Category: American artists

The Red Rose Girls. Part 3. Jessie Willcox Smith.

The third of the Red Rose Girls was Jessie Willcox Smith.  She became one of the most prominent female illustrators in the United States, during the celebrated ‘Golden Age of Illustration‘.  Jessie was the eldest of the trio, born in the Mount Airy neighbourhood of Philadelphia, on September 6th 1863, the youngest of four children.  She was the youngest daughter of Charles Henry Smith, an investment broker, and Katherine DeWitt Willcox Smith.  Her father’s profession as an “investment broker” is often questioned as although there was an investment brokerage called Charles H. Smith in Philadelphia there is no record of it being run by anybody from Jessie Smith’s family.  In the 1880 city census, Jessie’s father’s occupation was detailed as a machinery salesman.  Jessie’s family was a middle-class family who always managed to make ends meet.  Her family originally came from New York and only moved to Philadelphia just prior to Jessie’s birth.  Despite not being part of the elite Philadelphia society, her family could trace their routes back to an old New England lineage.  Jessie, like her siblings, were instructed in the conventional social graces which were considered a necessity for progression in Victorian society.   It should be noted that there were no artists within the family and so as a youngster, painting and drawing were not of great importance to her.  Instead her enjoyment was gained from music and reading.  Jessie attended the Quaker Friends Central School in Philadelphia and when she was sixteen, she was sent to Cincinnati, Ohio to live with her cousins and finish her education.

The Princess and the Goblin, by George McDonald, illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith, (1920)

On completion of her education, instead of returning to the family in Philadelphia, she remained in Cincinnati to look for a job.  Jessie had always been fond of children and managed to secure a position as a kindergarten teacher which would fulfil her need for money whilst doing a job she loved.  However, the belief that all young children are angelic was soon dispelled and she found her charges obstreperous and ill-mannered and soon realised that teaching at a kindergarten was not for her.  One of her friends was interested in art and soon she had managed to inveigle Jessie into the pastime and soon she showed a certain amount of promise as a budding artist.  She remembered this change of direction writing:

“…I knew I wanted to do something with children but never thought of painting them, until an artist friend saw a sketch I had made and insisted I should stop teaching (at which I was an utter failure) and go to art school – which I did…”

John Rogers figurine

Jessie Smith returned to Philadelphia to look for some artistic training and initially wanted to study sculpture.  At the time there was a popular small table-top sculptures called Rogers Group which were relatively inexpensive, mass-produced figurines in the latter 19th which graced the parlours of homes in the United States.  These figurines, often selling for as little as $15 a piece were affordable to the middle class.  They were sculpted in more affordable plaster and painted the colour of putty to hide dust.  She did try her hand at sculpture but soon realised it needed a certain talent, one which she was lacking.  She wrote:

“…my career as a sculptor was brief for my clay had bubbles in it and burst when it was being fired. ‘Heavens’ I decided, ‘ being a sculptor is too expensive!  I will be a painter…’ ”

An illustration by Jessie Wilcox Smith from A Child’s Garden of Verses is a book written by Robert Louis Stevenson

However, Jessie realised that to become a painter she needed formal artistic training and it was difficult for that to happen for a woman in 1884.  It was the age-old story.  Men who wanted to train to become professional artists had academies and teachers to support them but for women, up until the 1850’s, there were few institutions which catered for women and anyway, it was generally thought to be totally ill-advised for a woman to contemplate or prepare for a professional career, art or otherwise.  Life was mapped out for women.  Acquire certain accomplishments which would attract a man, marry that man and give him children, and then be educated at home in the skills needed to look after one’s husband and children.  For women of the middle and upper-class who were interested in art, then a private tutor could be hired but studying in mixed life-drawing classes was deemed unsuitable for women as was sketching nude statuary.

Edwin Forrest House, formerly the home of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women.

Despite this, twenty-one-year-old Jessie Willcox Smith, on October 2nd 1884, enrolled at The Philadelphia School of Design for Women, which was housed in a fashionable Philadelphia neighbourhood in an imposing mansion that had once been the home of actor, Edwin Forrest.  The School had begun when Sarah Worthington King Peter, the wife of the British consul in Philadelphia, established an industrial arts school in her home in 1848 so as to teach a trade to women, who were without a means of supporting themselves.  It was not in direct competition with the Pennsylvania Academy as its emphasis was on decorative pattern and ornament and until 1886 steered clear of controversial life-drawing classes.  After a year at the School of Design, Jessie hankered for more than it could offer her.  She wanted to study the techniques associated with Fine Art and so decided that she had to enrol at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 

Thomas Eakins, circa 1882

She managed to persuade her parents to fund her tuition and in 1885 she enrolled in the class of the brilliant but controversial painter, Thomas Eakins.  Master and student were so different.  Jessie Willcox Smith was a conservative and shy young woman whilst her tutor was brash, carefree and provocative and cared little for the Academy’s attempt to reign him in.  Eakins represented an outrageous departure from the social norms which had structured Jessie Smith’s life.   Many complaints had been levelled at Eakins and his teaching methods especially those regarding female students.  The following year, 1886, forty-one-year-old Eakins was sacked by the Academy.   It is interesting to note that although there is no doubt her artistic ability flourished under the tutelage of Eakins she viewed him with disdain, once confiding in a friend that she thought he was a “madman”.  Jessie did attend Eakins’ life-drawing classes but of the life models used, once declared:

“…I always wished there were children in the life classes, the men and women were so flabby and fat…”

After Eakins was dismissed from the Academy, he held private classes at his studio and many of his former students attended them, but not Jessie.  She presumably did not agree with Eakins’ way of teaching and decided to remain at the Academy and study under Thomas Anshutz and James B. Kelly, two of Eakins’ former students.

Jessie Willcox Smith graduated from the Academy in June 1888.  She looked back on her time at the Academy with a certain amount of disappointment.  Although her technique had improved, she had hoped to be part of an artistic community in which artistic collaboration would be present but instead she found dissention, scandal and in the wake of the Eakins’ scandal, institutionalized isolation.  Jessie talked very little about her time at the Academy.  It had been a turbulent time and she had hated conflict as it unnerved her and made her extremely distressed.  This desperation to avoid any kind of conflict in her personal and professional life revealed itself in her idealistic and often blissful paintings.  Jessie wanted to believe life was just a period of happiness.

Illustration by Jessie Wilcox Smith for the book of verse, The Seven Ages of Childhood

In 1909 a book of verse entitled The Seven Ages of Childhood by Carolyn Wells with accompanying  illustrations by Jessie Wilcox was published.

After graduation, Jessie became interested in illustration and in 1889 took a job with the advertising department of Ladies’ Home Journal, one of the leading American women’s magazines.   In 1894, nearly six years after graduating, she learned that Howard Pyle, the noted illustrator, was starting a School of Illustration at the Drexel Institute and she was accepted into the inaugural class along with Violet Oakley and Elizabeth Shippen Green.

Jessie Wilcox Smith, cover for Good Housekeeping Magazine. May 1921.

Her illustrations appeared on the covers of Good Housekeeping  resulting in most people becoming familiar with her art. For over 15 years she painted the covers for one of America’s most popular magazines. Month after month, from December of 1917 through March of 1933, a new Jessie Willcox Smith image was on the newsstands and in countless homes.

The Red Rose Girls were finally together.  In my next blog I will look at their time at the Drexel Institute with Howard Pyle and their life together.

……………………to be continued

Most of the information I used for this blog came from an excellent book by Alice A. Carter entitled The Red Rose Girls, An Uncommon Story of Art and Love.

The Red Rose Girls. Part 2. Violet Oakley

                                                         

                                                          Violet Oakley

The second of the Red Rose Girls I am featuring is Violet Oakley.  Oakley was the youngest of the Red Rose Girls, almost three years younger than Elizabeth Shippen Green and eleven years younger than Jessie Wilcox Smith.    During the American Renaissance mural movement of the late nineteenth-century it produced one of the great female muralists – Violet Oakley. 

Pennsylvania State Capital murals by Violet Oakley

Violet is probably best known for her murals at the Pennsylvania State Capitol.  The paintings, done by Oakley, show scenes in the state’s history including Washington in Philadelphia in 1787 when the Constitution was written and Lincoln giving his address in Gettysburg in 1863.  Yet, these were only a part of her extraordinary output. Over half a century, Violet Oakley decked out the interiors of churches, schools, civic buildings, and private residences with murals and stained glass. She also illustrated books, magazines, and newspapers, and painted hundreds of portraits. Her Renaissance spirit of civic responsibility helped shape the culture of Philadelphia.

 

Violet (seated) and her sister Hester Oakley

Violet Oakley was born in New York on June 10th 1874, the youngest of three daughters of Arthur and Cornelia Oakley (née Swain) who had married in 1866.   Violet’s eldest sister was Cornelia, who sadly died of diphtheria at the age of six after a very short illness, and a middle-sister, Hester.  She and her family were brought up in Bergen Heights, New Jersey.  As a youngster showing a love for art, she was brought up in the perfect family environment.   In later life she quipped that her own interest in art was “hereditary and chronic” and that she had been born with a paintbrush in her mouth instead of a silver spoon.  At least twelve of her ancestors were artists.  Her paternal grandfather was George Oakley who came to America from London.  He was a talented artist and made many return trips to Europe to study and copy many of the major works of art and became an Associate of the National Academy of Design.  Violet’s father, Arthur, was taught to paint by his father but his business interests precluded him from making art his profession.  Violet’s maternal grandfather, William Swain was a successful portrait artist and his daughter, Violet’s mother, Cornelia set up her own painting studio but gave up her artistic ambitions when she married.  Other of Violet’s aunts, Juliana, and Isabel, became successful painters.

