American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent at Philadelphia Museum of Art

American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent

Philadelphia Museum of Art

March 1, 2017 - May 14, 2017

Reviewed by Ed Voves

In the world of art, as in the course of everyday life, it is wise to expect the "unexpected." 

The latest blockbluster exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent, is a case in point. For once, this is not just the case of using name recognition to "sell" the show. Both Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent were true masters of watercolor painting. But neither artist played a pioneering role in America's enthusiasm for watercolor painting that began in 1866.

Before the Civil War, watercolor painting in America was deemed to be acceptable only for Sunday-afternoon artists and women. It was hardly  the "stuff" of Yankee manhood or the valor that  won the day at Gettysburg. 

The Union had waged  the Civil War with ruthless determination and technical expertise.  Once the shooting stopped, the expectation was high that these traits would carry over into other aspects of American society. The important role of technology should  have sparked a mania for photography, which had played a big role in the war. Likewise, the intense patriotism should have prompted a wave of battle paintings or works to honor the martyred Abraham Lincoln.

Nothing of the kind happened - at least not in 1866. Instead, a group of little known artists launched what soon became a nation-wide mania  for watercolor painting and collecting.

The founders of the American watercolor revolution were hardly household names - then or now.  Samuel Colman, Gilbert Burling, William Craig and William Hart were certainly proficient artists. The exhibit displays works by all, with the exception of Burling. These painters were heavily indebted to the British watercolor tradition and to the writings of its leading theorist, John Ruskin. What they lacked in the way of originality, these pioneers compensated for with persuasive charm and crusading zeal.

Fidelia Bridges, Milkweeds, 1876

The influence of Ruskin on American watercolor painting is exemplified by the work of Fidelia Bridges, (1834-1923). A New England artist who studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, Bridges painted "truth to nature" watercolors of such outstanding merit that she could not be denied a prominent place in the burgeoning watercolor movement - despite being a woman.

The new popularity of watercolor quickly led to the organization of a professional society. Colman was elected president of the American Watercolor Society in 1866. A year later, the organization mounted a successful show at the National Academy of Design, which became an annual event of great popularity. 

Soon first-rank artists like John LaFarge were answering the call to exhibit at the AWS shows in New York City. Sales revenue - the greatest inducement of all - kept pace with Colman's congenial, alliance-building leadership. 

In 1873, the greatest war artist of the Civil War, Winslow Homer "discovered" watercolor. Only the year before, Homer had painted his hugely popular tribute to American children, Snap the Whip, in oils. Snap the Whip is a nostalgic work of art. Wistful reflection on pre-industrial America was a keynote of many works by AWS painters, too.

This backward-glance is beautifully represented in the Philadelphia Museum exhibit by Edwin Austin Abbey's The Two Sisters. The two protagonists of this astonishing watercolor are dressed in  the early nineteenth century Federal period style. Abbey combined translucent watercolor and opaque gouache to create a work that is suffused with subtle color. 

Edwin Austin Abbey, The Two Sisters, 1882

This vibrant work of art, on special loan from Yale, is so delicate and light-sensitive that it is kept behind a curtain at the exhibit except when being viewed for very short periods by visitors. The damaging effect of light on watercolors can only be thwarted by extreme care. Because of this, opportunity to take gallery photographs was limited at the press preview.

Abbey's effective use of translucent and opaque watercolor was rivaled by another AWS stalwart, Thomas Moran (1837‑1926). Born in England, Moran was a great admirer of J.M.W. Turner, sometime to such a degree that it is difficult to distinguish their works. Moran took a lead from the hardy, well-traveled Turner and brought his watercolor box along  on an expedition to the American West soon after the Civil War. 

Thomas Moran, Big Springs in Yellowstone Park, 1872

In a way, Moran's Big Springs in Yellowstone Park, 1872, recorded a frontier that was fast disappearing, just as Abbey's genteel Federal period had vanished. Moran's depictions of the West, both in watercolor and in oil, played a major role in promoting the idea of National Parks to preserve the natural beauty of America. Moran also pointed the way for Winslow Homer to make his mark in watercolor.

Homer, "the always unexpected Mr. Homer" as a reviewer called him, followed the lead of both Abbey and Moran. He painted both pensive young women and barefoot country boys and the frontier-like conditions of Maine and the Adirondack Mountains in New York. But his style was all his own and it was not long before he was recognized as America's premier painter in watercolor.

