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 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 , 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. Raffaela first appears as a young model in Hawkins paintings around 1887.4 Around 1907, their daughter Jacqueline appears in his more Symbolist work.5 A Bohemian in Hawkins’ artistic training began in 1870 at the Académie Julian where students made copies from engravings, drawings, the antique and life, as they progressed to painting subject pictures.6 He was taught by the academic painters Jules Lefebvre and William Bouguereau. In 1876 Hawkins was admitted to the Académie Nationale des Beaux-Arts, where his teacher was Gustave Boulanger, another academic painter who specialized in orientalist themes. While a student at the Académie Julian, Hawkins met the young Irishman George Moore. Moore was so impressed by Hawkins’ cosmopolitan background that he made him a memorable character in two of his books. In his memoir, Confessions of a Young Not only was he tall, Man, Moore cast Hawkins as the dashing Marshall. In his later semi-autobiography, Vale, Hawkins becomes Lewis, a tall, thin young man with violet eyes and a broken strong, handsome, nose, who was so fluent in French “his thoughts moved in the language”.7 Moore writes of his fascination with Lewis (Hawkins) describing: “a face which absorbed and and beautifully dressed, interested me all the evening, my eyes returning to him again and again as he leaned across the table telling stories in fluent French, delighting everybody, the men as well infinitely better than I, as the women, assembled under the awning.”8 Moore paints a very complex character based on his friendship with Hawkins in Paris, but he could talk where they sporadically attended the Académie Julian and actually shared rooms for a period of time. These rooms, decorated by Lewis (Hawkins), were richly decadent French like a native. interiors with moorish lamps, carpets, velvet draperies, and gilded candelabra, and anticipate the later Symbolist leanings in his art. Notably, as early as 1878 Hawkins had George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, 1886 painted a portrait of the famous decadent Robert de Montesquiou in the costume of a Florentine page.9 Montesquiou would soon publish à Rebours in 1884, which became a cult novel for Decadent poets and Symbolist artists. Moore wrote of several love affairs Hawkins had with actresses and the demimonde society of the day, and of his dependency on these women – and Moore – for money.10 above: Louis Welden Hawkins, undated photograph, Musee d’Orsay Archives

12 louis welden hawkins Louis welden hawkins 13 While in Paris, Moore soon recognized that his own talents were not as a painter and he began to frequent the Impressionist circles of Edouard Manet and , becoming an art critic and novelist by the early eighties. This is also the period when Moore and Hawkins drifted apart, both in ideology and in friendship. At this time Hawkins was dividing his time between Paris and the villages of Barbizon and Grez-sur-Loing, located approximately 40 kilometers south of Paris, where he painted in a naturalist style in landscape and genre subjects. Barbizon Barbizon became a popular artists’ colony after Jean-Francois Millet and Theodore Rousseau settled there in the mid-nineteenth century. Millet’s depiction of rustic peasants became a signature theme that was emulated by many artists who followed. Rousseau’s interest lay more specifically in the depiction of the Fontainebleau Forest and its surrounding landscape. These rustic scenes and landscapes appealed to an increasingly urban milieu. Representations of the countryside and the peasant’s life provided solace to the overworked urban society of the industrial period. These landscapes reminded them of their origins and a return to a simpler, more pastoral existence. This was in a period when migration from the country to the cities was significant and the depopulation of the rural villages and communities was a threat to national stability.11 Not only was the art market saturated with such images, but also the literature and guidebooks encouraged urbanites to escape the over-populated cities and visit the countryside. Tourism for the middle classes was linked to the new train systems that allowed quick and easy access to the countryside as never before.12 One such destination was the forest of Fontainebleau, made popular through the paintings and guidebooks of the day. The Goncourts’ novel Manette Salomon features this escape A Scene in Barbizon, oil on canvas, 40.3 x 61 cm from the confinements of the city to Barbizon and Ganne’s Inn, where so many artists resided. 13 The Canadian artist William Blair Bruce was living in Barbizon and became a friend of Hawkins, who periodically stayed at the artists’ colony. In the winter of 1882, Blair Bruce wrote home to his mother: Would you believe it, Mr. Hawkins, a medalist of The Salon of last year (and an Englishman) whom I have been associating with for the last two weeks in Barbizon, after giving me many valuable hints for my Salon pictures, has advised me to take a couple of ‘six foot’ canvasses [sic] and make a bold strike for notoriety (or whatever you like to call it).14 Blair Bruce apparently took Hawkins’ advice and began to work on what was to become his 1884 Salon entry, the large painting Temps Passé, (Fig. 3) painted in the nearby village of Chailly. This painting depicts an old seated peasant woman contemplating her past and her eventual death, with peasant girls dancing in a field beyond.

