拍品專文
Metcalf returned from his obligatory art-student pilgrimage to France-- study at the Académie Julian, summer jaunts to Pont-Aven and Giverny--in 1888. Once back on American shores, first in Boston and then in New York, he found his days consumed with illustrations for magazines and books or with barely-tolerated portrait and mural commissions, his nights with the theater and his favorite clubs. By the mid 1890s, the light-filled landscapes that he had produced in France seemed a distant memory, their elegant spatial progressions and subtle harmonies of color ill-suited to the bold linearities demanded by the printed page.
By the spring of 1895, Metcalf's friends, John Twachtman and Childe Hassam, fearful that Metcalf was losing sight of his larger professional goals, encouraged him to leave the city and spend the summer on the New England shore. Twachtman urged Metcalf to join him at Rocky Neck, in East Gloucester, Massachusetts, where Twachtman had already planned to sit in on Charles Allan Winter's summer art class, more as a matter of renewing his creative juices under ideal sketching conditions than to gain additional instruction. Besides, suggested Twachtman, the vacation would provide Metcalf with an opportunity to develop some fresh pictorial ideas for the upcoming Society of American Artists, scheduled for early 1896.
And so Metcalf returned to the subject of the New England landscape for the first time since he had left for France in 1883. While in Gloucester that summer, Metcalf executed four oils--Ebb Tide (private collection), The Ferry Landing (private collection), Gloucester Harbor (Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts), Inner Harbor, Gloucester (private collection), and a pastel--The Jetty (Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz). All five works demonstrate Metcalf's command of the pictorial syntax--high horizons, spatial compression, asymmetrical compositions and vivid, sun-struck colors--that he had learned while a member of the international Impressionist community at Giverny. The largest and most successful of these 1895 paintings, Gloucester Harbor, brings the viewer into the scene across rooftops high above Smith's Cove. Laid out in a series of diagonal and horizontal planes beyond and below the viewer are the ferry landing and terminal on the right, jetties and boathouses on the left, and a three-mastered schooner anchoring the center of the cove. The scene is terminated by a wall of distant hills, completing the sense of an enclosed haven.
Three of these oils--The Ferry Landing; Inner Harbor, Gloucester; and Gloucester Harbor--were among the six paintings by Metcalf accepted for the 1896 Society of American Artists exhibition, and Gloucester Harbor was awarded the Webb Prize for the best landscape. The critical response to Metcalf's new work was, however, mixed. The New York Times reviewer, particularly, was half-hearted in his praise, writing on March 28 that
Gloucester Harbor is a clever, sketchy translation of
a simple bit of nature... Agreeable in a color way, ...
it shows Mr. Metcalf's usual dexterity, but the work is by
no means convincing, nor does it evince great thought of
working out of any special problem. As a composition it is
not particularly interesting or unusual, and, though Mr.
Metcalf is a man of much ability, ...yet there are other
things here that would seem much more worthy the honor
of the landscape prize.
A week later, the same critic continued his attact on Metcalf:
Clever things there are in abundance ...trifling suggestions
...queer problems ...with absurdly high skylines. There
may seem many dexterously excellent subjects quite unworthy
of the labor extended. ...it is difficult to see how the
Webb prize escaped Leonard Octhman's 'Enchanted Veil,' since it stands out preeminently, a strong, personal, earnest
composition unusually successful and full of interest. It
is carried out to a logical conclusion, expresses an idea,
and shows the artist has something to say out of the
commonplace.
By implication, the critic seemed to be saying, Metcalf's Gloucester paintings were unsuccessful, illogical, void of ideas and commonplace. Doubtlessly stung by such facile judgments, Metcalf vowed to prove the critic wrong in a painting that would summarize both his considerable talents and his Gloucester experiences, in the Fish Wharves--Gloucester that he painted following the Society's exhibition in the summer of 1896.
Like a modern Luther nailing his Impressionist theses to the door of received knowledge, Metcalf produced one of the great American paintings of the 1890s. Using the great mass of pilings in the right foreground--a movement echoed and reinforced by the dory that cuts into the scene at the lower left, Fish Wharves--Gloucester practically shoves the viewer into the picture space, only to divert him almost immediately from a crash course with the ferry terminal with the equally strong leftward diagonal of the wharf. There, at the end of the pier, he encounters three tiny figures, two standing looking out over the harbor, and another rowing a dory just beyond. To their left, at the true focus of this composition, rides a sloop, its white sail prominent against the muted walls, rooftops and trees of the enclosing hills.
