THE ART OF WILLIAM SOMMER

Reprinted with permission from the Akron Art Museum Akron Art Museum Brochure of the William Sommers Exhibition

November 6, 1993 - January 9, 1994

William Sommer, one of the finest artists to emerge from 's expansive early twentieth-century arts scene, doggedly followed his own path to create an art that transcended the ordinary and that still looks fresh and inviting today. While

Sommer (1867-1949) exhibited widely in and also in New York, London and other major cities during his lifetime, he never gained lasting fame beyond his own region.

A philosophical, hard-drinking, impractical man, Sommer lacked the tools and the desire to bring his art to a wider audience. Recent years, however, have seen a renewed interest in his art, not just in Ohio but beyond, as critical reevaluations confirm that Sommer merits further attention and perhaps even consideration as an artist of national stature.

Sommer's involvement with art began early in his life. The son of German immigrants, he took art lessons as a young child in his native from artist and commercial lithographer Julius Meichers. Even at a young age, Sommer's skills were apparent, and Melchers helped Sommer get a coveted apprenticeship in a Detroit commercial lithography studio in 1881. Lithography was a vital art at that time, for it was the primary means for mass production of images before photographic reproduction for commercial use was widespread After completing his apprenticeship in 1 888, lithographic jobs took him to Boston, then New York and England. As his lithographic reputation grew, though, so did his desire to create fine art for himself.

Good fortune enabled Sommer to pursue his dream. A fellow lithographer received a windfall and brought Sommer with him to study art in Munich, a city reputed to be a great art center. From February 1890 through March 1891, Sommer studied art there and traveled to Italy and Holland as well He worked primarily with a Professor Herterich, but records suggest additional classes with Ludwig Schmid and the famed Adolph

Menzel, an important painter noted for his lifelike domestic and historic scenes.1

In truth, the Munich of 1890 had not been a real art center for some time - that role had been usurped by Paris-but Sommer received a solid education in formal technique and rendering. He came to excel in these skills but learned nothing of Impressionism, which had revolutionized art from the 1 870s onward Sommer's year in Munich was the last formal art education that he ever received.

After returning to the U.S., Sommer settled in New York and returned to his commercial lithography. He married Martha Obermeyer in 1894 or 1895, and in 1896 the first of their three sons was born.Throughout this period, Sommer pursued his own art.

Working both with oil paints and pastels, he made a number of portraits, predominantly of children, rendered with the broad, gestural strokes and muted earth tones so integral to the

Munich aesthetic . He also joined the Kit Kat Klub, a small group of artists who met weekly to talk and sketch.

In 1907, Sommer and his young family moved to Cleveland at the request of the

Otis Lithograph Company. While at Otis, he met some of Cleveland1s more adventurous artists including his co-worker William Zorach and Zorach1s neighbor Abel Warshawsky, both of whom went on to study in Paris. He spent more time with them through the

Kokoon Arts Klub, an artists' group that Sommer co-founded in 1911 to promote interest in modern art.From Warshawsky, Sommer learned the fundamentals of Impressionism - bright, airy palette of pure, unblended colors, applied in short, soft strokes Sommer painted in an impressionist style from about 1910 to about 1912 . From Zorach,

Sommer learned of Post-Impressionism as practiced by such artists as Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh; this influence is readily apparent in the large, rather flat areas of bright color and somewhat simplified forms found in most of Sommer's works of

1913 and 1914.This exposure was furthered by a visit to the 1913 Armory Show, a landmark exhibition of European art featuring every major trend in modern art.5

There, Sommer learned of Matisse and the Fauves, artists who painted vivid scenes that eliminated all depth and much detail, emphasizing instead line and color. This new knowledge was soon reflected in Sommer's art, which began to incorporate vivid, often unnatural colors, energetic lines and extreme flatness. In just a few years,

Sommer had absorbed three decades worth of innovation, adopting what he wanted from each style in turn and discarding the rest.

In 1914, Sommer moved his family from the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood to a four-acre lot in the Brandywine neighborhood of Northfield Township, roughly mid-way between Cleveland and Akron. This lot had an old frame house, where the family lived, and an abandoned schoolhouse that Sommer converted to a studio. Sommer's happiness in his new surroundings is apparent in the art that he produced in those first years after coming to Brandywine. He created a number of festive watercolor scenes depicting nude or partially-clad women in idyllic settings. The soft, flowing lines, celebratory nature and sensual subject matter of these works revealed a strong debt to the art of Henri Matisse.

