Peter Moran’s “Outskirts of Old Santa Fe, New Mexico,” 1881

September 10, 2012 — Lisa N. Peters
Peter Moran - Outskirts of Old Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1880

Peter Moran, “Outskirts of Old Santa Fe, New Mexico,” 1880, oil on canvas, 20 x 30 inches

A member of the noted Moran family of artists and an important figure in the Philadelphia art world in the late nineteenth century, Peter Moran is well known for his naturalistic images in oil, etching, and watercolor of farm animals and rural landscapes. He is also acclaimed for his depictions of the Southwest, a region he visited during three consecutive summers, from 1879 to 1881. On his first trip, sponsored by the Union Pacific Railroad, he was accompanied by his brother Thomas, already a nationally prominent painter of Western scenery. The brothers ventured to California, the northeast Nevada territory, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. On his subsequent trips, Peter spent most of his time in New Mexico, where he concentrated his attention on the pueblos and people of New Mexico as well as the region’s dramatic mountain scenery. In the summer of 1880, Moran had intended to continue beyond New Mexico, but decided against it, as he became increasingly fascinated by the customs of the native people he encountered and their adobe architecture. On his return to New Mexico in 1881, he joined Lieutenant John Gregory Bourke on an ethnological trip to document the Moqui (Hopi) tribe, contributing drawings to Bourke’s book, Snake-Dance of the Moquis, published in 1884 (reprinted in 1984).

Peter Moran - Outskirts of Old Santa Fe, New Mexico - Verso

Inscription on verso: “Out Skirts of Old Santa Fe, N.M. / P.Moran 1881″

Dated 1881, Outskirts of Old Santa Fe, New Mexico is among a limited group of oils to result from Moran’s visits to the Southwest. He inscribed the back of the work with its title and date, demonstrating that the work was a direct product of his Southwestern experience. As was typical for Moran in his oils, he worked from field sketches. In this case, among his studies was a drawing in graphite and Chinese white in the collection of the Roswell Museum and Art Center, New Mexico, in which Moran depicted the same adobe home, the ladder leaning against it, and the fence that frames the foreground and divides the composition. In the painting, he added in a group of pack mules, loaded with goods to be traded that stand still on the road. Their owner may be the man approaching on horseback, or the trader could be bargaining within the dwelling, while the mules await his return patiently. A woman standing in front of the home holding her baby was perhaps sent to be a sentinel or she could be showing the animals to her child. Characteristic for Moran, the scene is well organized, with our interest focused on the foreground, while we are gradually drawn into the distance along the road to the mountains that shimmer in the glow of the sunset.

Peter Moran sketch - Roswell Museum

Peter Moran graphite and Chinese white sketch of an area surrounding Santa Fe, ca. 1880, 10 x 12-1/2 in., preparatory to his oil “A Moqui Trader,” from the collection of the Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM 1952.10.6.

Capturing a commonplace moment in everyday life in New Mexico, Peter Moran demonstrated his close observation of pueblo experience. Indeed, his images of the Southwest were recognized for this trait in his day. In 1881, the critic S. G. W. Benjamin, compared one of Moran’s New Mexican scenes included in an exhibition of the American Watercolor Society, to views portraying mythological and ancient subjects by such noted academic painters as Jean-Léon Gérôme and Lawrence Alma Tadema. Benjamin observed that, by depicting a scene of actual American life, Peter Moran had created a “real” history painting rather than one that belonged to the realm of archaeology. He went on to note how the recording of such subjects was important to preserve them for posterity, stating:

The true field of historical painting is to reproduce the spirit of contemporary life and events. Paintings thus inspired at once become historic records to the succeeding ages. . . . Many of the noble scenes which were to be found on this continent have vanished before the march of civilization. A few yet remain, such as Mr. Moran has represented. Now is the time to paint them. Where are the artists who are to immortalize themselves by identifying their genius with these remarkable scenes.

In creating Outskirts of Old Santa Fe, New Mexico and other views of old New Mexico, Peter Moran rivaled the popular scenes of North Africa and Spain by Orientalist artists, conveying the sense that an exotic and unique lifestyle existed within the boundaries of our own nation.

