TRADITIONS & D E P a R T U R
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REALISM NOW : TRADITIONS & D e p a r t u r e s M entors and P rotégés JOEL BABB chung shil adams • PETER BOUGIE barbara allen • LEWIS COHEN benjamin cariens jeff slomba • ARTHUR DECOSTA deborah deichler paul dusold • NEIL DREVITSON janice drevitson • LARRY FRANCIS frank depascale • ROBERT HUNTER sergio roffo • SIDNEY HURWITZ andrew raftery • PAUL INGBRETSON lindesay harkness • RICHARD LACK allan banks • LISA LEARNER geronna lewis • DAVID LOWREY sam vokey • DOUGLAS MARTENSON david campbell jess montgomery • MAUREEN MCCABE katy wood • GEORGE NICK shalom flash • ELLIOT OFFNER andrew devries • RICHARD RAISELIS sedrick huckaby REALISM NOW : • GLENN RUDDEROW david baker • TRADITIONS & D e p a r t u r e s SUSAN STEPHENSON nathan lewis • ANDREW WYETH M ENTORS AND P ROTÉGÉS jamie wye1th carolyn wyeth REALISM NOW : TRADITIONS & De p a rtu r es M ENTORS AND P ROTÉGÉS Part I Artists from New England, greater Philadelphia, and greater Minneapolis November 24, 2003 to January 17, 2004 vose NEW AMERICAN REALISM contemporary R EALISM N OW : T RADITIONS AND D EPARTURES , M ENTORS AND P ROTÉGÉS Part I, Artists from New England, greater Philadelphia and greater Minneapolis November 24, 2003 to January 17, 2004 Compiled by Nancy Allyn Jarzombek Essay by Trevor J. Fairbrother Catalogue designed by Claudia Arnoff Abbot W. Vose and Robert C. Vose III, Co-Presidents Marcia L. Vose, Director, Vose Contemporary Lynnette Bazzinotti, Business Manager Carol L. Chapuis, Director of Administration Nancy Allyn Jarzombek, Director of Research Siobhan M. Wheeler, Associate for Research Julie Simpkins, Artist-in-Residence, Preparator Courtney S. Kopplin, Assistant to the Gallery Manager Claudia G. Arnoff, Artist-in-Residence, Graphic Designer Carey L. Vose, Sales Associate Rebecca Fitle, Robert C. Vose, Jr., Intern Photography by RockyThies.com Printing by Capital Offset Co., Inc., Concord, New Hampshire © 2003 VOSE GALLERIES OF BOSTON , I NC . ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The idea for this exhibition emerged four years ago, when the We are grateful to Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, Nicholas Wyeth, decision was made at Vose Galleries to enter the contemporary market. Jamie and Phyllis Wyeth, Victoria Browning Wyeth, Amy Morey and Where is realism today?, we asked. Who are its proponents? In an art Lauren R. Smith of the Wyeth Study Center at the Farnsworth Museum press buzzing with the cutting edge work of installation art, video, com - in Rockland, Maine, Mary Beth Dolan and Helene Sutton, assistants to puter-generated images, and performance art, where does one look for Jamie Wyeth, and Joyce Hill Stoner, Director of the Winterthur/ well-crafted, innovative realist work? We began to look, and we discovered University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, for assisting with fascinating associations of artists conveyed to us by word of mouth: be artist statements, and helping with the loans of paintings by Andrew sure to look at this artist’s work, and have you heard of that artist? Wyeth, Carolyn Wyeth and Jamie Wyeth. Associations emerged as a vital characteristic; we decided to turn association The staff of Vose Galleries handled the many and sundry details of —mentorship—into the defining characteristic of our show. On behalf this complex project with competence and perseverance. Special thanks of Vose Galleries, I would like to thank all the artists who responded go to Carey Vose and Courtney Kopplin, assistant directors of Vose with such gratifying enthusiasm and provided invaluable guidance in Contemporary, who have organized and participated in all facets of this recommending artists whose goals blend with the galleries’ vision. project; to Nancy Jarzombek who applied her considerable curatorial In a project of this kind, there are many who deserve acknowl - talents in helping us shape this exhibition and worked closely with the edgement and gratitude. We would like to thank Trevor Fairbrother for artists in defining their statements; and to our staff who have handled his consideration of the project in its early stages, and for his thoughtful the myriad of tasks required in an exhibition of this scope: Claudia essay that revisits the artists of Boston’s elegant age-artists who are, even Arnoff, Lynnette Bazzinotti, Carol Chapuis, Julie Simpkins, Rebecca today, considered mentors by succeeding generations. Ray Kinsler was a Fitle, and Siobhan Wheeler. delight to work with and made many excellent suggestions. We would Perhaps most of all, I would like to thank my husband, Bill Vose also like to acknowledge the help and cooperation we received from and my brother-in-law, Terry Vose, for their unfailing support in this Gallery Naga in Boston, David David Gallery in Philadelphia, Gross new initiative. McCleaf of Philadelphia and Forum Gallery of New York City. Marcia L. Vose Director, Vose Contemporary 5 Figure 1. Lilian Westcott Hale , Agnes Doggett as a Bride , c. 1916 Private collection (photograph courtesy of Vose Galleries) 6 HISTORY LESSONS AND THE BOSTON SCHOOL Trevor J. Fairbrother While considering affinities between some contemporary realist part by copying famous pictures on display in museums. The broad artists it may be instructive to revisit a coterie of painters who technique of certain Old Masters—Titian, Rubens, Hals, and, most worked to combine historical approaches with contemporary trends. importantly, Velázquez—had a powerful impact. It accompanied a This group emerged in Boston in the 1890s and has come to be new interest in pictures with simple and harmonious compositions, known as the Boston School. 