The Graphic Art of Thomas Buford Meteyard

The graphic art of Thomas Buford Meteyard

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Citation Finlay, Nancy. 1990. The graphic art of Thomas Buford Meteyard. Harvard Library Bulletin 1 (2), Summer 1990: 50-66.

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The Graphic Art of Thomas Buford Meteyard

Nancy Finlay

"Late at night, by a fire of apple logs on the brick hearth, in a little room with pale green walls and white doors, the wood-engraver sits at his table, carving an initial for the Salt Marsh Press, while the lamp lights up his studious forehead and thin hands ... " (CourrierInnocent, No. VII, Spring, 1897)

he little room described above, and depicted in a wood-engraving (figure 1) T by Thomas Buford Meteyard (1865-1928), was located in Testudo, Meteyard's seaside home in Scituate, Massachusetts. The print, which depicts Meteyard's friend the architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, appeared in a little journal known as the CourrierInnocent. The text was written by Bliss Carman, a well-known Cana- dian poet; other literary contributors included the American poet Richard Hovey, and Goodhue's architectural partner, Ralph Adams Cram. Both Goodhue and another friend, the English expatriate artist Dawson Dawson-Watson, also contributed woodcuts to the publication. Meteyard's graphic art evolved within the context of this NANCY FINLAY is Associate circle of artists and writers, who constituted an informal dining and drinking soci- Curator of Printing and ety known as the "Pewter Mugs." The "madder and more fantastic members" called Graphic Arts in the Harvard 1 College Library. themselves the "Visionists" and met at Scituate, Boston, and Fred Holland Day's mansion in Norwood, where photographs show them taking part in elaborate costume parties. 2 By far the greatest part of Meteyard's graphic work was created for this group of friends. Although he was one of the most talented graphic artists active in Boston at the turn of the nineteenth century, Meteyard never worked for the large commercial publishers such as Houghton, Mifflin and Company or Lit- tle, Brown and Company. Nearly all of his designs appeared in books by Carman and Hovey, the publications of Fred Day and his partner Herbert Copeland, and the highly personal CourrierInnocent, which was produced and printed entirely by the contributors themselves. Thomas Buford Meteyard was born in Rock Island, Illinois, on 12 November 1865.3 His grandfather was an emigrant from England who spelled his name "Meat- yard." Young Tom's father died a few years after his son was born from wounds he received in the American Civil War, and the boy was raised by his mother, Marion Lunt Meteyard. He remained devoted to her as long as she lived. When Meteyard

1 Ralph Adams Cram, My Life in Architecture(Boston: Lit- 3 The best treatment of Meteyard 's life to date is Nicholas tle, Brown and Co.), 1936, pp. 91f contains the best Kilmer, "Thomas Buford Meteyard: A Biography," in description of the Visionists and their activities. Thomas Buford Meteyard (1865-1928): Paintings and Water- 2 See, for example, Estelle Jussim, Slaveto Beauty:The Eccentric colors(New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, 1989). See also my Life and ControversialCareer of F. HollandDay, Photographer, own brief biography of the artist in Artists of the Book in Publisher,Aesthete (Boston: David R. Godine, 1981), p. 55. Boston, 1890-1910 (Cambridge: Harvard College Library, Numerous photographs of the Visionists are preserved 1985), pp. 97-98. In 1989, an important group of color in the collections of the Norwood Historical Society, Nor- woodcuts by Meteyard were given to the Houghton wood, Mass. Library by the artist's son Robert T.B. Meteyard; these have inspired this article. The GraphicArt of Thomas Buford Meteyard 51

was in his early teens, they returned to her home in Massachusetts; in 1885, he Figure 1. The Wood-Engraver. Colorwoodcut by ThomasBuford enrolled as a special student at Harvard. There he met Carman, who was pursuing Meteyard. Reproduced in The a doctorate in English, Hovey, a divinity student, and Bernard Berenson, who, like Courrier Innocent (Scituate, Meteyard, was studying fine arts with Professor Charles Eliot Norton. Meteyard, 1897). The Houghton Library. Berenson, and Carman were involved in a project to found an "All-Art" monthly called "The Twentieth Century Review" to combat the growing standardization and industrialization of art. 4 The necessary financial backing failed to materialize, however, and in the summer of 1888, Meteyard and his mother sailed for Europe. Meteyard had decided on a career as a painter, and the next few years were devoted to the serious study of art in London, and especially in Paris. There Meteyard enrolled in the studio of Leon Bonnat, though his real interest was not in Bonnat's aca- demic style, but rather in the still-controversial artistesimpressionistes et symbolistes. By the fall of 1891, he had found his way to Giverny, where a growing colony of American artists clustered around Claude Monet. 5 In 1891, this colony was still in its early stages. Monet had only settled in Giverny in 1883 and had just begun to create his famous gardens; the Americans had started coming in 1887. Among the pioneers were Theodore Robinson, Theodore Earl Butler, and the Englishman Dawson-Watson. Eventually Monet would resent the encroachments of these foreigners, but he seems to have been more receptive in the early days, at least to an inner circle, which may possibly have included Meteyard himself. Meteyard's

