Gardening with a Paintbrush

Chicago Tribune | Arts+Entertainment | Section 4 | Thursday, July 2, 2015 3 VISUAL ARTS AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISTS Gardening with a paintbrush By Mark St. John Erickson Tribune Newspapers When the first American impressionists began returning from Europe in the mid-1880s, they soon found themselves embracing a familiar yet unex- pectedly rich and rewarding subject. Newly trained by their French mentors to paint out of doors — where they could revel in the mysteries of shifting light and color — they set out looking for American settings just as the nation’s late-19th-century garden movement was taking off. So as they had seen the great Claude Monet do in his beloved home garden at Giverny, artists started packing up their palettes, canvases and paints and walking out their back doors in search of spaces filled with flowers. What resulted was one of art history’s great marriages of subject and style as — over the following three decades — such talented painters as Frederick Childe Hassam, Philip Leslie Hale and Maria Oakey Dewing paired the country’s new fascination for horticulture and gardens with their own blossoming passion for loose brushwork, dappled light and seemingly CURRIER MUSEUM OF ART, MANCHESTER, N.H. infinite variations of color. A new traveling show on American impressionists holds over 70 paintings, such as Frederick Childe Hassam’s 1916 “The Goldfish Window,” above, Acentury later, more than 70 that paired the country’s fascination with gardens, starting in the late 1880s, with artists’ rising passion for loose brushwork and dappled light. of the finest and most eye-catch- ing examples can be found at the shimmering sunlight and vibrant Pennsylvania Academy of the Chrysler Museum of Art in a flowers. Fine Arts curator Anna Marley, new traveling show called “The “It is sunshine, flowers in who organized the show, says, Artist’s Garden: American Im- sunshine; girls in sunshine; the “They are not still lifes, but por- pressionism and the Garden nude in sunshine, which I have traits — and ambitious, full-scale Movement, 1887-1920.” been principally interested in,” ones at that.” And not only does the check- he wrote. “If I could only repro- They “take on the format of list read like a Who’s Who of the duce it exactly as I see it, I would horizontal landscape paintings nation’s great impressionist be satisfied.” rather than the traditional small school, but it also includes sev- Such arresting images had an scale of still lifes.” eral paintings so highly regarded indelible impact on the sensibil- Such transformative visions that they rarely leave their home ities of many American artists are a hallmark of Marley’s exhib- museums. studying in Europe, and when it, demonstrating how frequently “Everybody was excited when they returned home, they looked artists such as Dewing, Frieseke, they heard this show was being for ways to apply those lessons Hassam, Hale and others com- put together,” American art to American settings. bined flowers, gardens and their curator Alex Mann says, describ- Among the most remarkable own impressionist style to push ing the Chrysler’s own notable examples are Thomas Wilmer their imaginations forward. In loans to the Pennsylvania Acade- Dewing and his wife, Maria Hassam’s evocative 1916 canvas my of the Fine Arts, which or- Oakey Dewing, who met at “The Goldfish Window,” for ganized the exhibit. Giverny in 1885, then became example, he portrayed a figure of “So many museums wanted to two of the most influential mem- awoman looking out a window be part of it that it has become bers of a new artist’s colony that into a light-filled garden as if she one of the really rare opportuni- sprang up in Cornish, N.H. Avid glowed with some sort of lumi- ties to see some of the country’s gardeners as well as artists, the nous aura. best American impressionist couple inspired a horticultural Hale’s rendering of a seem- painters and paintings.” craze among their fellow paint- ingly secondary female model in Despite its wide popularity ers when they cleared their yard “The Crimson Rambler” has a today, the American impression- and began planting a new, similar effect, lavishing attention ist school was far from fashion- flower-filled landscape around on the burgeoning expanse of able when the earliest paintings their summer cottage. luscious red blooms in a way that in the exhibit were completed in Maria’s own work responded, helps define both the sumptuous the late 1880s. But within a dec- too, reflecting what she de- red bow trailing from her bright ade, its arresting explorations of scribed as “a long apprenticeship white dress and the bouquet of light and color had not only won in the garden.” Painting flowers flowers that tops her sunbonnet. acceptance, but also commanded with a close-up, gardener’s vi- So central did