1923
I N V I T A T I O N
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The Concord
Art Association |
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Patronesses [1923]:
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H. P. Boston Evening Transcript. Monday, May 7, 1923. The Concord Exhibition Forty-two Paintings, Many Sculptures and Miniatures Displayed in Colonial Setting--Few Boston Exhibitors--Honors and Medals. Art work Featured with the Review: “After the Bath” A Painting by Mary Cassatt, Lent by Messrs. Durand Ruel, which is Included in the Seventh Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculptures Held by the Concord Art Association. Having acquired a taste for major exhibitions, which has led to the undertaking of lengthy and arduous excursions, the opening of the annual Concord exhibition in its new-old Colonial setting was looked forward to with much interest and a certain restive impatience. Just what impression the private view held last Saturday evening, made, on the nature of the attendance, cannot be recorded for, as in the case of at least a number of members of the organization, no invitation was forthcoming. So the laconic information, “press admitted between the hours of ten and four,” was made use of, and the pilgrimage undertaken to the beautiful old town which envelops itself in peaceful reminiscence, and on this particular spring day seemed to have received a gilding of cool light, which touched each twig of venerable tree, and sprout of herbage, giving an air of sanctity and aloofness quite at variance with the hurry and commerce of Tremont and Boylston streets. The new home of the association, a stone’s throw from the Town Hall, where previous exhibitions have been held, glistens under a coat of virginal paint. The first impression is one of surprise, for this house, built in 1750, seems to have been unaltered in line, and one wonders where the pictures have been hung. Cleverly enough the lower rooms remain their original shape and appearance, even to Panelling and fireplaces, the second story, reached by a narrow Colonial staircase, forms the gallery. This room from its niceness of proportion, excellence of appointment, and suitability to purpose, elicits an involuntary exclamation of pleasure. The walls are of a handsome gray, with a texture that absorbs and softens the light, which filters down from overhead and illumines equally each wall and corner. Through previous exhibitions I was prepared for a rather comprehensive showing of paintings in which those by Boston artists would appear with others from New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere, a breadth which has led to the Concord event coming to be considered of considerable importance. A survey of the forty-two canvases shown failed to reveal more than a handful of works by local artists. Those who accepted the invitations sent broadcast to send canvases at considerable expense to Concord to await the jury’s consideration have apparently received a snubbing. As a whole, the exhibition give evidence of being an invited one. It is only another indication of the state of affairs the artists are “up against” in many of our large exhibitions, which is hardly fair; all too often artists who accept in good faith in vitations to exhibit have only one chance in a thousand of getting in. It’s one of those conditions where if you are in, you are in, and if you are out you are out, and are going to stay so. The Boston contributors of paintings are Sargent, Frank Benson, Charles Ho pkinson, Gertrude Fiske, Charles H. Pepper, Frederick Hall, Alice R. Sohier, F. A. Bosley, Adelaide C. Chase, and Alfred Smith, the other exhibitors are from further afield, and to whose honors much space is given in the catalogue. There is also a considerable number of sculptures which adds much to the attractiveness of the galleries, but here there are no local contributors whatever, and the miniature display consists of a group sent out by the American Society of Miniature Painters. In painting the Medal of Honor went to Charles Hopkinson’s work entitled “The Plazza Door.” This is not a recent performance, having been featured in one of the Boston Art Club exhibitions some years ago, and while being a handsome canvas is more personal and pictorial than later productions. The problem of light against dark has occupied the artist’s attention and the figure of the young girl in white is strongly accented against the dark of the doorway. Effects have been gained by a synthetical knowledge of form and even color. Honorable mention was accorded one of Ernest Lawson’s somewhat sunny landscapes in which virtue is not derived from conciseness but by a persistent fumbling and long drawn out process of pulling one color over another. In sculpture Albin Polasek also received honorable mention, his exhibit being a small bronze called “Aspiration” and among the miniatures, Lucy M. Stanton receives honors for her portrait of “Uncle George.” A work which stands out because of its weight and power is Bellows’ scene, tragic in its