Frederick Carl Frieseke: The War

"The Parrots" by Frederick Carl Frieseke

"Of the American painters in France, most had already returned home once war appeared inevitable, and others followed suit when war broke out. The Friesekes, however, hunkered down. As Frieseke wrote Macbeth: 'You see we are still staying by the flag. Things were sufficiently exciting with aeroplanes dropping bombs. We are provisioned for a six months' siege. I couldn't stand leaving Paris after the years I've lived here. Seemed like running away.'

Far from running away, he volunteered to serve with the American Red Cross ambulance service at Neuilly, outside Paris, an activity that lasted five months. He was no longer working in the hospital, he told Macbeth in a letter of February 1, 1915, because there were fewer wounded being sent to Paris. 'Am working hard in spite of the war - in fact find work the only relief from the sadness of it all.'

The painting continued in Paris and, with good weather, in Giverny also. The Paris Salons had been closed down on account of the war. It was next to impossible to ship work, and Frieseke had sent much of his stock to England for safekeeping. However, he was able to put together a striking representation for the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, which opened in June 1915. Here Frieseke was awarded the grand prize and gold medal for his entries, notable among them the nude 'Summer,' painted in 1914, an especially fruitful year for him. That season he produced a series of large, successful figure pieces, nude and clothed, single and in groups, that suggest singular energy, sufficient finances for material and frames, and plenty of working space. His 1915 presentation in San Francisco won him critical acclaim. His success was accompanied by sales sufficient to lead him into an unusual arrogance in defense of one of his preferred subjects. In a letter of late October 1915, he wrote Macbeth: 'You may find too many nudes among my last shipment. But one cannot paint for the public entirely and as over here my reputation is chiefly with my nudes I see no reason why the American public should not recognize it.'

However, his primary concern was not with subject matter as he wrote: 'I should have explained before what I am aiming at in my work, which has [for] a number of years been constant - experimenting to attain the priority of color and truth of light effect.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Frederick Carl Frieseke: A Biography by Nicholas Kilmer" in Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist"published on the occasion of an exhibition of Frieseke's work.)  

Frederick Carl Frieseke: France and Corsica

"Before Her Appearance (La Toilette)"
by Frederick Carl Frieseke

"Frederick and Sadie Freieseke returned to France in February. Aside from a very brief visit to New York and Pittsburgh at the end of 1928, this would be the last Frieseke was to see of his native country. The couple spent a particularly rainy summer in Giverny, but as Frieseke wrote to a friend: 'I managed to do a good season's work in spite of it and think I can put up a better show than last year.' Having created his summer's work (he complained it took two days to think of titles) and sent it to New York, Fred packed himself and Sadie off to Corsica for the winter months. 

Here, once they had found a house and garden to their liking, they set up shop and Frieseke sent for his model, Marcelle. She would figure in the six large canvases to be exhibited in the 1913 Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. After the miserable Giverny summer, the Corsican weather was an improvement. Even in February, Marcelle was able to pose naked on the beach, while Fred painted 'On the Dunes,' and Sadie watched from the distance to warn them of approaching tourists.

By the end of 1913 the Friesekes felt sufficiently stable economically to purchase the apartment on the rue du Cherche Midi. There had been sales in the United States. The arrangement with Wanamaker whereby he purchased a regular number of pictures annually was still in force, and Mrs. H.P. Whitney purchased the largest of Frieseke's Salon pictures, 'Before Her Appearance (La Toilette)' for $2500. Thus the Friesekes could afford to think of expanding into real estate. 

Besides, at the end of 1913, Sadie was pregnant. There had been other pregnancies that ended in disappointment, but this one was successful. In a world that was preoccupied by the parade of implacable forces whose posturing and ultimatums would lead to war, Sadie and Fred nursed a more loving hope. Frances, their only child, was born in Paris on August 2, 1914, as France mobilized for war against Germany. Fred had been in Giverny, but he managed to get the last civilian train to Paris."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Frederick Carl Frieseke: A Biography by Nicholas Kilmer" in Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist"published on the occasion of an exhibition of Frieseke's work.) 

