AMERICAN SEASCAPES: LANE, BUTTERSWORTH, BARD

AMERICAN SEASCAPES: LANE, BUTTERSWORTH, BARD

by Libby Clay

"Meditation and water are wedded forever," says Ishmael in Melville's Moby Dick.  The sea, and later the ships that sailed her, have always held a fascination for us; in art, this has manifested itself in the genre of the seascape, first developed by the Dutch and the English. Four American seascapes in MAG's collection remind us that the American experience has from the beginning been inextricably linked to the sea.

Fitz Hugh Lane (1804-1865) was one of the ablest of the "harbor view" painters.  The "Golden State" Enters New York Harbor, 1854, shows American space within a particular American harbor.  We see "The Golden State," sails set, majestically occupying the place of honor in the painting.  We sense not only the romance of the high seas, but also another sensation. By confining the fleet of ships in the harbor, Lane calms our fears of the vastness of the sea; the sea here is under control.

Lane was born in Gloucester, the son of a sail maker.  He had little formal artistic training, but painted intuitively.  He was apprenticed to a lithographer for a time, and that may be the source of his command of drawing.  He understood naval architecture and painted ships with confidence and clarity.

Early in his career, Lane tended to use impasto to emphasize the power of the waves.  By 1854 he was beginning to apply his paint more thinly; looking closely, you can see the twill canvas showing through the paint.  Of interest is the small boat in the right foreground.  At first glance, three of the men seem to be rowing. But look again, for the oars are tipped precariously, and the men are leaning over the gunwale, retrieving something—perhaps a fishing net. The boat in the left foreground, stern toward us, makes a nice juxtaposition.  By giving us these small foreground boats, Lane is including the shore world, our world, in the marine world.  Also visible are a steamboat and what may be a steam yacht.  Thus the artist bridges the age of sail and the age of steam.

Two paintings by James E. Buttersworth (1817-1894) evoke strong emotions.  The tragic Fleetwing Loses Six Men Overboard during the Trans-Atlantic Race of December, 1866, depicts the terrible power of the sea.  The moon emerging from the heavy cloud-cover casts its white light on the waves breaking over the starboard rail—the waves that will wash six men to their destiny.  The gray-green waves are a Buttersworth trademark—one of them makes an S-shaped sweep toward the unfortunate men, as if to emphasize the inexorable flow of the sea.

The Clipper Ship "Flying Cloud" off the Needles, Isle of Wight, shows the most beloved of the famed clipper ships.  The low horizon line serves to silhouette the ship and emphasize the fact that she is sailing into bad water.  The small boat in the right foreground is probably coming to pilot her to safety.  The men on board may have come from the houses that can be seen midway up on the right. Buttersworth's understanding of rigging and the setting of sails under way was unrivaled, and he matched his understanding with careful drawings.

The swift clipper ships had a glorious but brief life.  They were replaced by steamships, which used a more reliable propellant than the wind.  James Bard (1816-1897), painter of Steamship James Fisk, Jr., is acknowledged as the best of the steamship painters. He worked largely in lower Manhattan, near the docks, but is best known for his river views of steamboats, seen from the port side as a strong horizontal.  Bard took great care in measuring the vessels he painted, but he often overlooked consistency of scale and proportion.  This, combined with his flat patterning and bright arbitrary coloring, places him on the edge of primitive painting.

It is paradoxical that the very notion of seascape implies the imposition of order and perspective upon that which is by definition formless and shapeless.  Nevertheless, seascape taps a shared cultural experience and speaks to our "inner selves."

In addition to using MAG's marine paintings to complement the ongoing China Trade exhibition, they can also be connected to the sternboard, folk art (with Bard), View of the Delaware Water Gap, the Di-Polar Girls, Homer's studio, and Bard’s whiplash banners with Paley's ribbons on Convergence.

Sources:  Stein, Roger B., Seascape and the American Imagination; Wilmerding, John, A History of American Marine Painting.

