Impressionism: Translating the Modern World

© 2020 Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University Auburn University is an equal opportunity educational institution/employer.

JULE COLLINS SMITH MUSEUM OF FINE ART AUBURN UNIVERSITY Chi Omega-Hargis Gallery

– J U L E CO L L I N S S M I T H

Mary Cassatt, (American, 1844–1926), Kneeling in an Armchair (detail), 1903, drypoint engraving, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; museum purchase with funds provided by Dr. Gerald Leischuck.

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hese prophetic words of our museum's namesake spoken nearly two decades ago aptly preface this rich catalog and final presentation of a Spring student practicum, Impressionism: Translating the Modern World. Today, fully integrated into university life, the museum embodies the dream of Jule Collins Smith to be "a place [for students] to develop their already recognized talents and interests," and where "their worlds will be expanded in a positive, enriching way."

Toward Jule's vision, in January 2020, the museum began collaborating with Dr. Emily C. Burns and her Art History seminar students, providing exclusive use of a gallery as an on-site laboratory for an immersive experience. Students examined the permanent collection in the space, as well as discussed 21st-century exhibition design theory, researched and workshopped descriptive label text, explored the collection vault, and planned a visitor engagement experience. Staff flowed in and out of the weekly classes as well, offering insight and guidance, while visitors could examine the museum profession up close and see real-time work in progress.

As an academic institution, we look forward to increasingly fruitful and innovative partnerships in the years to come with all our university colleagues, no matter the discipline; and also extend our thanks to the College of Liberal Arts and the Department of Art and Art History for their support of this project.

The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University offers heartfelt congratulations to the class on their successful exhibition and publication and presents with pleasure, Impressionism: Translating the Modern World. It undoubtedly brings the entire Smith family's sentiments to fruition—a thoughtful installation exploring aspects of a beloved art movement set in an accredited and forwardthinking museum.

Cindi Malinick Director & Chief Curator

P R E FAC E

Over the spring semester, Dr. Burns held weekly classes in the Chi-Omega-Hargis Gallery, turning exhibition space into a temporary seminar room.

Students also worked alongside curatorial staff members in the museum vault.

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his exhibition, conceived and curated by the students in Auburn University’s Modern Art History Seminar (ARTS 4150) in Spring 2020, proposes that the art movement known as impressionism can be understood as an act of translation. Spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its artists depicted their momentary perceptions of the modern world around them, often using bright colors, visible brushstrokes, and flat or oblique spaces.

Translating the Modern World frames impressionism with four concepts: • Artists’ unique perceptions and interpretations of the world around them • Its circulation in different national contexts, particularly in the United States • The role of printmaking, a technique that literalizes not only the translation of a scene but also the transfer from plate to paper • The subtle adaptation by artists who retained their academic approach to painting Impressionist circles also included many female painters who explored their unique viewpoints and spaces through the new artistic style. Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, whose art appears in this show, regularly participated in exhibitions in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s, and many others adopted the aesthetic as well.

Impression: Translations of the Modern World also intentionally considers works by women, as well as their representation by male artists.

We thank our wonderful colleagues at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art for collaborating with us on this exciting project, and also our generous lenders,including a private collector, the Columbus Museum in Columbus, Georgia; the Dixon Museum and Garden in Memphis, Tennessee; and, Alabama's Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.

Dr. Emily C. Burns Associate Professor of Art History, Auburn University

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Lila Cabot Perry, (American, 1848–1933), The Forest (detail), n.d., oil on canvas, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Fred D. Bentley, Sr.

ON THE COVER:

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STUDENT CUR ATO R S Avery Agostinelli Rachel Allain Elizabeth Beasley Claye Gillis Christina Hancock Michael Harding Zoe Lakin Sally Lyle Leslie Schuneman

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P ERCEPTI ON AS T R A N SL AT I O N A central principle of impressionism is the idea that artists translated their personal perceptions of the natural world by painting subjects directly in front of them. Though not all of the artists featured in this section were French, all worked in Paris and in the French countryside, where they shared ideas about how to depict immediacy.