14 louis welden hawkins Light and Shade, oil on canvas, 19.5 x 24 cm

A Corner in Barbizon, oil on canvas, 58 x 41 cm News From Home, oil on canvas, 46.1 x 55.6 cm

Hide and Seek, oil on canvas, 55.5 x 45.8 cm The Departure, oil on canvas, 116.5 x 116.5 cm

The Last Step, oil on canvas, 129.5 x 83.8 cm The Bird’s Nest, watercolour on paper/verso charcoal drawing, 39.1 x 41.5 cm

Sunday, oil on canvas, 149.86 x 73.6 cm Untitled (Head of Young Woman), charcoal drawing on paper, verso, Mending, watercolour on paper, 23.5 x 41.6 cm Fig.3 William Blair Bruce, Temps Passé, exhibited at the Salon of 1884, Owens Art Gallery

Such a painting has an affinity with Hawkins’ The Last Step (cat. 7) in which an old woman entering a graveyard contemplates her own demise. There is an important connection here as Temps Passé was purchased by John Hammond for the Owens Art Institution in 1885 and Blair Bruce may have introduced his fellow compatriot to Hawkins at this time.15 It was this association with Hammond that also led to the purchase of these ten paintings by Hawkins, as well as two works by and three works by Wyatt Eaton that now form part of the collection of the Owens Art Gallery. There are three works in the exhibition that can be characterized as landscapes painted at Barbizon. Two of the paintings identify the locale, A Scene in Barbizon (cat. 1) and A Corner in Barbizon (cat. 2). The third, Light and Shade (cat. 3), depicts a village girl in the middle distance with the village beyond. All three typify naturalist landscape of the period, painted ‘en plein air’ as was the current trend. Artists took their canvases and panels directly to nature to paint in front of the motif. The two works with Barbizon in their titles have a similar light with a grey tonality pervading the colour harmonies. According to the Owens Art Gallery conservator, Jane Tisdale, Hawkins also used a grey gesso layer in A Corner of Barbizon as a prepatory ground. This evenness of light was a characteristic of many painters at Barbizon and Grez-sur- Loing who preferred to work in overcast conditions rather than bright sunlight. The American painter Otto Stark referred to this trend as “the so-called gray movement” from France. Writing an article for Modern Art on the evolution of , he explains further: This striving for grays was the result of the work carried on out of doors, or the ‘plein air’ movement, which was making itself felt about this period. Air and light were sought after as never before. The result of all of this was shown in pictures, beautiful in repose, harmonious in tone, generally without shrill notes of any kind; good in value, in a monotonous sense, but still lacking light and colors.16

Louis welden hawkins 27 Such grey tonality was also embraced by genre painters of peasant scenes, such as Jules Bastien-Lepage and Charles Cazin, who favoured a muted and even light in their Grez-sur-Loing painting. In the work of Bastien-Lepage, it is this use of colour – painting in a higher I have been three days at a place called Grez, a pretty and very melancholy hue with a grey tonality – that harmonizes the figures in the foreground with the village on the plain. A low bridge of many arches choked with sedge; great landscape. This aspect of his work is most evident in the well-known work, fields of white and yellow water-lilies; poplars and willows innumerable; and The Haymakers, (Fig. 4) exhibited in the Salon in 1878. above it all such an atmosphere of sadness and slackness… Robert Louis Stevenson letter to his mother, 1875

Fig.4 Jules Bastien-Lepage, The Haymakers (Les Foins), 1878 exhibited at the Salon, Fig.5 Undated postcard. Photograph taken from the grounds of the Hotel Chevillon of the 1878 and at the Grosvenor Gallery, London 1880 (Musée d’Orsay collection) riverside at Grez-sur-Loing. Private collection.