PILGRIMAGE TO SANTIAGO

PILGRIMAGE TO SANTIAGO

by Maureen Basil

(Editor's Note:  Our new statue of Saint James, recently installed in the Fountain Court, calls for an explanation of the Pilgrimage Route. Maureen Basil has written one for us.)

Pilgrimages to holy places began in Early Christian times.  In the 8th century the practice of imposing a pilgrimage as a penance for sins began in Ireland and spread throughout Europe.  By the 11th century, roads and bridges had been built, and hostels and churches, chapels and shrines—places for travelers to rest, pray, and make their offerings—sprang up along the routes.

The overwhelming majority of pilgrims in the Middle Ages did not undertake the long, hazardous journey purely because of a spirit of piety and devotion.  It was as much a spirit of fear—and hope—that drove them.  The paintings, sculptures, and mosaics in churches reinforced the priests' sermons on the urgency to obtain Divine forgiveness for one's sins.  The laity had to do something to ensure that, on the day of Judgment, they would not be condemned to eternal damnation.  They could ask a special saint to intervene—or they could journey to a shrine housing a holy relic of a saint.  By going on pilgrimage, the faithful hoped to win remission of their sins, and ensure that, on the Day of Judgment, they would be on the side of the chosen.

Three destinations were thought to confer a special blessing on the pilgrim:  Jerusalem, where it was possible to visit the True Cross and the site of Christ's Passion; Rome, with the tombs of Peter and Paul and countless other relic-filled churches; and Santiago de Compostela, in northwest Spain, the land that Christian knights were reconquering from its Muslim occupiers.

Santiago de Compostela is the shrine to St. James the Greater (meaning elder), one of the twelve apostles.  Condemned by the Roman ruler of Judea, Herod Agrippa, he was beheaded in Jerusalem about the year AD 44 and is said to be the first of the apostles to be martyred.

There are several stories of how the beheaded body of the saint came to Spain; but according to the most popular, it had been miraculously transported from the Holy Land in a ship built of stone, to be discovered in a remote field in the mid-ninth century.  The legend started an astonishing cult, which was so well established by the end of the 11th century that the pope transferred the bishop's see to Compostela, where a new basilica had been started in 1076.

Compostela's reputation drew pilgrims from as far afield as Scotland and Greece.  Once they reached France, they traveled along one of four routes:  from Paris though Tours, Poitiers and Bordeaux; from Vezelay through Perigueux; from LePuy through Conques; and from Arles through Saint-Gilles and Toulouse.  All joined at Puente La Reina in Spain to go onward through Burgos and Leon to Compostela.

Most pilgrims timed their departure for spring, as it took at least a month to complete one of the four routes.  They wore long, coarse tunics and carried wooden staffs blessed by their local priest.  The rich rode horseback, but the majority walked.

A Pilgrim's Guide, written in 1139 by Aimery Picaud, a monk from the region of Poiters in France, offered practical advice on the desolate and dangerous places the faithful would pass through.  Hospices dotted the roads to Compostela.  Besides providing bread and meat and rough red wine, they were a refuge from the cutthroats and other dangers of the road.  According to Picaud, "Those entering hospices will think themselves in the Kingdom of Heaven."

When the pilgrims finally arrived at Compostela, weary though they were, they immediately headed to the cathedral.  Inside, they knelt by the altar which had been built over the sepulcher of St. James.  Their journey was complete.

At the beach in Compostela, where the body of St. James was supposed to have miraculously landed in its ship, the pilgrims collected scallop shells.  This practice probably started because of another legend, which tells of a knight who rushed into the sea to greet the stone boat and emerged covered with scallop shells.

Thus the scallop shell became a symbol of pilgrimage.  It was the recognizable "badge" of the pilgrims, distinguishing them from other wayfarers, hopefully protecting them from the hazards attending medieval travelers.