intensity, called “Evening Swell.” A gigantic black cliff pushes boldly out into the sea, while the tide in heavy funereal billows crashes onto the shore of a cove, where a fisherman and his dory are revealed in the gathering gloom of night. It is like a setting for an O’Neill play with its element of pregnant fatefulness, and there is a suggestion that the fisherman caught between the forces of land and sea will eventually succumb to their imperviousness. Arthur B. Davies labors likewise under emotional stress, only the tones of his composition are subdued, softened, made golden and flute-like as though by cycles of time. From the grimstone reality of Bellows we are swept or rather lifted to the province of the unsubstantial and fanciful, and the fury of the “Inland Storm,” which beats upon the scene is as remote as cosmic forces. Figures of human form but not surely of human sensibility are sent spinning like tops or thrown in prostrate or uncouth position. Line in this panel decoration takes on tremendous importance and bends with swaying trees or is taken up a horizontal position in the sky thereby accentuating the chaos below. Two canvases which have been lent by Durant-Ruel are a tender spring scene by Monet and “After the Bath,” by Mary Cassatt. The latter work is of much beauty, the rounded forms of the mother and the nude infant are indicated in a handsome and appreciative manner, but the painting has been marred by the background. Pink azaleas frame the mother’s head, while back of them are blue water and green rushes of equal color-intensity, which combination, if not definitely disagreeable is at any rate monotonous. Leon Kroll interprets a New England scene, called “The Falls,” in a fluid manner. Above an arching bridge which spans a river-cataract appear village houses, the scheme being consistent, and the performance authoritative. There are enduring qualities in Robert Spencer’s “Gray Day, Spring,” with its nicely noted row of houses by the river, and interestingly treated sky, and there is also unity of tone. The Sargent is a mountain scene in which the seated figure of a painter is sown high up among glacial peaks. Here are displayed the artist’s rapid incisive methods, and sharp cutting of lights. The Benson canvas, of a decorative nature, is called the “West Wind,” and Frederick Hall’s still-life of Oriental silks and glazed china figures commands respect, because his technique is consistent. He secures the peculiar shades of Turquoise, lavender and green the Chinese employ in the objects of their art. Bosley’s interior is decorated with ultramarine blues; Alice R. Sohier’s contribution loses out on the gray background of the gallery walls because of its warm tone. Mrs. Chase’s portrait of Mrs. Alpheus Hyatt will doubtless please, owing to a sympathetic rendering of a delicately beautiful countenance. Pepper’s “Gewar’ lady is a fanciful creature who wears the most marvelous jade ornaments; Meyerwitz has some Cezanesque fruit on a white cloth. Wayman Adams makes portraits that are tremendously clever because of the instantaneous impression which he conveys. His “Southern Mammy” does not seem to take seriously even the momentous proposition of a national monument to her kind, but -”just sits” and fans herself. Dewing is represented by a delicately refined study of a “Lady in Green,” and Daniel Garber by a winter scene most carefully worked out, but lacking any eventful contrasts of value. There is some question whether Henri is getting worse or simply becoming more and more “Henri,” and a casual glance gives us all he has to convey in his head of a girl. John Folinsbee, who has taken so many prizes, has a snow scene, “Mid-Winter,” along the canals; Childe Hassam is surely represented by a goodly subject, though oft repainted, “Gloucester Church.” Rockwell Kent and his “Ice Curtain” have been thrown to the lower regions with the sculptures. Fromkes revels in a joyful glazing of colors that presents a young lady against a deep blue background. Jean MacLane does not “get by” with construction, but with dash and style and showy effectiveness, and Ernest Roth has an interesting Spanish scene made at Grandada. One should not neglect Paulette Van Roenkens’ “Satsuma Jar and Lilies,” for it is one of the fine things in the show. Among other exhibitors are Schofield and Symons, who have their usual snow scenes, Ufer, Emma MacRae, Sloan R. Bredin, Breckenridge and Ceclia Beaux. The Sculpture showing is notable and worthy of more space than at my disposal. French is represented by his seated figure of Lincoln, Paul Bartlett by a fountain figure and “appears in person” in the portrait bust by Grafly, which was given a medal of honor, Albert Laessle has an unusual group of small bronzes such as “Locust and Pine Cone” and “Kingerag and Beetle.” There are fancy and imagination in Mahonri Young’s “Listening Faun,” and good characterization in Margaret French Cressories study of a peasant. The Boston Miniaturists include Laura Hills, Sally Cross, Annie Jackson, Lucia Fairchild Fuller and Margaret Foote Hawley.