gardens be- an increasingly dominant share TERRA FOUNDATION FOR AMERICAN ART, CHICAGO sion, she cast the traditional still come to many American impres- of the American art world. Frederick Carl Frieseke, who spent time at Giverny, home of Claude life aside for images that im- sionists’ work that — even in “American impressionism was Monet’s garden, painted “Lady in a Garden,” above, around 1912. mersed their viewers in a near- winter — they could be found born in Europe — but after they abstract “worm’s-eye view” of outside, looking, studying and brought the style home, they neighboring house in the pictur- also many of Frieseke’s most leaves, stalks and blossoms. painting their snow-covered made it their own,” Mann says. esque French village of Giverny accomplished paintings. In “Iris at Dawn (Iris),” which trees, shrubs and flower beds. “By the end of the period we’re in 1888. “He was the painter. She was she painted in 1899, “Rose Gar- “Even when covered with looking at here, it had become a John Leslie Breck became the gardener. So it was a beauti- den” in 1901 and “A Bed of Pop- snow, gardens fascinated these powerhouse — and it was the Monet’s friend, confidant and ful collaboration,” Mann says, pies” completed nearly a decade artists,” Mann says. “In their beauty of these paintings done in neighbor at Giverny, too, and he looking at the canvas “Lady in a later, the effect is larger than life, eyes, a blanket of white is really a gardens that helped drive that absorbed the lessons he learned Garden,” circa 1912. “Clearly, transforming a subject of often luxurious patchwork of blues, popularity.” there so adeptly that his 1890 she’s the mistress of the garden intimate character and scale into grays and purples.” Many American painters show in Boston ranks as one of shown here. She’s its ultimate something far more ambitious. discovered the artistic potential the first American impressionist flower. But with all this color and Dewing herself described her “The Artist’s Garden: American of gardens and flowers through shows in the country. light, he’s almost made her van- remarkable flower paintings as Impressionism and the Garden their travels and studies in Eu- Frederick Carl Frieseke fol- ish into the flower leaves, stalks “portraits,” writing — as any Movement, 1887-1920,” through rope during the 1880s. Among lowed in 1906, inaugurating a and background.” truly impassioned gardener Sept. 6, Chrysler Museum of Art, them was Theodore Robinson, rich period of productivity in Frieseke himself described his might — that “flowers offer a One Memorial Place, Norfolk, Va. the pioneering American im- which the neighboring French- hugely influential canvases as if removed beauty that exists only Free; 757-664-6200 or www pressionist who not only be- man’s garden helped shape not —during his many long years for beauty, more abstract than it .chrysler.org. friended and worked alongside only the flower beds so famously painting in his backyard — he can be in a human being, even Monet, but also moved into a tended by Frieseke’s wife, but was intoxicated by the sight of more exquisite.” [email protected] MUSEUMS Industries Architectural Park boulevards, Glen Ellyn; Agonism, Formlessfinder 630-942-2321, www.cod Pick of the week: Julie Green’splate paintings are more and John Szot Studio. .edu/gallery than art, with Green vowing 15 years ago to create Ongoing: Statue of Yo ung Through July 31: “New Dionysos: The statue of the Acquisitions From the Col- 50 illustrations every year of the last meals of death row son of Zeus, from 100 B.C. to lection of Andree Stone”: prisoners until there is no longer capital punishment in the A.D. 100, is one of the few Works from the late gallery U.S. “The Last Supper: 600 Plates Illustrating Final Meals large bronze sculptures owner and philanthropist’s of U.S. Death Row Inmates” is a collection of Green’s plate from antiquity in North collection include paintings America. and sculpture from nation- art, where she only includes the date and state in the ally known artists. description, no names or crimes. Through Aug. 9, Mary and Beverly Arts Center Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, 2407 W. 111th St.; 773-445- Hyde Park Art Center 3838, www.beverlyart 5020 S. Cornell Ave.; 773- 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston; 847-491-4000, center.org 324-5520, www.hydepark www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu Through July 12: “Reflec- art.org tions”: Terrence Reese gives Through July 26: “Scenic ARC Gallery and Educa- Art Institute of Chicago a documentary-style Overlook”: Susan Giles tional Foundation 111 S. Michigan Ave.; 312-443- photographic look at the explores the modern mega- 2156 N. Damen Ave.; 773- 3600, www.artinstituteof living spaces of well-known lith in this exhibit.

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