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No. 131 NOVEMBER 2004 A Library Letter rom The Boston Athena:um articles about the Athen<Eum's collections, including the sparkling contributions by Michael Wenrworrh that have From the Director recently been collected as Look Agam: Essays on the Boston Athenceum's Art Col/ectrons I have open before me, on the desk in my office, the very For several years, members of the Arhen<Eum's staff first issue of Athenamm Items: A Library Letter from the have felt that it was time for us to make a change to our Boston Athenceum. It is dated March 1934 and its opening "Library Letter": not a mere facelift, and not something article - a mere two paragraphs - is devoted to the completely different (as the saying goes), but in a forma origins of the emblem of the Arhen<Eum, which (it turns that more accurately reflects the Athen<Eum's current out) was adopted on 4 April 1814. The emblem has been audiences. Our intention is to continue to draw refined since it appeared at the head of Athenceum Items in attention to the Library's collections, but to do so by also 1934, but our motto remains the same, and it was in fact writing about our programs, educational endeavors, and the purpose of that opening article in the first number of collaborations in the communities around us. Items to d raw our members' attention to the Library's We are also committed to ensuring that a nationwide collections. audience has a better sense of research opportunities at Readers may be interested in learning that the first iss ue the Athen<Eum and of the historical collections that was only four pages in length, much of it given over to would support scholarly work. Items is therefore emerg­ "New Books of Various InteresL" The categories were: ing this fall with a new look and more varied emphases, Biography and Reminiscence; Cri ticism and Letters; but with the coll ections of the Library still very much in Drama, Music, and Poetry; History; The New Era view. Missing from this issue, you will notice, is the (mostly books on economics and politics); Novels and traditional list of circulating books with which the old Short Stories; Philosophy and Religion; and Sport and Items always concluded. That list is being continued, Travel. Among those authors whose novels are listed in however, both on the Athenreum's Web sire, where it is the first number are Pearl Buck, Walter De La Mare, John periodically updated, and in a print version that we are G alswo rrhy, J ohn Masefi e l d, Dorothy P a rker, happy to send to all interested members. If you are ].B. Priestley, Kenneth Roberts, and Somerville and Ross. interested, please contact the Reference D epartment at Athenceum 1tems is now seventy years old, and I think it 617-227-0270, extension 280, and librarians there will be is fair to say that it has successfully fulfilled irs mission as happy ro send a current list to you. In the meantime, my a newsletter that stimulated members to make our books colleagues and I hope that you will enjoy the Library's circulate both within and outside of the Library. Along newsletter in its revised formaL the way - and particularly during the last ten years - Richard \X!endorf 1tum h as also brought its readers a number of engagmg Stanford Calderwood Dn·ector and L1brarzan An Uncommon Common leading figures in the local artistic community. His reachers by Frank Duveneck and fellow students introduced h1m w the works of rhe Dutch and Spanish Old Masters, notably Franz Hals and Diego Velasque1, whose dark, heavil) painted canvases influ­ In 1889 the internationally famous American artist Frank enced Duveneck's methodology and taste for decades. Nor DU\eneck (1848-1919) came w the city of Boston hoptng w coincidentally, the distinctive style that he and his contempo­ find at least temporary relief from the recent vagaries of his raries now created, partially under the influence of thosl hfe. The v1sir marked rhe end of two decades of European older artists, became known as "the Munich method." exp.uriation for Duveneck and ser in motion changes in his Duveneck spent much of the 1870s traveling in Europe, way of life that under any or her ctrcumstances he almost cer­ visiting the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy. In tainly would not have made. T he Boswn Arhen~um has 1878, with his friend and fellow American painter Frank recently acquired a painting that in subject and style com­ Currier, Duveneck established painting classes at the Bavarian memorates this moment village of Polling, rhereb} in Duveneck's career. beginnin g a lifetime of Whtle the arrisr is nor nor­ influential reachtng. In mally associated with the 1879 he wok a group of city of Boston, this his sruden ts, known as the