Lot Essay
RELATED WORKS:
At the Beach, 1914, oil on canvas, 18 x 24in., Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pier at Blue Point, 1914, oil on canvas, 26 x 32in., Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio
The Raft, 1915, oil on canvas, 25 x 30in., The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
The Little Pier, c. 1915, oil on canvas, 25 x 30in., The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Beach Umbrellas at Blue Point, c. 1916, oil on canvas, 26 x 32in., National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
RELATED LITERATURE:
I. Glackens, William Glackens and The Eight: The Artists Who Freed American Art, New York, 1983, pp. 170-77
R.J. Wattenmaker, "William Glackens's Beach Scenes at Bellport" Smithsonian Studies in American Art, vol. 2, no. 2, Spring 1988, pp. 74-94
William Glackens painted his most successful Impressionist works from 1911 until 1916 while spending his summers on the south shore of Long Island at Bellport. There in the company of his family and friends he developed a fully Impressionist technique, a painting style that he had become familiar with when travelling to Paris in 1912 to select and purchase paintings for Albert C. Barnes, the distinguished collector of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings.
Of the works that Glackens completed during the summers at Bellport, Richard J. Wattenmaker has written, "The beach scenes painted by William Glackens during the six summers the artist and his family spent at the seashore in and around Bellport, Long Island, constitute a single American contribution to the international tradition of Impressionism. From 1911 through 1916 Glackens painted an extended series of motifs of figures at the beach, bathers along the shore and in the water, enjoying carefree recreation under the sunlit skies of Great South Bay. . . In his Bellport beach scenes Glackens created a body of work that thoughtful critics and collectors have acknowledged to be among his most distinctive achievements." (R.J. Wattenmaker, "William Glackens's Beach Scenes at Bellport" Smithsonian Studies in American Art, vol. 2, no. 2, Spring 1988, p. 75)
The Bellport series not only represents an important development in Glackens's career, but in a larger sense it maintains a seminal position in American art between the traditions of Realism and Impressionism. Prior to Glackens's participation in the watershed exhibition of The Eight at Macbeth Gallery in 1908 in New York, the artist had developed a bold, painterly style more similar to his realist colleagues such as George Luks, John Sloan, and Robert Henri. Always interested in forging new directions in his art, around 1908 Glackens began developing a more Impressionistic style that included both assertive color as well as feathery brushstrokes reminiscent of the technique of Renoir. Wattenmaker writes, "The reasons for Glackens's dramatic shift from lively figures and park and harbor scenes, which had their source in Manet and Whistler, to impressionist color, texture, and light, are not a mystery. Glackens, by nature open-minded, curious, and intellectually acute, with a visual memory that was legendary among his peers, was highly receptive to the work of the French Impressionists." (Wattenmaker, "Glackens's Beach Scenes," p. 75)
Glackens had the opportunity to examine many Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings during his visit to Paris on behalf of the collector Albert Barnes in 1912. Travelling with his friend and fellow painter Alfred Maurer, Glackens visited the most prominent galleries of the day that sold such pictures, including Durand-Ruel and Bernheim-Jeune. At the same time Glackens and Maurer made the acquaintance of Leo and Gertrude Stein who introduced them to the work of Matisse, whose brilliant color harmonies were largely unknown to Glackens.
This extraordinary first-hand exposure to recent French art had a profound effect on Glackens's approach to color, and he soon adopted a vivid palette that employed contrasting color harmonies. Soon after Glackens exhibited his Bellport pictures, critics noticed the change in his approach to color. In 1913 Mary Fanton Robert wrote about an exhibition of Glackens's Impressionist pictures at the Folsom Gallery, which included many works executed at Bellport: "A more complete realization of all that color can accomplish on canvas has never been presented, we think, in one private exhibition in New York, and presented, with a variety so infinite that it is as though Nature had shared with Mr. Glackens the splendor of her most prodigal moods.(M.F. Roberts, Craftsman, vol. 24, April, 1913, pp. 135-136)
Other critics were equally enthusiastic about Glackens's recent work in an Impressionistic style. Charles H. Caffin found in the artist, "a temperament that is eagerly experimental. . . I enjoy particularly the seashore pictures. . . There is the suggestion of fullness of life in the color and air and light of these scenes. They are delightfully impressionistic in the sense that they have caught and hold the actual spirit of the shore in the magic of its momentary expression." (C.F. Caffin, "Eighteen Canvases by Glackens on View," New York American, 10 March 1913)
Glackens himself described the revolutionary effect of French Impressionism on American landscape painters. In an interview with his friend and artist-journalist Guy Pène du Bois, Glackens said, "Theodore Robinson, Hassam, Weir, and Twachtman were the first to bring here or to show the influence of the French impressionists under the leadership of Monet. They brought into our art a new theory of color, a color that was honestly derived from the color of nature. They brought into the country in fact, a truth that we had not fully realized. They sent our landscapists out into the open, sent them out after a new view of nature and cleared away the murkiness of the studio landscape." (Arts and Decorations, vol. 3, March, 1913, pp. 159-64)