Lisa N. Peters, Ph.D.

*S. G. W. Benjamin, “Fourteenth Annual Exhibition of the American Water Color Society,” American Art Review 2 (March 1881), 200.

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William Merritt Chase’s “Child Star Elsie Leslie Lyde as Little Lord Fauntleroy”

May 21, 2012 — Spanierman Gallery, LLC
William Merritt Chase-Child Star Elsie Leslie Lyde as Little Lord Fauntleroy, ca. 1889

William Merritt Chase, “Child Star Elsie Leslie Lyde as Little Lord Fauntleroy,” ca. 1889, oil on canvas, 69 1/4 x 39 1/2 inches

Few of William Merritt Chase’s full-length portraits are as flamboyant, colorful, and vivacious as his Child Star Elsie Leslie Lyde as Little Lord Fauntleroy.  Executed about midpoint in the artist’s career, the image of this child actress in costume evidences that distinct combination of skill, flair, and charm that Chase often realized in his portraits.  By the time he painted this canvas his standing as a leading American portraitist was firmly established by such works as Portrait of Miss Dora Wheeler (1883; Cleveland Museum of Art), James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1885; Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Portrait of a Lady in Black (1888; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).  Despite the obligations of other portrait commissions, a busy teaching schedule at the Art Students League, the demands of his growing family, and his ongoing efforts to organize pastel exhibitions, Chase actually elected to undertake this portrait with no thought of remuneration.  On completion of the painting and its public exhibition, he presented it as a gift to the sitter, Elsie Leslie Lyde (1881-1966).[1]

For further information on this painting, please email info@spanierman.com

Elsie was a daughter of Benjamin Tanner Lyde, an affluent merchant in Newark, New Jersey.  When her father lost his business due to poor health, she and her sister, Dora, joined the theatrical company of Joseph Jefferson, a family friend.  Elsie (her stage name was Elsie Leslie) went on to make her professional debut at the age of four, traveling to the Far West with Jefferson’s Rip Van Winkle Company.  In 1887, she achieved her earliest success in New York as the star of Editha’s Burglar at the Lyceum Theatre, which was followed by additional roles, including Little Lord Fauntleroy (1888) and The Prince and the Pauper (1890).  As America’s first child star, Elsie was a favorite of such theatrical types as Edwin Booth and William Gillette.  She also had a number of friends from the literary world, among them Oliver Wendell Holmes and Mark Twain.  In 1890, Elsie left the stage to attend school, but she resumed her theatrical work again eight years later, going on to appear in productions such as The Rivals, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Christian, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Man on the Case.  In 1907 she declared that she sought to exemplify “the child actress who grew up and could act,” but acknowledged that despite her achievements, she remained best known for her role as Little Lord Fauntleroy–to the extent that she would later say: “Sometimes it really seems to me that I don’t know whether I’m Little Lord Fauntleroy or Little Lord Fauntleroy is me–our identities have been so mixed.”[2]

At the time Chase painted her portrait, Elsie was playing the title role in the stage version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s tale of Little Lord Fauntleroy.[3]  The story describes the adventures of young Cedric Errol, a sweet, angelic child living with his poor widowed mother in Brooklyn, who discovers that his grandfather is the Earl of Dorincourt and is summoned to England to claim his patrimony.  The play originally opened in Boston but made its New York debut at the Broadway Theater on December 3rd 1888.  Chase attended the opening night performance, where he was so captivated by the child actress that he vowed to paint her portrait.  He arranged for a sitting in his Tenth Street studio through an acquaintance named W. H. Patten, who was a friend of the Lyde family.[4]