painting - The Boston "Duveneck boys," w Italy, Comnzon - IS not only a where, in Venice, they met relic of Duveneck's repa­ James Whistler and other . rriatton, bur also provides avant-garde artiStS. clues to his emotional Ouveneck spent the next state during a very diffi­ several years in Plorence, cult rime of his life. More Venice, and back in opttmisrically, it also Polling, teaching and records a friendship that working where\er he the greganous Duveneck went. In 1885 he studied maintained over several in Paris, and the following decades. With irs dark poericism, The Boston Common is year ended a long courtship by marrying Elizabeth (Lizzie) ultimately a wuchtng memenw of an artist with a broken Boon, one of his former pupils and daughter of rhe wealthy heart. expatriate Bostonian Francis Boon. The Ouvenecks lived for Frank Duveneck was born in northern Kentucky, just several years with Lizzie's cantankerous father in Florence; bur across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio, a wwn with which he in the spring of 1888, while visiting Paris only rwo yea rs after would be professiOnally affiliated for the rest of his life. In marrying Duveneck, Lizzie di ed suddenly from a severe case of . 1869, after early training with local artists, he followed what pneumoma. was becomtng the natural career track for American artists: he Lizzie Ouveneck's death was a blow w close friends such as \Vent w Europe and enroll ed in the Bavarian Royal Academy Henry James and other members of the American and British in Munich. He qutckly proved w be an apt and popular stu­ expatriate communities in Paris and Florence of which she dent, winmng pnzes and arrracting favorable attention from had been such an intrinsic parr. For Duveneck, however, it .................. ------------------------- ---------------------------------~------ - was a real tragedy, one from which the otherwise tough little completed. It remamed in his family until very recently American never totally recovered. His impulse was ro and was carefully preserved through several generations. The abandon Europe and thereby avoid the places where he had type of subject undenaken in The Boston ( omrnon is an experienced early professional and more recen r personal unusual one for Om em:ck. He is cenainlv, nor known as a triumphs. Eventually he would return to Cmcmnari to pa1nrer of cttyscapes, although he did pamr 'Kws of Venice, become the most popular and influential teacher in that both c.lose up and from a d1srance, and, ltke Wh1sder, made "Athens of the West." But first he went to Boston. the city the subject of some of his etchings. Nor 1s Duveneck The primary reason for Duveneck's coming to Boston on normally associated with the state of Massac.husens, with the this journey of recovery was to place his and Linie's son, important exceptiOn of Gloucester, where he spent Francis Boon Duveneck, in the home of one of LizLie's aunts, summers in the early t\\enueth century. f·or the most a stable environment where the child could spend the rest of pare, however, the bnghdy colored seascapes and his youth. Frank Duveneck probably already had a favorable views of the seaside town basking m the summer sun that view of Boston, though; it was there, in an exhibition at the he painted there have little stylistic connec.rion to rhe Arhen<£um's new work. Boston Art Club in 1875, that his paintings received their In fact, The Boston ( ommon could nor d1ffer more. In th1s first positive critical attennon. And, as luck would have n, painting Duveneck g1ves us an urban landscape wherein the Duveneck also had at least one dose, long-term friend in city is represented not by Hs inhabitants, bur simply by the Boston: the painter, watercolorist, and illustratOr George dome of Bulfinch's Stare House. The structure is seen across H en ry Clements (1854-1935). Clements was a native of and through the trees of the Common, rhe heart and lungs of Louisiana, bur had mer Duveneck in Europe-they shared a the cit), which is not rendered in the bright colors of spring house near Paris \vith several other artists for a season or two. or summer, as one m1ghr expect, bur in tones from a darker Clements had come to Bosron himself in rhe 1880s in search palette typical of the Munich method. If one \\ere to judge of artistic patronage, but he had good reason for lingering the painting merely by its tide, it seems likely that an entirely there: he had recently married Caroline Curtis Dixwell, a different sort of image would be imagined. Undoubtedly the Boston Brahmin who was related to the Bowdirches and the artist's own depression, sense of loss, and feelings of abandon­ Bo.udmans, and a descendant of Epes Sargent.

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