Louis Welden Hawkins Shades of Grey Owens Art Gallery Louis Welden Hawkins Shades of Grey Curated by anne Koval with Jane tisdale owens art Gallery 8 Jan to 14 Feb 2010 FOREWORD ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Owens Art Gallery is Canada’s first University Art Gallery, opened in 1895 on the I would like to acknowledge the many people who have contributed to this project. campus of Mount Allison University. A collection of approximately 350 eighteenth Firstly, many thanks to Gemey Kelly for the opportunity to work on the Owens Art Gal- and nineteenth century artworks of European, American and Canadian origin was lery collection and bring this exhibition to fruition. Jane Tisdale has enriched my un- amassed for the purposes of teaching art, forming the basis of the Owens Collection derstanding of Hawkins’ work. Roxie Ibbitson’s installation of the exhibition is perfect, of nearly 3500 artworks today. The “original” Owens Collection includes important as always. Thanks also to Sara Williamson for her behind-the-scenes work. paintings by George Romney, William Gush, John Everett Millais, and Blair Bruce, and Most importantly, I need to thank the people who led me to Grez and helped me to the largest public collection of paintings by the nineteenth century European artist see its quiet beauty. Without the significant help ofS ophie Bastis, my gracious host at Louis Weldon Hawkins (1849-1910). Grez, I would still be wandering around the countryside, quite lost. Her guidance and This exhibition presents the complete holdings of Hawkins’ paintings in the Owens introductions were significant and allowed me to begin to probe the complexity of the Collection. It is the first showing of his work at the Owens to be presented in conjunc- region where Hawkins and his contemporaries painted. Through Sophie I was intro- tion with a significant research project, giving audiences of the exhibition as well as duced to Claire Leray, an expert historian on the artists of Grez, who was wonderfully art historians, students, scholars, artists and interested readers everywhere new helpful and enabled me to visit the private house and gardens known as the Pension information and insight into the artist’s practice. Dr. Anne Koval’s research greatly ex- Laurent where Hawkins once painted. Thanks must also be extended to Ian Fuller who tends our understanding of Hawkins and the context in which he was working. I want photographed part of an old postcard collection of Grez for my research. to thank her for bringing this project to the Owens, and for her ongoing interest in the I would also like to thank Bernadette Plissart at the Foundation Grez-sur-Loing for pro- Gallery and its Collection. viding access to the Hôtel Chevillon in Grez. This important resource is now a founda- I also want to acknowledge the important contribution of Jane Tisdale, Fine Art Con- tion for Swedish artists and writers working in Grez-sur-Loing. servator, Owens Art Gallery, who has contributed a text on Hawkins’ techniques and Many thanks to Geneviève Lacambre, retired curator Musée d’Orsay, for the informa- processes in the painting The Departure. This exhibition and publication are part of tive discussions we shared on Hawkins and for her gift of the Amsterdam catalogue. her own ongoing inquiry and research on the original 1895 collection of the Owens At the Musée d’Orsay Archives, Dominique Lobstein was very helpful in guiding me and on the history of the Mount Allison Ladies’ College. through the collection. And finally I would like to thank Phillippe Saunier, curator of The Marjorie Young Bell Fine Arts and Music Fund at Mount Allison University has pro- the Musée D’Orsay, for his assistance with my research. vided support for this publication of Dr. Koval’s research and we are grateful for this Heartfelt thanks also go to Joanne Robertson and Jeannie Farr for their generous hospi- assistance. The Arts Branch of the New Brunswick Department of Wellness, Culture tality in London, England while I was there doing research on Hawkins. Also to Andrew and Sport has also provided important funding for this publication on one of the Prov- Koval for last minute research at the Queen’s Library special collections. ince’s most significant public collections. A thank you to Roger Smith who took the exceptional colour photographs of Hawkins’ Gemey Kelly work reproduced in this catalogue. Also, many thanks to Cathy Fynn for her editing Director work. The Marjorie Young Bell Faculty Fund and the Mount Allison Internal Research Fund provided funding for research and travel for this project. This publication has been made possible with funding from the Marjorie Young Bell Music and Fine Arts Award in 2009, and the Arts Development Branch, New Brunswick Department of Wellness, Culture and Sport. To Owen and