The result is this picturesque portrait of the nine-year-old child, dressed in the white lace and black velvet costume that she wore on stage.[5]  Indeed, Elsie’s garb contributed to the popularity of Little Lord Fauntleroy regalia, a distinctive “look,” described in one contemporary periodical, as “usually made of black velvet or velveteen, with a broad collar and cuffs of Irish point lace, with a sash of silk passed broadly around the waist and knotted on one side.”[6]  Ironically, the props that Chase assembled for this painting reveal more about the artist than about his young celebrity subject.  The renaissance revival chair behind Elsie is one of several variations that appear in many of the artist’s studio views and attest to the prodigious collection of furniture and bric-a-brac that he accumulated during his frequent journeys to Europe.  In this instance, the chair provides a touch of elegance as well as a vivid sense of scale to this diminutive figure.  The heavy green curtain behind Elsie looks identical to one that Chase featured in Meditation (ca. 1885-86; private collection), a pastel drawing of Alice Gerson, his future wife; in both works the curtain provides a sumptuous backdrop to the shallow pictorial space depicted.

The fur rug on the floor appears original and unlike anything seen in Chase’s other portraits, although he did include a different, mottled bear skin rug in an earlier studio view titled A Corner of My Studio (ca. 1885; The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco).  The rug supplies an exotic note here and also permits the painter to display his skill at suggesting the look and feel of fur.[7]  The inclusion of the tasseled velvet cushion at Elsie’s feet adds both color and counterpoint to her bright red sash while imbuing the portrait with an air of informality.  To achieve a similar effect the artist would use this cushion again in a small studio scene titled Weary (ca. 1889; location unknown) and, later, a variation on it for A Friendly Call (1895; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.).

Elsie’s pose and attitude equally reinforce this air of informality.  Although this stance may very well reenact one from her theatrical performance, there is no mistaking its clear resemblance to that of Chase’s famous portrait of Whistler, executed just four years earlier.  The child’s right foot points directly forward while her left is placed laterally behind it; Elsie, like Whistler, also rests her left hand on her hip, evoking a similar attitude of insouciance and nonchalance.  Lacking Whistler’s long, elegant cane, she casually rests her right forefinger (and perhaps thumb) in her hip pocket.  That Chase would have deliberately sought to associate this image with his most controversial and well-known portrait reveals both his mischievous sense of humor and his genius for shrewd marketing and self-promotion.  Although he would freely give this portrait to his young sitter, it was only after he had exhibited it in several prominent venues.

The critical response to the portrait was not disappointing.  When it was exhibited at the Society of American Artists in 1889 the New York Times judged it was painted “with more than his usual finish, yet without loss of breadth.  She stands near an armchair which gives, to some extent, a measure of her size, and looks out from the canvas with much the same artful artlessness that she exhibits on the stage.”[8]  Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, one of the era’s most discerning and thoughtful art critics, described the portrait in these words:

Mr. Chase is at his very best in the portrait of Elsie Leslie as Lord Fauntleroy, a big canvas filled with rich furniture and stuffs painted with a sympathetic completeness, an illusive truth, yet a breadth, freedom and vivacity which no one could surpass.  Not Alfred Stevens at his best, I heard a brother artist say, could paint better than this; and, as everyone knows, Alfred Stevens, in the eyes of his fellows, is the king of technique.  Yet with all this decorative splendor and technical brilliancy the portrait preserves its character as such-the tiny, sensitive face first attracts and longest holds the eye.[9]

Van Rensselaer had long admired Chase’s painting, and her remarks about technique cut to the heart of the work.  Eschewing the rich impasto and painterly brushwork that had often characterized his art since his return from Munich in 1878, Chase carefully depicted his subject in a restrained and naturalistic style.  The end rather than the means was paramount here as his broad technique was subsumed in a conscious verisimilitude, probably intended to please his young sitter.  Lyde holds her own in this portrait, despite the rich array of material objects that surround her, and her disarmingly direct gaze becomes the painting’s delightful focal point.

Before giving the portrait to Lyde, Chase would also exhibit it in the Chicago Exposition in 1889, the Indianapolis Art Association, and the St. Louis Exposition in 1904.[10]  Lyde would subsequently loan the picture to the Broadway Theater, where it hung in the lobby for many years.  She later gave the portrait to Frances Hodgson Burnett in gratitude for the author and playwright’s support and encouragement.

