Charles Hawthorne: By Example

"Two-Hour Study of Blanche Stillson"
by Charles Hawthorne

"On Friday mornings my father would paint for the class; sometimes it would be a model on the beach, sometimes a portrait or a still life. These examples, greatly prized, were drawn for at the end of the summer. Several years after his death we had occasion to look over a good number of these studies, gathered from all corners of the continent. As we looked at them I was tremendously impressed - or better, impressed all over again - for since last seeing any of them I had acquired a boat and done a lot of sailing in the harbor. This had made me most conscious of the part the direction of the wind played on the general weather, the kind of day, and the quality of the atmosphere. Each study recreated a particular day so well (as well as the model!) that I could tell from which direction the wind was blowing when each one was painted. These quick sketches had always had a special place in my affections, but this quiet demonstration, in a field I now knew well, was a revelation.

One last observation should be made about the book: it is manifestly impossible for it to represent the total of my father's ideas on teaching. A more eloquent testimony to the power and foce of his ideas is the great number of former pupils, now painters of reputation, who hold him in the greatest esteem, no matter in what style they themselves now paint."

Joseph Hawthorne
Toledo, Ohio
November 1959 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.)

 

Charles Hawthorne: Classes at Provincetown

"Mudhead Figure Study"
by Charles Hawthorne

"Perhaps something should be said about the actual conduct of Charles Hawthorne's classes in Provincetown. The students were forced to concentrate on (to quote my father):

'the mechanics of putting one spot of color next to another - the fundamental thing."

The problems were presented in an inescapably direct way. For example, a model would be posed on the beach, and the students would work with putty knives so that they could not be tempted to indicate the details of the model's face that they could not actually see under the hat in the blazing sunlight.

Also, as a means of making the students concentrate on the fundamental relationships of the main spots of color, they were urged not to finish, but to do as many studies as possible - a dozen or more - for the Saturday morning criticism, the high point of the week. In these four-hour marathons, my father used to pass judgment on as many as eight hundred to a thousand studies submitted by the hundred or more students, and cause amazement and consternation in the ranks when he would spot an occasional study that was turned on the wrong side, so that it showed one of the previous week's efforts."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.)

Charles Hawthorne: His Interests

"Self-Portrait" by Charles Hawthorne

"As might be expected from Charles Hawthorne's absorption with portraying the people of Provincetown, it was biography that interested him most in his reading. Mark Twain and Dickens were also favorites of his. Music was also one of his great loves, and this can be seen from the number of parallels he draws from music in his criticism. In New York he was a great concertgoer, and, as far back as I can remember, there was chamber music in the house. He started as a cornetist in the Richmond town band, and took up the cello later on.

In the 'Notes' are many references to the part played by hard work in the development of a painter. No one ever practiced better what he preached, for he was always at work in his studio by eight o'clock, and the volume of work he produced was impressive. With all this he was a warm and enthusiastic companion because of his ability to enjoy life. He loved people, and convivial occasions were numerous in the household.

Of course his relationship with young people, especially his students, needs a special chapter. Looking back on my experiences when studying music, it seems to me that there were an amazing number of scholarships at the Cape Cod School of art. Certainly the talent that assembled there each summer - sometimes only through extraordinary hardships - deserved them, but I know how seldom, as a rule, such need is recognized. Besides providing this large number of scholarships at his own school, he was instrumental in helping talented students in other schools, and also did such things as get up a purse to start off a gifted young Negro painter in Europe, since he would have no opportunity on this side of the Atlantic. To me, as his son, it is most heart-warming to discover, when I meet his former students, with what esteem and affection they still hold him." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.)

 

Charles Hawthorne: Provincetown

"By the Sea" by Charles Hawthorne

"Charles Hawthorne's fascination with the sea and the people who worked and lived by it led him to Holland in 1898. That next year he went to Provincetown. There he found not only an unspoiled fishing village with spectacular contrasts of sand, sea and sky, but also a clarity of atmosphere and a unique quality of light.

His ability to draw people to him brought a number of other painters, such as John Noble, Richard Miller and Max Bohm to Provincetown. His unique gifts as a teacher brought, over the years, thousands of young students tot he Cape Cod School of Art, which he founded in 1899.

Probably he, more than any other one person, was responsible for the growth of Provincetown as an art center because of the success and popularity of the school. Originally attracted to its classes, many of the students have kept their close connection with the town even after becoming established painters in their own right." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.)  

 

Charles Hawthorne: Beginnings

"The Fisher Boy" by Charles Hawthorne

A short biography written by Joseph Hawthorne, the son of the artist: 

"My father, Charles W. Hawthorne, was the son of a sea captain, and grew up in the seaport town of Richmond, Maine. Money was scarce during his boyhood there. He put in long hours cutting ice in the river but he seemed always to have known that he wanted to become a painter.

He went to New York in 1890 at the age of eighteen, worked days in a stained glass factory and studied at night at the Art Students League. George de Forest Brush and Frank Vincent Dumond were his early teachers. To illustrate how precarious existence was for him in those days, he told of having been notified of an award which was to be given him at a formal reception. To his dismay he realized that he had no presentable shirt. Lacking funds to buy one, he ingeniously used quick-drying china white paint to cover his cuffs and shirt front. Thus attired, he claimed his prize with aplomb.

