Posts in category: American Art

On Thanksgiving Day remember Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) and Give thanks for each new morning with its light, / For rest and shelter of the night. / For health and food, / For love and friends, / For everything they goodness sends… and ‘feast’ your eyes with Freedom From Want by Norman Rockwell.

The ‘Four Freedoms’ speech, the 1941 State of the Union Address by US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, is the only Presidential speech in American history that inspired a multitude of books and films, the establishment of its own park, a series of paintings by a world famous artist, a prestigious international award and a United Nation’s resolution on Human Rights. On the 6^th of March 1943, The Saturday Evening Post published Norman Rockwell’s Freedom From Want, a painting inspired by the ‘Four Freedoms’ speech, and one of my favourite Rockwell paintings.  https://fdr.blogs.archives.gov/2016/01/06/four_freedoms/

Norman Rockwell had a long-standing collaboration with The Saturday Evening Post, which he considered to be the greatest show window in America. The collaboration started in 1916, when the 22-year-old Rockwell painted his first cover for the magazine, and continued over the next 47 years. By 1963, when the collaboration with the Post ended, 322 Rockwell paintings had appeared on the cover of the magazine. https://www.nrm.org/about/about-2/about-norman-rockwell/

Freedom From Want is an iconic Rockwell painting we associate with Thanksgiving. Did Norman Rockwell paint Freedom from Want to celebrate a Thanksgiving feast?

No, he did not! Freedom From Want was one in a series of four paintings Rockwell made in response to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address known as the “Four Freedoms.” (The other freedoms were “freedom of speech,” “freedom of worship,” and “freedom from fear.”) He offered the series to the Office of War Information (OWI). The Office turned him down ‘unceremoniously,’ answering back to him… ‘The last war, you illustrators did the posters. This war, we’re going to use fine arts men, real artists.’ https://news.artnet.com/art-world/norman-rockwell-thanksgiving-freedom-from-want-three-facts-1926485

However, Ben Hibbs, editor of the Saturday Evening Post, Rockwell’s devoted ‘employer,’ had a different opinion! Rockwell’s paintings of the Four Freedoms were published, and they became so popular, that the magazine decided to offer prints for sale. The OWI, which had turned down Rockwell just a few months earlier, asked to use prints of the paintings in a war bond campaign that would ultimately garner over $132 million in bonds and stamps. Bottom line, millions of posters of Rockwell’s paintings were distributed across the country and posted in schools, libraries, and post offices. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/norman-rockwell-thanksgiving-freedom-from-want-three-facts-1926485

Freedom From Want depicts an idealistic white, middle-class family seated around a crisply adorned dinner table. The patriarch, placed at the head of the table, presides over the holiday gathering accompanied by the family matriarch, who presents a roasted turkey, the ‘piece de resistance’ of the artist’s painting. In a typical Rockwell manner, the people portrayed in the painting were his friends, family, and neighbors in the town of Arlington, Vermont, whom he photographed in his studio and painted into the complex composition individually (they never sat together). https://news.artnet.com/art-world/norman-rockwell-thanksgiving-freedom-from-want-three-facts-1926485  and https://www.nrm.org/2012/10/collections-four-freedoms/

Rockwell’s painting has its critics and its supporters. Even Rockwell himself thought that it ‘lacked a wallop.’ There are, however, many more who treasure it. Like Deborah Solomon, his biographer, who goes so far as to call the light-filled canvas ‘one of the most ambitious plays of white-against-white since Whistler’s Symphony in White, No. 1.’ For me, the composition is highly organized, the colour tones are warm (even the whites), and light is soft. This is a family scene we have all experienced, a moment we cherish, and a Norman Rockwell painting we love! https://news.artnet.com/art-world/norman-rockwell-thanksgiving-freedom-from-want-three-facts-1926485

I would like to draw your attention to page 82 of Picturing America, and how masterfully the controversy over Rockwell the artist, or Rockwell the illustrator, is addressed… Rockwell had been born into a world in which painters crossed easily from the commercial world to that of the gallery, as Winslow Homer had done. By the 1940s, however, a division had emerged between the fine arts and the work for hire that Rockwell produced. The detailed, homespun images he employed to reach a mass audience were not appealing to an art community that now lionized intellectual and abstract works. But Rockwell knew his strengths did not lie in that direction: “Boys batting flies on vacant lots,” he explained in 1936, “little girls playing jacks on the front steps; old men plodding home at twilight, umbrella in hand — all these things arouse feeling in me.” https://picturingamerica.neh.gov/downloads/pdfs/Resource_Guide/English/English_PA_TeachersGuide.pdf

For a PowerPoint on Norman Rockwell’s paintings of the ‘Four Wants,’ please… Check HERE! 