• See Muriel Miller, Bliss Carman:Quest and Revolt(St. John's, "The refugees from officialdom appeared out of Newfoundland: Jesperson Press, 1985), pp. 45-47. nowhere-that is, from St. Louis, Providence, Washing- > For a good discussion of the American colony at Giverny, ton, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, and most of all, see David Sellin, Americans in Brittany and Normandy, Boston;• p. 53. R. H. Ives Gammell, in The BostonPainters, 1860-1910 (Phoenix: Phoenix Art Museum, 1982). The 1900-1930 (Orleans, Mass.: Parnassus Imprints, 1986), p. colony is also decribed in Claire Joyes, Claude Monet: Life 28, also emphasizes the contacts between Boston artists at Giverny (Paris: The Vendome Press, 1985). Joyes places and Monet at Giverny. special emphasis on the presence of artists from Boston: 52 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

friendships with Butler and Dawson-Watson are well documented, and his oil paintings of these years were certainly strongly influenced by Impressionism. The influence of Monet on his graphic art, though less immediately apparent, was to prove no less significant. Meteyard's first securely dated graphic work stemmed directly from his life at Giverny. In the spring ofl892, Theodore Butler became engaged to Monet's step- daughter, Suzanne Hoschede. 6 This happy event caused great rejoicing in the Ameri- can colony and was celebrated by a special issue of the CourrierInnocent. In fact, the CourrierInnocent, later to reappear at Scituate, originated in Giverny as early as 1891. Claire Joyes has described how "the Hoschede sisters ... were having great fun with [Dawson-]Watson and his wife, who, by way ofriposte to a satiricaljour- nal published in Paris, Le courrierfranfais, [were] preparing one of their own at Giverny-Le courrierinnocent, published locally by the most primitive methods and copiously illustrated by their friends." 7 Extensive documentation is lacking, but two of the first five issues can be dated to the spring and summer of 1892. 8 These issues were apparently produced using an early mimeograph process. The artistic quality of the reproductions is therefore not very high, and the size of the edition must have been extremely limited. Meteyard's contribution to the spring issue, a moody landscape of breaking waves seen through a foreground screen of pine trees, accompanied a poem by Richard Hovey (figure 2). Hovey had come to France the previous autumn with his mistress. Although a child was born to the couple in February, it was to be several years before they could marry. 9 Hovey's poem, with its "Pine woods and mysteries, Sea sands and sorrows;• clearly reflects his own ambiguous personal situation rather than the joyful engagement of Butler and Suzanne Hoschede; in this it was unlike the other poems in the spring issue, which are consistently rollicking in tone. Meteyard, too, apparently experienced an unhappy love affair in 1892. 10 The close association of design and text seen in this early work would remain typical of Meteyard's collaborations with his friends. The landscape does not merely illustrate the verses; peculiarly expressive, it intensifies their emo- tional impact and lends increased significance and dignity to lines that are not inherently remarkable. Meteyard and his mother returned to America in 1893. The early 1890s were an even more exciting time in Boston than the heady days of the late 1880s. In 1893, the Knight Errant, an arts and crafts periodical devoted to the same ideals as the abortive TwentiethCentury Review and its short-lived successor, the Mahogany Tree, and, like them, inspired by the teachings of Charles Eliot Norton, was being edited by the two young architects Ralph Adams Cram and Bertram Grosvenor Good- hue.11 Herbert Copeland, a member of the Harvard class of 1891, and Fred

6 See Claire Joyes, "Giverny's Meeting House, The Hotel in March; the summer issue, the "Wedding Number;• must Baudy," in Sellin, Americans (note 5), p. 101; also Joyes, have appeared about the time of the marriage, in July. It ClaudeMonet (note 5), p. 66. Paul Hayes Tucker, in Monet appears that at least one other issue preceded these two. in the '90s (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, Dawson-Watson, in "The Rolling-Pin in Art;' The Liter- 1989), p. 156, suggests that Monet was so upset by ary Review,1, no. 5 (May 1897), 70, claimed that the Courrier Suzanne's engagement and subsequent marriage (and his Innocentoriginated in 1891, and a manuscript in the pos- own marriage to Suzanne's mother, which took place four session of the Meteyard family describes an exhibition days earlier, so that the painter might give the bride away) organized by "The Courrier Innocent" at the Hotel Baudy that he did little work for almost ten months during 1892. in February 1892. 7 Joyes, Monet at Giverny (London: Mathews Miller Dun- • See William R. Linneman, RichardHovey (Boston: Twayne bar, I 975), pp. 26-27. Publishers, 1976), pp. 27-29. • Since the two issues subsequently printed at Scituate are 10 See Kilmer, "Thomas Buford Meteyard" (note 3), p. 20. numbered 6 and 7, it may be that a total of five issues 11 On The Knight Errant, see Susan Otis Thompson, Ameri- appeared at Giverny. Of the two issues I have seen, the can Book Design and William Morris (New York and Lon- spring issue contains numerous references to the engage- don, 1977), pp. 40-41;Jussim, Slave to Beauty (note 2), pp. ment of Butler and Suzanne Hoschede, which took place 52-53; and Finlay, Artists efthe Book in Boston(note 3), p. 3. 53 The GraphicArt of Thomas Buford Meteyard