Loose brushstrokes and varied paint application imply that the subject could have been rendered in a single moment, signaling to viewers that the world had been translated through an individual hand. These paintings reveal how artists rendered effects of light, color and atmosphere differently. The idea of perception is reinforced by the many human figures who are shown perceiving and experiencing the world around them. The artists and these figures invite us to do the same.

- Rachel Allain and Sally Lyle

Eugène Boudin, (French, 1824–1898), Road in Countryside, n.d., oil on canvas, lent by the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama; bequest of William Pelzer Arrington in memory of his mother, Ethel Pelzer Arrington.

Eugène Boudin’s painting marks a key precursor to the impressionist movement. Paint tubes, invented near the start of his career, enabled easier outdoor, plein-air, painting. Road in Countryside depicts an open dirt lane that follows fields of green and a wash of a bright red field with small speckles of pink and white flowers. The painter gives two thirds of the composition to depicting the sky, where dark clouds with small patches of blue peeking through hang above the small lone figure walking on the path. While the paint is not as thickly applied as other paintings in this section, loose brushwork is already visible. Notice Boudin’s attention to weather and time: does the cloudy sky show the approach of an ominous storm or a hopeful sky after passing rains?

Rachel Allain, Class of '20

Originally, art critics insulted these paintings as “impressions” because they seemed unfinished. Nevertheless, the artists stuck with the name, defining the style themselves.

While little is known about Edmond Petitjean’s life and training, he was a prolific plein-air painter, and in the early twentieth century other artists made copies of his paintings in the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris. This painting melds greens, browns, and blues to convey a momentary effect along the rocky coast in rural Brittany, a region in France. Small figures gathering clams blend with the landscape, nearly becoming part of nature as Petitjean applies even attention to people and rocks with his brushstrokes.

Dr. Emily C. Burns

Edmond Petitjean, (French, 1844–1925), Les Côtes du Nord, Bretagne (The Shell Gatherers), ca. 1915, oil on canvas, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Noel and Kathryn Dickinson Wadsworth.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir used a blended approach that employed soft edges and few lines to convey an instantaneous quality with light effects, leaving an “impression” of an everyday scene of a mother and her son walking in a small village. His fixation on the positive aspects of life is apparent in this painting through his focus on the parent-child relationship.

Sally Lyle, Class of ’22

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, (French, 1841–1895), Mère et son enfant dans un village (Mother and Child in a Village), 1890, oil on canvas, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Bill L. Harbert, class of 1948.

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P ERCEPTI ON AS T R A N SL AT I O N The impressionists painted everyday spaces to which they had access. Male painters avidly engaged with the modernization of Paris, while female artists, including Berthe Morisot, more often presented the domestic arena. With a focus on the median between private and public spaces implied by large windows and verandas of the Parisian elite, she sketches two women engaged in conversation. Art historians have analyzed the artist’s apparent embrace of pastel colors and loose brushwork, practices that reviewers saw as a “feminine” style. The linear and gestural detail in this sketch, along with insistent pinks, yellows, and light blues, push against Morisot’s contemporary critics who presumed that women artists were incapable of incorporating line into their work.

Michael Harding, Class of '20

Berthe Morisot, (French, 1841–1895), Jeunes Filles sur le balcon (Young Ladies on a Balcony), 1893, pastel and charcoal, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Noel and Kathryn Dickinson Wadsworth.

An anarchist in both art and politics, Maximilien Luce emphasized ideas of labor, fatigue, and technology throughout his work. This painting displays the impressionist techniques of quick, varied brushstrokes, the use of unmixed colors, and an attention to movement as the wind brushes against this rural house. Similar to Frank Myers Boggs’s nearby painting of a street in Paris, Luce’s painting depicts a lone wanderer in the stark sunlight. With his earth-tone clothing and rucksack, he appears to be a working-class laborer. Knowing Luce’s political beliefs, do you think he intended to express a political meaning by portraying a worker in this way?

Claye Gillis, Class of '20 Maximilien Luce, (French, 1858–1941), Maisons aux Mousseaux (Houses at Les Mousseaux), ca. 1922, oil on canvas, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; museum purchase with funds provided by the Gerald and Emily Leischuck Endowment for Museum Acquisitions.

Frank Myers Boggs, (French, b. United States, 1855–1926), Paris, 1915, oil on wood panel, lent by the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, Montgomery, Alabama; bequest of William Pelzer Arrington in memory of his mother, Ethel Pelzer Arrington.

