discovered the work regimen was firmly embedded in the
mocked. He dressed in pegged pants, wore his hair long, affected
antique European curricula of art instruction and he was plonked down
elaborate bow ties and was never wanting for an opinion, sought or not.
in front of dusty plaster casts of classical sculpture to learn to draw.
In classes crowded with students drawing on boards propped on overturned chairs when all the benches were taken, he often made a
It was no surprise that Benton rebelled once again. His breezy style defied
spectacle of laying a line, slapping on paint, vigorously rubbing out,
classical lines and the lifelessness of the casts offered little inspiration to
shading with a stump, calling attention to his work. The acting out, the
someone used to seeking out expressions, postures and quirks that
effete clothes and his air of superior genius gave off misinterpreted signals
defined real people – if only in a comic sense. He transferred in and out
that caused at least two of his close chums and a male friend of his
of classes searching for a sympathetic eye and some respect for his
mother’s to make sexual advances on him, which he repulsed with disgust.
‘genius’. Finally, he wandered into a painting class and discovered colour; not just colour, but ways of using it that he had never imagined. He was
By the time he had graduated in his own choppy fashion through the
thunderstruck and wrote: “From the moment I first stuck my brush in a
classes at the School of the Art Institute, he felt himself ready for the
fat gob of colour I gave up the idea of newspaper cartooning. I made up
great pilgrimage to the godhead of fine art. He knew only Paris, the City
my mind that I was going to be a painter.”
of Light, could polish the genius he had hacked out of the insufficient experience Chicago had offered him. He wrote: “Of course I don’t expect
As was his way, he flung himself into this new world and on field trips
to be hailed as a remarkable artist for eight or ten years yet, even more
with friends he made at the Institute discovered the joy of painting
than that, fifteen comes closer to it. But I am building now the
outdoors. Watercolour in particular seemed to obey him as he struggled
foundation of my real work, which is to come later on and then I expect
with intensities and values. In the summer break he returned to Neosho,
to be successful, to have fame and money, to know and be friends with
immersing himself in rural life, but not discussing his artwork. With his
the world’s greatest of men.”59
batteries recharged, he returned to Chicago and plunged not only into his art studies, but into the bohemian life of self-abuse and debauchery
Not a bad boast. He only missed his apogee by ten years.
after shifting his living quarters to a shared room on Michigan Avenue that became a hangout for booze-ups, card games, trysts, parties and
With French language lessons under his belt – his vocabulary was
debates. He indulged himself in every shade of experience including
adequate but his accent was appalling Missouri Brush Jumper – Thomas
playing semi-pro football for five dollars a game and sparring with
Hart Benton embarked for France on the liner La Lorraine in June 1908.
professional boxers. Benton arrived in Le Havre and took the train up to Paris where he Not everything in Chicago was rosy. Tom Benton would always be The
secured a cheap and simple room in the Passage Guibert, stocked it with
Miracle Child in his own mind and his ebullient self-confidence translated
basic furniture and headed for the street-side tables of the Café du
beyond his thoughts and ideas to his wardrobe, his unabashed use of ‘I’
Dôme. There, with a dark coffee on a saucer, he began meeting other
in conversations and his boasting about his work. With certain
American artists. His drink of preference soon switched to hot rum with
underachievers – of which there were an abundance in most classes of art
lemon, a sort of Navy grog, and he settled into rounds of pub crawling
students – he diminished in status from annoying to shunned and
with his new friends. His initiation was accomplished by usually getting
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Thomas Hart Benton, Going West, c. 1930-1934. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Art Š Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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drunk and being tossed out. At this time and through the 1920s, Paris
managed to skirt the periphery of actual working artists and never,
was crowded with artist poseurs who seemed to think talent could be
according to witnesses, produced so much as a sketch. The sometime
achieved by osmosis, by endlessly talking about art, staring at paintings
consultant to the Louvre had heard of Benton’s ‘clever’ works and asked to
in the Louvre and absorbing the heady atmosphere of Paris cafe society.
see them, which dazzled the young artist. On viewing the body of work,
After following this regimen for a few months, Benton enrolled in the
Carlock pronounced them “awful” and proclaimed that everything Benton
Académie Julian.
knew about art was wrong. After a few of these wrenching confrontations, Carlock sent a humbled Benton off to study the true master drawings at
After seeing some student work from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Benton
the Louvre and to quit wasting time on slick academic exercises that were
realised his groping about was actually terrible. He had no sense of
hollow demonstrations of technique without substance.
proportion, composition or control of line required to make good on his boastful self-predictions. He and an artist friend chipped in to hire live
Benton started again at square one, but began to see what he had been
models and, gradually, his drawing improved, with success mostly
missing in the details and skills of the masters. His sense of form
attributed to his ability to quickly produce a likeness of his sitter. His
sharpened, as did the relationship of forms to composition. He began to
sketches of friends and models earned him some recognition among his
see past the aping of styles to the visual expression of ideas.
peers (who were also struggling with the oblivion of anonymity), but when he switched to a colour painting class at the Julian, he discovered
About this time, as his painting was showing signs of coming together,
how superficial his talent was in this medium.
the wheels came off his personal life. He met a young lady named Jeanette at a party and was riveted. Until that time, his experience with
Despite coming up hard against his shortcomings, Benton’s supreme self-
women in Paris had been humiliating brushes with prostitutes. His
confidence time and again brought him back to the centre for another
loneliness must have been crushing in a city where everyone seemed to
attempt. He found the rather shabby and cheaper Collarossi sketching
be so happy and filled with joie de vivre. He felt her attraction to him, but
studio where there was no instruction, but always a live model available.
did not know that this was her livelihood – finding well-off young men
While attending sessions there, he began seeking out different styles of
to support her for the sex and companionship she offered. While he
paintings and copying them, from Pissarro pointillist scenes to Japanese
sorted out this relationship, he met Stanton MacDonald-Wright.
prints purchased cheaply from the stalls along the Seine. While his volume of work increased, it was a hodge-podge of experimentations
Hardly a superb physical specimen, Wright always looked near death with
without any seeming direction. Among his peers, his work was seen as
a pale countenance, mismatched features and an apparently sour
‘clever’, which he saw and described in his letters home as a compliment,
disposition. He possessed three attributes that helped foster his
but was in fact a condescending dismissal in fine art circles.
friendship with Benton: Wright spoke fluent French, had money, and said good things about Benton’s work. Their friendship took hold even though
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While Benton railed against the lesser lights of his circle who did not
Wright was hardly popular among the café artists because of his frank
consider him a gift to the fine arts, one such acquaintance did have a
disdain for their lack of any redeeming talent. When Benton saw Wright’s
jarring effect on his direction as a student of art. George Carlock had an
paintings for the first time, he was quite stunned with the early exercises
encyclopaedic knowledge of what it took to correctly study art, but
that would become the Synchromist movement in 1913.
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Thomas Hart Benton, Sugar Cane, 1943. Oil and tempera on canvas, 78.7 x 121.9 cm. Private collection. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Thomas Hart Benton, Plowing It Under, 1934. Oil on pre-primed linen, 49.6 x 61 cm. Private collection. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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MacDonald-Wright had moved to Paris years earlier, had studied at the
send some pictures home to Joplin for exhibition prior to an American tour.
Sorbonne and the École des Beaux-Arts and had met Morgan Russell at the
Of course, he didn’t mention to Mother that the Paris galleries wouldn’t
Academie Collarossi. They worked together to begin the Synchromist
touch him so the first show had to be in his studio. That rebuke by the
Movement, which attempted to create emotion with colour. He left for New
galleries pertained to most of the legion of hopeful novice artists taking up
York in 1915 during World War I and ended up in Los Angeles. His early
table space in the cafes and bistros. In his case, following his one-man
experiments in what became ‘Modern Art’ resulted in the first exhibition of
show, that situation would not change. He had cards printed announcing
non-objective work in Southern California. His affect on Benton was one of
the opening and had them widely circulated to artist friends, cafes and
a fabulous, if dyspeptic bon vivant who knew everything and disdained just
other word-of-mouth art hangouts. He and Jeanette had new clothes
about everybody, so Wright’s friendship and respect counted for a lot.
made and the studio was lined with his pictures. Coffee and cakes were set
Benton even went to pains to conceal the fact that he had a mistress on the
out, using borrowed cups to make sure the crowd would be satisfied.
string, fearing Wright would be shocked and cut him off. The door was set to open at four o’clock. At three, Jeanette’s nerve failed Jeanette despised MacDonald-Wright, detecting the streak of misogyny
and she dashed from the apartment leaving Benton as the sole host. Four
in him. She had a sister in the south of France and suggested a visit so
o’clock came and went. By five o’clock, two friends showed up and
that Benton could paint and leave the tense atmosphere of Paris for a
peered at the walls in subdued silence. Then Wright appeared. Neither of
short time. He agreed and they packed up for Saint Augustin. During this
the first two approved of Wright so they cut him and left. By now, the
adventure, Benton rediscovered a direction he had visited before, but not
afternoon light had gone and the room was left in virtual darkness.
in the bright light of the south: painting in the fresh air and trekking through the fields. Only one painting has survived from the Saint
“Great stuff,” MacDonald-Wright said into the deepening shadows. On
Augustin series, titled Contre Soleil.
the sideboard, the coffee cooled and the cakes hardened.
The years have not been kind to this work, because Benton used calcium
Cloaked in gloom, Benton shelved the American tour and cobbled fancy
oxide mixed into his painting medium to remove moisture and speed the
frames onto a pair of his works for submission to the Paris Salon. Shortly,
drying process. It is the only pointillist work based on paintings by Signac.
he was informed he could collect his entries at the Salon’s reject stack. At
Though darkened by time, the original deep blues and purples of the
this time, Morgan Russell attached himself to Wright, who had offered to
shadows and brightly coloured highlights are suggested. His other
help Benton financially, but Benton had been slow to accept. Russell was
canvasses made during this trip were also worked through to completion
not so reluctant and joined Wright to create the Synchromist Movement.
rather than serving as studies to be finished later. He needed material for
As Benton’s life in Paris began to crumble, he discovered his father’s
his first one-man show planned for his triumphant return.
unsuccessful bid to remain in political office had severely depleted funds earmarked for Tom’s art education. The free ride was over.
He returned from the south brimming with confidence and wrote to his mother that his friends had been complimentary when they gazed upon his
Elizabeth Benton’s father, Pappy Wise the cotton farmer, chose this time
latest efforts. He envisioned his first show to be a modest affair in his studio
to die and leave Lizzy a considerable inheritance allowing her to be
and armed with sales from this event and kudos from the critics, he would
independent from Maecenas’ support. Tom’s education was saved.
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Thomas Hart Benton, Cradling Wheat, 1938. Tempera and oil on board, 79.4 x 99.7 cm. St Louis Art Museum, St Louis, Missouri. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Thomas Hart Benton, The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley, 1934. Oil and tempera on canvas transferred to aluminium panel, 104.1 x 132.1 cm. Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Laurence, Kansas. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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However, always a shrewd investor, Elizabeth was on her way to Paris to
He tried painting, but Maecenas Benton was revolted by the colour
visit her son and assess his future. Benton was on the edge of collapse
splotches Tom produced. To placate the family he painted realistic
when he realised the potential calamity of her reaction to Jeanette’s
portraits which appeared much more commercially viable. Sadly, just as
presence. His mortification became evident to the girl who berated him
Tom was drawing an unstressed breath, he managed to get a young
and stormed out in a tearful rage. Benton did his best to hide any
Neosho girl, Fay Clark, pregnant. Near the boiling point, M.E. Benton
evidence of a female life form on the premises before his mother swept
assayed his son’s prospects. The result amounted to a $150 bribe to leave
into his studio, but Elizabeth’s motherly sensors were on full alert and
town and a one-way train ticket to New York.
with one horrific discovery after another she unearthed the truth and, as was her habit, collapsed in a swoon on the couch.
His head still spinning with misfortune, at the age of twenty-three Benton skidded to a halt at the Lincoln Arcade in New York City at Sixty-fifth and
With very little ceremony and ruthless efficiency, Thomas Hart Benton was
Broadway. This fly-blown, cockroach-infested antique pile was home to a
wrenched by his mother from his Paris life, encapsulated in a steamship
variety of types from round-heeled prize fighters to thespians, artists,
cabin like a foreign bacillus and transported across the sea to Boston and
scribes and astrologers. Still clad in his shabby-at-the-cuffs French haute
then shipped by train back into the forested hinterlands of Neosho, Missouri.
couture, he fitted right into this strange stew of misfits. His life in New York began to follow the same pattern as Paris with his search for
After three years of being infused with Parisian manners, morals, fashion,
acceptance, living off his parents’ largesse, and scraping by, shuttling
speech and disdain for the rest of bourgeois society, Thomas Hart Benton
from one cheap studio to a cheaper one as his fortunes rose and fell.
was welcomed back to mid-America with all the panoply accorded a two-
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headed goat in a carnival side show. Local newspapers lampooned him,
His paths crossed other artists such as Stuart Davis, who had been
citizens peeked at him from behind lace curtains, his family trotted him out
studying with Robert Henri along with Glackens, Sloan, Luks and Shinn,
to be petted, poked and pitied for his strangeness. The only clothes he had
and his work showed Henri’s influence. Unfortunately, Davis caught
were his French suits with long coats, pegged trousers and negligee shirts
Benton at a bad time and was put off when Tom suggested he “go to Paris
which he covered with his flowing black bow tie. He wore either his round
and try to learn something”. Davis did finally travel to Paris and there
brimmed hat or floppy beret over long hair and his youth failed to carry off
found his metier in the work of the Cubists, but Benton’s cutting remark
the silver-headed cane he employed as a prop.
– however life-changing it proved for Davis – was never forgotten.60
A former Chicago chum who now headed the Kansas City Art Institute
During the years of the Great War, Benton persisted. His main supports
suggested Tom come to teach there since a “real Paris art teacher”
was his massive egoism that shouted from his letters home: “My outlook
would be a refreshing change. Desperate to do anything that would get
at present is far from bright… If I have not genius, I am utterly worthless…
him out of provincial Neosho, he took the job. Almost at once he found
The illustrators are not artists, they are rarely men of anything more than
himself to be a magnet for the growing homosexual population of the
mediocre intelligence, but they have certain clever tricks… I can’t even get
city, who gravitated to the art classes. They took one look at him in his
a job as a scene painter… Isn’t it awful to have a son so practically
Paris get-up and sensed a new comrade had joined them. Benton bolted
worthless? I would be willing to do anything – even hard work – for the
back to Neosho.
sake of my own living if I could find something to do. Anything that
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Thomas Hart Benton, Threshing Wheat, 1939. Oil and tempera on canvas mounted on panel, 66.1 x 106.8 cm. Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute, Indiana. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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doesn’t degrade my artistic ideals… I am sure every day that I am a great man. There is no young man here who can do what I can.” He studied Cézanne and made paintings in the master’s style that showed understanding rather than just aping technique. His shapes and forms took on an individual flair as he tried to reach beyond Cezanne’s shifting planes. In Upper Manhattan, painted while he was splashing together black and white background scenes – his first murals – for movie studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, he managed a vertical landscape of climbing forms and bright autumn colours that tied the entire painting together with a naked tree trunk in the foreground. He also used a diffused light that gives the buildings a glow as though seen after rainstorm has passed. He dabbled in Constructivism. During the war, it was impossible to ignore all the manifestos floating about from the rigours of the Synchromists, Orphists, Cubists, Rayonists, Dada, etc. Benton chose the Russian import, Constructivism. This exotic flower was pollinated by theories borrowed from Suprematism (Malevich) from the Ukraine, De Stijl (Neo-Plasticism) from Holland, and architectural bits from the Bauhaus in Germany. Benton cobbled together models made of wood, wire, paper and metal and painted still-lifes of them, adding the prismatic colours of the Synchromists. He applied this analysis of shapes and colours to some future paintings using architecture, forest scenes and other images built out of simple shapes and their compositional analysis. With major projects, he would continue this sculptural pre-conception method for the rest of his career. Absent during his mother’s illness in 1913, Benton had missed the New York Armory Show that had turned modern art on its ear, admitted a vast invasion of foreign and independent artists into the mainstream and exposed artists to painters and sculptors who were new, fresh and aggressively outré. He got his chance to make up for that miss by
Thomas Hart Benton, Corn and Winter Wheat, 1945. Oil varnish glazes on fabric. Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Thomas Hart Benton, Fire in the Barnyard. Oil and tempera on board, 72.3 x 114.3 cm. Private collection. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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participating in the 1916 Forum Show. This exhibition was more selective
moved out to Great Neck, Long Island. Without any money coming in
than the Armory hanging, but no less avant-garde in its message. Benton
from jobs or paintings, Tom Benton moved in with her. He waited to be
unloaded his most recent and cutting edge works.
drafted into the army, which mattered little since no one wanted his paintings. In a burst of resignation – and a desire for good food and a
In his work Three Figures (1916) he combines three voluptuous, muscled
warm bunk free from the horrors of the Flanders trenches – he joined the
figures linked as though part of a puzzle, but separated by form, black
Navy with every hope of using his drawing skills in the service of his
line and bold unreal colours. What first appears to be a blocky mass is
country. The Navy immediately saw his potential, and after basic training
actually a seething motion of forms existing in air. Exaggeration of the
in Norfolk, Virginia, they sent him to a coaling station and handed him a
anatomy emphasises each twisting bulk. This exaggeration of human
shovel. Thomas Hart Benton’s life did not improve.
form would be developed over the next decades. Being clever, he managed to demonstrate his skills and drew pictures of During and after the Great War, as he persisted and refused to go away,
buildings, produced some watercolours during urban canoe trips and
a bit more serious notice from his peers began to attach to Thomas Hart
became a camoufleur, painting camouflage designs for warships. Before
Benton. Even as he continued to grope for his own personal styles and
entering the Navy, while living in New York, he had shared a tenement
expression, what he turned out – in all its random variety – belied the
studio that had no plumbing with Tom Craven, an old chum. One of the
usual struggling novice. The desperation seemed to wear off while he
jobs he held was teaching art classes in Chelsea and he found himself
searched through the catalogue of ‘ists’ who pushed their theories. He
intrigued by one of his students, a beautiful Italian teenager named Rita
also sought out Alfred Stieglitz, gallery entrepreneur, photographer and
Piacenza. When he was discharged from the Navy and returned to New
self-styled seer of modern art.
York, he looked her up and fell into the habit – along with Craven – of dining with her and her family.
The Forum Show, though refreshing and invigorating for the New York art scene had created its own form of avant-garde by lifting art out of the
A show of his Navy watercolours produced some buzz, yet once again he
control of second-hand Impressionists and Francophiles to restore
was chastised by Stieglitz for “painting inside the lines”, but found no
‘American’ social themes and strengthen the school of realism. Abstraction
satisfaction practising the splashy watercolour art of Marin or DeMuth,
and non-objective works had lodged a beachhead, but there would be no
two Stieglitz heroes. Instead, Benton once again tried creating small
real breakout until after World War II. Stieglitz was of the opinion that fine
sculptures of his subjects in clay and then moving on to a pictorial
art was only for refined folk who could appreciate the nuance of
treatment of the scene or person. This “blocking in” allowed him to see
abstraction, the poetry of juxtaposition, the edges of free-range colour
his work in light and shadow.
spread beyond the lines. Thomas Benton had developed a deaf ear for such ramblings as Stieglitz poured over his besotted acolytes whose work hung
His figures and objects began existing in space under a particular diffused
on his walls at Gallery 291. Benton parted company with the great man.
light from above, a stage lighting that often belied the darkening sky as in Construction (1923), an active composition bathed in this light. It is a
In October 1918, the Benton house in Neosho burned to the ground
sculptural light, separating planes, defining beams and limbs and tools
taking with it all of Benton’s Paris and Chicago paintings. His mother had
with light and dark values.