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• b Th Buford Meteyard. Reproduced in The Courrier Innocent (Giverny, 1892). Figure 2. Pine Woods by the Sea. Drawing y Col:::;::n of Robert T. B. Meteyard. 54 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

Holland Day, a "very wealthy young resident of [Norwood]" and a gifted amateur photographer, were on the point of founding a publishing firm to issue "fine limited editions of high class works;" 12 in less than a year, two other Harvard men, Herbert Stone and Ingalls Kimball, both still undergraduates, would establish a rival firm- and enlist Bliss Carman as literary advisor and editorial reader. 13 Also in 1893, Meteyard's English friend Dawson-Watson emigrated to America to accept a post as director of the Hartford Art Society, later to become the Hartford Art School, in Hartford, Connecticut. Meteyard was quickly drawn into this group and became one of the leading members of the Visionists and Pewter Mugs. Soon he was produc- ing drawings both for Copeland and Day and for Stone and Kimball. The first book published by Copeland and Day was The Decadent,written by Cram and illustrated by Goodhue; their second purely American offering was Songsfrom Vagabondia,a collection of poems by Carman and Hovey with cover, pictorial endpapers, and poster by Meteyard. Most of the books on Copeland and Day's 1894 list were English imports from the publishing firm of Elkin Mathews and John Lane. These included, among other titles, Oscar Wilde's Salomewith illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, and the notori- ous Yellow Book. The strong blacks and whites of Beardsley's designs directly influenced Meteyard's drawings for Songsfrom Vagabondiain which the rather sketchy lines of his contributions to the CourrierInnocent (figure 2) were replaced with broad flat areas of solid black, and a more decorative approach appeared in his handling of the natural forms. This is most obvious in the circular device enclosing the portraits of the three collaborators that was employed on the cover and the poster (figure 3). One reviewer, clearly recognizing the origins of the style, referred to the design as "three men in a decadent moon." 14 Meteyard looked beyond Beardsley, however, to draw onJapanese sources.Japanese art was an inspiration not only to Meteyard, but also to Beardsley, to the symbolists and impressionists whom Meteyard had known and admired in France, and to many other artists of the period, both in America and in Europe. The use of a circular device was probably specifically inspired by circular Japanese stamps, which were much imitated by other American book artists, notably the Bostonian Sarah Wyman Whitman, who used similar motifs on many of her book covers. Hovey's CourrierInnocent poem, revised and entitled "A Song by the Shore," found its way into Songsfrom Vagabondia,and Meteyard's CourrierInnocent illustration was adapted for the back endpapers (figure 4). Here, as in the cover design, the forms have grown blacker, bolder. Whereas in the CourrierInnocent the design occupied a single page, here it has been expanded to fill a double-page spread, with each side the mirror image of the other. Meteyard's mongram therefore appears twice, at the lower left as well as at the lower right. This is the first firmly documented appearance of the large decorative M that Meteyard employed as his monogram in this period. In this case only, the M, which vaguely suggests an upside-down fleur-de-lis, is interlaced with a spidery TB. The format of pictorial endpapers incorporating a brief poem, evidently derived from the Courrier Innocent, was to be repeated in the other two books of the Vagabondia series. The year 1894 was something of an anno mirabilisfor Meteyard. Remarkable achievements included not only the Songsfrom Vagabondiadecorations but also his

12 See Joe W. Kraus, Messrs. Copeland & Day, 69 Cornhil/, 13 See Sidney Kramer, A History of Stone & Kimball and Her- Boston, 1893-1899 (Philadelphia: George S. MacManus Co., bert S. Stone & Company with a Bibliography of their Publica- 1979), as well asJussim, Slave to Beauty (note 2), pp. 61-91. tions, 1893-1905 (Chicago, 1940). 14 Anonymous review in The Book Buyer, 13 (1896), 519-520. The GraphicArt of ThomasBuford Meteyard 55

':_ ..~- ·, ... '.···:\,

Figure 3. Songs from Vaga- bondia (Boston,1894). Coverde- sign by ThomasBuford Meteyard. The Houghton Library.