He started to study with William Merritt Chase at his Shinnecock summer school in 1896, and became his assistant the next year. I believe that it was as students there that my mother and father met; on the same Chase school literature that showed my father listed as assistant, the name of Miss Ethel M. Campbell (the future Mrs. Hawthorne) appeared as corresponding secretary. There at Shinnecock he lived in a shack on the beach where fishermen stowed their gear. Thirty years later we received a pheasant at Christmas from one of those fishermen, turned gamekeeper, ,who had seen an announcement of a national prize won by my father. This is one example of his ability to make friends. His acquaintance covered a tremendous range of diverse personalities."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.)  

Willard Metcalf: Final Thoughts

"A Family of Birches" by Willard Metcalf

"In the October 1925 'Art in America,' Willard Metcalf and Winslow Homer are contrasted: 'Homer is dramatic, he produces ominous effects; he handles titanic rocks opposing the onslaught of waves; but Metcalf works in a mood of wistful harmony, of sparkling delicacy. . . . Homer's art is robust; Metcalf's is more fragile and meticulous, yet equally authoritative.' But Homer's work has persisted, despite changes in styles and taste, while Metcalf's went into basements and attics. Yet Metcalf's conservative Impressionism was modified by his own realism, an element that gave it strength and made it 'equally authoritative.' When his work included this element, it was successful. The landscape as a subject was obviously very important to Metcalf. He used his thorough training and his considerable formal mastery to interpret it and to express what he felt was its primary truth. 

Metcalf's Impressionism was informed by a certain kind of realism. It was not at all fussy but more along the lines of the kind of realist artist A.B. Frost talked about: 'There are two types of realist, there is the one who offers a good deal of dirt with his potato. And there is the one who is satisfied with the potato brushed clean. I am inclined to the second kind. To me, the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form.' 

Willard Metcalf became known as 'the poet laureate of the New England Hills.' It is not hard to see why. Travel south along the banks of the Connecticut River from Hanover, New Hampshire, to the Cornish Hills. Explore the Cornish villages and look at Mount Ascutney from the loggia of Saint-Gaudens' house (now in the care of the National Park Service). Cross that marvelous covered bridge to Windsor, Vermont, and drive south on Route 5 through the Connecticut River Valley, one of the most beautiful and still unspoiled countrysides in the East, to Springfield and Chester. There are Metcalf paintings wherever you look."

To be continued

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

 

Willard Metcalf: Afterwards

"Portrait of Willard Metcalf"
by Frank Benson

"Willard Metcalf's funeral service was held at Saint George Chapel, Stuyvesant Square. Among the many honorary pall bearers were Frank Benson, Royal Cortissoz, Frank Crowninshield, Frank DuMond, Charles Platt and Albert Milch. 

The body was taken the next morning to Fresh Pond Crematorium on Long Island. His ashes were divided between Charles Platt and Frank DuMond to dispose of as each saw fit. That spring Charles Platt and his son, Will, walked to a pine grove at the bottom of a slope in front of their house in Cornish. There Will watched his father send Metcalf's ashes drifting over a stone wall back to the New England earth. In September Frank DuMond scattered the remaining ashes in a northern stream, 'Away out across the murmuring river over on the mountainside a great solemn owl is spatting the breathless night with his distant melancholy hoot-hoot-hoot-hoot. . . . The world seems at peace. And I hope you . . . are all in the great beautiful harmony along with me. Everything passes.'

A furor began over Metcalf's will only four days after his death. On 14 March a newspaper reported that Albert Milch had destroyed thirty sketches and paintings, burned in accordance with Metcalf's will (in the malfunctioning miniature fireplace at des Artists). A week later the number was lowered to seventeen - two early French landscapes and fifteen academic drawings. The matter soon became a national debate, and Milch stated that 'twelve paintings representative of both Mr. Metcalf's early and late periods have been set aside. They will never go into any exhibition that may be held of Mr. Metcalf's most remarkable work. They may be burned, though a future conference of the executors will determine that.'

On 20 March the 'Washington Post' defended the destruction as an 'impressive example of artistic integrity.' It would avoid the sadness of a 'posthumous exhibition of the studio sweepings, the experiments, and the downright failures.'  But Morris Markey, in a lively admonition in the 'New York World,' refuted, 'Time, messieurs les executors, will take care of Mr. Metcalf's reputation. You are forbidden to tamper with it!' By this time the executors were extremely wary and it seems that they took few if any destructive measures."

To be continued

(Excerpt from "Sunlight and Shadow: The Life and Art of Willard L. Metcalf" by Elizabeth de Veer.)

 

Willard Metcalf: Summing It Up

"Northcountry" by Willard Metcalf

"In the fall of 1923, Willard Metcalf embarked on the large Vermont landscape that led to the 'New York Tribune' announcements of 27 March 1924: 'The sale of Abbott Thayer's 'Portrait of a Girl' and Willard L. Metcalf's 'Northcountry,' the latter to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, became known yesterday.'

