COOPER: MAIN STREET BRIDGE

COOPER: MAIN STREET BRIDGE

by Joan K. Yanni

                                                                             

COLIN CAMPBELL COOPER (1856-1937) was acclaimed as a painter of buildings—skyscrapers in Manhattan, palaces in India, villas in Rome—and churches in Rochester.  Whatever his subject, he brought to it a special light, glowing color and beauty of detail.

Cooper was born in Philadelphia, the only son of well-to-do parents.  His father was a surgeon and his mother an amateur painter in watercolors.  His parents encouraged his interest in the arts and gave him the financial and moral support that permitted him to study and travel as he pleased throughout his life.

In 1879 at the age of 23 he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where Thomas Eakins was his instructor.  Philadelphia at this time was the center of the country's artistic activity; the Pennsylvania Academy, founded in 1905, was the first full-scale art museum and art school in the United States.  Art students flocked here to learn the scientific approach to art as taught by Eakins:  drawing from nude models and from live animals (sometimes from dissections) and painting accurate rather than merely flattering portraits.

In 1886 Cooper went to Europe for further training and inspiration.  Joining fellow artists Henri, Schofield and others, he sketched and painted in Holland and Belgium.  He then went on to Paris and the Académie Julien, where instructors Gustave Goulanger and Jules Lefebvre further emphasized solid draftsmanship and composition.  While in Paris, Cooper saw the works of Claude Monet and was captivated by his loose brush strokes and vivid colors.  However, unlike other American Impressionists, Cooper chose to paint architectural treasures and city scenes rather than the countryside.  He adopted Monet's technique of painting a textured facade at various times of day, choosing Beauvais cathedral as Monet had chosen Rouen.  Though the effects of sunlight and atmosphere permeate these pictures, Cooper never lost the formal solidity of the buildings.  His technical training made a permanent mark on his style, and he was able to successfully combine attention to detail with his Impressionistic brushwork and palette. 

Although he spent many years abroad, Cooper took time between his travels to paint and work at home.  In 1897 he married the painter Emma Lampert, and they spent many productive years traveling and painting together.

In 1913 Cooper made his first trip to India, where he was able to capture the baked earth, blue skies, and exotic palaces on canvas. But it was in New York City that he found the theme which earned him most acclaim: the skyscraper.  He painted cityscapes according to a mathematical formula which he explained in a magazine article titled "Skyscrapers and How to Build Them in Paint."  Though his compositions were painted according to formula, his fluid brushstrokes convey spontaneity and excitement.

Main Street Bridge, Rochester

Because Cooper's wife was from Rochester and her family lived here, he painted many scenes of the city.  The popular Main Street Bridge (26.20) is one of them.  He once stated:  "Mrs. Cooper says that the Main Street Bridge picture...has attracted much attention because people are surprised that such a foreign looking place can be found in America."  The painting shows buildings lining the bridge.  The structures are gone now, but railings by Albert Paley add beauty and interest to the walkway.

In 1915 Cooper exhibited his works in San Francisco, and found California so attractive that, after Emma's death in 1920, he moved to Santa Barbara, where he spent his last years painting and teaching.

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Weaving Homespun, Canada

Emma Lampert, Cooper’s wife and a painter in her own right, painted Weaving Homespun, Canada (77.16), the work now in the Docent Room.  She was born in nearby Nunda in 1860, studied at Cooper Union as well as in Paris and Holland, and exhibited in the Paris Salon.  Her work was in the MAG 1913 Inaugural Exhibition and in later exhibits created by the Gallery.

Source:  Curatorial files; Goolsby, Tina:  "Colin Campbell Cooper: An American Impressionist with a Global Perspective," Art & Antiques, Jan. - Feb., 1963.