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Thomas Hart Benton, Cotton Pickers (Georgia), 1928-1929. Egg tempera with oil glaze on canvas, 76.2 x 90.6 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, George A. Hearn Fund. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Thomas Hart Benton, Deep South, from America Today, 1930. Distemper and egg tempera on gessoed linen with oil glaze, 233.7 x 297.2 cm. The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Rita Piacenza invited the starving artist to spend the summer of 1920 with
poverty of their situation. As, bit by bit, Tom’s work lured patrons and
her on Martha’s Vineyard. Tom, Craven and another artist, Rollin
mentors she kept the books and rescued paintings he would have
Crampton, arrived in July and the three camped out in the barn while Rita
customarily thrown away. She challenged his blockages and always
stayed in the farmhouse. He arrived practically a nervous wreck and was
talked up his “genius” to which she became totally committed.
overcome by the possibilities of the location. For the remaining decades of his life, he returned to the Vineyard every summer. Their lives were spartan
In 1924, Maecenas Benton, living alone and practising law in Missouri,
over the first ten years as she did the cooking and they travelled by foot
died of throat cancer. His last years had been lived in lonely depression.
everywhere since no one had money for a car or its upkeep. The place and
Tom Benton had been virtually estranged from his father since 1912, but
Rita’s support changed him. On the Vineyard, among the islanders, his
M.E.’s death brought in friends and neighbours and political cronies who
interest in small town America was rekindled from Neosho days. He found
revived the small town memories that had been blurred by life in Paris
subjects everywhere, deeply-lined faces rich with character: farmers,
and New York. After a visit to Missouri, Benton’s exposure to those
fishermen, retired old men who played board games down at the store,
memories caused him to paint a series of watercolours of old friends from
little old ladies whose beauty had been scoured by the salty sea winds. He
his past, a sort of rogues’ gallery of caricatures. These folksy, exaggerated
modelled their heads in clay and then tried out combinations of black and
colour sketches of mid-American types shown under the title
white values in tempera on the small sculptures.
“Missoura”, (sic) achieved some favourable critical notice. They staked out the territory he would return to again throughout his career and
There is a cartoon look to the pictures if only the exaggerations are
include him under the category of American Regionalist.
counted, but there is also a truth as the lines echo furrows in the soil, or the wash trailing behind the fishing boat. Clothes are softly rumpled, not
During the 1920s, Benton had launched into a study of structured form and
starched and new, and all the sitters, despite some El Greco stretching of
composition in abstract shapes that used every element within the frame as
anatomy, are alive within their characters. The theatrical gesture would
part of the whole. These were sharp-edged elements, not the insubstantial
come from the exaggerated pose and the fluid integration of the
creations of the Pointillists and gauzy Impressionists. Though he continually
background and foreground into the frame. All his dabbling seemed to
spoke out against the broad concept of abstract non-representational art, he
come into focus at once on the Vineyard because of its rich panoply of
employed these shape paintings as learning tools to incorporate pure form
textures, vistas and weather.
relationships without regard for subject matter or surface treatments – and not as an end in themselves. The mechanics of form organisation within a
The Piacenza family had emigrated from a small town north of Milan
frame related directly to the composition of representational painting. These
during the early 1920s and was enjoying American prosperity, but neither
earlier studies now combined with this new rich vein of American subject
they nor the Bentons approved of marriage between Tom and Rita, who
matter as he moved forward into the 1930s and 1940s.
was barely out of high school. Regardless, they were married in February
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1922 and moved into Tom’s barren, cold-water flat on Twenty-first Street
To this study of form he ascribed three basic principles of compositional
between First and Second Avenues. Later that year, Rita located a fifth-
structure upon which he elaborated in an essay: “The Mechanics of Form
floor flat in Union Square heated by coal lugged up from the basement
Organization”. The first is equilibrium, which examines the stable and
bin and lighted by oil lamps. She was made of hearty stock to endure the
dynamic forms and lines within the static and immutable frame – how
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Thomas Hart Benton, Arts of the South, 1932. Tempera with oil glaze on linen mounted on panel, 20.3 x 33 cm. New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut, Harriet Russel Stanley Fund. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Thomas Hart Benton, Politics, Farming and Law in Missouri, 1936. Mural for the Missouri State Capitol, Jefferson City, Missouri Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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they relate and balance each other, especially the support of diagonal
painting, that knowledge unlocks a greater intellectual pleasure in
movements by opposition, or the balancing of many small objects by one
realising what he managed to create. The wonder is, with all the shabby
or two large elements. His second principle involved the shifting of the
twists and turns of his early life up through the 1920s, that he managed
eye from point to point throughout the composition by means of
to use almost every creative tool he had learned to manipulate along the
sequence or connection. He discovered that the eye doesn’t necessarily
way. Like an athlete’s muscle memory, once learned, the lessons
follow the dynamic direction of a line but skips ahead to where lines meet
remained with him. Despite the many personal wounds – many of them
forming junctures and interactions. Finally, he determined the principle of
self-inflicted – Benton persevered and was reshaped by the friends who
rhythm – repetitive elements and elements that create an asymmetric
put up with him.
dynamism, adding energy to an otherwise static balance. All three of these principles relate to compositions created either on a flat surface, or
Taking his compositional discoveries from the abstract to the
to one that presents the illusion of depth.
representational was realised in Benton’s first major planned series of paintings titled The American Historical Epic, completed between 1924
His exploration of depth and the use of a rhythm of forms organized
and 1927. Conceived when he was a student, the series presents high
around a single vertical pole can best to shown with human anatomy. The
(and low) points in America’s “manifest destiny” – a history of conquest
natural flow of bones and muscles flex and contort as movement takes
of the elements, the people and the wilderness. They depict
place, revealing rhythmic patterns built around the central vertical core.
interpretations of real events featuring Americans of every stripe in
Compositionally, paintings organised, in a vertical frame flow best when
dynamic compositions, but they are more modern art than examples of
that central vertical pole is established, as with a piece of figural sculpture.
Realist painting. They adhere to Benton’s principles of creation around
In a horizontal composition, the painter has an advantage over the
central poles and the balance and rhythm of forms careening against
sculptor in that several vertical poles can be established and referenced to
each other. That theatrical light suffuses every muscle, sinew and fold of
each other by horizontal elements to achieve a visual whole.
cloth without regard for reality. Lithe bodies sinuously entwine with rocks, trees, clouds and wagons, and every frame seems barely able to contain
Later, during his teaching days in Kansas City in the 1940s when Benton
the masses of writhing forms.
took on Jackson Pollock as a pupil, the younger artist embraced Benton’s compositional
principles,
but
rejected
their
relationship
to
While The American Historical Epic came from his imagination, the
representational art. Even though Pollock pursued abstract art, he never
death of his father rekindled memories of wandering off with the old
quite left those principles behind in the gestural drip paintings for which
man into the back woods of Missouri in search of votes. Those
he became known.
meanderings gave young Tom a taste for the countryside and the people who survived there, bred families and worked until they died. Benton
As Thomas Hart Benton’s art moved into the modern era, reviewers
began to take walks with his sketch pad. Soon the walks became trips
placed him firmly in the Regionalist camp if only they judged his subject
where he just disappeared for up to three months at a time. Rita became
matter and its execution at that level. With a deeper understanding of
used to the long summer absences, but she resented them and he never
his years of experimentation in modern forms of expression, his attempts
spoke of what he did, where he went or what he saw. She bore up
to create a rich translation of forms and compositions into the lexicon of
stubbornly and stayed with him.
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Other motivators that got Benton out of the studio were the watercolour
composition was unique. The Abstract Expressionists would adopt this
paintings of Charles Burchfield, an Ohio artist who began showing his
type of unified approach two decades later. Only Stuart Davis, Benton’s
work in New York in 1924. Like Burchfield, Benton found himself
sworn rival, raged against them and, as a Communist, he continued his
compelled to start on down the road and record snapshots of the
foaming tirades against all of Benton’s work. Though Benton was a life-
American Scene, often covering 24 to 32 kilometres a day.
long Socialist, his political roots did not run very deep.
In 1930, Benton received a commission to do a room of murals on the
The rush to finish the murals devastated him and when they were
theme of America Today in the New School for Social Research building.
finished he was out of business for weeks, creatively and emotionally
At the time, he was turning over about $500 a year for his paintings and
spent. Meanwhile, his reputation soared and Rita kept busy selling off his
while the job offered no pay for the murals other than compensation for
huge stock of unsold work. They moved into a larger apartment and
expenses and a loft to create the panels, the resulting exposure had great
enlarged their Martha’s Vineyard home. They even managed to buy their
value. Also designing a room in the new building was muralist José
first automobile, a huge Stutz LeBaron purchased on the cheap from a
Clemente Orozco, whose theme was revolutionary movement. Their
tycoon who went broke in the stock market crash of 1929. As the Great
approach to each project was considerably different.
Depression deepened, Benton’s stock shot up as did his spending habits, and he quickly ran out of paintings to sell and owed money to the bank
Orozco chose classic fresco technique, spreading sections of the wall
on the Vineyard home mortgage.
surface with wet plaster and painting with a mixture of ground pigment binder and water directly into the still damp surface so the painting
Non-stop parties had depleted his cash as he became the toast of the
became part of the wall. Rather than bind his paintings to the future of
flower of art society and its attendant weeds. Among the party set was
the building, Benton created heavy wall panels that could be removed
Juliana Force, who managed the Whitney Studio Club at 147 West Fourth
with a canvas base coated with gesso to a depth of 0.3 centimetre thick.
Street that had been started by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. The club
His painting material consisted of an under-painting of pigment, water
became a social magnet and creative hitching post for many new artists
and casein binder over-painted with tempera mixed with a half and half
in its eleven galleries. Benton was one of those discoveries. When the
mixture of egg and water. Over the darker areas of the panels he over-
bottom fell out of Benton’s spending splurge and Rita needed $3,000 to
painted this application with oil paint glazes and then sealed the entire
keep the Vineyard homestead, she turned to Juliana Force and a deal was
painting behind a coating of wax that produced an overall soft gloss.
created whereby Benton painted a set of murals for the Whitney walls in return for the $3,000 plus expenses and $1,000 more on completion –
It took Benton six months to organize the scenes and only three months
the equivalent of $60,526 in today’s dollars.
to paint the murals, using many sketches he had brought back from his
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long summer wanderings. The result was almost unanimous approval by
Benton accepted the deal and set about creating another tour de force
the press, critics and the 20,000 people who came to see them during
mural project, The Arts of Life in America, a melange of facets of
the first two months after the opening. Some of the avant-garde didn’t
American life, many of which were hardly flying the flag of art. It is
know what to think because though they were Realist in their subject
Americana with its vox populi volume turned up full as though Aaron
matter, their “restless vitality” and modernist use of “all-over” design
Copeland was being played at twice the speed. The people on the walls
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Thomas Hart Benton, Navajo Sand. Oil tempera on masonite, 47.5 x 60.5 cm. Private collection. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Thomas Hart Benton, Jon Boat, 1973. Tempera and acrylic on board, 69.9 x 91.4 cm. Private collection. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Thomas Hart Benton, Cave Spring, 1963. Oil on masonite, 29.2 x 37.5 cm. Private collection. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Thomas Hart Benton, Harbour Scene, 1918. Watercolour on paper, 26.4 x 36.8 cm. Kiechel Fine Art Collection. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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came from Benton’s sketch books, again gleaned from his wanderings:
eggs no more than twenty-four hours old delivered every day for the egg
old pals, town characters, cartoonish politicians, hillbillies, cowboys, black
tempera. When the Indiana bankers came up with the first $1,000 to get
men and women, horses, locomotives, aeroplanes and player pianos,
rolling, Benton promptly blew virtually all of it on a big party and set off
Indians, coal miners and dudes in boiled shirts and derby hats.
on a tour of the state, sketchbook in hand.
Instead of the sedate work of a Puvis de Chavannes, the accepted model
Of course the history and modern face of the State of Indiana was
for murals of that time, Benton’s restless chaotic sprawl virtually rumbled
incredibly diverse and, as before with his mural projects, the majority of
across the space. It sharply divided the critics and reviewers into two
time was spent planning the complex organisation of all the elements,
camps, one that praised his work to the skies for Americanising a
looking at agricultural, industrial and political subjects. With his usual zeal
heretofore bombastic medium dominated by political drumbeating of the
and popular interpretation, Benton carefully plotted out the distribution
Mexican Communists, Orozco and Rivera; the other camp wanted
of light and dark values, created each composition component in
Benton’s head on a pike. The upshot of the whole Whitney Mural affair
modelling clay, and photographed the models under different lighting
was messy in the extreme.
combinations. Eventually the compositions were transferred to the gesso panels with the help or art students and other helpers as well as using the
In a drunken fog at the opening party, Benton received the $1,000
six hundred drawings he had made in the field during his state tour.
cheque as promised on completion, but ended up trying to soak Juliana
Miraculously, the painting went quickly as he was always energised when
Force for more money now that the murals were a big hit. Bathed in gin
it came to the final stages of these projects, seemingly tireless and usually
and regressing to the oafish clod persona of his head-strong youth,
working late into the night.
Benton managed to insult everyone who had been his main supporters among New York’s social lions. His work was removed from the Whitney
Part of the painting studio building had to be knocked down to get the
and when the museum moved to a new location, Juliana Force fobbed
4.26-metre painted panels out and loaded into special trucks – that had
off the murals in 1953 to the New Britain Museum of American Art for
to be routed to Chicago along roads that had no low bridges – for
$500. Today, they are worth many millions of dollars.
installation into the Indiana display area at the Fair. Controversy swirled around the finished works as Indiana locals whined that only an Indiana
Following the Whitney debacle, Thomas Hart Benton was recruited at the
artist could have done the job properly and who were those naked ladies
last moment by a committee of officials convened to create the State of
and isn’t that the Ku Klux Klan? A Social History of Indiana was a huge
Indiana display for the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. Over the objections
creative success, of course, and stirred great press and publicity for the
of local worthies and politicians that an Indiana muralist should do the
state – and Thomas Hart Benton. After the Fair, the panels were stored in
job (though no artist from Indiana came forward) Benton took the
various dank warehouses until they were hung in the new auditorium of
commission because he needed the money. He was dismayed at the
the University of Indiana.
deadline for completion in six months’ time for the 4.26-metre high, 70.1-metre long mural. He billed $10,000 – equivalent to almost
Following the brouhaha at the World’s Fair and with money in his
$160,000 dollars today – for the task plus expenses and materials. He
pocket, he returned to New York. As the last of 1934 ran out, on
bought all new brushes, paints and equipment plus had two dozen fresh
Christmas Eve his self-portrait appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
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After all those years of living in cockroach-infested tenements, eating
Alfred Stieglitz challenged the guru of abstract intellectualism and his
off the charity of others and thrashing about trying to find his own
influence on American painting. Benton was against non-objective
voice with paint and canvas, Benton turned the corner and would never
modernism, but did credit Stieglitz’s idealism and recognised him as a
look back. There were casualties, however, among his former friends
superb photographer. He dismissed Stieglitz’ windy rebuttal of his
and admirers, the kind of wounded egos and slighted benefactors who
article with a windy rant of his own that reaffirmed his genius and
could hurt his future achievements. He shook the dust of New York off
flexed his creative muscles.
his boots and headed for Arlington, West Virginia to visit and old friend, musician Carl Ruggles.
As he continued to paint in his instantly recognisable style he continued to anger Leftists, especially Stuart Davis, who seemed to be
Rural America called and he responded with a series of paintings based
consumed with vituperation towards Benton. And Benton’s
on the lives and culture of the West Virginia hill folks, where they lived,
association with the firebrand Craven kept the pot boiling. Finally,
worked, prayed and sang. Folk music and the bonds that cemented
Benton and Rita packed up and left New York for Missouri, where they
communities – good and bad – went into his canvasses. In his work Lord,
moved into 905 East Forty-seventh Street in Kansas City. Not long
heal the Child, an itinerant country preacher brings the congregation of
after his arrival, he was engaged to create a mural, The Social History
this mountain church into her prayers for the health of a small child. A
of Missouri, in the House Lounge at the Jefferson City Capitol for the
choir belts out a Gospel song accompanied by local musicians. Benton
sum of $16,000 plus expenses. State officials were trying to move the
knew many of the people in his paintings after spending time among
image of Missouri beyond its roughshod frontier roots to support
them. Harking back to his trips abroad with his father, he felt comfortable
institutions that were more gentile. To that end they turned native son
with these people and most of them knew nothing of his Jekyll & Hyde
Thomas Hart Benton loose on their state with his sketchbook and gave
reputation among his peers.
him space to work in at the Kansas City Art Institute. That same institution hired him to teach classes. He held that job – and was
One peer, good friend and creative ally, Thomas Craven, was busy
widely praised for his work with his students and relationships with
hammering the modernist movement in print back in New York and
the faculty – until 1941 when a typical candid appraisal got him in hot
building a pedestal for Benton as the vanguard of the American School.
water. On 4 April, in a casual interview with reporters, he labelled the
The 24 December 1934 issue of Time magazine was a solid supporter
typical museum “a graveyard run by a pretty boy with delicate wrists
of American Realist painters – in particular those from the Midwest –
and a swing in his gait… And the old ladies who’ve gotten so old
including Charles Burchfield and Edward Hopper as stellar examples.
nobody will look at ‘em think these pretty boys will do.” Comments
The same issue put down French influences and declared America the
like these and a general on-going rant against homosexuals running
hot spot of the hottest art. With the country still deep in the grip of the
the Kansas art scene got him sacked.
Great Depression, patrons of the arts had zipped up their wallets and were looking for sure things and guideposts to make judgments.
In preparation for the State House Lounge mural he travelled over the
Benton felt confident enough in his new-found success to attack what
countryside sketching everything from sorghum mills to Missouri
he saw as the pretensions of Alfred Stieglitz. His article in Common
mules, single-bottom ploughs, honky-tonks and backwoods fiddlers.
Sense, favourite reading material of the Left, titled America and/or
He even sketched a portrait of political fixer Tom Prendergast and the
Thomas Hart Benton, Back Him Up, Winter, c. 1940. Oil on canvas, 122.6 x 88.9 cm. Private collection. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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city council, which would reside on the wall between a slaughterhouse
Cooler heads prevailed and the murals remained. Benton’s use of
and dancing can-can girls. His models included real people portrayed
rhythmic clusters of set-pieces moving around vertical axes divided by
at their jobs or at their recreation and other interesting faces he
pathways led the eye about as the river carried trade up and down its
dragooned into sitting for a time to capture their likeness. Benton
banks, and pulled the energy of a growing state out of the walls. He
ended up with over eight hundred drawings. When he returned to his
managed to illustrate nobility alongside the oppression of minorities,
workshop he made a plasticine clay model of the mural, 1.21 metres
venality of capitalism run amok, a painted autobiography of his own
high and 3.65 metres long, which he photographed to keep available
family, and the righteous toil of common labour. The Social History of
a consistent check on the values of light and dark. The mural itself was
Missouri murals remain among his finest achievements.
painted in the Lounge area on five-ply wood panels covered with Belgian linen in turn covered with a gesso-mix base. The scaled-up
Throughout his next decades of work, Thomas Hart Benton continued to
sketch cartoons were transferred to the panels where Benton did all
paint in his unique style, occasionally causing a fuss, as with his nude
the painting in egg tempera with glazes of oil. He began in July and
period in the late 1930s with its exploration of realistic skin textures, and
the heat began rotting the eggs that arrived daily giving the room a
muralesque compositions such as Persephone and Susanna and the
sulphurous stink. After a year of research, planning and sketching the
Elders. They got him into trouble with blue-nosed officials and the clergy.
painting went quickly. When it was done, most of the citizens of
He was so successful, his work was termed “lewd, immoral, obscene,
Missouri wanted to lynch Benton from a tall tree.
lascivious, degrading, an insult to womanhood and the lowest expression
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of pure filth,” in St Louis. “I wouldn’t have a Benton hang on my shithouse door,” said one state official. The largest dispute was whether to paint them over with
He painted on into his mid-eighties, enjoying his longevity. “Old age is a
black paint or whitewash. On first entering the Lounge, an editor of
wonderful thing,” he said, “You out-live your enemies.” He was working on
the Jefferson City Examiner newspaper wrote, “Our first impulse was
a mural about the roots of country music for the Nashville Grand Ole Opry
to duck.”
when, at the age of eighty-five, he stepped back from his work and collapsed from a heart attack on 18 January 1975. Rita found him in his studio.
