The New Hope Art Colony: Edward Redfield, Pt. 3

"Melting Snow" by Edward Redfield

"In 1891 Edward Redfield and Robert Henri were at the Hotel Deligant in the village of Bois-le-Roi in the forest of Fontainebleau. Redfield's future spouse, Elise Devin Deligant, was the daughter of the innkeeper. At the inn Redfield, Henri, Grafly, and other young artists would have long discussions about art and aesthetics. It was at the inn the Redfield became fascinated by local snow scenes. He had hoped to become a portrait painter, but it was at this point that he abandoned portraiture, at least professionally, and decided to take up landscape painting as his livelihood. Of portraiture Redfield stated: 'With landscape, if I make it good enough, there are many who will appreciate it. Portrait painting must please the subject as a general thing - or no pay! It's a hired man's job.' Several of the young artists at the inn submitted works to the Paris Salon of 1891. Redfield's first snow scene, 'Canal en Hiver,' was accepted, while a full-length portrait by Henri was rejected.

After a trip back to the States in 1892 for a one-man exhibition in Boston, Redfield returned to London in 1893, where he married Elise Deligant. He always referred to her as 'Madame.' After the tragic death of their first child, they returned to France where their son Laurent was born. The artist commemorated the event by recording the view from the house where his son was born, and Robert Henri painting the five-month-old baby's portrait. Sadly the death of their firstborn was a cause of despair and mental illness for his wife.

After their return to Center Bridge, Pennsylvania in 1900, Redfield began to produce the local snow scenes for which he became noted as the leading American painter of the winter landscape, and his monumental canvases are the antithesis of the generally small and sentimental snow scenes of the earlier nineteenth-century American landscape painters. His works were broadly and rapidly painted at just 'one go' as Henry Rolfe had instructed him when he was a teenager. He completed his snow scenes outdoors, usually completing a fifty by fifty-six inch canvas in eight hours. Redfield stated: 'What I wanted to do was to go outdoors and capture the look of a scene, whether it was a brook or a bridge, as it looked on a certain day.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Pennsylvania Impressionists" by Thomas Folk.)