Although the painting's two contrasting vanishing points are the scene's strongest vectors, the picture plane is also measured out in vertical segments. Against the linear screen of masts and pilings Metcalf plays a few gentle curves--the reflections on the water, the swelling hulls and sails, and the plume of smoke rising from the steam sloop on the right. The whole is conceived in a lively color scheme of browns, ochres, blues, whites, yellow, violets and greens, often subtly placed, yet each patch and stroke serving to concerted effect. Fish Wharves--Gloucester is both a halcyon view of a summer seacoast and a virtuoso display of design and technique.
Whatever Metcalf's desire to disprove his critics, his and his friends' dissatisfaction with the general selection of paintings shown at the Society of American Artists would delay the exhibiton of Metcalf's retort until the 1901 exhibition of the Ten American Painters. The story is by now a familiar one; by 1898 Metcalf, Hassam, Twachtman, and seven other prominent American Impressionists decided to pull out of the Society's exhibitions and form their own separate exhibition group.
Although Metcalf's first offerings to the Ten were a mural study and a portrait, in 1901 he decided that it was time once again to submit his landscapes to the gauntlet of critcal judgment. This time Fish Wharves--Gloucester met with a positive response, even from the Times reviewer, who while still missing the painting's miraculous complexity, at least opined that it was "another excellent seaside view, the sunlight bravely shining on smacks and catboats and dories."
Metcalf's own entry in his diary was both terse and casual. "'Gloucester Wharfs' and 'Ebbing Tide' [another Gloucester painting, from 1895] to Durand-Ruel for 10 Show. Went to club in evening, home at 2." Despite the success of Fish Wharves--Gloucester in 1901--in the midst of another lengthy absence from landscape painting--Metcalf was still debating his artistic direction, still dissatisfied with his progress. It was not until two years later that, escaping unhappy love affairs and heavy drinking for the landscape of the Damariscotta River in Maine, Metcalf rediscovered his passion for the New England scene and then became its greatest artistic proponent.
Christie's is grateful to Dr. Bruce W. Chambers for providing this catalogue essay.
This work will be included in the forthcoming Willard L. Metcalf catalogue raisonné authored by Dr. Bruce Chambers, Ira Spanierman, Dr. William H. Gerdts and Elizabeth de Veer.
By the spring of 1895, Metcalf's friends, John Twachtman and Childe Hassam, fearful that Metcalf was losing sight of his larger professional goals, encouraged him to leave the city and spend the summer on the New England shore. Twachtman urged Metcalf to join him at Rocky Neck, in East Gloucester, Massachusetts, where Twachtman had already planned to sit in on Charles Allan Winter's summer art class, more as a matter of renewing his creative juices under ideal sketching conditions than to gain additional instruction. Besides, suggested Twachtman, the vacation would provide Metcalf with an opportunity to develop some fresh pictorial ideas for the upcoming Society of American Artists, scheduled for early 1896.
And so Metcalf returned to the subject of the New England landscape for the first time since he had left for France in 1883. While in Gloucester that summer, Metcalf executed four oils--Ebb Tide (private collection), The Ferry Landing (private collection), Gloucester Harbor (Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts), Inner Harbor, Gloucester (private collection), and a pastel--The Jetty (Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz). All five works demonstrate Metcalf's command of the pictorial syntax--high horizons, spatial compression, asymmetrical compositions and vivid, sun-struck colors--that he had learned while a member of the international Impressionist community at Giverny. The largest and most successful of these 1895 paintings, Gloucester Harbor, brings the viewer into the scene across rooftops high above Smith's Cove. Laid out in a series of diagonal and horizontal planes beyond and below the viewer are the ferry landing and terminal on the right, jetties and boathouses on the left, and a three-mastered schooner anchoring the center of the cove. The scene is terminated by a wall of distant hills, completing the sense of an enclosed haven.