In paintings such as The Haymakers, Millet’s hard-working peasants are reinterpreted The artists’ colony at Barbizon and Grez-sur-Loing, where Hawkins painted The Last in a more detailed and naturalistic style. Unlike Millet, who depicted his peasants Step (cat. 7), was a very international one by the early eighties and included artists hard at work, Bastien-Lepage usually depicted them in moments of rest, as shown from America, Ireland, England and Scotland. Amongst their number was William here. There is an implied narrative and more complex sentiment associated with his Stott of Oldham, who advised Hawkins on both his technique and his subject for what work that places them in the category of genre painting made popular in the second became his important Salon entry of 1881, The Orphans. Others included the Irish half of the nineteenth-century. artists Frank O’Meara and John Lavery, who painted alongside Hawkins at Grez-sur- The Irish artist John Lavery, who became part of the artists’ colony at Grez-sur-Loing, Loing. They formed part of the colony at Grez that was characterized by picturesque remarked on his popularity amongst the younger artists: paintings of peasants in a grey tonal light, painted in a naturalist vein, yet informed by the techniques of Impressionism. Many of these artists came to be known as …ardour and tobacco were burned freely before the shrines of Puvis de the “Anglo-Saxons”, attending the Académie Julian in Paris and using the villages Chavannes and Jules Bastien-Lepage…the favourite topics were Bastien- of the Seine-et-Marne as places to paint “en plein air” during the summer months. Lepage and plein air.17 Many stayed at the Hotel Chevillon, located on the river where they could indulge in Bastien-Lepage was extremely influential in this period, showing annually at theS alon swimming and boating after a long day of painting. In fact, the village was favoured in Paris and the Grosvenor Gallery in London. For the young artists working at Barbizon over Barbizon by the 1880s because of the river, both as a subject for their paintings and Grez-sur-Loing, he was an artist to emulate, especially based on his successes at and for their leisure. the Salon.