The roads to Santiago, built so many years ago because of medieval people's faith in legend, have left behind some of the most remarkable art and architecture of our civilization. MAG's recent sculpture acquisition Saint James is one of these treasures.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY FURNITURE

NINETEENTH-CENTURY FURNITURE

by Joan K. Yanni

Have you stopped to look at the intriguing arrangement in the Folk Art Room near the stairway?  The items on display are all articles that might be found in a 19th-century home.

Both the ladder back chair and the covered wooden box are from the Shaker culture.  The Shakers created beautifully simple, utilitarian furniture with remarkable craftsmanship.  The curved box is of maple and pine wood; the chair was made from maple and birch with a tape seat.  The Shakers—a popular name for the United Believers in Christ's Second Appearance-were a communal celibate order begun in 1787.  The community rose to about 6000 members, but because of the limitations imposed by celibacy, only a small group now remains in Maine.

The Dower Chest and hooked rug are from the Pennsylvania German, or Pennsylvania Dutch tradition.  The term Pennsylvania "Dutch" comes from "Deutsche", or German, and refers to settlers who fled religious persecutions in the Rhine Valley.  The first group arrived in Pennsylvania in the early 1690s in answer to William Penn's invitation to colonize his large tract of land.  As more German groups arrived, they developed communities of farmers and artisans isolated from the English by their language.  They adapted their distinctive German culture to fit their American needs.

A chest such as MAG's was one of the most important pieces of furniture in the household; it served as storage for valuable belongings, and could be used as a bench by day and a bed by night.  Often a girl planning marriage was given a Dower chest by her father, who probably made it himself.  In it she saved linens, china, silver or anything of value she wished to take to her new home.  Red or blue were favorite colors for the chests. They were decorated with painted tulips, hearts, peacocks, turtledoves and other symbols—tulips being the most common.  The tulip was easy to draw, and was considered a variation of the lily, a promise of paradise. Its three petals denoted the Trinity. The heart represented the heart of God, a source of love and hope. The turtledoves represented the Believer seeking Christ. A peacock stood for the Resurrection.  In later years the symbols lost religious meaning and were used as colorful "hex" signs to protect houses and barns.  They can still be seen in the countryside around Lancaster, Kutztown and other southeastern Pennsylvania areas.

The hooked rug is also of Pennsylvania Dutch origin.  Though at first home floors were bare, farm wives began to recycle old clothing—Papa's worn pants, grandma's wool petticoats, and ragged school clothes—and make rugs to warm and decorate their rooms.  Old garments were torn into strips about 1/2 inch wide and rolled into balls, then made into braided or hooked rugs. The hooked type were more fugal, since they could be made from shorter pieces of fabric.  Our rug shows the traditional birds and flowers in bright colors.

The tin lantern, though not necessarily made by the Pennsylvania Dutch, was often found in their homes.  This lantern was probably supplied by the itinerant  peddler who sold many items, from pots and pans to ovens and lamps.  Since tin is soft, it can easily be ornamented with punchwork, piercing or crimping.  Pennsylvania Dutch tinware was not made entirely of tin, but a sheet of iron rolled very thin, cleaned in a pickling solution, and then dipped in a vat of molten tin.

The horse in our case, labeled "hobby horse," was probably never used as a child's toy—it is too fragile.  It might have been a trade sign, or, more likely, a sample used by salesmen to show various saddle designs.

The lovely stoneware vessels were common in most 19th century homes. Dense clays were used to withstand high temperatures, and a salt glaze—common table salt thrown into the kiln while firing at its highest heat—resulted from salt vapors, which left a deposit on the surface forming a thin film of silicate. Cobalt blue was used to color the pieces because it is one of the few coloring additives that can stand the high temperatures needed to fire stoneware. The crock on display is stamped "John Burger, Rochester." The jug, decorated with hearts, is Geddes Pottery from Syracuse.

The thermometer was made in Rochester by Albert Bohacket, a carver born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, who had a shop on State Street.  It was donated to the Gallery by the Rochester Taylor-Sybron Corporation.