Violet Oakley, Self-Portrait (1919)

Violet was not a healthy child growing up as she suffered from asthma and an over-riding shyness.  Having lost her eldest child Violet’s mother over-cossetted Violet continually worrying about her ill health and fearing that she may lose her second child.  Her surviving sister, Hester, attended Vassar and Violet had hoped to follow her sister but her parents, ever concerned with their daughter’s health, decided to home-school her.  She spent a lot of her time copying paintings by the Old Masters, the prints of which had been brought home by her two grandfathers from their European vacations.  It was not until 1894, when Violet was twenty years of age, that the family allowed her to leave home to study.  She travelled with her father to New York city to attend classes at the Art Student’s league where she studied with Irving Wiles, who would become one of the most successful portrait painters in the United States, and who drew illustrations for magazines such as Harper’s and Scribner’s. Another of her tutors was Carroll Beckwith, an American portrait, genre, and landscape painter.

Penn’s Vision by Violet Oakley (oil paint over printed base) adorns the Governor’s Reception Room at the Pennsylvania State Capitol.

During the winter of 1895, the Oakley family travelled to France to visit relatives and both Hester and Violet decided to improve their artistic skills by enrolling at the Académie de Montparnasse where they studied at the atelier of the Symbolist painter, Edmond Aman-Jean.  It was an all-female studio and the students were a mix of those females who wanted to become professional artists and dilettantes who were merely bored with everyday life.   Violet fell into the former category whilst her older sister Hester, who had yet to decide whether to become an artist or writer, belonged to the latter and used the experience at the atelier to study people,  many of whom she incorporated into her 1898 novel, As Having Nothing.  The family’s European holiday was cut short when Violet’s father took ill.  It is thought that he suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by the failure of many of his business ventures.  Their father’s financial demise focused the minds of Hester and Violet in that they needed to earn money to support themselves and their family.  Hester managed to write and sell her novels and Violet decided that her art had to become financially viable.  Her family moved to Philadelphia to get medical advice for her father and so when Violet arrived in the city, she decided to enrol on two courses at the Pennsylvania Academy.  One was with Cecilia Beaux whose course was entitled Drawing and Painting from Head and focused on portraiture.  She also enrolled in the Day Life Drawing Class; a course run by Joseph de Camp.  However, art tuition cost money, add to that cost of materials and the commute to and from the Academy and Violet had now encountered financial problems.

Violet Oakley in front of the Unity panel that she painted for the Senate Chamber in the Pennsylvania State Capitol Building.

It was her sister, Hester, who saved the day.  Hester was continuing with writing her first novel and decided to enrol at the Drexel Institute where Howard Pyle, a writer and an illustrator was running an illustration class and Hester decided that he was just who she needed to teach her to become a novelist.  Buoyed by this find, Hester rushed home to tell her sister of the opportunity and persuaded her to leave the Academy after just one term and enrol at the Institute.  One could not just walk into to Howard Pyle’s course, one had to prove one’s worth and so Violet carefully organised her portfolio of work.   Howard Pyle examined Violet Oakley’s portfolio and accepted her onto his course, agreeing to help her progress.  Violet and Hester then set themselves up in a rented studio at 1523 Chestnut Street and their mother gave them some of the family’s furniture.  The two young ladies may have been sisters but they were as different as chalk and cheese.  Hester, the Vassar graduate, was outgoing, vivacious, and full of self-confidence whereas Violet was painfully shy and highly emotional and friends stated that she lacked a sense of humour.

Senate mural, Pennsylvania State Capitol by Violet Oakley.

That day in 1897 when Violet Oakley first walked into Howard Pyle’s illustration class she came face to face with the other two Red Rose Girls, Jessie Willcox Smith and Elizabeth Shippen Green ………………….

……………to be continued.

The information I used for my five blogs about the Red Rose Girls was mostly collected from the excellent book entitled The Red Rose Girls.  An Uncommon Story of Art and Love by Alice A. Carter.  I can highly recommend this biography.  You will not be disappointed.

The Red Rose Girls. Part 1. Elizabeth Shippen Green.

In my next series of blogs, I want to look at the lives of three talented women artists – Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley.  These three artists enchanted and fascinated early twentieth century Philadelphia with their brilliant careers and somewhat uncommon lifestyle.  At one time the three women lived together in The Red Rose Inn, a picturesque estate in the affluent Philadelphia suburb of Villanova, a respected area known as the Main Line, an historical and social region of suburban Philadelphia, which was situated along the former Pennsylvania Railroad’s once prestigious Main Line.  The three women were joined by their friend, Henrietta Cozens, who took on the responsibility of managing their communal household.  Their mentor and tutor at the time was the famous American illustrator, Howard Pyle, who, because of their residence, nicknamed them The Red Rose Girls.  The four women forged an intense and emotional bond and vowed to live together for the rest of their lives.  They even adopted and acronymic surname, wanting to be known as the Cogs family – C for Cozens, O for Oakley, G for Green and S for Smith.  In the following blogs, I want to delve into the life of these three women and look at their backgrounds, their works and how they fought their way through a male-orientated world of art.  These three women were to become renowned for their illustrative work.

Red Rose Girls, Pictured left are Violet Oakley, Jesse Willcox Smith and Elizabeth Shippen Green (with Henrietta Cozens).

In my next series of five blogs, I want to look at the lives of three talented women artists – Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley.  These three artists enchanted and fascinated early twentieth century Philadelphia with their brilliant careers and somewhat uncommon lifestyle.  At one time the three women lived together in The Red Rose Inn, a picturesque estate in the affluent Philadelphia suburb of Villanova, a respected area known as the Main Line, an historical and social region of suburban Philadelphia, which was situated along the former Pennsylvania Railroad’s once prestigious Main Line.  The three women were joined by their friend, Henrietta Cozens, who took on the responsibility of managing their communal household.  Their mentor and tutor at the time was the famous American illustrator, Howard Pyle, who, because of their residence, nicknamed them The Red Rose Girls.  The four women forged an intense and emotional bond and vowed to live together for the rest of their lives.  They even adopted and acronymic surname, wanting to be known as the Cogs family – C for Cozens, O for Oakley, G for Green and S for Smith.  In the following blogs, I want to delve into the life of these three women and look at their backgrounds, their works and how they fought their way through a male-orientated world of art.  The three women were to become renowned for their illustrative work.

Page from illuminated manuscript

Book illustrations can be traced back to the world of manuscript illuminations.  An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is accompanied with decoration as initials, borders known as marginalia, and miniature illustrations.  The term illumination originally denoted the embellishment of the text of handwritten books with gold or, more rarely, silver, giving the impression that the page had been literally illuminated. 

Biblia Pauperum or Bible of the Poor, woodcut illustrations with manuscript text

Fast forward to the 18th and 19th centuries and the literature of the Western World and the birth of what we now know as the novel, in the form of adult fiction.  

‘Mr Winkle Returns under Extraordinary Circumstances’, etched illustration by Hablot Knight Browne for The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club by Charles Dickens

An example of this are the novels of Charles Dickens and the way in which he would collaborate with book illustrators.  How it worked was Dickens would give the illustrator an outline of the story line before he wrote the text and he carefully scrutinised the drawings to ensure that they complemented his own ideas.  In the case of Dickens, his favoured illustrator was Hablot Knight Browne who worked under the pen name “Phiz”. 

By the end of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Shippen Green, was to become a leading American illustrator.

 Elizabeth Shippen Green

Elisabeth “Bessie” Shippen Green was born into an old well-to-do Philadelphia family, on September 1st 1871.  She was the third child of Jasper Green and Elizabeth Shippen Boude. Her eldest sister died when aged two and, Katherine, her middle sister, was born a year before Elizabeth.  The family lived near the centre of Philadelphia at 1320 Spruce Street.  Although not very wealthy, the Green family had impeccable “old Philadelphia” connections through both the Shippen and Green ancestors and as such Elizabeth was able to access the elite social circles throughout her life.  It was this advantageous aspect of Elizabeth’s life that led her to become easy going and self-confident.  Elizabeth’s parents were determined that their daughters had every possible social advantage in life and to ensure a good start to Elizabeth’s life journey she was sent to private Philadelphia schools.  Initially she was enrolled at Miss Mary Hough’s School and later Miss Gordon’s School.

Jasper Green, Elizabeth’s father at the Red Rose Inn (1904). Elizabeth Shippen Boude, Elizabeth’s mother (1903)

Elizabeth’s father imbued in his daughter a love of art as he was an amateur artist who had studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and during the American Civil War, worked as an illustrator/correspondent for the Harper’s Weekly, an American political magazine based in New York City.   It was said that during her early schooldays Elizabeth took pleasure in illustrating her school notebooks. 

Portrait of the Artist’s Father, Jasper Green by Elizabeth Shippen Green (c.1900)

Elizabeth Shippen Green, self portrait

In October 1889, a month after that first publication of her work she enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  She spent one year in the antique class, where she had to draw from plaster casts, and two years in the life class, working with live models.  During that period her teachers included Thomas Anshutz, Thomas Eakins, and Robert Vonnoh.  Elizabeth graduated from the Academy in 1893 and it was in that year that the Green family suffered a devastating loss.  Elizabeth’s sister, Katherine died on September 1st 1893, aged twenty-three.  This tragic death would haunt Elizabeth every year as it coincided with her birthday.  Elizabeth had now suffered the tragic loss of both of her sisters and one can only imagine the devastation felt by her parents.

Paper Doll Book #2 watercolour and charcoal by Elizabeth Shippen Green (1906)

Once her schooling was completed, eighteen-year-old Elizabeth enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1888.  For Elizabeth the Fine Arts path was not for her as she was interested in her father’s branch of art, that of illustration and, in her father, she had the best illustrations tutor possible.  By the time she was seventeen years-old she had turned a corner of her bedroom into her studio and produced a series of drawings which she managed to sell to the Philadelphia Times and the first of these were printed by the newspaper on her eighteenth birthday.  The drawings accompanied a short but charming rhyme about a child and her doll, entitled, Naughty Lady Jane.   Although this was the only work of prose which she had published, the Philadelphia Times editors recognised her immense talent as an illustrator and in the September 8th 1889 edition of the Philadelphia Times the editor inserted this extended by-line:

“…You will see in another column today some very pretty verses called Naughty Lady Jane accompanied by six exquisite illustrations.  They are the work of Miss Bessie S. Green of Philadelphia who is only eighteen years old.  The lines are unpretending, of course, yet admirably suited to their purpose; but the illustrations show wonderful talent.  Indeed, they would do credit to an artist much older and more experienced than Miss Green…”

Elizabeth (“Bessie”) must have been delighted to have her work published although the payment of 5o cents for a one-column drawing was hardly going to give her financial independence.