'Northcountry' was painted near Chester in Lower Perkinsville. Metcalf worked there and in Springfield, Vermont, during the last five years of his life. He stayed at the Fullerton Inn (later called the Chester Inn and now called the Inn at long Last0, situated on the green of this charming Vermont town, bounded on the north and south by branches of the Williams River. Frank Benson did a delightful little watercolor at Chester, in 1922, showing Metcalf painting on the banks of a river, presumably the Williams. 

Northcountry' seems to have everything. It might be thought of as a kind of summing-up picture. It has the technical ease of an artist who has had a thorough training and a lifetime of practice; the combination of plein-air tone and Impressionist hue; masterful organization and a sense of space derived from his experience in the Southwest but without that area's limitless expanse; and inspiration from a keen sense of place that is both realistic and poetic. There is a mountain in the background and a New England town. Willard Metcalf's painting was never better. In November 1924 he received a letter from the director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, proposing a one-man exhibition for January 1925. Compared to his first success in 1905, the events of 1924 and 1925 were a triumph.

Willard Metcalf is one of those who has placed an indelible stamp upon American art,' wrote the 'Washington Post' critic on 11 January 1925, 'and who will leave behind him in the record of his life's achievements for the uplift and joy of future generations a priceless heritage.'  The exhibition at the Corcoran was both a critical and a popular success, yet, while it attracted great crowds, none of his paintings sold. That would have to wait for his February show at the Milch Galleries in New York. But the memorial flavor of the 'Washington Post' review proved to be prophetic. On 9 March 1925, Metcalf was dead."

To be continued

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

 

Willard Metcalf: Changing Times

"October Morning, Deerfield" by Willard Metcalf

"On 30 April 1913 Willard Metcalf and his family steamed for Europe, stopping in Norway before going on to France and Italy. He did some painting in Norway, but it was relatively undistinguished and somewhat somewhat wooden, as was, with few exceptions, his work in Italy. He was more successful in Paris, where he set up at the same vantage point as his friend Childe Hassam had in 1897 to paint the 'Pont Royal.'

Metcalf returned to America just in time, for in August 1914 war was declared in Europe.

'The old order fell apart in Europe, and art fell apart with it. It didn't show all at once. Some people went on making art; some other people went on looking at it. Museums stayed open, exhibitions were held, magazines came out on time. But something had gone down forever: the unity, the stability, the perfected internationalism of the European art scene before 1914. How could it be otherwise, when Braque, Dérain, Leger and Apollinaire were in the army on one side and Kirchner, March, Macke and Ernst were in the army on the other?'

In New York, the annual exhibitions of The Ten were beginning to suffer, in part from the sense of unease and dissatisfaction caused by the war but also as a result of the Armory Show. The critics were beginning to be increasingly unsympathetic to The Ten, and by 1913, according to a reviewer in 'International Studio,' 'A generation has. . . passed since these ideas were new. . . yet still the members of The Ten are apparently content with their original program. Scant change has marked their production from season to season.'

From 1917 to 1919 Metcalf embarked on a correspondence with Charles Lang Freer in an effort to persuade that genteel and discriminating collector to buy more of his paintings. Freer had bought 'Blossom Time' in 1915, and later selected one of the Cornish subjects, 'The White Pasture.' The linear arabesques and asymmetrical placement of shapes in this painting gave it a very Oriental look, a look quite appropriate to Freer's purposes. He also chose 'October Morning, Deerfield;' and just before the Armistice in 1918, he bought 'White Lilacs,' one of Metcalf's most delicate works and one that he considered the artist's 'masterpiece.' Metcalf felt that he was included in the best and most discriminating collection in the country."

To be continued

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

 

Willard Metcalf: The Armory Show

"October Morning" by Willard Metcalf

"The International Exhibition of Modern Art, the celebrated Armory Show, was the most important exhibition of modern art ever held in the United States. Willard Metcalf went first to the Montross Gallery to catch the fifteenth exhibition of The Ten; and then he proceeded to the 69th Regiment's Armory to view the exhibition that shattered the complacency of the genteel. It shattered equally that harmony in life and art sought by so many members of the American art community, a goal of singular importance to Metcalf and many of his peers. Marcel Dechamp was a major disruption, with his infamous 'Nude Descending a Staircase.' There were other extraordinary works in that huge show of some thirteen hundred entries.

"This, however, was not the first sign of modernism in America. Steiglitz had opened his gallery '292' in 1905, when Metcalf was just beginning to achieve success. And while Metcalf was painting his winter landscapes, Stieglitz showed Cézanne and Matisse in addition to such Americans as John Marin and Georgia O'Keeffe. But the Armory Show did it all on a grand scale, and its special significance was that it permanently opened the United States to the new. Its effect on American artists was profound and far-reaching, but Willard Metcalf, at least for a time, was unaffected.* 

"Metcalf registered no opinion of the new work in his diary, referring casually to the exhibition as the 'Cubists Show,' although his wife reported that she felt compelled to hold his arm, because he seemed about to faint from shock as he viewed the work on display. A few nights later 'Les Anciens de l'Académie Julian gathered at the Brevoort in their old smocks and corduroys to burlesque the production of the 'cubes.' Metcalf, instead, played piquet at Charles Platt's and lost $14.30. Deliberate casualness was an appropriate defense against a niggling suspicion that sunny optimism would no longer be as appealing a theme in his work. And as the Armory Show was being prepared to travel to Chicago and Boston, Metcalf readied himself for a trip abroad.""** 

To be continued

(*Excerpt from "Sunlight and Shadow: The Life and Art of Willard L. Metcalf" in a portion by Richard J. Boyle.