List of the artists and their works Painting
Sculpture
The Boston Miniaturists
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The Sunday Herald, Boston, April 29, 1923. Exhibit to be in New Art Centre Concord Assn. Has Unusual Setting for Its Collection By F. W. Coburn, Literary Concord’s progress toward becoming one of the art capitals of America has been advanced by the opening of the Concord Art Centre at 15 Lexington road. This house, with its art galleries, is favorably situated to draw attendance and public support. The thousands of people, to be sure, who visit Concord every summer do not go there to see modern art. They are interested in the Old North Bridge, the Old Manse, Sleepy Hollow cemetery, Lake Walden, the houses in which the Alcotts, the Emersons and the Hawthornes once lived. They like to take away souvenirs of the golden age of New England literature. Still, if there is an art centre, right on the main street, with picturesque swinging sign in front and with the hospitable door wide open, then the oil magnate from Oklahoma and the preceptress of a girls’ school in Alabama will alike be attracted to step in and see the pictures and sculptures. If an occasional sale of a work of art is negotiated, that is so much to the good of the artistic producers as well as of the Concord Art Association. Expected to Attract Summer Tourists “IF the art centre isn’t visited in the vacation months it will be different from every other place with an open door, and some with closed doors, in Concord,” said an experienced resident of the town when the question of probable attendance at the new centre was mentioned. “You know this place is fairly messed up with tourists all summer long. We Concord people have to run away from it. We go to the mountains and the seashore and sometimes to New York, to escape the crowds. I expect the art centre will look like a Paris salon in July and August.” The art centre was finished and formally opened a fortnight in advance of the installation in the gallery of the seventh annual exhibition of paintings and sculptures of the Concord Art Association, to be disclosed with a private view on Saturday evening, May 5. The exhibition itself is always an event of more than local significance, for the Concord art committee attracts to the quiet town on the Musketaquid many of the best works from the art exhibitions of New York and Philadelphia. Held this year for the first time at an art centre instead of in the town hall, the exhibition, continuing through June 8, will normally attract a swarm of motorists from every part of the New England map. It has been quite a technical stunt to create an art gallery with smaller exhibition rooms in an old New England house of about 1750. It looks to be of about that period. It is not known to have had any connection with the battle at the North Bridge or to have been the residence of any of the literati who made Concord famous in the 19th century. It was bought some time ago by Lawrence Park of Groton, interested in the work of the Society for Preservation of New England Antiquities, and was by him sold to the Concord Art Association. The officers of the association which henceforth will be responsible for the conduct of the Concord Art Centre are: President, Daniel Chester French, vice-president, George S. Keyes; counsel, Frederick Hathaway Chase; treasurer, Miss Grace B. Keyes; secretary, Miss Elizabeth W. Roberts; directors: Miss Cecilia Beaux, Stedman Buttrick, Mrs. Huger Elliott, Allen French, Charles Hopkinson, Miss Alicia M. Keyes, Russell Robb, Charles H. Pepper. ________________ Attached to same panel with the above Sunday Herald clipping: Concord’s Art Centre Building Illustrated, and labeled: Above - Colonial House [Built About 1750],Which Provides Charming Atmosphsere for Art Collections. Below - A Fireplace with its Accompaniments. ________________ Woman Architect Aids “You don’t get me to work with no woman architect,” the skilled Yankee carpenter to whom it was proposed to entrust the difficult work of reconstruction is quoted as saying. He finally took the contract, though, and after some months of collaboration with one of Technology’s women graduates Miss Lois L. Howe, he has decided that architecture is quite a proper profession for a woman, after all. Architect and carpenter have together made a really wonderful work of preserving the old material of the house and of making the new construction