Philadelphia Public Ledger

Elizabeth continued working hard and would regularly submit her illustrations to the Philadelphia Public Ledger, a daily Philadelphia newspaper which was, at the time, owned by George William Childs and Anthony J. Drexel.  Elizabeth received many assignments for fashion illustrations from the newspaper.  In 1897, Elizabeth Shippen Green enrolled at the Drexel Institute which had been founded by Anthony J Drexel, a Philadelphia financier and philanthropist in 1891.   He envisioned an institution of higher learning uniquely suited to the needs of a rapidly growing industrial society and of the young men and women seeking their place in it.

Enter Howard Pyle the leading American illustrator of the time and the two other Red Rose Girls…………………………

………………………………to be continued.

 

The information I used for my five blogs about the Red Rose Girls was mostly collected from the excellent book entitled The Red Rose Girls.  An Uncommon Story of Art and Love by Alice A. Carter.  I can highly recommend this biography.  You will not be disappointed.

Henry Ossawa Tanner. Part 2.

The Resurrection of Lazarus, by Henry Ossawa Tanner(1897)

The year is 1897, and Henry Tanner’s painting, The Resurrection of Lazarus, was exhibited at the Salon where it received a third-class medal. The work remains one of Tanner’s most treasured and familiar works. The depiction of the biblical story is realistic and lacks sentimentality and is characteristic of Tanner’s religious work and with his fascination with rebirth and deliverance.  The French government purchased the painting for the Musée du Luxembourg. Later it was displayed at the Louvre, and since 1980, it can be found in the Musée d’Orsay.

The Two Disciples at the Tomb by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1906)

After Tanner’s move to Paris his artwork tended to focus mainly on religious art and less about depictions of his African American countrymen. Now that he had become a famous artist, there was a certain amount of pressure brought to bear on him to bring attention to the predicament of black people in America and for him to speak out about how racism had blighted their lives. Tanner was a deeply religious person but shied away from politics maintaining he chose to allow his work to make his point about racial equality.

TLes pélerins d’Emmaüs (The Pilgrims of Emmaus) by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1905)

Henry also depicted the famous biblical scene, much favoured by artists, of the resurrected Christ’s meeting with two of his disciples, Luke and Cleopas, at Emmaus. Tanner’s 1905 work was entitled Les pélerins d’Emmaüs (The Pilgrims of Emmaus). This painting is also part of the Musée d’Orsay collection.

Jessie Olssen Tanner and her son Jesse (c.1908)

In 1899, Henry Tanner did the inconceivable. He married a white woman. His wife was an American opera singer from San Francisco, Jessie Macauley Olssen. They had first met in Barbizon and she had often acted as his model. The couple went on to have their only child, Jesse, who was born in 1903.

Henry Ossawa Tanner Family Photograph

Above is a photograph of a family get-together in Paris. According to a note on the back of the photo the group was, from left to right, Jesse, their five-year-old son, Henry’s wife, Jessie Tanner, a fellow ex-pat American artist, Myron Barlow, and Henry himself. 

 

Portrait of the Artist’s Wife by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1897)

Henry completed a portrait of his wife around the time of their betrothal and is now part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In this portrait, Jessie Tanner is shown in a highly studied pose which is intended to look informal and nonchalant. Tanner put a lot of time in depicting the details of her face in comparison to the almost “unfinished” look of her dress.

Salome by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1900)

Tanner’s 1900 painting Salome is an Impressionistic-style work in which Tanner used sombre blues, greys, and blacks. It is a realistic depiction of the woman. There is no attempt to idealise her. It is an unusual and yet striking depiction of the biblical character and was typical of work which made Tanner the most famous and well-regarded artist of his time. The painting is housed in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC. It is thought that Tanner’s wife modelled for this 1900 painting

Wife and son

Many of Tanner’s subjects are based on his studies of African Americans from Georgia and North Carolina, the men, and women he encountered while traveling in the Middle East and North Africa in 1897 and 1898. and also, of his Caucasian wife, Jessie. She and their seven-year-old son Jesse posed for a photograph which Tanner would use for his 1909 painting, Christ and His Mother Studying the Scriptures which belongs to the Dallas Museum of Art. In the painting, we see the figures of Christ and her son engaged in a private moment of reading together. She has her hand wrapped around her son’s waist as they each hold the scroll from which they are studying. It is a painting exuding the tenderness of a mother and her son. This physical bond we see before us is also a recognition of their spiritual unity.

Christ and His Mother Studying the Scriptures by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1909)

Henry Ossawa Tanner has used a restricted palette of shades of blue, purple, with gold, bathing the figures in a warm, golden light. This illumination emanating from the scroll is a metaphor for the illumination gleaned from the words of the scroll. The existence of the photograph is proof that Tanner used his wife and son as models for Mary and Jesus. This being so gives the work a double meaning, firstly, a contemplative biblical scene and secondly a loving family portrait.

Christ Learning to Read by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1914)

Several years after, (around 1914), Tanner completed another painting remarkably similar to his 1909 work, Christ, and His Mother Studying the Scriptures. This time the title was Christ Learning to Read which is housed in the Des Moines Art Centre. In the Des Moines painting, brilliant colour, dramatic light, and deep shadows replace the Tonalist restraint of Tanner’s earlier work. The background is lighter and the design of the rug on the floor is more detailed. The depiction is less about spirituality and more about Christ’s early childhood with his mother.

Booker T Washington by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1917)

Booker T. Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to multiple presidents of the United States and, between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary black elite. Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. In 1899, he published an article on Henry Ossawa Tanner. The publication of this article played a significant role in securing the artist an important position in the art world of America.

La Sainte Marie by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1898) La Salle University Art Museum

La Sainte Marie is a very strange depiction of the Virgin Mary with the Christ child.   Mary appears melancholy and lost in thought. The infant, who is lying on the floor, is almost completely covered by a shroud-like cloth, possibly suggesting a foreshadowing of his death. Tanner was painstaking when it came to detail and took back home with him sketches which he had made whilst in Jerusalem, where he first travelled in 1898. Tanner’s style is academic and is distinctive for his use of luminous lighting. The model for the depiction of Mary was again Tanner’s newlywed Swedish-American wife. 

Flight Into Egypt by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1923)

Whilst living in Paris, Tanner had met Lewis Rodman Wanamaker, a fellow American expatriate living in Paris, who—like his father, the department store magnate John Wanamaker—was a major patron of contemporary religious art. He was a patron of many important commissions in the field of liturgical arts. He was very impressed with Tanner’s religious paintings so much so that in 1897 he arranged for the artist to travel to Palestine for inspiration. According to Wanamaker any artist who wanted to depict believable biblical scenes should acquaint themselves with the Holy Land and then, from that encounter, he believed Tanner would be able to remind himself of the different shades of blue that can be seen in the twilight sky of Jerusalem and along the hills of Bethlehem.  Tanner left Paris in January 1897 and journeyed south through France by train to the port of Marseilles, where he boarded a ship to Cairo. From Cairo, he travelled to Port Said, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Jericho, and the Dead Sea, returning to Alexandria and sailing back to Europe through Naples. He spent just over two months in the Middle East, but the sketches he made during this trip would be used in his religious paintings for years to come.

Interior of a Mosque, Cairo by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1897)

During the time Tanner spent in Cairo, he visited a number of mosques. One of these featured in his 1897 painting, The setting for the painting, Interior of a Mosque, Cairo was the madrasa of Sultan Qaitbey, a Mamluk-dynasty complex originally containing a mosque, a school, and a mausoleum, built between 1472 and 1475. This mosque has long been held as one of the masterpieces of Islamic architecture in Cairo. The mosque of Qaitbey is famous for its coloured and cut marble, geometric patterning, and decorative tile. Tanner’s painting portrays it as an ageless place of faith and mystery. We are looking at the eastern end of the interior, where the mihrab, a semi-circular niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the qibla, which is the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca and hence the direction that Muslims, should face when praying. Tanner has made a careful choice of view, one which is angled so as to highlight the curved arches and intricate marble patterning on two sides of the building. Light streams through the stained-glass windows onto the floor. To the left we can make out the minbar, an elaborately carved wooden pulpit in the mosque where the imam stands to deliver sermons. Two robed figures face east, engaged in their devotions. Tanner brought the completed work back with him to France.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Abraham’s Oak, (1905), Smithsonian American Art Museum,

Tanner returned to Palestine, a year later, for a further six months of sketching and painting. During the latter stay he came to Khirbet es-Sibte on the Plain of Mamre and came across the great oak venerated by some as the Oak of Abraham. According to the bible, (Genesis 13), it was beneath this tree that Abram (not yet Abraham) pitched a tent and built an altar to the Lord of Israel after God’s promise of the land of Canaan to him and his offsprings. Whilst Tanner was there, he too pitched his tent on the Mamre Plain and I wonder if he drew the parallel of himself and Abraham. The biblical figure’s lifetime of wanderings and Tanner, who left America and went to live in France where conditions allowed him to work and live relatively free of the widespread and overpowering racism of his own native country and, like Abraham, he too wanted to start a new life. For Tanner it was Paris, for Abraham it was Canaan.  It was almost seven years later that Henry Tanner produced a painting which he looked upon as a souvenir from his Holy Land travels. The painting is entitled Abraham’s Oak. In his depiction, the ancient tree looms large over the scene. It is not just any tree. It is strong, solemn, and gigantic. The aged tree has one of its massive limbs on the left seemingly supported by two struts. The tree is almost withered, almost bare, with the exception of a few leaves sprouting from the end of its mighty limbs. Tanner has used his customary nocturnal blue-grey palette to depict the thick, dim nigh time air broken only by the hazy glow of the moon.