28 louis welden hawkins Louis welden hawkins 29 It was at Grez where Hawkins painted his first success at theS alon, The Orphans (Fig. 7) in 1881. The painting was well received by the press. The critic for the Magazine of Art observed that Hawkins’ work “is painted in a light key, and with a good deal of bright out-door feeling of Bastien-Lepage in the landscape….It attracted much attention and in technique and sentiment it is certainly one of the most touching pictures in the Salon.”22 Rural Love and Courtship The theme of rustic love was made popular at the Salon with artists such as Cazin and Bastien-Lepage, whose Rural Love of 1882 (Pushkin Museum) exemplifies the genre. Hawkins’ painting, The Orphans, was originally to be a courtship scene with the title, Love Rises from its Ashes. Although set in a cemetery, the original sentiment was that the love of the parents was born again in the children. On the advice of his artistic colleagues at Grez, Hawkins changed the title to the more poignant, The Orphans.23 The three works, Hide and Seek (cat. 4), News from Home (cat. 5), and The Departure, (cat. 6) demonstrate Hawkins’ affinity for genre paintings of rustic love or courtship.24 These genre scenes were very popular in Victorian Britain and in France, where an Fig.6 Photograph at Grez-sur-Loing with its famous bridge in the background. From far left, implied narrative is often reinforced through the title. seated, Louis Welden Hawkins (previously unidentified), FannyO sborne (reclining on boats), in foreground, Antony Henley, John Bentz, Joseph Palizzi, R.A.M. Stevenson, Frank O’Meara, Ernest It appears that Hawkins employed the same models for all three paintings and that the Parton and Willie Simpson. (Will Low, A Chronicle of Friendships, London, 1908, p. 108) work was done in the fields outside of Grez. Noticeably the figures in all the paintings are not working or toiling in the fields, as we see in the work of Millet. Instead there is a harmonious sense of balance between the figures and the landscape.A ll have the Many of the artists who gathered at Grez-sur-Loing embraced a more bohemian same tonal treatment of colour, even down to the earth coloured clothing of the two lifestyle, distinct from the bourgeois culture of Paris. This photograph (Fig. 6), taken figures. There are no shadows; instead a grey light pervades the compositions. at Grez around 1880, shows a mix of artistic types characterized by their distinctive outfits and variation of hats.H awkins is seated on the far left, dressed casually in a Hawkins has successfully combined the lighter hues of Impressionism, as well as loose jacket with a wide brimmed hat. The most notable of the group is the painter some of the looser brushwork in the background, with the naturalist impulse to paint and later critic, Bob Stevenson, the cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson, who is shown closely from nature. These are not landscape paintings, as we see with the Barbizon wearing very distinct striped socks. Posing as the dandy, he conforms to the cultural School or the later Impressionists, but genre paintings that link the landscape with the construction of the bohemian with its outsider status of “glamorized Otherness”18. figures, in the style of Bastien-Lepage. Contemporary accounts tell of the bohemian existence of many of the artists staying in Grez, the village acting as a sort of playground for their antics.19 The main attraction of Grez was the quality of the light. Artists were drawn to the grey Rustic Piety atmospheric daylight, and the consistency of grey days enabled them to work on the Two works in the collection anticipate Hawkins’ later Symbolist work of the 1890s with paintings for days on end. its religious and mystical themes. The paintings The Last Step (cat. 7) and Sunday (cat. The artists came down to Grez at all seasons of the year…In the early spring 8) go beyond representing a landscape or portraying a rustic genre scene and suggest the place is said to be incomparable. It is then that a silvery mist pervades the a theme of greater depth, such as religious reverie in the one, and an allegory of death landscape, and those delicate luminous tones, like cobwebby veils over the in the other. grass in the early morning, give an exquisite softness and mystery to the earth The theme of the young girl, the innocent lost in reverie, was a favourite of Hawkins. 20 that the poetic artist loves. But he also liked to contrast youth with age. This is nowhere more apparent than in his This rather beautiful description of Grez was written anonymously for a San Francisco two paintings The Orphans and The Last Step. Both are set in a medieval cemetery in paper and suggests an intimate knowledge of the village. It was possibly written by Grez-sur-Loing.25 either Fanny Osborne, or her daughter Isobel, who were originally from San Francisco. They had come to Grez in the late 1870s when they met Robert Louis Stevenson and his cousin Bob. Fanny eventually married Stevenson and they visited Grez on numerous occasions. Both Fanny and Isobel were painters and had an understanding of how light works, with Isobel observing that at Grez: “The painters scorned sunlight, and endless time was wasted waiting for a grey day.”21

30 louis welden hawkins Louis welden hawkins 31 Fig.8 J.F. Millet, The First Steps, reproduced in Kenyon Cox, Artist and Public, 1914

