Just Chilling

Like a long holiday hangover, December’s Art Poll By Bob had to eventually come to an end. When I asked the following: “Which of the following Christmas stamps from around the world says ‘Christmas’ the most to you?” Strong to the finish were... the Finnish! With 16 votes, Finland's stamps featuring familiar characters by Finnish children’s book illustrator Julia Vuori and fancy “Frosty Night,” believed to be the world's first transparent stamp (designed by Nina Rintala), carried the day. Canada followed with 10 votes, Australia and England with 8, Spain with 6, the United States with 5, Ireland with 4, and Gilbraltar garnered a solid sole vote. Thanks to everyone who voted.

For the first Art Poll By Bob of 2009 I’m getting seasonal. Let me first begin by saying that winter is my least favorite season. I hate ice and snow. I hate shoveling it, driving in it, walking in it, you name it in it. (I’m not even a fan of Vanilla Ice [above], if you can believe it.) I agree that it can be beautiful to look at, but the thought of having to contend with it personally brings out the Scrooge in me. Putting personal prejudice aside, I ask, “Which of the following wintry works is the most chill to you?”:

Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Hunters in the Snow (1565).

Caspar David Friedrich. The Sea of Ice (1823-1825).

Andy Goldsworthy. Icicle Star (1980s).

Hiroshige. Mountains and Rivers on the Kiso Road (1857).

Claude Monet. Snow at Argenteuil (1875).

John Henry Twachtman. Winter Harmony (1890-1900).

Andrew Wyeth. First Snow, Study for Groundhog Day (1959).

Vincent van Gogh. Landscape with Snow (1888).

Grab a hot chocolate, sit by the fire, and pick the most chilling one of the bunch!

Society Painter

In the late nineteenth century in America, William Merritt Chase’s name was synonymous with the word artist. Born November 1, 1849, Chase garnered most of the awards, presided over most of the societies, and generally introduced his presence anywhere art was discussed. In retrospect, someone such as the withdrawn Winslow Homer may seem the greater artist today, but at the time, but Chase put himself forward as what an artist should look like and how an artist should relate with the public. As seen in Chase’s painting In the Studio (above, from 1882), Chase even decked out his home and studio in the mode of a fashionable society painter. Sumptuous carpeting and lavish décor seem out of place in the paint-spattered world of what we think of as a working studio, but Chase sought to create a mood in his sitters and patrons congruous with their own upper crust expectations. For an America still striving to forge a cultural heritage on the verge of the twentieth century, Chase stepped forward and assumed leadership of what direction that culture would take.

Stylistically, Chase greatly resembles John Singer Sargent in the lightness of his touch and flair for the theatrical in works such as Carmencita (above, from 1890). The label of Impressionism sticks better to Chase than it does to Sargent, however. Thanks to his friendship with John Henry Twachtman and other American Impressionists, Chase easily slips into the category of Impressionist, which was only then gaining in popularity in America. When Chase returned from his studies in Europe in 1878, Impressionism was “the new thing” and Chase a bold experimentalist. Success and recognition, however, froze Chase stylistically. As other artists moved past Impressionism into the movements that would mark the beginning of the twentieth century, Chase failed to keep up in his own art, more content to repeat the works of the past and rest on his hard-earned laurels. It’s easy to dismiss Chase as a fuddy duddy of sorts, but his importance in the development of an arts culture in America can not and should not be denied.

Despite his own artistic entrenchment, Chase taught young artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Demuth, and Marsden Hartley who took his lessons and struck out on their own path with his blessing. While Chase taught his students the old ways of painting and thinking, rival teacher Robert Henri taught his charges the new ideas of a physical approach to art totally immersed in the life of the everyman that evolved into the Ashcan School. Things actually got physical as Henri’s students sometimes rumbled with Chase’s pupils over art. (I tend to imagine this as an artsy version of the Jets versus the Sharks.) Chase, however, never entered the fray, always floating above it all. In the 1890s, Chase summered at Shinnecock off of Long Island, rejoicing in the seaside beauty and painting his family in the open air in works such as The Fairy Tale (above, from 1892). In many ways, Chase lived a fairy tale existence, carefully constructing a persona as an artist and inviting young artists to indulge in that fantasy world momentarily while discovering their own creative reality.