Finally, the theorem painting was popular as a household decoration.  A design was traced on transparent paper, then cut out to form a stencil, or "theorem."  Paintings created by theorems were composed of noncontiguous parts, both for originality and to prevent wet colors from bleeding into one another.

CHILDE HASSAM AND THE BATHERS

CHILDE HASSAM AND THE BATHERS

by Joan Baden

It is often customary to whisk our tours away from the nudity that greets them throughout the Gallery.  The tittering and poking that sometimes occurs has long been something of a problem to us, and we each have tried to work out solutions.  Escape is one method!  I would like to suggest that for our older students and certainly for adults, we use a head-on exploration of works which include nudes.  We could begin with the work of  one of America's leading Impressionists, Childe Hassam.

Hassam, born in 1859 in Boston, studied in Paris in the late 1880s, was exposed to the work of the Impressionists, and became one of America's first converts.  In 1898, with J. Alden Weir, he founded the group of American Impressionists known as The Ten, which included John Twachtman and Edmund Tarbell.

The Bathers (63.27) is believed to have been painted as a mural decoration for the residence of Charles Erskine Scott Wood of Portland, Oregon, a West Coast lawyer, collector, amateur artist and good friend of Hassam. On one of Hassam’s visits, Wood took him camping in the Oregon wilds, and some forty canvasses resulted.  In a letter to Weir, Wood wrote that he wanted his "bric-a-brac house" to get back "to Greek simplicity."  In addition to inviting Hassam to do a mural for his library, Wood lined up Weir to do a painting for his dining room and Albert Pinkham Ryder a work for the hall!

Hassam's mural was painted in New York City and transported to Portland to be installed by the artist.  In later years, when the house was torn down, the mural was removed, and Wood gave it to his daughter Nan Wood Honeyman.  It was later acquired by Mr. and Mrs. Ogden Phipps of New York, who gave it to the Memorial Art Gallery in 1963.

The painting has been described as a "pastoral scene full of sunshine and warmth against an exquisite background of bluish tints."  In all likelihood, it was inspired by Hassam's visits to the Isles of Shoals, which lie ten miles off the US mainland near the New Hampshire-Maine border.  Appledore, the gem of the nine islands, was the location of the gardens of his friend, the writer Celia Thaxter.  Hassam's painting of Thaxter in her garden appears in the frontispiece of her book, Island Garden.  It has been suggested that Hassam owed a debt to Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, painter of the grand murals at the Parthenon and the Sorbonne in Paris and in the Boston Public Library.

As we examine this oil painting, we see seven nudes, the center figure holding a mirror bearing a reflection; several are in the water; several are wearing garlands.  Trees are painted in clumps, and there are about twenty bushes and many rock formations.  At the horizon one can see outcroppings—other islands, perhaps?  The water is turquoise, the cloud yellow, orange and white.  The spaces between the dabs of paint suggest the dappling of the sun. The broken color method with alternate streaks and stripes of pure color in close proximity is certainly reflective of Impressionism. The general composition is symmetrical.  It is clear that Hassam was a seeker of sunlight and bright skies.

There is nothing vulgar about these nudes.  Some critics have suggested that Hassam appeared to have had difficulty in painting them: they seem flat—almost as if they were pasted on the landscape in a decorative arrangement.  (We might compare them to the realistic nude in John Koch's Interlude.)

There is much that can be discussed about this painting on our tours:  the spatial relationships; the contrast of horizontal and vertical; the blue sea vs. the amber red cliffs; the contrasts and similarities in the brush strokes of The Bathers and the other Impressionists in our collection.

And let us not ignore the judicious placement of this painting in the Gallery, near Piping Pan and Bacchante and Faun.  There are marvelous tie-ins here.  Pan, the Greek god of shepherds and hunters, constantly wandered through woods, playing and dancing with nymphs.  A faun, half human/half goat, was god of the woods and herds, and was a follower of Pan and Bacchus, god of wine.  The bacchante were worshippers of Bacchus, enjoying dancing, drinking and revelry.  Nymphs were maidens who guarded various realms of nature:  hills, mountains, seas, rivers, trees and forests.