In addition to this portrait of Lyde, Chase’s oeuvre also includes such portraits of actresses and female performers as Linda Dietz Carlton (ca. 1890; Newark Museum, New Jersey), Carmencita (1890; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Hilda Spong (1904; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond) and Minnie Maddern Fiske (1910; Museum of the City of New York).  Chase’s portrait of Elsie Leslie Lyde is clearly the most colorful and elaborate of these various works, demonstrating both the extensive efforts he expended in its execution and his singular attraction and devotion to his young subject.

Carol Lowrey and Robert Bardin

[1] For biographical details on the sitter, see Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak, The Oxford Companion to American Theatre, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 384, and Trustable and Preshus Friends, foreword by Julie Harris; edited by Jane Douglass (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1977).  See also: Elsie Leslie Lyde, “My Stage Life,” Cosmopolitan 6 (February 1889): 372-77, and “The Restless Ghost of Little Fauntleroy,” New York Times ( September 15, 1907), p. X5.  Elsie married the actor Jefferson Winter on August 27, 1901, but they later divorced; in 1918, she married the Canadian-American banker Edwin J. Milliken.  After fulfilling Elsie’s desire to travel, the couple settled in New York, where they remained until Elsie’s death in 1966.  Her papers can be found at New York Public Library.

[2] “The Restless Ghost of Little Fauntleroy.”

[3]  Lyde was actually required to alternate performing the lead role with another child actor named Tommy Russell, in response to pressure from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, whose members were concerned about her health and safety.  See Vivian Burnett, The Romantick Lady (New York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927), 179-80.

[4]  W. H. Patten is almost certainly William H. Patten, an illustrator and art editor at Harper and Brothers.  Some details of the circumstances surrounding the portrait are recited in Trustable and Preshus Friends, 34-36.

[5]  Several commentators have said that the sitter was seven years old when Chase painted her portrait, but in a contemporary magazine article about Lyde, she indicates that she is nine years old.  See Lyde, “My Stage Life,” 372, and Lucy C. Lillie’s supplemental comments, 376.  Also see “Elsie Leslie-Yesterday and To-day,” The Theatre – An Illustrated Magazine Devoted to the Drama and Music 2 (January 1902): 25.

[6] See Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine (September 1889): 244, as cited in Ronald G. Pisano, William Merritt Chase: Portraits in Oil, Volume 2 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006), 80.

[7]  Given Chase’s longstanding rivalry with John Singer Sargent and his occasional painted references to his competitor’s portraits, the addition of this rug may have been a response to Sargent’s Robert Louis Stevenson (1887; Taft Museum, Cincinnati), a portrait of a well-known celebrity that also features a fur rug.  See Robert G. Bardin, “Posing as a Fine Art”:  William Merritt Chase’s Portrait Strategies, Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1997, Chapter 5.

[8]  “The Society of Artists,” The New York Times (May 12, 1889), p. 5.

[9]  Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, “The Society of American Artists II,” The Independent (June 6, 1889), p. 8.

[10]  In Trustable and Preshus Friends, editor Jane Douglass states that Lyde’s portrait was shown at the “Paris exhibition” of 1900, where it won a silver medal.  Later writers have repeated this assertion, assuming this was the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle.  An extensive review of both Exposition literature and catalogues as well as contemporary newspaper accounts provides no support for this assertion.

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Arthur Bowen Davies exhibition reviewed by Piri Halasz

April 20, 2012 — Spanierman Gallery, LLC
Arthur Bowen Davies: Painter, Poet, Romancer & Mystic

Arthur Bowen Davies (1862-1928), "Children Playing," ca. 1896, oil on canvas, 18 x 22 inches

View the Davies exhibition   |   View the online catalogue PDF   |   Read the A.B. Davies biography

We are pleased to share the following excerpt from Piri Halasz’s review of Arthur Bowen Davies: Painter, Poet, Romancer & Mystic, posted on her blog, (An Appropriate Distance) From the Mayor’s Doorstep, on April 13, 2012.