• < ,~. : _. :· • ' •

\_•,•·

cover for The Ebb Tide, by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, published by Stone and Kimball of Cambridge and Chicago. Frederic W. Goudy later recalled meeting Meteyard, whom he mistook for an English artist, at the offices of Stone and Kimball, and being shown his Ebb Tide cover design. 15 According to Goudy, Meteyard was personally acquainted with Stevenson. Stevenson's writings were, in any case, an important influence on both Carman and Hovey, and Carman claimed that Songsfrom Vagabondiawere directly inspired by him. 16 Meteyard's cover

" Goudy's recollections appeared in his introduction to Mel- 16 For the influence of Stevenson on Carman and his circle, bert B. Cary.Jr., A Bibliographyof the Village Press (New see Miller, Bliss Carman (note 4), pp. 52, 128, and 154. York: The Press of the Woolly Whale, 1938), pp. 13-14. According to Miller, Carman saw Vagabondiaas an exten- sion "of the Stevenson, Henley, and Hovey" school. 56 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

WITH THE ORI·-ENT IN HEREYES, LIFE MY MISTR-ESS LUREDM£ ON. • KNOWLEDGE.. SA --ID THAT LOOKOF HERS. ,.SHALL BE YOURS-WHEN ALL IS DONE.:'

LIKE A POMEGR-ANATE IN HALVES. ..DRINK ME" SAID-'-TIIAT MOUTH OF HERS. AND I rnANKW -HO NOWAM HERE WHERE MYDUST-·WITH DUSTCONFERS.

Figure 4. Songs from Vaga- design for The Ebb Tide (figure 5) is even more stylized than his Songsfrom Vaga- bondia (Boston, 1894). Back endpaper by Thomas Buford bondiadecorations. A curving stretch of beach is reduced to a series of sweeping Meteyard.The HoughtonLibrary. lines, simplified almost to the point of abstraction. The design is powerful, eye-catching, ideally suited to its decorative purpose. Of all Meteyard's published work, it is the most closely related to contemporary continental art nouveau. A similar abstract approach to natural form is found in a series of watercolors of the Scituate beaches and marshes, executed at about the same time. 17 Despite its tropi- cal setting, required by the subject matter of the book, the Ebb Tide cover design is clearly based on these studies. One of them (figure 6) includes a cluster of pine branches identical to the palm fronds in the foreground of the cover. Immediately after Thanksgiving 1894, Bliss Carman travelled to Scituate to spend a few weeks with Meteyard and to begin their most ambitious collaboration, Behind

17 This drawing was exhibited at the Berry-Hill Galleries 28) under the title "Blue Sea and Pine Branch." The date in New York in ThomasBuford Meteyard (1865-1928): Paint- given there of 1893-94 must be approximately correct. ings and Watercolors,13 September - 7 October 1989 (No. The GraphicArt of Thomas Buford Meteyard 57

Figure5. The Ebb Tide (Chica- go and Cambridge,1894). Cover design by Thomas Buford Mete- yard. The Houghton Library.

the Arras, subtitled The Book of the Unseen.Poet and artist worked closely together. Meteyard's full-page illustrations were considered an integral part of the publication, complementing and enhancing the meanings of the poems that they accompanied. Work continued into the spring of 1895; in May, the manuscript was submitted to Copeland and Day. Then, to Carman's surprise and chagrin, Herbert Copeland responded that he and his partner did not choose to publish illustrated poetry. 18 This rejection of an author and an artist whose work had previously enjoyed great popularity may be linked to the so-called YellowBook scandal in England. Copeland had long objected to his firm's position as the American publisher of

18 See Miller, Bliss Carman(note 4), pp. 138-139. 58 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

Figure 6. Blue Sea and Pine Branch. Watercolorby Thomas Buford Meteyard, ca. 1893-94. Berry-Hill Galleries.

some of John Lane's more radical productions, notably Wilde's Salome and the Yel- low Book. Wilde's arrest for sodomy in April 1895 with a "yellow book" (actually a yellowback French novel) precipitated a crisis. Whereas "decadence" previously had been a fashionable pose, suddenly it was perceived as a sign of moral depravity, a threat to society. In the reaction that followed, Beardsley was dismissed from the editorial staff of the YellowBook. In May, when the scandal was at its height, Copeland may well have hesitated to accept work by an artist whose decorations for a previous Copeland and Day publication, Songsfrom Vagabondia,had been branded as "decadent." Although Copeland specifically objected to the illustrations of Behindthe Arras, Carman's celebration of male comradeship may have appeared equally suspect at that moment. Day had reacted violently to the lines "Make me anything but neuter When the sap begins to stir" in Carman's "Spring Song" when Songsfrom Vaga- bondiawas under consideration by the publishers. 19 That summer, the police raided the Visionist headquarters in Boston on three different occasions, and though it is not clear exactly what they expected to find, it may be that these visitations were part of the backlash generated by the Wilde case in Britain. 20 Relations between Carman and Meteyard and their other publishers Stone and Kimball were also somewhat strained in the summer of 1895. Stone and Kimball had moved from Cambridge to Chicago, and Carman was having trouble getting them to pay him royalties for his book Low Tide on Grand Pre. Carman claimed that they were not treating Meteyard well either, and that "Tom was refusing to have any more transactions with them." 21 Besides his design for the cover of The Ebb Tide, Meteyard had previously contributed decorations to Stone and Kimball's

