Samuel M Green Brooklln, Maine Digitized by tine Internet Archive in 2015 littps://arcliive.org/details/twentiethcenturyOObowd TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN WATERCOLORS November 2, 1973 — December 9, 1973 Bowdoin College Museum of Art Copyright 1973 by the President and Trustees of Bowdoin College Brunswick, Maine Printed by the Brunswick Publishing Company FOREWORD lege Museum of Art, Mr. Charles Chetham, Director; and The Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Mr. The collection of Mr. and Mrs. Olin C. Robison inspired Truman H. Brackett, Director — who have contributed to exhibition. Their interest in the worl< of Green this Samuel the show. It is a great personal pleasure to present works aroused my curiosity in recent watercolors and Mr. owned by Mr. and Mrs. Morton W. Briggs, Mrs. Victor L. Green's role relative to them. Because my own career Butterfield, Dr. and Mrs. C. B. Crampton, Mr. and Mrs. choice was greatly influenced by Mr. Green, it seemed Russell G. D'Oench, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Jose D. Gomez- appropriate to include these works in my inaugural exhi- Ibahez, Mr. H. -R. Hitchcock, Mr. and Mrs. Louis 0. Mink, bition at Bowdoin. I am deeply indebted to Mr. and Mrs. Professor and Mrs. Adolph F. Pauli, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Robison and Mr. Green for all their encouragement and Reed, Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Rosenbaum, Mr. and Mrs. help in making the exhibition possible. Richard Wilburand Mr. Theodore Williamson. Many have My special thanks go to Mr. and Mrs. Tessim Zorach been personal friends and teachers of mine. gift and Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Ipcar for their thoughtful of Finally, I wish to thank those who have made special a William Zorach watercolor, and Mr. and Mrs. Paul Carey loans available: the Whitney Museum of American Art, of Salisbury, Maryland, for the four watercolors they have whose Curator, Mr. Robert Doty, arranged to send three donated. This gift grew from Mr. Carey's fondness for important works; the Wadsworth Atheneum, whose Di- Brunswick which developed while on a tour of duty at the rector, Mr. James Elliott, and Curator, Mr. Peter Marlow, Naval Air Station in 1943. I am grateful to have a new gift made available the Hopper watercolor; and the Museum by old friends of the Museum, the Zorachs, as well as from of Art of Ogunquit, from whom the Charles Burchfield new friends, the Careys. picture was borrowed through the kindness of Mr. Henry Many have loaned works by Mr. Green. I sincerely ap- Strater. These works add an important dimension to the preciate the fine cooperation of the many private lenders exhibition. and the public museums — the Fogg Art Museum. Har- R. Peter Mooz vard University, Mr. Daniel Robbins, Director: Smith Col- Director modernity and liveliness that puts them in a very special INTRODUCTION category all their own." have said that is the father of Some exhibitions are planned to instruct the viewer Some Homer American watercolor. Before Homer, the American watercolor about a certain artist's development, a period of art, or an was iconographical theme. Other exhibitions are designed to often a study for a larger work or a fast color sketch to excite the eye and provide an enjoyable aesthetic experi- be painted in oil at a later time in the studio. Homer, along ence. The present exhibition attempts to instruct and to with others of his day, made the watercolor an end in it- self. Homer traveled to many different locales. all excite to some extent, but more than this, it is the story of They a collection: Twentieth Century American Watercolors at inspired him. But, whether in the Caribbean or Maine, Bowdoin College. Tynemouth or the Adirondacks, he imbued all his works No attempt has been made here to survey American with the same directness of observation, clear structure watercolors. This has been done quite recently by the of form and celebration of light. The best American water- Birmingham Museum of Art and earlier by the Metropoli- colorists have followed his lead. tan Museum of Art. Only six outside loans have been in- A few years later the Misses Walker also gave the La cluded other than the Samuel Green pictures. Our pur- Farge watercolor. This picture reveals him as a master, pose is to reveal the continuing growth of the collection too, but La Farge's style is more controlled. Oriental art, played role in work, is at the Museum and place on view new additions to it. which a Homer's more consciously Wash drawings were included in the original Bowdoin felt in La Farge's art. Finally, La Farge, like Homer, had a bequest to the Museum in 1811, but the earliest water- marked ability to capture light effects but handled them color donated to the collection was Winslow Homer's differently, perhaps because of his work with stained After the Hunt. This gift by the Misses