The Holy Family by Henry Ossawa Tanner (c.1910)

Some time in the first decade of the twentieth century, Henry Tanner and his wife and son had moved out of Paris and made their home in Etaples, a fishing commune on the Canche river in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France, fifty miles from the Franco-Belgium border. However, the fighting during the First World had moved perilously close to Tanner’s home and so he uprooted his family and hastily moved them to England. During his latter years Tanner received many honours for his art. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in America and made an honorary chevalier of the Order of the Legion of Honour in France. Although Tanner remained active until 1936, he refused to change his artistic style and refused to follow the period’s artistic innovations. The taste in art changed in the twentieth century. Modernism became fashionable and so the realism of Tanner’s art became old-fashioned. He remained steadfast in his resistance to becoming a spokesman for racial issues, once again maintaining he wanted to put all his energy into his art. Despite this Henry Ossawa through his international reputation inspired generations of African American artists.

Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1885)

His wife Jessie died on September 8th 1925 and Tanner died in Paris, alone, on May 25th, 1937, a month before his 78th birthday. On October 29th 1996, in the White House, the American president, Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary unveiled Tanner’s 1885 painting Sand dunes at Sunset in Atlantic City.

The painting became the first work by an African American artist to join the White House permanent collection.

Henry Ossawa Tanner. Part 1

Henry Ossawa Tanner. Paris 1907

In many of my previous blogs I have talked about youngsters, in centuries gone by, who had all the advantages needed to become an artist. They were male and did not have to overcome the barriers females had to hurdle over to become acknowledged painters. They were from wealthy families who could pay for their child’s best artistic tuition. They were part of an artistic family whose parents or siblings could initially tutor them, encourage them and, at the same time, introduce them to their established artist friends.  These were great advantages, not having these benefits was a disadvantage for an aspiring painter.

The nineteenth century American artist I am looking at today had one major disadvantage. He was an African American in nineteenth century America where racism was rife, and as such had to overcome problems his white contemporaries did not have to face. He, however, battled on and became the first African American painter to gain international acclaim. Welcome to the world of Henry Ossawa Tanner.

Portrait of Artists Mother by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1897)

Henry Ossawa Tanner was born in the city of Pittsburgh on June 21st 1859. His middle name was derived from the Battle of Osawatomie, an armed engagement that occurred on August 30, 1856, between pro- and anti-slavery partisans at the town of Osawatomie, Kansas. He was the eldest of nine children born to Benjamin Tucker Tanner and his wife Sarah Miller Tanner, a private school teacher, who was born into slavery in Virginia but whose mother had enabled her to escape to the North via the Underground Railroad. Tanner’s portrait of his mother in 1897, Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, is a dignified depiction of the woman who brought him up. The painting with its deep hues and the large area of dead space adds drama to the painting.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Angels Appearing before the Shepherds, c. 1910

Henry was brought up in a religious setting. His father was a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, the first independent black denomination in the United States. He and his family moved frequently due to him being assigned to various parishes. His father was also a political activist for the abolition of slavery. Religion always played an important role in Henry Ossawa Tanner’s life and art.

The family moved from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia in 1868 when Henry was nine years old. He attended The Promise Academy at Roberts Vaux High School, for coloured students. named after the American jurist, abolitionist, and philanthropist Roberts Vaux  It was a school which encouraged the love of art. He did well at the school and eventually graduated as the valedictorian of his class. The story goes that one day in 1872, thirteen-year-old Henry Ossawa Tanner was walking in the city’s Fairmont Park and came across an artist with his easel painting a landscape. He never forgot this meeting and determined there and then that he too would become an artist. Living in Philadelphia in the summer was a test for everybody. The temperature and the humidity were extremely high and everyday living became onerous. The Tanner family, like many others tried to escape the humid conditions by going to the seaside and experience the cooling Atlantic breeze. Young Henry enjoyed these seaside trips and found plenty of subjects to paint. Some of his sketches were seen by the Philadelphia artists, Henry Price, who offered young Henry a one-year apprenticeship at his Philadelphia studio. It was here that Tanner began to learn about art.

The Disciples See Christ Walking on the Water by Henry Ossawa Tanner (ca. 1907)

However, his father had other ideas as he was doubtful that a career in art was a suitable occupation for his son. With that in mind he arranged for Henry to start an apprenticeship as a miller in a flour mill. Henry Tanner was a delicate young man whose health was never resilient throughout his life and working in the flour mill proved too strenuous and he became seriously ill. Tanner was confined to his home to recuperate. Much of the time during this period of isolation was spent sketching. Once he had recovered, and was freed from home-based isolation, he would often take trips to Rainbow Lake in the Adirondack Mountains where the air was cleaner. He would also go down to the sunnier and warmer climate of Florida. He was pleased when he could get out of the family house and could not wait to be able to start sketching and painting. Tanner began to paint landscape and seascape scenes.

Sand Dunes at Sunset, Atlantic City by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1885)

His artwork must have reached a good standard as at the age of twenty-one, he passed the entrance examination to the Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts in 1880. It was here that he received the finest art tuition from the likes of the great American realist painter, Thomas Eakins. The artwork and teachings of Eakins were to have a great influence on Tanner for the rest of his life. He remained a student there, off-and-on, until 1885. Tanner exhibited some of his early works in New York in 1885 and the following year he opened his own studio in Philadelphia. Once again, Henry and his family would often head towards the New Jersey coast in the summer to avoid the stifling heat of Philadelphia. During those hot summer days Henry completed a painting entitled Sand Dunes at Sunset. Over a century later, in 1995, it became the first painting by an African American artist to be acquired by the White House.

The Young Sabot Maker by Henry Ossawa Tanner

Tanner left the Pennsylvania Academy prior to graduating as he wanted to set himself up in business and in 1888 an opportunity arose in Atlanta, Georgia for him to establish his own art and photography gallery. His idea was to set up a modest gallery where he would attempt to earn a semi-artistic living by selling drawings, making photographs, and teaching art classes at the city’s private Methodist, historically black, university Clark Atlanta University. Through Tanner’s connection with the Methodist Church he came in contact with Joseph Crane Hartzell who was an American Missionary Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  Joseph Hartzell and his wife became his main white patrons over the next several years. In spite of his efforts, Tanner’s Atlanta studio failed and, in the summer of 1888, Henry sold the business.

Spinning by Firelight – The Boyhood of George Washington Gray by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1894)

Henry Tanner left Atlanta and moved to Highlands, North Carolina, a town in Macon County in North Carolina.  The town is located on a high plateau within the larger Blue Ridge Mountains. He had moved there with the idea that he could make some money from his photographs and paintings. He also believed that the clean mountain air would be good for his well-being. After staying at Highlands during the summer of 1888, he returned to Atlanta and taught drawing for two years at Clark Atlanta University. In a conversation Henry Tanner had with Bishop Hartzell and his wife, he told them about his desire to go to Europe and study art in Rome. They believed it to be a good idea and they arranged to have an exhibition of his work at a gallery in Cincinnati in the Autumn of 1890 and from the sale of his work his trip to Europe would be paid for.

The exhibition was held but unfortunately none of Tanner’s paintings sold. He was devastated. However, the bishop and his wife came to his rescue and bought all the paintings ! Henry Tanner now had the funds to travel to Europe. Tanner eventually set sail for Europe in January 1891. He stayed for a short time in Liverpool and London and then travelled to Paris. He was so impressed by the art scene of the French capital. To him, the French artistic world was much more cutting-edged than that of America’s art world, so much so that he abandoned his plans to travel to Rome and put roots down in the French capital. Once settled in Paris, Tanner enrolled in the Académie Julian and studied under Jean-Paul Laurens, a French painter and sculptor, and one of the last major exponents of the French Academic style and Jean Joseph Benjamin-Constant, a French painter and etcher best known for his Oriental subjects and portraits. He also joined the American Art Students Club of Paris.

In 1893, Tanner went back to the United States to deliver a paper on African Americans and art at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In this same year, he created one of his famous works The Banjo Lesson while he was in Philadelphia.  His depiction incorporated a series of sketches he had made while visiting the Blue Ridge Mountains, four years earlier. The sketches he had made during the summer of 1888 had opened his eyes to the poverty of African Americans living in Appalachia.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson, 1893

The setting is inside a cramped log cabin with the cool glow of a hearth fire casting the scene’s only light source from right corner, enveloping the man and the boy in a rectangular pool of light across the floor. The young boy holds the banjo in both hands. He looks down, completely focused on the task ahead. His grandfather holds the banjo up gently with his left hand so that the boy is not hampered by its weight, yet it is also clear that the grandfather expects the young boy to appreciate the music he is producing although it may be hard work.

Woman from the French West Indies by Henry Ossawa Tanner (ca. 1891)

When he arrived back in his homeland, he was respected as an artist but despite this recognition and the honours and prizes he received for his art, his paintings were often displayed separately from those of his white colleagues. In 1895 he returned to in Paris, saying that he could not fulfil his artistic aspirations while fighting discrimination in America. Tanner lived over half of the rest of his life in France, saying that he was able to find an expansive and more accepting environment, free from the racial strife which he encountered in America.

The Thankful Poor by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1894)

In 1894 Tanner completed another memorable work. It was entitled The Thankful Poor. It was an oil painting depicting an elderly black man sitting down to supper with a teenage boy. Their heads are bowed in prayer, thanking The Lord for the food they were about to eat. The table is plain and the food upon it is meagre, but Tanner has captured their thankfulness. Whilst Tanner has painted the two figures in great detail, the rest of the scene, such as the wall and the tablecloth seem to just blend in the light. This warm light which streams through the window onto the wall helps to enrich the spiritual quality of the painting. The bright light shines on the young boy’s face and illuminates the boy’s deliberations, devotion, and gratitude for having food to eat. Look how Tanner has portrayed poverty in the way he depicted the man’s coarse hands and the boy’s scruffy clothes.
Around the mid 1890’s, Henry Tanner strong religious beliefs became more apparent in his works. He was determined that the biblical stories he knew and loved should feature in his artwork. He once said:

“…my effort has been not only to put the Biblical incident in the original setting…but at the same time give the human touch…to convey to my public the reverence and elevation these subjects impart to me…”

Daniel in the Lion’s Den by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1896)

Impressionism had been at the height of its popularity in the 1870’s and Tanner was Influenced by colours used by the Impressionists. He was also inspired by the works of the Symbolists. A classic example of his work at the time was his 1896 painting Daniel in the Lion’s Den which won an honourable mention at the Paris Salon of 1896. In this depiction, Daniel is incarcerated in a den of lions. He was being punished for refusing to pray to King Darius of Persia. The late evening light streams through an upper window of his dark prison cell lighting up the lower body of Daniel and highlights his arms crossed on his lap whilst besides him is the exceptionally large head of one of the lions. There is a calmness about the figure of Daniel which underlines his spiritual belief in what he is doing. The shades of blue/green offer us a picture of serenity. The painting, which was the first to be exhibited at the Salon by an African American, was highly praised by the art critics and received international recognition. This was Tanner’s first major religious painting and indicated the direction that his art would take.

