Swedish Immigrant Artists' Patronage Systems, 1880-1940 Mary Towley Swanson University of St
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
University of St. Thomas, Minnesota UST Research Online Art History Faculty Publications Art History 2004 A Tangled Web: Swedish Immigrant Artists' Patronage Systems, 1880-1940 Mary Towley Swanson University of St. Thomas, Minnesota Follow this and additional works at: http://ir.stthomas.edu/arthistory_pub Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation Swanson, Mary Towley, "A Tangled Web: Swedish Immigrant Artists' Patronage Systems, 1880-1940" (2004). Art History Faculty Publications. 9. http://ir.stthomas.edu/arthistory_pub/9 This Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Art History at UST Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art History Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UST Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Tangled Web: Swedish Immigrant Artists' Patronage Systems, 1880‐1940 An unpublished manuscript by Mary Towley Swanson, emeritus Professor of Art History, University of St. Thomas © 2004 Table of Contents: CHAPTER 1. Overview: Towards a Definition of Swedish‐American Artistic Patronage CHAPTER 2: Official Swedish Art Exhibitions in America Lend Support to Ethnic Artists CHAPTER 3: Early Immigrant Artists Create Template for Success CHAPTER 4. Ethnic Periodicals Help Artists Sustain Careers CHAPTER 5: Exhibitions Create a Catalyst for Artists’ Ethnic Sustainability and Support CHAPTER 6: Diverse American Systems of Patronage Provide Broad Support CHAPTER 7: Swedish Patronage Networks Encourage Artists’ Careers and Ethnic Collections APPENDIX A: Art Exhibitions: American Swedish Institute APPENDIX B: Art Exhibitions, American Swedish Historical Museum APPENDIX C: Swedish –American Artists’ Index A Tangled Web: Swedish Immigrant Artists’ Patronage Systems, 1880-1940 Ch. 1, p. 1 © Mary Towley Swanson, 2004 CHAPTER 1. Overview: Towards a Definition of Swedish-American Artistic Patronage Patronage conjures grand images of wealthy benefactors protecting and providing for penniless artists, but money is not the only instrument of patronage. Benefactors may also give time and vital encouragement. Patronage can be provided by organizations, publications, institutions, urban or rural settings that offer a nurturing environment, and the community of artists themselves. Broadening our understanding of patronage is mandatory in order to document the increasingly complex panorama of late nineteenth into twentieth century American art. The term “patron” in American art summons up the names of industrialist families--- Rockefellers, McCormicks, Deerings, Fricks and others--- living in palatial splendor in large American cities while imitating the cultural mores of their European mentors. Ethnic leaders and organizations in the lower and middle classes also found a variety of methods to support and encourage their visual artists. This book, based on more than 25 years of research in archives, libraries, and artists’ studios, examines the patronage systems that flourished for Swedish immigrant visual artists who arrived in America between 1880 and 1920 during the last great waves of immigration. Seldom studied a component in the careers of immigrant artists because it is difficult to find sources and there are few affluent donors, histories of ethnic artists generally omit this influential factor. Scholars who include artists in their study of American ethnic groups have tended to alphabetically list the artists, their training and accomplishments in a compendium of biographical data. This approach is used in Peter C. Merrill’s German Immigrant Artists in America (1997), Regina Soria’s American Artists of Italian Heritage, (1993), and David Karel’s Dictionnaire des artistes de langue française en Amâerique du Nord: peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs, graveurs, photographes, et orfáevres (French Artists in America, 1992). Research on ethnic visual artists is a fairly recent scholarly endeavor.Rarely has issue of patronage been highlighted. Aase Bak’s Danish-American Artists (1979) or John McElroy’s catalog Black Artists in America (1990) note generic patrons while emphasizing artistic themes and tendencies. In his detailed catalog Painting by Minnesotans of Norwegian Background, 1870-1970, (2000), Marion John Nelson included new information on these immigrant artists’ support systems. But he concluded, “patronage is a subject on which it is very difficult to get precise information.”1 As new finds of artists’ and galleries’ papers are being catalogued daily in museum and institutional archives, art historians who study ethnic-Americans will find patronage increasingly important in their efforts to comprehend the gigantic mosaic of influences