RE-UNITING HUMPTY DUMPTY

Arthur B. Davies has long puzzled me. In grad school, I learned that he’d been one of “The Eight” painters whose “radical” 1908 group show at the Macbeth Gallery ushered in 20th century American art. I also learned that he’d played a major role in organizing the original (and more genuinely radical) Armory Show of 1913, but the paintings by him that I saw in the histories of American art, of pretty-pretty nudes in fantasy landscapes, sometimes accompanied by unicorns, made him look like a cross between the later & more academic Pre-Raphaelites and French Salon painters like Puvis de Chavannes. In other words, he seemed like Humpty Dumpty, who had somewhere along the line fallen off a wall and broken into two halves, one dedicated to modernist theory and the other to retardataire practice. Hence, my surprise and delight at the group of 16 small to very small paintings by Davies assembled in one of Spanierman’s similarly small but ornately furnished viewing rooms at the back of the gallery. The works on display are all moderately to very informal paintings, most more like studies for larger paintings or sketches sur le motif, but in all the oils, the brushwork reveals itself to be looser and more impressionistic than any of the reproductions I’ve seen indicate, more modern in other words (given that in the early years of the 20th century, impressionism was still a moderately recent style).

“The Horn Players” (ca. 1893), a vignette of orchestra musicians, is reminiscent of Manet or Degas its subject & rich, dark tonalities — and closer to the more Old Masterly realists among The Eight, John Sloan and Robert Henri. The decorative, pattern-like “Children Playing” (ca. 1896) reminds me of another and equally modern member of The Eight, Maurice Prendergast. Some of the watercolor Davies studies of the Italian Apennines from the 1920s are yet more faithful to their subjects, offering a breath of fresh mountain air to this otherwise somewhat claustrophobic little gallery, but what I found even more revealing was the “Figures in a Landscape” (ca. 1912). This modest oil, only 23¾ x 28¼ inches, somewhat crudely portrays an orgy-like group of three nude couples in a woodland setting; it reminded me vividly of the small studies of groups of bathers by Cézanne that were so much in vogue among avant-garde artists and collectors in the early years of the 20th century (and which accordingly figure prominently in the current show of “The Steins Collect” at the Met). Even more daring — in concept if not execution – is the “Life Study (Interior)” (ca. 1910), an oil which depicts a standing female nude with faint tints of green in the shadowed parts of her flesh. These suggest to me that Davies had been admiring Matisse, even if he didn’t dare emulate him to the fullest. True, this exhibition also includes paintings that don’t go much beyond 19th century Symbolism, but leaving those aside, its main thrust is to bring together Davies’ avant-garde theory with his actual painting practice, re-uniting the two halves of Humpty Dumpty after nearly a century apart.

Also see the view at www.pirihalasz.com.

View the exhibition   |   View the online catalogue PDF   |   Read the A.B. Davies biography


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Hayley Lever’s “Storm, St. Ives” Painting

April 4, 2012 — Spanierman Gallery, LLC
Hayley Lever - Storm, St. Ives, 1910s

Hayley Lever (1875-1958), "Storm, St. Ives," 1910s, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 inches

Before immigrating to America, Hayley Lever lived and worked in St. Ives, on England’s Cornish seacoast.  His decision to make St. Ives his home is not surprising, for it was a quaint fishing village and holiday resort situated on a sloping hill leading to the sea. St. Ives was also one of England’s most popular artists’ colonies. To be sure, established during the early 1880s, the town attracted a coterie of British Impressionist and pleinairists that included such well known figures as Julius Olsson and Algernon Talmage, who were drawn to the clean beaches, busy harbor, and rugged moorland scenery, as well as to the simple way of life they encountered there. By the mid-1880s, Americans such as Edward Simmons and Howard Russell Butler were working in St. Ives, and a decade later, the colony was attracting the likes of Ernest Lawson, Gardner Symons, Walter Elmer Schofield, and Paul Dougherty, among other celebrated landscape and marine painters from the United States.