Entering the long narrow room with its red carpet and drapery surrounded by the murals can produce a giddy reaction as the
Thomas Hart Benton was a gasbag who had no quit in him. If he had not
tumultuous panoply of players and scenes drag your eyes around the
gone into the arts, he would have been a politician, an unparalleled
room. Coils of smoke, gaggles of people, swirling currents of the
boaster and tireless man of the people. But he was a painter with all the
Missouri River all thread their way across the walls. Bare backs, flexing
attendant agonies and insecurities of that lonely profession; he took that
muscles, drunks, gamblers, miners, steam drills, traction engines and
gift and built into something people recognized as greatness. If they
town halls are thrown together in such a compelling series of linked
didn’t recognize it, he would remind them of his genius. Many people
compositions that the eye cannot stay still for long. The idea of
today still think of his art as grotesque, and it was, as are we all at times.
legislators spending a relaxing few moments between debates and
Benton, too, was wracked with flaws, but he managed to give us a look
votes in that lounge over a tumbler of sipping whiskey and a hand of
at ourselves and the true American Scene without the gilded frames, and
cards was hard to imagine.
created an intense beauty in the process.
Thomas Hart Benton, The Year of Peril: Exterminate!, 1942. Tempera and oil on board, 250.2 x 189.2 cm. The State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri. Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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grant wood (1892-1942) The story of Grant Wood’s life is an American tragedy in three acts: birth
home they lived in belonged to Hattie’s retired parents and the public
and values, fame and influence, betrayal and death. It is also the story of
school he attended had more than one room. Where before he did
an era in American history in which numerous tragedies were acted out.
chores around the farm because it was expected, now he worked at odd
While many Americans survived the Great Depression of the 1930s and
jobs to put money on the table and earn his keep. At the age of ten, he
resumed their lives, Grant Wood represents the mirror image of that
took on a man’s responsibilities and left childhood behind.
scenario in that he thrived during those years of hard knocks and then, as prosperity had just began to return, he found himself to be irrelevant.
If he spent lonely hours looking back over his shoulder at life in the
How he faced both the pinnacle and the depths is a very human story.
Wapsie Valley outside Anamosa, he also discovered a new way to express himself in his Cedar Rapids public school. Grant became the pupil of art
For the most part, it all happened in Iowa, corn country in the
instructor Emma Gratten, who encouraged his curiosity. When he won a
Midwestern United States, where the stalks grew as high as an elephant’s
New York art contest with a chalk drawing of some leaves, his vocation
eye and a farmer could see his nearest neighbour from the top of the silo
as an illustrator became fixed in his mind. Still shy and inarticulate, he
on a clear day. Small, quiet Grant was one of four children born to Francis
could speak and impress people with his pictures.
Maryville Wood and Hattie Weaver. Frank was the firstborn in 1886, then came Grant in 1891, John followed in 1893 and Nan was the last,
At high school, he drew pictures for the yearbook and designed sets for
arriving in 1899. Hattie had been a teacher and gave up that profession
theatre productions. At home he worked on a correspondence course
to become a farmer’s wife on Maryville’s (he always used his middle
subscribed to from the Craftsman Magazine – a journal of the popular
name) farm 16 kilometres outside Anamosa, Iowa. For the first ten years
Arts and Crafts design movement. Upon graduation he signed up for a
of his life, Grant was a farm boy: mucking stalls, feeding chickens,
summer course at the Minneapolis School of Design and Handicrafts. His
hauling wood and water, shucking corn for the table and milking the
ambition was to study with Ernest Batchelder, who had written the 1904
cows. Supervising the work was his stern, unbending, Quaker father,
book The Principles of Design, an Art Nouveau handbook of the period.
who loomed over the farm demanding obedience and withholding
Batchelder drew on the lessons of Japanese precision and minimalism that
approval. A believer in true things he could see, he distrusted anything
created abstract images still rooted in reality, but relying on decoration,
that emerged from the imagination. Books of myths or fairy tales were
repeating forms, the rhythm of lines and patterns for their power.
not found in the Wood home. On the side, almost surreptitiously, Wood’s mother provided scraps of cardboard and the carbon end of burnt twigs
For six years Wood sporadically jumped in and out of classes, absorbing
for his drawing. He was not aware that the memories he was storing
as much as he could in different media from oils and chalk to creating
away as he finished each day, washing his calloused hands in the back
copper jewellery. He had a pair of carpenter’s hands that were handy with
porch basin, would one day make him famous.
tools. During this time, he worked at odd jobs, one of them as a mortuary assistant. He and a student classmate, Harold Kelly, had the grim task of
He had little time to think of anything when, in 1901, his father suddenly
carrying cadavers to the downstairs chapel. Wood described his last job
died and Hattie sold the farm, packed up the essentials and moved to the
at the mortuary: “One night we were carrying down an old gentleman
big city of Cedar Rapids across the Wapsipinicon River. The jolt from
and his toupee kept slipping off. The fellow we were working for got a
farmer’s overalls to city clothes was enough to befuddle the mind. The
hammer and some tacks and tacked it on. That was too much for us.”
Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930. Oil on beaverboard, 78 x 65.3 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. American Gothic, 1930 by Grant Wood All rights reserved by the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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This is an old mortuary joke that Grant ‘borrowed’ because it made a
His creative life was slow and orderly with brushes neatly stowed away in
better story than that they were fired because they refused to answer
shelves and racks he built in the house. He painted when inspiration
telephone calls to pick up bodies late into the night.62 Wood also tried
struck and made additional money building papier mâché models of
setting up shop as an illustrator with a photographer friend, Paul Hanson,
houses in settings for an estate agent. He created brochures and lettered
but it came to nothing.
programmes and advertisements, anything to turn a dollar with his artwork. As the war in Europe neared its bloody conclusion,
Gradually over that time his homesickness faded and he took classes in life
arrangements were made within the family to provide enough money to
drawing from Charles Cummings, an academic bound to the stodgy staff
Hattie and Nan to keep house, and Grant enlisted and shipped out to
of the University of Iowa. Trudging back and forth though the freezing
Camp Dodge near Des Moines, Iowa.
winter from his lodging to the University, nobody seemed to notice he was not enrolled and paid no tuition fee. His work did not impress Cummings.
Besides his salary, he made some pin money doing pencil sketches of
He drifted down to Chicago, and in 1916, after trying to earn a living
enlisted men for 25 cents and charging officers a dollar. Except for a
making hand-made jewellery while taking a few odd courses at the School
bout with anthrax that was almost fatal, he passed his army life in
of the Art Institute, he signed up as a full-time student and took life
pleasant circumstances. At least he had three square meals a day and
drawing classes. Finally, he ran out of money. Throughout his first six years
sent his pay home. Fortunately, by 1918 the war had wound down and
after graduation, he could not make a living with his art.
he was assigned to the camoufleurs in Washington D.C. to paint camouflage designs on artillery pieces. He also made clay miniatures of
In Cedar Rapids he tried teaching and he made jewellery and table lamps
field guns to demonstrate before and after his camouflage efforts
in the Arts and Crafts style, but once again family came first. His mother
were applied.
had gone through the farm sale money and to satisfy a bank judgement against her debt of over $5,000 the Cedar Rapids home was sold. It fell
Once out of the army, Wood went back into teaching and made a
upon him to support her and his sister Nan since his two brothers had
success of it from 1919 to 1925 in the Cedar Rapids school system. To
married and moved away.
save money he wore his army uniforms until he could afford new clothes during the first year of teaching and cut an unusual figure. He
Wood moved his mother, sister and himself into a shabby little shed that
was twenty-eight years old. A thyroid condition contracted in the army
had been built by some of his friends, and spent time fixing it up while
had slowed his already painfully slow speech. When unsure of an
mostly vegetarian meals were gleaned from what spending money there
answer or just insecure, he had a tendency to sway from side to side.
was. Eventually, partnering with a friend, Paul Hanson, who had good
His wide mouth and cleft chin were the main features of his round face.
credit and some money put by, they constructed a pair of bungalows in
However, he kept his army haircut – a low maintenance shaving the
the Arts and Crafts style with hipped roofs and latticed widows wrapped
sides close-cropped and leaving hair piled on top to cushion the steel
around the four walls in a band of woodwork. Entry was through the
helmet. This cut made his ears stand out like jug handles and the round
second floor living room that led to a downstairs kitchen-dining room. It
black rim spectacles he wore gave him a surprised owl appearance
was there he did his paintings, mostly landscapes and flowers, which sold
that compounded the effect. During his interview for the teaching job,
for five for ten dollars when they sold at all.
he got the hiccups.
Grant Wood, Self-Portrait, 1941. Oil on masonite panel, 35.8 x 31.5 cm. The Figge Museum of Art, Davenport, Iowa. Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Grant Wood, Daughters of Revolution, 1932. Oil on masonite, 50.8 x 101.6 cm. Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio. Art Š Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Despite his odd rustic appearance and manner, he engaged his students
He grew a beard and moustache, which only served to heighten his odd
with a sense of humour and an ability to get them involved in the many
appearance. The trip exposed him to painters he had only seen in
crafts projects he conjured up. He even supervised forty-five students
reproductions back home. It gave him a taste of the exotic and planted
who produced a 45.72-metre long titled Imagination Isles that was 45.72
the need to return and, if only by osmosis, absorb the requisite ritual of
centimetres wide and wound up into a roll to be scrolled in front of a
passage through the Paris academies and salons.
lamp to musical accompaniment and scripted narration as a theatrical event. The script spoke of this imaginary place where artists freed the
When he returned to Cedar Rapids from his 1920 flirtation with Paris, he
thoughts of ordinary folk who had become “mental shut-ins”. The
shaved off his beard and settled back into teaching. In 1922 he bought his
spiritual journey that was led by the artist as a “spiritual guide” was at
first automobile, a disreputable wreck that caused people to ask him when
odds with the contemporary view of the artist as a champion of morality
he expected delivery of the rest of the car.
and creator of ideal beauty. The nineteenth-century Symbolists had
teaching supervisor, Miss Preston, often had to come and fetch him from
inculcated this concept of spiritual guidance into worlds of imagination
home when it would not start in the morning. Wood had a number of
and dreams into the mainstream of modern art. This was radical thinking
friends he could call on for transport and was not a very good driver. He
in the hinterlands of Cedar Rapids, Iowa and labelled Wood as a member
created one innovation that charmed his home town. He built a left turn
of the modern art movement.
signal for his car in the shape of a pointing hand which he raised with a tug
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65
It was unreliable and his
on a wire. In the winter, he went so far as to paint a glove on the hand. For that first year, Grant Wood received $900 for his teaching services. With a few dollars in his pocket and not getting any younger, Grant
By 1923 the itch to return to Paris had become too great, and he
decided it was time for him and his old high school artist chum, Marvin
borrowed money from a number of Cedar Rapids residents who had
Cone, to make good on their boyhood dream to visit Paris. By living on
bought his paintings and hired him for decoration work. The school
the cheap and carefully planning their board and transportation, they
system granted him a year’s sabbatical leave, and near the end of summer
could just eke out a short summer vacation in the City of Light. He
1923 he returned to Paris.
explained to Nan that the trip was important because “the art critics and dealers want no part of American art. They think this country is too new
He enrolled at the inexpensive Julien Academy where the masters came
for any culture and too crude and undeveloped to produce any artists.
and went at intervals, as did the students. Models were available and the
You have to be a Frenchman, take a French name, and paint like a
students circled their easels each morning to paint the model du jour..
Frenchman to gain recognition.”64
Critiques followed if a master showed up that day. As with his first trip to Paris, Wood had no desire to learn the language. He pointed at items on
They were typical tourists except for renting a cheap studio on the Left
a restaurant menu and said “Donnez-moi.” This stubborn trait left him
Bank of the Seine where they set up their easels. They became
out of class discussions, or making any friends among the students. They,
boulevardiers, strolling among the Left Bank cafes where the post-war
in turn, tended to avoid him and gave him the nickname Tête de Bois –
legions of aspiring artists and émigrés were just arriving. Wood painted,
Wooden Head. He began to retreat from the daily classes and into himself
adopting the Impressionist loaded-brush and palette-knife techniques,
as the loneliness, unconcealed ridicule and diminishing self-confidence
turning out touristy scenes that bore no resemblance to his future work.
eroded his spirit.
Grant Wood, Woman with Plants, 1929. Oil on upsom board, 52.1 x 45.4 cm. Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Grant Wood, The Sentimental Yearner, 1936. Pencil, black and white Conté crayon painted white around image, 51.4 x 40.6 cm. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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At one point, desperate to attract attention, he spotted red paint all over the
Cedar Rapids. He had purchased some of Wood’s Post-Impressionist
flesh of a standing male nude he’d just finished in class as if it had a
paintings to decorate the parlours and reception areas of his business.
spreading rash. The other students gawked at his heresy, but he made out
Out back, he had a hayloft above the multi-vehicle garage that could be
that he had created a new style. He brought the painting back with him and
turned into a living space for Wood in return for Wood’s artistic talents
painted over the red spots. It resided in his Cedar Rapids studio for years.
decorating the funeral parlour’s interiors and supplying art work. Grant accepted and moved himself and his mother into the space. He created
The brief fling of pay-back didn’t last, however, and he retreated to his
kitchen and bath areas and the beds rolled back under the slanting roof
loneliness once again. A fellow student, an Englishman, called at his digs
ceiling, leaving him a large space for his painting and storage of
to see why Wood was missing classes. The visit and the chance to unload
canvasses. He would call this location at the mythical address of “5 Turner
to a fellow English speaker caused the shaggy, listless Wood to unburden
Alley” home for the next eleven years. He advertised its location with a
all his woes to this stranger. Not long after, the man returned with an
wooden hand nailed to an alley post which read “Grant Wood’s Studio”,
armload of books, classics by Dickens, Shakespeare and Goethe, and
pointing at the outside stairway he had built to the front door.
remained to read passages and discuss them. This intervention reenergised Wood who later credited his literacy and any traces of poise he
So here he was back in Cedar Rapids, still living with his mother and
had absorbed to this man’s generosity. He could never remember the
living rent free off charity of David Turner and selling his French paintings
Englishman’s name.
to Turner and Turner’s customers right off the walls of the funeral
66
parlour. He had made the pilgrimage to Paris, studied and exhibited his Fleeing the winter, he journeyed to Sorrento with a motley collection of
work to the collective yawns of critics who saw yet another country
acquired friends and managed to sell enough of his paintings of Paris
bumpkin trying to fake fine art and peddle pictures to buyers who didn’t
scenes and portraits of local subjects to pay for the trip.
know better. To the greater art world he remained an anonymous public school art teacher in a prairie town of 45,000 farmers and small
He returned from Paris recharged, having sold Post-Impressionist
businessmen. His chief claim to fame was becoming the Town Character.
paintings and exhibited them – though they were ignored by critics. He
Wood tumbled into another depression.
was broke when he arrived in New York and checked through customs. With his slow speech and apparent difficulty with the language, he was
The town of Cedar Rapids needed a stained-glass window designed for
mistaken for an immigrant and herded onto a westward-bound train
the Veterans’ Memorial Building. David Turner was held in high esteem
with a ticket for Iowa gratis from the United States Customs and
as a businessman and an art collector and his support of Grant Wood was
Immigration Service. When he arrived home, his French wardrobe of
considered an imprimatur to the awarding of the commission. In 1927
peasant shirts was given away by his mother along with the beret he had
Wood was granted a prestigious commission from The Memorial
affected and he was swept back into Cedar Rapids society. He once again
Window Committee to create a design in stained glass for the frame that
took up his teaching job at the McKinley School earning $200 a month.
measured 7.6 x 6.1 metres. He was required to create six life-size figures of soldiers of every American war, beginning with the Revolutionary War
Wood’s domestic situation took a new turn when David Turner made him
and ending with World War I, which would occupy the bottom of the
a proposition he could not refuse. Turner operated a mortuary service in
window. Above them was a woman representing the Republic.
Grant Wood, The Perfectionist, 1936. Black and white crayon, graphite, black ink, and white opaque watercolour on brown wove paper, 65 x 50.7 cm. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California. Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY Grant Wood, Portrait of Frances Fiske Marshall, 1929. Oil on canvas, 102.6 x 76.2 cm. Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Wood was required to travel to Munich, Germany and supervise the
John B. Turner, David’s retired father. For a background, he hauled out an
fabrication of the glass in this old country where the guild tradition of
old map of Iowa he had kept in his paper drawer for years since retrieving
medieval artisanship continued. Grant Wood’s sketches were re-interpreted
it from an equally old farmhouse. He privately referred to the painting as
by the Munich glass makers into more traditional-appearing figures,
“Two Old Maps”.
changing Wood’s contemporary faces to those of antique knights and saints rather than the American boys being commemorated. Frustrated, Wood
John B. Turner – Pioneer was a success, even with the old man’s sour
tried his hand at colouring the glass and after trial and error concluded that
demeanour. Wood had captured the years of life in rural Iowa etched into
the job should be left in the hands of the artisans. After a year of dawdling
the pale face with almost photographic realism. With his excitement fully
over the design, then a long time in Germany ironing out the problems,
turned up, as Wood worked on the Turner painting he began testing
Wood returned with the finished window. Almost nobody liked it. Why did
paint and making preparatory sketches for his next portrait, that of his
it have to be made in Germany with the war still fresh in people’s minds?
mother, which would be titled Woman with Plants.