Celebrated as the leading society portraitist of his era, write the NGA experts, John Singer Sargent influenced a generation of American painters. His personal captivation with Spain resulted in a remarkable body of work that documents his extensive travels from the north to the south and to the island of Majorca. Over three decades Sargent responded to the country’s rich culture by producing landscapes and marine scenes, pictures of everyday life, and architectural studies, as well as sympathetic portrayals of the locals he encountered. La Carmencita by John Singer Sargent is one such painting I would like to learn more about… https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2022/sargent-and-spain.html

In 1889, while visiting the Exposition Universelle in Paris, John Singer Sargent had his first encounter with Carmen Dauset Moreno, known as La Carmencita (1868 – 1910), the famous Spanish-style dancer, who danced at the Nouveau Cirque with great acclaim. Sponsored by theatrical agent Bolossy Kiralfy at first, La Carmencita became a theatrical sensation in the United States dancing in the ballet Antiope. In 1890, under the management of John Koster and Albert Bial, she performed in their 23rd Street Concert Hall with great success. Carmencita is the first woman performer to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera and may have been the first woman to appear in a motion picture in America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmencita

Sargent, enamored with Spanish music, and dancing since the 1880s, described La Carmencita as a bewildering superb creature. In 1890, the same year William Merritt Chase did his portrait of the famous dancer, Sargent persuaded a restless and demanding Carmencita pose for him. He was restless as well… and he made many studies of her dancing, but in the end, he opted to portray her in a stationary pose. According to the MET Museum experts the critics were divided… how dare did Sargent represent ‘a common music hall performer in such a monumental way…’ https://www.culturezohn.com/culturedpearls/tag/The+Met

Painted in bold colours, hands on hip, right leg extended, against a dark background to highlight his skills as a painter Sargent creates the portrait of a snapshot posing dancer. Her posture is elegant and majestic, projecting her magnetism. Her face, like that of several of Sargent’s models of the time, is rendered white and masklike from cosmetics, with arched eyebrows, hinting at a proud, even haughty presence. Using a charming theme, swift brushstrokes, and washes of warm earthy colours, Sargent created a magnificent painting of feminine allure. When during 1890 La Carmencita was exhibited in Chicago, crowds of visitors went to the Art Institute to admire the famous painting. In 1892, two years after its creation, the painting was purchased from the artist by the French state. Today La Carmencita is in the collection Musée d’Orsay. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/21453

For a PowerPoint on Sargent and Spain, please…  Click HERE!

From the Library of Congress, Washington DC, La Carmencita, the Spanish Performer, as she danced in front of an Edison motion picture camera. Filmed by William Heise, March 10-16, 1894, in Edison’s Black Maria studio… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-15jwb1ZTMA

The Sargent and Spain Exhibition can be seen in the National Gallery in Washington DC (October 2, 2022 – January 2, 2023). According to the NGA Experts, the Sargent and Spain  Exhibition presents for the first time, approximately 120 dazzling oils, watercolors, and drawings, many of which are rarely exhibited. Also featured from the artist’s travels are some 28 never-before-published photographs, several almost certainly taken by Sargent himself. It is an Exhibition worth visiting! https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2022/sargent-and-spain.html

The American artist Edward Hopper is acknowledged as one of the most significant artists of the 20^th century. He is known for his oil paintings of urban life scenes, behind windows and across streets, dating from the 1920s to the 1960s, some of which have become highly popular images, like the Nighthawks (1942, Oil on canvas, 84.1 x 152.4 cm, Art Institute of Chicago). He is less known for the attention he has paid to landscapes, particularly landscapes of New England, like Cape Ann Granite (1928. Oil on canvas, 73.5 x 102.3 cm. Private Collection). He is even less known for his early illustrations… like Smash the Hun…his ticket to success.