After forging a successful career painting marine landscapes and exhibiting them as well as cityscapes in the Paris Salon, Frank Myers Boggs became a French citizen in 1923. Settling in Montmartre, a bohemian neighborhood in the north of Paris, he renders a lone figure walking up the winding Rue Lepic in this painting. The pronounced diagonal brushstrokes behind the walking figure and the directional lines on the street and clouds give his movements a sense of speed. Boggs was connected with the neighborhood art world, including art dealer Theo Van Gogh, who lived in an apartment on this street with his brother for some time. Two of Boggs’s paintings are depicted on the wall in the background of Vincent’s portrait of Scottish art dealer Alexander Reid, reproduced here. Boggs inscribed one of these paintings to “my friend Vincent.”

Michael Harding, Class of '20 Vincent Van Gogh, Portrait of Alexander Reid, ca. 1887, oil on canvas, Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK. 7

ACCENTS: TR A N SL AT I O N I N CI R CU LAT IO N The impressionist movement is characterized by fluid aesthetic dialogues resulting from a constant flux of people and paintings. An interest in painting outdoors, connecting the viewer with specific observations of place and capturing momentary effects, appears in many parts of the world in the late nineteenth century. Although impressionism is often perceived as a French creation, the core group of exhibiting artists in the 1870s was international, and the movement found strength in embracing diversity of technique from outside France. Without stylistic inventions and cultural traditions from all over the globe, impressionism might have begun and ended with the Paris exhibitions of the 1870s and 1880s. Artists featured in this section began experimenting with impressionism while in France, but as they crossed borders, they applied the style to new settings infused with local traditions. From the global travels of Lilla Cabot Perry, Anna Richards Brewster, and Dawson Dawson-Watson, to the seascapes of Thomas Meteyard and Childe Hassam, to the explorations of the seasons in works by Søren Emil Carlsen, Hamilton Hamilton, Robert Emmett Owen, and Chauncey Ryder, adaptation to local settings is evident.

- Zoe Lakin and Michael Harding

Lilla Cabot Perry invokes a sense of serenity in this landscape, which places the viewer on a path entering a forest bathed in soft light streaming down from the treetops. This painting may have been made during one of her visits to Japan from 1899 to 1901 or perhaps in the tranquil countryside during her many summer days in the artists’ colony in Giverny, France. The artist’s love of poetry shines through in this painting in the almost audible sense of peace, harmony, and beauty represented through her subtle handling of momentary light and color.

Zoe Lakin, Class of '22

Lila Cabot Perry, (American, 1848–1933), The Forest, n.d., oil on canvas, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Fred D. Bentley, Sr. J CSM . AU B U R N. E D U

Lilla Cabot Perry, (American, 1848– 1933), (right) The Tea Party, 1890, oil on canvas, private collection. Lilla Cabot Perry, (left) Child in Window, 1891, oil on canvas, private collection.

Lilla Cabot Perry’s painting features many characteristics of impressionism, which the artist adopted during her long stays in France. She spent a substantial amount of time with Claude Monet, who told her to “… try to forget what objects you see before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever… and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives you your own impression of the scene before you.” Based on similar works such as Child in Window reproduced here, The Tea Party likely depicts Perry’s daughter Edith and the family cat Lierre during a brief summer visit back to Boston, Massachusetts. The light delicately filtering down onto the girl, cat, and tablecloth illuminates, but also colors the scene. Painted with impasto in hues of blue, green, and bright purple on the tablecloth, it bursts into the upper right corner of the painting in an explosion of thickly painted, vibrant colors ranging the full spectrum.

Zoe Lakin, Class of '22

One of the most common sitters in Lilla Cabot Perry’s paintings was her family cat, Lierre.

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ACCENTS: TR A N SL AT I O N I N CI R CU LAT IO N Anna Richards Brewster captures the light peeking into a darkened corner of the ancient Egyptian columns at the Philae Temple. Flood waters reflect the sunlight, masterfully expressed with quick strokes implying the spontaneity of a moment. The artist depicts the remaining paint of the hieroglyphics inscribed in the background as though colorful gemstones. Brewster’s overall palette suggests a serious and solemn mood, as if she is reflecting on the somber future of a lively past. The site at Philae was threatened by the flood waters caused by the British dam built on the Nile in 1902. Perhaps this attention to forces of destruction reminded her of her son’s recent, untimely death.

