JAMES ORMSBEE CHAPIN AND THE MARVIN PAINTINGS: AN EPIC OF THE AMERICAN FARM BY Sherman Reed Anderson Submitted to the graduate degree program in Art History and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ____________________ Chairperson Committee Members * ____________________* ____________________* ____________________* ____________________* Date Defended_______________ The Dissertation Committee for Sherman Reed Anderson certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: JAMES ORMSBEE CHAPIN AND THE MARVIN PAINTINGS: AN EPIC OF THE AMERICAN FARM Committee: _______________________________ Chairperson* _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ Date approved: ________________________ ii Contents Acknowledgments iv Introduction 1 Prologue 13 Chapter I: “We Make Ourselves a Place Apart”: 16 James Chapin, Robert Frost and the Marvins Chapter II: “A Servant to Servants”: 57 James Chapin’s Miss Ella Marvin Chapter III: A Modern Day Yeoman: 75 James Chapin’s Emmet Marvin Farmer Chapter IV: The Farmer and His Daughter: 94 James Chapin’s George Marvin and His Daughter Edith Chapter V: James Chapin’s Foxhunter: 112 A Portrait of a New Jersey Hilltopper Chapter VI: On the Road in a Laundry Truck: 132 Life off the Farm and the Greater American Scene Conclusion 147 Appendices 151 Bibliography 154 Illustrations 161 iii Acknowledgments This study would not have been possible without the valuable assistance and support of my mentors at the University of Kansas: Dr. Charles Eldredge, my princi- pal advisor and Chair of my dissertation committee; Dr. Marilyn Stokstad; Dr. David Cateforis; and Dr. Stephen Goddard. They all provided me with models to emulate in regards to what is right and proper in scholarship. I must also acknowledge the im- portant contributions made by Professor Judith McCrea at the University of Kansas; I thank you for your careful reading of this document and the images discussed therein. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Ileana Leavens at Seattle Central Commu- nity College in Seattle, Washington for leading me to the path of art history many years ago, and to Dr. Martha Kingsbury, Professor Emerita, University of Washing- ton, for the encouragement, friendship, and moral support she has offered me over the course of my education. I owe whatever success I may enjoy as a teacher of art and its remarkable history to all of the above named individuals; I have learned from the very best. Countless other people offered important assistance as this study progressed and reached its ultimate completion, so I will limit my thanks to the most essential. I am very grateful to Susan Craig, Head Librarian at the University of Kansas Art and Architecture Library, and her incredible staff. I have always maintained that librarians are one of the graduate student’s greatest assets; Susan and her staff have clearly vali- dated that conviction. I would like to offer special thanks to Tom Chapin for the won- derful day we spent reminiscing about his grandfather James Orsmbee Chapin, and to Russell Muller, who gave up a weekend to act as my personal guide during a research trip to New Jersey. I came to understand the Marvin family and their way of life much better while tromping around on what remains of the Marvin homestead in Russell’s company. And finally, I must acknowledge the important role Robert Hile- man played in bringing this work to its conclusion. Thank you for reading and com- menting on the early drafts of this manuscript, and more importantly, your unwaver- ing encouragement and support. iv This work is dedicated to Robert Hileman and to “my boys.” v Introduction When the motives of artists are profound, when they are at their work as a result of deep consideration, when they believe in the importance of what they are doing, their work creates a stir in the world. - Robert Henri1 It was one of those instances of love at first sight. From the first time I looked upon them, I was smitten with James Chapin’s paintings of the Marvin family [figs. 1.13, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, and 5.1]. While I admired the manner in which they were painted, it was the people I encountered in the pictures that attracted me most. Though there was no way I could have known them as individuals, I did know what kind of people they must have been. They reminded me of my paternal grandparents who, with all the strikes against them, farmed a small piece of land in the Missouri Ozarks and raised eleven children. Their needs were simple but they worked hard to meet those needs sun up to sun down. At times their lives could be difficult but they persevered and they endured. There were many American families like them in the 1920s whose roots ran deep into their own soil, people like the Marvins. But Chapin was the first American artist to take a long hard look at them and devote five years of his life— 1924 to 1929—to capturing their way life in his art. Chapin’s paintings of the Marv- ins are honest, down-to-earth representations of American farm life because they were derived from shared experience. He lived what he painted. I have since come to 1 Robert Henri, The Art Spirit. (New York: Harper & Row, 1984, Reprint of 1923 edition): 103. 