Like many American Realist and Impressionist painters who found inspiration in summer watering-holes along the east coast, Glackens was attracted to Bellport not only because of the subject matter it offered, but also because of the casual lifestyle and summertime activities that he could pursue there. H.B. Weinberg, D. Bolger, and D.P. Curry have noted, "As Glackens recorded it in many works . . . the shoreline [at Bellport] was punctuated by rickety gazebos, jetties, rafts and water slides, and dressing sheds and [it] seems extremely commonplace in comparison with the elegant beaches that Boudin depicted at Deauville or Trouville or that Chase recorded at Shinnecock. The liveliness of his figures' poses and of his paint application is entirely consistent with the casual energy and spontaneous activity associated with the young people whom Glackens pictures." (H.B. Weinberg, D. Bolger, and D.P. Curry, American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994, p. 121)
The artist's son Ira Glackens recalled Bellport of 1911 as "a simple place, cottages, nothing showy. Bellport was still an unspoiled town, and life was largely confined to the village street. There were no large estates in the neighborhood. Near the beach stood a huge barnlike 'Vacation Home' for New York shopgirls, which supplied subjects for many of my father's canvases. A ferry every fine day took bathers across the bay to the ocean beach, Old Inlet, whose rolling white dunes and scraggly bayberries and beach plums saw many picnics."
Glackens's special ability to develop a highly personal Impressionist technique and to translate the optimistic and carefree qualities of summertime onto canvas was recognized during his day. Albert E. Gallatin wrote, "It is interesting to follow Mr. Glackens's artistic growth, to see how his art has developed. Like all genuine artists, he has never been satisfied with his work, but has ever been an investigator, a seeker after new knowledge, hoping to increase his accomplishments . . . the beach scenes, completely enveloped in sparkling and joyous sunshine, in which the figures are placed in the landscape in a most masterly manner . . . are paintings which disclose his genius at its best." (A.E. Gallatin, "William Glackens," Magazine of Art, vol. 2, May, 1916, 263)
At the Beach, 1914, oil on canvas, 18 x 24in., Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pier at Blue Point, 1914, oil on canvas, 26 x 32in., Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio
The Raft, 1915, oil on canvas, 25 x 30in., The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
The Little Pier, c. 1915, oil on canvas, 25 x 30in., The Barnes Foundation, Merion, Pennsylvania
Beach Umbrellas at Blue Point, c. 1916, oil on canvas, 26 x 32in., National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
RELATED LITERATURE:
I. Glackens, William Glackens and The Eight: The Artists Who Freed American Art, New York, 1983, pp. 170-77
R.J. Wattenmaker, "William Glackens's Beach Scenes at Bellport" Smithsonian Studies in American Art, vol. 2, no. 2, Spring 1988, pp. 74-94
William Glackens painted his most successful Impressionist works from 1911 until 1916 while spending his summers on the south shore of Long Island at Bellport. There in the company of his family and friends he developed a fully Impressionist technique, a painting style that he had become familiar with when travelling to Paris in 1912 to select and purchase paintings for Albert C. Barnes, the distinguished collector of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings.
Of the works that Glackens completed during the summers at Bellport, Richard J. Wattenmaker has written, "The beach scenes painted by William Glackens during the six summers the artist and his family spent at the seashore in and around Bellport, Long Island, constitute a single American contribution to the international tradition of Impressionism. From 1911 through 1916 Glackens painted an extended series of motifs of figures at the beach, bathers along the shore and in the water, enjoying carefree recreation under the sunlit skies of Great South Bay. . . In his Bellport beach scenes Glackens created a body of work that thoughtful critics and collectors have acknowledged to be among his most distinctive achievements." (R.J. Wattenmaker, "William Glackens's Beach Scenes at Bellport" Smithsonian Studies in American Art, vol. 2, no. 2, Spring 1988, p. 75)
The Bellport series not only represents an important development in Glackens's career, but in a larger sense it maintains a seminal position in American art between the traditions of Realism and Impressionism. Prior to Glackens's participation in the watershed exhibition of The Eight at Macbeth Gallery in 1908 in New York, the artist had developed a bold, painterly style more similar to his realist colleagues such as George Luks, John Sloan, and Robert Henri. Always interested in forging new directions in his art, around 1908 Glackens began developing a more Impressionistic style that included both assertive color as well as feathery brushstrokes reminiscent of the technique of Renoir. Wattenmaker writes, "The reasons for Glackens's dramatic shift from lively figures and park and harbor scenes, which had their source in Manet and Whistler, to impressionist color, texture, and light, are not a mystery. Glackens, by nature open-minded, curious, and intellectually acute, with a visual memory that was legendary among his peers, was highly receptive to the work of the French Impressionists." (Wattenmaker, "Glackens's Beach Scenes," p. 75)
Glackens had the opportunity to examine many Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings during his visit to Paris on behalf of the collector Albert Barnes in 1912. Travelling with his friend and fellow painter Alfred Maurer, Glackens visited the most prominent galleries of the day that sold such pictures, including Durand-Ruel and Bernheim-Jeune. At the same time Glackens and Maurer made the acquaintance of Leo and Gertrude Stein who introduced them to the work of Matisse, whose brilliant color harmonies were largely unknown to Glackens.