As the postcard reproduced here shows, Brewster would have reached the site by boat. It is unknown if she finished Columns at Philae, Egypt on board. Why might she have found it important to portray this scene from the boat?

Christina Hancock, Class of '22

Anna Richards Brewster, (American, 1870– 1952), Columns at Philae, Egypt, 1912, oil on canvas, lent by the Montgomery Museum of Art, Montgomery, Alabama; gift of the Estate of James L. Whitehead and Elliott P. Ellis.

Marques & Fiorillo, Philae, In A.B. De Guerville, “New Egypt.” E. P. Dutton & Company, New York, 1906.

Anna Richards Brewster exhibited with the National Academy of Design in New York at the age of 14.

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The son of a prolific English illustrator, Dawson Dawson-Watson adopted impressionism during his studies in France beginning in 1886. Following other artists, including Claude Monet, Thomas Buford Meteyard, and Lilla Cabot Perry to Giverny, France, Dawson-Watson painted popular subjects like the grain stacks that occupied the fields near the village.

His diagonal strokes of pastel colors and deep purples reveal his buildup of paint on the surface. Passed through descendants of the family who owned a local hotel, this painting is believed to have been DawsonWatson’s payment for lodging in Giverny.

Elizabeth Beasley, Class of ’20

Dawson Dawson-Watson, (English-American, 1864–1939), Les Meules (Grainstacks), ca. 1888–93, oil on canvas, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; museum purchase with funds provided by Judge and Mrs. Bo Torbert and Mr. and Mrs. Ed Lee Spencer.

Frederick Childe Hassam, (American, 1859–1935), Broad Cove, Appledore, 1912, watercolor on wove paper, lent by the Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia; gift of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc.

Frederick Childe Hassam was an impressionist painter in the United States and a member of “The Ten,” a collective of artists who used the style to depict local landscapes and also scenes in Paris, a city he frequented. There he painted from the studio of the famed French photographer, caricaturist and balloonist, Nadar, who lent his studio for the first impressionist exhibition, located in the same building where Frank Myers Boggs also painted. In Broad Cove, Hassam portrays a swimming hole at low tide beneath a looming slab of rock at Appledore, one of the nine Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire. The expressive features of the cove are depicted through intense color, but the composition as a whole remains flat and nearly abstract with daring and dramatic brushwork in watercolor, especially compared with the slow recession in Meteyard’s delicate watercolor nearby. Hassam imitates the instantaneity of impressionist brushstrokes but translates it into his own unique fragmentary style.

Leslie Schuneman, Class of '20 11

ACCENTS: TR A N SL AT I O N I N CI R CU LAT IO N

Thomas Buford Meteyard, (American, 1865–1928), Mid-Atlantic, ca. 1890, watercolor on paper, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of the Meteyard Family.

Described by a critic as “unusually delicate,” Thomas Buford Meteyard’s palette includes unexpected combinations of hues such as the purples and yellows within the vast waters seen in Mid-Atlantic. Another reviewer observed that the artist looked with “unclouded eyes,” allowing his viewers to feel the breeze off the Atlantic Ocean through expressive brushstrokes and striking colors. While regarded as an impressionist, Meteyard did not fully identify with the term, fearing the implications of the label. Striving to reflect his individual style, Meteyard wrote, “… it is better to fail altogether than to be like the crowd that see and paint through another man’s eyes.”

Avery Grace Agostinelli, Class of ’21

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Robert Emmet Owen was already an accomplished illustrator by the time he began producing his impressionist landscapes of the Connecticut countryside. After buying a rural house, he experimented with vibrant colors and thick, open brushwork. With its veil of snow partially obscuring the road and nearby houses, Owen pairs the chaos of a storm with the pinkish color of twilight in Snowstorm.

Elizabeth Beasley, Class of ‘20

Robert Emmett Owen, (American, 1878–1957), Snowstorm, ca. 1912, oil on canvas, lent by the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, Tennessee; gift of Susan and John Horseman in honor of Kevin Sharp.