Sommer's distance from the city did not mean physical or intellectual isolation for him. An intelligent, inquisitive man, he was a voracious reader. Once his interest in the newest artistic developments had been initiated, he kept up with the avant-garde trends by reading art journals obtained at Laukhaff's Bookstore, a meeting place for Cleveland's

Bohemians Additionally, his job at Otis brought him into Cleveland during the day and many of his friends came out to the country to visit, so Sommer received the intellectual stimulation of exchanging ideas with other artists and thinkers. This group of friends included artists Philip Kaplan, Carl Moellmann, Richard Sedlon and

Ernest Nelson; the architect William Lescaze; and poets Samuel Loveman and the famed Hart Crane. Interests in philosophy, music, literature and a range of other areas led

Sommer to read some of the greatest minds of his own and earlier times, thereby gleaning new ideas that could be absorbed into his art. His reading was remarkably diverse, ranging from Feodor Dostoevsky to Sherwood Anderson and from Frederick Nietzsche to the Bhagavad Gita. Music, too, played a role in shaping Sommer's art, inspiring him to visualize specific chords or use colors suggested by the notes. His musical tastes clearly leaned toward the Teutonic, with Bach and Wagner among his favorites; they, too, were incorporated into his work. The artist's delight in his art, reading and music were affected, however, by a growing frustration with his job. This discontent, coupled with

Sommer's lifelong problem with alcoholism, sometimes led him to disappear for several days at a time.

Nonetheless, Sommer's art continued to evolve as new influences entered his life.

Beginning around 1917, he began to add angular lines to his works, often combining them with curving forms. Gradually, the geometric angles and curves grew firmer and more extreme, dominating color as a means of expression in his work. These changes were inspired by Sommer's exposure to Cubism, and even more so, to its British variant,

Vorticism. Sommer had seen the Cubist paintings of Picasso and Braque as early as 1913.

Yet, these radical works, which fractured three-dimensional subjects by showing different views of the same object simultaneously, affected him only slightly. He embraced the Vorticists' work and doctrine more wholeheartedly, adopting their aesthetic of wildly explosive compositions within solid, static contours by the early 1920s.

Through the mid-i 920s, Sommer created a number of expressive, angular paintings that grew increasingly dense in their forms and earthy in their colors. Their expressive, gestural quality and flat, geometric forms revealed the added influence of German

Expressionism and Paul Cezanne, whom Sommer revered. Most of these works were rendered in oil paint, and they increasingly depicted those subjects on which Sommer was to focus for the remainder of his career: children, the livestock and scenery of the

Brandywine Valley and still lifes. These subjects were all quite conventional compared with the industrial and machine-age imagery of Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth and other major American modernists. Sommer, who was fully aware of their work, preferred to focus on simpler, homier themes. His choice was probably motivated by the love of nature that first drew him to the countryside, and perhaps affirmed by his great love of

Cezanne's art, especially the French painter's landscapes and still lifes.

Throughout the late teens and into the mid-twenties, Sommer tried to combine the very different influences that he had assimilated and somehow make them coexist comfortably.

His efforts culminated with the union of two disparate traditions Sommer blended aspects of

Cezanne, the Vorticists and Cubists-all artists who treated subject matter as broken masses existing in space-with the flat, patterned arrangement of lines and colors used by

Matisse and the Post-Impressionists. This union was not always a smooth one, and for every success, he also produced works that were heavy, stiff, or lacking cohesion.

Somehow, though, out of his struggle to combine these elements with each other and with his own aesthetic, a unique style emerged in the late 1 920s. Sommer perfected this style by using line to shape and define his forms, shifting to the more spontaneous, looser medium of watercolors and relying more upon his strong natural instinct for color and composition.

Combining the innovations of European Modernism with the Midwestern subject matter that he knew so well resulted in an art that was distinctive, harmonious, and original.

Children became one of his favorite subjects, perhaps because Sommer, who was impulsive, irresponsible and rather childlike himself, empathized with them Since his hallmark style was not established until he was well into his fifties and his own children were grown, he used his grandchildren and the children in his neighborhood for models.

Offering coins or food for them to pose, he depicted many of the same children repeatedly but seldom with identical results Sommer manipulated physical reality, giving his young subjects unusually large heads or overly emphasizing different features; distortion became a means of expression. A common thread in these works is their psychological intensity

They are unusually probing portraits that convey a range of emotions. Some works are even quite disturbing, denying the innocence ascribed by many adults to childhood, capturing instead the fears, dependency or bullying nature. The artist noted, however, that the emotions reflected by his young subjects were often his own, projected onto the sitters.

The land, buildings and animals near Sommer's country home became another favorite Subject and other surrounding foliage and structures were rendered in unrealistic tones, and always altered, simplified or adorned with decorative flourishes by the artist Although

Sommer's scenes were recognizable to those who knew them, he did not strive to recreate reality but to improve upon what existed, regarding that as an artist's duty. The resulting landscapes were decorative, with a pleasing lyrical quality His horses, cows and other animals, rendered in a similar manner, were paradoxical. They, too, displayed unnatural embellishments and colors, but Sommer's simple, expressive lines always sought out and found the most characteristic aspects of these animals His cows might be yellow or blue and flattened, but they conveyed a stronger sense of the animal than many more conventional depictions.