We will soon see more of Hassam's Impressionistic works when The Impressionists' New York opens later this month.  Meanwhile, have a long, good look at The Bathers.

LOUIS COMFORT TIFFANY

LOUIS COMFORT TIFFANY

by Thea Tweet

Louis Comfort Tiffany's birth in 1848 instantly made him eligible to preside over Tiffany and Company, the multi-million dollar diamond and silver business his father had built.  Instead, at eighteen Louis announced that he wanted to become an artist, and he set about learning landscape painting from George Inness.  After two years in Inness's studio, he went off to Egypt and Europe and spent the next five years studying art in a thoroughly undisciplined way.  Yet he became quite a respectable painter, and his Duane Street, New York is often cited as a forerunner of the Ashcan School.  On the whole, though, he had more in common with the work of Winslow Homer.

Before long Louis realized that his forte was interior decoration, and he set up his own business.  He specialized in glassware, but also made tiles and mosaics and designed bronze hanging lamps.

Tiffany himself was neither graduate chemist nor glass blower, but he hired expert chemists and craftsmen to realize his designs, and he supervised them closely.  His first successes were with stained glass windows.  He avoided painted decoration, striving for a jewel-like effect in his work.  Chemicals were added at various stages of glassmaking, and the glass was manipulated as it cooled to alter its thickness.  To achieve a kaleidoscope effect, as the Gallery's window, Sunset Scene (93.28)  clearly illustrates, he had pieces of broken glass placed in a  glass bed; then molten glass was poured over them.  His experience as a landscape painter had taught him perspective, and he learned to use glass to gain that effect.  The windows he designed for churches and chapels often had landscapes rather than religious scenes as their subject.

Tiffany's greatest achievement technically was in making what he called "favrile" glass.  In 1880 he received a patent for his process.  In this method, gold chloride (AuC13) was used both in suspension and sprayed on the surface, creating a satin-like texture.  The gold in the glass was brought to the surface by a reducing flame.  Tiffany made his gold chloride by melting $20 gold pieces in a solution of nitric and hydrochloric acid (aqua regia), which was used for the spray.   Modern craftsmen would no doubt use scrap gold, but Tiffany had no for regard for expense when he wanted a special effect.  This literally was "The Gilded Age"!

Tiffany was diligent in maintaining the integrity of his products. Everything not commissioned was offered for sale on consignment to dealers for three months.  Unsold items were offered to another dealer.  Anything still unsold was returned to Tiffany and destroyed.  However, he did sell some of his glass to other artists who used it to execute their own designs.  Consequently, much inferior work has been sold as Tiffany.

Tiffany's work was popular not only in New York but in such places as Washington, D.C., where he decorated rooms in the White House for President Arthur in a style combining oriental and gothic elements.  When Teddy Roosevelt came to the White House, one of the first orders he gave was to tear down a Tiffany glass screen. This was the first of many losses of Tiffany's work.

Tiffany and Louis Sullivan, the Chicago architect, are usually considered the founders of Art Nouveau in the United States.  Both men used decorative motifs deriving from natural plant forms, and preferred curvilinear to straight lines.  When Frank Lloyd Wright broke away from Sullivan, he also rejected the Art Nouveau aesthetic and was outspoken in this scorn of Tiffany's decorating style.

The famed Armory Show of 1913 marked the beginning of a change of taste in art and decoration in America.  By the time of his death in 1933, Tiffany's style had fallen out of favor, his $13 million inheritance had been reduced to one million, and his business went bankrupt.  Fortunately he had already established the Tiffany Foundation as an art colony for young artists looking for freedom in their work.  It was thirty years after his death before Tiffany began to receive the recognition he deserved.

MAG’s Tiffany window was removed from a mausoleum at Mt. Hope cemetery to keep it safe from vandals..  The preservation of the window would have pleased Tiffany.  Its prominent location near the tour entrance would have delighted him.