This was wrong and that was wrong. There was no hoopla, no dedication and the window was installed with only a curt nod of acceptance to remain
The one true constant in Grant Wood’s life was his mother, Hattie. Since
there until today with no plaque or designation.
his father’s death and selling the farm to move herself and the children into the town of Grand Rapids, she had been the one person who had
During Wood’s stay in Munich, he discovered the Alte Pinakothek
always stood by him. As one by one his siblings married and moved away,
Museum and fifteenth-century Northern Gothic painting that was
his bond to his mother grew firmer. Now, living together in the hayloft
growing in popularity in Germany during the 1920s as die Neue
room behind the mortuary, she was his greeter, his hostess when
Sachlichkeit. Wood admired the hard-edged precision and clarity of
company called and his sounding board when no one else was available.
the artwork by Jan Van Eyck, Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein. There
She had been a school teacher and had given that up for farm life, but
was an implied simplicity in Northern Gothic painting. He realised
she never gave up her bright intelligence, or the need to look after Grant.
there was nothing like it in the United States. This revelation directly
Most people who visited him noted the forever smiling, slightly wizened
affected his change of style away from the derivative Impressionist
old lady and described her as “quaint”.
works he had produced since his Paris adventures. It was as if he saw the decorative motifs of his earliest painting efforts finding a place in
Even though Grant was dissatisfied with the Turner portrait, he knew he
his new mature work, taking advantage of his new skills. He examined
was on to something. His next experiment with the Flemish glaze
the layering of glazes employed by these precise German and Flemish
painting technique was a portrait of his mother, sitting with a snake plant
painters. Each coating allowed the colour beneath to come through
or Widow’s Tongue.
and left a pristine surface. By nature, Wood was a slow and accurate artist and the slash and dab techniques of the Impressionists had never
The composition pays homage to the fifteenth century, looking more
seemed to be his calling.
like the Mona Lisa than a contemporary work. The straight fingers touching rather than holding the potted plant are iconic, as is the
After the debacle of the Memorial stained glass window, Wood hunted
rigid upright posture of this prairie widow and mother. A landscape
for an apt subject with which to try out this new technique. He selected
with globular trees and a graduated sky fill the background together
Grant Wood, Portrait of John B. Turner, Pioneer, 1928-1930. Oil on canvas, 76.8 x 64.8 cm. Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Grant Wood, Sentimental Ballad, 1940. Oil on masonite, 61 x 127 cm. New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut. Art Š Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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with the trace of a meandering river and a red brick house disappearing
The painting had a much longer life. Despite its technical flaws that were
into the woods. At her elbow are the leaves of an enormous begonia
obvious to local farmers – the hilly land that made crop planting
plant – resulting in Wood’s plural title. The snake plant, a very hearty
impossible, barns built near the river’s edge, and the imaginary structures
species, has no significance other than being a needed vertical
that never did exist – the painting won the landscape award at the 1930
element. She wears an antique cameo and a deeply scalloped apron,
Iowa Fair. Despite the head-shaking farmer who backed off from the
but her eyes looking off to the right are what capture all attention.
picture declaring, “I wouldn’t give thirty-five cents an acre for that land,”
Hattie Wood was ill at the time and it was evident to everyone except
Stone City became the property of the Omaha Society of Liberal Arts and
her painter son who saw the seams and wrinkles in her face as old
found a place on the wall of the Joslyn Memorial Museum.67 The painting
friends he had grown used to over the recent years. The small
also became the forerunner of a long line of rolling landscapes from
painting – only 43.2 x 50.8 centimetres – got bad reviews from most
Wood’s meticulous brush.
of the family, even Grant. He made a photograph of his mother and preferred it. She, on the other hand, loved the painting. After
Some would say Bible Belt satire was the target of Wood’s next major
painting the portraits of two children, Wood finished 1929 with what
work, others would claim it to be a tribute, and still others the image of
would be acclaimed as some of his best work, but at the time, nobody
heroism. Wood had in mind a double portrait, not of specific subjects
around him – except Mum – seemed to like the new style and his
but a composite of two pioneers – either husband and wife or brother
unyielding touch.
and sister – who represented a lifetime working the land. To pose for the picture he elicited the services of his sister Nan, only after reassuring her
The following year, Wood embarked on another of his seminal works in
he would lengthen her face and alter her looks enough so no one would
the new style, Stone City.
recognize her. For the elderly farmer he chose his dentist, Dr B.H. McKeeby. Here again a lengthy selling job was required, but eventually
When Stone City was exhibited for the first time, locals who trudged
he gave in and, despite the time away from his practice as the Great
up to the spot where Wood had stood to sketch the scene did not
Depression took hold, he marched up to Wood’s hayloft studio.
recognize what he had painted. Stone City was a former boomtown built around a large pink limestone deposit that was used to create
For a background, Wood had discovered a simple peaked-roof white
all the public buildings warehouses and even the workers’ huts. The
house with a second floor church-style window, but was run down in the
owner of the quarry, J.A. Green, built himself a limestone castle-like
back. In place of a dental pick, Dr McKeeby was handed a hay fork. Nan
estate on a hill overlooking the town centre. What Wood painted he
wore her mother’s cameo and a scalloped-edge apron, similar to her
would had to have seen when he was a child and the steam drills
mother’s apron in Woman with Plants, from a mail-order catalogue.
were still chewing away at the rock strata and the town nestled
Actually, the same snake plant and begonia from that painting appear on
among the rolling hills was all hustle and bustle where it straddled
the front porch of the house. Wood worked on the painting for three
the Wapsipinicon River with a single bridge. In 1930, Stone City was
months and titled it American Gothic.
a ghost town with only eroded remains of the great limestone
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harvest, replaced as a construction essential by the invention of
The anonymity promised by Wood failed when anyone in town who
Portland cement.
saw the picture immediately recognised Nan and Dr McKeeby. Being
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Grant Wood, Parson Weems’ Fable, 1939. Oil on canvas, 97.5 x 127.3 cm. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas. Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Grant Wood, The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover, West Branch, Iowa, 1931. Oil upon composition board, 65 x 100 cm. The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota, The John R. Van Derlip Fund, owned jointly with the Des Moines Art Center. Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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individuals not used to putting themselves forward, this recognition
have “suffered tortures from these people who could not understand
was uncomfortable for them both. When the painting appeared in the
the joy of art within him and tried to crush his soul with their sheet
Chicago Art Institute annual show for 1930, and was a sudden
iron brand of salvation.”68
sensation, attracting crowds of people many of whom had never attended an art show before, their celebrity was sealed. Critics seized
With American Gothic, Grant Wood leaped from Town Character to
on the painting, claiming Wood was the discovery of the exhibition.
Nationally Acclaimed Artist. The timing of its arrival amplified its
American Gothic was awarded the Norman Wait Harris Bronze Medal,
appeal. As the Depression tightened its grip on the economy, this
as well as a $300 prize, and the Friends of American Art at the Institute
sturdy, severe farm couple represented the backbone of Midwest
quickly purchased it for another $300. Critical acclaim surfaced in art
culture, the bulwark against the farms gobbled up by bank
columns in Chicago, New York and Boston. The Chicago critic was
foreclosures and destroyed by failed crops due to poor soil
charmed and wrote that the painting was “quaint, humorous, and
conservation and prairie wind storms. They became defiant symbols
AMERICAN”. A Boston critic saw the couple as grim religious fanatics.
like the later portrayal of “Rosie the Riveter” rolling up her sleeves to
He knew nothing of the artist, he admitted, but guessed Wood must
build tanks and planes for World War II.
Grant Wood, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, 1931. Oil on masonite, 76.2 x 101.6 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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If there was a downside to this sudden fame, it was Grant’s exposure to
Students paid $40 for the six-week course or $7.50 by the week. He
the media, and to fellow Iowa citizens who had a bone to pick or a
offered a full menu of fees right down to the boards students used in
question to ask. Most of the controversy ranged around the concept of a
place of canvasses. To house the students, a collection of ten ice wagons
‘typical’ Iowa farm couple. Writers and critics outside Iowa who didn’t
was assembled from the Hubbard Ice Company. Formerly horse drawn,
know anything about Wood mostly saw him laying bare the rigid,
the motor truck had replaced them and they were presented free of
inflexible, dour farmers as hard-working hatseeds of the heartland. Many
charge to the colony for a named scholarship to be given to the best of
citizens of Iowa claimed Iowa farmers didn’t look like that and were
the student applicants each year. The wagons were strung out across a
offended at the stereotype. Wood was hounded constantly for an
ridge near the town and each resident was allowed to decorate the
explanation and finally refused further comment – to anybody.
wagon to suit his or her taste.
Suddenly, the art world could not get enough of his work, which made
A faculty of local art teachers was assembled as were nude models
his life difficult considering his very slow work habits and the time it took
from among the nearby farms; young ladies who wanted to earn a
the overlaid glazes to dry between coats. So, as American Gothic hung
few dollars while putting up with flies, mosquitoes and sunburn were
by itself in the Chicago Art Institute gallery, Grant Wood forged ahead.
often chaperoned by anxious parents. Once they were reassured, the posing was strictly for “art’s sake”, the parents usually went away
He tried an unusual point of view and some humour with his The
mollified. Grant was ‘faculty director’ and circulated among the
Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. Looking down on the sleepy village of
students in his overalls.
Lexington, Wood commandeered a child’s hobby horse to use as a model for Revere’s mount. The hill country of Massachusetts was more
Wood’s teaching style was a mixture of casual folksiness and strict
accommodating to his rolling landscape than flat Iowa.
regimen. Abstract interpretations were verboten. The painting had to sell an idea and the idea, or slice of life, had to come from what the student
He also painted the birthplace of Herbert Hoover – hardly a popular tourist
saw. The painting classes were conducted outside in various locations
destination as his desultory administration battled the plunging economy
selected by Wood. He always had a comment, observation or critique for
– and the painting, wherever it was hung, drew a larger audience than the
each student and sometimes he took the student’s brush and made and
President’s personal appearances. The painting has a more real landscape
dabbed something on the student’s work. All paintings were done on
than Stone City, but there is still an ideal dream sequence look to it as his
boards, not canvasses, and some students earned pocket money
mannerisms for trees and contours became more developed.
preparing boards ahead of time with a coat of white lead and linseed oil to seal the surface. He also reversed his loathing of instructors who
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The hard part was that Wood painted steadily, slowly carving these hard-
directed him how to paint rather than guiding his own interpretation.
edged fantasies from Arbor Day to the Fruits of Iowa, but all around him
Wood laid down hard and fast rules for the painting medium (oil and
people were losing their money so his compensation away from the
linseed thinned with turpentine), pencil sketching directly on the board
major New York markets was constant, but small. He needed a steady
before application of paint, dividing the composition into thirds and other
income to fill in while he painted. To this end, he established the Stone
immutable guides. For sketching he only used brown butcher’s wrap
City Art Colony.
paper bought by the roll – the same material used by shopkeepers to
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Grant Wood, Overmantel Decoration, 1930. Oil on upsom board, 101.6 x 161.3 cm. Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Grant Wood, Death on the Ridge Road, 1935. Oil on masonite, 81.3 x 99.1 cm. Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts. Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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wrap parcels. Wood claimed it was “pure”. He was not shy in his
Virtually every element of Dinner for Threshers is from Grant Wood’s life,
criticism, at one time asking a student, “Do you have a palette knife?”
from the date beneath the barn’s roof peak, “1892” (he was born in
On receiving the knife, Wood made three downward strokes, carved off
1891, but made himself a year younger in 1916) to the people
the student’s work from the face of the board and walked away.69
representing family members and the kitchen cabinet that had been built into the bungalow he had built for his mother. The scene is accurate,
As Wood matured, and especially following the huge success of
depicting men trooping into the farm where they have co-operatively
American Gothic, his attitude towards Regionalism and Realist painting
helped thresh the crop. Often threshing crews with steam traction
hardened. The return to rural values in the face of the plummeting
engines did the work helped by the farmer and his hired hands plus the
economy was the direction for art. Art had to return to the people, not
neighbours. This was the big midday meal since the work had been going
elitist critics and art experts and self-styled connoisseurs. His taste of fame
on since the dew had lifted in the morning.
earned him lecture dates around the country at $500 a talk, which celebrity he took in his stride. But he had no patience with anyone who
Dinner for Threshers was later voted the most popular painting at the
didn’t recognize him or his name. His paintings were often selling for as
Carnegie International Exhibition in 1934. Later Wood travelled to New
high as $7,500 (over $113,000 in modern dollars) and yet he was no
York where he was feted and passed around the art crowd as though he
businessman and was always in debt, often borrowing money at
was some kind of exotic plant. But among the massive egos, he fitted
exorbitant interest fees.
right in.
He embarked on Dinner for Threshers, his most ambitious painting, in
His lectures developed his feelings about Regionalism over time until
1933 following that summer’s session of the Stone City Art Colony. He
he made “building a native American art” his centrepiece. Budding
and his partners in the colony were making plans to develop the colony
artists climbing on the Regionalism bandwagon painted images aping
as a permanent fixture as he began laying out the 1.98-metre by 45.7-
the styles of Benton, John Curry or Wood and believed they were part
centimetre set of panels that would show the men coming in for dinner
of a ‘movement’. Regionalism, by Wood’s definition, grew from
in a typical farm kitchen. His work and his side interests became
familiarity with a geographical region and all its subtleties and moods
increasingly enmeshed. His mother and Nan were frightened that he was
and especially its people. He frequently lashed out at European
stretched too thin, neglecting debts to honour speaking engagements
influences when he spoke:
and forgetting to pay some bills why overpaying others. They believed his involvement in the Stone City Art Colony was too much of a drain and
“Art can be a significant form of expression, understandable to
he should shut it down. Even David Turner, Wood’s most staunch
virtually everyone, and still not violate basic aesthetic principles. Art
supporter, became frustrated with Wood’s stubborn streak. Eventually,
need not be the exclusive property of the intelligentsia, as so many of
Wood and his partners shut down the Colony and in 1934 he moved
the Surrealists and Post-Impressionists seem to think. They are very
himself and his mother and sister from the hayloft at 5 Turner Lane to
bitter about our work.”
Iowa City to be closer to the State University where he was lecturing regularly. He directed the New Deal’s Public Works of Art project (PWAP)
By this time, Grant Wood had become a monument like a statue in the
through the University.
town square to Cedar Rapids society. His next gimmick, escapade, or
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crackpot idea was always anticipated. Everyone was shocked, however,
was not new to Grant. He had been writing one, Return from Bohemia,
when the Cedar Rapids Gazette announced he was engaged to Sarah
a sort of artistic cautionary tale and sermon and would continue, but it
Sherman Maxon, a striking woman with experience as a professional
never saw print.
singer. Sarah was five years older than Grant’s forty-four. The news was not universally praised. Many of the people who literally looked after
In 1937, to achieve a wider market for his work, he followed the same
Wood – helped his mother, kept track of his debts and, like David
path many artists had tried, printmaking. He continued with lithography
Turner, sold his paintings, were opposed to the union. Wood
into the 1940s, but his most controversial work was copied from a
rationalised that since they were both artists they would understand
painting he had created of a farmer dumping a bucket of water over
each other’s needs and expressions.
himself out at the rainwater tank. He revealed the painting to a group of select friends and discovered the men were mortified at the full frontal
His honours now included being elected to the National Academy of
nudity while the women were curiously charmed by the idea of a male
Design and the National Academy of Mural Painters for the work he
nude. His puzzlement was increased when he made a lithograph of the
supervised with the PWAP. He bought a house in Iowa City for $3,500
painting and the U.S. Postal Service refused to send it through the mail.
(almost $53,000 today) with a mortgage, a move that strained his
Only one hundred were printed.70
friendship with mentor and supporter, David Turner, whom Wood suggested, “bought my paintings because he knew they’d be worth
With Sarah handling his social obligations in Iowa City with numerous
a lot of money some day.” In October 1935, he discovered he had
parties and teas, he was free to work on improvements to the house and
been passed over to paint the murals in the Cedar Rapids Courthouse,
grounds as well as his painting and teaching-lecture load. Sarah took care
the commission going instead to Francis Robert White. In a fit of
of the finances as well, freeing him from any money worries. He once
pique, he turned down a mural to be painted in the Washington D.C.
again had someone to take care of him.
Post Office even though he had done preparation work for it. He claimed he was too busy.
Gradually, life began to gnaw away at Wood’s perfect world. First, at the University, Grant became increasingly bitter over the curriculum
That same month, on 11 October, Frank Wood received a call from Grant
keeping students from actually lifting a brush until their third year,
saying that Hattie was sinking fast. She died a few hours later at the age
requiring two years of academic ‘preparation’ until they were turned
of seventy, watched over only by Grant. Illness had robbed her of her final
loose with paint and canvas. There was also an undercurrent of ill-will
active years and she was buried on the family homestead in Anamosa
being circulated concerning his lack of sophistication, his accreditation
next to her husband, Maryville.
to teach and his inability to compromise. Secondly, his marriage was falling apart. He was visited by Internal Revenue people and informed
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He gave up his painting for some time after his mother’s death,
that no income tax report had been filed from 1935 to 1937. His
working at setting the new house in order, lecturing, teaching at the
standard of living had far outstripped his income. A nasty quarrel
University, and in the spring of 1936 working on illustrations for a
ensued which finally terminated in an uncontested divorce. Much of his
children’s book titled Farm on a Hill by Madeline Darrough Horn, and
time after that was spent trying to re-establish his old rhythms, his
another set of illustrations for Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street. Book work
former habits, to retreat back to what had stabilised him in Cedar
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Grant Wood, Stone City, Iowa, 1930. Oil on wood panel, 76.8 x 101.6 cm. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska. Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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Rapids – but without ever admitting to his former neighbours that he
After a marathon effort painting for twenty-three straight hours, the
had ever been wrong in his judgement calls. He picked up his painting,
painting was shipped to New York and sold almost at once for
starting with watercolours he had used as a child.
$7,500 which brought Wood’s pay to over $20,000 for the year, a new record. He also took a two-year leave of absence from the
Parson Weems’ Fable came about during this time after Wood read a
University to have some time to pull things together. The house in
pamphlet by the Parson who claimed intimate knowledge of George
Iowa City became a must-see for every wandering artist, and Wood
Washington’s life – specifically the story about cutting down the cherry
continued his return to full-scale painting again while entertaining
tree. “I cannot tell a lie,” young George cried out when confronted by his
the visitors.
angry father. There is no historic provenance for this popular myth except
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as a morality tale created by the Parson. Wood chose to illustrate this
He painted posters for the movie Long Voyage Home, an early
historical clunker by presenting Parson Weems raising the curtain on the
patriotic film about Britain’s struggle in the North Atlantic with Nazi
depiction of the drama of confrontation. He also chose to depict the six-
U-boats. Wood also managed a poster for British War Relief in 1941.
year-old Washington with the head of the mature president we see on
Spring of that year was particularly fine in Iowa and he set about
the dollar bill.
painting a series of spring pictures beginning with Spring in the Town
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and ending with Spring in the Country. He also put the finishing
On 19 December the surgeons quickly found that cancer had riddled his
touches on his self-portrait that he had been working to for years.
organs and settled in his liver. The doctor told him the situation was hopeless. On 18 December he had made a will leaving everything to his
Here is Grant Wood at the peak of his talent, relaxed, out from under
sister, Nan. His next task was to resign from the Iowa State University.
debt and a crushing schedule. At last he can revisit his roots. Once again
They rejected his resignation, which pleased him. He had time to
the land rolls with impossible hills and crops are laid out with meticulous
discuss his burial plot, which would be in Anamosa, but the stone was
perfection. Everything is clean and orderly in his Regionalist vision – as it
small and without an epitaph – but with his correct birth date, 1891.
almost never was in his real life. He had time now to travel and accepted some dinner invitations in Florida, with the idea of another one-man
Grant Wood died on 12 February 1942. At Iowa State University,
show in New York in 1942. He could really gather together a body of
memorial tributes were spoken and the best of these stated simply:
work. But as he travelled, he found his health getting worse with no appetite and constant fatigue. Finally, he returned to Iowa City and
“Grant Wood painted what he knew… and sometimes he had a
entered the University Hospital on 24 November 1941 for exploratory
little fun.”
surgery. Wood was sure he had gallstones.
Grant Wood, Dinner for Threshers, 1934. Oil on hardboard, 49.5 x 201.9 cm. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California. Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
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charles burchfield (1893-1967) William Charles Burchfield and his wife, Alice Murphy, created six children
thicker; the winds roared until everything grew dim in the white rush
in Astabula, Ohio. The fifth of these, Charles Ephraim Burchfield, was
of snow…”71
born on 9 April 1893. There were no artists in either family, and shy little Charles just faded into the mob. When he was four, his father died and
That year of 1911-1912 also put into his hands the books of John Burroughs,
Alice packed up her brood and their belongings and moved to her
the literary naturalist whose lyrical essays earned him considerable renown
family’s home in Salem, Ohio. There, her two bachelor uncles bought her
in the mid-nineteenth century. For example, in his essay, Birds and Poets,
a six-room house to live in rent-free.
he wrote: “The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet.
