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.)