Walker was an aus- glass windows. picious beginning, as Homer is perhaps now recognized The French Impressionist style also influenced Ameri- as the greatest and best-known American master of the can watercolor to a considerable extent. It contributed to medium. Albert Ten Eyck Gardner even observed, the general loosening of brushstrokes and immediacy of "Homer's watercolors, with their brilliantly controlled painting which occurred about the turn of the century. technique, and their individual color harmony and their The works of Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent and unhackneyed subject matter have survived the passage Maurice Prendergast offer perfect testimony. Sargent is of time and retained the active interest of the artist's an especially interesting watercolorist. His paintings in many admirers. They seem to possess a perpetual watercolor were usually done as a means of relaxation. They are, therefore, spontaneous and unencumbered by Rockwell Kent of Lobster Cove, 1927, likewise illustrates salon considerations. Many of them come from Sargent's the influence of Cubist art, although the long bands of latest period in the 1920's. Prendergast. whose Central color also show the influence of Art Deco which was the Park is included in the exhibition, studied Impressionism rage in avant-garde design after the Paris Exposition in Paris. Yet, his pictures, often compared to mosaics and of 1926. tapestries, never lose the characteristic American preoc- Painting in the 1930's was dominated by the interest of cupation with structure, light and clarity. His subjects, the the Regionalist School of Thomas Benton, John Curry, gathering of people in a park and the horse and carriage, Grant Wood and others. Although some watercolors re- were those of the Impressionists. He translates the Grand flect this trend, the traditional approach remained strong. Jatte into an American idiom and the scene takes place Certain watercolorists became intensely interested in on the Charles River. one special locale, a regionalism of sorts, but most artists A curious figure, George "Pop" Hart, spread the Im- were interested in several locations simultaneously. pressionist style of Sargent and others. He was a vaga- Scenes including areas of water (so beautifully captured bond who painted everywhere, often using whatever ma- in watercolor) remained popular, although cityscapes are terial was available. Morea is painted on a piece of card- conspicuous in this period. John Marin, for example, was board, possibly ripped from a box. On this he flowed the inspired by both New York City and Maine. Bellows, figures with a few strokes to produce the very free, spon- Marsh, Burchfield, Peirce and Hopper often chose both taneous composition. city and rural subjects. Interesting parallels can be found As French influence continued in the twentieth cen- in the biographies of these men. Painters like Burchfield tury, the more "Moderne ' styles of Cubism and the and Pleissner were born in the city but took special plea- Fauves replaced Impressionism as the model for Ameri- surein country scenes. Many werehighly educated; Regi- can paintings. Charles Demuth, a native of Lancaster, nald Marsh attended Yale and Waldo Peirce attended Pennsylvania, reveals his Parisian Cubist training in the Harvard. well-known My Egypt and other paintings of Pennsyl- The exceptional figure of this group is Edward Hopper. vania or Provincetown. On the other hand, his August While a member of the "Main Street" realists group, he Lilies reveals his awareness of the Fauves. Like Demuth's studied in Paris. Instead of joining the avant-garde in other watercolors of fruit, vegetables and flowers, an ele- France, he developed a feeling for style and an interest in gance of line and sensitivity to color displaces the precise light there. To his European experience Hopper added a severity of his Cubist interests. Bowdoin's watercolor by knowledge of commercial art. About 1924 he studied graphics. His experience in Paris and work with commer- Thus far the Bowdoin collection does not contain cial art and graphics combined to produce a new synthe- works in watercolor by this group. The collection has re- sis. The catalyst was Hopper's choice of subject matter. mained closer to the so-called realist tradition. Even He examines alienation, rejection and separation. The re- though the abstract group demanded and got the atten- sult has influenced many watercolorists and given Hop- tion of art historians, the realist tradition offered an per a place as significant as Homer's in the history of equally viable means of expression. Today there is a re- twentieth century American watercolors. newal of the realist tradition, not in its old forms but con- By the end of the third decade of the twentieth century, ditioned to some extent by Abstract Expressionism, Pop American watercolor broke free of the modernism which Art and Hard Edge painting.