His childhood in the small town that had been settled by Quakers
A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and
was typical with barefoot summers and being doted on by his uncles;
intense his life… The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every
wandering across the fields and woods to the swimming hole and
grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds – how many
the baseball diamond. The major difference for Charles was his
human aspirations are realised in their free, holiday-lives – and
obsessive need to draw and paint whenever possible. He began the
how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!”
practice of carrying a sketchbook before he entered first grade. His subject matter was the bounty of flowers, hills and woods, small and
This love of writing for a time threatened to steer him away from his art
large animals that filled the country landscape. The concentration
as he began building his library of journals. He had discovered the
required for drawing fitted his developing nature: quiet, avoiding
ability to evoke feelings and emotions through the rhythm and music of
crowds, remaining in the background whenever possible. He was the
words that was lacking in his pure representational art. He would spend
neighbourhood shy kid.
his lifetime in pursuit of illuminating the senses through his paintings and searching for evocative symbols in his art that were so readily
With a minimum of social distractions, Burchfield studied hard through
available in his writing.
four years of high school, graduating in 1911 at the top of his class and receiving a $120 scholarship for his scholastic efforts. After years
In 1912, Burchfield entered the Cleveland School of Art. His programme
of roaming the area with pencil and paintbrush, he wanted formal
of study included two years of basic courses followed by two years of
training at an art school and put the money away towards that end. To
studies directed at his goal of becoming an illustrator. Though he obviously
further build up his cash, he took a job filing sheet metal for the
had many of the gifts needed to become an illustrator, his greatest
Mullins Company. Typhoid fever knocked him out of that job, but
deficiency was drawing the human form – a prerequisite for commercial
when he recovered he took a clerical position in the same Mullins
illustration. It’s not that he couldn’t draw people – though there are no
Company. To earn more money, he produced calling cards, place cards
nudes from figure drawing classes in his school sketches, which may be
and calendars, using floral and natural intertwining elements as
explained by a deeply held sense of morality – he was just not interested.
decoration. At the same time, he kept lyrical journals about his
He loved nature and its intricate design. In the third year of his studies, he
experiences with an eye to writing for a living: “The storm came… the
abandoned the path to illustration and decided to become a painter, away
air was filled with flying flakes of snow, which constantly became
from the dictates and assignments of editors and publications.
Charles Burchfield, Ice-Bound Lake Boat, 1924. Watercolour, gouache and pencil on paper mounted on paperboard, 62.3 x 46.7 cm. National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., gift of the Charles E. Burchfield Foundation.
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Throughout his years of study at the Cleveland School, once he conquered
for all their manipulations of imagery were permanent, but silent.
the crippling effects of homesickness and made a few friends among the
Burchfield explored symbols of sounds to be employed in paintings to
students, he copied the techniques of Chinese and Japanese scroll
suggest the symphony he heard in nature during his ramblings. He had
painters, with their simple brush techniques and delicate decorative
not yet been exposed to the demonstrations of the Abstract
effects. He produced elaborately-rendered posters and calling cards to
Expressionists, Futurists, Cubists, Symbolists or Constructivists who
earn spending money while he supported himself working in restaurants.
sought similar translations stretching from natural phenomena to
His paintings of nature took on the quality of the Asian masters.
metaphysics. He followed his own path. Considering Burchfield’s isolation as a student from these influences, the sophistication of his work
The New York Armory Show of 1913 came and went without causing a
demands comparison with works by both Der Blaue Reiter group and
ripple in Midwestern Ohio. Burchfield was essentially ignorant of the
Kandinsky, when he was in transition between representational art and
modern movements introduced at that epic exhibition and yet his own
total abstractions. There was a complete lack of self-consciousness as
work, while representational, began probing the same questions
Burchfield strived to solve his self-created problems of seeing – and
Cézanne, Van Gogh and Picasso explored.
hearing – what was beyond the subject in front of him.
Reading the words of Burroughs and studying the images of Hiroshige
As with his high school studies, Burchfield was a grind at the Cleveland
and Hokusai, Burchfield produced surprisingly mature watercolour
School and graduated in 1916 with yet another scholarship, this time to
renderings that would have held their own at the Armory Show
the National Academy of Design in New York City. Just the concept of
alongside the masters. In The Ravine, painted in 1916, a water-carved
living and working in that overwhelming beehive made him blanch. He
creek bed flows beneath spring-bare branches and matted grass,
arrived in time for the autumn term, immediately visualized the horror of
flowing red with action around a small rock to puddle out in ripples at
earning a living in the huge city, dealing with demands, both social and
the foot of its miniature waterfall. The design is a natural balance of
academic, for which he felt ill-equipped, and borrowed $25 from his
stabilising forms with the dynamic overlay of the undergrowth. He also
brother Fred for the train fare home to Salem, Ohio. He fled New York in
succeeded in working with simple, less convoluted forms and linear
November 1916 ahead of what he perceived as looming failure, and
designs in The Lighted Window watercolour from 1917. The picture is a
never looked back.
simple rendering of a rough grey exterior wall of a cabin surrounding a window that holds a glowing oil lamp. There is snow on the ground and
As he wrestled with his decision and the stink of failure that clung to it,
above the slant of the roof, eerie tree branches gesticulate, stripped bare
he headed into the woods with his watercolours to regain his spiritual
by winter winds. The window is an island of warmth framed by clean
centre once again. As he worked alone, at the Cleveland School of Art
white curtains offering a haven within; all this with a minimum of
two of his teachers hung a number of his paintings constituting his first
strokes and colours.
one-man show.72
It was plain that during this time he felt that the shortcomings of sounds
Burchfield’s intensity released itself with a burst of 165 watercolour
and music lay in their ephemeral states – here and gone, while paintings
paintings in 1917 while he held down a full-time job in the Cost
Charles Burchfield, Street Scene-Sun and Shadow, c. 1933. 48.3 x 47 cm. Collection of James and Barbara Palmer.
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Charles Burchfield, Rainy Night, 1929. Watercolour over pencil, 76.2 x 106.7 cm. San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California, gift of Misses Anne R. and Amy Putnam.
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Department at the Mullins Company that had welcomed him back. He
rotting pumpkin, which he labelled “Dangerous Brooding”. These
managed by working during his lunch hour, fleeing the office for a
sketches seemed to coincide with entries in his journals related to
fifteen-minute walk, chewing down a snack lunch and using the
childhood nightmares and feelings of unease, which he transferred to
remaining time to make a sketch of some natural phenomenon: a cluster
his paintings in cloud shapes and the writhing of wind-torn trees.
of leaves, a copse of trees, a gurgling brook. Including time to hurry back
Weather and wind lashed at or swirled around his works turning even
to the office, the entire sortie required forty-five minutes. The works that
simple cabins in the woods into hulking, brooding animals and queasy
emerged from this daily ritual have the slap-dash plein air intensity of a
shadow shapes. His mind seemed to run riot.
Van Gogh but the economy of Japanese brush painting. In some, such as Dandelion Seed Ball and Trees, the paper is filled with a cacophony of
The calligraphic, spidery ‘doodles’ he created, almost like automatic
dots, scrolls, lines, shavings, tanglings and grass that march across the
writing, seemed to reflect his work lettering calling cards with a nib pen.
bottom of the page in waves of jagged lines like a seismographic record
His strokes swept across the page in great swoops, perfect in their
of an earthquake.
copperplate splendour, but instead of illuminating capital letters, or penning a flowery introduction or invitation, the strokes left behind
His sunflowers loom like bystanders gaping into a window as he strived
buzzing insects of fantastic complexity. What had been painstakingly –
to codify his response to nature’s textures. His trees ranged from pointillist
copied flowers were now suggestions of buds, leaves, stems, languorous
dabs held aloft by shaggy bark to clumps on the horizon growing from
stamens and thrusting pistils. Fabulous birds with peacock tails cruised his
insubstantial grass like ice cream cones supporting frosted dollops that
skies, filling pelican bills with hapless creatures while all around curious
are sprinkled with coconut. Where his response clings to representation
seed pods spiralled towards the fertile earth.
of nature, the air around his subjects is often electrically charged by his brush to reveal sounds, breezes, birdsong, and the exhalation of oxygen.
This need for almost cartoon-like exaggeration developed more fully
He filled dozens of notebooks with his writings and sketches for later
over the next two years as Burchfield began to add more man-made
reference. As often as nature enticed him to linger and draw, the same
subjects to his nature meanderings. In July 1918, he was drafted into
nature frightened him with its sinister and relentless side as winter
the army and marched off to what was left of the Great War.
blizzards scoured the trees bare and torrents of rain caused floods.
Fortunately, they sent him to the Camouflage Corps to work under a lieutenant who was a Philadelphia portrait painter, and he was put to
His pure design explorations turned to creating symbols, on the one
work painting camouflage schemes for field artillery. He was also
hand a sort of shorthand he called “conventions”, and on the other
allowed time off to wander about painting as he had done before at
two-dimension doodling that was calligraphic in nature. The
the Mullins Company. He found isolated buildings and ruins in and
conventions were three-dimensional combinations of shading and linear
around Camp Jackson in South Carolina, which he roughed in, often
constructions that created shapes, not of things, but of emotions – from
leaving a melancholy feeling as a sadness seemed to come over him and
a shaded comma that indicated fear to a hovering amorphous shape
his work. His symbolism intruded into the most innocent of natural
that to Burchfield suggested “morbidness” (sic) or evil. Still another
scenes, transforming flowers into demon masks and coal mine
yawning black space appeared to be a toothless mouth carved out of a
openings into yawning pits.
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On departure from the army in 1919, he returned home to Salem,
a shaft hole waits in the shaded darkness away from bright sunlight
Ohio and his job at the Mullins Company. He arrived in turmoil,
spilling on the rocks and tailings that tumble down into its black
attempting to return to where he had left off with his nature
interior. This painting comes as close to total abstraction as any he
investigations, but came up short. His former living flowers, trees and
ever created. He worked as though exorcising demons and then one
swirling weather effects gave way to isolated and abandoned houses.
morning he awoke and felt better. Gradually the clouds lifted and he
Verging on deep depression, he gathered many of the paintings
found himself caught up in the human as well as the natural life
together and burned them.
around him.
His mood swings deepened, producing such works as the
The Kevorkian Gallery in New York started out in 1920 with a bang,
Abandoned Mine. It is an amorphous juxtaposition of shadows and
awarding Burchfield a one-man show in February that was critically
shapes, weighted from the top to the bottom of the composition, as
praised and sold enough works to allow him a three-month hiatus from
Charles Burchfield, Night of the Equinox, 1917-1955. Watercolour, brush and ink, gouache, and charcoal on paper mounted on paperboard, 35.6 x 45.7 cm. National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., gift of the Sara Roby Foundation.
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the Mullins Company Cost Department to paint. He turned to houses and
eaves pierced by dead-eye windows, revealing nothing of life inside
buildings and man-made environments.
the slab-like walls. At times, among the dead structures, trees thrust up from the trampled soil and soften the blocky urban landscape with
Back in Salem, he now planned trips criss-crossing Ohio on the
their reaching.
interurban electric rail lines, stopping at small towns and villages. For company, he read volumes by Sherwood Anderson and Willa Cather.
“Realism, intense realism. Crude barn-like houses in January sunlight are
People began to appear in his sketches and paintings, along with their
more beautiful than the wildest fairy tale,” he wrote in his 1920
activities – not as central characters of importance, but accompanying
Sketchbook Number Two.73
the structures and streets. As usual the weather was key to each scene, bitter snow turning the ground to iron and rain flooding down among
This intensity translated itself into his mantra: “Force, Power, Vigour!”
the rooftops and railway trucks. The structures were cubes and angled
On he plunged with his “conventions”, boiling skies and blasted
Charles Burchfield, Street Scene, 1940-1947. Watercolour, 99 x 134.6 cm. Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas.
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landscapes laid bare by the elements. However, he was becoming a
paint. At work, his designs came to be considered “special products”
middle-sized fish in a very tiny pond, working away in Salem, Ohio. The
and it wasn’t long before he was in charge of three assistants. He
pinch came in 1921 when he lost his job with the Mullins Company.
considered his wallpaper designs to be for the most part “hack”
That spring he took a job for the summer on the Kenreich farm. There,
work, but his ingrained Protestant work ethic demanded his best
he met Bertha Kenreich and discovered love in the alfalfa field. He was
efforts for the reward of his pay cheque. The results were floral and
so smitten by her and was besotted with the feelings between them he
woodsy patterns that reflected both his former “conventions”
could not describe any of it in his journals. His Bertha became a silent
(considerably tamed) and his calligraphic doodles mingled with
partner in his life.
naturalistic studies of cattails, lilies and fronds of all types arranged across two-dimensional space in such a way that often produced the
With the need to once again cut out on his own, he thought of some
illusion of a third dimension.
advice he had been given by his instructors at the Cleveland School and considered wallpaper design for a full-time vocation. He contacted the
All this time, though they lived in a still fairly undeveloped suburb, he
firm of M.H. Birge & Sons in Buffalo, New York and sent some of his
was still surrounded by Buffalo and its industrial environs. His volume of
watercolours along with the letter. His journey to Buffalo and subsequent
work had slowed to a trickle, but he still managed to wander afield and
interview were a success and they offered him the job of assistant in the
find some old houses, many dating from the nineteenth century, that
design department, where he reported for work on the first Monday
had not yet tumbled into the street, and made some pencil and crayon
following Thanksgiving 1921.
sketches. Though he produced fairly straightforward renderings in pleasant compositions, his raison d’être was still vague. Why was he
Tepidly, he set up work while living alone in the city and making
painting? What statement was he making? Buffalo was an
weekend visits to Salem. Soon, Bertha accepted his proposal of
unsympathetic town, cobbled together by businessmen at the
marriage and he hurried back to Buffalo to rent a two-room apartment.
crossroads of the Erie Canal from the east and Lake Erie with its
They were married on 20 May and moved into their first home. The
gateway to the iron ore mines in north-west Minnesota. Was the
settled nicely into domestic life and their first daughter, Mary Alice, was
common man beaten down by the press of progress, by the tailings of
born in 1923 followed by Martha Elizabeth in 1924, Sarah Ruth in 1925
“manifest destiny”? People had vanished from his paintings once
and Catherine Esther in 1926. After a breather of two years, Charles
again, leaving the houses and buildings as though everyone had just
Arthur arrived in 1929. By 1925 they had moved into a two-storey
stepped away. Burchfield discovered he was one of those people. He
house on a narrow deep lot at 3574 Clinton Street in Gardenville, near
was no longer a visitor to his subject as he had been to the woods and
Buffalo Creek, the city’s namesake. To accommodate his painting, a
rolling hills of Ohio. He had become what he painted and needed new
small studio was constructed behind the house. On this plot of land, he
symbols to portray the life of which he was now a part.
and Bertha lived for the rest of their lives. It was with this push into depicting his urban and industrial surroundings What with moving, kids, construction and the hundred domestic
that Charles Burchfield entered his Regionalism period for which he
crises that arrive in any family, Burchfield scratched out less time to
became most recognized during the 1930s. He pressed on with his
Charles Burchfield, Houses in Late Autumn Sunlight, 1917. 54.6 x 44.5 cm. Private collection.
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paintings of Buffalo homes, mostly clapboard with deep eaves and
family a living wage and more. Still Charles hesitated. Back in
Palladian arched windows, Victorian mansard affairs studded with
Gardenville, supported by his wife pregnant with their fifth and last
dormers. He wandered down to the Lake Erie docks where the ore and
child, Charles Arthur, he took the plunge. On 1 August 1929 he
grain boats docked and the grain elevators shot up like giant
tendered his resignation at H.M. Birge and picked up his brushes for
tombstones above the flat and swampy landscape. Trains were
his new full-time career.
everywhere; large puffing steam locomotives with fifty goods wagons hanging off their drawbars, clanking and spitting oil with every stroke of
With Rehn as his new dealer, the second man came into his life.
their connecting rods.
Edward Hopper was also one of Rehn’s exclusive artists. Hopper’s career had begun to soar with his watercolours of lighthouses, ship
By the late 1920s more and more of his paintings were coming to the
captain’s homes and small-town streets. There was a definite
market and attracting attention. Two men came into his life: one would
resemblance in Hopper’s and Burchfield’s subject matter if not their
make his career, the other would be come a staunch and influential
styles. They were often compared by critics, which they both found
friend. His job at the H.M. Birge wallpaper factory began to drag him
to be distasteful. However they began to exchange letters and in
down. Coupled with the demands of his domestic situation, his
1928 Hopper wrote of Burchfield: “From what is to the mediocre
painting was being constricted as he conscientiously brooded over
artist and the unseeing layman the boredom of every day
problems at the office. He began to hate the nine-to-five prison. On the
existence... [Burchfield] has extracted a quality that we may call
other hand, he had been sending his works to the Montross Gallery in
poetic, romantic, and lyric... By sympathy with the particular he has
New York, which had been handling his paintings since his brief but
made it epic and universal.” 74
ugly scholarship foray back in 1916. His sales in 1928 had been encouraging, but not enough to live on. Frank Rehn got word of
In 1950, Burchfield returned the favour by noting in an article, “Cumulus
Burchfield’s desire to do better.
clouds would not attract him, perhaps because of their voluptuous, decorative character.”
Rehn with his New York Gallery was considered to be the best dealer of contemporary art in the city – handling only American artists. He
From the 1930s and throughout the 1940s, they remained
wrote to Burchfield with a proposition to represent him. Vacillating,
geographically ‘to each his own’, but of the pair, Rehn was most
Charles could not just dump Montross and that dealer refused any
amazed with Burchfield’s work. He seemed to come from nowhere and
compromise division of Burchfield’s work between the two dealers. At
remained nowhere, capturing the soul of the Midwestern landscape
this same time, Burchfield was contacted by Edward Root, a professor
without having followed the same route to success as his
of art at Hamilton College, who had one of his paintings and asked to
contemporaries. Even Thomas Hart Benton had gone to Paris, as had
see more to add to his collection. When he learned of the stand-off
Hopper – three times – and then he spent years trying to fob off those
between the artist and the two dealers, he invited Rehn and Burchfield
Paris paintings. Burchfield had not even studied in New York.
to his home in Clinton, New York. There, Rehn convinced Burchfield
Everybody who was anybody had studied in New York – the real New
that enough paintings could be sold to guarantee the artist and his
York City – not Buffalo.
Charles Burchfield, Over Porch Roof, 1933. 74.9 x 54.6 cm. Curtis Galleries, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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As Burchfield painted his way through the 1930s, he became disenchanted
In the 1940s, woodland scenes began appearing, each one dissolving
with being grouped into the Regionalist mould. In a letter he wrote to Frank
into the fantasy of symbolism as reality melted into tumbles of shapes.
Rehn, Burchfield moaned: “I am not an Ohio or a western New York artist,
Trees seemed to be in flames as their shivering leaves sent out vibrations
but an American artist – or should I say an artist who happens to be born,
into the ether and weather effects blossomed and bloomed in orgies of
living, painting in America. If I paint for an audience, it is to anyone,
clouds that surrounded recognisable objects. The works recalled the days
anywhere who happens to be spiritually akin to me. ‘Regionalism’ makes
of 1916-17 when his forests writhed with tentacles for branches and
me sick!”75 However, he did continue on as he discovered endless subject
moonbeams poured down from the sky, pecked and spotted with star-
matter for his work. He, Benton, Hopper and the Iowa farmer Grant Wood
dots and dabs. As he moved through this transition into the final period
gained their fame and fortune while other less fortunate folks saw theirs
of his work, his “regionalism” began to distort and shimmer, fading out
go down the rathole that was the Great Depression. It was the golden
of focus as his need to embrace the fantasies of his youth gained the
period of the American Scene painters. Those who bought and collected
upper hand.
their works seemed to yearn for simpler times. As the war in Europe chased a number of artists off the Continent and Burchfield’s success with his paintings translated into commissions from
into the United States, this influx of modern artists took root in New York
businesses and industries – and the magazines that put those businesses on
and Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, Dada and other expressions of non-
their front covers and in feature articles. He found himself on assignment
objective art became the darlings of the galleries. American Scene
from Fortune magazine painting scenes in a sulphur-loading terminal then
painters, Regionalists and even the poor American Impressionists still
drawn into the black opening of a West Virginia coalmine.
hanging on, if not irrelevant, were suddenly pushed off museum first floors and gallery show windows. The offended Realists raised a huge
At the back of his mind, however, amid the images of structures and
bellow of protest.
industrial transportation, there lingered residual memories of those early days of discovery in the woods, the delicacy of flower petals, the whisper
As already mentionned, Hopper wrote that “New American painting was an
of fronds bending in the breeze, the ticking of pine trees and rustle of
attempt to create ‘pure painting,’ that is, an art which will use colour and
large – leaf oaks. He remembered the close-up world of bugs rendered
design for their own sake and independent of man’s experience of life and
in his delicate calligraphy. But heaps of architecture had rumbled into his
his association with nature. I don’t believe such an aim can be achieved by a
vision and now he found power in the slanting roofs, and rhythm in row
human being… We would be leaving out a great deal that I consider worth
upon row of windows piercing clapboard and brick walls surmounted by
while expressing in painting, and it cannot be expressed in literature.”76
thrusting chimneys. In his journals, he wrote of painting a house only to have a cloud’s dark shadow sweep across it and he looked skyward at
Edward Hopper’s huffing and puffing seemed unnecessary since his stark
the roiling mass of dark-bellied cumulus. The call back to nature was
management of forms, light and shadow combined with the
strong as was the nostalgia of his youth in Salem, Ohio. Even as Rehn
psychological malaise of his characters had already been embraced by
mounted shows of his moody industrial and architecture work,
many ‘modern’ painters as more than adequate for membership in their
Burchfield began to experiment.
revolution. Hopper was a closet modernist against his will.