Le Grand Inquisiteur chez les rois catholiques by Jean-Paul Laurens

The choice of a religious subject may have been inspired initially by his teacher Jean-Paul Laurens, his former tutor at Académie Julian, who was noted for dramatic biblical paintings and who had depicted a similar scene of incarceration in his painting, Le Grand Inquisiteur chez les rois catholiques, a copy of which Tanner had owned. A later version of this painting can be found at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Wilshire Boulevard.

..……to be continued.

Hudson River School – The Hart Family

Part 3.  Julie Hart

“…Mrs. Julie Hart Beers Kempson became the only woman artist of the century to specialize in landscape. It is perhaps not surprising to find so few women landscapists, since the rigors of painting outdoors and the unseemliness of women engaging in this activity during the Victorian era acted as a deterrent…”

William H. Gerdts,
Women Artists of America 1707-1964 (Newark: Newark Museum, 1965)

The above extract is from the article in the 1965 Newark Museum catalogue Women artists of America, 1707-1964 that accompanied the exhibition.  It was written by the American art historian and former professor of Art History at the City University of New York Graduate Center, William Gerdts.

Cabin in Autumn, Upper Hudson Valley by Julie Hart Beers (1910)

In my final blog regarding the artistically talented siblings of the American Hart family I want to look at the life and work of the youngest child of James and Marion Hart, Scottish immigrants who had settled in Albany, N.Y., in 1831. Julie Hart was born in 1835, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and was the only one of her siblings to have been born in America. She, as we have seen in the two previous blogs, had two talented artists as brothers, William Hart and James McDougal Hart. The world of Fine Art in America, in the nineteenth century, was a male-dominated institution. There were female painters but they were looked upon purely as hobbyists rather than being serious professional painters. It was believed by many men that women had better things to do than paint professionally – raising children, keeping house and looking after their hard-working husbands. Most art academies didn’t admit women, and neither did the art societies that linked artists with patrons, which was a prerequisite to the financial success of an aspiring artist. So, in the early part of the nineteenth century, women artists signed their work with just a first initial and a surname so as to conceal their gender, thus hoping that their ability as an artist would not be downgraded once the sex of the artist was known. For women to succeed in the world of Fine Art they needed both their family and/or financial backing to launch them professionally. Often, they were the sisters, daughters and wives of better-known male artist. There was no formal training for women at art institutions so once again they relied on family members or friends to help develop their talent. Julia Hart was fortunate enough to have her two elder brothers, who were aligned with the Hudson River School of art, to teach and mentor her and so, as a teenager, she became interested in plein air landscape painting.  She was one of very few professional women landscape painters in nineteenth-century America

The Old Birch Tree by Julia Hart Beers (1876)

In 1865 the American Civil War had ended and the Reconstruction had begun. Americans unfettered by the trials of war were once again relishing the joys of tourism and travel. They would often explore the great landscapes. One such area was the banks of the Hudson River which had started its 319-mile journey from the Adirondacks towards its outflow between Manhattan and Jersey City. It was the upper reaches including the Adirondacks, Catskills and White Mountains which tempted both tourists and artists alike. The artists, who were looked upon as being part of the Hudson River School, wanted to capture the beauty on canvas and the tourists wanted pictorial mementos of their journeys. These areas of beauty were often steep-sided hills and mountains and for female artists who came to the region for some plein air sketching and painting, they had to overcome the challenge of decorous dressing versus suitable attire for their arduous painting trips. These women ventured on their own or alongside male relatives into the wilderness, painting the breath-taking scenery that inspired America’s first art movement. Julie Hart was one of those women.

Hudson River at Croton Point by Julie Hart Beers (1869)

Julie Beers married in 1853, when she was eighteen years old. Her husband, also a painter, was Marion Beers. Marion, like Julie’s brothers, helped teach his wife artistic techniques which were to serve her well in the future. In the mid 1850’s Julie, like her two brothers, relocated to New York city and set up a studio. Since her marriage, Julie signed all her paintings “Julie H Beers”
It is thought that Julie’s first exhibition was held at the National Academy of Design (NAD) in 1867, following which she had her paintings exhibited at the NAD annual exhibitions in each of the following twelve years. She also exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum in 1867 and 1868 and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1868.

Still Life with Fruit by Julie Hart Beers (1866)

Besides being a renowned landscape painter Julie was also a talented still life artist as can be seen by her 1866 painting Still life with Fruit.

Basket of Roses by Julie Hart Beers (ca. 1860’s).

Another of her still life paintings, completed around the same time was entitled Basket of Roses.

Cabin by the Forest by Julie H Beers

Her husband, Marion Beers died in 1876 and the following year Julie married Peter Kempson and the newly-weds moved to Metuchen in New Jersey.  Julie Hart Beers Kempson proved that women landscape painters were the equal of men, despite the harshness of painting en plein air in the wild and often barely accessible landscapes along the Hudson River.  Sadly her paintings did not receive affair and objective assessment during her lifetime and she was not truly valued in her own time, but notwithstanding that transgression, her talent and dedication as an artist which not only produced outstanding works of art, but also led the way for the female landscapists who would follow her.

A Quiet Pond by Julie Hart Beers (1873)

I will end this blog as I started it, with a quotation.  This one is from Jennifer Krieger, Managing Partner at Hawthorne Fine Art in New York City. Her article entitled Women Artists of the Hudson River School formed part of the catalogue which accompanies the 2010 exhibition, Remember the Ladies: Women of the Hudson River School, which was held at Cedar Grove, The Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, New York. She wrote about the trials and tribulations of female artists and their struggle to carry out plein air painting in remote areas of the Hudson River valleys. She wrote:

“…These artists managed to make their way through vast, unexplored stretches of the American landscape and to shimmy up trees (for better views) in spite of their long skirts. Rather than complain about all that society had placed in their way…… [They] were all intent on honoring the beauty of the natural world they had experienced so directly. Rather than to complain about all that society had placed in their way, women artists pushed forward to accomplish their goals. As a result of their determination, our own cultural topography has been immeasurably enriched…”

A Hudson River Scene by Julie H Beers

Julie Hart Beers Kempson demonstrated that women landscape painters were the equal of men, even given the hardships of painting outdoors.  While largely undervalued in her own time, her talent and dedication not only produced outstanding works of art, but also broke important ground for the female landscapists who would follow her.

Hudson River School – The Hart family.

Part 2 – James McDougal Hart and family.

James McDougal Hart

The Hudson River School, as it has come to be termed, was founded by the painter Thomas Cole around 1825. Cole believed that nature manifested to man the mind of the Creator and saw the artist as a prophet. The Hudson River School was so named because its proponents showed a fondness for depicting the scenery to be found in the countryside bordering the Hudson River. James McDougal Hart, like his brother William and his sister, Julie, were looked upon as second generation exponents of this type of landscape painting.

James McDougal Hart (1828-1901)

James McDougal Hart was born on May 10th 1828 in the East Ayrshire town of Kilmarnock. His father James was a schoolteacher and he and his wife took passage on the SS Camillus with their seven children and emigrated to America, landing in New York on February 12th 1830. After landing on American shore, the family located to Albany in upstate New York.

After completing his education, James, like his brother William before him, became an apprentice to a local sign and carriage maker and was employed to paint landscape scenes on carriage doors and banners. In 1851 James left America and travelled to Germany, visiting Munich, Leipzig and Dusseldorf, where he enrolled for a short period at the Dusseldorf Art Academy. Being a student at the Academy he was influenced by the Düsseldorf school of painting, which was a name given to a group of painters who taught or studied at the Academy during the 1830s and 1840s, a period when the Academy was directed by the Romantic painter Wilhelm von Schadow. The Dusseldorf School is typified by its keenly detailed yet imaginary landscapes, often with religious or allegorical stories set in the landscapes and he was a great believer in plein air painting and the use of a palette with comparatively subdued colours.

The Old Homestead by James McDougal Hart (1862)

The Düsseldorf School had a significant influence on the Hudson River School in the United States, and many prominent Americans trained at the Düsseldorf Academy such as George Caleb Bingham, Worthington Whittredge, and Richard Caton Woodville. Strangely, one of the great Hudson River painters, Albert Bierstadt, applied but was not accepted.

Cows Watering by James McDougal Hart

James Hart returned to Albany around 1853 and opened a studio where he painted and gave painting lessons. In 1857 he moved to New York City and he and his brother William opened up a studio. James became an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1857 and a full member in 1859.

The Puzzle by Marie Theresa Gorsuch Hart

James Hart married fellow painter Marie Theresa Gorsuch in 1866 and the couple went on to have five children, three sons Robert Gorsuch Hart, William Gorsuch Hart and William Howard Hart and two daughters, Mary Theresa Hart and Letitia Bonnet Hart. Three of the siblings became artists in their own right.

Portrait of Adeline Pond Adams Seated in an Interior by William Howard Hart (1891)

William Howard Hart became a landscape and portrait painter. He studied in New York with J. Alden Weir at the Art Students League. Later, in the 1890’s, he went to Paris and studied under Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre at the Academy Julian.

The Basket of Roses by Letitia Bonnet Hart

Letitia Bonnet Hart, who became a painter known for her portrait and figure painting, was born in 1867. She exhibited in twenty-eight annual exhibitions from 1885 to 1914, including at the Woman’s Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In 1901 she exhibited in the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York and three years later, in 1904, her work was shown in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis,. She and her sister Mary Theresa Hart, shared a studio in NYC and later she went to live in Lakesville, CT.