19 Miller, Bliss Carman(note 4),p. 121. It is interesting to note, ally been suggested that these raids were linked to suspi- in light of their reactions to Carman's innocuous verses cions of drug use by club members, though "nothing and Meteyard's equally innocuous drawings, that both stronger than beer and tobacco were consumed." Jussim, Copeland and his partner were probably homosexual. Slave to Beauty (note 2), p. 48. 2° Cram, My Life in Architecture(note 1),p. 91. It has gener- 21 Miller, Bliss Carman (note 4), p. 133. The GraphicArt of ThomasBuford Meteyard 59

magazine The Chap Book, which Carman had edited as long as the publishers remained in Cambridge, but now he would supply no further drawings to the firm. Despite these difficulties, the summer of 1895 saw many merry meetings down at Scituate, where Meteyard was building a new house. Another youthful Boston firm, Lamson, Wolffe and Co. agreed to publish Behind the Arras, and Meteyard's illustrations were duly reproduced. With one or two exceptions, however, they are not among his best work. The stylized landscapes at which he excelled were ill-suited to the portrayal of Carman's "abstract concepts" and his figurative compositions are not very successful. The best is the illustration to "The Red Wolf," a stark winter landscape in the style of the Ebb Tide cover and the Vaga- bondia decorations. The only publication with decorations by Meteyard to appear in 1896 was More Songsfrom Vagabondia,a second collection of poems by Carman and Hovey. This was by no means so good a book as its predecessor, but Meteyard's endpapers show distinct progress beyond his previous work. The subject matter recalls Giverny. The front endpaper (figure 7) depicts a man lying in a boat, cleverly foreshortened, and even more cleverly bisected by the gutter dividing the double-page spread into its two halves. As in the endpapers of the earlier book, each side of the double- page spread is a mirror image of the other, with the single, subtle exception of the pipe that the man in the boat is smoking. This has been eliminated from the left- hand page, though a break in the lines indicating the boards in the bottom of the boat reveals where it once was. The boat floats on a little stream bordered by pol- larded willows, and a line of poplar trees-the same poplars that appear repeatedly in Monet's series Poplarson the Epte-forms a frieze in the background. A little turtle swimming in the water on either side of the boat serves as Meteyard's signature. From now on a turtle-or, more properly, a tortoise-would frequently be used by Meteyard in a manner analogous to Whistler's butterfly. Meteyard was known as "the Tortoise" to his friends because of his phlegmatic temperament and deliberate habits. His new house in Scituate was known as Testudo, or Tortoise-Shell, and his woodcut bookplate, dating from about this time, depicted a tortoise and bore the inscription "Ex libris/testudini." The interest in the back end paper of More Songsfrom Vagabondialies in its rela- tionship to one of Meteyard's most beautiful independent prints, a color woodcut printed on blue paper depicting the moon rising over a hillside dotted with dark cypress or juniper trees (figure 8). In the endpaper (figure 9), the sky has been altered to include fleecy clouds, and instead of deep blue, the background color is a pale golden tan, suggestive of mid-day heat rather than moonlit calm. This use of color to evoke different times of the day recalls what Monet was doing in the nineties in his series paintings. Meteyard's application of the idea to printmaking is both interesting and logical. In order to repeat a painted composition, it is, of course, necessary to recopy the subject every time, but a woodblock may be printed over and over again, and radically different lighting effects can be created simply by varying the color of the ink and paper. In fact, Meteyard was not the only printmaker experimenting with color woodcuts in this way. Similar effects may be found in the prints of his contemporary Arthur Wesley Dow. 22 Dow had had contact with the Visionist group as early as 1893, when he published an article, "A Note on Japanese Art and What the American Artist May Learn Therefrom," in the Knight

22 The best general reference on Dow is Frederick C. Moffat, in Boston (note 3), pp. 88-89 and Finlay, "Some Influences Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922) (Washington: Smithsonian of the Color Woodcuts of Arthur Wesley Dow,'' Harvard Institution Press, 1977). See also Finlay, Artists of the Book Library Bulletin, 35 (1985), 184-200. 60 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

WHOSE FURTHEST--FOOTSTEP NEVER STRAYED BEYOND THE VILL.--AGE OF HIS BIRTH IS BUT A LODGER FOR THE NIGHT IN THIS OLD WAY SIDEINNOFEARTH

TO-MORROW HE SH--ALL TAKE HIS PACK AND SET OUT FOR THE WAYS BEYOND ON THE OLD TRAIL FROM STAR TO STAR AN ALIEN AND A.--V AGABOND

