Art Eyewitness Book Review: Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks

Edward S.Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks

Delmonico Books & Prestel/$65/184 pages

                                                                             

Reviewed by Ed Voves

If I were asked to select one artist to represent the American experience or what Robert Hughes called "American visions,"  I would pick the photographer, Edward S. Curtis. 

Pages and pages of explanation for my choice would never suffice. But even a brief perusal of the new book, Edward S.Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks, will quickly confirm Curtis as a defining genius of American expression.

Edward S. Curtis was the self-appointed champion of the Native American peoples of North America. Curtis, born in 1868 in Wisconsin and reared in Minnesota, was a bona fide Western pioneer. Like earlier frontiersmen, Daniel Boone and David Crockett, Curtis had an empathy for Native Americans which enabled him to see them as human beings rather than as savages.  

With his camera, Curtis recorded the traditional way of life of tribes from the Arctic Circle to the Rio Grande. The result of his determination to pursue this challenging - and occasionally dangerous - task is the subject of this compelling  book  published by Delmonico and Prestel.

The photographs comprising Edward S.Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks represent the "best of the best" taken by Curtis.  In the multi-volume The North American Indian, the career-defining work of Curtis, there were 2,234 photographs richly produced in photogravure. The quality of the One Hundred Masterworks photos is worthy of the now legendary earlier effort, produced in a limited run of 300 copies of each volume.

It needs to be highlighted and underscored that Curtis, a largely self-taught photographer, was not only an artist of the first rank. He was also a driven, obsessive picture taker and a methodical ethnographic researcher. Curtis was known as "Shadow Catcher" to the Native Americans he photographed. Between 1896 and 1927, Curtis captured 40,000 "shadows," a staggering 40,000 photographs.

Edward S.Curtis, Canyon de Chelly- Navaho, 1904 

The law of photographic averages or being "at the right spot at the right time," however, does not account for astounding images like Canyon de Chelly - Navaho, 1904, or Sioux Mother and Child, taken a year later. Curtis entered into a state of spiritual communion with those he photographed. There are 40,000 souls in the pictures Curtis took - and the soul of America.

In some ways, Curtis was indeed "the right man at the right spot at the right time." 

Six years before Curtis began his quest, the last "stand" of Native American resistance to the loss of their independence took place in the infamous "battle" at Wounded Knee, South Dakota on December 23, 1890. Three years later, at a meeting of the American Historical Association, Frederick Jackson Turner delivered his "frontier thesis" which explained U.S. history in terms of the westward expansion of Anglo-Saxon society from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.

Where the original inhabitants of North America were to fit into the post-frontier scheme of the U.S. was a loaded question. Many people expected the "Red Man" to simply vanish. Rapid demographic decline among Native Americans in the years following Wounded Knee seemed to confirm this. In 1900, there were only 248,253 Native Americans living in the continental U,S., while the estimate in 1800 had been 600,000, almost certainly an under count. 

Edward S.Curtis, Sioux Mother and Child, 1905

Given the explosive rate of population increase in the U.S. by natural birth alone during the nineteenth century, the days of the Native Americans as a separately identifiable racial group seemed numbered. Even Curtis, for all his spiritual kinship with Native Americans, half-expected this to happen. Some of his most haunting images have titles like The Vanishing Race - Navaho, 1904.

The "Red Man" did not vanish. Thanks in large measure to Curtis, Native American culture was documented and to a considerable degree preserved. A series of richly produced photographic volumes, The North American Indian, introduced Curtis' stunning images to collectors and the public beginning in 1907.

In just over thirty years, Edward Curtis conducted a single-handed campaign to save some vestiges of the traditional way of life of Native Americans from oblivion. Adept at still photography and motion picture camera work, Curtis created imagery that is enchantingly beautiful and historically accurate. With grudging financial backing from J.P. Morgan and the emotional support of President Theodore Roosevelt, Curtis forged ahead. 

Edward S.Curtis, Self--portrait with baleen whale, Pacific Northwest, ca.1914

Against incredible odds, Curtis succeeded in publishing the last of the lavishly produced photo books in 1930. Publication was literally in the "nick of time" because many of the "old ways"  of the tribes had been undermined and effaced by U.S. Government agents and Christian missionaries in the years since Curtis commenced his venture in 1896. 

It was a bittersweet triumph for Curtis. The Great Depression began in earnest just as the final volumes of his magnum opus came off the press. Curtis had beggared himself in the process, wrecked his marriage and endangered his health.  Few people had the money to purchase his books or copies of his photos - or even cared to. 

Curtis scratched out a living for himself doing still photography and some motion picture work for the Hollywood studios. He worked on The Plainsman starring Gary Cooper, one of the rare adult Westerns of the 1930's. Curtis tried his hand at some wildcat mining schemes and died in obscurity in 1952. 

Curtis and The North American Indian nearly vanished from collective memory. Then in 1971, the Morgan Library in New York City mounted an exhibition of Curtis' works, based on the financial support which J.P. Morgan had provided. Scholars took note and slowly Curtis' astonishing achievement began to be realized.

The present volume and the related museum exhibits of Edward Curtis' "masterworks" are the result of the devoted study of one of these scholars. Christopher Cardozo is the leading contemporary authority on Curtis. Cardozo has created an impressive collection of the photographs taken by Curtis, authored or edited eight books about Curtis and curated major exhibitions in museums and galleries around the world.

The North American Indian was notable for Curtis' scholarly text as well as his stunning photographs. The same is true of Edward S.Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks. Cardozo and fellow historian, A.D. Coleman, have provided a brilliant assessment of Curtis as a photographer, ethnographer and environmentalist. 

Edward S.Curtis, An Oasis in the Badlands,1905

Coleman  notes perceptively that Curtis' photographic style occasionally reflected the Pictorialist school of photography and Alfred Stieglitz's journal Camera Work, both influential during the early 1900's. Certainly, the deliberately romantic poses of a small sample of the photos in The North American Indian like An Oasis in the Badland - Sioux, 1905 showed that Curtis was a man of his own time. 

Yet Cardozo cogently argues that "Curtis' pictures transcend by far the merely informational and illustrative: they can stand alone as autonomous, fully realized works of visual art." 

The importance of the individuality of the subjects of Curtis' photos cannot be stressed too much. The Native Americans who posed for Curtis emerge from his pictures as "autonomous, fully realized" human beings. This is in contrast to the pseudo-scientific titles that Curtis occasionally bestowed on some of the photos like "Lummi type" or "Kalispel type." Perhaps, he did this to satisfy the sociologists of his era, fixated on finding representative samples of the world's inhabitants.

Edward S.Curtis, Lummi Type,1899

Yet, when you stop to examine the strong, sensitive face of this matriarch of the Lummi tribe, you realize the absurdity of any attempt to categorize human beings as "typical." This woman came from Curtis' home ground, on the coast of Washington State. She was in essence a neighbor. One can only wonder why he did not record her name or devise a romantic-sounding title for her as did for others.

Whatever the reason, the unique, God-given self-hood of this Native American woman rips asunder the straight jacket of categorization in any shape or form. And you have to give Curtis part of the credit for this. Curtis, a master of the techniques of photography, was equally adept at capturing  the spiritual essence of his subjects and conveying this to us, the viewer.

Louise Erdrich and Eric Jolly both emphasize this shared experience in their essays in Edward S.Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks.  It should be noted that both are Native Americans. Jolly writes:

Edward S.Curtis, A Walpi Man, 1903

Look into the eyes of Qahatika girl and A Hopi Man and recognize that they are looking back at us across time. These are haunting images that depict pride, strength and a sense of a future, that give us hope for the generations to follow ... As you experience the stories that emanate from these photographs, you have a rare opportunity to connect across time and generations to the heart and soul of these people. In so doing, you too may become stewards of their story. In the end, this work is breathtakingly, though simply, a collective act of stewardship.

This brilliant insight is really the best way - perhaps the only way - to interpret Curtis' achievement. 

Curtis, remarkable individualist though he was, helped to create a bond of empathy between racial and ethnic groups that was held by many in his time to be unbridgeable. And this achievement is rendered even more extraordinary by the way that he fostered an "intensity of regard" between generations, past, present and to come, as Louise Erdrich also wisely discerns.

Perhaps without quite knowing it, Edward S. Curtis, the last pioneer from the Old West, was the first to explore an America without frontiers, an America whose people are truly "from the many ... one." 

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

Images Courtesy of Delmonico Books and Prestel Publishing Co.

Introductory Image: Edward S.Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks 2015 (cover) Image credit:  Delmonico Books and Prestel Publishing

Edward S.Curtis (American, 1868-1952), Canyon de Chelly- Navaho, 1904 Photogravure 12" x 16", Southwest

Edward S.Curtis (American, 1868-1952), Sioux Mother and Child, 1905, Platinum, 7 11/16" x 5 7/16", Great Plains

Edward S.Curtis (American, 1868-1952), Edward S.Curtis, (Self--portrait with baleen whale, Pacific Northwest), ca.1914, Toned Gelatin Silver, Northwest

Edward S.Curtis (American, 1868-1952), An Oasis in the Badlands,1905, Photogravure 12" x 16", Great Plains

Edward S.Curtis (American, 1868-1952), Lummi Type,1899, Photogravure, 16" x 12", Northwest

Edward S.Curtis (American, 1868-1952), A Walpi Man, 1903, Platinum, 15 3/16" x 10 1/2", Southwest

Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts

Class Distinctions:

Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 

October 11, 2015 - January 18, 2016

Reviewed by Ed Voves

Occasionally, when I walk into the galleries of an art museum, I get the sensation that I've stepped onto the pages of an art history book. That feeling often strikes me in MOMA where so many of the great works of early Modernism are displayed in close proximity.

A recent visit to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) provided a similar feeling of crossing a portal of time. The pages I walked onto, however, dealt more with the realm of history than of art. A consciousness of past time occupied the foreground here, matters of foreshortening and brush stroke being pushed a bit  to the side.

That is not to say that the superlative exhibition at the MFA, Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer lacks masterpieces of art. Of these, there are plenty. The Astronomer by Johannes Vermeer, on loan from the Louvre, is but one of the celebrated Old Master icons on view.

Johannes Vermeer, The Astronomer, 1668

The theme of Class Distinctions, however, takes a different path than most other treatments of the Dutch Golden Age. Previous exhibits have often stressed the innovations and individualism of the great Dutch artists.

Class Distinctions examines how the revolution in art in the Netherlands provides insight into the social make-up of  the United Provinces during the seventeenth century. The Netherlands, like all of Europe in the 1600's, was divided into tightly circumscribed classes. Significantly, the MFA exhibit brilliantly reveals that interaction, not exclusiveness, was the keynote of Dutch society during that troubled century.

The exhibit also testifies to the connection between the growing tolerance and prosperity of Dutch society and the receptiveness of its citizens  to the arts. To the amazement and incredulity of the envious English, art works were purchased and cherished by all but the poorest Dutch citizens.

"God created the world," as the old proverb states, "but the Dutch made Holland."

And the same was true of the art of the Dutch Golden Age.

Interaction and cooperation enabled the Dutch, beginning in the early Middle Ages, to dredge marshland, build flood barriers and convert marginal land into pasture and farmland. In short, to "make" Holland. These same principles of conduct are apparent throughout the exhibition. Although the first three galleries are devoted to separate classes, the works of art reflect the binding ties of obligation and service which held the United Provinces together.

The first  exhibition gallery is devoted to the upper classes. Despite being surrounded by  other magnificent art works, Frans Hals' dynamic group-portrait, Regents of the St. Elisabeth Hospital of Haarlem, exerts an almost magnetic force.

Frans Hals, Regents of the St. Elisabeth Hospital of Haarlem, 1641

Hals painted Regents in 1641, a year before Rembrandt's fabled Militia Company of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, misnamed the Nightwatch. Like Rembrandt, Hals shows an animated scene of upper class officials performing their civic duty. Unpaid - except in honor and prestige -these Regents undertook vital tasks, insuring that the poor received effective aid and that the lid on dissent was kept securely fastened.

Group portraits were a major artistic innovation of the Dutch Golden Age. Portraits of regents boards were a major sub-genre. According to art scholar Eric Ketelaar, no less than 33 group portraits of regents boards were painted in Amsterdam alone during the peak years of the Golden Age, 1617 - 1686. 

The St. Elisabeth Hospital was in Haarlem, Holland's brewery capital. Most of the Regents of St. Elisabeth Hospital were wealthy brewers and therefore initally of the middle class. Administering to the poor provided them with the credentials to move up in rank, joining the ruling elite of the United Provinces.

Hals painted group portraits of female regents, as did his rival, Johannes Verspronck. It is a pity that one of these portraits of regentessen could not have been included in Class Distinctions. It is virtually the only significant omission in this brilliantly curated exhibit.

Another outstanding work in the first gallery highlights the military  and diplomatic effort needed to protect Dutch society during the Golden Age. Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange, painted by Anthony van Dyck, about 1631–32, shows the Stadholder or chief executive of the United Provinces.

The title of Stadholder was a vestige of Hapsburg rule of the Netherlands, similar in rank to the viceroy who ruled Mexico for the Spanish crown. When the Netherlands revolted against the Spanish Hapsburgs in 1568, the position of Stadholder was maintained. 

With self-rule as the motivating force of the Dutch resistance to Spain, the power of the Stadholder might well have been reduced to ceremonial insignificance. The opposite was true. As Stadholder, Frederik Hendrik was the supreme military leader or kapitein-generaal but answerable to the Dutch legislature, the Estates General.

Anthony van Dyck, Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange, c.1631

The careworn face of Frederik Hendrik (1584-1647) reflects his difficult position. As Prince of Orange, he was a hereditary nobleman but also the leader of a republic battling for its freedom against mighty Spain. Frederik Hendrik spent his whole career fighting - and beating - the Spanish. He never wore fancy armor in combat as he does in van Dyck's portrait but this battle gear symbolizes his life of service to his county men.

The second - and the central - gallery of the exhibit deals with the broad social category that made the Dutch independence movement a viable enterprise. Ship builders and shop keepers, clergyman and tavern owners, lens makers and artists - all combined and cooperated to form the first recognizable middle class in a modern sense of the term.

With roots stretching back to the 1300's, the Dutch middle class had a degree of influence during the Golden Age that was unmatched by any other nation in Europe. As with the upper class regents and regentessen, the role of women in the contributions of the middle class is readily apparent as well.

Rembrandt's The Shipbuilder and his Wife depicts the interaction of Jan Rijcksen (1560/2-1637) with his wife, Griet Jans. They were a Roman Catholic couple and loyal citizens of the Dutch Republic. Rijcksen was the master ship builder of the Dutch East India Company. Rembrandt's painting, one of his early masterpieces, shows a preoccupied Rijcksen being handed a note by Griet Jans. 

Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Rijcksen and His Wife, Griet Jans, 1633

In Rembrandt's unforgettable work, Rijcksen looks up, perplexed and startled like an absent-minded professor who has just been reminded that his lecture began fifteen minutes ago. Griet Jans, by comparison, is a model of calm and efficiency.

It was a typical situation. Dutch men engaged in politics, war, commerce and science. Dutch women were left to run the homes and very often the family business affairs, thus keeping  the whole enterprise from crashing into ruin. 

Gerrit Dou, Grocery Shop, 1647

Gerrit Dou's Grocery Shop, dated to 1647,  and Adriaen van Ostade's The Fishwife (displayed in the gallery devoted to the Dutch lower class) likewise show the vital role of women in the day-to-day management of Dutch economic life. But women had an inspirational role as well, serving as guardians of what Simon Schama calls  "the moral geography" of the Dutch Republic.

Faced by the awesome, if brittle, power of Spain, followed later by French invasions under Louis XIV, the Dutch could not afford the luxury of always keeping their women at home. Yet the family hearth was of transcendent importance to a people fighting for their independence. Pieter de Hooch evoked the quiet, clean, peaceful atmosphere of the Dutch home in a series of memorable paintings like Interior with Women beside a Linen Cupboard, painted in 1663.

In de Hooch's painting, a mother and her elder daughter fold and store the family linen. A younger daughter pauses from playing with her hockey stick to watch. The wider world beckons beyond the vestibule or vorhuis of the home but the little girl is learning how the "moral geography" of the Dutch home - and the Dutch Republic - is maintained: by unremitting work and obsessive attention to detail. 

De Hooch's painting testifies to the personal toll that it took to "keep the home fires burning." This particular work is one of the last great family-themed works that he did. After 1663, de Hooch stopped painting scenes with children. Two of his own children died around that time, followed by his wife in 1667. Financial woe added to his anxiety, the art market all but collapsing during the 1660's. De Hooch began painting scenes of elegant ladies and dashing gentlemen, perhaps to entice wealthy clients. De Hooch's muse soon abandoned him and he died in an insane asylum in 1684.

Pieter de Hooch, Interior with Women beside a Linen Cupboard, 1663

Standing over the door frame in de Hooch's Interior with Women beside a Linen Cupboard is a curious figure. In his book, The Embarrassment of Riches, Schama identifies the peculiar statue as Mercury, god of commerce. Mercury is holding a bag of coins. Was this an admission by de Hooch of the financial pressures that menaced the "moral geography" of the Dutch home?

Whatever the relation of de Hooch's personal circumstances to the composition of his painting, the use of doorways and the vorhuis as a stage for pictorial drama appeared in other Dutch paintings as well. Jacob Ochtervelt used the door frame and vorhuis as a motif in a number of his paintings. It is the point where the lives of the well-to-do and laboring poor intersect.

Standing on the other side of the doorway in his painting (the introductory image of this review), Ochtervelt shows itinerant musicians. They are performing an impromptu concert for a middle class child and her nurse, with a reward in hand from the lady of the house. 


The charm of this wonderful painting should not obscure its serious theme. In this moment of shared humanity, we can see how the Dutch class system preserved both the lines of demarcation and communication between rich and poor. In this genre scene, we are made aware of how the United Provinces remained united.

Jan van Bijlert, Portraits of the Men from the St. Job Inn in Utrecht Collecting Alms, c.1630

The third and fourth galleries of Class Distinctions display numerous works that depict the lives of the poor or the ways that the social classes mingled, associated and worked together. Portraits of the Men from the St. Job Inn in Utrecht Collecting Alms by Jan van Bijlert is particularly noteworthy.

The fourth gallery has a surprise in store, even for art lovers like me who expected great things from Class Distinctions. Ronni Baer, the MFA curator who planned the exhibition, prepared a stunning mini-exhibit of three tables, each set with the dinnerware and table accouterments of the three Dutch classes during the 1600's. The pieces were meticulously selected from art collections from the Netherlands and the United States. 


I was transfixed by this ingenious and moving display of artifacts from the everyday lives of the Dutch people. It was like a door had been opened to the Golden Age and I was permitted to stand in the vorhuis to get a glimpse.

A contrast of the Upper & Lower Class table settings in the Class Distinctions Exhibit.

Ann and Graham Gund Gallery *Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston



It is impossible to give a true sense of this insightful display in an online review like this. By grouping photos of the upper and lower class table settings, I hope to enable the brilliantly orchestrated sense of contrast to be apparent. 

The Middle Class table setting in the Class Distinctions Exhibit.

Ann and Graham Gund Gallery *Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

With a more detailed view of the middle class setting, hopefully the feeling of kindred experience that this tableau engenders can be grasped as well.

This year has been extraordinarily rich in wonderful art exhibitions. I will not be so foolhardy as to pick an Academy Award-style "best exhibit" for 2015.  However, Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer does deserve an extra word of praise.

Like Job Berckheyde's Baker, announcing that his baked goods are ready and waiting for rich and poor alike, the MFA exhibit sounds the trumpet of our common humanity. 

 

Job Berckheyde, The Baker, about 1681



Whether we wear an elegant lace ruff or a woolen scarf about our necks, we are all children of God. And like the Dutch folk of the Golden Age, we are all fed with the bread of life from God's table.

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

Images courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Introductory Image:     
Jacob Ochtervelt (Dutch, 1634–1682), Street Musicians at the Door, 1665 Oil on canvas, 68.6 x 57.2 cm (27 x 22 1/2 in.) (Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Eugene A. Perry in Memory of her mother, Mrs. Claude Kilpatrick 

Johannes Vermeer (Dutch, 1632–1675), The Astronomer, 1668, Oil on canvas, 51.5 x 45.5 cm (20 1/4 x 18 in.)Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Peintures 

Frans Hals (Dutch, 1581 to 1585-1666), Regents of the St. Elisabeth Hospital in Haarlem, 1641, Oil on canvas, 153 × 252 cm (60 1/4 × 99 1/4 in.) Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem 

Anthony van Dyck (Flemish, 1599–1641), Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange, about 1631–32, Oil on canvas, 114.3 × 96.5 cm (45 × 38 in.) The Baltimore Museum of Art: The Mary Frick Jacobs Collection 

Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669), Jan Rijcksen and His Wife, Griet Jans, known as "The Shipbuilder and His Wife", 1633, Oil on canvas, 113.8 x 169.8 cm (44 5/8 × 66 3/4 in.) British Royal Collection 

Gerrit Dou (Dutch, 1613–1675), Grocery Shop, 1647, Oil on panel, 38.5  x 29 cm (15 1/8 × 11 1/2 in.) Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Peintures 

Pieter de Hooch (Dutch, 1629–after 1684), Interior with Women beside a Linen Cupboard,1663, Oil on canvas, 70 x 75.5 cm (27 5/8 x 29 3/4 in.) Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. On loan from the City of Amsterdam 

Jan van Bijlert (Dutch, 1597–1671), Portraits of the Men from the St. Job Inn in Utrecht Collecting Alms, about 1630–1635, Oil on canvas, 76.3 x 115.3 cm (30 1/8 x 45 3/8 in.)  Centraal Museum

Job Berckheyde (Dutch, 1630–1693), The Baker, about 1681, Oil on canvas, 63.3  x 53 cm (25 × 20 7/8 in.) Worcester Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Milton P. Higgins 

Photos of the Class Distinctions table displays at the Ann and Graham Gund Gallery © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life

Philadelphia Museum of Art

October 27, 2015 - January 10, 2016

Reviewed by Ed Voves

There are two basic ways to interpret the brilliant new exhibit on American still life painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Audubon to Warhol. 

The first and most obvious way is to simply enjoy the beauty and virtuosity of the vast array of still lifes in the Philadelphia exhibit. Some of the artists involved may not be familiar names. The art works that have been put on display, however, are first class from start to finish.

The second approach entails abandoning the idea that still life painting is a sideshow to the "center stage" display of portrait, landscape and abstract painting. Still life art, as is evident in Audubon to Warhol, is not "Sunday painting." The skill and proficiency of these works is often astonishing and their implications for American life and society are equally profound.

Anne Lloyd, Gallery View of the Audubon to Warhol Exhibition, 2015

Still life goes back a long way in art history, right back to the Egyptians. The French call still life painting "nature morte." With the prevalence of rabbit carcasses, boiled lobsters and cuts of beef, it is easy to see still life as dead nature.

Still life is often viewed as a celebration of conspicuous consumption and painterly skill. Quite frequently, nature morte had ominous, moralizing implications. The dead, trussed-up rabbit (often with an open accusatory eye) is a warning. Alive one moment, dead the next. Take heed.

American artists embraced these classical European traditions of still life. In fact, American painters from the early Republic era like Raphaelle Peale demonstrated levels of sophistication and subtlety in still life painting that often surpassed European artistry. Peale's Blackberries shows a command of shadows and reflected light as great as any Dutch master of the 1600's. 

Raphaelle Peale, Blackberries, c. 1813

Blackberries is a masterpiece of simplicity and deep thought. Peale deftly addressed the theme of the cycle of life without heavy-handed moralizing. The red, unripe berries emerge from the shadows, there are some red drupelets in the ripening berries in the center, while the fully ripe berries hang over the edge of the bowl ready to be plucked and consumed.

American still life painting begins with the remarkable Peale family. The Peales continually demonstrated how American painters addressed still life in unique ways that did not always adhere to European art theory.

Rembrandt Peale, Rubens Peale with a Geranium, 1801

The wonderful family portrait of the Peales painted in the early 1770's by Charles Willson Peale, skillfully uses still life as an element of the larger whole. This tremendous work points the way to a later masterpiece, Rubens Peale with a Geranium, painted by his brother Rembrandt. The geranium plant, the first grown in the New World, "embraces" the young botanist, Rubens Peale, who fondly touches its terracotta pot. Nature and humanity, still life and portrait are combined in one of the truly great American works of art.

Along with the Peales, John James Audubon (1785-1851) set the tone for American art during the early Republic. Audubon was born on a sugar plantation in Haiti but grew up in France.  Audubon's father, fearing the great slave revolt which eventually erupted in Haiti in 1791, purchased a large farm near Philadelphia as a potential refuge. Audubon emigrated there as a young man and began his epic studies of North American wildlife that culminated in the nearly 500 life-size depictions of Birds of America. 

One of the most striking examples of Audubon's avian art is on display, the beautifully hand-colored engraving, Carolina Parrot.  An objection might be made that Audubon's images of American birds can hardly be considered as a proper still life. Actually, Carolina Parrot is a still life in a grim way that Audubon could never have imagined in 1828. The colorful bird has been extinct since 1918, a case of "nature morte" in the extreme.

John James Audubon, Carolina Parrot, c. 1828

The Carolina Parrot or Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis)  was the only native parrot species living in the eastern regions of the United States, from Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico. It was hunted for its plumage to decorate hats and because it was considered a "pest." Its favored habitat was riverside woodlands, a prime area for development into human habitat. 

The Carolina Parrot was a casualty of America's "Manifest Destiny." During the years 1861 to 1865, Americans paused from recklessly killing wildlife to shooting each other. The terrible human holocaust of the Civil War, now reckoned to be close to a million dead, is remembered in a moving still life, Reminiscences of 1865, the introductory image of this review. It was painted by John Frederick Peto in 1904, decades after the war's end.

Peto was born in 1854, too young to serve in the Civil War. But the staggering "butcher's bill" of the war and the shocking assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in its final days left a deep psychological imprint on every American who lived during that tragic era.

Peto studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art (PAFA) but the austere nature of many of his works, in this case a faded photo of the martyred Lincoln tacked to an battered door, struck a bit too close to home. Peto never achieved much artistic success, eking out a living playing the cornet in a Methodist camp band.

William Michael Harnett, Peto's friend and fellow PAFA student, was much more successful marketing his still life paintings. After the Hunt, of which Hartnett painted several versions, was a celebrated work of art in its day. Harnett's trompe l'oeil masterpiece did not just trick the eye; it tricked the mind's eye into thinking back to a simpler, happier, more "manly" age. 

William Michael Harnett, After the Hunt, 1885

The halcyon era that Harnett evoked was the pre-Revolutionary War period. Beginning in the 1870’s, Americans began to indulge in a nostalgic interest in the early years of their country. The Colonial Revival, as it came to be called, embraced literature, architecture, craft design and the fine arts.  

Every detail of Harnett's After the Hunt proclaims the virtues of "ye olde America." The venerable musket is a 17th century model, the powder horn and flintlock pistol are of 18th century vintage and the elaborate iron work of the door latches might well have graced the Hudson Valley estate of a Dutch patroon.  The world that Harnett evoked is one that Rip van Winkle would have felt comfortable in before and after his long nap.

It was a world, even as nostalgia, that could never last. American society is in love with motion and innovation. That was the direction that Charles Sheeler took still life painting in the early 20th century. 

Sheeler was a collector of American folk art - notably Shaker furniture and hooked rugs - which he arranged as the setting for a series of interior scenes. These paintings are not included in Audubon to Warhol. Though major works of art, their omission is not a significant loss to the Philadelphia Museum exhibit. Sheeler's interiors are static where the works that are exhibited, Rolling Power and Cactus, are harbingers of action and movement.

Charles Sheeler, Rolling Power, 1939

With Rolling Power, the pause before motion is obvious. Painted in tones that recall Sheeler's earlier commercial photography, Rolling Power also evokes the sepia-tone newsreels of the 1930's. When we look at this image, the wheels and disk driver of a Model J3A Hudson Thoroughbred locomotive, we almost expect the train that this engine pulled to lurch into movement and start to pull away from the canvas on its journey across America.

With Cactus there is no such certainty. The only thing without question about this unnerving painting is that it impels us - or rather repels - to escape its harsh, searchlight glare.

                                                   

Charles Sheeler, Cactus, 1931

Cactus may well be one of the great Surrealist paintings in American art history. The idea of placing a cactus, a plant which has evolved over eons to live in an environment of unrelenting sunlight, under artificial light is positively absurd. Perhaps that is the point Sheeler was trying to convey.

Sheeler was a prominent member of the Dada-inspired group that gathered around Walter and Louise Arensberg, the great patrons of avant-garde art, during the 1920's. However, Sheeler was also the appointed propagandist for the Ford Motor Company's PR campaign with his photographs and paintings of Ford's River Rouge auto plant. 

Which of these conflicting sides of his personality was at work when Sheeler painted Cactus, we'll never know. But this work reacted strongly against the kind of contemplative values of the great 19th century still life paintings. The trend continued as the 20th century unfolded, with major American artists painting still lifes that repudiated the talismans of modern life as well.

Following the Second World War, the sheer abundance of goods and services threatened American art. With “conspicuous consumption” virtually a secular religious rite, how could artists embrace an avalanche of the necessities of the good life? From the opposite vantage point, how could they find the means to reject a tidal wave of “things” that dulled human awareness and community spirit? How could American artists cope, pro or con, with Howdy Doody Time?

                                                                                                                                          Andy Warhol (American, 1928 - 1987), Brillo Boxes, 1964

                                                        
The answer was provided by Andy Warhol. Gigantic Brillo boxes or images of Campbell’s Soup cans were placed on a pedestal by Warhol. With an almost physical presence – as can be felt in the final gallery of the Philadelphia Museum exhibit – Warhol’s Brillo Boxes challenged the viewer to make a choice.

Andy Warhol brought American still life painting back, full circle, to Raphaelle Peale’s Blackberries. If we thoughtlessly consume the good things of life, the sense of blessing will be lost. If we meditate too long, the blackberries will rot.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has once again mounted an exhibit which feasts the eyes. Audubon to Warhol also asks its patrons to make their choice. Peale, Peto, Sheeler, Warhol and all the other American still life painters pondered the living values of America through depictions of the valued objects of American life. What do these mean to us?

There are, of course, no definitive answers to the meaning of life, but it’s a question that we cannot dodge forever.

***
Text: Copyright of Ed Voves, all rights reserved 
Images courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Introductory Image:     
John Frederick Peto (American, 1854 - 1907), Reminiscences of 1865, 1904. Oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches (76.2 x 50.8 cm) Framed: 41 7/8 × 31 7/8 × 2 1/4 inches (106.4 × 81 × 5.7 cm). Lent by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Julia B. Bigelow Fund by John Bigelow.

Anne Lloyd, Gallery View of Audubon to Warhol Exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, digital photograph, 2015 © Anne Lloyd

Raphaelle Peale (American, 1774 - 1825), Blackberries, c. 1813. Oil on panel, 7 1/4 × 10 1/4 inches (18.4 × 26 cm). Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D.
Rockefeller 3rd.

Rembrandt Peale (American, 1778 - 1860), Rubens Peale with a Geranium, 1801. Oil on canvas, 28 1/8 x 24 inches (71.4 x 61 cm) Framed: 35 1/4 × 31 3/8 × 2 3/16 inches (89.5 × 79.7 × 5.6 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1985.59.1.

John James Audubon (American, 1785 - 1851), Carolina Parrot, c. 1828. Hand-colored engraving, etching, aquatint on rag paper, 38 7/8 × 25 3/4 inches (98.7 × 65.4 cm)
Framed: 44 × 34 inches (111.8 × 86.4 cm). Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Gift of Alma and Harry Coon, 2000.108.

William Michael Harnett (American,1848 - 1892), After the Hunt, 1885. Oil on canvas, 71 1/2 x 48 1/2 inches (181.6 x 123.2 cm). Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Gift of Henry K.S. Williams.

Charles Sheeler (American, 1883 - 1965), Rolling Power, 1939. Oil on canvas, 15 x 30 inches (38.1 x 76.2 cm) Framed: 22 5/8 × 37 3/4 × 2 3/8 inches (57.5 × 95.9 × 6 cm). Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts. Purchased with the Drayton Hillyer Fund.

Charles Sheeler (American, 1883 - 1965), Cactus, 1931. Oil on canvas, 45 1/8 x 30 1/16 inches (114.6 x 76.4 cm) Framed: 50 1/4 x 35 1/4 x 3 1/4 inches (127.6 x 89.5 x 8.3 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950.

Andy Warhol (American, 1928 - 1987), Brillo Boxes, 1964. Screenprint and ink on wood, Each: 17 x 17 x 14 inches (43.2 x43.2 x 35.6 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Acquired with funds contributed by the Committee on Twentieth-Century Art and as a partial gift of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 1994. © Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York