JOHN STEUART CURRY

JOHN STEUART CURRY: THE BATHERS

by Joan K. Yanni

Blogger’s Note:  A painting by John Steuart Curry on loan at the time (1992) to the MAG inspired the Blogger/Author to write the following article for the Docent Newsletter:

As the Hudson River School painted the glories of America's wilderness, and the Ashcan painters recorded scenes of the city, so the American Regionalists championed the Midwest.  The triumvirate of Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), Grant Wood (1892-1942), and John Steuart Curry (1897-1946), painted pictures that the public could understand and enjoy, and for a decade, focused attention on the people and places of Middle America.

Boomtown 

MAG has an excellent Benton; Boomtown (51.1) was part of the Benton retrospective that traveled around the country last year.  Now we have on loan a remarkable painting by Curry, installed next to Boomtown.

The Bathers shows three men, probably farm hands, and two boys cooling off in a water-filled animal trough.  The farm in the background looks brown and hot.  A tractor sits idle, and two pigs may be heading for the shade of trees in the far right side of the picture.  The men, two of whom are dousing each other with a pail of water, look unusually clean and groomed for farm hands; but they have the tan of outdoor laborers on their faces and forearms. The young boy with his hands above his head, about to jump into the water, is said to be the youthful Curry. As a second-grader pointed out, the figures are "not wearing shorts."

The painting is dated 1928, the same year as Curry's well-known Baptism in Kansas, and its men are splashing in the same round animal trough being used for a baptism in the latter picture.  The Bathers is said to be the last of Curry's major works still in private hands.

John Steuart Curry was born on a farm in Kansas.  After high school he decided to study art, for a brief time in Kansas City, then at the Art Institute of Chicago.  He became a successful magazine illustrator, contributing to Boy's Life, The Saturday Evening Post and other Curtis publications, but he wanted to produce more serious art.   He went to Paris to study for a year, and returned to his studio in Westport, Connecticut, to paint what he knew and loved best—the Midwest.  He received his first recognition as an important American painter when Baptism in Kansas was exhibited in a show at the Corcoran Gallery in 1928.

By 1929 the Great Depression had begun, and people were yearning for better, happier times.  The cities were poor and dirty; Curry's scenes of the manicured, abundant farmlands of the Midwest supplied reassurance and hope.  Some of his paintings, like Wisconsin Landscape, are quiet panoramas of the land; others, such as The Tornado, depict the violence of nature.  He injected movement, vibrant color and melodrama into his works.

During the '30s Curry increasingly turned to mural work where he could comment on social problems and reach even larger segments of the population.  His murals are on the walls of the Department of Justice and Interior in Washington, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and the Kansas State Capitol Building.

In 1936, after teaching at the Art Students League and at Cooper Union in New York City, he returned to the Midwest to become artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin, where he stayed until his death in 1946.

Curry and Grant Wood met in 1933 and remained friends throughout their lives. They also knew Benton.  All three had independently rejected the European art of the Armory Show, believing that America should have an indigenous art, realistic and nationalistic.  Their art flourished until the late 30s and the coming of World War II, when interest in Regionalism ended and Internationalism captured the attention of the public.

Sources:  Czestochowski, Joseph S.: John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood, A portrait of Rural America; Eliot, Alexander: 

Hundred Years of American Painting

WALTER ELMER SCHOFIELD

WALTER ELMER SCHOFIELD

by Joan K. Yanni

Three paintings by Walter Elmer Schofield are among the American Impressionist works in the Gallery’s collection.  The paintings—Lower Falls (40.42), In the Dugway (51.59), and Polperro Bay (41.27), are arresting, and their impressionistic brush stroke is obvious; but the artist's name is not a familiar one.

In the Dugway

Schofield (1867-1944) was born in Philadelphia of English parents. He studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where fellow students were Robert Henri, John Sloan, William Glackens, and Edward Redfield.  In late 1892 he went to Paris to study at the Académie Julien under Bouguereau and remained in Europe for three years.

Back in Philadelphia in 1895, he tried to work in the family business, but found painting to be his main interest.  He attended Tuesday meetings at Henri's studio on Walnut Street, and became a regular member of the group where The Eight and other Henri followers had animated discussions about art.

