R E C E NT A C Q U I SI T IO N S FALL 2008 V O SE G ALLERI ES O F B O ST O N Samuel Lancaster Gerry (1813-1891) (detail) Lake Winnipesaukee in October Oil on canvas, 14 x 20 inches, Signed lower left: S. L. Gerry 1858 , Dated 1858 RECENT ACQUISITIONS September 19- November 12, 2008 VOSE GALLERIES OF BOSTON Raised in a farming family in Pennsylvania, Martin Johnson Heade’s modest roots did not presume that he would ultimately enjoy the longest career of any nineteenth-century American painter, and travel far beyond the boundaries of his home state. Heade began painting around the age of eighteen and settled in New York in 1843, a move that prompted a fifteen-year period during which he lived and journeyed throughout the United States and Europe, spending time in cities such as Rome, St. Louis, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Tren - ton, Providence and New Orleans. After his travels, Heade took a studio at the popular Tenth Street Studio Building in New York City, where he met the leading landscape artists of the day, including Frederic E. Church, who most likely influenced Heade’s lifelong interest in land- and seascape paint - ing. The artist’s long relationship with Vose Galleries began in the late 1850s while he was painting in Rhode Island. There he met Seth Vose, and the two became friends and col - leagues; Vose represented Heade’s pictures from as early as 1860. After leaving New York in 1862, the artist rented space in Boston’s newly-opened Studio Building. During Heade’s two years in Boston he attracted positive reviews and ex - plored the city’s north and south shores, painting the local marshlands and shorelines. From the Studio Building, Heade wrote to Vose, “I have just sent by early express two pictures that I happened to have finished. The one you may get 35 for & the other 20 or 25. In a few days—about a week—I’ll send a large one, & a good one, & you must not let it go for less than 150. Get more if you can.” Sailboats off the Connecticut Shore (Black Rock) incorporates aspects from two types of paintings for which Heade was known: seascapes and marsh scenes. The calm water dotted with small sailboats and the incandescent clouds create a delicate contrast to the figures toil - ing in the marshy foreground. Exhibitions: American Paintings and Sculpture , Allentown Art Museum, Pennsylvania, 1985. Literature: Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., The Life and Work of Martin Johnson Heade, A Critical Analysis and Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000) Illus. p.250, #191. 2 Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) Sailboats off the Connecticut Shore (Black Rock) Oil on wood panel, 9 x 12 1/4 inches, Circa 1870 3 Alfred T. Bricher was born in the coastal town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and raised in Newburyport, Massachusetts. At the age of fourteen he went to Boston to work as a clerk in a dry-goods store and took art classes at the Lowell Institute in his spare time. In 1858 he met Charles Temple Dix and William Stanley Haseltine on a sketching trip to Mount Desert, Maine, and soon after established a studio in Boston. At that time, the newly built Studio Building was also home to fellow landscape painters Martin Johnson Heade, William Bradford, George Inness and Samuel L. Gerry. During his early career, Bricher made sketching trips through the Catskills and the White Mountains, but was painting primarily seascapes of the New England coastline by the mid-1870s. In 1874 Bricher made his first visit to Grand Manan Island off the coast of New Brunswick, and began a series that fascinated him for the next fifteen years. Bricher trav - eled out to the island by boat from Eastport, Maine, a trip which he referenced in an 1895 let - ter to his daughter, Dottie: “Here I am you see. Left Eastport at 1 Saturday got to Grand 1 Manan at 3—took the mail wagon and got here about 7 in the evening—very tired….” Low Tide and Cliffs, Grand Manan , demonstrates all of the signature elements—flat calm sea, cerulean blue sky and dramatic cliffs—that made Bricher one of the most well-known and widely collected marine painters of his day. Nineteenth-century Vose Galleries proprietor Seth Vose greatly admired Bricher’s work, and handled his paintings from as early as 1862. Seth would buy as many as ten to twenty paintings at a time. Bricher was also promoted by Springfield, Massachusetts, dealer James D. Gill, who sold many of his paintings to avid art collector G. W. V. Smith. Several of Bricher’s seascapes remain in the collection of Springfield’s George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum. 1 Indianapolis Museum Exhibition Catalogue, Jeffrey R. Brown, 1973. 