**Excerpt from "Sunlight and Shadow: The Life and Art of Willard L. Metcalf" in a portion by Elizabeth de Veer.)

Willard Metcalf: Winter Paintings

"Hush of Winter" by Willard Metcalf

"Some of Willard Metcalf's more outstanding paintings of the Cornish period include - besides 'Icebound' and 'The White Veil,' both from 1909 - 'Blow-Me-Down,' and 'The Village' - 'September Morning' (both 1911), one of those views of a typical New England village, all clapboard and white, dominated by the church steeple and contrasting with the blue of the sky and the green of the foliage; three very special winter scenes - 'The Hush of Winter,' 'Cornish Hills,' and 'Thawing Brook (No. 1),' all painted in 1911; and an exquisite, somewhat decorative winter picture called 'The White Pasture,' painted in 1917 and bought by Charles Lang Freer for his new gallery in Washington, D.C. 

Through his masterly handling of paint, his sensitive orchestration of tone and color, the nuances of white, and his emphasis on the warm side of color temperature, Metcalf creates in 'The Hush of Winter,' a scene that leaves no doubt of the time of year but also has a sense of warmth and intimacy. It is as though Metcalf has implied that, along with Robert Frost in the post's 'A Winter Eden,' 'an hour of winter day might seem too short.' 

The correspondences between Frost and Metcalf, in both style and personal circumstances, are many and inescapable. Both had an unaffected, straightforward and deceptively simple style. Both conveyed a strong and convincing sense of place, both responded positively to the natural world, especially to New England, and both received delayed recognition. When Metcalf first came to the Cornish region, Frost was working on a farm near Derry, New Hampshire. Frost won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1924 for his book of poetry entitled 'New Hampshire,' and Metcalf earned the title 'poet laureate of the New England hills' for the paintings he did in Cornish and later in Chester, Vermont, and was elected to the Academy of Arts and Letters."

To be continued

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

Willard Metcalf: Cornish, New Hampshire

"Cornish Hills" by Willard Metcalf

"Willard Metcalf wanted to go farther north, where the snow season was longer. 'Evening,' wrote Stephen Parrish in his diary of 3 March 1909, 'to...dinner. The Shipmans and Metcalf the painter.' Stephen Parrish and his son, Maxfield, the famous illustrator, lived in Cornish, New Hampshire, which Metcalf began to paint in February and March 1909. The countryside around Cornish became the subject of some of Metcalf's most direct, unaffected, and joyous paintings. Between 1909 and 1920 he returned to Cornish over and over again, and from it he later discovered the nearby region around Springfield and Chester, Vermont, the scene of his very last group of paintings. But while in Cornish, his work encompassed views of the Cornish hills, a landscape that includes Grantham Mountain, the Croyden mountains, and Blow-Me-Down Brook.

Unlike Old Lyme, Woodstock, New York City, Gloucester, or Taos, no single town or village was associated with the Cornish artists' colony. Rather, it consisted of artists' houses sprawled over the Cornish hills and scattered among the villages. Not far from a most impressive covered bridge, in 1885, Augustus Saint-Gaudens started the colony, and in the two decades he lived there, he produced about one hundred fifty sculptures.

 With Metcalf in Cornish were his friend the playwright Louis Shipman and his wife Ellen, who designed quite a few of the Cornish gardens, many of which had become famous; and the architect and painter Charles Adams Platt, whom Metcalf had met at the Académie Julian and who had designed the Freer Gallery. The painter and conservative critic Kenyon Cox had a house there; and Thomas Dewing rented a place during the summers, as did Will Ladd Taylor, one of Metcalf's oldest friends.

In addition, the colony included theater people, writers, and musicians, who engaged in what today would be called performance pieces but were then called 'masques.' It could get a bit too social, but Metcalf's interests were more professional, and unlike most of his Cornish colleagues, he preferred the winter to all the seasons he painted in that area. Yet there are probably more known Metcalf paintings of the seasons of the Cornish landscape at any time of the year than by any of the other members of the colony." 

To be continued

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

Willard Metcalf: Seasonal Landscapes

"The First Snow" by Willard Metcalf

"From about this time, Willard Metcalf developed as a painter of seasonal landscapes, sensitive to the specific nature of the individual seasons, foliage colors, and qualities of light. This new emphasis was remarked upon by the critics. He became particularly interested in winter scenes and his winter landscapes were compared to those of his friend John Twachtman. Although Metcalf had occasionally painted winter subjects earlier, he began to give them greater emphasis, and this emphasis continued until the end of his career. 