Lower Falls

By June, 1895, Schofield was back in Europe, this time sketching with Henri and friends, including Glackens and Colin Campbell Cooper.  While Henri studied the portraits of Hals and Rembrandt, Schofield satisfied his craving for landscape art in the collections in Brussels, Amsterdam and The Hague.  Dark, muted tonalities and soft hazy images became typical of Schofield's paintings:  He used soft, greenish-grays and browns, misty sfumato, nocturnal illumination and loose brushwork.  For the next ten years he was a tonalist, using a limited range of muted colors.

Polperro Bay

In 1897 he married Murielle Redmayne, an English woman whom he had met when she visited Philadelphia with her parents.  At first they lived in Philadelphia, but by 1901 they had moved to England where Murielle and their two sons could be close to her family. They eventually moved to Cornwall, where Schofield joined an international artists' colony and found landscapes that were an inspiration for the rest of his life.  His art barely paid for his travels, so for the most part,

Murielle and the boys were financially dependent upon her parents.

Schofield continued his friendship with Henri and his circle and regularly went back to the United States, though he also went on painting trips in Cornwall and throughout Europe.  He loved painting en plein air, no matter what the weather.  Often he spent the winter months in America, where he painted the snow scenes for which he became known.  Sun-filled Cornish scenes reflect the summers he spent with Murielle.

After the move to Cornwall, Schofield's palette changed; his brushstroke was still impressionistic, but his colors became bright and vibrant, nature in the full glare of sunlight.  By 1915 he and Redfield (painter of our River Hills) were known as the masters of the Pennsylvania Impressionist school.

How Schofield got to Rochester is not clear, but he did visit here in 1914-15, when he painted the dramatic Lower Falls (Genesee River at Rochester, NY).  The swiftly moving water from the falls seems to pour down over the painting from the high horizon line.  The dramatic perspective, with smoke-spewing buildings at the head of the falls, creates a powerful landscape.  (MAG's Polperro Bay is a picture of Cornwall; In the Dugway, a snow scene, is probably the area north of Philadelphia where he loved to paint.)

In late 1915 Schofield joined the British army, as he wrote to Henri, "to prevent Germany goose-stepping over the world."  He saw battle in France and retired from the army with the rank of major.

During the first three decades of the twentieth century, Schofield was regarded as one of America's leading landscape painters.  He never gave up his American citizenship, but "commuted" between England and America.  In March, 1944, he collapsed and died after a day painting the nearby English countryside.

Source:  Curatorial Files, Catalogue for Walter Elmer Schofield:  Bold Impressionist with essay by Thomas Folk.

FRANK STELLA: PAINTER AND PRINTMAKER

FRANK STELLA:  PAINTER AND PRINTMAKER

by Joan K. Yanni

                                                                             

Estoril Five I, an intricate, somewhat mystifying print, was created by renowned painter and printmaker Frank Stella, one of the most influential and innovative artists of our time.

Stella was born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1936 and educated at Phillips Academy and Princeton.  He became interested in painting at college, and after graduation in 1957 moved to New York City, rented a studio and supported himself, at least partially, by house painting.

His talent was quickly recognized.  His first exhibition came in 1959, and his first solo show followed in 1960 at the Castelli Gallery.  Since then he has appeared in almost every exhibition—national and international—of contemporary abstract painting.

In his earlier years, Stella was determined to create a rational and orderly art in response to the frantic and emotional abstract expressionist school.  The "pin stripe" series was the result—canvases with symmetrical 2 1/2 inch black stripes.  His idea was to eliminate illusionistic space and show that a painting was nothing more than a flat surface with paint on it.

He did his paintings in series.  He began to cut notches out of the centers, corners and sides of his canvases so that the shape of the paintings would become part of the design.  L's, T's, and geometrical shapes replaced the usual rectangular form of the picture.

After his black series, he gave color a primary role, with geometric shapes painted in brilliant shades of fluorescent paint. His geometric shapes seemed to move back and forth in space, and thus he returned to three-dimensional illusions.  Next he experimented with color combinations, and his paintings became larger—often ten to twenty feet in width.  Some of his recent works—paintings or sculpture?—are a combination of canvas and wood and actually extend out from the wall by five inches or more. In many of his works French curves, S-curves, protractors, and other architects' tools can be seen.