Winslow Homer, Building a Smudge, 1891

Not all the reviews of Homer's work were glowing. Homer did not take kindly to negative criticism in the proliferating journals like Scribner's Monthly. Some years, he refused to send any work to the AWS shows. Instead, he would paddle-off into the woods of New York and New England, building a "smudge" to keep the vociferous flies at bay - along with the art critics.

Other years, Homer would seek artistic refuge on the North Sea coast of England, where he painted watercolors of stalwart fisher folk, or go to the tropics where he painted the luminous A Garden in Nassau in 1885 .            

Winslow Homer, A Garden in Nassau, 1885

Homer's facility in every form of watercolor and in every setting was matched by John Singer Sargent. Twenty-years younger than Homer, Sargent joined the exhibiting ranks of the watercolor fellowship somewhat late in his career, though he had always painted privately in the medium. 

Weary of the "grind" of society portrait painting in England, Sargent "went public" in 1904, just a few years before the still vigorous Homer died in 1910. One of Homer's last watercolors, Diamond Shoal, proves that he was still at the top of his form in his last years. 

Winslow Homer, Diamond Shoal, 1905

Had Homer not died in 1910, a "duel" in watercolors with Sargent might well have ensued. The Philadelphia exhibit devotes an entire gallery to a "compare and contrast" examination of the watercolors of Homer and Sargent. It is very intriguing but there is no record that either artist viewed their work in such a competitive spirit. It was much more of a case of "passing the torch" of artistic leadership from one master to another.

Sargent did more than keep the golden age of American watercolor going into the twentieth century. His bold use of translucent watercolor to explore the ever-changing quality of light raised the medium to a new, almost miraculous, height of achievement.

John Singer Sargent, Spanish Fountain, 1912

It is only fitting, when mentioning superlative achievement, to acknowledge the curator of this fabulous exhibit, Kathleen Foster. One of the greatest contemporary authorities on American art, Dr. Foster conceived and organized American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent. She wrote the text of the exhibit catalog in its entirety, a most impressive achievement. Most exhibit books are written by a team of scholars. 

Dr. Foster's achievement is definitive not merely for the depth of her research but also its wide-ranging field of study. The "Golden Age" of American watercolor embraced the  Aesthetic Movement of the 1870s, design for commercial enterprises like the celebrated Rookwood Pottery, the "house beautiful" ideal and the American mural movement. All of these strands are woven into an exhibit which will not soon be topped for its authoritative scholarship and its sheer, soul-restoring beauty. 

The American watercolor movement coincided with the rise of Impressionism in France. This can create a bit of confusion for non-experts on American art. Several early figures of American watercolor painting were considered "Impressionists" but these artists were influenced by the thriving Munich school of painting rather than by Claude Monet and his confrères. The French Impressionists did not favor watercolor to any significant degree.  

Childe Hassam, Boulevard at Night, Paris, 1889

Eventually Childe Hassam, an American Impressionist and an accomplished watercolor painter, united the two schools of art with outstanding works in watercolor.

American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent concludes with an insightful look at the science of watercolor.  We are reminded that the achievements of the age of Homer and Sargent were also based upon a material revolution in watercolor, developing from hard brittle cakes to disposable tubes of color. 

Watercolor Box belonging to Winslow Homer, 1900‑1910

John Singer Sargent died in 1925, the end point of this wonderful exhibit. Vast changes were in store for American art in the years following 1925 - and for American society. 

Watercolor, however, has retained its popular appeal with the public and with professional artists alike. Watercolor became an American Art just as Baseball became America's game. Rising from English roots, watercolor was utilized in the post-Civil War years to create a truly national art form. Since then, watercolor has never gone "out-of-style" in America, however much the styles of art change and evolve.