The Puzzle by Marie Theresa Gorsuch Hart

Marie Theresa Hart was born in 1872 in Brooklyn, New York and studied with her father as well as with Edgar Melville Ward, the American genre painter, at the National Academy of Design. Between 1889 and 1895, she was enrolled in antique and life classes at the Academy and won several awards. She was best known for her floral painting and illustrations of violets and was also an accomplished portrait artist and art teacher.

 

The Coming Storm by James McDougal Hart

One of James Hart’s favourite subjects was cattle, and this can be seen by his painting entitled The Coming Storm, where he depicted them huddled under trees, during a period of stormy weather.

Picnic on the Hudson by James McDougal Hart

The mid 1860’s was a time of wealth for some Americans. The Civil War had ended in 1865. The North in 1865 was an extremely prosperous region. Its economy had boomed during the war, bringing economic growth to both the factories and the farms. Since the war had been fought almost entirely on Southern soil, the North did not have to face the task of rebuilding. Men involved in transportation made large profits from the movement of supplies for the Union troops during the Civil War. The world of property development also created many wealthy people. It was known as the Gilded Age and was an era that occurred during the late 19th century, from the 1870s to about 1900. The Gilded Age was an era of rapid economic growth, especially in the Northern United States and the Western United States.

A Mid Summers Idyll by James McDougal Hart (1868)

James Hart later moved to Brooklyn and in the 1870s, he and his brother, William, opened studios in Keene Valley, NY, in the heart of the Adirondacks. For artists like James Hart and his brother William there was plenty of commissions to be had. The wealthy industrialists, now the nouveau riche of the post-Civil War society especially wanted to acquire works which depicted serene and relaxing rural scenes, scenes of picturesque tranquillity and they were eager to spend their money on such paintings as well as other paraphernalia of culture which they believed would allow them to become part of the cultured elite. The American author Sinclair Hamilton summed it up, observing:

“…both Hart brothers painted in a language intelligible for the artistically illiterate…”

James McDougal Hart Oil Painting – Hudson River Landscape

James went on to exhibit at the annual exhibitions of the National Academy, and also at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Boston Athenaeum, the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, the Boston Art Club, and at the Paris Expositions of 1867 and 1878.

Autumn Landscape by James McDougal Hart (1867)

James McDougal Hart died on October 24, 1901, aged 73. Like his brother William, he is buried at the Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York. Even if one cares little today for the style of painting carried out by James and William Hart, one is able to benefit a better understanding of the era in general, and of its fascination with the Hudson River School painters, through a study of their art work. . The paintings of James MacDougal Hart can be found in several public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

Hudson River School – The Hart family.

Part 1. William Hart

“…Go first to Nature to learn to paint landscape, and when you shall have earnt to imitate her, you may then study the pictures of great artists with benefit . . . I would urge on any young student in landscape painting, the importance of painting direct from Nature as soon as he shall have acquired the first rudiments of Art…”

Asher Durand, a leading Hudson River School painter.
Letters on Landscape Painting (1855)

The Hudson River School painters produced the most richly colourful and remarkable landscape works of the 19th century. However, the term “Hudson River School” was a judgemental term used by European critics who were used to, and preferred, the revered realism of the French Barbizon School. The Hudson River paintings celebrated and honoured the rugged beauty of the American landscape. The works effectively communicated the natural grandeur of what was termed the New World. The paintings did not just depict scenes of the Hudson River Valley, but also depicted scenes from the Catskills, Adirondacks, White Mountains, the Maritimes, the American West and South and the second-generation painters even captured the beauty of their Canadian neighbour. In earlier blogs I have looked at the life and works of many of the Hudson River painters such as Frederick Church, Asher Durand and the man looked upon as the founder of the movement, Thomas Cole. In my next three blogs I am going to look at the members of a family whose art followed the concepts of this art movement. Let me introduce you to three members, siblings, of the Hart family.

James Hart and Marion Robertson lived in Scotland and the couple married on July 16th 1811, and they went on to have ten children. Of these, William Hart was born in Paisley, Scotland on March 31st 1823 and James McDougal Hart was born five years later on May 10th 1828. In 1830 James and Marion Hart and their seven children sailed for America, arriving in New York on February 12th aboard the SS Camillus.  They later settled in Albany in up-state New York. At the time of their sea voyage, James was twenty-one months old and William was just a few months away from his seventh birthday. On December 28th 1834, their youngest child, a daughter, Julia Fenn Hart was born. She was the only child of the family to be born in America. Julia later changed the spelling of her name to Julie and dropped the middle name, Fenn, entirely.

William Hart
William Hart’s signature

If you read about William Hart you will see his name is often given as “William M Hart” or “William McDougal Hart” but some say the middle name “McDougal” was his brother’s middle name and not his.  I have no idea of the correct name so I will just refer to him as William Hart.  Above is a signature from one of his paintings and he has signed it “Wm” with the small letter “m” underlined which I believe is a shortened version of William and not the initial of a middle name.  William’s artistic ability was all self-taught. He was apprenticed to a decorative painter in Albany, New York and worked in the local township of Troy. He was employed to paint coach panels and window shades with depictions of landscapes. Later William decided to set himself up as a portrait painter and travelled in search of commissions and spent several years in and around Michigan but returned to Albany in 1845 because of ill health and a paucity of business opportunities.

First Sketch from Nature by William Hart (1845)

To give some idea of the artistry of William Hart, one only has to look at one of his first landscape works. It is a prime example of his talent at using oil paints plein air which required a special talent. Prior to 1841, when collapsible paint tubes revolutionized plein air painting, pigments had to be mixed and blended by hand, and then carefully sealed in leather bladder bags for transport. It was a time-consuming and problematic task. However, William Hart probably was able to buy the collapsible tubes. The work was entitled First Sketch from Nature and this oil on canvas work was completed in 1845, by the twenty-two year old. On the reverse of the canvas is inscribed the words:

“…My first sketch from Nature in Oil Wm. Hart 1845 Normanskill near Albany N.Y…”

Wordsworth Manor (White Moss House near Grasmere) by William Hart, (1852,) Albany Institute of History and Art

His first art works were exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York in 1848. Having gained the financial assistance of a patron, Doctor Ormsby, William Hart went abroad in 1849. He spent three years travelling around both England, but mainly his native Scotland before returning to Albany in 1852.

A Quiet Nook by William Hart (1885)

In the following year he took up residence in New York and at this time, all his art was focused on landscape painting and many would include studies of cattle. Cattle were a popular decorative addition in Hudson River School art, and many of the artists from that group included them in at least some of their landscapes. The inclusion of the animals was looked upon as being symbolic of man’s cordial rapport with nature.

Mount Madison from Shelburne by William Hart (1871)

In 1854, he opened up his own studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building, situated at 51 West 10th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in Manhattan. It was the first modern facility in the city designed solely to serve the needs of artists. It became the centre of the New York art world for the remainder of the 19th century. In its initial years, Winslow Homer took a studio there, as did Edward Lamson Henry, and many of the artists of the Hudson River School, including Frederic Church, Lockwood de Forest and Albert Bierstadt.

Harvest Scene – Valley of the Delaware by William Hart (1868)

William soon became one of the most popular landscape artists of the late nineteenth century. He was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1854 and an academician in 1858. On July 15th that same year William and his wife, Jennette had their first child, a daughter, Jessie.

Cows Drinking at a Pool by William Hart (1886)

William Hart was a founder of the Brooklyn Academy of Design and seven years later, in 1865, he became its first president. William Hart exhibited his work on a regular basis throughout the mid 1870’s in particular at the Brooklyn Art Association. He was also one of the eleven founding members of the American Watercolour Society, which was formed at a meeting at the Gilbert Burling’s studio in the New York University Building on December 5th 1866 and Hart was its president from 1870 to 1873. It is interesting to note that although the Society wished to keep the quality of its membership high, many of the top artists of the time were reluctant to join the new Society because women had been allowed membership.

White Pine, Shokan, Ulster County, New York by William Hart (1859)

William Hart also painted in watercolours and his 1860 watercolour and pencil on paper work entitled White Pine, Shokan, Ulster County, New York is a fine example of his work. It is a depiction of a white pine tree.  Few works can surpass the immediacy and spontaneity of William Hart’s watercolour of a stately white pine tree, which he observed whilst visiting Shokan, New York, which lies on the eastern edge of the Catskill Mountains. Hart frequently went on long sketching trips and travelled throughout the Hudson River valley. He even went as far away as Maine and Lake Superior. As a talented draughtsman he experimented with different media and diverse styles. William Hart completed close to four hundred drawings and watercolours which in 2004 were donated to the Albany Institute and from looking at the collection one can see his love of nature and his determination to depict it accurately.

Naponock (Naponoch) Scenery, Ulster County, New York by William Hart (1883)

William Hart was also known for his remarkable etchings. In 1883 the Art Department of the New England Manufacturers’ and Mechanics’ Institute, Boston, held an important exhibition of contemporary American art. The 731 works on view were mainly American drawings and etchings one of which William M. Hart’s etching, Naponock (Naponoch) Scenery, Ulster County, New York.

Scene at Napanoch by William Hart (1883)

That same year Hart completed an oil painting depicting the same area which also included the obligatory cattle. It was simply entitled Scene at Naponock and can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, a direct bequest from Hart’s daughter, Jessie Hart White.

William Hart died at Mount Vernon, New York, in June, 1894, aged 71 and was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.

Albert Herter. Part 2 – The muralist.

Albert Herter

Although Albert Herter was recognized as an “easel painter” who concentrated on portraiture and floral still lifes, he had always loved mural painting, a specialization he began early in his career. Herter’s best-known and most personal mural was his work which is displayed inside the Gare de l’Est. one of the railway stations in Paris. It is entitled Le Départ des poilus, août 1914. It was one of many mural commissions he completed during his lifetime, many of which were for buildings in America, such as the murals prominently displayed in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (Milestones on the Road to Freedom, dedicated in 1942) and in the Connecticut Supreme Court Hearing Room (The Signing of the Fundamental Orders of the Constitution 1638-39, and An Allegory of Education, both installed in 1913).