Stella's interest in printmaking began in 1967, during a time when recognized painters and master printers began to collaborate in a revival of lithography.  He met printer Kenneth Tyler and they joined in producing a number of print series based on his paintings.  Stella did the design, Tyler the printing.  The black series paintings had been done in 1958-59; the black series prints were done in 1967.

Our Estoril Five I is one of his Circuit (race track circuit) series, named after race tracks:   Estoril (Portugal), Imola (Sicily), and Tellegada (Alabama).  Stella has always been interested in auto racing.  He designed a BMW racing car in 1976, and traveled with the BMW Formula II racing team from Munich to Sicily.  He did a Race Track series of prints in 1972 and the Circuits in 1982.  Each of his Circuit prints is done in more than one version, thus Estoril Five I, with a variety of plates and colors.

Our print was created in five steps on handmade paper, from a beech woodblock and four magnesium plates.  The paper was made under Stella’s supervision at the Tyler Graphics workshop, where each sheet was hand colored with a series of nine liquid dyes ranging from lime green and pale orange to blue and magenta.  In Step 1, the printing was done with the routed beech woodblock in transparent yellow to allow the paper color to show through.  Step 2:  A metal plate was used to print in red, yellow, yellow-orange, pale orange, spring green and turquoise blue.  Step 3:  a second metal plate with light ocher was pressed over the yellow of step two; Step 4, a thin, line plate was used to print in purple.  Step 5 added dark ocher over the yellow and light ocher, and a black border.

Sources:  The Prints of Frank Stella:  Catalogue Raisonne; curatorial archives; and research by Anne Mauromatis, education department intern.

ROCHESTER'S RALPH AVERY

ROCHESTER’S  RALPH AVERY

by Joan K. Yanni

Ralph Avery (1906-1976) was probably the best known and most loved of Rochester's artists.  Though he was nationally known for his magazine and greeting card illustrations, local admirers knew best his views of Rochester, streets wet with rain.  He had an insight that cut through the grey days and saw color and warmth in the city's streets. 

Avery was born in Savannah, Georgia, the son of a marine surveyor and harbor-master.  He moved to Rochester in his early twenties to attend the Rochester Institute of Technology (then the Mechanic's Institute) and graduated in 1928.  In his senior year, he captured first prize in the Picturesque Rochester Contest with a charcoal drawing of the statute of Mercury atop the Kimball Tobacco Factory. He never tired of recording Rochester's neighborhoods and landmarks, particularly the Third Ward, where he lived for over forty years.

His early career took many directions: he studied at the Académie Julien in Paris and spent two years at the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation in Oyster Bay, LI.   He was by turn a designer of belt buckles, director of the Rundel Library art gallery, a Navy cartoonist, and an instructor at RIT.  At last he settled into the life of a full-time freelance illustrator.

For his subject matter, he returned again and again to the places most familiar, discovering at different times of day and from different angles some previously unnoticed detail in the urban landscape.  "I'm a real downtowner," he said.  "I like to be right around the corner from where things are happening."

Avery gained international recognition for the many Reader's Digest covers he painted for both English and foreign language editions in the 1950's and '60s. He also found himself in great demand for calendar illustrations, nostalgic Christmas card designs, and precisely rendered 

advertisements for industry.  Despite his legendary personal reserve and love of  home, Avery was an enthusiastic traveler.  The watercolors which emerged from early sketching trips to Mexico, Guatemala, the West Indies, Europe, and Africa were infused with the playfulness he could not indulge in his commercial work.

Although Avery considered himself an abstractionist, strong draftsmanship was the underpinning of even his simplest compositions.  "Painting is not a bag of tricks," he wrote.  And in the manner of academically trained artists, he worked through a series of preliminary sketches.  However, he was not afraid to provoke the watercolor purists of his time by touching his transparent washes with a bit of opaque gouache.