Yippie Kay Ay

I’ve never been much for Westerns. My father loved them, so I’d sit through tumbleweed-infested flicks and wonder what all the fuss was. Certain films, like The Searchers, certainly caught my attention, but for the most part I found the fantasy of the American West just too fantastic. The art of Frank Tenney Johnson helps ease some of my inborn aversion. Born June 26, 1874, Johnson lived in the Midwest for most of his life before heading to New York City to learn art at the Art Students League of New York under American Impressionist John Henry Twachtman. Johnson headed west soon after, taking Twachtman’s style with him and eventually perfecting the play of moonlight on figures in motion, most often cowboys riding their mounts, as in Texas Night Riders (above, from 1929). In contrast to Frederic Remington, who mythologized the West like no other (my favorite “bad” Remington shows a man loading a rifle on a galloping horse by spitting the bullet down the barrel), Johnson shows remarkable restraint, presenting an idealized vision of cowboys, of course, but one that remains rooted in reality.

What separates Johnson from Remington may be the fact that Johnson actually spent time on ranches, observing and talking with the men who worked with the animals and faced the obstacles of nature. Remington wove his images out of brief opportunities of observation, taking just enough visual memory back for him to interject his own imaginative flights of fancy. In Ever Westward (above, from 1910), Johnson paints a wagon train of pioneers crossing the continent to the promise of a new life. The painting contains a high level of sentimentality, down to the grizzled old hand leading the pack with his faithful dog alongside, but that dreaminess softens rather than obscures a factual core. Remington would have a horde of “Injuns” pour over the nearest hill and the pioneers desperately circling the wagons, whereas Johnson shows the mostly quiet course of everyday life. Johnson reportedly painted often with his fingers to achieve his effects, just another way that his paintings are “hands on” more than those of other Western artists.

Johnson illustrated many of the Western novels of Zane Grey, adding evocative visuals to Grey’s evocative prose. Grey’s dramatic inventions play right into the stereotypes of the Old West, but his sense of the beauty of the landscape and the cowboy life match those of Johnson well. Johnson’s Nocturne (above, from 1915) seems like something Whistler would have painted had he found himself at home on the range. The range of blues makes this a symphony of tones. The shadow obscuring the rider’s face lends the work a sense of mystery that pulls you into the story being told. The white line running down the horse’s face anchors the entire work. Regardless of subject matter, Johnson knew the art of composition and tonality inside out. Because of his subject matter, however, and his deft handling of it, Johnson belongs with the ranks of those truly American artists who painted American life as it was truly lived.

Playing the Part

When anyone searched for the center of the art world in late nineteenth century New York City, they didn’t need to look any further than the studio of William Merritt Chase. Born November 1, 1849, Chase’s studio was itself a work of art, as his 1882 painting In the Studio (above) shows. Chase filled his workplace and home with every exotic item he could find—rugs, furniture, clothes, musical instruments—all to help him shape the perception of what an artist’s studio should look like. Chase dressed the part, as well, sometimes even living beyond his means to create the proper impression for patrons and fellow artists. While contemporaries such as Winslow Homer kept lower profiles (Homer was once mistaken for a bank executive), Chase’s flamboyant lifestyle and personality paved the way for later American artists to play the part of the larger than life artist.

Fortunately, Chase’s talents backed up his image. In works such as Idle Hours (above, from 1894), we see Chase bringing his European training back home to America with decidedly Impressionist overtones. Chase studied in several places in Europe, perhaps most notably with Jean-Leon Gerome in Paris. Chase’s work always reminds me of that of John Singer Sargent, if Sargent had gone as consistently Impressionistic in his oils as he did in his watercolors. When John Henry Twachtman dies in 1902, the remaining members of The Ten, the anti-academic band that broke off when the American academies rejected Impressionism, ask Chase to join. Regardless of his sales or social status, Chase always remained a central figure in American art during his lifetime.

When his fortunes as a painter began to fail, Chase turned to teaching, becoming one of the most influential instructors of his time in America, second perhaps only to Robert Henri. Edward Hopper studied under both Henri and Chase, taking the best of both worlds into his unique style that would dominate the first half of the twentieth century. In the Self-Portrait of 1915, Chase seems chastened, no longer the brash showoff of the 1880s with the fancy clothes and showplace studio. The stereotypical artist of the late nineteenth century redefines himself here as the old sage, teaching the next generation how to paint. Posing beside a canvas, Chase seems ready to demonstrate for his students, with the details of his studio in the background painted sketchily for being less important than the task at hand.

Art Allies

Born on this date in 1859, Childe Hassam painted some of the finest Impressionist paintings ever done by an American artist. As much as he loved Paris and the countryside of the French Impressionists, Hassam loved even more his native country, especially the streets of New York City, his home for most of his life. During World War I, Hassam painted many scenes of the patriotic fervor surrounding the push for America to enter the war and the patriotic frenzy that broke out when it finally entered the fray. Allies Day, May 1917 (above) shows the flags of the United States of America, France, and England hanging from the buildings lining the day’s parade route. Without showing the throngs of people gathered, Hassam captures the spirit of the time in the bold colors of the flags, which drape rhythmically off into space. Throughout his career, Hassam himself forged alliances with other artists that helped further his own career as well as the school of Impressionism in America.

Hassam discontinued using his given first name, Frederick, in favor of his unique middle name Childe (pronounced “child”) to add to his artistic mystique. A high-school dropout, Hassam learned wood engraving before moving on to illustration and watercolor. While in London, he admired the watercolors of J.M.W. Turner. In Paris, he studied with Salon academics but felt drawn more to the outlaw style of the Impressionists exhibiting throughout the city. Hassam succeeds most when he brings that Impressionist style to bear on uniquely American scenes, such as Winter in Union Square (above, from 1889). He gilds “the Gilded Age” with the soft brushstrokes and atmospheric effects of Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir while still capturing the distinctly American architecture, free of the old styles of the big cities of Europe. The emergence of photography during this period allows us to see what the New York of this time looked like, but Hassam’s seasonal paintings of the city allow us to feel what it was like to live back then.

When the American art establishment, embodied by the Society of American Artists, resisted Impressionism in America, Hassam resigned and helped form the group known as The Ten with his friends and fellow Impressionists J. Alden Weir and John Henry Twachtman. Like Weir and Twachtman, Hassam also painted the rural scenery of New England, as in his Oyster Sloop, Cos Cob (above, from 1902). Again, Hassam paints a classic boating scene found often in French Impressionism but injects a new note with the distinctly New England feel. Sadly, Hassam and the American Impressionists faded from the limelight as America’s wartime alliances fostered an international interchange that introduced new modern art movements that pushed them to the margins of art history. Not until the 1960s did Hassam and the Impressionists find a new audience, hungry to find early examples of America’s entry into the world of European art.

First Impressions

J. Alden Weir, one of the first true American Impressionists and an important figure in the development and acceptance of Impressionism in America, was born on August 30, 1862. While studying in Paris under Jean-Leon Gerome, Weir first encountered the Impressionist style and brought it back with him to America and his native New England. Works such as Factory Village (above) from 1899 resemble French Impressionism in their soft focus on nature, but add the American element of industrial progress in the inclusion of a factory peeking through the flora. This realist touch may have come from Gerome, who also taught America’s preeminent realist of the late 19th century—Thomas Eakins.

In many ways, Weir acted as a bridge over which Impressionism could flourish in America. (His Red Bridge, from 1895, appears above.) When Duncan Phillips first began forming the collection known today as The Phillips Collection, Weir steered him towards collecting not only the prominent French Impressionists, such as Monet, but also towards appreciating American Impressionists such as his friend John Henry Twachtman. Phillips, of course, recognized Weir’s own talent and collected his works, too. Present-day appreciations of American Impressionism in the late 19th century owe much to Weir’s ground-breaking efforts at the time. Without his championing, who knows what works and artists could have been lost to the mists of time.

As Weir grew older, his works took on more and more of an atmospheric, almost Whistler-esque look, such as in his Moonlight (above) from 1905. Weir’s greatest talent, however, may have been in creating communities, such as the Impressionist community that grew up around him and Twachtman in New England. Weir’s connections throughout the art world were incredible (a funny picture of Weir with his friend John Singer Sargent and a portrait of Weir by Sargent are here). In 1912, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors elected Weir as their first president. Sadly, he resigned in 1913 after the Association helped sponsor the 1913 Armory Show in New York that ushered in the age of Modernism in America. After trying so hard to get Americans to embrace Impressionism, which seems hard to believe today, Weir couldn’t stand being upstaged by the new ways of seeing.