Le poilu (French infantryman of the First World War.

In 1926, Albert completed his most famous monumental painting which measured 12 x 5 metres depicting the departure of young soldiers to the front. It was entitled Le Départ des poilus, août 1914. Poilu is an informal term for a French World War I infantryman, meaning, literally, “hairy one” and is still widely used as a term of endearment for the French infantry of World War I. The word hints at the infantryman’s typically rustic, agricultural background.

 

Le Départ des poilus, août 1914. by Albert Herter (1926)

Albert Herter, who painted the work in an empty room of the Palace of Versailles, donated the work to France in memory of his eldest son. In the upper half of the painting we see a depiction of young men in uniform on the train awaiting departure to the Front. The soldier on the far right carries the French tricolour.

Everit Herter

Look at the soldier in the centre of the painting with his arms raised aloft. In his right hand he holds up a rifle, the muzzle of which is filled with a bouquet of flowers. This is a portrait of Everit, his younger son, who was to die on the battlefield.

Albert Herter

The lower half of the painting is dedicated to the soldiers’ families who have come to say their farewells. Look at the man to the right who carries a bunch of flowers. He is bent over and clutches his chest. This is a self-portrait of the artist, Albert Herter. He has depicted himself as being sad and somewhat fearful of the fate of his son.

Adele Herter

Scan across to the left of the painting and look at the woman in white with hands clasped in prayer. This is a portrait of Herter’s wife Adele. She has a haunted look on her face. She too is fearful for her son. The painting was inaugurated on 8 June 8th 1926 in the lobby of the Paris Gare de l’Est Station in the presence of Marshal Joffre. It has hung at many different places in the station. The painting was removed from the Gare de l’Est in 1948, to be cleaned of the dirt deposited by years of smoke from steam trains. It was returned in 1964, but was removed again in 2006 to allow the station to be adapted for the TGV Est.

Mural in situ at Paris Gare de l’Est railway station

After restoration, it was reinstalled in early 2008 hanging seven metres above the floor in the station’s Hall d’Alsace. The Gare de l’Est was chosen as a site for the work as it is a place of remembrance of the First World War as many soldiers passed through it on their way to the front while those returning home from the battlegrounds passed through there on their way to joining their families at home. For many veterans, the painting by Herter was regarded as an invitation to remembrance and recollection.

Another series of Herter’s murals was commissioned for the Wisconsin Supreme Court Hearing Room although these were somewhat controversial. The controversy was written about in the 1995 Wisconsin State Capitol Historic Structure Report which reported:

“…The complicated and protracted story of the Wisconsin Supreme Court murals involved three different artists (one of whom perished on the Titanic), justices who needed to be convinced of the desirability of murals in the hearing room and an architect who was determined to implement his scheme for the space. The justices, accustomed to portraits of former justices on the walls in the hearing room of the previous capitol, wanted to hang the portraits in the new hearing room…”

Wisconsin Supreme Court main Hearing Room with one of Herter’s murals in the background

The Wisconsin Supreme Court Hearing Room is reputed to be the most beautiful of its kind in the country. In addition to the walls and columns of marble from Germany, Italy, France and Maryland, the bronze candelabras, the carved mahogany bench and counsel table, the most striking objects are the four large murals by Albert Herter, each nine feet by 18 feet six inches. Each mural depicts a source of Wisconsin law.

The mural on the north wall, to the left of the Hearing Room shows King John of England sealing and granting Magna Charta (the Great Charter) in June 1215 on the banks of the Thames River at the meadow called Runnymeade. His reluctance to grant the Charter is shown by his posture and sullen countenance. But he had no choice. The barons and churchmen led by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, forced him to recognize principles that have developed into the liberties we enjoy today. King John, out of avarice, greed or revenge, had in the past seized the lands of noblemen, destroyed their castles and imprisoned them without legal cause. As a result, the noblemen united against the king. Most of the articles in Magna Charta dealt with feudal tenures, but many other rights were also included.

Article 39 provided:

No freeman shall be seized or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way destroyed, nor will we condemn him, nor will we commit him to prison, excepting by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

Article 40 promised:

To none will we sell, to none will we deny, to none will we delay right or justice.

Out of these and other provisions came the rights of habeas corpus and trial by jury. Freedom of the church was also guaranteed in the Charter. The barons and churchmen claimed that all of these were ancient rights expressed in earlier charters of Edward the Confessor and Henry I. This mural commemorates our indebtedness to English common law, brought to these shores by the early British colonists. The young boy holding the dog was modelled by Christian Herter, son of the artist. He became governor of Massachusetts and secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The mural on the west wall over the entrance to the Hearing Room depicts an incident in the reign of Caesar Augustus Octavius. The Roman writer Seutonious tells of Scutarious, a Roman legionnaire who was being tried for an offense before the judges seated in the background. The legionnaire called on Caesar to represent him, saying: “I fought for you when you needed me, now I need you.” Caesar responded by agreeing to represent Scutarious. Caesar is shown reclining on his litter borne by his servants. Seutonious does not tell us the outcome of the trial but leaves us to surmise that with such a counsellor he undoubtedly prevailed. The mural represents Roman civil law, which is set forth in codes or statutes, in contrast to English common law, which is based not on a written code but on ancient customs and usages and the judgments and decrees of the courts which follow such customs and usages.

The mural on the south wall portrays the trial of Chief Oshkosh of the Menominees for the slaying of a member of another tribe who had killed a Menominee in a hunting accident. It was shown that under Menominee custom, relatives of a slain member could kill his slayer. Judge James Duane Doty held that in this case territorial law did not apply.  He stated:

“…it appears to me that it would be tyrannical and unjust to declare him, by implication, a malicious offender against rules which the same laws presume he could not have previously known…” 

Judge Doty acquitted Chief Oshkosh of the charge and they became friends.
In 1848 Wisconsin achieved statehood and this mural shows the state’s indebtedness to territorial law. Article XIV of the Wisconsin Constitution of 1848 says the common law in force in the territory and the laws of the territory are part of the law of Wisconsin except as changed by the Constitution or altered or repeated by the legislature.

The fourth mural, which is actually the first one that is visible on making an entrance to the Supreme Court Room, and is Albert Herter’s rendition of the signing of the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787. George Washington is shown presiding. On the left, Benjamin Franklin is easily recognizable. On the right, James Madison, “Father of the Constitution” is shown with his cloak on his arm. Although he was in France at the time, Thomas Jefferson was painted into the mural because of his great influence on the principles of the Constitution. The painting hangs above the place where the seven member Wisconsin Supreme Court sit to hand down their decisions. The mural’s position above the bench is symbolic that the Supreme Court operates under its aegis and is subject to its constraints. The United States Constitution has served us well for more than 200 years. This mural shows our indebtedness to federal law.
Thus, the four murals show that Roman, English, federal and territorial law are all part of our legal heritage.

Albert Herter is believed to have used studio space at both his business, the textile design firm, Herter Looms in New York City, and at “The Creeks,” his meticulously designed East Hampton, Long Island estate. Herter’s use of certain colours in his murals so that they complemented the colours in the marble panels beneath them was ingenious.  The murals arrived in Madison, and work began on installation at the Capitol on May 25, 1915, The Racine (Wisconsin) Journal-News reported on that day.

“…The pictures cost the state $28,000. Francis D. Millett, who was the first engaged to make the paintings for the Supreme court room, lost his life in the sinking of the steamship Titanic before he could begin the pictures…” 

House of Representatives chamber of the Massachusetts State House,

Another set of five murals by Albert Herter can be found in the House of Representatives chamber of the Massachusetts State House, the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court, the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The murals known as the Milestones on the Road to Freedom in Massachusetts decorate the upper walls of the chamber. The names above the murals list the fifty-three most important men in Massachusetts history.
The mural on the left was a scene from the court case against a local magistrate, Samuel Sewall. In 1692 a small group of men and women of Salem were arrested for bewitching their neighbours. Samuel Sewall, a local magistrate, was a member of the court that ultimately sentenced nineteen people to be hanged. The tragedy was realised several months later: those still being held were released. In the mural, Sewall is seen standing in Old South Church in Boston with his head bowed as his confession and prayers for pardon are read aloud.
Sewall is said to have fasted one day each year, praying for his soul and the souls of those wrongfully put to death. At the dedication of the murals, this event in particular was singled out as a turning point, for it represented “the beginning of the recognition of the ‘quality of mercy’ in human affairs.”

Christian Archibald Herter

The mural was a gift of the artist and his son, Governor Christian Herter which was unveiled December 16th, 1942.

Besides these murals at Madison, Wisconsin, Albert Herter’s murals now decorate walls in the State capitols at Hartford, Connecticut, Lincoln Nebraska, the Public Library in Los Angeles, the Academy of Science in Washington DC, the National Park Bank in New York and many other public buildings.  It is probably his murals that Albert Herter will be best remembered and one has to remember the story of him as a child when his first drawing was a very large picture featuring numerous people.  Maybe his large-scale murals were always going to be his favoured genre.