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 

Images Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Yale University Art Gallery, Yale Open Access policy, for Edwin Austin Abbey's The Two Sisters, 1882

Introductory Image: American Watercolor in the Age of Homer and Sargent, 2017 (cover) Image credit: Philadelphia Museum of Art 

Fidelia Bridges (American, 1834‑1923) Milkweeds, 1876. Watercolor on paper, Sheet: 17 1/4 × 13 inches. Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Museum of Art, Utica, New York, Proctor Collection

Edwin Austin Abbey (American, 1852–1911) The Two Sisters, 1882. Watercolor and gouache over graphite underdrawing, sight in frame: 59.2 x 89.5 cm (23 5/16 x 35 1/4 in.) Yale University Art Gallery, The Edwin Austin Abbey Memorial Collection. 1946.130

Thomas Moran, (American, born England, 1837-1926) Big Springs in Yellowstone Park, 1872. Watercolor and opaque watercolor on paper, 9 1/4 × 19 1/4 inches. Private Collection

Winslow Homer (American, 1836‑1910) Building a Smudge, 1891. Watercolor over graphite, with scraping, on wove paper, Sheet: 13 3/4 × 20 9/16 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 125th Anniversary Acquisition. Gift of Ann R. Stokes, 2002.

Winslow Homer (American, 1836‑1910) A Garden in Nassau, 1885. Watercolor and opaque watercolor over graphite, with blotting and scraping, on textured cream wove paper, Image: 14 1/2 × 21 inches. Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection.

Winslow Homer (American, 1836‑1910) Diamond Shoal, 1905. Watercolor and graphite on paper, Sheet: 14 × 21 7/8 inches. Private Collection.

John Singer Sargent (American, active London, Florence, and Paris, 1856‑1925) Spanish Fountain,1912. Watercolor and graphite on white wove paper, 21 × 13 3/4 inches. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1915.

Childe Hassam (American, 1859‑1935) Boulevard at Night, Paris, 1889. Watercolor on paper, 8 × 12 inches. Private Collection

Watercolor Box belonging to Winslow Homer, 1900‑1910. Manufactured by Winsor & Newton, London, founded 1832. Watercolor pigments and metal, 8 1/8 × 8 1/4 inches. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, Gift of the Homer Family.

World War I and American Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

World War I and American Art 

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA 

 November 4, 2016–April 9, 2017 

New-York Historical Society, New York, NY 

May 26, 2017–September 3, 2017 

Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN

October 6, 2017–January 21, 2018 

Reviewed by Ed Voves

For the United States, the First World War began in April 1917 with flags and banners waving. The corpse-strewn conflict ended in November 1918 with the Stars and Stripes covering the coffins of countless Americans killed in battle.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia has just opened a major exhibition, World War I and American Art. This revealing display of paintings, sculpture and propaganda posters investigates the role of art - and advertising - in wartime. The exhibit will later travel to the New York Historical Society and to the Frist Center in Nashville, Tennesee. 

Art played a huge and controversial part in the war efforts of all the major belligerents between 1914 and 1918. The American experience of World War I followed in the footsteps of Great Britain, France, Germany and the rest of embattled Europe. What occurred in August 1914 was repeated in April 1917.

Childe Hassam, Avenue of the Allies, Great Britain, 1918, 1918

Images of drums and bugles, marching bands and inflammatory propaganda fill the opening galleries of the PAFA exhibit. And there are flags. Lots of flags, as in the brightly-hued, monotonous paintings of Childe Hassam. 

The "Big Parade" was followed by massive, industrial-age slaughter. A little-known painting, The Devil's Vineyard, presents a view of "No Man's Land." This was the killing ground between the rival lines of trenches where futile, anonymous death befell millions.

Harvey Dunn, The Devil’s Vineyard

The British poet Wilfred Owen, who was killed in one of the last battles of the war, described the carnage in his unforgettable Anthem for Doomed Youth:

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?                                                                    Only the monstrous anger of the guns.                                                                           Olympic the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle                                                                               Can patter out their hasty orisons.                                                                                       No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;                                                             Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—                                                                     The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;                                                                     And bugles calling for them from sad shires.  

Under conditions like these, it took a lot of prodding to get the American people to join the Allied war effort. The key event in the propaganda campaign took place in May 1915 when a German submarine sank the British passenger liner, Lusitania, without warning. The death toll included 128 Americans, many being women and children.

The United States avoided war in 1915 when the Germans briefly suspended further submarine attacks made without prior warning. The damage to Germany's reputation was already done as can be see in the military recruitment poster which shows a Madonna-like mother and child drowning in the depths of the sea, victims of a U-Boat attack.