After studying painting abroad and befriending American painter William Merritt Chase, Hamilton Hamilton began to experiment with impressionism, turning mostly to pleinair painting in 1875. Translated into his own style, the artist places the viewer on a path to walk into and explore an apple orchard in full bloom. He uses a muted, earth-toned palette which underscores blossoms that project off the canvas, inviting his audience to experience the spring alongside him through his technique and colors.

Leslie Schuneman, Class of '20

Hamilton Hamilton, (English-American, 1847–1928), Apple Orchard, after 1889, oil on canvas, lent by the Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia; museum purchase in honor of Frances Cole.

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ACCENTS: TR A N SL AT I O N I N CI R CU LAT IO N

Søren Emil Carlsen, (Danish-American, 1853–1932), (left), Wooded Interior, 1904, oil on canvas, lent by the Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia; museum purchase. Søren Emil Carlsen, (right) China and Cherries, ca. 1895–1900, oil on canvas, private collection.

Søren Emil Carlsen’s brushstrokes suggest a fleeting view of the natural world in this wooded scene, which is uninhabited by humankind. While he was best known for painting more closely rendered stilllifes, the artist also depicted outdoor scenery, especially forests. Carlsen took what he learned from the impressionist painters of France while there from 1884 to 1886 and translated the new techniques into his work. Compared with the more expansive views nearby, he more tightly framed his subject.

This type of composition is akin to his still-life paintings, such as the example illustrated below. The pronounced brushstrokes suggest wind blowing the leaves and the thickly applied paint, or impasto, draws attention to the idea that the painting translates a specific moment in time.

Rachel Allain, Class of ’20 J CSM . AU B U R N. E D U

Chauncey F. Ryder, (American, 1868–1949), Green Lane, 1930–35, oil on canvas, lent by the Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia; bequest of Edward Swift Shorter.

Chauncey F. Ryder played a key role in the transition of impressionism into modern abstraction. He adopted many key aspects of the movement, such as the use of a palette knife to create thick, unvarying layers of impasto, as well as the practice of painting subjects directly, rather than from memory. In Green Lane, the artist creates a space that although not specifically recognizable, appears real and immediate. Ryder juxtaposes peculiarly bright greens in the foreground with creamy hues of white and blue in the sky, lending a sense of balance to the landscape.

Zoe Lakin, Class of ‘22

Chauncey Ryder preferred to paint landscapes in a way that were unidentifiable to anyone but himself.

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P R IN T AS TRA N S L AT I O N Not only are impressionist print designs a translation of the world, but the print process is a translation in and of itself. From carving into a surface to transferring the design onto the paper with ink, artists' original designs are adapted through intricate steps to create the final pieces seen in this section, utilizing the techniques of drypoint, etching, woodblock printing, and lithography.

In 1853, the re-opening of trade with imperial Japan after over 200 years of isolation, incited Europe’s fascination with Japanese culture. Western artists, including impressionists Claude Monet and Thomas Buford Meteyard, began collecting and exhibiting Japanese woodblock prints, such as the four by Yōshū Chikanobu included in our exhibition. Artists in both regions were interested in representations of nature and momentary scenes, but they approached this common subject with drastically different styles. By bringing these objects together, the viewer can see different line qualities, colors, sizes, and stylistic priorities as artists leveraged these media to translate their individual perceptions.

- Avery Agostinelli, Claye Gillis, Christina Hancock

Yōshū Chikanobu, (Japanese, 1838–1912), (left) Snow, Moon and Flowers: Snow in Kashino, (right) Untitled (Seated woman and cat) n.d., woodblock prints, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Lewis Taft Glenn.

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Yōshū Chikanobu, (left) Untitled (Woman with umbrella), n.d., (right) Snow, Moon, and Flowers: No. 26 Edo, Snow at Yanagi Bridge, Takasaki Beian as Nezumi Kozo and the Clam Seller Sankichi, ca. 1884, woodblock prints, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Lewis Taft Glenn.