4 Alfred Thompson Bricher (1837-1908) Low Tide and Cliffs, Grand Manan Oil on canvas, 14 x 20 inches, Signed lower right: AT Bricher 5 The modest desire to capture unidealized views of nature launched a revolution in French art in the 19th century. By 1850, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Charles-François Daubigny, Narcisse-Virgil Diaz and Jean-François Millet were all painting in the village of Barbizon. In defiance of academic standards that stressed historical scenes, themes from mythology and portrait painting, these artists took their canvases outdoors and painted di - rectly from nature. Providence art dealer Seth M. Vose (1831-1910) began acquiring works by these un - conventional artists in the 1850s, convinced that they were among the greatest painters of their day. His collection of art by Barbizon School painters numbered in the hundreds, but it took more than twenty years before he would sell even one work. Despite ridicule, he re - mained devoted to their cause and eventually turned public opinion; in 1887 Vose sold five Corot paintings for $10,000 a piece. Diaz exhibited his paintings at the Paris Salon for the first time in 1831. His earli - est works were mostly figurative pieces, with a particular specialty in nymphs, Turkish and Arabian women. His viewers were so impressed by the glowing qualities of these works and their realistic portrayal of warm sun on vibrantly colored clothing that many assumed he spent his summers in the East, not knowing that Diaz had never seen these ladies in per - son. Later in his career, nearing the age of forty, Diaz made the first of many trips to the forest of Fontainebleau and began the series of works for which he is now best known. He befriended Theodore Rousseau, another major figure of the Barbizon School, who instructed him on the application of bolder colors such as emerald green and Naples yellow. His obit - uary in The Art Journal read: “He delighted to paint forest-scenes, and was particularly happy in lighting up the dark places with rays of sunlight, and touching with spots of gold the 1 hoary tree-trunks.” 1 The Art Journal , Diaz obituary, 1877, p.31. 6 Narcisse-Virgil Diaz (1807-1876) Page and Hounds in the Forest of Fontainebleau Oil on wood panel, 16 x 12 1/2 inches, Signed lower right: N. Diaz 7 Hippolyte-Camille Delpy was born in Joigny, in the heart of France, in 1842. The son of a pharmacist, Delpy’s early talents in painting were recognized and encouraged when Charles-François Daubigny, a close friend of the family and famed Barbizon School painter, took the young Camille under his wing. At age sixteen, Delpy sought to develop his paint - ing skills in Paris, but he soon became Daubigny’s student exclusively, and long remained under his artistic influence. Later in Paris, following a year of military service from 1862 to 1863, Daubigny introduced Delpy to Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. As one of the best-known early Barbizon School painters, Corot would prove to be another strong influence on Delpy’s painting style. A critic from La République Française described how “Mr. Delpy has revealed himself as a young landscape painter combining Corot’s poetical style with Daubigny’s more 1 naturalistic style in a way that [does] not exclude his own personality.” Delpy made his debut at the Paris Salon of 1869 and enjoyed a career that spanned over forty years. He won many awards and medals, was elected to full membership of the Société des Artistes Français in 1886, and exhibited at the prestigious Exposition Universelle of 1900. A later meeting with Cézanne and Pissarro had a great impact on Delpy. Although he remained faithful to the technique of Daubigny and Corot, he brought a more vigorous touch and a greater intensity of color to his work. Delpy is considered one of the most em - inent of the second-generation Barbizon painters. 1 La République Française , Feb. 14, 1876. Exhibitions: “Barbizon Returns to Vose,” Vose Galleries of Boston, 1991. Illus. exhib. catalogue, p.20. 8 Hippolyte-Camille Delpy (1842-1910) Canal Barge on the River Oil on wood panel, 13 x 23 3/4 inches, Signed lower right: H. C. Delpy, Dated 1890 9 Go out and look at any landscape...there is a sentiment, a feeling, which pervades the whole...the man who can reproduce that feeling on canvas, who can make the one who sees the picture feel 1 as he felt, that man is an artist, and his work is a work of art. It took William Preston Phelps over a decade as a professional artist to discover a landscape that moved him so powerfully that it inspired his greatest body of work.