The New Hope Artists Colony: Robert Spencer, Art Beginnings

"On the Canal, New Hope" by Robert Spencer

"Robert Spencer specialized in scenes of rural mills and tenements that he rendered in the impressionist aesthetic. He is the only major American Impressionist painter to dedicate much of his art to the working class and their environment. Unlike his colleagues he often chose to depict the tedious aspects of daily existence. However, the miseries of poverty were only rarely depicted, but rather conveyed the excitement at simply being alive.

Spencer was born on 1 December 1879, at Harvard, Nebraska. His father was a Swedenborgian clergyman, who edited essays by George Inness dealing with aspects of that faith. Spencer admitted that as a boy, 'father changed his parish so often - so I never had what is called a hometown. I left Nebraska when I was three months old for Illinois.' He then lived in Missouri, Virginia, and finally settled in New York, where he graduated from high school in Yonkers in 1899.

Spencer then began attending classes at the National Academy of Design. This instruction continued until 1901 under such artists as Francis Coates Jones, Edwin Howland Blashfield, and Robert Blum. From 1903 to 1905, Spencer attended classes at the New York School of Art where his instructors included William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. Chase encouraged the young Spencer and stated, 'You will be a painter, sir.' Chase may have encouraged a preference for Impressionist aesthetics. In subject matter, however, Spencer would be more heavily influenced by Henri and members of the Ashcan School in terms of his interest in lower-class subject matter.

In 1905 Spencer may have spent almost a year in a civil engineering office in New York as a draftsman and as a surveyor. He did not enjoy this work and never deviated from painting as a career."

To be continued

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