1 learn that my initial response to this series of works was not that unusual; in fact it appears to have been quite common. James Chapin, to borrow Robert Henri’s apt phrase, created a “stir in the world” in the late 1920s and 1930s with “The Marvin Paintings,” as they are com- monly known. From their debut at the New Gallery in New York City in 1926, these unconventional depictions of a New Jersey farm drew the approbation of art critics from New York City to Chicago, and various points in between, many of whom praised the young adventurous artist for “discovering” the American scene and thus setting American art on a new course.2 Here they claimed could be found the first af- firmation of an American art that owed no debt to European modernism. Moreover, the paintings did not conform to any pre-existing models for they were neither aca- demic nor modern, but something outside that binary opposition. Chapin had pro- duced, according to his supporters, an indigenous, home-grown style, which he em- ployed to depict a recognizable American subject, the independent, self-sufficient American farmer, rendered with total honesty. Chapin’s Regionalist ally Grant Wood acknowledged the value of these original works in a 1940 essay he wrote for the cata- logue that accompanied a retrospective exhibition of Chapin’s work at the Associated American Artists Galleries in New York City. According to Wood, the paintings were “among the best things in American art,” pictures that accurately captured “the pain and bleakness of a frugal existence on the land.”3 Edward Alden Jewell, art critic for the New York Times and long-time supporter of the artist, wrote of the same exhibi- 2 “New York Season” The Art Digest., 1 February, 1930:16-17. This notice of Chapin’s 1930 exhibition at the Rehn Gallery in New York City cites several favorable reviews that had previously appeared in The New York Times, The New York Post and The Philadelphia Eagle. 3 Grant Wood, “James Chapin and The Marvins.” (New York. Associated American Artists Galleries, 1940). 2 tion, “This show…establishes his [Chapin’s] position as second to none in our con- temporary roster. It contains some of the finest paintings of our time. It…constitutes a full and ringing American challenge. In a word, this show is the real thing.”4 Chapin loathed painting the familiar, and no one like the Marvin family had yet appeared in American art. In the society of the 1920s, transfixed by rampant mate- rialism and the ever-growing abundance of consumer goods, the self-sufficient Marvin family offered a striking contrast. They were hill-people, down-to-earth coun- try folks, who for the most part kept to themselves, and Chapin’s paintings are a re- cord of their struggles and triumphs. However, it would be a mistake to think of the Marvin paintings as objective renderings of rural farm life. Rather, they are subjective responses to a stimulus. For Chapin, the Marvins were representative of such virtues as self-reliance, personal fortitude, and perseverance in the face of adversity, all of which would become especially meaningful in the 1930s as the nation struggled through the Great Depression. They were humble people of the soil, the heirs of those men and women who settled this great nation, and thus in the eyes of the artist, noble and worthy of respect. Moreover, in Chapin’s hands, they transcend the particular, the individual, and eventually come to symbolize the typical, self-sufficient, hardworking American. Chapin’s ambitious Marvin series consists of five paintings that the artist con- sidered his major canvases, all of them portraits of members of the Marvin family. Additionally, there are an unknown number of paintings and sketches scattered 4 Edward Alden Jewell cited in “American Challenge.” Time, March 11, 1940: 63. 3 throughout the country that depict the Marvins working their farm.5 Due to the im- portance Chapin placed on them, the portraits will serve as the overall framework for this study outlined below, and they are: Emmet, George and Ella Marvin, also known as The Marvins [fig. 1.13], (Trenton: The New Jersey State Museum), Miss Ella Marvin [fig. 2.1], (Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art), Emmet Marvin, Farmer [fig.