look consistent and substantial. A big central chimney had to be removed in part. Its top, however, still peers above the roof and some of it is left on the ground floor where a “secret room” has been preserved intact, with its dark, cubiculum suggestive of a depository for old-time bootleggers, if there were any such. The old panelling has been kept so far as possible. So have the doors with their hand-wrought hinges, and the fireplaces which are notably good examples. The el has been fitted up for quarters of the caretakers. A large gallery, top-lighted, has been created on the second floor. It is octagonal in shape, with extreme dimensions of 42 by 30 feet, and with wall space for hanging about 60 paintings At only one point does the wall of the gallery coincide with the outside wall of the house. There, at the head of the stairs, is a window, which will ordinarily be covered with a tapestry. Elsewhere there is a storage space between the gallery and the exterior walls and at one corner a covered triangle, in which a piano is in hiding. For a musical entertainment of a dance, the instrument can be readily moved out into the gallery.
Offers Her Treasures For furnishing the gallery prior to the hanging of the pictures of the annual exhibition Miss Elizabeth Wentworth Roberts, secretary of the association and the moving spirit in this enterprise, contributed some of her personal treasures; a portrait of Sir William Young, by Benjamin West, an old colonial portrait, the armor of a medieval knight, an Italian marriage chest and several other objects of art. It is purposed to have a series of exhibitions appropriate to the locality through the year. In November next there will be one devoted exclusively to work in black and white. On the first floor are three small galleries for installation of the permanent and lent collections of the Concord Art Association. In the room to the right, as at present arranged, is a considerable collection of etchings by Seymour Haden, Meryon Millet, Frank Brangwyn, Joseph Pennell, Mary Cassatt, Anders Zorn and others, and a collection of Chinese colored drawings on silk. The latter, lent by George S. Keyes of Concord, is a very interesting souvenir of Boston’s clipper ship days, quite realistic depictions of Chinese craftsmen and tradesmen and likenesses of birds and animals. In the front room to the left is a case of miniatures, several of them the gifts of Miss Roma Newman and Miss Alice W. Ball. The most notable, artistically speaking, is the portrait of William Gowen by Edward Malbone. In a case are artistic book covers and an autograph letter of James McNeil Whistler. Two very fine examples of old Chinese wall paper are from the Greene homestead, Hopkinton, N.H., one of Miss Roberts’s ancestral homes.
Case of Porcelains A picturesquely shaped room to the rear of the foregoing contains a large case of porcelains and glass; many musical instruments; a built-in cupboard filled with old silver; a Terry Clock; a collection of brass and pewter over the mantel of the fireplace, and other things. Many of these objects are just what the average tourist hopes to see in Concord though no effort is made to compete with the local antiquarian society. The art centre is primarily what its name indicates--a New England home of fine arts. Not much has been discovered concerning the early history of the house now occupied by the art centre, according to an officer of the association. The date of its erection, 1750, is only a guess. |
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The World of Art. Sunday Herald Magazine. [1923] Concord’s Summer Show Coburn, F. W. At the Art Centre, Lexington street, Concord, a summer exhibition invites motorists and other visitors. The many signatures recorded daily in the visitors’ book attest the usefulness of the centre with its privilege of free admission and its opportunity to see the work of foremost American painters and sculptors. In the main gallery at the Art Centre is a selection made from the works lately shown at the seventh annual exhibition of the Concord Art Association. With no overcrowding the octagonal exhibition room presents a favorable appearance. It give opportunity to see pictures by several painters who are quite unknown to Boston and by others familiar and highly esteemed. The Concord Art Association has acquired a reputation for bringing to this part of the United States representative canvases