 

Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Macbeths

"On the Balcony" by Frederick Carl Frieseke

"Frederick Carl Frieseke could not have found better friends in America than William and Robert Macbeth, the most successful and influential of the New York art dealers. The Macbeths carried an impressive array of talent, groomed their artists assiduously, and talked turkey. They could also sell pictures. Working with Macbeth, Frieseke prepared a one-artist exhibition that opened on January 17, 1912. Fred and Sadie were on hand for the opening. Though normally reticent, impatient, and not forthcoming when it came to talking about his work Frieseke gave an interview, to an as-yet-unidentified reporter in New York, which seems to represent a fair sense of the way he thought about his painting:

'He considers his problem at present to be 'light and color and sunshine.' All the paintings in the exhibition displayed the main tenets of his art principles, namely 'that painting is not theoretical, but a matter of enthusiasm.' He makes no previous sketches for his work, but takes the inspiration for his work straight to his canvas, and apprehending nature as a system of green and blue, not of brown, he demonstrates a fearless use of colors, fresh and pure, and avoids mixing white in anything. 'Most artists,' he says, 'are afraid of green,' and to prove his emancipation he uses all colors with utter fearlessness and boldness, and by this madness has won his way to eminence. Drawing he considers the A B C of painting. His detail is sufficient and comprehensive, but it does not take his first attention, for, 'if you have a human being on your canvas,' he says, 'your interest is there, and not on a dish or a material.' And for his future, his belief that it is impossible for an artist to be satisfied with his work unless he is by nature self-complacent, and that he must go on experimenting, in fact must be dissatisfied in order that he may approach his goal, will doubtless lead him to greater things than he has even yet accomplished. 'No artist,' he says, 'should be bound to one style,' so just what his development will be it is almost impossible to tell.'" 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Frederick Carl Frieseke: A Biography by Nicholas Kilmer" in Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist"published on the occasion of an exhibition of Frieseke's work.) 

 

Frederick Carl Frieseke: Associations

"The Garden Parasol" by Frederick Carl Frieseke

"The Friesekes and the Richard Miller and his wife were fast friends. Miller, who had arrived in Paris shortly after Fred, was well connected in America, achieved European success quite early, and showed generous admiration for Fred's work. Invited to fill a room at the Venice Biennial in 1909 with his own paintings, he offered to share the space with Fred.

It is at the Eighth International Exhibition in Venice in April-May 1909 that we find the first important offering of outdoor subjects by Frieseke. Here were some of the major plein air themes that would come to be associated with his summer work during the next decade: the woman in the garden, the nude sunbather, and the woman in a boat in shadowy water. 

As he turned his attention to the out of doors and thus subjected himself to a far-from-controlled environment, Frieseke remained the methodical and meticulous painter who had trained under Whistler. The 1910 portrait by Karl Anderson shows Frieseke in bow tie, smock, and Panama hat, painting a nude outdoors. He holds the same array of brushes as he might have in the academy, one brush set aside for each of the colors that had been mixed beforehand.

Frieseke had known Karl Anderson when both were students at the Art Institute of Chicago, and both had traveled in Holland in the summer of 1898. They renewed their friendship, traveling together with Richard Miller in Venice and Florence in 1909. Anderson spent time in Giverny in both 1909 and 1910. He became one of the so-called Giverny luminists who exhibited together at Henry Fitch Taylor's Madison Art Gallery in December 1910. 

For Frieseke's career, this first venture into the commercial world of New York was of crucial importance, and as a result he came to the notice of William and Robert Macbeth, the most successful and influential of the New York dealers."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Frederick Carl Frieseke: A Biography by Nicholas Kilmer" in Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist"published on the occasion of an exhibition of Frieseke's work.) 

 

Frederick Carl Frieseke: A Giverny Aesthetic

"Rest (Femme au Sofa)" by Frederick Carl Frieseke

"Beginning in 1906 Fred and Sadie Frieseke began to spend the warmer months in Giverny, a comfortably bucolic village within easy reach of Paris. Giverny also enjoyed all the urban advantages of a well-established art colony, one that had been especially favored by Americans. During the months from April through October the surroundings were a movable feast attended by regulars such as Ernest and Mary Blumenschein, the Karl Buehrs, Theodore Butler, the A. B. Frost family, Lawton Parker, and Guy and Ethel Rose. The men fished together. There were countless musical evenings, tennis matches at the courts of the Hotel Baudy, and afternoon teas. The Friesekes took tea with the Monets. Monet and Sadie, herself an ambitious gardener, eagerly discussed the expansion of Monet's garden, and the new bridge from which his water lily garden could be enjoyed.

Alieen O'Bryan, Sadie's niece, spent the summer of 1910 in Giverny with the Friesekes and left a memoir that preserves some of her impressions from that time. 'It was not alone the desire to paint gardens that brought this group together,' she wrote. 'They wished to be rid of business and political ties, rid of petty vanities and avarice, rid of fashions and affiliations.' As a cultural model for the group and its aesthetic she suggested the works of Horace, in which were to be found 'a kind of breviary of good taste, of poetry, or practical and worldly wisdom.' 

'It was our custom to spend a great deal of the time in the garden. Sadie would usually read aloud while Fred painted. Occasionally I would get out my water colours; but more often I would pose for Fred and listen to whatever my aunt had chosen from their well-filled bookshelves. As I look back, life was very pleasant, and much of the pleasure lay in the fine aestheticism.'