This rustic scene of domestic life contrasts with Hawkins’ depiction of the old peasant woman in the graveyard. Youth is juxtaposed with old age. This cycle of life and death is a theme explored by many artists of this group, including the melancholic work of Fig.7 Louis Weldon Hawkins, The Orphans, oil on canvas, 1881 (Musée d’Orsay) Frank O’Meara and William Blair Bruce, as shown in his Temps Passé of 1884.27 A more Christian sentiment can be found in Hawkins’ Sunday, depicting a girl standing In The Last Step, Hawkins paints an old woman supported by a cane standing in in a forest reading a prayer book and holding a rosary, with a church beyond.28 This the graveyard, possibly contemplating her own death, as she looks over to the painting may have been exhibited at the 1884 Salon as L’Hermitage. According to gravedigger. The 1886 catalogue entry for the Owens Art Institution included the the 1886 Owens Art Institution catalogue, the work was listed as an “Exempt” in the following quotation: Paris Salon, but cannot be traced under the current title Sunday. The same catalogue An aged peasant woman with faltering tread and leaning heavily on a staff included the following quotation: pursues her way through a graveyard. It is late in the afternoon, and the A young girl stands in the shadow of a wood reading her prayer- book, and shadows are lengthening toward the night. Right in her pathway lies an open ever and anon saying a prayer as she counts the beads of her rosary. The air is grave, the grave-digger at his work, but the mortuary chapel beyond tells of still and clear; the little church in the distance seems to invite her thither and the Christian’s hope, and “chanticleer, the “bird of morn” standing upon its the deep shadow cast by the wood upon her face adds an element of quiet threshold, seems waiting to announce the moment when “the day breaks and peace and restfulness. the shadows fly away.” The subject and composition bear an affinity with the well known work The Angeleus The “chanticleer” or rooster is depicted in the background of the composition, (Fig. 9) by J.F. Millet, of two peasants working in the field, who pause to say the exactly in the position of the cat depicted on the cemetery wall in The Orphans. Angeleus prayer for their departed. In the distance is the church steeple ringing the Hawkins often used animals for the symbolic content or as a playful, domestic Angelus bell, morning, noon, and night. feature in his work.26 Notably the historian Jules Michelet’s The People of 1846 helped to popularize the An additional entry in that 1886 catalogue cites that: “This picture was painted in piety of the peasant and begins with a scene of peasants attending Sunday church juxtaposition with Jean Francois Millet’s First Step [sic].” Millet did several versions of after a week of hard work in the fields. this work, including the pastel reproduced here (Fi. 8).

32 louis welden hawkins Louis welden hawkins 33 By 1887 Hawkins begins to devote himself to the new movement of Symbolism, writing to one of the key painters of the day, Puvis de Chavannes, asking to be his student.32 Although Hawkins’ request was rejected, he began working in a more Symbolist vein from this point until his death in 1910.33 The work of Hawkins shown in this exhibition was part of a larger movement known as Naturalism, pervasive in the second half of the nineteenth-century. Coupled with the stylistic trend of naturalistic painting was the artistic migration to picturesque communities, such as Barbizon and Grez-sur-Loing, where distinct artists’ colonies developed. Many of these artists turned away from the modernization of cities, such as Paris, to answer an increasing consumer demand for paintings that reinforced Fig.10 From a photograph in the Fig.9 J.F. Millet’s The Angelus, reproduced in McClure’s Magazine, 1896 the nationalistic values of rural France, perceived Hawkins collection, Musee d’Orsay as under the constant threat of urbanization. Hawkins revisits this theme of rustic piety, positioning his figure in silhouette, much Archives as Millet placed his peasants against the dawning light. His inclusion of the church in Hawkins’ paintings of peasants and rural life the distance also reinforces this reading. are symptomatic of this naturalist trend and contrast significantly with the modernity of the Impressionists, who, in much of their art, celebrate the modern city. In the In the design of the frame for Sunday, the liner is shaped to form a gothic arch, considerable history of Modernism, Impressionism has been privileged over the work furthering the link between God and nature, with the forest metaphorically becoming of artists such as Hawkins. This cultural bias of Modernism has been addressed more God’s cathedral. This shaped frame suggests an awareness of the designed frames of recently by a revisionist approach in art history that acknowledges a multiple, rather the Pre-Raphaelites, a group of artists working from the mid-century in London. In fact, than singular, narrative. In this exhibition, by revisiting the work of Hawkins’ and his Hawkins painted an ivory miniature after Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Fair Rosamund, of contemporaries, a more complex in the late nineteenth-century emerges. 1861, suggesting he had an intimate knowledge of their work.29 Hawkins may have used photography as a memory aid for his painting Sunday, as there is a photograph from his studio of a girl of similar stature, leaning against a tree (Fig. 10).30 Many of the naturalist painters used photography as visual aids Hawkins produced at least one other work using a similar composition, such as the untraced painting The Dead Bird c. 1882, showing a girl standing against a tree holding a dead bird in her hands.31 This is a theme that Hawkins repeats in several other works, including his watercolour, The Bird’s Nest, (cat. 9) where he reworks the motif by painting a young woman holding a nest of living birds. This theme of the cycle of life and death is explored in a number of Hawkins’ paintings of the early 1880s and later in his Symbolist work of the 1890s.

