The New Hope Art Colony: William Langson Lathrop

"Ely's Bridge" by William Langson Lathrop

"William Langson Lathrop was considered the 'dean' of the New Hope Art Colony, and had come a long way from his beginnings on his family's farm in Painesville, Ohio. The farm was located near the 'broad expanse of Lake Erie, ice-bound, bleak and forbidding throughout the long winters and reluctant springs.' During 1877-79 he spent his winters teaching in a little red schoolhouse to a class of thirty to forty pupils. In the summers he worked on the farm, but he always continued to sketch and draw. 

In 1880 he worked three months at 'Harper's' and was counseled that 'This is no place for you. It is educating you straight away from your bent... Go straight back to the farm and keep on studying as you have been doing.' He listened and his work plowing the fields and living in close relationship with nature informed his landscape painting later on. Indeed several critics noted that Lathrop excelled at painting 'raw earth.'

Lathrop spent from July 1887 to April 1888 in New York. He studied briefly with William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League. He stated that he painted three hours per day under Chase and that he was the only male member of the class; the remainder was comprised of six women. Of Chase, Lathrop wrote that he was 'contagiously energetic. No humor. No poetry.'

In April to July of 1899, Lathrop visited England, France and Holland and spent much time absorbing and sketching the rural countryside. In England he met and married Annie Burt of Oxford. He passed his time with long-time friend Henry Snell and with the Tonalist painter, Henry Ward Ranger.

He worked on his art and improved until he was officially recognized after winning the coveted W.T. Evans Prize at the Twenty-ninth Annual New York Watercolor Society Show. All six of his entries sold at twice the price he had expected. The resulting publicity brought him the patronage of Geoerge S. Hearn and William T. Evans. William MacBeth, a noted dealer, soon began to handle Lathrop's paintings. His success attracted a group of students, and he began teaching outdoors during the summers of 1897 and 1898 in the Poconos."

To be continued

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