Most of Sommer's still lifes were fairly conventional, but he also used the genre to experiment and take liberties that he would not allow himself with his other subject .

At times, he combined disparate objects into impossible juxtapositions, in one case placing a building in a bowl and in another, making an apple as large as a building. This experimentation resulted from his readings of several philosophers, such as the Russian P.D. Ouspensky, who suggested that people could generate their own realities In addition,

Sommer was inspired by Surrealism Consequently, he came to believe that artists were capable of making their own fantastic worlds.

Even as Sommer enjoyed the benefits and sense of accomplishment that came from developing and honing his mature style. Several financial problems presented him with challenges. Commercial lithography work, long Sommer's source of income, had dwindled over time as photographic technology made it obsolete In 1 929, the Morgan

Company (which had purchased Office in 1 926) dismissed Sommer. He was sixty-two at the time, just a few years short of retirement age. This allowed him to devote all of his time to his art but left him with no salary. Concurrently, the advent of the

Great Depression made buyers for his art scarce. He had built up a group of earlier in his career that included William Milliken and Henry Francis, Director and

Curator, respectively, at the ; Robert Bordner, a Cleveland newsman; and Arno Bohme, a neighbor; Yet the impact of the Depression touched most everyone, forcing many former buyers to abandon art in favor of necessities. Sommer's resourceful wife grew apples, raised and sold purebred dogs and engaged in other ventures to support the family, but finances remained tight.

The federal government, aware that American artists were suffering the Depression's effects even more than the general public, set up several projects to employ them in making art for public places. Sommer applied and was accepted for several of these projects.

Consequently, from 1933 to 1941 he worked for the government. Stints with the Public

Works of Art Project, the Works Progress Administration, and the Treasury Art Project

Resulted in several large-scale murals in buildings throughout northeastern Ohio. These included Cleveland's Public Hall and Public Library, the Geneva Post Office and the library of Akron's Bowen School (now the Akron Board of Education's meeting room).

These works are not generally among Sommer's best; he worked better on a smaller scale and with a more spontaneous approach. However, they remain among the most ambitious art in the region resulting from the federal projects.

In 1945,Martha Sommer died, devastating the artist and causing him to cease painting some time, Sommer had relied on his wife to deal with practical issues and to care for him. Even after he resumed making art, he made few efforts to take care of himself.

Sommer would go for days without eating or changing clothes, and he often drank heavily.

Fortunately, some unshakable friends assisted him, seeing to it that he never went too long without a good meal or clean clothing. This continued until 1949, when he died at age eighty-two.

For many years after his death, Sommer - the artist who had forged his own unique style, known some critical success during his life, and influenced a number of younger artists around him-was all but forgotten. His total lack of skill at self-promotion and his location away from New York City had combined to keep his work relatively unknown during his lifetime. After he died, near-total obscurity quickly followed, the sole exception being his faithful northeastern Ohio audience. It is useless to speculate on whether moving to New

York would have brought Sommer the same fame achieved by other area artists who had moved there, such as William Zorach and Charles Burchfield. Sommer simply had no desire to leave this region. Still, his art did not completely escape notice In a 1950 issue of the New York Times writer Alime Louchheim stated, "It is astounding that an artist of the stature of William Sommer should be so little known outside the Cleveland area in which he made his home, For this artist. . surely deserves a place high in the roster of

American artists". Some thirty years later, well after Sommer's name had fallen even further into obscurity and his Brandywine house and studio had been razed to make way for

Interstate 271, Hilton Kramer noted in the New York Times that". .his (Sommer's) work seems to have been born-somewhat miraculously of a remarkable inner serenity and lyric grace. Whatever the disorder or disappointments of his life, his art is beautifully controlled"

.This seems to have signaled a small renewal of interest in the artist's work. Over the past decade, as dealers, curators and collectors have sought to rediscover regional artists, the seeds have been planted for William Sommer to achieve his posthumous fame.

NOTES

1 T Raymond Evans, in his 1957 Princeton University B A

"William Sommer--Poetic Artist," suggested that Sommer had studied for a very short time with Menzel.

2 Records on the date of his marriage vary Cleveland Museum of Art Director and Sommer acquaintance William Milliken noted the later date, while Sommer's friend and collector D James Kocour suggested the earlier date

3.Although there were no records of his membership, Sommer said that he was, and he is generally believed to have been, a member of this club 4 The spellings Kokoon Arts Klub and Kakoon Arts Club were both used from the club's inception until 1929, although the former spelling was used more frequently After 1929, the latter spelling was used almost exclusively.

5 Although records confirm that Sommer viewed the Armory Show, it is uncertain whether he saw it in New York or Chicago

6 Aline B Louchheim, "Far a Native Son," New York Times November 5,1950

7 Hilton Kramer "An Early Provincial Modernist," New York Times, June 29,1980