Figure 7. More Songs from Errant.A second article by Dow, "Painting with Wooden Blocks;' appeared in Modern Vagabondia (Boston, 1896). Back endpaperby ThomasBuford Art, another Boston periodical, in the summer of 1896. In it, Dow explained how Meteyard.The HoughtonLibrary. in a series of woodcuts, the colors could be "varied indefinitely in the same design during successive inkings of the blocks." 23 He insisted that his intention was "not to represent any place, or any time of the day, or season very realistically, but rather in an imaginative manner, to use some beautiful groups of lines and shapes, chosen from the scenery of [an] old New England town, as ground-work for different color schemes, a pattern ... for a mosaic of hues and shades." 24 Nevertheless, a reviewer for Time and the Hour-still another Boston little magazine-immediately remarked that Dow's method might be used to obtain "powerful effects of dawn, and blazing noon, sunset, moonlight, a gray day, storm, snow, or rain." 25 It hardly seems coincidental that "blazing noon" and "moonlight" are the two effects that Mete- yard obtained by varying the colors of the More Songsfrom Vagabondiaendpaper.

23 Arthur Wesley Dow, "Painting with Wooden Blocks," 25 Anonymous review in Time and the Hour, 2, no. 12 (29 Modern Art, 4 (1896), 86. August 1896), 17. 24 Ibid., p. 85. The GraphicArt of Thomas Buford Meteyard 61

Figure8. Moonrise. Colorwood- cut by Thomas Buford Meteyard, ca. 1896. The HoughtonLibrary.

A clear indication of Meteyard's fascination with the woodcut technique at this period was the revival of the CourrierInnocent, the little journal that had originated at Giverny. Dawson-Watson, a moving force in the original publication, paid extended visits to Testudo during the winter and spring of 1897, and his presence probably had something to do with the decision to bring out the new numbers. On the other hand, Theodore Butler was probably not present, despite the appearance of his name among the contributors to both new issues. Presumably his contribution was limited to the design of the cover, carried over from the earlier issues, but now for the first time cut in wood by Dawson-Watson. Butler's design depicted a Pierrot-like figure reading a paper with the masthead "Courrier Innocent." Another important factor in the revival of the journal must have been the temporary disillu- sionment of the authors and artists with their publishers, a desire to do everything- 62 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

IF ANY RECORD OF--OUR NAMES BE BLOWN ABOUT--THE HILLS OF TIME LET NO ONE SUN--DER US IN DEATH THE MAN OF PAINT THE MEN OF RHYME

OF ALL OUR GOOD--OF ALL OUR BAD ONE THING ONLY IS OF WORTH WE HELD THE LEA GUE OF HEART TO HEART THE ONLY PURPO--,SE OF THE EARTH

Figure 9. More Songs from writing, illustration, design, printing, distribution-entirely by themselves. This Vagabondia (Boston, 1896). Back endpaperby ThomasBuford was in keeping with the ideals of the arts and crafts movement, which had first Meteyard.The HoughtonLibrary. influenced Meteyard and his friends in the late 1880s. It must not be supposed that this new CourrierInnocent was in any sense a mass market periodical. Like the French original, it was primarily created for the amusement of the contributors, and circu- lated primarily among their acquaintances. Dawson-Watson stated that 148 copies of No. 6 were printed, and this seems quite a large number, considering that each page was printed by hand, using a rolling pin and a piece of felt. Furthermore- presumably reflecting Meteyard's newfound enthusiasm for the medium-not only the cover design and illustrations, but also all of the text, were painstakingly cut in wood using a jack knife. Dawson-Watson claimed that to cut a single page took six hours. Dawson-Watson's description of the making of the CourrierInnocent, published in The Literary Review in 1897 under the quaint title "The Rolling-Pin in Art," indicates the importance to the collaborators of this aspect of production, and the pride they took in their accomplishment. 26 A similar emphasis on handcraft is

