Frederick Carl Frieseke: Normandy and Frances

"The Artist's Daughter" by Frederick Carl Frieseke

"As his career progressed Frederick Carl Frieseke did not hesitate to follow his innate sense of how his craft must develop. His manner and approach would become progressively more meditative and deliberate, his production less. He wrote Macbeth:

'My present method of painting allows me to produce very few pictures as compared with that I turned out previously. You will have to explain to your customers that these pictures take five to six times as long to paint as previous ones, and I consider them far more complete as works of art.'

There were other changes at work as well. In 1919 the Friesekes decided to shift their summer quarters. They had become friendly with the Philadelphian George Biddle, who had painted with Fred in Giverny during the summers of 1915 and 1916. In September 1919 Fred wrote to George, 

'We have been trying to find a place in Normandy to buy. Hard to  find what we want and the troubled times here make us doubtful if it's wise to buy at all... Giverny has been quite gay this summer. Louis [Ritman] is installed in Miss Wheeler's house with his model [Gaby]. Waldo Pierce, with Jeanne Savoy, is living in the little house next to the farm...'

Though the Friesekes often said that their reason for taking a place in Normandy was the fishing, undoubtedly they had also concluded that Giverny was no place to bring up a little girl. Once they had purchased the Normandy property in 1919, Frieseke began the series of landscapes and the clothed figures - many of them portraits - that would occupy him for the remainder of his life. As Frances grew older, she became more and more his preferred subject.

From the very beginning the Friesekes had never been at ease about their daughter's health. Her birth followed a difficult pregnancy, and her infancy was threatened from the outset by her parents' unwitting use of a criminally adulterated baby formula to which formaldehyde had been added as a preservative. For much of her youth, and until her marriage in 1937, Frances was considered to be either an invalid or at grave risk. Though she occasionally attended schools for brief periods, as the Friesekes moved back and forth from Paris to Normandy, for the most part her education relied on tutors and governesses."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Frederick Carl Frieseke: A Biography by Nicholas Kilmer" in Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist"published on the occasion of an exhibition of Frieseke's work.)