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An Adventurous Spirit: Julian Alden Weir

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An Adventurous Spirit: Julian Alden Weir An Adventurous Spirit: Julian Alden Weir uring a long career lasting from continued there under Gérôme, who took Dthe mid-1870s into the second a special interest in him, providing advice decade of the Twentieth Century, Julian and counseling him on painting excur- Alden Weir (1852–1919) was at the center sions. Although Weir would abandon the of a cosmopolitan generation of Ameri- high finish and ideality of Gérôme’s art, can artists who were committed to high the legacy of his tutelage would live on in aesthetic standards, emphasizing artistry his dedication throughout his career to over description.1 However, even among composing pictures meticulously, making his peers, Weir stood out in his era for use of many preliminary studies. his innate artistic nature, which led him The French Realist Jules Bastien- constantly to absorb new ideas and Lepage was the other artist who influences, seeking the most perfect profoundly impacted Weir during his means of matching subject and method. formative years. He quickly absorbed the His objective, as noted by the artist and elder artist’s strong naturalism, which writer Eliot Clark in 1920, was to achieve was influenced by the Old Masters— “a consummation, the form in which to especially Flemish and Italian Renaissance embody his artistic idea,” as evident in painting. This impact surfaced in Weir’s the works in this exhibition from work in the summer and fall of 1875, different phases in Weir’s career. 2 when he resided in the Île-de-France Art seemingly ran in Weir’s blood. town of Cernay-la-Ville, 45 kilometers His father Robert Walter Weir (1803– southwest of Paris. Whereas Weir had 1889) was an esteemed professor of spent time during the previous summer drawing at West Point, a position he in Pont-Aven, a popular artist’s colony held for forty-two years. His half-brother of expatriates in Brittany, he selected John Ferguson Weir (1841–1926)— Cernay-la-Ville because he believed he also a successful artist and an important would “learn more and be more serious” art teacher at the Yale Art School— there, if he “remained with the Frenchmen.”3 Olin Levi Warner mentored and encouraged him. In his Among the results of this visit is (1844–1896) youth, Weir was surrounded by the Jeune Fille, a small bust-length rendering enormous collection of prints and books of a peasant girl. Here, Weir adhered to that his father had acquired on trips to the tête d’expression (reflection or thought in Bust of Julian Alden Weir Italy and by Hudson River School artists, the study of a head) exercises given in including Frederic Church, Thomas Cole, classes at the École, while his exposure to 1880 and Asher B. Durand, who regularly Bastien-Lepage’s work is evident in his visited the Weir household. His career tonal palette and sensitive modulation signed Olin Warner, dated 1880, and inscribed Alden Weir on the reverse path was facilitated by John, who upon of light and shadow. Weir’s treatment bronze leaving for Europe in 1868, turned over reflected traditional peasant imagery, in 22 × 11 × 11 inches his studio in the Tenth Street Studio which the subjects were portrayed with Building in New York—home to many of expressions conveying religious sentiments PROVENANCE the day’s leading artists—to his younger or psychological states. By choosing a Julian Alden Weir sibling. In New York, Julian studied at the closely cropped portrait and vertical Mrs. George Page Ely (née Caroline Weir), National Academy of Design (1870–1872), format, he elevated his subject to a role his daughter, 1919 primarily under Lemuel Wilmarth. traditionally reserved for the wealthy Mrs. Gregory Smith (née Anne Weir Ely), With John’s urging and patronage elite, endowing her with nobility, while her daughter provided by Mrs. Bradford Alden, a conveying spiritual essence in the soft light By descent in the family to private collection, family friend, he continued his training in glowing across her face. The sidelong view California Paris in 1873, studying in the atelier of the gives her a sense of animation, enhanced noted Academician Jean-Léon Gérôme. He by her pensive expression. passed the entrance exam at the École des In a letter Weir sent to his mother Beaux-Arts in the following year and from Cernay-la-Ville in October 1875, 2 he reported that he was working on three as an art advisor, purchasing works for also parallels the dark-toned paintings large paintings.4 However, he appears to the New York art collector Erwin Davis, of street boys and apprentices by the have chosen the small Jeune Fille as one of among them Bastien-Lepage’s Joan of Arc, Munich-trained artists William Merritt his two contributions to the 