Information about Albert Herter’s murals at the Wisconsin Supreme Court Hearing Room came from the Wisconsin Court System website:

https://www.wicourts.gov/news/view.jsp?id=687

 

 

Albert Herter. Part 1

Albert Herter

One’s upbringing surely plays a big part in how we develop. Often, we follow in the footsteps of our parents and soon what was there chosen occupation, becomes ours. Financial stability must play an important role in how we develop. There are many stories of artists struggling away against financial adversity in their childhood and youth to become famous painters. It was that struggle which shaped them and their life. However, there are also many young people who emerged from a wealthy background who also made it to the top of their profession. They neither struggled with nor worried about financial matters. My artist today is Albert Herter, an American, who was one of those privileged people who had a successful career as an artist. Regina Armstrong, writing in The Art Interchange of January 1899, commented on Herter’s start in life:

“…Well, Albert Herter simply has no right to exist. To begin with, he was born to wealth and social position; he is handsome and attractive in manner, and he has exceptional talent. You see, his career knocks the props from under those accepted saws about the impetus of poverty…”

Albert Herter, Self-Portrait in Costume of Hamlet, (ca. 1900)

Albert Herter was an American painter, illustrator, muralist, and interior designer. He was born in New York City on March 2nd 1871. He came from an artistic family. His mother was Mary Herter (née Miles) and his father was Christian Augustus Ludwig Herter, a German immigrant, who with his brother, Gustave, were founders of the prestigious Herter Brothers, a prominent New York interior design and furnishings firm, which began as a furniture and upholstery shop/warehouse, but, after the Civil War became one of the first American firms to provide complete interior decoration services. Albert’s father, Christian, was also a talented amateur artist. Albert was the younger son and had an elder brother, by six years, Christian Archibald Herter, an American physician and pathologist noted for his work on diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. He was co-founder of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

As a child Albert loved to draw and historians love to quote the story of one of Albert’s first artistic forays – not a small sketch nor a painting but a complicated multi-figure, large-scale drawing. His parents realised that their son’s future was to be artistic. They realised that he was not bound for an Ivy League university but the artistic establishments of New York and Paris. He studied in New York at the Art Students League where he studied alongside William Kendall, the subject of my previous blog. Albert’s work received a number of mentions in art journals and was awarded many medals for his artistic works. He was also acknowledged as the youngest artist to have his work shown at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.

Portrait of Bessie (Miss Elisabeth Newton) by Albert Herter (1892)

In 1892 Herter completed a portrait of his childhood friend, Elisabeth Newton. It is a life-sized depiction measuring 59 x 32 inches. The lady is in a reflective mood and for this work there are signs of Herter being influenced by Whistler with its carefully schemed arrangement of whites. In the background we have a decorative patterned curtain which also reveals Herter’s interest in textiles and Japanese design.

Portrait of Miss Phyllis de Kay by Adele McGinnis Herter

After Albert Herter left the Art Students League, he travelled to Paris to hone his artistic skills in the studio of Jean-Paul Laurens, the French Academic-style painter and sculptor. It was whilst living in the French capital that Albert met another American art student. She was Adele McGinnis who was studying under William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Gustave Courtois, and Tony Robert-Fleury at the Académie Julian. Adele, who was two years older than Albert, was born February 27th 1869. She was the daughter of the New York banker, John McGinnis and his wife Lydia. Love blossomed between Albert and Adele and they married in New York in 1893.

The Creeks, 1905.

In 1894, Mary Miles Herter, Albert’s mother, gave the couple a wedding gift. It was not just any wedding gift, it was a seventy-acre parcel of land in East Hampton, Long Island, between Montauk Highway and Georgica Pond. In 1899, on this parcel of land, the couple built The Creeks, a 40-room, Mediterranean-style villa. This beautifully created estate incorporated almost a mile of waterfront on the tidal estuary. As both Albert and Adele Herter were artists, they incorporated into their villa two large art studios so each would have their own workspace. Adele Herter also designed the extensive gardens.

Orange and; Yellow Garden, (1913). Albert Herter’s studio is the building at left Frances Benjamin Johnston, photographer – Johnston Collection, Library of Congress

In 1912, Albert Herter added a much larger studio to the complex, which also doubled as a private theatre, and it was in this building that famous artists, such as Enrico Caruso, Isadora Duncan and Anna Pavlova performed. The house design and interior featured in a 1914 book entitled The Honest House by Ruby Ross & Rayne Adams in which the authors wrote:

“…One of the finest examples of a color plan in our architecture is the country place of Mr. Albert Herter at East Hampton, Long Island. Here is a large, rambling house, built so close to the sea that the blue-green of the water and the clear blue of the sky are deliberately considered as a part of the color plan. Mr. Herter’s idea was to get, if possible, the effect of a house in Sicily, and so he built the house of pinkish yellow stucco and gave it a copper roof. The sea winds have softened the texture and deepened the color of the walls to salmon, and the copper roof has been transformed into ever-changing blue-greens that repeat the colors of the sea. In front of the house there are terraces massed with flowers of orange and yellow and red, and back of the house there is a Persian garden built around blue and green Persian tiles, and great blue Italian jars. Here flowers of blue and rose, and the amethyst tones in between, are allowed. Black green trees and shrubs are used everywhere, with the general effect of one of Maxfield Parrish’s vivid Oriental gardens…”

Still Life with Philodendrons and Coral by Adele McGinnis Herter

Although known for her floral still life and decorative wall paintings, Adele McGinnis was principally a portraitist. Through Adele’s upper-class upbringing she made many important contacts some of whom sat for her, such as Abby, the wife of John D Rockefeller and Mary Emma Harkness the wife of the wealthy philanthropist, Edward S. Harkness. She received a number of awards for her art, the major ones being at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, in 1901 and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1904. She was also a charter member of the Cosmopolitan Club, New York.

Eastern Blossoms (also known as Geisha Standing on a Balcony) by Albert Herter (1894)

Albert and Adele honeymooned in Japan, and Herter completed a number of paintings with Oriental themes such as his 1894 work entitled Eastern Blossoms.

Portrait of Master Rosenbaum, (Portrait of Albert M. Rosenbaum, Jr.) by Albert Herter(c. 1914)  

The Portrait of Master Rosenbaum, (Portrait of Albert M. Rosenbaum, Jr.) was commissioned by Albert and Nettie Rosenbaum, young Albert’s parents.  The painting then became the property of Milton Meyers, the older brother of Albert M Rosenbaum Jnr and his wife Fern Meyers. According to Mrs Meyers, the Rosenbaums, whom she never knew, commissioned Albert Herter to paint a portrait of their son after his impending death became known. She didn’t remember if she’d ever heard the cause of his death at the age of eleven, but it was probably consumption.

The couple returned to Paris for the first years of their marriage. Albert and Adele went on to have three children, two sons, Everit born in 1894,  Christian Archibald in 1895 and one daughter, Lydia Adele in 1898. Everit and Lydia both became artists.  Sadly, Everit was killed, at age 24, in World War I.  Christian became a politician, serving as governor of Massachusetts and later U.S. Secretary of State under Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Woman With Red Hair by Albert Herter

In 1894 Herter completed his well-loved painting entitled Woman with Red Hair. His work was a depiction of fine living during America’s Gilded Age. The Gilded Age was a term derived from the title of Mark Twain’s satirical novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today and defined the turbulent years between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the turn of the twentieth century. It was during this period that America became more prosperous and saw unprecedented growth in industry and technology. However, the Gilded Age had a more sinister side. It was a period when greedy, corrupt industrialists, bankers and politicians enjoyed unprecedented wealth at the expense of the working class. The lady in the painting is the height of elegance with her swan-like neck and mass of red hair set against a lavishly decorated background. Her dress is sumptuously embroidered and the gossamer filaments which attach the sleeve to the bodice reveal a sophisticated sensitivity to the beautifully handcrafted garments that could only be afforded by the wealthy. There is an element of the depiction which reminds one of the portraits of the Italian Renaissance which many aspiring American artists liked to mimic. For many artists of the time the accoutrements used to set up the painting were of great importance.

Woman with a Fan by Albert Herter (c.1895)

Arabella Huntington was a philanthropist whose second husband was the American railway tycoon and industrialist Collis Potter Huntington. Collis Huntington died in 1902, and in 1913 Arabella married his nephew, becoming the second wife of Henry Edwards Huntington. Arabella Huntington was once known as the richest woman in America and was the energy behind the art collection that is housed at the Huntington Library in San Marino California, which was founded by her husband Henry Huntington. The establishment, which already owned an inlaid ebonized secretary cabinet designed by the Herter Brothers furniture and decorating company purchased Albert Herter’s 1895 painting entitled Woman with a Fan.

Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1490, by Domenico Ghirlandaio. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

There is a lot of speculation as to who the sitter was for this portrait. On the back of the frame is a nameplate which reads Miss Maude Bouvier. Maude Bouvier was the grandmother of Jacqueline Kennedy and it is known that during the early 1890’s, Albert Herter had spent time in the Hamptons, close to where the Bouviers lived. The only query as to the sitter is that the nameplate is not original to the painting and thus there is an element of doubt as to the authenticity of the sitter. Her costume and the format of the painting are derived from Italian Renaissance portraits, such as the Huntington’s Portrait of a Woman, by Domenico Ghirlandaio

In 1904, Albert Herter’s mother, Mary bought a plot of land in Santa Barbara, California with the intention of having a home built. She persuaded her son and daughter-in-law to help decorate the large Mission Revival-style home.

El Mirasol

They agreed and the residence was transformed into a veritable showplace, which was bedecked with magnificent murals, tapestries, and other artistic pieces. The Herter family spent their winters there.   When Mary Herter died in 1913 Albert inherited the house and he turned it into a hotel and named it El Mirasol (The Sunflower). Later Albert and Adele built a number of bungalows on the surrounding land of the property, and El Mirasol became a destination resort for the wealthy.

Herter Brothers, the business founded by Albert’s father, closed its doors in 1906, and Albert founded Herter Looms in 1909, a tapestry and textile design-and-manufacturing firm that was, in a sense, successor to his father’s firm.

Black and white print of Portrait of College Boys by Albert Herter

Around 1912 Albert Herter completed a portrait of his two sons and many prints were made of the work. It has been given many titles, such as The College Boys, Portrait of the Artist’s Sons, and Two Boys. The depiction features Albert and Adele Herter’s sons, eighteen-year-old Everit and seventeen-year-old Christian. The painting was part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum from 1912 until 1923, when it was returned to the Herters, in exchange for another of his paintings.  The request to have the painting returned to the family could well have been due to the death from shrapnel wounds of Everit in World War I. Sergeant Everit Albert Herter, Herter’s twenty-four-year-old son, volunteered to join the US Army in September 1917, some months after the US joined the First World War. Everit Herter joined the camouflage section of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Sergeant Herter was killed in June 1918 near Château-Thierry in Aisne, while serving in France with the American Expeditionary Force, and is buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery. Sadly, Everit Albert Herter was the first to be hired as a volunteer and also the first to be killed in his unit.

In the next part of the Albert Herter blog I will look at his work as a muralist.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everybody a Happy Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah and a peaceful New Year.

Jonathan