During his years in St. Ives-he was there from the late 1890s until 1912-Lever painted the town and its harbor throughout the seasons and under varying climatic conditions, working “when the tide was out and when it was in, at all hours; sunrise, midday, sunset and moonlight.”[1] He subsequently established a notable reputation in international art circles for his Cornish marines which, according to one critic, “stand out with heroic force and arrest the attention for their splendid colour, simple treatment and deft arrangement of masses.” [2]

These words would surely apply to Storm, St.Ives, in which Lever presents us with a view looking over the top of Smeaton’s Pier toward the town. The aerial perspective and sharp foreshortening truncates the view, emphasizing the zigzag shape of the pier’s Victoria extension. As the title of the work indicates, a storm is underway. Usually rising high from the water, the jetty is under siege, with the water rushing over the pier at its far end, so that the lighthouse at its extremity almost appears to be in the water. Figures on the pier stand in lines as if in amazement at the impact of the raised level of the water. The waves are full, pounding the far shore. By contrast, the houses, painted with angularized contours have a sturdy, solid, and staid appearance, as if to suggest that such storms had been present before, and the townsfolk are ready and used to them. Boats in the harbor are also docked quietly. Viewed from above, they seem to look up at us, as if to say that they, too, are waiting eagerly for the storm to subside so as to be back on the water.

Just as Lever’s Cornish pictures had been vital in establishing his reputation abroad, they performed a similar role in America; the artist exhibited them in many of his solo exhibitions and in the national annuals, winning over critics as well as prominent collectors, such as Duncan Phillips. Certainly Storm, St. Ives has the “vigor and sincerity” that, as perceived by one contemporary commentator, “make an irresistible appeal to the modern spirit.”[3] Striking in the directness and simplicity of its treatment, its exquisite coloration, and its fine sense of compositional design, this work captures the distinctive spirit of St. Ives and its harbor, and attests to Lever’s reputation as a keen observer of his surroundings.

 

[1] Helen Wright, “A Visit to Hayley Lever’s Studio,” International Studio 70 (May 1920): lxx.

[2] W[illiam] H. [de B.] N[elson], “A Painter of Harbours: Hayley Lever,” International Studio 52 (May 1914).

[3] Exhibition of Paintings by Mr. Hayley Lever, exh. cat. (Rochester, N.Y.: Memorial Art Gallery, 1914), p. [3].

©The essay herein is the property of Spanierman Gallery, LLC and is copyrighted by Spanierman Gallery, LLC. It may not be reproduced without written permission from Spanierman Gallery, LLC nor shown or communicated to anyone without due credit being given to Spanierman Gallery, LLC.

See Spanierman Gallery’s Artists in Inventory for more paintings by Hayley Lever

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Long Island in Bloom

March 30, 2012 — Lisa N. Peters

Lisa N. Peters

(left) Edith Mitchill Prellwitz, "Among the Roses," ca. 1895, oil on canvas, 17 x 55 in. (right) Ty Stroudsburg, "Peconic, Forsythia," 2009, oil on linen, 30 x 36 in.

Edith Prellwitz, "Roses," ca. 1900, oil on canvas, 13 1/4 x 12 inches

Edith Prellwitz, "Roses," ca. 1900, oil on canvas, 13 1/4 x 12 inches

With the loan of works by Edith Prellwitz (1864-1944) and contemporary artist Ty Stroudsburg, Spanierman Gallery is pleased to take part in Long Island in Bloom, an exhibition on view at the Long Island Museum in Stony Brook, New York, through July 8.  Coinciding with Long Island’s blooming season, the show draws from the long and extensive roster of artists who worked on Long Island through the generations and depicted flowers—those growing in the open air as well as those brought indoors.