1876 Paris 1879 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Chase and Duveneck. Salon—under the title Tête de jeune fille, New York) .10 In the early 1880s, Weir became more étude. On seeing his works in the Salon, In the summer of 1881, Weir selected expansive, as seen in Flowers, 1882, where Weir wrote to his mother that his large two works by Édouard Manet for Davis, he united his increased attention to both portrait was badly hung, but the “head A Boy with a Sword, circa 1861, and Woman still life and watercolor. Although in the of the little child, however is pretty well, with a Parrot, 1866 (both, Metropolitan late 1870s, he used oil to create many and I have already received a great Museum of Art), and one by Edgar large-scale, detailed images of floral compliment from Mr. [Frank] Duveneck, Degas, Dancers in Pink, 1876 (Hill-Stead arrangements, often in vertical formats, who I am told is the best portrait painter Museum, Farmington, Connecticut). here, he selected a more intimate in Munich. He on his second visit walked He also began to derive influence from composition and a spontaneous method all over to find this head, not knowing Manet as well as from the Spanish in watercolor and gouache. In his casual by whom it was.”5 Weir’s “small study Baroque sources of which Manet was array of bright red and delicate white of a head” was also noticed by a reviewer enamored, including Diego Velázquez flowers strewn on the ground, he united of the exhibition for the Baltimore Sun, and Bartolomé Estegan Murillo. light and color effects. and in 1920, Clark praised it as having A result of this influence is demon- On April 24, 1883, Weir married “much of the intensity of an early strated in Boy Polishing a Brass Jug, rendered Anna Dwight Baker (1862–1892), who had Flemish master.”6 When the painting in the late 1870s or early 1880s. Using a accompanied a friend to a class he was was included in Weir’s 1924 Memorial frontal composition, dark palette, and teaching, leading to their engagement show at the Metropolitan Museum of painterly brush handling, Weir represented after just three weeks. She joined Weir in Art, Frederic Newlin Price took notice the contemporary daily life of a household establishing a feeling of domestic bliss at of “that little head of a French peasant servant. He emulated Manet in his use of their home in New York at 11 East 12th girl, so exquisitely beautiful that it might white impasto for reflective surfaces— Street and in Branchville, Connecticut, well have been an upturned face of an such as the gleam of the jug and the small where Weir had acquired a farm in 1882. angel from some dream.”7 bowl of polish on the table. His image After marrying, Weir intended to In April 1877, Weir was one of only a few American artists to visit the third French Impressionist exhibition— La Troisième Exposition des Impressionnistes— held at 6 rue Le Peletier in Paris, across the street from Durand-Ruel’s galleries, where the artists had held their first exhibition in 1874.8 Steeped in the Academic tradition, Weir was bewildered and revulsed by the art he saw, writing home that it “was worse than the chamber of Horrors.”9 That September, he returned to New York, where he established a leading role in a community of similarly foreign-trained artists, showed his work at the National Academy of Design and the newly formed Society of American Artists, and taught at the Cooper Union School of Design for Women. However, he returned to Europe every summer, renewing his acquaintances with artist friends and absorbing new Anna Dwight Baker and Julian Alden Weir on their honeymoon, 1883 influences. While abroad, he also acted NPS PHOTO 3 “hammer at portraits,” but few portrait McNeill Whistler’s Symphony in White, commissions were forthcoming due to the No. 1: The White Girl, 1862 (National competition from “artistic” photography, Gallery of Art, Washington, DC), shown and he focused instead on paintings of in New York in 1881, which spawned his family, especially Anna and Caroline so many American artists’ interest in (1884–1973)—their first child, whom predominantly white pictures that they affectionately called Caro.11 Weir demonstrated subtle tonal gradations.13 featured Caro in some of his most Weir gave careful attention to the acclaimed works, including Idle Hours, brilliant whites of Caro’s lace-trimmed 1888 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) dress and its high collar which called and The Christmas Tree, 1890 (Terra to mind the ruffs in Dutch paintings, Foundation for American Art). Caro with such as those by Frans Hals. an Orange (Portrait of Caro), 1887, which Weir Another work that inspired him exhibited at the Universal Exposition in was Velázquez’s famed Las Meninas, 1656 Paris in 1889, belongs among them.
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