The Graphic Art of Thomas Buford Meteyard

The graphic art of Thomas Buford Meteyard The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Finlay, Nancy. 1990. The graphic art of Thomas Buford Meteyard. Harvard Library Bulletin 1 (2), Summer 1990: 50-66. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42661198 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA 50 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, accom- panied a poem by Richard Hovey (figure 2). Hovey had come to France the previ- ous 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.

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