"Winter Landscape" by John Twachtman

'First Snow,' painted in 1906, is an example of an earlier treatment of a winter scene. It is a bit 'fussier' than his later paintings on that theme, but the general direction is there, and so are the interest and enthusiasm. The diagonal thrusts are stabilized by horizontal and vertical directions, and the square shape of the canvas (a predilection he shared with Twachtman) reinforces that stability. Again, like Twachtman, Metcalf used tonal variations of a gray and subtle changes of tones in the white field, broadly brushed on the canvas, to convey the feeling of silence, serenity, and 'aloneness' that he seemed to be seeking in his work.

After 1907 Metcalf did not return to Old Lyme to paint. The social aspects of the colony had begun to interfere. It was becoming gentrified, with afternoon tea served during exhibitions. This gracious life was not to Metcalf's taste, and he began to look elsewhere for new places as well as new associations and new ideas."

To be continued

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

 

Willard Metcalf: Success

"May Night" by Willard Metcalf

"Willard Metcalf first stayed in Old Lyme for an extended time in 1905, and he returned in 1906 and 1907. He also worked for periods in other areas of Connecticut, most of them near Old Lyme - and he painted intensively. 

The version of 'November' done at Old Lyme is a good example of the kind of work that earned Metcalf a reputation as a painter of the changing seasons: a small stream flows quietly through a section of ground on which the browns, oranges, and yellows of the autumn leaves have fallen. The branches of a tree covered with yellow leaves hang over the stream. 'November' also exemplifies his use of a modified Impressionist style to express his feeling for nature and his keen sense of place. Here Metcalf, like Robert Frost, uses a part to represent the whole. There is something else as well: a hint of melancholy, perhaps, and conservatism. The colors of autumn are not obvious, not bright or garish - all yellow ocher and burnt sienna, no cadmium yellow or orange; and the reflections in the water mirror not the yellow leaves of the standing tree but the dark shapes of its branches.

In 1906 he exhibited again at the St. Botolph Club, hanging eighteen canvases that included 'May Night,' painted at Old Lyme that year. Most, if not all, the paintings had been done at Old Lyme in the past two years. 'May Night,' however, was the star of the show, even though it was 'different,' 'an uncommon subject,' as written in the 'Boston Herald.' And it was atypical: moonlight illuminates the pediment and columns of a late Georgian house as a rather ethereal-looking woman approaches the front portico. The woman - and to a certain extent the picture itself - feels more like Dewing than Metcalf. But it was popular, and it represented a turning point in his career. 

When Metcalf offered Miss Florence Griswold the painting to pay his bill, she refused. 'I won't take it,' she exclaimed. 'It's the best thing you've ever done.' So was the exhibition. The painter and critic Philip Hale, another Giverny colleague and teacher at the Museum School in Boston, summed up the show in a four-column feature story in the 'Boston Herald' on 18 November 1906, which praised Metcalf's 'vitality' and his 'freshness in point of view and a skill and breadth in handling that makes them remarkable.' Metcalf sold enough paintings to more than pay his debts to Ms. Griswold, then went to Maine to visit his parents for awhile." 

To be continued

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

 

Willard Metcalf: The Old Lyme Colony

"Kalmia" by Willard Metcalf

"The painter Henry Ward Ranger started the Old Lyme Colony. He was enchanted with the village from his first visit in 1899, and immediately made plans to establish a new Barbizon at this juncture of the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound. Old Lyme is situation in one of the most beautiful areas in southern New England. Its white houses lining the old Boston Post Road look as though time had stopped about 1900, and was eminently paintable, as were some of the other towns nearby. 

Old Lyme was a bit down-at-the-heels when Ranger got there, because the ship-building industry had gone elsewhere, diminishing the once-great prosperity of the town. The Griswold family, for instance, was an old, distinguished New England family fallen on hard times, and Miss Florence Griswold began to take in summer boarders, among them Henry Ward Ranger, who felt her late Georgian house was just the place to establish his colony of American landscapists. 

Fortunately Miss Griswold agreed with him, for Miss Griswold and her house, with its grand portico and spacious grounds, became central to the founding and development of the colony at Old Lyme. The house, now the Florence Griswold Museum and Lyme Historical Society on Lyme Street, soon became headquarters for painters of the Barbizon persuasion led by Ranter - until Childe Hassam came to town in 1903, with all the paraphernalia of the Impressionist style. Hassam also brought with him his friend and fellow Impressionist Walter Griffin and encourage Metcalf to join them. Metcalf represnted neutral territory in his pursuit of a middle course as a kind of latter-day American Bastien-LePage. But his work had an Impressionist edge, and soon the colony became 'Impressionized.' Henry Ward Ranger moved elsewhere." 

To be continued

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

 

Willard Metcalf: Autumn Foliage

"Autumn Festival" by Willard Metcalf

"James Gibbons Huneker wrote that Willard Metcalf had solved the problem of autumn foliage, and Royal Cortissoz that 'stated in the simplest terms, this gift of his is a gift of drawing... When Mr. Metcalf pitched his tent beside the Damariscotta, he resolved to paint its portrait with as much care for its individual traits as he would in... the portrait of a man or woman.' And he was right. Metcalf's landscape drawing enabled him to convey a convincing feeling for the natural scene, both general and specific. 