The subjects of these woodblock prints are consistent with Yōshū Chikanobu’s speciality, women and children, while the title of the series, Snow, Moon, and Flowers, from which two of the prints come, refers to a verse by the Chinese poet, Bai Juyi: “In times of snow, moon, and flowers, I think most of you.” Japanese culture placed a strong emphasis on harmonizing with the natural world, and printmakers often referenced setsugekka, a popular theme referencing the beauty of the four seasons, represented by snow, moon, and flowers. It was considered a huge compliment to compare one’s beauty to nature, as in the quotation.

In Untitled (Seated woman and cat), a woman sits contemplatively in an interior space looking out a circular window. The impressionists were inspired not only by Japanese representations of everyday life, such as Chikanobu’s casual, domestic scenes, but also their use of bright colors, distinct outlines, and dramatic cropping. The representation of women in three of the prints is comparable to the prints by Mary Cassatt and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, also featured in this exhibition. A similarly dramatic approach to perspective can be found in the paintings by Frank Myers Boggs, Maximilien Luce, and Lilla Cabot Perry.

Christina Hancock, Class of ’22

Many Japanese artists chose names as a sort of nom de plume, such as Hashimoto Naoyoshi, who signed his work as Yōshū Chikanobu, as seen on the prints in our exhibition.

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P R IN T AS TRA N S L AT I O N Through her artwork, Mary Cassatt defied expectations for women, participating in four impressionist exhibitions in Paris. Drawing inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints such as those hanging nearby, she translates the dashed-off effects of her painting style onto this drypoint engraving.

The subject depicts Margot Lux, the daughter of Cassatt’s friend, who was a frequent sitter. In this period, psychologists understood children differently than before, recognizing them as unique and individualized beings. Margot’s pensive expression exemplifies that new theory.

Claye Gillis, Class of ‘20

Mary Cassatt, (American, 1844–1926), Kneeling in an Armchair, 1903, drypoint engraving, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; museum purchase with funds provided by Dr. Gerald Leischuck.

Many impressionists used etching, with its effect akin to a spontaneous drawing, to imply a moment in time. This small piece illustrates a group of people at leisure on the beach at Berneval, on the Norman coast in France. Pierre-Auguste Renoir frequently depicted women, whom he saw as part of nature. Two female onlookers in the foreground frame the viewer’s perspective on the scene. The composition and its intimate scale encourage us to look more closely.

Sally Lyle, Class of ’22

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir, (French, 1841–1919), Sur la Plage, à Berneval (On the Beach at Berneval), 1892, etching, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of Bill L. Harbert, class of 1948.

In this series of woodblock prints, which depict the medieval Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris accompanied by its reflection in the Seine, Thomas Buford Meteyard modifies hues to suggest different times of day. Varying the saturation of his pigments to convey night as opposed to twilight, the artist translated Notre Dame with different colors, or what a critic described as “nature’s alchemy of light.” This reviewer also stated that, though Meteyard’s prints repeated the same perspective of the cathedral, his variety of textures conveys the momentary quality and “freshness of feeling” of impressionism. In contrast, Japanese printmakers used fully saturated colors and outlines within their compositions.

Avery Grace Agostinelli, Class of ’21

Thomas Buford Meteyard, (American, 1865–1928), Notre Dame, ca. 1890–95, woodblock prints, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of the Meteyard Family.

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P R IN T AS TRA N S L AT I O N

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, (French, 1841–1919), Le Chapeau Épinglé (Pinning the Hat), 1898, color lithograph, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University, gift of Bill Harbert, class of 1948.

Impressionist artists embraced this medium to express vibrant ephemeral qualities in images that could circulate widely. Bright color and gestural marks communicate the impressionist theme of immediacy. In its large scale and affordability targeting a wider market, this color lithograph by Pierre-Auguste Renoir depicts Berthe Morisot’s daughter Julie pinning flowers on her cousin Paulette. The scene elevates a moment in time that would otherwise be thought of as an everyday and commonplace moment. Renoir highlights the beauty of ordinary everyday activities, a goal of other impressionist artists.

Sally Lyle, Class of ’22

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Thomas Buford Meteyard (American, 1865–1928), Theodore Earl Butler (French, b. United States, 1861–1936), Bliss Carman (Canadian, 1861–1929), Ralph Adams Cram (American, 1863–1942), Dawson Dawson-Watson (English-American, 1864–1939), Courrier Innocent, ca.