34 louis welden hawkins Louis welden hawkins 35 Notes Select Bibliography

1 see Peter J. Larocque, Fine Intentions: An Account of 18 Marilyn Brown coins this phrase in her essay “Barbizon the Owens Art Institution in Saint John, New Brunswick, and Myths of Bohemianism”, p. 448. Almy, Gilles, Louis Welden Hawkins, Jacobs, Michael, The Good and Simple Life, 1884-1893, MA thesis, University of New Brunswick, 19 see Will Low, A Chronicle of Friendships, 1873-1900, peintre (1849-1910), mémoire de Phaidon, Oxford, 1985. 1996, for this early history. pp. 176-178 maîtrise, Paris X-Nanterre, 1983. 2 in Gilles Almy’s Louis Welden Hawkins, painter (1849- 20 anonymous, “The Village of Grez, France”, San Lavery, John, The Life of a Painter, 1910), MA thesis, under his entry for the work in the Francisco Call, April 26, 1891, 13, from William H. Arayashiki, Toru, ed., The Painters in Cassell and Company, London, 1940. Owens listed as The Last Step, is an old photograph Gerdst, “The American Artists in Grez”, Out of Context, of the image, and the term “localisation actuelle p. 51. Grez-sur-Loing, Japan Association of Low, Will, A Chronicle of Friendships, inconnue” (current location unknown) is used, see 8, 21 French lessons, p. 76.**** check source Art Museums, 2000. listed in his thesis as “Cimetiere” c. 1881. 22 J.F. Robertson, “Salon of 1881”, Magazine of Art, p. 1873-1900, Scribner and Sons, 3 Bonekamp, p. 7. 428. Billcliffe, Roger, The Glasgow Boys, New York, 1908. 4 almy, p. 86. 23 Moore, Vale, p. 85. John Murray, London, 1985. 5 Bonekamp, p. 53. 24 in the Owens Art Institution catalogue of 1886 the entry McConkey, Kenneth, British 6 Campbell, p. 17. for The Departure includes the following quotation: Bonekamp, Lucas, Louis Welden Impressionism, Phaidon, Oxford, 1989. 7 George Moore, Vale, 1914, p. 52. The woman with her little bundle is about to depart. Hawkins 1849-1910, Van Gogh The waving wheat in all the glory of its sunny sheen Moore, George, Confessions of a Young 8 ibid, p. 54. Museum, Amsterdam, 1993. 9 almy, p. 63. seems to stand and listen while the man (perhaps her Man, The Modern Library Publishers, 10 demimondes were from a class of mistresses (kept father) speaks words of cheer and admonition, and over her bowed head seems to breathe a blessing. Brettall, Richard, Painters and Peasants New York, 1925 edition. women) who often took lovers on the side, as was in the Nineteenth Century, Skira, Geneva, the case with Hawkins. Moore in Vale, p. 63, writes of 25 Ferdinand Sadler, in L’Hôtel Chevillon et les Artistes Moore, George, Vale, William Heineman, Hawkins’ mistress Alice and her paramour, “She liked de Grès-sur-Loing, p. 11, identifies it as “l’ancien 1983.Brettall, Richard, ed., A Day in the cimetière de Grès, aujourd’hui place Jollivet.” This London, 1937 edition. my question, Who is the fellow who pays for all of this? Country: Impressionism and the French and I heard the name Phillipar for the first time, a great cemetery was relocated in the late 1880s and the place name it was then in the Parisian financial world.” Jolivet, today functions as a parking lot. Landscape, Los Angeles County Museum Murray, Joan, ed., Letters Home: 1859- 11 Robert Herbert, “City vs. Country: the Rural Image in 26 in another work by Hawkins, La Paysanne et les Oies of Art, LA, 1984. 1906, The Letters of William Blair Bruce, French Painting from Millet to Gauguin”, Artforum, 8. (The Peasant and the Geese), exhibited at the 1882 Penumbra Press, Ontario, 1982. 