1 Its leaders, Edmund C. Tarbell, Frank a trend reflecting the influence of historic Dutch painting, the recent W. Benson, Joseph DeCamp, and Philip Hale, were all successful art Aesthetic Movement, and a greater knowledge of the principles of school teachers as well as prolific artists with national reputations. Japanese design. In addition, starting in the late 1880s, the most Sadakichi Hartmann described them as “the Tarbellites, a clan of modern traits explored by the “Tarbellites” had their roots in Boston artists. [who] are clever men, with a flexible hand and a Impressionism. These varied but interrelated new approaches to decided sense of color.” 2 Three years later, in The History of American painting were still deemed “mad” by mainstream art critics on both Painting , Samuel Isham praised Boston as the only city in the nation sides of the Atlantic; they included colorism, conspicuous brush - where recent art had achieved “a distinct character of its own.” The work, and plein-air effects. The daring of the young local artists fifty-year-old artist and writer argued that the aesthetic solidarity paralleled the interests of Boston’s savviest art collectors, who had within New England’s cultural capital stood in marked contrast to begun to amass contemporary paintings by Claude Monet by 1889. the heterogeneity of New York. He argued that the dominance of Lilian Hale’s Agnes Doggett as a Bride (fig. 1) encompasses influences what he called the “artist’s standpoint” gave Boston its creative of these sorts while reflecting the maker’s personal point of view. It is edge; in other words, the painters themselves set the standard for a classic Boston painting on Isham’s terms, and a testament to the artistic excellence. Generalizing about the brushwork of the leading curriculum at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, where Tarbell practitioners Isham stated that these Bostonians favored “a certain was her paintings instructor and her husband was on the faculty. In breadth, a rougher texture, and a quivering light.” He praised the addition to its immediate Boston connections, Agnes Doggett as a “frankness and directness,” of their work, noting a connection to Bride is very much a “symphony in white” indebted to James Winslow Homer’s art, but “with more of grace and of the training McNeill Whistler. Carefully building her image with pale colors of the [art] schools, and with less of [Homer’s] originality and and subtle tonal evocations of light and shadow, Hale induces a 3 elemental force.” meditation on beauty and grace. Her altar-like scenario, with its Isham’s assessment can still ring true if analysis is confined to the work astute allusion to the High Renaissance, honors feminine allure, of about thirty figure painters of the period: the above-mentioned the childbearing years of a woman’s life, and the blessings of virtue. “Tarbellites” and their most successful cohorts and protégés. 4 After The delicate play of brushwork renders the surface of this picture as acquiring a professional grounding in the European academic tender as the woman it depicts. tradition these artists looked to a variety of influences in order to It is instructive to consider Agnes Doggett as a Bride in relation to the develop their individual styles. They selectively combined recent landmark Whistler exhibition presented by the Copley Society in developments with diverse historic precedents that they learned in 1904 (the year Hale graduated from the Museum School). 7 an American living abroad, flourished as a local cultural mascot. After completing his training in Paris in the late 1870s, Sargent practiced an increasingly virtuoso style, intensifying it with Impressionist-derived touches as he saw fit. Throughout the 1880s America’s more conservative critics dismissed his manner as overly clever, experimental, sketchy, or slapdash; when, for example, Boston’s artistic upper crust gave him his first solo exhibition, at the St. Botolph Club in 1888, the reviews were mixed. By the time that Isham’s History of American Painting appeared in print, however, Sargent enjoyed the popular reputation of being a living “Old Master.” For example, in 1902 Rodin, whom Sargent had painted in 1884, referred to him as “le Van Dyck de l’époque” in the London press. Sargent’s Royal Elisha Robbins (fig. 2), painted in Massachusetts in 1890, gives a shrewd, successful New England businessman an air of sober distinction.