by artists for whom Boston has no regular annual exhibition. Enough of these pieces have been retained for the Concord exhibit to give it a distinctly national quality. Charles Hopkinson’s “The Piazza Door,” awarded the medal of honor at the spring exhibition, holds a prominent place in the gallery. It has been seen in Boston, a presentment of a charming little girl coming out of a door and with an arched-back kitten at her ankles. It has the big attractiveness of a good Hopkinson. Two pictures of prime consequence are Ernest D. Roth’s “Frozen Marshes” and “San Salvador, Granada.” This artist’s etchings have been shown in Boston. One does not remember ever seeing any of his paintings since, cheu annos fugaces, we were together at the Art students’ League. An earnest and able painter who has not been uninfluenced by Cezanne is Roth. The separations in his study of towers and roof lines at Grenada are quite of the present New York mode, and still the piece is individual enough to be likable. Thomas W. Dewing, said to hate Boston so intensely, having for a time starved here, that he won’t allow a picture to be shown within the limits of the detested municipality, has ventured to be represented at Concord, only 20 miles away. His “Lady in Green” is one of his subdued divinities of the half-light, a shapely and colorful blonde [as one quesses] who pallidly emerges from a dusky green background. The poetry of understatement and repression has sufficed to give Mr. Dewing much of his wide reputation. You feel, withal, that even when he is vague and detached he is never inchoate or meaningless. Other paintings which on one account or an other challenged the reviewer’s attention were: Alice Worthington Ball’s “Habitant Houses, Canada,” objective and admirably picturesque; Paulette van Roekam’s “In the Park,” brisk and quivering with life; Charles Vezin’s “The First Lights,” a Whistleresque impression of the New York waterfront in the early morning; Carl Lawless’s “Winter Light,” with snowy tints, very delicate and spattered over with calligraphic branches and wisps of dried grass; John Westerling’s “Morning,” some of it shaken out of a mustard pot; Emma Fordyce MacRae’s “Daisies,” decoratively inlaid with much thought of patterns and color; Maurice Fromkee’s “White Cosmos,” accessory of a very red-lipped girl made with the porcelain finish of which this artist is a protagonist; Gardner Symons’s “The Birches,” straight and unaffected painting. Among the works by Boston painters are Stanley Woodward’s “The Turmoil,” a surf-swash acquired for a Concord private collection; Gertrude Fiske’s “Saunterers,” afoot on the ocean pier; Charles Hovey Pepper’s “The Gekwar,” pepful and imposing; Adelaide Code Chase’s refined portrait of Mrs. Alpheus Hyatt; Frederick G. Hall’s still life, “The Flying Horseman”; David Reasoner’s vigorous “From Monadnock Bridge.” One wall of the gallery is appropriately given to works by Elizabeth Wentworth Roberts, secretary of the association and watchful from the beginning over its interests. Here are nine of Miss Roberts’s studies of the sea, called “Figures on the Sand.” There is a fine northland feeling in her “New Hampshire Hills” and “Greene Homestead, Hopkinton, N.H.” Notable among the sculptures are a study for the Lincoln memorial, Washington, by Daniel Chester French, president of the association; Chester Beach’s “Anne,” a terra cotta head; a sterling Calder’s “Naiod,” and Margaret French Cresson’s “Roumanian Peasant.” The last-named piece of modelling by a daughter of Daniel Chester French is a singularly poignant and formful work. A number of miniature sculptures are shown downstairs. British etchings by members of the Print Society of Ringwood, England, occupy the print room on the ground floor. This is a collection that intrigues one. It is so competent, so satisfying. One would like to know more about the personality of these able etchers of Albion, who interpret the architecture of their own island and of the continent with such scholarly gusto. Mostly their work is not wildly exciting but it is very well made. It merits your closest study and respect. In the permanent collection of the art centre, hung in the room to the left of the entrance, are two paintings by early Americans of high standing: Benjamin West’s “Sir William Young,” and the portrait of William Gowen by Edward Malbone, miniaturist. These are pictures any museum would be glad to possess |