Edith Prellwitz, "Vase of Peonies," ca. 1900, oil on panel, 31 1/2 x 26 inches

Edith Prellwitz, "Vase of Peonies," ca. 1900, oil on panel, 31 1/2 x 26 inches

Edith Prellwitz, whose Peconic home with her husband Henry overlooked the Long Island Sound, often painted flowers in her light-filled studio.    In Vase of Peonies and Roses, she created suggestive, lyrical still lifes.  Rendered with a loose, expressive brushwork, Roses (left) conveys vulnerability.  The white flowers come forward in the dark space, yet the blossoms seem reluctant in the way that their petals are indistinct, as if they are being viewed through a tinted glass.  In Vase of Peonies (right), the flowers project more confidence, their energy accentuated by the circular shape of a mirror or molding behind them.  The tonal harmonies in these paintings are in the mode of Whistler, while Prellwitz’s painterly handling reflects her studies with William Merritt Chase.  In Among the Roses (above), Prellwitz depicted a female figure stretched out on the ground in a classicized gown within a rose bower. The depiction of such lithe women in flowing robes ensconced in flowers represented a realm of aesthetic otherworldliness that transcended the abrasive nature of urban and industrialized environments.  At the same time, the subject raises her gaze from her book as if to demonstrate her active, independent mind, which would certainly have characterized the strong-willed, quietly rebellious nature of the artist.  The figure’s horizontal is paralleled in the work’s format, the closed-in space perhaps having a symbolic connotation with respect to the hemmed-in nature of women’s lives in Prellwitz’s time—this was a topic that she railed about in her diaries.

Ty Stroudsburg, "Red Garden at Longhouse," 2004, oil on canvas, 16 x 18 inches

Ty Stroudsburg, "Red Garden at Longhouse," 2004, oil on canvas, 16 x 18 inches

Representing a generation of women artists that Prellwitz could not have imagined, Ty Stroudsburg, who lives in Southold, creates images of shimmering floral landscapes that exude a feeling of freedom.  Both in the depiction of flowers in such profusion that the landscape seems almost swallowed up by them, and in the way that elements of nature seamlessly fuse into pure color and shape, Stroudsburg’s paintings convey a sense of expansive, uninhibited possibilities and choices.

Beyond the obvious appeal of their beauty, flowers have often been the conveyors of feeling and thought, as these works and so many others, suggest.

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A Rare Oil by John Whorf: “Ship in Rough Water”

December 13, 2011 — Lisa N. Peters
John Whorf, "Ship in Rough Water," 1930, oil on canvas, 28 1/4 x 36 1/8 inches

John Whorf, "Ship in Rough Water," 1930, oil on canvas, 28 1/4 x 36 1/8 inches

Lisa N. Peters

Prominent in the New York and Boston art worlds from the 1920s through the 1950s, John Whorf (1903-1959) is best known for his vivid, painterly watercolors, which are often compared with those of John Singer Sargent.* Oils are a rare aspect of Whorf’s oeuvre, but one nonetheless in which he demonstrated the same masterful handling, using sweeping, bravura brushwork that seems effortless.  This technique is exemplified in Ship in Rough Water (1930s), in which John Whorf portrayed a large fishing vessel battling a raging sea.  Here he no doubt felt oil was ideal for this dramatic scene, and he used the medium adeptly to express the weight and feel of the surging waves.

An allegory of the confrontation between man and nature, the storm-tossed boat has been explored in art through the ages.  John Whorf’s painting of it parallels those by Winslow Homer, expressing man’s struggle against the sea’s elemental force.  As in the works of Homer, Whorf used a  high horizon and a dynamic, closely cropped composition to create a sense of immediacy. Whorf’s vision of this subject is hopeful.  On the listing ship, a lighted cabin offers refuge, while figures on the deck stand watchfully over the sea, exuding a sense of confidence that their ship will proceed to safety.

John Whorf is represented in many important private and public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Brooklyn Museum; the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Pitti Palace, Florence; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

The New York Times stated in John Whorf’s obituary:  “While still in his twenties, Mr. Whorf already had established a solid artistic reputation.  Reviewing Mr. Whorf’s 1929 exhibition in New York, one critic said of the young artist that he was ‘perhaps the most brilliant watercolorist in America today, if we take ‘brilliancy’ to mean a breathtaking skill in depicting reality.’ Mr. Whorf won constant acclaim from art critics over the years, particularly for his deft landscapes, maritime subjects, and nudes. . . he conceived of painting as an act of absolute fidelity to the picturesqueness of America and Europe.”  “John Whorf, 56, Water-Colorist,” New York Times, February 14, 1959.