Source:  Robert Koch, Louis C. Tiffany, Rebel in Glass.  Crown, 1964.

KAHN’S GLOWING LANDSCAPE

KAHN’S GLOWING LANDSCAPE

by Joan K. Yanni

The radiant, sensuous colors in the painting appeal to everyone who visits the 20th-century galleries.  Even adults who claim to dislike all "modern" art, who scoff at Albers, Hofmann, and Frankenthaler, stop and sigh in front of Wolf Kahn's Evening Glow. How do they know it's a landscape?  They know.  There's a horizon in the painting, with the elements of land, water, and sky.  The colors may not be real, but they're wonderful and exciting.  And that tiny white spot in the middle of the canvas makes everything come alive.

Wolf Kahn was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1927, fourth child of Emil and Nellie Kahn.  His father was conductor of the Stuttgart Philharmonic.  When he was three he went to live with his grandmother in Frankfurt, where he attended Philantropia, the "gymnasium" of the Frankfurt Jewish community, and began private art lessons.  His love for art never diminished.

In 1939, two weeks before the outbreak of World War II, he was sent to England in a transport of refugee children.  A year later he joined his father in the United States, then moved to New York City where he attended the High School of Music and Art.  He joined the U.S. Navy at 18, and after his discharge returned to the pursuit of art, attending classes taught by Stuart Davis and Hans Jelinek.

In 1947 he began studies at Hans Hofmann's School of Fine Art in New York, and spent a summer painting with Hofmann in Provincetown. Hofmann became his mentor, and he found his roots in Abstract Expressionism.

After receiving a B.A. from the University of Chicago, Kahn settled in New York City, where he had his first one-man show in the Hansa Gallery at the age of 26.  In 1957 he was part of the exhibition "New York School—The Second Generation" at the Jewish Museum in NYC.  Shows throughout the country followed.

He made several trips abroad—to Italy, France and even Kenya—and lived in Venice and Rome for a time; but he found his inspiration mainly in New England, particularly around the Connecticut River Valley.  He has said that one must be familiar with a place to paint it.

The influence of the Abstract Expressionists on Kahn's work can be seen in his fluid, gestural painting.  He differs from them, however, in that he insists on the object in his works, while they eliminate it.  He does not paint to manipulate or to evoke specific moods, but wants his audience to "freely participate in the paintings on their own."

Color is a primary interest, and he finds inspiration in the works of both Turner and Mark Rothko.  Like Turner, he avoids sharp delineations in his paintings, preferring subtle transitions from earth to sky.  Like Rothko, he uses radiant, vibrating colors. In Evening Glow one can see the hovering color and glowing layers of veiled light that are evident in Rothko's abstractions.  "Rothko took the idea of radiance further than any previous artist," Kahn says.  "Since I saw Rothko...I look at nature in a different way.” He found that, for example, if you make a hard edge between two colors you inhibit the radiance of one color against another...I am no longer so interested in the division between things, but am much more interested in the lack of division between them."

Kahn is married to contemporary artist Emily Mason, and they have two daughters.  In 1968 he bought a farm in West Brattleboro, Vermont, and he has been spending his summers there ever since, soaking up the New England atmosphere.  His winters are spent in a home and studio in New York City, where he transforms summer sketches and motifs into paintings or watercolors.

Today Kahn is widely regarded as one of the country's leading contemporary landscape painters.  His work has been exhibited across the United States and abroad, and he is represented in major museums across the nation, including the Metropolitan, the Whitney, the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, San Diego Museum of Art, and the Carnegie Institute.

A new book on his work is being written by noted art historian and critic Robert Hobbs and will be published in 1995.

Three Kahn pastels are on view in the Contemporary Gallery next to Evening Glow at this time:  Key West Harbor, Bright Winter Day, and Evening at Deer Lake.