This extraordinary first-hand exposure to recent French art had a profound effect on Glackens's approach to color, and he soon adopted a vivid palette that employed contrasting color harmonies. Soon after Glackens exhibited his Bellport pictures, critics noticed the change in his approach to color. In 1913 Mary Fanton Robert wrote about an exhibition of Glackens's Impressionist pictures at the Folsom Gallery, which included many works executed at Bellport: "A more complete realization of all that color can accomplish on canvas has never been presented, we think, in one private exhibition in New York, and presented, with a variety so infinite that it is as though Nature had shared with Mr. Glackens the splendor of her most prodigal moods.(M.F. Roberts, Craftsman, vol. 24, April, 1913, pp. 135-136)
Other critics were equally enthusiastic about Glackens's recent work in an Impressionistic style. Charles H. Caffin found in the artist, "a temperament that is eagerly experimental. . . I enjoy particularly the seashore pictures. . . There is the suggestion of fullness of life in the color and air and light of these scenes. They are delightfully impressionistic in the sense that they have caught and hold the actual spirit of the shore in the magic of its momentary expression." (C.F. Caffin, "Eighteen Canvases by Glackens on View," New York American, 10 March 1913)
Glackens himself described the revolutionary effect of French Impressionism on American landscape painters. In an interview with his friend and artist-journalist Guy Pène du Bois, Glackens said, "Theodore Robinson, Hassam, Weir, and Twachtman were the first to bring here or to show the influence of the French impressionists under the leadership of Monet. They brought into our art a new theory of color, a color that was honestly derived from the color of nature. They brought into the country in fact, a truth that we had not fully realized. They sent our landscapists out into the open, sent them out after a new view of nature and cleared away the murkiness of the studio landscape." (Arts and Decorations, vol. 3, March, 1913, pp. 159-64)
Like many American Realist and Impressionist painters who found inspiration in summer watering-holes along the east coast, Glackens was attracted to Bellport not only because of the subject matter it offered, but also because of the casual lifestyle and summertime activities that he could pursue there. H.B. Weinberg, D. Bolger, and D.P. Curry have noted, "As Glackens recorded it in many works . . . the shoreline [at Bellport] was punctuated by rickety gazebos, jetties, rafts and water slides, and dressing sheds and [it] seems extremely commonplace in comparison with the elegant beaches that Boudin depicted at Deauville or Trouville or that Chase recorded at Shinnecock. The liveliness of his figures' poses and of his paint application is entirely consistent with the casual energy and spontaneous activity associated with the young people whom Glackens pictures." (H.B. Weinberg, D. Bolger, and D.P. Curry, American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1994, p. 121)
The artist's son Ira Glackens recalled Bellport of 1911 as "a simple place, cottages, nothing showy. Bellport was still an unspoiled town, and life was largely confined to the village street. There were no large estates in the neighborhood. Near the beach stood a huge barnlike 'Vacation Home' for New York shopgirls, which supplied subjects for many of my father's canvases. A ferry every fine day took bathers across the bay to the ocean beach, Old Inlet, whose rolling white dunes and scraggly bayberries and beach plums saw many picnics."
Glackens's special ability to develop a highly personal Impressionist technique and to translate the optimistic and carefree qualities of summertime onto canvas was recognized during his day. Albert E. Gallatin wrote, "It is interesting to follow Mr. Glackens's artistic growth, to see how his art has developed. Like all genuine artists, he has never been satisfied with his work, but has ever been an investigator, a seeker after new knowledge, hoping to increase his accomplishments . . . the beach scenes, completely enveloped in sparkling and joyous sunshine, in which the figures are placed in the landscape in a most masterly manner . . . are paintings which disclose his genius at its best." (A.E. Gallatin, "William Glackens," Magazine of Art, vol. 2, May, 1916, 263)