Avery particularly loved the city's architecture.  "I have a feeling for old buildings and streets," he said. He noted that abstract patterns can make or break a painting:  "When I paint a building, I am not concerned whether my building looks just like the one in front of me—it may be just a vague mass with little dots for windows.  As long as that mass seems to be the right size, color and shape, and is correctly placed, I am satisfied."

Avery died unexpectedly in 1976 as he was trying to push his car out of a snow bank.  His last exhibition had been a joint showing with Rochester artist John Menihan at the Atelier, 696 Park Avenue.  The year after his death, his family presented the Gallery with a major gift of over 450 of his works.

Strange and Familiar Places, the exhibition of his works mounted in 1992, included precise illustrator watercolors, some from Readers Digest covers; looser, more personal vacation views; and drawings—preparatory as well as highly finished.  They presented as varied subjects as New York cityscapes, North African settings, beach scenes, Rochester's streets and Upper Falls, and Charlotte Whitney Allen's garden.

JEROME MYERS: ANGELS OF THE FESTA

JEROME MYERS: ANGELS OF THE FESTA

by Joan K. Yanni

Angels of the Festa

Angels of the Festa by Jerome Myers is an enigmatic painting, with its dark background, subdued colors and flattened perspective.  Its theme is a religious celebration, and its people are taking part with a sense of subdued joy.   

"Festa" is the Italian word for feast, celebration, or saint's day.  And among the Italian Catholic immigrants who lived on New York City's lower East Side, their saint's feast day was the time for celebration.  Usually the saint had been the patron saint of their province in Italy; and yearly, on a summer Sunday, they held a street festival in his or her honor.

A procession after the last Mass started the day.  Men of the parish carried the statue of the saint set upon a paten, along with smaller statues from the church and banks of candles in wedding-cake arrangements. In the afternoon, the festivities began. Always there was ethnic food and socializing.  Often there was a band concert.  It was time for families to enjoy their religion, their friends and each other.

In our painting, darkness has come and the festa is about to end. The procession and musicians have disbanded in front of a statue of the honored saint surrounded by candles, banners, and the Italian flag. The saint is a bishop, as we can see by his miter, or hat.  Perhaps he is San Gennaro (St. Jerome), whose feast is still celebrated in September on New York's Bleeker Street.  But the name of the church, which can be seen in the painting, is St. Ciro, a rather obscure saint but important enough to Italian immigrants to have a church named after him. The location of a statue is puzzling.  It seems to be in a free-standing shrine, since onlookers lean out of upstairs windows on either side.  Little girls in their best dresses—part of the "angels" title—hold lighted candles as neighbors and families look on.  And in the dark sky above the festa, two blissful angels—this time the kind with wings—can be seen throwing roses onto the crowd below.

Jerome Myers (1867-1940), the painter of this scene, was born into poverty in Petersburg, VA. 

He managed to get to New York City when he was eighteen, and while he worked by day as a sign painter and photo-engraver, he took evening art courses at Cooper Union and at the Art Student's League.  He studied under George de Forest Brush and learned from the works of old masters, but his style and subject matter were his own.  He felt a kinship with the city's poor, and they became his theme—one frowned upon by the academicians.

Myers had chosen drawings, etchings, and pastels as his medium; but in 1902 he met the noted art dealer William MacBeth, who liked his work, became his dealer, and encouraged him to turn to painting.  He had his first one-man exhibition in 1908, began to exhibit widely, and joined John Sloan and his circle, also painters of the city.

Myers, Henri and Sloan were among the artists who showed in the 1910 exhibition of Independent Artists, the first non-juried show ever held by and for American artists.  Myers also helped to organize the Armory Show of 1913.  He had hoped that the show would promote American artists; but Arthur B. Davies invited European painters to participate, and the Europeans, the Cubists in particular, stole the show.