In 1918 Edward Hopper was thirty-six years old and still struggling for artistic recognition. He was born on July 22, 1882, in the charming riverfront village of Upper Nyack, New York, where he spent his formative years. He grew up, comfortably, embraced by an educated family that was involved in the arts, and went to museums, concerts, and other cultural events. Inclined to draw as a child, Hopper was supported by his family to pursue the arts, but being of practical mind, his parents suggested he chose to study Illustration for a career that would provide him a steady income. Hopper took courses at the Correspondence School of Illustrating and at the New York School of Art. Noted illustrator/painters Arthur Keller, Frank Vincent Du Mond, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Robert Henri were among his teachers, and John Sloan, who worked regularly as a commercial illustrator prior to 1916, was an early influence. His strong, and dynamic illustrations for trade publications are memorable… but this is not what he really wanted, and by 1918 he was getting restless… https://www.thoughtco.com/edward-hopper-biography-4165484 and https://www.mutualart.com/Exhibition/Unknown-Hopper–Edward-Hopper-as-Illustr/3CFFF3BDEE4BBFF2

Unduly… it was the art of illustration that won Hopper his first kind of fame. According to Gail Levin, who wrote Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography, Bert Edward Barnes, editor of the Morse Dry Dock Dial, liked his work and probably persuaded him to enter the contest for a propaganda poster sponsored by the United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation in 1918. The agency had been created in September 1916 with the authority to build, purchase, lease, or requisition vessels needed for the war effort.

Barnes encouraged Hopper to visit the shipyard to get the right feel, and volunteered one of his employees, Pete Shea, to model for the poster. He also had Shea photographed in the pose and gave a print to Hopper, who recalled in an ironical sketch: “I got this big Irishman to pose for me in the shipyards, with the background of ship’s ribs, that sort of things. I had his swigging a maul, and the maul was aimed at a bloody bayonet sticking unpin one corner. I titled it ‘Smash the Hun’; it was pretty awful and I don’t think it was ever published.” In fact, Hopper’s design appeared on the cover of the Morse Dry Dock Dial for February 1919.

The four-colour poster won Hopper the three-hundred-dollar first prize among fourteen hundred contestants. Since the armistice was declared before the poster could be reproduced for mass distribution, Hopper’s fame came from the exhibition of Smash the Hun along with nineteen other finalists in August 1918, in the window of Gimbel’s department store on Broadway, where, according to the press, ‘thousands’ saw the ‘stirring pictures placed on vie.’ The papers reported that the wave of popular excitement swept up Hopper’s model, Shea: he enlisted in the Navy.

Interesting to read… Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography by Gail Levin https://books.google.gr/books?id=6Dh2gFK-lecC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=Hopper+Smash+the+Hun&source=bl&ots=qjJ-w8SQPt&sig=ACfU3U2U_AkbuBJuhjWMNGjQXS_edv90bw&hl=el&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwif6dug0Yf6AhXGSPEDHWFXCpw4ChDoAXoECBQQAw#v=onepage&q=Hopper%20Smash%20the%20Hun&f=false pp. 108, 116-117

For a PowerPoint, titled Edward Hopper: The Early Years, please… Check HERE!

An interesting Video Presentation of The Unknown Hopper: Edward Hopper as Illustrator. The Video was created for the Exhibition that was on view at Norman Rockwell Museum between June 7, 2014 to October 26, 2014… https://www.facebook.com/historyofart2016/videos/200213034763003

The origins of Edward Hopper’s earliest oil paintings by Louis Shadwick “cuts straight through the widely held perception of Hopper as an American original,” and helps the reader understand Hopper’s artistic journey. https://burlington.org.uk/media/_file/generic/202010-42790.pdf and https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/some-edward-hoppers-earliest-works-were-copies-180975958/

The Parthenon by Frederic Edwin Church in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is one of my favorite paintings of all time. I look at it and think of the artist, who wrote to his friend William O. Osborn on the 14^th of April 1869… The Parthenon is certainly the culmination of the genius of man in architecture. Every column, every ornament, every molding, asserts the superiority which is claimed for even the shattered remains of the once proud temple over all other building by man… I have made architectural drawings of the Parthenon and fancied before I came to Athens that I had a good idea of its merits. But, I knew it not. Daily I study its stones and feel its inexpressible charm of beauty growing upon my senses. I am glad – and shall try and secure as much material as possible. I think a great picture could be made of the ruins. They are very picturesque as well as imposing, and the colour is superb… American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School by Avery, Kevin J., Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque, John K. Howat, Doreen Bolger Burke, and Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, 1987, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, pp. 263-265 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/American_Paradise_The_World_of_the_Hudson_River_School

And the colour Church employs for his MFA Study for “The Parthenon” is indeed superb! More so than the finished painting of the Parthenon in the Metropolitan Museum, Church’s MFA Study captures the unique Athenian light… its shocking ability to change into all the colours of ‘Iris’ in the course of a day… its vibrant, warm, and eloquent qualities… its ability to touch the Pentelic marble and give it meaning, significance, and a pulsating inner world… In April 1869 Frederic Edwin Church outdid himself… creating a superb representation of a superb architectural creation.