that helped immigrant artists find a niche within the American artistic mainstream. Since the early twentieth century, a limited number of articles, exhibition catalogs, and books have traced the careers and idiosyncrasies of connoisseurs of American art. These early patron/collectors included Alfred Steiglitz, Duncan Phillips, Lillie P. Bliss, Katherine S. Dreirer, and Arthur J. Eddy, among others, who helped American artists achieve some measure of financial stability while at the same time satisfying their almost-compulsive need to acquire contemporary art. Collectors of ethnic American art, however, remain unexamined. The network of patronage, both informal and formal, that supported Swedish-American artists was uniquely vigorous and, although diffuse, was often interconnected. Why did this network exist more strongly for Swedish-Americans than for other groups? Two significant factors appear to be at least partially responsible. From the mid- to late nineteenth century, Sweden had one of the highest levels of literacy in Europe, thus assuring aspiring visual artists from various social classes of a solid educational background. Secondly, Sweden respected and A Tangled Web: Swedish Immigrant Artists’ Patronage Systems, 1880-1940 Ch. 1, p. 2 © Mary Towley Swanson, 2004 generally supported its talented visual artists, making them an esteemed part of the social fabric. Exceptionally talented artists were able to climb the social ladder in the mother country, achieving status because of their artistic abilities. The examples of Anders Zorn (1860-1920) and Carl Larsson (1853-1919), both men from poor, lower class families who found a niche in social circles because of their abilities, served as an inspiration to young immigrant artists. Recalling this high level of social acceptance in their mother country, the immigrant artists worked to establish their careers in the New Land. Swedish artists sought to assimilate successfully and quickly into the American societal framework within the most populous waves of immigration to the New World between 1880 and 1920. Swedish-Americans settled en masse in Chicago during this period, becoming the third most populous national group in that city. They also settled in large numbers in areas on the East Coast: Brooklyn, among the other Scandinavians; Worcester and Boston, Massachusetts; and regions of New York . In collections of essays in Swedes in the Twin Cities (2001), and Swedes in Chicago, (1991), scholars such as Dag Blanck and Philip Anderson reported that as a group these immigrants developed community-based organizations that paralleled both those they left in the homeland and those they found in the New World. Thus immigrant artists and collectors alike transferred roles they witnessed in the mother country into this new society forged from immigrant beginnings. The early decades of the twentieth century also witnessed the American public’s acceptance of seven widely popular exhibitions of Sweden’s most contemporary art in major American cities, ranging from the East Coast to the Midwest. No other European country sent as many exhibitions of their cutting-edge paintings and sculptures on tour to respected American galleries and museums. American art critics greeted the exhibitions with astonishment, pointing to the fresh vision of Sweden’s modified Impressionist artists. The exhibitions’ widespread acceptance by critics and museum personnel alike helped to ease the transition of Swedish- American artists into the American cultural mainstream. They also inspired the founding of Swedish immigrant artists’ associations and exhibitions in the early twentieth century. Thus the Swedish government and Swedish artists themselves became factors in the process of building a supportive network for Swedish-American artists. At the turn of the century, immigrant leaders wrote numerous essays about their artists, then reaching maturity in their careers, and art collectors in Swedish-American and Scandinavian-American publications. During an era when immigrants were increasingly perceived with suspicion and resentment on the part of the American public, these essays and news stories served to remind their ethnic colleagues and general populace that Swedish- Americans were an educated and culturally sophisticated group. The publications served as inspiration for an immigrant people and their artists, as well as providing a public relations ploy to advance the social and cultural status of Swedish-Americans. This period also coincided with the era when galleries, museums and patrons focusing on American art were just being established and nurtured in East Coast and large Midwestern cities. Swedish-Americans witnessed this phenomenon and attempted to clone these kinds of exhibitions and systems of patronage in their own community,