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.)