"Awakened in You" African American Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

"Awakened in You": the Collection of Dr. Constance E. Clayton

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

February 21, 2020–July 12, 2020

Reviewed by Ed Voves
Original photography by Anne Lloyd

There are so many reasons to celebrate the latest exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) that it is hard to know where to start.

"Awakened in You" does not merely represent the opening of another landmark exhibition at the historic art school and museum. The 75 works on view are part of a major collection of paintings and sculptures by African American artists. The works of art selected for the exhibit will join the permanent collection of PAFA's museum once "Awakened in You" closes in July 2020.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020)

Laura Wheeler Waring's The Study of a Student, ca. 1940s 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020)

Gallery view of the "Awakened in You" exhibition at PAFA

Any time a museum receives a major bequest like this, it is a truly significant event. 

The magnitude of the "Awakened in You" collection is enhanced by the fact that it represents an African American success story demonstrating the importance of inspired community leadership in the arts. The exhibition also testifies links to PAFA's commendable role in aiding and encouraging African American artists.

The "Awakened in You" paintings and sculptures were collected by Dr. Constance Clayton, who was the Superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia from 1982 to 1993. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Dr. Clayton was the first African American and the first woman to take on the challenge of directing the city’s schools. 

With the aid of her mother, Mrs. Williabell Clayton, Dr. Clayton set about building a collection which would document the great achievements of African Americans in the visual arts.  From the post-Civil War landscapes of Edward Bannister (1828-1901) to Romare Bearden's bold reworking of Classical mythology in the light of the African American experience, virtually every significant African American artist is represented in "Awakened in You."

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020)

 Edward Bannister's Untitled (Landscape with Water and Sail Boat), 1885 

              Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) Romare Bearden 's Odyssey Series, ca. 1970s            

As a measure indicative of just how important the donation of the "Awakened in You" collection is to PAFA, Dr. David Brigham, President and CEO of PAFA, and Brooke Davis Anderson, Director of the PAFA Museum, served as the curators of this exhibition.
Perhaps even more significantly, the exhibition team included Ms. Sarah Spencer, a charismatic and knowledgeable assistant curator.

  Dr. David Brigham & Ms. Brooke Davis Anderson introduce Ms. Sarah Spencer (center)  at the "Awakened in You" exhibition at PAFA

In their introductory remarks, Brigham and Anderson stressed the importance of “mentoring” in the past practice and contemporary mission of PAFA. Mentoring is more than just teaching or passing the secrets of the “trade” to apprentice workers. Rather it is a process by which future leaders are accorded the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and skill. Judging from her dynamic participation in the press preview, Sarah Spencer has amply fulfilled her role in the “mentoring” process at PAFA and in the African American art community.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020)  
Ms. Sarah Spencer, Assistant Curator of the "Awakened in You" exhibition 

The display of magnificent paintings and sculptures collected by Dr. Clayton begins with a series of nature studies by a long time teacher at PAFA, Louis B. Sloan (1932-2008). These are displayed at the foot of the grand staircase of the PAFA Museum and at first glance appear to be conventional, “weekend” paintings. Indeed, some of them were painted on weekend art excursions when Sloan took student groups to the nearby Wissahickon Park, some of which is quite rugged terrain, and farther afield to more distant countryside around Philadelphia.

                                       Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020)                               

Louis B. Sloan's Landscape with White and Yellow Wild Flowers

Sloan was a beloved teacher and a brilliant painter. His finished works ranged from highly accomplished realism in Backyards (1955) to the almost abstract landscape of Frost Valley in the Catskills (1995). Both of these works are part of PAFA's collection. I was astonished when I realized that this John Constable-like nature study had been painted by the artist who did the dazzling Frost Valley!

There a subtle message to the placement of Sloan’s small landscape series. Many of the artists included in the second floor exhibition galleries of “Awakened in You” were graduates of PAFA or had worked in the WPA art programs of the Depression-era Philadelphia. They had to establish their “creds” with works like these nature studies. No artist can claim a spot on the gallery walls of PAFA without climbing the “steps” of practice, experimentation, of inspiration-dripping with perspiration.

Upon entering the “Awakened in You” galleries, you quickly realize just how hard these African American artists worked and how brilliantly they integrated their life experience into the powerful works on view.

Among the first works on art on view in the exhibition galleries are portraits of family members and friends, testifying to bonds of love and relationship which enabled African Americans to endure privation and prejudice for so many years, indeed centuries.

Laura Wheeler Waring's engaging group portrait, Four Friends, painted around 1940, and Barkley Hendrick's Head of a Boy, which introduces this review, evoke childhood as close to an ideal state, yet tinged with a degree of melancholy.
                                                                                                                                        
                            

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) Laura Wheeler Waring's Four Friends, ca. 1940s 

In the wall text which accompanies Four Friends, Sarah Spencer comments on the serious underlying message to what otherwise might be accounted an exercise in "mere" portrait painting. Spencer notes:

Four Friends celebrates Black youth and the innocence of childhood in a world that often sees Black children as a threat. Waring captures joy in its purest form, emphasizing its necessity for Black children’s survival and the ability to fully claim their humanity.