26 Dawson-Watson, "The Rolling-Pin in Art" (note 8), p. 70. The GraphicArt of Thomas Buford Meteyard 63

evident in Carman's prose idyll "The Wood Engraver," quoted at the beginning of this article, which appeared in the spring 1897 issue of the CourrierInnocent, together with Meteyard's woodcut portrait of Goodhue (figure 1).27 Although Mete- yard had executed other portraits of his friends, including the Vagabondiacover design, a series used by Copeland and Day in an advertising brochure, and another group, including Visionist attributes, used to decorate the meeting room at Testudo, 28 this is perhaps the first time he portrayed one of his fellow artists practicing his craft. Although Goodhue is clearly recognizable as "The Wood Engraver," his features are simplified enough and generalized enough so that the figure might also stand for Dawson-Watson or Meteyard himself, the other two artists who contributed woodcuts to the CourrierInnocent. Meteyard's tortoise-logo appears on the base of the lamp suspended above the table at which the wood-engraver sits. The revived CourrierInnocent was not profusely illustrated, probably because the contributors found the wood-engraving process so laborious. In addition to "The Wood Engraver," Meteyard's chief contribution was the pressmark of "The Salt Marsh Press;' which appears on the back covers of the two issues produced in Scit- uate. This small woodcut, measuring a mere three by two inches, is a characteristic view of the Scituate marshes seen from an elevated viewpoint. A nearly identical watercolor exists, which may have served as a study for the woodcut. 29 In it, the curves of the meandering watercourse are reversed, and the headland in the dis- tance appears at the right rather than the left, indicating that Meteyard failed to reverse his design in transferring it to the woodblock. This further suggests that he was not familiar with the medium at this time, since an experienced printmaker surely would not have made this mistake. In other ways, however, the little print is a masterful performance. In a colored version, the grain of the woodblock is clearly visible, confirming that the blocks were cut parallel to the grain (as for woodcuts), and not crosswise (as for true wood-engravings). The vivid, unreal coloring is similar to that in Meteyard's watercolors of the period and suggests an awareness of post- Impressionist printmakers such as Emile Bernard and Paul Serusier as well as a con- tinuing interest in Japanese art. Meteyard and his friends were clearly familiar with the work of the post-Impressionists. Not only was Dawson-Watson's woodcut "cen- terfold" in the CourrierInnocent based on "La Dame au Manchon," an 1888 woodcut by Bernard, but Meteyard himself actually exhibited with the post-Impressionists at the Cafe Volpini. 30 Meteyard's woodcut of the Scituate marshes should also be compared to Arthur Wesley Dow's woodcut views of the Ipswich marshes. One example of Dow's woodcuts had accompanied his article "Painting with Wooden Blocks" in the July 1896 issue of Modem Art, 31 but it is likely that Meteyard knew others. Apparently the efforts of the Salt Marsh Press were limited to the two issues of the CourrierInnocent described above; Meteyard's pressmark, however, reappeared as the cover design of a book of poems by Carman in 1899. A Winter Holiday is dedicated to Meteyard, and two long poems, "December in Scituate" and "Winter at Tortoise-Shell" express Carman's admiration for his friend's paintings ("An open- air Impressionist, He swims his landscape in a mist.") and describe his life at Testudo,

27 Despite the title of Carman's prose idyll, the illustrations 30 "La Dame au Manchon" is reproduced in Caroline Boyle- and text are woodcuts, not wood-engravings. Turner, The Prints of the Pont-Aven School: Gauguin & his 28 A series of portraits of Cram, Goodhue, Hovey, and Mete- Circlein Brittany (New York: Abbeville Publishers, 1986), yard is reproduced in Berry-Hill Galleries, Thomas Buford pp. 54-55. For Meteyard's connection with the Cafe Vol- Meteyard (note 3), Nos. 31-34. pini, see Kilmer, "Thomas Buford Meteyard" (note 3), 29 Berry-Hill Galleries, ThomasBuford Meteyard (note 3), No. p. 12. 26. The drawing measures 7 x 5 inches. 31 Reproduced in Finlay, "Some Influences on the Color Woodcuts of Arthur Wesley Dow" (note 22), p. 185. 64 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

"safe beneath [his] Tortoise Shell." Stamped in metallic silver on dark gray, Mete- yard's design vividly suggests the ice and snow that cover the Scituate marshes in December, although its earlier woodcut version, especially when printed in bright colors, was obviously conceived as a summer scene. Once more, the series paintings of Monet come to mind. A Winter Holiday was published by Small, Maynard and Company, the last of the small Boston publishers associated with the Visionists. Herbert Small and Laurens Maynard were both members of the group; the phrase "and Company" in the name stood for Bliss Carman, the third partner in the firm. 32 Not surprisingly in view of his friendship with Carman, Meteyard contributed art- work to a number of Small, Maynard publications, including a "symbolist cover design" for The Children'sCrusade, by Marcel Schwob (1898)33 and page decorations for The Rosary in Rhyme by John B. Tabb (1904). Richard Hovey died suddenly in 1900, at the age of thirty-six. The little group of friends who had remained in close contact throughout the 1890s broke up in the next decade. Carman was devastated by Hovey's death; Marion Meteyard, travelling in Europe with her son, described it as "a crushing blow." 34 There were other changes as well. Stone and Kimball, who had moved west to Chicago in 1894, dis- banded in 1897. Copeland and Day dissolved their partnership at the end of 1898. Lamson, Wolffe and Co. failed in 1899. Small, Maynard and Co., who seemed to suffer from chronic financial difficulties, reorganized repeatedly; and the ultimate failure of the firm in 1903 left Carman's stock worthless and Small dead from a sudden heart attack. 35 Goodhue and Cram, though they would remain partners until 1913, were experiencing personal and stylistic conflicts by the turn of the century. In 1903, Goodhue moved to New York to oversee a commission for the United States Military Academy at West Point. He never returned to Boston. Nevertheless, Meteyard proceeded in 1903 to build a new studio near his house in Scituate with the assistance of such friends as he could still assemble. Some of his most beautiful color woodcuts appear to date from this period just after the turn of the century. A remarkably subtle, almost atonal view of the marshes (figure 10) bears an uncanny resemblance to a 1903 photograph by Alvin Langdon Coburn (figure 11); Coburn had attended Arthur Wesley Dow's summer school in Ipswich that year. Whereas the strong black lines and bright colors of Meteyard's earlier prints are closely related to his book designs, the effects in this woodcut are far more painterly. Printed from two blocks, both carefully inked by hand with thin washes of color, this woodcut might easily be taken for one of Meteyard's contem..; porary watercolors. Similar in technique (even the brushstrokes used to apply the ink to the block are clearly visible) is a misty view of Notre-Dame de Paris reflected in the Seine. Although based on a small oil painting of 1890,36 it must surely be contemporary with the woodcut "Marshes." The modification of clear sunshine in the oil painting to blue gray mist in the woodcut recalls the color effects that Meteyard was exploring in 1896 and 1897, in his earlier print of the Scituate marshes and in the endpaper of More Songsfrom Vagabondia. Meteyard's last collaboration with Carman took place in 1903. Last Songsfrom Vagabondiawas intended as a memorial to Richard Hovey, and perhaps to other