Charles Burchfield, The Mysterious Bird, 1917. 52.7 x 45 cm. Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware, bequest of John L. Sexton.
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Charles Burchfield, Gateway to September, 1946-1956. 106.7 x 142.2 cm. Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee, gift of the Benwood Foundation.
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Charles Burchfield, Summer Solstice, 1961-1966. 48.9 x 65.6 cm. Collection of Mr and Mrs Harry Spiro.
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Charles Burchfield arrived at that same status by dint of revisiting the
and Josephine Hopper – had learned to be happy with a frugal life.
fantasies of his youth. Going back in time for almost any artist, regardless
However, searching for a bit more security Charles farmed himself out
of medium, involves a resurrection of the good, the bad and the
as an art teacher to various institutions. For an artist, teaching requires
insufferable, as the egos born in simmering hormones must face the
feedback from the students in proportion to the artist’s deeply-felt gift
harsh reality of a more mature evaluation. “Almost any artist” applies to
of knowledge. This feedback is not always forthcoming. The ratio of
Burchfield. He was ecstatic over his past watercolours to the point of
truly gifted artists in a class to the ungifted grinds and the time-wasting
using the original paintings not as simple inspirations for new work, but
layabouts is a tiny percentage. Fortunately, as sales improved based on
as part of the new paintings. He actually pasted wings of paper to the
the Whitney show, his need to teach matched his diminishing desire for
sides of the small originals and stroked out the original concept onto the
the job.
larger field. He was as happy as a small child with the results. Frank Rehn was aghast.
As his financial worries went away so did his health, and in the late 1950s and early 1960s he was struck by low blood pressure, asthma and a
Ultimately, having Burchfield’s cobbled-together bits-and-tatters was
bleeding ulcer, which put him on a rollercoaster of recovery and illness
better than no Burchfields at all, so Rehn assembled a show of the
that severely cut short his ability to paint. He was almost seventy when
“reconstructions”. Burchfield would not see the exhibition though,
he was hit by a heart attack while sketching in the woods and added
because he had taken his paints off into the wilds of western New York
Digitalis to his pharmaceutical collection alongside Orinase for diabetes,
state, caught up in windblown daisies, lashing trees, heaving shrubs and
listing all his drugs in his journal. Charles came to rely on Bertha to help
the “impression of butterflies in motion”, he wrote to Rehn.
him through each day and help set up his easel in the field.
The more Burchfield’s fantasies took hold of his subject matter, the more
He laboured on with the same sure hand, turning out dozens of studies
metamorphosis took place. Wind zephyrs took shapes like sails catching
and building his paintings from what he saw, highly seasoned with what
the breeze, trailing from tree branches as inhabited cocoons that would
he felt and sensed and could codify with his brush. He did not just paint
detach at the next gust. In reversion to his past vocabulary of vibrations,
nature, he worshipped it, felt its tug in his vitals. Looking at his final
semi-transparent gauze-like membranes and the dancing calligraphy of
works is like observing living things through the eyes of the things
creatures humming, buzzing and devouring their kind, he transformed
themselves. His love had always been in communicating about nature
nature into his own private expressionism, a codex unique to translation
whether in words or drawings and he accomplished both. Burchfield was
of vision and sound.
almost completely self-invented and fortunately had the technical skills to release that ocean of creativity.
Of course, this fluctuation in styles and some uneven quality in the reconstructions caused cash flow problems at home. Honours and
On 10 January 1967, Charles and Bertha were in West Seneca at the
medals began coming his way as did retrospective shows, and in 1956
Chestnut Lodge having lunch when his seventy-three-year-old heart
a very comprehensive show of his work was hosted by the Whitney
finally gave out and he collapsed. He had been a gentle man who had
Museum. Never big spenders, Charles and Bertha – quite like Edward
found a homely niche in the Midwest and turned it into a garden.
Charles Burchfield, Eye of God in the Woods, 1949. 120.7 x 64.8 cm. Vatican Museums, Vatican City.
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Charles Burchfield, Glory to God, 1953. 119.4 x 69.9 cm (central panel), 119.4 x 24.1 cm. The Warner Collection of Gulf States Paper Corporation, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Charles Burchfield, The Four Seasons, 1949-1960. 141.9 x 121 cm. Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois.
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andrew wyeth (1917-2009) Christina’s World was not unlike Andrew Wyeth’s world. The metaphors are
also accepted the flip-side of his choice of visualisation – the critical
endless and have all been used. Only the breathless hiss of the long grass
condemnation that his work appeared ‘photographic’ in its stark realism.
and the distant flapping sound of the black shirt on the laundry line break
The months of work lavished on each painting are less spent in duplication
the stillness of this painting, until she moves again towards the distant
than in re-ordering the natural and man-made elements to conform to
shelter. She scrapes and struggles over every blade of grass, hauling with her
Wyeth’s personal vision. Wyeth’s textures, while resembling the exquisite
arms and dragging the baggage of her useless appendages behind her. But
surfaces explored by photographers Walker Evans and Edward Weston, are
she won’t move. Christina has been fixed to the side of that slope since the
skilfully used to hold the eye, to create tension where sunlight and shade
last brush stroke at the end of summer 1948. The execution of the original
meet, or whitewashed wood is draped with the tangle of fishing net. As
rough sketch had taken three and a half months. Wyeth’s flawless technique
William Harnett demonstrated with his exquisite still-lifes, the surface can
with egg tempera and dry brush could not be hurried. The painting sold for
tell a story of use and neglect, of artisanship and jury-rig. The textures of
$1,800 (about $15,500 in today’s dollars) – one of the great bargains in
faces suggest emotions beneath the skin planted there over a lifetime.
modern art history – to hang in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. So, Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World is a signature work, a painting Like Christina, Andrew Wyeth has not moved, either physically from the
forever linked to his name, just as Hopper has Nighthawks and Wood is
windswept coastal tidewaters of Maine and Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania
present in American Gothic. The painting says as much about the artist
or creatively from the internal movement of his own personal conjuring
as it does about the subject, because each painter’s biography can be
machine. As Charles Burchfield, another nature painter, tried to visualise
read in his brush strokes.
sounds, Wyeth has successfully painted stillness. As Edward Hopper attempted to portray both expectation and resignation, Wyeth has
Andrew Wyeth was born on 12 July 1917 in Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania, the
created flashes of recognition that occur in the corners of our lives, in our
youngest of five children. Andrew was a sickly child and so his mother and
peripheral vision. While Hopper peered in through windows, the
father made the decision to remove him from school after he contracted
perpetual voyeur, Wyeth looks out from within. Grant Wood commanded
whooping cough and thereafter he was home-schooled in every subject
his tempera medium into fantasy compositions and into portraits who
including art. Andy’s father, Newell Convers Wyeth, was a giant in every sense
glanced away in the manner of the Flemish masters. Wyeth’s egg
of the word. In the Golden Era of illustration, ‘N.C.’ Wyeth’s talent towered
tempera compositions seem to be enticed from the surface, magically
over most of his peers and, as a big man beneath an unruly bush of curly hair
stroked up from, rather than painted down on, the panel as though the
with muscular shoulders and strong hands, he was the patriarch of his family.
scene had been there all the time just waiting to be released. From N.C. Wyeth’s brushes thundered the hereditary Knights of the As Christine had refused to use her father’s wheelchair he had needed
Round Table, galloping and clanking into fields of valour, great sets of sail
because of arthritis, choosing to crawl rather than admitting to her
billowed and cracked against Caribbean skies as cannons belched smoke
handicap, Wyeth discovered his tools of expression early on and stayed
and flame and hot iron crashed into Spanish galleons from ships of war
with them. He eventually explored the earth tones and ivory whites,
flying the Jolly Roger. Old Uncas stood over the fallen Magua, bloodied
textures that are part of the rock, clapboard, sand dune, pebbled shore, or
war club in hand as the Last of the Mohicans. All these scenes of bold
wind-scoured wood, not the surface of the panel or paper. Andrew Wyeth
adventure flowed from Andrew’s father. They flowed onto book covers,
Andrew Wyeth, Trodden Weed, 1951. Tempera on panel, 71.1 x 46.4 cm. Collection of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth.
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into magazines, onto posters and spread across advertising. The Wyeths’
breakfast and rouse the house. And not just porridge or cold cereal; he
lifestyle had escalated with two sons and three daughters to a level of
prepared pancakes beneath a liberal coating of sliced apples and bananas
wealth that demanded hard work and a constant income.
and grapefruit stuffed with powdered sugar in the centre. As he thrust himself into all their lives, never passing up a moment to deliver a lesson
Andrew’s mother, Carol, the former Carolyn Brocius, managed to keep a level
or a homily for success, Carol became a quiet, calming island refuge for
of calm amid the circus while N.C. provided the finest of everything: food,
the children before they were stampeded off into yet another adventure,
entertainment, cars, clothes and education – except for Andrew, who was the
another project, another object lesson by N.C. He gave the best and
runt of the litter and subject to illnesses. His home schooling in academics was
expected only the best of their efforts in return.77
sorely lacking compared to the endless stack of drawings that flowed from his pad under his father’s supervision. At the age of twelve he was turning into a
Andrew, by all accounts, was a charming little boy: cheerful, inquisitive,
fine artist, but he was not literate enough to find a word in the dictionary. His
disciplined and thoroughly spoiled by everyone in the family, but never
older brother Nathaniel had the organizational makings of a scientist, and his
seemed to take advantage of his exalted position. He was too busy,
sisters, Henriette, Ann and Carolyn, were all of individual temperaments that
always investigating something. His hands were never still. He also knew
kept the house lively. Ann wanted to be an artist or a musician and N.C. even
his audience and how far he could push the envelope before becoming
created a studio for her, but, despite the boy’s physical and nervous problems
the victim of his father’s “Wagnerian Roar”. Once he told a joke at the
N.C. had bet his money on Andrew as inheritor of the creative flame.
dinner table that convulsed his entire family, including the usually straitlaced N.C. “Who was the first carpenter in the Bible?” he asked. “Eve,”
Andrew drew for hours at a time. Being the smallest Wyeth he tried to avoid
he answered, “She made Adam’s banana stand.”78
being bothered by his siblings, ‘talked to’ by his father or fussed over by his mother. Drawing was an escape. Fortunately, by the time Andrew arrived, N.C.
While he developed this puckish personality and an ability to parry the hard
had backed off fatherhood a few degrees and everyone was able to breathe
moments of life, he also perceived that below the surface of his caring father
better without all the ‘fathering’ inflicted on them. But Andrew was a special
lurked an explosive flashpoint. N.C. Wyeth’s action drawings featured hacking
case. Illness dogged him at every turn. He suffered from anaemia, whooping
and stabbing pirates, blasting flintlocks, knives and tomahawks dripping with
cough, a double hernia and dripping sinuses, and was targeted by N.C. for
blood. Eyes blazed, muscles bulged and even young Jim Hawkins managed to
special treatment. When nightmares woke him, there was N.C. sleeping
empty two pistols into the face of Israel Hands in Treasure Island.
alongside, or sitting beside the bed ready to rub him down with cool witch hazel alcohol. The entire brood of Wyeth children was racked with sickness at
Unchecked violence was never far away. Any manifestation of fear was
one time or another. Henriette came down with polio. Ann suffered from
held in contempt; nor was turning away from a fight tolerated. If Andrew
peritonitis and Nathaniel had bouts of internal bleeding and stomach seizures,
managed to avoid physical conflict through the charm of his personality,
so N.C. was everywhere, a live-in nanny, cajoling and administering to the sick.
or the ability to defuse a situation, the undercurrent of violence handed down from N.C. remained in Andrew’s paintings.
When he wasn’t reading the manuscripts he had to illustrate in the dead
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of night, he was up at dawn, sketching in his studio, stopping in time to
If the youngest Wyeth had free rein for his imagination, his first brush
crash into the kitchen in a pandemonium of pots and pans to prepare
with academia was a blow. Thrust into first grade in a Chadd’s Ford public
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Andrew Wyeth, Maga’s Daughter, 1966. Tempera on panel, 67.3 x 76.8 cm. Collection of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth.
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school, the interaction with other pupils (survival was more like it) and the
him a limp that caused him to walk with an unusual hobbled gait with
long days almost shattered him. He begged to come home. His indulgent
his feet splayed out. He carried this affliction for the rest of his life.
father decided he was more capable of giving Andrew the best education and placed him in the hands of a succession of tutors. Unfortunately, the
Unlike so many artists who have had to go against their parents’ wishes,
boy manipulated his tutors and some of the home schooling was largely
or at best not count on them for inspiration to enter the arts as a
a failure. It wasn’t until he was twelve years old that people discovered
professional, Andrew Wyeth literally vibrated like a taut bowstring with
he didn’t know how to read, or recite his ABC.
hypersensitivity and alertness to everything around him. As N.C. thundered from project to project designed to set their imaginations
With a heavy schedule of classics and poetry, that fault was finally
alight, he saw to it that they had the proper tools to accomplish their goals
remedied. While the work on his mind progressed, there was little anyone
– at least the tools he deemed necessary. The youngest, spindly, sickly
could do about his body. At school he was an outsider, a queer duck on
Wyeth grew into a sturdy lad thoroughly enmeshed in his father’s universe.
the periphery. His illnesses had caused his hip to slide out of joint giving
During an interview with Thomas Hoving for the text in the catalogue of
Andrew Wyeth, Long Limb, 1998. Tempera on panel, 121.9 x 182.8 cm. Collection of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth.
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his exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1976-77, Andrew
Manipulating the characters he cast himself in the lead of the blond hero
remembered: “I played alone, and wandered a great deal over the hills,
who gets the beautiful blonde heroine in the end. In all, it was a
painting watercolours that literally exploded, slapdash over my pages, and
resourceful production.
drew in pencil or pen and ink in a wild and undisciplined manner.” His second task was the completion of his first fantasy picture. Andrew With Nathaniel clearly on a path to a career in engineering and Anna
had been making innumerable watercolours from nature showing a
steeped in music, Henriette and Carolyn became the focus of N.C.’s art
growing sophistication with the medium. This picture arrived fully
tutoring. Andrew, while loved and included in family events, was pretty
formed from his imagination; an antique castle loomed over a
much left to his own artistic devices until he reached the age of fifteen.
countryside as medieval knights hurled themselves against its walls and
The sudden emergence of his ascension to the mantle came when he
ramparts. The details, the rendering, everything was there in N.C.
created a toy theatre for the production of a performance of The White
Wyeth’s eyes. At last, his son and the heir to N.C.’s creative skills had, in
Company, a pot-boiler romance adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle.
fact, drawn the sword from the stone.
Andrew Wyeth, Spring, 1978. Tempera on panel, 61 x 121.9 cm. Collection of the Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, anonymous gift.
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While this meant graduation to Andrew, it also committed the boy to a
tones. Here, he is lavish with his blue skies, water and clouds, suggesting
monastic existence under his father’s tutelage to report to the ‘lower
the sharp, clean breezes that swept the beaches and roiled the offshore
studio’ where N.C. worked on murals, for rigorous academic artistic
lobster beds. What would later become metaphor was now observation
training. Howard Pyle, the great illustrator, had driven Wyeth in these
and enjoying mastery over his medium.
academic studies so he knew their value to determine proportion and line control. Andrew immediately hated the exercises, drawing cones, cubes,
Also at this time, N.C. attempted to test Andrew’s mettle as an illustrator
plaster casts, wax still-lifes, the eerie Lincoln death mask and the classic
and subcontracted some jobs to him. A few Andrew completed with
bust of George Washington. The mantra of drawing teachers everywhere
N.C.’s name affixed, but his heart wasn’t into the interpretation of
pursued Andrew through these pitiless examinations: “You must know
manuscripts that often did not appeal to him. Finally, N.C. gave in and
the rules before you can break them.”
backed away from his son’s development.
N.C. Wyeth subjected his son to a constant pattern of construction and
Andrew’s confidence in his watercolours was given a boost when, in the
deconstruction, complimenting, then tearing down, diminishing his character
autumn of 1936 the Philadelphia Art Alliance hung twenty of his paintings.
for sloppy habits and then building it back up. At this time, Peter Hurd,
Using that show and an introduction from one of N.C.’s associates in New
another student of Wyeth’s and Henriette’s boyfriend and eventual husband,
York, Wyeth approached the MacBeth Gallery for an exhibition. This gallery
began to mentor Andrew. He showed the younger Wyeth the egg tempera
had built a reputation for exhibiting American artists, especially Realists
technique that Andrew would seize upon later and carry to brilliant lengths.
such as Frederic Remington, Winslow Homer and Ashcan School painter George Luks. The gallery was impressed and promised him a one-man
For a change of climate, the Wyeths spent their summers away from the
exhibit the following year. Spurred on, Andrew packed up his father’s car
Chadd’s Ford farming community to travel to a summer camp in New
and drove it to Maine the following June and plunged into his work. He
England, first in Needham and later in Port Clyde, Maine. Along the sea-
made no studies; he just painted. If a painting failed in any way before it
scoured shores, rocky coasts and dark pine woods he roamed with his old
was finished, it was abandoned and he moved on. When he finished, he
scarred tackle box and fresh water to squat among the stones and paint.
sent his collection to his father who made a selection, had them matted
He most admired Winslow Homer, even going on a pilgrimage to Prout’s
and sent along to the MacBeth Gallery. He wrote to Andrew in part:
Neck and visiting Homer’s cabin to stand before his easel and soak up the
“They look magnificent, and with no reservations whatsoever, they
resonance of that large room still crowded with memorabilia.
represent the very best watercolours I ever saw! This remark from your old dad may not mean much to you, but I believe what I say
His watercolours of this period reflect Homer’s influence and, considering
and I am certain I am right.”
Wyeth’s age, they also reflect the sophistication in his work. Many of these were painted en plein air – on location in front of the scene. The
In his later years, Wyeth has been able to remember that letter word for word.
harmony of his colours and suggested shapes splashed on in the wet reveal incredible pre-visualisation and interpretation with a minimum of
The entire Wyeth family except for Peter and Henriette Hurd, who were
brushwork – classic watercolour technique. Also his colour choice at this
in New Mexico, breezed into New York for the show opening on 19
time shows nothing of his later warm palette of browns, greys and earth
October 1937. For Andrew, the situation did not bode well. Nobody had
Andrew Wyeth, Witches Broom, 1990. Tempera on panel, 67.6 x 55.2 cm. Collection of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth. Andrew Wyeth, Christina’s World, 1948. Tempera on gessoed panel, 81.9 x 121.3 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York.