Sources: Wolf Kahn, Landscapes, exhibition catalog published by San Diego Museum of Art; curatorial files.

SONNTAG: HUDSON RIVER PAINTER

SONNTAG: HUDSON RIVER PAINTER

by Joan K. Yanni

Catskill Panorama (38.40) by William Sonntag was given to the Gallery in 1938 by Hannah Gould and was recently restored at the Williamstown Regional Arts Conservation Laboratory through funds donated by the Elizabeth F. Cheyney Foundation.  The undated painting shows an autumn landscape framed by broken or cut branches, trees and mountains.  A lone figure sits fishing; his rustic cabin can be seen on the right of the canvas.  A lake or river in the foreground flows upward into a distant, mountainous mist.

Sonntag (1822-1900) is associated with the second generation of the Hudson River School, and was a friend of Asher B. Durand (Genesee Oaks), Frederic Church, and Worthington Whittredge.  The Hudson River painters, popular from around 1826 to 1876, are known for their meticulous, realistic detail and romantic feeling for nature.  Cole, Durand and Thomas Doughty, and later, Church and Albert Bierstadt, were prime figures in the school.  Cole (1801-1848) and Bierstadt (1830-1902) are represented in the Gallery’s collection, as are other artists of the time: John Kensett (1816-1872), Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904), Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900) and genre painters Eastman Johnson (1824-1906), Lilly Martin Spencer (1822-1900) and David Blythe (1815-1865).

Sonntag was born in Pittsburgh in 1822 to a family which proudly traced its roots to 13th-century Saxony and the American Revolution.  He grew up in Cincinnati, where his father was a successful merchant.  How William became interested in painting is not known; it is known, however, that his father viewed the study of art as impractical, and tried to deter his son from following it as a career.  He sent William on a trip to the Wisconsin territory to take his mind off art, but William returned with a love for the wild, untamed landscape he had seen and was determined to paint it.

Nothing is knows about Sonntag’s art teachers, so he probably either was self-taught or learned from a minor artist.  In 1846 he exhibited his first work at the American Art Union in New York City and was hired by the proprietor of a Western Museum in Cincinnati to paint dioramas for exhibitions.  Money from this venture gave him the means to open his own studio, where a patron encouraged him to paint his first important work, The Progress of Civilization, a four-painting series probably inspired by Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire.  At the time, paintings with religious or allegorical themes were considered the highest artistic level to which an artist could aspire.

In 1849 the Cincinnati Directory lists him as a painter of circus wagons—not an unusual way for a painter to earn money.  In 1851 his only panorama, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained was exhibited at P.T. Barnum’s American Museum (See MAG’s The Burning of Barnum’s Museum) and in other cities throughout the country to crowds who paid to see it.

In 1851, at the age of 29, he met and married 16-year-old Mary Ann Cowdell.  Their honeymoon was a trip paid for by the director of the B&O Railroad, who had commissioned the artist to paint that line’s wild and picturesque scenery.  At the time, railroad trips were touted as pleasant excursions during which America’s wilderness could be viewed in comfort, and Sonntag’s paintings were to serve as advertising.

In 1853 Sonntag submitted one of his paintings to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia—the first of many to be accepted—and he took his first recorded trip to Europe.  After his return, he painted several Italian landscapes, which were favorably reviewed.  Eventually he settled in New York City, and by the late 1850s was at the height of his popularity.  He was elected an associate of the prestigious National Academy of Design in 1860, and exhibited his work at the Boston Athenaeum in 1869.  In Boston he probably got his first look at the French Barbizon School paintings, which had been introduced to America there—a style of quickly painted, intimate, romantic scenes of nature that influenced his later work.

In 1869, after eighteen years of marriage, Sonntag and Mary Ann had a son, William, Jr., and in 1871 a daughter.  William, Jr. eventually became an artist known for his illustrations.  As Sonntag aged, his style became looser, more relaxed.  He also became interested in watercolors and began exhibiting with the Water Color Society of New York.  A portrait of the artist James Beard (The Night Before the Battle) is one of his few known portraits.

