Willard Metcalf: Childhood Propensities

"Midsummer Shadow" by Willard Metcalf

"Early Spring is full of promise.
This artist has decided talent, and talent too, of a high order.
He already paints far better than other artists who
have had twice as much experience with the brush."

"When this critical praise for the young Willard Metcalf was published, the artist was shortly to leave Boston for the Southwest on an illustrating assignment. He had absorbed what Boston had to teach him; the influence of the Barbizon School through the work of Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Jean François Millet, and especially of William Morris Hunt; the anatomy lessons of Dr. William Rimmer, as well as examples of Hudson River School painting. He also had survived an apprenticeship in the studio of George Loring Brown.

Like many American artists starting out in the 1860s and 1870s, Metcalf began his professional career by working briefly for a wood engraver. He had received his early education in public schools in Maine and Newtonville, Massachusetts, where his family lived before moving to Cambridgeport. There he was apprenticed to the celebrated Boston landscape painter George Loring Brown through the intercession of Mr. George M. Patten, a friend of the Metcalf family. George Patten was an artist of sorts himself and encouraged the young Metcalf to develop his talent.  

Although George Loring Brown had patrons and supporters, his financial condition was none too secure. An apprentice who paid to clean up the studio and help with some of the bigger pictures, in return for the chance to learn his craft and gain experience, would be welcome. Metcalf did just that. But even at that time, Metcalf at least knew what he did not want. He did not want to paint pictures like Brown's, with classical references and subject matter: 'that darned old Rome,' as he put it in his diary. Although Brown himself was not a great draftsman, he did instill in his apprentice the overall importance of draftsmanship in his art. In addition, Metcalf must have gained valuable experience in working techniques and methods, and an abiding sense of craftsmanship. He was one of the last young artists to experience the apprenticeship system, a method of training that was being replaced by the formal art school." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Sunlight and Shadow: The Life and Art of Willard L. Metcalf" by  Elizabeth de Veer and Richard J. Boyle.