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any money because of the Great Depression. Who would want paintings
As his career moved along through the late 1930s, Andrew Wyeth’s
by an unknown kid from Pennsylvania? That opening night was quiet as
cheerleaders, his family, began drifting into their own lives and goals. One
a few invitees straggled through the two rooms. One painting sold. The
constant always remained. N.C. Wyeth was still the patriarch, but even the
Wyeths returned home with encouraging pats on the shoulder. Andrew
family’s long-time guiding hand was showing some unsteadiness. Since
stayed behind and busied himself the next morning until curiosity and
the 1920s, N.C. had struggled with his desire to a achieve recognition in
embarrassment finally brought him back to the MacBeth. Maybe
fine art equal to his reputation as an illustrator. Most of his greatest
someone had bought another painting…
illustrations were behind him and had sealed his place in the continuum of illustrative art. But all his creative life he continued to experiment with
Both rooms at the MacBeth Gallery were crammed with people and
both Impressionism and the use of broken colour bordering on the garish,
when they left there was nothing left but the nails in the walls.
and keeping an eye on ‘modern’ concepts. He searched for the Holy Grail that might hold the solution to his fine art aspirations.
Following his triumph, Wyeth headed north to Maine, following in the footsteps of his idol, Winslow Homer. But once he was there, he was
His change of fortune did not lie with technique as Andrew saw it. N.C.
swept by feelings of homesickness and a crushing mental block with his
would hold court for hours discussing, talking and venting his mental
watercolours. An exchange of letters with his sympathetic father pulled
energy until there was little left to apply to a painting. While Andrew saw
him back and he turned to his second creative tool, tempera. He had
complexity in the simplest subjects, his father was held prisoner by his
painted his first tempera painting in 1936 and had sent it along with his
own bigness, his own bombast. To seek wisdom within himself, he pared
watercolours to the MacBeth show, but the work never reached the
his ideas down to the bone, which had the same effect as saying the
walls. He brought his temperas up to Maine and used them to achieve
same word over and over until it lost all meaning.
greater detail and more meticulous effects. He discovered he needed more technical training with the medium and headed back to Chadd’s
When Andrew’s 1937 show at the MacBeth Gallery sold out, N.C. was
Ford to work alongside his father.
ecstatic for his son, but as he beat Andrew’s drum, his own inability to achieve a like triumph as a fine artist dragged down his self-esteem. The
Andrew had already developed a dry brush technique with watercolour
arrival of the 1940s and World War II only continued N.C.’s depression.
where the water is squeezed from the brush and the individual bristles
He wrote in 1941: “All sense of serenity and security has crumbled away,
are used to stroke on colour and crosshatching. Peter Hurd had adopted
and all I can do, when I think about it all, is to gawk stupidly at the
egg tempera from Renaissance painters and demonstrated it to Andrew.
retreating pageant of my dreams and hopes.”79
Using pure mineral pigments, the yolk is separated from the white of the egg and the clingy clear albumen removed by rolling the yolk around in
The war also complicated the Wyeth clan’s life. As naval gunnery tests
the palm of the hand. The yolk is pierced and mixed with distilled water.
and training rattled the dishes in their Port Clyde home, ‘Eight Bells’, to
Pigment is added and the thickness can be adjusted from thin, like a
N.C.’s horror, the military draft reached out for Andrew in 1943. His
glaze, to a firm impasto. This range gave Wyeth a 180-degree change
arthritic hip saved him from a trip to the Solomon Islands. That near-miss
from the showy and splashy watercolour, but avoided his distaste for
was only one shaky event that shook N.C.’s world. John McCoy, one of
“greasy” oil paint on “important” pictures.
N.C.’s students, had married Ann Wyeth in 1935. But N.C. was not losing
Andrew Wyeth, Distant Thunder, 1961. Tempera on panel, 121.9 x 77.5 cm. Private collection.
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Ann. She was setting up their home in Chadd’s Ford where she would
All of these marriages bled away N.C.’s children and this change of
pursue her music studies. Carolyn, always strong-minded, defied her
interaction removed his direct influence on their world and allowed them to
father who had no use for her intended, a part-time N.C. student,
come into their own. This was a huge change for all of them, stepping out
Francesco Della Donne, known to the family as ‘Frank’. After knowing
of the bear-hug reach of their father, and it came at a time when N.C. Wyeth
each other for only four months, the couple eloped to be married in
was going through his own agonising transition. He realized the work that
Arlington, Virginia in 1941. N.C. never did like Frank and when an
had made him famous was well behind him and he had yet to achieve his
accident caused Carolyn to break her ankle and walk with a limp for the
overriding ambition to make a name as a fine artist. To Andrew, however,
rest of her life, N.C. flew at Frank for not taking care of his daughter. Still
the release proved a godsend, because Betsy stepped up into N.C.’s place.
crushed by that rebuke and feeling like an outsider, Frank joined the Air
She did not paint, could not cook and had to learn many domestic jobs from
Force and returned in 1945 only to abandon Carolyn shortly thereafter
scratch, but she had a grand intellect, instinctual and questioning that, as
and an uncontested divorce followed.
she learned more of Andrew’s world, was able to challenge him.
In 1936, Nat defied N.C. to court and propose to Caroline Pyle, the niece of
Andrew Wyeth shifted gradually to egg tempera as he had learned from
a famed illustrator and N.C. Wyeth’s mentor. She was a pretty young poet
Peter Hurd. In 1941 he created a high key landscape titled Dil Huey Farm
who had been stranded by a financial situation. N.C.’s objections cooled and
with blue skies and lavenders in the shadows, not unlike his earlier
he gave the pair his blessing and they were married in January 1937.
watercolours but in the new medium. It is a simple enough scene with the tree occupying the centre of the wide shallow board, but it has an
By this time, Henriette Wyeth had already been married to Peter Hurd for ten
uncharacteristic shimmer that goes well with his later egg tempera work.
years and they lived in New Mexico where he was establishing himself as a
That same year, Peter Hurd and Andrew Wyeth held a two-man show at
painter and had collected well-heeled patrons. The nest was almost empty.
the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and the picture was displayed. It impressed the director of the Museum of Modern Art in their
Andrew had met Betsy James in 1939 when she was seventeen and he was
1943 American Realists and Magic Realists show.
a gangly twenty-two-year-old who had come over to see her father, Merle James. Andrew was impressed by both the girl and the stark simplicity of
The painting was a success, but, according to Andrew, Betsy did not like
their home, compared to the overstuffed ostentation of Wyeth’s Maine
it. She hit on the similarity to his early flamboyant watercolours. The
compound. After a year of courting, they decided to marry in May 1940.
painting might have been painted anywhere, not in the valley of the Dil
N.C. was dead against it. He had seen it before, promising talent married
Huey Farm. What was more important, painting colour or the telling the
and then ruined by a wife who made demands when all that was important
truth? His Impressionist tendencies, inherited from N.C.’s experiments,
was to paint. He even offered to build Andrew a studio and back him until
began to erode away. As he continued, Betsy began to see where his
he was established. Andrew and Betsy were equally stubborn and were
fascination with detail began to edge into obsession. She cautioned him
married at the James home in East Aurora, New York on 15 May 1940. As
that spending excruciating amounts of time on surfaces that have a
the service concluded and they were pronounced man and wife, it was the
minimum impact on the story of the painting was wasting his time and
son Andrew and the father, N.C. Wyeth that fell into each other’s arms
the viewer’s. She even struck out against his formulaic approach to every
sobbing, leaving Betsy to wonder what she had got into.
work, plotting out the composition in pencil or pen and ink and then
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Andrew Wyeth, Weatherside, 1965. Tempera on panel, 122.2 x 70.8 cm. Private collection.
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“painting inside the lines”. He was painting with a safety net, taking
expression and the observer. To seek freedom of so-called free and
away the creative risk of discovery through an accident.
accidental brushwork… Not to exhibit craft but rather to submerge it; and make it rightfully the hand-maiden of beauty,
He found some interest in the Expressionists who were beginning to
power and emotional content.”
penetrate the more conventional, the more conservative art scene in the United States. The growing avant-garde and their non-objective visual
World War II caused the art market to slide and Andrew’s sales of his
translation of their manifestos, their exorcism of personal demons that
watercolours dropped to as low as $38 apiece. Shows returned
failed to trust in nature and the ability of the viewers to prise out those
minuscule amounts after the costs of catalogue printing, framing and the
demons held no future for him. In the Corcoran Show catalogue where
opening party were figured into the books. They had no bank account,
he was pigeon-holed under the ‘Magic Realists’ category, Andrew wrote:
practically no furniture in the old school house rented from N.C. where
“My aim is to escape from the medium with which I work. To leave
Andrew painted, Betsy sewed her own clothes, drapes and tablecloths
no residue of technical mannerisms to stand between my
while Andrew’s toy soldiers from his childhood went into a bookcase next
Andrew Wyeth, Master Bedroom, 1965. Watercolour on paper, 53.7 x 74.9 cm. Private collection.
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— Andrew Wyeth —
to the collection of works illustrated by N.C. Fortunately, as usual the
in colours, food, reading material, or just showing up every single day
Wyeth family chipped in with support: a wing-back chair, and dinner
for a ‘visit’.
invitations, and drew Andrew back into the family circle – N.C.’s family circle. While Betsy became accepted for who she was – Andrew’s wife –
Her critical job, as Andrew saw it, was to distract N.C. so Andrew
she preferred to remain on her own ground.
could work. His father practically set up Andrew’s palette each day, hovering over paintings in progress. It was the son’s method to
N.C. Wyeth, the patriarch, could not accept this chink in his command
disappear when he left the school house each day, to travel his own
of the family and treated Andrew and his non-conforming wife like a
path, make discoveries. Betsy, like him, had to adopt a secret life of her
pair of hunting dogs who would not come to heel and needed
own and the two of them shared moments when N.C. was not
constant training to measure up. Every day Andrew left the school
around. Like two speckled fawns crouching in a sun-dappled glade at
house to work and Betsy felt abandoned to N.C.’s next thrust at her
the edge of the great looming woods, they made their life outside
individualism, or stab into her intellectual level, or jibe against her taste
N.C.’s overpowering presence.
Andrew Wyeth, Overflow, 1978. Drybrush on paper, 58.4 x 73.7 cm. Private collection.
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By 1942, the younger Wyeths needed money and Andrew began
it into the smoke box sending it back down onto the tracks where the
accepting illustration jobs to Betsy’s chagrin. “You’ll be nothing but
process was repeated rolling over and over for 43.58 metres until the
Norman Rockwell for the rest of your life,” she pouted when he
roof had been smashed down. Newell’s small body had been flung into
painted a cover for the Saturday Evening Post in 1943 for $500 and
the trackbed, his neck broken. The shivering locomotive vented steam
they offered him a contract. Cash was cash, however, and commercial
in hissing clouds from the cylinder cocks, while atop the steam dome
art illustration paid well. Andrew had not the skills but the Wyeth
the engine’s whistle screamed into the valley. N.C. Wyeth died as he
name to draw in clients.
had lived, spectacularly.
With the income, he could return to his long walks down the roads and
The death of the creative patriarch, the life force that had motivated
across the fields of the Brandywine Valley where he was born.
and driven the Wyeth children to their various callings, had a profound
Neighbours never knew when he might turn up at their back door. His
effect on the Andrew Wyeth household. They were in Maine when the
tempera, Soaring, that he began in 1942 and finished in 1950, literally
accident happened and packed immediately for the return to Chadd’s
shows a bird’s eye view of the valley’s topography. The buzzards pass
Ford. Andrew was stricken as though a curtain had been rung down
over the John Andress house, or curve to the right and pass over
on the first twenty-eight years of his life. A great oak tree that shaded
Mother Archie’s church in the black community started by the Quakers
the lawn had suddenly been uprooted and taken away and now the
in the nineteenth century, or they curve to the left passing over the
grass was laid bare to the relentless sun. For Betsy, the feeling was one
Kuerner Farm where he would spend many creative hours.
of relief. She explained to Richard Meryman, Andrew’s biographer: “I had an enormous sense of relief as though a terrific sense of
This would be his way for the rest of his life, wandering Chadd’s Ford,
responsibility had been lifted from me. I had never wanted the
the Brandywine Valley and then Port Clyde summers along the coast
responsibility of… playing this double game, being part of a cover-up
of Maine. His neighbours became his subjects. It was in the rolling
against his father. I was tired of that.”
farmland that N.C. Wyeth drove a woody station wagon along the Ring Road near the Kuerner Farm. Beside him was his grandson,
For the rest, even though they had scattered to their own lives each –
Newell, whom Carolyn had sent along with Grandpa for an outing.
except possibly Nat the engineer – remained to some degree enfolded
Near the crest of a hill, N.C. stopped and as usual had a lesson for his
in that huge embrace, so that even in death N.C. Wyeth was still part
young charge. He stopped the car and took the boy into a corn field
of his children and indelibly stamped on the remaining years of his wife
where farm hands were hand-shucking ears of corn. They returned to
Carol. From the turmoil of guilt, rage and sadness that stirred Andrew
the car and drove to the crest where the Reading Railway crossed the
Wyeth, he worked out an epiphany that he explained later that before
valley. The sun was bright into the windshield and N.C. braked,
the death of N.C.: “I just wanted to paint. The seriousness, the
squinting to get his bearings. He looked into the face of the driver in
dimension wasn’t there. I didn’t have much to say. Edward Hopper had
the cab of an unscheduled mail train bursting out of the sunlight. N.C.
an emotional reason to paint. Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Frost
raised his arm. The locomotive slammed into full reverse and the
had a reason to write poetry, but for the first time I felt a reason… But
brakes grabbed hold, screaming and smoking. But nothing could be
that didn’t dawn on me until after my father’s death, which put me in
done; the iron cowcatcher scooped up the station wagon and crashed
touch with something beyond me, things to think and feel, things that
Andrew Wyeth, Renfield, 1999. Tempera on panel, 87 x 73 cm. Collection of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth.
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— Andrew Wyeth —
mean everything to me. Then I needed to put them down as sharply as
The artist’s story is a personal reflection, not something anyone
possible – with the clarity of the north wind.”
viewing the painting could draw from its elements unless familiar with
81
the situation and time frame. Wyeth ran from his father’s death, but The painting Winter 1946 marks an important watershed in Wyeth’s
he ran back in time, not forward. He had never painted a portrait of
professional career as it was the first work following his father’s death
his father, and began to use neighbours as surrogates for that
and the first of what became a lifelong series of proxy self-portraits. This
omission. Always he looms within the painting as the rolling wind-
painting shows a neighbouring boy, Alan Lynch, running down a hill near
scoured landscape, the wall, the field, the rusting wagon box, the
a snow-spotted fence-line bordering a field of high grass. The slope
fluttering curtain.
reaches almost to the top of the painting and represents the crest of the ridge where the Reading Railway runs. Beyond the crest lie the tracks, the
He was there, too, in Christina’s World, painted at the house owned by Al
road and the crossing where N.C. Wyeth died in his car. Wyeth
and Christina Olson in 1948. Just as this painting marked a critical turning
commented, “…was me, at a loss—that hand drifting in the air was my
point in his professional career, her death in 1968 suggested a sea change
free soul, groping.”82
in his life and outlook. During the years of introspection that followed his
Andrew Wyeth, Adrift, 1982. Tempera on panel, 70.2 x 70.2 cm. Collection of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth. Andrew Wyeth, Braids, 1977. Tempera on panel, 41.9 x 52 cm. Private collection.
245
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father’s death, he had cast himself in many roles in his paintings, physical,
Painted in the Erickson’s sauna, the painting has Siri staring straight out at
spiritual and natural. He discovered he had begun to fall into a routine,
the viewer. The flush in her cheeks is natural and her expression is neutral
finding locations and returning again and again to those first twenty-eight
as though frozen in the act of exposure, a recognition of vulnerability
years sheltered by and attached to his larger than life father. In the autumn
before either laughing seductively or covering up. The picture was a total
of 1967, as they prepared to leave their home in Cushing, Maine for Chadd’s
departure for Wyeth. He painted her again in 1977 at the age of eighteen
Ford, Betsy and Andrew stopped at a house owned by a Finn named
and it is easy to see how she was becoming a beauty, self-possessed and
Erickson to look at an old shed he had attached to the rear of the building.
unafraid to show herself in a full-length nude against a vaguely shaded
As they followed him around the main house Wyeth saw Siri Erickson
dark wall and floor. Once again, Wyeth bowed to Betsy’s insistence that
standing in a woodshed door. She was thirteen years old, wearing a bikini,
he take the leap and paint the girl without a stitch on.83
and holding a black cat. Her blonde hair straggled down onto her shoulders and her fair lashes barely blinked as she watched Andrew and Betsy pass.
Although Siri became an early subject of public exhibitions and cause for twinges of jealousy from a surprised Betsy, work on an even more surprising
Andrew asked if he could return and paint her. She assented as did her
– and secret – project had been under way for about five years. Karl Kuerner
father. Wyeth made a quick sketch, but her image became deeply
and his farm were frequent subjects in Wyeth’s paintings in and around
imprinted his mind. In January 1968, Christina Olson died and the
Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania. In 1971, the elderly Kuerner needed help
Wyeths returned to Cushing for the funeral, a funeral that took away
around the farm and Helga Testorf arrived. She was thirty-two years old and
more than a person Andrew had come to cherish for her independence
had lived in Chadd’s Ford since 1961. Skilled in domestic work as well as
and stoicism, but also a subject, a house and a creative motivator that
music, baking and teaching, she became Kuerner’s caretaker. Struck by her
had returned satisfaction and relief to his internalised emotions. He could
fresh beauty, Wyeth painted her portrait at the Kuerner farm. However,
not get young Siri out of his mind. That summer he visited her again and
when it was finished, he didn’t take it back to Betsy. Instead, Wyeth stored
painted a water colour of her in the bikini.
it in a third-floor room at the farm. Soon, he began another picture of Helga and studies of her. He never spoke of this project to anyone, nor did she as
Betsy saw the painting and wondered why Andrew hadn’t asked her to
painting after painting ended up in the farmhouse room.
remove the halter top. The idea terrified Wyeth. Siri had just turned fourteen years old and was already a voluptuous young woman with that
Eventually, Kuerner’s infirmities forced her to leave the farm to be
frank, steady stare. But Andrew screwed up his courage and proposed
replaced by a relative who was also a nurse. At this point Carolyn Wyeth,
the idea to her and she, in turn, went into the house to ask her parents.
Andrew’s sister and family contrarian, stepped in and offered her small
Wyeth remembered himself thinking, “Oh shit, here’s where they’re
studio, still in place at the house. The creation of the paintings became a
going to get a shotgun.”
grand conspiracy with Helga moving into the Wyeth house as a nurse for the semi-crippled sister. Helga had never modelled before, but Wyeth had
246
To his relief and surprise, no shotgun was forthcoming and the girl had
a gift for putting sitters at ease, concentrating on them, often moving in
her parents’ permission. After making Wyeth close his eyes, she stripped
very close to peer at details as he worked and she found the experience
off the top and there she was, a sudden breath of life after all that death
of being scrutinised enjoyable. Sessions would go on for hours, but she
and stillness that had come before.
never complained even when her limbs became numb.
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Andrew Wyeth, Airborne, 1996. Tempera on panel, 101.6 x 121.9 cm. Collection of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth.