Beyond their evident charm, of these two works of art, assert the human dignity of the young people who posed for their portraits. These works - and many others collected by Dr. Clayton - challenge our preconceptions of the artists. 

Barkley Hendricks later created his "brand" of art, bold, full-length portraits of cool, savvy men and women. They posed, at ease with themselves and proud of their flamboyant "70's" clothing. Hendrick's later portraits strike such a chord that the sensitive drawing of the pensive, young boy takes us off-guard.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) Barkley Hendricks' Head of a Boy (detail)

The skillful handling of a limited range of colors, highlighted by deft touches of light blue on the boy's forehead, the mastery of drawing - all these proclaim an "old master" status for the artist. If it comes as a surprise that Barkley Hendricks created this portrait, and not John Singer Sargent, it should not do so.

Hendricks graduated from PAFA - he studied with Sloan - and so did Waring. There is a strong, Philadelphia regional element to the "Awakened in You" collection. Philadelphia-based Dox Thrash, one of the greatest print makers of mid-century America, is well-represented in the exhibition, though in a unconventional way. The selection of his works on view includes a nude, a controversial African American genre given its connotations with slavery. Thrash was on more sure ground with his arresting portrait of a man wearing red suspenders.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020)  

Dox Thrash's Portrait of Male with Red Suspenders (detail)

Dr. Clayton, however, looked beyond Philadelphia in her collecting efforts.

There are two drawings in "Awakened in You" by the great Chicago artist, Charles White, on view and a strong showing showing of works by Harlem Renaissance artists. I was particularly impressed by the woodcuts of James Lesesne Wells (1902-1997). The ironically entitled, Primitive Girl, is actually an amazingly sophisticated work, skillfully incorporating American folk art themes with the dignity of the bronze portrait sculptures of Benin.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020)  

James Lesesne Wells's Primitive Girl, 1927

In terms of the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, Augusta Savage was surely the most influential, in terms of her leadership and teaching. Her own work as a sculptor was of the highest quality but Savage often lacked the funds to have her clay originals cast in bronze. 

   Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020)  

Augusta Savage's Gamin

The version of this iconic work, which Clayton was able to purchase for her collection, is one of three sculptures which anchor the "Awakened in You" exhibition. The other sculptures, both bronze casts, are Richmond Barthé's Head of a Dancer, created around 1940, and May Howard Jackson's Slave Boy, 1899. 

Another cause for celebration is the high quality of the wall texts which accompany many of the art works on display. Exhibition visitors, myself included, often skim through the comments from unseen, unheralded curators. That is perhaps unavoidable given the need to focus on the art works. But PAFA has gone the extra-mile to commission especially cogent mini-essays to help art lovers grasp the historical setting and aesthetic value of these works of art. 

Some of these wall texts were written by the PAFA curators, as we saw with Sarah Spencer's reflections on Four Friends. For the superlative etching  by Henry Ossawa Tanner, extremely perceptive brilliant insights were provided by Mr. Teddy R. Reeves,  Assistant Curator of Religion, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) Henry O. Tanner's Mosque,Tangier, ca.1910 

Tanner's subject is a mosque in Tangier, Morocco. Reeves, however, affirms that it is the "Judeo-Christian influence on Tanner" that is on full display. Also implicit in this exceptional work is Tanner's awareness of his status in a racially-divided America. Reeves notes:

Within the biblical text, the positionality of one’s physical body inside or outside of a gate was essential in understanding an individual’s position and stature—from the prophets of the Old Testament calling for justice and transparency at the city gates to Jesus’ interaction with the blind beggar Bartimaeus at the city gate in the Gospel of Mark. Tanner’s capturing of the woman and horse outside of the city’s gates is indicative of the marginality African Americans, including Tanner himself, experienced at the gates of many American cities... Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in… (Psalm 24:7)

American art has come a long way since Henry Ossawa Tanner felt compelled to express himself in such coded messages. But it is precisely because Tanner "lifted-up" his head and created great and meaningful art that the gates have finally opened wide for African-American artists, writers, philosophers to express themselves fully and freely.