For Frederic Edwin Church traveling to Greece was part of a three-continent Grand Tour that included England, France, Egypt, Lebanon, Jerusalem, Syria, Turkey, Austria, Switzerland, and finally Rome in Italy. The trip started late in 1867, it included the whole year of 1868 and ended in 1869. In April 1869 Church sailed to Athens, where he spent several weeks. Impressed by the Parthenon, he wrote to his sculptor friend Erastus Dow Palmer… I recently visited Greece – Athens – I was delighted – the Parthenon is a wonderful work of the human intellect – but it must be seen – no photograph can convey even a faint impression of its majesty and beauty – fragments of sculpture are strewn all about – and let me say that I think Athens is the place for a sculptor… The Greeks had noble conceptions. They gave a large-godlike air to all they did and the fragments and bits are full of merit. I spend over two weeks there with immense pleasure and profit – and when I returned – Rome with its gross architecture looked cheap and vulgar. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/American_Paradise_The_World_of_the_Hudson_River_School

Back in the United States, in January 1870, Church wrote once more to his friend William O. Osborn… I shall commence a large picture of the Parthenon soon, probably. This picture is now part of the Metropolitan Museum Collection. My favorite Picture of the Parthenon is, however, housed in the Boston MFA. It is one, of the finest in my humble opinion, of ten carefully recorded Studies the artist did before embarking on his final representation of the Parthenon.

Celebrating UN International Day of Democracy, allow me to quote UN Secretary-General António Guterres saying… Let us commit to safeguarding the principles of equality, participation and solidarity, so that we can better weather the storm of future crises… and enjoy the eternal symbol of Democracy… The Parthenon as painted by the great American representative of the Hudson River School of Painting, Frederic Edwin Church.

For a PowerPoint on Frederic Edwin Church’s 1869 trip to Athens, please… Check HERE!

John Keats (1795-1821), as a true Romantic… dwells in Solitude, alone, in pleasant surroundings rather than in a city populated by murky buildings… O solitude! (he writes) if I must with thee dwell, / Let it not be among the jumbled heap / Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,— / Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, / Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell, / May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep / ’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap / Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. / But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee, / Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, / Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d, / Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be / Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, / When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. Edward Hopper (1882–1967) with his painting Rooms by the Sea creates, visually, an Icon of his own Solitude! https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46561/ode-on-solitude and https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/52939

Ever since Hopper visited Cape Cod, back in 1930, he fell under its spell… As Gregory Dicum of the New York Times wrote… At low tide, the warm water of Cape Cod Bay recedes to expose banks of smooth sand, which swarm with kids, dogs, and blissfully vacationing parents. As the sun sinks toward Provincetown, it cuts through a hazy summer sky, shimmering off the quicksilver bay. Hopper was enchanted! Summers on Cape Cod were welcoming and joyful… so in 1934, he and his wife, Josephine, built a modest summer house/studio, a classic Cape, but for a huge north-facing window. For nearly 40 summers, Hopper returned to this simple dwelling to enjoy and paint… the ease of an open landscape of beach, heath, and woodlot.

In 1951, a mature Edward Hopper painted Rooms by the Sea, a view of what Hopper would have seen out the back door of his studio… the expanse of the Cape Cod sea and the bright sunlight. What an interesting, awkward,  composition! A white, wide wall dominates the center of the composition, dividing his canvas into two distinctive parts. The left side depicts an ordinary room glared with boring tones. The right side, bathed in sunshine, presents the vastness of the sky and the energy of the sea. This is the painting of an artist who liked us to focus on mood more than detail, and the mood is that of silence and solitude. Let’s not forget that the original title of the discussed painting was Rooms by the Sea. Alias the Jumping Off Place. https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/52939 and https://www.edward-hopper.org/rooms-by-the-sea/

The Art Critic Clement Greenberg persuasively described Edward Hopper as a bad painter but a superior artist. I would like to wrap this presentation up with what Greenberg further wrote: “Hopper is not a painter in the full sense; his means are second hand, shabby, and impersonal, But his rudimentary sense of composition is sufficient for a message that conveys an insight into the present nature of American life for which there is no parallel in our literature, though that insight in itself is literature.” So interesting… Reviewed Work: Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography by Gail Levin, by: Alan Rutenberg, The American Scholar, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Autumn 1996), pp. 628-631 https://www.jstor.org/stable/41212573

For a PowerPoint on Hopper’s Cape Cod, please… Check HERE!

An interesting Video, titled Summer On Cape Cod with Edward Hopper, by curator Joachim Homann of Harvard Art Museums… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9KzVQ_9qQI