1896, woodblock print, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; gift of the Meteyard Family.

Echoing his Notre Dame prints, Meteyard and his friends in Scituate, Massachusetts produced these pages of a small magazine with a monochromatic image of the cathedral surrounded by diagonal lines implying the sunrise behind it. Courrier Innocent, produced irregularly between 1892 and 1897 in both Giverny and Scituate, contained poems accompanied by illustrations made by the artist, as well as others such as Dawson-Watson, who remembered making the prints with only jackknives and wood. Since his first visit to Paris in 1888 as an art student, Meteyard often spotlighted Notre Dame in his compositions.

Avery Grace Agostinelli, Class of ’21

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ACA D EMI C A DA P TAT I O N If you could ask artists Birge Harrison and Kenyon Cox today, they likely would deny being impressionist painters. Nevertheless, we included their work in our exhibition to showcase the movement's undeniable impact on their academic painting styles. Their training, revealed through a focus on fully-defined figures, allegory, large size, and central, balanced compositions, as well as tight brushstrokes and a wide range of colors, differentiate their paintings from most of the others on view here. Yet their selective impasto and attention to dynamism and light reveal impressionism’s influence. Many understood the genre to be a shift entirely away from academic painting, but its effect proved more complex than that. Regardless of the academy’s scorn, the style presented a new way of viewing and interpreting the world. In their selective adaptation of some defining characteristics of Impressionism, Harrison and Cox speak to the movement’s wide circulation.

- Leslie Schuneman and Elizabeth Beasley

Kenyon Cox was vocal in his displeasure for impressionism, but he still made use of the movement’s technique. In Hope and Memory, which depicts allegorical figures in honor of his recently deceased father, the artist builds up paint and constructs colored shadows. But Cox also celebrated individual vision, stating that the artist chooses “from nature the truths that come home to the individual mind, so making you see, not nature, but the artist’s view of nature.” Akin to the divergent directions of the figures’ gazes, Cox looks backwards to academic styles and forward as he experiments with impressionism.

Elizabeth Beasley, Class of ’20

Kenyon Cox, (American, 1856–1919), Hope and Memory, 1900, oil on canvas, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; museum purchase with funds provided by Dr. Gerald S. Leischuck in loving memory of Emily Reaves Leischuck.

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Birge Harrison, (American, 1854–1929), (left) Return from the First Communion, 1881, pen and ink over pencil on cream paper, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. (right) Return from the First Communion, 1882, oil on canvas, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University; promised gift of William L. Stone.

In Birge Harrison’s large-scale depiction of young women picking flowers, impressionist technique seeps through in his rendering of nearly abstract flowers from mere brushstrokes and delicate lace from dabs of a quick brush. The artist emphasized the effect of light illuminating and cascading through the main figure’s veil as though responding to a gentle breeze. The sketch illustrated here suggests Harrison’s academic process but also his experiments with light and translucence, especially in the veil and sleeves of the central figure’s dress. Although he retains a smooth surface and solid human figure, Harrison pushed for fellow artists to stay true to their own perceptions of nature as well as working to convey atmosphere and time of day.

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AC K N OW L E D G M E N TS :

Chambers, Bruce W. “Frederick Childe Hassam, Broad

We thank our wonderful colleagues at the Jule Collins

Cover, Appledore.” In Lines of Discovery: 225 Years of

Smith Museum of Fine Art for collaborating with us on this exciting project. We also thank our generous

American Drawings the Columbus Museum, edited by Charles T. Butler, 80–83. Columbus: Columbus Museum of

lenders, including a private collector, the Columbus

Art, 2006.

Museum, the Dixon Museum and Garden, and the

Child, Theodore. “Gallery and Studio: Frank Myers Boggs.”

Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. We also thank

Art Amateur 10, no. 3 (August 1884): 53–54.

Jennifer Jankauskas, Julie Pierotti, Kevin Sharp, and Jonathan Frederick Walz for their support of this project.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Steven. The Barbizon School and the Origins of Impressionism. London: Phaidon Press, 1994.

Barter, Judith A. and Erica E. Hirshler. Mary Cassatt, Modern Woman. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1998.

Berger, Klaus. Japonisme in Western Painting from Whistler to Matisse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

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