The critics and the public found something very American about his landscapes. He was painting, celebrating even, a definite and specific American locale. The 'New York Tribune' agreed with Cortissoz and went even further in praise of the artist's stylistic deftness in avoiding both the excessive shadows of the Barbizon School or the exaggerated brilliance of the Impressionists. 'He has,' said the 'Tribune,' 'studied the effects of light without any reference to Monet.' Wishful thinking on the part of the press, but very real progress on Metcalf's part, and he attributed all of this praise to a kind of working aesthetic hibernation in Maine in 1904.

But he did not go back to Maine in the summer of 1905; he went instead to Old Lyme in Connecticut, to the famous art colony that he had visited briefly in 1903 - possibly at Childe Hassam's suggestion. Metcalf was fresh from the success of his first New York one-man show, his reputation very much enhanced. In Old Lyme he solidified that reputation by painting some of the best pictures of his career."

To be continued

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

Willard Metcalf: First One-Man Show

"The Pool" by Willard Metcalf

"Although Willard Metcalf painted in a more Impressionist style, he did not give up his concern for good draftsmanship or what he believed was its importance; nor did he give up a Tonal approach entirely, refining it and making it more subtle instead. Getting back to Maine in 1904 proved not only a good decision but also an important step in Metcalf's career.

He also began to teach again, this time an evening class at the Rhode Island School of Design, commuting there once a week. He traveled to New York in November, where he began negotiations for his first one-man show there. He was forty-six years old and began to keep a scrapbook of notices and critical reviews. Alluding to the revived and fresh direction of his work, he noted on the inside cover, 'A partial history of the Renaissance.' When he finally returned to New York, after a year in Maine, this 'renaissance' had yielded some twenty paintings, which were included in his exhibition at Fishel, Adler, & Schwartz in February 1905. 

In March that year he exhibited with The Ten, and in April with Dodge McKnight at the Rhode Island School of Design. He ascribed this change for the better to his sojourn in Maine, where he had a chance to uncover what was essential in his painting. Suddenly he was perceived as an artist who could truly paint a landscape, particularly the landscape of New England. He was seen to have the special ability to synthesize studio draftsmanship, Tonalism, and Impressionism without being dogmatic or imitative, and make it coalesce into something personal, into a style of his own. Molded by his forceful personality, it was subtle and sensitive, a style that he would develop and refine and play back for the next twenty years. It finally came together in that first one-man show in New York in 1905, and the critics were delighted."

To be continued

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

Willard Metcalf: Renaissance in Maine

"Ebbing Tide (Version 2)" by Willard Metcalf

"In late 1903 or early 1904 Willard Metcalf left New York for his parents' home in Maine, near Damariscotta, an acre known as Clark's Cove. He stopped teaching for awhile, at least in New York, and went up to Maine to paint and to think. It was an effort to try to pull his life together, professionally and personally, and to do that he turned to nature - to the landscape he had always had an affinity for. 

When Metcalf reached Clark's Cove he began to paint what he deeply and honestly felt about the natural world. It was his self-designated 'renaissance.' From 1904 he worked in a more assured and relaxed manner, responding to this area's craggy coastline, its softer inland hills, and its enveloping silence. He painted in Walpole, East Boothbay, and Boothbay. He pained on the banks of the Damariscotta River, occasionally pitching a tent there, and he painted in the Penobscot Bay region. 

"Ebbing Tide (Version 2)," for example, is a view of the Bay from Frank Benson's house on North Haven Island and is painted in the bright color and broken brushwork of Impressionism. He did 'Ebbing Tide' in 1907, but the confidence of its manner came about in 1904, during that full year in Maine when he also painted 'The Landing Place,' 'Afternoon Breeze,' 'Spring on the River,' and many others." 

To be continued

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

 

Willard Metcalf: The Ten American Painters

"The Red Oak" by Willard Metcalf

"Late in December 1897, Childe Hassam, along with Weir and Twachtman, resigned from the Society of American Artists. Metcalf and six other artists joined them to form a loosely knit independent exhibiting group, The Ten American Painters. Edward Simmons recalled its beginning in his autobiography: 'The Ten American Painters was started quite by accident. We never called ourselves the 'Ten'; in fact, we never called ourselves anything. We were just a group who wanted to make a showing and left the Society as a protest against big exhibits. At our first exhibition at the the Durand-Ruel's Gallery we merely put out the sign 'Show of Ten American Painters' and it was the reporters and critics speaking of us who gave us the name.'

The Ten were dissatisfied with the vast, mediocre, overcrowded installations of the Society's annual exhibitions and that it had become just as conservative as the National Academy that it had broken from in 1877. The seceding artists [who included Frank Benson, Edmund Tarbell, Joseph DeCamp, Thomas Dewing, Robert Reid, Edward Simmons and even Abbott Thayer who joined only briefly, backing out before the first exhibition] grew dissatisfied with their membership in a large body which is governed by form and tradition, and having sympathetic tastes in a certain direction in art."