1969-70, p. 45 documents the migration to cities when Salon, two amorous geese are observed by a young Brown, Marilyn, “Barbizon and Myths the depopulation of the countryside by 1860 totaled rustic leaning pensively on her rake. The historican Ormond, Richard, John Singer Sargent: nearly one-sixth of the rural population. Claire Leray has identified the location as the gardens of Bohemianism”, Barbizon, Klinkhardt 12 see Green, Nicholas, The Spectacle of Nature: of the Pension Laurent, at Grez-sur-Loing. and Biermann, Munich, 1999. Paintings, Drawings, Watercolours, Landscape and Bourgeois Culture in Nineteenth-century 27 hawkins’ Pauvre Genres, (untraced) exhibited in the Phaidon, London, 1970. France, for a more complete history of this phenomena. 1884 Salon is listed in Almy (no. 29) with a photograph Brown, Roger, William Stott of Oldham, 13 The Goncourt brothers stayed at Ganne’s Inn, a popular of two figures in the same graveyard, one appearing to 1857-1900, Gallery Oldham, Oldham, Oeuvres du Musée, Ville de Grez-sur- be an older woman. inn in Barbizon on numerous occasions. See Daniel 2003. Loing, Comité Départmental du Tourism, Rosenfeld and Robert Workman, p. 10. This is also 28 w. Blair Bruce describes a work by Hawkins that may where Hawkins stayed when visiting the village. be the painting titled Sunday: “Hawkins comes down Fontainebleau, 2002. every two or three weeks. He has changed his mind Campbell, Julian, The Irish 14 letter from Bruce to his mother and grandmother, from Rosenfeld, Daniel and Robert Workman, Paris, dated March 25th 1882, Murray, ed. J. Murray, about working here and is enlarging one of his Salon Impressionists, National Gallery of Art, Letters Home, p. 47. pictures. He has taken out the spirit and leaves only the Dublin, 1984. The Spirit of Barbizon, Museum of Art, little girl at prayer. “ (Barbizon, December 27th, 1882), 15 John Hammond is mentioned by Blair Bruce in a letter Letters Home, ed. J. Murray, p. 67. Rhode Island School of Design, Rhode from Barbizon dated 1 October, 1884, “There is a Frazier, Adrian, George Moore 1852- 29 Bonekamp, pp. 37,58. Island, 1986. man called Hammond who wants to buy my last Salon 1933, Yale University Press, New Haven, picture. He gets 1000 dollars every year for the purpose 30 almy, p. 8. of purchasing works of Art. It’s a bequest from a private 31 Reproduced in Bonekamp, p. 30. 2000. Sadler, Ferdinand, L’Hôtel Chevillon et les individual for the founding of a Gallery. He is coming to Artistes de Grès-sur-Loing, no publisher, 32 Copy of letter in Musée d’Orsay Archives. Gerdts, Willliam, H., “The American Paris next winter to see about it. I will very likely have 33 Many of his associates at this time included the no date. to sell it for next to nothing.” Blair Bruce, Letters Home, Symbolist writers Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Adam, Jean Artists in Grez”, from Out of Context, ed. J. Murray, pp. 100-101. Lorrain, Séverine, and Joséphin Péladan, the founder American Artists Abroad, editors, Laura Sillevis, John, and Hans Kraan, The 16 otto Stark, “The Evolution of Impressionism”, Modern of the Société de Rose+Croix, an important Symbolist Barbizon School, Haags Museum, 1985. Art, 3, spring 1895, pp. 53-54, quoted in W.H. Gerdst, venue. Note that the most complete history of Hawkins’ Felleman Fattal and Carol Salus, Praeger, “The American Artists in Grez”, Out of Context, p. 46. Symbolist work can be found in Lucas Bonekamp’s Westport, Conneticut, London, 2004. Stevenson, Robert, Louis, “Fontainebleau: 17 william Shaw Sparrow, John Lavery and his Work, catalogue. The Musée d’Orsay has the largest number London, 1911, p. 41. of Symbolist works by Hawkins. Green, Nicholas, The Spectacle of Village Communities of Painters”, Nature: Landscape and Bourgeois Magazine of Art, 1884, pp. 341-343. Culture in Nineteenth-century Weisberg, Gabriel, Beyond Impressionism: France, Manchester University Press, The Naturalist Impulse, Abrams, New York, Manchester, 1990. 1992. Herbert, Robert, “City vs. Country: the Rural Image in French Painting from Millet to Gauguin”, Artforum, 8. 1969- 70, p. 45-54.