247
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His first Helga painting was Letting Her Hair Down, finished in 1972. The
The release of the Helga collection to the public was traumatic for
difference between the virginal Siri peering at the artist in the sauna and
both Andrew and Betsy as the “single fifteen-year painting” came to
this Prussian-born experienced woman with knitted brows and a set
an end. Many things came to an end with it. Chadd’s Ford and its
mouth is startling. The study in textures between her wisps of fine
wonderfully eccentric neighbours became something else and age
blonde hair, the clean set of her jaw line and the weight of her breasts
began shutting down Andrew’s peripatetic lifestyle. Betsy continued
resting on her crossed arms gives off a solid air of guarded expectation
her management of the Wyeth empire of shows, print collections and
and vitality.
gallery requests. Helga joined the family as a care-giver to the ageing Andrew, who had endured hip surgery. His personality evolved as his
He finally realised his dream of recording a person’s life over a long period
work circulating as prints and reproductions or the occasional show
of time. By 1985, the then forty-seven-year-old Helga posed in a winter-
further entrenched his iconic status. Interviews were few and far
scape against the harsh bark of a very old and scarred tree. She is in profile
between as he eased into his nineties. The work was still there,
encased in a heavy jacket and scarf, her eyes closed. There is the sadness
experiments, fiddling with technique for a different look, a different
that comes at the end of a journey, but also a resignation to a concluding
vocabulary, but he couldn't paint the indignities of age and the
chapter as the tree shields her from the harsh wind above the Wyeth
perceptions that lingered, the ever-present image of his father's dead
house in Chadd’s Ford.
face in the coffin. Abandoned, and yet a stalwart example of Nietzsche's quote: "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger."
Between 1971 and 1985 the work continued, building up a body of 240 separate pieces with 140 of those being full paintings and the
A large collection of his work hangs today in the Brandywine River
rest studies and sketches.
Museum, a converted grist mill in Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania together with works by N.C. Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth. Andrew’s granddaughter,
Finally, at the age of sixty-eight, Wyeth presented the collection to his
Victoria, a clinical psychologist, spends time giving visitor tours that
startled wife. Betsy, who had always found security in her control of the
include inside stories about the works from when she knew them as a
household allowing Andrew free range for his creativity, suddenly
child. On occasion, Andrew and Betsy visited the museum, especially
confronted 240 pictures of this beautiful blonde girl, nude and clothed,
when one of his latest works was exhibited. At the age of ninety-one he
close-up and full-figured. She knew Andrew was faithful, but she also
still needed to see how the work looked "on the wall". When the Wyeths
knew he became who he painted, transported himself beneath their
arrived at the gallery, visitors were quietly and courteously shooed from
skin, explored every pore and hair, became intimate beyond love-
his presence since he no longer gave interviews or answered questions.
making. When the surprise became reasonably settled between them, a
He said, "Everything I have to say is on the walls.”85
single home for the collection was sought. In 1986, Leonard E.B. Andrews purchased the series and made it available for a coast-to-coast
The horror of being nailed down and defined can only be answered in the
tour organized by the National Gallery of Art from 1987-89. Some time
words of the productive patriarch, still bigger than life:
after the conclusion of the series debut, the Helga pictures came into the
“I’m not going to sit here and turn out nice temperas. ‘Oh, there’s
ownership of a private Japanese interest that still assembles exhibits of
another Wyeth! He ought to get a medal for popularity!’ Fuck
the works and allows access.
that! Really!”86
84
Andrew Wyeth, On the Edge, 2001. Tempera on panel, 123.8 x 124.8 cm. Private collection.
249
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notes 1
2
Teresa A. Carbone, « Eastman Johnson », Magazine Antiques,November 1999
3
Groce & Wallace, The New York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America, Yale University Press, New Heaven, 1957
4
Österreichisches Central-Commitee von der Weltausstelung zu Paris 1867 (http://www.expo2000.de/expo2000/geschichte)
21
Adams, op. cit., pp. 42-43
22
National Gallery of Art, Still-Life Five Dollar Bill, 1877,Philadelphia Museum of Art, Alex Simpson Jr Collection, http://www.nga.gov/feature/artnation/harnett/money_1.shtm
23
Nicolai Cikovsky Jr., “Sordid Mechanics” and “Monkey Talents” – The Illusionistic Tradition, edited by Doreen Bolger, Marc Simpson and John Wilmerding, Amon Carter Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harry Abrams, Inc. New York, 1992, p. 2
24
Alfred Frankenstein, After the Hunt : William Harnett and Other American Still Life Painters, 1870-1900, University of Los Angeles Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1969, p. 29
25
Stanley V. Henkels, The William Michael Harnett Collection: His Own Reserved Paintings, Models and Atelier Furnishings, sales catalogue, Philadelphia, Februry 23-24 1893
5
« The Paris Universal Exposition of 1867 », New York Times, December 25, 1866
6
Sarah Burns, « The Courtship of Winslow Homer – Letters Reveal Relationship with Helena de Kay », Magazine Antiques, February 2002
7
(http://webexhibits.org/pigments/indiv/overview/indianyellow.html)
26
Alfred Frankenstein, op. cit., p. 55
8
William Mullen, « Beneath the Colour, Secrets of the Artist », Chicago Tribune, Tribune Corporation, February 29, 2008, pp. 1 et 14
27
http://www.askart.com/AskART/artists/biography.aspx?artist=22050
28 9
David Tatham, Winslow Homer and the Great Forest, in the Catalogue for the Exhibition Winslow Homer : Masterworks from the Adirondacks held at the Fenimore Art Museum June 21 – September 6, 2004 in Ressource Library Magazine (http://www.fenimoreartmuseum.org)
Harold McCracken, Frederic Remington – Artist of the Old West, J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia and New York, 1947, p. 28
29
Ibid, p. 29
30
Peggy & Harold Samuels, Frederic Remington: A Biography, Doubleday & Co., Garden City New York, 1982, p. 36
31
Collier’s Weekly, « A Few Words from Mr. Remington », March 18, 1905
32
Frederic Remington, « On the Indian Reservation », Century Magazine, July 1889
10
William Innes Homer, Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art, Abbeville Press, 1992, p. 36
11
Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins, His Life and Work, Vol.1 Ams Pr. Inc., June 1977, p.27
12
H. Barbara Weinberg, Thomas Eakins, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001 33
Ibid
13
Henry Adams, Eakins Revealed – The Secret Life of an American Artist, Oxford University Press, New York, 2005, pp. 3-5
34
Harold McCracken, op.cit., pp. 66-67
14
Ibid, pp. 36-38
35
Poultney Bigelow, Seventy Summers, Longmans, Green & Co., 1925
15
Jeff L. Rosenheim, “Thomas Eakins, Artist-Photographer, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art” in Thomas Eakins and the Metropolitan Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994, p. 45
36
Harold McCracken, op.cit., p. 93
37
Ibid, p. 108
38
Ibid, p. 121
39
Garnett McCoy, “Reaction and Revolution 1900-1930” Art in America n°53, August-September 1965, p. 69
40
The Bruce Museum of Arts and Science, Painterly Controversy: William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, January 27 – April 29, 2007 (http://www.brucemuseum.org)
41
Ibid
42
Neal McLaughlin, « Ashcan School » (http://virtualology.com/hallofartmovements/ashcanschool.net)
16
Edward Lucie-Smith, American Realism, Harry Abrams, Inc. New York, 1994, p. 35
17
Ibid
18
Homer, op. cit., letter from Eakins to Edward H. Coates, September 12, 1886, p. 166
19
Elizabeth Johns, (PhD, Art Historian University of Pennsylvania),Thomas Eakins: Scenes from Modern Life, PBS (http://www.pbs.org/eakins)
20
250
Eastman Johnson, Paintings and Drawings of the Lake Superior Ojibwe,Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota Duluth, October 29, 2006 (http://www.d.umn.edu/tma)
Darrel Sewell, Thomas Eakins: Artist of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982, p. 78
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43
Jim Lane, « Everett Shinn, Biography », University of Phoenix, January 7 2000 (http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=g&p=c&a=b&ID=296)
64
Larry Jordan, « Grant Wood Revisited », Midwest Today, April-May 1996 (http://www.midtod.com/9603/grant_wood.phtml)
44
Mark Thistlehwaite, « George Luks, The Cafe Francis » (http://www.butlerart.com/pc_book/pages/george_luks_1866.htm)
65
Darrell Garwood, op.cit., p. 73
66
Ibid, pp. 75-76
45
Judith Hansen O’Toole, « George Luks – An Artistic Legacy », September 1997 (http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa563.htm)
67
Ibid, pp. 116-117
46
Jim Lane, op.cit.
68
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma98/haven/wood/criticism. html, in: Wanda M. Corn, op.cit., p. 131
47
Peter Anastas, « A Walker in the City », July 20, 2007 (http://peteranastas.blogspot.com/2007/07/walker-in-city-john-sloan-andgardens.html)
69
Darrell Garwood, op.cit., p. 152
70
Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA (http://www.dbqart.com)
71
John I.H. Baur, The Inlander – Life and Work of Charles Burchfield, 18931967, Newark: University of Delaware Press, New York, Cornwall Books, London, 1984, p. 24
72
Ibid, p. 57
73
Ibid, p. 111
74
Edward Hopper, « Charles Burchfield: American » The Arts n°14, July 1928, p. 5
75
John I.H. Baur, op.cit., Letter to Frank Rehn datée October 11, 1938
48
49
Erica D. Passantino, David W. Scott and Duncan Phillips, The Eye of Duncan Phillips – A Collection in the Making, Yale University Press, New Heaven, October 1999 Mary Sayre Haverstock, George Bellows, Merrell, London, New York, 2007, p. 16
50
Ibid, p. 25
51
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Smith-Corona-CorpCompany-History.html
52
Mary Sayre Haverstock, op.cit., p. 29
53
Gail Levin, Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 1995
76
Edward Hopper, Letter to Mrs. Frank B. Davidson of Richmond, Indiana, January 22, 1947
54
Brian Doherty, Edward Hopper, American Masters – The Voice and the Myth,Universe Books, New York, 1988, p. 14
77
Richard Meryman, Andrew Wyeth – A Secret Life, Harper Collins, New York,1996, pp. 32-36
55
Edward Hopper, Letter to Mrs Frank B. Davidson of Richmond, Indiana, January 22, 1947
78
Ibid, p. 39
56
Edward Hopper, Reality: a Journal of Artists’ Opinions, June 1952, courtesy : Francis Mulhall Achilles Library, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
79
Ibid, p. 212
80
Ibid, pp. 157-160
Henry Adams, Thomas Hart Benton – An American Original, Alfred Knopf, 1989, p. 16
81
Ibid, p. 227
58
Ibid, p. 21
82
59
Ibid, p. 34
North Carolina University Show (http://ncmoa.org/collections/highlights/20thcentury/20th/19101950/039_lrg.shtml)
60
Ibid, p. 66
83
Richard Meryman, op.cit., p. 310
61
Ibid, pp. 258-266
84
Andrew Wyeth’s Helga Pictures: An Intimate Study at Joslyn Art Museum (Omaha, NE), May 4 – August 4, 2002
62
Darrell Garwood, Artist in Iowa – A Life of Grant Wood, Greenwood Press,Westport, Connecticut, 1944, reprinted in 1971, p. 31
85
Joann Loviglio, « Wyeth granddaughter gives one-of-a-kind museum tours », Chicago Tribune, Tempo, Associated Press, July 2, 2008, p. 6
Wanda M. Corn, Grant Wood the Regionalist Vision, Minneapolis Instituteof Arts, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1983, p. 8
86
Richard Meryman, op.cit., p. 411
57
63
251
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Levin, Gail. Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, University of California Press, California, Berkeley, 1995. Lucie-Smith, Edward. American Realism, Harry Abrams, Inc., New York, 1994. Martin, Alvin. American Realism – Twentieth-Century Drawings and Watercolours, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Harry Abrams, Inc., New York, 1986. McCracken, Harold. Frederic Remington – Artist of the Old West, J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia and New York, 1947. Mecklenburg, Virginia M., Robert W. Snyder, and Rebecca Zurier, Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York, National Museum of American Art in association with W.W. Norton & Company, 1995. Meryman, Richard. Andrew Wyeth – A Secret Life, Harper Collins, New York, 1996. Mowll Mathews, Nancy. American Dreams – American Art to 1950 in the Williams College Museum of Art, Hudson Hills Press, New York, 2001. Passantino, Erica D., David W. Scott and Duncan Phillips, The Eye of Duncan Phillips – A Collection in the Making, Yale University Press, New Haven, October 1999. Rosenheim, Jeff L. “Thomas Eakins, Artist-Photographer, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art” in Thomas Eakins and the Metropolitan Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994. Samuels, Peggy & Harold. Frederic Remington: A Biography, Doubleday & Co., Garden City New York, 1982. Sayre Haverstock, Mary. George Bellows, Merrell, London, New York, 2007. Sewell, Darrel. Thomas Eakins: Artist of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982. Thomas Eakins. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001. Tedeschi, Martha, and Kristi Dahm. Watercolours by Winslow Homer – The Colour of Light, The Art Institute of Chicago, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2008.
Periodicals Collier’s Weekly, “A Few Words from Mr. Remington” March 18, 1905. New York Times, “The Paris Universal Exposition of 1867” December 25, 1866. Burns, Sarah. “The Courtship of Winslow Homer – Letters Reveal Relationship with Helena de Kay” Magazine Antiques, February 2002. Carbone, Teresa A. “Eastman Johnson” Magazine Antiques, November 1999. Hansen O’Toole, Judith. George Luks – An Artistic Legacy, in the Catalogue of the George Luks Exhibition held at Owen Gallery, New York, from October 25 through December 17, 1997. Henkels, Stanley V. The William Michael Harnett Collection: His Own Reserved Paintings, Models and Atelier Furnishings, sales catalogue, Philadelphia, February 23-24 1893. Hopper, Edward. “Charles Burchfield: American” The Arts n°14, July 1928. Loviglio, Joann. “Wyeth granddaughter gives one-of-a-kind museum tours“, Chicago Tribune, Tempo, Associated Press, July 2, 2008. McCoy, Garnett. “Reaction and Revolution 1900-1930” Art in America n°53, August-September 1965. Mullen, William. “Beneath the Colour, Secrets of the Artist” Chicago Tribune, Tribune Corporation, February 29, 2008. Remington, Frederic. “On the Indian Reservation” Century Magazine, July 1889. Tatham, David. Winslow Homer and the Great Forest, in the Catalogue for the Exhibition Winslow Homer: Masterworks from the Adirondacks held at the Fenimore Art Museum du June 21 – September 6, 2004, reprinted on July 20, 2004 in Ressource Library Magazine.
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index Eakins, Thomas
Bellows, George Cliff Dwellers
86
The Agnew Clinic
44
Club Night
113
Between Rounds
40
Dempsey and Firpo (a.k.a. Brodie’s Revenge)
112
The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull)
34
Forty-Two Kids
111
John Biglin in a Single Scull
37
Outside the Big Tent
106
Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic)
45
Self-Portrait
46
Benton, Thomas Hart
Singing a Pathetic Song
49
Arts of the South
165
Starting Out After Rail
36
Back Him Up, Winter
175
The Swimming Hole
39
The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley
155
Taking the Count
43
Cave Spring
171
Corn and Winter Wheat
158-159
Cotton Pickers (Georgia)
162
Cradling Wheat
154
Deep South, from America Today
163
Engineer’s Dream
145
Fire in the Barnyard
160
Going West
148-149
Harbour Scene
172
Jon Boat
170
Navajo Sand
169
The New Fence
142
Plowing It Under
152
Politics, Farming and Law in Missouri
166
Sugar Cane
151
Threshing Wheat
157
The Wreck of the Ole ’97
146
The Year of Peril: Exterminate!
176
Burchfield, Charles
254
Glackens, William At Mouquin’s
97
Harnett, William Michael After the Hunt
54, 55
The Artist’s Letter Rack
50
Cigar Box, Pitcher, and “The New York Herald”
58
The Faithful Colt
64
For Sunday’s Dinner
56
Job Lot Cheap
53
The Old Cupboard Door
61
The Old Violin
63
Still Life – Violin and Music (Music and Good Luck)
62
Trophy of the Hunt
57
Henri, Robert Ruth St. Denis in the Peacock Dance
90
Salome
91
Snow in New York
92
Eye of God in the Woods
222
The Four Seasons
225
Gateway to September
220
Glory to God
224
Breezing Up (A Fair Wind)
22
Houses in Late Autumn Sunlight
215
Coast in Winter
33
Ice-Bound Lake Boat
206
Moonlight
28
The Mysterious Bird
219
Prisoners from the Front
20
Night of the Equinox
212
Rocky Coast
31
Over Porch Roof
216
Rocky Coast and Gulls
25
Rainy Night
210
The Signal of Distress
23
Street Scene
213
Summer Storm
26
Street Scene-Sun and Shadow
209
Two Figures by the Sea
30
Summer Solstice
221
Watching the Brakers
27
Homer, Winslow
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Hopper, Edward
Shinn, Everett
Apartment Houses
126
Mouquin’s
93
Automat
123
Theatre Box
98
Chop Suey
122
Theatre Scene
99
Drugstore
116
Four Lane Road Gas
133 134-135
Sloan, John Easter Eve
105
House by the Railroad
129
Election Night
New York Corner (Corner Saloon)
140
Gloucester Harbour
New York Movie
121
The Haymarket, Sixth Avenue
New York Office
139
Six O’Clock, Winter
95
127
South Beach Bathers
108
Night Windows Nighthawks
118-119
Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair
Office in a Small City
132
Travelling Carnival, Santa Fe
People in the Sun
130
A Woman’s Work
Summer Evening
124
Summertime
138
Two Comedians
137
9 103
88 107 89
Wood, Grant American Gothic The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover, West Branch, Iowa
Johnson, Eastman
94
Daughters of Revolution
178 196 182-183
A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves
19
Death on the Ridge Road
Corn Husking
15
Dinner for Threshers
Cranberry Pickers
16
The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere
197
The Hatch Family
12-13
Overmantel Decoration
199
200 204-205
Negro Life at the South
14
Parson Weems’ Fable
195
Woman in White Dress
10
The Perfectionist
187
Portrait of Frances Fiske Marshall
189
Portrait of John B. Turner, Pioneer
190
Self-Portrait
181
Luks, George Bleecker and Carmine Streets
102
Roundhouse at High Bridge
100
Sentimental Ballad
The Wrestlers
114
The Sentimental Yearner
186
Stone City, Iowa
203
Woman with Plants
184
Metcalf, William Gloucester Harbour
192-193
8 Wyeth, Andrew
Remington, Frederic Aiding a Comrade Boat House at Ingleneuk
72 6
Adrift
244
Airborne
247
Braids
245
The Bronco Buster
80
Christina’s World
Buffalo Hunter Spitting a Bullet into a Gun
74
Distant Thunder
237
Buffalo Runners – Big Horn Basin
71
234-235
Long Limb
230
The Charge of the Rough Riders (Charge of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill) 77
Maga’s Daughter
229
The Cheyenne
75
Master Bedroom
240
Coming Through the Rye
69
On the Edge
248
Evening in the Desert. Navajoes
78
Overflow
241
Hauling the Gill Net
82-83
Renfield
243
An Old-Time Plains Fight
79
Spring
231
The Outlier (preliminary version)
85
Trodden Weed
226
Rounded-Up
70
Weatherside
238
Self-Portrait on a Horse
66
Witches Broom
232
255
R
ealism is a monolithic, lockstep, strictly governed method of painterly visualisation shattered into nuances of interpretation. Where you paint can make you a Regional Realist. What you paint might label you a Genre Realist, while who you paint might classify your work as Portrait Realist—or maybe a Portrait Regionalist Realist if you paint Native Americans in the West, or sea captains on the East Coast. Of the variations cited, there are even further nuances that mock the concept of “American Realism” as an all-embracing style. What remains are American Realist artists, each facing subject matter that is part of the fabric of the American scene. The result of their efforts is determined by the filtering of their perceptions through their individual intellects, skill sets, training, regional influences, ethnic influences and basic nurturing. If there is any binding together it is within the tradition of Realist Art in the United States, which accepts such a range from Winslow Homer's poetic watercolours of the 1860s to the haunting minutiae of Andrew Wyeth and melancholy light of Edward Hopper in the 1950s and 1960s. This book presents a cross-section of American Realist artists spanning more than 100 years of art. It begins as some artists struggle with the influences of Europe and other home-grown painters bring their nineteenth-century American scenes to life, and ends as today's generation of Realist painters co-exist with American Modernism and absorb this new freedom into the latest incarnation of their art.