*When Whorf had his first exhibition at the Grace Horne Gallery in Boston in 1924, John Singer Sargent visited the show and purchased one of Whorf’s works.  Following his successful debut, Whorf received informal instruction from Sargent.

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Twachtman Exhibition Confluence

December 1, 2011 — Lisa N. Peters
John Twachtman, "L'Etang," ca. 1884, oil on canvas, 19 1/2 x 24 inches, Spanierman Gallery, presently on view at Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut

John Twachtman, "L'Etang," ca. 1884, oil on canvas, 19 1/2 x 24 inches, Spanierman Gallery, presently on view at Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut

Lisa N. Peters

As we received notices of exhibition openings this fall and winter, we realized there are presently several shows—including one of our own—featuring the work of John Twachtman (1853-1902).  Whether it’s a coincidence or a spirit in the air, we felt this confluence was worthy of notice.

The first to open is American Impressionism: The Lure of the Artists’ Colony, on view at the Reading Public Museum, Pennsylvania, from September 24, 2011 through January 29, 2012.  Twachtman’s The Coast Scene (1879), in the museum’s holdings, is accompanied by other works from this significant collection of American Impressionist painting that is rarely on view with this breadth, and that is less well known than it should be.

On view from October 22, 2011 through January 22, 2012 is Seeing Colors: Secrets of the Impressionists, an exhibition of more than forty works from the collection of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, that is being held at the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.   Committed to using its museum as a teaching tool, the Muscarelle has involved the students at the college in every stage of organizing the show (the most important in the history of the museum, according to director Dr. Aaron De Groft) and in studying the art, which includes iconic paintings such as Claude Monet’s Houses of Parliament in the Fog (1903), and work by other French artists Pissarro, Renoir, Degas, and Cézanne, as well as by Americans, including Cassatt, Sargent, Hassam, Chase, and Twachtman, who is represented by the very still, quiet snow scene, Along the River, Winter (ca. 1885).

The third exhibition is Divided Light and Color: American Impressionist Landscapes, on view at the Bruce Museum of Art, Greenwich, Connecticut, from October 29, 2011-January 29, 2012.  The show features two dozen works, including many by artists who were part of the local Cos Cob art colony.  Jewel-like in the low light of the galleries, the paintings capture a celebratory feeling for the refreshing beauty of the American countryside and coast.  Among the works by Twachtman on view are two lent by the gallery, L’Etang (ca. 1885), an abstractly composed poetic image from Twachtman’s French period and Greenwich Garden (1890s),* a vibrant Impressionist image, in which the artist transformed his home and garden into a totality, expressive of his love for a  place that was an extension of his creative and personal identity.  The gallery also lent William Merritt Chase’s Sunset at Shinnecock Hills (Long Island) (ca. 1895); as the painting given the key position just beyond the entryway, it sets the tone for the show.

John Twachtman, "Weeds and Flowers," ca. 1888-91, pastel on paperboard, 19 x 16 inches, Spanierman Gallery, LLC, New York

John Twachtman, "Weeds and Flowers," ca. 1888-91, pastel on paperboard, 19 x 16 inches, Spanierman Gallery, LLC, New York

Last, but not least in the confluence, is Seeing Abstractly: Works on Paper and Small Oils by John Twachtman, the exhibition we are holding from December 15, 2011 to January 14, 2012.  The twelve works included—ranging from throughout Twachtman’s career—reveal his consistent ability to express the artistic qualities in his everyday experiences, demonstrating an awareness of abstraction that was far ahead of his time. The show is accompanied by a pdf catalogue that is available online.

*Twachtman painted Greenwich Garden, with the assistance of his son Alden, whose signature appears on the work.  Nonetheless, the painting bears little evidence of the artistic approach of Alden, leading to the conclusion that he played a very small part in its execution.

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