By the 1890s, sales of work by Hudson River artists had slowed, out of vogue in a society that had begun to revere genre painting and European “modern art.”  Sonntag died in New York City in 1900.

Sources: Nancy Dustin Wall Moore: “William Louis Sonntag, Artist of the Ideal (1822-1900),” Goldfinch Galleries, Los Angeles, 1980; curatorial files.

LOOK! IT’S MOVING! George Rickey’s Kinetic Sculpture

LOOK! IT’S MOVING! George Rickey’s Kinetic Sculpture

by Joan K. Yanni

It looks like shiny antennae, gracefully moving and bowing with the air currents.  It is eye-catching, fascinating, and absolutely absorbing.  It's MAG's kinetic sculpture, which was installed in front of the Gallery entrance in 1994.

The acquisition, Two Lines Up Excentric—Twelve Feet (94.44), was given to the Gallery by Richard F. Brush, Chairman of The Sentry Group, member of our Board of Managers, and long-time friend of the Gallery.

The work consists of a 10-foot-high stainless steel column topped by two 12-foot-long blades that move independently of each other as the wind nudges them.  (No, they never collide!)  The stationary shaft of the sculpture is made up of four pieces of steel, welded together to form a hollow column and set in concrete.  Lead was poured into the hollow arms, or blades, until a desired balance was achieved.  Ball bearings in the sculpture joints permit movement.  The piece is the creation of George Rickey, major American sculptor and pioneer of kinetic sculpture. It was made during the past year and installed by members of the artist's studio.

George Rickey was born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1907, and educated in Scotland and England.  He showed an early aptitude for mechanical devices, inherited perhaps from his father, a mechanical engineer, and his grandfather, a clockmaker.

While studying modern history at Balliol, Oxford, (he earned a BA in 1929 and an MA in 1941), he also attended the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.  Attracted to painting, he later traveled throughout Europe, studying with cubists Andre Lhote and Fernand Leger before returning permanently to America as a painter.  He worked in both the manner of Cezanne and in a social realist style, supporting himself by teaching history at Groton, then as a copy reader at Newsweek.

During World War II, Rickey served with the U.S. Air Corps, teaching the maintenance of computing instruments used by bomber gunners.  Here he learned welding and gained a knowledge of the effects of wind and gravity on ballistics.  His artistic interests turned from painting to sculpture, and through welding he made his first mobile in 1945 to entertain his army friends.  He created his first kinetic sculpture in glass while studying at the Institute of Design in Chicago after the war, and his first work in stainless steel in 1950.  He was influenced by the work of Alexander Calder and encouraged by sculptor David Smith, a friend.

In 1947 he married Edith Leighton; they became the parents of two sons.  He taught at various colleges and universities, including Tulane; UC Santa Barbara; Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York; and Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

In 1960, he and his family moved to a farm in East Chatham, New York, near Albany, and his work became larger in scale, often using simple, elegant blades that oscillated with wind currents.  The design of his sculptures lies in the motion rather than the form of each piece.  His constructions, he says, "have more in common with clocks than with sculptures."

Rickey's sculpture draws on the tradition of constructivism, non-objective art based on space and time; and his book, Constructivism, Origins and Evolution, published in 1967, remains a major source for that movement.  He prefers smooth, slow, changing motion, which the viewer contemplates over time, much as one watches the movement of waves or clouds.  Many of his works are in stainless steel, which he or his assistants burnish with a disk grinder in short, random stokes, as can be seen in MAG's piece.

Rickey has been the subject of many exhibitions, the first at UCLA in 1978, the latest in celebration of his 85th birthday, with simultaneous shows in Los Angeles, Osaka, and Berlin.  He and his wife divide their time between Santa Barbara and East Chatham.

Source:  Two Hundred Years of American Sculpture, published by David Godine; "George Rickey, Master of Kinetic Sculpture" an essay by Nan Rosenthal.