 Fred Spears, Enlist,1915

This poster by Fred Spears was commissioned, not by the United Stated government, but by a group called the Boston Committee of Public Safety. Where Americans were to enlist, given the continuing U.S. neutrality, the poster does not say. Many Americans did serve in France before 1917, some in the famed French flying squadron, the Lafayette Escadrille.

There was a strong counter-current of opinion against rushing to war, despite the Lusitania incident. William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate who who helped engineer the war against Spain in 1898, opposed the U.S. joining the Allied camp in 1915 and tried to undermine support for Britain. Hearst's most talented cartoonist, Winsor McCay, was forbidden to publish anti-German illustrations in the Hearst publications.

McCay found a way to outmaneuver Hearst. McCay had created the pioneering animated cartoon, Gertie the Dinosaur, in 1914. On his own initiative and expense, McCay drew and produced an animated depiction of the sinking of the Lusitania. One of the most vivid images in McCay's account of the tragic disaster showed Spear's mother and child sinking to the bottom of the sea.

McCay's 12-minute animated film is on view in the PAFA exhibit. It is a sensational work, years of painstaking effort in the making. The Sinking of the Lusitania did not appear until 1918, after the U.S. had entered the war. Yet, it was a landmark in modern art and media culture. 

Warfare, as experienced by American troops in France during 1917 and 1918, bore little resemblance to the jingoistic propaganda that had sounded the drumbeat to war.

Some of the most compelling images of combat were created by a battle-tested officer, Claggett Wilson (1887–1952). Wilson's graphic (and accurate) depictions of battle were later donated to the Smithsonian and forgotten until recently. With paintings like Flower of Death (the introductory image to this essay), Wilson depicted the war "Not as It Looks, but as It Feels and Sounds and Smells."

As powerful as Wilson's images of the war undoubtedly are, no work on view in the PAFA exhibit can compete with John Singer Sargent's Gassed. Sargent was an eyewitness to the terrible aftermath of an attack with deadly "mustard gas" on a British unit in 1918. Gassed is a tremendous painting, having lost none of its power.

Though some of victims of poison gas were only temporarily blinded, few ever recovered completely. Mustard gas burned the lungs and mucous membranes of its victims, as well as their eyes. Almost all who survived a gas attack suffered permanent - and painful - health problems. The brother of Georgia O'Keeffe never fully recovered from the effects of poison gas, which contributed to his death from Influenza after the war.                                                                                                               

John Singer Sargent, Gassed, 1919

Sargent's Gassed, which was generously loaned by Britain's Imperial War Museum, is one of the great paintings of the Twentieth Century. Because Sargent worked in the time-honored tradition of Realism, Gassed has been somewhat undervalued in comparison with Picasso's Surrealist masterpiece, Guernica. But if you spend some time before this vast evocation of suffering and hope - the sun in Gassed is rising, rather than setting - you will experience a sense of transcendence and empathy that only comes from truly great art.

Sargent initially tried to remain aloof from the war, though he lived in England. In the spring of 1918, he went to France as an official War Artist, but struggled to find a theme worthy of his genius. Then, on Good Friday, March 29, 1918, a German atrocity claimed the life of Sargent's beloved niece. Rose-Marie Michel was killed by long-range German siege artillery which bombarded Paris. Rose-Marie Michel was a nurse tending blind soldiers, so her death found a resonance in the plight of the blinded soldiers in Gassed. 

The story of how Sargent came to paint Gassed is wonderfully told in a recent book, published in 2014, John Singer Sargent and His Muse, written by Daniel Williman and Karen Corsano.

This brings us to one of the important themes of World War I and American Art.There has long been a theory that World War I made only a passing impact on American society, at least in comparison with the Civil War and the Second World War. The PAFA exhibit and the superb catalog that accompanies it completely dispels this falsehood.

By looking at the letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and the art work she created in reference to World War I, it is clear that she was emotionally consumed by interest in the war. O'Keeffe's well-founded anxiety about her brother, Alexis, and frustration about doing something meaningful in wartime energized her art.

Georgia O'Keeffe, The Flag, 1918

The blood red, midnight blue and cloudy white hues of O'Keeffe's The Flag are symbolical. Yet O'Keeffe's painting reaches a deeper level of reality than many purportedly realist 
works could possibly achieve.

Another American artist of the period who was  molded by his experience of the war was Charles Burchfield. After graduating from art school in 1916, Burchfield faced the prospect of being drafted and sent to the Western Front. Like O'Keeffe, Burchfield was deeply affected with stress and anxiety. 