After their opening at Durand-Ruel the group exhibited annually in New York, most often at that gallery or at the Montross Gallery, and sometimes the exhibitions traveled to the St. Botolph Club in Boston. There were no officers in the organization, and there was no jury. Each man received an equal amount of space, and each artist's work was arranged by the artist himself and 'hung on the line,' with plenty of room in between. The press was generally favorable, even though some of the critics expected a more rebellious art. One of them even seemed disappointed that the show was good only because of the 'intrinsic quality' of the work! These exhibitions were to be a forum for Metcalf's work for the next twenty years."

To be continued

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

Willard Metcalf: Life in New York

"Early Spring Afternoon, Central Park"
by Willard Metcalf

"In 1890 Willard Metcalf moved to New York, the financial, commercial, and cultural center of the United States, attracting artists, writers, and creative people in all areas. The artists tended to live downtown, congregating around or near Lower Fifth Avenue at Washington Square. Metcalf and Theodore Robinson, for example, lived near each other on Fifteenth Street. William Merritt Chase worked in the Tenth Street Studio building, designed specifically for artists by Richard Morris Hunt. The National Academy of Design was then on Twenty-third Street, as was The Players, a newly established club housed in Edwin Booth's former residence. Standford White, who redecorated the house, belonged to the club, as did Metcalf, who remained a member for twenty years and used the club as his mailing address during the ineties. 

Metcalf's friend Childe Hassam had his studio there in 1890, and became an unofficial chronicler of Fifth Avenue, describing it in all seasons and at all times of day. From 1890 through 1919 he made a series of paintings that could have inspired such urban scenes by Metcalf as 'Battery Park, Spring' and 'Early Spring Afternoon, Central Park.' But Metcalf was no chronicler of cities, and it is significant that in both of these urband views the park is the dominant element. At this time, however, Metcalf did very little painting, concentrating instead on illustration assignments, teaching, and occasional portrait commissions. When he participated in exhibitions, he showed mostly his French paintings - at least until after his trip to Gloucester in the summer of1895.

Gloucester has always been a great place for painters, an aspect of its activity that would peak in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When Metcalf went there it was already listed in the guide books as 'a great resort of artists, owing partly to the picturesqueness of the town itself, and partly to the fine scenery of Cape Ann.' Metcalf painted 'Gloucester Harbor,' his first American landscape since he left for Europe in 1883, and he could not have chosen a better, more indigenous locale. The subject was American yet also reminiscent of Europe. 

When he exhibited six Gloucester paintings at the Society of American Artists annual exhibition in 1896, it was the confidence, assurance, and skill of 'Gloucester Harbor' that won him the coveted Webb Prize. 'It was the beginning of his success,' Childe Hassam judged. And Hassam took the credit for it: 'I got him to go there and start his work.'" 

To be continued

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

 

Willard Metcalf: Boston

"Gloucester Harbor" by Willard Metcalf

"Willard Metcalf wrote his parents on 7 December 1888: 'I shall set sail on the Champagne from Havre on the 15th. It makes me later than expected, but still I shall be in time for Christmas, as I shall arrive in New York on the 23rd at the latest and will come at once to you.' After arriving home, he visited his former teacher, George Loring Brown. Portly and white-bearded, Brown was still at work, but on out-of-date and unsought canvases, a forecast of what would happen to Metcalf himself after his death. In January 1889 Edmund Tarbell and Frank Benson welcomed Metcalf back to Boston and to the studios at 145 Darmouth Street. At that time both Tarbell and Benson were teaching at the Boston Museum School. 

Number Two Newbury Street in Boston was then the location of the St. Botolph Club, founded in 1879, which offered Metcalf his first one-man exhibition on his return from Europe, and he prepared for the show at the Dartmouth Street studios. The Club's exhibitions made it an aesthetic center for the Boston area, and played a strong role in promoting American Impressionism by showing works by Hassam, Weir, Twachtman, Chase, and in 1889, paintings by Willard Metcalf. It also exhibited the work of DeCamp, Benson, and Tarbell, future colleagues of Metcalf in the Ten American Painters and members of what has come to be called the Boston School. In addition, the club presented the first exhibition of paintings by Monet outside of France in 1892.

Despite generally favorable reviews, Metcalf's exhibition of forty-four paintings did not do well financially, a condition that plagued him until about 1905. This was not surprising, since American collectors were not eager at the time to buy work by American artists. Nevertheless, the sale of 'Marché de Kousse-Kousse à Tunis,' the painting that garnered him an honorable mention at the Paris Salon, along with some portrait commissions, illustration assignments, and the generosity of Stanford White, who paid Metcalf's studio rent for a few years, enabled Metcalf to move to New York permanently in 1890."

To be continued

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

Willard Metcalf: NY Appellate Court Murals

Right half of "Justice" by Willard Metcalf

"In 1899, under the aegis of John La Farge and in the company of H. Siddons Mowbray and Edwin Blashfield, Robert Reid, and Edward Simmons, Willard Metcalf was commissioned to paint two murals for the Appellate Court in New York City. His subjects, 'Justice' and 'The Banishment of Discord,' were appropriate to the site, and they were painted in a style that seemed to combine his Beaux-Arts draftsmanship with the illustration manner of A.B. Frost. As 'Harper's' pointed out, at least one of the murals resembled a giant book illustration. 'A composition by Willard L. Metcalf, the first decoration he has essayed,' wrote 'Harper's' critic, 'has some very agreeable passages... But... the result is an appearance of minuteness, notwithstanding that the figures are to the same scale as those on the other walls... Much more satisfactory is a group on the return wall, symbolizing 'the Banishment of Discord.' In this respect, with the exception of the painting and stained glass of John La Farge, Metcalf's work was not unlike that of Simmons, Reid, or Blashfield, whose murals were in a nearby courtroom. *

In "Justice" Metcalf placed a winged "Justice" as the main figure, flanked on her left and right by two young attendants. The one on the left holds a pair of scales aloft. The one on the right an attendant boy holds up a panel inscribed "Justitia." To his right is the seated figure of "Law" with "Transgression" at her feet. Next to this pair stands a armored figure representing "Protection," beneath which is "The Oppressed," next to whom are two figures representing "Flight from Justice." To the left of the boy with the scales is the seated figure of "Equity" holding a crystal ball, and at her feet is "Sorrow" mourning the dead. Next is "Mercy" kneeling in front of the accused, who awaits judgment, guarded by a figure with a spear.**

Although Metcalf's efforts at mural painting represent a brief sortie rather than a full-scale attack, his involvement was very much in the spirit of the time. The last quarter of the nineteenth century was a great age of mural painting in America, unparalleled until the WPA mural projects of the Depression. In contrast to murals of the 1930s, mural painting of the 1890s and the turn of the century was part of a culturally optimistic movement that has been called the American Renaissance. The term came into use about 1880, and it described the identification of many Americans - ruling class as well as artists - with the Italian Renaissance and the feeling that its spirit had been captured in the United States." *

To be continued

(*Excerpt from "Sunlight and Shadow: The Life and Art of Willard L. Metcalf" by  Elizabeth de Veer and Richard J. Boyle.
** Information from a booklet produced for an exhibition of the art in the "Temple of Justice: The Appellate Division Courthouse" in 1977.)  

 

Willard Metcalf: Illustrator

"Sunset Hour on the West Lagoon, World's Columbian
Exposition of 1893" by Willard Metcalf

"When Willard Metcalf returned from France in the late 1880s, he became more active as an illustrator, working primarily for 'Scribner's.' Added to those commissions, he began to receive work from 'Century Magazine' as well in 1891. In 1893 he was commissioned by the Executive Committee of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago to do 'Sunset Hour on the West Lagoon.' In addition Scribner's sponsored a special exhibition in which four of Metcalf's illustrations were included, and in the Fine Arts Building he was represented with three paintings from his years abroad. He wasn't painting very much at this time, working instead at illustration and on his French studies, teaching at the Art Students League and at Cooper Union, and executing a few portrait commissions. But illustration absorbed most of his time and energy, a reflection in part of the avid interest and taste of the American public.

By 1896 Metcalf was impatient with illustration. The year before, in Gloucester, he had tasted personal satisfaction and professional success with his landscape painting - the first time he had seriously concentrated on this subject since his return from Europe. 'Gloucester Harbor,' one of his early successful efforts at pure Impressionist painting - picture 'light-filled and casual,' won the prestigious Webb Prize at the Society of American Artists' annual exhibition in 1896. So, as he began to chafe under the constraints of illustration, the demands of the story, the restrictions on color, the enforced use of obvious imagery, and the burdens of deadlines, then left the field of illustration altogether. But he also gave up its rewards: the money, the fame, and the good life, which for some could be very good indeed."

To be continued

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

Willard Metcalf: Principles

"Midsummer Twilight" by Willard Metcalf

"Willard Metcalf's Giverny experience, as well as those in Pont-Aven and Grèz, gave him a greater awareness of some of the specific problems of landscape painting and of how he wanted to resolve them. He did not want to give up a tonal value system entirely and replace it with one based upon hues alone, at least not at this time. Nor did he want to give up the use of drawing to describe form or to place an object in space. In effect, he was withholding a commitment to any single style or manner. Rather, through a maturing discernment of different approaches to interpreting landscape, he began to develop the sense of place that characterized his later work. He preferred to develop slowly, through careful analysis of a scene, to which he responded according to its inherent light, color, and texture. Metcalf began, however, like his friend John Twachtman, with a basic empathy for landscape.

One of the earliest American residents of Giverny, he was among the first to show the paintings he had done in France, when he returned to the United States. In 1889 Metcalf and Theodore Wendel, a fellow Givernyite (and Duveneck Boy), exhibited their work in Boston, Wendel in his own studio and Metcalf at the St. Botolph Club. Public response to Metcalf's exhibition was positive. His conservative and rather independent brand of Impressionism promised to serve him sell with the critics and the public."

To be continued

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