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.)