Though Myers never was a huge success in selling his paintings, he eventually received prizes from the National Academy and the Carnegie Institute.  His pictures of the slums were idealized, sympathetic and dignified.  His children, unlike Luks's dirty urchins, were clean and happy and in their best clothes.  His people exude a spiritual happiness and a hope for the future.

Angels of the Festa can be compared to any of the Ashcan paintings.  Myers' loose brush stroke is similar to that of Sloan in Election Night, and both are paintings of celebrations.  The painting can also be used with Lawrence's Summer Street Scene in Harlem, or discussed in connection with ceremonies in the African gallery.

Source:  Curatorial files; Bennard B. Perlman, The Immortal Eight.

FIELD: THE EMBARKATION OF ULYSSES

FIELD: THE EMBARKATION OF ULYSSES

by Joan K. Yanni

The painting recently installed in the Folk Art Gallery is an eye-catcher.  In brilliant colors it presents a scene that looks like a stage setting: architectural towers are outlined against a vivid blue sky.  Men in colorful costumes stand on the decks of sailing ships.  Banners are unfurled, trumpeters play, and women in classical garb watch at the top of the steps leading to the sea.  The painting is The Embarkation of Ulysses by Erastus Salisbury Field.

Ulysses was the hero of Homer's Odyssey, one of the Greeks who sailed to Troy to rescue Helen, carried off by Paris. Ulysses and the Greeks then defeated the Trojans through the trick of the wooden horse.  After the fall of Troy, the Greeks sailed home—but it took Ulysses ten years to get there.  When he finally got back to Greece, he found his faithful wife Penelope surrounded by suitors, whom she had kept at bay by promising to choose a new husband when she finished her tapestry, then weaving by day and unraveling by night.

(This painting, on anonymous loan, is of the glorious departure of the Greeks for Troy.  It is a fascinating painting by an intriguing painter). 

Erastus Salisbury Field (1805-1900) was born in Leverett, Massachusetts.  His parents encouraged his sketching of family activities as he grew up, and he went on to study briefly in New York City with inventor-painter Samuel F.B. Morse.  Once home again, he painted portraits; and in his early works Morse's influence can be seen.  Field soon developed his own style, however.  He had a special insight into his sitters’ personalities, and he was able to show their inner spirit as well as intricate details of their clothing, hair styles and homes.

During the 1830s Field was able to support his wife Phoebe and their daughter Henrietta by working as an itinerant painter in Massachusetts and Connecticut.  Some of the best work of his career was painted at this time.

Between 1841 and 1848 Field moved to New York City.  Here, in addition to portraits, he began

to paint history pictures which he copied from engravings. Our Embarkation of Ulysses dates from this time.  It was taken from an engraving, City of Ancient Greece with the Return of the Victorious Armament by the English artist J. W. Appleton, published in London in 1840.  (The engraving, in turn, had been copied from a painting by W. Linton.)          

While in New York, Field also learned the new art of photography (the daguerreotype had been introduced into this country in 1839 by Samuel Morse).

In 1849 the painter was called back to Massachusetts to take care of his ailing father's farm.  Though he still painted, photography had lessened the demand for painted portraits.  Field began to take photographs of his subjects to reduce sitting time, and painted from these images.  Consequently, his later portraits, though realistic, lack the spark of his earlier works.

In 1872 Field conceived the idea for the masterpiece of his old age.  His painting The Historical Monument of the American Republic, which measured 115" x 158", was completed in 1876 on the 100th anniversary of American independence.  It represents history in the grand manner:  towers of varying architectural styles (some similar to those in our painting) rise in the air, and each is keyed to a major event in American history; each national hero is represented.  Field had hoped that his Historical Monument painting would be turned into sculpture, but that was not to happen.

A mildly eccentric painter watched over by his equally eccentric daughter, Field spent his last days in Plumtrees, Massachusetts,.  His legacy is a body of work that reveals the character, taste and look of his New England world, ending with a huge painting of an idealized American dream.

Source:  Black, Mary, Erastus Salisbury Field, Springfield, MA 1894.  Beryl Smith, assistant librarian from Rutgers University, located the image of the source of our painting.