An state observer, Aileen O'Bryan was surely correct in her suggestion that idealism was a significant factor in bringing and holding the group together. Appropriately, the nude figure outdoors, the symbol of this urbane community, is an Arcadian motif claiming a civilized innocence."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Frederick Carl Frieseke: A Biography by Nicholas Kilmer" in Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist"published on the occasion of an exhibition of Frieseke's work.) 

 

 

Frederick Carl Frieseke: Professional Success

"Afternoon Tea on the Terrace" by Frederick Carl Frieseke

"On his return to Paris at the end of May 1904, Frederick Carl Frieseke learned that the director of the Luxembourg Museum had selected one of his Salon nudes for purchase by the French government. The triumph must be celebrated with a dinner at Lavenue, a cafe-restaurant in a first-class hotel near the Montparnasse railroad station. Fred invited a party that included the Clarks and William Merritt Chase, who was in town.

Frieseke, who had begun to work in larger scale, exhibited three sizable canvases at the spring Salon. Fortunately, he now had enough money to devote his studio space exclusively to painting, because he had to plan and execute an even larger-scale composition - the mural project for the Hotel Shelburne in Atlantic City. The mural, designed as a single composition, but completed in seven segments, depicts a beach scene with figures, principally elegant young ladies, although a few children, an occasional male, and even a donkey also appear. Sadie was the model for many of the figures. The mural was installed under his supervision in February 1906. 

Frieseke's professional life was booming. His entries to the Saint Louis World's Fair of 1904 had earned him a silver medal. A large nude submitted to the ninth Internationalen Kunstausstellung in Munich in 1905 was awarded the gold medal. That same summer he made what may have been his first visit to Giverny. 'I am leaving in a few days with Young,' he wrote Sadie. She had gone back to Pennsylvania to help her sister Kitty with a new child. 'Giverny is where Monet paints, and MacMonnies lives. You'll like the Youngs.' Frieseke was at least a month in Giverny during the summer of 1905, but what or how he painted there is not recorded."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Frederick Carl Frieseke: A Biography by Nicholas Kilmer" in Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist"published on the occasion of an exhibition of Frieseke's work.) 

 

Frederick Carl Frieseke: All for Sadie

"Through the Vines"
by Frederick Carl Frieseke

"The O'Bryans had returned to Paris in October 1903. They took an apartment in a rather opulent new building just by the boulevard du Montparnasse. Frederick Carl Frieseke lived a mere ten-minute walk away. Sadly, Judge O'Bryan died rather suddenly on March 1, 1904, following an operation for appendicitis. The family was obliged to pack, parcel their belongings out among friends for safekeeping, vacate the apartment, and accompany O'Bryan's body on its return to the United States for burial. Fred had spent the hours of watching with the family, and he accompanied them on their voyage.

He had other business in America - business that may have had as its motive the desire to qualify as a husband for Sadie O'Bryan. The previous year he had begun to provide illustrations and marginal decorations for the 'North American,' a Philadelphia newspaper owned and managed by the Wanamakers' eldest son. He pressed Frieseke to come to Philadelphia as an advisor to the art department and to provide more drawings for both the paper and the Wanamaker stores. Though Frieseke was provided with ample studio space, it amounted to an office job, and it did not agree with him. 

By Spring Frieseke was decidedly out of sorts. He complained to Sadie:

'I want to paint and, honey, the longer I stay the harder it will be for them to get on without me. Oh, dear, if only I were not ambitious... As a great compliment and favor they are going to give me a full-page ad, 'The American Girl by Frieseke.' Well, I hadn't the heart to refuse. They meant it so kindly. But to think I'd ever do such a thing! I've drawn the girl, though, and they are pleased to death with her. And this is fame, dearie. I'm an ungrateful little slob.' 

True, Fred and Sadie were of the same national origin, but after that there were significant differences. Sadie was elegant and tall, almost six feet; Fred was short and dumpy, a condition he could alleviate only by good humor. He concluded one letter with 'I send you all the love that's possible from a person of my size.' Sadie's family was militantly Catholic, while his approach to religion was tangential. Sadie's family enjoyed an ostentatious display of wealth, while Fred was poor and of a family whose economic status could be described as 'comfortable' at best. Fred was modest, determined and introverted. Sadie was dramatic, gregarious - and probably even more determined. As it worked out in due course, they were married in Paris on October 31, 1905. It proved to be an excellent match." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Frederick Carl Frieseke: A Biography by Nicholas Kilmer" in Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist"published on the occasion of an exhibition of Frieseke's work.)