36 louis welden hawkins Louis welden hawkins 37 The Departure List of Works

By carefully examining The Departure, an unfinished painting by Louis Welden Hawk- All dimensions are in centimetres, height preceding width. All works are in the ins, we can understand more about the artist’s painting techniques and processes. collection of the Owens Art Gallery. Titles are from the Owens Art Institution The artist began this painting on a smooth, commercially primed linen canvas. The Catalogue of 1886 and date to before their acquisition in 1885. original white gesso priming which has slightly yellowed and darkened over time, is 1 A Scene in Barbizon, oil on canvas, 40.3 x 61 visible in the foreground. The gesso layer was an important component of Hawkins’ 2 A Corner in Barbizon, oil on canvas, 58 x 41 work and it remains visible in many of his finished paintings, such as in Hide and Seek and in A Corner in Barbizon which reveals his experimentation with a grey gesso layer. 3 Light and Shade, oil on canvas, 19.5 x 24 The artist intentionally left these areas unpainted in order to allow the tonality of the 4 Hide and Seek, oil on canvas, 55.5 x 45.8 ground to be part of the overall effect of the finished painting. 5 News From Home, oil on canvas, 46.1 x 55.6 First, in order to establish his composition, the artist sketched with charcoal on the gessoed canvas. Charcoal lines can be seen in the skirt and around the shoulders of 6 The Departure, oil on canvas, 116.5 x 116.5 the figure on the right. Then, with a large brush and thinned oil paint he roughly de- 7 The Last Step, oil on canvas, 129.5 x 83.8 veloped tonal variations in browns and greys to indicate shadows and forms. A bristle 8 Sunday, oil on canvas, 149.86 x 73.6 from this large brush is embedded in the paint in the bottom left corner. 9 The Bird’s Nest, watercolour on paper/verso charcoal drawing, 39.1 x 41.5 Distinctive outlines and details of the figures and landscape were then applied with opaque umber and black paint over the transparent tonal areas and the charcoal un- 10 Untitled (Head of Young Woman), charcoal drawing on paper, verso, Mending, derdrawing. These dark outlines remain partially visible in most of Hawkins’ finished watercolour on paper, 23.5 x 41.6 paintings. They can be seen clearly in the hands and clothing of the figure in Sunday and in the vest in News from Home. In The Departure, Hawkins appears to have worked from top to bottom as he started to complete the painting in a more finished way. The background landscape and the head of the male figure are the most completed areas of the image. There is evidence that the artist worked on the painting over a number of days rather than all in one sitting. Alterations to the male figure’s face were made after the first layer of paint had dried. Thick pinkish paint was used to cover and to change the original dark outline of the mouth and chin. These areas would appear blended or smeared if the paint had been wet. The same scumbled effect of the tree’s foliage on the right also indicates that the dark underpaint had completely dried before the sky was added. In the long grass directly behind the figures, the light coloured impasto highlights were applied with a small brush which dragged across darker underlying dry paint. As paint ages, it often becomes more transparent, and compositional changes made by the artist become increasingly visible -- technically described as’ pentimento’. The changes made in The Departure will become more obvious over time. Another example of pentimento is found in the left hand of the main figure in The Last Step, showing the artist’s decision to make the hand wider than it was initially. In its incomplete state, The Departure directly reveals the artist’s working methods. It is as though he has provided a technical demonstration of his working methods. Pur- chased for the Owens Collection in 1885 as an example to students, this unfinished painting is a unique resource for the study of work by Louis Welden Hawkins.

Jane Tisdale Fine Art Conservator

38 louis welden hawkins Louis welden hawkins 39