High Society
American art societies are the subject of a new exhibition at Menconi + Schoelkopf
American art societies are the subject of a new exhibition at Menconi + Schoelkopf
January 15-February 9 Menconi + Schoelkopf 13 E. 69th Street #2F New York, NY 10021 t: (212) 879-8815 www.msfineart.com
Watercolor in America had existed at the edges of the established art world until the formation of the American Society of Artists in Water Color (now the American Watercolor Society) in 1866. Its purpose was, and is, “to promote the art of watercolor painting in America.” Its first exhibition was in 1867 at the National Academy. attending one of its exhibitions moved Winslow Homer to experiment more with the medium and to become one of the country’s most admired painters.
The American Society of Painters in Pastel had a short existence, being formed in 1881, having the first of four exhibitions in 1884 and disbanding in 1890. Nevertheless, it attracted some of late 19th century’s best artists including Childe Hassam, Cecilia Beaux and John Henry Twachtman. Its brief presence on the scene was extraordinarily influential. Menconi + Schoelkopf in Newyork is celebrating a century of American watercolors, pastels and works on paper.the first of two exhibitions, Masterworks of American Art On Paper, Part I, featuring works from 1865 to 1915, includes major examples of works that elevated watercolor and pastel as worthy media and “advanced considerably the possibilities of paper as a proper support for a masterpiece.” Maurice Prendergast (1858–1924) was born in Canada but moved to Boston with his family when he was 10. He studied in Paris from 1891 to 1894 and, on his return, attracted patrons who enabled him to spend time in Italy in 1898 to 89. His watercolor Italian Flower Market is from that period. His painting shows the influence of the European avant-garde, in which his forms and colors are divided to bring attention to the surface of the painting rather than obtain verisimilitude. He brought his
distinctive style to scenes of everyday life in the city and at the sea shore.
Paris also influenced John La Farge (1835-1910), but it was there that he discovered the English Pre-raphaelite painters who would influence his work. La Farge painted murals, notably for H.H. Richardson’s Trinity Church in Copley Square, Boston, and designed and experimented with stained glass. He used watercolor to develop the ideas for his murals but on his extensive travels, watercolor was his medium of choice. One journey in 1890 to ’91 took him and his friend Henry Adams (18381918) to the South Seas. His brilliantlycolored Portrait of Faase,thetaupo of Fagaloa Bay, Samoa, is from that journey. Adams’ journal The Education of
Henry Adams was published posthumously and won the Pulitzer Prize. La Farge was also an accomplished writer. In his Reminiscences of the South Seas, he wrote, “The taupo is a young woman elected by the village for the purpose of directing all social amenities in which women can take part. It is for her to receive the guests, to know who they are and what courtesies should be extended to them; to provide for their food and lodging. If they are great people like ourselves, for their being attended, for their having all small comforts of bath and soft mats and tappa, for their being talked to and sung to and danced to.”
William J. Glackens (1870-1938) took a less romantic view of his subjects. Beginning in 1894 he was a staff artist at the Philadelphia Press with an extraordinary group of fellow artists—john Sloan, Edward Davis, George Luks and Everett Shinn. He was a friend of Albert C. Barnes and helped him assemble the famed Barnes Collection. He was an organizer of the American section of the 1913 Armory Show that brought the best of the European avant-garde to America. At that time he wrote, “everything worthwhile in our art is due to the influence of French art.we have not yet arrived at a national art… I am afraid that the American section of this exhibition will seem very tame beside the foreign section. But there is a promise of renaissance in American art.” He remained a realist painter despite his admiration of the modern movements and captured scenes of everyday life.
His uncharacteristically monochromatic painting, The Balcony, is an example of the quality of his observation and, at this point in his career, his indebtedness to French impressionists like Renoir. Robert Henri’s pastel portrait Betalo depicts one of his favorite models, Betalo Rubino, a dancer. In his book, The Art Spirit, he wrote, “work with great speed .... Get the greatest possibility of expression in the larger masses first. Then the features in their greatest simplicity... Do it all in one sitting if you can. In one minute if you can.
There is no virtue in delaying.”
Part two of the gallery’s Masterworks exhibition featuring works from 1915 to 1965 will be shown at The Art Show at the Park Avenue Armory February 28 through March 4.
John Marin (1870-1953), Downtown from the River, 1910. Watercolor on paper, 14 x 17 in., signed lower right: ‘Marin 1910’; inscribed on verso: ‘AS Collection. Never Exhibited. Signature O.K. AS.’.