" See Miller, Bliss Carman (note 4), pp. 150-155. yard was a much better correspondent than her son Tom, 33 See Finlay, Artists of the Book in Boston (note 3), p. 53. The who, in keeping with his tortoise image, was seldom description "symbolist cover design" appeared in Publisher's effusive. Weekly (12 March 1898), 529. 35 Miller, Bliss Carman (note 4), pp. 187-188. 34 See Miller, Bliss Carman (note 4),pp. 179-180 and Kilmer, 36 Reproduced in Kilmer, "Thomas Buford Meteyard" (note "Thomas Buford Meteyard", (note 3), p. 34. Marion Mete- 3), p. 13. The GraphicArt of Thomas Buford Meteyard 65

friendships as well. Carman's poem "The Girl in the Poster" was inspired by Ethel Figure10. Marshes. Colorwood- cut by Thomas Buford Meteyard, Reed, a brilliant young artist, who, after designing book decorations and posters ca. 1903. The HoughtonLibrary. for the Boston publishers and serving as a photographic model for Fred Holland Day, had vanished abruptly just before the end of the century. 37 As in previous volumes, Meteyard supplied the decorated endpapers, and his medallion portrait of the three friends appeared on the book cover. Stylistically, the endpapers are similar to those of the earlier volumes, especially More Songsfrom Vagabondia.This may be a sign that Meteyard considered such a style appropriate for book decoration, or it may reflect the deliberately nostalgic, backward-looking tone of the poems. The front endpaper once more depicts a French hillside; the back endpaper, appropri- ately, shows breaking waves (figure 12), recalling Meteyard's first collaboration with Hovey, a decade earlier in Giverny (figure 2), when Hovey had described "the strong surf sobbing, sobbing." Hovey's last poem links the sea and death, expressing his longing to die

Not with the sick-room fever and weary heart And slow subsidence of diminished breath- But strong and free With the great tumult of the living sea. 38

37 See Finlay, Artists efthe Book in Boston(note 3), pp. 100-102. 38 Last Songsfrom Vagabondia(Boston: Small, Maynard and The definitive study of Reed is yet to be written. Company, 1903), p. 2. 66 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN

NOTHING I BROUG-HT TO THE HOUSE BUT THE GARB OF-RUDDY AND TAN, SUITED FOR PLEA-SURE OR WEAR, BEFITTING A RO-VING MAN.

NOTHING I BROUG-HT TO THE INN BUT THE TRAVELL-ER'S CLOAK I WORE; AND THAT, WHEN-I CAME AWAY, I NEEDS MUST DR-OP BY THE DOOR.

Figure 11. Last Songs from Meteyard and his mother returned to Europe in 1906, little suspecting that the Vagabondia (Boston, 1903). Back endpaperby ThomasBuford move would be a permanent one. Meteyard married an Englishwoman, Isabel Mon- Meteyard.The HoughtonLibrary. tague Barber, in 1910; a child, Robert, was born in 1912. Marion Meteyard died inJune 1915, and a month later the house in Scituate burned to the ground. There was now no longer any incentive to return to America. Despite these personal losses and the international tragedy of World War I, these were productive years for Mete- yard's painting. He experimented in a variety of styles; there is even a vivid poin- tillist portrait of his wife, dating from 1911 to 1913. Some of his loveliest and most accomplished watercolors also date from the teens. Few prints are known from this period, however. His last known print, a linocut view of Cavalaire in the south of France is said to have been executed in the 1920s as a Christmas greeting. Mete- yard died in Switzerland on 17 March 1928, following a brief illness. 39

39 There is apparently no basis for the story, related by Book in Boston (note 3), p. 97, that Meteyard contracted Lawrence Alloway in "The Travelling Man," Art News, a chill when he fell off a rock into a snow drift while 54 (November 1955), 12, and cited in Finlay, Artists of the painting.