MacCAMERON: NEW ORLEANS MAN
by Joan K. Yanni
New Orleans Man, the eye-catching portrait of a black man, was painted by Robert Lee MacCameron, an artist once renowned, now almost forgotten. The painting was part of the recent exhibition Facing History: The Black Image in American Art 1719-1940, organized by the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC.
Robert Lee MacCameron was born in Chicago in 1966, and grew up in Wisconsin. Little is known about his parents; the biographical sketch in the Corcoran catalog says that MacCameron's father, Thomas, was a member of the Wisconsin state legislature. In any case, the family was of modest means. Robert spent his early life surrounded by forests in which he learned to be an expert woodsman and rifle shot. The locale offered little in the way of formal education, and MacCameron used to say that he never had more than a year of school. At the age of fourteen, he was doing a man's work in a lumber camp.
A chance acquaintance with an itinerant French drawing teacher awakened his interest in art and gave him a chance to develop his talent. By saving his wages he was able to go to Chicago, where he studied art at the YMCA. His drawing skill brought him success as an illustrator in Chicago and New York, and when he was 22 he went on to London, where he briefly illustrated "Boy's Own," a children's publication. Success in London made it possible for him to move to Paris where he received a scholarship to the École des Beaux-Arts. He went on to study under Jean Léon Gérôme, and after Gérôme’s death, with James McNeill Whistler.
MacCameron received some recognition during these years, but very little money, so that living was always a struggle. In addition, he was a perfectionist who destroyed much of his early work because it did not satisfy him.
In 1902 he married Louise Van Voorhees of Rochester. How they met is not clear, but a son was born in 1904 and a daughter in 1906. With marriage, his fortune changed. In 1904 he gained his first public recognition when his painting Mi-Careme won honorable mention in the Salon des Artistes Françaises. (He later destroyed the painting.) In 1906 he won a gold medal; and that same year he was awarded the Hors Concours Medal, the highest honor a foreign artist can gain in France, for Groupe d'Amis (a group of absinthe drinkers), which now hangs in the Corcoran. He was interested in the poor and created sensitive, insightful pictures of them. (In addition, to New Orleans Man, MAG owns MacCameron's The Absinthe Drinker.)
Fame and success quickly followed. It is ironic that, though MacCameron was always interested in showing the plight of the destitute, his popular acclaim came from his portraits of the rich and famous. He now traveled between Europe and America, painting portraits of the most influential in society, politics and art: Presidents McKinley and Taft, Chief Justice Harlan, Rodin, Whistler, Gertrude Stein, Sir Thomas Beecham, Mrs. John Astor, Mrs. E.H. Harriman, Mrs. Arthur Iselin. He maintained studios in London, Paris and New York and was a member of the National Association of Portrait Painters, The Paris Society of American Painters, and the National Academy of Design.
In 1912 his career was at its peak. He was awarded the medal of the French Legion of Honor, and the first American exhibition of his work had been scheduled. Tragically, in December of 1912, he died suddenly in New York City of a heart ailment. He was 46.
His paintings show his skill as a draftsman, his facility with paint, and his ability to show the character of his subjects, whether street people or men and women of importance.
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