 Charles Burchfield, The First Hepaticas, 1917

The emotional toll upon Burchfield is reflected in his classic landscape, The First Hepaticas. Painted in 1917, Burchfield makes a forest near his home look as though it had been hit by an artillery barrage. Flowers, the hepaticas of the title, wilt as if stricken by poison gas. World War I had come to America's doorstep.

Burchfield eventually was assigned to a unit designing camouflage for armored tanks. The the fighting ended before he was sent to the front. Yet, the haunted, brooding cloud of war never quite departed from Burchfield's art. We can trace the mystical elements in his later work back to the state of mind that influenced the creation of The First Hepaticas.

World War I and American Art is an outstanding exhibit which commendably includes numerous works dealing with the African-American experience during the conflict. Black soldiers like Horace Pippin fought a two-front war, against the Germans on the other side of No Man's Land and against racial intolerance at home.

Horace Pippin, Dog Fight over the Trenches, 1935

Pippin, Burchfield and Wilson survived the war but American fatalities were heavy. There were 53,402 combat deaths and 63,114 from disease, many from the dreaded Spanish Influenza epidemic. This occurred during the last months of the war and into 1919. An estimate of civilian deaths in the U.S. from the Spanish Influenza is around 500,000. Worldwide, the (misnamed) Spanish Influenza killed nearly 50 million people. This was far in excess of the estimated 17 million war dead. Many of the Spanish Influenza victims died because of wounds or privation caused by the war.

World War I and American Art ends on a somber note, as indeed it should. Despite heroic self-sacrifice, the War to End all Wars failed to bring peace. A sense of futility, a feeling that war would resume as soon as a new generation of cannon fodder came of age, pervaded the world during the 1920's and 1930's.

In 1928, John Steuart Curry began a painting to memorialize a friend, killed in the war ten years before. By the time he finished The Return of Private Davis from the Argonne in 1940, war had broken out again in Europe. Hitler was on the march and U-boats were sinking ships at a faster rate than during the First World War.

John Steuart Curry, The Return of Private Davis from the Argonne, 1928–40

The oil paint barely had time to dry on Curry's elegiac painting before American industry began to retool for arms production. A year later, on December 8, 1941, James Montgomery Flagg's famous "I Want YOU for the U.S. Army" poster was dusted-off to encourage Americans to fight a second War to End all Wars. 

World War I and American Art at PAFA makes no overt effort to editorialize or extend the scope of the exhibition theme. But the maimed and the wounded, the gassed and shell-shocked look down on us from their picture frames. Their silent verdict is deafening.

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 
Images courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Introductory Image:
Claggett Wilson (1887–1952) Flower of Death—The Bursting of a Heavy Shell—Not as It Looks, but as It Feels and Sounds and Smells, c. 1919 Watercolor and pencil on paperboard, 16 ½ × 22 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Alice H. Rossin, 1981.163.18 Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/Art Resource, NY

Childe Hassam (1859–1935) Avenue of the Allies, Great Britain, 1918, 1918. Oil on canvas, 36 × 28 3/8 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967), 1967, 67.187.127  Photo: ©The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY 

Harvey Dunn (1884–1952) The Devil’s Vineyard, n.d. Oil on canvas, 34 × 44 in. South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, 1970.01.14 

Fred Spear, Enlist, 1915 Poster, 32 × 23 in. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Princeton University Poster 

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) Gassed, 1919 Oil on canvas  231 x 611.1 cm (91 x 240 1/2 in.) Imperial War Museum, London  Art. IWM ART 1460

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) The Flag, 1918 Watercolor on paper, 11 15/16 × 8 3/16 in. 
Milwaukee Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Harry Lynde Bradley, M1977.132 © 2016 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo: Larry Sanders 

Charles Burchfield (1893-1967) The First Hepaticas, 1917–18. Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper, 21 ½ × 27 ½ in. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, 1935, 43.1935

Horace Pippin (1888–1946) Dog Fight over the Trenches, 1935 Oil on canvas, 18 × 33 1/8 in. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966, 66.4071 

John Steuart Curry (1897–1946) The Return of Private Davis from the Argonne, 1928–40. 
Oil on canvas, 38 ¼ × 52 ¼ in. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas.