Theodore Robinson, A Sudden Departure

"On the Tow-Path, a Halt" by Theodore Robinson

Will Low and his wife had returned to Paris for one of his projects and had the good fortune to be stay at the house a French art critic who was away for five months. He and his wife had 'adopted' Theodore Robinson as a quasi-permanent member of their household. His stay with them was described thusly:

"In the morning over coffee, Theodore Robinson would quietly remark that he would be gone for a few days, and he would thus with characteristic quietness, slip out of our common life for a time; going, no doubt, to Barbizon, Grez, or some haunt along the Seine - for Giverny was of later discovery with him - and then slip back into his place at the table as quietly as before.

This his friends humoured, as they had learned to do years before, and as they continued to do in after years, when a ring at the bell might mean his unannounced return from Europe; or, after a winter in New York, his announcement, "I think I'll sail tomorrow" would be made in much the same tone as his (more frequent) remark, "If you are not expecting guests, I think I'll stay to dinner." But we were always glad to have him at any time on any terms.

I had thought nothing of his not appearing at our house for a week or ten days when, on the afternoon of April 2, 1896, a messenger summoned me from my work with the news of his sudden death. A friend, who was also his physician, had seen him in the morning, Robinson protesting against his ministrations that he was simply suffering from a mild attack of the asthma to which he was subject, a diagnosis in which the physician concurred - and half an hour after he had expired, as a candle burning brightly down to its socket, flickers and goes out.

A delicate, sensitive artist, receptive to the beauty of atmosphere and limpid play of light over the face of nature, he had no greater preoccupation, in his last years, than to find in the land of his birth a country side that was as inspiring to his work as his well-loved Valley of the Seine. Some strain of Puritan conscience, a desire to identify himself with his native land, was his impelling motive and by this strain he was brought to the hills of Vermont, from whence he had been taken in his infancy and there had found his ideal country. The last time we spoke together he was planning to return there and looking forward to work that should be filled with the contentment of an attained desire, when it was otherwise ordered."

(Excerpted from Will Low Hicok's "A Chronicle of Friendships, 1873-1900.")