The same can be said of Augusta Savage, Dox Thrash, Charles White, James Lesesne Wells and the other African-American artists whose works Dr. Constance Clayton preserved in the collection which she has so generously shared with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved  
Images copyright of Anne Lloyd


Introductory Image:
Barkley L. Hendricks, (American, 1945-2017) [Head of a boy], n.d. Charcoal and pastel on paper: 17 x 13 in. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) # 2019.3.24. Gift of Dr. Constance E. Clayton in loving memory of her mother Mrs. Williabell Clayton

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) Laura Wheeler Waring's The Study of a Student, ca. 1940s. 
Oil on canvas: 20 x 16 in. PAFA, # 2019.3.69  Gift of Dr. Constance E. Clayton in loving memory of her mother Mrs. Williabell Clayton 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) Gallery view of the "Awakened in You" exhibition at PAFA.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) Edward Bannister's Untitled (landscape with water and sail boat), 1885. Oil on canvas: 14 3/4 x 23 in. PAFA, # 2019.3.2. Gift of Dr. Constance E. Clayton in loving memory of her mother Mrs. Williabell Clayton 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020)  Romare Bearden's Odyssey Series, ca. 1970s. 
Silkscreen: 25 1/2 x 21 1/4 in. PAFA, # 2019.3.4. Gift of Dr. Constance E. Clayton in loving memory of her mother Mrs. Williabell Clayton 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020)  Dr. David Brigham & Ms. Brooke Davis Anderson introduce Ms. Sarah Spencer (center)  at the "Awakened in You" exhibition at PAFA

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020)  Ms. Sarah Spencer, Assistant Curator of the "Awakened in You" exhibition

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) Louis B. Sloan's  [Landscape with White and Yellow Wild Flowers], n.d. Oil on board: 15 x 21 in. PAFA # 2019.3.44 Gift of Dr. Constance E. Clayton in loving memory of her mother Mrs. Williabell Clayton 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) Laura Wheeler Waring's Four Friends, ca. 1940s. Oil on canvas: 25 x 30 in.  PAFA, # 2019.3.68. Gift of Dr. Constance E. Clayton in loving memory of her mother Mrs. Williabell Clayton

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) Barkley L. Hendricks' [Head of a boy], n.d. (detail).

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020)  Dox Thrash's Portrait of Male with Red Suspenders (detail), date unknown. Watercolor on paper: 11 3/4 x 8 7/8 in. (29.845 x 22.5425 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  # 2019.3.57  Gift of Dr. Constance E. Clayton in loving memory of her mother Mrs. Williabell Clayton.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) James Lesesne Wells' Primitive Girl, 1927. Woodcut, ed. 2/50: 7 1/4 x 8 1/2 in. PAFA, 2019.3.74.  Gift of Dr. Constance E. Clayton in loving memory of her mother Mrs. Williabell Clayton 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) Augusta Savage's Gamin, n.d. Plaster : 9 1/2 x 4 x 5 1/2 in.  PAFA, #  2019.3.38. Gift of Dr. Constance E. Clayton in loving memory of her mother Mrs. Williabell Clayton 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2020) Henry O. Tanner's Mosque, Tangier, ca. 1910. Etching on paper: 10 7/8 x 13 1/4 in.  PAFA, #  2019.3.54. Gift of Dr. Constance E. Clayton in loving memory of her mother Mrs. Williabell Clayton 

From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early Republic at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art

 From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early Republic

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

June 28–December 29, 2019

Reviewed by Ed Voves
Original photos by Anne Lloyd

'"Thus in the beginning all the World was America."

This often-quoted statement by John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government (published in 1689) is acutely relevant to an outstanding exhibition on the birth of landscape art in the United States. This splendid, beautifully-mounted exhibit recently opened at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (PAFA).

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) 

Gallery views of the From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early Republic exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts 

Locke commented on the way that human beings originally lived in a state of nature.  He contrasted this primal life-style with habitation in a civil society based on legal codes enforced by the rule of political authority.

"America" for Locke was the great example of the state of nature. God, Locke wrote. "who hath given the World to Men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of Life, and convenience. The Earth, and all that is therein, is given to Men for the Support and Comfort of their being."

A century later, after the English-speaking colonists had asserted political independence from Britain, their relationship to the natural world became a matter of great importance. The Patriots having won the War of Independence, "America" was now theirs to "make use of it to the best advantage of Life, and convenience."

Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, proposed in 1782 that a quote from the Roman poet Virgil be modified to appear on the Great Seal of the United States, Novus Ordo Seclorum. The motion passed but the idea of "a New Order of the Ages" no longer corresponded to Locke's conception of "America" as a virgin wilderness. After a century of using the lands along the Atlantic seaboard for "the Support and Comfort of their being," few Americans now lived in a "state" of nature.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Joshua Shaw’s Landscape with Farmhouse and Castle, 1818

In 1790, George Washington and the freshly-minted United States Government launched into the serious business of nation-building. The U.S. capital was the most-populous and centrally-located of America's cities, Philadelphia. As Washington's administration and the First Congress wrestled with the many problems facing the fledgling nation, Philadelphia-based artists addressed the challenges of visually representing "a New Order of the Ages" for their country.

This crucial moment in the history of the United States is where the PAFA exhibition comes in. The exhibit has a rather unusual name (which we will discuss) but it really is vital to think of it in terms of the birth of landscape art in the U.S and of the cultural identity crisis which occurred during the 1820's and 1830's.

The PAFA exhibition is entitled From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early Republic. The Hudson River, because of its relation to New York City, is well-known, but what or where is the Schuylkill?

Pierre Varlé, Plan of the City and Its Environs, 1798

This map of Philadelphia shows the grid of the city between the shallow, meandering Schuylkill River on the left and the deep-water Delaware on the right.

The Schuylkill is one of two rivers which flow around the central and oldest part of Philadelphia. Schuylkill means "hidden creek," a name conferred on it by Dutch explorers in the 1600's. Unlike the much larger Delaware River, the Schuylkill is a shallow stream, limiting its use by ocean-going ships. To make the Schuylkill more usable for "the Support and Comfort of their being," Philadelphians tried a number of economic strategies like the use of steamboats and the digging of one of the first canals in the U.S., opened in 1825.

Philadelphia's claim to greatness during the early 1800's, once the political capital had moved to Washington D.C., was the Fairmount Water Works.

Designed in 1812, the Fairmount Water Works consisted of a pumping station and reservoir to supply the city with fresh water from the Schuylkill. Ironically, this impressive facility was conceived and approved on the mistaken assumption that the devastating 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic, which killed half of Philadelphia's population, had been caused by polluted water. Mosquitoes were the real culprit, but the "Watering Committee" had indeed acted wisely. Even Charles Dickens, no great admirer of Americans, was impressed with the Fairmount Water Works when he visited the United States in 1842.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)  Detail of Thomas Birch's Fairmount Water Works, 1821

The stately, neoclassical  edifice of the Fairmount Water Works became so famous that the image was used to decorate Chinese export porcelain, made for the U.S. market.

Unknown artist (China), Cup and Saucer showing the Philadelphia Water Works, 1825

The image of "American" nature which the early Philadelphia artists used time-and-again was one of "progress" and utility, as well as charm and beauty. Philadelphia's merchant elite built country homes on the banks of the Schuylkill and the Delaware where they could watch the movement of their steamboats and coal-laden canal barges.

To give them credit, Philadelphia's "movers and shakers" devoted a considerable amount of effort and money on the arts. The redoubtable Peale brothers, Charles and James, played a dual role as major portrait painters and civic leaders. Not only did the Peales paint the proud "face" of America's prominent leaders and citizens, they also depicted the countryside of the new American nation as we can see in the setting of this family portrait by James Peale.

James Peale, The Artist and His Family, 1795

The Peale brothers were leaders in the founding in 1805 of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The first art school in the U.S., PAFA provided budding artists with the skills to paint or sculpt images of "progress" for the new Republic.

What should have been a straightforward American success story quickly became rather complicated. For one thing,  most of the painters involved  in the Philadelphia-based landscape movement were named Thomas: Thomas Birch, Thomas Doughty, Thomas Cole and Thomas Moran.

The real wrinkle in this story is the fact that three of these artists named "Thomas" were born in England. A number of early America's leading artists like Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley had traveled to Britain around the time of the Revolution, never to return. These young British-born artists looked to the New World to make their fortune.

Thomas Birch's panoramic view of the Fairmount Water Works and the Schuylkill River is perhaps the greatest of the "landscapes of progress" which preoccupied American artists during the early 1800's. Birch painted this exceptional landscape in 1821, epitomizing the virtue and hard work needed to create the Novus Ordo Seclorum in America.

Thomas Birch, Fairmount Water Works, 1821

Birch, however, had achieved success painting naval battles featuring U.S.S. Constitution, "Old Ironsides," during the War of 1812. Increasingly, Birch favored maritime drama over the domestic harmony of the Fairmount Water Works and country homes. This yearning for adventure was the American equivalent of the celebration of the "sublime" in nature taking place in British art at the same time.

America had plenty of "sublime" of its own. Upstream of the Fairmount Water Works was the "Falls of the Schuylkill" and for those willing to venture into the frontier region of the U.S. there was the breath-taking Niagara Falls. Already famous from drawings made by British military engineers during the 1700's, Niagara with its awesome, cascading streams of water began nudging the Fairmount Water Works off the sketch-books and easels of American artists. 

William Russell Birch, Falls of Niagara, 1827

Thomas Birch's father, mercifully name William, caught a case of "Niagara" fever. Highly regarded for a series of urban views of Philadelphia which he created shortly after arriving in the U.S., Birch, Senior, plunged headlong into the wilderness with this 1827 enamel on copper view of  Niagara Falls. Interestingly, he chose a close-cropped focus for this miniature scene, with an Iroquois warrior to give a sense of scale. This was an appreciation of "America" worthy of John Locke - and of a rising generation of Americans whose gaze was increasingly directed westwards. 

"Stay-at-homes" could also savor the sublime with views of Niagara Falls on their dinnerware as with this magnificent lead-glazed earthenware serving dish. It was made by the British firm, William Adams and Sons, at some point between 1834 to 1850. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) 

William Adams & Sons Factory & Thomas Cole, The Falls of Niagara, U.S., 1834-1850

The image on the Adams and Sons serving dish was based on a painting by Thomas Cole (1801-1848).  Born in Lancashire, Cole came to America in 1817. His family's fortune had been ruined in an economic downturn in England. Though largely self-taught, Cole did study for a time at PAFA from 1823 to 1825. He then departed for an extensive sketching and painting tour of New York state, at that time still heavily-forested and sparsely populated. It was Cole who made the definitive turn in U.S. art from "Arcadia" inspired landscapes to the rugged, authentic American scene of the Hudson River School.

That is the canonical version of U.S. art history. A major exhibition in 2018, presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery in London, examined Cole's decisive contributions to American culture. Thomas Cole's Journey: Atlantic Crossings also investigated the influence of J.M.W. Turner, John Constable and other leading British artists upon Cole when he returned to Britain for a study-visit in 1827. Atlantic Crossings was a wonderful exhibit - but did not address in any detail the early formative contributions of the Philadelphia art scene to Cole's success.

That the "Schuylkill River School" laid the foundation of the more famous Hudson River School is the theme of the PAFA exhibition. It would be incorrect, however, to assume that PAFA's From the Schuylkill to the Hudson was planned as a rebuttal to Atlantic Crossings at the Met. Exhibitions take many years to plan. For over a decade, Dr. Anna O. Marley, PAFA's Curator of Historical American Art, has been studying the origins of American landscape art, dating back well before 1800.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019)

 Dr. Anna O. Marley, PAFA's Curator of Historical American Art. Dr. Marley stands next to Thomas Birch’s The Residence of James Craig, Bristol, Pennsylvania, ca.1820-21

No less an authority than Thomas Cole would have agreed with Dr. Marley on the accomplishments and example of the Philadelphia-based landscape artists. Speaking later in his life to the art historian, William Dunlap, Cole said as a young artist that "his heart sunk as he felt his deficiencies in art when standing before the landscapes of Birch."

Cole more than made-up for his "deficiencies." He became a national cultural figure and that is how we should view the rise of landscape painting in the early Republic. This was not an either/or process, Philadelphia vs. New York. The artists involved, whether the many "Thomases" or John Lewis Krimmel, Joshua Shaw, Russell Smith  and Asher Durand, all had one objective. It was to discover and accurately depict the authentic American landscape.

The key discovery was the need to go back to primal nature, Locke's "America," or as close as the artists could reach. It did not matter whether they were members of a Schuylkill River School or a Hudson River School. Their paintings played a leading role in a national trend. Beginning In the 1820's, Americans began to search for their identity in art, literature, religion and philosophy. James Fenimore Cooper, after writing dull English-style novels, dropped this derivative format, selecting American frontier history as the subject for his immortal "Leatherstocking" tales.

Jacob Eichholtz, Conestoga Creek and Lancaster, 1833

Albert Bierstadt, Niagara, 1869

Cooper was writing The Last of the Mohicans in 1825, the year that Cole first traveled up the Hudson. The Pennsylvania-born Jacob Eichholtz (1776-1842) and the German-born Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) followed Cooper and Cole to the "backcountry" for the same purpose. All sought to discover the real America and the true meaning of American life.

It is delightful to be able to report that this journey of discovery continues with From the Schuylkill to the Hudson at PAFA.

Most of the works of art on view in the exhibition come from PAFA's extensive collection. Dr. Marley conducted a thorough audit of PAFA's paintings from the 1800's and came across a magnificent mid-nineteenth century landscape which had been forgotten or overlooked for decades. Research showed that the painting had quite a tale to tell, directly relevant to the theme of From the Schuylkill to the Hudson.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Paul Weber’s Landscape: Evening, 1856

The huge oil-on-canvas was entitled Landscape: Evening. A now obscure German artist, Paul Weber (1823-1916), had created this masterpiece in 1856. It is a tour-de-force depiction of the American wilderness and was so-regarded during the 1850's. A subscription was taken among Philadelphia's art lovers to purchase the painting for PAFA.

Who was this virtually unknown painter? Gottlieb Daniel Paul Weber had fled Germany after the 1848 democratic revolutions in Western Europe had been crushed by military  forces. He emigrated to the U.S., settling in Philadelphia. He  exhibited widely throughout the U.S. and won the Silver Medal from PAFA in 1858.

Weber was also an influential teacher. Two of the greatest American landscape painters of the 1800's, William Trost Richards and William Stanley Haseltine, studied with Weber. Both are now relatively forgotten, as is Weber. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Detail of Paul Weber’s Landscape: Evening

Landscape: Evening is a revelation. This is not only a technical marvel, as can be seen in the incredible way that Weber handled the golden glow of the setting sun on the topmost branches of the trees. More significantly, Weber transformed a relatively undistinguished patch of woodland into a setting for profound meditation on the mysteries of creation, the cosmos, the passage of time.

 There are no landmark features of nature here or man-made monuments, no Niagara Falls or Fairmount Water Works, to distract your attention. It's just you and God. 

 With this rediscovered masterpiece, Paul Weber places each of us in that much-discussed realm, the state of nature, where "in the beginning all the World was America."

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves. Original Photos: Anne Lloyd. All rights reserved                                                                                           
Images courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

Introductory Image:

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Detail of Thomas Birch's Fairmount Water Works, 1821. Oil on canvas:  20 1/8 x 30 1/16 in. (51.1175 x 76.35875 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection. #: 1845.1. Bequest of Charles Graff.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Gallery views of the From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early Republic exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Joshua Shaw’s Landscape with Farmhouse and Castle, 1818. Oil on canvas: 15 1/4 x 21 1/2 in. (38.7 x 54.6 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection, #1879.8.21. Bequest of Henry C. Carey (The Carey Collection).

Pierre Varlé. Plan of the City and Its Environs, 1798. Watercolor on paper: 18 x 20 in. (45.72 x 50.8 cm.) Private collection, Chestnut Hill

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Detail of Thomas Birch's Fairmount Water Works, 1821.

Artist/maker unknown, Chinese, for export to the American market. Cup and Saucer showing the Philadelphia Waterworks,1825. Hard-paste porcelain with cobalt underglaze decoration and gilt cup: 2 5/8 x 4 3/8 x 3 5/8 in. (6.6675 x 11.1125 x 9.2075 cm.); saucer: 1 1/8 x 5 1/2 in. (2.8575 x 13.97 cm.) Philadelphia Museum of Art

James Peale, (1749 -1831) The Artist and His Family, 1795.Oil on canvas: 31 1/4 x 32 3/4 in. (79.4 x 83.2 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection, #1922.1.1. Gift of John Frederick Lewis, 1922.1.1.

Thomas Birch, (1779-1851) Fairmount Water Works, 1821. Oil on canvas: 20 1/8 x 30 1/16 in. (51.1175 x 76.35875 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection, #1845.1. Bequest of Charles Graff.

William Russell Birch, (1755-1834) Falls of Niagara, 1827. Enamel on copper: 2 1/2 x 2 1/4 in. (6.4 x 5.7 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection, #1860.1. Bequest of Eliza Howard Burd.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) William Adams and Sons Factory & Thomas Cole, The Falls of Niagara, U.S., 1834-1850. Earthenware (white) and lead glaze 1 11/16 x 19 7/8 x 16 3/8 in. (4.318 x 50.546 x 41.656 cm.) Winterthur Museum, Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Dr. Anna O. Marley, Curator of Historical American Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Dr. Marley stands next to Thomas Birch’s The Residence of James Craig, Bristol, Pennsylvania, as seen from the Delaware River, ca. 1820-21, PAFA collection.

Albert Bierstadt, (1830-1902) Niagara, 1869.Oil on paper laid down on canvas: 19 x 27 in. (48.26 x 68.58 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection, #2015.18. Joseph E. Temple Fund.

Jacob Eichholtz, (1776-1842) Conestoga Creek and Lancaster, 1833. Oil on canvas: 20 1/4 x 30 1/4 in. (51.4 x 76.8 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collection, #1961.8.10. Gift of Mrs. James H. Beal.

Anne Lloyd, Photo (2019) Paul Weber’s Landscape: Evening, 1856. Oil on canvas: 60 1/4 x 86 in. (153.0 x 218.4 cm.) Pennsylvania Academy purchase, by subscription, #1857.1.

                                                                    

The Artist's Garden at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

The Artist's Garden: 

American Impressionism and The Garden Movement, 1887—1920

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA)
February 13, 2015 - May 24, 2015

Reviewed by Ed Voves

The Artist's Garden: American Impressionism and The Garden Movement, 1887—1920, takes a fresh look at the landscape tradition from the standpoint of our own backyard. The new exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art presents dazzling art and vintage "green thumb" gardening books from the late-Victorian era through the end of the First World War.

Cecilia Beaux, Landscape with Farm Building, Concarneau, France, 1888

The PAFA exhibit is certainly a feast for the eyes. It is an expansive exhibition with art work by virtually every American artist of the period, including Cecilia Beaux (1855- 1942) and William Merritt Chase (1849-1916). 

Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872-1955), Water Lilies Fountain, 1913

The ideals of beauty and innocence from the years before the First World War are evoked by two exquisite garden statues by Harriet Whitney Frishmuth  (1880-1980) and Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872-1955).

An additional feature of the PAFA display is a companion exhibit, Gardens on Paper. Along with rare prints, this exhibit presents an array of early color photographs, discovered in the Pennsylvania Academy’s archives.  These Autochromes, the earliest method of color photography, show the garden of artist Thomas Shields Clarke at his home in Lenox, Massachusetts.  I hope to do a separate post on these incredible images.

Thomas Shields Clarke,  Photographic Autochrome, ca. 1910

The Artist's Garden is not just an occasion for displaying paintings of verdant fields or striking works of stained glass.  There is a subtext to the exhibition, the lurking presence of daunting social problems besetting American culture at the turn of the twentieth century.

American Impressionism began when young artists from the U.S. traveled to France to study and paint with Claude Monet at his idyllic retreat, Giverny. The Americans produced works of beauty that matched some of the best work done by the great Impressionist master and his colleagues, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro. 

John Leslie Breck (1860-1899) was one of the first American painters - with the obvious exception of Mary Cassatt - to embrace Impressionism. There is no sign of humanity in his landscape, Garden in Giverny, just dense masses of flowers, seemingly untended, and an empty path. But there is such a powerful sense of being in this work that one senses the presence of the natural world in a direct, almost personal manner.

John Leslie Breck, Garden at Giverny, between 1887-91

Many of the American Impressionists followed in Breck’s footsteps, painting works of nature with little sign of human mediation. Color, itself, in the dazzling garden and flowering field, was an invitation to the Impressionist style as the artist Charles Curran noted in a 1909 article discussing the work of his colleague, Willard Metcalf.

In looking at such a gorgeous mass of flowers in nature the eye would be so filled with the richness and profusion of forms that the precise form of no one particular flower would be noticed. It would detract greatly from the charm of such a picture if each flower were sharply drawn in detail…

Impressionism then was suited to the vision of American painters who embraced it so readily. The world of art, however, had already moved on by the time that they began painting en plein air in France. The joint Impressionist exhibitions in Paris ceased after 1886. Symbolism, with its powerful explorations of the human psyche, was gaining in notoriety. The brilliant landscapes painted by the American Impressionists could thus be seen as the final flourish of an avant-garde art movement that was soon to be overshadowed by more radical artistic oeuvres.

American Impressionism and the Garden Movement can be interpreted in another light, however. They were vigorous responses to the changing circumstances of life in the United States following the Civil War. These post-war decades were dubbed the "Gilded Age" by Mark Twain. But "Iron Age" is a more accurate title.

As the U.S. economy surged past Great Britain and Germany, the environmental and social costs of breakneck industrialism could not be disregarded for long. The vast slag heaps of the coal industry and the polluted rivers threatened the image of America the Beautiful. The shocking disparity between the standard of living of the "Social Register" few and that of the impoverished “Masses” threatened the ideals of America the Just.

Nostalgia, combined with concern for the future, nurtured the Colonial Garden Movement. Beginning with displays at the Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia in 1876, theories about the "simplicity" of life during the eighteenth century exerted a widespread appeal. From the design of gardens and the emphasis on planting native or vintage flowers to the decoration of summer homes, a popular, romantic image of Early America took hold, countering the crass, "shoddy" reality of the late 1800's.

As the PAFA exhibit details, the Garden Movement was influenced by the cultural background of Philadelphia and the New Hope art colony in nearby Bucks County. Philadelphia was a city with a deep-rooted "club" tradition reaching back to Benjamin Franklin's Junto. In 1913, the Garden Club of America was founded in Philadelphia. The city was also the home of the Burpee Seed Company, founded in 1876. The world's largest mail order seed company, Burpee’s Seeds enabled a new generation of plant and flower enthusiasts to swell the Garden Movement.

All these disparate factors combined to promote the Garden Movement as an ideal for America. Philip Leslie Hale's 1908 painting, The Crimson Rambler captured the mood to perfection. The vibrant young woman in the picture sits astride the porch fence, poised for growth and movement, just as the climbing rose bush - a variety only introduced in the U.S. during the 1890's - soars upward.

Hale (1865–1931) was a New Englander, a descendant of the Revolutionary War hero, Nathan Hale. If Philadelphia provided inspiration for the Garden Movement, many of the leading American Impressionist painters were from New England. 

Of these, Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935) was the most commanding figure. Prodigiously talented and prolific in the number and variety of his paintings, Hassam was also a contradictory figure. Self-taught, he was a consummate professional. Hassam loved the quietude of New England seacoast refuges like Appledore Island, Maine, where he befriended the poet and gardener, Celia Thaxter. Yet he never tired of observing people in the supercharged atmosphere of the big cities.

"Humanity in motion,” Hassam declared, “is a continual study to me.” 

Hassam's art was not without  points of contradiction, too, and the influence of the Garden Movement, perhaps surprisingly, brought them to the surface.

Childe Hassam,The Goldfish Window, 1916

In The Gold Fish Window, 1916, Hassam painted a work of great beauty. Every detail of the scene, natural or man-made, is bathed in golden, luminous light. Yet there is total absence of the spontaneity and mobility that Hassam professed to find intriguing.

The Gold Fish Window is a disturbing picture. Its unsettling effect is compounded by the fact that Hassam painted many variations on the theme of a solitary young woman, meditating or melancholy. Like the goldfish swimming in their light-drenched bowl, the young woman is seemingly a hostage of her environment. The window frames, the bordering curtains, the polished table act as barriers to her interaction with the outside world. Even the garden, sun-dappled and flower strewn, is less of a sanctuary than a prison cell.

The young woman in The Gold Fish Window may be compared to the protagonists of Johannes Vermeer's works. Vermeer’s young women occupy a serene moment in time. Yet they are all absorbed in a task, making lace, reading or playing music. Hassam's young woman, by contrast, clutches a flower to her breast in an almost funereal gesture.

The Gold Fish Window was painted in 1916 while the Women's Suffrage Movement vigorously campaigned for the rights of women in the United States. You would never know it from The Gold Fish Window that Hassam had declared that a true artist is "one who paints the life he sees about him, and so makes a record of his own epoch.”

As we can see in the array of paintings in the PAFA exhibit, other painters of the era also placed pensive young women in their works. In 1918, Daniel Garber (1880–1958), the leader of the second generation of the New Hope Impressionists, countered this view of passive femininity. Garber’s The Orchard Window is a brilliant evocation of a young woman in harmony with nature and society.

Daniel Garber, The Orchard Window, 1918

By the 1920’s, however, American Impressionists like Garber were unable to maintain their place in the front ranks of Modernism. For all the revolutionary technique that Hassam, Garber and others brought to their work, American Impressionism was increasingly perceived as the art of the past. 

These reflections deal with only one of the themes of PAFA exhibit, the Lady in the Garden.  The Artist's Garden is wide-ranging and extremely perceptive in its presentation of vital developments in American life and culture. Additional themes treat the Urban Garden, Leisure and Labor in the American Garden and the Garden in Winter. 

The idea of including winter scenes in the exhibit, the Garden at Rest, is particularly significant because it shows the sensitivity of these American artists to the cycles of nature, to the fundamental structure and the regenerative power of the natural world.

Of all the American Impressionists, none made a better case for the importance of the natural world than John Henry Twachtman (1853-1902). Born in Ohio, but a New Englander by choice, Twachtman infused the subtle tonalities of James McNeill Whistler into his seasonal landscapes, especially those depicting winter.

"I can see now how necessary it is to live always in the country—at all seasons of the year. We must have snow and lots of it. Never is nature more lovely than when it is snowing," Twachtman wrote, ". . . . That feeling of quiet and all nature is hushed to silence."

Abbott Handerson Thayer,  Blue Jays in Winter, c. 1905-09

Abbott Handerson Thayer's Blue Jays in Winter is another testament to the rediscovery of the natural environment. Thayer (1849-1921), more famous for his paintings of angels and childhood innocence, produced this remarkable work for his book, Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom. 

Thayer's ideas on animal camouflage were disputed by no less a figure than Theodore Roosevelt. But the important point is that Thayer - and the rest of the American Impressionists - focused on nature as a living entity, a vital component of our daily lives.
Ultimately, the role of the artist as a vital interpreter of nature is the essential theme of this thoughtful exhibit. The Artist's Garden: American Impressionism and The Garden Movement, 1887—1920 will be on display at PAFA, February 13, 2015 - May 24, 2015. Following its presentation at PAFA, this wonderful exhibition will be shown at a number of other U.S. museums during 2015-2016.

And of course, the natural wonders depicted by Breck, Hassam, Garber, Twachtman and the other American Impressionists are also on view each time you look out the window on to your own garden or green space nearby.

***

Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 
Images Courtesy of the  Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

Introductory Image                                                                                                           Philip Leslie Hale (1865–1931), The Crimson Rambler, ca. 1908 Oil on canvas 25 1/4 x 30 3/16 in. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Joseph E. Temple Fund, 1909.12 

Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942), Landscape with Farm Building, Concarneau, France, 1888, Oil on canvas, 11 1/16 x 14 3/16 in. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Gift of Henry Sandwith Drinker, 1950.17.31

Thomas Shields Clarke, Series of approximately 100 photographic autochromes, ca. 1910 PAFA Archives 

Bessie Potter Vonnoh (1872-1955), Water Lilies Fountain, 1913, Bronze, 28 ¾ x 15 ¼ x 7 ¼ in. Conner Rosenkranz, LLC Photo: Mark Ostrander, courtesy of Conner Rosenkranz, New York

John Leslie Breck (1860-1899), Garden at Giverny (In Monet’s Garden), between 1887-91 Oil on canvas, 18 x 21 7/8 in. Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.18. Photo: © Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago 

Childe Hassam (1859-1935),The Goldfish Window, 1916, Oil on canvas, 34 3/8 x 50 5/8 in. Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, Museum Purchase: Currier Funds, 1937.2

Daniel Garber (1880-1958), The Orchard Window, 1918, Oil on canvas, 56 7/16 x 52 ¼ in. Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA, Centennial gift of the family of Daniel Garber, 1976-216-1

Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921), Blue Jays in Winter, study for book, Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, c. 1905-09, Oil on canvas, 22 1/8 x 18 1/8 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, Gift of the heirs of Abbott Handerson Thayer 1950.2.12/Art Resource, NY