Sweet Harmony

Of all the American Impressionists that I love, John Henry Twachtman, born August 4, 1853, may be my favorite. Twachtman brings a beautifully delicate style to his Impressionism combined with a true sense of spirituality. His Winter Harmony (above) shows how masterfully he could create an entire world of whites and bring a winter scene to life in all it’s harmonious glory. He seems to have earned a reputation as being difficult during his lifetime, but I prefer to see that difficult streak as more demanding—of himself and of others pursuing a career in art.


Despite his capacity for curmudgeonry, Twachtman established many close friendships with fellow artists. J. Alden Weir and Childe Hassam, two other great American Impressionists, remained close to Twachtman up to his early death at the age of 49 from a brain aneurysm. Weir introduced the young Duncan Phillips to the art of Twachtman after Twachtman’s death. Phillips began adding Twachtman’s work to what would become the Phillips Collection obsessively, regretting that he never got to meet the man himself. Works such as The White Bridge (above) show Twachtman’s ability not only to capture the American landscape in all its delicacy and wonder but also to infuse it with the spirituality he himself felt deeply. Twachtman’s commitment to his artistic ideals led him to help form the separatist group “The Ten” after he felt that the establishment Society of American Artists had turned too conservative.

The Twachtman painting that haunts me the most is his Sailing in the Mist (above). When I saw this painting at a PAFA retrospective of Twachtman’s work years ago, it etched itself on my imagination. After the death of one of his children, Twachtman searched for a way of expressing his grief and arrived at the image of a small boat drifting off into the mist. I’ve always seen Twachtman in a different light since encountering that painting, and believe that it might be the best imaginative voyage into “that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns” ever done by an American. Sadly, Twachtman himself took that final voyage much too early, leaving us only a glimpse of what he could have produced.

An American Vision

Ernest Lawson (1873-1939), Spring Night, Harlem River, 1913; Oil on canvas mounted on panel, 25 1/8 x 30 1/8 in.; The Phillips Collection, acquired 1920

Holding up the works of American Impressionists to the best France had to offer, Duncan Phillips, founder of The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC once said, “Monet was only an eye, whereas Twachtman, Weir, and Lawson are also temperaments.” The singular vision of Duncan Phillips once focused tightly on American Impressionists, which made up 87 of the 237 paintings displayed when The Phillips’ doors opened in 1921. The exhibit American Impressionism: Paintings from The Phillips Collection tries to recapture that moment in art history when American Impressionism stood high in American art circles and Duncan Phillips was at the center of that ascendancy.

In the companion catalogue to the exhibit, American Impressionists: Painters of Light and the Modern Landscape, Susan Behrends Frank, Assistant Curator at The Phillips Collection, pays tribute to and chronicles the journey of Duncan Phillips as he struggled to become an art critic and then amassed his renowned collection. William H. Gedts, perhaps the foremost authority on American Impressionism, provides additional context to Frank’s essay with his own essay exploring the larger reception of Impressionism in America. At the heart of both essays lies the story of the struggles Phillips and the American Impressionists had first to overcome resistance to Impressionism and then to decide what “American” Impressionism truly meant. From the very beginning, Phillips boldly hung works such as Ernest Lawson’s Spring Night, Harlem River (above) next to works by Claude Monet, the quintessential Impressionist for most Americans at the time, intentionally inviting comparisons with a faith that the Americans could hold their own and that America deserved a place next to Europe in the world of art.

Julian Alden Weir (1852-1919), Afternoon by the Pond, Ca. 1908-1909; Oil on canvas, 25 1/8 x 30 in.; The Phillips Collection, acquired 1921

After seeing the collections of the Corcoran Gallery and the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, Phillips forged “an intensely self-conscious focus on the evolution of his collection in comparison… in the late teens,” Frank explains. Augustus Vincent Tack, a student of John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, and William Merritt Chase, became an early mentor to Phillips as he developed his critical eye and fostered contacts within American Impressionist circles. Late, Weir himself befriended Phillips and challenged him to hang the works of Americans beside those of the great European Impressionists. Through Weir’s influence, Frank explains, Phillips sought “American artists who, he believed, expressed spiritual truth as well as visual truth” in the vein of early visionaries such as George Inness, in contrast to “the theatrical vision” of the Hudson River School. Weir himself fit this bill nicely, as can be seen in his Afternoon by the Pond (above), an intimate scene of nature full of the silent, contemplative spirituality Phillips came to favor.

John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902), Summer, Late 1890s; Oil on canvas, 30 x 53 in.; The Phillips Collection, acquired 1919

Another spiritual American Impressionist Phillips learned to love through Weir was Twachtman, whom Phillips always regretted never meeting himself. Works such as
Summer (above) inspired Phillips to say that in Twachtman “impressionism [had been] carried to the heights of spiritual expression.” “Few, if any, landscape painters were more sensitive or subtle,” Phillips wrote of Twachtman. Phillips passionately collected all the Twachtman paintings he could in the years before the opening of The Phillips Collection.

Childe Hassam (1859-1935), Washington Arch, Spring, Ca. 1893; Oil on canvas, 27 1/8 x 22 ½ in.; The Phillips Collection, acquired 1921

Sadly, Phillips relationship with Childe Hassam, the American Impressionist he ranked only behind Twachtman and Weir in greatness, was more stormy. Phillips continued to collect Hassam’s work, but never with the same enthusiasm as he brought to Twachtman and Weir’s art. In the late 1920s, Hassam and Phillips argued over the direction Phillips’ collection was taking, with Hassam denigrating Phillips' taste in art as “opinionated ignorance.” However, Phillips continued to value works such as Hassam’s Washington Arch, Spring (above), one of the highlights of The Phillips Collection and of all American Impressionism.

Allen Tucker (1866-1939), The Rise, Undated; Oil on canvas, 30 ½ x 36 in.; The Phillips Collection, acquired 1927

With the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression in the United States, The Phillips Collection fell on hard times and the market for American Impressionism slumped. At the 1913 Armory Show in New York City, where the works of Marcel Duchamp and Henri Matisse first exploded on the American art scene, the conservative aspects of Impressionism made the movement seem a thing of the past. Phillips himself began to collect more modernist works. In retrospect, he realized that his collection of American Impressionists helped pave the way for these modern movements. Works such as The Rise (above) by Allen Tucker, once called “The American Van Gogh,” signaled a new period for Impressionism in America.

Today, American Impressionism has achieved a rebirth among art critics. After little interest during the 1940s and 1950s, several collections of solely American Impressionism rose in the 1960s. The long-overdue recognition of the achievement of Twachtman, Weir, and Hassam, as well as that of other American Impressionists such as Maurice Prendergast, Theodore Robinson, Edmund Tarbell, and many others, owes much to Duncan Phillips and his museum. The exhibit American Impressionism: Paintings from The Phillips Collection recaptures a landmark moment in American art and allows us to live it once again.

[Many thanks to The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC for providing me with a review copy of the catalogue and the images from the exhibit.]

In Monet’s Shadow

Theodore Robinson, perhaps the finest of the American Impressionists, was born on June 3, 1852. Robinson traveled to Giverny, France in 1888 to meet Claude Monet and eventually became Monet’s next door neighbor and close confidant. Robinson’s Valley of the Seine from Giverny Heights appears above.

After studying with Carolus-Duran (also the teacher of John Singer Sargent) and Jean-Leon Gerome (also the teacher of Thomas Eakins), Robinson traveled to Giverny as part of the colonizing wave of American painters seeking out Monet and the secrets of Impressionism. One painter, Theodore Butler, even married the daughter of Monet’s companion, much to the displeasure of Monet, as can be seen in Robinson’s diary entry. “Monet rather upset and apprehensive, which is perhaps natural enough—I had to reassure him,” Robinson writes. Robinson commemorated the wedding with his painting The Wedding March (below).

I’ve always thought of Robinson and John Twachtman as the two finest American Impressionists. Robinson returned to American in 1892 and eventually taught briefly at the PAFA. Because his style was so close to that of Monet’s, he suffers in Monet’s shadow. The 2005 exhibit titled In Monet’s Light: Theodore Robinson at Giverny helped bring Robinson out of that formidable shadow.