Three of these oils--The Ferry Landing; Inner Harbor, Gloucester; and Gloucester Harbor--were among the six paintings by Metcalf accepted for the 1896 Society of American Artists exhibition, and Gloucester Harbor was awarded the Webb Prize for the best landscape. The critical response to Metcalf's new work was, however, mixed. The New York Times reviewer, particularly, was half-hearted in his praise, writing on March 28 that
Gloucester Harbor is a clever, sketchy translation of
a simple bit of nature... Agreeable in a color way, ...
it shows Mr. Metcalf's usual dexterity, but the work is by
no means convincing, nor does it evince great thought of
working out of any special problem. As a composition it is
not particularly interesting or unusual, and, though Mr.
Metcalf is a man of much ability, ...yet there are other
things here that would seem much more worthy the honor
of the landscape prize.
A week later, the same critic continued his attact on Metcalf:
Clever things there are in abundance ...trifling suggestions
...queer problems ...with absurdly high skylines. There
may seem many dexterously excellent subjects quite unworthy
of the labor extended. ...it is difficult to see how the
Webb prize escaped Leonard Octhman's 'Enchanted Veil,' since it stands out preeminently, a strong, personal, earnest
composition unusually successful and full of interest. It
is carried out to a logical conclusion, expresses an idea,
and shows the artist has something to say out of the
commonplace.
By implication, the critic seemed to be saying, Metcalf's Gloucester paintings were unsuccessful, illogical, void of ideas and commonplace. Doubtlessly stung by such facile judgments, Metcalf vowed to prove the critic wrong in a painting that would summarize both his considerable talents and his Gloucester experiences, in the Fish Wharves--Gloucester that he painted following the Society's exhibition in the summer of 1896.
Like a modern Luther nailing his Impressionist theses to the door of received knowledge, Metcalf produced one of the great American paintings of the 1890s. Using the great mass of pilings in the right foreground--a movement echoed and reinforced by the dory that cuts into the scene at the lower left, Fish Wharves--Gloucester practically shoves the viewer into the picture space, only to divert him almost immediately from a crash course with the ferry terminal with the equally strong leftward diagonal of the wharf. There, at the end of the pier, he encounters three tiny figures, two standing looking out over the harbor, and another rowing a dory just beyond. To their left, at the true focus of this composition, rides a sloop, its white sail prominent against the muted walls, rooftops and trees of the enclosing hills.
Although the painting's two contrasting vanishing points are the scene's strongest vectors, the picture plane is also measured out in vertical segments. Against the linear screen of masts and pilings Metcalf plays a few gentle curves--the reflections on the water, the swelling hulls and sails, and the plume of smoke rising from the steam sloop on the right. The whole is conceived in a lively color scheme of browns, ochres, blues, whites, yellow, violets and greens, often subtly placed, yet each patch and stroke serving to concerted effect. Fish Wharves--Gloucester is both a halcyon view of a summer seacoast and a virtuoso display of design and technique.
Whatever Metcalf's desire to disprove his critics, his and his friends' dissatisfaction with the general selection of paintings shown at the Society of American Artists would delay the exhibiton of Metcalf's retort until the 1901 exhibition of the Ten American Painters. The story is by now a familiar one; by 1898 Metcalf, Hassam, Twachtman, and seven other prominent American Impressionists decided to pull out of the Society's exhibitions and form their own separate exhibition group.
Although Metcalf's first offerings to the Ten were a mural study and a portrait, in 1901 he decided that it was time once again to submit his landscapes to the gauntlet of critcal judgment. This time Fish Wharves--Gloucester met with a positive response, even from the Times reviewer, who while still missing the painting's miraculous complexity, at least opined that it was "another excellent seaside view, the sunlight bravely shining on smacks and catboats and dories."
Metcalf's own entry in his diary was both terse and casual. "'Gloucester Wharfs' and 'Ebbing Tide' [another Gloucester painting, from 1895] to Durand-Ruel for 10 Show. Went to club in evening, home at 2." Despite the success of Fish Wharves--Gloucester in 1901--in the midst of another lengthy absence from landscape painting--Metcalf was still debating his artistic direction, still dissatisfied with his progress. It was not until two years later that, escaping unhappy love affairs and heavy drinking for the landscape of the Damariscotta River in Maine, Metcalf rediscovered his passion for the New England scene and then became its greatest artistic proponent.
Christie's is grateful to Dr. Bruce W. Chambers for providing this catalogue essay.
This work will be included in the forthcoming Willard L. Metcalf catalogue raisonné authored by Dr. Bruce Chambers, Ira Spanierman, Dr. William H. Gerdts and Elizabeth de Veer.