the boys, with love. 6 LOUIS WELDEN HAWKINS LOUIS WELDEN HAWKINS 7 INTRODUCTION The paintings and drawings exhibited here form part of the larger story of the Owens Art Gallery and its early formation as the Owens Art Institution in Saint John, New Brunswick. John Owens, the original founder of the Institute, died in 1867 leaving funds for the purpose of establishing a gallery or school of art. Under his executor, Robert Reed, the formation of the Owens Art Institution began with the hiring of John Hammond as the superintendant. From 1884-5, Hammond amassed a collection of art for the new gallery during his travels in Europe,. This formation of the collection was largely for the pedagogical purposes of teaching and for educating the Saint John public.1 These ten works by Louis Welden Hawkins are something of an anomaly; they form the largest body of work by a single artist in that original collection. Included here are eight oil paintings and two watercolours with drawings on the reverse side. Significantly, this is also the largest collection of paintings by Hawkins in any public gallery. For the purposes of consistency I have used the titles from the original 1886 catalogue of the Owens Art Institution in Saint John. I have dated all the work to before 1885 when Hammond shipped it back to New Brunswick. It is not known why Hammond acquired so many works by Hawkins over any other artist in the collection, or whether he acquired them directly from the artist or through a dealer. It is likely that he dealt directly with the artist, as one of the works, The Departure, was left unfinished, and would not have been available in this condition from a dealer. There are no known records of Hammond’s transactions in Europe while he was gathering this collection for the Owens Art Institution. This exhibition is an attempt to contextualize these unique works by Hawkins and to place them within the larger framework of naturalism and the artists’ colonies in France at that time. During the early 1880s, Hawkins was working at the villages of Barbizon and Grez-sur-Loing, where these paintings were executed. Although Barbizon had been an established art colony from the middle of the nineteenth century, Grez had only been “discovered” by the burgeoning writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his cousin Robert (Bob) M. Stevenson, in the late 1870s. By the time Hawkins was working there an artists’ colony was becoming established. Grez was characterized by its internationalism, with the “Anglo-Saxon” contingent of English, Irish and Scottish artists, along with Americans, soon to be joined by a Scandinavian contingent and later by several Japanese artists. Many of these artists’ paintings share a grey tonality that characterizes their work from this region, an aspect I will be exploring in the essay that follows. This collection fills a gap in the scholarship on Hawkins and helps to contextualize his artistic output. To date, the literature on Hawkins is limited to a Masters thesis written by Gilles Almy in 1983, an exhibition organized by Lucas Bonekamp at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 1993, and the inclusion of his work in group exhibitions of Symbolism, and in the literature on the naturalist schools working in late nineteenth century France. This exhibition and catalogue begins to address the need for more research on this collection, and erase the label, “untraced” (an art historical term meaning current location unknown) for many galleries and curators in Europe who now have access to these works by Hawkins.2 Anne Koval LOUIS WELDEN HAWKINS 9 NO STRONG SHADOWS, NO HARD lines, the aiR is almost alwaYS HAZY WITH SHADES OF VIOLET, OBJects FUse togetheR…the GROUND IS LIGHT, THE AIR IS LUMINOUS AND THERE ARE NO FORESTS to DARKEN THE SCENE. august strindberg on Grez-sur-loing, from Among French Peasants, 1889 Fig.1 l. Coffin, Grez-sur-Loing, the Mill (Moulin de la Fosse), undated postcard, private collection. LOUIS WELDEN HAWKINS 11 Louis Welden Hawkins Louis Hawkins was born in 1849 at Essingen, Germany, the son of William Hawkins, a British Naval Officer, and Louise Sopransi, Baroness von Welden, an Austrian aristocrat and daughter of a Field Marshall. According to George Moore, Hawkins’ father and Shades mother separated when he was three and his mother raised him in Brussels. As a youth, he lived in Middlesex, England, where, at fifteen, he followed his father’s footsteps and joined the Royal of Grey Navy. By 1870 he had left the navy and settled in France, where he adopted his mother’s name, and became known as Louis Welden Hawkins.3 He lived in France for the remainder of his life and was naturalized as a citizen in 1895. The following year he married Raffaela Zeppa who, had previously given birth to their only child, Jacqueline, in 1892.